The Stranding

by Karen Viggers

  A flash of light jolted him awake. Had it been another flare of lightning, or something else, car headlights perhaps? He sat upright, straining into the dark, listening. There was nothing but the roar of the wind.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Callista murmured from beneath the feathery warmth of the doona.

  ‘I saw a flash of light. I’ll have to go out.’

  ‘This is a lightning storm, Lex.’

  ‘It might have been a car.’

  He turned on his torch and Callista sat up.

  ‘Nobody will be out driving in this,’ she said. ‘Especially not all the way out here.’

  Lex yanked on his clothes in the torchlight. ‘I have to check. I didn’t see Mrs B come back this afternoon. She was going to visit Frank.’

  ‘So you’re really going out there,’ Callista said. ‘Do you want me to come too?’

  ‘That’s up to you.’

  ‘Do you have another torch?’

  He fetched one from the kitchen and tossed it onto the bed. He pulled on his Gore-Tex and boots while Callista dressed quickly. He thrust a woollen duffle coat at her.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and get you if there’s anything.’

  Outside was wild. He couldn’t believe the intensity of the wind and the clamour of the rain battering against his raincoat and needling his face. Within seconds he was drenched. In the feeble torchlight, he navigated to the cliff edge and peered out into the dark. There was nothing—just the roar and pound of the sea tearing at the rocks. He moved further around the lip of the cliff, uneasy, unsure, afraid of being snatched and whipped over the edge.

  There! He thought he saw a dim light in the murk. Leaning out, he stared into the rain and wind, cursed and wiped the water from his eyes. He could just make out two beams—maybe headlights—hard to see through the thrashing salty air. Perhaps a car had gone over. Panic surged in him and he dashed back to the house. There wasn’t much time, if any.

  ‘Quick,’ he yelled. ‘I think there’s a car down there. Grab my phone from on top of the fridge.’

  God knows why he’d kept it charged all this time. Was he still subconsciously waiting for a call from Jilly?

  Callista came out into the dark, waving the torch as she pulled on a hat. Lex didn’t pause to look at her face. He hooked her arm and pulled her across the road through the rain and wind, through the hiss of the threshing heath, down towards the beach. Staggering down the wooden slats onto the sand, he could hear the roar of angry, wind-whipped waves smacking and thundering onto the beach. It was so dark. An occasional fork of lightning flickered over the sky. The rain was steady, soaking.

  In the torchlight, the sea was alien. The waves were mashing together in confusion—a mess of water and froth and tangled directionless slappers and dumpers. Lex grasped Callista’s forearm and guided her fast up the beach towards the cliffs. They neared the rocks, slick and black in the wavering beam of the torch. Staring into the water, Lex could just make out the hump of a car roof with waves smashing over it.

  ‘Stay on the beach,’ he yelled to Callista, ‘And try to give me some light if you can.’

  He shucked off his Gore-Tex and trousers and powered into the churning sea, straining against the shoreward thrust of the waves and the blast of the wind. The water was cold and angry and alive, like a beast. It curled around his thighs, dragged at him, crashed into his chest, clawed him back.

  Ten metres out around the rocks and he could see the car more clearly. It had spun in the fall so that its nose was facing the shore. The headlights cut dimly through the wild darkness. The front end was caught up on a rock, keeping the nose out of the water, and waves were engulfing the rear.

  He hoofed barefoot over the rocks, feeling the rough surfaces slice his soles. His leg caught in a crack and twisted, but he had to surge through the gouge of pain. The knee had to stay strong.

  He reached the car, Mrs B’s Peugeot, and leaned himself against it while a wave crashed on him, a vast mass of black heavy water. He felt his way under the water to the handle of the driver’s door and clamped his hand on it.

  Oh God, let it open, he thought.

  It wouldn’t budge; it was jammed tight. Perhaps if he used both hands and wrenched it down. Like this. It moved. He leaned into the rise and swell of an oncoming wave and hauled back on the door, heaved against the water. He’d have to be quick. He’d have to find the seatbelt. Snap it open, pull her out. What if she was already dead?

  Water gushed into the car with the wave. It rose right to the roof and sucked out again almost as fast. The meagre light from the headlights was useless, he had to navigate with his hands. A body was slumped over the steering wheel. He leaned in across and fumbled for the seatbelt catch. His fingers were slow and thick with cold and he couldn’t make out the mechanism.

  Another wave cascaded in. Lex took a breath, submerged. He spat out the salt as the water frothed and bubbled out again through the door. There. The belt gave with a jerk. Now he wrapped his arm around Mrs B. It must be her, although he couldn’t see in the wet dark. He couldn’t be careful dragging her out with the crush of another wave pounding in on them. Speed was what he needed to get her head up out of the water.

  With waves battering them, Lex hauled her out and wrapped her across his body, pinning her to his waist. Then slowly he ground in towards shore, propping his legs against the rocks with waves heaving and pounding at his back. Already he was revising CPR in his head.

  It was then he heard a terrible roar of wind out to sea, ugly and sinister, like death. He felt the wave coming with it, a swelling mass of water whipped by the gust. If he didn’t make it fast into shore, he and Mrs B would both be swamped and then sucked out by it like wisps of paper. He forced his legs through the mishmash of crosscutting waves. Then the sea started pushing with an urgency that horrified him, lifting up, beginning to sweep his feet away. They were dragged high, tossed into the air, then plummeted through a furious mass of angry water. Under they went, tumbled. And then, incredibly, he was on his feet and pushed ashore by the water at his back, until it licked his heels high up on the beach.

  Quick now. It might already be too late.

  He dropped to his knees over Mrs B’s body, yelled for Callista, and then groped for Mrs B’s face to begin CPR. In the dark, his fingers mapped out the structures of her face. He straightened her up, dipped his fingers in the hollow of her neck to check for a pulse. It was there, weak and thready. There was no time to see if she would breathe, she was probably full of water.

  He pegged her nose with his left hand, lifted her chin with his right, inhaled, clamped his lips over her cold slack ones and blew air into her chest. Three times. It was too dark to see if her chest rose and fell, but the air had gone somewhere and he felt a whisper of it puff out of her mouth on his own wet cheek.

  How was it that he was here doing this again? Hadn’t he had his turn for this lifetime?

  He had to kill thought. Focus on the rhythm. Feel for the rise of Mrs B’s chest. Feel the soft puff of air exiting her lips as he drew breath. Try to shield both their faces from the rain. Where was Callista?

  At last he heard her, screaming for him, somewhere up the beach. Between breaths he roared a reply, then he was down again, working on Mrs B. Her pulse was still there—weak, but steady. Maybe they were going to win.

  The ambulance came. Callista had called them after the gust. She had yelled into the mobile phone, she said, so they could hear her above the wind. She had called them even though she hadn’t believed Lex could pull anyone alive out of there. When she saw the lights piercing the dark near the top of the cliffs, she went to guide the paramedics onto the sand while Lex remained with Mrs B, locked into the pattern of resuscitation.

  The paramedics took over with strong torch beams and assertive confident hands. They rolled Mrs B a few times, shifted her into recovery position and gave her a thrust on the back. She vomited the sea out onto the sand and then sputtered into gurgling breaths. Lex
was dazed by their competence. It was the same as last time, with Isabel—the same, but different. Mrs B was going to live. He shrivelled into the cold and tiredness that was seeping through him.

  The paramedics slipped Mrs B onto a stretcher. Lex felt like he could use one too. Cold was stiffening right through him and his feet were wincingly tender. Thank God for Callista, who hooked his arm and steadied him as they followed the stretcher across the beach and up onto the heath. There was just a spattering of rain now amidst thick sea mist. Lex could see the salt air swirling in the torchlight. The night subsided to an eerie, uncanny peace. On the heath track, the wet grass was like a cushion under his raw feet.

  The paramedics slid the stretcher into the ambulance under blinking red lights.

  ‘Jump in,’ one of them said. ‘The girl’s face needs attention, and you look like the walking dead.’

  Callista’s face had been flayed raw by whipping sand and his own legs and feet were laced with oozing bloody gashes. They climbed into the brightly lit interior of the ambulance and sat, still and numb, while the paramedic strapped a mask to Mrs B’s face and started the hissing flow of oxygen. He tossed them a couple of blankets and turned back to Mrs B. The ambulance lurched and swayed down the Wallaces Point road towards Merrigan.

  The hospital was all bright lights and clean white linoleum. It seemed surreal after the dark wildness of the beach. Lex was still in shock from the feel of Mrs B’s slack mouth beneath his, and the exhaustion of performing CPR. He hobbled into reception behind Callista while the paramedics disappeared through flap doors with Mrs B. The waiting room was empty. Behind the desk, the white-clad nurse looked hard at Callista.

  ‘Have you been here before?’

  ‘Do we look that bad? I’m Callista Bennett. I’ve certainly been here before. Tonsils when I was a kid. And a few other visits.’

  Lex gazed around the starkly lit room, then back at the nurse. He felt strangely absent, like he wasn’t really there. He watched the nurse frowning as she punched at the computer keyboard.

  ‘There’s nothing under Bennett,’ she said, squinting up at Callista. ‘Could you be under another name? Aren’t you Jimmy Wallace’s girl?’ She focused back on the computer screen. ‘I thought you were in here under Wallace . . . Here you are.’

  The nurse sounded pleased with herself, but Callista looked suddenly pasty, and Lex’s chest constricted. He felt himself zinging somewhere up near those bright lights, looking down on himself and the girl beside him.

  ‘It’s Bennett,’ he heard himself say. ‘Callista Bennett. Didn’t you hear her?’

  ‘Here it is,’ the nurse said, holding out Callista’s file to show him. ‘Callista Wallace.’ She smiled kindly at Callista. ‘Well, honey, you’ve had a hell of a night. What have you two been up to?’

  Lex struggled with dizziness. He felt like he was falling in on himself. Callista Wallace? It must be a mistake. It must be wrong.

  ‘I feel ill,’ he said.

  The two women turned to him and suddenly he was back in his body. The nurse was hesitant, Callista panicky. There was throbbing in his feet and in his legs. He felt hot, sticky.

  The world folded around him into quietness.

  In the morning they visited Mrs B in her room. She looked small and frail in the bed, her face as pale and grey as her hair. She was sleeping. She was exhausted, the nurse said, exhausted and weak, but she would be all right, so long as she didn’t succumb to pneumonia. It was a risk, she told them, because of all the fluid she’d had in her lungs, but they had her covered with antibiotics just in case.

  Lex stood by the bed and watched her breathing. It was reassuring to see the regular rise and fall of her chest. Last night was still heavy in him. Despite the painkillers they had pumped into him after the faint, his feet were agony. He hadn’t known pain could do that to you—make you faint. Pain and complete exhaustion.

  This morning Callista was hesitant with him and he was too vague from the drugs to engage with her. Each time he considered her name—Callista Wallace—there was a numb buzzing in his brain. Why had she hidden it from him? Why had she hidden who she was? When he flashed back to all the discussions they’d had about whaling, Wallaces, the Japanese . . . if he’d known, then perhaps he’d have understood. Or perhaps he’d have withdrawn. Who knows; he was too hazy to think about it now.

  One of the nurses coming off shift drove them back to the Point. Lex sat silent in the back, only half-listening to the women as they discussed the storm. Sheds blown over. Telephone and power lines down. Trees blasted over. Roofs peeled off. Their chat seemed to trivialise everything.

  At the end of the Point road, the nurse stopped her car on the gravel in front of the house. She hopped out to look over the cliffs at Mrs B’s Peugeot swamped in the licking surf.

  ‘I’m impressed you got her out of there,’ she called to Lex.

  But Lex was looking at the house, uneasy. ‘Something’s wrong,’ he said.

  He stared at the house, curious cartwheels turning in his chest. What was it that was different? He couldn’t put his finger on it. Was he still light-headed from the painkillers?

  The front of the house looked cleaner somehow. He noticed there was movement inside the windows, a slow flap of curtains. That absent feeling was back as he hobbled across the road. He shuffled painfully across the lawn and looked blankly into the house. The windows were gone. The entire frontal face had been punched in.

  Slowly he climbed the steps. The door was an empty frame with shattered glass around its rim. It crunched as he pulled it open, mashing glass fragments. Inside was an explosion of glass and water. Splinters of glass were shot everywhere across the room. Lex stepped inside. He picked his way over glass scattered across the floorboards, careful not to slip in the pools of water on the floor. The couch and armchairs were drenched. His playing cards were strewn across the room. Half the books had tumbled from the bookshelves, and Vic Wallace’s whaling-boat photos had crashed to the floor and lay smudged in their broken frames. The back windows were gone too. Spat outwards. Over the sink, the curtains flapped and fluttered in the breeze like prayer flags.

  Blankly, he drifted through the ruin of his home, sweeping glass off the table and the kitchen bench with the back of his hand. He picked up a sodden book from the floor and shook the glass off its cover. It was strange, this floating, absent feeling that had come over him again, like it was happening to someone else.

  ‘It’s like a bomb blast,’ Callista was saying.

  Lex hadn’t noticed her come to the door. He looked into her shocked face and felt nothing. He was so detached, so floaty. Surely he should be feeling upset.

  He placed the book on the kitchen bench and walked down the hall to the bedroom. The wind had smacked the bedroom door shut. He forced it open and stopped. Glass was scattered all over the room. The bed was soaked. The curtains whipped in the wind and the sea seemed to roar in unchecked.

  Numb, Lex stood in the doorway and stared out through the wreckage. He watched Callista wrap a towel around her hand and sweep the shattered glass off the bed onto the floor. She kicked some glass out of the way and dragged the chest of drawers aside where it had toppled against the bed. A drawer fell out and with it a framed photograph, the photo of Isabel. Callista bent to pick it up.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, voice hollow. ‘I’ll have that.’

  A strange noise huffed out of her as he pulled the photograph from her hand. Her eyes were hurt and angry. She tried to snatch it back.

  ‘What’s this,’ she said, eyes snapping. ‘A child? Your child?’ She tugged frantically at the other drawers, tipping the contents onto the floor. ‘And what about your wife? Is there a photo of her too? What else are you hiding?’

  ‘Hiding?’ Lex was suddenly exploding with outrage. ‘Hiding? What about you? You didn’t tell me you were a Wallace.’

  ‘Is it such a big deal?’ Callista was wild, reckless, struggling with some desperate thing inside her. She felt as if s
he might throw something.

  ‘Yes it is, given that this is your grandfather’s house.’ Lex was like granite.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Something unfamiliar was curling over in him, like a wave breaking. He wished Callista would stop before something snapped in him. There was hammering in his head. The rumble of anger boiling deep within him was pressing to the surface. He tried to hold on, but his voice came out hard.

  ‘When were you going to tell me?’

  Her eyes flashed. ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Your real name . . . Callista Wallace.’

  ‘I told you my name. My married name. I wasn’t hiding anything.’

  ‘Of course you were hiding something. We talked about Wallaces dozens of times and you never mentioned it. Why’s that? Were you trying to woo me so you could win back the house?’

  Callista thought she would erupt. ‘That’s a disgusting suggestion. I enjoy your company.’

  ‘What? Like on the beach the other night, when you ripped me to shreds?’

  ‘When you were hooking into my father again! What was I supposed to do? Stand by and watch you annihilate him?’

  She was backed into a corner, fighting like a cat. And Lex was hot with seething anger. The room was too small for their emotions.

  ‘I think you should go,’ he said.

  But Callista stood firm and defiant. ‘Not until you tell me.’

  ‘Tell you what?’ he asked, incredulous.

  ‘About your wife and your daughter.’

  Lex glanced at Isabel’s photo and his fury left him. He felt bereft, betrayed, demolished.

  ‘My daughter’s dead,’ he said, flat and tired. ‘She died from cot death. And my wife blames me. So now she’s divorcing me. That’s about all you need to know.’

  He side-stepped past Callista’s shocked white face, through the shattered window and out onto the deck.