by Erin Hortle
How did I know that this night was precisely what I needed? she wonders. What a weird thing to anticipate. And yet she did anticipate it, and it’s brought her whole body to life again.
She’s alive, with her octopuses that writhe and flow, so imperceptibly on her living skin, and terrorise living fish.
She was alive, laughing with Flo and Harry; mutton-birding with the Seabornes.
She was alive, with her arm thrust in a burrow.
She was alive.
Harry had glanced back, only once, and quickly at that. Lucy had been squatting at the edge of a rockpool wearing nothing but her undies, leaning forward to wash her jeans and jumper. She looked like a child, peering down into the pool and perhaps poking a finger into the whiskery mouth of a sea anemone or harassing a scuttling crab.
‘I’m not sure whether we should eat them on Easter after all,’ his mother is saying to him. He’d already waded out to retrieve the boat, and had brought it to the rock shelf, where his mother is currently standing, nattering. ‘We’re having your brothers and all down, and Lucy’s probably gonna be with the Allenbys. I reckon we should make a special night for us. Just the three of us, you know?’
‘Yeah. Let’s,’ Harry agrees. ‘We probably don’t have enough birds for everyone anyway.’ They only have four. Lucy had gotten one more, and Harry had only gotten one. He’d found it hard to navigate the burrow with his big hands.
‘Here she comes. Hold the boat still for me, Harry, so I can get in.’
He looks up. Lucy’s skipping from rock to rock towards them. She’s put her singlet and black jeans back on but is carrying her sodden jumper.
Harry had wondered about her body. He couldn’t help it. He’d supposed that she’d have a child’s figure and that had made him feel weird about finding her so attractive. That suspicion had been confirmed, or so he’d thought, when he’d glimpsed her by the rockpool just now. But seeing her out of her usual baggy jumper, seeing her silhouette, front-on, as she skims from rock to rock: she looks like a woman. She has the curves. That they’re slight, gentle curves doesn’t change the fact that they’re there. But as she gets closer, Harry realises the reality of her lack of breasts. He can see the snaking arms of her octopuses curling out from behind the fabric of her skimpy top, where the bulge of her breasts should have been. She’d mentioned the tattoo to him, but he hadn’t expected it to look so … animated. He can see that she’s cold—she’s shivering and her skin has turned to plucked goose flesh—but of course, he can’t see nipples, raised by the cold, and he can’t shake the feeling that they’re what he should have been seeing. That somehow they’re what would have given substance to his budding attraction to her and, despite Jem, that somehow they’re what would have made it okay. As she emerges from her silhouette, it would have felt right to glimpse them, erect through her wet top; it would be so erotic that it would have felt right to fall in love with her then and there. But seeing her like this—red, blotchy and goose-fleshed in the cold, with her strange octopus skin—confuses him. He doesn’t know if he was expecting to find her more or less beautiful than he does in this moment.
‘Harry, give her your jumper,’ his mother hisses and he realises he’s been gawking.
‘Have my jumper,’ he mumbles automatically.
‘Nah, you’re right, Harry.’
‘It’ll be like a dress on you. You can take off your jeans. They’re sopping. You’ll freeze with windchill.’
‘But won’t you be cold?’
‘Nah, I’ve got my flanny and my Stormy.’ He gestures to his fleece-lined life jacket. ‘I’ll be right.’
‘If you say so.’
He tosses his jumper to her, then tries not to watch as she pulls it on and shimmies her jeans off from beneath it.
‘Gawd, you still reek!’ Flo says when Lucy climbs down into the boat.
‘I know! I can’t get the smell off my hands. I kept rubbing and rubbing, but it was all greasy and the water couldn’t cut it. I’m going to scald myself in the shower when I get home and give these’—she nudges the lump of sodden clothes with her toe—‘like, twenty cycles in the washing machine.’
‘You don’t have much luck with all of this, do you?’ Flo says, shaking her head.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you got inked well and proper by the octopus, didn’t you?’
‘Oh yeah, I forgot about that.’
‘Bit distracted by getting hit by the car?’ Harry asks. He pushes them away from the ledge. The water chopped up by the boat makes a plonking sound and, for a brief moment, Harry’s a boy again, watching his father’s Adam’s apple plunge up and down in his throat as he skols a big glass of water.
‘Yeah, something like that.’ Lucy smiles and flicks her eyes in his direction. Her gaze meets his and there’s something in it that feels so intense it sends a murmur of euphoria fluttering through his body. But despite this, he finds he can’t hold it. He looks away from her, looks at the motor, which is splattered with squid ink—how had he missed that when he was flushing it the other day? He’s usually so thorough. He grasps the pull-cord, yanks it once, twice, and the engine burbles to life. He tries not to think about the touch of her arm, slipping around his waist.
Harry remains standing, with his hand on the tiller, as they motor back towards the net and the elation that bubbled through his chest quickly gives way to that familiar anticipation as he pulls up by the line of buoys.
‘All right, Lucy, you want to pull it?’ he asks.
‘I would, but I reckon I’d flash you.’ She gestures to her bare legs and shoots him a grin as she says this. What does it mean?
‘Righto. I’ll pull it then. But one of you is gonna have to drive.’
‘You go, Lucy,’ Flo says. ‘My boating days are over. I’m happy reclining like a lady o’leisure.’
‘Onya, Flo.’ Lucy chuckles as she takes the tiller.
‘Face the boat towards the shore, so we’re coming at the net side-on,’ Harry tells her. ‘Yep, that’s it. Just go slowly, and ease off when I say so.’
He leans over, hooks the first buoy with his forefinger and begins to haul the net up over the side of the boat, one hand after the other, taking care to keep twists out of it as he guides it into the bin in even folds. He’s barely started pulling it when he spies the first glimmer of silver.
‘There’s colour! Just back off a moment, Luce’—Luce? Since when did he call her Luce?—‘it’s a snotty. Oh! And there’s more. Shit yeah! I reckon we’ve hit a school! Mum, you want to do the honours?’
He disentangles the gasping fish from the net and holds it out to his mother.
‘Oh well. There goes leisure,’ she grumbles. ‘Give it here.’ She takes the trevally from him, rips out its throat with her thumb and forefinger, bends its head back to break its neck, then throws it into the bucket. She’s a fisherman’s wife through and through, his mum is. By the time she’s done, Harry’s got another fish ready for her, then another, then another, then another. His fingers become cold and stiff as they work against the weight of the rope and the slick bodies.
‘What’s the possession limit?’ Lucy asks.
‘Ten per person, I think,’ Harry says. ‘How many are we on, Mum?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Ah, we’re laughing then. I think this one here is the last of ’em anyway. And no by-catch,’ he adds, grinning at Lucy.
‘That’ll keep Jem happy.’ She laughs, and although Harry laughs with her, the mention of Jem curbs his elation, just a little. Although he soon forgets Jem exists when he pulls the craypot and finds a big crimson lobster, trapped behind the tea-tree bars. He can’t believe it.
‘Oh my god! What was that? In the water for two hours, tops? What are the chances? No one’ll believe me. Fark. Look at the size of that thing!’ he laughs as he hauls the pot back into the boat. He sits down on the seat next to his mother and gazes up into the pale sky. Takes the time to drink in a couple of deep breaths and
tries his best to memorise the moment: the air, the sea, the fish, the birds. The company.
‘Hey, you want to take us home, Luce?’
Luce. There it is again, coming out of his mouth. Luce.
She doesn’t seem to notice, or if she does, she doesn’t seem to mind. ‘If you’re sure,’ is all she says.
‘Go for it.’
She stands as she drives. Her bare feet are planted firmly on the boat floor, her left foot edged further forward than her right, and she settles her weight back into her right hip, which accentuates its curve. He can see that she’s shivering with cold. He wishes he had more clothing to give her. But it’d be strange if he stripped his flanny and went topless beneath his Stormy and, in any case, the wind whipping off the dimpled ocean is causing him to shiver too. Not that he minds. Tonight, he doesn’t mind anything.
‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ Lucy shouts over the drone of the two-stroke, pointing to the darkening eastern sky.
The gibbous moon is on the rise, which catches Harry by surprise. Night falls so quickly this time of year, he thinks to himself. It looks massive, in that way it always does when it’s hugging the horizon. Then he notices what Lucy’s talking about: the dark shapes of mutton-birds flitting across its light like bats swarming.
‘That’s why they call ’em moon birds,’ his mother yells.
‘I thought it was because of a myth about them being left homeless, when the moon fell into the sky?’ Lucy shouts back.
‘Yeah?’ Flo responds.
‘Yeah. Because the moon is the same size as the Pacific Ocean and so when it fell from the Earth to the sky the ocean flooded into the space where their home used to be. They never land except here, when they breed. The rest of the time they just fly over the Pacific, looking for their lost home. Or something like that.’
‘Is that an Aboriginal story?’ Harry asks, raising his voice to be heard over the noise of the motor.
‘You know, I’m not sure.’ Lucy shrugs. ‘It’s just something I read. They’ll be leaving soon, I suppose,’ she continues. ‘I read about that, too. They leave first, and then a bit later, the chicks follow them. They don’t have to be shown where to go. Something in them just knows that the Bering Sea is the place to be in the Tassie winter.’
‘They reckon it’s ’cos they can’t stand the footy,’ Flo yells.
‘What?’
‘Well, they disappear just as the season starts, then reappear just after the grand final.’
‘Should call them cricket birds,’ Harry quips.
Lucy chuckles. She’s silent for a moment or two. Then she asks a little sadly: ‘Do either of you feel bad about killing their babies?’
Harry and Flo both shrug.
‘You can’t look at these things like that,’ Flo says again.
Lucy’s silent for another moment, then she asks: ‘Do either of you know how the moon and Easter works?’
Harry and Flo both shrug.
Lucy laughs. ‘God, you should see the two of you perched up there like cockies. You’re so bloody similar!’
Then, a couple of minutes later: ‘Doesn’t it all make you feel alive?’ Her eyes are white and gleaming and she’s grinning at him and Flo widely—or is he imagining it, or is it just him she’s grinning at? His jumper is beating against her body and her hair is fluttering and whipping about on the wind. It’s like her whole body is caught up in the energy of the evening.
Seeing her like this, Harry thinks it’s better than nipples any day.
He takes the tiller back when they get into the bay and, as he eases off the juice, he becomes aware of the smell of mutton-bird that hangs about the boat. It’s a two-tiered stench: the rounder, musty stench of the birds themselves and the harsh, acidic stench of the vomit on Lucy and her clothes, crumpled on the floor by the bucket of fish. When they were going fast, the scent had been ushered away on the wind, but now they’re puttering slowly towards the jetty it hangs above them like fog.
‘It’s pretty full-on, hey?’ Lucy says, as if reading his mind.
‘Makes me nostalgic. Smells like childhood.’ Flo smiles.
‘That’s just what I was thinking,’ Harry says. ‘Except the vomit. That just smells rancid.’
‘That’s because Mandy and I were always cleaner about it than Lucy,’ Flo says.
He guides the boat to the wharf, which, in the twilight, is lit up by yellow streetlights. There are no other boats about, no other cars with boat trailers waiting in the car park. He flicks the motor into neutral, loops the rope around a bollard, climbs up onto the jetty and jogs over to where the car and trailer are parked. He then reverses down the boat ramp and his mother drives the boat up onto the trailer.
There’s something about the flawless rhythm of the whole thing that makes him feel like he’s stepped into his dad’s life: this is a routine that he’d watched his parents perform time and again when he was a boy, either waiting impatiently in the boat, doing bombs from the old jetty if the weather was fine and the tide high enough, or gambolling in the tray of the ute while his mother shouted angrily from the boat for him to sit still god dammit. Except when she and Auntie Mandy went mutton-birding, his mother would never drive the boat—that was his dad’s job—except, that is, for when she drove it, every single time, up onto the trailer. His father would be sitting behind the wheel of the old ute, cigarette hanging off his lower lip, keeping an eye on her in the rear-view mirror. Harry remembers standing in the tray of the ute, pressing his face to the window and watching his father’s pale, watercolour blue eyes lock on her in the rear-view mirror. He remembers his father’s gaze sliding to his, remembers the quick wink his father had given him before his eyes tracked back to the figure poised by the tiller, watching her revving the motor, easing the motor, revving the motor again as she edged the boat up onto the trailer—watching her, just as Harry is watching her in the rear-view mirror now.
Perhaps that’s why mutton-birding had seemed such a mysterious thing to him as a boy: his mother would disappear in the afternoon in his dad’s ute, towing his dad’s tinny, once every year and reappear later that night—and it was always on a night when the sky was lit up by the orb of the Easter full moon—smelling like mutton-birds and beer.
Harry tows them up onto the flat and jumps out of the ute to sort out the boat for the drive home. He’s vaguely aware of the sound of an engine while he ratchets the strap, but it doesn’t register. Not really. Then he hears his mother hiss: ‘Oh shit, it’s the fuzz!’
He would have laughed at her melodrama if, at her words, his throat hadn’t closed over with anxiety. He looks up and, sure enough, Mitch Saunders is climbing out of the cop car.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
He glances at Lucy and Flo, both of whom are hovering nervously by his side, and the former of whom is still shivering, still wearing nothing but his jumper.
Never mind the birds, Mitch is gonna have a field day about that, Harry thinks uneasily.
‘Finish packing up the boat,’ he mutters to his mother and then begins to walk towards Mitch.
‘Well I’ll be. Mitch Saunders. Look at you,’ he calls. ‘When’d you turn into such a straight’—and then he stops up short. He can’t finish the sentence. He was going to say when’d you turn into such a straight cunt, but he can’t say it in front of Lucy, let alone his mother, and he’s feeling so anxious, no other word comes to mind. Fuck fuck fuck.
But Mitch doesn’t seem to notice the way Harry’s tongue’s stumbled and is saying: ‘Harry Seaborne, ay? Heard you was back. When were you gonna give us a call?’
‘’s only been a few weeks,’ Harry mumbles, coming to a stop in front of Mitch, noticing, vaguely, the way his blue shirt has so obviously been ironed. ‘Just been settling back in, ay.’
Mitch grabs Harry’s hand—the same one that only a couple of hours ago had been groping around in the burrow—and begins to pump it up and down saying: ‘Good to see you, mate. Good to see you.’
‘You too,’ Harry says, hoping Mitch can’t smell the birds on him. ‘Thought I might’ve seen you at the pub.’
‘Nah, mate, not me. I got obligations now. Check this out.’ He pulls out his phone and shows Harry a photo of the twins: two little pink beach balls, all cheeks and gums.
‘Well, I’ll be,’ Harry says, shaking his head. ‘You had it in you after all.’
‘Ho ho. You’d better believe it.’ Mitch gives him a wink. ‘Any luck?’ he asks, nodding his head at the boat.
‘Aw yeah. Few snotties in the net and a dog in the pot. You know how it is.’
‘Snotties?’ Mitch raises his eyebrows. ‘Still about then? Good to know.’ Then, to Harry’s dismay, he starts towards the boat, saying: ‘Don’t mind if I check ’em out, do ya? And have a look at your flares and rego while I’m at it?’
Panic rises like bile in the back of Harry’s throat. ‘Come on, mate. Is that really necessary?’ he asks uneasily. ‘They’re all in order.’
‘Nothing personal. It’s just a routine check, mate. You know how it is. Civic duty and all that.’ He pats Harry on the arm and keeps striding towards the boat. ‘Flo, is that you?’
‘Mitch, how are ya?’ Flo says, positioning herself so that she’s standing squarely between Mitch and the boat. Lucy, Harry notices, is up in it, rummaging around and hopefully doing a proper job of hiding the birds.
Meanwhile, his mother is saying: ‘How’re the bubs? Got a picture?’
‘Do I have a picture?’ Mitch laughs. ‘Wrap your eyes around these little men.’ He gets his phone out again.
While Flo is doing her best to gush, Mitch notices Lucy climbing out of the boat, doing her utmost to keep herself covered by Harry’s jumper as she does so.
‘Well, well, who’ve we here? Found a bit o’ skirt in the mines did you, Harry?’ His eyes track to Lucy’s bare legs and he sniggers, presumably because she so obviously isn’t wearing a skirt at all.
‘I’m Lucy,’ she says, holding her hand out to Mitch.
He gives it a shake. ‘Lucy, hey?’ he asks, peering into her face, then, once again, flicking his eyes to her legs. ‘Not Jem Allenby’s Lucy?’