Refuge

by Richard Rossiter

  Praise for Richard Rossiter

  For Arrhythmia

  ‘It’s hard not to be swept up in the intoxicating mystery of this beguiling collection of short stories from Richard Rossiter … Rossiter draws us into a compelling narrative which explores the emotional mind. Highly recommended for readers of short stories and lovers of good literature.’

  CANDICE CAPPE, Bookseller+Publisher

  ‘Rossiter’s collection is so rich with connections and suggested associations that reading it invites a sort of double cognisance … Collectively [the stories] work as a masterful structural feat—and a worthy example of the whole being more than the sum of its parts.’

  NICOLA REDHOUSE, Indigo

  ‘A quietly impressive collection of linked stories … Rossiter writes as some professionals play tennis, “within himself”, and the modesty and restraint of the book’s style is an effective foil for the drama of its contents.’

  KERRYN GOLDSWORTHY, Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘Rossiter’s is a contemplative and distinctive voice. His sharp observation of the lives the stories tell is often surprising, and the collection invites many re-readings.’

  WILLIAM YEOMAN, The West Australian

  ‘Rossiter is a consummate stylist … his language is sparse and finely honed … the collection acquires a haunting quality, for, as with the characters themselves, beneath the surface beats the arrhythmic pulse.’

  Island

  ‘Rossiter’s sparse and tense prose possesses a distinctively dry, desert-like beauty.’

  PATRICK ALLINGTON, Australian Book Review

  For Thicker Than Water

  ‘Rossiter writes in parched and spartan prose, often with piercing psychological insight about love and trauma, avoidant behaviour and erotic confrontation … [it possesses a] complex structure, dramatic intensity and astutely rendered characters.’

  CAMERON WOODHEAD, Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘The beautifully written Thicker Than Water takes readers on a journey … Readers will find this novella hard to put down. The language is poetic and Rossiter has an uncanny ability to connect his readers with a deep truth that seldom reaches the surface in most of us. This novella is psychological drama at its very best.’

  WritingWA

  ‘At once bold and suggestive, fierce and melancholy … One of the most unusual narratives I’ve read for some time … A beautifully crafted and beautifully written story of darkness and sadness and madness.’

  SUSAN MIDALIA

  ‘There’s a hard clarity, and almost brutal concision to the writing that adds to the shocking, cumulative power of the narrative. This both is and isn’t an easy read.’

  WILLIAM YEOMAN, The West Australian

  ‘Richard Rossiter has written a novella of such depth and power that is an undiluted joy to read. His vivid evocation of the West Australian coast must spring from his own experiences of living in a bush dwelling and writing full time. Thicker Than Water is an intense family drama that explores love’s transgressions across the generations.’

  MEREDITH JAFFE, The Hoopla

  Refuge

  Richard Rossiter lives in Perth, Western Australia, and from time to time in a bush dwelling in the south-west of the state. He is a writer, editor, mentor and occasional judge of writing competitions, including the Tom Hungerford Award and the WA Premier’s Book Award. He has been the fiction editor for Indigo and Westerly and supervised numerous postgraduate creative writing students. He is an editorial board member with Margaret River Press and an Honorary Associate Professor at Edith Cowan University. He enjoys catching herring.

  Refuge

  Richard Rossiter

  First published in 2019 by

  UWA Publishing

  Crawley, Western Australia 6009

  www.uwap.uwa.edu.au

  UWAP is an imprint of UWA Publishing,

  a division of The University of Western Australia.

  This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Copyright © Richard Rossiter 2019

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  ISBN: 987-1-76080-037-6

  Cover design by Upside Creative

  Cover image: Coast, Juniper Road by Caroline Juniper

  Typeset in 11 pt Bembo by Lasertype

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  The Charles and Joy Staples South West Region Publications Fund was established in 1984 on the basis of a generous donation to The University of Western Australia by Charles and Joy Staples.

  The purpose of the Fund is to highlight all aspects of the South West region of Western Australia, a geographical area much loved by Charles and Joy Staples, so as to assist the people of the South West region and those in government and private organisations concerned with South West projects to appreciate the needs and possibilities of the region in the widest possible historical perspective.

  The fund is administered by a committee whose aims are to make possible the publication by UWA Publishing of research and writing in any discipline relevant to the South West region.

  And I have asked to be

  Where no storms come,

  Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,

  And out of the swing of the sea.

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

  One

  ‘And then Peaches left; she headed for the city, to get away from us. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Skel nodded.

  Rock continued: ‘That’s what Dad told us. I can’t really remember.’ He looked at his older brother, expecting something more. Skel shook his head.

  The woman removed the saucepan of milk from the gas ring. ‘Do you want to sit outside? It’s nicer than in here.’ The two boys rose, obediently.

  She poured a dash of milk into her coffee and then filled two larger cups. The Milo floated to the surface. ‘Take these with you, and a teaspoon.’

  They sat on the steps of the small deck outside the shed. The autumn sunlight was breaking through the clouds and the trees were perfectly still. The boys looked at the woman, waiting for her to say something.

  ‘Peaches—was that really your mother’s name?’

  Skel looked at Rock. ‘Yeah,’ said his younger brother. ‘That’s what Dad always calls her …’

  ‘Sometimes he calls her Peaches and Cream,’ said Rock.

  ‘Or Peachblossom,’ said Skel.

  ‘And your father—is Tinny his real name?’

  ‘No,’ said Rock. ‘He’s really Quentin, but no one calls him that. He goes out in his boat a lot, and that’s called a tinny, so he’s called Tinny. And Quen-Tin, you know?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Such strange names.’

  Two pairs of eyes gazed at her, expressionless.

  ‘What’s your name?’ said Rock.

  ‘Greta,’ she replied.

  ‘Is that like in Hansel and Gretel?’ Skel asked.

  ‘Almost,’ she said. ‘But I don’t have a brother and I’ve never been in the house of a wicked witch in a forest.’

  ‘Nor have we,’ said Rock. He looked at Skel. ‘I think we’ve got to go now. Dad will be home soon. He worries if we’re not there when he first comes in. After that, it doesn’t matter.’

  The two boys had been standing in the trees at the edge of the clearing. She didn’t know how long they had been there before she noticed them. She knew who they had to be: the children from the neighbouring block, who lived in a shed not much bigger than hers. She’d seen the building often enough in the distance, and sometimes the boys or the man, on her frequent walks
through the bush to the coast. She could look across to it from her side of the scrubby hill they shared, the boundary unfenced but marked by a firebreak. Apart from trees along the creek line, there wasn’t much high vegetation on these coastal blocks; still, she was surprised how easy it was for buildings and people to disappear from sight within a few metres of where you were standing. This happened with kangaroos that she didn’t see until, disturbed, they bounded through the low scrub. Tinny’s boys were like that. She hadn’t seen them until they moved. They were brown-skinned with colourless clothing, and hard to distinguish from the skinny trunks of the red gums.

  She’d been here almost a year, and this was the first time they’d been to visit. She wondered why they had suddenly appeared, or whether they had been before, watching without her knowing. She had no dog to warn her of visitors, or intruders. But for now she felt safe; she did not know how soon that feeling would change. Oliver’s dog, Kipper, had died from a snakebite shortly after she’d moved to this new block, and she hadn’t sought out a replacement for her. The dog was the last remaining link with the man. She still missed him.

  Two

  When she received the news, she’d gone to bed and pulled the sheet over her head and closed her eyes. Oliver’s letter, delivered by his solicitor, said: My son, Fyn, is well cared for; if you want, this is yours—and it is your choice what you do with it. I have talked to Fyn about this: he cannot live here and does not want to come back here, not after the fire. So she had accepted her unlikely inheritance; she stayed put and finished building the house that Oliver had started before the fire. She did not know what else to do. But no sooner was it finished than she decided it was time to leave. Living there by herself on his block had not felt right from the very beginning. She didn’t want to forget Oliver—that was not possible—but nor did she want the constant reminders of his injuries that she felt responsible for. The fire didn’t kill his body, not immediately, but afterwards he wasn’t the same. And nor was she.

  Now she was the owner of this patch of land on the coast, not too far from Oliver’s. She had put up the shed that served as her house, and attached a rainwater tank. There was no mains power, but she had a gas stove and a gas fridge and relied on candles and lamps for lighting. Her mobile phone worked erratically; the hotspot, where there was occasional reception, was on the hillside overlooking Tinny Thompson’s shed.

  She found life on this isolated bit of the coast to be reduced, and expanded. Slowly the past was receding, now troubling the present less and less often. Although there were still too many reminders of Marvyn. But she was determined today was not going to be one where she was trapped in that half-life. There was work to be done around her dwelling, satisfying work. She had to clean leaves out of the gutters so the downpipe to the rainwater tank was not choked. She would weed the small covered garden bed, where there were herbs and various varieties of lettuce growing, struggling really, but surviving. If she had time, she would dig another hole and shift her outdoor toilet. It would be at least six months before she needed to do it again.

  She stood on the ladder, easing her hand along the guttering, careful not to catch her wrist on the sharp, overlapping tin of the roofline. She thought again of Tinny’s boys, the whole family with such strange names. But they were not alone. Someone else with a strange name, in her opinion, was her friend Skyler Roche, a teacher at the local school, who knew the Thompsons and had told her that the district was in thrall to a revival of the 1970s, except they didn’t know they were repeating history. ‘They think the world began in the year 2000,’ he’d said.

  ‘Skyler, that is not possible. They would be no more than teenagers. Whoever these people are, they know they’re older than that.’

  He’d cocked his head at her. ‘You would think so.’ And then changed the subject.

  Skel, she thought. Short for skeleton, so they said. Well, so Skyler said. He said the boys were a bit wild, but smart, when they chose to be. Even Skel, who didn’t say much. He always had his head in a book. The story was that Tinny and Peaches—no one knew whether that was her real name—had a human skeleton hanging up in their bedroom. They would talk to it, include it in their conversations, claiming that it belonged to an ancestor who still wanted to be counted in the daily goings-on of their lives. When their first child was born, it was obviously a reincarnation of their forebear, who now rattled in the bedroom when the sea breeze rushed in from the south-west. There could be no other name for the baby, but they preferred the abbreviation of Skel, so that’s what appeared on the birth certificate. Their friends were not surprised, nor offended by the name. ‘When the second boy was called Rock, no one blinked,’ said Skyler. ‘In fact, it seemed a commonplace sort of a name.’

  ‘A bit like yours,’ she’d said.

  In spite of her care, there were small cuts on her fingers where there wasn’t enough space between the roof and the gutter. She hadn’t removed all the gunk, but it would have to do.

  Three

  Tinny Thompson swept the floor of his shed. He didn’t like wearing shoes, inside or out, but couldn’t stand the feeling of grit under his feet when he was inside. Tinny talked to himself when he was concentrating on a task. He was comforted by the sound of his voice filling up the spaces around him. ‘Should’ve left the dirt floor in, forget the concrete slabs. But not really. Boys will be boys, leave their clothes all over the place. Can’t have your kids going to school dirty. What would the neighbours think? Neighbours? What neighbours?’ He moved the woodbox aside and stared at the debris underneath. ‘Ah, more dirt. Grist for the mill. Gristle for the mill. Grizzle for the mill.’ He paused and looked at himself in the mirror.

  ‘Now, where was I? Neighbours. There is, of course, the tall German over the hill there. Not that she’s over the hill—not at all. A good looker, but a bit funny, living by herself, wandering around down the coast, always with a fishing rod in her hand. Oliver’s girlfriend, so they reckon. Used to be. Poor Oliver. What does she do for a living, that woman? Left her the place, didn’t he? Maybe it was love. Love, sweet love.’ He looked up when the screen door banged. ‘Oh, so here you are, my favourite boys. Come home to visit your old dad, have you? Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Just walking around, looking at things,’ said Rock.

  ‘And you, too, O silent one, have you just been walking, and looking?’

  Skel nodded.

  ‘Come here, and give me a hug.’ Tinny put an arm around each boy and drew them to him. ‘We need hugs, don’t we? All of us.’

  The boys held him tightly for a moment and then wriggled free.

  ‘Get yourselves something to eat—tea won’t be ready for a while. It’s too nice an evening to waste inside. Anyway, we’ll light the fire outside a bit later and cook out there. We’ll grill fish, just for a change, eh?’

  Rock raised his eyebrows. ‘Sure, Dad, just for a change … What’re you going to do now?’

  Tinny pointed to the broom. ‘Finish this and then check out the coast. Do you want to come? There’s no wind and I can’t hear the ocean, so there’s not much swell. Perfect for fishing, I’d reckon. What do you think?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  ‘Remember, Rock my soul, He who sleeps cannot catch fish.’

  Rock was thinking of their visit to the woman, Greta. Even though they’d just left, he wanted to go back there. Wanted to sit around, maybe at her table inside, and watch her do things, listen to her talk. He looked at Skel but couldn’t work out what he was thinking. In the last few months, he felt things were beginning to change; he wanted someone to talk to, someone who didn’t rant and rave like Tinny did. For sure, he talked, but mostly to himself, even when he was doing crosswords—especially when he was doing crosswords—and it was hard to know what he really thought about anything or when he was serious. Sometimes he would say things very loudly and laugh, and you didn’t know why, or what he meant.

  That afternoon, Rock had waited until most of the other kids had le
ft the room in the last period of the day, and then he’d gone up to the English teacher, Mr Roche, who was packing away his books. He wanted to talk to him, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say. So he had asked him a question about the fish in the story they were studying, The Old Man and the Sea. What did it stand for, the fish? It was a fish, but also something else. Symbolic, Skyler had said. Rock liked Skyler—Mr Roche—because he talked about things like relationships between people, love, even sex. And none of the kids laughed when he did because you felt grown-up in his class. If you sniggered or punched the boy next to you then you felt like a little kid, but only in his class. Rock wanted to know how something could be real, like the huge fish, and a symbol at the same time, which is what Mr Roche said. ‘How can it be both things?’ he asked. ‘Together?’

  For a moment Rock thought his teacher looked a bit annoyed. He probably thought he should have asked the question in class, not now, when he wanted to go home. Then he sat on the edge of his desk and looked at Rock for a moment without saying anything.

  ‘I think you know the answer to that question, Rock, even if you don’t know you know.’

  This is what Mr Roche did. He wouldn’t tell you straightaway, but he talked to you like you were saying something important, which could be discussed. Not like in maths, where there was one right answer, usually. In English there could be different answers, all of them sort of right—or at least not wrong.

  ‘Think of your name,’ said Mr Roche. ‘It means different things at the same time. It’s your name, Rock Thompson, and you’re real enough, I suppose.’ He smiled. ‘And then rock means a large stone, and stands for qualities like solid, dependable, a strong foundation—I’m sure you could think of more—maybe stubborn. It doesn’t mean that just because you’re called rock you’ve got all these qualities. Your name is a sign that is you and points to lots of other things. Think of money. Money is a symbol but becomes the real thing when you exchange it for something that you want, like food or a toy. There’s not ten dollars’ worth of paper and ink in a ten-dollar note, or fifty cents’ worth of silver in a fifty-cent piece. So they’re real and not real at the same time. It’s what people in a society agree on. So you can’t use your money from Bali here in Australia. Unless you exchange it, of course.’