Karen Viggers was born in Melbourne, Australia, and grew up in the Dandenong Ranges riding horses and writing stories. She studied Veterinary Science at Melbourne University, and then worked in mixed animal practice for five years before completing a PhD at The Australian National University, Canberra, in wildlife health. Since then she has worked on a wide range of Australian native animals in many different natural environments. She lives in Canberra with her husband and two children. She works part-time in veterinary practice, provides veterinary support for biologists studying native animals, and writes in her spare time.
KAREN
VIGGERS
THE STRANDING
ALLEN & UNWIN
First published in 2008
This edition published in 2009
Copyright © Karen Viggers 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
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Australia
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
The stranding/author, Karen Viggers.
ISBN 978 1 74175 773 6 (pbk.).
A823.4
Typeset in 11/13.5 pt Bembo by Bookhouse, Sydney
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For David
For his infinite love, patience and support
He left the house in the eerie light of the moon and walked barefoot to the end of the road. Here the cliffs fell sharply into the sea and most nights the waves foamed over the rocks and crashed against the walls. But tonight was calm, and the sea collided with the rocks less violently, and despite the constant movement everything seemed unusually still. The moon sailed large and round, illuminating the wisps of cloud that drifted across the sky.
There was something else in the night. He could feel it. A presence. He was sure it had a name, and he was not afraid of it. Looking out across the flickering silver sea he watched the swell rolling in, ever moving, rising, falling, rising, falling. He felt his breathing slowing, deepening. The rhythm calmed him. The rhythmic emptiness of the endless sea.
Then he heard it. A loud huffing sound. Below and not far out. His eyes swept over the surface of the water, seeking. There must be something . . . The water slid quietly, rolling in towards the cliffs. Then he could see it, the smooth back of a whale, slick and glistening, black and silver, as the sea rippled over it. An exhalation came again. He could see the vapour spout this time, drifting fine spray lit by the moon. Then another, a smaller puff, a calf, wallowing alongside. His heart raced. He wondered if they had seen him too, whether they knew he was there, watching them, alive and present in the night, bearing the weight of existence.
For a long time he stood there, breathing with the whales, watching the sea slide over their sleek backs, listening to the slow puffs of their restfulness. In the long, moving quiet, he found emptiness, and the joy contained within it. He dwelled in the essence of now, away from pain, until he was cold and soaked with dew.
Contents
PART I: Patterns and Tides
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
PART II: Turbulence
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
PART III: Aftermath
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
PART IV: The Stranding
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Acknowledgements
PART I
Patterns and Tides
One
A month after he moved to Wallaces Point, Lex Henderson burned all his clothes. He burned every last item, except what he was standing in. And he did it deliberately. It was an irrational moment and nothing could have stopped him.
He’d arrived with wounds that were deep but invisible. He’d packed his Sydney life into a suitcase and driven south, leaving chaos behind, but also carrying it within. As the highway hours stretched behind him, the trepidation and doubt that had followed him from the city began to ease, and his hands rested more steadily on the wheel. When, finally, the Volvo shuddered to a halt on the grass outside his new home, the sound of the sea entered him and he was calm.
He spent the first few weeks at Wallaces Point drifting along the beach by day and drinking himself into oblivion at night. He passed the daylight hours trying to erase the ugliness of the night before, and the night trying to erase the past four months when his life had turned upside down. Daytime, it was easy to immerse himself in the lonely wild world of the beach. The wind swirled through his soul, the spring sun warmed his head, and he walked, leaving footprints in the sand then sitting up on the rocks to watch them dissolve as the tide crept back up the beach.
In those first days, he saw large things, like the waves shaping the beach, the swans on the lagoon, the crushing blue of the enormous sky. Then, gradually, over hours and days, his focus sharpened and he began to see other things: the rippling patterns left in the sand by the receding water, a sea eagle floating on the breeze above the cliffs, sooty oystercatchers poking among the rocks, honeyeaters scattering in dogfights over the heath.
After that, patterns started to emerge, like the time of day the eagle appeared and where it roosted in a skeletal tree on the headland, the timing of the tides, the gradation of sea creatures on the rocks, when to expect the honking of swans just after dusk as they flew low towards the lagoon. He watched the waters and learned to read the rips, sat for hours watching gannets fishing out to sea. Along the high tide mark he fossicked for seashells and rocks, tiny bird skulls, cuttlefish floats, driftwood, crab claws, tendrils of pink seaweed. On the rocks just below the cliffs, he spent hours sitting, watching the waves roll in. Over and over. From low tide to high. The roar and rhythm were just enough to anchor his sanity.
In the laundry cupboard he found a wetsuit and fins, and on calm days he took to the sea. After that first gasp of cold water trickling through the suit, he plunged out and bodysurfed, kicking like crazy down the waves, then pulsing with the thrilling rush of being picked up and surged towards the beach. The waves shot him skywards before dumping him in a tumbled confusion of foam and sand. It did him good, the physicality of it, striding out against the incoming waves and then swimming to catch their ride in.
But nights were not so easy.
Each evening, he went inside, scrubbed clean by the wind and the sky, and stood by the window, watching the light
fading from the heaving face of the sea. His new home stood fifty metres from the finish of the road, flanked by waving grasses and the stiff skeletons of a few hardy banksias bent rigid by the onshore winds. It was the last house in the line and its elongated face of glass looked out over the cliffs and the slow roll of the sea. The house faced north, gathering light, and the windows stretched in front of him like a wide-angled lens, collecting as much sea as they could grasp. From where Lex stood, the view reached far and long, passing the hummock of the darkening headland and arcing east across the water to the murky horizon. Whoever had built the house had only two things in mind: glass and sea.
To Lex, it seemed the house was waiting, as if it was watching for something.
When the sun had set and the silver waters had sunk to grey then featureless black, Lex would sit on a cane chair in the lounge room, staring out into darkness, wondering what he had done in coming here. When he had first seen it, the house seemed neutral enough—all straight lines and simplicity, an open plan kitchen and living area, just the essential furniture: a wooden kitchen table, a cane couch and a few armchairs facing the sea. But sometimes he thought perhaps he could feel someone else in the house. Someone else lifting an old book from the shelf and leafing through the musty pages. Someone else staring at the photos on the walls of old boats and salted fishermen. It seemed that the house was reminiscing on a past that had nothing to do with him.
The bookshelves were laden with books he would never have bought. A few were potentially useful: seashore guides, fishing manuals, a tattered handbook of birds. The rest were of dubious interest; mainly cheap shiny-backed novels, a few biographies and a handful of old books about whaling. Each night, determined to avoid the stash of grog in the pantry, Lex would pull a book from the shelf and flick through it, trying not to feel the dark pressing in through the windows, trying not to feel his skin creeping with desire—the desire for the emptiness that came with the bottle. But soon his will would wither and, with shaking hands and bitter self-contempt, he’d find himself at the cupboard again, pulling out a glass, pouring a drink, enjoying the tart burn of whisky. And there he would be once again, rollicking in misery, drowning the flood of his thoughts, burying them in staggering inebriation. Another night lost.
A few weeks into this ritual, when he was three or four whiskies down, the phone rang. Lex knew it could only be his mother. No one else had his number.
‘Mum,’ he said, hooking the receiver on his shoulder and pouring another drink, taking care not to clink the bottle against the glass.
‘Darling. How are you? Just thought I’d ring and see how your holiday was going.’
‘It’s not a holiday, Mum.’
She didn’t like to think of him moving away, he knew that.
‘Let’s be realistic, darling,’ she said in her fruity voice.
‘You just need a little break. After what you’ve been through, that’s only natural. Then you can come back refreshed and sort everything out.’
‘Yes, Mum,’ he said.
But after all that had passed, there was nothing to go back to.
‘I do understand that you’ve had a bad time,’ his mother was saying. ‘Jilly’s been terrible and the funeral was awful . . .’
Lex walked to the window, gripping his glass tight. He didn’t want to think about the funeral, or Jilly.
‘Mum, I’m fine. I’m just settling in.’
‘Lex, you’re in the country. There’s nothing you can do there that would be remotely interesting for you. Why don’t you do what I suggested? Have a few more weeks’ rest then I’ll come down and visit. We’ll have a chat.’
Lex tossed back the rest of his whisky and emptied the remnants of the bottle into his glass. His last bottle.
‘You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’
He said nothing.
‘I knew it. Darling, you need some help. It’s not shameful to need help. We all do at times. Why don’t you rent the house out and come back here where you belong.’
Lex didn’t feel like he belonged anywhere.
‘Jilly’s very upset,’ his mother said.
‘She threw me out.’
‘I’m sure she regrets that. We all do silly things sometimes.’
Lex said nothing.
‘You didn’t give it very long, did you?’
Four months of hell.
‘These things take time to work out,’ his mother continued. ‘Both of you had such a traumatic time. Perhaps you should come back and give it another go. Persevere longer. Jilly’s very distraught. Just tell me when you’re coming. We can find you a flat, or you can stay here until you and Jilly patch things up.’
Nausea swept through him and he realised he was sweating.
‘. . . I know about what happened just after Isabel died,’ his mother was saying. ‘I know what Jilly did . . . Her mother told me.’
‘Mum, I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I understand that it was terrible for you. I miss you, darling. I’ll come and visit in a week or two. Things are very busy here, as you know.’
‘Fine. Just call me before you come.’
Lex put the phone down. For a moment he leaned against the kitchen bench, exhausted. Then panic took him and his chest curdled in its grip. With tight hands he clutched the bench, holding himself up, struggling to breathe. In one ragged gulp he drained his whisky, then crashed open the kitchen drawer and snatched out the bottle opener. With the whisky all gone, he’d have to drink wine. He pulled a bottle from the pantry, but his hands were shaking so much he couldn’t pierce the cork, so he threw the opener against the wall and held the bench tight until the panic passed.
At last, the black swamp of it left him and he wobbled to the couch and slumped there. He had forgotten how these attacks left him ripped open and empty. He lay down in a foetal curl and tears seeped out.
Later, cold, stiff and horribly sober, he went to bed.
He dreamed he was in the kitchen of his Sydney home, making breakfast. He could see the bowls of cereal laid out before him on the bench. On the wall, the clock was ticking, measuring time. Jilly and Isabel were both sleeping in.
At the bench he sliced strawberries, one at a time, until Jilly came out, all fluffy with sleep. They both looked at his hands, still cutting strawberries, and then Jilly looked at the clock and jolted when she saw the time.
‘It’s eight o’clock,’ she said.
Lex heard his own voice, distant and hollow, as if he were far away. ‘What time did you feed her?’
‘I don’t know. Two o’clock, maybe.’
Jilly disappeared down the hallway to wake Isabel and Lex put down the knife. He could hear floorboards creaking.
He looked at the clock, stared at it, watching the numbers rippling as if the clock was underwater. The second hand didn’t seem to be moving and Jilly’s footsteps were slow in the hall. He wanted her to get to Isabel’s room, but it seemed she’d never get there, and the second hand on the clock was still not moving.
There was silence, then Jilly’s voice, strangled, panicked.
‘Lex. She’s not breathing.’
The pile of strawberries started rolling into the sink, one after another, and then a flood of them, filling the sink and overflowing onto the floor.
‘Lex.’
He pulled up feet like lead and tried to run down the hallway. The ticking of the clock became the beating of his heart, and he ran and ran. But the hallway stretched forever and it seemed he’d never reach the end, never arrive in Isabel’s room.
Then he was there, trying to drag back the curtains.
‘Hurry,’ Jilly said.
His heartbeat was in his mouth, thundering. Then he was at the cot, looking down.
Isabel’s face was slack. Her mouth was open, her lips blue, like plastic. He lifted her out, rolled her out of the wrap—everything happening fast now. He placed her on the bed. She was still and cold. All loose and floppy.
‘Call the
ambulance.’ His breathing was loud, and his voice was strange, like it was someone else speaking. Someone far away, using a megaphone.
He closed his mouth over Isabel’s face and exhaled into her. Two small puffs. Two tiny airy breaths. Careful not to rupture her lungs. He watched her chest rise and fall and his heart thumped in his ears. Two of his fingers reached to Isabel’s sternum. He beat out a string of chest compressions. Was he supposed to do ten or fifteen? He counted, pressed, breathed, counted, pressed, breathed. She could have been a doll in First Aid class.
Her eyes flew open, black and deep as wells, and she watched him as he worked on her. She was cold, so cold. And her lips were blue and flaccid. Panic surged in him. Why was she watching him? Why didn’t she breathe? He didn’t check her pulse.
Then he heard the siren. The ambulance was coming at last. Was it too soon or too late? In a minute he would know what he already knew.
They came in and ushered him aside. Their hands were kind and firm, slipping over Isabel, his baby, feeling her, touching her. Hands slipping, rolling, sliding, examining. Their hands seemed to be everywhere. He wanted to stop them. What were they doing?
‘Keep up the CPR,’ he said, panicky. ‘Don’t stop.’
They looked at him and the truth was in their eyes. He felt it in Isabel’s cold lips. He knew it in his heart.
But why was everyone staring at him—the paramedics, Jilly, Isabel? Were they all thinking it was his fault? He could see it in their accusing eyes.
I didn’t do it, he wanted to cry. It isn’t my fault. But his voice wouldn’t come. It was stuck in his throat, like a great lump of clay, and the words were buried.
Then there were Jilly’s screams: hollow, echoing, like in a tunnel. His mind was telling him to reach for her, but everything was frozen. She was like an animal, contorted, red, wet. She was sobbing, sobbing, but he couldn’t reach out to her. And there was another sound, an eerie moaning that wasn’t of this earth, a grinding utterance of despair. It was coming from him. He was an animal too.
The Stranding Page 1