Death of a Whaler

by Nerida Newton

  The cards sell well.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe how many people are coming into town these days. Young people!’ Karma tells him over their evening meal. ‘You should come into town on a weekend. It actually looks a bit alive.’

  ‘Yeah, I might,’ says Flinch. But he stays in the pastel house, travelling only to the beaches to fish and, often, to lodge the handle of his rod in the wet hard sand and stare out at the sea, as if he is expecting a bottle to wash up at his feet with the answer to his life rolled up inside it. He has stayed away from the town, he’s had no reason to go there. He hasn’t even needed to go to the store since Karma started picking the groceries up.

  ‘You’ve got a great eye for detail. You really should paint something.’

  She pushes a piece of paper in his direction. He ignores it and goes into the living room to sort through the household bills he’s been avoiding for as long as possible. Later, when she has gone to bed, Flinch picks up a brush and looks at the paints in front of him. The images of sea creatures disappear. All he can see in his mind is a broad red canvas, the colour of old blood.

  Karma seems to fill the house, be around every corner, turning up the radio when Flinch is trying to sleep and locking the bathroom door when Flinch needs to get in — he pisses outside in the yard, against the shrubs at the edge of the garden, the goats nuzzling the backs of his knees. Flinch finds himself wishing she would leave when she is around and missing her when she is not. He does nothing all day, but is exhausted. The shape of his prone body is moulded into the couch, and once there he is as immovable as a stain. When he wanders around the house alone he feels like a bucket full of water, sloppy and weighed down, reluctant to move with speed lest something inside him spills over.

  Karma makes him herbal tea.

  He empties it down the sink when she isn’t looking.

  ‘You look terrible,’ she says.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he replies.

  She raises her eyebrows but he gives her nothing more to go on.

  ‘You look like you need something to shock you into action. Bring you back to life. You’ve been walking around in a dream, Flinch. Why don’t you do something? Your life isn’t getting any longer, you know.’

  To find some peace and space, and to make Karma think he’s out doing something useful, he starts taking walks to the lighthouse in the afternoons, following the goat tracks that start at the edge of Wategos Beach to the top of the cliffs, stumbling over rocks and the roots of trees, throwing himself into the wind that gusts up over the headland. He walks to the edge of the outcrop that extends from the mainland like some thin knobbly limb, and lies face down in the pebbles of goat droppings, his head over the edge, relishing the dizzying vertigo, the feeling of temptation and imminent flight. When he stands up and rubs his face on his jacket sleeve, his eyelashes and brows are caked with salt.

  At the lighthouse he rests, leans against its cool cream base and feels the solidity of it, the reliability, its straight-backed resilience to storm and sea. Unflinching. Throwing light out across the whitecaps at night, over the decades, first by wick, then mantle, then electricity. The lantern itself composed of more than seven hundred pieces of crystal, floating in a pool of mercury. The crystal brought out from France, loaded precariously onto small boats so that it could be brought in to shore. On the fishing boats, Flinch had always looked for the red beam that lit up Julian Rocks, that one consistent stare from the lighthouse while its other huge eye blinked light and dark, awake and asleep.

  He has been inside the lighthouse once, on a tour, when it opened for visitors on a Sunday. There had been a church community picnic at the headland, and Audrey had taken him. While she snuck sips from the flagon she had packed in their basket, he had joined the end of a guided tour group. Inside the eye of the lighthouse, the glass looked fractured, incapable of the single, pure beam of light he was to see from offshore years later. When he looked skyward, he saw shattered clouds, shards of sky, fragments of rainbows. Out on the balcony that surrounded the lamp room, the ocean stretched in a huge arc. The whistle and breath of the wind in his ears whispered wild half-formed secrets to him. He leant his weight against the white railings and hung his clumsy braced leg over the edge.

  ‘Oh, be careful Flinch!’ one of the church women said. And he was enveloped quickly in a flapping paisley housedress, his arm held firmly in the clutch of white gloves.

  ‘You would think his mother…’

  ‘She wouldn’t even know he was up here.’

  ‘Someone should say something…’

  The sighs, then, that sound he was to hear like some intermittent soundtrack throughout his life, the little exhalations of pity.

  But he didn’t mind. ‘Did you see the dolphins?’

  ‘No, darling, I didn’t see dolphins. Did you, Fran?’

  ‘No, I didn’t. But if you say you saw them, Flinch, we believe you.’

  He knew they didn’t. But that was still at the stage where they’d say that sort of thing. Because of the leg, and because they thought, even though he had often spoken to them, that he had a mental impairment as well.

  ‘They’re always such happy souls though, the slow ones, don’t you find?’ The women would say it out loud, when he was in earshot.

  ‘That’s their blessing, really.’

  Murmurs of agreement over cups of tea and spongy slices of cake.

  He stands up and scans the ocean now for movement, the flash of silver in the curl of a breaker. But there is nothing. The ocean is quiet. The whales, too, are long gone. Back to the cooler waters, having birthed and fed their young in safer tropical bays. Deep, still sea nurseries off Tonga and Niue, places Flinch has seen only as a cluster of dots on sailing maps.

  As dusk settles around him, he can hear the coo of a cuckoo dove, the honeyeaters and wattlebirds, the shrill screech of a white cockatoo. The ocean, too, its long sighs into the early evening as it rolls towards the cliffs. He heads for home.

  ‘The thing is, Flinch, I think you’re getting worse.’

  This conversation again. Flinch busies himself with washing up.

  ‘Look, I’ve done some reading. I think you’re still grieving for your friend. Some people say there are seven stages of grief, some nine, but to compact it a little, I’ve decided to go with the theory that claims there are five.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  ‘My point exactly. I think you’re stuck in one, or maybe across a few, of the stages.’

  Flinch doesn’t say anything. He’s learnt that sometimes, if he lets her lecture for a while, she’ll feel satisfied and leave him out of it.

  ‘Okay, so, like, first there’s denial, then anger, then bargaining, then depression, then acceptance. You’re not in denial. But I think you’ve folded anger, bargaining and depression into one big stage, and you’re not ever going to make it to acceptance unless you try to move through that.’

  ‘What about you?’ he says. A last-ditch attempt. ‘Are you feeling healed?’ The word hisses and fizzes, acidic on Flinch’s tongue.

  Karma frowns. ‘There’s been a shift, Flinch. I can feel it. I feel almost … reborn.’

  ‘I haven’t noticed any difference.’

  She is quiet for a little while. He can feel her watching him and he keeps his back to her, busies himself with drying a saucepan. He knows he’s struck at her with his words. He didn’t mean to, but he feels trapped, hemmed into a corner.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether you have or not,’ she says finally.

  She leaves the room.

  In the middle of the night, Flinch lies on the floor of the living room. The lights are off. The moon splays dull silver through the window. On the radio, the weather report and tide times and shipping forecasts are being read like poetry, in half-sentences, a line at a time, updated constantly with reports from vessels in the region.

  Gale Warning NSW coastal waters south of Broken Bay.

  Strong Wind Warning.

 
; On the synoptic, a low 992 hPa located about 300 NM

  ESE of Gabo Island is moving slowly ESE.

  SW wind up to 30/40 knots, tending

  southerly in the afternoon.

  Sea 4 to 5 metres in south and offshore.

  Swell S/SW 2 to 3 metres, increasing to 3 to 4 metres.

  Broken Bay to Tweed Heads:

  SW wind increasing to 25/33 knots and tending

  southerly in the afternoon.

  Sea 2. 5 to 3. 5 metres. Swell 1 to 2 metres increasing to

  3 metres later in the day.

  Wind clockwise around low 30/40 knots increasing to

  40/50 knots over the storm area on western flank of low.

  Very rough to high sea.

  Moderate to heavy swell.

  In the words, Flinch can feel the pitch of the ocean, the rise and fall of a vessel. Knows the sailors will be pulling beanies down over ears; saying to each other, over lukewarm instant coffee, No sleep tonight, mate, not with those seas ahead of us.

  ‘Pray to the sea gods,’ Nate would say when they struck high water, rough sea.

  ‘What sea gods?’

  ‘Neptune, Nerid, Poseidon, Triton, Aipalovik, Njord. The Saxons sacrificed humans to Aegir for good sailing. Solinthar was the patron god of mariners, according to the Titans. Or you could try the gods who came from the sea as half-fish, half-man. Vishnu did, and the Babylonian god Oannes.’

  The names would wash over Flinch and away with the water that flooded overboard. He listens carefully now to the forecast, focuses on the sounds of the words, hoping to feel similarly gutted, washed away.

  The following afternoon, a storm rolls in from the ocean, thick and dark green, flashing lightning, exploding above the bay with a furious roar. The windows of the pastel house rattle in their sills. Karma is still at the surf shop. Flinch takes his bottle of rum and heads out to the dinghy. He sits on one of the bench seats as the lightning sears the sky around him and thunder threatens to split his eardrums. The dinghy fills with dirty grey water that rises to mid-calf. Flinch screws the lid on the rum bottle between nips so that it isn’t watered down.

  He has heard that once, during storms like this, two lighthouse keepers were struck by lightning in the same week. Both survived. One was left unconscious, recovered black and bruised and disoriented, and was never quite right afterwards — though nobody could put a finger on how he’d changed. The other was struck quite unexpectedly, as the skies were clearing; the paper he was reading set alight in his hands, his fingers charred. Smelt like burning human hair for weeks afterwards.

  Flinchwaits impatiently for a bolt to set him alight where he sits, but the storm dries up and the lightning fades to flashes over the hinterland. The dinghy empties of water through a hole near the stern.

  ‘Next time,’ he says to the goats as they wander back into the yard from their shelter under the awning.

  FOURTEEN

  A thump that makes the wall paint flake off in scabs. And again and again. Flinch awakes from an afternoon slumber thinking some part of the roof has finally caved in. Realises through a numb haze that it’s someone at the door.

  ‘Who the hell?’ He says it out loud, hoping whoever it is will decide to go away before he gets to the door. Karma has a key. The door unlocked anyway. Audrey, once, spying men, starched white shirts and black briefcases, making their way up the gravel driveway, flung the door open just before they knocked. Stark naked except for feathery pink slippers, fanning herself with a soft-bound hymn book she’d pilfered from a church outing. The men, red-faced and wet through their shirts with the effort of climbing the driveway, hands poised in fists, turned around without saying a word. Audrey had put her dressing gown back on, filled a glass with cask wine and poured Flinch a cordial and they toasted the success. It was one of the good afternoons.

  Flinch squints as he opens the door. Macca, clutching terry-towelling hat in hands. A couple of goats have wandered up behind and are staring at him, as if he should have asked their permission to enter the garden. And now here he is already at the front door. The audacity. They move away bleating, black tongues out.

  ‘Mate, you look like shit.’

  ‘Thanks, Macca, good to see you too.’

  Macca starts to laugh, stops, sniffs. Wrings the terry towelling as if trying to squeeze drops from it.

  ‘You want to come in?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks, mate.’

  Flinch wonders what brought on this visit. Macca hasn’t dropped around much since the failed attempts at bringing Flinch out of his isolation after the accident, visits involving warm beers and stilted conversations that ended in an awkward inertia. Now Macca only ever visits the pastel house to drop off the odd bit of news, and pick up tackle he borrows and perhaps one day intends to return.

  ‘Beer?’

  ‘Yeah, could do with one alright. Thirsty weather, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, too right.’

  The fridge has to be peeled open from the side. Closes with a thunk and hums like a plane taking off. They take long swigs. Let out sighs, both of them, after.

  Macca clears his throat, leans forward over the table, hairy hands clutched together as if in rough and ready prayer.

  ‘So, I’m startin’ a business.’

  ‘Really? What?’

  ‘Sailing. Fishing. For the tourists. Charter boat stuff.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Whaddaya mean why? I’ve been out of work since they let that lot of us go at the meatworks. Like to say I put aside a nest egg that was big enough to keep us going till we carked it, but all I got really is the old place and the shirt on me back. Need something to live on, eh?’

  ‘Yeah, s’pose you do.’

  ‘Anyway, I was wondering … Maybe you’d like some work? I know you’re always keepin’ an eye out. I can’t pay you much to start, but I’ve got to get my old boat in working order. Set it up all nice and cushy for tourists.’

  Flinch shrugs. ‘Not much good at that. Fixing stuff.’

  ‘Wouldn’t need to be, mate. I just need another pair of hands really. I’d direct ya. Then maybe later you could take out some of the charters and stuff. Must be itchin’ to get your feet on deck again, eh?’

  The afternoon light pounds hot through the window onto the laminex of the table. Warms the beer in their hands. The bubbles dull.

  ‘Can I think about it, mate?’

  ‘What’s there to think about? Thought you’d jump at the chance. Would do you some good.’

  ‘How do you reckon?’

  Macca pauses. Scratches at the sweat forming on his brow. ‘Well, I met your lady friend the other day.’

  Flinch groans. Plonks his beer on the table. Froth rises to the top, dribbles over. ‘So she’s got to you too?’

  Macca fidgets in his chair. Scratches his thigh, readjusts his privates.

  ‘Oh, Macca.’

  ‘No, mate, it’s nothing suss. She just said she’s worried about you. Says you’re sleeping all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’m tired, mate. Really tired.’

  ‘She says you yell out in the night. Have night panics. She said you call out stuff about drowning.’

  Flinch winces. Sinks back. The vinyl of the kitchen chair brings a sweat to his back.

  ‘She reckons it’s about Nate. She reckons you never got over it.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘How much have you told her about it?’

  ‘Nothing. She just knows it happened.’

  Macca sighs and rubs at the sweat that has dripped stinging into his eyes. ‘She’s an interesting one, that’s for sure.’

  ‘She’s fixated on healing me, whatever she means by that. She’s like a bloody terrier. Won’t let it go.’

  They sip at their beers in silence. Belch and sniff, listen to the radio hissing the coastal forecast in the background. The humidity of the day dissolves around them. The sun shifts across the room.

  The chair creaks as Macca stands. Downs the last
of his hot beer.

  ‘Yeah, well. The offer’s there. And even though your lady friend suggested it, it is genuine. Could really do with a hand. The old lady would be pleased to see you again. You know how she is. Needs to dote on someone when she’s had enough of me. And she’s always had a bit of a soft spot for you, mate.’

  Flinch takes a final swig of his beer. ‘Yeah, righto, mate. Look, I’ll think about it. Get back to ya. Ta.’

  Outside the afternoon is bruising blue to night, cooled by a wind that flutters in over the ocean. Birds call out to each other from overhead, in the shrubbery, as if passing on news of the day, the evening headlines.

  ‘Great spot up here, eh?’ says Macca, stretching his arms, back cracking like a nut. The ocean sprawled before him to the horizon.

  ‘Yeah, good view anyway.’

  A goat starts towards Macca with its head lowered, ready to butt. He shoves a boot in its face.

  ‘Feral bastard. Pity they don’t make good eating. You’d have to stew ’em for days and then they’d still taste like me thongs.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘I’ll see you around then, son.’

  ‘Yeah, Macca. See ya.’

  Karma comes home late. Slams the door, trips and laughs out loud.

  ‘You high on something?’ Flinch smoulders quietly in the doorway to the kitchen, preparing to get mad at her for interfering, not really knowing how to vent his irritation.

  ‘Life, Flinch. High on life.’

  He takes a step into the kitchen and sits opposite her. She’s grinning at him, eyes like a dozing cat.

  ‘Smells more like bourbon to me.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she concedes, stretches lazy arms across the table and rests her head. ‘Could be a bit of that. Friday night drinks. A tradition, I have been told.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have talked to Macca.’

  ‘It’s a free world, baby.’ She looks up at him through a mesh of hair. ‘Anyway, he approached me. Well, kind of. Came into the surf shop to see if he could bring in flyers for his fishing thingy when it’s up and running. Seemed right up your alley. So we had a little chat.’ She yawns. Flinch sees her tonsils. ‘I’m so sleepy I could nap here all night. But I think bed is a better plan. See you in the morning, darl.’