by Gregory Day
He found himself a perch on a rock at the front of the headland and sat with his cap pulled forward and his nose in the air. He seldom sat on the beach doing nothing and yet this is what he now continued to do.
On the other side of the riverbust he could see loops of dried seaweed on the half-buried sand dune fence, hanging like black washing on a line. He felt the warm waves in the air of the day beginning. Looking across Snook Bay towards Minapre, he could make out yet another curtain of rain heading over the sea. The offer that Dom Khouri had made as they fed the bristlebirds only a few weeks before came to mind. He could see that Dom Khouri felt guilty for having brought it up. He needn’t have worried, he thought, the time might well come.
His association with the kind, rich man from Tripoli had revived something that had existed only as a memory since Leo Morris died. The longing, in Ron’s case the shy and intensely private longing, for a height. Something level with the cliff where he was born. A glory in keeping with the sea of diamonds. He found it in the music and he suspected it was in what large amounts of money could buy as well.
Now he looked around from where he sat to check whether the navigational light out on the edge of the headland had stopped flashing. It had. The human day had begun. There was light enough now from the risen sun to guide the passing ships, even if, because of the GPS, they didn’t need it anymore. Getting up, he dug his pocket knife out and went southward across the beach and into the hem of the tide. He prised some bait off the half-submerged rocks. He lifted others for the little crabs underneath. He made a mental note to tell Sweet William how warm the water was, perhaps warmer than he’d known it. He would fish later that evening off the sand. A few peri winkles and a crab or two would do. Maybe a worm as well, from the cliff-face later on.
After gathering the bait he briefly returned to the serrated cliff of sand beside the burst rivermouth and watched the flow. It was a good deep cut. He estimated the depth at around twelve feet. He could see terns swooping sharply back in the stiller water of the estuary. They were the experts. He thought of Wally Lea. And then he thought of his father. He wished he’d been at the party but somewhere inside he knew that his mother didn’t. He turned and made his way along the sand for the steps back up to the road.
NINETEEN
LIZ TURNS THE CORNER
It was yoga that cured Liz of her ecophobia. Friends had been evangelising to her about it for years but she’d never taken the plunge. She was, in fact, a little wary of spiritual practices from Asian countries. She’d seen people go completely gaga after returning from monasteries and retreats in India and Thailand. But one morning in Minapre, turning the corner from the busy main street with the newspapers and the latest copy of Wallpaper magazine under her arm, she saw the very attractive poster that changed her mind.
It was stuck onto the front window of the Anise Juicery and Cafe alongside another poster advertising a clearance sale scheduled for that weekend in the Uniting Church Hall. It was the clearance sale advertisement that first caught her eye but then as she stood there reading the list of ‘. . . jewellery, lingerie, wetsuits, swimwear, audio books, Macintosh computer parts . . .’ and thinking that it all sounded a little dodgy, she noticed the better designed poster beside it. Perhaps it was the wording – ‘Exploring classical & contemporary yoga systems, we will unite masculine and feminine practices to strengthen & deepen our connection to life through the heart’ – or perhaps just the timing, but whatever it was Liz’s trepidation about yoga cleared like a cloud in a freshening wind.
When Liz got home she rang the Woody’s Junction number of the ‘Vrindarvan Yoga Room’ and spoke to one of the teachers, who told her that she didn’t have to wait the fortnight until the sessions advertised on the poster and that if she wanted she could come to a class that very evening. Liz thought the teacher sounded not at all new-agey and so she agreed. Then she rang Craig on his mobile and asked him if he could cook tea.
When she got off the phone she fixed herself an espresso and sat out on the verandah looking down at the riverflat. The air was springy and the land looked lush. She already felt different. Before even having gone to the class. The wedge of tension that had been ruling her since the beginning of winter seemed to be dissipating minute by minute. There was pollen floating in the sunlight, she could see the tiny golden filaments sailing past all around her, wild freesias dotted the paddocks, and her body felt energetic again. She stood up and touched her toes. Then, spreading her legs, she began to swing her arms across her body, her right hand touching the left toe of her Pumas and so on. Then she did some lower back rotations. After months of coiled anxiety and displacement, Liz had turned the corner.
As Libby lay on her bed downloading songs later that night she had to double-check when she heard her parents laughing in the living room. She clicked on the cancel button and listened. They were having fun out there for the first time in months. At one point she even thought she heard singing.
Libby felt her anti-family stance clear and something much friendlier take its place. Of its own accord, her heart lifted as she lay on her Snoopy doona. A wave of relief filled her room and she felt an urge to get up and go share in the joke. Just this once. But no, she had too much to do. She was making a compilation CD called ‘Two Hearts Kyoto Mangowak’ for her friend Bo who was on a student exchange in Japan. It was already overdue and Bo was horribly homesick. The happiness coming from the living room would have to wait, but she returned to the downloading with an extra sentimentalish enthusiasm.
Liz had come home from the Vrindarvan Yoga Room to find that not only had dinner been cooked but the dishwasher was stacked and her meal was waiting under plastic beside the microwave. Craig was sitting on the couch with Reef, teaching him the guitar chords to ‘The Pelican Song’ by Stereomatic. The boy had his tongue between his teeth and Craig seemed very pleased with his progress. As Reef reached the chorus in a halting but consistent way, Craig looked over the couch at Liz as she entered and gave her the thumbs-up.
When she had rung to tell him that she was going to a yoga class it was the best news he’d heard in weeks. All he wanted was for her to be fit and happy rather than lethargic and tetchy. If he could take the bull by the horns and give up surfing for something that would make him happier (though he hadn’t been fishing since he’d made his birthday wish) then why couldn’t she? Craig thought yoga was certainly a good step.
Liz zapped the chicken thigh fillets and sat down at the Mambo bench to eat them with a small glass of shiraz from the two-litre De Bortoli cask they kept for cooking. Craig, she noticed, was onto his third Cascade.
After Reef had strummed through ‘The Pelican Song’ to the end Craig told him he could do it once more and then it was bedtime. Reef straightened his back in preparation, the Maton acoustic huge where it sat on his thighs, and began.
It was a gentle little rock song and when Craig was trying to find something to kick off Reef’s guitar playing Liz had suggested it. She was right, it was perfect: three chords in a round with a simple accent for the little fingers of his left hand, one change for the chorus and easy lyrics that an eight year old who liked to sing into the hairbrush could get into. As he passed through the introductory bars and began to sing, Reef imitated the slacker twang of the Stereomatic singer’s voice. He already knew the tune well, he’d heard the song maybe a thousand times since he was born, mostly on the car CD player.
At the finish, Reef gave the Maton a mock gargantuan strum as a final happy flourish.
‘Well done, Reefy,’ called Liz from behind them, clapping her hands.
‘Yeah, bloody good, Reef,’ said Craig, slapping his son on the back. ‘You’re a bit of a natural, you know. It’s nighty-night now.’
Reef got up, glowing and for once not protesting about having to go to bed. He kissed them both and wandered off through the kitchen to his room still singing ‘The Pelican Song’, complete with the dah-dows of the Stereomatic guitar riffs.
‘So how wa
s it?’ asked Craig, swivelling around on the couch to face his wife.
‘I loved it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. It’s in a fabulous building just up a little road into the bush a bit, just before you get down into Woody’s Junction, with polished floors and big views. And everyone was really lovely. It wasn’t too new-agey. And it didn’t matter that I knew nothing. They were really friendly.’
Craig nodded in approval and took a swig from his Cascade. ‘So how come, Lizzie? How did it happen?’
‘I dunno. I just saw this poster in Minapre this morning and it felt right. Weird isn’t it, after all I’ve said about yoga.’
‘Well, you’ve gotta be free to change your mind.’
Liz smiled at him appreciatively. ‘That’s right.’
She finished eating, refilled her wineglass and sat beside Craig on the couch.
‘You’ll never believe what happened to me today with Batty,’ he began, proceeding to tell her all about their drive back from the Svenssons and how Colin had gone on and on about going out fishing in his boat alone.
‘And then we went and had a countery and he just wouldn’t shut up about it. You know when someone gets so full of shit about something and they just have to get you involved. He ended up getting on his mobile and ringing some old mate of his dad’s who he thought could get me a cheap boat. Of course I made the mistake of telling him I was getting into fishing. Bad move! Oh, he was so into it. And you know who was sitting at the bar all this time? Jamie Niall and Givva Way.’
‘Could they hear what you were talking about?’
‘Of course they could. You know how loud Colin is. They were pissing themselves. And I was stuck there having to pretend to be seriously interested. I tell you, it was hysterical.’
The two of them sat laughing on the couch as Craig continued.
‘I mean, does he go around telling everyone how “fucking grouse” it is on the boat? Everyone’s heard by now what he does out there. Someone’s gonna tell him. Sooner or later.’
They made scoffing sounds now as they sipped at their drinks.
‘Anyway, he got pretty pissed over lunch, and he started crapping on again about Ron McCoy and the Khouri place and the Morris house. He’s obsessed! Anyway, Mango the barman came over and told him to keep it down and did he know that today was Min McCoy’s one hundredth birthday.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yeah, apparently. He kind of shut up after that. And then some bloke he knew came in and they started talking about the old days in Devon Beach. That was pretty fascinating, actually. Batty’s old man was a bit of a character.’
‘Colin’s nuts,’ said Liz. ‘If you bide your time there he’ll chase some other dream and you can take over the business.’
Craig slumped a bit into the couch. ‘That’ll never happen,’ he said.
‘You don’t know, at the rate he’s going.’
‘Yeah, but do I wanna run a real estate agency?’
‘You’d be your own boss.’
‘True.’
‘You’d make big money too.’
‘There’s no doubt about that. I reckon Colin pulls one fifty, maybe two hundred a year.’
Liz raised her eyebrows. ‘That’d be all right.’
‘We don’t need that much.’
‘No, but things’d be easier. You wouldn’t have to work for him. The money’d just be a bonus.’
Craig shook his head. ‘I don’t think Colin’s going anywhere. He was telling me and this old mate of his today how when he was younger he’d had some kind of mystical vision to come here. Before that he’d sworn himself off the coast for life. Kept on saying how he’d beaten his old man, how you see BATTY REAL ESTATE signs everywhere you go. He wouldn’t stop going on about it.’
‘That’s sad,’ said Liz.
‘It’s fucked up, that’s what it is,’ Craig agreed.
Liz showed Craig the flyer for the twelve-week yoga course at Vrindarvan and as he read it he got up and put a CD on. Thom Yorke’s plaintive voice filled the room and he went back to the couch and put his hand on Liz’s thigh. She was wearing tights. He could feel the static electricity in his fingers.
Forty minutes later, as Libby was applying a fourth filter on the Takada image she’d chosen for the cover of the CD for her friend Bo, she thought she heard something from her parents’ room. She also thought she knew what it was. Scowling, she put her headphones on and kept clicking and scrolling, with her left ankle tucked up under her bum, hoping she’d find the way to get something totally pure for the cover of the compilation.
TWENTY
THE NEW SPIRITUALITY
Liz now realised that the ants had put her at odds with herself by biting her when she least expected it. Then, of course, when her foot swelled up to twice its size and she became nauseous her whole system had gone into a panic. The landscape had become the culprit, one vast dry reservoir of formic potential. But thankfully now the yoga was reinstalling her self again. By the syncing of her breath with her movements the almost cellular trepidation she’d been experiencing, the twittering inside her that had felt as if ants were striving up and down her bloodstream, had begun to fall away. In its place came a new Liz, made up of ninety per cent of the old Liz and ten per cent of her new depth and body awareness. In that new ten per cent she felt that life was teaching her a fresh satisfaction.
More than anything, though, the happiness with which she welcomed the new summer was born out of relief. Life was no longer a soporific retail repetition, it had its verve back again, its big sky. Now all the earth required was hiking boots rather than Birkenstocks, the EpiPen, but no other great precautionary measures.
She remembered as a child how her father had bought a new car and she had subsequently noticed that model all over the roads. Now in a similar way she noticed that people were often mentioning yoga when previously they hadn’t, and that on the noticeboard at the general store there were no fewer than four advertisements for yoga classes locally. She had known it was popular, of course, what with all the friends who’d been in her ear about it, but she had no idea it was that popular. This made her feel good. It gave her a satisfying Zeitgeisty feeling. We aren’t guinea pigs anymore either, she thought. Not like the baby boomers. Yoga’s the natural survivor out of all that sixties hippy shit.
So yoga was sensible and Carla was thrilled for Liz. They sat together at the cafe and talked it through. Carla had done some yoga herself, in a second storey studio in Acland Street, when she lived in St Kilda. She told Liz she’d loved it but in the end she’d just run out of time. ‘I’ve got my positive visualisations that I do,’ she said. ‘In the end that’s all I can fit in with the kids.’
Liz told Carla how Craig was being totally supportive of her yoga and seemed actually happier himself since she’d begun. ‘And you know how much he hates his job now.’
Carla frowned. ‘I didn’t know he hated his job. I knew he couldn’t stand Colin Batty but I thought he kind of enjoyed the rest of it.’
‘Colin’s so in his face. More and more. But Craig’s handling it well. And, as I say, since I’m happier he seems to be too.’
‘Well,’ said Carla, satirically lowering her voice, ‘he’s probably getting a bit, darl.’
They laughed and Liz looked around to see if anyone could hear.
After their coffees they decided to take a walk to the river mouth rather than jump straight back in their cars and go home. They crossed the main road, walked past the old brick plasterer’s shed and around to the water. Three purple buses from the Sunraysia towered in the carpark near the steps leading to the beach through the marram grass. When Liz and Carla got down on the sand they saw that a large group of older men and women were being led along the edge of the estuary by a bus driver and a young woman wearing an Akubra. Rather than negotiating their way through the brabble of frocks and unsteady feet, they decided to continue on up the track towards the Meteorological Station.
; They climbed the treated pine steps from the toilet block and began to scale the hill through the bearded heath and pymelia and she-oaks. As soon as they were in the shrubbery of the cliff, the laughter of the pensioners disappeared and a sheltered hush was on them. Carla walked ahead and Liz noticed again how amazing her bum was for her age. How on earth was it that this girl couldn’t find a man?
At the Meteorological Station they found a modelling shoot taking place on the kikuyu grass lawn in front of the old station’s main building. Liz and Carla noted immediately that the young woman with the wet-looking auburn hair was effortlessly beautiful and very natural looking, with freckles along the lines of her cheekbones, and a tall but cosy figure. She was wearing a sixties style sleeveless lemon frock and Liz and Carla both thought she had a young Marianne Faithfull thing going on. With her was the photographer and one other guy, touching up her make-up and spraying mists of water onto her hair with a pump-action plastic bottle. Behind the model the ocean stretched back towards Minapre, cobalt and soothing. There was a hint of a southwesterly up there on the hill, just enough to dimple the lemon frock and remind the viewer of the magazine-to-be that the coast was wild as well as glamorous.
Liz and Carla stood near the painted stone lintel of what was once the Meteorological Station’s laundry and observed the shoot with interest. They watched as the model was photographed standing up and laughing, reclining on the lawn in the sun, with sunglasses on, and with them off, then listing dreamily on her haunches amongst the flowering tea-tree. There didn’t seem to be much rapport between the photographer and the model, but the heavily gelled make-up guy kept cracking jokes and keeping the mood jovial. Three times they changed the model’s shoes. Initially she was wearing heels with a Restoration buckle, but then she tried a knee-length pair of green patent leather boots, and then a pair of bright red loafers with a big white S stitched on either side. Carla loved the look of the green leather boots, but Liz preferred the loafers. Neither of them could come at the heels with the Restoration buckle.
