Tide

by John Kinsella

  Humouring Andy, and feeling she had his measure, Selina said, Then you’ll have all the time in the world to spend with them. Let’s do something else in the meantime.

  Next Christmas they flew to the Australian Alps, and spent their time hiking. As they flew out of Perth, Andy looked down at the ocean and saw the whale’s mouth gaping. He looked deep down into its belly and saw himself and Beth cuddling together against the cold, and Sarah asleep at their feet, salt water lapping about her.

  THE UNFINISHED HOUSE

  The wind tried to wrap itself around the glowing steel frame but couldn’t find purchase. It roared up out of the ocean, but failed to get much more than a shimmer from the unfinished house – a skeleton still waiting for flesh. Nonetheless, a high-pitched whistling, as unsettling as a scream, said that house and wind were battling each other in ways that might not be seen or understood.

  Sand and limestone and coastal heath and piss-smelling scrub surrounded it, and its empty eye sockets looked out on the blue-black water of great depth that made the immensity of the southern ocean. Even in the high winds, gulls tried to settle on the frame, their corrosive droppings raising flustered patches on the metal. But after fighting the winds for longer than one would think possible, they’d spread their wings and be lifted out at an acute angle, rising slowly and jaggedly like kites.

  The house had been left in this unfinished state for five years.

  In order to keep upright, Meredith held on tightly to Li-an’s arm. He’d brought her down to look at the ocean, but as her hair whipped her eyes and salt formed a patina over her face, she kept glancing back and examining the house. Something wasn’t quite right. Didn’t fit. Or fitted too well. It didn’t add up for her. Not just a case of not being finished. That really had nothing to do with it. She couldn’t work it out. She felt strangely inarticulate.

  Li-an’s gaze was fixed determinedly on the ocean, and subtly – not so difficult in the strong wind – he angled his arm and tilted, twisting Meredith’s body back towards the ocean, make it more difficult for her to twist and look over her shoulder.

  Meredith yelled into the wind, Whose house is that, Li-an?

  Li-an didn’t react. Words were rushed away and shredded before they left the mouth. Meredith forced her lips into Li-an’s ear, which she cupped with her hands. Whose house is that?

  Li-an placed his arm protectively around Meredith, as if she were about to be blown and dragged down the granite cliffs into the ocean, which was grinding froth and swirling paint far below them, while just beyond the breakers it was throwing reflections of the sky sharply at the cliffs and up at the shining house frame. She almost fought him, but felt vulnerable enough to give way and be taken from the edge of the continent, back up the narrow wallaby path through the scrub. She didn’t try to look at the house again. Vertigo had bent her will.

  Hubris, said Li-an.

  What? asked Meredith, washing the dishes while Li-an wiped.

  It was hubris to try to keep the wind and the spray and the ocean out, he said. It might be a long way up from the ocean, but you get king waves here, reach right up over the top of the cliffs and drag anything there back into the sea. They are unpredictable. They come without warning. You might be looking out onto a calm ocean, with sunlight casting its brilliance and blindness on the surface, and then a huge surge will rise up and suck you down. Crushed in the machine of the ocean. It is merciless.

  Meredith had been going out with Li-an for almost six months and had never heard him speak like that. He was a taciturn man, and she liked that. Her ex had been a loudmouthed, large-featured man, into body-building. He ran the gymnasium in this coastal town which was working hard to become a small city. Bob had been a picker and a mocker, always finding fault with her clothes, her talk, her body. He’d even said to her one day, I love your tits – they hang just right for me – but I think you need to do some heavy-duty work on your arse … I’ll work out a program for you, tailored to fit your defects. Really she’d been with him because, coming to the town to teach, she’d been lonely, and joined the gym for some kind of social contact outside work, only to find that most of the new teachers had done the same, and really didn’t feel like talking with each other after spending the day a classroom or two apart. He’d picked her up so easily it embarrassed her.

  Li-an actually was a teacher, but one who’d been in the town for ten years. He’d been married to yet another teacher who’d died some years ago.

  He didn’t say much. I talk a lot, she’d say, but I am an English teacher. You’re a maths teacher, you don’t need to talk much. He’d always frown and shake his head, but they both knew she only said it to stir him up. He almost liked that about her. He needed to come back out of his shell.

  Li-an, she asked, days later, tell me the story of that unfinished house. I know you know. I am trying to be sensitive, but it’s starting to annoy me not knowing.

  It’s got nothing to do with me, said Li-an. You’ve got nothing to be sensitive about.

  Then why are you so weird about it?

  Weird? What do you mean?

  Well, weird … just weird. When we were down there I felt you pulling me away. You wouldn’t answer my questions. Then there was the hubris soliloquy the other night. Then yesterday, when I asked to visit that spot again, you got shirty.

  Shirty?

  Annoyed.

  No, I didn’t.

  Why did you take me there in the first place? It’s out of the way, I’d never heard of it before. I needn’t have gone there. It’s not a local talking point. There are more dramatic and accessible tourist spots with lookouts and no steel skeletons to distract the eye!

  Don’t you get so annoyed, Meredith. I don’t like it when you’re annoyed.

  She appreciated he wasn’t criticising her but was genuinely frustrated by her upset. She wound it down a notch.

  Sorry, I wasn’t meaning to get under your skin, to turn you inside out, Li-an.

  You weren’t. You’re not. Truth is, I just took you there because it’s a spot I really like. It’s dangerous, but only sometimes. And I didn’t take you to the edge. I love its noise, its lack of calm. And yet it is so lonely and isolated and has its own peace.

  You love its contradictions, she said.

  Yes. It’s almost a paradox.

  That works in language and in maths, Li-an?

  Nothing to do with either, he laughed, though slightly irritated.

  Meredith didn’t like it when Li-an got called away on ‘family business’ in the city, 500 kilometres north-west. He said, That means you must love me now. Separation anxiety.

  Either that or I don’t trust you! She laughed nervously.

  I’ll be in constant contact. Keep your phone with you at all times. I’ll ring and text and I can use Skype at my mother’s.

  Meredith had never met Li-an’s mother in the flesh, but knew her well via Skype, though Mother, as she liked to be called, always shook her camera around when Meredith got on to say hello, as if that would bring her into focus in some deeper way. Mother, said Meredith, you’re just making it hard for me to see you. When you shake the camera like that you blur. Bah, said Mother.

  Since that one and only time with Li-an, Meredith hadn’t been back to the unfinished house on the cliffs. As soon as Li-an was ensconced at Mother’s in the city, she thought she’d take a drive and a walk out on the ‘wild coasts’ (as the tourist brochures advertised), and have a closer look at the house that had so bothered her.

  She wasn’t sure why she felt impelled to go in Li-an’s absence. Why his leaving brought it to mind so strongly. She’d only ever had an urge this strong when she was giving up smoking.

  As she was leaving, the phone rang.

  Yes, Li-an, I am fine. Are you behaving? You have spent up big at Wooldridges? Your students will love you. More maths problems for them to solve. Yes, yes, my darling, I do believe maths is a beautiful thing!

  She got in the car, turned the phone off, and t
ossed it on the passenger’s seat.

  As the wind shook her, she wondered if her body would take it or just rattle apart. Limbs and vessels tangled and torn. Whether it would hold up to the buffeting. She thought of Bob: whether, if she’d stuck to his program, that would have helped her out in the battle to keep her footing. A better arse for better leverage on the surface of an unstable world. The wind seemed to come from all directions at once. Stepping onto the house’s pad and into its anatomy, she covered her ears to muffle the pinging and whining of the steel which, to look at, barely seemed to shudder.

  She realised how perfectly it was structured. How symmetrical, how mathematical its shape. The house spiralled into the centre. It was like being inside a shell. Because the metal glinted gold in the distance, she’d assumed it was the play of sunlight and glare cast off the ocean far below. But it was in fact painted gold. The gold had flaked and worn through in parts, and bird shit had eaten it away, but it was a golden house in the shape of a spiral. She suddenly thought, Fibonacci! She’d spent many evenings listening to Li-an praise and worship the Fibonacci numbers.

  Though she’d arrived early in the afternoon, she suddenly found it was late. Dusk had arrived. Only the loss of the last intense rays of the setting sun snapped her out of her trance. She’d been walking the skeleton, measuring with footsteps, counting. Why it was what it was, where it was, and why it couldn’t be finished. An epiphany. A revelation. She wanted to text Li-an and tell him she’d worked out the house. She reached for her phone then realised she’d left it in the car. Had wanted to leave it in the car. She felt bereft. Probably wouldn’t get a signal out here anyway, she reassured herself.

  And then it was dark. There was no moon. Clouds were rolling in, fast. The wind was confusing, as always. She forced herself to step out off the house pad onto the heath. She could smell the sea. She had to walk slightly down towards it, then turn to find the track. Where had the light gone? And so quickly? Even through the wind she could smell the pissy odour of scrub that indicated the wallaby path was close. She fell to her hands and knees and crawled.

  And then she thought, Hubris. Perfection is hubris. And the ocean so immense, so rough. But deep down, down past the gnashing rocks, down to the core of where king waves are formed and yet are barely felt, there was peace. Perfection without hubris. And the wind and the night and the cliffs had her in their grasp. Falling is like a wave with all water sucked out. Gravity and fluids and momentum and inertia. And the ragged edge of the coast, the ragged edge of knowing all people who want company and solitude.

  THE BOUQUET

  I was heading home after a week away shearing. I’d been caught behind this old Nissan for too long. Double white lines then a clear spot, and the one truck on the damned road appeared and I had to hold back. Would have been a head-on. Then another set of double white lines. It’s always when you’re tired. I was glad I skipped the cut-out – inevitably I would have made the long drive after putting a few away, though it doesn’t make me proud to say so – and as we finished at lunch I could go early. It was a three-hour journey.

  The sheds these days are getting further away. The drought means farmers are culling their sheep. Less work. Once, I could almost shear from home, joining up with the team in the morning, heading back at night. And when the working sheds were out my way, the team bus would cruise past and I had nothing to worry about except how many I’d do that day. A few drinks after the last run – no problem. But now it was away for weeks at a time, staying over in quarters on the big properties further out.

  That old Nissan was doing forty under the speed limit and really starting to piss me off. I was on its tail, giving it the charge. It wavered, and I expected the driver to slam on the brakes. In the rapidly fading light I could just make out a couple up front – a man driving, a female passenger – and maybe a kid or a dog bobbing about in the back. I dropped off the pace a bit. A kid shouldn’t die for the stupidity of their parents. And then something flew out of the front passenger’s window and the car accelerated away, at high speed. I was so taken aback I slowed down, stopped, and reversed back to where the thing had landed on the side of the road.

  It was a bouquet of flowers. An expensive bunch of red roses. I opened the door, reached out and grabbed it. I counted eleven. I took the bouquet, and placed it on the passenger’s seat beside me. It had survived rough treatment remarkably well, as if it had just floated down onto the ground. Even the cellophane around it looked crisp and fresh, held snugly in place by a red ribbon.

  I know we all say it too often in life – I don’t know what possessed me. But truly, it’s the only way of putting it. Some gremlin had got inside me; something out of character happened. I set off in high-speed pursuit of the rose throwers for no particular reason and with no purpose in mind other than to catch the Nissan, to catch and confront the occupants. There were no words inside my head, no action to accompany the confrontation.

  You’ve got to understand that I am a meticulous man. Always have been. As a kid I collected footy cards, and kept a record of every point and goal kicked by every team. I was a ‘stats boy’, as my grandfather proudly said. And in the shed I know everyone’s tally – which leads some to say I’m hungry, but it’s not that, it’s just an interest. You see, in the movie Sunday Too Far Away, when the shearers compete for the honour of being the best, the numbers matter as much as the outcome. That’s me.

  Unbelievably, the Nissan had found new legs, as if shedding the bouquet’s weight gave it extra grunt. I couldn’t catch it. It must have been doing thirty over the speed limit. But damn it, this was a challenge, and no old Nissan was going to outrun my Commodore V8 sports edition. I planted it. The V8 drank the juice and I flew. I was on the Nissan’s tail in seconds. Then the bastard hit the brakes at speed and I almost slammed into the back of him. I pounded the horn and flashed my lights on and off. It was dark out there now.

  The Nissan was crawling, and I was crawling behind it. I tried to make out what the occupants were up to. Were they arguing? Having a go at each other? But the adults remained still, and the kid or dog still bobbed around in the back.

  I flashed my headlights and hit the horn again, and wound down my window to give a ‘move over’ sign with my hand, not that they could see it. I then overtook and cut in front of them, trying to force them to stop. Nothing. They just followed slowly behind. I raced ahead and stopped the car right across the lane at an angle, thinking they’d have to stop too, but they just cut around me on the gravel shoulder. In the headlights as they passed I could clearly see a bald man driving and a woman with extraordinarily long hair, and yes, a dog, maybe a retriever, bobbing up and down on the back seat, maybe barking.

  I couldn’t see the expressions on their faces, it was too quick and the light was all wrong and I was stunned by their tactics. They seemed to be looking ahead, not deviating from their eternally forward vision. Compelled, obsessed, in a trance? And the dog bobbing up and down, barking. That would send me insane. Shut up, ya mutt! I called out, though I could hear nothing other than the throbbing of my V8.

  I sat in my car there, angled across the road in a way so dangerous I would have condemned anyone else who pulled such a stunt. I sat and reached for the bouquet, running my hands down the rose stems, pricking myself, sucking the blood from my fingertip. I turned the interior light on and studied the roses’ rich colour, richer than the colour of the blood that I was tasting. The nearly opened buds were richly perfumed, and I smelt them deeply. They were perfectly formed.

  I thought back to my marriage. I had bought my wife roses for each of our seven anniversaries. Just like this, in just this state. She called them ‘sex roses’, because after giving them to her I always wanted sex. Straight away, anywhere. In the corridor, outside, in the bedroom, once in this very car. I said roses reminded me of her. Perfect.

  I wasn’t too far from home now. But I sat there, fingering those roses. The entire road around there, around here, is decorated with rubb
er doughnuts and figure-eights and fishtails. The boys come out here with their hot cars – their V8s – and do burnouts after the pub. It’s the middle of nowhere. But close enough to town and the farms they live on to make it interesting. And sometimes they do the run along here at high speed with their headlights off. Anything to crank up the adrenaline, the risk.

  I turned off the headlights, I turned off the engine and turned on the stereo. I don’t know what was playing. A CD, I can’t remember what. I like all sorts of music. We listen all day long in the shed. Goes in one ear and out the other. It’s the rhythm you’re after – to help the shearing, to nullify the time. I thought of the boys flying over the crest and slamming into me. It’d be a murder-suicide, but who’d know? And what reason would I have for such an act? None. Those boys are just younger versions of me. And I don’t hate myself.

  I sat a little longer than I knew I should, then started the car, turned on the lights and started off. Headlights appeared as pinpricks in the rear-vision mirror, growing rapidly larger. They’d be on me in seconds. The window was still open from my manic waving to the Nissan. I grabbed the bouquet, hurled it out of the window onto the road and accelerated away. The lights behind me filled the mirror, then wavered. The car had stopped. Stopped to investigate the bouquet. I hit the accelerator. Soon they’d be pursuing me. I needed as much of a start as I could get.

  TARPING THE WHEAT: THE WAGES OF SIN

  Looks like bad weather coming in. I want you boys to get down and start tarping the steel-sided open bins.