The Briny Café

by Susan Duncan

  “She hated me. I mean really hated me. For as long as I can remember. Whatever I did wasn’t good enough. I never measured up. From the moment I started breathing, I failed to live up to Emily’s expectations.”

  Sam pours more wine and puts the bottle within reach on the floor. He’s relieved, though, when Kate takes her customary small sip. Getting shit-faced, as he knows only too well, doesn’t ease the pain, it only delays it.

  “She used to make me wear silly frilled skirts when I was a little girl. I always ripped the hem, which drove her mad. Maybe that’s where it all started. What do you think? I was plain, too. She loathes plain people. At least I’ve never been fat. I didn’t fail her there.” Another sip of wine. “I wish I could remember just one kind moment. Isn’t that sad? God, all it takes is nine months in the womb and they own you forever. Whether it suits them or not.”

  Sam lets her ramble on and on without a word, indicating with a nod of his head when it seems she needs a reaction from him. Kate’s memories ricochet from tennis clubs and pikelets to low-cut dresses and very high heels. From life in a country town to a string of business failures in the city. She and her father were clearly subjected to the whims of a woman who, he gathers, would disappear on and off throughout her marriage. Neither father nor daughter ever knew where.

  “When I was twenty I fell in love,” Kate says, holding his eyes with her own.

  Sam sits up a bit straighter, listening intently now.

  “He was a farmer. Every weekend, he drove three hundred kilometres to take me out to dinner. Red-checked tablecloths, candles in old wine bottles. You know?”

  Sam nods.

  “Afterwards, we’d lie on the sitting room floor at home, barely touching, listening to my parents’ old records. I liked him, Sam. Thought I loved him. He made me feel … valued. ‘This is the one,’ I eventually confessed to Emily. A couple of weeks later, she told me that he’d gone into her bedroom and fondled her breasts. That he was a philanderer and I had to get rid of him. Anyone could reach into the gutter, she said.”

  Those words, Sam suspects, must have sent most of Kate’s relationships careening off-course before they had a chance to take hold. How could she ever trust her judgement about men again? A single betrayal or a lifetime of them? The pieces begin to fall into place. So the house in Oyster Bay was a refuge, he thinks, making sense of it at last. Kate was not a misfit, certainly not a loner nor a drifter. She’d done a runner.

  “And now,” Kate almost shouts, “she tells – told – me I have a brother!”

  He gets up from his chair then and slides in behind her on the sofa until her head rests against his chest. He puts his arms around her shoulders to stop her shaking. He smells lavender, rosemary in her hair. She fits in the hollow of his shoulder like it was carved for her.

  “What am I supposed to do about that?” she says, beginning to cry again. “Does she mean a full brother? A half-brother? A step-brother? I have no idea. Was he born long before me? Did my dad even know? Who raised him? And now she’s dead and I can’t ask her.”

  “If it’s true, what do you want to do about it?” Sam says, over the top of her head.

  “Well, find him, of course,” she says, twisting in his arms so she can see his face. “He’s my brother, Sam. My family. We might even like each other.”

  “Or you might not.”

  “That too. But I have to give it a chance.”

  “I guess we’ll just have to start looking then.”

  “You understand, don’t you? I have to find him. I have to know.”

  “We’ll find him. It’s like any problem …”

  “You wear it away.” Her lopsided grin slithers off her face, but it was there, like a ray of hope. “We?”

  He’s about to say his mother always said that two heads were better than one but he swallows words he knows are banal in the current situation and strokes her arm. “Yeah, we,” is all he says.

  A few minutes later, she relaxes against him like a rag doll and is deeply asleep. A few hours later, she doesn’t stir when Sam rests his lips on the soft white skin of her inner arm and then tucks the blanket under her chin. He lets himself out with barely a sound. It is three in the morning, the wind has dropped to a murmur and even the sea seems at rest.

  Cook’s Basin News (CBN)

  Newsletter for Offshore Residents of Cook’s Basin, Australia

  * * *

  DECEMBER

  * * *

  MERRY CHRISTMAS!

  The Editor would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a joyful and safe Christmas and New Year. See you all … on the water.

  FUNNEL-WEB SPIDERS

  Last week, while cleaning the bedroom, I came across a funnel-web spider about to take up residence in the laundry basket. Loath to kill any living thing, I managed to slip it into a jar. I then found that live funnel-webs are needed for regular milking of their venom for anti-venom serum for people who have been bitten. So next time you find a funnel-web, catch it safely and send it on to an authorised handler. Remember to put a hole in the jar for oxygen and moisten some cotton wool for fluids. You could save a life.

  Christmas Day – Limited Service

  The Community Vehicle is available for limited times. Please request or confirm your booking with the driver on duty on Christmas Eve. And have a great Christmas and New Year from the Community Vehicle Driver Team.

  CAROLS AFLOAT - DEC. 21

  Share the fun with family and friends. Load up your tinny with a picnic, a bottle of something festive, the kids and the dogs to sing along with the offshore choir. Either anchor in Log Frollow, starting around 7 p.m. Or catch the final performance at the Spit, at 8.30-ish. Look out for the lovely Mary Kay and follow the music! If you are boatless, call the ferry service to book a spot on the Seagull.

  Wanted –House to Rent

  For family with two young boys now returning to Sydney after seven years abroad. We would like to try offshore living before committing to buying a property. We’ve just given up managing a game reserve with lions, elephant and leopard, so the wilds of Cutter Island shouldn’t pose too many horrors. Required from June for one year. We figure that’s long enough to know whether it will suit us.

  Bill and Tracey

  Recycling over the Holidays

  Recycling will be the same as usual. There are still a number of residents who are not separating bottles and paper. Please make an effort! If you receive gifts in large cardboard boxes, please break it down into small pieces for easier (and tidier) disposal. Merry Christmas one and all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Three days before Christmas, Kate leaves Oyster Bay in the cool light of morning that turns the landscape satiny. She does not want to attend this last performance of Emily Jackson. But if there is an adored son, surely he will come to see his mother buried. Say goodbye.

  If he exists.

  And if he does, does he know of her existence?

  She tries, but cannot visualise a sibling. And yet it’s not impossible. Her childhood was riddled with secrets.

  “Your mother’s going out,” her father would say.

  “Where?”

  “Just out.”

  And when Emily returned home, often a day or two later, glassy-eyed and dishevelled, Kate would ask: “Where did you go?”

  “Out.”

  When she was old enough to understand, Kate suspected Emily was having affairs. Now she wonders if she dressed up and took flight not to meet a lover but to see a son she’d given up. If only she’d asked a single question, received a single answer. But Emily, she suspects, would have lied. Lying was a compulsion, as though the truth was too boring to waste time on.

  Kate bans Ettie, Sam and Fast Freddy from attending the funeral. “The old girl wanted it to be private,” she lies. They step back from her then, and let her go.

  At the service Kate searches the small group of faces for a man who looks like her or her mother. There is no one. Just a line-up
of stooped, white-haired “inmates” from the retirement village, hardly looking grieved. More likely relieved that it is not their turn yet.

  At the graveside, she squeezes a clump of dirt. She knows she should toss it gently on the lid of the coffin in a gesture of regret and sorrow but hesitates for too long. Curious eyes turn towards her.

  She hurls it then, like a fast bowler. The soil lands on the polished wood with a dull thud. Without waiting for the end of the service, she turns and tramps away. Rain begins to fall in big, round drops, as hard as pebbles.

  She marches through silent lines of weather-beaten marble slabs with names and sentimental messages chiselled into the granite. How many lies are neatly etched forever on the tombstones? Beloved? Adored? Really, truly? Surely not everyone is a model husband, wife, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather. How many are sunk into the ground with a collective sigh of relief?

  She’d cited cost when the undertaker had asked for an epitaph. “Name and date. Nothing else.” No hypocrisy. Not now, not ever.

  Ignoring the rain, Kate keeps on through the ordered, silent army of the dead. For a split second, she thinks she sees wraiths swooping through the air. There is a crack of thunder, then a deluge. She comes to her senses. The earth turns fragrant and water runs down her face, stings her eyes. Salty.

  So many cemeteries located in the best real estate in town, she thinks, detaching herself, like a journalist, from emotion. As though the dead have eyes and feelings. She climbs into her car and drives aimlessly until the late afternoon. Emptying her mind. Knowing that if she doesn’t, she will go mad. Then she turns around and heads home to Cook’s Basin.

  It is early evening when she reaches the Spit. The landscape gleams in the rain-washed summer twilight. She walks slowly towards the Square, her eyes on the ground, dodging the massive pothole that Ettie says will one day swallow a baby and a pram if the council doesn’t pay attention.

  A few people sit on the damp seawall holding fishing rods. The Seagull is tucked cosily on her mooring. The café is closed. Not even a lamp shines in Ettie’s penthouse. A night out with the chef, Kate thinks, happy that her friend is happy.

  It is almost dark now, with a white moon already high in a fading sky. She continues to Commuter Dock where she hears the steady diesel thrum of the Mary Kay and looks up. The barge glides into the drop-off and pick-up zone and waits there.

  Sam jumps onto the pontoon and walks towards her. “Need a lift?” he calls out softly.

  “I’m good,” she says.

  “Magic night.”

  “I’m tired, Sam.”

  “Well, love, I’m sorry to hear that because I am under strict orders and I’ve always been a bloke who does as he is told.”

  “Orders?”

  “Yep.” He grabs her hand. “Follow me.”

  “No, Sam. Thanks. It’s really kind of you but …”

  “Don’t force me to throw you over my shoulder, mate.”

  “I am not your bloody mate!”

  They chug smoothly over the water. Neither of them speaks.

  He nudges into the rear deck of The Briny and waves at Ettie, who’s watching from her penthouse. She gives a thumbs-up and disappears. In a few moments, Fast Freddy, Marcus and Ettie emerge carrying baskets, blankets and iceboxes.

  “We all decided it was a top night for a picnic,” Sam says. “Long as you don’t mind a wet bum when you sit on the ground.”

  Way beyond Kingfish Bay, they anchor a few metres off a crescent-shaped sliver of beach that shines whitely in the night. Ettie and Fast Freddy row a dinghy ashore and set out blankets, cushions and an old washing machine drum that Sam had hoisted out of the hold where he stores the mooring chain. They twist it into the sand and then fill it with wood to make a campfire. Quickly, smoke curls upwards, a spectre against the night sky. The flames are warm, inviting, offering comfort.

  In the wheelhouse, Sam fiddles with cables and switches. He shoos Marcus away when he offers to help. “Never touch the workings of another man’s boat, mate. That way you can’t be blamed for the explosion.” He eventually hits a switch and it happens all at once. Music fills the air and a few lights strung around the gunnel flutter into red, green, yellow and blue life. The chef slides overboard into water up to his knees to join Ettie and Fast Freddy. On the beach, he swings both of them in a waltz. They plough into cool damp sand and fall in a laughing heap.

  “Now,” Sam says, reaching for Kate. “You can teach me to tango.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Kate replies, almost smiling, “I happen to be very good at dancing.”

  “So. Who taught you?”

  “My mother,” she says softly, and a scant golden moment of her shadowy childhood eases the hurt.

  “Anyone at the funeral who could be your brother?” he asks, spinning her round. Deliberately talking about it so it doesn’t fester.

  “Nope.”

  “Hell of an inheritance, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Well. She was always a bit of a drama queen. God, Sam, you’ve got the grace of an elephant.”

  “Easy on. It’s early days. Give a bloke a decent chance.”

  “I think Ettie’s waving to say our picnic is ready,” she says.

  “That woman …”

  “Is the answer to every man’s dreams. Move on, Sam, you have truly worn that line to a shred.”

  “Everyone’s a critic,” he grins, knowing he’s trumped her. He jumps off the bow into the knee-deep shallows and reaches up to lift her off.

  By nine o’clock on the morning of Christmas Eve, the sun already burns hot and the air is thick with moisture from a tropical northerly. Swarms of white moon jellyfish rise and fall hypnotically in a gelatinous sea. It’s the last few hours before shops and offices close down for the silly season.

  Sam drops in on Artie with enough supplies to get the old fella through the close-down period when over-partied locals can be found lumped on beaches, decks and sofas in a state of such lethargy it would take a cyclone to budge them.

  “Got a message from Ettie and Kate,” he announces, after turning down the offer of a pre-lunch rum. “Christmas dinner at The Briny. No excuses. It’s sorted. Jimmy and I are going to strap you into a bosun’s chair and use the crane on the Mary Kay to hoist you off your boat so we can transport you in regal splendour to Ettie’s magnificent top deck. A comfortable chair already has your name on it and is waiting patiently for your arrival.”

  “Ya gonna lower me into an appropriately comfortable receptacle for the voyage over? Not leave me swingin’ in the sunshine like a newborn hangin’ from the beak of a stork?”

  “Would I do a mongrel act like that?”

  “Ya bloody would.”

  Inside the café, the rush is on to prepare for crowds that flock to the shore to watch the Dog Race. Ettie and Kate expect the usual chaos and mayhem, as well as a massive jump in orders for hot chips and cold beers.

  In the remains of the afternoon, the Spit is a seething mass of wall-to-wall people. They line the shore, the ferry wharf. Some are stacked four-deep on the roof of the cabin of the old Seagull, which has sunk so low in the water it is inches away from a death roll to the bottom of the sea.

  Kate takes a quick break and rushes outside, pushing her way through the throng until she finds Jack the Bookie. She lays an astonishing fifty dollars on a rank outsider called Joy.

  “Not in the know, are you?” asks Jack, who is more accustomed to one-dollar flutters.

  “Nah. I just like the name.”

  Jack snatches her money, relieved. “Ah. A girl bet. All show and no form.”

  “Probably.”

  He gives her odds of twenty-to-one which adds up to a thousand bucks if it comes home. He leans around Kate to check his ancient tinny is still tied up in a handy spot. If Joy wins, he’s fully aware he’ll have to do a runner.

  To hedge his financial exposure, Jack lowers the odds on the mutt to evens – a critical mistake. Suddenly everyone
wants to plunge because they figure it must be a good thing. Nervous sweat trickles down Jack’s face and a rush of queasiness swamps him as he tries to remember how much petrol he has in the tank. He sits down abruptly on a picnic bench, short of breath. So he misses seeing the start of the race when all the dogs swim with their owners across the two-kilometre stretch of sparkling blue sea. He realises he has no idea what Joy looks like. For all he knows, it could be a poodle or a Portuguese water dog. “Please,” he prays out loud, “not a Portuguese water dog.”

  Jack looks up nervously from his battered sandshoes when the crowd begins to roar. He stands and eases his way to the front with an apologetic smile. “I’m the bookie,” he explains. “Need to see the winner for myself.”

  The cry rises: “Joy! Joy!”

  Out to sea, sodden canine heads jut out of the water and paddle into focus. Black dogs, white dogs, brown dogs, brindle dogs, long-haired, short-haired, curly-haired and just plain summer-shorn-down-to-zero dogs. Closer and closer. The chant is hysterical.

  “Joy! Joy!”

  Jack closes his eyes and crosses his fingers.

  “Joy! The winner!” yells Sam, the race facilitator, from his official position in the western corner of the beach.

  Jack opens his eyes just in time to witness a moment he later refers to as “divine deliverance from bankruptcy”. He leaps from the seawall like a grasshopper, scrambles across the sand and grabs Sam’s arm.

  “Mate, mate,” he shouts above the cheering, pointing at the red ribbon of the finishing line. “The mutt landed outside the barriers. She’s gotta be disqualified.”

  Sam scratches his head and consults the scrawl on a torn-off envelope he’s pulled from the back pocket of his blue shorts. He makes a quick phone call to a long-time Islander who invented the rules more than three decades ago. Jack waits, with his eyes squeezed shut. He hums fervently.