The sleeping man opened his eyes—a startling blue, they seemed to reflect the river—and watched Danny help the girl from the boat. Danny climbed up after her. ‘Well, catch you,’ she said and reached up to kiss Danny on the cheek. He laid a hand on the hair that fell down her back. He whispered in her ear. She laughed, turned away, her long legs striding along the jetty. Behind her, Kane followed her movements, rising stiffly to his feet. Danny, too, watched her till she reached the shop at the other end of the marina. Her hair blazed for a moment in the sun at the doorway and she was gone.
He turned to Kane, on his feet now and taller than Danny by a good ten centimetres, muscular in the chest and shoulders, though slender. Danny would never lose this habit of sizing men up the moment he met them. Didn’t even notice it anymore. ‘Sorry, mate. Let’s go.’ The bloke looked nervous, uncertain. ‘Well, come on. Do you want a lift or don’t you?’ Kane gave him another wary glance and then made his way down into the Quintrex. Danny followed him and started the motor. Once clear of the channel he opened her up and the boat bounced across the glassy water.
‘Beautiful day,’ Danny ventured as they raced towards the opposite shore. The man gave him a sideways glance and said nothing. Funny bloke, Danny thought. Skittish as a crab. Everyone on the river lived their lives out in the open. Couldn’t just get into a car and hide your worries from the world. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed a new pallor creep across his passenger’s face as he gripped the bar. The sandstone cliff above the long strip of houses on the near bank loomed above them. Best get him over there quick and off the boat before he threw up. ‘Where do you need? Durham’s?’ he shouted over the motor. ‘Or you dropping your gear somewhere first?’
‘Mancini’s,’ Kane said quietly.
‘What’s that?’ Danny called.
‘MANCINI’S!’ he shouted, too loudly, then looked away, out over the river, embarrassed.
Danny wondered whether Kane was the full deck. He slowed the motor as they approached the row of wharves and curved to the south. He knew the place—it was a little beyond the centre of the row. You couldn’t miss it because it was next to Tom Shepherd’s and everyone knew his place. Looked like a scrapyard—every spare inch of land surrounding the house crammed with tyres, old fridges, tinny hulls—with a wharf that seemed ready to fall into the river on the next big tide. A bit further along on the other side was Durham’s, a wooden frame mid-construction, the old house gone in the last bushfire, several years back. Mancini’s was a nice little place, a wooden house set back from the water with a broad jacaranda that kept off the worst of the afternoon sun. It was just losing the last of its purple flowers now; they spread in a carpet in the shade. Couldn’t imagine what this bloke wanted here. The house was let to that girl, Rose, the quiet, pregnant one with the big bush of blonde hair. This guy looked like he was moving in.
He brought the rear of the boat round to the ladder at the end of Rose’s jetty. ‘That’s fifteen bucks, mate.’ The notes the bloke fished out of his jeans looked like they’d been living down the back of a couch. Danny shoved them in his pocket and hefted the backpack onto the jetty. Not much reason to hang about and chat. Didn’t figure this one would be a regular user of the water taxi. You got one-offs this time of day; ferry didn’t stop at the beach for a couple of hours after peak hour. People got stuck.
He was about to slip the motor into gear when he saw the girl coming down the wharf towards them. She was very tall, as tall as Danny, and had a serious face, long, curly dark-blonde hair tied back at her neck. Looked like she was wearing her nightie—a long shapeless white shift that hung unevenly around her knees. She wore glasses, little rectangles that reflected the light and obscured her expression, though she scowled slightly into the sun. She walked a little strangely, cautiously, as though there was something slightly wrong with her legs or back, but that’d be the baby. She gave Kane a little wave and nodded at Danny. He wondered again what the connection could be. You could spend your life wondering about those things, the stuff you saw on the river, he thought, yet you were almost always wrong. He took the boat out clear of the jetties and the moorings of big old wooden boats, the sleek yachts with names like You Beaut and Aurora, and headed south towards his pick-up at the far end of the beach.
Rose watched the tenant climb out of the water taxi and make his way along the jetty towards her. Billie had told her to expect him. After eight months’ free run, James was putting a tenant in the boatshed. What could she say? Maybe he’d be company. Someone to notice if she fell in the river one fine morning, at least.
He was tall and slightly bandy-limbed. She thought of a cowboy as she watched his figure approaching, the front of his body cast into shadow by the western sun at his back, winking and glaring between his legs as he drew closer. She shielded her face with a hand so she could see him more clearly. He was young, scruffy, soft-faced. He dropped his backpack at the foot of the stairs to the verandah. ‘G’day,’ he nodded. ‘You’d be my landlady, would you?’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘Your neighbour. I’m a tenant, too. My sister’s boyfriend owns the place. Want a cuppa?’
He peered at her. ‘OK. If it’s all right with you.’
‘Sit down.’ She nodded towards the cane chairs on the shaded verandah. ‘I’ll be back in a sec.’
When she returned with the tea tray she could see him more clearly. Bamboo blinds shut out the worst of the afternoon sun, allowing a filtered light onto the verandah. His eyes were as blue as the river on a still, cloudless morning like this one. It had been so long since she’d had a cup of tea with someone. Who was her last visitor? Billie, that was it, when she’d come to tell her she’d sold their father’s house, back in the winter. She’d gotten rid of her as quickly as she could; said she had to work. In fact she had felt overwhelmingly nauseous, needed her sister to leave before she could no longer hide it.
‘Nice place,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, looking at the river through the gap between the blinds. ‘I haven’t been here that long myself. I’m Rose, by the way.’ She turned to him, held out a hand.
He took it, tentatively. ‘Kane.’ His long, dry fingers trembled for a moment and he withdrew his hand quickly, wiped it on his jeans. ‘Husband at work?’
She smiled. ‘Husband?’ He nodded at her belly. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘There’s no husband. Where do you get one of those?’
‘What’s the deal with that fella on the water taxi?’
For a moment Rose couldn’t follow his train of thought, but then realised he’d changed the subject. ‘Oh, Danny? I don’t know. What do you mean?’
‘He was laughing at me, over at the marina. Made some joke to his girlfriend. This one of them places they don’t like outsiders?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that. You need to baptise your firstborn in the river and then sacrifice a goat every full moon for a year before they’ll say hello to you in the pub around here.’
He grinned briefly, but seemed unsure. ‘Hard to fit in, is it?’
‘They’re all right. I think they check you’re staying before they waste too much energy on you, that’s all.’ She leaned forward. ‘Watch this one, though,’ she gestured towards the house to their left. ‘He’s a miserable old bugger. Neighbour from hell.’
‘Yeah? What’s he do?’
‘Leaves his garbage on my jetty. Lets his dog crap in my yard. Just a charmer, you know. Drunk, mostly.’ She noticed he’d finished his tea. Must have downed it fast enough to scald his tongue. His left foot was jumping around on the decking. ‘Come on, I’ll show you the shed. Hope you’re not expecting too much.’
She set her cup down on the table and led him off the front of the verandah along to the boatshed. It was an ugly brick thing, built long after the little wooden house, but it had tinted glass sliding doors that let you look out at the river from the bed. As she slid back the door a smell escaped, a faint odour of damp. She’d tried to air it out the day before but it
persisted. ‘You can probably leave it open. Most people do round here.’ She watched him take in the narrow room, the concrete floor, the single bed, the bench on the wall opposite with a bar fridge underneath, a camping stove and a kettle on top. ‘Will you be all right, do you think?’
He stared into the room for a few seconds more, then looked into her eyes. He was a fair bit taller than her, tall as she was. His mouth opened. He seemed lost for a moment. Then he lowered his eyes and grinned. ‘It’s great, mate,’ he said. ‘A waterfront mansion! I’ve come up in the world.’
‘OK,’ she laughed. ‘Let me know if you need anything. I don’t have a boat but the ferry stops at the public wharf if you need to get over the other side.’
He took his backpack inside, dropped it in the middle of the floor, sat on the bed. She waited for a moment to see if he would say anything else, but he was looking at the floor. She withdrew, quietly, and made her way back to the verandah.
He felt like the world was playing tricks on him. A girl like that, right next door, not married, no bloke anywhere in sight? When he’d seen her standing on the steps, he’d almost turned around and got back in that arrogant clown’s boat. Her hair, honey-coloured, glowing in the sun, her beautiful belly. And so tall, almost as tall as him. He couldn’t look at her at first, but when he did she was smiling, kindly—at him. And then making him tea. It made him nervous to sit and chat to a girl like her, as though that kind of thing happened to him every day. Every second he sat there, on her verandah, right next to her, seemed to bring him a second closer to being discovered. In the shed he could relax a little, though he was sorry when her figure at the glass door, blocking out the sun, finally disappeared. He’d driven her away, he knew, but he needed time to think.
He wasn’t sure how things were going to go here. He was getting confusing signals. He tried to read the world, tried to get a glimpse of what was coming, avoid the old mistakes, but it wasn’t easy. That bloke on the boat, he’d been a bad sign. The trophy girlfriend, the whispering behind his back. Rose seemed to balance things out—there was something about her, like she wasn’t just being nice for the sake of it—but some people were put there to trick you, catch you out. You had to be careful.
He lay back on the bed and watched the dazzle of the river through half-shut eyes. His thoughts slowed, his jumping leg stilled, out of the sight of others. This was a new place, his place. Back up the river it was a bad scene. He’d only been up there for six months and there was a double shooting—some old couple borrowed money off bikies—and a knifing every other week at the back of the pub. And then that other business. Round here, he’d heard, it was wall-to-wall doctors and lawyers and advertising people with weekenders. They looked normal, out fishing in their tinnies, drinking tap beer at the pub, but it was Paddington on the water—he knew that. Well, except for the junkies, he’d seen a few of those already. That was all right. Made him feel at home.
No, he thought. He let himself believe in the future, in himself, in new beginnings. He’d been reading a book; his mum had given it to him when he’d visited. Christ knew where she’d got hold of it. It was about being your best self, about deciding to be something and then being it. ‘That’s all right for him to say,’ he’d told his mum. ‘Look at him, look at the guy’s teeth. They’re worth more than your car.’
‘No, Kane,’ she insisted, putting his dinner in front of him. ‘He came from nothing, like you. If he can do it, why can’t you?’
The book seemed cheesy, American, until he got into it. When you got past the talk-show host thing, it made sense. No one was going to do it for you; you made your own destiny. His problem was, he’d always hung around with losers and he’d let them tell him what he was worth. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed it, but he’d wriggled out of trouble up the river like an eel. That was another thing in the book: you had to recognise gifts. It was a sin to waste them. Here was a gift if ever he saw one. He had a place to live—a beautiful place—a lovely, kind girl next door and the job on the Durham place that his mate in town had hooked him up with. A new start, that was his gift—he knew how hard they were to come by. All he needed was a boat—maybe he could get his first couple of weeks’ pay in advance—and he’d be the freest man that ever lived.
Chapter 3
It was just on dusk and the water was cold. The tide was coming in, fresh from the sea, and old Tom Shepherd was hanging onto a marker. He’d had more than a few, and had sunk his barge, again. He’d been there twenty minutes or so. He could see Dog on his wharf, and Dog could see him; he was on the edge, barking for all he was worth. No point in fighting a tide like this, though, Tom thought, just on the turn. The ferry sauntered past, not fifteen metres away. Bastard Steve, he muttered. He’d been wondering whether it was worth the effort of hanging on, but after the ferry soaked him in its wake he decided he’d keep going just to spite him.
Then, not five minutes after the ferry had left Tom for dead, Danny Reynolds came tearing across from the island in the water taxi. He was a good boy, that one. Danny slowed as he approached, and helped Tom scramble over the side and onto a bucket seat, wet and limp like Dog after an overenthusiastic fishing trip with the old man. ‘Steve radioed me,’ Danny said. ‘What’s that, third time this month?’
‘I’ve kept out of the drink for a good stretch now. I’m to be congratulated, if anything. Better take me where the beers are cold, young man.’
‘Want to go home and get into some dry clothes first?’ Danny asked as the engine idled. ‘I’m OK to wait.’
‘Christ no, mate. Late for the boys already. They’ll be running up my tab as we speak.’
‘All right, Tom. Marina?’
‘You’ll go to heaven for this, Danny boy.’
Danny dropped him at the petrol bowsers just as the last of the day’s light drained from the cliffs across the water. ‘Join the boys for a drink, Danny?’ Tom called after him as he began to motor away slowly towards the chandlery.
‘Beer’s good. I’ll just drop the boat.’ After he’d tied off he posted the keys through the locked door of the chandlery. Alf must already be down there with the others. As he reached the little crowd of men gathered outside the marina shop, beers in every hand, someone handed him a cold brown bottle. He looked up and there was Rob, looking like he’d just come off a shift himself, still in his yellow trucker’s vest. ‘Thanks, mate,’ he nodded.
‘Seen the show, Dan?’ Rob said, nodding towards the water. ‘Some bright spark’s started the season early.’ Down on the track that ran along between the channel and the railway line, maybe fifty metres away, was a car in flames. It hadn’t been going when he came across, so someone must have just lit it. Liquid fire poured in sheets from the bonnet, and the shape of the car disappeared for seconds at a time inside the ball of beautiful yellow-orange flame. There was a series of sharp cracks as the tyres blew out, like someone thrashing a horsewhip on concrete. Behind the car the dark sky glowed.
Danny stared at the fire. It reached a part of him he hadn’t known was there, that sprang up, perfectly preserved, from his memory. There was a night—he must have been seven or eight—when his father had set fire to a car in some paddock. There was a load of men, drinking, shouting, a couple of dogs on rasping chains. He’d sat in the cab of his dad’s truck and watched, not knowing what he saw—the flames, the lurching silhouettes of the men under the trees, everything flickering as he plunged towards sleep and tried to keep his eyes open, failed. He wondered now where his brother had been. He had no memory of him being there, but he’d found that with memories. You erased people from them because they weren’t what you were interested in at the time. Then they’d mention the same memory and you’d have to admit that the things you remembered so clearly were always a little bit skewed, so you could have no confidence in them.
‘Let’s go get the little shit,’ said Steve, the ferry driver and island fire chief, scowling into his beer under a mop of wild ginger hair.
‘Oh com
e on, mate,’ said Rob. ‘It’s just kids. They can run a damn sight faster than us, and that car’s been dumped there for weeks, anyway. Maybe the council will finally shift it now.’
Steve shook his head. ‘No, bugger it. We’ve had no rain all winter and there’s already people doing stupid things. I don’t like it. Teach the little buggers a lesson.’
Rob thrust a beer into Steve’s hand and slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Easy there, Steve. Leave the police something to do.’ The men laughed, and Danny swigged his beer quickly, watching the reflection of the flames on the water as the sky and the river grew dark.
Rose floated on her back in the inlet behind the railway line, the little channel the locals called the Gut, dusk bringing the mosquitoes buzzing around her exposed face and the long flanks of her arms and legs, finding herself strangely buoyant. It was her belly, and her swelling breasts. She could lie here for hours, finally cool. She felt hot all the time now—though it hadn’t been a particularly warm December so far—and the relief was delicious. Could she sleep like this? She felt incapable of sinking.
A tap on her shoulder brought her out of it. When she stood on the oozing mud the water didn’t reach her knees, though she thought it had been much deeper when she walked in. The sun had still been out then. Kane pointed behind him towards the tracks and the village beyond. There was brackish water in her eyes, dripping from her hair, and at first she couldn’t work out what it was she saw. There was a blur of hot light on the other side of the railway tracks. She couldn’t tell whether it was small or large. She wiped her eyes. It was a car, burning up on the service road between the inlet and the river.
The water felt cold suddenly, and unclean. She clutched her belly and, in clumsy, rushed strides, sloshed towards the bank where she had left her clothes and began pulling them on over her wet swimming costume and skin, the mosquitoes attacking in noisy squadrons. ‘Hey, wait up,’ Kane called, lunging through the water after her. ‘What’s the problem?’
The River Baptists Page 3