In At the Deep End

by Penelope Janu

  Per stills.

  ‘I’m not going to explain that. I loved my father. He meant everything to me.’

  ‘But you were what, fourteen, fifteen—’

  ‘I wanted to be with him.’ I close my eyes. ‘We lived in a tiny apartment at Newport. It overlooked a strip of ocean, framed on either side by pine trees. I’d open the doors to the balcony and we’d sit for hours, gazing at the play of light on the water. Dad would spot whales, dolphins, all sorts of things.’ I rest my cheek on top of Per’s head and breathe into his hair. It smells of my shampoo. ‘I must’ve sketched that view hundreds of times.’

  ‘How long were you there?’

  ‘About four years with Dad. It’s where he died.’

  ‘Yet you never went to school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Harriet?’

  ‘Stop asking questions.’

  ‘One more. Your father was wealthy. But he hardly left you anything. Why?’

  ‘He set up the foundation.’

  ‘You were eighteen.’ He refuses to budge when I try to get off the bed. He kisses my throat, and settles his head between my breasts again. Then he takes my hand and matches our fingers up. ‘I don’t want to upset you. I want to understand.’

  ‘You’re such a snoop.’ I relax against the pillows. ‘Dad knew I’d be all right, that I was strong. That’s why he set things up like he did. Thinking about what happened in Brazil, and afterwards, has made me remember that. He lost a lot in the accident—my mother, his health. But never his belief in me.’

  Per pushes himself upright and frowns down at me. He opens his mouth as though he’d like to argue, but I put a finger over his lips. I try to make things clearer for him.

  ‘One of my first memories of Dad was when he told me I could do anything. I made plenty of mistakes when he was alive, but he always trusted me to get things right in the end.’ I stroke the crease between Per’s brows. ‘My mother would tease him sometimes, about the faith he had in me.’

  Per is still frowning when he kisses my cheek. He breathes into my hair. ‘Stay with me?’ he says. ‘All night.’

  I lie on my side. He spoons behind me, putting one of his legs between mine. We’re both propped up with pillows so he doesn’t cough as much. But he’s tense; his arm is like a steel band around my waist.

  ‘Relax, Per. Aren’t you tired?’ I stroke the soft hairs on his forearm, and trace the vein on the back of his hand. The cannula came out a couple of days ago, but the bruise is still there. I yawn. ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘Sov, lille venn. Sleep.’ His heart thumps against my back. Something is bothering him. It’s the last thought I have before I close my eyes.

  CHAPTER

  40

  The first thing I’m aware of is the sound of a car pulling up at the kerb outside my house. Then I realise that Per isn’t hugging my back anymore.

  I yawn and stretch. A car door slams. Morning light is peeping in under the blind but it’s too early for Allan to be here with Drew. The click of the door latch jerks me upright and I’m out of bed in time to see Per in the front garden, gesturing to Kat to give him ten minutes. I almost bump into him in the hallway. He’s dressed in trousers and a white cotton shirt with a collar. The clothes were in the suit carrier that was sent from Balmoral; they’ve been hanging on the door all week. He’s shaved and showered. His hair is damp. He’s focusing on the ribbon strap of my pyjama top that’s fallen off my shoulder.

  ‘Per?’ I rub sleep from my eyes. ‘What time is it? What’s going on?’

  When he smiles it’s merely a movement of his lips. ‘I’ve made coffee,’ he says. ‘C’mon.’ He holds out his hand—but walks away before I have an opportunity to grasp his fingers. His stride is lengthening every day. It’s not panther-like yet but it won’t be long.

  ‘What’s Kat doing here?’ I say.

  Per takes our coffees out to the deck. I sit, and nurse my mug on my lap. He stands and rests his on the railing. His face is thinner, but other than that he looks much the same as he did. In a dissolute-pirate sort of way, he’s even more handsome than he was before he was sick.

  When the kookaburra appears he and Per scrutinise each other. The kookaburra looks away first.

  ‘I asked Kat to come,’ Per finally says. ‘She’s taking me back to Balmoral.’

  The urge to burst into tears is as sudden and unexpected as his words are. My voice wobbles. ‘Why?’

  ‘I called Professor Tan, told him to let you on The Adélie. As you know, she sails tomorrow.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tom and the other members of crew can keep an eye on you while you’re on board. Tan assures me you’ll be safe with the film people for the two days you’re on the islands.’

  Within five minutes of waking I’ve been told he’s leaving me, and that I’m going to Palau. I don’t notice my hand is shaking until he takes my coffee and puts it on the railing next to his.

  Finally I find my voice. ‘Why did you change your mind?’

  He looks out to sea. ‘Tan altered the terms of our agreement. I shouldn’t have gone along with it.’

  It unsettles Per, not telling the whole truth.

  ‘There was something else,’ I say. ‘What?’

  ‘You’d better get organised if you’re going.’

  I can hear that his chest is tight. It’s in the way that he’s speaking, and in his short sharp breaths. His eyes are guarded, defensive.

  Suddenly I’m angry. ‘Why won’t you tell me? Is letting me go to Palau the equivalent to a thankyou fuck? Because I looked after you?’

  Thick heavy clouds hang in the sky but his eyes are much darker. ‘I refuse to even respond to that,’ he says.

  ‘Well what am I supposed to think? How can I understand if you won’t give me a reason? Why now? Why not yesterday, the day before?’

  ‘We’ll talk when you get back …’ A coughing fit takes the rest of his words away. When I push him into a chair he leans his elbows on his thighs and fights to get his breath back. I automatically put my hand on his shoulder but as soon as he can sit straight again he shrugs me off. It feels strange not running my fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck like I usually do after he coughs.

  ‘I’ll find your puffer.’

  He wheezes. ‘Kitchen.’

  The puffer is on the kitchen bench, next to my sketchbook. Last time I saw the sketchbook it was on the floor under my bed. It’s open now, and the image of Per in the hallway—just after we’d tumbled to the floor together and he’d taken off his shirt—is staring back at me. There’s a mixture of desire and vulnerability on his face. If he’s seen this sketch, I have to assume he’s seen all the others. He was aware I’d been drawing him all week. Often he’d wake up as I was doing it, just like he did when I was sketching this one. His lips would twitch, and he’d hold out his hand. I’d take it, and smile, and pretend I didn’t know what he wanted.

  He’s not an action hero in any of the sketches. Sometimes he’s frightened. Sometimes he’s breathless. Sometimes he’s afraid I’m going to leave him. Sometimes he’s my dark-haired little boy. As I sketched I highlighted the things that he was trying to hide. They’re there in every line, every shadow, every smudge.

  When I get back to the deck he’s standing again. I hand him the puffer and throw the sketchbook onto a chair.

  ‘You had no business snooping.’

  ‘Bullshit. I’m the subject.’

  ‘You want to get rid of me. That’s why you’re letting me go to Palau.’

  He’s with me in two strides, standing so close that I see he has tiny lines near his mouth, as well as at the outsides of his eyes. ‘This isn’t easy, Harriet. Stop provoking me.’

  ‘Is that an order, Commander?’

  He puts his hands either side of my face, and softly presses his forehead against mine. Then his fingers skirt over my shoulders, pulling my straps down to the tops of my arms. He’s looking down, watching what he’s doing. He sucks in
a breath, and clenches and unclenches his fingers as they slide up and down my arms. His thumbs stroke the tops of my breasts through the soft white cotton of my top, and then they slip lower. A warm familiar ache builds between my thighs and I press my body closer to his, until his erection nestles against my stomach. Then I stand on tiptoes. Our lips almost touch before he turns his head away.

  ‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘Not when I’m like this.’

  I run my hands over the familiar contours of his chest. He’s not well, but there’s only a tiny chance that he’s infectious. Not that he’d ever take that chance. When I stroke his nipple through his shirt it puckers.

  ‘Yes you can,’ I say. ‘But you won’t.’

  His voice isn’t much more than a croak. ‘Fuck, Harriet.’ He kisses a path from the sensitive hollow beneath my jaw to my temple and then he rests his mouth against the pulse that’s madly beating there. He touches it with the tip of his tongue. Pulls the hairband from my hair and undoes the plait. Bites my earlobe. Nuzzles along my jawline.

  I pull his shirt out of his trousers and rest my hand on his abdominal muscles. His stomach is firm but his skin is soft and silky. Thinking about how we touched each other when we made love intensifies my longing to do it all over again. My fingers glide over his belt and slip lower until I’m stroking his erection through his trousers. I’m tentative at first, but then he clamps his hand over my fingers and I increase the pressure. My head rests on his chest. I’m trembling, and my breathing is shallow. I tug at his belt. My sentences run together when I speak.

  ‘Please come back to bed. I’ll tell Kat to go away. You’ll get tired afterwards but then you can sleep. I’ll prop you up if you cough. I don’t care.’

  He lifts his head, and strokes my bottom lip, back and forth, with his index finger. He must be as aroused as I am. His eyes are silver.

  ‘Per?’ I whisper.

  We both start when the front door bangs open and Kat shouts out that she has to get to work. But it takes a little while to let each other go. He manages it first, taking me by the shoulders and nudging me away so we’re standing close but apart, our breath mingling in the no-go zone between us.

  ‘I’m going,’ he says.

  He walks away. I hear him collecting his things. By the time I step into the hall they’re assembled along the wall, and he’s leaning over his kit bag. When I put my hand on his arm his body snaps upright.

  ‘Per?’ We stare at each other, and then I grasp his wrist. I refuse to let it go when he turns away. He won’t look at me. But maybe it will be easier to talk to him this way. My voice is quiet, but steady.

  ‘Come to Palau with me. Let me take care of you on The Adélie. We’ll stay for a day or two and then we’ll fly home. I’ll tell you what I’ve been hiding. You won’t like it, but I’d better tell you anyway. And you can tell me about your scar, if you want to.’

  He closes his eyes for a moment and takes a couple of breaths. He tips his face to the ceiling, and then, very deliberately, he opens my fingers one by one to release my grip on his wrist. My hand is still in midair when he gets to the door. When he turns to me I can barely see his face because I’m blinking back tears.

  ‘Going with you would defeat the purpose of sending you away,’ he says.

  By the time I go outside he’s pale and breathless, leaning against the car. The boot is open. I brush past him and shove my sketchbook into the top of his kitbag.

  ‘As you pointed out,’ I say, ‘you’re the subject, so you may as well keep the drawings. If you don’t want them, throw them away.’

  ‘Don’t you dare do that, sir,’ Kat says, taking the sketchbook out of the bag and opening it.

  Per snatches it away. He scowls, first at Kat and then at me, as he puts the sketchbook back in the bag. ‘I’ll see you when you get back,’ he says.

  I refuse to look at him. And I hold back my tears until I shut the front door behind me.

  He’s stripped my bed bare. His reference books are gone from the side table. The sheets and pillowcases, and my pyjamas, are neatly folded and placed there instead. So are my pencils. They’re lined up side by side, seven of them. Some are blunt and some are sharp.

  I don’t know what he’ll do with the sketchbook. He should have looked at it more closely when he found it under my bed. Then he would have seen that only someone who loved him could have drawn him like that.

  CHAPTER

  41

  Professor Tan has been leaning against the deck railing and giving me advice for over half an hour. He arrived a few hours after Per left. The kookaburra is perched on a branch of the spotted gum tree at the bottom of the garden. He hasn’t been fed since Liam left for Byron Bay, but he’s looking at me hopefully.

  ‘We’ll do everything possible to make this trip a successful one for you, and the foundation,’ Tan says. ‘I’m delighted that you’re going.’

  There’s something in the tone of his voice that tells me he’s less delighted than he’s letting on.

  ‘You were worried about me letting the foundation down. Why did you change your mind?’

  He purses his lips. ‘Let’s just say the commander was persuasive.’

  ‘So he wanted me to go on The Adélie?’

  ‘Frankly, Harry, I think he has the same reservations I have. So don’t let the foundation down. The ship, the documentaries, this is what you’ve been fighting for, after all.’

  We were with Per’s lawyer and the mediator when I thought up the campaign. I sketched a lion, a rhinoceros, and a bull elephant. Tears clog the back of my throat. I have to forget Per. He didn’t like me seeing him weak, or vulnerable. Even though he’s attracted to me, he made it plain that whatever we had, or might have had, is over.

  ‘And don’t worry about Drew,’ Tan says. ‘I’ll keep an eye on him.’

  Tan is a pragmatist. And a strategist. I’m about to tell him that since he’s made his threat I don’t trust him to have anything to do with Drew, when an idea takes shape in my mind. I race to the kitchen and grab a pad and pen. Then I sit at the table on the deck, and start a list.

  The professor consults his watch. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’

  ‘Wait!’ I look up. ‘I’ve just had a really good idea.’

  He looks at me with suspicion. ‘And that is?’

  I take a breath. ‘My school principal’s been offering me compassionate leave for months because of Drew’s diagnosis. My seniors have more or less finished for the year, and a temp can step in for my juniors.’

  ‘Your point, Harry?’

  ‘I’m going to take more time off work. I’m taking Drew to Palau with me.’

  The professor blinks. ‘Is he well enough?’

  ‘He’s not bad physically, it’s just that he forgets everything. But we’ll be together most of the time. We can stay on The Adélie until she heads back to Sydney to get ready for Antarctica, and after that we can live in villages on the islands. It’ll just be the two of us, and maybe one of the film crew. Think of all the stories we can tell—fishing villages, plantations, markets and schools. We can look at Palau in the context of rising sea levels, sustainable fishing, all sorts of things.’

  ‘How long would you be away?’

  ‘Not too long. I’ll have to be back mid-December to finish off the school year.’

  ‘But that’s over six weeks away.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘I’d better get organised then.’

  The professor frowns. ‘The commander said a week, Harry. He won’t approve.’

  This trip will be wonderful for Drew, and a good opportunity for the foundation to pursue its environmental agenda. And perhaps I’ll miss Per less if I’m looking at the Pacific Ocean north of the equator, instead of south of it. I clear my throat. Even so, my voice wavers a little.

  ‘One week or six weeks doesn’t make a difference. The commander wants me to go away. That’s what he said this morning.’

  The Scott Foundation: Environment Adventure Educ
ation

  Roald Amundsen once said, “Adventure is just bad planning.”

  Drew and I are enjoying our adventure in Palau. This morning, the Prime Minister of the tiny island nation and I went snorkelling, and in the afternoon I interviewed him. This was the culmination of weeks of talking to people about Palau’s future. At the local level there are sustainability and land care challenges, and globally there are the implications of warmer oceans and polar melts. As usual, Drew spent most of his day on the wharves with the fishermen—we’ve got some wonderful footage of him exchanging tall tales with the other old salts around here. I can’t wait to start working with the producer to put the first couple of episodes of the documentary series together.

  And as for The Adélie’s second voyage … after weeks of preparation, the ship is now kitted out for Antarctica. Commander Amundsen and his fellow scientists will work with Captain Tom Finlay and the other crewmembers to ensure that this year’s voyage to the South Pole region will be rewarding both environmentally and scientifically. The foundation’s film crew will go with the ship and report back regularly, while Professor Tan and I will continue to work on the Scott and Amundsen fundraising campaign at home.

  Incidentally, I think that risking heartache by falling in love is far more dangerous than an unplanned adventure is ever likely to be …

  Harriet

  Liam grins. ‘Risking heartache by falling in love is far more dangerous than an unplanned adventure—’

  I push him in the chest with both hands. ‘Shut up!’

  He laughs and kicks whitewash from the waves at me, until my board shorts and bikini top are dripping.

  Drew and I flew in from Palau this morning, and it took most of the day to settle Drew back into his care home. The sun was going down by the time I got home but I was desperate to stretch my legs. I dragged Liam away from the television and over the dunes to the beach.

  We sit on the sand facing the ocean. The last of the sun is on our backs.