Shallows

by Tim Winton

  VII

  On the road east the next day, despite his noon breakfast of eggs and toast and coffee, Cleve Cookson felt a sensation in his stomach like hunger pain and, like a hungry man, he saw small objects with unusual clarity as they flashed by, seemed to feel each stone of the road drumming into him as he swept along unsealed stretches. Twenty-eights blurred green across his path. Before the Hacker River bridge he turned off onto a dirt track that buckled through old, deserted properties parallel to the Hacker. The estuary through the paperbarks was a wide, incongruous smile, an arc that swept round to dunes and the sea. At the end of the estuary the water broadened into a cul-de-sac against the flat, wide sand-bar at the river mouth.

  Cleve drove out onto the hard-packed sand of the bar between sea and river, and the chassis hissed. Precipitous dunes banked the estuary on either side, wind-smoothed and marbled in ribbed patterns. Over the water, a shag lifted, craning suddenly away. With a flick of the wheel Cleve brought the Land Rover suddenly round; the open tray swung out, spraying a wake of sand as he side-drifted and came to a stalling halt. He switched the ignition off, wound a window down, and inhaled the sweet, mucky smell of the estuarine shallows and the paperbarks.

  There, he tried to apprehend a memory. Surf tumbled behind.

  The summer they married, the Cooksons came here to swim in the cobalt pools at the end of the beach. The morning was hot and clear, but by noon cloud from the south reduced the air to a chill and there was a quickening breeze from the sea. They gathered hats and towels and walked back along the beach to where the Land Rover was parked, exactly as now, on the bar. Queenie washed the sand from her feet in the estuary, wet legs glistening like polished walnut. She commented on the warmth of the water and continued to paddle about as Cleve stood by the edge. She coaxed him into paddling with her in the warm shoals, and soon they were splashing one another, batting the coppery water about like children, shaking it from their eyes. It was sometime then that Queenie noticed the dinghy upside-down on the bank around from them. Cleve took no notice; he was cautious of ownership and a feeling of dread spread through him as Queenie waded round to the boat. He was afraid of being caught; and then as she coaxed, afraid of ridicule, he took his chances of being discovered and helped turn the boat over, in awe of Queenie’s reckless innocence. Underneath there was some rope, a length of anchor chain, two oars, and one rowlock. They launched – gay and awkward – with one makeshift rowlock made with a loop of rope, and began their circuitous route upstream. Neither of them could row; Cleve’s father had never taken him fishing as a boy (much to his shame at school) and Queenie had always been reluctant passenger to her grandfather. They took an oar each and laughed and splashed and saw mullet and smelt riffling the surface, skipping in their corkscrew wake.

  Snagged in paperbarks, a quarter-mile up, the boat confirmed its superiority, refusing to be moved, and one oar floated away through the weepy, tangled trees. They stumbled and cursed; their gazes met and Cleve clung to her and she pulled him to the bottom of the boat and wrapped him in her nut-smelling thighs, wanting him for protection, wanting to protect him, her back bathed in the warm swill in the bottom and her hands in the woody smell of his hair. He could not take his eyes from her face, felt her breasts flattening themselves to him; he ached to dissipate and live in her body, a clean, warm, healing place. He wanted to inhabit the space behind her eyes, the source of her animation. She sighed and the paperbarks soughed and in time he could not tell between them as he made his own helpless sounds. Birds beat their wings afar off, like applause. The gentle rocking of the dinghy sent out a chorus of rings, ripples chasing one another under the flaking forms of the trees out onto the larger expanse.

  Later they unsnagged themselves and then the boat and sailed downstream in the freshened breeze, holding spread an orange towel between them. Wind shook white bark from their hair as they went.

  Cleve started the engine. He was hungry. His body and his mind growled with dissatisfaction, with pain almost.

  At the turn-off, Cleve paused for a moment looking east along the road towards Wirrup. He had a sudden thought: the old man, he’d go and see the old man. He wanted to talk, he wanted to sit out on the veranda with the old man without Queenie hovering over them both. He began to drive east, mind racing. He’d tell the old man about Queenie. The three of them could sort it out . . . But on the bridge he braked suddenly, backed up and headed back towards Angelus.

  No, he thought. The old man’ll think I’m crawling, and I’m not crawling to anyone.

  By the time Angelus came into view, his hunger was bitter and it burned acidic in him.

  June 26th, 1831 The motto of my companions, it seems, is a text from the prophet Isaiah: In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. The ignorant fellows believe the sperm whale to be the Serpent, agent of the Evil One. No honest fish, they say, has lungs and a teat and a member like a man’s. Perhaps it is fortuitous that we concern ourselves only with the right and humpback, the sleepy giants.

  June 27th, 1831 At dawn I heard noise and clattering in the camp. Gibbering, threatening sounds and shouting and what sounded like a struggle. There was a single musket-shot, then cries and jabbering. As I rose and peered through the shutter, I beheld Leek in the act of launching a lance, but my vision was narrow and I could not see its destination. Nevertheless I heard a cry, a dreadful scream. I was in the act of dressing when I heard a second shot.

  With the others of my hut I went outside to witness the scene. A blackfellow lay convulsing on his back, Leek’s lance piercing his throat, letting out blood in great gouts, and another native lay face down with a sorry wound in the back of his head. Men cursed in Cain’s hut. We went in. Churling lay naked and stricken with blood upon his lips and a horrible spear wound in his stomach from which still protruded the broken stub. Someone dragged something heavy through the door, and as I turned I perceived that it was the lubra I had seen once before. There was a musket hole in her back and she seemed to be dead.

  Some others, drunk, I presume, slept right through the commotion.

  We dug shallow holes for the natives as whales breached out in the bay. Finn’s boat took a canvas bundle and a Bible and returned at noon with Churling consigned to the sea and a whale in tow. Somehow they contrive to see it as a good omen.

  The lamp sputters and my eyes are strained. The wind has backed to north-easterly and blubber steam blows about. For some reason Churling’s clothes lie upon my sea chest. They will fit no one else, yes, that is the reason. Excepting his garments, only a waterstained notebook survives him, and that is of little use to anyone here. In it there is but one page of crude lettering which I transcribe below out of some sense of propriety that even I do not understand.

  ‘Eugene Andrew Churling

  Lost.

  The sand on this bech was once wite.

  Myself also. And I thot I might tell him my

  frend but he is faraway and can not lisen.

  He is lost in the Hevens and the Hevens is

  lost to me.

  Flesh. Blod. Sol.

  Good thing Mother is in Heven and I to Hell

  for now I will not meet face her over this.

  For I am ther animal.’

  Painstakingly scripted below this is a verse copied from Jonah the prophet, the favourite, it would seem, of the whalemen.

  ‘Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better to die than to live.’ There is nothing else to tell of Churling. Even the Testament he has copied from is gone. His garments, like my own, reek. This shabby piece of written nonsense is all, and the remainder of his notebook remains a blank volume.

  VIII

  Beneath a heatless bolt of sun which angled through her window, affixed itself to the wall and bristled with angry dust-motes, Queenie Cookson lay on her bed listening to the building and, beyond those red, wet walls, the cit
y. Somewhere a car horn brayed. She would stay in today: the streets, shops, parks, walking feet, the news-stands, fruit, faces, smells, the close forward movement, did not attract her this morning. There had been no news. She was even losing expectation. She felt winter’s firmness and observed that cold bar of sunlight until an unseen cloud extinguished it.

  Queenie had almost given up imagining what the others were doing; it was difficult to imagine them at all. The anxious waiting had become a dull anticipation, then curiosity, and now a bitter taste. She had no idea how Cachalot was progressing; the papers mentioned nothing, and she could only presume they were still at their hotel, blocks away, in an airier quarter of the city, waiting for the Zodiacs that no one would transport and no one would replace. Without some inside influence, it looked hopeless. No amount of money would help.

  She was glad she had decided to wait it out alone. The trip from Angelus in the crowded car, the plush hotel, the primal screaming and the parties and hangers-on had been too much. It was action that she wanted, not Brent’s sleazy press conferences, not more talk. Waiting was bad enough. Talk made her lonely. She had told herself back then – she could not afford to be lonely. It was what made her need. It was what Cleve liked best and, though she despised herself for it, it was loneliness that she found most attractive in him.

  Queenie lay with her hands behind her head, thinking of the past weeks. She had found the guest house in a cheap part of town. The landlady, in a man’s threadbare dressing-gown, showed Queenie to her late husband’s room which was still occupied by a collection of model railways and war games spread along a wide, laminated table. The room was dark. The mattress of the hollow bed smelt of urine. The big house reverberated with the cough and hock of chronic smokers. The ivy-smothered outhouse was a long walk away, and the lane behind was the territory of fighting cats. The yard snapped and flapped grey with bed linen on long, drooping lines.

  Each morning Queenie, not staying for the big fatty breakfast with the other hawking boarders in the dining-room, left her room at the front of the house and sought out new and different places in which to have her coffee and toast, cafes and restaurants squeezed between long nondescript buildings, in arcades and lanes.

  Pushed forward by other bodies and an eagerness for exploration, Queenie embraced the city. At first she felt awkward: her skirts too short, jeans obsolete, her accent too broad, her manner dull and friendly and countrified; but she soon learnt to take refuge in the haste and anonymity and the grandness of scale; she buried herself. Boutiques led to markets, galleries, taverns, craft shops, and arcades linked with more arcades: bookshops, cinemas, antique shops, junk shops, theatres; she found parks and restaurants and streets full of American sailors, unemployed youths, browsing matrons, clusters of old men spitting and laughing with phlegmy throats. Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Poles, passed her in the street. She walked blindly into a cinema and found herself watching a pornographic movie with thirty men in business suits who fled when the lights went up at intermission. In the bookshops she bought new novels and books of poetry she had never heard of. Once, she caught a bus to the beach and walked through the coastal suburb in which Cleve had lived with his parents all his life. She wondered what she would do if she suddenly came upon his parents. She had met them only once. Her walk through the suburb was not illuminating.

  Footsore and heady, Queenie returned each night to her room of dusty locomotives and fallen soldiers to read herself to sleep. The bed sank in the middle like a hammock, the headboard was crusty with nosepickings and squashed insects. The hardbound novels, she found, were mostly about the writing of more novels, and the poetry concerned itself with itself, and between them they posed no threat to sleep.

  Come on, you bastards, Queenie thought, getting out of bed at last. Let’s hear from you. Something must be happening, something at least.

  IX

  When finally the rain ceases, Hassa Staats steps outside onto the footpath under the leaking marquee and draws in the crisp, still air, exhaling cautiously so as not to cough and yield to the itch in his chest, the feeling of having swallowed a burr that will do damage if dislodged. The southerly has blown itself out: the harbour is tranquil and the townspeople pass, unharassed, with armsful of shopping, skirts and coats and hats in proper place. Some of them smile or say hello as they pass, and to those he feels deserve it Staats will wave and grin back between chomps on his barley sugar. Cars hiss by, lifting water from the road, creating their own vaporous rain. This Saturday noon Angelus is peaceful, even dull, but Hassa Staats savours the calm. The empty tour buses parked outside the Bureau up the street do not discomfort him today. It is good to have peace, he thinks, shifting inside his jacket. Everything has its place again today; there is a rightness in the air.

  The sight of Marion Lowell unhurriedly dodging the streams of water spilling from the gutters as she comes down the hill from the direction of the Pustling office breaks the spell, though not unpleasantly. As he observes her progress down the street towards him, noting the elevation of her breasts at each step, he is reminded of a matter that until now has belonged to yesterday – Des Pustling’s phone call. Pustling had spoken to him about TRENT’S RENTALS and at some length about the future of Angelus. TRENT’S RENTALS is owned and run by Harry Trent who is, by marriage, Hassa Staats’s cousin. Pell, Pustling said, had been hiring one of Harry’s trucks these past weeks, much to the neglect of his congregation and the commerce of the town. And, Pustling said, the money he was using to hire with was hot money. Embezzlement. Pustling was asking a favour. Hassa was to speak to Harry. Trucks were to cease to be available. All trucks.

  It was a shock to Staats to hear such news. Certain though he was about the worthlessness of Pell’s denomination and the weakness of the old man’s character, the idea of embezzlement surprised him. Instinctively, he thought it a matter for the police, but he would see Harry nevertheless; he was not one to turn aside a favour for Des Pustling.

  It occurs to him, as he thinks and observes, that Marion Lowell’s breasts must be of considerable weight; he sees them rise and fall like loose pistons and he has a terrible desire to weigh them in his hands. Though he intends to, he has not yet spoken to Harry Trent about this matter of Pell; he is reluctant. Hassa does not like to mix family with business. And this kind of business leaves him uneasy.

  ‘Hello, Marion,’ Staats says, as she comes within earshot.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Staats,’ Marion says, looking up from the pavement, surprised.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Um. Fine.’ She hesitates, stops a few feet from him. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘No.’ Staats chuckles. ‘No, no, not at all.’

  ‘Oh.’ She breaks into a doubtful smile, prepares to walk on.

  ‘Would you care for a drink?’

  ‘I —’

  ‘On the house?’

  ‘Well, I was just going to lunch.’

  ‘A quick glass of sherry, then.’

  ‘Beer will be fine.’

  They go into the lounge bar where he steers her to an empty table in a corner and has drinks brought. The pub is beginning to fill. Staats raises his glass. Marion Lowell drinks, nervous; the bulk of the publican, the glowing corpulence of him, frightens her.

  ‘I have a favour to ask of you,’ he says, thinking of other favours he wishes he had the courage and the youth to ask.

  ‘Oh?’ Her heart shrinks. She does not like favours.

  ‘Can you tell me a few things about Reverend Pell?’

  Marion Lowell lowers her glass carefully. ‘I’m not an expert on Mr Pell,’ she says just as cautiously.

  ‘What about his trips?’

  ‘Well, I hardly —’

  ‘Harmless curiosity.’

  ‘Which trips do you mean, Mr Staats?’

  ‘The ones he makes out to the farms in Harry Trent’s truck, for instance.’

  ‘Listen, I think I’d better leave now —’

  ‘Let’s be frank
, shall we?’ Hassa Staats says, laying one pink soup-plate of a hand on the table beside hers, so close she can sense his heat.

  ‘You be Frank and I’ll be Marion.’

  ‘You have a sense of humour,’ he says, feeling his advantage slipping.

  ‘And a sense of decency, too, I like to think.’

  ‘I need to know – I have to know – what he takes out in Harry’s truck. Please?’

  ‘Why do you need to know?’

  Staats takes a breath. Why not be honest? he thinks. A bit. ‘Because I have to do a favour, too.’

  ‘Favours. This bloody town was built on favours! Hell, what’s it matter, anyway? He takes out food, blankets, clothing, matches, kerosene, books, Bibles. That kind of thing.’ She sips her beer, disgusted.

  ‘Hot?’

  ‘Hot Bibles? For God’s sake!’ she says with a tone of amusement that she cannot sustain.

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask the man?’

  Staats slides his glass about the laminated table, unable to answer.

  ‘Well, I don’t want to spoil my lunch,’ she says, rising, thinking: well you’ve blown it now, girl – on a bloody priest, of all things.

  Staats, amused and entertained, watches the tension in her moving buttocks as she leaves and thinks enviously of Pustling. A girl with life, there, he thinks, drinking up. By the time he has finished his glass – and hers – his admiration is replaced by a thin, undefined worry.

  He rises and sidles out onto the pavement again where he watches the shopkeepers closing up, cars pulling out, children shouting and evading their mothers. He recognises the thin, awkward figure of Cleveland Cookson emerging from the hooded entrance of the Black and White, and he notices the lopsided gait like that of a man who has recently had an arm amputated and has lost equilibrium; it is the same walk his wife Mara had after her first mastectomy. Staats watches the young man lope off. She’s left you for good, matie, he thinks – and I don’t know who’s luckiest, her, you or us. But even this gives Staats short comfort because he knows that she will be back.