An Open Swimmer

by Tim Winton

  A nor’wester blowin’ the best of a gale,

  An’ the beach was as white

  As a sweet vargin smilin’ –

  The air around smellin’, smellin’ of whale.

  – smellin’ of whale.

  The old man smacked a hand on his thigh as he sang the chorus.

  Out in the longboats, then sailors.

  Put your backs to the oar.

  Mind a big bull don’t come up an’ nail us,

  Or we will be sailin’ no more

  – We will be sailin’ no more.

  ‘Good song,’ said Jerra when the old man didn’t continue.

  ‘Me an’ the wife used to sing it.’

  ‘Where’s she?’

  ‘On the other beach.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘She died. Burnt in the shed on the beach.’

  ‘Shit. That’s rough.’

  ‘We used to argue a lot. She lived in the shed on the beach after a while.’

  Jerra tasted it at the back of his throat.

  ‘Some things you can’t do anything about.’ The old man fidgeted.

  ‘Yeah, things go that way.’

  ‘Yer just get the feeling of it all comin’ down around you. Like sinking. Drowning.’

  ‘Yes.’ Yes! he thought.

  ‘Like I said. What people want most. Always wanted to be a real man with the bollocks of Ben Boyd. Anyone’s. I had to settle for the boat. That was the only time we were together, on the boat. It was orright then, with the boat. We wiped its bum like a kid. Still it was just a boat and not a kid. When she sank that there was nothin’ left to hold her. So she thought, my lovely Annie. Gave her the pearl out of a kingie’s head, once. Beautiful. An’ why do they throw it away an’ want what you can’t give ’em, eh? Eh?’

  Then it was true. The pearl was true. He had heard nothing else. And he’d let it go, that time as a child in the boat, not letting it be cut up. A turrum should have one, his father said, but Jerra said no, seeing the eye staring again and the stricken mate diving at the moment of death.

  ‘Why do they?’

  ‘Not sure I follow you.’ Jerra was thinking of fish; the old man was talking women and bollocks.

  The old man got to his feet, disgusted.

  Jewel. The name wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t always catch the face any more. There were so many of them. A new face with each mood, each collapse, each mistake. But he wouldn’t forget. Not if he could.

  The seal had really irked him. He admitted it now, lying awake. Sean slept. Jerra was grateful. He doesn’t look like her at all, he thought bitterly.

  After a time, Jerra slept also. It was a trammelled sleep crowded with fish and women and bollocks.

  little pieces came away

  every time he touched

  SUN WARMED their shiny black skins as they basked on the rocks. A clutter of gear surrounded them, glistening, the salt appearing as they dried, and below their feet, the glossy kelp rose and fell with the surge. They talked idly, drawling, deliciously drunk from sun and exertion. Jerra had been thinking about their growing apart. He knew it wasn’t just the money and the intimidation. Deliberately, he turned the conversation towards women. It was a wilful thing. He wanted to prove himself right again. He mentioned Mandy Middleton.

  ‘You remember Mandy. Course,’ he said, eyes shut tight against the white of sun. Come on, you prick, he thought, tell me you don’t.

  ‘No. I don’t.’ Sean unzipped his wetsuit.

  ‘You and Mandy were pretty close, weren’t you?’ he insisted.

  ‘We got into a habit,’ Sean sighed, irritated.

  ‘She was a nice one, though. Gave you a good run.’

  Sean snorted. ‘A good run.’

  ‘Always thought you’d get married, you know.’

  Sean buzzed the zip up again, then down.

  ‘You were, weren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never did figure out why she left town in such a hurry. Always thought it would be you who pissed off.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You had your job to think about, though.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘She must’ve met someone bloody good.’

  ‘She was off quick. Didn’t seem any reason. Heard she was in Geraldton.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Someone down the beachfront. Ages ago. Phil. Said she was on her own.’

  ‘Dumped, I s’pose.’

  ‘In a nice motel.’

  ‘That’s good,’ he said dully.

  ‘Dunno how she can afford it.’

  ‘Probably works. Some of us do.’

  ‘Hope she comes down again, some time. She was good fun.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll come back.’

  ‘No. Maybe not.’ Bastards. Same as your old man. Just get rid of ’em to save embarrassment.

  A crab tumbled across the rocks below. It skittered into a crack above the waterline. Jerra lay back, satisfied that he had confirmed it again. He smiled, perversely, bitterly. He almost enjoyed the hurt of knowing it was all over between them; it was only a matter of time. And, a second later, he wished it could be still the same as the old days. He cursed himself. It was all bloody stupid. God, we’re all bloody stupid, he thought.

  ‘Where’d you go yesterday?’ asked Sean, rubbing the hairs on his chest.

  ‘Up the beach.’

  ‘See anything?’

  ‘Driftwood.’

  ‘Didn’t bring it back.’

  ‘Wedged into the rocks.’

  ‘Lot of use in the rocks.’

  ‘Got some mallee roots up the track this morning.’ Always me getting the wood, he mused bitterly.

  A leg reached from the dark, scorched red and orange.

  *

  The claw flexed and retreated into darkness.

  ‘Coming in again?’ Jerra asked, feeling the hard teeth of the zip on his chest.

  ‘I’ll stay in the sun.’

  Jerra clipped the weights on. His feet slipped into the flippers. One yellow, the other blue. Like thongs. Never a pair. Different brands, even.

  ‘Why do you reckon I’ve got odd flippers?’

  ‘You can’t pick a pair.’

  ‘They’re a pair.’

  ‘Not even the same size. No wonder you get fish. Curious to see what sort of dickhead they’re up against.’

  ‘Arr. Jealous.’ He thumped Sean matily, and slid down to the water.

  The crab skidded across the rock into darkness. The water was cool.

  Leaning under, he slid down shallow and followed the bottom, the curving fall, as long as he could bear it, then surfaced, clearing his snorkel, and wandered along the surface. He pushed out past the big, incongruous hump towards the limits of the reef, wrinkled with trenches, channels, open pores of holes with weed sawing back and forth on itself, wallowing on the crags that sheltered schools of tiny pomfrets and bullseyes clouding silver and yellow in potholes. Green wrasse cruised the bottom for food.

  Jerra watched from above, gliding, with a wrasse circling idly in the cover of his shadow. He ducked and slid down behind the fish, took out his knife and prised an abalone from the bottom. It sucked on his palm. He dropped it. The wrasse watched. He floated up. It circled the exposed meat. After a few moments, it nudged the shell and left.

  In a long, steep trench, Jerra saw a clutch of queen snapper feeding near the bottom. He descended from behind, feeling the rubber bite into his thumb. The fish clung. Just as he chose a target, the leader turned side on. The others baulked, spreading blue, and Jerra lunged, catching the leader behind the gills. They struggled all the way to the surface, trailing a mist of blood. It was as big and blue as his left flipper, the yellow lines radiating from its eyes like wrinkles. He thrust it, threshing, into the bag, tore it from the barbs and dived.

  The others had grouped further along the trench, about six of them, wary and slow. They fanned quickly, seeing the black shadow descending. Jerra chased one
of the bigger fish to a pothole, weeded over and dark. He waited, his guts tight. The blue head appeared. Prongs pierced the forehead and gills. It was dead before Jerra had it on the surface.

  The bag and his legs were heavy. He struck for the rocks. As he slopped the bags onto the rock, the first fish twitched.

  ‘A couple of blues,’ he said, nasally, the mask pinning his upper lip.

  Sean looked up.

  ‘Bit of quality for a change, eh?’ He slipped them out, fingers in the gills, and laid them on the rock. ‘Nice size, too. A few pound. Let’s go back and have an early tea.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Jerra, spitting a pink gob onto the water. ‘I’m going back for another look. Check ’em for worms first.’

  He shivered. Always colder the second time. Worse the third. His white nails glowed against the blue of his fingertips. Tiny bubbles gathered on his knuckles. Shafts of light webbed the water. It was like swimming under a net. He tightened the weights.

  He found the holes again, in the odd-shaped hump in the reef.

  It opened darkly, awash with trailing strands of black. He kicked down, tightening, and followed the clean silver of steel. His spear scraped the rock, leaving a welt. Sweep and morwong cluttered the shaft and fanned like red and black feathers as he approached. A crusted circle of barnacles lay in the silt. Ledges opened black on all sides, as he rolled to see them all, wondering why they were so even and well-formed, so precisely hewn by the sea. It was unnerving, this orderly cave.

  A porcelain globe faced him, solid as the head around it, encasing it. Scales fanning from the heavy gills, flat terraces fading into the distance of tail and cave. It watched him, monstrous, motionless, current drifting cold from behind. Jerra’s palm met the soft bottom. The hard edge of something pressed into his thigh as he settled, aiming. The rubber of the handspear cut. He waited. Longer. The fish turned and bared its side, jowls twitching. Jerra aimed for the softness and the spine behind the gills. It was gone into the dark.

  He turned to surface. Rust chafed his leg. He pulled at the curious formation. It peeled from the barnacled bed of its own imprint and he held it against his side, uncovering rotten wood as he found a handhold, aghast as well as almost black from exertion. Timber gave way beneath his heels as he rammed up.

  Sean was gone. Jerra slid up onto the flat rock. The fish were still in the bag, floating in a rock pool. He chased an orange crab from the pool. A corner had been chewed out of the bag, but the fish were untouched.

  ‘That’s right, leave me to clean the bloody fish.’

  Knots of guts fell onto the rock. The gulls hung, cackling. He washed the clean, firm, curving fillets, and kicked the offal into the pool that was scummed at one edge with a skin of larvae. Flies walked on the water’s skin.

  ‘Get it while you can, crab, you crazy ol’ bastard.’

  Jerra threw his gear into the big sack with Sean’s, put the rusty circle in, and tossed the lot over his shoulder. It was coarse on his back.

  ‘Some cave. Reckon we’re both crazy.’

  The crab clattered.

  The old man eyed Jerra, pools quivering in his eyes.

  ‘Whatcher got there?’

  ‘Ringbolt. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Could be.’

  Birds were fidgeting in the ashy sand.

  ‘It’s a ringbolt for sure.’

  ‘Hard to tell.’ Keeping distance. ‘There’s no bolt left, nothin’ to attach it to anything.’

  ‘Worn away. Yours, isn’t it?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘It is. I know.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Don’t you want it?’ Jerra offered. The old man retreated.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Dunno. Thought you might like to keep it.’

  ‘You keep it.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘I said I don’t want the bloody thing!’ The old man snatched it from him and held it over his head, as if to fling it into the water. He dropped it at Jerra’s feet and walked away.

  It was a crusty, eaten thing in Jerra’s hand as he climbed back. It left stains on his hands. Little pieces came away every time he touched.

  The day after, Jerra went back to the clinker-built fossil in the reef and found that there were crays nestling in its hoary beams which he had previously overlooked, and he brought one of them – the biggest, like an armoured car – back to camp where Sean had spent the day reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Sean, he had to admit, was impressed.

  ‘Two pounds if it’s an ounce.’

  ‘Metric now, mate,’ he said, happy for a moment.

  ‘Same in metres.’ Sean laughed. ‘How long since we had one o’ these?’

  ‘Dongara.’

  ‘When you speared that ray.’

  ‘We all have our moments.’

  Jerra propped the bucket in the flames, chuckling at the memory of Sean being towed along the bottom by the startled foot-mat of a ray.

  ‘Were there any more?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘Should have got them.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The water stirred, clusters of bubbles at the edges. Sticks and flames bone-cracked. It boiled.

  ‘Put ’em in.’ Jerra got up.

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘The annexe. Gonna tidy up.’ The rattle of limbs thrashing. Flesh. Boiling. He closed the flap.

  A verse almost came to him in his half-sleep. He held his breath while it fumbled around inside him . . . all dressed in clobber white . . . An’ as their snowy forms go steppin’ by . . . Something, something. It escaped him.

  Pickets, tickets, wickets. Crickets: the clicking tongues of a drumful of crabs, each their own clock, ticking. The smell of crayfish twitched in the blankets. He opened his eyes.

  ‘Funny we never saw any of those crays before,’ said Sean with his chin on the pillow. He had been shaving. Orange and yellow firelight flickered on the window.

  ‘They were hidden away.’

  ‘Odd colour.’

  ‘They’re called golddiggers. A southern cray.’

  ‘Strange so close in.’

  Jerra had a few ideas why they were so close in. Like the boat being loaded with a catch when it went down.

  ‘How come you’re not diving?’ he asked Sean.

  ‘Oh, it gets a bit silly after a while. Swimming in circles.’

  ‘Thought you liked it. You were crazy on it, once.’

  ‘Oh, it’s the same stuff.’

  ‘You always see something different. It’s never the same.’

  ‘Who wants to swim in circles the rest of their life?’

  The moon was a pale fillet. Jerra saw it in the hairs on his arm. Sean’s eyes were pink, blinking.

  ‘Ever thought about diving to the bottom more often? In the caves. Always different. Another world.’

  ‘Taking it a bit seriously, aren’t you?’

  ‘What do you take seriously any more?’

  ‘There’s other things in the world.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Fish! It’s not the only bloody thing there is.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘For you, maybe, and your father, and the crazy ol’ bastard up the hill, but not me.’

  ‘We don’t appreciate the better things, I know.’

  ‘Arr.’ Sean laughed.

  ‘None of which you could think of for the shares in yer head an’ the shit in yer heart. What are you now?’

  ‘Talking like a loony!’

  ‘Everyone’s a fucken loony. A loony. Someone that doesn’t suck the crap is a loony. You learned orright. You got taught well, mate.’

  ‘So? You learnt fish. Ah, yes.’

  ‘An’ you ate ’em. You lived it. It was the only family you had, mate – ours! Where was yours! Flittin’ around EU-rope havin’ a good time!’

  ‘Fish! Fish! Shit!’

  ‘Didn’t hear you complain. Ever.’

  ‘Yer too obsessed to hear.
’

  ‘That what you told yer old lady? Never gave her a bloody moment. Oh, yeah, she was a bloody first-class loony.’

  Sean laughed hard. ‘And a bloody idiot, Jerra. Like you.’

  Jerra shifted back, pulling even breaths. Then he knew that Sean didn’t know about him and her. That would have been the moment of a lifetime, an opportunity Sean would not have missed if he had known and been waiting.

  ‘You talk in your sleep, you know.’

  ‘So what.’

  ‘Oh —’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘You called for your mother.’ He waited one second. ‘“Mum”, you said.’

  ‘Get fucked, Jerra,’ said Sean quietly. ‘Just get fucked.’

  Jerra pulled the blanket up. It was hot and the blanket itched where he sweated. His face itched with triumph and shame.

  ‘Sean doesn’t love his Mum.’

  ‘Yes, he does.’

  ‘Has he ever said it?’

  ‘Nah, boys don’t say it.’

  ‘I’ve heard you say it.’

  ‘Well, I’m a bit strange, ’cause I hang around with you.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll bet,’ said Auntie Jewel, sipping her lemonade that smelled funny, looking out over the quay.

  In his dream in the half-stern shuddered with all the fish in the ocean, living in the skeleton that had grown a skin again. He swam off the edge, looking for the cutting edge of bow. It was blue for ever; he blacked without reaching bottom.

  Walking, next morning.

  A glimpse only, but he was sure. The tree grew an arm which disappeared suddenly. A crackle of leaves, the outline at the crest of the dune. Enough to give you the creeps. The ragged shirt was unmistakable.

  All morning Jerra walked the same arc of beach, guiltily picking over the weed, uncovering tiny new things, textures, smells. He felt the corrugated skin of a shell, different shades of white and black in the sand, the minuscule air holes left in the wet sand by the sand crabs that came out and tattled around in the dark with their run-stop-run-stop movements, and disappeared in the day, buried in the wet sand of the shore.

  He tried his poem again. He’d call it ‘No’, just to satisfy the tree.

  NO

  All the men . . .