Pool

by Justin D'Ath

  Wolfgang went to check the message pad. Two words were scrawled on it in his father’s spidery handwriting.

  ‘What’s a comma girl?’ he asked, returning with the pad.

  ‘I wouldn’t have a clue.’

  ‘Dad, you wrote it!’ Wolfgang said, frustrated.

  ‘Let me see that,’ said Leo. ‘Ah, coma girl. Her father rang.’

  ‘Whose father?’

  ‘You know.’ Leo gestured towards the television. ‘The furniture man.’

  ‘You don’t mean Keith Babacan?’ asked Wolfgang.

  ‘There was a phone call from him.’

  ‘For me?’ Wolfgang said, even though he knew it must have been for him. He certainly wasn’t going to ring back. ‘What’s this coma girl thing?’

  ‘His daughter. She was the one who was in a coma.’

  ‘Audrey Babacan’s in a coma?’

  Leo dragged his eyes from the television. ‘That’s her name, yes. Audrey Babacan.’

  Wolfgang’s heart bounded. ‘Has there been an accident? Has something happened to Audrey?’

  ‘She nearly drowned.’

  ‘Oh my God!’

  ‘But she woke up after twenty months,’ Leo said calmly.

  What? ‘Dad, I saw her two days ago.’

  ‘Yes, she still lives in town. I’ve had to treat her dog once or twice.’

  Wolfgang took a deep breath. ‘So this accident – when she nearly drowned – it happened quite a while ago?’

  ‘Ten or fifteen years,’ his father said. ‘She woke up the day you were born.’

  Wolfgang found his mother on the back patio watering her pot plants. ‘Mum, is it true,’ he asked, ‘that Audrey Babacan – the daughter of Keith Babacan, the Furniture King – was in a coma or something years ago?’

  Sylvia turned the hose-nozzle to a fine spray and moved to one of her ferns. ‘It was so tragic,’ she said, feathering the spray back and forth. ‘She was only a toddler when it happened. Everyone thought she’d die but she held on for nearly two years. And then, snap, one morning she just woke up.’

  ‘On the day I was born?’ Wolfgang said.

  ‘That’s right.’ His mother nodded. ‘I remember all the fuss – the nurses all talking about it. It wasn’t until the next day that we heard she’d lost her sight.’

  Wolfgang thought about returning Keith’s call. He was not looking forward to telling him their deal was off. Keith wouldn’t take it well. And with good reason. They had moved Audrey’s surprise birthday party to tomorrow night just so Wolfgang could be there; but now he wasn’t going. Wolfgang wanted nothing more to do with the Babacans, father or daughter. He went to bed that night without having made the call. It took him a long time to get to sleep, and when he finally drifted off he dreamed he was in a coma.

  28

  Audrey paused outside the ticket window.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said brightly.

  Wolfgang had been hoping she wouldn’t speak. Normally she held up her season pass and walked straight through.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, it is you.’ She broke into a smile. ‘You weren’t here yesterday.’

  He looked at her closely. Something was different about her. Something had changed but he was not sure what. ‘It was my day off.’

  Audrey hesitated, fiddling with her pass. ‘Are there people waiting, Wolfgang?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I just wanted to say something – to apologise, actually, for the other night.’

  ‘You had a headache.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Audrey said, a tide of pink moving slowly up her neck. ‘I wasn’t nice to you and I’m sorry.’

  You say sorry a lot. ‘It’s okay. Forget it.’

  ‘Can we do something tonight?’

  She still didn’t know about her party – the surprise party that he wasn’t going to. ‘I’ve got something else on, actually.’

  ‘Tomorrow night, then?’ Audrey asked.

  Wolfgang could see Michael watching them from the side of the pool. He took a deep breath. ‘Audrey, I don’t think we should do this any more.’

  ‘Do what?’ she asked in a small, scared voice.

  ‘See each other.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her face muscles worked. ‘Is it because of the other night?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, yes. It’s about that and everything else. It just isn’t working.’

  ‘I thought it was,’ Audrey whispered.

  ‘It isn’t. At least not for me.’ Wolfgang took another big breath. He felt terrible. ‘I’m really sorry, Audrey.’

  She turned to her dog. ‘Come on, Campbell, let’s get out of here.’

  Rather than going in through the wheelchair gate, Audrey pulled Campbell around and hurried back out the way they had come.

  It was only after she had gone that Wolfgang realised what was different about her. Audrey had been wearing lipstick.

  29

  After work Wolfgang rode to the public library. With the help of one of the librarians, he found the edition of the Advertiser published the day after he was born. On page three there was a large photo of a much younger Keith and Bernadette Babacan crowded one on either side of a doll-like child lying prone in a hospital bed. Despite its large headline, the accompanying article was brief.

  Coma Girl Wakes

  A young Loddon Springs couple is rejoicing after their daughter emerged from a twenty-two month coma at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne yesterday.

  Audrey Babacan (3) slipped into the coma after she nearly drowned in the Loddon Springs Pool on 22 February 1990.

  Her parents and elder sister drove to Melbourne last night to be reunited with Audrey.

  A hospital spokesperson described Audrey’s awakening as unexpected. ‘Comas are still a mystery to medical science,’ she said. ‘Victims can remain comatose for as long as thirty years and some never regain consciousness.’

  ‘We never gave up hope,’ said Keith Babacan, father of the coma girl.

  Audrey’s mother, Bernadette, said the family and friends had prayed every day for her recovery.

  Audrey, who was 13 months old at the time of the accident, is to remain in hospital for several days while tests are carried out.

  There was no mention of her blindness, nor were there any details of her near-drowning. Wolfgang searched through the 1990 issues of the Advertiser until he came to the 22 February edition. There was nothing about Audrey’s accident. Surely it would rate a mention, he thought.

  ‘Stupid!’ he muttered aloud, clapping himself on the forehead and attracting censorious looks from two grey-haired women poring over a yellowed newspaper at a nearby table. If the accident happened on 22 February, it would be reported the following day!

  He found it on page six, a brief account titled ‘Toddler nearly drowns’. There was not much detail, just a few centimetres of column space reporting how Audrey, thirteen months old, had fallen into the pool and been rescued by her father. She had been taken to hospital by ambulance, where she was ‘recovering’. The reporter seemed more interested in the pool than in Audrey, and the final paragraph referred the reader back to the cover story. Wolfgang turned to the cover.

  ‘POOL DEFIES GRAVITY!’ screamed the huge headline. Below was a photograph of the pool cordoned off with what looked like crime-scene tape. Three men in suits stood inside the tape peering down at the sloping water with bemused expressions on their faces.

  A smaller photo showed a close-up of the pool edge, with a spirit level being held just above the waterline to demonstrate its deviation from the horizontal.

  The article, as the headline and photographs suggested, was all about the pool’s famous sloping water.

  So this was when it started. Wolfgang recalled seeing the pictures before, perhaps in primary school, and he had known that the historical event happened in February 1990, but to see the original newspaper reportage brought it alive. It was like being there, being part of history.


  The pool had been sloping all Wolfgang’s life. Like most of his friends, he’d grown up with it and took it for granted.

  There were a number of theories: a seismic shift directly below the pool had warped a tiny area of the earth’s magnetic field that acted, for reasons unknown, only on water; the natural spring which fed the pool, and after which the town had taken its original name, had once been a powerful Aboriginal sacred site; it was the work of angels.

  Wolfgang had considered all the theories but he didn’t know what to believe. All he knew was this: one day the pool had been level like any other body of water, the next day it was sloping.

  No wonder they made such a fuss about it when the extraordinary phenomenon first occurred back in February 1990. No wonder the Advertiser had devoted three whole pages to it, including a full-column editorial.

  No wonder a tiny story about a toddler nearly drowning was pushed back to page six, where it was almost lost beneath an article about a proposed set of traffic lights at the bottom of Acacia Street. Her awakening nearly two years later was more newsworthy – it made page three. Wolfgang spent another half hour in the library scouring old editions of the Advertiser from cover to cover but found no further mention of Audrey. Once she woke up – once she ceased being ‘the coma girl’ – the town seemed to have forgotten about her.

  30

  ‘Wolfgang. Wolfgang.’ His mother stood over his bed, silhouetted against the light from the passage. ‘There’s a phone call for you.’

  Wolfgang squinted bleary-eyed at the glowing green display on his clock radio: 4:55 a.m. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘It’s Mr Babacan. He says it’s important.’

  Bummer! Wolfgang pushed back the covers and sat up. He had stayed on the Internet all evening, just to keep the phone line busy so they couldn’t call and ask why he wasn’t at Audrey’s party. By eleven-thirty, when finally he’d gone to bed two hours after his parents, he had assumed the threat was over. Obviously not.

  Keith came straight to the point. ‘Wolfgang, do you know where Audrey is?’

  ‘N-no,’ he said. ‘I’m thorry I didn’t come to her –’

  ‘Never mind about that,’ Keith cut him off. ‘I’m looking for Audrey. We thought she might have been with you.’

  ‘I haven’t theen her thince yesterday morning.’

  Keith sighed. ‘Okay. I’m sorry I woke you.’

  ‘Wait! When did you last see her, Mr Babacan?’

  ‘Last night. She went out at about six. Normally she never goes out that early – that’s why we thought she might be with you.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning,’ Wolfgang repeated. He looked out the window at the end of the passageway. There was a pale bruising of dawn at the bottom of the star-speckled sky. ‘But I think I know somewhere you could look.’

  Keith parked the Mercedes outside the wrought-iron fence.

  ‘Why the cemetery?’ asked Audrey’s sister Martine, who had driven up from Geelong the previous afternoon.

  Wolfgang opened his door and stepped out into the grey dawn. ‘I don’t know. She brought me here on New Year’s Eve. It was like she knows her way around.’

  ‘My crazy sister.’

  ‘Martine!’ her mother said reprovingly.

  Keith caught Wolfgang’s eye across the car’s roof. ‘We appreciate your help, son.’

  None of them had mentioned the party, nor the fact that Wolfgang hadn’t been there. Without Audrey, of course, there wouldn’t have been a party, regardless of whether he was there or not. It made him feel less responsible. Less guilty. But he was still guilty about Audrey. About yesterday. The lipstick had been for him.

  He led her family up the wide gravel path between the headstones. The cemetery seemed smaller in the spreading light of the new day than it had the last time he’d been here. Even the headstones seemed smaller. It was chilly. Wolfgang wished he had thought to wear more than just a T-shirt and shorts. Keith had on a fawn windcheater and grey tracksuit trousers. His wife wore a blue cardigan over a fancy-looking black dress that came nearly to her ankles and looked incongruous with her sneakers. Martine, who had Audrey’s colouring but finer features and a slim, almost boyish build, wore low-cut jeans below a short yellow and green striped top that left her pale midriff bare. She seemed slightly drunk. Wolfgang had the impression that all three of them had been up all night.

  They saw Campbell first. The dog sat up and wagged its tail as they walked down the long grassy slope. Audrey lay in roughly the same spot where she and Wolfgang had spread their blanket on New Year’s Eve. As they approached – Bernadette hurrying ahead – Wolfgang saw half a dozen orange flowers scattered across the grass beside her.

  ‘Audrey!’ cried her mother, kneeling and attempting to gather Audrey in her arms. ‘Darling, are you all right?’

  Audrey stiffened as she came awake. She struggled free of her mother’s clumsy embrace and sat up, her right hand reaching automatically for Campbell.

  ‘Mum?’ she said, frowning. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘We could ask you the same thing, young lady,’ said her father.

  Martine nudged past and squatted in front of her sister. ‘Hi Auds. Happy birthday.’

  ‘Marty! Hey, what’s going on?’

  ‘I come all the way up here for your birthday party and you shoot through.’

  Audrey let go of Campbell and brushed her fingertips through the grass, finding one of the flower stems. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘It’s morning,’ her mother said. ‘Darling, we’ve been worried sick.’

  Bernadette reached for her daughter again and this time Audrey allowed herself to be held. Martine took one of Audrey’s hands – the one without the flower – and with the other she lightly touched her sister’s cheek.

  ‘You gave us quite a scare, Auds.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Audrey murmured into the folds of her mother’s cardigan. She began quietly sobbing.

  ‘It’s okay, baby. You’re safe now,’ Bernadette said.

  Keith knelt next to his wife and two daughters and began stroking Audrey’s tangled red hair. For once he seemed lost for words. Wolfgang, standing a few paces away, felt like an intruder. He had no connection with these four people, no place in their lives. What had he been thinking when he’d accepted Keith’s money?

  ‘It isn’t fair,’ Audrey whimpered.

  ‘What isn’t fair, baby?’ her mother asked.

  ‘Being blind! No one likes me because I’m blind.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, darling. We love you very much.’

  ‘Not you, Mum. Other people.’ Audrey’s voice became small and plaintive. ‘I’m never going to have a boyfriend.’

  Bernadette brushed Audrey’s hair back and kissed her forehead. ‘What are you talking about, darling? Wolfgang’s right here.’

  31

  Wolfgang’s father met him in the hallway as he slipped quietly in through the front door. Even though it was only six-fifteen in the morning, Leo was already wearing his suit. He held the teapot, a grey worm of steam rising from its spout.

  ‘Whose car was that?’

  ‘Keith Babacan’s.’

  ‘He phoned you.’

  ‘I know that, Dad. That’s where I’ve been.’

  Leo made a jerky gesture with the teapot, sprinkling a trail of steaming water drops across the polished wooden floor. ‘Would you like a cup of tea, Edward?’

  Wrong son, Dad, Wolfgang thought. ‘No thanks,’ he said. All he wanted was to go back to bed.

  ‘I got your butterfly,’ Leo said.

  ‘What butterfly?’

  ‘The black one.’

  ‘I know you did. Luckily Mum found what you’d done with it.’

  ‘But your mother isn’t even up yet,’ said Leo.

  Wolfgang sighed. It was like talking to a child. ‘I’m going back to bed.’

  ‘Sleep well,’ his father said amiably, then wandered off down the passage carrying the steami
ng teapot.

  Wolfgang sat on the bed and dragged his sneakers off without untying the laces. Silly old fart, he thought. He stood to remove his T-shirt and draped it over the bed end. Something caught his eye.

  What was his setting-board doing in the middle of the desk?

  ‘Damn you, Dad!’ he muttered. ‘Have you been going through my stuff again?’

  Approaching the desk, Wolfgang drew in a quick involuntary breath. Neatly pinned to the cork, its four wings perfectly aligned and set beneath two rectangles of semi-transparent kitchen paper held flat by entomological pins, was a large black butterfly.

  32

  Leo led him into the spare room. ‘It was in there,’ he said, pointing.

  One of Wolfgang’s traps lay up-ended on the dusty work table.

  ‘Where did you have it?’ Wolfgang asked.

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘The trap.’

  ‘It was in the shed where you left it.’

  ‘Dad, I didn’t catch the butterfly,’ Wolfgang said, ‘you did! This is a different butterfly!’

  ‘It was in the trap.’

  ‘I know that. But where was the trap?’

  ‘In. The. Shed,’ Leo said loudly, an edge of anger in his voice. ‘Are you deaf, boy? The trap was in the shed, the butterfly was in the trap. Is that too hard for you to understand? I’m surprised, frankly, that you left it in there – it might have damaged itself.’

  Wolfgang stared into his father’s watery brown eyes. ‘When did you find it, Dad?’

  ‘Yesterday, I think.’ Leo tugged on one ear for a moment. He nodded. ‘Yes, it was yesterday morning, just after you went off to work.’

  Was it possible? Wolfgang wondered as he made his way barefoot along the brick-paved pathway to the garage. Could he have caught the butterfly himself on Thursday and not noticed it in the trap? If it had been sitting in the corner of the wire frame beneath the fold of the funnel, it might have been difficult to see. It was black, after all, not the most eye-catching of colours.