Shallows

by Tim Winton

  July 30th, 1875 Why the others?

  July 31st, 1875 A man has only himself and his cunningness and stubbornness, brute strength and wit. He has no need of forgiveness. And, should I have need of it?

  Cleve stared at the final page, too drunk and confused and excited to notice the stub along the spine where pages had been torn out.

  Arrogant old sod, he thought with admiration. It’s sixty miles from here to Wirrup. Stubbornness and courage. You old bugger.

  Cleve sat for an hour in the kitchen as his thoughts jumbled hurriedly. We need blokes with balls . . . He saw a little boy with his penis in the teeth of a metal zipper. He saw an emaciated man hobbling into a searing light. He saw himself in the long shadow cast by Queenie Coupar in the afternoon sun. He saw his naked name on the front page of the Advocate. Saw a white-fingered hand. Saw himself shivering in the rain, treading water in circles like a drill-bit. A shrivelled ear. One of us . . . His fist crashing down on her back, his back, backs.

  He slid low in his chair until all he could see was the jarrah grain of the table, like a brown sea, like effluent, oil, leather, skin, windows, nothing.

  At three o’clock in the afternoon Cleve staggered out to the Land Rover and, unsteadily, made his way through town to Middle Beach. An offshore breeze licked the tops off the incoming swells and an archipelago of surfers took advantage of the conditions. Old men fished from the beach with long fibreglass rods and retired couples strolled along the cold white sand. Cleve parked outside the Ocean View Hotel and got out into the chill. The low sky foretold rain. His head was dense with alcohol and confusion; he walked without grace.

  At the reception desk a balding man in his mid-thirties scowled at him. ‘What can I do you for?’

  ‘Er, is . . . Ted Baer in, please?’ Cleve managed to say, wrestling consonants.

  ‘No. Sorry,’ the balding man said, looking as if he was itching to pick his teeth, ‘Mr Baer doesn’t have visitors.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not a visitor,’ Cleve said, rocking gently, ‘I’m a colleague.’

  ‘Listen, mate, if you’re from the press you’ll have to book an appointment by phone. You can go outside somewhere to a public phone and ring from there.’

  ‘I’m not from the press,’ Cleve said. ‘Do I look as if I’m from the press?’

  The desk clerk eyed him critically. ‘You look like you’re from the Boongs’ Reserve. Out!’

  Cleve stared, dumb. ‘Hey, listen,’ he said after a moment, ‘I’ve been invited to go shark fishing with Mr Ted Baer —’

  ‘You look like you couldn’t catch a dose of clap, let alone a shark. Now get out, or I’ll have you put out.’

  ‘Listen, mate, I drink here, you know!’

  ‘Looks to me like you don’t care where you drink.’

  ‘Now listen here —’

  Cleve found himself in a half-nelson in the company of two men with thick sideburns and bad breath, walking, bent over, out of the hotel. He was amazed at such behaviour and before he could unhand himself he discovered himself face-down on the grass verge.

  Nauseated and angry, Cleve drove back through town and out to the Paris Bay road. He overtook tour buses and strayed several times onto the gravel edge of the road. At a roadside shop he bought a hamburger, the meat of which slipped from between the buns and into his lap as he drove off. He opened a warm bottle of beer that had rolled about under the seat for weeks, and drove with it between his legs.

  Half a mile before the locked gates of the whaling station at Paris Bay Cleve turned off the sealed road and bounced up a track that led to the beach. Sleepy, he sat for a time above the place where he had dived and met Ted Baer. He listened to the radio and in time the ABC announcer lulled him to sleep.

  When he woke, Cleve was thirsty and the sun was heavy on the hills. He drank the remainder of the warm beer and started the Land Rover.

  A few miles along the road towards Angelus in the national park, Cleve was confronted by a huge kangaroo that stood in the middle of the road, turning its head from side to side in a gesture resembling arrogance. Cleve sounded the horn; it did not move. Cleve sat with his fist on the horn, stopped directly in front of it. When at last the creature sniffed and lumbered off to one side, Cleve was seized by a sudden urge.

  He pulled off the road to one side, cut the engine and got out. From the tray in the back he pulled out the speargun, tightened the spool of line with his palm, and went into the dense bush where the kangaroo had entered. Light was worsening; the bush was low and in the lee of the coastal hills. There was no sound except for the wind and Cleve’s footfalls. He stopped for a moment, braced the butt of the speargun on his hip and pulled back the heavy jelly rubbers to load it. He picked his way through the noisy banksias, stalking, surveying the bush slowly and with care. For seventy yards more he stalked, pointing the diamond head of the spear about him. His head ached and his throat was parched. Twilight, sudden winter twilight settled and the air grew colder. Cleve became angry, frustrated, embarrassed by the very idea, and he turned to make his way back. Out of the darkness beside him came another dark which brushed him aside, floating like a black cloud. As he fell, Cleve felt the spear jerk free, heard the rattle and the thick grunt. He lay on his back, dazed, the spool spinning beneath him. It took him a few moments to realise that he had not speared himself but the kangaroo. The bush was awake with pounding and crashing.

  He grabbed the empty stub of the barrel and tried to stem the unravelling of the spool. As soon as the line went taut he was jerked to his feet and then back to his knees. He swore, realising it was almost dark and he was connected to a struggling, wounded kangaroo in a national park. He was dragged a few feet on his knees, cursing; farther along a stump caught him in the shins. He made hopeless efforts at wrapping himself round flimsy trees, but they broke and slashed his cheeks. The animal was in pain; in the darkness he heard its weight, its impact against the logs and earth.

  ‘Lie down and die, you bastard,’ Cleve muttered in his desperation.

  And then the barrel was jerked free from his hands, the butt catching him sharply on the chin. He heard it rattle away. For a few yards he followed; it was always a little ahead, snagged on rocks and bushes. The animal lurched on, coughing.

  Cleve was doubled up by his own sickness and he vomited until he could breathe again. When he stood it was totally dark. The horizon was about eight feet away. He abandoned the hunt and turning, and turning again to return, realised that he was lost.

  He blundered for an hour. He found the road, but in the darkness he could not tell in which direction the Land Rover lay. He shouted at the dark to save himself the indignity of more tears. A car passed, slowed, break lights glowering.

  Storms

  I

  Marion Lowell moves about in the fluorescent light of the empty office, looking now and then down to the deserted street that is salmon-pink in the dawn and silent but for the wind rushing in from the harbour, lifting papers, stirring muck in the gutters. She opens filing cabinets and drawers, jerking them out. Something catches her eye every time she changes direction – the kookaburra on the Goormwood Service & Lube calendar, head back in ridicule, eyes unblinking these past six months. All year she has been watched by those eyes as she marks off the days with a felt pen as she has done all the years before. And now she takes up the pen and strikes the twentieth of June through; and pauses for a moment before blackening the kookaburra’s eyes with a hasty pair of sunglasses. She scoops up an armful of files and takes them to the shredder in the back room.

  We Buy, We Sell, the plaque says. I know, I know, she thinks. The sound of the shredder all but cancels thought; she looks about her with care.

  HAVE A WHALE OF A TIME IN ANGELUS,

  150 YEARS OLD IN 1979

  ANGELUS: HISTORY MADE AND IN THE MAKING

  PIONEER TOWN, 1979

  JEWEL OF THE SOUTH: ANGELUS ’79

  The new posters on the white walls left by the drunken executive almost a fortn
ight ago still make her uneasy: she can almost hear them shouting over the noise of the machine; too many smiling faces and rich colours. How long? she thinks, returning to the office. Oh, Marion, you’ve just been too stupid and too greedy. She feels the calendar in the recesses of her vision as she gazes out into the street: 150 Years Old in 1979. Yes, she thinks, I feel as though I will be, too. You should never have thought you could climb in this town, dearie. Should have vamoosed to the city with all your friends. This place isn’t right. It drove the old man away and Mum’s sickening from it. And your efforts at ripping the place off have been a laugh. Oh, the first one, Johnny Weldon, wasn’t too bad; and I did all right out of it. Could’ve married him and had the lot. Pity the poor old bugger had to die and leave me out in the open. And this. Five years, this. Five years of being a septic tank for Pusface’s effluent. God knows I’d have married the animal once, but I was hungrier then and it didn’t seem such a high price. And if and when he died – well I had hopes. That night I picked his keys out of the shoebox in the trophy room I knew what I was doing; after all, there’s only one BMW in this town. A septic tank. Well, Desmond, you disintegrating piece of crap, you can spill your beans elsewhere because my drains are blocked well and truly and God do they stink. Feel that, Marion, feel the skin under your chin. Even your hands look like your mother’s. All this year on the keys they’ve looked like someone else’s. You wash them too much. Those mother’s hands rubbing his pimple-headed back. You’re someone else now. A loser, woman.

  Down the street a milk truck hauls its rattling load uphill past the Bright Star on the corner outside which a curled figure sleeps. Marion Lowell is tired. The thickening light reminds her of the long night’s thinking and deciding.

  ‘Well, that’s about it,’ she says aloud. Her bag is full of her personal stationery, coffee mug, box of tissues, and the ugly paperweight someone forgotten once gave her.

  She types a note and leaves it in the machine.

  As of today, 20 June 1978, I am no longer in your employ of any kind. Records concerning Pell no longer exist, so leave him the hell alone. Don’t try to contact me. If you threaten me I’ll do some talking in the pubs and maybe a few bedrooms and even the Presbyterian church about your business interests and your sexual interests, and I’m sure the town will find them very interesting and probably very very funny. I’ll also tell them about how your sperm is as fertile as cold sago pudding if I get the urge. I hope you won’t do anything that’ll make me get the urge.

  Before leaving she turns the heating up to the maximum level, turns on all the taps in the kitchen, switches on every light, two transistor radios, the electric typewriters, the colour television, the telex, the electric shaver in Pustling’s drawer, the electric fans, the empty kettle, the private burglar alarm transmitting to his home. She drags out the movie projector, choosing from a catalogue of blue movies, and splices one up and sets it into motion with the image smudging all over the wall. Then she opens a window and turns up the sound. Finally, just as she is about to leave, she opens the long cabinet beside Pustling’s desk and drags out a soiled girdle.

  Out in the street she walks into the wind, cheeks painfully alive. She stops beside the Goormwood Memorial with its wishing well and pulls the girdle over the head of the monument. Then walks away in the wind.

  Two men stand beside the urn in the office of the Angelus Advocate talking over the muted clatter of press in the rooms behind.

  ‘Today,’ one says to the other.

  ‘Then it’s on?’

  The first man nods before returning his attention to the telex. A telephone rings. Another. Calls from two hundred miles away. They ring all the morning as the press clatters.

  II

  Immediately the convoy of vehicles trundled down the hill at Paris Bay the gates of the whaling station compound were swung shut and padlocked. Flensers continued to work. Some workers in their lunch break walked up the gravel drive to the gates to watch the cars and a microbus disgorge strange young people. Faces, arms, hands, voices. The workers smoked nervously. Placards went up, held above the ranks that rallied into a rough formation in the muddy car park. Then silence. A camera crew arrived and settled on the bonnet of a car. People sat on the roof of the microbus.

  Out on the bay the launch towed an inflated carcass towards the ramp. Gulls followed the listing hulk. People held handkerchiefs to their faces. A loudhailer appeared, glinting in the weak light. Over the murmurings of the launch came the sound of an outboard motor in the far distance. Feet scuffed the mud.

  When the Zodiac inflatable came skittering into sight, smacking away a sudsy wake, nosing up in the breeze, the crowd came alive. A television crew arrived in a station wagon and another car poured out reporters. Telephoto lenses traversed the water like gun muzzles, following the tiny craft across the Sound and into the bay. Moustachioed men in sports jackets fiddled with cameras and microphones, combing their hair.

  The workers at the gate were joined by others. A loudhailer barked at them. They raised their fingers at the crowd. Queenie Cookson, standing beside Brent who shouted into the loudhailer, raised hers in reply. A ragged chorus of ‘We Shall Overcome’ got into motion, and pressmen moved amongst the nervous young people, sucking peppermints, thinking of angles. More cars arrived. Townspeople who had followed the convoy out of curiosity stood, at a distance, on their car bonnets, pointing, horrified, at the inflatable skating across the bay. They were soon joined by their share of reporters.

  From the distance, back in the hills where the road wound through the national park to the township, came a sound like a squadron of bombers echoing in the abating wind. It grew louder every moment until the procession of Harley Davidsons topped the hill above, greeted by a cheer from the crowd of young people. As the bikies dismounted the cheers dwindled to a collective moan. God’s Garbage moved through the crowd distributing Paris Bay leaflets and hostile stares before taking up position on the seaward flank, flexing their tattooed arms and long bellies. Reporters left them unmolested.

  Queenie cringed and sank back into the crowd, terrified that the bikies would recognise her. Which one did I go out with? she wondered. Geez, I must have been game. Oh, God. But none seemed to pay her any special note. Then she saw the Zodiac turning in a wide arc and a figure in the bow holding a banner and she tried to sing with the others, but she could not get enough air into her fluttery lungs and a man in a sports jacket stood too close and blocked her view.

  ‘Are you aware that those men out there in that rubber boat are in grave danger? The locals say the biggest sharks in the world inhabit these waters. Are these protesters irresponsible, do you think, or heroes?’

  A notepad flapped in Queenie’s face. Sharks? Oh, shit, the sharks! Rubber boats . . . how could I . . . how could we not . . .?

  ‘Well?’ the man prompted, turning his pencil as though it was a small dagger. His eyebrows worked up and down belligerently.

  So bloody stupid, she thought. ‘Heroes,’ she said.

  ‘And is it true that Gil Cranes, ex-Deputy Prime Minister, is coming here to support your protest today?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, hoping it was so because no one had told her. The reporter moved on, leaving Queenie hollow. The long night, the tiredness welled up in her. Bloody hopeless, she thought.

  She recalled the long night before driving hard from the city in an atmosphere of jubilant expectation, arriving at dawn to discover, on the cold, white sand of Middle Beach the Zodiacs – left by their anonymous and expensive supplier – that no one knew how to assemble. Fleurier assumed Marks knew. Marks thought Brent knew. Steam rose from their quiet hissing. All morning, to the jeers of a growing mob of onlookers, they read instructions from a manual and fended off reporters who seemed to appear from nowhere, until finally Marks struck upon a method that worked and the craft took shape and the cameras were allowed near.

  Queenie kept her fists in her pockets as the Zodiacs made arcs across the pink lake at the foot of the f
lensing deck.

  Bikies spoke through the fence to workers, friends and brothers-in-law, passing tobacco and papers.

  The outboard buzzed and raced. The singing of ‘We Shall Overcome’ was pale: word had got around about the sharks. A dachshund floundered through the crowd between legs. Another car pulled up. Gil Cranes, ex-Deputy Prime Minister, climbed out in his denim jacket and tweed pants, but he went unseen because at that moment a murmur went through the crowd as it mouthed the word on the banner held in the bow of Zodiac.

  SHAME!

  Queenie Cookson pulled her hands from her pockets and threw them into the air with a cry. ‘Shame!’ Others followed her lead. The loudhailer whined. The bikies booed, and down on the deck a silver curve of water shot out from the firehose towards the inflatable. And then a unified gasp. Fingers pointed to where, beyond the moored whales, a mass of dorsal fins broke the oily surface.

  ‘Sharks! Sharks!’ the people called.

  No, Queenie pleaded, oh no.

  Near the moored whales the dorsal fins split into two groups and began to curve in towards shore. The crowd became hysterical. ‘We Shall Overcome’ expired completely. The bikies fell silent. Gil Cranes lowered his fist and got down off the bonnet of his car. And the men in the Zodiac zigzagged for the cameras.

  It was several moments before something tripped in Queenie Cookson’s brain, as if all sound and movement seized for a second and only the benign, familiar shapes of the dorsal fins burnt into her senses.

  Dolphins. Bloody dolphins, she thought. ‘Dolphins,’ she said to Brent in the silence.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘They’re dolphins!’

  The crowd was still for a second, teetering between relief and disappointment. Then people were shouting ‘Dolphins! Dolphins!’ as the grey-blue backs hooped out of the water in an unmistakeable movement. ‘We Shall Overcome’ wound itself up again. Notebooks flapped.