Night Fishing

by Vicki Hastrich

  I wonder why notions of ideal states, in whatever form they take, have always been so attractive to humankind. (The concept of heaven is as much about this as it is about ongoing existence.) Is it an evolutionary carrot built into us to keep us striving for something beyond our capabilities? Even so, isn’t it weird that just the wanting delivers such strongly felt, such real, personal benefits in terms of pleasure? No doubt some psychologist or philosopher could explain all this in a minute.

  But back to the boat show. Go along and watch the people and you will see it’s all about the dream, the search for perfection in the face of inevitable compromise.

  •

  On leaving the exhibition halls, I called by the floating docks again for another quick look at the Iguana. Just to make sure I’d seen what I’d seen. By this time the wind was ripping through. Promotional banners and flags snapped like dogs at heels. It was the last day of the boat show—indeed, these were its last hours. The afternoon sun was bright but the wind was cold, the shadows growing. The super race grabbed at folding chairs skittering off and held their jackets close to their skinny bodies. Snap, snap. Soon, all the arrayed affluence would be packed up and sent back to wherever it came from.

  On the bus on the way home I happily examined the few things I’d picked up: tide charts, two magazines and a couple of two-dollar packets of circle hooks. As the bus crossed the bridge, I glanced out the window. There, far beneath and stretching away, was the glittering path of Sydney Harbour.

  Night Fishing

  I.

  ghosts

  Still life. Items laid out on a cotton bedspread: the broken arm of a pair of spectacles, a watch, and a wallet, the notes spread out drying

  •

  Remember that day my father fell and we thought he was gone, or I did anyway, a chasm splitting in my chest as he disappeared into the water? The boat with all of us in it, my mother, sister, brother, me: the little clutch of us travelling on, leaving the spot where he disappeared.

  We did not know how to stop the motor. And it was so loud it seemed no one could cry out or shout over the top of it, though perhaps we were struck dumb.

  It had been hard to start. My father wound the leather strap around the flywheel of the old Blaxland engine and yanked again and again with such strenuous effort that no one talked; somehow to do so would be to belittle the commitment to each attempt. A glum mood settled as it increasingly seemed we would not be going anywhere. But just when my father’s temper and the outing itself seemed exhausted, the motor powered to life and we set off.

  It was autumn. The kind of autumn day of sharp outlines that presages winter with its quickly fading afternoons. We wore jumpers, and the water looked cold.

  We had not gone far when it was somehow understood there was another problem: a newspaper parcel of bait remained on top of one of the wharf pylons. The boat could not be stopped in case the engine would not start again, and, for reasons I don’t now recall, neither could it be set to idle. My father decided we would drive by and he would stand, one foot on the seat and one foot on the gunwale, to reach up and grab the bundle, while my mother, at the tiller, steered. He leant, indeed, almost stepped out in a Cartier-Bresson-caught moment with arm stretched, fingers spread ready to accept the shape of the parcel. And that’s when he disappeared between the boat and the wharf timbers armoured with oysters. In the boat, we left the circle of downthrust where he entered the water, and unstoppably motored on.

  So many times we children had thrown rocks from the wharf, running backwards and forwards to the narrow, stone-strewn shoreline looking for the biggest we could carry and drop, studying with relish each plunge to oblivion.

  My mother dragged on the tiller to head the boat back, but the arc of its turning circle was wide and slowly executed.

  We twisted in our seats looking for him.

  Finally, he reappeared.

  While we motored in a holding pattern, Dad somehow hauled himself onto the lower landing of the wharf (bleeding at the temple from a red-running nick) and went on, up to the house to change into dry clothes. We were still frightened, we kids—not safe yet—and possibly my mother was nervous too, unaccustomed as she was to handling the boat. There was unspoken agreement that we needed to be quiet to let her concentrate, but she stayed outwardly calm and by example kept us somewhat reassured. When Dad returned she steered close and his leap back to us was executed without further trouble. I do not remember anything about the rest of the outing, except for seeing, on our return to the house, his things laid out on the bed in the front room. The image of that neat arrangement imprinted itself on my mind: the broken arm of his glasses; his watch; and his empty wallet, the notes spread out drying.

  The wet money was especially troubling for its diminished power; something about its true nature revealed.

  •

  Fifteen years later, on a crisp, cloudless Saturday morning when I was 21, my father and I went out to play golf on a public course. When I got home, it was without him.

  In the mid-afternoon of the same day I saw him again. This time I was with my mother and we were at Fremantle Hospital in the basement morgue.

  Dad had died that morning in the middle of a dewy fairway still patterned with the footsteps of earlier players and the skidding tracks of balls. I had walked on ahead after hitting a shot and when I turned to see if he was close to catching up, he was where I’d last seen him, but lying flat on his back. I ran to him. A lit cigarette, still held in his fingers, was burning his hand. He made a few sounds, sighing exhalations, and I left him to go and get help. In retrospect this was a mistake, though not one I’ve blamed myself for. What I’d heard was agonal breathing, I later learnt. His heart had already stopped.

  I ran to the clubhouse but at that early hour the doors were locked. I ran to the pro shop, passing people freshly arriving in their natty attire, but I was too stupidly shy and blank to simply stand still and call out for help.

  The ambulance, when it finally came, lumbered across fairways.

  By then, the dew had evaporated.

  •

  In the golf club car park I sat in the driver’s seat of Dad’s car. I had never driven an automatic. For a long time I sat there wondering if I could do it. I did not want to leave the car there; something made me feel responsible for getting it home. I suppose I had turned down offers of transport from the golf club staff, though I don’t recall any now. It’s only stop and go, I told myself. Only stop and go. People do it. And, very slowly, I drove the car home.

  As I approached the front door, my mother came out with her handbag, smiling. She was just off to the shops to get us something for lunch. Looking past me for my father, she asked, not concerned, why we were home early, where was he? She was on the move, purposeful and happy on a sunny morning. I did not know how to start changing her day, her life. What I had to say would sound stupid. Like I was making it up.

  •

  Uncle Pete, the husband of one of my mother’s sisters, drove us to the hospital. He was a GP and familiar with the place, able to escort us down backstairs and byways. In him, we had an insider as a guide, but our visit was official: we must identify the body, we’d been told. My father had died in a public place and this was the law. It didn’t matter that I was with him at the time, although why it didn’t matter, I never learnt.

  In the basement corridor we stood waiting outside a closed door for somebody to arrive. The walls, I seem to remember, were painted skin-coloured pink, certainly not newly done.

  I don’t know now whether we were waiting a long time, but my mother and I were both struck with the need to go to the toilet and my uncle indicated a convenient bathroom down the hall. The bathroom was quiet, pink-tiled walls, the half-dozen stalls empty, doors open. We selected a cubicle each and began to urinate, and for each of us the stream leaving our bodies was so strong and powerful and went on so long—as if our organs and muscles had taken control to operate at peak efficiency to expel every drop of flu
id from us—and it was so loud—as never-ending and as forceful as a horse’s piss, destroying the bathroom’s quiet—that we began to laugh. Emerging from the cubicles we continued laughing, the echoing sound of it ringing in the pink basement bathroom, genuine laughter, not hysterical. We could hardly stop ourselves, didn’t want to, and we gave ourselves over to it and the enjoyment of it and it made us feel good. Two minutes later we were ushered through the door we had waited in front of previously.

  The room was small, small like a storeroom, and in it my father lay on a trolley. A sheet was pulled up across his bare chest.

  That seems odd to me now, why he needed to be naked so soon. What was the hurry? It was as if the staff had played dolls with him. It was their job, I can hear them explain, as if, years later, they are talking on a documentary film: ‘It’s just what you did. It’s what you always did. They’d come in and you’d take off their clothes.’

  Although that was the last time I saw him, I can’t really recall how he looked. Reasonably normal, I think, as if greyly asleep. I remember my mother though, how she went to him and put her hand gently on his face, how she said in a small, miserable, wondering voice, ‘He’s so cold. He hated being cold.’ As if really to say, how on earth did it come to this? As if this did after all prove him dead, for he would not willingly lie there. In her voice, too, was the bewildered acceptance that she could not fix it; there was nothing to be done to make him warm.

  Next my uncle and the hospital attendant tried to remove Dad’s wedding ring, but after a brief tussle they desisted, saying they would get it later. My uncle, who had years of experience in country practice, mentioned something about soap and string.

  In another corridor, upstairs and lined with windows through which the continuing day flooded, Mum and I waited for the two young policemen who would eventually appear. There were papers to sign before we could go.

  It was nice in the sun. By now perhaps we felt a little tired and not inclined to move; happy enough in our squares of sun. We had nothing to rush away to.

  •

  I think of Dad’s death with equanimity now. This is how life is. Neither fair nor unfair. It just is. But I still miss him. And sometimes when I do, my throat tightens and my eyes sting, even after all this time.

  In the dark night the red and green of the estuary’s channel markers blink, pinpoints of light. On and off. Alternating pinpoints of light.

  The time Dad fell in the water was unusual in that we were staying at the old holiday house by ourselves, without my parents’ best friends, Pam and Clive and their children, whose house it was.

  My father and Uncle Clive used to call each other Dad, fondly.

  ‘Let’s take the kids fishing.’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  And in the solid, broad-beamed old putt-putt boat, the two men took us.

  The broken arm of his glasses on the bed, his watch, and his wallet, the notes spread out drying.

  •

  When my mother was taking her last breaths in the middle of the night twenty years after she was widowed, I was with her. And I said in the surest voice I could manage (though tension and urgency made it waver), ‘Dad’s there. He’s waiting for you.’

  I did not mean in heaven. I meant, in your imagination. I meant, make a picture of him in your head and go to him for comfort.

  ‘He’s there,’ I told her.

  This is what pictures are for. When we are help-less, this is what pictures are for.

  II.

  maiden voyage

  I wanted to go, I said I’d go, so people were expecting me to go, there was a break in the weather, I went. Night fishing.

  People said, Aren’t you scared?

  I wasn’t scared, I knew what I was doing in daylight, knew where I was going inside out and back to front. Anyway, I had lights planned. Not proper lights, like on a proper boat (my boat is a little old beaten-up fibreglass dinghy), but lights as in a lantern, a torch and one of those miner’s light things you can strap on your head if you don’t care about your credibility. Okay, I was just a little bit scared, or, you might more accurately say, apprehensive. But not because of the woman thing, being a woman alone, which was, you could tell, what people were thinking. Although, okay, perhaps there was that too, just a little bit. Being alone out there in the dark with no one to help you if something goes wrong—well, the prospect of that could be just a little bit scary for anyone, if you let it. And then there was the man thing. Because what if blokes in their boat came near to me in mine? I would be just a bit apprehensive of what they might say, even though it’s far more likely their behaviour would be friendly and not intimidating. But a woman meeting any man in the dark in, let’s face it, an unusual situation is bound to invite comment and, well, it just is going to be an uncomfortable prospect, and that’s a truth of the world.

  But I choose not to entertain those thoughts. I can’t let the idea of anything bad that’s 99 per cent never going to happen stop me. Whenever I start to go wobbly when it comes to doing anything marine, I think of that kid, that sixteen-year-old girl who sailed around the world by herself, and I think, Jesus, don’t be so pathetic. What I’m doing, where I’m going, it’s nothing. I could swim home. And anyway, it’s going to be beautiful and serene out there, it’s going to be all Debussy.

  So I’m going. For the first time ever in my life. Tonight. Night fishing. New moon, which means next to no moon, but this is my opportunity. It’s cloudy, been sultry and rainy for days, so useful moonlight’s out of the equation anyway. I had a rain jacket on but took it off. Too hot. I’m okay in shorts and a t-shirt, and the last time I looked the forecast said that the chance of showers was low—at last.

  I load the gear into the dinghy slowly. No rush, waiting for the tide to rise. Set everything up in as organised a fashion as I can. Leave shore about 9.30 pm. Careful as I wade out with the boat, the water turbid and the various lights I’ve got at my disposal not greatly penetrating.

  Almost straightaway a prawn materialises: translucent, elongated, zipping along on the surface and seemingly curious, swimming to the light, to me, with all the friendliness of a dog. As if wanting to lick my knees.

  I wade quite a long way out to get past the part where it turns shallow again. In the narrow beam of the torch the water is cordial orange. No hope of seeing anything lying on the bottom before I tread on it.

  Start the outboard, jump in, flip the motor into gear, I’m underway. And I look up into the middle of the bay and the new reality is immediately startling. I can’t see. I’m going very slowly but my lantern, hanging on a pole shoved into a rod holder at the bow, is useless. It lights the interior of the boat well, but I also thought it would act as a brave standard, showing the way ahead, just like a London linkboy. In that moment I discover something obvious about the quality of different lights, forgotten in this indoor age. A lantern spills a pool of light but the focusing lens in a torch is needed to throw light forward, to make a beam that can seek out shapes and surfaces. The life of a linkboy would suck. No chance to see danger coming, only the snarl on its face when it arrives.

  Where is everything? I’m motoring in the dark and, with a head explosion of what would be alarm if it wasn’t counter-weighted with disbelief, I think, Where are all the moored boats that I know to be there, where is the line of the oyster lease? I’m astonished. And for a moment the idea of going further, going night fishing, seems impossible. And stupid. This is why no one else is out here doing it. It can’t be done. This is why there is only me. (Forget that it’s a Tuesday, and the weather has been shitty for days, and how many people are in the habit of night fishing, anyway?) Why is the way ahead such a black hole when the sky is not dark but visibly filled with bulbous banks of aquatinted clouds, undercast with the light of town and distant suburb? It doesn’t make sense. All around the bay, I can see house lights and streetlights, and can even discern the surrounding shapes of hills, but the water is a bowl of black.

  After a momen
t of disorientation, I grab the torch and aim it out to where the boats should be, and at last the beam finds a yacht’s red hull, rakes along it—dips into darkness—blue powerboat—darkness—sudden catamaran yellow: it’s a Morse code in colour.

  Swinging the beam to my right I find the reassuring white-painted tops of the posts of the lease-line. These sticks are my guiderail: keep the moored hulls all to my left, the sticks to my right, can’t go wrong. Except this isn’t all. Compounding my sensory overload while I’m trying to work everything out, all around me, in my sweeping light, things are jumping. Fish, prawns, I don’t know what, leaping, flashing out of the water, skipping, chased, chasing, white-silver, all in such frivolous excess it’s a baroque fountain of living things. The estuary spitting up its jewels. Here, there, left, right, my head’s swivelling on my neck, where to look next? Every creature gone before it arrives.

  Thank God for the extension wharf jutting out ahead. It’s one stable thing I can aim for. There’s something Van Gogh about the radiating municipal glow from the streetlight at the end of it; lonely and sterile, yet also reassuring, because it’s there, at least it’s there. That’s what I think about the lights in Van Gogh’s Night Cafe. The lamps hanging over the tables are beacons of despair, and yet real despair is no light at all. If something happens and I end up in the water, I can always swim back to the wharf and climb up the ladder that’s recently been installed. A much better prospect than swimming to shore, swimming over weed and wading through weed, sinking in mud, stepping on unseen rocks studded with oysters; stepping, maybe, on a razor clam.

  I’m motoring past the wharf and I’m judging the distance to where I want to be, which is in the channel between the wharf and the corner of the big lease. But where is the big lease? I seem far from the wharf and I should be seeing the sticks of the lease, but the sticks are spindles in the dark; is that the line, a further line or a close line? I seem far from the wharf, can’t pause to look properly, the breeze is strong here, coming in gusts, turning the boat, I’m where?