‘D-d-dad … c-c-om …’ Harry could barely get the words out now.
No mate, Miles thought. No one’s coming.
Miles wished he could see Harry properly, but knew he was better off on his back. Wrapped around. That way Miles could shelter Harry’s head from the wind. If he took his jumper off and put it on Harry, it wouldn’t make any difference. The heat trapped by the wool would be lost as soon as he peeled it away from his own skin.
‘We’ll be all right,’ he said, and he closed his eyes.
He didn’t know what to do.
There was a black emptiness inside him and it was all that he could see. He tried to imagine a fire in the darkness, and at first it was just one blue flame too small to feel. But he willed it on, felt the first flicker of warmth as it grew. Then it raged, turned into a ball of fire, orange and red and hungry. It devoured his stomach, moved up to his lungs, his back. Moved into his heart.
He shared it with Harry through his skin.
The flames hissed and popped, hungry for the new wood. Miles got into his pyjamas and Mum tucked him up in a blanket on the couch. She pretended to be mad with him for going near the river, but he knew she wasn’t really mad. He hadn’t meant to fall in. He’d just got too close to the edge and slipped and the current had taken him before he knew what was happening. It had sucked him down.
‘It’s just lucky your brother was there,’ Mum said.
Miles looked up at Joe. He had fished Miles out and carried him home. He had saved him. He brought Miles over a hot Milo and Miles rested down into the couch.
‘Warm enough, sweetheart?’ Mum said.
‘Yes,’ he said. He felt the warmest he had ever felt.
‘Don’t go to sleep,’ he heard Mum say, but it was soft and in the distance.
‘Don’t go to sleep.’
But his eyes were heavy. He was sinking down, into warmth, into light.
‘Where’s Harry?’ It was Mum again, loud now. ‘Where’s my baby?’
Harry wasn’t really a baby, he was three and a half, but Mum always called him her baby. And everyone thought Harry was so cute with his curly blond hair and blue eyes, but he just got in the way most of the time. He always followed Miles around saying, ‘Whatcha doing, Miles? Whatcha doing?’
‘Miles?’
It was a different voice. A small one.
‘I’m not scared anymore.’
It was Harry. Miles could see him now. He was standing there in front of the fire. And he brought his face right down so that their foreheads touched.
Harry’s big blue eyes were blurred by the closeness.
‘I’m not scared of the water anymore!’ he said. ‘I’m not scared of the water!’
Miles was coming back through a fog. Wind against his skin.
Cold water splashed his face, forced his eyes open.
He spun around, frantic, and called out his brother’s name. But Harry was gone.
Harry’s feet hardly seemed to touch the ground as he followed Jake, and it was easy to run. He ran through the trees, reached out, and he could almost touch Jake’s red fur. George was up ahead. George, waving from the top of the hill.
And when Harry got there, he could see it all.
The land just as it had been forever – untouched. Dark green tracks of forest over hills and mountains and rolling down valleys. Trees as far as he could see, running on and on to snow-capped peaks that lit up the sky. And there was water, too. Pockets of it and rivers of it. Big silent lakes of it. And he could see the ocean now. Light blue and dark blue. Places where the surface boiled up white and gold.
It went on for as far as he could see. The whole world.
And he thought, I am free – flying like a bird. I am free.
Miles was in the orange light that came before darkness. The sun burning brightly before it fell below the earth. He had been drifting for a lifetime and his mind had lost its way. It was dissolving and he had forgotten about Harry, forgotten about all the things that came before. There was only this vastness, the swing of a giant pendulum – water receding then flooding back. And he was part of it.
Part of the deep water, part of the waves. Part of the rocks and reefs along the shore.
He sank down in the water, muscles relaxed, no longer fighting. And he dropped away from the light and away from the air.
Ready now.
Water spewed from his mouth, breath making him gasp and cough. He was being lifted, carried, his body swaying from side to side.
But his eyes were heavy.
The world was still too far out of reach.
He was thirsty. So thirsty. His lips cracked and stung. He felt a hand under his head, lifting it up and something cold touched his mouth. Water. He swallowed it down but now he felt cold. His body started to shake, to twitch. Pins and needles in his limbs moved down to his hands, his feet. Ripples of cold and feeling. He cried out and someone touched his head, stroked his hair. He still couldn’t see.
He heard footsteps. Voices. The buzz of lights.
He fell into nothingness again.
It was Joe looking down at him. Joe.
‘Thank God,’ he said, and his face was weird. It was swollen and blurry and his eyes were thin, almost closed.
Miles looked around the room. He looked at the grey walls and door, at the low white ceiling. Uniform squares with hundreds of uniform holes in each. He was in the hospital.
He tried to sit up but his body wouldn’t work. Only his head would move. Only his fingers. They stretched out and curled back, felt the sheet beneath him smooth and crisp and tucked tight. He made a fist and tried to hold it.
Joe reached out and touched his arm.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Miles opened his mouth to speak but no sound came. His throat was tight. He didn’t know what Joe was talking about and now the hand touching his arm was hot. It was burning him.
‘He looked peaceful, Miles. I mean, he was perfect. They found him on one of the reefs out near Acton and he was perfect. Nothing had touched him.’
Miles closed his eyes and tried to breathe. He was in the water.
Harry was in the water!
He started screaming.
The sound bounced off the walls and off the floor and whipped around the room like a storm, but it didn’t feel like it was coming from him. The sound was coming from somewhere else – from someone he could see.
A boy lying on a bed. A boy that couldn’t be him.
The sound grew fainter, died away until it was nothing but a whisper he could barely hear. And he felt heavy and tired then. He felt warm.
It was warm in the car. It was snug, with all the bags and clothes packed in around them and Miles looked at Harry. His eyes were heavy, falling into sleep. But the car slowed down. It stopped, and Miles couldn’t tell where they were on the road because it was so dark. He thought he could hear the river, but maybe it was just the wind in the trees. Maybe it was the ocean. And the passenger door opened and someone got in. A man.
‘Ready?’ he said, and Miles could just see Mum smiling in the dark, see the white of her face. And she said, ‘Yes, my darling. Yes.’
And the man turned in his seat. He reached over and stroked Harry’s cheek. He looked at Miles.
It was Uncle Nick.
And Miles wanted to stay awake and listen to the songs on the radio, to be awake when they drove over the mountain so he could see the city, because Mum said the lights of Hobart were really something. She said you could see all the lights of the wharf and all the big tankers and ships. Ships that sailed to Antarctica and to Argentina and Scandinavia. Ships that were as big as factories.
But the road was windy and the headlights were soft and it was so warm. And he wanted to say, Wake me when we get there, but he forgot. And something pulled tight around his neck, around his chest, and all the bags were falling. All the bags were pushing him down.
Everything went quiet and black then.
&n
bsp; Until he heard Harry cry.
Until he heard Harry.
Miles opened his eyes and it was dark. It was nighttime. He sat up and he could see a figure asleep on a chair next to the bed in the glow of the low grey light coming from the hall. It was Joe. He was still there.
Miles leaned back against the pillow quietly but Joe opened his eyes. He sat up and grabbed the side of the bed.
‘Are you OK?’ he said, and he turned on the lamp. ‘Do you need anything? Are you hungry?’
Miles shook his head. He blinked his eyes against the light.
‘You came back,’ he said.
Joe nodded. He looked down at his hands and let go of the bed. Miles knew they were shaking.
‘The wind was too strong,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get through the strait. I couldn’t leave.’
And Miles knew it was lucky Joe hadn’t been lost out there, too. He was lucky.
‘It was Dad,’ Miles said, and Joe stood up out of the chair.
‘I know. It’s OK. I know what happened.’
But Miles shook his head. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘Uncle Nick was there. He was in the car. I saw him there but I forgot.’
Joe opened his mouth but he didn’t speak. He stood for a minute then he sat back down on the edge of the chair, and Miles told him about the crash – what he remembered now.
How when he’d opened his eyes again it was dark and there was no sound. No horn, no headlights. But he could see someone was looking down at him. Someone else was there in the car. Dad.
‘He left us there,’ Miles said. ‘He took Nick away and he didn’t come back.’
And Miles remembered waiting in the dark and in the cold, and how he’d called out for Mum over and over but she didn’t answer. She never answered. And he was too scared to reach out and touch her. He was too scared to move. And he found a blanket on the floor and wrapped it up tight around Harry. And he tried to stay awake.
They slept on Joe’s boat.
Miles didn’t know what was meant to happen now. Granddad’s house was empty but they moored in close at Lady Bay and he spent the sunny parts of the day up at the house on the verandah. But he liked the boat, the way it felt. Joe had begun building it when he started his apprenticeship and it had taken a long time. All these years. The wood inside golden and soft. The galley and the workspaces, the small kitchenette and the bunk beds. All wood. All made by Joe. And here it was waiting to leave again.
Miles sat on the bed. Joe was studying a roll of charts at the table, taking notes. He was using a ruler to mark out the path he would take to wherever it was he was going. Marking out the fastest path away from here.
Miles stood up suddenly.
‘I’m coming with you,’ he said. ‘To the house.’
Joe looked across at him, his eyes wide. He put his pencil down, leant his hands against the table.
‘OK,’ he said.
Miles didn’t look at anything on the way in the van. He didn’t look out the window at the road or the sky or the trees or the river. He just looked at nothing. At his legs and at the inside of the door. He felt sick.
It was Harry’s funeral on Friday. Friday, in the cemetery where Mum was buried. Where Granddad was buried. Lots of people would be there and they would all be crying and they would all be saying how terrible it was. Harry wouldn’t want those people there, Aunty Jean and the relatives from town. And Miles didn’t want to see them. He didn’t want to think about any of those people.
When they pulled up the drive, neither of them moved. They sat in the van for a long time, silent, and Joe’s face was still, his eyes tired. Miles watched him stare at the house.
‘What do you think happened to him?’ he said. ‘To Dad?’
Joe shook his head.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and he blinked his eyes clear. ‘I hope he’s dead.’
The door wasn’t locked and the house was quiet and cold. It smelled of damp. Miles almost expected Dad to be there somehow, sitting in his chair in the gloomy room. Sitting there waiting. But he wasn’t. There was no one. And it felt like a long time since anyone had been there. Since it had been a place where people lived. A place where he had lived.
Miles walked over to the framed photograph of Mum on the sideboard and picked it up, took the photo carefully out of the frame.
‘Cloudy,’ he said.
And he knew he was right, now. He remembered. How Nick had grabbed Mum up and hugged her and how she’d laughed. How she’d pushed him away. And he didn’t know what that meant, if it meant something or nothing. But he wanted to keep it, the photo. He wanted to take it with him.
Joe moved close, took the photograph out of his hands. When Miles turned around he could see how much they were the same, Mum and Joe. How much they looked the same. Their eyes and the colour of their hair. Their skin.
‘Do I look like her?’ Miles asked.
Joe looked down at him and nodded. He handed back the photograph. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’
The bedroom was exactly as it had been. Piled neatly in the corner of the room were Harry’s show bags, still half full. Harry was always saving everything.
Miles let the bag he was stuffing with clothes fall to the floor.
‘We don’t have to get everything now,’ Joe said, and he bent down, picked up the bag. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, OK?’
Miles sat down on Harry’s bed. The doona was cold under his hands and he dug his fists into it.
‘I don’t want to go to the funeral, Joe. I’m not going. I don’t want to see those people, Aunty Jean and relatives I don’t even know. I don’t want to see them.’
Joe put the bag down on the bed. His voice was soft.
‘Stuart will be there – kids from school. And George. You might regret it, not going. Not saying goodbye.’
Miles tried to look at Joe, but his eyes were raw. They wanted to close. There was too much light.
‘I’m staying here,’ he said, and he felt Joe sit down on the bed.
And he was staying. He was going to stay with Harry. Stay here. Joe didn’t understand. He didn’t know. Harry might come back, come here. Like Mum. Remember, Harry? How Mum came back? She came back sometimes when we couldn’t sleep. I know she did.
‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep,’ he said, and the weight of his body gave way.
But he felt an arm around him. He felt it tight.
‘Let’s just go, Miles – you and me.’
He listened to Joe talk about all the places they would go, the tropical islands and the clear warm water, the big bright lights of new cities. The free open space of ocean. And he knew that Joe was going to take him with him, now. Wherever he went.
He leant his head down against his brother’s shoulder. He let himself cry.
Miles stood on the deck of Joe’s boat and looked out at the water. His eyes moved over it slowly, carefully. The bay was calm now, still, and it was hard to believe that the swell had ever been so big, that there had ever been a storm. But Miles could see where it had been. What it had touched. Boulders the size of cars had been pushed over so that the shellfish and plants living safely underneath were now stuck metres above the water, exposed to the sun. Hip-high piles of kelp, ripped loose from their roots, blacked out the beach, and whole trees, leaves and all, lay battered and smashed on the rocks.
Joe said it had been the biggest swell he had ever seen. Banks that had been working forever were wiped out – gone. The whole coastline had been changed.
But the bluff was still there, the reef solid. A tiny swell running on the surface. Tiny ripples turning into small lines. Little waves beginning to peel, pulling right and wrapping around the reef. Waves that could be something as the tide dropped. Waves that could be working.
Light wind.
Winter sun.
It could be something.
And Miles could feel it in him. The water.
With his board tucked under his arm, his bare feet hit the sand. And he ran down th
e beach. The sun was up high with that bright blinding white coming right off the water, and out there, the silhouette of a boy moving – taking to the air, his arms outstretched like an eagle. And even before Miles paddled up, even before he could see that face, he knew it was Justin Roberts. Unmistakable. Justin out there, with his big mouth and his big teeth saying, Give me another one of those. Just give me another one and I’ll show you something.
Miles let the rip that ran with the bluff carry him. He enjoyed the ride, felt his hands slipping through the cool water, body floating free. And there was this feeling in him like when it had all just been for fun, the water. Him and Justin out here on their foamies all summer – out until dark, ripping on all those shories, ripping the life right out of them, wishing that the sun would stay up just a bit longer. Just one more. Just give me one more.
Mum would be in the Holden waiting and she’d honk the horn.
‘Come on, you two – time to go. Time to get dry. It’s dark!’
And they’d get in the car with the heater on, and they’d be starving – suddenly starving. They’d drop Justin off. They’d drop Justin home to the stone house over the bluff.
‘See you tomorrow.’
‘We’ll get some good ones tomorrow!’
Justin waved, looked him right in the eye, no fear.
‘Long wait between sets, but I thought, stuff it. Not going to get any better today.’
And that was it. Just like always. Talking about the water – talking about the waves.
Miles noticed the board beneath Justin gleaming. No dings, no wax gone brown from grime and sand. Just a clean white surface, brand spanking new.
‘Dad got it for me. Have a go if you want.’
Miles didn’t waste a second. He found his leg rope and ripped it loose. A new board, light and sharp, and Miles sat tall, let the first wave roll underneath him. He reached his arms to the sky as it bucked.
God. Remember this, Justin? The first time we came out to this reef? The first time we made it out the back? We just decided, looked at those waves and said, Let’s go – let’s just go. Hearts racing, saying, Yes! Come on, it’s time now. Ducking under the white water over and over until we were shaking. Looking out at all that deep water, all that dark water. Being scared. Seeing the face of the reef as the tide rolled back. Sitting where we are right now. Like this.
Past the Shallows Page 12