Swimming on Dry Land

by Helen Blackhurst

  ‘Just a minute,’ I shout, running for the shop. With my back pressed up against the door, I face the shelves of food and car supplies, almost deafened by the pounding of my own heart beat. What now? I can see him so clearly, curled up on the bottom of that tank. Of course Eddie wasn’t murdered. Suicide makes too much sense.

  I call Susan. The buttons on the office phone are stiff; it takes two attempts before I get through. She recognises my voice immediately. ‘Mr Markarrwala’s condition has stabilised in the last hour. All the signs are good. You got back ok?’

  I make some kind of croaking sound as I try to speak.

  ‘Is Monica alright? Did they find…?’

  ‘It’s Eddie.’ I can hear her holding her breath, but I don’t know how to continue. And then the door opens and Caroline is standing there. Seeing her somehow releases me; I just say it. ‘I found him in the water tank.’

  Whatever Susan says in reply gets washed up in Caroline’s face, leaving a wreckage of disbelieving lines. Caroline gravitates towards me without seeming to move, and takes the phone from my hand. She tells Susan we will contact her as soon as we reach Adelaide. The receiver gets dropped and bangs against the cupboard; there is a constant drone. Caroline holds onto me. We stay caught up in each other for a long time. I don’t have the strength to push her away.

  Caroline takes my hands, turning them palm up. They’re covered in blisters – a few have burst.

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ I tell her. ‘Did he say anything to you?’

  She shakes her head, guiding me through to the bathroom, and dresses my hands with antiseptic bandages.

  ‘Where’s Moni?’ I ask, as she secures the pins.

  ‘I told her to wait in the caravan. We should go.’

  She doesn’t seem shocked or sad, just empty.

  ‘We’ll tell her later,’ I say, unable to face the idea right now.

  We head across the tarmac.

  Moni spots us through the window. ‘We’re going to bury the bird,’ she says, jumping up from the table and racing out to meet us. ‘What’s wrong with your hands?’

  ‘I burnt them,’ I say.

  She leads me around the caravan to the spot where she was kneeling earlier on. There is a mound of earth and small stones. ‘Mum said you’d say a prayer.’

  Caroline and I crouch on either side of Moni as she says: ‘Do you think she’ll be able to fly when she wakes up? If I was a bird, I’d just fly straight to heaven. I wouldn’t wait until I died.’

  I study the small grave, trying to find a response. ‘I used to think heaven didn’t exist, for anyone. Now I’m not so sure. Who’s to say there isn’t somewhere for birds to go to when they die.’ I draw Moni towards me. ‘Nothing is impossible, when you think about it.’

  ‘Will you say the prayer now?’ she asks, drawing back from me in anticipation.

  ‘A prayer. Right. Close your eyes.’ As Moni closes her eyes, I look across at Caroline. The muscles in her face falter as she tries not to cry.

  ‘For the bird that got shot down, we pray that it may find its way to heaven or the place where birds go to when they stop breathing.’

  ‘How will it find its way?’ Moni asks, her eyes now wide with concern.

  ‘Birds are clever creatures. Remember the swallows, all the way from Africa. They always found our shed, didn’t they?’

  ‘But Georgie’s not a swallow.’

  ‘Heaven will find her.’

  Moni’s face lights up for a second. ‘We should make a cross.’

  She starts poking around the tyres and sparse scrub at the back of the caravan, looking for sticks. I search with her. Neither of us notices Caroline leaving. Moni chooses two sticks from the pile we collect. I do the best I can, tying the sticks together with a piece of scrub grass – not an easy feat with bandaged hands. We lay the cross on the mound; the earth is too dry to hold it upright.

  ‘That’s fine,’ Moni says, tugging my shirt sleeve as we head back across the tarmac.

  Later, when Moni is in bed, I phone the police, who tell me to leave Eddie where he is until the morning. And then I call Susan again. After that, I sort through Eddie’s things. The piles of paper are easily packed. It’s the plans, his precious plans for Akarula that I don’t know what to do with. I peel them off the wall. Every building is mapped out in minute detail. A railway line, for goodness sake. The whole idea was ridiculous, impossible, yet somehow he managed to pull off … if not most of it, the important part. He made a town. Which is a damn sight more than I can boast about.

  Caroline raps on the window. The outside light gives her a ghostly appearance. She’s holding one of the boxes that were stacked behind the shed ready for moving. If the rain comes before we’re finished, they’ll be ruined.

  When I open the window, she thrusts the box towards me. ‘Take it,’ she says, wearing a determined expression that hides everything else.

  Then she passes me another one.

  ‘Is Moni asleep?’ she asks.

  ‘Think so.’

  The last box gets stuck at an awkward angle and is now rammed in too far to be pushed back. Caroline tugs from her side, and I pull from mine. Eventually the box breaks. I don’t know what to do with my half.

  ‘Give it to me,’ she says, reaching through the window. But I don’t give it to her. I clamp the rotten dusty scrap of cardboard to my chest. Whatever she is standing on – most likely a beer crate – makes her able to lean right in, while she holds onto the frame for support. ‘Give it to me,’ she repeats. She is half-in, half-out of the window. Her fingers grip the ledge. I study the tiny flecks of varnish clinging to her nails without attempting a reply, but she’s insistent. ‘Michael, for God’s sake, we’re going to have to talk about it some time.’

  ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘You’re right.’ She stops, and when she starts again, her voice is softer. ‘If it will make things easier, I can stay. At least I won’t be in your way. Moni doesn’t want me either; I know she doesn’t. And now Eddie.’

  ‘What about Eddie?’

  ‘Do you think it’s my fault?’

  I pause, trying to register what she means, and then say: ‘What you do is up to you.’

  The remains of the box slip through my hands. I turn away from the window and go back to the desk. Each drawer contains another pile of notices. My eyes catch words and phrases, but not enough to make sense: red statements at the bottom of a page. Eddie is home and dry. We’re the ones left picking up the pieces. Yet again, he has walked away scot-free. Caroline has gone when I look back. A stream of insects flies in through the open window. England has never felt so far away.

  Eddie’s filing cabinet is stuffed with notebooks full of sketches, two-line ideas, doodles; where is the evidence of a businessman? He wasn’t the wheeler-dealer people thought him; just played the role, wore the cap – managed to convince everyone because he had convinced himself. He wanted to be the Prime Minister at one stage. Maybe he would have made a better job of that, surrounded by advisors; he had no one to advise him, no one to rein in his wild fantasies and lay out the actual facts.

  High-pitched voices start up in the sitting room. When I open the door, I find Moni and Caroline flinging words at each other like snowballs packed tight to give a punch. Both of them spin round when they see me.

  Caroline gets in first. ‘She did it again. Tell her she can’t do that.’

  ‘Do what?’ It’s not unusual for me to act as umpire. Two headstrong women – well, Moni is still a girl, but sometimes, when she flashes that temper, I can see clearly the woman she will become. She has fallen silent, staring into me with her glistening eyes: the picture of sadness in her orange cardigan. She sleeps in that cardigan now.

  Caroline is sharp on the defence. ‘Talking as if Georgie is in the room. What is she trying to do? Torture us all?’ She swivels back round to Moni. ‘Do you think it’s funny?’

  Moni settles her gaze on the wooden floor.

 
‘It’s just too hard when you do that,’ Caroline says, relenting a little. ‘Can you try not to do it? Please try.’

  I step between them. ‘Your mum’s tired. We’re all tired. Why don’t you get back into bed? We’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’ I help her onto the camp bed and kiss her cheek, pushing her hair back off her face. She has no idea how precious she is.

  I draw Caroline into the office and close the door. ‘Why did you shout at her?’

  Caroline stays resolute, her arms folded across her chest. ‘It’s Georgie’s voice. She uses Georgie’s voice. How does she do that?’

  There are tears in her eyes as I lead her on into Eddie’s bedroom. ‘Get some sleep.’ I say, pulling back the cover and adjusting the pillow. I leave her in the quarter-moon-darkness to get undressed.

  Later, I find her curled up on Eddie’s bed, still dressed, her haunting green eyes staring out. Wheeling the chair in from Eddie’s office, I sit in the corner of the bedroom and wait until she falls asleep.

  The last place to sort through is Eddie’s shed. I take the key from the hook in the hall, go outside and unlock the padlock. With a torch, I assess the size of the task ahead of me. This doesn’t look like Eddie’s shed. As with his office, all the shelves have been tidied: nails in the nail box, tools hanging on the wall in their rightful places. Only a large cardboard box with a plastic bag taped to the top obstructs the floor. I try to push the box over to the wall but it weighs a ton. Taking a Stanley knife from the tool box, I make a hole, then cut one side of the box away. It’s a projector, a full-sized cinema projector. Once I cut through the plastic bag on top, I find a reel of tape, and a square paper note: Happy Birthday, Mike.

  I push the projector outside and point the lens at the back wall of Eddie’s house, before running an electric cable through the office window. It takes me a while to figure out how to work the thing and where to put the reel. When I flick the switch, the reel starts turning and a square of light hits the wall, a mass of grey flecks. I sit on the tarmac and wait for the picture to start.

  And there I am, aged twelve, running around in that fringed cowboy suit, firing a gun. The camera bounces as Eddie runs after me. In my head, I can hear us shouting at each other.

  ‘You can’t shoot and be the sheriff at the same time.’ That’s me.

  ‘I’m Castro,’ Eddie says.

  Eddie was always Castro and I was always Egor. We both had magical powers and could do just about anything. Egor, the fearless. And I was fearless, and brave. As I watch myself leap over what must have been the rabbit hutch in our parents’ garden, something rips inside me and all the things I’ve packed away over the years tumble out. I can’t stop them. My tears make the film look smudged.

  I must have taken hold of the camera because Eddie is running now; he keeps looking back and waving. ‘Come on, Mike. Look out Father, Egor’s coming!’ Father is sitting in a wooden deckchair, cleaning his boots. He throws his hands in the air as Eddie points the gun. ‘Alright, boys, what do you want? Don’t shoot.’ He did a pretty good job, our father, when I think about it.

  The reel tugs as it reaches the end, but I carry on with that day, going down to the river with Eddie to catch fish in plastic bags. Eddie almost falls in and I laugh at his panic and do a stupid dance, snagging my leg on a bramble, which makes Eddie laugh. We find a rotting sheep and get a stick and poke around inside. I think we make a fire too, but that could have been another day. We were the same back then, Eddie and I.

  I replay the film over and over.

  ‘The police have arrived.’ Caroline’s voice sounds as if it’s coming from a distance. ‘I heard a plane about ten minutes ago.’ As I shake off the remains of sleep, I slowly realise that I’m in the shed, and pull myself up with the help of the projector. It’s light again. The sky is a mess of thick clouds.

  Caroline doesn’t ask why I’ve slept in the shed. She glances at the projector and then says: ‘Moni’s waiting for you. I’ve made coffee.’ She looks like a worn-out copy of herself.

  Moni is sitting crossed-legged on Eddie’s bed when I go in. I sit down beside her.

  Caroline talks to us from Eddie’s office. ‘Maybe we can make a fire later? Cook some food outside. What do you think?’

  Moni looks at me warily – she doesn’t trust this talk.

  ‘What do you think, Moni?’ I ask.

  She loves fires. We used to take her to the sea, to Caroline’s parents, on her birthday, build a fire on the beach, have a picnic, before Georgie was born.

  ‘Can we?’

  I wink and she winks back.

  As I head out, she asks ‘Where are you going?’

  I glance at Caroline, who narrows her eyes and mouths for me to say something. So I do. ‘Uncle Eddie had an accident yesterday.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  I nod, unable to find more of an explanation.

  Moni doesn’t blink. It’s as if she can’t quite take it in, and then she says to Caroline, ‘Shall we play Scrabble?’

  Detective Delaney and Walsh are accompanied by two other men: a sandy-haired fellow with rough features and a navy sports cap, and a younger chap who gesticulates wildly as he talks. As I reach the bend, I stop to watch them tramp across the scrub at the edge of the airstrip. Walsh waves. The sight of them sends my head spinning.

  We walk as far as the tree. The youngest one moves in under the branches and we all follow. A silence cuts through the tail end of our greeting. It’s as if we’ve broken into someone’s home and the alarm has gone off. Delaney says we’d better move on.

  When we have veered off onto the mine road and made some distance, Walsh asks, ‘What happened?’ eyeing my bandages.

  I throw my hands into the air and lift my chin slightly by way of answering. And then, perhaps because we are almost there, I dive in, dredging up the details, plucking out the key points. ‘Eddie couldn’t swim. He was always terrified of water.’ I’ve said all this before, on the phone last night, but not like this. Once I start, I’m like a burst pipe; everything floods out: bits and pieces about Father and how Eddie always overstepped the mark.

  ‘Georgie was a lot like Eddie,’ I say, realising this only now.

  I hardly notice the two men from forensics head on towards the tank. I continue talking, thinking, tripping over myself in my rush to get to the end. Then I notice the pile of equipment in front of the water tank. They must have thrown it out of the plane on their way.

  ‘You needn’t watch this,’ Walsh says, as we stop within yards of the sight. But I carry on, showing Delaney how the plug was out and how the lid was off.

  ‘We’ll do the rest,’ she says, signalling for Walsh to get rid of me. She doesn’t want me to see the body. ‘Let us know when you get to Adelaide. We can talk you through the procedure then. We’ll need to do an autopsy. You might want to make arrangements for a funeral.’

  I can hear them unzipping a bag on the other side of the tank. They are going to put my brother in a zip-up bag.

  ‘How’s Monica?’ Walsh asks, as he directs me back along the mine road. ‘At least the rain’s on its way.’ The sky visibly blackens as he speaks.

  I stop to let him know that I can go on alone.

  Walsh scratches the back of his hand. ‘We’ll call in to say goodbye,’ he offers, before turning back.

  Eddie’s water-tight body bobs to the surface of my mind as I drift along towards the service station. I try to picture his face, the lines around his eyes, his sharp chin, but all I see is Father’s white frosted moustache. And a pair of hands.

  The removal van has taken most of our belongings to Susan’s house. I sent the projector; we can always sell it. There’s a refreshing emptiness to the caravan and most of Eddie’s rooms. I pile the rest of his clothes and papers in a heap on the tarmac, ready for burning. I put the film reel there too. I’ll never watch it again.

  At dusk, Moni and I collect wood for the fire and poke it underneath Eddie’s things, shifting the more flammable items to
the bottom. Caroline is preparing a meal with the remains in the fridge.

  ‘Do you think Georgie will be able to see our fire, if we build it big enough?’ Moni throws a bundle of sticks on top of Eddie’s clothes.

  ‘Maybe. That depends on where she is.’

  ‘She’s in the sea.’

  ‘Why would she be in the sea?’

  Moni stops what she is doing and looks at me. ‘Mrs. Thompson in Hendon School told us that some people believe that when you die you turn into the thing you most want to be. Is that true?’

  ‘Well, I can’t say it isn’t true because I don’t know. We believe whatever fits into the way we think, but that doesn’t mean everything else is wrong, and it doesn’t mean that what we believe in is right. You can’t believe everything you’re told.’

  ‘Do you remember how Mrs Thompson lost her hair and had to wear that turban? I bet she’d be a dog. She loves dogs. Or maybe an apple.’ Moni picks some sleep from her eye. ‘What will you turn into when you die?’ Moni asks.

  I take my time thinking of the right reply. ‘That’s a hard one. Let me see. I think I’ll be that matchbox you keep in your pocket, so I can keep my eye on you.’

  Moni laughs – it’s the most beautiful sound.

  I poke in the last of the wood, thinking about Moni’s old teacher, who somehow managed to survive, despite the odds. Moni asks. ‘I’m going to be a bird,’ Moni says. ‘An eagle or a kingfisher. I don’t mind which.’

  We position three crates to sit on. Moni hasn’t mentioned Eddie. Sometimes with children, if you’re lucky, these things can wash right through without a trace of sadness.

  I light the fire while we wait for Caroline. With a splash of petrol, the flames swell, forming a tower of smoke. We sit watching the sky, seeing if we can spot the moment when the day slips into night.

  Caroline arrives with kangaroo steaks and a good chunk of bread.

  ‘This is the lot,’ she says. ‘I’ve thrown the rest away. Eddie had the whole carcass in the freezer.’

  Moni refuses to eat kangaroo, and tucks into a slice of buttered bread instead.