Sheerwater

by Leah Swann

  ‘It’s a bit late for coffee, Caleb,’ Grace was saying in a low voice. ‘You’ll never sleep. Herbal tea would be better. Or warm milk. Could you take tomorrow off? Have Lori or someone fill in?’

  ‘We’re doing Jamie tomorrow.’

  Ava walked towards the wooden table and grasped the back of a chair, afraid again that her legs would fold if she did not sit. Perhaps this was shock, all this coldness and hotness, this sliding towards dizziness, as though nothing was real, as though the world could melt like ice into water at any moment. At work they talked about shock as a medical condition where the circulatory system fails to maintain good blood flow to vital organs. There’d been a doctor at the police station. Hadn’t someone flashed a torch over her weeping eyes? Or was that at the scene, a paramedic? Anyway, if she was in shock she’d be in hospital, wouldn’t she?

  ‘Sit. Try to eat,’ said Grace, putting a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise in front of Ava. ‘You need your strength.’

  A second bowl clunked onto the table in front of Simon. Everything here was sparse, functional, wholesome. Ava focused on Simon’s fingers flickering like antennae over a coffee mug and recalled how he’d lifted the boy’s head with such a knowing and decisive touch.

  ‘Kids, come join us please,’ Grace called. A girl who must have been about ten turned down the volume on the television and came to the table with her younger brother. They introduced themselves to Ava as Clover and Benjamin. They took their places and tucked in their chairs at the table and waited. The girl’s face was round and ruddy and her bright eyes kept darting towards Ava and away.

  Benjamin said a short blessing at his mother’s request, and they ate. The bolognaise was darkly flavoured with bay leaves and cloves and so much like the sauce her mother used to make that Ava ate several eager forkfuls before her stomach closed over like a fist. Max would never eat a sauce this colour, he’d eat the pasta plain but Teddy would eat most things. The rushing sensation over her skin intensified: harsh and itchy, cold and hot.

  ‘Do your little boys go fishing?’ said Benjamin. ‘I go fishing. I caught a real big one yesterday . . .’

  ‘Hush now, Ben.’

  ‘Yes, their dad takes them fishing sometimes.’

  ‘We could go fishing when they come back,’ Benjamin said, smiling at her with his child’s clumsy eagerness to make her feel better. ‘Mum says you’ve come here to live.’

  ‘Just down the road. Number five.’

  ‘The renting house! I could walk to there. We could walk together to school.’

  ‘Mummy, can we turn up the television?’ said Clover. ‘There’s Uncle Simon on the news!’

  Ava’s eyes snapped to the screen in the living room and saw fuzzy footage that must have been taken on someone’s phone: the crushed nose of the plane, the bright burst of flame. She leaned forward, riveted, and saw herself belting madly through the smoke. The lens panned around to take in the vehicles that had pulled over: Simon’s car, a truck, an ambulance, a few motorbikes, three police cars and a fire engine. There was no vision of Ava’s car, no sign of Max and Teddy. She strained to see anything or anyone she recognised.

  ‘Turn it up!’ she cried and jumped to her feet, knocking over her chair.

  Benjamin ran into the living room and picked up the remote and they caught a fragment of voiceover: ‘ . . . Bird strike has been blamed for a fatal light plane crash near the Peterborough Airport in Victoria’s southwest that killed a woman. The pilot had a narrow escape when he lost control of his Cessna plane and was rescued by passers-by. Two child passengers survived and have been reunited with thankful parents. The crash . . .’

  ‘You’re a hero, Uncle Simon, they’re calling you a hero!’ said Benjamin, turning towards his parents for confirmation.

  Ava again remembered the dead woman. She loomed over the blur of the accident like the sun over the sea, only she was not gold but grey, a great, grey ghost head, with the fishiness of her eyes, her damp skin, her dark blue lips. Ava caught Simon staring at her with a blunt, searching, urgent look. When their eyes met he looked away.

  Onto the screen flashed the photographs of Ava, Max and Teddy that she’d texted police from her phone.

  ‘That’s you!’ said Clover.

  There was a number people could call to give information. Ava could barely make out the newsreader’s words. The segment was over.

  Ava heard herself say: ‘I think – I’ll go to the shelter now and lie down.’

  ‘It’s best you sleep here, in the manse,’ said Caleb.

  ‘Take my room,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll show you where it is.’

  ‘Let me show her,’ said Grace, getting up.

  Ava managed to ask Grace where the bathroom was. She needed a shower. Running water would wash off the dust and blood. She felt consumed by the urgent need to stand under streaming hot water with her forehead pressed against a tiled wall.

  Grace moved ahead of her along the hallway, opening and shutting cupboards and collecting various items. She gave Ava a clean towel, as well as bandaids and antiseptic cream.

  Ava looked at the box of bandaids and the cream without understanding, and then noticed for the first time small cuts on her hands.

  5

  When she finally slept, Ava dreamed she was swinging from a helicopter over a flooded quarry. The woman she was trying to rescue was screaming. She clipped the woman onto her harness and as they rose further into the air she looked down and saw her boys’ arms waving from the thick brown glug. She unclipped herself and dropped into the water and found she was swimming with Lawrence and he was telling her that the boys were safe from harm.

  She woke. Had she heard a sound – a knock? She lay stiffly in the strange bed, listening, and another knock came clear and distinct above the endless sea breeze that shrieked through the manse’s eaves. Perhaps it was the detective who was coming from Melbourne. Yes, that was it! The detective was waiting at the door – maybe with Teddy and Max!

  Ava got up and ran through the manse and opened the front door to find moonlight shining on an empty step where the marguerites had closed into pale, drooping flutes. Cold air gusted in from the street so strongly she had to push the door to shut it.

  She dragged herself back through the dark house to the bedroom, convinced she would not fall back to sleep. Perhaps she should drive back to the scene of the accident? She thought of the wind driving through the sea grasses. She thought of the cliff. She closed her eyes. Her body was dog-tired and she did sleep and she dreamed this time of the sea of her childhood at Brighton Beach. With her was Wes Norris, one of her mother’s boyfriends, the one who’d taught her how to swim, how to read the tides, how to spot a rip, who’d taken her to local swimming competitions and cheered her on, first for entering the competition, then for gaining fifth place, then third, then finally a first. Wes had been a father figure in her life for less than two years but he was the one she dreamed of still.

  ‘You’ve got a ripper style, Ava – we’ll make a champion of you!’

  His warm interest had been something for her little starved self to pour itself into, like flour into a cupped hand. One person’s kindness can be enough to sustain a whole childhood. That was the story of every Dickens novel she’d ever read and it was true of her own life too, and that was why those novels made her cry.

  In the dream, he had his arms outstretched over the bay, and he said: ‘See here? The sea constantly creates. Every wave is new.’

  It was not at all a Wes-like statement. In life he’d been blokey and down to earth and proud, like her mother Vanessa, not believing in anything beyond what the eye could see, the ear could hear, and the hand could touch.

  When he’d first seen the little altar in Ava’s bedroom – a box draped with a scrap of velvet cloth and a gold plastic angel with red wings bought for a dollar at her school’s trash-and-treasure stall – he’d been curious. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That’s where I pray,’ she’d told him. ‘Miss Kelly says
everyone has a guardian angel. I pray to mine.’

  ‘Your angel?’ He’d gently ruffled her hair as if to shake out such nonsense. ‘I don’t think so. And anyway, angels don’t have red wings.’

  ‘They do,’ she’d said, surprising herself. ‘The strong ones, the ones that know about nightmares and bad things.’

  She’d never told Wes what it was that she always asked her angel for: a father. Nor did she say that she’d thought he might be the answer. As things turned out, she was wrong: like all Vanessa’s boyfriends, Wes Norris had soon sunk into the bubbling cauldron of her mother’s past.

  She felt something warm on her palm – Wes’s giant, weather-roughened mitt, holding hers. She tightened her grip and grew aware that the touch was softer, more cautious, and she stirred, waking for the second time. Had she heard something, another knock? She saw the bedroom door gently closing and smelled aniseed. Had Caleb come in to check on her? Had he touched her hand? She remembered Teddy and Max were not there and fear passed through her like hot wire.

  The smell of aniseed was fading. She turned off the lamp. A small light flashed coldly in the darkness. The phone. She picked it up and saw there were missed calls and three new messages, one from her mother, one from Lawrence, and one from an unknown number.

  Hi Ava, I’m Detective Fiona Ballard, and I’ll be in charge of finding your sons. Resuming search at first light. Call me any time.

  There were several missed calls and a hysterical text from her mother.

  Oh my god, I’ve seen you on the news! I can’t believe this is happening!

  The message from Lawrence made her gasp. But what had she expected? She’d left and not told him where she was going. He was reacting to what she’d done. But still, somehow, it was quintessential Lawrence. She pummelled her temples with her knuckles. He could send her straight to despair.

  She slid off the bed and knelt, driving her face into the bedclothes. She pictured the boys napping together on the beanbags at home as they sometimes did, Teddy’s head lodged under Max’s chin and Max’s arm thrown protectively around his brother’s shoulders, as though by imagining this she could make it real, bring them back to her. A prayer unspooled from her, a long and incoherent plea. Our father, who art in heaven, guard them till they wake, keep them safe, keep them safe, bring them home, God, if you exist, can you hear me, God? Help me. God, help me. She felt stunned that despite all her forethought, her professional training, her planning, she was back, flailing, in the wash of helplessness she’d felt as a child when circumstances were beyond her control.

  SIMON

  Simon woke before midnight, the craving driving him up from sleep. He sat up, feeling it low down in his gut, stretching through him like a starving cat, claws hooking into his bowels, his belly, the back of his throat. He pulled his knees into his chest and rocked. He was in a worse state than most of his patients. Another tremor ran through him. Staring into the darkness of the living room he made out the shadowy outlines of a bookcase, an armchair, the television, a picture frame. The shabby leather sofa was dry and scaly against the soles of his feet.

  Here he was, back in Sheerwater, the tiny town where he’d been born. The night was full of the sounds of his childhood: the screech of a sooty owl, the guttural coughs of possums, the ocean wind tearing through the garden and rattling the windows, the wind he’d known and loved and hated from the crib.

  He’d kill for a drink. He pictured bottles filled with spirits. Long and short, green, clear and brown, curving and gleaming. Whiskey, gin, vodka, calling him like sirens. Liquids pooled and waiting and rippling with promises to fill the void. He understood the science of it, knew his body’s craving was both chemical and emotional – what a thing it was to be brought down by your own body’s chemistry. Simon gritted his teeth.

  Two nights ago, he and Olivia had thrown out every last drop of alcohol in the house, even the methylated spirits, but Simon later remembered a gift stowed high in the kitchen: Moët et Chandon in a limited-edition gold and lambskin sleeve. He’d crept out of bed and taken a stool into the pantry and dug around on the highest shelf. Had Olivia chucked it? No, there it was, seeming as solid and precious as pirates’ treasure on the dim shelf.

  The liquid inside would be strawberry blond, too sweet for his usual palate, but at that moment he couldn’t conceive of anything more delectable: that incredible baked-apple fragrance, the delicate whirr of fine bubbles, foamy and soft as clouds. The thought made his tongue curl, his buttocks clench, his palms twitch. He’d unwrapped the foil and eased out the cork, hoping the pop wouldn’t waken Olivia; even if it did, he calculated he’d have a third of the champagne drunk by the time she came down the hallway.

  Liquid spilled out, lukewarm, and he licked it from the meat of his hand. He was suddenly repulsed by his need. No! Don’t do it! He lifted the bottle to his lips. No! His teeth gnashed at the glass neck, and he threw the bottle across the room. It shattered into a shining mosaic of puddles and glass on the tiled floor. He spat out sweet burning drops and laughed.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Olivia had shouted, running down the hallway to the kitchen. ‘Why are you laughing? This is messed up, Simon.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  The champagne smelled beautiful, a rose-gold fragrance wafting from the floor.

  ‘You’ve got to get this in hand.’

  Simon got the mop from the cleaning cupboard. ‘Go back to bed, Olivia. I’ll fix this.’

  ‘Not just this, Simon,’ Olivia said. ‘Everything. What’s it going to be like in court if you’re like this? You’ll lose everything . . .’

  All he wanted was to get down on all fours like a dog to lick the champagne still clinging to the shards. He pushed the dirty mop through the mess.

  ‘It’s amazing you’ve held it together for so long,’ Olivia said, leaning forward to touch his arm. ‘Maybe it’s – too hard being here.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘You need to get away from here, from me. Go home for a bit. Stay with Caleb and Grace and the children.’

  As she spoke, Simon saw his brother’s face as he was when they were kids – an unbrushed tuft of hair sticking up like a cocky’s crest, the faint blue light hovering over him in that early hour at the breakfast table before school, the freckles, the cheeky grin. He put the mop to one side and shovelled sticky glass into the dustpan and tossed it in the bin.

  ‘How long is it since you’ve visited Sheerwater?’ Olivia said. ‘Go and talk things over with Caleb. If anyone can help you, he can.’

  There was no alcohol here in his brother’s house. For Simon there was only one way to deal with these cravings and that was to walk. He got up from the couch and pulled on his jeans. On his way to the bathroom he trod on one of Ben’s water pistols and the loud plastic snap made him jump.

  In the bathroom, he drank from the tap and washed his face and recoiled from his spectral reflection: eyebags soft and dark as plums and skin pitted like an unmade road. He splashed his cheeks with Caleb’s cologne, which smelled of essential oil, and rubbed his eyes. Don’t take money, he told himself, before remembering he was in rural Sheerwater where nothing would be open, not even the bottle shop.

  Simon pulled on his old footy jumper and went out through the front door into the cloudless night. The wind was biting. Once he could have jogged to warm himself but now he lacked condition; his shanks were as reedy as an old man’s. He had to go back inside for the coat and beanie he’d left in the bedroom occupied by Ava.

  He pushed softly at the door. The bedside lamp was on. Ava lay on her side facing the door, one hand outstretched, palm upwards. Simon’s coat was draped over the foot of the bed and his beanie was on the bedside table beside a pair of red feather earrings. He picked one up. The stem of the feather had been pierced directly by the cheap hook, making it hang awkwardly. It looked handmade. Feathers were tricky to work with, as he knew from his own boyhood attempts to make arrows like Robin Hood’s. Who had made thes
e for her – one of her missing sons?

  Simon glanced down at the slender face on the flowered pillow and saw how the skin puckered between her eyebrows like old paper even though she was younger than him – he guessed she wouldn’t be older than thirty. From her dry lips puffs of breath whitened in the cold bedroom.

  She was curled up tightly except for the hand that lay open, the only part of her that seemed to be truly asleep. He touched the open palm and to his surprise her hand gripped his finger. Her skin was cold. He took an extra blanket from the cupboard and laid it over her, almost tripping on the small, furry form of the sleeping dog on the floor.

  By the time he stepped outside again the craving for a drink had almost passed. Pulling the woollen hat down over his ears and stamping his feet to keep warm, he thought of what Ava had said to the dying woman in the plane. You’re going into love. Into love, or into nothing? What is nothing, anyway? A conscious being cannot experience its own cessation so it’s impossible to know.

  Simon strode against the wind towards the township, listening to the faint cries of shearwaters returning over the cliffs. Before long his legs were trembling. What kind of dickhead lets himself go like this? Weak. Eaten out. A shell of his former self.

  He had to rest. He found a bench that looked out to the ocean and sat down and closed his eyes. He pictured a tray of surgical instruments – scalpel, clamp, rongeur, forceps, nerve hooks, dilator – each with its unambiguous function of cutting, holding, gouging, grasping, retracting, dilating. Organised. Precise. Lifesaving. All he’d ever wanted was an alive and ordered universe that made sense of his compulsive mission to save and fix and cure people. His hands clenched. He was free of work and its bloodthirsty schedule and he was useless, a cork on the waves, a discarded thing.