Deeper than the Sea

by Nelika McDonald

  Theo padded down the hallway towards Tania’s room, but her light was off. She’d have to wait until morning, it was Sunday tomorrow so they usually had breakfast together anyhow. Theo always felt relieved on Saturday nights now. No church for her, these days. She’d found other things to worship. She opened her door, and switched on the light.

  Oliver was sitting up in her bed, his chest bare. He smiled at her, and Theo almost laughed out loud. There might be a bit more to tell Tania in the morning.

  Later, Theo always remembered that kiss in the storeroom as the moment when she first allowed herself to believe that she and Oliver might become something more, that she might be in with a chance. Those things would always be inextricably linked for Theo, Oliver’s success at the pub and her success with Oliver. He told her that she was instrumental in his ascent. Theo demurred, but privately agreed that he couldn’t have done any of it without her. She was the one who tasted the dishes, discussed the flavours beyond any reasonable amount of discussion. She had encouraged, supported, told him the truth, as he had asked. And there was the rest of it – she’d had to work on Kelvin, had to push the special menus into the hands of the right punters, seat them at good tables, bend over backwards serving them attentively to make sure their whole experience was positive.

  By the end of that summer Kelvin had fired the other chef, they didn’t do beef and Yorkshire pudding any more, and Oliver and Theo were rarely apart. They lay in her narrow bed at night and Oliver told her about Australia. He said that some of the richest people in the country had the poorest tastes, when it came to food. He told her about houses with windows all along their fronts, wooden decks with squatter’s chairs facing out to sea, eating dinner outside with possums inching along the power lines, how it was still hot at nine o’clock at night, inside and outside woven together. Cafes all had tables outside, backyards had trampolines and sprinklers, no hat no play at school. Cold drinks, hot heads. Australians were loud, Oliver said, and funny, and sharp, and a little bit mad. She liked the way he widened his eyes at her when he said that.

  His parents lived in an ‘over-fifties community’ in Perth, he said, in the next suburb over from where he had grown up. They spoke twice a year, at Easter and Christmas. His own childhood, with no siblings, had been happy enough, he supposed, if a bit quiet and dull.

  ‘Mostly what I remember is being bored,’ he told Theo one night or very early morning. She lay with her head on his chest and Oliver played with her hair, something Theo had never enjoyed before now.

  ‘Because you wanted other children to play with?’ Theo thought of her own childhood, empty quiet hallways, books for company, and Oliver alone in his bedroom on the other side of the world. She imagined them sitting, backs against the wall with their skinny kid legs stuck out in front of them, just chatting. When Theo had her own family, she would make sure she had a few in quick succession, so that they were always together.

  ‘No, I never really liked other children,’ Oliver answered. ‘Even when I was a child. I just wanted to grow up, become an adult as fast as I could.’

  ‘Oh. Who taught you how to cook?’ she asked.

  ‘I learnt how to cook to make my dinners edible,’ he said.

  Theo laughed. ‘Was it really that bad?’

  ‘Have you ever had lamb that has been boiled so furiously that it turns grey?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I have.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Ate it, of course! That was my mother’s rule. Rules were not broken.’

  ‘Ah. Well, for rule-breaking I had my Aunt Ginny.’

  ‘Everyone should be so lucky.’

  ‘Yes. She and my father are polar opposites. He’s very set in his ways. Newspaper and one beer at five o’clock, then dinner in his armchair, meat and three veg with Gravox every night. A sherry afterwards and in bed by nine-thirty.’

  ‘In full pyjamas?’ she said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And Aunt Ginny?’

  ‘No pyjamas at all in her bed, I would guess. It took me an embarrassingly long time to work out that she was a lesbian.’

  Aunt Ginny had lived with her business colleague and dear friend, Rudi, on a vineyard in the Margaret River district, grape-growing country outside Perth, Oliver said. Wine was their business, not that either of them got their hands dirty. Oliver said the train ride to Ginny’s felt like moving from grey and white into technicolour, and he got off the train and ran to her waiting car, an old green Saab, with palpable relief and joy. It felt like he’d been holding everything in, his shouts, his laughs, his cries, every tear and gasp of frustrated anger, and he could now release it.

  He went to Ginny’s every school holidays and long weekend that he was allowed. She taught him how to cook and gave him free rein in the kitchen, but also let him just roam the vineyard, chatting to people, helping at harvests, free to do as he pleased, with very few restrictions. It was a stark contrast to his home life, the unvarying routine of school, home (alone in his bedroom usually), and the occasional friend’s house or outing to the movies. It was an awakening in every sense of the word, he said, those days at the vineyard.

  Theo wished that she’d had access to a vineyard to be awakened in as an adolescent. It had taken two semi-naked carefree girls in the changing rooms at the baths to awaken her, and that had only been last year.

  Dark hairs curled in a whorl at the base of Oliver’s spine, and Theo traced them with her fingertips. She didn’t know she could be this happy.

  chapter twenty

  Sitting in the waiting room at the offices of Alice Hopkins-Bell’s lawyers, Beth thought back to the other waiting room she had been sitting in just days ago, at the police station. This one was certainly nicer. She sipped her coffee, even though it was probably the last thing she needed right now – it felt like every square centimetre of her body was charged with electricity, trembling and poised. Her eyes kept flicking to the doorway – would she know Alice when she walked in? Would Alice know her? It had taken Beth such a long time to dress this morning, trying on different combinations from Mary’s wardrobe. Nothing looked right. Eventually she’d put on jeans and a lacy green top of Mary’s. It was pretty but the lace scratched at her neck. Beth knew that when she took it off her skin would be red and angry.

  Mary didn’t say anything about her top when they had passed in the hallway on Beth’s way out.

  ‘Do you need a lift today?’ she’d asked. On her hip, the baby tugged at her collar and whined. Mary had dark circles under her eyes, and her voice was husky.

  ‘No thanks.’ Beth hovered at the door.

  ‘When will you be finished?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Home for dinner, then.’ Mary looked at her as though she could see right inside her.

  Beth hadn’t answered. She wasn’t planning on eating dinner.

  She had eaten a handful of grapes and a few spoons of porridge this morning and had a coffee then, too, but that was hours ago now. Even if she’d wanted to, Beth couldn’t have eaten any more than that. For the tenth time she checked her bag for her inhaler. She watched the numbers on the display panel next to the lift. G, 1, 2, 1. G again. Was that her arriving? Was she stepping into the same lift that Beth had stepped into, right now, right this second?

  What should Beth say? Did she need to introduce herself to her own mother? A small chime sounded and the secretary stood and spoke to Beth.

  ‘Come this way, please.’ She motioned to the hallway.

  ‘Oh!’ Beth stood up as though someone had pulled a string on the top of her head. Alice must already be here, in the building. She must have arrived early, or had Beth been late? She couldn’t have been late, she had left hours ago, and checked the time repeatedly. Was there a different way in? Beth looked at the coffee cup in her hands. She couldn’t work out what to do with it.

  ‘You can leave that there,’ the secretary said.

  Beth set the cup down on the saucer so quic
kly that coffee sloshed out over the rim. She felt a red flush starting to spread across her face. She gathered her bag and followed the secretary, one hand at her neck, her donkey between her fingers. They walked down a corridor until the secretary paused and put her hand on a doorknob. Beth smoothed down her hair and ran her tongue over her teeth.

  The door swung open onto some sort of meeting room with a long wooden table down the centre and high-backed, black office chairs parked down each side. At one end sat a man in a suit, laptop and papers spread in front of him. He was on a mobile phone. There was nobody else in the room. The man smiled at Beth. She hovered inside the doorway, confused. Who was this? Where was Alice? She turned around to find the secretary and ask her, but she had disappeared, closing the door behind her. The man gestured at the chair closest to him and smiled again. Beth sat down, one seat further away. Her face was hot and her neck was stinging where it chafed from the lace of her top. She had no idea what to think. The man in the suit kept saying ‘Mmmhmm’ into the receiver and nodding.

  After what felt like hours to Beth, he finished his phone call and shook his head.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Alexander Pullman. You must be Elizabeth.’ He held a hand out and grasped Beth’s briefly before dropping it and turning his attention back to his laptop computer. ‘Almost there, just a moment,’ he murmured, and bent his head to fiddle with the cords snaking under the table.

  From the corner of her eye Beth saw a rectangle of light projected onto the far wall. All the other lights in the room dimmed. Are we here for a movie? Beth thought. What on earth was going on?

  ‘Aha,’ Alexander Pullman said, ‘now we’re cooking with gas!’

  Beth hadn’t yet uttered a syllable, but he seemed hardly to notice. He tapped a few keys and white noise blared from somewhere. All of a sudden, a woman’s face appeared on the rectangle of light on the wall. Beth gasped.

  ‘Hello?’ the woman said. ‘Are you there? I can’t see anything yet.’ She had a sweet, girlish voice that seemed wrong for her striking face. She had straight blonde hair, a long nose, high cheekbones and wide-set eyes, just like Beth’s.

  ‘Alice! Hello. My apologies,’ Alexander Pullman said. ‘I had some technical difficulties. I’ve got young Elizabeth here, have you got the picture working at your –’

  The woman on the wall clapped a hand over her mouth. With her other hand she pointed at Beth. Beth breathed shallowly and tried to smile.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  The woman removed her hand from her mouth. ‘Hello, hello. Oh God, I’m sorry! Hello. Elizabeth. It’s you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Most people call me Beth,’ Beth blurted out, then pinched herself hard on the leg, under the table. Stupid. She knew that was not what the woman on the wall had meant.

  ‘Beth. Of course. Beth. I’m Alice, but you know that already. How are you?’ Alice gazed at Beth, as though she wanted to study every millimetre of her.

  ‘Um, fine. Fine!’ Beth grinned like a fool and bit the inside of her cheek to stop from crying.

  ‘Fine? Good.’ Alice smiled a little.

  ‘Well. It’s been a strange week.’

  They both laughed a little. Here I am, laughing with my mother, thought Beth. Alice got the same creases across the top of her nose as Beth did when she smiled.

  ‘I wish I could talk to you properly. But Alexander has warned me that I mustn’t say anything to you about Theo, or about why I’ve hired him. He’s even staying put there to make sure I don’t!’ Alice waved at Alexander, who nodded, and smiled at Beth.

  Beth nodded as well.

  ‘Okay,’ Beth said. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Yes, I can tell that you do,’ Alice agreed, and Beth felt absurdly proud.

  ‘I wondered . . . I thought that maybe you would be here today,’ she said to Alice. ‘I thought we were going to be in the same room.’

  ‘Oh, did you? Alex, you should have been clearer with Elizabeth, she –’

  ‘But it’s fine! Of course it doesn’t matter,’ Beth said. She didn’t want her mother to think she was complaining, at least not in their first conversation.

  ‘Of course it does,’ Alice said. She spoke loudly and clearly, as though Beth was a child. ‘You must have been so terribly confused, you poor thing!’

  ‘Oh, well, yes. A little.’

  ‘I live in Melbourne, that’s where I am now. I’ve got a show opening tonight, otherwise I’d be there and we could have met in person.’

  ‘A show?’

  ‘An exhibition, at a very good gallery. My first in Australia! I do wish you could come. I’m very nervous! When I get nervous, I talk too much, do you? I won an award in America, for a painting I did, just last year. They had to pull me off the stage, my acceptance speech just went on and on. Anyway, there was enough prize money to get me on a plane home.’

  ‘You’re a painter?’ Beth asked. She was having trouble keeping all of this straight.

  Something passed across Alice’s face, but she didn’t drop her smile. ‘A visual artist, yes.’

  ‘Visual artist,’ Beth repeated.

  They stared at each other for a few moments. When I get nervous, I clam up and can’t say a thing, Beth thought.

  ‘Did you like America?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘It had its moments,’ Alice said. She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. Beth nodded in what she realised was an exaggerated way, but she couldn’t help it. This was all just so strange. At the back of the room Alexander cleared his throat.

  Alice nodded. ‘I must let you go,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to make this experience too overwhelming for you, Elizabeth.’

  Beth frowned. It was far too late for that. She had felt overwhelmed since the moment Sergio had told her that Theo was at the police station.

  ‘Will I . . . see you soon?’ she asked Alice.

  Alice pouted, her lower lip stuck out. ‘I don’t know. I hope so.’

  ‘Okay.’ Beth tried to seem like she wasn’t bothered either way.

  ‘I know. It’s all dragging on so long, isn’t it?’ Alice lifted a hand to smooth her hair, and Beth could see that it was shaking. Dragging on, Beth repeated to herself. Did she mean Beth finding out that her adoptive mother was actually her abductor? Was that what was ‘dragging on’ for Alice? Or did she mean Theo potentially being charged and imprisoned for that same thing was ‘dragging on’? Shouldn’t that sort of thing drag on, out of necessity? The police needed to investigate. These things took time. Beth shook her head again, confused. Was she defending Theo now? This was just too much.

  Alice smiled from her spot on the wall. ‘Anyway. I had better let you go. Can we . . . chat again?’ She bit her lip, and squinted at the camera.

  ‘Of course.’ Beth did that strange exaggerated nod again.

  ‘Wonderful. Thank you so much for speaking with me today.’ Alice leant back and looked away for a moment. She sounded like a telemarketer then, showing her gratitude to Beth for completing a survey about radio stations or laundry liquid.

  ‘Thank you,’ Beth said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘Until next time!’ Alice blew a kiss, and Beth smiled and waved.

  ‘Speak soon, Alice,’ Alexander called, waving to her. He pressed some buttons and the sound went off. Alice said something that they couldn’t hear, still waving. Beth kept waving too, in case Alice could still see her, and then all of sudden the rectangle of light disappeared and with it Alice. The lights in the room brightened again. Alexander bent his head to fiddle with the cords and Beth kept watching the space on the wall where her mother had been. She’s gone again, she told herself.

  Alexander Pullman was engrossed in something on his screen, his lips moving as he read. Get up, Beth commanded herself, get up and leave this office, go back down in the lift, walk out into the day. But her legs remained still, as though they had petrified.

  Well, now I have met her, Beth thought to herself. I have met my
birth mother, we have spoken. She replayed Alice’s breathless laugh, her plaintive tone. You poor thing, she had said to Beth. But I am not a poor thing, Beth thought. I am your thing. And you are mine.

  So why do I wish I had never come here?

  chapter twenty-one

  That night, Theo sat just outside the back door with a glass of wine, smoking a cigarette. She knew it was terrible for her, and she never allowed herself to smoke around Beth, but maybe bi-annually, she indulged. A French cigarette and a French wine, her mother was partial to both of those, too. Or, she had been, anyway. Theo had been restless all day, her body singing the same tired longing songs, for the sea, for Beth, for something other than the walls of this house. The rain in the afternoon didn’t help – how Theo would have loved to swim in the ocean while it was raining. Water above her and water below her, Theo in the centre like the fulcrum.

  She knew David was annoyed at her, or just frustrated with her stubborn response to the situation. Under no circumstance would Theo allow that Alice’s accusation had any truth. What had occurred was not abduction and she would not deviate from her position on that. A consummate professional, David had been ringing the police every day anyway, asking how long Theo would need to remain hostage in her own home. Would charges be laid within the next fortnight? Or the one after that? The police had fobbed him off with promises to relay messages, return calls, answer emails, but nothing had come of it. They would just have to wait, and keep waiting for as long as it took. The police did point out that Theo was not a hostage in her home, she only had to be mindful of the 200-metre exclusion zone around Beth.