by Nikki Buick
‘You’ll have to go for a walk along the beach after lunch,’ Cathy said to Mum. ‘It’s the best stretch of sand in the whole country.’
‘She’s right,’ Barney agreed. ‘Wonga Beach is heaven on earth. The promised land.’
Sophie sat opposite me and rolled her eyes every time the adults said something stupid, which was pretty often. Her foot reached across and caressed my ankle. I nearly jumped out of my skin. ‘Isn’t this fun?’ she said with a trace of sarcasm.
‘So you have only Sophie? The one daughter?’ Mum asked, being overly nosy as always.
‘Nah. Got an older boy, Terence,’ Barney said gruffly. ‘He had a spot of bother and he’s down in Townsville now in a correctional facility.’
‘What’s a correctional facility?’ Pippa asked.
I wanted to slide beneath the table with embarrassment.
‘It’s a prison, love,’ Cathy said with a painful little smile.
‘Oh … my dad’s …’ Pippa began but Mum coughed and clearly pinched the blabbermouth on the leg beneath the table. Pippa stopped sharply and went back to her bread roll.
‘That must be very hard for you,’ Step broke the awkward silence.
Like he’d know how hard it was. I reckon he was happy Dad was in jail and out of the way. No competition. Mum had met Step after the court case so Dad never even got a chance to compete for Mum. Dad might have asked Mum to forgive him and wait for him if the intruder hadn’t come along at just the right time when Mum was all sad and fragile. Of course it also made Step look better. They’d dated for ages before Mum let it get too serious. It took her over a year to even tell Step the whole story of her ‘ex’. Step never ever said it but I always felt that he had a superiority complex. Ohhh … I’m going to be an upstanding school teacher and your dad’s just a no-good prisoner.
I was pleased when the subject of prison came up and got dumped out on the lunch table. It was healthy to talk about it and not bottle it up. Mum had to see that. Dad had made a mistake and was paying for it. People were not all so shallow and bigoted that they would blame her or her kids for that and tarnish us all with the same brush.
Cathy and Barney nodded and I saw Sophie put her hand over Cathy’s and give it a little squeeze. They were a family who clearly talked about things and didn’t have the need for secrets and lies. Sophie obviously felt very close to her stepmum. But her own mother was dead so that was more understandable than in my case.
‘Very hard,’ Cathy whispered.
Barney slapped my fish fillets on my plate. I let Mum have a taste.
‘Hmm, it’s good.’
I was eating something that I’d caught myself. Like a real hunter. You couldn’t macho it up more than that! I’d missed out on the scaling and gutting but I didn’t mind about that so much. The fish was flaky and soft, and a squeeze of lemon washed it down nicely.
‘Better than fish and chips from the takeaway, eh?’ Cathy nodded, passing salad bowls around the table.
It was pretty good, but I’d always have a soft spot for greasy fish and chips with tomato sauce and chicken salt.
Barney kept us all laughing while we hoed into the feast. Once he’d had a beer he was much more talkative. I think he was more comfortable on his own turf. He’d lived around Mossman all his life and had even been a real-life crocodile re-locator for a while.
‘Worked at the croc farm on the way to Cairns. It’s nice to keep the salties here in the Daintree where they belong, but if you get a rogue who’s eating the locals … well … better to move him to a safe place or a farm, than have some vigilante shoot him.’
‘Did you wrestle them, like Steve Irwin?’ Pippa was enthralled.
‘Sure did. Wrapped these arms around a few feisty crocs in my time.’ Barney was quite pleased with himself.
‘That’s awesome,’ I grinned. ‘You could give Mick a few pointers, hey?’ I looked across at Step and gave a smirk. ‘You ever done anything like that, Step?’
Step gave an uncomfortable laugh. ‘Well, I rode a mechanical bull once.’
‘Maybe I could interview you for my project on crocodiles, Mister …’ Pippa gushed at Barney, ignoring her stepfather.
‘Call me Barney and you bet, love. I’d be honoured.’
Did I detect a tiny glimmer of jealousy in Step’s eye?
We all ate in silence for a while, savouring the tastes and ignoring the subtext. Mum poured herself another glass of wine, her jaw set like concrete. Behind her eyes I could see her brain churning at a speed of knots, trying to figure out how she could manage my increasingly frustrating behaviour. She and Step probably sat up at night, analysing my moods and trying to hang them on the most appropriate theoretical framework.
‘More salad, anyone?’ Cathy chirped, shaking off the sudden cords of tension strung about the table. ‘Look, there’s still more potato salad and green salad.’
Everyone groaned. We were full of fish and bread and dips.
‘How about dessert? Pavlova?’ Cathy hooted.
The groans turned to laughter.
‘I’ll definitely need to walk along the beach to shake the ten kilos I just put on,’ Mum said.
‘Did you bring my swimmers?’ Pippa asked.
Before Mum could answer, Barney cut in. ‘Oh I wouldn’t go swimming kiddo. I’d be worried about the stingers. Just stick to the sand.’
‘I thought it was off-season,’ Step said, mopping up the last of the seafood sauce off his plate.
Pig.
‘Yeah,’ Barney nodded. ‘But with all this global warming stuff, they’ve been known to appear out of the blue. As I said, that’s just me. There’s a good netted area down at Port Douglas. You been down there?’
‘No, but maybe on the way back,’ Mum nodded and looked over to where the dog was leaping about Ranger, who was flapping about on the floor with some toys.
‘I’d come for a walk with you later but I’ve got to go to work,’ Cathy said, helping herself to another spoonful of potato salad. ‘I work in geriatrics up at the local hospital.’
‘You’re a nurse?’ Step asked.
‘A nurse’s aide. I’m pretty much the bed-pan lady,’ Cathy grinned and gave a final slurp of her lemonade.
‘Yuck, Mum. We’re at the table and you’re talking about bedpans!’ Sophie groaned.
‘Sophie, you and Hunter go and make the coffees, eh,’ Cathy suggested, ignoring her daughter’s complaint. ‘And take some of these plates.’
‘Brad,’ Mum said, looking up at him. ‘Let’s take the kids for a wander down the beach later, hey? Take some photos.’
‘There’s a great view of Snapper Island from the beach,’ Barney said gruffly. ‘I’ve got to tinker with the truck or I’d show yous about.’
‘We don’t need a chaperone, thanks Barney,’ Mum said. ‘We’ll just take a little stroll. Wonga looks like a lovely place.’
‘That it is,’ he replied, nodding.
Sophie and I began clearing the table and Mum raised her eyebrows and gave me a lopsided smile. She didn’t need to say anything. I could read her mind. Look at Hunter performing like the perfect son for these strangers. Clearly got a crush on that young girl and trying to impress.
Maybe I was trying to impress Sophie, but I was also just desperate to get away from the table and the oppressive presence of my family.
‘I’ll come for a walk with you guys, if you like,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s nice. The beach runs all the way up to the mouth of the river. We can collect coconuts.’
Sophie and I served coffee and then she invited me downstairs to her room to play Xbox while the oldies continued to chat. A girl who liked Xbox – Sophie was just getting better and better.
We sat on the edge of her bed, facing her small television and she looked at me nervously.
‘Do you really want to play Xbox or
would you, maybe, rather …’ Her face was going a shade of pink and her hand rested on my thigh again.
As if it was the most natural thing in the world, I leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips were so soft and warm. I’d kissed a few girls in my time but this was something else. Sophie opened her mouth and kissed me back quite urgently. Her tongue danced on mine and I felt myself getting very hot and bothered. There was movement at the station and I slipped a sneaky hand up to her boob. Her nipple jumped out to meet me.
‘Have you ever … you know? Done it?’ she asked.
I wanted to be super cavalier and say ‘hell yeah … heaps of times’ but I couldn’t lie to Sophie. ‘Nearly. Once. What about you?’
‘Yeah, there was one older guy. We hung out for a few months. But he moved away.’
I was disappointed and suddenly wished I had lied. I felt a bit idiotic because she was more experienced than me. I’d gotten so close with a girl who was billeted with our family. She was from Korea. At the last minute she’d suddenly thought Jesus was watching and just freaked out and put on the brakes.
Sophie put her arms around me and pushed me down on the bed, kissing me again.
‘I really, really like you, Hunter,’ she whispered in my ear.
‘And I really, really like you too, Sophie. Heaps.’
We kissed until I’d run out of breath. She tasted like salt and lemons. It was beyond nice.
‘Our parents might walk in,’ I stuttered.
‘We should wait until we’ve got more time,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll have to come back here for longer next time.’
‘Sophie, Hunter,’ a voice called from the top of the stairs.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘See? That’s what I’m talking about.’
‘Okay. But we’ll do this another time and place, okay?’ Sophie’s eyes were glistening and I kissed her again.
‘Most definitely!’ I grinned.
THE CORAL SEA
‘People get hit on the head all the time from them,’ Sophie said, looking up at the half-hidden coconut husks dangling like a bunch of giant wooden grapes from way up above. ‘Even killed.’
I kicked one that was lying open on the sand. It was empty. I didn’t know why, but I’d always thought that the coconuts you bought from the supermarket were the things that fell out of palm trees, but they were actually only the seed of a much larger, even tougher husk. Like a peanut, the fun edible stuff was locked away inside the armour of a hard shell. I came across an intact one.
‘You need an axe to split these things.’ Sophie laughed as I picked it up and tried to smash it against a rock.
Further down the beach, Mum and Step wandered along the shoreline, hand in hand. Ranger was in the crook of his father’s arm. Pippa trailed behind them, looking for shells. Occasionally, she’d shoot a look our way and then toss her little head in a huff. I knew she wanted to hang out with us but she could hold her breath and die before that happened. Little sisters were a serious liability. They always managed to come out with something totally embarrassing.
Once she’d told Jesse and Beggsie that I’d cried after watching the movie Titanic. I paid her back by telling a group of her friends that Pippa peed in the bath. I knew it was okay for boys to cry. Mum said that all the time. But it was not something you should do in front of your mates and not something they really needed to know about. Crying was like farting – best done in private. Tears seemed to have a similar effect on people as farts. They’d clear the room. Unless it was your mum, and she’d only be sympathetic because that’s what mums did – love their kids; farts, tears, tantrums and all. Maybe that was why I sometimes snapped at Mum. Because I knew she’d always forgive me. And maybe that was why I liked Sophie so much. Because she’d seen me cry and hadn’t made fun of me.
There was a strong offshore breeze that blew across from Snapper Island. The beach was wide and the tide was quite a long way out. Barney had been right. The beach was like something from one of Mum’s ‘show-off’ postcards. It was like a painting of what an artist would imagine the perfect tropical seascape to be – shimmering blue water, miles of cotton-puff sand and the gentle sway of green palms bending over us as we walked past.
It all had me summoning up images of a deserted island in the middle of the ocean – somewhere like Tahiti or Fiji or Hawaii. I could have been one of those contestants on a television reality show that lobbed a bunch of folks onto a remote island and forced them to treat everyone terribly until there was only one left. I could see myself as the cut-throat contestant who stole the food and shirked on all the work. I’d vote Step off first. Followed by that baby. Then Pippa and finally Mum. I’d take the prize money and go and live in a mansion by myself with servants to look after me. No school. No camping. No annoying family! Maybe just Sophie, who would kiss me and do things to make me smile all day and all night long!
‘Hey, look. Yes!’ Sophie pulled a victory fist and bent to pick up a perfectly round and hairy coconut. ‘Usually they’ve all been scavenged.’
It had three little indentations like a furry bowling ball. Sophie dropped to her knees in the sand and reached into the grass that bristled at the edge of the beach, grabbing a sharp, pointed rock. She began bashing and then drilling and twisting into the little dark circles nestled in the stringy hide. After some effort she managed to get through one hole and held it out to me.
‘Here, drink.’
I lifted it to my mouth and slurped. It was cool and nutty tasting.
‘Hmmm,’ she smiled and winked at me.
‘Come on, we’ll show your folks,’ Sophie called as she took off like a wild rabbit across the sand and down toward the water.
I’d been enjoying walking with just Sophie and I didn’t want to share her with the family, but I followed her down to the border of wet sand that framed the ocean. They all huddled around the coconut like it was some kind of magic orb rather than the tatty bit of impossible fruit that it was. Strange to call something like that fruit. It looked more like a dead, plucked echidna than a juicy bit of mango or banana. The more tropical you got, it seemed, the weirder the fruit. Mum had found some ‘chocolate’ fruit by the roadside on one of our uneventful daytrips. We’d all eaten some, but it tasted more like dirty socks than cocoa.
‘Look at what I’ve found,’ Pippa squealed when she got sick of the coconut and emptied her pockets onto the sand. She had a colourful collection of shells and some had obviously held snails and miniature crabs.
‘That’s a pretty one,’ Sophie said, taking a fan-shaped shell and holding it up to the sun.
Pippa looked at Sophie like she was a goddess or a movie star.
‘Come on, Hunny. Help us find some more.’ Pippa had clearly forgiven me or was just being nice to win points with Sophie.
I shut my eyes and sighed. ‘Fine.’
We waded along the shore, bending down every now and again to inspect a particularly unusual object. The coral just looked like pitted lumps of concrete once it was out of the water. All the beautiful coloured coral that you saw on the reefs was alive, and the little fish and the coral polyps made the colours. Dead coral was really boring.
‘So your brother’s in jail?’ Pippa whispered to Sophie, loud enough that I could hear.
I wanted to shove a mouthful of sand into her.
‘Yeah. I really miss him.’
I waited for Sophie to blow it and spill the beans about me telling her about Dad but she gave me a quick look and kept quiet. I could have kissed her. Again! Pippa would have a fit if she knew I was telling new people about our family problems. She’d blab to Mum and then the sky would rain crap all over me.
‘I bet he misses you too,’ Pippa said softly and gave me a look that I had trouble reading.
Step got tired of carrying Ranger after a kilometre or two of nonstop sand and water. ‘Let’s have a rest. My feet ache,’ he c
omplained.
I was with him on that.
Pippa was washing her shells in the shallows. There were no big waves or breakers this far north. No surf like you’d find at the Gold Coast or down at Byron Bay. The biggest wave was about ten centimetres high.
‘You can’t keep the shells, you know,’ Sophie said to Pippa, who looked up at her with wide-eyed confusion. ‘It’s bad for the ecosystem. They’re protected.’
‘But they’re dead. There’s no little creepy crawlies in there anymore,’ Pippa said, holding one up to prove it.
‘Yeah, but what makes sand, Pippa?’ Sophie asked, sounding ever-so-slightly like a school teacher.
‘Um … I dunno … it’s just sand.’
‘Sand just comes from the sand fairy, hey, whipper snipper?’ I teased.
‘Shut up.’ Pippa grabbed a handful of sand and threw it fair at my chest.
I grabbed one and hurled it straight back. She’d thrown that first one in anger, but after Sophie joined in the sand fight, we all started to laugh and chased each other up the beach. Wet bombs flew like the front line of some military clash. There was no competition. It was total annihilation. I slammed the girls until they were completely covered in mud. We all screamed and cackled until our sides hurt. Our hair, our faces and mouths, all of our bodies, covered with wet sand. Who would have thought a sand war could be so much fun. I made a mental note to explore the idea in a computer game.
Mum and Step sat further up the beach, clearly enjoying the spectacle. Ranger sat between Mum’s outstretched legs, eating handfuls of the powdery sand. Step suddenly ruined the whole thing by standing up and walking toward us with his camera snapping. Everyone became more self-conscious.