The Salt Madonna

by Catherine Noske

  ‘They made you join in on their classes, I remember that. You read Shakespeare,’ her mother adds.

  ‘Did I?’ She thinks back, searches for the image of her mother in the back of a classroom. They had made heat packs from corduroy cut-offs and wheat in a home economics room. Mundane exercises meant as a treat, something special. The ferry going back to the island had been a relief, the wind cool and clean.

  ‘Do you remember coming home?’ she asks.

  Her mother turns to her and waits.

  ‘You told me on the ferry that Chesil was beautiful but not worth my life.’

  Hannah’s mother looks at her without understanding. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘No.’

  Hannah frowns. She can remember the timbre of her mother’s voice as she said it, the impossibility of replying. She had cried, that night. It isn’t beautiful, she had wanted to say. It’s home.

  ‘I remember you got chewing gum on your dress,’ her mother says, passing her a cup of tea. ‘I couldn’t get it out.’

  *

  Mary can see her from the dunes. The woman stands and stares around the classroom, says something to whoever is there with her. The new teacher, she thinks. The village has been talking about her. Another Mulvey. Mary squints to see through the classroom windows. The woman disappears into the shadows by the door and Mary stands, walks back down through the dunes to join the boys on the beach. They are talking quietly, standing all together as she comes across the sand. When she gets there, they break up. Picnic stares out to sea, Ben scuffs at a pile of seaweed with one foot. Thomas just looks at her.

  ‘New teacher’s there,’ she says.

  ‘What’s she look like?’ he asks.

  ‘Alright.’

  He seems to expect more, but she doesn’t know what to add. She squints at the sun and starts walking down the beach towards the village. Thomas keeps step beside her; behind them, she can hear Picnic and Ben muttering again.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Just that tonight we’re gonna –’

  Ben whoops suddenly and goes sprinting past them to swoop on a plastic buoy that has washed up on the beach, kicks it into the wind.

  ‘What?’ Mary calls, but all three boys are running now. ‘Gonna what?’

  Picnic reaches the buoy first and scoops it up. He doubles back, the buoy held out like a football, and waves it in front of Thomas. Ben laughs and launches himself into a tackle, dragging Picnic down, and Thomas piles on.

  Mary can’t help but laugh. They are up again before she reaches them, and though they look back at her every now and again, they don’t wait.

  They turn off towards the village when they reach the path. By the time Mary makes it to the road, only Thomas is waiting.

  ‘Come tonight,’ he says in a hurry. ‘We’re meeting at Picnic’s.’

  She hesitates a moment and then nods. He grins.

  ‘See ya,’ he says, and sprints away down the road after the other two.

  ‘See ya,’ she calls after him, but it is taken by the wind. She crosses the road and turns into the paddock, follows the vines that lead in straight corridors up towards her home.

  She pauses when she reaches her driveway and looks back down towards the village. The boys are gone.

  ‘Mary?’ her mother calls. She is standing on the veranda with her eyes shaded, peering down the drive. Her voice is long and strung out across the distance.

  ‘Your father is home,’ her mother says when Mary draws near. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Just down the beach. The new teacher is here.’

  ‘What’s she look like?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Her mother turns and marches towards the kitchen. ‘I need your help in here,’ she calls.

  ‘Mmm,’ Mary says, heading around the back. ‘Coming.’

  ‘Now, please!’

  The edict follows her – her mother’s voice is muffled, but the tone is clear. Mary ignores it. She can hear her father in the shed, swearing at the tractor, and she ducks out of his line of sight, sneaks around the corner and contemplates making a run for the vines.

  Dinner is uncomfortable, the three of them around the table, the television flickering on mute from the lounge. Mary’s father is propped up on one elbow, leaning over his plate, his fork in his free hand. He hasn’t showered yet. Mary can tell he would rather be in front of the TV.

  ‘Good day today?’ her mother asks him.

  He grunts. ‘I’m gonna have to move those steers over the weekend.’

  ‘Don’t forget we have church Sunday,’ Mary’s mother says.

  Mary looks up. ‘Do we have to?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes,’ her mother says. ‘No argument about it.’

  ‘I’ve gotta move those steers,’ her father repeats.

  Mary’s mother purses her lips and says nothing. Mary looks between them and crosses her fingers under the table.

  ‘Mum,’ she says, ‘can I go down to Picnic’s tonight?’

  Her parents exchange a glance across the table.

  ‘No,’ her father says brusquely.

  ‘And no argument,’ her mother says again. ‘You’re coming picking again in the morning. Last one before school. You’ll be yawning all day if you go out tonight.’

  ‘No,’ her father repeats. ‘Try it and I’ll thrash you.’

  They eat in silence, after that. Mary plays with her food. Under the table, her legs fizz and jiggle.

  Her father leaves Mary and her mother to do the washing-up. They hear the TV burst back into voice as soon as they start running the water for the dishes. It is hot in the kitchen, the windows perspiring with condensation. Mary washes and her mother dries, tea towel smearing at each plate.

  ‘Sarah at the store tells me your new teacher has come in from one of the fancy city schools,’ she says. ‘She grew up here, y’know. She’s that old woman’s daughter – the one up the hill, Mr Mulvey’s sister. Your teacher’s his niece. But they aren’t close, apparently. Mrs Keillor was saying they don’t get on at all.’

  Mary drops the cutlery as a bundle into the soapy water.

  ‘Careful!’ her mother says.

  ‘Sorry,’ Mary murmurs.

  ‘You splashed me!’

  ‘She looked nice enough,’ Mary says. ‘The new teacher.’

  ‘Sarah said she was very polite. And good thing she’s back. God knows how that old woman was managing on her own.’

  The TV floats through as a muffled buzz from the lounge. An audience, laughing, applauding. Mary washes the final pan and lets the water out.

  She goes to bed early, in the end. She climbs in still fully dressed, pulls the covers up around her neck so her mother won’t see. When all is quiet from her parents’ room, she slinks downstairs. She takes a jacket off the peg in the front hall, turns back towards the kitchen to go out the back door.

  A light flicks on. She freezes. From where she is standing she can see her father shuffle into the kitchen and sit at the table. He is a silhouette, slouching, his back to her. Mary can feel her throat constrict, the nape of her neck tight with adrenaline. Quietly, she creeps backwards and hangs up the coat. Almost without breathing she tiptoes past and makes her way back up the stairs to her bedroom. She sits on her bed and hugs her knees to her chest, rocking slightly, trying not to breathe too loudly. Slowly, she calms down, frustration replacing her fear. Unfair, unfair. Only then do the tears come.

  *

  Thomas wakes with a hangover. It is crusted around his lips and smells of vomit. He doesn’t remember vomiting. He doesn’t remember going to bed, either, but he is twisted in a sleeping bag on Picnic’s floor. He rolls over onto his back. Ben is curled into a ball on the couch, clutching at his stomach. The room spins gently. Thomas swallows carefully. It is very hot. The light is furious in his eyes and sweat beads across his back, down his legs. He lurches up and sheds the sleeping bag like a skin. He makes
it to the toilet just in time.

  When he emerges, Ben is awake, shuffling around, pulling clothes on.

  ‘Picnic?’ Thomas croaks.

  ‘No idea,’ Ben says, pulling a jumper over his head.

  Thomas feels the heat prickle down his neck and wonders how he can. He wipes his face on his t-shirt and goes through into Picnic’s bedroom. Picnic is sprawled on his back, arms around his face, the doona pulled up to his chin. He has a hard-on. Ben appears behind him, wielding a black texta and grinning wickedly. They are halfway through the penis when Picnic wakes. Ben laughs, slaps him on the cheek.

  ‘Swim, sunshine?’

  Picnic groans and rolls over. Thomas shrugs. It is early, they realise, when they get outside. The houses along the street are still quiet. The pounding of Thomas’s head matches the sound of the surf from the shore. They wander down past the pub to the track in the dunes. Ben still seems drunk. They find their whisky bottle halfway along the path. There is still about a third of it left, golden brown beneath sticky grains of sand.

  ‘Hair of the dog?’ Ben asks, unscrewing the top. He waves it invitingly and Thomas reels away, his stomach rolling again. Ben laughs and screws the top back on.

  ‘We better find somewhere to hide it,’ he says, and shoves it back into the sand.

  Thomas just grunts.

  Picnic appears at the top of the dunes as they begin to strip off. His cooee is caught by the wind and pulled backwards away from them. His hands cupped around his mouth are the only way they can tell he is yelling. He still has texta on his face. Thomas looks at Ben and they walk down to the water. The waves are grey-brown, the foam the colour of butter. When they splash in, the cold catches Thomas by surprise, holds him, braces him. Picnic runs down to meet them, whooping and yelling like a child, and then the whole world disappears in beautiful silence as together they plunge under the swell of an unbroken wave. Thomas emerges, stands and shakes himself. Ben bobs up beside him and Picnic rolls over to lie floating on his back. None of them say anything. They simply let the lull drift around them and wait for the next set to come in.

  It is well gone midday by the time Thomas gets home. His mother is watching from the garden as he rides his bike up the drive.

  ‘About time,’ she says when he reaches the house. ‘Go down and get your dad, will you? Lunch won’t be far off.’ She turns and marches inside. She is angry.

  Thomas wheels his bike back towards the paddock and dumps it by the shed. He stops at the fence line and stares out across the bay. Mary’s house is down and across towards the village. It faces the sea, like all of them. The spread of bright blue is broken only by the blur of the mainland on the horizon. It sparkles up at him, hard somehow, and bright.

  His father calls, waving. Thomas turns and walks down into the vines towards him.

  ‘So,’ his father says, ‘you’ve decided to grace us with your presence, hey?’

  ‘Just been down at Picnic’s,’ he replies. He wants to grin. His father is not angry. ‘Mum says lunch’ll be soon.’

  His father straightens, drops the bucket, then peels the sticky gloves from his hands and wraps them around the snips.

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘And I’m guessing you’ll want to be down there again tonight? Are we going to see you at all before school starts?’ His eyes are laughing.

  ‘Can I go?’ Thomas asks carefully.

  ‘Don’t see why not,’ his father replies, and he leads the way back to the house. ‘Would I be able to keep you here if I said no?’

  His mother only works out Thomas is going again when she finds him in his room after lunch. He is stuffing a jumper and a packet of matches into a backpack with a rolled-up towel, some newspaper and firelighters.

  ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing down there,’ she says quietly from the doorway. Thomas looks up and she frowns. ‘You stink,’ she says. ‘For God’s sake, don’t let your father find out what you’re up to. He’ll flay you alive. And don’t do anything stupid.’

  He can hear the note of pleading in her voice and can tell how much she hates this. It is just another way of controlling him, he realises. She is making it her decision, not his. His throat tightens and he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, doesn’t turn. Just forbid me, he wants to say. Just tell me I can’t go. You can’t stop me! She shakes her head and leaves the room. He grabs his backpack and follows her down the hallway to the kitchen, waits to check she can’t see him before rummaging around in the bottom of the larder. There is a bottle of port, dusty and greasy, at the back. He draws it out carefully and hides it in the bag with a packet of chips.

  ‘See ya,’ he calls, heading out the back door. Their voices come back in an anonymous blur.

  Thomas can hear Picnic screaming even before he reaches his friend’s house. The noise is insistent, rises riotously above the lazy afternoon sounds of people in the pub, the low whining of a dog.

  ‘C’mon,’ Picnic is screaming. ‘Get there, faggot!’

  It takes Thomas a moment to realise that it is the television screaming back, the roar of a crowd, the high-pitched voice of a commentator. Thomas goes around to the back door and enters through the laundry. The noise from the TV is so loud that Picnic doesn’t hear him come in.

  ‘What’s up, Doc?’ he grins from the armchair when he sees Thomas at the door. The curtains are drawn and he is already slurring. Another whisky bottle is open at his feet, with half a bottle of Coke beside it. Thomas leans forward and pulls the bottle of port from his backpack.

  Picnic laughs. ‘What the fuck is that?’ he asks. ‘The old girl’s got three cases of this shit out there,’ he says. ‘Don’t think grog’s a problem.’

  Thomas shrugs and sets the port down on the floor. ‘Where is she?’ he asks.

  ‘On the mainland,’ Picnic says. ‘Cleaning. Back next week.’

  Thomas looks up in surprise. ‘What, so you’re here alone?’

  ‘Yep.’ Picnic turns up the volume on the TV. Thomas says nothing as the noise fills the room.

  They wait till dark before they go. Picnic bangs around in the shed at the back of the garden and comes back with a glass bottle half-filled with petrol. They walk down through the back streets near the beach and peer in Ben’s bedroom window. By the light of the bedside lamp they can see him lying face down on his bed. He looks up when they knock and grins when he recognises them. Picnic holds the whisky bottle aloft. Thomas makes to go around the front of the house and Ben waves at him frantically. He opens the window as wide as it will go, pulls the flyscreen away from the sill.

  ‘Mum’s got the shits,’ he says, and climbs out sideways. He reaches back through and pulls a jumper out after him. ‘Let’s go.’

  Thomas is nervous as they walk. Excited, yes, but nervous too. They are going up to the bridge. It is trespassing, technically, but Thomas is more worried by the stories. All the stories happen up there, the dirty ones. The men from the pub go up there, Picnic has said. They turn onto the beach and walk along the sand, the wash of the waves beside them slowing the rhythm of their steps. Picnic takes the top off his bottle and passes it to Ben. The night is clear, the stars and moon bright. The bridge is a dark figure rising ahead of them. Thomas’s body is tight with anticipation. The whisky comes around and he drinks. There is no going back now.

  It is taller than he expected. It looks like the ruins of an ancient building. The pylons glow white and reach out into the water, the surf hissing and foaming around them. Looking out along it, the mainland seems suddenly closer, more achievable. The curl of the cape is a black line against the blue-dappled water.

  Picnic weaves between the crossbeams and hangs from a rusting metal girder. Someone has sprayed ‘FUCK CUNTS’ in black paint along the pylon beside it. ‘Men died when they built it,’ he says suddenly. ‘They got swept away.’

  ‘Further up, you reckon?’ Thomas asks.

  Ben snorts, the whisky bottle hanging loose from one hand. ‘Bit wet here.’

&nbs
p; They slither and scramble up the loose sand banked beside the pylons, start their way through the reach of the dunes, the bridge a monolith beside them.

  ‘I would like . . .’ Ben starts, proffering the whisky dramatically as he walks, and Thomas turns, expecting, God knows why, a toast. ‘I would like . . .’ Ben says again, ‘. . . to get off this shitheap.’

  It is a moment before they all erupt into laughter. When it stops, when the noise is gone, the night feels suddenly empty.

  ‘I’m good,’ Picnic says. ‘What’s wrong with it here?’

  ‘It’s alright for you,’ Ben replies. ‘You’re fucking Mary.’

  Picnic grins lazily. Thomas feels himself go cold and immediately hot.

  ‘So what if I am?’ Picnic says. ‘Bum a smoke?’ he asks.

  Ben nods, hands Thomas the bottle and rummages through the backpack on Picnic’s back to get them out. Thomas’s chest is tight. The dunes turn silently beneath him. There is the snick of a lighter and when he looks up there are two glowing spots dancing in his vision. Mary didn’t come when he asked her, he thinks. She came when Picnic did.

  ‘Tommo?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You want outta here?’

  There is a pause.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I want out.’

  But it isn’t what he is imagining, as they make it over the crest of the last dune and pause. Before them, they can see where the bridge sinks slowly to meet the rise of the hill. Wattle and dune grass crowd around it, and a ring-lock fence springs up out of nowhere alongside. Standing there, Thomas imagines Mary beside him, alone and together in the night.

  A patch of scorched and trodden earth is cleared under the shelter of the last pair of pylons. A black pit of ancient ashes and a couple of driftwood logs sitting abandoned within, crouched in the bridge’s shadow.

  ‘Here?’ Picnic asks.

  They look at each other, and Ben shrugs. The pylon closest to them is scarred and pitted with burns and scratches, names and messages and dates. Picnic drags a warped weatherboard plank out of the grass, and they all kick around for sticks of kindling. Thomas screws up sheets of the newspaper he has brought, nestles the firelighters among it. Ben piles the sticks in a teepee over the top.