The Best Australian Stories 2016

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The Best Australian Stories 2016 Page 16

by Charlotte Wood


  ‘Select your strongest swimmers,’ I said to Father Anthony. ‘Those girls will take the end of the net farthest from the beach. They’ll be the ones to swim across the entrance to the bay.’

  ‘I see you’ve thought this through. Would you excuse me for a minute? I must consult a colleague.’

  I let him go with regret. It had begun to grow cool in the room, if it’s possible here to have any sense of what cool truly is, and I fancied that this relief emanated in some way from Father Anthony. His pink skin suggested not clammy heat but the smooth, cool skin of a baby. I was content, sitting there in that office. My presentation had gone well. I was acting on my belief that Mabel should be free. It was good to talk to another man again. And, as if offended by this betrayal – who was he, if not another man? – Darwin appeared at the window with the air of someone casually strolling by. He peered in.

  ‘It’s safe,’ I said in a loud whisper. Then I gave him the victory sign, at which he looked puzzled.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Darwin.

  ‘Gone for help.’

  ‘Help for whom?’

  Darwin ambled away from the window and out into the trees, but I could see the bright camel colour of his naturalist’s coat among the greenery; he hadn’t gone far. Sitting comfortably in that cooling office, I considered the ways in which Darwin had never been particularly helpful to me, despite the initial promise of his appearance. After all, to a man – a scientist, no less – who has recently lost his faith, the ghost of Darwin could be a rich resource. We might have sat and talked a little about God’s sovereignty, and then about its dissolution: a little of God vanishing into the dodo, a little into the long-lost ichthyosaurus. But he seems impatient when I raise these topics, and I’ve come to avoid them. I used to think of Charles Darwin in the same way some people think of Jesus Christ: he was a real man who existed in a specific historical time and he taught some valuable lessons, many of which I could adopt with no sense of contradiction. In short, I was a sensible man. I was no Creationist. I was reconciled with Darwin. I weighed it all up, and with the same clever hands I held something else entirely: that joyful faith of mine, impregnable.

  I was once quite certain that God so loved the world. How sudden it was, on day 282: God’s absence upon my shoulders, like a heavy flightless bird that can still hop to a height. How sobering to pass from Dr William Birch, beloved of God, to Bill Birch, organism. Just to be there on my sticky cliff and feel this way for no specific reason – it was a kind of grief. And I saw Mabel differently after that. How could I help it? She has nothing to do with me. I can’t eat or fuck her. She’s without complication. I was sure of one thing, until I was no longer sure; now my conviction is that Mabel must be free. And not for her own sake, no; although I love her, I would have put her in a tank and watched her in it for the rest of her life, or mine. But now I think she should remain a mystery. There must be some things in the world that no one sees and no one knows. Some monsters.

  I began to worry about Father Anthony. Why was he taking so long? I rang the silver bell and a girl appeared. She was about sixteen, neat and shy behind heavy hair, and I felt like a Bounty sailor encountering beauty for the first time. I thought of the one mutineer who had the date he first saw Tahiti tattooed on his quivering arm.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  ‘Hello,’ she answered. She was solemn, and so was I. The heat had returned.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Faith,’ she said, and she was so allegorical, standing there, she may as well have been draped in white robes, placed on a plinth above a plaque that read ‘Faith’. I laughed, which startled her.

  ‘Is that really your name?’ I asked. ‘Or did Father Anthony ask you to come in here and tell me that?’

  She was confused but pleased. I knew I wouldn’t touch her – I’m not so mad as to touch her – but I wanted to. I want to. Oh, Tahiti! Was Darwin ever there? No, I don’t think so. He preferred dustier places, godforsaken places like the Galápagos, prehistoric with tortoises. This girl and girls like her would come to the beach with me and draw aside the net.

  ‘Do you like to swim, Faith?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered.

  Father Anthony entered the office, and behind him was Eric, the driver.

  ‘Faith!’ Father Anthony cried, as if overjoyed to see her, and he ushered her merrily out. She looked back at me very quickly, the way she might look over one shoulder while swimming. Where had she appeared from, and where would she go now? Father Anthony went behind his desk but didn’t sit down. Eric leaned against the bookshelf.

  ‘Now, Bill,’ said Father Anthony. ‘You mentioned headaches. The brain is a very delicate thing, which you as a scientist would know very well. The brain and the mind – two different things, yes? Both very delicate. If we’re going to help you, I’d like you to do me a favour first.’

  ‘I already gave the lecture,’ I said. ‘You owe me a favour.’

  Father Anthony laughed.

  ‘Very true, very true,’ he said. ‘You’re right. But perhaps you’d consider doing this favour anyway. For my sake. Let me just tell you what I have in mind. I’d like you to see a doctor about these headaches of yours. Symptoms that seem harmless enough in other places become much more serious on an island like ours. When I first arrived, I was reluctant to see doctors. I thought I could cope with all the discomforts. But things escalated until I was in the grip of a brain fever.’

  ‘You called it a spiritual crisis,’ I pointed out.

  ‘It was, Bill, it was,’ he said, smiling, pinker than ever. ‘I want you to travel back to town with Eric. There’s a doctor on the supply ship, and he’s willing to see you. It’s either today, or you’ll have to wait another month. Why suffer needlessly?’

  ‘And the squid?’

  ‘You see the doctor,’ said Father Anthony, ‘and then free the squid.’

  ‘It has to be tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ nodded Father Anthony.

  Of course he was transparent; a man like Father Anthony always is. He was perched on the edge of his desk, becalmed in his own solicitude, hoping I would submit without fuss to his will. So I did. I allowed myself to be ushered out, I allowed him to assure me that my supplies had been refrigerated, I allowed myself to be seated comfortably in the jeep. Father Anthony followed the jeep as Eric backed it onto the road, he waved us off as if with a valedictory handkerchief, and I turned my head at the first corner to see him walking toward the school with his arms behind his back, his head lowered, as if in prayer.

  Around that first corner I offered to pay Eric to stop the jeep.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, intent on the road.

  ‘Please, Eric. This is important. How can I make you understand?’

  ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll lose my job. You know how hard it is to earn money here if you want to stay legal? I have a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Auckland, and this is the only work there is. I’ll drive you into town. After that you do what you want, I don’t care, and if anyone finds out it’s not because I’ve told them.’

  We drove on. Soon afterwards I noticed movement in the trees alongside the road. There was Darwin, running. I’ve never seen a man move so fast. He couldn’t quite keep up with the jeep, although he managed it for stretches of a minute or two and at times seemed to extend his right arm out to reach the car door. Perhaps he was trying to warn me of what I already knew. Faithful Darwin sped beside us, the wings of his coat flying out behind him, his feet a blur and his face a study of determined strength. We lost him shortly before town when it was necessary to cross a river and he made the mistake of plunging into the stream rather than waiting to follow behind us on the narrow bridge. I turned to look and saw him thrashing at the water with the incredulous fury of an Olympian who’s just lost the final.

  Eric and I parted in town. He made no reference to the doctor, but also no promise of a lift back to the school. I walked through the
sandy streets to the end of the beach farthest from the dock, observing the population as I myself was no doubt observed, and I hoped that once I left the island I would never see a place like it again in my life. I longed for escape. The supply ship sat smugly in the harbour, equipped with its doctor, and I was tempted to board it waving a white flag. But who then would free Mabel? If she doesn’t belong to God, she belongs nowhere. I must remember to write that into my grant report.

  I thought I might find Darwin on the beach, but I found the protesters instead. They talked in groups in the extended shadows of the palm trees. I walked toward them with my hands in the pockets of my trousers, and when they saw me coming they stirred with hope and indignation. I stopped a few feet from them, and despite the failing light they peered up at me with their hands cupped over their eyes, as if the absurd sun of the island’s midday had forced them into a permanent habit.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said.

  ‘Hi,’ they chorused.

  A blond boy stood, handsome, a kind of voluntary Achilles. He advanced toward me. ‘Maybe you can help us,’ he said. He seemed to be wondering aloud. A ripple of assent went through the group: yes, yes, they seemed to sigh, maybe he can help us.

  ‘I hear you’re looking for transportation,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have a car? Even better, a truck?’ said the boy.

  ‘A bus?’ called one wag, and they laughed.

  ‘Where is it that you’d like to go?’

  ‘We need to get to the other side of the island,’ said the boy. ‘Do you know of a scientist, a Doctor William Birch?’

  ‘Bill Birch, yes. Sure I do.’

  ‘And you’re not him?’

  ‘Me? I’m no scientist,’ I answered, and for some reason they all laughed again, perhaps in relief. The boy began to explain to me that he – that they – objected to the work Dr Birch was doing with a certain captive squid. He was guarded, but furious. They’d all been together on some kind of ecology project in the Cook Islands when news of Dr Birch’s work broke, and had talked their way onto the supply ship.

  ‘That was only three days ago,’ the boy said, with pride. ‘We’re here before the media.’

  ‘So you want to get to Dr Birch,’ I said.

  ‘No one seems to know where he is,’ said the boy. ‘It’s like he’s a hermit or something.’

  It thrills me to know the locals protected me from that lovable, good-looking, deluded band.

  ‘I know where he is,’ I said, ‘and I’ll do what I can to get you to him.’

  They rose up as one then, and surrounded me with their relief and zeal and exhaustion, shouting names at me and asking mine.

  ‘Eric Anthony,’ I said. ‘Now tell me, what would you have said if I’d been Dr Birch?’

  ‘We’d have said we were marine biology students,’ said Todd, the Achilles. ‘Who wouldn’t want to see a colossal squid if they got the chance?’

  And they asked me to take a photo of them, all together on the beach; it was a beautiful picture, sand-lit, and they pressed together inside its frame with such health and trust that I wanted to – I did – like them, very much. And I knew they would help me if I asked them to; they would swim out across the bay, they would remove the net, they would farewell Mabel with me, sending her seaward, and every second of her escape would be captured on their phones. Mabel would swim forever in a digital sea. She’d be free, but all the world would know her.

  In town, I had more luck than they had finding transportation. I paid for the use of a utility truck owned by a friend of Eric’s, and the crusaders climbed into the tray with their knapsacks. I even bought them supplies and checked the batteries in all their torches. The townspeople watched us. It pleased me to think that the only person they would betray me to was myself. Todd rode in the front with me. He asked me what I did on the island, and I told him I taught in a Catholic school near Dr Birch’s camp. I told him we would pass the school, and that they should walk up to visit me there whenever they needed to get into town. He asked if I lived at the school, and I said yes. He asked if I was Catholic, and I said yes. This all came very easily. Todd is an earnest and admirable young man. I’d be proud to have a son like him. But he plays no part in my vision of freeing Mabel, and my principal concern was to cause him as much inconvenience as possible. To accomplish this, I dropped him and his cheerful gang at the head of a trail leading to a beach a few bays east of my observation station and told them that Mabel, far from being trapped in a small inlet, was enclosed by the coral reef and had the whole lagoon to move around in.

  ‘Don’t go swimming,’ I said. ‘She’s probably pretty angry by now.’

  ‘Are colossal squid dangerous?’ asked Todd.

  ‘Deadly.’

  I told them Bill Birch moved his camp from place to place in the jungle, so they might have trouble finding him at first. I said that he was essentially harmless, that the machete he carried was only for cutting paths; I warned them, too, that he was hard of hearing and jumpy when startled. I said I knew they were responsible kids and would act with appropriate caution. We unloaded their gear onto the road. I moved the car so the headlights shone down along the trail. They remarked on the audible ocean and seemed much less nervous than they should have; they said goodbye, they expressed their gratitude, and then they plunged off into the humid trees. When they were far beyond the beam of my headlights, Darwin bound into the road like a stricken kangaroo.

  ‘There you are,’ I said.

  He climbed into the car and sat rigidly, ecstatic with terror, like a boy waiting for a rollercoaster to descend its first hill.

  ‘You’ve never been in a car before, have you?’ I said.

  He shook his head. I gave him quite a ride. There are some hairpin bends on this old volcano that could knot your intestines like a skilful sailor. By the time we’d climbed down to the observation station we were both giddy as schoolboys. We walked out onto the cliff and looked down at Mabel. It was dark, of course, and colossal squid are not, to my or anyone’s knowledge, phosphorescent, but I would be willing to swear that I saw her outline glowing very faintly from the bottom of her bay.

  That was last night. I slept late this morning, day 498, and spent the afternoon writing this account. Now Darwin is with me, and it’s pleasant to see him in the fullest light of the day; he seems more definite, and in this way more ordinary. The weather is clear, so we amuse ourselves by pretending we can see New Zealand. I don’t know what’s become of Eric; I don’t know what report he’s given Father Anthony. No one has come looking for me. I imagine the supply ship has left by now. I imagine I’ll spend the next month in town living on this newly discovered goodwill of the locals, just another oddball wanderer. The protestors will find me, eventually, and we’ll make friends; we’ll laugh together when they hear what it is I’ve done, and one of the girls, less pretty, perhaps, but kind, will take pity on me. I’ll resign my position, of course. I’ll take the next ship; I’ll go home. Darwin says he won’t come with me. He’s scornful of Australia and talks of England with the adoration of exile. This is all as it should be. Unless, unless, I get too close to Mabel, and she takes me with her.

  In these last few minutes I’ve felt the swimmy brimming that precedes an attack of vertigo. I feel it as a pressure in my feet. Soon, I know, the earth will fall away from them, and this too is as it should be. My head seems to press outward. To myself I say, Shark, anemone, starfish, seahorse, eel. My main concern was that if Eric raised the alarm, Father Anthony wouldn’t permit the girls to take their daily swim. But here they come now, down the mountain. They’re singing, of course, and Faith is among them. She’s singing softly. She likes to swim. She’ll wade out into the water and the other girls will follow her. What is it about being immersed in water that’s so exciting, so vital to us? We all experience it – this thrill of feeling the medium we move in as something dangerous and contingent. It reminds us of the artifice of oxygen and gravity, the sheer unlikelihood of their provision.
We feel the water close around our arms and legs and we make our way through it with difficulty and determination, singing and proclaiming and making promises, kneeling and rising and sitting and standing. It feels like the unbearable presence of God, His hands on our submarine chests. A blowfish might waft past, inflated, with a look of dumb surprise on its face. I have basketfuls of fish ready to feed to Mabel. The girls will take hold of the net; I’ll watch as they rise through the sea with it into the air. The light will billow and flare around them in the bright wind, and their hands will reach out to heaven as if strung on trapeze wires. I’ll wade through the shallows, wet to my stupid waist; then I’ll kick downward and swim. Darwin will observe from the shore in his nineteenth-century socks. And Mabel will fly seaward, holy and beautiful, a bony-beaked messenger bringing no news.

  Alpine Road

  Jennifer Down

  Mornings were when they were most forgiving of each other. When they fucked now, it was first thing, when they were still kind.

  Before Clive got sick, he was always up early. He worked at the power plant in Hazelwood. Even when he’d been on night shift, he’d get up and make the coffee.

 

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