Riptides

by Kirsten Alexander

  ‘Atherton,’ Ryan says. ‘Remember how Sal and I took a semester off in third year and lived up north? We stayed in this wild house at the top of a hill, with a river running next to it and this incredible view across a valley. A mattress floor in the living room, bunch of musicians, chickens and goats free-ranging.’ He waits for me to indicate I remember hearing about any of this.

  ‘Yeah, vaguely,’ I say.

  ‘That was Finn’s place.’

  ‘Heaven,’ Sal says. ‘We should’ve stayed longer. That seed bread Lucy used to make?’

  Ryan smiles widely.

  ‘So you’d have met his girlfriend, Skye?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure,’ Ryan says as Sal sits beside him. ‘We know Skye, and her baby, Beau. You loved that kid, didn’t you?’

  Sal coos. ‘My little lamb.’

  ‘Haven’t heard from Skye in years,’ Ryan says. ‘Are they still together? I should’ve asked about her.’ He twists around in his seat to see if Finn is still here.

  I take a mouthful of beer. ‘Don’t ask him about Skye.’

  ‘They broke up?’ he asks.

  Of all the sick twists of fate. ‘Skye was living with my dad.’

  ‘What? Living with, as in –?’ Sal wrinkles her nose. ‘Ew.’

  ‘My dad treated her way better than that scumbag.’

  ‘Honestly, Charlie, what’s with the aggression?’ Sal says.

  ‘Skye and my dad were engaged. She was pregnant.’ I look from Ryan to Sal. They aren’t making the connection. ‘Was. I told you about the woman who had the car accident, the one who was living with my dad.’

  ‘That was Skye?’ Sal asks. ‘Skye’s dead?’

  Ryan moans. ‘No.’

  Maybe it was a good thing Finn showed up before I had a chance to tell them the whole truth. But if they see Finn again, he might tell them Dad and I tried to kidnap Beau, and I’m not certain now how they’ll take that. I want to keep them firmly in my corner.

  ‘Finn used to beat her up,’ I say.

  Ryan scowls at me. ‘Why would you think that? Did Skye say that?’

  ‘That’s why Skye left him and ended up with my dad. Finn was hitting her.’

  ‘He’d never,’ Sal says. ‘I can’t believe she’d even say that.’

  ‘You don’t know the whole story,’ Ryan says. ‘They had an intense thing going on – mutually intense.’

  ‘She got pregnant really young. She more or less trapped him,’ Sal says. ‘We loved her, but –’ She lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

  ‘She was kind of hysterical, Charlie,’ Ryan says. ‘Sort of crazy.’

  Sal agrees. ‘Didn’t you get that vibe?’

  I’m dumbfounded by what I’m hearing. ‘Whoa, she’s dead, guys. This is not cool. And from everything I know, Skye was the victim of the story. There’s no version of crazy that makes it okay –’

  ‘Everything you know?’ Ryan says. ‘You never met her?’

  Sal interrupts us. ‘Wait, does Finn know?’

  ‘That she’s dead? Yeah, he knows. You didn’t see how devastated he was? How he was mourning? Or were you distracted by his grope?’

  Sal flicks me on the shoulder. She turns to Ryan. ‘I’m going to see if I can talk him into staying in town a while longer. We can all go back to Addison Street, crash there.’

  Ryan nods. ‘I’ve got nothing against your dad, Charlie, but him and Skye? I don’t know, man.’

  I don’t want to have this discussion. I watch Sal walk through the crowd and inside the pub. I look at the head-high wall of cream and steel-blue tiles, the rust-coloured wall above them. I see a long-haired blond surfie with his back against the tiles, blowing smoke over the head of a girl dressed like Hiawatha before moving in to kiss her. A swarthy guy standing next to the jukebox watches them like he’s at the drive-in. Finn smiles as Sal walks towards him.

  ‘Ryan, how can you think it was okay for Finn to hit Skye?’

  ‘I don’t think that’s okay. I don’t think it ever happened. They argued a lot. But I never saw him do anything remotely physical. You might want to think about why your dad’s telling you that. Sounds like a classic power move.’

  This, like ‘Bali is ruined’, is one of Ryan’s current obsessions. He’s become a broken record about it. His theory, sparked by something he read, is that every interaction between people is a power play, sometimes subtle, sometimes unrecognised – but everything is about power. It’s a depressing way of seeing the world.

  Sal calls out from the doorway. ‘Ryan, our little lamb is here.’ She stands on the top step next to Finn and has her hand on Beau’s shoulder. He’s wearing denim shorts, a Milo t-shirt and thongs that are at least a size too big for him, and his hair sticks out awkwardly over his ears. It’s all I can do to stop myself from jumping up and throwing Beau out of their reach, away from all of us.

  As Sal, Finn and Beau walk towards our table, I notice that the boy is staring at me with a look of worry: I’m the dangerous one, I realise, the one who came to kidnap him.

  ‘Let’s go back to the house,’ Sal says once they reach us and Ryan has greeted Beau. ‘Finn says he can hang out a while.’ She puts her hand on Finn’s arm. ‘We had no idea you’d been through such a terrible time, babe.’

  Beau stands next to Sal, holding her hand.

  ‘Wait, where was Beau while you were talking with us?’ I ask Finn.

  Finn cocks his head in the direction of the street. ‘Outside, playing. Not that it’s any of your business.’

  Beau lifts up a calico bag, unsure whether he’s supposed to offer evidence. He looks to his father for guidance but Finn has fixed his eyes on me again so Beau slowly drops his arm back to his side.

  Ryan, Sal, Finn and I sit on the veranda of a run-down Queenslander on Addison Street. The house belongs to Sal’s cousin Colleen, a nurse, who has gone to work a night shift.

  We occupy a lumpy armchair apiece, with a potted umbrella tree standing by the front door, parched. The neighbour’s tabby cat slinks along the top of the crusty wooden railing and settles in the shadows offered by an overgrown jasmine vine. I feel the warm boards under my feet, the layer of grit sticking to my soles. I’m here because I’m anxious about the conversations that might happen in my absence. Otherwise there is no way I’d want to spend another second in Finn’s company.

  There’s still enough light in the sky to watch fruit bats flap towards the banana groves. Nearby streetlights jerk awake. Sal has put a radio on the floor beside me, the volume on low because Beau is sleeping on Colleen’s bed. I smoke a spliff and munch on salt-and-vinegar chips, listen to 4BC.

  Finn agrees with Sal that it’s a good thing her cousin moved to Red Hill and found this house on stilts with its sloping backyard, its mango and avocado trees and out-of-the-country landlord. They talk about the house they lived in with Skye, when Beau was a baby. The three of them share memories of Skye. Ryan cries. Sal doesn’t. I watch Finn’s face for any sign he knows the police suspect Abby and me, but I see nothing to suggest he does, and neither of us mentions Roberts or Doyle. No one mentions my dad.

  Cars roll along the road below us, gathering speed as they travel down the hill, spraying water when they hit the puddle of sludge that’s formed in a dip. A dog howls. I exhale and watch the smoke curl and rise against the darkening sky, up and then gone, motion without consequence. I make a note to tell Abby. Then think about how many cigarettes it would take to cause air pollution.

  There’s a knot in my gut from listening to their affectionate stories about Skye (crazy, evidently, but loved), from waiting to hear my dad’s name, from knowing that Beau is only a few walls away, from being unsure if Finn knows anything or everything or nothing. Separate from the accident, Finn has to be angry that I tried to take his son but he says nothing, doesn’t mention it aside from calling me Water Rat. His calmness is freaking me out.

  We need food. Around nine o’clock, Ryan drives with Sal to Milton Road to get hamburgers. Ryan’s the only one of us
remotely straight enough to drive, doesn’t see why that means he should have to go on his own, and the decision about who stays, who goes is arrived at silently, poker faces all round. Sal’s already made it clear that I’m bugging her, and while Ryan would never admit it, leaving Sal alone with Finn is asking for trouble. And Finn’s not going anywhere.

  So here I am with Finn. It’s not exactly comfortable but what’s he going to do? I’ve been hit before and survived, and he doesn’t have his rifle. I’ve seen curlier situations. My fear lifts a little more with each mouthful of beer, each breath of dope, and I find myself – ludicrously – wanting to win him over. I’m not sure if everything I’ve heard about him is true. It’s not like Ryan to misjudge someone that badly, whereas my dad and I haven’t always agreed about people.

  I hold the longneck out and tilt it towards Finn. ‘Top up?’ He nods, lifts his empty glass.

  Is it possible my father lied to me, or that Skye lied to him? Finn’s a dope grower, but I have no problem with that. In bed with the cops, but sometimes bad things happen to good dope suppliers, so I can excuse that, too. And his aggression towards me was to protect Beau from would-be kidnappers. That’s more than reasonable behaviour – it’s what a responsible father would do. And it wasn’t him who blurted out news of Skye’s death. Maybe Finn had been shielding Beau from that until he could break it to him gently. Also, I can’t think of a single time either Ryan or Sal has expressed any tolerance for violence, so . . . My head is spinning.

  Finn stretches his legs out, sinks further in the chair, then says: ‘I’m a little curious how you came to be at my farm.’

  A fair question. ‘My dad promised Skye he’d make sure Beau was okay. And he did, so we won’t be back. Seems like he has friends, lots of space to run around.’

  ‘You came to take him. But I asked how, not why. Arcadia’s way off the beaten track. And we value our privacy, which you and your father violated. So I’m wondering how that happened, how you found us. Did Skye tell your old man where we were?’

  ‘Guess so.’

  He turns his head my way and raises his eyebrows. ‘And have you shared that information with anybody else? At a guess?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’ I shake my head vigorously. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Ah, perhaps Doyle has sent him after all, to find out what I’ve told Mark, if I’m going to lead him to the commune.

  Finn speaks slowly. ‘So what exactly is your story? Can’t figure you out. A third wheel. Do anything for Daddy’s approval. Living with your sister. You don’t strike me as a halfwit but that’s some stunted life you’ve got going.’

  I frown. ‘Not stunted. What you’re seeing now is an aberration, temporary. In a few weeks I’m heading back to Bali.’

  ‘On your own, by the sounds of it.’

  I’d forgotten for a moment what Sal had said at the RE. Surely she’s only looking at houses to keep Ryan happy.

  ‘Sal and I are walking Ryan through a bit of a meltdown. We’ll be back in Bali before the end of January. You’ll see.’

  He smirks. ‘“We”. She’s out of your reach, Water Rat. I know that woman, and you are not enough man for her.’

  ‘She’s not in or out of my reach. We’re friends, the three of us,’ I say. ‘You don’t get it.’

  ‘Think I do.’

  How many beers have I had? How many spliffs have we shared? My words are chewy in my mouth. My head moves about like a ball on a spring. ‘So the rifle,’ I say. ‘That was unexpected.’

  ‘Feral pigs.’

  ‘Right. Right.’ I stare out at the night sky. ‘Ryan said you and Skye had something intense going on. But you know, that doesn’t explain her running away without Beau. I mean, she kept trying to get him back, so it’s not like she didn’t want him. She told my dad you had a bit of a temper, said a bunch of stuff about her that wasn’t true.’

  He squints as if he hadn’t seen me until now, or isn’t quite sure what to make of me. ‘What happened between me and Skye is none of your goddamn business.’

  ‘Well it sort of is, since she was about to marry my dad. And the baby would’ve been my half-brother or sister, technically. So Beau would be something to me, too, I guess. No. Hang on.’

  ‘She was pregnant?’ he says.

  Why wouldn’t the police have told him that?

  ‘Pregnant with your dad?’ he asks. ‘Your twice-her-age dad?’

  ‘He loved her. She left you, chose him. So that’s . . .’

  ‘Pregnant.’ He pauses. ‘Let me ask you something: were you with your dad when she had the crash? The police told me she was alone. But where were you, Water Rat?’ The air takes on a chill. His voice has a snarl in it now.

  ‘First I heard about it was the morning we got to the farm and some cop was telling Dad.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Abby, my sister. We drove there together.’

  ‘Morning after the crash. Didn’t you say he’s near Chinchilla? You must’ve left Brisbane at the crack of dawn.’

  I reach for my glass but it’s empty. I can’t believe I told him earlier where Dad’s farm is, but I did. Stupid. Tried to make him laugh at my description of the turkeys. ‘I don’t know exactly what time we got there. Doesn’t matter anyhow. I didn’t know about Skye until then, is what I’m saying.’

  He twists in his seat to face me. ‘She was a good driver, cautious. Like, boringly cautious.’

  ‘Maybe there was something wrong with the engine. Or there was a kangaroo. Or she’d gone into labour.’ I think I’m talking faster than normal, but I can’t be sure. ‘Maybe she fell asleep.’

  He waits a moment before replying. ‘Maybe.’

  A car pulls up outside the house and parks on the gravel driveway. I hear the slam of doors, then Ryan talking to Sal.

  Finn speaks in a low voice. ‘It’s been a real treat having this chat. But if you or your father come near my farm again I will break you.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Monday 30 December 1974

  Charlie

  I stand next to Dad on the veranda, in the morning shade, drinking black coffee, giving him an edited version of what I told Abby in full about my evening. I want him only to know I saw Beau and that he’s okay. And that ‘rescuing’ him is entirely off the table.

  Ten feet away from us, perched on a thick branch, a kookaburra tilts its head from one side to the other as it considers whether to leave the safety of the gum tree to eat the shreds of ham Dad put on the wooden balustrade, shreds that are darkening and warping in the heat. It isn’t far for him to come: the tree almost touches the railing, so he could inch his way along and get to the meat in a small jump. But he keeps his distance.

  ‘Did you wear that?’ Dad points to my t-shirt. It’s pale blue, with a drawing of two of those big-headed, tiny-body nude kids, smiling and hugging, the words Save Water. Shower with a Friend.

  ‘No, why?’

  ‘Bloody ridiculous,’ he says. ‘You know, if you’d called me from the pub I could’ve come down.’

  ‘To get Beau?’

  ‘That didn’t occur to you?’

  ‘It’s still kidnapping. And Finn will know it’s you or me if Beau goes missing, and he’ll come take him back – legally. How would that drama be good for Beau?’

  Dad stares at me, a hard, unwavering stare that makes my gut clench. He really hates being told he’s wrong.

  I hear a screech of tyres. A green ute flings around the corner into Abby’s street and the driver stops suddenly, right in the middle of Abby’s driveway. A woman gets out of the ute.

  ‘It’s the chick from the commune.’

  ‘Maria,’ Dad says.

  She’s more tanned than I’d noticed in the half-light of our failed rescue, lean and muscled. Not as ironman as Finn but jeez, they must log a lot of hours in those fields. She walks to the passenger’s side and opens the door. Beau clambers out.

  ‘What?’ I spook the kookaburra: it hits a brace of leaves and flaps madly to ke
ep its balance. I look at Dad, who’s smiling as if he’s somehow manufactured this situation, as if Beau’s presence here is proving him right.

  We head downstairs and open the front door. Maria nods a hello, keeps one hand protectively on Beau’s shoulder. I peer inside the ute but Finn isn’t there.

  ‘How’d you know where I was?’ Dad asks.

  ‘Ryan and Sal, Dad,’ I say.

  ‘Hello, young man,’ Dad speaks to Beau. ‘I’m sorry we scared you when we first met. And I am very sorry about your mother. She was a special lady and I know she loved you.’

  Beau says nothing. His attention is not on my father or me. He’s peering inside the house, letting his eyes roam from one object to the next. He looks at the landscape painting – parched bushland at dusk, a solitary Aboriginal man wearing a loincloth standing stork-like on one leg, holding a spear – that hangs over a brown pot holding dried pussy willows, smiles when he sees Woof padding down the stairs. I remember Beau lives in a teepee, and wonder how many houses he’s been in, and if they’re usually as run-down as Sal’s cousin’s place.

  ‘Car’s roasting,’ Maria says. ‘Beau and I could use a drink.’

  We stand aside to let them come in as Woof licks Beau’s hand, sniffs Maria’s leg and wags his tail, greeting them altogether more affably than we have.

  Once we’re in the kitchen, Beau wriggles himself onto one of the stools and sits on the edge of the brown vinyl cushion. Woof stands on his hind legs, his front paws on Beau’s bare thighs. Maria stands next to the counter, scanning the room, smiling at something she doesn’t share with us. ‘Nice place.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dad says.

  ‘Beau, do you want some cordial?’ I ask. ‘Lemonade, chocolate milk?’

  ‘He doesn’t drink that sugary stuff,’ Maria says. ‘Juice or water. Doubt you have soy milk.’

  ‘You doubt correct. What would you like, buddy?’

  ‘Juice please,’ Beau says. He sounds relaxed, his voice peppy and light. It doesn’t seem interesting to him that he saw me last night, or even at the commune. I’m just another grown-up now, hanging around with the other boring grown-ups.