That we do, thinks Flinch. All the things he cannot say make his chest ache. His throat parches dry at the thought.
Macca comes around once while she is out. Flinch has to hide the evidence of his mobility, a piece of bread and butter he had fetched himself from the kitchen, under the sheets. Lies limp on his side.
‘Hello, mate.’ Macca is quiet, as if he’s in confession. ‘How you feelin’, eh?’
Flinch has to focus to lie still.
‘The boat is goin’ so well, got people lined right up some weekends for fishin’ and sightseeing. Eleanor painted us some special brochures and everything. She’s a lovely yacht to sail, but you’d know that. Would love to talk to you about her maiden voyage.’ Macca lays a hand on Flinch’s shoulder. ‘Cheeky bastard,’ he says. ‘Later, eh.’
Reaching for his snack after Macca leaves, Flinch feels the butter like a paste against his palm.
He can’t pretend for much longer. He wishes he had Audrey’s strength of conviction in fictional realities. His mother has disappeared from his dreams. She stormed out in a gust of wind and dust and slammed the door shut behind her. Nate has left too. Faded into the wallpaper where he was sitting. The copy of Moby-Dick that he was reading lies open and face down on Flinch’s bedside table. The lighthouse keeper returns during pasty daytime dreams, tapping away on the door of the lighthouse like some demented woodpecker. Flinch tries to speak to him.
‘I don’t understand,’ Flinch tells him, trying to still his rapping hand.
The lighthouse keeper coughs. ‘Olim,’ he splutters. Flinch wakes, the word in his head like the rusted key for some padlock he has long ago misplaced.
Flinch picks up Moby-Dick. On the page on which it was lying open, he reads: And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell.
He throws the book spinning across the room. Pages flap once like broken wings.
It’s the routine of ablutions that forces him to admit his awareness. She comes home one day looking exhausted. Circles shadow her eyes. She doesn’t say hello to him, just shakes him a few times and attempts to hook his arms over her shoulders, sit him up.
‘C’mon,’ she says. ‘You must need this more than I do.’
He resists.
‘Come on Flinch. A quick trip to the loo then you can go back to bed. You know the routine.’
‘Karma,’ he says quietly. ‘Eleanor.’
She springs back from him. ‘Flinch?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you…?’
‘Come back?’
‘Yes.’
‘A little while ago. Not long.’
She wipes her eyes with the base of her hands. ‘We’ve all missed you, you know, you silly bastard.’ She doesn’t try to stop herself crying. ‘We didn’t know where you’d been or what happened to you out there.’ She sniffs, looks at him in a way that makes him feel like hiding. ‘What did happen?’
Flinch thinks of the underwater, the airless, blue peace, the wings of whales.
‘I fell overboard,’ he says.
She strokes his fringe from his face. He turns his head away and she lowers her hand.
‘I must have suffered lack of oxygen to the brain.’
She doesn’t look convinced.
‘You still got the Westerly home. Lucky you did, too. Macca knew where to find you.’
‘I had to bring the boat back. Macca would have finished me off for sure if I didn’t, eh?’
‘Near drowning or not, I suspect.’
The humour a welcome diversion. As thin and brittle as paper.
They eat dinner in silence. He looks up from his plate a few times to catch her staring at him with the wide-eyed curiosity of a cat. She starts to say something but stops herself. Takes their empty plates to the sink and runs the tap, leaves the water gushing over her hands even after she’s rinsed the crockery. As if she’s trying to dilute something, the memory of some incident, thinks Flinch. Cooling what is burning. Flinch fingers a pile of brochures left in a small stack on the table. On the front cover of each, a beautiful, hand-painted portrait of the Westerly. Desire and shame rise in him spontaneously, feeling acidic.
‘Come outside,’ she says. ‘It’s a full moon.’
They sit in the dinghy.
‘Funny,’ Flinch pats the side of the boat. ‘We’ve spent a long time in this little boat that goes nowhere.’
‘Don’t know about that,’ she says. ‘Not all journeys are physical.’ She’s not looking at him but there is a message for him in the words. They cause a ripple through Flinch like a stone thrown into a pond.
‘So, who are you now?’ He asks to distract her. To shift focus.
‘What do you mean? I’m me. You know me.’
‘I mean, what do you call yourself — are you Karma or Eleanor?’
‘Eleanor,’ she says.
‘Oh.’ Even now, when she says it he feels as if it is being scratched afresh into his mind. He thinks of the little girl with the blonde pigtails in the photo on the mantelpiece in a decrepit weatherboard house in Duchess.
‘Do you remember everything? Like, do you remember our bonfire night?’
‘Yes,’ says Flinch. He can say nothing more. He knows he will give himself away. He tried and failed to hide himself from Audrey, who accused him of wearing his heart on his sleeve as if it were an embarrassment, a foul stain.
‘Flinch, I want you to listen, and not say anything. Even if you think you need to. Can you do that?’
He hears the tone in her voice that sounds like panic, the waves splintering against the rocks and dissolving. The wind picks up and he is cold, suddenly, immersed in something he doesn’t understand. But he nods. His teeth rattle in his jaw.
‘I didn’t know why you took off that night. I thought maybe you were just really into it and had gone off to … I don’t know, reflect. I didn’t follow you. When you didn’t come home the next day, I looked all over town for you, and then I went to Macca’s place to see if you’d stayed there, but Macca was only just back from his trip. I told him you’d disappeared and then he saw that the boat was gone. Some fishermen thought they’d seen you at the old jetty so we went out there, and we found Milly. We waited for hours. You were a mess when you docked. You couldn’t speak. You were spluttering half-sentences, throwing up sea water.’
‘I don’t remember,’ he says.
‘You weren’t yourself. You looked like you’d been struck by something. Blinded, almost. You were unseeing.’
She rubs her eyes with her fingers. Flinch can’t work out whether she’s crying again or whether she’s just exhausted.
‘You were in hospital for a while, and we had to have a nurse here as well for a bit. Then I took over. I decided to read to you, in case it made you feel better. Brought you back. I read you stories of healing from some of my alternative medicine books. I even read to you from a Bible I found on your shelf. Book of Revelations. There’s this quote in there that says something about the prayers of the saints being delivered to God on the smoke of incense. So I burnt some for you in your room.’
‘The smoke,’ says Flinch. ‘Audrey. The lighthouse keeper.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ says Flinch. ‘I dreamt a lot.’
‘You did. You talked, too. All sorts of rubbish. I kept listening for a sign that you were on your way back to us, but I couldn’t make sense of any of it.’
She takes a deep breath. Flinch notices that the moon above has paled silver from gold. Paves a brilliant white streak across the dark ocean.
‘I got tired of reading my own books to you. I went looking for something else. A couple of weeks ago, I opened your bedside table and found a copy of Moby-Dick.’
The chill sets in his bones. He feels himself plummet from a great height. The strength and solidity of the board on which he is sitting dissolves beneath him. He feels himself land with a thud b
ut he hasn’t moved. He looks up at the moon through a translucent surface, as if from the ocean floor.
‘I read the inscription. I know who you are, Flinch. I know what you did.’
He is shaking, being hauled up into the cold. Exposed and pale and naked.
‘And you know who I am.’
Flinch’s shirt is wet. He doesn’t realise he is sobbing until he exhales and a blubbering, wet sound bursts out of him.
‘Eleanor.’ It’s all he can say.
‘Yes.’
He wants to collapse, faint, disappear. She sees him slipping away again. Sinking under. Before he can, she takes him by the hand.
‘Come inside,’ she says. ‘I have something to show you.’
She sits him on the couch. Hands him a double shot of rum. He drinks it with one wide gulp and it burns quickly through him, but the warmth does not last. She goes into her room and he can hear her shuffling around, opening and closing drawers. He thinks of Audrey’s ability to escape in this very spot. Slide into oblivion in the velour and return only when she felt fit enough to face her life again. He thinks about a glazed-eye retreat, but there is a pull like a lunar tide to stay, and he anchors himself to the moment. Eleanor returns to him with a piece of paper that looks as ancient as parchment. There is a fine fur along the edges where it has been folded so often. A tear in one corner.
‘I didn’t come to the bay by accident,’ she says. ‘The commune was convenient. It made it easy to reinvent myself and travel to where I was headed. A happy coincidence, you might say. But really I came here because Nate told me about this place. He sounded happy here. I didn’t know what had happened to him, but I knew something must have.’
She hands him the folded piece of paper.
It is a letter.
Flinch unfolds it. His hands shake. The paper falls open along its creases.
He recognises the hand in which it is written.
Dear Eleanor,
I am sending you some of my beloved books. Please look after them, you know they are my best and oldest friends and I hate to think of them mistreated. I’ve decided recently to unload them, a painful but simultaneously rewarding process. I am thinking about moving on from this place, as beautiful as it is, but when I tried to pack my rucksack I had no space for clothing, thanks to all my tomes. I figure you can hold on to them for me until I see you, that way I will be able to rejoice in a double reunion. I’ve handed some of my other books around to various people who I think will appreciate them.
I’ve given a friend of mine here my copy of Moby-Dick. You know it’s my favourite, and I know you would look for it in the pile I am sending you. But this friend, El, is deserving of my prized possession. He is such a gentle soul. He’s weathered a terrible childhood (like ours, though not in quite the same way) with a calm dignity — in him I see the kindness and optimism and love for what could still be that I wish I could have retained under the pressure of our upbringing.
He has been like a brother, and I have grown to love and respect him more than anyone else I have met since I left home.
In some distant future, perhaps we could all meet up here in the bay. We’d walk up to the lighthouse just before dawn (you’d love the sea and sky, sis) and we’d toast the sunrise. We’d be the first people in Australia to see it. Nothing like the promise of a new day, as we both know.
Miss you, as always.
Love, Nate.
‘It was his last letter to me,’ says Eleanor. ‘No more ever came.’
Flinch notes the date. ‘It was sent the week before the accident … before I…’
‘I know. When I found the book, I caught on to why you took off that night. Who your dead friend was. And realised your terrible guilt. I worked out the big picture. Macca confirmed the details.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I went to the graveyard and found where you’d buried him. I gave him flowers and I had a long chat to him. I read to him, too.’
‘I’m so sorry. So sorry.’
Flinch folds the letter. Places it on the arm of the couch and shifts away from it.
‘Did you know that he was gone?’
Eleanor’s blank stare. ‘There was nothing. He just stopped writing.’
‘We sent a letter. The priest.’
She shakes her head. ‘Nothing ever came. I think my mother had a suspicion but I’m not sure. She locked herself away from us a long time ago.’
‘You must hate me,’ he says. ‘You will want to leave.’
‘I did.’ As a sigh. ‘Hate you and want to leave. At first. I even packed. But I couldn’t go. I read that letter again and again after I found out, and I realised that Nate would have wanted me to forgive you. He loved you. You clearly loved him as much as I did. It was an accident. And Nate would have wanted you to forgive yourself for that as well, Flinch.’
Flinch lets the words trickle through him like water.
‘You were meant to see this letter. I was meant to find you. And you were meant to restore me to who I was, who Nate knew me as. We’re like a gift to each other, from Nate.’
‘That sounds like Karma talking.’
She allows herself a small smile.
‘Yeah, well, I know you think it’s all a bit cosmic, but it’s amazing how often she’s right about these things.’
Flinch breathes and it feels like the first breath he’s taken in years. As if he’s reached a fresh surface. It almost stings his lungs.
‘I named the boat after him, really.’
‘I know. Macca said you were insistent.’
‘He was my best friend.’
‘He was mine too.’
Eleanor turns on the radio. It is fixed on the weather station. She leaves it there, the snap and crackle of static and snatches of conversations about winds and seas somehow comforting to them both.
‘Hear that?’ she says, listening to the words being spat out amid the white noise. ‘It’s been a full moon. A high tide. A perfect time to wash away all old sins and start again. A clean slate.’
‘You reckon?’
‘I reckon.’
Flinch shrugs.
‘It’s true,’ she says.
‘It’ll be good fishing anyhow.’
Eleanor slaps him on the knee.
A waft of sea wind smelling of brine and tasting of salt lifts the curtains. Nate’s letter flutters to the floor but neither of them notices. The radio weatherman, preaching like an evangelist, predicts fine sailing in the days to come. In the kitchen, the brochures advertising the Westerly lift from the table and dance around the room like carnival confetti.
NINETEEN
Over the white foam the Westerly pitches and falls and Flinch, riding the rhythm, leans over the railing scanning the horizon for the familiar bellow and spray.
‘There,’ he says, pointing. ‘Macca, starboard. There.’
The tourists on board cluster to one side and the Westerly keels slightly.
‘I don’t see,’ says one of them.
‘Over there,’ says another.
Where Flinch has pointed a whale breaches suddenly, propelling itself skyward and landing again in an eruption of white water.
Since they’ve been taking the boat out on the sightseeing charters, they’ve seen a few whales. Flinch observes their shapes, fin indentations, mottled colouring, in the hope that he will recognise the whale he met under water, but so far he hasn’t seen anything that jogs his memory. Like a half-remembered dream, his recollection of the moment is blurred, but when he thinks of the encounter, a feeling of peace drifts through him, soaks through to his core.
Mrs Mac feeds the tourists on finger sandwiches of crustless white bread filled with ham and mustard, chicken and mayonnaise, soggy cucumber. Lukewarm mini sausage rolls with a glob of tomato sauce on the pastry. Eleanor makes up a tray of felafel balls and salsa and marinated olives and Turkish bread with hummus. Mrs Mac moves that tray to the back when Eleanor looks away to pour the tea and coffee for the passe
ngers. When Flinch catches Mrs Mac’s eye, she gives him a well, honestly look that forces him to conceal a grin.
On the deck, the sails bubble and flap as the Westerly is turned towards the shore. Flinch has grown to love the sound, the sight of the sails flailing then filling like lungs, bloated with the sea breeze. The English passengers, mostly backpackers with anklets and necklaces dangling seashells and St Christopher medallions, lie charring their bodies in the fierce afternoon sun. On the headland, the lighthouse pricks the horizon, its white trunk visible even from this distance.
‘The most easterly point of Australia,’ says Flinch, pointing.
The passengers lying on the deck lift their heads briefly, nod politely. A few come out from the cabin to take photographs. Flinch wonders if any of them see it, the shoulder of the land lying prone in the water, the limb outstretched, beckoning him home.
Mrs Mac and Eleanor clean up the leftovers and pour the tea leaves overboard.
Macca downs sails. Flinch scrubs down the deck with Mrs Mac’s kitchen mop.
‘So, day off tomorrow,’ says Macca. ‘But full boat the next day.’
‘Yeah,’ says Flinch. Concentrates on working the mop back over his uneven foot prints.
‘It’s all goin’ good, eh.’ More question than statement. Macca is checking on him.
‘Yeah, mate,’ Flinch responds. ‘It’s going great.’
Eleanor has packed a small bag with some frozen juice and sandwiches, a thermos of tea.
‘Breakfast,’ she says. ‘I’ll carry it.’
The winding road up the headland and then down again to Wategos Beach flickers black and white in front of Milly’s one fading headlight. They park at the far end of the beach. With the tiny single beam of Flinch’s camping torch, it takes them a while to find the entrance to the path up the cliff, but eventually Flinch pushes through the undergrowth and over some rocks and they find it, set off uphill. Eleanor stays behind Flinch. He slips, sends small rocks scuttling down the hill behind him.
‘We’ll miss it,’ he says.
‘We won’t.’
The sky lightens pale violet. The colour of predawn that Flinch has seen so many times before at the end of long all-night shifts of trawling, a time that now seems as hazy and pastel in his memory as the light itself.
Death of a Whaler Page 21