I sat on the edge of the towel and bounced him on my knees.
“Are you going swimming?” I asked, letting Oliver’s sticky fingers wrap themselves around my thumbs.
“Maybe. I’m going to do some serious sunbaking first.” Hayley lifted her blonde curls and massaged a handful of sunscreen into her neck. It smelled of coconut and left her shoulders shiny like a swimsuit model’s. The sunscreen my mum had given me had sand around the rim and smelled like old ladies.
“Do you want some coconut oil?” asked Hayley. “Hold up your hair, I’ll do your back.”
I lifted my straggly ponytail and watched her crimson fingernails skim over my neck. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her rings twinkling in the sun; two silver snakes entwined around her thumb and the diamond on her ring finger. Sometimes, I wanted to be like Hayley so much it hurt. I looked down proudly at my shiny brown shoulders and pulled on my sun hat.
“Do you like my hat?” I asked.
For my thirteenth birthday, Sarah had taken me shopping in Cairns. The hat I had chosen was narrow brimmed straw with big yellow sunflowers across the band. Mum said it was gaudy and tasteless, but I loved it.
Hayley clicked the sunscreen closed and slid the bottle back into her beach bag. “I like it a lot. Is it new?”
I nodded. “Birthday present.”
Hayley straightened her towel and lay back on her elbows. I looked out over the crowded pool. Justin was bouncing through the water with his arms stretched out to the side.
“Marco!” screeched Rachel.
I pried a strand of my hair out of Oliver’s fist. “Hayley?” I began.
“Abby?”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
She peered at me through large round sunglasses. “I think you’re very pretty.” She smiled as the baby let out a loud wet gurgle. “So does Ollie.”
I giggled and patted his soft red hat. “Do you think I could get this guy to ask me out?”
“The mystery man again, hey? Why don’t you ask him out? This is the nineties after all.”
I chewed my lip. “Did you ask Andrew out?”
“No, he asked me,” she admitted. “But I’ve asked guys out before.”
I always thought it would be easy if I was like Hayley. Everything went right for her. It hadn’t occurred to me then that maybe having a baby at twenty hadn’t been part of her grand plan. I just assumed Oliver, like Andrew and everything else around her, was part of her perfectly executed life path; a path that came easily to beautiful people like her.
If I was that beautiful, I thought, I could ask Justin out and know he’d say yes. I wished I had that kind of self-assurance, so I could wear my sunflower hat without worrying that it looked tasteless, or sing along to the radio when my favourite song came on.
Hayley was never shy like that. She and Andrew even kissed in public. Mum said it made her look like a tramp.
“You remember that when you get a boyfriend, Abigail,” she said. “No-one wants to see what should be kept in the bedroom.”
But I secretly hoped I’d have the guts to kiss my boyfriends in public. I longed to be as confident in the rest of my life as I was up on stage playing my violin.
Oliver made a face as though he was about to throw up and I gave him back to Hayley.
“So who’s the guy?” she asked. “Do I know him?”
“It’s a secret,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. I began to bury my feet. Sand lodged under my fingernails.
“Come on,” Hayley sung. “I can keep a secret. If I guess and get it right, will you tell me?” She reminded me of a less irritating version of Rachel, and the thought made me smile.
“Okay.”
She sat up in interest. “Is he at the rock pool right now?”
“Maybe.”
She began to point to various randoms hanging around the pool, trying to outdo each other with the size of the splash they made when they hit the water and the amount of fluoro on their board shorts.
“Is it that guy? … No, wait, I bet it’s him… Oh no, definitely that guy in pink.” She clutched my arm suddenly. “I know, it’s Andrew, isn’t it. You have a great big crush on your violin teacher!”
“Damn, you guessed,” I giggled.
We were still laughing when Andrew returned, dripping from the pool.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, splattering water over us as he reached into Hayley’s bag for a towel.
“Nothing,” I said quickly.
Andrew took Oliver into the pool with him and I went to play Marco Polo. Justin was It.
“Look at your violin teacher with his kid,” drawled Rachel as we bobbed awkwardly through the shallow end. “That’s like the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Stop looking,” I hissed. “You’re embarrassing me.”
Justin was edging towards us, splashing through the warm water. I knew he was peeking. I slowed down and let his wet fingers slide around my waist.
“Gotcha,” he grinned, opening his eyes.
“Cheater.”
SIX
Nick and Mum started to argue more after he turned twenty-one. Mostly about things that didn’t really matter.
“Were you planning on washing that plate, Nicholas, or were you just going to leave it to me as usual?”
“I already said I’d do it later… Jesus Christ… Give me a break.”
“Give you a break? I’m the one who has to run around picking up after you all like a slave…”
“Do you hate her?” I asked him once.
Nick was washing his car and soap was running into the garden. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes. Do you?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes.” I stood in the river of hose water and squelched my bare feet into the mud.
“You know, one of these days, I’m gonna bloody move out,” Nick said for the billionth time.
He had started to come home late every night. Sometimes he would act in ways I didn’t understand; bumping into the wall and things. Once, his t-shirt was on inside-out and backwards. I knew he didn’t mean for me to see him, but I was a light sleeper and he’d wake me up when he’d crash through the back door into the kitchen. I’d always ask him about it the next morning, when he’d crawl out of bed, his blonde hair flattened on one side.
“Where do you go? Why were you acting like that?”
“Keep your trap shut,” he always said. “You didn’t see nothing.”
Then he’d announce that was gonna bloody move out. But he never did.
To my endless delight, I was baby-sitting Oliver while Hayley and Andrew made an appearance at one of the Acacia Beach social functions funded by Hayley’s ultra-rich family.
I hated the way the town pretended it was some raging social metropolis. For nearly fourteen years I’d been subjected to countless trivia nights, bush dances and Christmas parties in which the town gossip- usually consisting of which no-good young so-and-so had gotten herself knocked up in the supermarket car park and which senior citizens had recently had bladder surgery- was bandied around like the secret to eternal youth. I chucked sickies more often to avoid the parties than I did to get out of school.
When I arrived to baby-sit, Andrew was saying “Oh come on Hayles, seriously?” a lot and kept suggesting they go to the pub instead.
“What is it tonight?” I asked, chasing Oliver along the carpet on my hands and knees.
“D&D ball,” called Hayley from the bathroom.
“Seriously,” said Andrew. “Why the hell are we going to a D&D ball?” He flopped on the couch. “More to the point, why is this town even having a D&D ball? Surely everyone knows each other by now. The single people are doomed to stay that way forever.”
“Andrew!” Hayley swanned out of the bathroom with a neckline so low that even if she had have been desperate and dateless, she wouldn’t have been for long. “I promised Mum and Dad we’d go. Apparently tickets haven’t been selling so well. Dad thinks it’s because Peter from t
he supermarket is bringing his karaoke machine.”
“Kill me now,” said Andrew.
Hayley flashed her best supermodel smile. “Stay home if you want. There’ll be plenty of dateless men to keep me company.”
“Okay, okay, I’m coming.”
Hayley scooped Oliver off the floor and kissed him on the cheek. “You know where everything is,” she told me, putting the baby in my arms. “If you need us, you know where we are. Just call the lifesaving club and we’ll come home.”
“Don’t hesitate,” Andrew called as Hayley dragged him out the door. “And if there’s no emergency, feel free to create one…”
Oliver let out the obligatory whine as they left, squealing until I let him play with my troll doll key ring. I chased him around the carpet for a while, then he fell asleep on my shoulder, a tiny, squishy fist pushed into my neck. I smiled at him. He had Hayley’s blue eyes and curls. Andrew’s dark hair. A slightly turned up nose from somewhere else on his family tree.
I glanced at Hayley and Andrew’s wedding photo, which sat framed on the lounge dresser. Hayley had only been eighteen. I remembered the flood of gossip that had engulfed the town when she had gotten engaged, most of it circulated by my mother.
“He’s only in it for the money,” she said. “Can’t make a living with his music, so he’s marrying the rich girlfriend...”
I had asked in my first violin lesson: “Can you not make a living with music so you married your rich girlfriend?”
Andrew had been drinking coffee and had spat it back into the mug.
Hayley’s parents had invited the whole town to the wedding.
“Ludicrous,” said Sarah, watching Nick stretch his feet over the end of the couch and slurp from a can of beer. “She’s only Nicky’s age. How could anyone that young possibly know real love?”
But I secretly hoped that when I was eighteen I’d have the same exciting romance as Hayley.
“Love at first sight,” she told me one day. “We were only together for two months before he asked me to marry him. We were at the beach in the middle of the night…”
Sometimes, I wanted to be Hayley so much it hurt.
A tourist got stung by a box jelly that had broken through the stinger net and my mum decided swimming at the beach was too dangerous.
“Can we still go in the rock pool?” I asked. “There’s no jellyfish in there.”
“They can get in the rock pool just as easily,” said Sarah. “As well as Heaven only knows what other kinds of animals…”
“But Mum-”
“Abigail, stop arguing. If you want to go swimming, you can go to the swim centre.”
The swim centre was a shallow twenty-five-metre pool at the back of the lifesaving club that no one ever used unless a jelly got through the stinger net. Justin and I sprawled across foam kickboards and watched a lifeguard with bleached blonde hair strut up and down the pool deck. Rachel, who had seen the poor bastard froth at the mouth all over the pier, sat cross-legged on the edge of the pool, vowing never to swim again.
“This sucks,” said Justin. He dived under the surface and grabbed me around the ankle. I kicked him off. He resurfaced and shook the water from his hair like a dog. “Nick’s at the beach, you know.”
I nodded. Nick never listened to Mum. Whenever she tried to yell at him, he would tell her to piss off, then jump in his car and go for a drive. It was so easy for him, I used to think. Easy for him to just disappear for a while. Not as simple for me, or for Tim, who was only ten. We had to stay behind and listen to Sarah get angrier each time Nick sped off down the highway. Angrier with us as though it was somehow our fault. I hated Nick’s drives.
“Well I think your mum is right,” Rachel piped up. “If you went to the beach you could die. Die like that German guy.”
“That girl’s got massive tits,” said Justin, pointing to the lifeguard. “When are you going to get tits like that, Abby?”
I narrowed my eyes and slithered my shoulders under the water, self-conscious of the flat chest beneath my bathers.
“Come on,” said Justin. “Let’s go to the beach. This is completely lame.”
“I can’t. It’s not worth the trouble.”
“Your mum’s such a tight-arse,” he said. “You should stand up to her more like Nick does.”
I sighed. “Yeah. Well hopefully I’ll get out of here soon. Then I won’t have to deal with her anymore.”
“Abby!” cried Rachel. “You’re not actually thinking about what that violin guy wants you to do are you?”
“No,” I mumbled, sorry I had said anything.
Justin turned to me. “What does the violin guy want you to do?”
“Nothing.”
“He wants her to go to the city,” said Rachel. “To study.”
Justin let go of his kickboard and it drifted down the pool. “Abby?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said quietly. “Sarah won’t even let me go to the beach, let alone to Melbourne.”
“To Melbourne?” Justin repeated. “That’s a million miles away.”
“I’m not going,” I said again.
“But you want to.”
I didn’t answer. Justin swam to the edge of the pool, leaving me bobbing in the shallow end. I sucked in my breath and followed him out of the water.
“Jus? Are you shitty?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m shitty,” said Rachel.
I glared at her. “I wasn’t asking you.” I grabbed Justin’s arm. “You know how much playing the violin means to me. You know how much I want to make something of myself.”
“Fine,” he said. “Can we just stop talking about it? You said you’re not going, so that’s that. Let’s just leave it.”
SEVEN
We pretended our conversation in the pool had never happened. Violin became a part of my life that I no longer mentioned in Justin’s presence. For months, I practised in my bedroom with the windows closed, afraid the sound would drift into the street and remind him of things we were trying to forget.
A lot of the people that stayed at our park drove enormous, scruffy campervans. They slept on air mattresses in the back, drank juice straight from cartons and hung wet board shorts out the windows to dry. One van had a map of the world on the back, dotted with stars to mark off all the places they’d visited. I saw it out of my bedroom window and laughed at the thought of what my map would look like. I’d mark Antarctica with a star just to make myself feel better.
The people in the vans rarely stayed more than a couple of nights. Unimpressed and restless, they’d pack up and disappear out of our lives like half-baked memories. I’d stay behind of course, stagnant and desperate, watching Sarah triple check the campers’ payments because she didn’t trust boys with long hair.
I felt I was watching my future.
I practised until my fingers were raw, my arms ached and my neck was iron. I had no money. I had no parental support. So it had to be music that would get me out of Acacia Beach.
I let myself into Andrew’s basement, tears flooding down my cheeks. He looked up from a crate of music he was rifling through.
“What’s wrong?”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “My mum’s making me stop violin.” Fresh tears spilled down my face.
“You serious?”
I flopped onto the piano seat. “She says we can’t afford it, but I know she’s lying,” I sobbed. “She just doesn’t want me going to the city. She thinks it’s stupid to want to make a career out of music. And I don’t make enough money working at the caravan park, so I can’t afford to pay you either.” I gulped down my breath, hatred welling inside me.
Andrew reached over and touched my wrist. “You don’t have to pay me for lessons, Abs. You know I’ll teach you for nothing.”
“I can’t expect you to do that,” I coughed. “You have to make a living. And you spend so much time teaching me.”
“I love teaching you. You kno
w that. And I’m making plenty of money working at the high school.”
I sniffed. “I’ll baby-sit for you whenever you want. And I’ll give you all my peg money.”
Andrew laughed gently. “You keep your peg money, Abs.” He brushed my arm. “Stop crying, okay. It’s alright.”
I tried to swallow my tears. They left a salty taste in the back of my throat. “Thank you so much.”
“Does your mum know you’re here?” Andrew asked.
I shook my head. “She thinks I’m at Rachel’s.” I lifted my chin slightly. “But I don’t care if she knows. She can’t stop me from playing.”
He stood up. “Still, maybe you should stop talking about leaving for a while. I feel terrible. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t brought that up.”
“I want to do it so much,” I said. “And I’m going to. I don’t care what my mum says.”
He flashed me a half-hearted smile. “That’s good. But let’s just keep it to ourselves for a while. Maybe your mum will calm down.” He knelt back on the carpet and shuffled through the crate of manuscript. “Are you going to play? I thought we were having a lesson now.”
“I didn’t bring my violin,” I sniffed. “Can I use yours?”
“Sure.” Andrew produced an old, leather bound folio with curly gold writing on the cover. “Elgar Violin Sonata. Want to play it with me?”
The Elgar E Minor.
Back then, it was the most magical piece I had ever heard. It made me think of somewhere distant and exotic. Somewhere it hailed and snowed. Somewhere the sky was milky and grey, where mountains broke the horizon. The music made me ache for something I couldn’t define. Made me long for something I could never express.
I opened the score carefully. The pages were yellowing around the edges. Inside the cover was an inscription written in faded fountain pen. ‘Happy anniversary 1930.’
“Where did you get this?” I asked. “It’s an antique.”
“I think it belonged to my great-grandmother,” said Andrew. “If you like the piece, I’ll copy it for you.”
Music From Standing Waves Page 4
