‘Look, I’ll tell you when I’ve got you over to the boat. Everyone else knows anyway. Mostly he’s just drunk and mad. Harmless.’
‘OK, done.’
‘Get your stuff now, before Kane pops up. I’m surprised he hasn’t already.’
‘I won’t be a tick. Thanks, Danny.’ He smiled, and for a moment she felt happy in a simple way: still and oddly calm, despite the eddies of disquiet whirling up around her.
It didn’t take her long to pack, but when she came back into the room Danny was asleep on the sofa, his empty glass on the rug. She turned off the lamp above his head and sat in the chair next to him. She heard a big boat on the water, maybe Tom’s barge, someone swearing with frustration, dropping something, drunk perhaps. There was the train on the bridge, then its roar was muffled by the tunnel. She could see Danny’s outline in the shadowy room, a dark man-shape asleep in the chair, legs apart, head back, arms flopping over the sides. His bare feet were a few inches from her hand, hanging over the side of the sofa. If she touched him, would he stir?
She closed her eyes. She knew she should wake him so he could get home to his own bed. But the bulk of him lying there was peaceful, comforting. She wanted to stop things for a moment with him there, before life hurried on in its usual lonely vein. For a few seconds she would do nothing and not force herself to make any decisions, large or small.
But then, moments later it seemed, she was woken by a weight falling against the sliding glass door. She opened her eyes instantly. There was a weak light in the room— morning—and she saw a dark figure at the glass, a man etched against the pale dawn sky. He was leaning on the door, hands over his eyes, peering into the room. It was Kane. He was smiling—but his smile looked off balance, excited.
She glanced quickly at Danny. He was still asleep. Kane planted a palm heavily on the glass and Danny blinked, sitting up quickly. She found herself struggling to her feet from the long low sofa, supporting herself on the coffee table with one hand, smoothing her wild hair with the other. She approached the figure leaning full-weight against the other side of the glass. ‘What is it, Kane? Do you need something?’
He ignored her, and smacked the glass again, eyes never leaving Danny, who was now on his feet and walking away from them towards the front door. Out on the verandah, he doubled back towards Kane, who pushed himself back off the glass to face Danny.
‘Problem, mate?’ Danny asked quietly.
Kane’s shoulders were clenched, stringy beneath his singlet. He was hunched, ready for something. ‘Yeah, there’s a problem. Me and Rose have got an understanding. Looks like she hasn’t explained that to you.’ He was still smiling. Rose felt a wired alertness surge through her body.
‘She wants you to leave,’ Danny said quietly. ‘You should take your stuff and go today.’
Kane moved quickly, so quickly Rose couldn’t be certain she’d seen what she had seen. Could Kane really have slapped him? All she could be sure of was that Danny was holding his hand to his cheek, a look of still violence on his face, in his tensed body. The look was shocking to see in a gentle man. Kane stepped closer to Danny and jabbed towards Rose with his finger. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Rose?’ He was smiling at her. ‘I’ll talk to you later, Rose, all right?’
She stared at him, nodded. Oh, God, she thought. I should have talked to him before now. She could still make it OK; she just needed Danny to go. Her skin was hot and she was suddenly thirsty. She stepped towards the verandah. Kane put his face close to Danny’s. ‘This is your only warning.’ He banged down the stairs and disappeared around the side of the house.
She began walking towards the open front door, but then Danny, too, was leaving, walking quickly away from her along the jetty, the usual grace of his movements marred by a stiff-limbed anger. Without a glance backwards he was down the ladder, untying his dory, and rowing across the channel towards the island. Though he faced her, not once did he look up at her house until he was a long way off, too far away for her to see his expression. When he was most of the way across he rested his oars and gazed at her house for several seconds, right at where she stood behind the glass, before finishing his row home.
Chapter 15
Rose sat on the deck of the yacht in the moonless night, watching her house. A woman called Maggie had arrived in the morning, not long after Danny had left. She was a practical-looking woman wearing gumboots, a navy blue fishing sweater and jeans, and holding a flask and a greasy brown paper bag. ‘Bacon sandwich?’ she offered, holding it aloft. She appeared to be in her early forties; wavy, dyed red hair, lived-in skin, friendly, handsome face. Rose recognised her from the ferry. She always got off at the island with some constantly rotating combination of her brood of kids. ‘I’m Maggie—Danny’s friend. Rob’s wife. That’s our yacht out there. Danny said you needed a place to stay for a few nights.’
Before she took her over to the yacht on her dinghy, Maggie crept behind Rose’s house to the back of the boatshed where there was a small, high window. Rose leaned out the kitchen window, heart hammering, while Maggie climbed up on a milk crate and peered inside. She came back, shaking her head, wrinkling her nose, presumably at the state in which he kept the shed. ‘Asleep,’ she whispered.
On the curved shelf of Rose’s belly lay her mobile. Danny’s number was on the display. Maggie had made sure it was in there before she left, as well as her own, and Rob’s, and the fire chief’s in case she went into labour and needed the fire barge to come across from the island. If she pressed the green button it would dial Danny now. ‘I don’t think he’d want me to call him,’ she’d said to Maggie. ‘I think I’m bad luck for him.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ Maggie said. ‘He was just angry this morning. Not every day you wake up to a slap.’
‘I’m sorry about all this,’ Rose said. She glanced through the porthole over to her place and the boatshed. All was quiet.
‘No worries. Come up on the deck, but sit down. We’ll try not to advertise the fact you’re here, I think. I can move the yacht, if you want, while I’m here.’
‘No, that’s OK. But I think I should go over there, and sort things out with him. This is going to make it worse.’
‘Gone a bit far for that. He’s taking a swing at anything that moves. We’ll get some of the fellas to have a quiet word with your mate over there. Sort it all out for you.’
‘I should have explained things to him. It’s my own fault. Stupid.’
‘We all make mistakes, kid. Doesn’t give him the right to go round punching people. The boys’ll sort it. The last place he should be is next door to a woman with a baby on the way.’
Rose felt close to tears, suddenly, at this description of herself. It made her sound like someone honoured and precious, a member of the village that everyone had known since she was born. She couldn’t trust herself anymore. Her hormones seemed to betray her every five minutes. She nodded, waiting for the feeling to pass. Maggie poured her a coffee and handed her the sandwich.
‘It’s OK, mate. I remember what it felt like, with my first. You want the whole world to be safe around you. You want to control everything. We’ll keep an eye on you, love. Don’t worry.’
Rose turned away and blinked. There he was. She gestured silently towards her jetty with her head. Maggie followed her gaze and nodded. He was leaning on her door again, no knocking this time, just peering inside for several seconds. He stayed there for perhaps a minute, then hopped over the balcony and onto Tom’s property, disappearing around the back of the little fibro house. Rose stared at Maggie. She wanted to put a hand on this woman’s arm and tell her: what had happened to her dad, what she’d done, why she was alone. After a few minutes, he was out at the wall, untying his boat. He passed close by the yacht and she stared into her lap, making herself and the boat small, insignificant.
When she eventually looked up again, she saw a dark blur among the junk in Tom’s yard—Dog, chasing his tail. ‘Why does Tom hate me?’ she asked, after a moment
. ‘Danny was going to tell me. Then he came,’ she nodded towards the boatshed.
Maggie had grown up on the river, knew James, knew his father. Had heard all the stories that ran between the people here. Knew which parts of them were true, and what had been added over the years as the stories were passed on.
She told her—about Tom’s daughter, never right in the head, always in trouble with the boys once she was a young woman. About how she staggered into the pub one night and something had happened to her. No one knew where the rumour started that it was Mancini—no one even knew if Molly had said it herself. Tom had never been keen on him, and he seemed to believe it all right. But after they’d chased the Mancinis off, Molly drowned herself. It was recorded as an accident because Tom’s wife had been Catholic, but no one believed that. Now Tom blamed Mancini for her death as well as the other thing. Then Tom’s wife went, too. A bit later, a bloke from up at the ridge was put away for attacking young girls. He never gave any details, so no one knew for sure, but it made people wonder, and Tom just went on his fishing trips, picked up his scrap, drank a little, stayed quiet. But the last few years he’d been hitting it harder, and then when James came back he started going a bit loopy every now and then. Still, everyone knew what he’d been through. No one worried about what he did. It was just old Tom. He was one of those old fellas that was just part of the river, like the smell at low tide or the days when the septic tanks were on the nose. No point complaining about it.
Rose slept all afternoon, a fitful sleep in which she threw off the covers, found them again, needed to be wrapped up, hidden, but then felt suffocated and anxious. She woke at sunset and sat facing the shore, trying to let the strange currents within her settle. She could see Tom now, his podgy, bent old shape etched in the light of the rooms of his house, feeding his dog, fetching beers. Then he came out on his jetty, eased himself into his low fishing chair, raised his bottle to his lips. Sad, sad old man, she thought. She watched him for a moment while her hand rubbed her belly in wide circles. From the corner of her eye she saw, or felt, something move at her place. He was at the door again, Kane. She could just make out his boat at the jetty. He must have rowed it, or paddled quietly, drifted to her door, right by her. So it wasn’t true what Danny said, that you’d hear anyone coming. He’d been within a few metres of her, who knew how many times, and she’d had no idea. In the light spilling from Tom’s place she saw him press his head against the sliding glass door, looking into the dark room. His body moved and there was a sharp rap on the glass. Tom’s head turned to see what was happening. When there was no answer Kane knocked louder, with the side of his fist it sounded like. ‘Rose,’ he shouted. Then more softly: ‘Rosie, mate. Come on. We need to talk.’
Was he as mad as everyone was making out? The idea, the possibility of violence and pain, was suddenly in her world, where it never had been before, or at least not before the death of her father. It was as though, once it had arrived, you passed through a membrane into another world—one that looked the same but where ordinary objects vibrated with threat—and couldn’t return.
She dropped out of her chair and onto her knees, edged forward to the balustrade to get a better look, her mobile gripped tightly in one hand. Her belly stopped her getting right up to the edge, but she was close enough to hold onto the rail and peer through the gap between it and the fibreglass hull. He banged on the glass again, flat-palmed, then made his way unsteadily down the small flight of stairs off the balcony. ‘Come on, Rosie,’ he said quietly, and disappeared inside the boatshed. She felt a pull towards him, towards the gentleness she’d seen in him. Her father had taught her—for all the good it had done her—about the power of words, and courtesy, and directness. She had been brought up to apologise to other children, to behave graciously, to set an example. She would go over there, and talk to him face to face, and stop creeping around behind other people. Perhaps, though, it was a job for morning. Daylight would make everything normal. She’d take him breakfast, and she’d sort this thing out, once and for all. She’d treated him like one of those city boys; made an assumption about what he wanted. She would clear it all up tomorrow. For now, though, she would keep things quiet and go to sleep without further upset to anyone.
She crept over to the stairs on her knees, slipped her legs out from under her and climbed down into the dark galley. She didn’t turn on the lights or use her torch. Fully clothed, she inched her way under the covers on the bed. The pillow smelled of Danny—soap, beer, cigarette smoke from the pub, laundry detergent. Her breathing seemed loud to her; she deliberately let it slow. Much later, as the light began to creep through the porthole, she closed her eyes, thinking not about Kane, nor her father, nor even James, but about Billie, sitting at the other end of a kayak from her, on the bay, at the age of eleven, laughing. She couldn’t remember why Billie had been laughing but she remembered what she’d said. ‘Oh my God, I’m going to wet myself, Rosie.’ Suddenly she’d jumped over the side, disappearing beneath the dark blue swell. When she emerged, her hair plastered to her head like a water rat, she was still laughing, snorting water from her nose. ‘You did it, didn’t you,’ laughed Rose. Billie nodded and grabbed hold of the side of the kayak. She rested her blonde head on the side of the boat, smiling, bleached in the sun.
Rose carried the image into sleep. She’d loved her so much when she was younger, she’d wanted to be her. She remembered the feeling now, of adoring her sister, her hair, her skin; let it flood through her and take her down.
Kane sat in his tree and watched her house. It was dark now and she hadn’t turned the lights on. He’d looked in every window but still he had this feeling she was there. She was close; he felt as though he could smell her in the warm night air above the smell of the salty river and Tom’s flowering frangipani.
He had his fishing knife out, and without realising he was doing it he carved slim strips of bark from the tree trunk next to him and laid them out carefully in a row on his branch. When he put his hand down and felt them there, hanging over the branch like skins, he didn’t remember making them. But the action had calmed him, like cleaning a fish. Brought order to his thoughts after the blindness he’d felt all day.
‘Bugger it, Rosie,’ he murmured into the leaves. It wasn’t like he’d given her a reason to worry, to bring him into line. She’d had him from the day he’d set foot on her wharf. He hadn’t pushed her, he’d been a mate, giving her lifts, checking she was all right, taking care of her. Not like Flash Dan and even flasher dick with the blonde. How many did those blokes need? He’d just asked for one. Hadn’t ever pushed her. She’d asked him, when it came down to it.
She’d see, when she had the baby. She’d see how much use those others were then. And he’d be there. He’d do anything she needed him to do. His mum, last time she’d seen him, she’d known. ‘There’s something different about you,’ she said. ‘Something’s happened to you, I can see it.’
He slithered down the tree, touched the wall of her house, the weatherboard slats still warm from the day’s sun, and slipped inside his shed where he could sleep, dream of her, of the night she lay right next to him, sleeping against his body until the sun woke them. He knew she hadn’t forgotten. It was the others, getting between them, putting ideas in her head about him. If he could get through the bloody bodyguard and talk to her, she could be here again. I am the one who decides my future, he whispered. He would have her again: her heat, her skin, right here beneath his hand.
Chapter 16
Tom sat in the cool sliver of shadow between the house and the shed, surrounded by the detritus of a quarter of a century of not giving a shit about personal and domestic cleanliness, facing a hangover of proportions that even for him were discouraging. On his lap lay a gleaming glass bottle, a bright new yellow duster and a bottle of metho. Alf had made him promise not to think about fires anymore. The police had been through town after the last ones. Alf had connections, heard things. There was a whisper they suspected there wa
s a local arsonist. There’d been patterns over the years that they’d started to notice. He didn’t want Tom put away, especially now he knew he was ill. Done time himself when he was younger. It’d kill old Tom. If the locals found out it’d be worse. You’d get skinned alive around here if they had you down for a firebug—if it was even a rumour on someone’s lips. And they’d sorted out this thing about Molly. Alf said now he had his doubts about Mancini—everyone had since that bloke had been put away. It was just Mancini turning up again, stirring the pot, and now another one of them in the same house. Alf said he’d been nasty with booze that night—stewing. He knew how that was. But they’d been off their heads on tequila down in Alf’s boatshed and high on having freshly patched up their quarrel—nothing they said counted. And it didn’t make sense what Alf said about Mancini. Everyone knew it was him. That bloke they arrested never admitted anything. He had nothing to do with it. And Tom had believed it for so long now; he’d let Edie go, believing it. It had to be true.
Now it looked like he was going out early. They’d been vague at the doc’s—the way they are. Maybe a year, if he looked after himself. They offered him chemo, but he couldn’t do that alone. He’d helped Edie through it, and he often wondered whether he’d done the right thing. Not much point in the operation, they’d said; he’d left it too late. No use in putting himself through it. You’d think they could let him anyway, just something to give him hope. People got up and walked all the time, didn’t they, when they’d been written off by the medical profession? Who knew what hope could do, if they left him with a scrap? But those people that got up and walked, they were burning with something—either God, or love, or some fuck-you sense of destiny. The only thing that burned in Tom was a nagging bitterness and a love of whiskey, and a decent fire, of course.
He didn’t have it in him to decide today. He’d just make sure everything was ready, that it was all where he needed it, just in case. He knew Alf would come and find Dog; that was one less thing to worry about. Tom closed his eyes, breathed in the cool moss growing on the pile of wood next to his feet, swore silently at the pain that was expanding inside his head and dozed off.
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