by Ann Turner
We moved into a big creaking house in a dark leafy street in suburban Kew, so far away from the beach. A green desert. And then one year later, Dad moved out.
Mum ached to go back to London but she had a job as a lecturer, teaching Spanish, and as with all Alvarados she stayed to make a better life for her daughter. She insisted that I take my first surname – in Spanish tradition that meant her maiden name. I would be Laura Alvarado. I longed to be Laura Green. I worshipped my father and loved that he – and therefore I – was Australian. I blamed my mother and wondered what awful things she’d done to make Dad go. I’d grill her; she’d never answer. I saw Dad at weekends for a couple of years, and then he moved to Sydney and was, more often than not, too busy to come down, or have me up to visit.
That left Mum and me in the too-big house in a cold, foreign place.
A penguin started pecking curiously at my leg, pulling the trouser fabric, letting it go, pulling again.
‘No rock here, my love.’
He looked up curiously and pecked again. Another penguin dropped a stone between the tripod legs of the camera. The pecking penguin waddled off and returned with a blue stone of Kate’s, dropped it on the leg of the tripod where it rolled off. I photographed them and made notes, concerned the camera may have been erected on their annual nesting spot. They were tagged with tiny radio antennae that stuck out through their oily feathers on the back of their necks. I looked them up on my satellite-tracking app – Isabel and Charles. I would follow them; make sure the camera didn’t disturb them.
Elsewhere, young penguins arriving for their first breeding season were trying to coerce their way into established partnerships to no avail. They’d rush in when one penguin was away, only to be pecked out, like a game of musical chairs, but they never won the chair. I sympathised. The camera swivelled and took arbitrary shots.
My nose started to freeze and a familiar sensation rushed through me. A storm was brewing. Down here, anything could change at any second. I looked across to Kate. She’d felt it too. I threw on my jacket and signalled for home; Kate gave me the thumbs up. We put on our skis.
The wind was fierce as we tilted against it, slowly making our way cross-country through icefields stretching wide to three horizons. Gales had whipped the surface into sastrugi, small ridges like frozen waves, with little peaks and troughs shadowed blue beneath sky that was turning a dark, foreboding grey. We took care to keep to the flagged area our safety engineer had set out, away from deep ice crevasses that could be fatal. In Antarctica, people normally moved around on motorised equipment but we preferred to ski and it was much less disruptive to the Adélie colony. Our tiny Apple hut, a round red dome of warmth and shelter – looking just like its namesake, a cheery red apple – was a welcome sight in the vast white. I tried to pull open the door, but the wind kept blowing it closed. Kate helped, and together we managed to force it ajar long enough to slip inside. Shutting it, there was a beautiful muffled quiet. A blizzard was forming, and the katabatic winds, roaring downhill from the inland ice, grew so strong that everything started to rock.
We ate a quick meal of hot soup and biscuits in companionable silence. Kate was often not much of a talker, which always amused me given how loud her beloved penguins were. Afterwards, we slipped into sleeping bags and lay on single stretchers crammed close for body heat. Kate was absorbed in the footage the camera was recording and was now reprogramming it so that she could control where it filmed. I looked across at her screen and saw the penguins hunkered down, becoming white with snow and ice until they were indistinguishable from the landscape.
I checked my satellite-tracking app and found Isabel and Charles huddled together between the tripod legs, snug on their new nest. I, too, had found my mate down here once: at twenty-seven, in the abandoned Norwegian whaling station of Grytviken on South Georgia Island, I’d married Cameron Stewart, a dark-eyed, dark-haired, intense marine biologist the same age as me. We were part way through a summer investigation of humpback whales which at that time were in decline. The bloody, awful history of the whaling station should have made us sad. But we were young and deeply in love, and instead it brought out an unexpected fighting instinct. We wanted to do something to respect the whales, to mark and pay homage to their terrible destruction. There was a small museum, and the woman in charge was also a chaplain. Cameron and I were sombre and respectful as we took our vows in front of the empty pews in a tiny church that had been built for the whalers.
That night we slept in a tent by the harbour and stuck our heads out watching the sparkling array of stars in the deep sky, listening to a recording we’d made of humpback whales singing. Three pods, each with their own song, which the males sang to find their mate. They were eerily musical, sharing notes and arrangements with human compositions, like ethereal, modern performances.
We spent the next two weeks on board the Antarctic Explorer with a group of American scientists, diving with the humpbacks in their crystal-clear underwater world, vivid colours refracting light. With the rhythm of oxygen from my scuba tank, my protective diving gear keeping me in a warm cocoon, I felt more alive than ever before. We followed the humpbacks’ songs, which developed each day and grew more complex. A high note here, a bass note there, a new coupling of tones. Our bodies vibrated as the songs swept through us. We named the whales, photographing them, memorising the distinctive black and white markings on the underside of their tail flukes. Each pattern was unique, like a fingerprint; there were no two alike. My favourite humpback was Lev, a calf, about ten months old. He was a friendly clown and had already found himself in trouble, with a diagonal scar running across his flukes. He’d swim so close I could touch the long white pleats stretching from his mouth to his belly.
My phone started ringing. I reacted as I saw who it was. Kate glanced over, registered the caller, and waited to see what I’d do.
‘Is it okay with you?’ I asked. She grinned, green eyes lighting up. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’ I punched her on the arm and put the phone on speaker.
‘Hi Mum.’
‘Laura, haven’t you received my messages?’ Cristina Ana Alva-rado’s strong, resonant voice boomed out. I could imagine her sitting where she always did at her kitchen table, running long fingers through stylishly-cut brown hair. Mum was an older, more fashionable version of me. Same olive skin, same dark eyes. I’d always wanted to take after my dad; he had brown hair and black eyes too, but still managed to look like a white-bread Anglo-Saxon.
‘Sorry, I’ve been busy.’
Kate snorted, too loudly.
‘Who are you there with, honey? Is that Kate?’
‘Yes, we’re in the field.’
‘Hi Cristina,’ called Kate. Mum asked Kate how she was, but before waiting for an answer began speaking earnestly. Once she started, it was challenging to get her to stop.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen the news?’
‘No, Mum, I’ve been—’
‘That’s the problem down there. You forget about everyone else.’
Kate nodded exaggeratedly and whispered, ‘That’s the point.’
‘It’s awful,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve just got home from a protest march. Those poor refugees are desperate. They’re drowning in the Mediterranean as they try to get to Italy. And more innocent children have washed up on the shore, just like that little boy.’
My tablet beeped – Mum had sent a photograph of two girls, no more than six years old, lying face down in shallow water, tiny arms stuck out to their sides, like they were trying to hold hands. Drowned. My blood drained from me.
‘Australia needs to take more refugees, it’s barbaric.’
I nodded, unable to speak. The wind roared, our Apple hut rocked violently, and the connection broke up. Mum was still talking as the call was lost. I sat back, staring at the photo. Kate leaned over, and reeled away in shock. ‘Wish I hadn’t seen that,’ she mumbled, quickly refocussing on her penguins. ‘Your mother’s right, we should be taki
ng more.’
‘She’s always right on those things,’ I said. It’s just everything else she’s wrong about. Like sending this terrible photo, already lodged in my mind, opening a portal into my memories that were pouring in, unstoppable. When Cameron and I had returned from Antarctica, I’d discovered I was pregnant. My mother heard the news of the marriage and pregnancy at the same time. I thought she’d be furious but she was ecstatic. In one swoop my family life improved – Mum had been increasingly vexatious, difficult and angry, even before Dad left, and argumentative ever since, but now she mellowed. Cam and I set up in a rented house in Elwood by the sea. We both had post docs at Melbourne University and our world was each other, our work and most centrally our ever-growing, cutely kicking, adorable soon-to-arrive baby boy. Mum started a second career purchasing baby clothes and all the trappings of prams and bassinets and toys imaginable.
The days grew closer to my full-term. I stopped working. Mum and Cam helped set up a cosy room filled with mobiles of penguins dangling from the ceiling, and colourful posters of whales of every species on the walls. We bought new furniture, and arranged the clothes in drawers from zero to twelve months. We were like blissfully nesting Adélies.
When my waters broke, Cam, Mum and I went to hospital as planned. Everything was going perfectly until intense pain exploded in me, and blood flowed like rain. Our baby was coming, clawing his way out in monstrous bursts, but something was terribly wrong. Specialists raced in and took over from the midwife. The contractions were fast. Too fast. I was rushed to the operating theatre. Mum held one hand, Cam the other as I was wheeled along, and then to my horror they had to leave. An oxygen mask was clamped on my face, I was given blood to replace the gush of red seeping out, and rapidly prepared for an emergency C-section. Doctors swarmed. An intravenous drip in my arm and a general anaesthetic were the last things I remembered. When I woke up my life had changed.
As I opened my eyes, the recovery room was silent. I looked around, waiting to hear for the first time the beautiful cry heralding my baby’s arrival, expecting him to be close in a crib. I noticed my mother was nowhere to be seen. Cam, dark eyes sunken and bruised from tears, broke the news. Placental abruption. Sudden, unexpected. Starving our boy of oxygen. The doctors were unable to save him.
Stillborn.
Cam held me tight.
I asked to see my baby. The midwife was crying as she carried him in, swaddled in a hospital blanket, and placed him gently on my chest. Nothing made sense. He was beautiful, perfectly formed, with a head of black hair like Cam. Even in this miniature state I could see that he would take after his father – straight nose, narrow, pointed chin like an imp. I held his tiny crinkled hand and kissed him. My baby was limp, with no heartbeat. That wasn’t possible. He’d been bucking playfully inside me for months, with a strong, healthy, throbbing heart.
He was white as snow. A white I’d never seen.
We called him Hamish. A Scottish name, like his father. The midwife offered to take photographs. Cam said no. Every instinct in me needed to bathe Hamish, dress him in his soft blue pyjamas and wrap him in his own new woollen blanket. A nurse carried a bowl filled with water to the bed. I was slow and careful as I washed his dark hair, my body numb and aching simultaneously. I tried to keep him warm, but he was as cold as ice. Cam stood shivering beside me, crying softly. He reached out his hand to touch Hamish; pulled it back, unable to.
After the funeral, with the pale coffin so small it looked like it housed a doll, we packed away the ultrasound scans of our growing boy, but we left his room furnished, with the mobiles of penguins and posters of whales. We kept his clothes. So many clothes. Cam and I couldn’t talk about it. Milk still came, useless. I was fragile for weeks from the caesarean. I couldn’t concentrate or care about my research. Mum tried to be supportive, but she was furious with the universe. It brought all the losses the Alva-rados had faced rushing in. I blamed myself, my mind churning. What had I done? I hadn’t smoked, drunk alcohol, taken drugs; I didn’t have high blood pressure, wasn’t overweight. I’d had none of the risk factors. But I was certain it was my fault, and I knew my mother blamed me too. She said I was being irrational but I couldn’t shake the feeling. I withdrew further and further.
Cameron and I tried for another child but nothing happened. I wanted a baby desperately, to raise a little boy or girl so differently to the way I’d been brought up. I’d not dominate; I’d make sure not to drive the father away. But Cam and I just weren’t the same after the death of Hamish. Two miserable years later we separated. I felt so displaced I moved back in with Mum. A fatal mistake. We’d argue and make up and argue in a revolving psychodrama. And always, the face of my beautiful baby Hamish hovered. As soon as I closed my eyes. As soon as I woke.
I caught my breath, a hot flush burning my cheeks. In Antarctica ghosts could visit.
The blizzard was shrieking. I listened to the familiar roar, feeling the force of wind and ice and snow raging across the continent. It comforted me, even though it brought mortality knocking. Life could be so easily extinguished in extreme cold, if you were caught in the wrong place. Life was fragile. With sadness, I closed the image of the two drowned refugee girls, sickened by the injustice that they’d had to flee their homeland, only to meet death, rather than a future of hope, the shared migrant dream.
I lay back and kept listening to the wind, grateful to be warm and sheltered, and then I tapped open a journal: Bio-Medicine International. Mum had always hoped I’d study Spanish literature but there was something in my head that relaxed when I observed minute details with clean precision and recorded facts and figures, and I was addicted to collaboration, the teamwork that gave me an endless stream of tiny, tight-knit families.
As Antarctica howled, I scrolled to the long article by my father, Professor Michael Green, on the influenza virus and how susceptible the world was to a massive pandemic, greater than anything we’d ever seen. I kept abreast of Dad’s research, even though I hadn’t seen him since I first graduated from university, following in his footsteps with my science degree. When Hamish died, Dad had sent flowers and money, and written expressing his condolences – but he couldn’t come to the funeral because he was overseas. Since then we’d had email contact, and left occasional messages on phones. For the past decade Dad had been either away or too busy when I tried to catch up with him in Sydney. It saddened me, but I knew it was Mum’s fault. I looked so much like her, and she’d treated him so badly. That didn’t stop me feeling angry with him on my own behalf, but I always found myself slipping back into admiration. Dad had become a pre-eminent scholar, the most respected microbiologist in his field in the Asia-Pacific region. At least I could enjoy reading his work. It couldn’t hurt me.
Or so I thought.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ann Turner is an award-winning screenwriter and director, avid reader and history lover. She is drawn to salt-sprayed coasts, luminous landscapes and the people who inhabit them all over the world. She is a passionate gardener. Her films include the historical feature Celia, starring Rebecca Smart – which Time Out listed as one of the fifty greatest directorial debuts of all time; Hammers Over The Anvil, starring Russell Crowe and Charlotte Rampling; and the psychological thriller Irresistible starring Susan Sarandon, Sam Neill and Emily Blunt. Ann has lectured in film at the Victorian College of the Arts.
Returning to her first love, the written word, in her debut novel The Lost Swimmer Ann explores themes of love, trust and the dark side of relationships. Her second novel, Out of the Ice, a mystery thriller set in Antarctica, will be published by Simon and Schuster in 2016. Ann was born in Adelaide and lives in Victoria. Visit Ann’s website at www.annturnerauthor.com.
Author photograph by Kristian Gehradte
SIMON & SCHUSTER
simonandschuster.com.au
authors.simonandschuster.com/Ann-Turner
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are used fictitiously.
THE LOST SWIMMER
First published in Australia in 2015 by
Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Limited
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This edition published in 2016.
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Visit our website at www.simonandschuster.com.au
© Ann Turner 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator:
Turner, Ann, 1960- author.
Title:
The lost swimmer/Ann Turner.
ISBN:
9781471153082 (paperback)
9781471153099 (ebook)
Subjects:
Disappeared persons – Fiction.
Interpersonal relations – Fiction.
Suspense fiction.
Psychological fiction.
Dewey Number:
A823.4
Cover design: Christabella Designs
Cover image: Igor Stevanovic/Shutterstock
Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Two quotes of Pompeii graffiti are gratefully reproduced from Mary Beard’s Pompeii, The Life of a Roman Town, Profile Books Ltd, London, 2008.