Deeper than the Sea

by Nelika McDonald

  ‘All your clothes are going to smell of beer and smoke. Mind that, won’t you?’ he said to her.

  ‘That’s fine,’ Theo said. She thought about going home for a visit in her work clothes, her mother’s face tightening. She smiled.

  Kelvin looked doubtful, but shrugged and ducked back into the bar.

  At the payphone in the hallway, Theo rang Greta and described her lodgings.

  ‘It’s called the Egg and Spoon. Isn’t that a good name?’

  ‘I suppose. Anyway, I’m so glad you’re doing this,’ said Greta.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Mmm. I don’t think you’d be a very good teacher.’

  Theo began that night, her books still piled upstairs on the floor. Tania was the other girl behind the bar, a Russian traveller who never went back to Russia, and then there were Abe and Alfred, the sons of Kelvin and his wife Esther. They were general dogsbodies, kitchen hands and relief bar staff. They did whatever needed doing, lugging round kegs and barrels and bags of potatoes. Polite and kind boys, they reminded her of her brothers. The final member of staff was the Australian chef, Oliver. Oliver didn’t remind Theo of her brothers.

  Not at all.

  chapter sixteen

  That afternoon, Caleb took Beth to the caravan park.

  Beth had never been inside before. Girls like her didn’t go into the caravan park. Dolphin Sands, it was called. There was a sign above the driveway with a mermaid painted on it, red on white, scalloped scales on her tail, clam shells over her breasts. In her hand a starfish stood on two points, waving a third and smiling.

  ‘Do you want to wait here?’ Caleb asked.

  Beth shook her head.

  The caravan park was like a small version of a regular neighbourhood, streets in a grid. There was a shower block in the centre. The main office was the first van and looked the same as all the other vans, but with a piece of timber nailed to a post out the front. Enquiries was painted on it in white. A man sat on a folding chair out the front gutting fish, with a rod, bucket and black plastic toolbox at his feet. Beth thought she might have seen him around before, but she wasn’t sure. He was the sort of person she would try not to see, usually. Caleb nodded at him, and the man nodded back, then looked Beth up and down. She yanked at the hem of her skirt. The way he looked at her was an assessment, cold and clinical, as though he was cataloguing her: breasts, hips, eyes, nose, teeth. It made Beth feel like she was little more than her anatomy, a case for bones and flesh, a mannequin. It made her feel stripped.

  Caleb took her hand in his and they walked on. Some of the vans looked like they had been there for years, with proper gardens, seating areas, big gum trees shading the blocks. One had a whole forest of garden gnomes out the front, cemented in. Another had a fence with thongs tied to it, layered over each other like feathers on a bird. Others had trash out front in piles, a bathtub filled with water and junk mail, catalogues sodden into a big papery soup. There was hardly anyone around, even though the weather was nice. Caleb stopped at one of the vans. This one had nothing outside, not even a pair of shoes. Through the open door Beth saw a man smoking, a can of beer in his hand. He was looking at something on the table in front of him, and a television blared from behind him.

  Caleb motioned for her to wait and walked up the path. He said something to the man and closed the door behind him. Before it shut, the man looked over Caleb’s shoulder and saw Beth waiting there. He smiled and Beth saw that most of his teeth were gone, hollow black holes and stumps where they should have been. She waited, telling herself not to be so childish. The caravan park was probably just an ordinary neighbourhood, but it had become a convenient place for adults to tell children that all the bad people were, a location to pin them to. That way the rest of the town was unsullied. But really, bad people could be anywhere. Closer than you ever knew.

  Caleb came out and shut the door behind him.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, looking over his shoulder and taking her hand again.

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘Away.’

  They walked, faster this time, a different way to how they had come in, until they got to the clearing where the bonfires were held. In the light of day, the fire pit reminded her of the mouth of the man in the caravan, a black hole. Ash was smeared into the sand around it. Empty beer cans and cigarette butts littered the ground. A couple of logs and milk crates were arranged around the fire, along with a busted car seat, foam bubbling out of the rips in the vinyl cover. A couple of people were slumped in the sand at the edge of the dunes, and a few more sat out the front of nearby vans, facing the sea.

  It was a million-dollar view from here. Caleb’s father’s current election promises included razing this caravan park to the ground and selling the land to property developers wanting to build a resort and golf course. It would bring jobs, tourism and wealth to the district, he said. Beth wondered if they would tell the residents of the caravan park they were coming, or just turn up one night with bulldozers and jackhammers and floodlights shining right into the windows of the vans where people slept.

  Caleb sat in the sand, pulled a bag out of his pocket and began rolling a joint. My bloody stupid asthma, Beth thought. The last thing she wanted to do was start wheezing and coughing. She didn’t want Caleb to think she disapproved, because she didn’t. Today, Beth approved wholeheartedly. A little oblivion, a few moments of peace – she was jealous. Looking out at the ocean, Beth felt itchy all over, like her skin and hair crawled with germs and dirt. Suddenly she couldn’t bear it any longer, she needed to get clean, needed to wash herself, and she needed to do it now.

  ‘I’m going in for a swim,’ she said to Caleb, and he hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘I’ll wait here for you.’

  In the sea, Beth went out as far as she could while still touching the bottom. The water lapped at her chin, and she dipped her head back so her hair fanned out over the waves. She had always had long hair, because mermaids had long hair. Theo used to brush it for her every night, one hundred strokes. Theo kept her own head shaved to a centimetre, Beth usually did it for her with the clippers. Theo said she didn’t like the drag while she was swimming; she wanted as little as possible between her and the water.

  ‘Like a seal’s pelt,’ she said, when her head was freshly shorn.

  Maybe though, Beth thought, and it made her chest start to hurt again, maybe it was a disguise. Maybe Theo had cut off her hair so Beth’s real mother couldn’t find her. Where had baby Beth been stolen from, anyway? From her family, a car, her cot, a shopping centre? Beth thought of those little red beds for babies, perched on shopping trolleys. Were the babies buckled into them, or could you just lift them right out? If it was Theo, she must have known it was wrong and shameful, unless she was insane. That was a possibility, Beth supposed. She knew madness wasn’t always visible. But Theo was pretty rational, about most things anyway. Surely Beth would have known if she was mad? There would have been signs. Anyway, whatever had happened, Theo had lied, over and over and over again. And all that time her real mother could have been out there searching for her. It had taken sixteen years. Theo must have hidden them both pretty well.

  Beth dunked her head under the water and watched the bubbles stream from her nose. She stayed under for as long as she could. When she came up for air, her head spun like a merry-go-round. Of course Theo had hidden them well, Beth thought. Theo was practiced at hiding things. Beth had known there were secrets folded inside Theo. She had just never known that they were secrets about her.

  Beth wondered if her real mother had a hole inside her, shaped like Beth. The thought of this woman, the actual identity of her real mother, had been hovering on the periphery of her mind. Beth hadn’t let it advance to the front, until now. It was just too big. But now, in the sea, she could let the water carry her, and let herself think of who her mother might be. Alice.

  The idea of it made her feel tingly, nervous, sad, excited. She knew her real mother had seen Theo, so
maybe she was in Cardmoor right now. All the police had told them was that Beth’s biological mother had seen Theo and recognised her. Maybe she’d even seen Beth.

  Her mother could be walking past Beachcombers right now, buying soap and toothpaste at the same supermarket they went to. Would Beth know her? Would she look like Beth herself?

  Beth wrapped her arms around herself and bobbed in place. The water rippled like a sheet being shaken out, greyish blue today. Theo had once said she would like a series of paintings of the sea in every colour it came. Running your eye along them would be like thumbing a flip book, you could see it changing in your very own house.

  The parts of her that were above the water were starting to get goosebumps and the wind on her skin was cold. If Beth stared straight ahead, she could see only water, even from the corners of her eyes. That wasn’t a bad thing. Water was uncomplicated. Now that she had thought about seeing her real mother, Beth wasn’t sure if she even wanted to. Did she have to? Would the police make her? Beth pictured a woman, blank face but arms outstretched, waiting for Beth to walk into her embrace and be enclosed. Beth imagined being hugged by her mother. What would she smell like? What sort of hair did she have? Beth imagined Theo watching her hug her mother, and Theo sobbing, calling and beckoning to Beth. Beth didn’t know if the salt she could taste on her lips was the sea or her own tears.

  Back on the beach, Caleb waited for her, hood pulled up and head down. He was twitchy and kept looking around him, craning his neck to stare over his shoulder, or checking both ways down the beach. His hand kept going to his pocket. When he looked at Beth she saw that his eyes were marbled red and he was chewing the inside of his cheek. She sat down next to him, but not right next to him, and watched his face.

  ‘Okay?’ he said, and shuffled over to put his arm around her.

  ‘I’ll get you wet.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  She leant in.

  After a while Beth lay back in the sand with her head resting on Caleb’s chest. She imagined going home. She could hear the sound of her own key in the lock, see the tiny lines on the back of her hand as she pushed open the front door. She stopped just inside the entrance. The walls breathed Theo in that house. She was everywhere. Beth walked from room to room. In the lounge, a folded piece of paper under the leg of the rickety table, and her books, like soldiers standing in lines. In the kitchen, Theo’s favourite teacup and saucer stood on the draining board. She never drank out of mugs, always proper china teacups, about the only snobbish thing she did. A shirt was slung over the shower rail in the bathroom, the fabric still holding the curve of Theo’s spine. On the side of the sink, one of Theo’s bowls held Beth’s hairclips. This one had a face that looked happy, radiant. Beth held the bowl up next to her own face and looked in the mirror. She smiled, pretending she was as happy as this face on the bowl, made her lips stretch right out, as far as they would go. She dripped on the tiles, her hair a tangled crown. As she watched, a face appeared in the mirror behind her: Theo, bright and happy to see her. She opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘Beth,’ Caleb said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Don’t you want to meet her? Your birth mother?’ Caleb sounded curious, but his voice was gentle.

  ‘I don’t know. No. I’m not ready.’ Beth shook her head.

  ‘She’s your mother. What do you need to be ready for?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just need to get my head around it. What would I say to her?’ Beth picked up a handful of sand and let it trail through her fingers. A nervous drumbeat began to throb in her abdomen. Nervous, but excited too.

  Caleb shrugged. ‘I don’t know. “Hi, Mum?”’

  They both found that wildly funny.

  ‘Long time no see.’

  ‘So, do you come here often?’

  Caleb laughed until he started coughing. ‘She could be really great,’ he murmured, when his throat had cleared.

  ‘She could be,’ Beth agreed. She had thought Theo was great, too.

  ‘Or she could be just as messed up as the rest of them,’ Caleb said.

  ‘Or worse. A witch.’

  ‘A bitch.’ Caleb grinned at her and Beth tried to smile back.

  He got to his feet.

  ‘Come with me. I’ve got an idea.’

  chapter seventeen

  Theo was lying awake in bed when she heard the sound of glass shattering and the shards raining down onto a hard surface.

  It was early in the morning, maybe two or three am, and Theo had been trying, unsuccessfully, to sleep. She had decided not to take any painkillers, no matter how bad her hips were. She didn’t like the way they made her feel, fuzzy and vague. She needed to be sharp. It was a warm night, hushed and still like a pause. Theo had thought she’d heard the front gate scrape on the path but had told herself she was imagining things. A few moments later the glass broke somewhere close, there was a thump, then all was quiet again.

  Theo lay there for a few moments, suspended. She should go and see what it was, it could have been an accident of some sort, or maybe it wasn’t even at her house. These wooden floors threw sound around in strange ways. Her house was crumbling with age, something may have given. Theo held her breath and listened, but couldn’t hear anything. She climbed out of bed and walked down the hallway without turning on any lights. Before she rounded the corner into the kitchen she picked up a paperweight that sat on the hallstand. She could use it, she thought, if it was an intruder. She hadn’t had an intruder in the whole time she’d lived here though, and none of the neighbours had either. That was the insurance policy of small towns. Eyes everywhere.

  In the lounge, Theo flicked on the light, took a few steps with the paperweight aloft and then stopped. Glass was all over the floor. One of the doors leading onto the verandah had only a few stalactites of glass clinging to the frame, the rest was gone. A brick lay in the middle of the wreckage. Theo stood and stared at it. That was how the glass had broken. Someone had thrown a brick through her door. Someone who had known she was here, alone. Theo immediately thought of the woman on the cliff, no surviving family. What if Theo had been standing here? What if she had been in the way? Who had done this? And were they still here?

  Theo walked around the house, turning on every light, and then picked her way through the glass and stood on the verandah with a torch, searching the yard. There was nobody there and the gate was closed. Under the glow of a streetlight she saw a possum leap from a low branch onto a car, and heard the scrabbles and screeches as others followed its path. She turned the torch off and laid it on the table. Her hand shook. She went back to inspect the brick. There was nothing out of the ordinary about it, it could have come from anywhere. Theo thought of the cop shows on TV, forensics teams dusting for fingerprints and locating the source of this particular batch of bricks. Then she thought of Detective Verten, and the way he spoke to her, like she was trash. The pair of black boots under the toilet door when Theo sat sobbing in the cubicle. The blank stares, the manhandling. She would not be calling the police about this. They would tell her that it was just kids mucking around. But this didn’t feel like kids, and it didn’t feel like mucking around. It felt personal. It felt like a message. Beth? Could it have been Beth, so angry that she’d vandalise her own home? So angry at Theo that she wanted her to feel all of her hurt, betrayal and fear? Possibly.

  By the time she had cleaned up the glass, the sky was lightening. Theo put the brick squarely in the centre of the kitchen table and sat there drinking coffee until the sun had risen completely. She couldn’t picture Beth doing something like this alone, standing at the door and staring into the darkness with the grit of the brick rubbing off on her fingers. Someone would have been with her, someone encouraged her. Who? Who whispered ‘now’ into her ear, who laughed as they grabbed her hand and bolted when the glass shattered?

  Who was with her daughter right now?

  Tania was a loud, funny, brash girl. Theo’s mother would have said ‘not our
kind’. She was one of the most welcoming people Theo had ever met. Later, in Cardmoor, when Theo met Mary, she reminded Theo a bit of Tania, headstrong and warm. Tania wore a full face of makeup and elaborate hairstyles every single day, and spent much of her time and energy on beautifying. Theo came to look fondly upon the smears of tan foundation and opalescent blue eyeshadow on the towels when she did the laundry, they were Tania’s ‘face’. With her makeup on and hair teased into a bouffant, eyebrows pencilled into ticks and dark lip-liner drawn just above the natural line of her lips, Tania was ready to face the drunken customers ogling her breasts and the young girls smirking at her hair and the skinheads hissing at her thick accent. She could stare them all down from beneath her thickened and curled lashes until someone broke, and it was never her. She was a real-life china doll on speed, with acne scarring and rough hands. Her English was better than Kelvin’s. She sometimes cried herself to sleep. She didn’t talk about Russia or her family, and much later it occurred to Theo that she should have asked, but she was never good at knowing whether, or when, it was okay to intrude.

  Theo had never learnt such an awful lot from one person. There were the clothes and makeup, and the job itself, but more than that, Tania showed Theo a way of being in the world that she coveted – brave, brash, fearless. Tania marched down streets as if she owned them, booted out punters who gave her lip, told Kelvin when he was being stupid, and generally took up as much space as she wanted to. Whenever Theo had to do something that scared her, she remembered her exiled Russian barmaid friend and tried to summon her boldness for a while. She had never really understood why Tania was friends with her. She didn’t teach Tania anything much, although sometimes they worked on her reading and writing. Theo would have done anything for her, if Tania had asked, but she never did. Maybe it was enough for her to know that she could.