She breathes in, breathes out. ‘I’m not sure,’ she says.
‘Why? Got other more exciting things on? The market? Lotu?’
‘Okay,’ she says slowly. ‘You’re right. I’ll come.’ Ungracious Beth, she chides herself. ‘Thanks, that’d be great.’
He’s standing there, looking at her with those big brown eyes, and all she wants to do is run.
*
‘You see Mister Pirate then?’ Lena asks, carrying the silver pot, steaming with tea.
‘Yes, I did.’ Beth tries to sound nonchalant.
‘You have kaikai?’ Lena pours tea into the cups.
‘Yep, we had kakaruk. No fish.’
‘No fish last night. Sky all wrong.’ She hands Beth a cup.
Beth blows the hot tea, sips and changes the subject: ‘I saw Delilah today—her thumb is looking better.’
‘Healing yes, gutpela tru,’ Lena smiles, then adds: ‘Mister Pirate nice man?’
‘Yeah Lena, I think so.’
‘He good looking even with his hair like a girl’s.’
They rocket with laughter. And then Grace comes running into the haus win and jumps up on the bench, standing behind Beth. She reaches for Beth’s ponytail, lets a curl unravel over her hand, plays with the long spiral as if she is milking a cow, one hand over the other, feeling the soft grooves of it.
‘What about your man, Lena?’
‘Desmond?’ Grace looks at her suddenly, and drops Beth’s hair. ‘Desmond is in his home village. He hasn’t been here for some months, maybe one year.’
‘What’s he do?’
‘Not much!’ Lena pokes at the fire with her shoe. ‘He come here and I work hard. He sit inside and watch TV or go fishing. Sometimes he bring fish. Most times, he bring nothing.’
‘Do you miss him?’
Lena looks up at Grace. ‘Better this way,’ she says. Grace picks up another spiral and loops it over and over like a skipping rope.
‘He was a good man,’ Lena says. ‘Never drinking, never angry. Then one day he lose his job when the plantation down the highway close.’ She leans towards Beth and whispers, ‘He never the same. Scare us. Drinking all day. Shouting angry. I tell him no. I am teacher, I say, I need quiet house, good house. So he leaves for his mummy’s island and hasn’t come back.’ And then she smiles at Grace. ‘I got her,’ she says. ‘It is enough.’
‘Ahhh men,’ Beth says, leaning back against the bamboo wall. ‘Sometimes just trouble.’
‘Bikpela trabel,’ Lena says, laughing. Then: ‘Sometimes, yes. But not always. Desmond was good when he had job. Working so hard.’ She tears coconut husks and throws them on the fire. ‘You pretty, Beth. Nice. Pirate handsome. Gutpela. You both same.’
‘He leaves soon, Lena. Sometime soon Jim will want to go.’
‘Yes. Mister Jim always leaves.’
‘Must be hard, you know. On Rejoice and the kids.’
‘It’s the way, susa. So many leave. But Mister Jim, he different. He always kam bek.’
Clem wakes early and knows that something’s different. He wracks his brain: Eva? Red? Beth? Something’s up. He swings his legs out of bed and looks at the clock radio. 4:45. It’s not a bad thing, he’s not worried, he just knows that something’s changed. Righted itself somehow.
He takes a mug of steaming tea outside and the kelpie stirs from her kennel and noses over to him. The chooks can wait, the watering as well. It’s a morning for a walk.
He slips through the grape vine and heads across the home paddock to the creek. Barefoot and still in his boxers, he carries his tea like it’s the Eucharist, with Red at his heels, big white diamond chest luminous in the early morning light.
*
‘She was just so different, Mum,’ Clem says through the wound-down window of the ute. He’s on his way to Claytonville and has dropped in to see if Eva, watering her garden, wants anything in town. And to tell her he’s finally spoken to Beth. ‘She sounds good. Just been real busy with school, that’s why we haven’t heard anything.’
‘Well, that’s great to hear, love, truly,’ Eva says. ‘She’s had a rough trot all right. We did the right thing, you know, getting her up there to Val.’
‘She loves the kids,’ he says. ‘Says the swimming’s good and everyone’s real friendly. She’s going to some small island this weekend. A little holiday, I guess.’ He takes off his hat and wipes the sweat from his forehead. ‘She lives on a tropical island, what does she need a holiday for?’
‘P’raps she’s met someone,’ Eva says, giving the boronia a squirt.
Clem shakes his head. ‘Nah, Mum. Who’d be up there she’d be interested in? Besides, it’s only been a few months. She wouldn’t be ready.’
‘We don’t know what Beth thinks,’ says Eva. ‘Or wants. For all we knew, she and Sam were going to be together forever. It surprised us all. You can’t deny that.’
‘True enough,’ he says.
‘And what happened after. She blames herself, poor kid.’ Eva looks down the valley to Smithson’s. ‘Beth’ll come good. Just you wait.’
‘So,’ Val says. She’s standing near the gate as Beth walks in from school. ‘How was the other night with Pirate?’ She’s picking orange hibiscus.
‘Fine,’ says Beth. ‘Nice flowers.’
‘Yes,’ says Val, and waits. ‘Shame they don’t last though,’ she says. She snips a bougainvillea stem, a shocking pink explosion, adds it to the hibiscus. ‘He seems nice enough,’ she adds, trying to sound offhand.
‘Yeah, he does,’ Beth says. ‘Well, I better go in.’ She heads towards the house then stops, turns, walks slowly back. ‘Val, I might go to liklik ailan this weekend. With him.’
‘It’s a beautiful spot,’ Val says coolly. ‘Bilas ples.’
‘Would that be all right, do you think?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you know, the people here—Ruth, Lena— would they, you know—’
‘Think less of you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Beth,’ she says slowly, ‘you know, these people here love telling stories. Whether they’re grounded in reality or not, they’ll tell them.’ Then, gently: ‘But, you do what you want because I think ... no, no, I know ... if it was me, I’d go. For sure. Plus ...’—she smiles—‘you deserve it. You work so hard here. Have some fun, you’re thirtyone, not sixty-one, for Christ’s sake.’
She makes the sign of the cross, and Beth laughs. And as she watches her walk home across the grass, she reckons there’s a spring in her step. She feels something like pride: maybe she’s helped put it there. Now that’s worth celebrating. She cuts the stalk of another flower and heads inside for the Pimms.
1976
Although Clem always showers with the door open, steam hovers like fog in the bathroom. Rose sticks her head round the shower curtain and Clem, razor at his face, thick with lather, turns around, alarmed.
‘Jeezus, love, I could have cut me throat.’
‘It’s Tom,’ she whispers, big green eyes filling. His hand drops. ‘Eva just called. The doctor said we should come.’
Clem shoves his head under the water, focusing on the soap streaming down his brown, skinny legs.
*
The homestead is blazing when they drive over the last hill. Eva must have every light on in the place.
‘It’s like a bloody circus,’ Clem mutters, taking his boots off at the back door. He looks up at the coloured party lights lining the gutter of the veranda.
Eva is stoking the fire when they walk in.
‘Mum,’ says Clem, going to her, arms out. ‘It’s boiling in here.’ She lets him hold her for a few moments.
‘He’s cold, Clem,’ she says, distracted. ‘Ever so cold.’
‘And all these lights ...’
‘I know, love,’ she says. ‘It just seems right. I want him in light.’
Clem turns to the single bed in front of the tightly drawn curtains. He hears Tom’s panting: rasping, rap
id gasps. Rose comes to stand alongside Clem, looping her fingers through his.
‘He’s peaceful enough now,’ Eva says. ‘But I don’t think it will be much longer. He hasn’t spoken all day.’
Clem looks at Tom’s flushed face, the faded blue eyes that stare ahead.
Rose places her hand on his forehead. ‘He’s warm,’ she says, then whispers: ‘I thought he would be colder.’
‘It’s the fever, love,’ says Eva. ‘He shivers and shudders and moans.’
Clem watches his wife stroking Tom’s forehead, gently running her fingers over his fine baby hair, and he reaches under the blanket for his dad’s hand. It twitches, and then goes slack. Clem rubs his coarse fingertips over the skin, paper-thin and knobbled.
‘Well Dad,’ he says, able to speak at last. ‘We’re here. We’re all here.’ Eva stifles a sob behind him.
He hears Eva draw in her breath. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she says, and walks to the kitchen.
‘Tom,’ Rose coos. ‘If it’s time, you go. We’ll be okay.’
Clem feels a shudder rip through him. He feels oversized.
‘Tom ...’—Rose is stroking his hair now—‘Clem’s a good man, such a good man. You can be proud of him. And I’m going to love and care for him for the rest of my life.’ Her voice wavers. ‘And the two of us, we’ll look after Eva too. She’ll be all right.’
They sit silently for a few minutes. Tom’s eyes seem to sink further into his face. He blinks rapidly, then stares at the wall, and Clem holds his breath until Tom blinks again. Once he lets out a hacking cough, tries to sit up, and Eva comes hurrying into the room.
‘He’s all right,’ Rose says, steadying him back into the pillow. She reaches under the blanket for Clem’s hand. ‘Here, love,’ she says softly. ‘Let me.’
Clem releases his grip and moves slightly, as Rose takes Tom’s bone-thin arm out from underneath the covers, his fingers curled over. She sits on the bed and lifts up her shirt, carefully prising open Tom’s fingers before straightening them along her belly. She takes full, deep inhalations, watching her baby gently rising. And closing her eyes she rocks the thin, old man and the big fish inside.
‘This baby will know all about you,’ she says.
Eva comes back with tea and cake and the three of them sit around the bed, sharing memories of Christmases, family holidays, the wedding day, and then musing over the coming baby. Eva picks at cake crumbs that have fallen on the blanket.
‘Mum,’ Clem says, ‘he’s saving them for later.’ A smile plays at Eva’s lips, and she closes her eyes.
The room smells of wood smoke and, faintly, of old sweat. When Eva and Rose leave to wash the dishes, Clem stays by the bed. He hovers, putting his face close to Tom’s, their noses almost touching. He looks at the face, a face he’s always known, now eaten from the inside, half the size it once was. But even this rake-thin version is better than the moon face three months ago, when Tom was pumped full of steroids. This face, Clem says to himself, a man could be proud of. And he sits back, stroking his dad’s hair like he saw Rose do, and pictures come into his head. He sees the paddocks they scarified together and then sowed with rapeseed and wheat. The harvest. He sees the decades of hay bales dotting the hills. He sees sheep, shorn and bleating, their skinny arses twitching in the early spring dawn. He sees trees they planted down by the creek to stem the salt creeping through the farm. He sees Tom take him as a boy with his dog and shiny twenty-two, round the farm, shooting at anything that moved. That’s me boy, he’d shouted, when Clem hit a post from a hundred yards. Clem sees the homestead, with its mud brick walls and wide jarrah verandah, its lead light windows and party lights, the place lit up like Christmas. And then he sees the four of them—Eva and Tom, Clem and Rose—sitting in this room, celebrating the baby news. That’s the best medicine for an old man, Tom had said, raising his glass. And they’d hoped there would be enough time.
Clem puts his head on his dad’s bony chest and weeps.
When the dinghy rounds the southern tip of liklik ailan and Pirate brings it into the bay, Beth sees a sturdy bamboo hut with Liklik Island Guesthouse thatched in the walls. Their room has a double bed, a mosquito net suspended above and an old kerosene lantern on the bedside table. She sprawls like a starfish on the bed and Pirate flops down beside her.
‘A double bed,’ she says, eyes closed. ‘Heaven!’
And suddenly Sam is before her: they’ve rented a hut in southern Thailand and spent the entire day in bed, the ocean lapping against the wooden struts beneath them. I reckon we’ll be together forever, Sam whispers, his hand cupping her face.
‘So,’ Pirate says, ‘shall we swim? Jim says the rock just off shore has great snorkelling.’
‘Sure,’ Beth says, shaken from the memory. ‘It’s exactly what I need.’
She watches as he stands, takes off his shirt. He is brown and lean and her cheeks burn.
They swim in green water, trawling around rocks, home to wriggling anemone and darting colourful fish. There’s a small dinghy further along, its anchor an old Singer sewing machine tied to a rope, and Beth thinks about Eva for the first time in days. They walk around the island: underneath towering coconut palms and past ramshackle bush huts, the sand swept clean beneath them, rangy dogs keeping watch. Kids paddle by in dugouts, calling out Apinun.
Pirate reaches for her hand.
*
At dinner they sit opposite each other at the picnic table. Jemimah brings them yam chips and fried fish, bowls of rice and greens. They sip lemonade and eat, picking at bones and feeding them to dogs lying under the coconut palms.
Beneath the table, Pirate searches for Beth’s foot with his own, finds it, rubs over it gently.
Later, he walks with her to the shoreline and watches the moon trip over the water, listens to the rippling of one wave over the next. Finally, he puts his arm around her, resting a hand on her hip, and pulls her close. She rests her head against his shoulder, shuts out other hands, other words. Feel this, Beth. Only this.
In bed she brings herself on top of him, and grabs fistfuls of his hair. They are a tangled mess, writhing, searching each other. Outside, the night is quiet, the waves barely audible.
*
She wakes, feels Pirate’s chest at her back, and smiles.
‘Sleepy head,’ he whispers.
She squirms, befuddled with sleep. ‘This is the tropics! Aren’t you hot?’
‘Yep,’ he says. ‘We should get up. It’s late.’
‘Not yet.’ She turns to kiss him on the mouth, then sits up and looks right at him, into him: ‘What’s your name?’
‘Pirate.’ He holds her gaze.
‘Real name.’
‘Beth, what does it matter? What does it mean if I’m Harry or David or Bob or Pirate?’
‘I’d just like to know.’
‘A true gentlemen never kisses and tells,’ he says, lunging for her, tickling, digging long fingers into her ribs till she’s squealing and pleading, wriggling free, grabbing her laplap and running out the door.
‘Bet it’s Gonzo or Horatio or something!’ she yells back, and when she dives into the cool sea she’s smiling, because in a strange way not knowing his real name somehow releases her too. She could be anyone, say anything, out here. She feels looser, lighter, with every stroke out into the bay.
Pirate likes the way she feels under him, her body sliding left and right, hips rocking against him. He likes to feel the power of her, knows that if Beth wanted, she could force him off in an instant and wriggle free. But she never does. They lie entwined for hours under the fan, the white mosquito net billowing like a low hanging cloud, her long brown limbs against his darker ones. They read each other’s bodies like maps; fingertips trace blue vein tributaries, follow mountain ridges to knee, elbow, chin. He wants to know about the triangular scar marking the lowest joint of her right thumb.
‘Washing a glass at home. I was only ten,’ she says, examining the lumpy scar closely. ‘Shov
ed a dishcloth inside and when I took it out a shard of glass was missing, my finger killed like hell and there was blood everywhere. Probably should’ve had stitches.’ She sucks in air. ‘Weird seeing glass stuck in your skin.’
‘And what about this one?’ Pirate asks, tapping the centimetre round scar on her left arm.
‘TB,’ she says.
‘For here?’
‘Nope. India.’ She turns away. ‘A long time ago,’ she says, then, with an edge: ‘I have my secrets too.’
The words bite and for a moment he wants to let her go. Then he bends and softly kisses the scar.
‘I’m not going to take your secrets, Beth. It’s okay. I was just curious, that’s all.’
He strokes her arm, then rolls her onto her back, brushes his lips over hers. When she reaches up for him, just before her eyes close, he sees the tears.
1976
Clem wakes early and walks through the dark to the kitchen. He boils the kettle and sits sipping tea, Elders Weekly open before him, sensing Tom sitting alongside him at the table. He reads about an eighty-three-year-old man called Dougan, still shearing sixty a day: in the photo there’s grey hair sticking out his large ears, small square teeth stained from tobacco, big nose purple from grog. And a grin as big as Christmas. The phone rings. Clem knows it’s Eva.
‘Clem,’ she says before he’s said a word. ‘He’s gone, love. About four this morning, I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘We’ll come. I’ll wake Rose.’
‘I’m all right, love. Come after breakfast. There’s no rush now, is there?’ She lets out a sad kind of laugh.
His voice is strained: ‘Were you there?’
‘I was up all night. Just couldn’t leave him, you know. Nodded off a few times then he’d stir or shake and it put the wind up me so I stayed awake. I told him we all loved him—me, you, Rose, the baby even, the blokes from the shed. I went through all the names, you see, so it was like everyone was here anyway.’
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