Death of a Whaler

by Nerida Newton

  The next letter from Karma is a postcard. A grainy photograph of a kangaroo with a joey in its pouch on the front. Blurry orange background. AUSTRALIA’S OUTBACK, it says in yellow letters above the kangaroo’s head. The roo looks perplexed. Flinch empathises.

  Darl, heading home AT LAST. Will be on Thursday bus. Arrives about 11 am. Can I bum a lift, if Milly is cooperating? If not, will hitch to the house, no worries. Hope all is well. Love, Karma.

  Wednesday night he hardly sleeps. After the dreams he’s been having, it doesn’t bother him. He’s awake before the birds’ dawn chorus, makes himself a cup of tea and sits sipping it in the dinghy as the sun rises over the ocean. Tries to convince himself he’ll miss the quiet solitude. He irons a shirt. Rubs Brylcreem through his wet hair and pats it down. A recalcitrant cowlick flicks over his forehead. He remembers Audrey’s spit on his scalp as she tried to tackle that one. ‘Useless,’ she’d say. And he’d know she meant him. He decides to leave it there, where it wants to be.

  At quarter past ten he’s at the bus stop. He sits in the ute for half an hour listening to radio talkback, tries to muster a vague interest in the discussion. Refugees from Vietnam. Arriving on the nation’s doorstep, pretending to be workers but covertly planning to turn the country a commie shade of red — according to the bloke who’s called in, anyway, some croaky-voiced old codger. A whining housewife agrees, says she’s worried about the kind of nation her kids will grow up in. She’s trying to sound polite. Just simply concerned. The real displeasure bleeds through in her tone. The talk show host neither agrees nor disagrees, sounds like he’d rather be elsewhere. He has a polished English accent.

  Flinch switches the radio over to a music station promising hard rock, delivering advertisements for car insurance and discount clothing stores and white-goods. After an hour he needs to pee, but doesn’t want to walk down the street to the pub in case the bus arrives and Karma doesn’t see Milly there and hitches a ride home. He looks up and down the street. A few shoppers wandering in and out of doorways. Seagulls settling in a grassy patch in the median strip. The publican cleaning the windows of the Great Northern. He ducks behind a tree in the nearby park when the street seems emptiest. Tries to look casual on his way back to the ute. Hands in pockets. Whistling.

  The bus arrives at quarter to twelve. Flinch has fallen asleep to the drone of the radio, head lolled back over the seat, mouth open. Drooling onto his shirt collar. The squeal of the bus’s brakes wakes him with a start that results in mild whiplash. He wipes his mouth on the back of his arm.

  Doors hiss open. A young couple, tanned, wearing silver bracelets and anklets and carrying backpacks, are off the bus first. They walk past him, a map open between them, speaking a language Flinch can’t identify. Then an older man, short sleeves, a bow tie, a fedora, a small checked suitcase. Flinch watches him as he waves to the driver, heads straight across to the pub. The bus doors remain open. He can see a figure standing in the aisle. He tries to make out if it’s her, his heart thudding in his chest. He feels strained with impatience. Finally she steps off. The doors make a clunking sound as they close behind her.

  He is out of the car, rushing towards her as if propelled, near her, embracing her.

  ‘Well,’ she says, kissing him on the cheek. ‘You missed me after all, eh?’

  Flinch steps back, wipes his wet nose on his palm and runs his hands down the front of his shirt. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So everything is still good?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘House still standing? Goats still perpetually hungry?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘The boat’s coming along?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And you’re still fishing?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Barbarian.’ She gives him a shove on the shoulder. He stumbles back, grinning.

  Milly is compliant for a change, and once on the road Flinch finds the words that he thought he had misplaced. Months’ worth of news is uncorked and tumbles forth from him as if he is an upturned pitcher. He tells her about the boat, how he chose the colours and the name and that the blue of the sail moved him to tears and about the starfish on the toilet paper and the blue-and-white striped seat covers and the Blue Peter that he painted. It is only when they reach the pastel house that he realises his mouth is dry from so much talking. Karma has barely said a word. She has been nodding, and laughing in all the right places, but as they pull up in the driveway he looks across at her and notices that she looks as if she is sagging. She has dark circles under her eyes. She is paler than when she left.

  ‘What about you?’ he asks.

  ‘Me? Oh, you know, I’m fine.’ She pats his knee. A couple of firm slaps that are meant to be reassuring.

  ‘Your family okay?’

  ‘Not really. But they never were.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It was the end of an era,’ she sighs, a small shudder. Her hand moves lightly to her breastbone. ‘I had some things to sort out. But it’s good to be home.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Flinch. ‘I know what you mean.’

  She sleeps all afternoon. Flinch roasts her every vegetable he can find for dinner. Zucchini, beetroot, sweet potato, carrots, onion. She laughs when she sees the offering.

  ‘Flinch, you are a darl.’ She wipes tears from her eyes with the base of her palm.

  They sit in the dinghy in the evening and drink beer and watch the moon tinge the whitecaps the silver of mercury.

  ‘What did you have to go home for exactly?’ Flinch asks her.

  Karma yawns. ‘There’s too much to explain. I’ll tell you some other time, okay?’

  Flinch feels a little sting in the avoidance. ‘Okay,’ he says quietly.

  She puts her arm around him and rests her head on his shoulder. Wisps of her hair blow across his face like web.

  ‘The stories of our lives reveal themselves in all sorts of ways, Flinch. They don’t always make sense to tell.’

  Flinch thinks of Audrey and the stories that she told over and over, compounding her despair and bitterness with the retelling. In the end that is all she was, all she amounted to. A collection of anecdotes from her own past, a series of half-truths and exaggerations and justifications invented after the events. Drawing targets belatedly around the bullet holes. He wonders if the truths of her life came to her on her deathbed, as she lay hawking up the black bile, as the effort of breathing became too tiresome. The simple truth of her love and hate of him, and his of her. He wonders if she reconciled. If anyone gets that chance.

  In the glimmer of the morning they stand on Macca’s struggling, dew-soaked lawn and admire the boat. Macca has loaded her onto a trailer and wheeled her out into the sunlight. The white gleams bright and crisp, the brass glinting gold. Flinch believes there is something of the divine about her.

  ‘She’s beautiful!’ says Karma. Looking at the boat, and realising the truth of her beauty and completion, Flinch feels like he’s won the lottery, fathered a child, discovered a cure.

  ‘Bloody oath,’ says Macca. ‘Didn’t pour blood, sweat and tears into her for nothin’, eh, Flinch?’

  ‘Did you see the inside?’Mrs Mac, hovering with a teacup and saucer.

  ‘I did,’ says Karma. ‘It’s gorgeous. A beautiful selection. It really complements the whole thing. They really make it, don’t they, the little touches.’

  Mrs Mac, having initially raised eyebrows and pursed lips at the sight of Karma with her unbrushed hair, bare feet, no bra, beads and hemp-weave singlet, softens. ‘Yes, you and I know it takes a woman’s touch to finish things off properly, doesn’t it, pet?’

  Macca nudges Flinch in the ribs and they both twist the grins off their lips.

  The ocean breeze blows inland and the sails, strapped to the masts, billow in the places they are a little loose, as if catching scent of the sea, eager to unravel.

  Tea and homemade pumpkin scones in the McTavish’s kitchen. Flinch notices Karma screw her nose up at the huge side of
meat defrosting on the sink, blood running into the drain, and is glad she refrains from saying anything.

  The kitchen is overwhelmingly orange. Orange laminex cupboards, orange plastic tap handles, orange vinyl padded chairs around a small table. A cream blind above the window has a citrus fruit print.

  ‘We had the kitchen redone recently,’ Mrs Mac says to Karma. ‘These fruity colours are all the rage at the moment. I got the ideas out of the Women’s Weekly.’ Mrs Mac surveys the kitchen with what Flinch decides is pretend modesty, wipes at an imaginary stain on the bench top with a tea towel.

  The others look on in silence. Mrs Mac fills the kettle again.

  ‘Karma likes orange,’ says Flinch, uncomfortable in the dull quiet that has thickened in the room. ‘It’s her favourite colour. Her whole tent at the commune was orange, hey, Karma?’

  Karma shoots him a quick look that he can’t decipher.

  ‘Really?’ says Mrs Mac. Puts the kettle back on the stove. ‘Well, I guess you young people are up on all the trends, after all.’

  ‘Actually, it’s an eternal colour,’ says Karma. ‘Buddhists have believed for centuries that it has energising properties.’

  Mrs Mac looks sideways at Flinch and her husband.

  Macca grunts and clears his throat. Starts to say something but ends up scratching the back of his neck instead.

  ‘That’s nice, dear,’ Mrs Mac says eventually.

  Leftover pumpkin scones harden. A fly lands in the whipped cream and drowns.

  ‘Look, mate, I’m taking the missus away for a little holiday.’ Macca is standing out in the yard with Flinch. The women inside rinsing the cups and saucers. Through the open window, the occasional bleating of Mrs Mac’s schoolmarm voice. Karma’s polite laughter.

  ‘Well, the boat’s done.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I reckoned.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘The in-laws. Live up in Maryborough. Maybe get in a bit of deep-sea fishin’ off Fraser Island if I’m lucky. Her brother’s a good bloke and the ladies like time alone to natter. There’s a good run of tailer off the beach up there too sometimes. Might be wrong time of year, but.’

  Macca walks over to the Westerly. Pats her side. ‘Shit, she’s come up nice though.’

  ‘I’ll check in on her, mate, if you want.’

  ‘Yeah. Can’t put her back in the shed so I’m going to throw a tarp over and park the trailer under the tree. But if you could come around, check up on the place, I’d be grateful.’

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘Thanks, eh, Flinch. We’ll be back in about a week. Some things are best in small doses, if you know what I mean. Then we’ll take her out.’

  ‘Lookin’ forward to it.’

  ‘Bloody oath.’

  Before returning to the pastel house, Karma wants a swim at Wategos Beach. Flinch parks Milly in the shade and they slip down onto the beach through a tangle of tree roots and rocks. The dry white sand reflects glare like a mirror in the midday heat.

  The surf in this bay has no urgency, no purpose. Cupped by headland, the waves that roll in peak slowly, dissolve into foam. The tidal drag and rip of the more open beaches break and weaken. The water most days as clear as a resort pool, just the inkling of something wild in the taste of the salt spray. In the early mornings, the fins of dolphins appear close to the shore. Flinch has been in the water a few times and glimpsed a steely tip nearby, each time holding his breath, his mind snapping immediately to an image of hundreds of jagged teeth, but each time the fin has risen again and curved in the graceful arc of the dolphin, been joined by another almost in unison. In those moments, Flinch felt full gratitude for his existence.

  Today the ocean rises and falls, gentle as a melody. They lie on their backs in the water, float like driftwood. Flinch looks skyward. There are no clouds. Nothing but blue. He realises that he is entirely surrounded by blue, above, below, beyond. He imagines this is what the afterlife must feel like. Still, boundless, bright, motionless, quiet, weightless. The colour of the sails of the Westerly.

  That night, still thinking of the afterlife, Flinch reaches for his copy of Moby-Dick. He is about to flick it open, find some passage that he hopes will be a message from Nate, when Karma knocks on his door. He shoves the book under the covers.

  ‘Saw your light on,’ she says as she leans her head in. ‘I’m making a cuppa. Do you want one?’

  ‘Um, I’ll skip it. Thanks anyway.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘See you in the morning then.’

  ‘Yep. Night.’

  ‘Night.’

  Flinch reaches for his book, puts it in the drawer of his bedside table. He turns off his light. It is hard to consult the dead when the living are asking you questions. He decides to leave the drawer shut, the book unopened. At least for a while.

  Karma goes back to work at the surf shop, back to feeding the goats and using all the hot water when she showers and turning up the radio in the mornings. Charred lentils burnt onto the bottom of saucepans most evenings. Flinch resumes his meaty breakfasts, burying the T-bones in the backyard so that Karma doesn’t complain about the smell of cooked meat when she opens the bin.

  He drives down to Macca’s daily to check on the Westerly. He peeks under her tarp as if he’s lifting a skirt. He starts to believe she is impatient for the ocean, that she’s whispering it to him when he turns his back. He puts his ear to her broad wooden hull but she tells him no secrets.

  ‘Soon,’ he tells her anyway. He imagines Nate’s laughter in his head and he knows he’s a bit of a crazy, sentimental bastard.

  ‘Macca and the missus are back tomorrow.’ Flinch tries to sound casual. The week has felt like a month. Afternoon beers in the dinghy, the sunset blazing red and auburn overhead. Karma looking tired. They haven’t been saying much.

  ‘Are you going to take the boat out then?’

  ‘The yacht. Reckon he might need a day to settle in.’

  ‘Yeah, probably. Not long now though until you’re behind the wheel, or rudder, or whatever it is.’

  Flinch takes a swig of his beer. ‘I’m not sure if I’ll go out, but.’

  ‘What? You’ve been obsessed with this thing.’

  ‘With rebuilding it, yeah.’

  Karma rests her stubbie on the lawn next to the dinghy. Turns to face him. ‘Okay, what’s going on?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you go out? The main reason to rebuild a yacht is so you can sail it, Flinch. Otherwise you would leave it to rot.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Whatever. You know I’m right.’

  He takes a deep breath. He admits it in the exhalation. ‘I’m scared.’

  ‘What of? Drowning? Sinking?’

  Flinch thinks for a moment. ‘My destiny.’

  ‘How can you be afraid of your destiny? How do you know what it holds? Are you a psychic now? Thought you were sceptical of all that cosmic stuff. It’s not destiny, Flinch, it’s just plain old cowardice. That’s what is holding you back.’ She won’t look at him.

  Flinch is surprised by the strength of her annoyance. ‘But I’ve proven it,’ he struggles to explain. ‘In the past.’

  ‘The past, my arse. You only have the moment. You don’t own yesterday or tomorrow, you only have today.’

  They sit in silence. Around them a couple of goats bleat and bump heads before curling up near the dinghy. The afternoon slides blue towards night. Flinch can hear the waves crashing against the cliffs like some kind of repetitive taunt.

  ‘I have an idea,’ she says later. They have moved inside. Even though they have been in separate rooms, Flinch resting feet up on the couch, listening to the weather reports, Karma pacing between her room and the kitchen, Flinch has felt her brewing and is not surprised. ‘ We did this once at the commune. It’s a burning ceremony, to release us of the past. In all honesty, I need to do one too after the last trip home. We could do it right now.’

  ‘Now? A
burning ceremony?’

  ‘Yep. It’s a great way to shake off old demons.’

  They had skipped dinner in lieu of a sixpack of beer, and Flinch is hungry. He thinks of the sausages he has tucked away in the back of the fridge and has a sudden hankering for a couple of them barbecued over an open flame.

  He shrugs. ‘Guess it couldn’t hurt.’

  They set up a fire in a ring of stones. Flinch burns his sausages. Eats them ash-black on white bread with butter and sauce. The smell of smoke and burnt meat reminds him a little of Audrey, but he dismisses the thought of her quickly.

  ‘How are they?’ asks Karma, standing upwind of the smell of the burnt fat in the flames.

  ‘Delicious,’ says Flinch. ‘Perfect.’

  Under Karma’s instruction, Flinch has gathered a small pile of belongings for burning.

  ‘Not everything from your past,’ she had told him, ‘but tokens representing incidents or memories or feelings from which you’d like to free yourself. It’s a symbolic ritual.’ She had shown him her collection. A string of beads that had been a gift from Jed, which she’d worn only once. The stub of a bus ticket from Canberra to Sydney, a trip to see him. A school exercise book filled with coloured writing. A black and white photograph of a bullish-looking man with a scar over his eye. Flinch hadn’t asked.

  Flinch had rattled stiff drawers, looked under his bed, raided his tackle cupboard and had come up with a few things. An old cigarette packet of Audrey’s that he’d kept after she died, one bent cigarette still in it. A fishing rod he’d snapped in two when he couldn’t find the words to voice his feeling of entrapment. Audrey’s pale pink scarf. His dark red painting.