He looks across my shoulder toward the ocean. “Surfing is a mix of battling against nature and going with it, Al,” he explains. “You fight against the waves to get out, fight against gravity to stand up, then you harness the energy of the wave to ride it safely in to shore. And when you’re trying to get to where you need to be, out the back before you surf in, just like in life, you don’t need to take every wave head-on. Pick the ones you can push through and the ones that are best to duck under…like I taught you on the board paddling out the other day.”
We walk along the sand till we get to the spot Rick thinks is just perfect. “See that rip, there to the right of the sandbar? We’re going to use it to get ourselves out. Rips can be swimmers’ enemies, Al Pal, but surfers’ friends.”
We paddle out. I’m tucked tightly in behind Rick until we’re carried in the sandbar gutter by the pull of the rip. Once we finish our free ride, we paddle on farther, making our way out the back through the rolling crests. I push the rails of my board with my hands, and knee it down in the middle, to duck-dive under the oncoming waves. Rick nods at me like he knows I’ve been listening and beckons me over to him ahead in the clear water. This is a place where Rick likes to talk.
“Okay, Al, we’re at the mercy of the ocean now; we can’t control it so we’ve got to work with it and take what it gives us. It forces us to use all our senses and adapt quickly. Don’t be scared, Al. Just be ready. Do you remember the day you popped up on the front of my board at Bondi?”
I tell him, “Yep, I’ll never forget.”
“You’re going to do the same again, Al, only this time on your own, on your own McGrigor. And I’ll be right behind you. But first you’ve got to pick the right wave, one with a solid blue face, and you’ve got to decide where you’re going. Not knowing where you’re going is dangerous for a surfer and anyone else nearby. You’re going to use the energy of your wave, commit to it and give it back a good burst of your own energy too. Once you feel that wave grab you from behind, then spring up, get onto it, get into it—and whatever you do, Al, don’t forget to lap up the joy.”
I wait for my wave. I’ll know it when it comes. I will see its face and it will recognize mine too.
And here it is
This is the one
I’m paddling hard and fast
If I can ride a wave, I can climb a tree
If I can stand up on my board on my own…
I can be free
I spring up
And then I’m standing—woohoo—I’m standing
My knees are bent
I’m staying low
Locked into the wave
I’m gliding-dancing-flying
Toward the shore
Suspended and held
By nature’s hand
I go from not being able to do it, to not being able to stop. I catch wave after wave, losing count and all track of time. Rick can’t wipe the smile off his face, and Darce and his boys watch from the rocks, cheering me on until they paddle out too and the five of us spend the rest of the day surfing together with them calling, “It’s yours, Alligator!” at every good wave.
* * *
■ ■ ■
We’re all pushing off in the morning, so Darce has planned a farewell feast.
“Chicken Honolulu, and I’m going to need you all involved in its preparation,” he announces, picking up twigs for the fire. He gives us each a chicken breast in a plastic bag and tells us to pop it onto the middle of our camp chair and sit down on it very slowly and stay there for two beers, “Or in our young Alligator’s case, two Cokes.”
Once that’s done and the chicken is flattened out, Darce places our squashed breasts on cheese slices that he’s centered on large pieces of foil and then tops them with pineapple rings from a Golden Circle can. He wraps them up into foil parcels and, like he’s done with every other meal he’s cooked, pokes them into the embers of the hot fire.
“You’re gonna love this one, Alligator,” he says, beaming with confidence. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t like cooked pineapple and probably won’t like sat-on chicken either, especially if I end up with Fat Matt’s breast that burst out the sides of his plastic bag and had to be peeled off the canvas chair. Blokes’ food was good for a while, but suddenly I’m missing Matilde’s beef goulash, spaetzle dumplings and fisherman’s soup.
Darce slaps his cooked creations into hamburger buns and tells me, “Get your chops around that grub,” which I do, mostly for his sake, while he watches on with a cook’s anticipation, lighting up a smoke. Despite the cooked pineapple it tastes good, surprisingly good, and when Darce asks, “So what do ya reckon, Al?” I say, after a second bite, “Bloody delicious!” He unleashes such a big belly laugh that it becomes a croak, then a cough, then a whole-body wheeze. “There you go…you learned how to make chicken Honolulu…and you got out there and learned how to ride that McGrigor like the bloody Duke…all without traveling to Hawaii. What do you reckon, boys? Here’s to our surfing Alligator,” he says between deep wheezes.
Darce raises his beer, then quite a few more, until his eyes get red around the rims and watery in the middle. He tells Rick that meeting us on this trip was “bloody fantastic” and that this girl here—Alligator—“is every bit as good as a boy and in some ways a good deal better.” He says that he’ll never forget watching me learn to surf and that to do that straight out of bloody hospital was a gutsy bloody thing to witness. He raises another beer to Rick and says that he’s “a great bastard, real persistent,” and one of the best bloody dads he’s ever seen in all his travels up and down the bloody coast. “Pardon my bloody French, Alligator…and here’s to you again, young lady.”
Glen suggests it might be time to turn in, but Darce says he’s just got one more thing to say—to get off his chest—and that is, having kids is the best bloody thing that could ever happen to a bloke, and that even though he would have loved a daughter, he’s been blessed to have three sons, and that it breaks his heart to see some bloody bastards not look after their kids because you never know what’s round the bloody corner and when you might lose one and be left with nothing but ashes.
He says that losing their mum was “a big bloody blow,” but that they did all right. “Didn’t we, fellas? Four men, just on our own with me giving it a crack to be Mum and Dad. And I tell you what…you’ve made your old man bloody proud every bloody day, and at least my princess was spared from the worst blow of all…losing our Trev….”
We all sit silently looking at the fire until Glen fills us in: “Our brother Trev died in a car accident eleven weeks ago.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, mate,” says Rick.
We keep watching the fire.
“And now, now there’s just…just the three of us,” says Fat Matt, wiping a large tear away with his free hand.
Darce goes quiet and his bottom lip starts to tremble. He loses interest in his beer. Glen and Matt stand up and put a hand under each of his elbows, pull him out of his camp chair and say good night. They take Darce, each with an arm around his back, weeping quietly, off toward the direction of their tent.
That part of my heart that feels engorged with someone else’s sorrow lifts me out of my camp chair and onto my feet. I catch up with Darce, so I can tell him, in case I never get to see him again, “You’re a good dad, Darce, and a good mum too. And a bloody great bloke.”
I wrap my arms around his middle and rest my face against his smoky chest. His weeping becomes a whole-body wheeze, then a cough, then a croak, then a big belly laugh; and even though I shouldn’t be doing all this swearing, I am kind of pleased that I have, because I think that tonight under the stars at Crezzo it might have just helped slightly reverse a situation.
* * *
■ ■ ■
“Where are my mum’s ash
es?” I ask Rick as we get ready for our last night in the tent.
“She was buried, so there are no ashes, Al. She was buried in Waverley Cemetery. We could visit her grave when we get home, if you want to do that.”
“Nah, not really,” I say, climbing into my sleeping bag. “I just wish I could remember her face. Sometimes I think I do, but then when I zoom in it’s just a mirage or something.”
We’re lying in the dark and after a while Rick says, “I’ve got something that might help you remember, Al. I brought it with me and was waiting for the right time.” He gets up and starts rustling through his bag. “I’m sorry you can’t see your mum, Al, I really am, and I’m sorry that the two of you can’t ever have a good yarn, but I’ve got something here, so you can kind of smell her.” Rick brings a plastic bottle to just under my nose and says, “Take a whiff, Al. Inhale your mum.”
The smell is familiar and comforting and at once old and new. It ties loose strings from my long-ago memory to my more recent life. Happy strings which, tied together, make sense. The smell is green-apple shampoo. It’s the smell of my best-ever friend, Patricia Faith O’Brien, and now my dad is telling me that it’s my mum’s smell too.
I inhale again and whisper to Rick, “I miss Patricia.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It’s a long drive home on the exact same road that we took to get up to Crezzo. I’m looking out the window and thinking about soon turning thirteen—a teenager. Some pockets inside me feel thirteen, but others feel more like thirty-two. It won’t be the exact same me returning to Number 23, that’s for sure. I’m suntanned for a start, and Rick reckons I might be a bit taller and that I’m definitely a good deal stronger. “You’ve got surfer’s arms, Al, and I reckon you’re starting to get surfer’s abs.” He gives me a soft prod in my side across the bench seat and looks kind of pleased with every bit of me.
And a surfer’s presence in my head and direction in my feet, I say to myself, wondering if those things can ever be seen.
We stop at the petrol station at the Bulahdelah Bends for a “burger with the lot.” On my way back to the van I walk past a truckie eating a burger on the benches by the bin and I say, “G’day…bloody good burgers, hey!” He gives me a thumbs-up and a look like he’d be ready to help if I needed it. I’d better get all this swearing out of my system before I next see Matilde; she would never pardon my French. I start eating my burger alone over the hood because Rick says he needs to make a quick call from the phone booth inside the gas station, and once he’s done that, and he’s polished off his burger in seven big bites, we hit the road again, and I hit play on Morning of the Earth.
It’s late afternoon when we finally slide down the driveway of Number 23. Suddenly I realize how much I’ve missed home, and I can’t wait to see Matilde and Joy. I leave Rick to unpack the van, and I run up the steps to the back porch and in through the kitchen door. I want to tell Matilde all about our trip…the places we’ve been, the cooking we’ve done, Darce, Matt and Glen…and my own McGrigor: well, maybe I won’t tell her everything; I’ll leave out the bits that would make her deadset livid.
But Number 23 is empty. Strangely, Matilde is not at home. I’ve never known Matilde not to be home in the late afternoon before. I go from room to room. The fridge is looking all but empty, the Singer is cold, and unfolded washing sits on top of the cane basket in the laundry. Then I see something that’s so unusual, I double back to take a second look: Matilde’s bed is unmade.
I go to the side fence, through the brown gate and weave past Joy’s wind chimes into her kitchen. If my grandmothers still spoke to each other, then perhaps Matilde might have let Joy know where she was going; to the post office, or up to the shops. She might have asked if Joy would like something from Dave’s or a lemon from Joe’s. But I can’t remember that ever happening, and here at Number 25 there is no sign of Joy either. Her teapot is cold, her sweeties jar is empty and her bed is also unmade—though I have to admit that’s not so unusual.
There’s one last place to look for Joy: the glasshouse. I’m kind of uncomfortable going to Joy’s glasshouse, having left it a mess of smashed bottles last time I was there. I approach the door gingerly, and Simone de Beauvoir pops her head around the trunk of the magnolia tree. She looks happy to see me but just as uncertain as I am about the glasshouse door being opened again. She saunters over to be by my side and nuzzles into my left ankle.
I pick up Simone and together we open the door. There is no sign of Joy in the glasshouse and no sign of any of her emotions either. Instead, on the far side, under the glass window is a potter’s wheel, and drying on the bench is a series of pots, in all shapes and sizes, with little twists and indentations.
There are glazed pots and vases too, in purples and greens, oranges, turquoise and reds, out as if on display. And glazed alphabet letters…I count them out: two As, two Es, two Ds, two Ns, an I, S, L, G and a B. On the windowsill nearby is a menagerie of small clay animals: rabbits, bears, ducks and whales—even a penny tortoise. Simone looks up at me, perhaps hungry and hoping for boiled lettuce, but it could be that she has a question: Are you going to get to work and smash all of these too?
“Allegra!” It’s Matilde. She’s calling me from over the fence. “Allegra,” she calls again, with a levity and lilt that sound almost like love. I have for a long time suspected that Matilde cooks with love, mends with love and hovers with love, but she’s never sounded like love…not before now.
“I’ll see you again soon,” I assure Simone, putting her down by the water-lily pond.
I pop back through the gate and into Matilde’s open arms. Today she even smells like love.
“I missed you, Matilde,” I say, with my two arms around her back now long enough to touch on the other side: I have her completely encircled. Releasing slightly after a hug that she’s actually returning, I realize that our eyes are now almost at the same level. So Rick is right, I have definitely grown, but it could also be that Matilde has shrunk.
“And I missed you, Allegra, I missed you very much.” She seems to be pushing through feeling awkward to get to a warm place. “I didn’t expect you back before dark.” Matilde is wearing her gardening clothes and has a bucket at her feet filled with small spades, hand trowels and her Dutch hoe.
“Were you in the garden?” I say, a bit puzzled. “I didn’t see you there before…before I went over to Joy’s.”
“Let me look at you again, Allegra. Yes, yes, I think that you have definitely grown to be taller,” she replies, not responding to my question. “You must be hungry—it’s past six o’clock. I haven’t anything cooked, but still we will eat.”
Even though Matilde’s fridge is short on supplies, her pantry is—as it has been my whole life—full. Shelf after shelf is stockpiled with pickles and preserves, chutneys, relishes and jams, sauces and all varieties of bottled fruit. Throughout my childhood I’ve often wondered if Matilde was preparing for famine, a food strike or perhaps another world war. But right now all her harvesting, preserving and bottling means that on short notice she is prepared for dinner. By the time I’ve showered and changed, she is putting a colorful meal out on the table. It looks nothing like spuds wrapped in foil or chicken Honolulu, but I know it will be familiar, nutritious and completely delicious.
She sets down a large serving of sweet and sour summer pickle made up of cabbage, onions, purple peppers and carrots that she’s scooped from a jar labeled CSALAMADE into her best porcelain bowl, the one with butterflies around the middle. Into smaller bowls with the same pattern she dishes up pickled gherkins, shredded beetroots and hard-boiled eggs. I don’t think Darce and the boys would consider this good “blokes’ food,” but after weeks in hospital, and then up the coast, I’m looking forward to getting my chops around Matilde’s grub.
“Here, Allegra, take this plate up to your father before we sit down,” says Matilde, hanging her apro
n on the hook near the stove.
I catch a wave and hear myself say with a burst of bátor, “Maybe he’d like to eat with us down here.”
Matilde lowers her eyelids for three-apple-pie and inhales. She lifts her head and slowly exhales. Then—right there—at that moment there is a shift. Matilde’s head, heart and soul pull a U-ey and she says, “Well, because you are safely back home, yes, for tonight, you can invite him down here for dinner.” She doesn’t use Rick’s name, but an invitation is an invitation.
I’m absolutely bowled-over bloody astonished. But of course I don’t tell Matilde that—especially the “bloody” bit—and instead tell myself, Just act cool, Ally, like it’s perfectly normal that Rick should join us for dinner—at the same table—sitting down together—like a family.
“Thanks, Matilde,” I say, jumping up and running out the back door and up to Rick’s flat before she has a smidge of a chance to change her mind.
“Are you sure she invited me, Al?” says Rick, standing at his door in a towel.
I’m about to sweeten it up, give it some oomph and say something like, Absolutely, she suggested it right out of the blue, with a beaming smile, saying she’d be deadset delighted if you joined us for dinner, but I stop myself and instead shoot for the truth and tell him exactly how it came about. “Well, I suggested it, but Matilde agreed, and an invitation is an invitation.” I prod him in the ribs and add, “Please come, Rick….Don’t fob me off now.”
That does the trick, and for the first time in my whole entire life, my dad, Rick, has a seat at our table.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I sleep in late…that’s what teenagers do, apparently, and I’m eight days off being thirteen. I’m surprised that at ten past eleven Matilde hasn’t blasted me out of bed, calling me a lazing-bones-sleeping-head. I soon learn why; she isn’t here. Matilde, it seems, has gone out, again. She has left breakfast prepared for me, though: liverwurst, tomato and cheeses, splayed out on a plate in the fridge.
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