Watermark

by Joanna Atherfold Finn

  • • •

  Mrs Brouart goes around the class and asks everyone what they are dressed as. Jessica is Alice in Wonderland.

  She scrapes her chair away from you and says, ‘Your parents really don’t like you, do they?’

  Mrs Brouart overhears this, reprimands Jessica, and then tells you that you have been asked what is known as a rhetorical question.

  Nicodemo is positively beaming. He is Sherlock Holmes. He points the end of his plastic pipe towards you and sneers. ‘My dear Watson,’ he says. ‘What can it be?’

  Everyone in the class laughs, even Mrs Brouart, though she tries hard not to.

  ‘It should be clear to all well-read children,’ she says, ‘that Josephine is a Gumble. Gumbles are marvellous creatures and, thankfully, very resilient. Now, let’s all walk up to the hall for the parade.’

  • • •

  Up on the stage, each class has to walk around in a circle. Below, on rows of wooden chairs, parents sit and point and chatter. Some stand up and take photos. You try to watch out for your dad with your one working eye. You try not to fall over. He’s not out there. He’s probably at that stinking place he always makes you go to. You sort of hope he doesn’t show up. Sort of.

  The principal gets 3/4B to stand in a row. The kids without costumes sit in the audience. ‘And here we have Sherlock Holmes, and Winnie the Pooh, and …’ The principal leans down towards you; he is so close you can smell the coffee on his breath. ‘What have you come as, little one?’ he whispers.

  You look again for your dad. He’s not there. You wiggle your fingertips though the slits in the foam and do a little waddle. ‘I’m a penguin,’ you whisper.

  ‘And here we have a penguin. A very cute little penguin at that, I might add,’ the principal says, and rests his hand against your back. ‘What book are you from, Miss Penguin?’

  What book? What book has a penguin? Then you hear a shout from the audience.

  ‘She’s not a penguin. She’s a goddamn Gumble! Isn’t it obvious? Bottersnikes and Gumbles. It’s an Australian classic.’

  The hall is suddenly silent. It’s his voice. You scan the crowd until you see him. He waves at you but you don’t wave back. You couldn’t even if you wanted to.

  He’s brushed his hair and slicked it back. He is wearing dark glasses and has a black bag slung over one arm. He’s dressed in the lairy silk shirt he calls his subtle shantung. The principal announces that parents are welcome to stay and have lunch with their children. Your dad waves at you again. You want to throw off your costume and trample on it. Flatten it out like a pancake. You thought Gumbles couldn’t get hurt.

  • • •

  Your dad leans against the jacaranda tree and pulls out two cans of lemonade and some cheese-and-ham rolls. Jessica flounces up in her blue dress. Grub dawdles along after her in his school uniform. They both sit down and Grub pulls a Vegemite sandwich out of a paper bag. Your dad passes him a roll and tells him it’ll put hairs on his chest. Jessica giggles in spite of herself. Only a couple of parents have stayed behind and you’re wishing your dad wasn’t one of them. Nicodemo is circling like a vulture.

  Your dad pushes his glasses on top of his head and hands you a roll, but you can’t move your arms, and there’s no mouth hole anyway. ‘God, Josephine,’ he laughs. ‘How on earth are you going to eat? That was a bit of a design flaw. You’ll have to take it off.’

  Your skin is sweating under the foam. ‘I’ve only got undies and a T-shirt on,’ you whisper.

  ‘Right. Oh dear.’

  ‘I’m not hungry, Dad. Really.’

  Nicodemo is smirking and coming in closer. ‘Hello young man,’ your dad says. ‘You must be the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.’

  ‘I’m Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ Your dad leans in to your costume and presses his mouth against your ear. ‘The teeth threw me off the scent, Dr Watson.’ You wonder if he can feel your smile through the foam.

  ‘Boys and girls, gather around if you dare. Who can wiggle their ears?’ They all shake their heads, and he wiggles his ears up and down. ‘Years of practice. That’s all it takes. I’m the nation’s uncontested ear-wiggling champion.’

  Grub laughs and gives it a go.

  ‘Concentrate. That’s it. I’m sure I saw them move. Have a go in front of the mirror when you get home. Now, Sherlock, where’s your dad today?’

  Nicodemo is engulfed by the white sphere of your vision. He somehow looks smaller.

  ‘He’s at work.’

  You look at his teeth and he moves his tongue over them. His nose starts to twitch, but he’s not smiling anymore. The bell goes and your dad helps you up to your feet.

  ‘You know where I’m taking you this afternoon, Josephine?’

  You think of the puffer-fish men and that woman winking at your dad and the briny smell. You think of Mrs Carter and her Jesus on the cross and your angel, dead and buried, in the garden.

  ‘Yes,’ you say. ‘I know where we’re going,’ and you shuffle towards your classroom.

  He follows you. He pushes his hand through the slit at the side of your costume, loosening the gap until it is big enough for him to grab your fingertips.

  ‘As soon as your mum gets home, we’re going to put our cossies on. I’m taking you both to the beach. Your mum will lean back on the sand with her head in a book and her knees in the air. I’ll paddle you out to one of the boats and we’ll hold on to the anchor rope. It’s safe out there, Josie. The rope is attached to a huge weight and the more the water tries to pull it free, the further it digs in.’ He tightens his grip on your fingers.

  ‘Dad, do you think we could go back one weekend and visit Mrs Carter?’

  He pushes his finger up under his glasses and rubs his eye. You count the seconds until he speaks. Four spaghetti, five spaghetti, six.

  ‘I think we could. I know we could.’

  ‘Do you think the people in our old house would let me into the backyard? There’s someone … something I left there.’

  He says, ‘Of course,’ and you walk back to the classroom, and Jessica tells you what a grouse dad you have.

  ‘He’s pretty funny sometimes,’ you say, and you let yourself love him again.

  Oasis Estate

  On the first day of winter, a burnt-crimson leaf floated from the ornamental grapevine choking Audrey Trott’s pergola. It fell onto the tallowwood deck without a sound. On that day Audrey walked, calmly and politely, out of her life.

  She had woken at six and loaded her dryer with a tracksuit still gritty with sand. The laundry window was covered in a dull film of salt and dust. The border of the fly-screen was splitting; she noticed pockets of rust on its edges. It seemed to her that the house, built to prestige specifications just a few years ago, was falling apart. The skirting boards were bowing and lifting from the walls. Buds of plasterboard burst in musty blooms on the cornices.

  Outside, the wind moaned and Audrey’s camellias thrashed their pink-rimmed heads against the house. She felt absurdly composed. At church the night before, she had sung with such fervour that Steven had squirmed in his pew and pinched her leg. She usually just mouthed the words. She was, according to her husband, tone deaf. When it came to the chorus she fanned her hands out like a cascading spring and sang of the joy, like a fountain, in her soul.

  Steven was already at work. She had packed him off with a thermos and a turkey roll with an extra dollop of English mustard. A note was wedged between the bread and the plastic wrap, a short note that managed to say more than enough. Audrey folded the clothes from the dryer. She could smell damp washing and what reminded her of kitty litter. Unusual, because the Trotts didn’t own a cat. Steven was very much against cats, even ones with bells around their necks. He had said that if the cat next door strayed onto their property, prowling for the Willy Wagtails that skittered across their Sir Walter buffalo, he would stun it with a slingshot. Audrey thought Steven shooting anything was unlikely, but she’d de
cided early on not to encourage the cat, even though on balmy days she imagined it lying on its back with its legs splayed while she stroked its lovely white belly in the sunshine.

  Audrey grabbed her suitcase, a faded photo of her dad holding a mulloway, and a potted plant with leaves so glossy and perfectly formed they looked synthetic. She walked next door and pressed the chime.

  Her neighbour looked down at her bag and raised his eyebrows. The cat flicked its tail across his calf and butted its nose against him.

  ‘I’m going home, Harold,’ she said.

  He opened the screen door and gave her an awkward rub on the shoulder with his calloused hand.

  • • •

  For three years, Audrey and Steven Trott had lived in Oasis Estate, a private retreat on the coast where the only intruders were kookaburras swooping onto the communal barbecue plate. Safe and relaxed living by the sea. That’s what the brochure had said. There was only one way in, a bit like heaven, Steven joked, restricted to those with a security code. A gated community, he called it (a tad pompously, Audrey thought). He seemed to get a special thrill entering his unique digital sequence on the keypad. He would lean out of the car and flick his fingers over the numbers. ‘Four-eight-four-nine and up she goes,’ he’d say as the boom gate tilted towards the sky. He said it every single time. Audrey would repeat the words in her head as Steven raised his index finger from the wheel and nodded at passers-by. ‘G’day mate,’ he’d mouth through the window and she would smile with her thin lips clenched together.

  The road that meandered from the entrance was lined with Birds-of-Paradise; their purple and orange heads jutted from dark-green foliage. Behind the landscaped gardens, a series of shiny billboards featured smiling couples galloping bareback across sand dunes and blonde-haired toddlers frolicking in the waves. Your New Backyard was written in a looping scrawl on each sign. It was just a short drive until the road inclined to the high point of the estate then tipped steeply down into a labyrinth of brick and Colorbond housing.

  • • •

  Steven Trott was a real-estate agent. His most common line to potential buyers was, ‘Why would you need a sales pitch from an agent who actually lives here?’ They had purchased their house-and-land package using the part of Audrey’s inheritance that he knew about. She had hated Oasis Estate at first sight. The houses were corralled in muted huddles of grey and taupe, and cordoned tightly within their borders. The intense blue of the sky looked out of place; Audrey wondered how it could hover above a scene so bleak and not be drained of its colour. There was a choice of four facades – to encourage, Steven said, a sense of harmony. After much deliberation they had settled on the Majestic-with-luxe-inclusions, though Audrey wasn’t entirely sure what that meant.

  In the lounge room of their apartment on the day they’d signed off on the final stage of construction, Steven had been unable to sit still. He kept leaping from the lounge to the window, peering out as though someone might hijack his carefully laid plans at the last moment.

  ‘We’re sea changers, Audrey,’ he’d said. ‘No more little yobs pissing on our doorstep. No more rattling night trains. We’re going to be around people just like us.’

  Since they’d been married, the Trotts had rented a small unit near a train line on the outskirts of the city. Audrey had come to enjoy the hectic tempo of city life, her coffee catch-ups with the old couple next door and the daily nod she got on her way to work from a busker who sang Christmas carols in May. The unit was just two stations from the hospital her dad had been in until recently. The move three hours north had been Steven’s idea. In the foggy haze of grief that had plagued her since her last visit to the hospital, she’d agreed. She would have gone along with anything. She hadn’t even seen the house. Steven had wanted it to be a surprise.

  ‘Imagine when they get our Christmas card this year. We should get a special sticker done up. Steven and Audrey Trott, 7 Castaway Close, Oasis Estate. You can’t get much better than that.’

  She’d put her head to one side and squinted as though she were trying to focus on something that kept blurring. ‘I’ve always thought of castaway as being something you discard. You know, cast aside.’

  Steven’s voice was strained and deliberate when he responded, as if explaining a complex notion to a child. ‘No. Not in this context,’ he’d said.

  She’d signed her name next to his. Trott. Growing up it was Maher. It was impossible to write Trott with any sort of flair. ‘As long as I can walk to the beach. That’s all that matters,’ she’d said, picturing herself reclining indolently on the sand and strolling down to the water’s edge. She could almost feel the cool shock of the ocean rising in increments up her body with each step.

  ‘It’s more than a beach, Audrey,’ he’d said, folding the contract into his briefcase. ‘We’re on the bloody Tasman.’

  • • •

  Steven had an aerial shot of the estate hanging in his office. From the air it looked idyllic. In the photo, Oasis Estate was bordered by a small tract of green, a smooth curve of yellow and a torn edge of blue extending off the sheet: the bush, the beach and the sea. What the photo didn’t show was the nearby mangroves that bred grey clouds of mosquitoes travelling ravenously east. When they moved in it was summer. On their first night, Audrey had laid out a platter of cheeses and dips with toasted croutons. Steven poured red wine into plastic cups. Audrey contemplated the straw-coloured strips of turf while Steven slapped at his legs and neck. She said she would plant an ornamental grape to stop the sun streaming into the kitchen. A mosquito hummed around her head. She pulled her hair around her ears and dragged her knees up under her T-shirt. They said nothing for a while. Audrey silently dug into the cheese with her bread and Steven gulped at his wine, licking his front teeth between mouthfuls.

  ‘Blue vein’s nice,’ she said.

  He hit his cheek and flicked a mosquito from the end of his bloodied fingertip. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said.

  They tossed the food back in the esky and ate at the breakfast bar surrounded by packing crates. The next morning at dawn, a lone lawnmower droned. Steven put his head under the pillow. Audrey started a shopping list, adding citronella candles and repellent in capital letters followed by an asterisk. Soon the mower was joined by whipper snippers and what sounded like industrial cleaners whirring in a grinding cacophony.

  ‘Leaf blowers,’ Steven said with authority, lifting the corner of his pillow to face her. ‘Winner of the mindless-gadget award.’

  By midday the summer heat hung as heavy as phlegm.

  • • •

  In that first stifling week, three years ago, Audrey had finished unpacking, pulled on her new indigo swimming costume, grabbed a book and headed down the street. As she passed her new neighbour, he waved his secateurs in the air. He was moulding the ficus trees on his front lawn into perfect green globes, and she paused to admire his handiwork. Perspiration beaded on his forehead in a pearly rash. He had dark stains under his armpits. Audrey couldn’t tell if the blood-and-bone smell was emanating from her neighbour or his garden.

  ‘Harold Johnson,’ he said, wiping the palm of his hand against his shirt and holding it out. ‘Welcome to paradise. Land of the mortgagee.’

  She laughed and extended her hand. ‘Hello, I’m Audrey. We’ve just moved in. I’m still getting my bearings.’

  ‘Won’t take you long, Audrey. Where you off to?’

  She looked down at her swimming costume and back at him. ‘Oh, just thought I’d have a dip.’

  ‘They haven’t got the pool in yet, love. That’s the next stage, along with the convenience shop. Long time coming. I’ve started a petition, if you want to sign it.’ Harold slotted his secateurs into the tool bag strapped beneath his stomach and headed towards his front door. ‘I’ll just grab it for you. Sign for your hubby too, if you like.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not after a pool,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m off to the beach.’

  He pushed his cap back on his forehead and
laughed. The skin on his nose was peeling. ‘Let me know if you find it,’ he said.

  Audrey headed for the tree-rimmed perimeter of the estate. There was a gap in the scrub, with four-wheel drive tracks. Trudging over the rutted surface, she followed the tyre marks until they petered out into dense trackless bushland. She swatted branches away with her book. The ground was hard and stubbled. She thought she could hear waves, but she couldn’t be sure over the buzz of cicadas.

  Audrey walked until it was hard to catch her breath. Her scalp was prickly with sweat. She retraced her steps, wiping her neck with her towel until she saw the glint of the road. Heat was rising from it in ripples. She followed the meandering path back to her street. Harold was still in his yard, crouching on his lawn on all fours.

  ‘Cool bath and a cuppa always does the trick for me,’ he said. His tone had a sort of resignation to it.

  She watched him fossick through the grass with his thick fingers, pulling out clumps of lawn and flinging them into a compost bin.

  ‘Bloody kikuyu. Spend my days pulling kikuyu out of the buffalo.’

  • • •

  On the last day of autumn, Audrey made porridge. She scooped it into a bowl and sprinkled it with wheat germ. She poured milk from a striped blue-and-white jug and felt a strange sort of joy, watching it mill in creamy swales. Porridge reminded her of her dad. It had been his speciality, made with semolina and milk, stirred in a figure-eight and seasoned with sea salt. Audrey would stand next to him on a step fashioned out of recycled timber and test it with a tasting spoon while steam flooded the space between them.

  They didn’t ever sit at the kitchen table after her mother died. It was an unspoken agreement. Audrey had been just five and her memories were small and splintered. She remembered the red scarf wrapped around her mother’s head, and the way she could never get warm, even though Audrey held her hand and rubbed it over and over again. Audrey remembered worrying that her dad would die too. After the funeral, neither of them could sleep. He ended up moving into her room. He was there when she closed her eyes and when she opened them again. Each morning they would sit on the lounge on the verandah and rest their breakfast bowls in their laps, scooping away at porridge islands trickled with maple syrup and drowned with warm milk. After breakfast they would trudge to the end of the street in their gumboots, with fishing rods and a bucket packed with frozen prawns.