In At the Deep End

by Penelope Janu

  His face is grim. ‘I have time,’ he says.

  He crouches by my side and rests his arms on his knees, and Helga and Allan step back. I study his widow’s peak. It comes to a perfect point in the middle of his forehead, as if it’s been carefully drawn there.

  I meet his gaze. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No you’re not. You did it deliberately.’

  ‘You didn’t have to hang around after you got me out of the water.’

  ‘But then …’ He glances over his shoulder at Helga and Allan. They can’t hear him, but he lowers his voice anyway. ‘I’d have missed your performance.’

  I pull Helga’s towel more tightly around my shoulders. I’m still shivering. Why did I have to show him what he was letting himself in for? Was I hoping he’d be put off and leave me alone? Or did I want him to see I was so badly broken that he wouldn’t be able to fix me? I’m afraid of crying again so I close my eyes tightly. But then he grabs my chin. I’m so surprised I open my eyes and the tears escape and run down my cheeks. He takes a deep breath. And snarls.

  ‘You want us to feel sorry for you? After what you just did?’

  ‘No! I didn’t know Helga and Allan were there.’

  He grasps under my arms and hauls me to my feet. He hisses his words. ‘You knew I was there.’

  Once I have my balance he lets me go. I jerkily turn my back and wipe my face with the wrap. There’s a wet patch on the sand where I vomited so I methodically spread layers of sand over it until it disappears. I’m dimly aware that Helga and Allan are talking to Per. They tell him about the Amazons, and he asks polite questions about midwinter temperatures in Avalon, and wind chill factors.

  And then he walks away without saying a word to me.

  I refuse to let Helga and Allan walk me home. ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Go and have your swim.’ I feel their eyes on my back as I head for the dunes. I look over my shoulder and shout. ‘Please go. I’ll see you at the party tonight.’

  It’s a cloudless morning and the sun warms the sand underfoot. A silver soft drink can discarded on the path catches the light. The reflection, just for a moment, shines into my eyes and blinds me.

  The Scott Foundation: Environment Adventure Education

  A few people have asked me why Robert Falcon Scott wasn’t rescued. This isn’t an easy question to answer.

  A week or so before Scott died, two men from the British base camp restocked One Ton depot (a scheduled stop in the final leg of Scott’s journey). While the men were there, Scott was only eleven miles away, too exhausted and malnourished to leave his tent.

  The actions to be taken in the event that Scott didn’t make it to One Ton depot or base camp (within the expected timeframe) had never been clearly defined. Scott put the fact that a dog crew had not arrived to meet him as ‘a miserable jumble’. It appeared he thought there were no dogs available to do the task, when in fact there were. Could Scott have been rescued? Were the men charged with coming to his assistance at fault? If they were, Scott didn’t bear a grudge, seemingly attributing their failure to the inherently dangerous conditions in Antarctica. In one of his very last journal entries Scott wrote that ‘no one is to blame’.

  Scott accepted his fate. He and his men were on their own. In a blinding wilderness of white.

  Harriet

  CHAPTER

  18

  My house is packed to overflowing for Drew’s sixty-fifth birthday party. The chatter and music is loud and cheerful. Most people here are Drew’s regular weekend visitors. Many are around his age, others are younger—sailors he’s worked with on The Watch, and environmentalists he’s mentored over the years. Drew seems to be enjoying himself, even though he can barely remember who most of the guests are. Thank goodness he hasn’t forgotten me yet, or Mum and Dad.

  ‘Within a year he’ll lose all of his memory,’ his doctor has said. ‘Shortly after that, you’ll lose him altogether.’

  Drew sees me across the room and smiles. I smile back, and then pirouette to remind him I’m wearing a dress. Our eyes meet again and he laughs. He turns to the woman next to him, one of the documentary producers we’ve worked with before, and takes her hands and bows. She follows him when he leads her to the corner of the living room where I’ve cordoned off a dance floor. My iPod is set on shuffle. Liam and the other men complain whenever a seventies disco song or a ballad from the eighties or nineties blasts out of the speakers.

  There’s a lot of footage of Drew and me dancing together—with Ghanaian drummers, North American boot-scooters, Turkish belly dancers. He used to say he only got into trouble when I wasn’t dancing with him, like the time he waltzed with a dictator’s mistress in Cuba, and did the tango with a Geisha in Japan.

  Helga puts her hand on my arm. ‘Take the quiches out of the oven,’ she says. ‘Allan, pass around the dips. Liam, go to my house and get four more bottles of sparkly from the fridge. Turn down the music please, Jonty.’

  We all grumble, but do as she asks. She corners me between the oven and the kitchen bench. She doesn’t notice that Jonty turns the music up again.

  ‘It’s a lovely party, Harry,’ she says. ‘And I’m glad you put a dress on.’

  ‘Told you it’d look fine with the jumper over it.’

  Helga lifts the baggy black jumper above waist height and surveys my body. ‘I’m using my imagination to picture you without the camouflage. Are you feeling better now?’

  I’ve been refusing to answer her questions all evening. ‘I’m tipsy.’

  ‘But you’ve only had a sip of cider.’

  ‘I talk too much when I drink.’

  ‘You should be enjoying yourself at your age, not working all the time. When you’re not at school you’re doing something for the foundation. And now there’s this swimming business with Commander Amundsen.’

  ‘I like to be busy. And I enjoy what I do. Mostly, anyway. Sorry about this morning.’

  ‘Have you apologised to the commander?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Maybe you should do it properly. You told him to keep his hands off you, even after he’d been good enough to pull you out of the sea. And you called him a freak.’

  Besides wishing I could die—immediately—I can’t remember much about what happened after the wave hit.

  ‘Did I call him a control freak?’

  She nods.

  ‘That’s not so bad, then.’

  Helga purses her lips. ‘Harry …’

  ‘Okay, I’ll think about it.’ I take Helga’s arm and lead her out of the kitchen. ‘Want to dance with your favourite girl?’ I call to Drew.

  He watches me approach, and holds out his arms. The song has a dance club beat—Jonty’s choice—but Drew and I dance slowly. The others on the dance floor step back, form a circle, and watch us. One of the crew has a word to Jonty, who finds Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’ on my iPod. I’m weepy as Drew and I sway together. He pulls me tighter and pats my shoulder.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Harry. I’ll keep an eye out. You’ll be all right.’

  We’re tidying up when Liam tells me that Per called.

  ‘Drew was holding your phone when it rang,’ he says. ‘He told Per you were here, and wearing a dress. And that you had a queue of men waiting to dance with you.’

  ‘Liam!’

  He laughs. ‘I took the phone away from Drew. It was difficult to hear what Polarman was saying, what with the music and drunken laughter in the background, but I got the distinct impression he wasn’t expecting you to be dancing.’

  ‘He can’t control everything I do.’

  Liam shakes his head and sits on the sofa, pulling me down next to him. ‘I think he called to see you were okay, Harry. Anyone’d think you wanted him to think the worst of you.’

  ‘He wasn’t suspicious about Drew I hope.’

  It’s not easy to perpetuate the lie that Drew was in tip-top mental health before The Watch went to Antarctica. Particularly as he’s deteriorated so dramatically in th
e past few months. I tell people that dementia set in from January, but I’m careful to keep Professor Tan away.

  ‘You shouldn’t have lied about the date of his diagnosis,’ Liam says. ‘Or about what happened with The Watch.’

  ‘I wanted to protect him. I still do.’

  Forging documents to hide what Drew had neglected to do to prepare The Watch for Antarctica was wrong. I lied under oath. And I misled the maritime inquiry. But now it’s done. No one will ever be able to say, ‘He was a brilliant sailor in his day, but then …’

  I look at my watch and yawn, trying to hide the tremor in my voice. ‘Is Per coming at six? Is that why he called? No point going to bed if he is.’

  ‘Off the hook for now, Harry. Said he had things to reassess in light of what happened this morning, and that Tan would be in touch.’

  Harry,

  Can you meet with me at the university on Friday, seven o’clock? Per will join us shortly afterwards.

  There are two agenda items. Firstly, the commander wants medical confirmation that going back in the water won’t harm you. Secondly, he wants your agreement that you’ll follow his instructions.

  You know I want you on board for the October voyage, so I trust you’ll do your best to reassure the commander he has nothing to worry about on either count.

  I appreciate you have a function at Taronga Zoo at eight the same evening, so I won’t keep you long.

  Xiao Tan

  CHAPTER

  19

  I arrive early to the university. There’s no point going to Tan’s office because he keeps me waiting even when I’m on time.

  The Ancient History museum is near the main quadrangle. The museum is closed, but the curator is working in his office nearby. I tell him my name, and he lets me in.

  ‘Your mother was a graduate,’ he says. ‘As was your father.’

  The old bones and artefacts remind me of Mum, and the bits and pieces she’d dig up. She never kept anything. She’d convince local museums or elders to take her treasures, and then she’d worry about whether they’d have the resources to care for them properly. Dad used to tease her about it.

  ‘Harry’s quite small. You’d better not put her into storage by mistake,’ he said one day. The three of us were on our hands and knees in a hut in Thailand, cataloguing pottery fragments. Someone had pilfered them from Angkor Wat.

  Mum smiled at Dad. She had a really big smile, like mine.

  ‘Harriet’s the most precious thing in the world,’ she said. ‘I’d never leave her behind.’

  Tan reads the letter from Dr Makepeace. ‘Thanks for this,’ he says, nodding. ‘Precisely what we needed.’

  He’s sitting behind his desk and peering at me over his glasses. I’m perched on a chair opposite. He wasn’t happy when I walked into his office at five past seven and told him I had to leave by seven thirty, but he’s looking very pleased with himself now.

  ‘You don’t mind me showing it to the commander?’

  ‘After he put you up to this? Slap his face with it for all I care.’

  Tan barks a laugh. ‘Strange how you two don’t get on.’

  ‘It’s not surprising, given how we met, and what’s happened since. Not that our antipathy seems to bother you. Why is that, Professor?’

  He blinks a couple of times. ‘Sometimes, Harry, you’re too direct. Let’s just say I’m a physicist. I enjoy making sense of all sorts of things. You and the commander have the potential to work well together for the benefit of the foundation and, by extension, the environment.’ He rests his elbows on the desk and props his chin on his hands. ‘That’s my primary focus. And yours, I presume?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The other agenda item—will you follow the commander’s instructions?’

  ‘Sure. Within reason.’

  ‘So you agree to wear the wetsuit he provided?’

  I wanted to wear Mum’s wetsuit. When I got home from the beach on Monday I rinsed it in the laundry tub and hung it on the line to dry. And then I carefully folded it and packed it away.

  ‘If that’s what he insists on.’

  Tan frowns when he sees the tears in my eyes. ‘He mentioned it specifically, Harry. He said he’d had it made for you.’

  I have a jumble of images in my mind. Per’s hands on my body, confirming the lengths of my limbs. Per standing over me, accusing me of performing.

  I get to my feet, fiddling with my bag strap. ‘I hope the foundation’s not paying for it.’

  ‘I don’t believe so.’

  ‘Right, then. Better go.’

  ‘Just one more thing. I understand you’ve negotiated other matters regarding the commander’s assistance. Care to tell me what they are?’

  Per agreed that he wouldn’t touch me unless absolutely necessary. He also agreed that once he’d finished with The Adélie, even if I couldn’t swim by then, he’d help me to convince Tan to let me on board. I can’t think how I can tell Tan about the first condition without sounding like I can’t handle myself, or the second without it seeming like I’m going behind his back. If Per hasn’t said anything, I’m not going to either.

  ‘Nope.’

  Tan only has a moment to be annoyed before there’s a knock at the door. I glance at my watch. It’s seven thirty. Time to go.

  Per smells of soap. I try not to breathe in too deeply but it’s an effort not to because it’s a nice, fresh, clean sort of smell. Not ocean, but almost as good. His hair is damp. And just like last time we met here, all his clothes are black: V-neck long-sleeved jumper, trousers and canvas shoes. I’m suddenly self-conscious about my white sneakers, blue skinny jeans, and blue and white striped jumper. Am I wearing a sailor suit? He’s breathing slightly faster than usual. He must have walked quickly to get here. He looks at me again. Then he looks away. Just like he did at the beach.

  Tan places another chair next to the chair I was sitting in, and gestures for us to sit. Per waits for me.

  ‘I’m leaving,’ I say. ‘The professor will fill you in.’

  ‘Stay, Harry,’ Tan says. ‘I won’t keep you long.’ He turns to Per. ‘Harry’s agreed to follow your instructions, Commander. And she’s provided a letter from Gordon Makepeace, the adolescent psychiatrist. He’s an excellent fellow, known him for years. The letter states that there’s no physical or physiological reason that stops Harry from swimming.’ He pushes the letter across the desk as he speaks. ‘Read it for yourself.’

  Per asks for my permission.

  ‘Like I have a choice?’

  ‘Is that a yes?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He reads the letter and hands it to me, narrowing his eyes. ‘It says you shouldn’t go into the water alone. So why did you go onto the rock shelf?’

  ‘I wasn’t intending to go in the water.’

  ‘Like you weren’t intending to be incompetent, and sink The Watch?’

  When Tan clears his throat and suggests we look to the future, Per gives me a fake smile.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Badly phrased. Just one more question though. Have you been back to the therapists referred to in the letter?’

  ‘I’m not answering that.’

  ‘I’ll take that as a no, then. Which makes sense. You never ask for help when you need it.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  Tan looks at me over his glasses. ‘That will do, Harry. The commander’s agenda items have been satisfied. You can go now.’

  I’m putting Dr Makepeace’s letter into my bag when I think up my own agenda item.

  ‘The accident in Brazil,’ I say. ‘If we do this, I don’t want Per badgering me about it, asking personal questions.’

  ‘I have no personal interest in you,’ Per says, ‘after what you said on Monday.’

  ‘You can barely look at me. Why are you insisting on doing this?’

  Suddenly his eyes, darkest grey, bore into mine. ‘Like I’ve said before, you’re dangerous yet marketable. It’s in the foundation’s interest, and my
own, to keep you alive until we secure the ship. Preventing you from drowning is a means to that end.’

  It’s like there’s not enough air between us anymore. I take a step back. I’m cold, and the tips of my fingers are white. Tan grimaces. I think he’s wondering whether it’d be more worthwhile to stick up for me, or side with Per.

  ‘Thanks for the letter, Harry,’ he says, ‘and for agreeing to toe the line with the commander. We’d better let you get to the zoo.’

  Per wins.

  My hand is on the doorknob when Per speaks again. ‘Harriet?’

  I don’t turn around. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m at sea for the next two days. We’ll start again on Monday morning. Six o’clock. I’ll get the wetsuit to you beforehand.’

  I’m too choked up to articulate anything sensible in reply.

  Taronga Zoo is twenty minutes from the other side of the Harbour Bridge, and the traffic is still heavy so I’m half an hour late. The woman who meets me at the door shepherds me into the bathroom. When I look into the mirror I understand why.

  I have a wild-eyed look. So I take a few deep breaths. Then I smooth down my hair, and smear lip gloss over my mouth. Thinking about Per and Tan and the meeting will have to wait. One of my laces is undone so I do that up, and then I pull my stripy jumper down over my hips.

  When I’m led to a table next to the stage, a man with bushy brown hair and a red beard gets up, smiles widely and pumps my hand.

  ‘I’m Robbie Matheson, a vet working on the orangutan-breeding program,’ he says. ‘I understand we have a mutual friend, Grant Reid. We were at uni together.’

  I swallow and smile. ‘What made you specialise in orangutans? Is it an advantage that you have the same colouring?’

  He laughs. ‘Yes!’

  The CEO of the zoo takes my arm and we walk to the stage together. He tells me I’m the third and final speaker at the orangutan fundraiser, and I only have a five-minute slot. Then he whispers that he suspects the guests have heard more than enough about orangutans from the other speakers in the past thirty minutes, and they’re keen to eat their main courses.