Dancing on Knives

by Kate Forsyth

  Sara was ashamed. Oh, my mother, long dead.

  ‘Gus went straight to Gayla after the funeral. He couldn’t even pretend to care, for our sakes. I hated him so much then. Mum hadn’t been dead for more than a few weeks. I can’t help thinking, if only fucking Gayla hadn’t rung Mum, hadn’t rung her and rubbed her face in it, well, then, maybe Mum would still be alive …’ He took a deep, painful breath and ran his hand over his face. He looked tired and defeated. ‘Then Gus goes and brings her here, and Mum not yet cold in her grave. How could he? I’ve never forgiven him, never.’ He looked at Sara angrily. ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘I remember,’ Teresa said. ‘I remember everything. It wasn’t like that at all. Mum told me why she rang. She couldn’t bear the deceit any more. She felt it wasn’t right.’

  ‘Wasn’t right! Hell, she got one thing right, then. Wasn’t right! It makes me sick to the stomach to even think about it,’ Joe said.

  ‘You make me sick to the stomach.’ Teresa thrust her face into his. ‘You talk about right and wrong, and put my mother down … when you killed our father! You’re a murderer!’

  ‘Shut up! Just shut up!’

  ‘I don’t believe this. You kill our father, you kill him, and you talk about things which happened ten years ago, as if it’s reason enough! As if you want us to sympathise! You’re a murderer!’ Teresa punched him in the shoulder.

  Joe jerked away, shouting, ‘Shut up!’

  Sara grasped him by the arm. ‘Stop it! Please, just stop it!’

  Only the twins were silent. Tears were trickling down Dominic’s face.

  ‘Don’t you understand? I didn’t mean to kill him, it just happened!’

  ‘How?’ Sara asked, shaking his arm gently.

  He pulled away from her, sat down in one of the bamboo chairs and sunk his face into his hands. ‘I’d gone to have a surf, to try and clear my head, get over the fight I’d had with Dad. As I was coming home, Aunty Maureen drove past me, almost crashed into me. I was so angry, I couldn’t believe it. They’d been up at the headland together, even after that dreadful scene with Alex. I turned off the road, drove up the track to the headland. I don’t even really know why. Gus never cared what anyone else thought, he wouldn’t have listened to a word I said. But I was so angry, I had to have it out with him. It all got out of hand, though. He said terrible things. I couldn’t stand it. I hit him, and he sneered at me, and I hit him again, and he just slipped and fell backwards, and then … he just disappeared. I heard him scream, and then there was this, like, crunch, and then … nothing.’

  Falling.

  Dylan said, ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you get help?’

  Joe kicked at the table-leg, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. ‘I don’t know. I panicked, I guess. I just got out of there as fast as I could. I didn’t know what to do. I thought he was dead.’

  ‘So we searched all night,’ Dylan said sarcastically, ‘and you searched with us, pretending to be so worried, when all the time …’

  ‘All the time,’ Dominic continued, ‘you knew where he was, you knew what had happened.’

  ‘And he fiddled with the phone connection, so we couldn’t even ring for help,’ Dylan realised. ‘If we’d been able to get on to the police earlier, maybe Dad wouldn’t have had to hang there for so long.’

  They stared at Joe with accusing eyes.

  He brought up his hands as if to fend them off. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I thought he was dead, I thought he must be dead.’

  Teresa held her stomach, sobbing quietly. ‘He is dead. He is dead,’ she whispered. ‘You killed him.’

  ‘He thought I’d told Alex about him and Maureen,’ Joe cried in despair. ‘How could I? I didn’t even know! He wouldn’t believe me, there was no telling him. I couldn’t believe it. He’s a monster! He doesn’t care about anyone but himself!’

  ‘Didn’t,’ Teresa said. Dominic gave a sharp cry. Sara gripped his shoulder.

  ‘It was an accident, I swear.’ Joe dropped his head in his hands. ‘He said he’d damn well sleep with anyone he damn well wanted to, and that it was none of my bloody business. We had such a fight! He was sure it was me who told Alex – I couldn’t get it out of his head.’

  ‘And you didn’t?’ Sara whispered.

  Joe shook his head.

  ‘I did,’ Teresa said defiantly. ‘I told Alex, on Friday morning, after I saw them having it off up there. I rang him and told him.’

  They all reeled back. It was so unexpected. Teresa hated her step-uncle – why would she tell him? For a moment it seemed Joe would hit Teresa, such a rage possessed him. They glared at each other, hating with a vengeance. ‘Then it’s your fault he’s dead!’

  ‘Ha! Wasn’t me who pushed him off the cliff! You’re the murderer!’

  ‘If you hadn’t told Alex …! Don’t you realise none of this would have happened? You bitch!’

  ‘Yes it would, yes it would,’ Teresa sobbed. ‘You’re the murderer, you’re the murderer.’

  ‘I don’t understand? How did you know?’ Dylan asked.

  Teresa flung herself on the lounge. Between the storm of hysterical tears snatches of words could be heard: ‘He … I saw … they were there … and I wanted … I hated … I didn’t … I only wanted …’

  Sara sat beside her and patted her shoulder. Tears were thick in her throat. ‘Why did she tell, though? I thought she hated Alex.’ Dominic looked from one to the other.

  ‘I hate all of you!’ Teresa sat up and stared round at them. ‘I wish Mum had never brought me here. All you do is sneer at me and look down on me and make snide comments. Wasn’t my fault Mummy and Dad weren’t married; he loved her best, he wanted to be with her, and with me. Your bloody mother wouldn’t let go!’

  They all stared at her. For quite a long time, no-one said anything. Teresa looked shamefaced yet defiant, while Joe simply sat, his shoulders sagging.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Sara said at last. ‘You don’t hate us. If you hated us, you wouldn’t care so much.’

  Teresa flushed and pushed her sharp chin into her shoulder, refusing to look at anyone. ‘Who says I care about any of you?’ she said then, sullenly.

  ‘Me,’ Sara said. ‘Not that that means much, I admit.’

  ‘Well, I hate him anyway,’ she said, jerking her head at Joe. ‘He never wanted me here, he’s never called me anything but “the brat” and now he’s killed my dad. I’m going to tell the police everything.’

  ‘He’ll be tried for murder,’ Dominic said. He was white and shaken. ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘We’re not telling the police anything,’ Sara said. ‘It was an accident. Joe didn’t mean to kill him.’

  Teresa said angrily, ‘We can’t just let him get away with murder. I want him to pay for it, don’t you see? He killed him, he killed our father.’

  ‘He can’t just walk away and say, “Oh, well, what a shame. Never mind, no harm done,”’ Dominic said. ‘He took a life.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ Joe said angrily.

  ‘If we’d got him to a hospital when he first fell, he might have lived,’ Dominic said. ‘That was the real crime, I reckon.’

  ‘Not telling us he had fallen! Then cutting the wires!’ Dylan said. ‘So we had to ride all the way into town before we could call for help. It was criminal.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Sara said. ‘Joe’s going to pay for it, he’ll pay for it the rest of his life. There’s been too much hatred, too many recriminations. I want it to stop. Family is what counts in the end. Family.’

  Teresa shook her head, her mouth set in the stubborn line they all knew well. ‘What about justice?’

  Card eleven. A woman with a double-edged sword raised upwards, and a set of scales in her other hand. To turn this card means justice will be done, balance will be restored.

  ‘How would sending Joe to prison be justice?’ Sara said. ‘I can’t see any justice in that. Police and courts and lawyers and prisons, what has
any of that got to do with us? You were the one who rang Alex and told him about Dad and Maureen. Tell me what justice you deserve.’

  Teresa hunched her shoulder. ‘I’m going to tell.’

  ‘No, you aren’t,’ Sara said softly. ‘We may not be much of a family but we’re the only family you’ve got. You’re stuck with us. Besides, what are you going to tell them? No-one knows anything but us, and we’ll deny everything. There’s no evidence. None of us told the police anything.’ She turned to the twins. ‘Did you?’

  Dylan shook his head. ‘Nup,’ he said laconically. ‘Neither of us said anything.’

  ‘The police might wonder how Dad came to fall like that, but they’ve got no way of knowing what really happened. It might just as easily have been you who pushed Dad off the cliff, remember.’

  Teresa scowled at her.

  Sara put her hand up to the sprig of thyme in her hair. ‘I’ve lost everyone I’ve ever loved,’ she said very quietly. ‘I feel like I’ve lived my life surrounded by ghosts. I don’t want to lose anyone else. Not Joe, and not you, Tess. It’s too late for Dad, he’s dead now. But it’s not too late for us. We have to make something out of what is left to us. I’m sick of unhappiness and grief. I want to live!’

  ‘But Joe has to pay!’ Teresa wailed.

  ‘He’ll pay,’ Sara said. ‘He’s lost the farm, he’s lost us, he’s lost everything. And he’ll remember.’

  For the past is always a prologue. Sara saw this with great clarity, but she did not know how to express it in words. In her mind’s eye she saw enormous black storm clouds looming over the landscape, blotting out its brightness. She saw a great wave, foam flying back like hair. She saw a frail figure, swimming under that great weight of water, trying to escape the inevitable crash and collapse. She saw herself leaping out of the cold sea foam, taking flight like an albatross and soaring away over the ocean. All this she saw but she could not say. She could only look at them pleadingly, trying to make them understand they had to stride out, away from the past and into the future, leaving its shadow behind them.

  Joe had put his head down on his hands. They could hear the broken rasp of his breathing. Teresa looked at him and then at Sara, and gave a little helpless gesture of her hands.

  ‘What’s going to happen to us now?’ Dominic said.

  ‘We’ll have to sell the farm, of course,’ Sara said. Unexpectedly, terror leapt up and grasped her by the throat. She had not realised how closely it still dogged her heels. She had to struggle hard to thrust it back down again, to breathe, to calm her hammering heart, to speak again. Her voice was hurried and uneven when it came but no-one seemed to notice. ‘Alex will buy it. This is just the chance he’s been waiting for.’ She took another deep breath and felt her lips twist in a small, bitter smile. ‘The Hallorans will get their caravan park after all.’

  Joe got up and went to the window. Sara saw his shoulders heave. She went to his side, and saw with pity the tears on his cheeks. She put her hand on his arm. He turned to her and buried his face in her shoulder, and she comforted him as if he was a child.

  Later that night, in the silence of the sleeping house, Sara let herself in through the kitchen door. Her body ached and stung. It had been better the second time. Much better. Afterwards she had lain for a long time in the warm curve of Matthew’s arm, listening to him breathe, her cheeks curved in a smile she could not banish.

  Now she tiptoed through the dark kitchen, careful not to bang her hip on a chair. In an action that was so familiar she did not need to see, she reached up and found the carved wooden box her grandmother had left her. Holding it in the crook of her elbow, she reached up again until she found the battered old recipe book, bulging with the wrack of the past. Then she turned and made her silent way back to her room. Everyone else slept, worn out with the emotion of the day, but Sara was not tired. She had never felt more alive.

  In the dim spotlight of her bedside lamp, Sara opened the box, leaning close to breathe in the sweet evocative smell. She took out the silk-wrapped cards and then carefully laid the recipe book back in the box. From her bedside table she took a little sprig of thyme, crushed a few leaves between her fingers so she could smell its clean spicy scent once more, then laid the herb inside the front cover of her grandmother’s recipe book. ‘Thyme for courage,’ she whispered.

  This time she laid out the cards for herself. She did so slowly, gently, taking pleasure in their familiar smell and touch.

  The first card was the Page of Cups. A young man stood contemplating a chalice from which a fish was jumping. Behind him the sea lay in tranquil waves.

  Sara understood this card to represent herself. It often symbolised a young man or woman, melancholy, passionate, given to flights of fancy. It was a messenger card, a card that signalled change. She smiled dreamily and turned over the second card.

  The Six of Swords. A boat crossed a lake to a far shore, where an orchard grew. A man poled the boat along. Sitting before him, their backs hunched, their faces covered in grief, were a woman and a child. In the prow of the boat six swords stood like crosses.

  Sara gazed at the card thoughtfully. It signified a journey, away from sorrow towards calm and contentment. It could mean both a journey of the body or of the mind, or of both. Sara touched it lightly, then turned the third card over.

  A woman danced, her crossed legs forming a triangle like that of the Hanged Man. Unlike that symbol of sacrifice and suffering, however, she was pointing upwards. Her dancing body was framed in a wreath of leaves and ribbons. The World, the twenty-first and last card of the Major Arcana, signifying triumph and liberation. A very good omen indeed.

  Tide At The Flood

  low tide – 0.77 m

  4.05 pm, Thursday

  high tide – 2.34 m

  10.30 pm, Thursday

  On the day Sara and her brothers and sister went to the headland to throw their father’s ashes into the sea, there were no clouds in the pure and perfect sky. In the last brightness of the day, the Sanchez family sat together on the cliff, bound together by a dangerous fragility. They knew this was the end of life as they knew it.

  ‘So that’s that,’ Dylan said at last.

  ‘Yes, he’s gone,’ Sara said, her voice roughened with tears.

  ‘I suppose we should do it,’ Dominic said.

  Sara nodded slowly.

  ‘Do you want to do the honours?’ he asked gently, and Sara looked around at the others, questioning. Teresa grimaced at her through her tears. ‘Yeah, Sara, you do it.’

  Sara got to her feet rather slowly, clutching in her arms the round metal box. Her brothers and sister also rose, and they stood together on the edge of the cliff, at the point where Augusto had fallen. Joe stood a little apart, his shoulders hunched.

  ‘This is, like, a chance for us to really say goodbye,’ Sara said awkwardly, thinking over each word as she spoke. ‘Dad died up here, and he died painting, which if he’d ever thought about it was probably the way he’d want to go. It was a terrible accident, and we’re all going to miss him very much.’ She paused then, not sure if she should say any more. The others looked at her expectantly. ‘There’s nothing we could do about the fact that he’s gone, or the way that he died,’ she said then. ‘So I think we’ve got to remember how much he loved life, and how fully he lived, and try and make sure we don’t let him down.’

  Slowly she unscrewed the top of the canister, and with tears burning her eyes, looked out to sea. ‘Goodbye, Augusto Sanchez,’ she called and tossed out the contents of the canister.

  Sara stood, watching the ashes fall into the wind. She did not need anyone to tell her that time was the great healer and soon this agony of grief would fade – she knew that, having experienced grief before. The problem was, she did not want the pain to lessen, she did not want to stop feeling this great sorrow. Once the memory faded, her father would also fade. The day he was forgotten would be the day he ceased to exist, and that would be his true death. She understood no
w why her father had painted her mother one last time. He had been trying to keep her alive. He had been trying to expiate her death.

  She would paint him, Sara decided. She did not yet know how or whether her talent was great enough for such a task. She had spent a great deal of the past week trying to draw and discovering once again the difficulty of pinning down the moment with a streak of paint on a canvas. She felt as if she had come through a time of dark forgetting, so that her eyes and her hand no longer knew how to work together. All she could do was take pleasure in the colour and fluid texture of the paint, like a child finger-painting, and hope that, with practice, that crippled connection would find new nerve paths to travel.

  So she had walked into the hills and along the shore with her sketchbook and her paints, and she had drawn and dabbled and doodled, while back at the house her relatives squabbled over Augusto’s will and diminished the truth of his death with dusty truisms. Only the Sanchez siblings had not bickered or platitudinised. They were bound tight together by a secret. The death which should have torn the whole family apart had instead, paradoxically, brought them all closer. Even Joe, although he had become slow and quiet, as if whatever it was that had kept him wound so tightly had snapped.

  It did not take long for the wind to disperse their father’s ashes. Soon the air below them was clear again.

  ‘I’ve cooked us zarzuela,’ Sara said. ‘We’ll have one last feast before we go.’

  She could hear her father’s voice, saying, ‘The secret with zarzuela is the sweetness. Cinnamon, saffron, sweet paprika, bay leaves. It should be sweet and salty, like the sea, like pasión.’

  ‘I don’t s’pose we’ll ever come back here,’ Dylan said. ‘It all belongs to Alex now.’

  ‘He won’t mind us coming back,’ Sara said consolingly. ‘I’m sure he’ll understand.’