Fury

by Kathryn Heyman

  The woman at the reception looked at me briefly, her eyes following the trail from eyes to my cheek. Dulled by painkillers, my cheeks still ached; a thick purple bruise ran from my eye to my chin. Orange hoops swung from her ears as she glanced away from my battered face.

  My mother always hid her bruises. Cardigans on hot days, sunglasses, heavy make-up.

  The woman glanced up again, asked, ‘Single room?’

  I lifted my hand to my bruised cheek—not to cover it, but to cool it. The woman’s eyes followed my hand, then she was all bustle, leaping up from the wooden stool, searching for an unnecessary form, pressing a pen into my hand. In response to her contempt, I wanted to say: it was not a man who did this, but a boat. Not a punch but a storm. As though the shame from a punch would be mine. But instead I took my hand away, turned my cheek to her, let her have a good look while I said, ‘Yes, I’ll have a single room.’ Her nails, covered in chipped black polish, tapped at the counter while I told her the number of the fleet account.

  When she slid the key under the metal grille, I said, ‘It’s a bruise, not a birthmark.’ I waited for her to say something else. To ask how, or why. But her orange hoops twirled furiously as she looked away, held up her hand to Karl. ‘Yes, single room as well? On the fleet account?’

  After the storm, in the dim early-morning light, we’d steamed half-heartedly back into Darwin docks for the shipwrights to spend two days fixing the boards. We were silent when we came alongside, silent when we stepped onto the dock, muted with the ache of disappointment, of unspoken failure. Still, two nights on solid ground, in a hotel paid for by the company, this was a promise of golden riches. The room was a small one, above the pub: a single bed, a tangerine chenille bedspread, a bedside lamp in the shape of the Statue of Liberty. Shared bathroom. Two days, though, without being woken every three hours; two days without having to speak to another person; two days of lying flat, reading and reading and reading. Two days of buying sweet-smelling cosmetics, hand creams, potions for my drying skin. I laid out the contents of the cotton bag I’d brought off the boat: three singlet tops, one skirt, a short polka-dotted dress, a pair of brown sandals, a plastic bag with toothbrush and cheap shampoo.

  Though I turned the bag upside down, and shook it, and looked again, and shook again, I saw no wallet. I patted my body as though I were both cop and suspect, but there was no wallet, no means for buying books or potions or creams. Or, there was: but it was back on board the Ocean Thief, at the docks.

  The pedestrian mall in the centre of Darwin had a broad tree in the centre, its leafy boughs spreading out across the path; with the ground still proving too unyielding, I stopped, leaned against the trunk, feeling the rough bark strange against my back. My head rested against the tree, my eyes closed for a moment.

  ‘Kacey? Kacey?’ A tap on the arm, a face grinning in front of me. A dark-haired, bikini-wearing girl. Long-limbed and from somewhere exotic, she was one of many faces at Lameroo Lodge. For three nights, or four, we’d shared a dorm room. She had snored lightly in her sleep, snuffling like a small animal. There, in front of the Darwin tree, her arms were held out as though for a hug, and I edged closer to the trunk. I couldn’t recall her name, but I remembered that she spoke in exclamation points, her face beaming endlessly, the world always sunny, the slightest trace of a Swedish accent. ‘How amazing! You’re still here! I’ve got a job! In a cafe! The Golden Cup! Didn’t you go on a boat?’

  ‘A trawler. Yes.’

  ‘That must be, um, exciting?’

  My face was reflected in her sunglasses, round and distorted. I thought about the unwelcome memories that had begun swirling around me, courtesy of being stuck on a trawler. I said, ‘It’s hard.’

  She stepped back, almost tripping, ‘Oh my God, what happened to your face?’

  I held my hand up, touched the place where I knew the bruising to be, said, ‘It happened on the boat.’

  ‘Someone did this to you? My God!’

  ‘No. There was—a storm.’

  ‘Oh.’ The excitement slid slightly from her face.

  I wanted the drama back, I wanted to shock her. I wanted to be the hero. ‘We sank. The boat sank.’

  ‘No!’ Her face shone with interest.

  ‘We couldn’t get the nets up. During the storm. And the weight of the catch, the storm—I mean, it was insane.’ I looked up to the matt sky. ‘The boat went over, took water and went under.’

  ‘My God! How did you—I mean, is everyone safe?’

  ‘Pretty much. We managed to get the tender before we went under—so I had to wait in this tiny boat, just hoping for the best. It was pretty frightening.’

  ‘Tender? Like love?’

  ‘What? No. Like small boat. To get to shore. We managed to launch it and we waited the storm out. It was close, really close.’

  ‘And you came to shore in this little boat?’ She looked around, as though expecting the little boat to be tied to the sprawling tree.

  ‘Another trawler picked us up.’

  She shook her head so that her glossy hair shivered. ‘What a shocking thing to happen.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it was, it was shocking. Truly.’ And then I set off towards the duck pond, wobbling and weaving along the road, waiting for the ground to settle beneath me, or for my legs to settle on the road.

  Now when I remember this I wonder if I knew all along, if I’d watched him, if I’d timed it. The Ocean Thief comes into view, smaller than I think of her, tattier, more battered. A black car is parked beside her, the boot open. Something makes me stop, hesitate, my heart thudding strangely. I can see a hand resting on the sill of the driver’s window. I’m thinking: it’s the shipwright, but so soon. Closer, I can see inside the boot: two battered freezer containers take up the whole boot space. A potato-shaped man snaps the lid on as I come close, then slams the boot shut. A figure emerges from the freezer room, wrapped in the thick red suit, his familiar moustache highlighting the pink patch of his face.

  The hand on the windowsill of the car retracts, slams on to the car horn. The bright toot makes him turn to the car, makes him shout out something in French. The potato-shaped man—now I’m closer, I can see his wiry hair, his pitted skin—bolts to the passenger side of the car, slams the door. The tyres squeal as they reverse from the side of the dock.

  Frenchie was peeling the freezer suit off as I climbed up to the deck, his face gleaming. ‘My friends, they take my share of the catch.’

  ‘Sure.’ We were each entitled to a box or two of the catch to take home to family, to eat with friends, to do with what we wished. I watched him for a moment, both of us standing awkwardly, waiting for the other. I nodded towards the cabins. ‘I forgot my wallet.’

  Frenchie put his hand on my elbow. ‘You remember you watch out for me? This is our deal.’

  I shrugged. ‘Sure.’

  ‘This is my last season. I have had enough now. It’s too much, this work. I need a good catch to leave here, to return to my life. To finish empty-handed, no, I cannot.’ He wiped the damp from his face and said again, ‘I look out for you, you look out for me. This is our deal. Without a good season, I have nothing.’

  I thought: What do you think any of us have? What do you think I have? But I said nothing, just watched the bead of sweat in the hair of his moustache, watched it trickle to the top of his lip until he wiped it away, leaving a smear of dirt across his mouth, brown like chocolate, or mud.

  It took three days in the end for the boards to be repaired. On the last day before we headed back out to Bonaparte, I showered for twenty minutes, letting the hot water run over me. The water did not run cold, and it did not run to a trickle. Beneath my feet the tiles did not move, the soap had no layer of sludge, there was no build-up of grime, and it was simple, so simple, to be happy. I was scrubbed clean, the festering cuts on my hands and feet disinfected and dressed, my fingernails trimmed and clean, my clothes smelling only of laundry powder and the hotel dryer.

  The s
ign above the Golden Cup extended into the mall, so it was easy to find. Inside, long, golden-hued wooden tables stretched the length of the cafe. I wondered if the golden wood was where the name came from, the name that made me think of Midas, or urine. The Swedish girl from Lameroo Lodge served me. Her hair was tied back in a perky ponytail, her teeth white and straight.

  When she took my order, I said, ‘My boat didn’t sink. I’m sorry, that seemed more—God, I don’t know, more exciting.’ The air felt heavy, like it would swallow me. I added, ‘I was hit in the face while I was trying to hold a torch on a boom. During a storm. It was—sorry. I don’t know why I lied. I just thought it was a better story. It was someone else’s story. It was stupid.’ ‘Yes. That is a very strange thing to do.’ She peered at me. ‘Your face looks a little better. A little.’

  Frenchie was the last of us to get back to the docked Ocean Thief, a child’s school backpack flung over one shoulder. He had a block of dark chocolate for me. When he handed it to me, Davey said, ‘Why her and not me? I’d love some chocolate.’

  Frenchie said, ‘You’ve been near shops for three days. Buy your own. Kacey and me are taking care of each other.’

  After the expanse of a two-star hotel room, my bunk seemed cramped. For the first time in months, I noticed the diesel smell, the public-toilet colour of the walls. There were no photos of family or friends in my bunk, nothing but the small collection of books which were my home. And my black lace-up shoes, tied to the end of the frame. Those shoes. Before I’d left to hitchhike along the highway, a woman had come to my mother’s house, a fortune-teller. My mother paid her. It was, I suppose, my mother’s way of giving me a blessing. ‘Give me some jewellery,’ she’d said. I had none. Not a ring, not a watch, nothing. I was bare. Just myself, my own skin. And that is how I thought I would always travel. I remember the woman with a head too small for her body, her henna-red hair spiralling down her back. Red lace was tied about her throat, and her lips were red too. She sat at my mother’s pine table and I handed her what I had. One drawn-on brown eyebrow raised into a wrinkled forehead. At the time this seemed horrendous to me—the wrinkles, the chin, the eyebrow. Age seemed horrendous to me. The thought of it, the appearance of it. ‘Give me anything,’ she said. ‘A ring, an earring, anything.’

  I said, ‘I haven’t got anything.’ And then I gave her my shoe.

  She said I would find love and I said that wasn’t what I was looking for. She said I would find riches and I said, yes, sure, that’s what I was looking for, why not? She didn’t make me any other offers.

  We were all quiet as we headed back out with the newly repaired boards, the freshly mended nets, the coiled and oiled ropes, the stock of fresh food. Bonaparte had not been good to us and there was little inclination to return. Still, Mick called us all up to the bow deck as the sun started to drop and we leaned against the gunwale, watching the sky turn gold and the water shine the colour back up to us. The door to the wheelhouse was open and we all heard the radio call, the broad Territory accent slicing the airwaves, the nasally voice. Steady and low, that voice asking all boats in the vicinity of the Tiwi Islands to be on the alert. A crew member is missing.

  We crowded into the wheelhouse, leaning closer to the desk.

  Deckhand. Missing since early oh-five-hundred-hours.

  The radio crackled and then the voice spoke again. If the missing crew member is on board with you after pick-up, radio immediately. Repeat, immediately.

  The water unfurled ahead. The words of the radio sat heavy in the air. We didn’t look at each other in the wheelhouse, didn’t admit that we were waiting, hoping, for a second call, another voice crackling, Got him, mate. Stupid dick toppled over, but we were right behind. Bringing him in now. But there was no second voice, just the crackle and the thrum of the engine. Mick ran his hands along the desk, tapping against the glass of the radar. Slow beats patted my back in the place that I rested against the wheelhouse door, above the churning of the engine. Pat, thrum, pat, thrum. Davey was the one I thought about. If that missing boy were him—

  But it could have been me, it could have been anyone. The season before, a cook had disappeared somewhere off Gove, barely three hours’ coasting from the shabby town bowling club. Her name was Lucretia. She was a dancer. Had been, anyway, before the swansong of the Gulf and its easy money.

  But this one was a boy. A deckhand younger than Davey, probably, with his gleaming grin and his excess of hair bouncing over his eyes. I could feel him with me in the wheelhouse, the missing boy. Could feel his breath, smell the fruity-salty smell of his skin. They didn’t give his stats on the call-out, didn’t give a description. What would we be looking for? A tall, lanky, brown-haired twenty-year-old? A blond, chubby seventeen-year-old growing his first beard? In the water, height is irrelevant. Still, I imagined him with tanned skin, green eyes, a sharp chin with a single dimple.

  Daniel. They did say his name. His name was Daniel.

  We steamed on, each of us imagining our own version of this boy, this Daniel, scanning the water side to side, knowing what we’d find, if we found anything at all.

  Flecks of nail polish fall on to my beige dress. I’ve worried at my nails, chewing the corner of each in turn, tearing at the creamy polish. Hoping, perhaps, to unpeel the whole sheet of it, and then to unpeel my own skin, my innards, my whole self. Walking up the three steps to the witness box, my sensible low heels make a dull click. Someone at the back of the courtroom coughs repeatedly as though a fur ball is stuck in their throat and my hand goes to my own throat in sympathy.

  It begins gently enough. The public prosecutor asks me my name, where I live. He asks me if I got a taxi on the night in question.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I got a taxi home from a party.’

  ‘Can you remember the man who drove the taxi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you point to that man?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, and I point, but I cannot look at him.

  You see, even in this way, I am a bad girl, a bad witness. Why could I not look at him? Was I ashamed? Of my own behaviour? People who are lying often avoid eye contact. People who are frightened do, too. People who are distressed, they avoid eye contact. People who are so stuck, so lost, that they don’t know how to raise their eyes.

  After the prosecutor walks me through the events of the Night In Question, the man’s barrister steps up, adjusting his tie. He smiles at me, then looks at the paper in his hand. ‘You fell asleep in the taxi for twenty minutes, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I think so. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Not sure?’

  ‘No, because I—’

  ‘Because you’d consumed rather a lot of alcohol that night, hadn’t you?’ And then his mouth twists and he holds up a plastic bag. ‘Are these your underpants from that night?’

  Inside the plastic my pearl-coloured French knickers have been pegged into shape so that you can see the line of them, the way they gleam, the silk inviting touch, the way the pant leg flares open like shorts.

  ‘Did you,’ the barrister asks, ‘have underpants on under these shorts?’

  I say, ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Underpants.’

  ‘They are my underpants. They are—’ and here I begin crying ‘—they’re French knickers. It’s a—women used to—’

  He says, ‘I know what they are and what their history is.’ He nods to the jury. One woman shakes her head slightly as she looks at the plastic bag. Brown hair curls neatly around her chin, her hands clasped together on the bench.

  Although it doesn’t matter, not now, I add, ‘My friend gave them to me. My girlfriend.’

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  I am crying properly now.

  ‘And won’t it help your case,’ he says, ‘if you are distressed?’

  The judge inclines his head, his whole body following. I remember him with glasses, horn-rimmed, and with excess flesh wobbling slightly on his cheeks. To the court transcriber he says, ‘Note th
at the witness is distressed.’ To the barrister, he says, ‘That line is unacceptable.’

  I cannot say thank you, though I want to.

  The barrister begins again. ‘You were so very drunk, weren’t you, that you left these loose shorts in the taxi, is that right? Though, in fact, they barely needed removing.’ He holds the plastic bag up again, highlighting the wide-open leg, the lack of elastication.

  Again, the judge leans forwards, the light bouncing off his glasses, and the barrister is chastised.

  ‘Why is it,’ the barrister says, ‘that you told the police officers “I think I have been raped”?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know if he—if it was his finger inside me or—’

  ‘You weren’t sure? You couldn’t tell the difference?’

  ‘It was dark. I wanted to be careful with the truth. And I had been drinking.’

  ‘Yes, you had. Quite a lot by the look of this list. One bottle of cider, two bottles of wine, two glasses of strong liquor.’ He smiles at the jury. ‘I think I would be quite forgetful if I drank that much alcohol.’

  ‘I didn’t have all that alone. I shared it with my friend.’

  The curly-haired woman on the jury compresses her lips, looks sideways at the woman beside her. Again, that slight shake of the head.

  The barrister runs his fingers along his collar, tugging at it as though letting air into his chest. His hair has a shine to it; his skin is unblemished. He is, I think, the kind of man I might have fantasised about marrying, if I were a different kind of girl. The kind of man who might have saved me. But he is not here to save me. He is here to destroy me.

  He asks me if I have a boyfriend (I don’t), if I have sex often (I do), and what I hope to gain by dragging this poor man to court. He points out that I have been to drama school, that I dropped out of university. He asks me four times how many people were at the party, and each time my answer is different.