Deeper than the Sea

by Nelika McDonald

  ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,’ she said, and he nodded.

  ‘Maybe you don’t have to do anything.’

  ‘I have to do something. I hate this.’ She rubbed her eyes, and he nodded.

  ‘What can you do?’

  ‘Nothing, wait. That’s the shittiest part of this whole thing. It’s about me, but everyone knows more than I do. Mary must know something, but she hasn’t said. Theo’s the one I should talk to, but I can’t. Sorry, what are you doing today anyway? I should have called.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have answered. I’d probably still be asleep. I don’t do much in daylight. Night owl.’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed.’ It was Beth’s turn to blush then.

  Caleb moved a little closer. ‘I’m glad you came here.’

  Beth nodded. ‘Me, too.’

  He stood up and held out a hand to her. ‘I’ll show you my room.’ Beth took his hand and hoped that hers wasn’t clammy. They headed to the stairs, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous house.

  Caleb had a sheet pinned over his window so it was dark. It smelt musty in there, but unlike the other parts of the house his room felt like an actual person spent time there. Books on the table, posters of video games and Dali prints, melting clocks and warped faces. Album covers, Jimi Hendrix in a halo of smoke and flames. Sneakers in different colours on a rack behind the door. A potted fern in an ice-cream tub on the television stand.

  They sat on beanbags on his bedroom floor, listening to music. Caleb told her a bit about his parents.

  ‘I’d be pretty happy if I found out I was adopted,’ he said.

  Beth threw a cushion at him. ‘That’s a stupid thing to say to me.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She watched him to see if he was joking, but he wasn’t. ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘They don’t like me and I don’t like them. My dad, at least. My mum just does whatever he tells her to.’

  ‘He’s a pretty intimidating person.’ Beth thought of the broad shoulders of the man from the television.

  ‘She’s a pretty weak person,’ Caleb spat.

  Beth didn’t say anything.

  ‘Have you got a photo of her?’

  Caleb opened his wallet. His mother was not beautiful, but delicate, small like Beth. She had fine features though, and Caleb had inherited her big eyes and dark lashes. There was something limp about her, like she had been working too hard for too long, stretched too thin.

  ‘She’s from Sardinia,’ Caleb said. ‘Every day, I used to ask her to take me back there with her, just the two of us. Sometimes I even packed a bag. All my best toys.’

  After a while, Caleb went downstairs and came back with bowls of cereal.

  Beth looked at it, gritting her teeth as saliva filled her mouth. She was so hungry, but she didn’t want to eat. She didn’t want to need it, didn’t want to want it. She didn’t want to feel the heaviness of food in her stomach, pellets of lead weighing her down. She wanted to be weightless, and then she could just float above everything. Nothing on this earth would touch her.

  She was hungry though, her body wanted her to eat it, her body wanted her to pour it down her throat and ask for more. Her hand lifted the spoon to her mouth, and the cereal dissolved on her tongue. Beth imagined the grains of sugar as tiny silver beetles eating away at the insides of her mouth. Acid rain trickling down into her stomach. When she looked back down she could almost see them, writhing in the bowl. She had two more spoonfuls, then pushed it away.

  It felt strange not to be going to work today. Mary had called Beachcombers last night to say Beth would not be coming in. Sergio said that Beth could take as much time off as she needed. Beth didn’t know what she needed. Maybe she needed to keep going to work. But it sounded like that option wasn’t available.

  Downstairs, a door slammed closed and Caleb was up, rooting around in a pile of washing on the chair for a shirt. He pulled one on and stopped to listen for a moment. A deep voice called out from downstairs.

  ‘We’ve got to go.’ Caleb found her bag and took her by the arm, pulling her down the hallway. Beth’s head throbbed with the movement. They left by a side door, without going back downstairs.

  ‘Your father?’ Beth asked once they were outside and out of earshot.

  Caleb nodded.

  Orphans, Beth thought, as they walked up the street. Today we are orphans.

  The sky was low and grey, and frangipanis littered the footpath. The houses were a lot nicer around these streets. A man washing his fancy car in his driveway watched them until they’d rounded the corner. Beth held his gaze. Caleb ignored him, and Beth put her hand in his. The man might have known who Caleb was, or maybe he thought they were there to try to rob him and his neighbours. Maybe he knew Theo. Suddenly Beth was sure they were being watched from all around, curtains twitching at every window they passed. That man might tell Theo she was here with Caleb, Beth thought. And then she remembered – she didn’t need to care about that. Mary would probably be too busy with her own children to notice Beth had even gone.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked Caleb.

  He answered without turning his head, his long arms swinging by his sides. The sun beat down on his shoulders, turning him golden.

  ‘Wherever we want, Bethie. Who’s going to stop us?’

  chapter fifteen

  David excused himself pretty quickly after their conversation. When he’d left, Theo started cleaning the ceilings again. What else was there to do? He probably wouldn’t come back, she told herself. Why would he? She had very little money, and probably even less chance of winning any court case that might come of this. Hopeless, helpless. Pathetic.

  The problem was, once the ceilings were clean, the walls looked dirty: grey and tired. By the third hour in, Theo’s knuckles were scraped raw and her hands were dry and peeling from the vinegar and bleach. Even sitting, her hips throbbed, and her knees and back. She knew she’d been moving strangely to lessen the pressure on her hips, which sent her other parts out of kilter.

  She would ring Mary once in the morning and once at night, but limit it to that, Theo decided. Mary wouldn’t be keeping a log of everything Beth did or said, and it wasn’t fair to ask her to. She could ask her where Beth was to find out if Theo could chance a trip to the beach, but it seemed trivial and frivolous to even raise it. The important thing was that Beth was in Mary’s care. In all of this mess, that was a gift. She had to be careful with it.

  She wanted Mary, too, but she wanted her for Beth more.

  At about three in the afternoon, there was another knock on the door. When Theo opened it, David Hartnett stood there again, with coffee and croissants from the local deli. He looked freshly showered, and had different shorts and T-shirt on. They sat back down at the table. Theo tore into the croissants, ravenous. She had eaten two and drunk half her coffee before they even spoke.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d come back,’ Theo said.

  David raised his eyebrows. ‘I had to go and do some research.’

  ‘Research?’

  ‘Precedents, other cases like yours. Oliver Watts.’

  ‘Did you find anything?’ Theo chewed slowly.

  ‘About Oliver, yes. But not about cases like yours. I need to know more, first.’

  Theo nodded. She guessed that would help. ‘What did you find out about Oliver?’

  ‘That he has a very expensive law firm screening his calls.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That doesn’t surprise you?’

  Theo shook her head.

  They both looked away, out the windows. A brightly coloured lorikeet zipped past. Theo remembered the first time she had seen one, in the bushes alongside the freeway, heading into the city from the airport. She had pointed them out to Oliver, delighted.

  ‘They’re everywhere,’ he’d told her. It had spoiled it a little. Even so, it actually never stopped feeling special, seeing lorikeets. Rainbows with wings, in her very own
garden.

  ‘Did you grow up here?’ she asked David.

  ‘Just down the road, actually.’

  ‘So you have the home ground advantage in court?’

  ‘I suppose. I don’t actually do a lot of trial work, usually.’

  Theo’s face must have betrayed her feelings, and David laughed. ‘But when I do, I win.’

  ‘Good. Do you surf?’

  ‘Surf? No. I’m spectacularly unathletic. I do cycle, but just because I like it.’

  ‘The wind in your hair?’

  ‘Something like that. And you?’

  ‘I don’t surf, I swim. I’d quite like to try surfing, but I think I’m too old.’

  ‘It has an age limit? That’d be news to quite a few people around here. Maybe you could get some lessons.’ David raised his eyebrows.

  Theo shrugged. She didn’t much feel like talking about the future right now.

  ‘We should get started,’ David said. Theo nodded. She supposed they should.

  ‘I need to know anything and everything you can tell me,’ David said. ‘Start at the beginning, whenever that is, and work through until the present day. I’ll take notes.’

  Sitting across from him at her kitchen table, Theo kept having to remind herself that he was here because she needed a lawyer. Theo still couldn’t quite believe that all of this was happening.

  ‘Think of this as a council of war,’ David said, when she hadn’t spoken after a while.

  ‘Are we at war?’

  ‘Well, I would have thought so, Theo. We’re at war if you think you have something worth fighting for.’

  Theo nodded.

  She had planned on never telling anyone what had happened when Beth was a baby, and how they had come to be here together. Except Beth, eventually. Nobody would understand. They would think she was a criminal, or mad, and they would probably call the police. So Theo had kept herself to herself. The easiest way to make sure nobody knew was to keep everybody at arm’s length. But Mary had wriggled in closer than that. Theo just hadn’t been prepared for someone like Mary to try so hard to know her. Still, apart from Mary, she had done well. She hadn’t even spoken to her own family for fifteen years now.

  She had called Greta once, just last year. Nothing in particular had happened that day, Theo hadn’t been conscious of feeling especially nostalgic or alone or sad. It had just been a normal Saturday. She and Beth had done the grocery shopping, gone to buy Beth a new pair of school shoes, given flea treatment to the cat. Mary had come over in the afternoon to help Theo write a funding proposal for an outreach program at the library, then they’d had a glass of wine together in the backyard before Mary went home. On her way to bed that night, Theo had picked up the phone and watched her finger dial Greta’s home phone number. She didn’t even know if Greta still lived there. The ring tone had made her stomach seize.

  ‘Greta speaking.’ Her sister’s voice, exactly the same, came down the line and Theo drew in her breath. Greta waited a few moments, then spoke again. ‘Hello? This is Greta. Who is calling, please?’ She sounded irritated.

  Theo pressed the receiver up against her ear so hard it hurt. She closed her eyes and waited for Greta to speak again.

  ‘Hello? Look, I’m sorry, but if there’s someone there, I can’t hear you. I’m hanging up now.’

  ‘Greta,’ Theo whispered, but it was too late. Greta had already hung up.

  In choosing Beth, Theo had decided that she also had to sacrifice some things. Her family was the biggest thing. But, Theo knew that she couldn’t have it all. That was part of the deal. It seemed fair, in a strange way. Give and take. Her family wouldn’t understand what she’d done. Little sister Theo never quite measured up, never really got it right, even before all this. Why give them ammunition? Especially when Theo knew she had got this one thing right, actually. Of all of them, Greta might understand. But understanding was different to agreeing with Theo’s actions, or supporting them. After all, Greta was a lawyer. She believed in the rule of law, and the duty that citizens had to abide by it. Theo couldn’t ask her to watch as she broke the law, day after day. So, she didn’t.

  She also didn’t want Greta to tell her that she was wrong.

  It wasn’t until Theo began swimming that her parents finally had something to say about her.

  ‘Tobias is being headhunted by another football team, the manager left a note on his bicycle asking him to call! Greta sits the bar next week. She’s quite confident. Marjorie is due with her third child in April. A born mother, and still fits in orchestra rehearsals. Theo hasn’t quite found her groove yet. But she’s started swimming and she loves it . . .’

  It took Theo a very long time to realise that the absence of groove was her groove. When she reached the end of her schooling and found that she was still not exceptional at anything, she resigned herself to it. She was passable, she supposed, middling both in intellect and attractiveness, and it certainly could have been worse – exceptionalism went both ways; at least she wasn’t very ugly or very stupid. But in her family, she might as well have been. In her family, to not be brilliant was to have failed.

  It was at the pool that Theo learnt she was good with small children. Or at least, she got on well with them. She began to help them, showing them the things she had learnt about moving in the water. She saw the ones who were in pain, who lived with it as a constant, just as she had. She saw it in the way they carried themselves, so carefully, with none of the casual, loose spontaneity that children normally move with. But it was more than that, it was their inwardness, their preoccupation with their bodies, their lack of attention and interest in other things. It wasn’t a choice they had. Pain forced them to inhabit themselves more devotedly than anyone would ever want to. They had the resignation of people decades older, but Theo could make them laugh.

  At some point, perhaps when word got out of Theo’s work with the children at the pool, it was decided that she ought to become a teacher. ‘It’s a noble and useful profession,’ her mother said. Privately Theo thought that nobody ever asked her brothers and sisters to think about what was noble or useful. Tobias was a professional footballer for god’s sake, and Alec, his twin, a model. Where was the nobility in either of those pursuits? She did like children though. She’d been lumped with Marjorie’s kids often enough, and she preferred them to Marjorie. The kids at the pool seemed to like Theo. She supposed teaching was as good an option as any.

  So she went to uni in Manchester. Greta was there too, sharing a flat with her boyfriend. At least Theo would know one person in the same city as her, she thought. But after a while, she realised that wasn’t the problem. During lectures, when Theo thought about being a teacher, standing at the front of the classroom with expectant faces looking at her, trusting her to know, to be able to explain, confirm, deny with certainty, Theo felt no excitement, no anticipation. Just a low-ebb panic, a tiny but insistent voice in her head saying no, no, no.

  She lasted a term, and then, on the day she was supposed to attend her first class of the second term, Theo walked straight past the university to the Old Baths. Her feet carried her onwards and she pretended not to notice. She spent two hours floating on her back. Afterwards, in the change rooms, Theo dressed near two girls who were talking about someone, a prospective boyfriend or current partner of one of them. Theo half listened, more to the way they spoke than what they said; half-sentences that the other appeared to understand, fractured stories meandering all over the place. They were good friends, she decided, they didn’t need to explain everything.

  One of the girls, a redhead, stood there in her knickers and nothing else, bent forward at the waist, towel-drying her hair vigorously as they chatted. Theo saw that her knickers were faded and sagged over her bottom, and the girl didn’t seem to care in the least, she was quite unselfconscious. Theo could see her pale breasts swinging and jiggling as she rubbed at her scalp. Her friend leant forward at the mirror, baring her teeth at her reflection.

 
; Theo tried to look away from them but couldn’t. They were mesmerising, their bodies and the ease with which they inhabited them, the carefree way they moved in this public space. Theo thought about how different she was when she was alone, how she would have performed these same tasks, drying herself and dressing herself and inspecting her appearance. Theo thought of her mother, by default, and what she might have said about the redheaded girl in her knickers. ‘Someone’s a bit of an exhibitionist. What if she got hit by a bus wearing those?’

  It was almost as though her mother was sitting beside her on the change room bench. Theo realised she had never seen her mother naked, though it was in her body that she had grown into being. She thought of all the habits, all the mannerisms and expressions and ways of thinking that she’d had absorbed from her family and never even questioned. It would never have occurred to Theo that it might be all right to wear old, faded knickers to the baths, to anywhere! But so what if she got hit by a bus? What, realistically, would happen? Someone, a paramedic, a doctor, some nurses, might see her knickers and think they were probably not her newest. Would they stop trying to resuscitate her? Theo sank down heavily on a bench, just in her knickers too, and let the possibilities wash over her. As she sat there, she thought about other things she wouldn’t have thought to do because her parents wouldn’t like it, or hadn’t suggested it to her.

  She wasn’t going back to her teaching course, Theo allowed herself to admit. She still liked children, but all she really wanted was her own, not the snotty progeny of other people in her classroom. Probably, she thought, she had known that for some time, certainly before she came to the baths instead of going to class today. Well, then, what was she going to do? What would the redheaded girl do? Probably whatever the hell she liked, Theo thought.

  There were various jobs that Theo’s mother had always spoken of as being unsuitable, in one way or another. Working in a pub was one of them. Theo thought a partially trained teacher with no interest in teaching could probably do that. That night she went into four pubs in a row in the U-shaped court over the bridge, and the fourth one gave her a job, with lodging: a room with yellow wallpaper marbled with mildew, and her own bathroom the size of a wardrobe. She loved it. She moved out of the women’s quarters at the university the next day. The owner of the pub, Kelvin, saw her carting her books in shopping bags up the stairs.