The True Colour of the Sea

by Robert Drewe

  But she was definitely agitated. ‘They jump, you know. What sort of hotel is this, with fleas in the bed?’

  ‘Flea singular,’ he said. ‘Maybe.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Anyway, if there was one, it’s gone now.’ He put his arms around her.

  Her shoulders were tense and she wriggled away. For the wedding the hairdresser had done something unfamiliar with her hair that he thought looked complicated and ancient. Maybe Egyptian. He preferred her dark hair long and simple. She said, ‘Where there’s one there’s always hundreds.’

  ‘Really? I don’t think so.’

  But her insistence that he summon someone to catch and kill it, that she couldn’t possibly relax with a flea lurking in the marriage bed, ready to spring out and bite her, with her ‘serious insect allergies’ (which came as news to him), made him complain to Housekeeping.

  The flea was long gone, of course, if indeed it had existed. The housekeeper rolled her eyes and said it was probably just a spot or thread on the coverlet. The woman departed the unsuccessful flea hunt in a miasma of insect repellent and with a sarcastic, ‘I’ll leave the spray can with you. Better luck with the rest of your honeymoon.’

  They had to walk on the beach while the smelly cloud disappeared. It was a silent walk. He’d never seen Angela rant before. He put it down to wedding nerves. She still had the complicated Egyptian hairstyle, which looked even stranger with casual clothes. David wondered whether she or her hairdresser, Hans of Vienna, had been thinking Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra.

  Perhaps the insecticide had done its work and, eventually, the champagne, because the total absence of fleas allowed the marriage to be consummated and the honeymoon to proceed in a normal manner until Angela was stung on the thigh while wading in Thomson Bay two afternoons later.

  She shrieked and sobbed. If he’d thought her flea outburst a little excessive, the anxiety she now displayed at a tiny transparent stinger leaving a faint pink welt on her leg was, in his opinion, definitely overdramatic. Marine stings were a normal expectation on the Australian coast. Who hadn’t been stung by a bluebottle some time? Even half-hearted dog-paddlers like Angela. Sure, it could hurt, but every beachgoer had their own home remedy, whether vinegar, hot water, iced water, beer, even – so some old codgers said – urine. You winced, treated the sting if necessary, and got over it.

  But she was moaning that it was agony. ‘David, I can’t walk!’ So to the startled glances of holidaymakers, he lifted up his new bride, hoisted her on his back, and carried her up from the shore towards the tearooms. The sign there said Sandwiches-Hamburgers-Hot Water. The hot water was for people who drank tea, tea being more popular than coffee back then. ‘Hot water’s the best cure,’ he muttered to her.

  There was no breeze, the summer sun bore down and crows and bush flies mocked their progress. His sweat made her a slippery burden. Encumbered, he couldn’t brush the sticky relentless flies from his face.

  ‘No, I need a hospital!’ Angela cried, so he changed course, veered through the crowded settlement to more curious and amused stares, and piggybacked her to the medical hut. She was still moaning as he set her down and the nurse bathed her leg in vinegar and water.

  ‘You’re my fifth case today,’ the nurse said. ‘Of course the others were just little kids.’

  ‘Hospital is what I need,’ Angela kept insisting. ‘A proper hospital – Royal Perth. I need an emergency flight. Take me to the airport, David.’

  ‘Are you serious, love?’ the nurse wondered, giving her two Panadols. ‘The plane’s for actual emergencies. In an hour you’ll feel better. Have a lie-down.’

  ‘This is an emergency,’ Angela said.

  In this second, more serious disagreement of their honeymoon, he declared, ‘Angela, the nurse is right. Please come and rest and calm down.’ He hoisted her up again and carried her, still protesting, back to their room, where he collapsed in a pool of sweat and she lay on the bed facing the wall and woke an hour later morosely but miraculously healed.

  The Byron argument had begun harmlessly enough next day. He’d waded ashore over the reef after swimming the channel at the Basin. Since the sting Angela wasn’t venturing out more than ankle-deep. She was sitting warily on the shoreline as the tide lapped at her feet, and with cupped hands she was splashing water over her body like an elderly non-swimmer, like someone’s wary immigrant grandmother from an ancient landlocked country, not a twenty-year-old West Australian girl in a blue bikini.

  ‘Heroic Lord Byron returns from swimming the Hellespont,’ David joked, flicking water at her. She was a bookish girl, hence the bookish reference to impress her. He didn’t have many of them.

  ‘Byron was always showing off,’ Angela said.

  ‘A good swimmer, though,’ he said, reaching for a towel.

  ‘Not as good as Shelley.’

  ‘You’re kidding! Shelley couldn’t swim a stroke! That’s why he drowned.’

  ‘Shelley loved the water. He worshipped the water and found it erotic and lyrical. I did Shelley at school.’

  ‘But he couldn’t swim in it. When his boat sank it was curtains for Shelley. His body washed up on the beach and was cremated there. And his heart didn’t burn. That was weird. And didn’t his wife write Frankenstein?’ This, rather than his poetry, was the sum of his Shelley knowledge.

  ‘He was better than Byron, anyway.’

  ‘Not at swimming.’

  ‘If you insist. But at poetry.’

  He spread out the towel and lay on his back in the sun. ‘Okay,’ he said, and closed his eyes and the kaleidoscopic shapes did their customary dance behind his eyelids. He’d done Byron at school. The bored surfing boys in English class had perked up at the references to swimming and sex and dashing behaviour. The mad, bad and dangerous-to-know stuff. The club foot and the half-sister got their attention. Byron was always at it. He preferred Byron.

  And now he was a married man.

  *

  The island loomed sharply into view as David Lang sat drinking a beer on the balcony of the Airbnb apartment he’d rented in Perth for the holidays. He was long divorced from Angela, presently living alone in Sydney since the break-up with Victoria, and it was the evening of Christmas Day. He was expecting his children and grandchildren for dinner and his mind at the moment was in a place with vivid family memories because only a hundred metres along the beachfront was the Seaview Hotel where their father had taken them to Christmas dinner six months after their mother died.

  Forty-nine years ago, and of all his childhood Christmases he remembered this one the clearest. He recalled the heat of the sun on his shoulders as they got out of the car, the bitumen bubbling in the hotel car park, the hibiscuses wilting around a sandy patch of buffalo grass out front, and the stale beer and floor-polish smell in the hotel corridors.

  Their table (‘the best in the dining room’, their father had said proudly) faced the ocean. The sea was grey and sullen and windless all the way to the western horizon, and stretching north and south as well. It was the first time he’d considered Rottnest Island as a moving mirage, mysteriously appearing miles from its true position. The real island had been erased and where it belonged was now bare ocean. In the heat haze beyond the dining-room window, three separate islands – smoky, shimmering landmasses – sailed southwards.

  He was eleven, suddenly feeling too old for the Biggles and Famous Five books he’d received as gifts, sweltering in his school uniform and self-conscious in his stupid party hat. They’d always worn them at home after pulling the Christmas crackers, but that was fun and this was different and Dad was behaving as if it wasn’t different. Wearing a mauve crepe-paper crown with a jaunty air and the dye beginning to trickle down his damp forehead, his father was loud and embarrassing and the whole thing was wrong.

  He recalled the hotel manageress joining them at their table after the plum pudding, and his and Max’s and Annie’s surprise when this woman they’d never met had gifts for them, important-looking presents wr
apped in gold paper. Fountain pens for him and Max. A bride doll for Annie. The manageress wore strong perfume and red lipstick and from the way she mopped Dad’s brow with a napkin she seemed to know him well. She brought him and herself brandies and called him Rex, not Mr Lang.

  ‘Get some fresh air, kids,’ Dad said, ‘while I do the bill.’ A cigar appeared from nowhere, and she lit it for him.

  As they headed back to the car they snatched off their party hats in a simultaneous impulse, crumpled them and threw them on the asphalt. The inside of the Ford was stifling and the seats were hot on their legs. Max said, ‘Shit! Give me air!’ and Max and he tore off their ties and school shoes, and Annie tossed the doll into the back and took off her patent-leather party shoes and frilly socks, and everyone groaned in an exaggerated way. He knew they were all thinking of past Christmases at home. But no one cried.

  As they wound down the car windows they could see into the manageress’s office. She was combing Dad’s hair where his party hat had tousled it, and he was grinning. They all looked away uncomfortably. Eyes front. No one spoke.

  Across the ocean horizon in front of them, the three displaced and imaginary islands with their phantom trees and ghostly mountains kept sailing further and further south in the grey sea.

  *

  This Christmas evening, however, Rottnest Island was in correct order both optically and geographically. A single island perfectly in situ on the horizon. Due west as expected. Its outline sharply defined. Both lighthouses visible. Everything as it should be. Next stop Africa.

  These days there were annual swimming races from the mainland to the island. Events far further and more adventurous than Byron’s one-mile Hellespont crossing. Twenty kilometres of open ocean, with shipping traffic and hypothermia and stingers and even seasickness from the ocean swells. And so many swimmers were keen to participate that the organisers had to hold a ballot for entrants. Some swimmers, men and women both, were so fit and enthusiastic that when they reached the island they turned around and swam back.

  In the week since David had arrived in Perth he’d noticed a young woman in a black racing swimsuit stride down to the water an hour before sunset each evening. From the balcony he watched her drop her blue striped towel on the sand, tuck her long dark hair into a yellow cap, march into the water, dive under the shore break and swim vigorously out to sea. She swam beyond the outer surf line and marker buoys, so far out that he eventually lost sight of her cap.

  Her disappearance made him slightly anxious the first evening. But as the sun began its descent into the horizon, he spotted a small line of splashes appear and grow bigger and there she was, stroking neatly back to shore, her evening exercise perfectly timed to the last vestiges of daylight. As the red whale dived into the golden sea, she strode ashore, took off her cap, shook out her hair, dried herself with the blue striped towel, and left the beach in the approaching twilight.

  But last night, Christmas Eve, as she completed her swim and neared the beach at sunset, she’d removed the cap while still knee-deep in the sea. Then she swung a heavy fall of hair in his direction and lowered it into the water. Could she see him on the balcony watching her? Had she spotted him on the six previous nights? He wondered this but couldn’t turn away or stop looking at her. She straightened up, still facing him, briskly gathered up her hair and squeezed out the water.

  Then for some reason, as if acting on a sudden impulse, she smiled widely and repeated this display. With a wide looping action she dropped her blanket of hair in the sea again, a shining black cascade in the setting sun, and then straightened up and flung it in a sweep of sparkling droplets. The darkening silhouette of the island was behind her as she bowed her head towards him on the balcony and caught her waterfall of hair in her arms, and threw it back.

  David felt his face go hot with embarrassment at being spotted, but also with appreciation of her Christmas Eve poise and her teasing performance. Smooth-haired now, sleek and athletic in her black swimsuit, she strode boldly up the sand, gathered up her towel and was gone.

  On Christmas night she was there again at the usual time. Before his family arrived he was on the balcony to watch her ocean entrance as usual, her confident plunge through the breakers, the yellow cap bobbing in the swell. Since the night before he had felt a pride in her self-assurance and, yes, a definite connection between them. Strangely, as if they were in this experience together.

  Inside again, making dinner preparations, he heard voices below the balcony reminding him of the new community habit in full swing. West Australians now celebrated their Indian Ocean sunsets. After a hot summer day the coastal cliffs attracted lines of sightseers, especially young people, drawn to view the dazzling conjoined spectacle of sky and sea.

  On this special holiday, the crowds of sunset lovers were defying the local authorities’ laws against public drinking to praise the blazing sky with beer and wine. But even at Christmas there seemed a solemnity rather than a party atmosphere about them.

  When the sun finally ended the lightshow by submerging dramatically into the sea he heard respectful cheers and whistles along the seafront. He couldn’t remember anyone acknowledging the sunset in his youth, much less applauding it. Sunset as entertainment – such a simple, wondrous and inexpensive pleasure. He wished he was twenty again and cheering the sunset with a beer and a pretty and understanding girl. Maybe a sunset ocean swimmer like the bold black-haired girl.

  Welcoming the first arrivals for dinner, his daughter Helena and her children, Harrison and Scarlett, ten and eight, he remarked on the phenomenon of the sunset-watchers. ‘Yes, yes,’ Helena said briskly. ‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’ Her body felt strangely bony and reduced when he embraced her.

  Scarlett’s eyes darted about and found the small artificial Christmas tree he’d bought. ‘Presents?’ she said archly.

  ‘I said to wait,’ her mother said.

  ‘Wait, wait, wait,’ sighed Scarlett.

  ‘When everyone arrives, sweetheart,’ said their grandfather.

  ‘Isn’t this the beach where people were attacked by sharks?’ said Harrison. Their eyes lit up in the hope this was presently occurring and the children ran out to the balcony.

  ‘Not attacked – bitten. It’s not like the sharks committed a crime,’ their mother called after them. She was ferrying bowls into the kitchen – two big and imaginative salads involving tofu, nuts, leaves, seeds, stems, peels and many shades of green and orange. ‘And a long time ago.’

  As David expected, Helena’s husband Nigel was a no-show. Details were vague, but according to her, his son-in-law had returned to Hong Kong, his old home, ‘to sort out the family finances’.

  Apparently Nigel’s brother Dominic had either done something complex with the Chan companies or had failed to do something complex, she wasn’t sure which. Anyway, it was a serious financial misjudgement that needed Nigel Chan’s superior knowledge of auditors’ reports, or whatever. She said he’d been too busy to explain or to communicate much lately.

  Nigel had now been gone three months, and Helena looked older, harried and gaunt and she showed half an inch of dark hair below the dyed blondness that her father hadn’t noticed before. David didn’t know if this was an intentional hairstyle or negligence, just as he wasn’t sure whether her new thinness was the result of recently turning vegan or due to anxiety over her husband’s continuing absence. Maybe both.

  No attempt by Nigel to make it back for Christmas? David thought this was wrong of him, and deeply hurtful to Helena and the kids. Hong Kong to Perth was only seven-and-a-half hours. The same time zone. However, he didn’t bring this up with her at this point. Not at Christmas. Why disturb her more?

  ‘I got some seafood,’ he told her. ‘Perfect for a hot evening.’

  ‘For you and Paul, maybe,’ she said. ‘The kids won’t touch it. And as I keep saying till I’m blue in the face, I’m a vegan.’

  ‘I thought maybe crustaceans might slip through your net. As a lower form of cre
ature. No actual mammals slaughtered.’

  ‘I don’t think you get it, Dad.’

  ‘I thought it was mainly mammals and not wearing leather.’

  Out on the balcony, Scarlett shouted, ‘I saw a fin!’

  ‘No, she didn’t,’ said Harrison. He came inside and slumped down with his phone. ‘I’m hungry,’ he whined.

  Were the kids vegans as well? their grandfather wondered. They looked chubbier than ever.

  ‘I’ve got some ham, too,’ he said. ‘Paul is bringing the cold turkey,’ he said.

  ‘How appropriate,’ Helena muttered.

  Even twenty years later she couldn’t resist a crack about her older brother. One Friday night in the pub when he was nineteen Paul been arrested in a police sting with a small amount of cocaine, sold to him five minutes earlier.

  ‘Something nice for Happy Hour,’ the dealer said, winking at the plainclothes men at the bar. They’d nabbed a dozen boys in half an hour. He pleaded guilty, received a six-month good-behaviour bond for possession and was spared a conviction.

  That close shave was enough for him, Paul said. ‘The first and only drug experiment,’ he assured his shocked parents. ‘I’m not into anything. Not even grass.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said his younger sister. She’d been on his case since he was fifteen. ‘You and your constant cones. You forget we had adjoining bedrooms. You are such a bullshitter.’

  ‘Just a few ciggies at parties and weekends.’

  There was no credit coming from his father either. David was just as opposed to ordinary cigarettes. ‘Cigarettes killed Grandpa Rex,’ he’d been telling his children ever since primary school. His lectures had begun early. He wanted to catch them before the teenage desperate-to-be-cool stage.

  ‘Seventy unfiltered a day at his peak. And cigars too,’ he told them. Rex used to light one Turf from another, usually had one on the go, another resting in the ashtray near his drink and one burning a hole on the edge of the dresser. His early-morning coughing fit was a legend in their street and he was dead at fifty-seven.