Deeper than the Sea

by Nelika McDonald

  ‘What is it, mate? Did you remember something?’ David asked.

  ‘Well no, it’s just . . .’ He inclined his chin at the sky. David and Theo turned their heads up to where was indicating. The full moon hung in the sky like it was suspended there in an invisible net.

  ‘The bonfire, you know. You’d probably find both of them down at the beach.’

  When Theo and Beth arrived in Cardmoor they stayed at the motel on the main street at first. There were no other guests, so the owner said she could just pay by the night and stay however long she pleased. He came by in the evening on the first night with a bowl of arrowroot biscuits crushed in milk and sprinkled with sugar for Beth.

  ‘My grandchildren love this,’ he said. Beth ate every crumb.

  Theo felt so welcomed, already more than she ever had in Melbourne. The next day they went out walking and found a house with a Holiday Rentals sign out the front. Short-term lease, your home away from home, it read. It was a little shack at the top of the hill, and Theo’s calves hurt from pushing the pram all the way up. But the hill meant there was a view. From the front verandah, Theo could see a triangle of ocean between the palm trees. That was probably more important to her than the house itself.

  The house wasn’t new, and not as well appointed as Theo and Oliver’s home in Melbourne had been. It smelt like the inside of a wardrobe that hadn’t been opened in a long time, camphor and lavender-scented drawer liners. A pot of gerberas was cemented to the ground on either side of the front door, cigarettes stubbed into the parched dirt at their bases. A broken wind chime hung from the doorknob.

  ‘Hello?’ she called out, but nobody answered.

  Theo turned the handle and the door opened. She liked the idea of Beth in a place where doors didn’t need to be locked.

  Walking into the hallway, Theo saw the first bedroom and knew that one would be hers. The carpet was a disastrous medley of swirling browns, but there were dusty French doors behind plastic venetian blinds that opened out onto a decent-sized verandah. From there, Theo could see the ocean. The nursery was next, and Theo could clearly imagine Beth in here, a toddler on her stomach on a rag rug, lying in a pool of light with a stack of books in front of her. Theo gave the kitchen and bathroom a once-over, then pushed the pram back to town to find the real estate agent’s office.

  With each thing that she did, Theo told herself it was only temporary. It was just for now. She might go back to Melbourne next week, or possibly the week after that. It didn’t escape her that Alice might have been saying those exact words herself, at that exact time. A woman from a few houses down the hill offered them a cot that her kids no longer used and a bookshelf painted in pillar-box red. There was a thrift store on the main street, and when they put a couch on the footpath for sale, Theo bought it. A few days later they put a table out and she bought that too. Some elderly ladies who lived nearby came to introduce themselves in that first week. They took turns cuddling Beth and showing her around the garden while Theo swept the cobwebs out from the corners of the ceilings.

  The ease with which it all fell into place convinced Theo that she had done the right thing. The universe approved. It handed her what she needed on a platter. Part of her still denied that she’d left, not really. Certainly it was nothing she could tell her sister about. The last time she had spoken to Greta had been the day before they’d got on the train. A week passed, then another two or three, and Theo still didn’t ring. She imagined that Greta had spoken to Oliver, by now. What would he have said to her? What did Greta think of her, now? These were the worries that belonged to the other part of Theo, the pocket of doubt that opened up when she was alone late at night. What if Greta told her that she had to go back, Theo thought. What if she said that taking Beth away with her was illegal and immoral? She had little time for Oliver, and would be supportive of Theo leaving him, but she was pretty black and white when it came to the law. Perhaps she had to be. Defendants were either guilty or innocent. Greta could even turn her in to the authorities, if Theo disagreed with her. That was hard to imagine, but entirely possible. Greta took her profession very seriously. She’d see it as a sort of tough love, and a moral obligation, dobbing Theo in. She’d find it difficult, because she wasn’t made of stone. But she might still do it.

  That wasn’t a risk Theo could take.

  To stop Greta from worrying, Theo sent her an email.

  Greta,

  I’ve left Oliver. You probably saw that one coming. I’ve decided to get away for a while. There’s so much of this country I haven’t seen – I’ll probably stick to the edges, though, going from beach to beach. I don’t know what I’ll do after that. Mother would probably say that it’s not too late to come home and finish studying to be a teacher! The only thing I do know is that I won’t do that. I might send you a postcard, but I just want to be left alone for a while. I know you’ll understand. I need to figure myself out, and I need to do it alone. I’ll get back in touch when I’m ready.

  I love you. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.

  Kiss the littles for me,

  Theo xx

  Her inner monologue was savage. You couldn’t have a baby, so you took someone else’s, she taunted herself. You knew she wasn’t yours to take, but you did it anyway. That’s why you’re not telling Greta the truth. Because she’ll tell you that you’re a criminal.

  Besides, what makes you think this baby is better off with you than her father, Theo Abrams? What have you got to offer her? What can you do that a professional nanny couldn’t, besides love her? Does she really need that, from you? And what sort of love is yours, anyway? What is it worth? Oliver didn’t want it. Why should Beth?

  But then, Theo would remember things, Alice’s schoolbag of baby items, how her drawings on the postcards took up all the room, her regal countenance and unhurried walk away from her daughter. The way Oliver held Beth like she was radioactive, the contempt she saw when he frowned at the pair of them, the way his eyes glazed over when Theo tried to talk to him about her. The way Beth looked at her when she wanted Theo to pick her up, the way she kept her eyes trained on her until she did, the triumph on her face when she was safely in Theo’s arms. The way she clung there like a koala, the sweetest package Theo had ever carried.

  It didn’t feel wrong. It felt like mercy, for all of them.

  Theo was a regular visitor at the library from their first week in Cardmoor. She read books about babies, and about the flowers that grew in their tangled bushy backyard. The neighbours brought her honey and cardamom cookies, and as soon as Beth could crawl she motored over to the fence to call out to them. Theo read a book that instructed parents to get down on the floor in order to empathise with their children, to literally see from their perspective. When Theo tried to do that, Beth climbed up on her back as though she was a horse, her chubby baby legs gripping Theo’s flanks, her hands buried in Theo’s hair. She didn’t want Theo to come down to her level, she wanted to be raised up to Theo’s instead.

  For most of the remainder of her first year Beth preferred to be carried rather than crawl. Theo bought an old Mexican blanket from the thrift shop, embroidered with crows and ears of corn, and used that to wrap Beth onto her back, weaving her in and tying the blanket across her waist so that her hands were free. Beth was happy there for hours at a time, sometimes she would drift off, but more often she would just perch there, her chin resting on Theo’s shoulder, her hot breath in her ear, cooing and babbling, gumming on a fistful of Theo’s T-shirt. When she took the wrap off, Theo felt weightless, her arms floating by her sides, her feet too soft on the floorboards. It felt wrong.

  Just a few days short of her first birthday, Beth walked from a chair over to Theo as though she had been doing it for months already. Theo cried. A neighbour managed to take a photo to mark the moment. Theo made a copy and sent it to the most recent address she had for Alice. On the back, she wrote, ‘Beth’s first steps. Theo.’ She rang Oliver, but only when she knew he wouldn’t be in. She l
eft a message on the answering machine, saying that they were safe and they were at the beach, enjoying the sun. At the end of the message Theo blurted the name of the motel in town and said that if he or Alice needed to contact her, they could call the motel and they would get the message to her.

  She kept using her bank card for the first few months but spent little money. Her elderly neighbours said she could use their car, and they even gave her work driving them around. The buses were few and the taxis expensive, and not many of the elderly women in town still trusted themselves to drive. So Theo took them to their doctor’s appointments, to the RSL, to their bridge club and book club and each other’s houses. They sang along to the golden oldies radio station and brought her casseroles and overpaid her. The ones who could reach passed biscuits and dried apple to Beth in her capsule in the back.

  After a year had passed, Theo had stopped using the bank card. She took pride in needing nothing from Oliver, any more. Beth was very well taken care of. She had more knitted cardigans than one baby could possibly wear, especially one who lived at the beach.

  Oliver could contact her if he wanted to, Theo reassured herself on the nights she lay awake with her stomach twisting like rope. If Alice came back for Beth, she wouldn’t have had to look very hard to find her. But still Theo didn’t go out of her way to tell anyone her story. She would guard her child and her home as fiercely as any other mother animal protecting her young. That was the job she had been given, and she would do it well; she would be the most vigilant and careful and thoughtful mother there was. And nobody would ever be able to accuse her of not loving Beth as a mother ought to.

  If Alice did turn up to stake her claim, Theo would have to give her Beth. She knew she would have to. Sometimes she wrote lists of all the things Alice would need to know: Beth’s nap times and night routine, the foods she disliked and the books she did like. Just in case. But, if Alice did come, Theo would have some questions for her. She wouldn’t simply hand Beth back as though she was little more than a borrowed dress. Alice didn’t come.

  Theo nursed Beth through various illnesses, none of them major, except, of course, the asthma. She got spider-bitten twice (she had a habit of sticking her little fingers into holes and peering into hollow logs and under rocks), there was the broken arm and some painful braces. Theo made her some of her clothes and bought her others, they both loved scavenging in op shops and finding costumes for Beth’s dress-ups box. Theo brushed her hair every night, one hundred strokes. They went to the movies on Sunday afternoons and sat in the front row so it felt like they were inside the film. They had pet lizards and mice and cats, for a very short time they had a cat and a mouse, but that didn’t end well. One of the neighbours died and Theo took Beth to her first funeral, where she watched mystified as people wept, asking Theo why they were all crying at the party. She ran up to watch when the coffin trundled through the hatch into the incinerator at the end of the service. They went camping. Beth learnt to surf. Mary taught them both how to cook. They swam, always. Beth went through phases: of hating school, loving it, being irritated by Theo and so devoted to her that she cried when Theo went to work. She did ballet and didn’t like it, she did tap-dancing and loved it. She said she felt like a musical instrument when she danced. She collected rocks and shells and kept silkworms in shoeboxes. She read every science book Theo could find at the library, and conducted experiments in the kitchen with baking powder and all manner of other things. She was cheeky, irreverent, stubborn, and sweet. She worried about other people to the point of making herself sick. She could be funny and unforgiving. She was Beth in all her glory.

  Theo had never loved anyone or anything so entirely.

  Neither Oliver nor Alice ever made any attempt to contact their daughter.

  Theo sent Greta an annual email, telling her she was fine, but that she was too busy to return to the UK, or have visitors in Australia. At first, Greta was hurt, and angry and upset, and she sent a barrage of emails telling Theo so. But, when Theo didn’t respond, after a while, Greta stopped. After the first ten or so years, she stopped replying altogether.

  In that way, sixteen years passed.

  chapter forty-two

  Beth walked into the ocean with long, sure strides.

  She heard Caleb calling, ‘Beth, come back,’ but she didn’t want to come back. She waded out further. She wasn’t cold at all. She was looking for the right spot to dance in, where the light was brightest and most pure. She would know when she found it. Beth moved out further and further, she looked back at the beach and the people were tiny shapes, droplets of water dancing on a hot skillet. She heard shouting and saw that they were waving to her, she heard her name and waved back. She thought she must look beautiful in her dress made of moonlight, her skin was luminescent with it. She threw her hands up into the sky; she was ready to become a mermaid now.

  Beth felt sad to leave behind her human form, but at peace because she knew this was where she needed to be. She could feel her hair spreading out on the water behind her, and then she tasted salt, it filled her mouth. She told herself she was drinking the moonlight, that was what mermaids did, that was how they survived. They lived off it, it was their sustenance. The last thing Beth remembered was opening her mouth wide, opening her heart wide, surrendering. She finally understood why the water meant so much to Theo, why she craved it so. It was everything. It was the answer to every question. She understood why Theo had warned her off swimming at night for so long, too – she had known Beth wasn’t ready, wasn’t old enough or strong enough yet.

  But now she was.

  It was time.

  Beth let the water lap over the crown of her head, bubbles seeping from her lips as she released the last of her air, that last vestige of her earthly form, before her transformation was complete.

  chapter forty-three

  Theo ran back the way they’d come through the caravan park, and David ran with her, only once pulling her arm to jerk her back when she headed down the wrong road.

  ‘This way, this way,’ he said, and they ran on.

  Her every muscle and sinew was aflame, there was barbed wire in her joints. In her mind, she went somewhere else, a place where there was only her and Beth and the space between them and Theo was closing it with every step.

  They got to the edge of the park where it opened onto the beach and stopped, panting and sweating, to survey the crowd. The bonfire burned high, and people sat around it in rings, like they were worshipping. David got his breath back first, and took off again, bending to check faces, asking all of them, ‘Has anyone seen Caleb Sutton? Beth Abrams?’

  ‘Beth? Please help, I need to find my daughter.’ Theo grabbed at the arms of anyone who came within reach, but they all just shook their heads.

  After a minute or two, David stopped and yelled, ‘Beth Abrams! Caleb Sutton!’ Everyone turned to look at him, but nobody answered, because down at the shore, someone started screaming. The crowd surged down towards the water and Theo and David cut a path through them. Theo heard the sounds from her own mouth like they were someone else’s, ‘Move, move, move, get out of the fucking way!’

  At the water’s edge, some girls were screaming, their faces emptied of colour. The only light came from the moon, but it was enough for Theo to see a parcel of clothes, folded neatly on the sand. A silver necklace was laid across the clothes, a donkey charm turned to the sky. Theo started to shake.

  David got there first. A boy was slumped in the sand, rocking on his haunches.

  ‘What happened, where is Beth?’ David yelled at the boy and shook his shoulder so hard that he almost lifted off the ground.

  ‘She’s in the water but I can’t see her, I wasn’t there –’ Caleb moaned and Theo wanted to put her hand over his mouth, clamp his lips together, shut him up.

  Another girl, her face pinched with worry, came over to Theo and shook her head. ‘She went in and she didn’t come out.’

  ‘Where?’ Theo demanded. ‘Show me whe
re.’

  The girl pointed to where the moonlight made a path on the water. Up at the caravan park, someone turned the music off and everything went quiet.

  Theo shucked off her jeans and shoes and ran into the sea.

  chapter forty-four

  Beth was lying down, but it wasn’t in her bed. She couldn’t move her arms and legs, something, maybe the wind, pushed against her, weighing her down. Was she still swimming? Beth didn’t think so. This didn’t feel nice in the way that swimming felt nice. The sounds she heard were familiar but strange, and she couldn’t quite locate the place in her mind where she knew what they were. All the answers hovered just beyond her reach.

  Someone seemed to have slid something hot and sharp down her throat, and her lungs felt like they had been grated, they burned. The pain came forward and then receded, then came forward again.

  She heard someone talking, but they were standing too far away for her to hear properly. She heard her name and tried to lift her hand but it was too heavy. All of her was too heavy. She heard Sabre screaming. Other girls crying. Caleb said something, he sounded agitated, and she wondered vaguely why. Beth opened her eyes for a moment and saw nothing. She was moving, somehow. She was just so tired. Someone lifted Beth’s eyelids and gazed at her. Beth’s chest felt cold, she could feel the breeze on it. Everyone seemed to be shouting.

  She remembered Theo carrying her in from the car when she’d fallen asleep on the way home from somewhere. Beth was five or six. She knew that she didn’t need to wake up properly, Theo was there and she would lay her down in her bed. Soft as a cloud. From one cocoon to another. The pain came back and this time it stayed a bit longer. Beth found that she could be right inside it, like the eye of a storm. If she had any breath this pain would have taken it. But her breath was too far away as well, like a ribbon slipping from her fingers, inch by inch. She might have to let go, she understood that, and when she did the pain would be gone. Everything would be gone.