by Michael Sala
Daniel picked up a piece of driftwood and carved a wavering line into the wet sand. ‘Freya,’ he said. ‘Do you ever think about Pop?’
‘What? I guess so.’
Daniel had stopped moving, and stood there with the stick in one hand. ‘Do you think he’s looking after us, like Nan always says?’
‘Do you even remember him?’
Daniel nodded.
‘I thought you’d be too young. You were only four when he died.’
‘I’m not too young,’ he said at once. ‘I can remember everything.’
‘What colour was his watch then?’
Daniel’s face tightened. ‘I’m not telling.’
She laughed. ‘Because you don’t know.’
His voice turned thick. ‘I just don’t want to tell you.’
He turned from her and—in a gesture that was both violent and helpless—flung the stick as far as he could across the water. It did not go far. To tease him, she could have told him then that he threw like a girl. Dad would have said it. With the next wave the stick came floating back towards them.
‘It’s silver,’ she said. ‘The watch. Nan’s keeping it. For you, she told me. For when you grow up. You’re the only boy in the family, you know.’
His face relaxed. ‘Will we see her again?’
‘Nan? Of course.’
How long had it been since they’d seen Nan? A month. She thought again of the book Nan had given her, sitting there in her suitcase. Freya turned a slow circle, took in the floodlit beach, the ocean baths to one side, and to the other, on a bluff, the hospital where Mum worked. Past the bluff, cast into darkness, was another, smaller beach they called South Newcastle, and beyond that more rock shelves and jagged boulders under high, sheer cliffs. Further off, she could just make out the nearly black outcrop of another headland, the endless march of the land away from her, disappearing into the evening.
‘Are they fighting?’ Daniel asked.
She turned back to him. ‘Who?’
‘Nan and Mum. I heard Mum say she hated Nan.’
‘Mum says stuff like that sometimes. She doesn’t mean it. You should hear some of the stuff she says to me.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like nothing.’ She paused, studied his face. ‘Of course Pop’s looking after us. We need someone up there, right?’
‘Does Dad have a dad too? Or a mum?’
‘No. His mum died when he was little.’
‘What about his dad?’
‘A lot later.’
What was it like for Dad, to not have a mother anymore, or a father—anyone really, outside of them? She’d never ask him something like that.
Mum and Dad had kept walking along the beach. They were up ahead, standing facing each other, arms hooked around each other’s waists. They looked like they’d just kissed. Dad lifted Mum suddenly, easily in his arms. Mum laughed and shrieked as he walked into the water up to his ankles. He made a show of staggering, but he was never, ever going to fall.
It was completely dark by the time they got home, the open sky an echo in her thoughts, the laughter and the lightness left behind at the beach, and no breeze in the house, though the windows were open. The place still looked and smelled like a ruin, and it was worst when you first came in.
They had an old chocolate-coloured couch in the living room now, a red shawl thrown over the backrest to hide a stain, and matching armchairs they’d bought from the Salvation Army. Mum and Dad sat together on the couch, Mum with her feet in his lap. They were watching a movie called Vertigo. The music set Freya on edge, but nothing really seemed to be happening, or at least nothing that made sense, just a man watching a woman, going where she went, but never so she noticed he was there, more like he was a shadow, waiting for something—what?
Daniel went upstairs and had a shower. Freya retreated to the dining room and sat cross-legged on her mattress while she waited for her turn. Ahead of her lay school, and then the rest of the week, and the week after.
In the other room, Mum said something and Dad laughed. They had fallen back into their rhythm, together again. They were her parents, and this—this was the new world. She was not sure yet whether it would settle into something more solid or fall apart again, but it was somehow better not being sure. At least that way she was ready for anything.
4
In the narrow lane behind the house, a dog was barking. Maryanne had heard it a few times in the last week. It sounded trapped, furious at the world, helpless. Its voice seemed to tear with the strain of the barking, but it wouldn’t stop. She took a breath, let it go. The kids were at school, Roy at work—it was just her, getting ready for her shift, listening to the dog that was going mad.
She closed the kitchen windows, checked that the back door was locked, and went out into the hallway, with its dirty floorboards and dusty wallpaper. The place hadn’t grown on her yet. These were the quiet sorts of moments where she didn’t even have to pretend.
The look on her daughter’s face when she’d walked in on that first day had nearly broken her heart, because she’d known that look. She’d been feeling it too. So she’d begun talking in the usual way, trying to convince them both that it was better than it appeared, not that either of them had bought it. But what could you do? You made the most of it—that’s what. It was theirs now. And maybe—in all its abandoned desolation—it suited them.
She did like the hospital where she worked. There was something gorgeous about the way it sprawled there across the bluff by the sea, and rose over the park as you walked towards it, especially at night, when the salt air made the evening lights hazy, and the noise of the waves and wind in the background was like the hum of life. There was a feeling too with the people who worked there, an easy camaraderie she’d never really encountered back in Sydney. Something about being on the coast, maybe, with the open windows and the sunlight and the fresh air and the sounds of the lifeguards on the beach drawling their instructions at anonymous swimmers.
But the house, oh, the house. This ruin that they’d staked their lives on. The worst house on the best street you could afford—that was the mantra, right? And you pushed yourself, you suffered for it. If they made the most of it, they would come out ahead, sell it with enough left over from paying off the loan to really make a start on something else. That was the secret to getting ahead. But God, the work it would take! Why did it always feel like she was on some treadmill? Why was she always trying to make the most of things? Not just this house, but everything? She had so little to show for the last ten years.
She pulled her watch from the front pocket of her uniform. Time to go, more or less. Really, she didn’t have to go straight away, but she wanted to. She wanted more than anything to get out of the house.
The phone began ringing. She dropped her bag where she stood in the hallway and listened. Her mother didn’t have her number. It couldn’t be her. Did she want it to be her, though? The dog was still barking, muted now by the closed window but no less grating, and the phone kept ringing. Something was building inside her.
She shook herself, took several steps, and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello?’
Roy’s voice came at her through a faint static hiss. ‘Expecting someone else?’
‘I wasn’t expecting anyone, to be honest.’
‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
‘I’m going now. Did you call to check on me?’
He laughed softly. ‘Do I have to?’
‘Only if you want to. I’ve left dinner in a pan in the fridge. Just heat it up.’
He was silent a moment. ‘I just wanted to say I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
‘Are you sorry yet?’
‘No, Roy. Of course not. Why would I be sorry?’
‘You hesitated.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I was joking. Don’t be so sensitive.’
‘I’m not sorry.’
‘You don’t even know what I’m talki
ng about.’
‘I do know,’ she said. ‘The house. Everything. This leap into the dark.’
‘A leap into the dark? Is that how you see it?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I’m never the one that doubts our relationship. I’ll wait up for you tonight.’
Before she could say anything else, he’d hung up. He liked that, to get in the last word, to leave her off-balance. She placed the phone back in the cradle. No. Sorry was not a word she would use. Not again.
As soon as she stepped outside, as the door closed behind her with a resolute snick of the lock, she remembered her bag, sitting in the hallway where she’d dropped it. She cursed and reached into the pocket of her uniform, but realised as she grasped at nothing where her keys were. In the bag, of course.
She slumped with her forehead against the door. Being locked out wasn’t a big deal—it wasn’t—but whatever had been gathering inside her climbed up through her lungs. She was crying, she suddenly realised, big, convulsive sobs. She wasn’t sure what she was crying about, and she didn’t care who saw her.
‘Hey,’ a voice said beside her.
She turned. The next-door neighbour was there, standing at his front door. Of course it had to be the next-door neighbour.
‘Are you okay?’ he said.
He had very light eyebrows. His cheeks were slightly pockmarked. There was something papery about his skin, like it would tear easily.
‘I just—’ She wiped her face quickly with the backs of her fingers. ‘It’s nothing. I just locked myself out of the house. I don’t even like this house.’ She laughed in spite of herself. ‘I don’t know why I told you that.’
He stepped closer, looked from her to the door. ‘Can I help?’
He was maybe in his late forties. Tall but not broad, stooped slightly. A long-sleeved shirt rolled up to the elbows, sandals, his hair thinning, the face overall a little ruddy—a drinker—and lots of lines around his eyes, as if he was used to smiling a lot, not that it meant anything at all. Plenty of arseholes were used to smiling all the time.
Maryanne shrugged. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s only my bag in there.’
‘But you want your bag,’ he said wryly. ‘I can tell. Why don’t we look around the back, see if you’ve left any windows open? That’s what I always do.’
It meant going around the block to the lane that ran behind the terraces. He was already in motion, and she had to catch up. She found herself taking two steps for every one of his as they walked together around the back. She felt embarrassed, vulnerable, her face still flushed from crying. She wished she had her sunglasses, but they too were in her bag, and as they reached the gate, she shielded her eyes with one hand.
‘God, it’s bright out here.’
The man laughed. ‘I know. Daylight. You don’t realise when you’re stuck in these gloomy old terraces. I’m Richard, by the way.’
He held out his hand and she took it. It was large but surprisingly soft and smooth, and slightly damp.
‘Maryanne.’
‘Like in that song by Leonard Cohen,’ he said.
Maryanne smiled politely. She hooked her hand inside the gate and unlatched it. She didn’t close the gate but rested it, fully open, against the bike that Freya had locked to the water pipe. The bike was a nuisance just there, but there really wasn’t anywhere else for it to go.
‘There,’ Richard pointed. ‘It looks like you’ve left the door to the balcony open. I can get up that way and let you in.’
‘I don’t want you to break your neck,’ she said. ‘I’ll just call my husband.’
Richard shook his head. ‘You’re going to work. You don’t want to be waiting around.’
Maryanne hesitated.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve had to climb onto my own balcony plenty of times.’
Before she could say another word, he hoisted himself up onto the brick wall that separated his courtyard from hers, made his way to the small balcony—it was easy to reach from the top of the wall, she realised—and hauled one leg and then the other over the railing.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, looking down at her with a grin. ‘I’ll just let you in the back door and be out of your hair.’
He disappeared inside the house.
A minute later, he emerged from the back door into the courtyard. ‘There you are.’
‘Thank you.’ She stepped into the kitchen, glanced at him over her shoulder. ‘I’ll just get my bag.’
When she returned, he was still there. She pulled her cigarettes from her bag, put one in her mouth and offered him one, which he took. She lit both. He had a manner of leaning forward, a shape to his mouth when he exhaled the smoke, that made her think maybe he was gay. She thought of Roy and hoped so.
‘So,’ he said, releasing a plume of smoke from the corner of his mouth. ‘What brings you to this charming part of the world?’ ‘I need a reason to come here?’
He showed his yellow, slightly crooked teeth. ‘Everyone needs a reason to come to Newcastle. I’m not saying it’s not worth it.’
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I have no idea.’ She let herself smile. ‘Love, I guess.’
He looked at her a moment longer than he needed to. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s an easy place to get used to. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. And the sea, right there—what’s not to love?’
‘I guess so.’
‘If you need anything,’ he said, ‘let me know. These walls are thick, but I’m only a door knock away.’
‘I’ll remember that,’ she said.
And then he was gone. She left by the back alley this time, past the dog, which started up again at the sound of her footsteps, but she did not slow down, and the wind straight off the ocean, coming at her between and over the houses and apartment blocks, buried the world behind her.
Work passed quickly. One minute she glanced out the window and it was daylight; the next it had been dark for hours, and the moon was big and yellow, looking as exhausted as she was as it slouched over the water near the ocean baths. Then her shift was over, and it was time to leave.
Roy was watching television when she got home, his large feet slung out before him on a coffee table that he’d made himself.
‘How was your day?’ he said.
She thought of Richard, and was about to say that she’d locked herself out, and that he’d broken into the house for her, and how easy it was to get onto that balcony at the back, but it sounded too strange once she’d started arranging the words in her head. She opened her mouth and closed it. Roy was watching her curiously.
‘The usual,’ she said. ‘What’s on?’
‘Just the late news. You know that Salman Rushdie bloke?’
She stared at him blankly.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘that writer. He wrote a book and now the Arabs want to kill him. The Ayatollah’s offering three million bucks to anyone that’ll do it. God, I’d do it at that price. You reckon I could pull that off? It might be less work than all this.’
‘If you put your mind to it. How long have the children been asleep?’
He looked at his watch. ‘Daniel for ages. Freya, an hour maybe.’
‘It’ll be good when they have their rooms.’
‘I’m working on it as fast as I can.’
She smiled at him. ‘I know. How was your day?’
‘Long.’
‘Me too,’ she said. ‘I got a padlock for the back gate.’ She put a key for him on the coffee table.
He picked it up, chuckled softly. ‘Worried Freya’s going to make a run for it with some boy in the middle of the night?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s other people I’m thinking about. I don’t like the thought of them just being able to walk into the courtyard off that dirty alley. They should at least have to go to the trouble of climbing over the wall.’
He was stretched on the couch. The singlet he wore lifted at the front to reveal his belly—hairy, softer and full
er than it had once been. Just a bit of grey in the dark hair on his chest. But his legs were muscular, his calves knotted and thick, and there was still a feel to him as if he might burst into energetic motion at any moment, the king lion under his tree. He slapped the couch with one hand.
‘Come here,’ he said.
She approached him, stood before him.
He pulled her down next to him by one wrist. ‘Did you save any lives today?’
‘A few,’ she said.
‘Of course you did.’ He unbuttoned the top of her shirt, pushed one warm, rough hand in between her bra and her breast. His other hand brushed the inside of her thigh. ‘Speaking of which…’
‘I don’t know if I can relax,’ she said. ‘Especially with the kids just in the other room. I need to get in the mood, maybe have a shower.’
‘You’ll relax just fine,’ he answered, already on his feet, lifting her up, carrying her to the mattress. ‘You’ll get in the mood.’
5
On the last Wednesday afternoon of summer, Freya found herself in a press of others, spilling out of a school bus at the ocean baths. They were there to practise for their Bronze Medallion. It was sunny, but there was a cool wind up, and it stripped the warmth right out of her bare arms and legs when she left the change room. A few men in speedos lounged on the stone steps built into the wall by the lap pool, out of the wind, parading the sag and bulge of their old, hairy, gleaming bodies.
In the other direction some surfers were walking with their surfboards along the walkway between the baths and the kids’ pool. A few of them let off piercing whistles at the girls and one thrust his hips and jeered when a teacher walked towards them. The teacher turned back and shook his head. The surfers began hopping one by one from the rock shelf. They dropped from sight, then appeared out past the rocks, paddling on the swell as it ripped and tilted towards the shore. The last surfer lingered on the rocks, his body straight as he stared back across the baths, and Freya had the sensation that he was looking directly at her, before he too jumped in, vanishing from sight.