The Bay

by Di Morrissey

  ‘Yes.’ Erica’s eyes blinked for a moment, like an old turtle, Eddie thought.

  ‘Look out for me. From the lighthouse. I’m going to sail past there.’ Her voice was weaker and Eddie thought she must be starting to lose touch with reality.

  But Tina leaned closer. ‘We’ll always have the light on for you, Erica. You won’t get lost.’

  ‘I know that. It’s all right now.’

  ‘That’s long enough. Her mother wants to be with her.’ The sister steered them away from the bed before it struck Eddie that they hadn’t said goodbye. But then he couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  ‘Let’s get a cup of tea.’ Tina took his arm.

  ‘I could do with something stronger. Christ, this is terrible. What can we do?’

  ‘Very little. We’d better ring Kimberley and Amber. And who else?’

  ‘I don’t know who else Bonnie knows in The Bay. The same group . . . Holly, Mac, Stolle and Lynn, Nola. Oh, and Billy. Their shops are both in the arcade, they seem to be friends.’

  ‘Mac is probably the best person to get to break the news around town. And we’d better call Cheyne. He’s experienced in these situations,’ added Tina.

  ‘So what exactly happened? How did it start? The fire?’ Eddie asked. He hadn’t wanted to get into the details on the drive up. But now there was no escaping the reality of what had happened.

  ‘To be confirmed, but it seems pretty sure it was candles,’ Tina explained, ‘in Erica’s room. Curtains went up. That’s where the fire started. Not sure yet if it was accidental or not.’

  Eddie had to get away from the hospital. ‘Let’s go for a walk. It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours.’

  Mac tapped on Kimberley’s window a short time after sunrise. ‘It’s me, I didn’t want to wake Matty.’

  ‘Come round the back. I’ll make us coffee.’ Kimberley was red-eyed. ‘Did Eddie ring you?’

  ‘No. But I know. I know,’ said Mac sadly. ‘Have you told Matty?’

  ‘No. I’ll let her sleep as long as possible. She’ll find this so hard to deal with. Thanks for coming round. It would be good if you’re here when I tell her.’ While she might look a trifle eccentric, Mac’s loving heart and comforting arms would help Matty. And me, thought Kimberley. As well as being a friend Mac had slipped into the role of surrogate mother and grandmother for Kimberley and Matty. ‘God, how is Bonnie going to survive this? I couldn’t. If anything happened to Matty I’d die.’

  ‘No you wouldn’t,’ said Mac firmly. ‘You have to go on living. And that’s what we have to help Bonnie do. But there’s something more immediate. Erica’s father might want to take over. We have to help Bonnie bring Erica back here. The funeral must be here, not Melbourne.’

  Kimberley stared at her, wondering how she knew these things. She didn’t question for a moment that Mac knew what Erica wanted.

  Andrew paced along the edge of the sand dune where it began to level out and meet straggling marshland plants and pandanus trees. A small stream ran tea-stained brown from Tea-tree lake hidden further back in the wetlands. A large abandoned tin shed and bits of rusting equipment lay about a cracked cement slab near the remains of an overgrown railway track. He was counting to himself, measuring the distance with footsteps. He turned around and went to where Letitia was sitting on the sand studying a large set of plans.

  ‘It’s looking good. Though this area is a mess, used to be the old abattoirs.’ He gazed out to sea. ‘What a location. Bloody madness putting a meatworks next to one of the world’s great beaches.’

  ‘I think it had something to do with shipping the cattle and meat down to Sydney and Melbourne.’ She looked up from the plans and pointed further along Mighty Beach. ‘At low tide you can see the pylons of the old jetty.’

  ‘They’ll have to go. Too dangerous for water sports.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘You know, if they had a long wharf here in the old days, what’s to say we couldn’t put in a marina or some kind of aquatic centre?’

  ‘Are you joking? You haven’t seen the Easter tides, and they still get cyclones along here. Come back in a couple of weeks.’

  He dropped on the sand beside her and pulled her to him. ‘I might just do that. You don’t get down to Sydney enough.’

  ‘I’ve had my hands full up here, or hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘You’re doing brilliantly.’

  ‘Thanks. The next round might not be so easy.’

  ‘Leave the council to me,’ said Andrew confidently.

  ‘Andy, when are you going to tell me the full story about this? If you’re thinking of buying off the council, there are too many greenies in there. They’ll go bananas.’

  ‘They’re not the majority. Pressure can come from a lot of directions. Don’t you worry your pretty little head, I have a plan.’

  ‘That’s so sexist! I’m not your wife. Boy, I’m going to have to retrain you,’ Letitia said with a patient grin.

  Andrew fell back on the sand. ‘Oh, I like the sound of that. Do you use whips?’

  Laughing, Letitia fell across him and he clutched her body to his. She pushed the plans to one side as their mouths locked. Neither noticed the beautiful brown dog prance past, closely followed by Mitchell.

  He turned away, hurriedly going down the dune closer to the water. Why wasn’t he surprised? He hadn’t warmed to Andrew but he felt concerned for Holly. Did she know her husband was having it off with a young woman? He tried to tell himself it was none of his business. But there was more that bothered him. Andrew was a well-known architect; known for super luxurious five-star resorts in up-market parts of Asia. Letitia Sweetman was a solicitor specialising in commercial and real estate deals. The strip of land on which they were cavorting had attracted developers before, but none with the clout or the kind of backers Andrew Jamieson seemed to have. Holly had intimated that Andrew was more than a designer and consultant in the overseas developments, that he was often part of the consortium that built them. She had been vague, she obviously didn’t follow Andrew’s business dealings too closely.

  Mitchell began to wonder about their presence in The Bay. He had made it clear to Holly that he was against monster developments, which was why he was so supportive of her plans for restoring Richmond House. So what was going on?

  As the day passed into evening, Bonnie wished the moments could be decades. She sat beside the hospital bed holding the bandaged hand of her dying daughter. A blackened shadow of the baby she’d birthed and raised and believed would grow up to be so special. Why had God decided to take her back? Had she been such a bad mother? How was she to go on alone? She thought of the sea, the ocean her child loved so deeply. Erica had always wanted to sail single-handed over the horizon, and in her mind she was now going to embark on that voyage. But all Bonnie could feel was the increasing pain of loss, and she was drowning in that pain.

  Sensing her mother’s thoughts, Erica whispered, ‘It will be all right, Mum. Really. You must be strong for me.’

  ‘I can’t bear this. I can’t live without you, darling girl.’ Bonnie could barely speak, her throat was so constricted. Never, even in her worst moments, had she ever imagined her child would die before her.

  ‘Mum, I’ll be free and happy when I go. It’s too hard for me here.’

  Bonnie fumbled and fled outside, gasping, trying to breathe. She wanted to cry out that she’d always be her mother, and a good one, so please live. But all the plans she’d made at the Dolphin Centre were now cruelly shattered.

  The arrival of Erica’s father wasn’t the traumatic and emotionally disturbing experience she’d expected. They’d clung to each other, linked by the love and bond of their child, and the reunion gave her strength. For a wild moment Bonnie imagined he might take her home to Melbourne, they would share this grief and have the closeness they’d never known when Erica was alive. But reality hit when she heard him on his mobile phone to his wife, seeking comfort, needing her, not Bonnie. Once again Bonnie felt abandoned. Onl
y strangers had come to support her, and they would be the only ones there when it was all over.

  Bonnie looked up as Tina put a cup of tea in her hands. ‘Drink this and go back to her. Her father says she’s asking for you.’

  On the Cape, above the sweep of The Bay, the lighthouse beam was dark for an instant, as if missing a beat.

  Kimberley was tired. The shock of Erica’s death had galvanised The Bay and the township of Brigalow. The Beacon Bugle screamed from its front page: ‘Why Are We Losing Our Children?’

  Members of Bonnie’s family were starting to arrive, Kimberley had found them a house to rent and stocked the kitchen with food. Amber spent as much time as she could with Bonnie in between keeping the Beach Hut open and fobbing off curious and nosy people who wanted to know all the gruesome details.

  Matty trudged home from school. There’d been a special assembly about Erica. Everyone was asking what had happened. There were whispers she had intentionally started the fire. Matty noticed her mother’s car wasn’t there. She was glad her mum was keeping busy and helping Erica’s mum. And she was also pleased to have some time alone. Everyone had been smothering her so much, afraid to leave her on her own, when what she really wanted was time and space to think through this huge, sudden loss in her life.

  The garbage can was still out the front, several days newspapers littered the driveway and mail spewed from the mailbox. Matty threw the papers in the bin and wheeled it to the mailbox to toss in the junk mail. There were some letters in it as well as the coloured advertising pamphlets – one addressed to Kimberley, a postcard from her father in India, the telephone bill. And a letter to Matty. She recognised the writing instantly and her hand shook.

  It was from Erica.

  THE DAY OF ERICA’S FUNERAL DAWNED STORMY GREY AND windy. Bonnie had been surprised and touched by the stream of visitors, heartfelt expressions of grief, compassion and support that had swept her along in a wave of love. Many people she’d had little contact with and some she had never even spoken to before were now embracing her, somehow wanting to share her grief as if old friends, but she struggled to put names to many. Those closest to her and Erica were grappling with their own pain and anguish, made worse, if that were possible, by the knowledge that Erica had taken her own life. For it had been determined that the fire was the deliberate result of drugs, candles and curtains. Fortunately no one else had died, but the question – why? – hovered in many minds.

  Bonnie’s family from Melbourne – her parents, her former husband, Stephan, and a cousin – had stayed as if on an island, clinging together, marooned in the tide of Bonnie’s new life. Stephan, shattered at Erica’s death, thought this world of The Bay was all a bit odd. He had found it hard to come to terms with the fact that his former, proper corporate wife was looking so very different. He couldn’t imagine how she had been living, and he didn’t want to think about it in case he became overwhelmed with anger that her lifestyle could have contributed to Erica’s death. He tried to tell himself that Erica had gone, and the nightmare of her going would soon pass. He knew he had to be seen to be doing ‘the right thing’, but behind the veneer of sympathy whatever happened to Bonnie now was of little interest to him. He respected her parents, though, and didn’t want to add to their grief by losing it with Bonnie. Her parents were also finding this community very strange compared to their more conservative friends in Melbourne.

  While Stephan thought that Bonnie’s acquaintances here were an odd bunch, he was relieved they had taken on some of the burden of comforting and caring for her. Bonnie had no close friends during their marriage. She’d been one of those ‘ladies who lunch’ so often reported in the social pages, and was in a circle of wives obliged to entertain each other and visiting high-flyers. The rest of the time, it seemed to him, she spent tending the roses and watching television. Now here was Bonnie, on the morning of their daughter’s funeral, being swept off by a strangely garbed woman called Lynn who was giving her a massage!

  He was feeling dreadfully lost and wished he’d brought his new young wife to comfort him. He went outside to call her on the mobile in private.

  Lynn’s strong bony fingers seemed to find every twisted knot of tension in Bonnie’s body. Firmly she kneaded and stroked, steadily easing what felt like great lumps of metal in Bonnie’s shoulders and neck, along her spine and the backs of her legs. The smell of the musky oil, the gentle ambient music from the CD, a peaceful combination of sounds of the sea orchestrated with flute and harp, sent Bonnie drifting into a purplish hazy dream.

  At one point Lynn’s hands seemed to burn and Bonnie could feel heat reaching into her vital organs. She had been feeling numb, as if each nerve end in her body had been blocked. Now she experienced a white flash behind her closed eyelids and then her body went limp as though everything had been washed out of her. But, painful as it was, she felt she was alive again, even though her skin felt raw and exposed.

  Then, slowly, as Lynn continued her smooth, powerful ministrations, Bonnie felt a tingling warmth flow through her; it was as if she was coming back to life again. Tears poured down her face but it was a cleansing cry, soundless and almost unemotional.

  When an hour or more had passed Lynn rested her hands on Bonnie’s feet, her fingertips finally trailing off her toes, as if pulling the pain and sadness from her body, then she quietly left the room. ‘Come out when you’re ready.’

  Bonnie lay there for another ten minutes, thinking the last few days were a dream. That she’d get up and Erica would be there and they’d go to the beach, have a coffee, hang out, go shopping.

  Gradually, consciousness took over and she opened her eyes, looking at the unfamiliar wall with the picture of a bearded Indian man wearing a garland of flowers and a poster of a whale throwing itself backwards into the ocean. Suddenly the awful reality of where she was, why she was there, and what had happened flooded over her and she curled on her side and began to sob.

  Hearing the deep, racking cries, Lynn waited a few moments, then went in and leaned over Bonnie, holding her in a protective embrace. Bonnie stopped sobbing and began to shake, then slowly sat up, wiping her face with the edge of the massage towel. ‘I thought this was all a dream. I can’t stand this pain. Why, Lynn? Why did she do it? What did I do? Am I so bad? Why didn’t I die instead?’ She covered her face with her hands, and Lynn was stunned at her next words, ‘Damn you, Amber. Damn you.’

  Lynn decided it was not appropriate to ask Bonnie about this remark, though she might ask Amber. She smoothed Bonnie’s hair and handed her a glass of water, which Bonnie gulped. ‘I don’t have those answers, Bonnie. Don’t torture yourself by asking. It was Erica’s choice, she never stopped loving you. She doesn’t blame you.’ She wanted to tell Bonnie to be strong. But then thought better of it. ‘Cry all you want. If you want to yell and scream, do it. You’re safe here.’

  They sat quietly together until Bonnie shook her head and took Lynn’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘I really think I’m going to cope much better with the day now. I have to be brave and not let her down by going to pieces, right?’ She stretched her lips in what she thought was a smile, which tore into Lynn.

  By the time she was dressed and had tidied her hair, Bonnie stepped out of the small room looking almost composed. ‘Lynn, what was that music, those sounds?’

  Lynn picked up the cover of the CD. ‘It’s “An Odyssey of the Sea”, whale songs. Mitchell lent it to me. Those whale songs that seem to echo around the underwater world are actually a language. Some people now believe whales have their own literature; their own Iliad, their own songs and stories. They change their songs every few years.’

  ‘How do we know that?’ asked Bonnie. ‘It sounds too wonderful.’

  ‘We’re learning. Slowly, we’re learning.’

  ‘I wonder if Erica ever heard a whale sing? She would have liked that‚’ said Bonnie softly.

  By sunset the weather had cleared and the group had gathered on Tiny Bay Beach
. The closed coffin on the sand was shaped like a small white boat. Planted beside it was a long bamboo pole with a canvas sail. Friends and family had painted the sail with messages and pictures for Erica. Mourners were dressed in colourful, ‘happy’ beach attire as Bonnie had requested.

  Matty had put together a large board covered in photographs and memorabilia she knew were meaningful to Erica. From Bonnie’s mother came the teddy bear that had passed from Bonnie to Erica and had been in the grandmother’s care. It sat on the coffin with flowers and a pile of letters held down by a stone.

  Bonnie asked Amber to stay close to her as people came up to her to offer sympathy.

  Frances, the warm and attentive funeral company representative, had smoothed everything. She’d discussed arrangements with Bonnie, who confirmed the stories everyone had heard now about Erica’s dream of one day sailing around the world. She’d also talked to Matty and other girls in the class about Erica, her life and the funeral.

  ‘We’re comfortable doing things differently here,’ she’d gently advised Bonnie and her family. ‘You tell us what you want. It’s a time to reflect on who Erica was, what she gave to everyone, a time to honour her. No need to rush these things. Have everyone involved as much as possible, take as much time as you need.’

  Frances had listened and then guided them towards the ceremony on the beach. ‘It seems to me that is how Erica would have written the script,’ she had said to the family when they were planning the details. ‘It is symbolic of her dream, and her character, isn’t it? A celebration of her life really, a spirit setting sail.’