The Convent

by Maureen McCarthy

I’d dressed up a bit, in tight black pants and red boots, my red silk shirt hidden under an awful long jumper that I planned to take off just as soon as I warmed up. Walter wasn’t much better than Nick. Fluke was probably the best dressed in a nice charcoal jacket, jumper and clean jeans.

  ‘Your parents actually own this place?’ Fluke was looking around the spacious hallway incredulously.

  ‘Not really.’ Dicko shrugged dismissively.

  ‘They stole it?’

  ‘You got it.’ We all laughed.

  ‘From who?’

  ‘Some poor deranged aunt.’ He held the door at the end of the hall open for us. ‘Welcome!’

  We knew quite a few people and there was the usual shrieking and wild hugs as we all recognised each other. Trying to introduce Fluke over the music was pretty well impossible, but no one seemed to care much. Nick’s three totally dolled-up Greek cousins descended, squealing their greetings, pointing out possible girlfriends for Nick.

  And checking out Fluke as if he was some kind of prize at a raffle.

  ‘Way to go, Peach!’

  ‘He’s cute!’

  ‘Got a twin brother?’

  Fluke grinned and put his arm around me.

  Drinks were shoved into our hands, and Det, Fluke and I headed through the crowd to the glass doors at the back of the huge living space and peered out. The big fluorescent-blue square of the pool was surrounded by wooden decking and further out were paving stones heading down to a row of tall eucalypts along the back fence. Det sidled out to join the smokers braving the cold, leaving Fluke and I inside, smiling at each other.

  ‘You and me, Peach!’

  I nodded happily and took his hand. ‘You and me.’

  When Dicko came over to refill our drinks I asked him if we could go upstairs for a look.

  ‘By all means.’ He waved us towards the stairs. ‘Just hold off throwing yourselves over the balcony. I don’t want any trouble with the police.’

  Fluke and I made our way up the wide marble staircase, hand in hand. It was like being on a movie set. We poked our noses into bedrooms and bathrooms and studies, marvelling at the huge lights and luxurious carpets and nice paintings and knick-knacks. The master bedroom opened up onto a wide, tiled balcony.

  Out there without our coats it was absolutely freezing, but the clear, bright night gave us such a fantastic view that neither of us wanted to go back inside. We laughed and yelled, pretending we were on the Titanic about to go down, and clinging to each other in the bitter wind.

  But after a while we grew silent.

  The house was built out on a cliff and the ocean lay below like a huge, dark desert. The moon sat up high in the clear sky, sending an arch of light skidding across the shining surface of the water. The occasional flashing light from passing fishing boats in the distance enhanced the dreamlike feeling. I let my mind float out across the expanse of water, almost able to feel it against the bare skin of my face and arms.

  Luke stood behind me. He put his hands under my jumper and shirt, encircling my bare waist, and turned me around so we were facing each other. Then he pulled me closer, caressing my back. I pulled his shirt out of his trousers and we stood there our bare bellies pressed against each other. I felt for the coarse dark hair of his chest and then followed the line of it down from his chest past his navel and into his jeans. He gasped in shock, but I laughed and kept touching him.

  Desire licked up between us like a flame, getting hotter and hotter with each kiss. Oh God, I could die now. I let my head fall back, feeling his lips on my neck. I could die and I wouldn’t care. Our bodies trembled and ached as we clutched each other in the biting wind, skin on skin, laughing through chattering teeth, swaying like reeds at the bottom of the ocean.

  We pulled away eventually, tucked in our shirts and rearranged our clothes and hair.

  ‘Just keeping things nice, bro,’ I joked.

  ‘Okay, sister.’

  We both knew that later, after the party was over, we’d be alone in the dark, in the warmth of some borrowed bed, or mattress on the floor, or maybe even in the double sleeping bag that I’d thrown into the boot just in case. That same desire would hold and devour us until we fell asleep in each other’s arms. And when we woke it would be as if our lives had just begun.

  ‘I will never leave you, Peach,’ Fluke said seriously, doing up the buttons of his shirt, staring straight ahead.

  ‘What?’ It was such an odd thing to say.

  ‘I will never leave you,’ he said again.

  I stared at his profile against the light streaming from the bedroom, trying to quell the sudden tears that had raced into my eyes. It was too much. Way too much. And yet … my heart leapt towards those words like a parched person grabbing at a bottle of water, and my pulse quickened all over again with giddy gladness.

  I hadn’t told him anything about the dreams I used to have, but his words told me that on some instinctual level he knew anyway. It was as though he had seen right down into the very core of me and understood where my deepest fears lay.

  ‘But what if we break up?’ I said, trying to sound light, desperate not to give myself away.

  ‘You’re in my heart,’ he said. Then he grinned. ‘Nothing will change that. You are in my heart.’

  I buried my face in his shoulder and wished that I could bottle what I was feeling right at that moment. Imagine having a row of little glass bottles of this lined up in my room, I thought. Whenever I woke feeling bleak, I’d just reach over and suck one down before I got up.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ I said at last. ‘My face is turning numb.’

  ‘As long as you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  We walked back down the stairs, hand in hand. Why do people say that love is hard? I was in love and it was the easiest thing that had ever happened to me.

  The party had hotted up in our absence. More people had arrived and a lot of them were getting pretty smashed. The lights had been turned down and the music up, and people were laughing and screaming inanities at each other above the din. Raucous and crazy, but it was fun too. Doubly so because of what had happened on the balcony between Fluke and me. I was living on another planet to everyone else.

  Nick, his face glowing with alcohol and pleasure, put his arm around my shoulders. ‘Got to get the dancing going, Peach,’ he declared, and prising me out from under Fluke’s arm he hauled me out onto the polished floor near the speakers.

  But I didn’t need encouraging. I felt like dancing. I tried to pull Fluke in with us, but he laughed and waved me on and went over to get himself another drink.

  Cassie and Stephano joined us and within a few minutes the square of polished floorboards was full. Then came a sequence of events that are impossible to remember with absolute accuracy. First up, I lost sight of Fluke for some time. After I’d danced myself to exhaustion I had a couple of drinks in quick succession – probably too quickly – and felt quite pissed for a while. So I went and got myself some water and found a seat next to a girl named Robin who I hadn’t seen for ages. We had an interesting conversation about the time she’d spent working up in an Aboriginal community near Darwin the year before. We were interrupted by Dicko, who insisted that everyone had to stop talking and get into his Gatsby mood with some weird sort of conga dance that he’d worked out was all the rage in the roaring twenties. Dicko was known and loved for his eccentricities, so just about everyone put down their glasses and joined in. Even the smokers came inside for it.

  In no time there were a couple of circles of inebriated dancers holding onto each other, laughing and screaming, falling over, weaving in and out and around the furniture. I saw Det and then Cassie and Stephano across the room from me and was really glad to see that Det seemed to be having a good time. I couldn’t see Fluke, but assumed that he was somewhere in the mix. When it finished I was sweating and dry-mouthed. After getting more water I started for the bathroom. Det intercepted me at the door.

  ‘A few of us ar
e going down to the beach,’ she said excitedly, ‘want to come?’

  ‘But how would we get down there?’ I said, not liking the idea. ‘This place is up high.’

  ‘There’s a track down to the beach,’ Det said. ‘I’ve checked it out.’

  ‘It will be freezing, Det.’

  ‘So? We’ve got coats.’

  The reckless glint in her eye alarmed me. Det had two ways of getting over heartache. She either closed herself up in a room for weeks at a time and never went anywhere, or she went wild. Seeing as it was me who had talked her into coming to the party, I figured that I should keep an eye on her.

  ‘Okay,’ I agreed.

  ‘So get your coat. We’ll wait for you outside.’

  ‘I’ll just find Fluke and see if he wants to come.’

  ‘Fluke’s in the kitchen,’ Nick said on his way into the toilet.

  ‘You coming, Nicko?’

  ‘No way.’ He grinned at me.‘I’m not mad.’

  They were the only two people in the kitchen. Fluke and this amazing-looking, sharp-faced girl, with very long, straight black hair and dark skin. They were holed up in a corner away from the buckets of ice and drinks, having some kind of deep conversation. She was covered in silver, rings on every finger, chains around her neck, silver combs keeping her hair back from her face. She was older than him, definitely, probably in her late twenties, and dressed in tight shimmering green pants and a very small, cropped green leather jacket with studs all over it. More than anything she reminded me of a praying mantis, all thin and spindly and green, but beautiful too in an oddly elegant way.

  The way they were standing together, not actually touching but so very close, was disconcerting. He was leaning against the wall, bending over her and she was looking up into his face, her eyes glowing and animated. They were intent on each other in a way that didn’t include anyone else. A spurt of jealousy rushed through me as I stood watching from the doorway. What is going on here?

  She saw me first. Her eyes left his face and narrowed. What do you want? As though I had no right to be standing where I was. When Fluke turned around I swear it took him a few moments to place me. It was as though my sudden appearance had flummoxed him.

  ‘Oh hi,’ he said, as though suddenly remembering. He came over, put his arm around me and dragged me over to her. ‘Come meet an old friend.’

  ‘Is that what I am?’ The girl’s laugh was thick with suggestion and she barely looked at me as I mumbled hello.

  Luke’s face coloured with embarrassment. ‘Ada, this is Peach.’

  ‘Peach,’ she mocked, ‘as in the fruit?’

  I nodded. ‘Det and I are going down to the beach,’ I said to Fluke. ‘Do you want to come?’

  Fluke didn’t notice, or pretended not to notice, my consternation. ‘Oh sure. Yeah. Let’s go.’ He turned to the girl and smiled. ‘How about you, Ada?’

  ‘No way!’ She gave me a withering look. ‘It will be freezing.’

  There was a moment or two of awkward silence and I watched in shock as her eyes flitted flirtatiously over him. She placed one of her ringed hands briefly on his arm in a mocking gesture of supplication.

  ‘Don’t go yet,’ she whispered. ‘We’ve only just found each other again.’

  ‘Listen,’ Fluke said to me quietly, as though I was his kid sister or something. ‘I’ll be down in a little while, okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said stiffly, and turned my back, almost in tears. I went and found my coat, pulled my proper boots from my bag and joined Det and Walt and two others I didn’t know who were waiting for me.

  Det led us over to the track at the end of the garden. Thankfully Walt had thought to bring a torch, because halfway down the very steep track got really rough. Any one of us might have taken a tumble and broken our neck. Det was going faster than everyone else, screaming out instructions about tree roots and slippery bits, completely wired on the danger of what we were doing. I could hear it in her voice and I wanted to yell out for her to calm down. But I was too churned up by the scene in the kitchen.

  Miraculously, the five of us got down to the beach in one piece. Once we hit the sand we all began to run to keep warm, because the wind was really sharp.

  ‘Isn’t this fantastic?’ Det yelled as she passed by.

  ‘Yeah,’ I screamed into the wind, running after her. I told myself that Fluke would be down to join us any minute. He’d explain the scene in the kitchen and we’d laugh together about what had just happened.

  But he didn’t come. And after about twenty minutes every minute that passed had me feeling worse. I was running about, screaming into the wind, acting drunk, but really it was just a show. I suppose I still might have been a little drunk, but not so it mattered. I kept turning to scan the cliff face, my eyes raking up and down the beach trying to discern a lone figure making his way towards us. Surely any moment he’d be there. I knew the rough track down wouldn’t stop him. So where was he?

  The five of us linked arms and walked along the beach. Who was that girl? What the hell was going on between them? Why had they been standing like that? Why hadn’t he chosen to come with me? It was as though the ground was giving way beneath me and I was clutching for anything to help me keep my balance. Didn’t he tell me just a couple of hours ago that … Well, what did he say really? Maybe I imagined that too. Maybe I’ve read him wrong all along … maybe he was …

  ‘Listen, I want to go back,’ I said to the others.

  ‘Just a bit longer.’ Next to me Det threw her head back to look at the star-filled dome above us. ‘This is so so so great.’

  ‘No, Det.’

  ‘Come on, Peach! It’s magic.’

  And it was. Some part of me could see that. Just the five of us on the lonely windswept beach, the stars flickering above, the dragging sound of the waves on one side of us and the rugged cliff face on the other. The moon. The brilliant round moon beaming white light down on us. I thought of Stella and the way she’d warned me off this night. Oh Stella … I wish you were here. I let myself be dragged along until Walter decided that he’d definitely had enough. The two others also wanted to go back, but something had got into Det. Or something that was always there had reared up and come to life. Just as we were heading back up the sand towards the track she stopped.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said.

  We all turned around. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got an idea.’

  A pause. The four of us looked at her.

  ‘Let’s go in!’ she shouted.

  ‘What?’ Walt shouted into the wind.

  ‘A swim,’ she screamed.

  My heart sank. She had to be off her head. It was either booze or grief or something else I didn’t know about. ‘Listen, Det, no!’ I yelled.

  ‘Oh, Peach!’ She ran towards me, laughing, and threw both arms around me and lifted me in the air. ‘Come on, let’s do it. See if we’re strong enough.’

  ‘Det, it’s freezing!’

  But she was already taking off her coat.

  ‘Come on!’ she laughed. ‘We’re young and we’re tough! We can do anything.’

  Walt sighed and shook his head. So did the other two guys. ‘Come on, Det, please. The cold will kill you.’

  But Det already had her boots off. She unzipped her jeans and threw off her shirt and underclothes. Completely naked, her thin white limbs so childlike and utterly vulnerable in the moonlight, she ran into the waves, shouting and shrieking.

  ‘Det,’ I yelled after her, ‘you can’t!’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ she shouted. ‘Watch me.’

  And so we stood and watched her. Me and Walter and the other two guys on the sand, watching Det plunge naked into the icy cold of the Southern Ocean at midnight in July.

  ‘Oh God!’ she screamed again and again. ‘I’m going to die. I swear it! I’m going to die!’

  The three guys laughed and shook their heads in grudging admiration at her courage.

  ‘Christ, she is nuts,’ Walter
groaned. ‘You’d have to be totally and utterly nuts to do that.’

  ‘I reckon!’

  There was nothing for me to add to any of that. She is nuts. I watched her small head bobbing against the waves. She wasn’t hanging about in the shallows. She was actually swimming out.

  ‘Det,’ I yelled into the wind, ‘enough!’

  ‘How long will she stay in for?’ Walt asked me.

  ‘How would I know?’ I snapped.

  ‘I think she’s, like, swimming out,’ one of the other guys murmured. ‘Jeez, I hope she’ll be able to get back.’

  ‘Det,’ I screamed, ‘don’t go too far.’

  But she was too far out to hear me. I watched her head bobbing along and her white arms chopping through the water as if she had a destination in mind. And I thought of sharks and stingers and the terrors of the deep and waited for her to turn around. Then she disappeared.

  At least, I couldn’t see her anymore. I stood there on the edge of the water peering into the blackness for some sign but there was none. When I turned around the three guys were standing with arms crossed against their chests, edging away, mumbling again about wanting to get back to the party.

  ‘You can’t go now,’ I yelled sharply.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Walt said defensively.

  ‘But what if she’s not?’

  The three of them looked at each other uncomfortably.

  ‘Well, what do you want us to do?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ I was on the point of tears.‘But we can’t leave her.’

  ‘Can you see her?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ Walter said, as if he knew something that the rest of us didn’t. ‘Det has a pretty good radar for danger.’

  ‘And how long have you known her?’ I screamed at him. ‘All of about twenty hours!’ I was the only one there who really knew Det. And what I knew was that there was always one part of her racing towards her own destruction.

  ‘Listen, I’m sick of this,’ the short guy said. ‘It’s up to her. She decided to go in. I’m not hanging about. I’m going back.’ He turned on his heel and started up the sand again.

  ‘Me too,’ the other bloke said and walked off. So it was just Walter and me looking at each other waiting for the other to move or say something.