Riptides

by Kirsten Alexander

  ‘Mate, magnificent job. Bloody brilliant.’

  I feel like something vital has torn in my throat, as if all the spiky words I’ve swallowed back, for years, have ripped into my flesh. But I know if I said that there are so many people who are good at what they do, who never hear a word of praise because they aren’t on television, who never get slapped on the back at dinner parties or treated like rock stars because they’re busy working in emergency wards, or teaching kids how to read, or collecting our garbage – or using their engineering degree to calculate how many tiles are needed per square foot of kitchen wall . . . Pointless. My words stick in my gullet, where they fester and burn. I won’t tell Jim I’m going to uni. The approval I wanted seems unsavoury now, as though his sanctioning my choice would grant him some ownership of it. And I don’t want that – this is mine.

  ‘Abby?’ Mark says.

  ‘What? Sorry.’

  ‘No worries,’ Jim says. ‘Grab us a couple more, Karen?’ He holds up an empty bottle.

  ‘Want to give her a hand, Abby?’ Mark asks.

  ‘Carrying beer?’ But I look from Jim to Mark and realise I don’t want to stay at the table anyway. ‘Sure.’

  When we return to the table, Jim speaks with fresh vigour. He wants me on script. ‘You’re a lucky woman, Abigail. To be the first to hear these things he gets up to. Incredible stuff.’ He holds my gaze, stern, waiting. ‘Quite the husband you’ve got here.’

  I offer him the smallest smile, and Mark notices our stand-off. ‘Time to head home, I think. We have a busy Sunday ahead of us.’

  ‘Pig.’ I flop into the car seat and slam the door. ‘He’s a pig. He treats me and Karen like we’re his servants – his servants and your fan club. And you go along with it.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I tried to keep the night civil. How much have you had to drink?’

  ‘Not nearly enough.’

  I’m still scratchy after we’ve arrived home, after I’ve stomped to the bedroom and clumsily made my way into my nightie. I’m sure I’ve woken Dad, don’t even know if Charlie is here. But no sound from the kids. All the while, Mark is going about his night’s rituals and ablutions more slowly than usual. His composure incenses me. I’m dealing with something more enormous than he or Jim could imagine, and without an audience.

  Mark walks into the bedroom, wiping his face dry. ‘Jim can be a clod. Don’t take it to heart. It was good to see Karen, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t good to see her. There’s no solidarity in humiliation.’

  ‘Bit dramatic.’

  I throw my hairbrush at him, then apologise, then cry. I’m angry at Jim’s smugness, Mark’s relaxed self-assuredness, at my self-pity, Charlie’s dependence, Dad’s misery. I’m scared of being discovered. I’m scared of having my future snatched from me, scared I’m losing my mind. And I can’t say any of this to my husband.

  I try to think of something soothing. When I was pregnant with Sarah, Mark and I went to Sydney for a holiday. There was no Dad, no chores, and nobody knew Mark as the most gifted student in the English department, the boy who would be prime minister or write the Great Australian Novel. We were a young couple expecting their first child. We rode the harbour ferry. We strolled Manly Beach promenade, eating iceblocks. We walked the trail above the Gap, marvelling at the cliffs, the churning sea, and the huge height from which so many tortured souls had flung themselves. At the lookout, Mark kissed my salty lips through strands of windblown hair.

  When I wake, Mark is touching my shoulder. We’re in the living room, in the black of night, lit by star shine coming in through the veranda’s sliding doors. I am doubled over, my hands on my thighs, as if I’m recovering from a running race. I curl myself up slowly.

  ‘Why am I in here?’ I ask.

  Mark seems as baffled as I am. ‘You walked in here asleep, I guess. I woke up when I heard you.’

  ‘Heard me doing what?’

  ‘You were . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘You were trying to move the couch, I think. Do you remember what you were dreaming about?’

  I freeze in horror. Has my brain decided this is how I’ll cope? That I should behave like Lady Macbeth of the suburbs?

  ‘What’s going on with you?’ he asks gently, then puts his arm around my waist and leads me back to bed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Monday 23 December 1974

  Charlie

  I pretend to be asleep when Dad opens the curtains, even though the metal rings make a racket, even when he threads his jangly belt into his slacks and taps me on the shoulder.

  ‘Charlie.’ His knees crack as he bends down to speak directly into my ear. He taps me again. ‘Charlie.’

  I give up. ‘Dad, I get it.’

  Dad walks around to the other side of my fold-out bed, a rumpled mess of sheets, thin bedspread kicked to the end.

  ‘Let me sleep.’ I pull my pillow from under my head and put it over my face. He yanks it off. ‘What, Dad, what?’

  I reach under the canvas bed and bring up a balled t-shirt, which I pull on without smelling for wearability.

  ‘I had a thought.’

  ‘Nope. Coffee.’ I push myself up. ‘Whatever you’re going to lecture me about, I at least deserve that first.’ I stand up, pull on my jeans. ‘It’s not even daytime.’

  Before he can reply, the phone rings. I look at my father, but this doesn’t seem to be connected to our ridiculously early rising. From his expression I can see he has no idea who would call this house before dawn. Would the cops call this early? I guess they can call whenever they feel like it. Especially if they have news.

  Mark shuffles down the hallway to answer. And then, a minute later, he’s standing in our bedroom doorway. ‘Charlie, call from Bali. Didn’t catch her name.’

  I walk quickly to the kitchen, Dad following me.

  ‘What’s happening? Are you okay?’ I say into the phone.

  Dad puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Sal.’

  He grunts, walks to the sink, and fills the percolator pot with water.

  ‘So, are you okay?’ I ask her as Dad ferrets around in the pantry.

  ‘Ryan’s having a meltdown. He says we have to leave Bali on the first flight we can. He’s spent the last two hours shoving clothes in our backpacks. He’s freaking me out. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Put him on the phone.’

  ‘He’s at home.’

  ‘What brought this on?’

  ‘Who knows? Everyone was at Jack’s place – and you know Ryan hates it there – but he was in a good mood. And then he lost it. Stands in the middle of the room and rants about how life has no meaning and we came to discover paradise and now we’re destroying it and ra ra ra. He grabs my arm and says we’re leaving – leaving Bali.’

  ‘You mean for Christmas? I thought you weren’t doing that this year.’

  ‘We’re not. He means forever.’

  ‘Was he stoned?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not that. He’s been in a mood since you left. Can you come back early? He’ll listen to you.’

  ‘Sal, I can’t. There’s some heavy stuff going on here right now.’

  ‘I need you.’

  ‘What if you close up KD and hang here with him for a couple of weeks? Maybe he needs a break. We can fly back to Bali together.’

  ‘Charlie, you haven’t seen him. He’s deadset serious about this. He wants to give KD to Ketut. If he goes to Australia now, I don’t think he’ll ever come back.’

  Her words hit me. Bali without Ryan is unthinkable, because that’s Bali without Ryan and Sal. Thinking about going back is all that’s keeping me afloat.

  Dad huffs and whacks his hands against his sides. ‘I don’t know where she keeps anything.’

  I point to the fridge. He mutters something about Abby putting things in illogical places (meaning places he wouldn’t choose himself), and stands with the door open, as annoyed and befuddled as he’d been at the pantry.
The light from the refrigerator beams out like a spotlight.

  ‘Sal, flights are going to be booked out. You guys probably can’t leave right now. But can you get him to the phone anyway, soon as you can? Doesn’t matter what time.’

  Dad slams the fridge door and puts the coffee tin on the counter. He spreads his palms on the brown-tiled bench as though he’s about to do push-ups, stares crossly at the tin and then at me. ‘Filters?’ He doesn’t bother lowering his voice.

  I gesture at the middle of three drawers.

  ‘Sal, it’ll be okay. Go to Ketut and Made and ask them to help talk some sense into him. And get him on the phone to me.’

  She hangs up.

  Dad stands with his arms folded, adopting a grim expression. ‘It sounds like your friend’s in some trouble. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Are you going to make a pot of coffee or did you just want to give me the shits?’

  ‘I’ll make coffee if you can find the lid for the blasted machine.’

  I resist the urge to swear at him. The lid is in clear view on the dish rack.

  ‘What’d you wake me for anyway?’ I ask as the first drops of coffee hit the glass-bottomed pot.

  ‘We’re going to fetch the boy,’ he says, then slaps the laminex by way of full stop. ‘Today.’

  He walks me out to the veranda so we can talk without fear of Abby or Mark overhearing. They’re up now, going about their morning routines. I balance my mug on the wooden railing and watch the street wake. A powder-blue Kingswood reverses down a driveway, a sprinkler flicks sparkling drops of water across a lawn, a bare-chested man framed by an open window calls his labrador – ‘Ruuuby’ – who bounds towards him.

  ‘He’s living with his dirtbag father, in a tent on a hippy commune.’

  ‘Eumundi?’

  ‘No place for a child.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. And he’s not your kid, right?’

  ‘Drug addicts and dropouts. And they’re into some extremely dodgy business, Charlie.’ He stops, as if to decide if I’m up for whatever it is he was about to say. Evidently not. ‘They don’t send the kids to school, let the young girls run around with nothing on, work the women like they’re animals. The boy’s father is their self-styled leader and –’ Again with the half-thought. ‘Brute of a man, a criminal. The stories I heard from Skye would curdle your blood.’

  ‘Let me know when you’re up for telling me what those meaningful pauses are for. Whatever you’ve seen or heard, it won’t shock me.’ I flick the ash from my cigarette over the railing. ‘Did she live there for long before she met you?’

  ‘For a time.’

  ‘A time. And she had Beau with her at this commune, right?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘Well, if she left him there it can’t be that bad.’ I lift my mug, feel the smooth warmth against my bottom lip.

  ‘It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand.’

  I laugh.

  ‘I don’t see what’s so funny.’

  ‘Nothing, Dad. But if you want me to help you kidnap a child I’ll need more than “it’s complicated”. I can’t think of anything that’s not complicated right now.’ I take a drag on my cigarette. ‘Seriously, if it was such a bad place why did she let her son stay there? Why did you, for that matter?’

  He lifts his head up. A plane makes its way across the sky, leaving a thin white trail in its wake. I’d give a million dollars to be on that plane, flying away from all this, flying to Bali, to Sal.

  ‘She went back for Beau three times, only once when I knew her, early on in her pregnancy. But she didn’t tell me until she came back. I wanted to call the police but she . . .’

  ‘She what? Why don’t you call them now if you think there are kids in danger? Call Doyle.’

  He scoffs. ‘He’s the last person I’d call. Anyway, they’d put Beau into some type of state care. He needs to be here where I can look out for him.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mean here here, as in Abby and Mark’s house.’

  He ignores me. ‘Listen, I have no legal connection to that child.’

  ‘Glad we agree. So why is kidnapping him okay?’

  ‘Rescuing him. The boy needs to be with a proper family. I should’ve forced the issue with Skye months ago.’

  ‘Is this bunch a cult or something?’ I ask.

  ‘Enough questions, Charlie. Do me a favour and believe I know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘I gotta ask, Dad. What kind of woman leaves her kid behind with a man like that?’

  ‘A good one, an angel. A woman you wouldn’t understand. You gad about with women who don’t know the first thing about selflessness or sacrifice.’

  ‘Sweeping generalisation.’ Also, ‘gad’: don’t think that’s a real word.

  He looks down at his polished brown brogues, dappled from the sunlight pushing through the leaves of the eucalyptus tree. ‘His name is Finn and she thought he was going to kill her the night she left. He would have. She had to get out to stay alive, and she was in no state to take a child with her. Bastard broke her collarbone, beat her black and blue.’

  ‘Whoa.’

  ‘Then told the other dumb-as-dirt hippies Skye’d turned on them, turned on their ideals, abandoned her son and gone back to the world they rejected. Because –’ he gestures to the street in front of us, its green gardens and neatly parked cars – ‘it’s so horrendous. So when she showed up for Beau they chased her out. They’d been brainwashed, the lot of them. And I couldn’t care less about what they think or what they get up to, except that Beau’s there with them and he meant the world to Skye.’

  ‘Dad, I still don’t get why she didn’t call the police and report the assault, get her son brought to her.’

  ‘She abandoned the boy. She left. And there’s no one at that place who’d hold up her side of the story about why she left or who’d hurt her.’ He hits the railing with his palm. ‘You think you’re worldly because you’re scruffy and unemployed and own a backpack, but –’

  ‘Not unemployed.’

  ‘You don’t have a clue about this type of thing. You don’t call the police to a drug farm when the police are running it. You don’t demand the police arrest someone they’re doing illegal business with. They have millions of dollars growing up there and even the fact she knew that was dangerous. Skye is –’

  ‘Collateral damage,’ I say.

  I stand in silence for a moment, taking this in. ‘Okay, I get it. And that’s totally something you want to stay out of. But to the boy, this place is home. And you don’t know what they’ve told him about his mother or the outside world or strangers. So we can’t show up out of nowhere and tell him to come with us. Even if he knew us, he wouldn’t want to leave his dad and friends, would he?’

  ‘They lock them up, you know. Lock the kids in a hot, gutted kombi for the day with no food or water if they misbehave. What do you think about that?’

  ‘That’s fucked, obviously. But it doesn’t answer my questions. If we did manage to get him out of there, people will ask where he came from, and he’ll tell them. And since the cops are in cahoots with these guys – Wait, is Doyle in on this place?’

  ‘Well he mentioned Eumundi, so he knows about it. But it’s possible Finn is a suspect somehow. As for the rest, we’ll sort it out once the boy’s here. The main thing is to get him out. I want him with us for Christmas.’

  ‘Which is the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Two days, Dad.’

  ‘That’s why we need to go today. And he’ll live here, in this house. He’ll have a proper family, and he’ll eat normal food, wear normal clothes and go to school.’

  ‘Dad, seriously. A boy from your fiancée we’d never heard of, who lives on a drug farm cult commune whatever-the-hell place run by cops? When are you going to tell Abby? Tell me you’re planning to talk to her.’

  ‘She’ll be fine.’

  ‘Are you kiddi
ng me?’

  The woman in the house next door is hosing her driveway, chasing leaves and wattle flowers into the gutter. The smell of cold water on hot bricks wafts up to me. From inside the house I hear a squeal of ‘Muuum’. It sounds like Joanne.

  ‘Abby’s going back to uni in February. Mark works full time. You can’t drop a kidnapped child into their life. Who’s going to take care of him?’

  ‘Abby will. She already has three, one more won’t sink the boat.’

  ‘Right, women’s work, kids and kitchens.’

  ‘Well it bloody is. I’m not having this conversation with you, too. Raising kids is what women do well. I’ll pay for whatever he needs. And between you and Mark and me he’ll have men around to teach him things.’

  ‘I’m not going to be here, Dad. And why do you think any kid would come with us and wait until we’re back here to ask what’s going on? And that nobody will come after him? Like, his dad? Or the police?’

  ‘I’m not a fool. I’ve thought this through. But you don’t need to know any more right now.’

  I suspect he’s trying to be profound or mysterious but I don’t want any surprises if I agree to go with him. And despite everything, I’m considering it. ‘I reckon I do, Dad. For starters, how would you get him to leave the commune with you?’

  ‘Right.’ He moves closer to me. ‘We’ll need to be quiet and not raise any alarms. I’ll take a rag and some chloroform. We’ll carry him back to the car. And once we’re –’

  ‘You’re going to drug him?’

  ‘It’s the kindest way.’

  ‘You’re going to drug a child and kidnap him?’

  ‘That’s enough,’ he bellows. ‘Enough. You’re twisting my words, making this sound – After what I’ve told you, you know this is the right thing to do. That child needs me, and I’m going to fetch him. And you.’ He points a shaking finger at me. ‘You are coming with me.’

  The sliding door opens, letting through the smell of buttery toast and the faintest hint of a song on the radio. Sarah sticks her head through the gap.