The Disappearances of Madalena Grimaldi

by Marele Day

  It was what the film industry calls magic hour. When they can give the illusion of night. Street lights are on but it’s not yet dark. Enough natural light to shoot by but not enough to make it look like bright harsh daylight. There was a gathering of clouds over the southern extremity of the beach but they didn’t look like they’d cause any problems to the people still enjoying the surroundings. It all looked like happy families as Vince and I walked along the beach front. Surfers on boards far out on the darkening water, small and toylike at this distance, as were the men, women and children splashing about in the white foam that spilled onto the sand. The wave at the end of its journey, before the molecules of water were sucked back out to sea to start the process all over again.

  We walked past a man under the public shower rubbing his hands over his prominent stomach to wash off the salt. As if the spray of water couldn’t do the job on its own. Beside him a sandy, sun-burnt child waited patiently. The man appeared to ignore her.

  At the north end of the beach, near the rock pool, was a mosaic mural with an appropriately marine theme. On the grassy verge beside the footpath, groups of people dressed in shorts and summery clothes were having barbecues. The smell of steaks and grilled calamari hung on the air. Guaranteed to make anyone within smelling range feel hungry. I wondered if I was starting to get obsessed with food. Seemed to me, everywhere I went lately there was food. I was either eating it or watching whether other people were eating it. The textbooks say it’s a substitute for sex. Yeah, well.

  Shafts of golden light were coming down through the clouds as if God had left the door of heaven open. It certainly was magic light. Everyone full of bonhomie, goodwill towards their fellow humans, how could there be suffering, pain or evil in a tableau like this? We didn’t know it then but this was to be the last barbecue of summer. The next day a total fire ban was declared. Ironic really, because in less than ten days the city would be ablaze.

  Vince stopped and looked silently at the shafts of light. Even a rational mind like his could not help be moved by it, I thought. He gazed at it a while longer then said, ‘Just proves light travels in straight lines, doesn’t it? It’d be a great idea for science teachers to bring a bunch of kids out here to see this.’

  ‘Yes, it would be a great idea for a bunch of kids to see this,’ I agreed.

  We continued walking, the path now starting to rise. Below us was the rock platform, the waves splashing over it, filling the honeycomb weathering with foam. There was the rock that once had a bronze version of ‘The Little Mermaid’ sitting on it, but the mermaid had long since been ripped off.

  When we got to the crest of the cliff there was a bench at the most scenic point. The bench was occupied by a couple of teenagers gazing out to sea. Well actually, she was gazing and he was trying to talk to her. ‘Seduction in progress, stage one,’ announced Vince. It sure was a nice place for it—all that crashing surf, the setting sun, no-one up here but seagulls—and a PI and a social worker doing a commentary.

  On we went, further around the north end. There was a group of kids sitting in a car. They looked like they were waiting for us to leave. Maybe I was just being suspicious. I looked down at the rock platform. There were good places to take shelter down there, out of reach of the sea’s long watery fingers. Under ledges, in crevices between rocks. You’d have to climb down there, or walk the long way round from the beach but it was safe, at least from the elements, once you were there. I couldn’t help thinking that all that climbing and walking would be good exercise, the sun and the sea a healthy environment. Like a holiday resort for homeless people.

  We ignored the kids in the car and walked on. ‘Homeless kids shelter down here sometimes,’ Vince said, putting words to my thoughts. There were signs-some crumpled-up navy blue material. It could have been a shirt, part of a sleeping bag, some old rags. Something to put between your soft body and the hard rock.

  ‘Where else do they shelter?’

  ‘Anywhere they can. Caves, clothing bins, under railway bridges. In tunnels.’ Vince stopped. He turned away and mumbled something but the words were carried away with the wind.

  I touched him lightly on the arm. ‘Vince?’

  ‘I found a kid in a tunnel once. Or what remained of her. Rats don’t seem to care what they gnaw on. It’s all protein to them.’

  We were almost at the end of the walkway now. The streets of North Bondi—Ramsgate Avenue, Brighton Boulevarde, Hastings Parade—all came down to the cliff edge. Blocks of flats sitting right on the cliff edge. They weren’t too extravagant, given the breathtaking location. Bondi did have a particular style. A cross between British seaside resort and Spanish Southern California. Lots of curves. Archways and balustrades.

  Something on the rock platform caught my eye. The last rays of the sun beamed on something painted in white on a boulder down there. The crude drawing of a syringe. I pointed it out to Vince.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, as if he’d seen it all before.

  ‘Do kids come down here? Use this spot?’ I asked him.

  ‘What do you think?’

  We started to head back to the beachfront. A man and a woman in their forties were sitting on another bench. He had his hand on her knee. She didn’t seem to mind. ‘Seduction in progress, stage two,’ Vince announced. Then he looked embarrassed. I was feeling a bit embarrassed myself.

  ‘Let’s find a place to drink these beers,’ I suggested, changing the subject.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Vince, glad to have the subject changed.

  The barbecuers were starting to pack up now. It was getting dark, kids had to be put to bed. Vince put the six pack between us on the bench then offered me a beer. Bondi could easily have become as brassy, extravagant and soulless as the Gold Coast, but it wasn’t. You could feel a renewed sense of civic pride. Developers wanted to do the place over with big tourist hotels. Think of all the money and employment it would bring to the area, they’d argue. But then Bondi would lose its flavour and become just another big hotel.

  There may have been a renewed sense of civic pride but there was also a syringe painted crudely on a rockface looking out to sea. Vince and I sat looking out to sea as well.

  ‘The reason I was the one who went into the tunnel,’ Vince continued, ‘was that in my misspent youth I’d done a bit of … urban caving.’ I knew Vince and Steve belonged to the university speleological club but I thought that meant exploring Jenolan Caves. ‘I found the girl in the stormwater drain in Rushcutters Bay park. You know the one I mean?’

  ‘Yeah, I know the one,’ I said grimly.

  ‘It was during my time at the Centre. One of the kids came in one day with this anklet. It was leather thonging with beads threaded on it. It looked like the one Tracey wore. We hadn’t seen Tracey for a couple of weeks so I asked her where she’d found it. She told me she saw it floating in the water in the drain. So I went and had a look. I went in all the way under the road. That’s where I found her.’

  ‘Does that happen a lot, people sheltering underground?’

  ‘Occasionally. Look, as bad as it is in Sydney, at least we’ve got climate on our side and some semblance of a welfare system. In the tunnels under New York there are whole communities, some with elected mayors. Can you believe it? There have even been babies born in the tunnels over there. Crack babies. There’s a whole underground society with different communities, some friendly, some not. There are loners. Men, women and children. Some set up a permanent life under the city. Tap into the electricity supply, catch water from leaky pipes, light fires, eat the rats. Before the rats eat them.

  ‘But as I said, here the tunnels are used more as occasional shelter. The temperature never drops below freezing point in Sydney, there’s more space, more air around people. They don’t shoot each other over a park bench.’

  ‘But they sometimes die. What had happened to Tracey?’

  Vince shook his head. ‘There was no way of telling. Kids crawl down into places they think are safe and can�
�t get out. Tracey could have slipped and fell, she could have OD’d, and yes, she could have been killed.’

  ‘My father … well, actually no. Someone bearing my father’s name died in that stormwater canal. Anzac Day, 1985.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise,’ said Vince, extending condolences on behalf of someone I didn’t even know.

  ‘Is that the only time you’ve ever found someone like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Vince. ‘And I must have been all under this city at one time or another. Particularly when I was a student. Steve must have told you about it.’ Vince offered me a second beer.

  ‘No. He never did. You weren’t one of those Agharti seekers, were you?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘There’s supposed to be a subterranean world called Agharti.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that, we were just down there for the buzz.’ Kerry had said the same thing. What was it that was so compelling about it? Vince told me how he and Steve had once gone all the way to Bondi by canoe via the sewer tunnel. ‘Brown water rafting,’ he grinned.

  I couldn’t resist the opportunity. ‘I hope you didn’t lose your paddle.’

  He saluted me with his beer. Things were loosening up, especially tongues.

  ‘There was another group who called themselves the Drain Drivers. They used to drive minis through stormwater drains. They’d go for kilometres. Under the surface, the city is absolutely riddled with tunnels. What the kids do now is race through the Harbour Tunnel in the wee small hours.’ He took a mouthful of beer. ‘You know what I’d like to do? Drain all the water out of the harbour, scrape away the surface layer of the streets and just have a good look. You’d see a completely different city. Tunnel City. There are even private ones. You know that pub in the Rocks, the Hero of Waterloo?’ I’d heard of it, it was the oldest pub in Sydney. And still functioning. ‘Back in the early days there was a trapdoor in front of the bar. Drunks would be dropped through it and pressganged. Sold to some ship’s captain. If you go downstairs there you can see the tunnel that used to lead to the waterfront. Manacles on the wall and everything.’ Vince was almost gleeful.

  ‘Why don’t we go for a walk?’ I suggested. ‘We can stick the rest of the beers under the bench and pick them up later.’

  Vince was doubtful that the beers would still be there when we returned but he didn’t mind. ‘Where will we go?’

  ‘As close as I ever want to get to caving,’ I said. ‘Let’s walk along the rock platform, to Needle Rock,’ I christened it.

  Vince brought one of the beers with him. Just in case. We walked back to the bench where we’d seen seduction stage one. It had now progressed to about stage eight. Didn’t these people have homes to go to?

  We found a way down to the rocks. My eyes were accustomed to the dark now and besides, the moon was shining so brightly you could almost read by it. I took off my shoes, preferring to feel the way with my feet and giving myself a better grip. I trod on something soft and realised it must have been the clump of rags we’d seen earlier. I put my shoes on again. I didn’t want the next thing I felt to be a syringe. We continued round the point, looking down into the black jags of crevices, taking care to jump well over them.

  Then it came into view—Needle Rock. An easy landmark for kids if they knew where to look. Despite the fact that I could feel eyes everywhere, we saw no-one down here. And such a romantic spot too. With all that seduction going on up above you’d think some of it would have trickled down here. The rock loomed larger and larger as we approached, much bigger than it looked from the walkway.

  The moonlight accentuated the white paint, making it look like the bleached bones of a skeleton. If it was a meeting place, there was no meeting tonight. We strolled over to it. No sign of real syringes. But they could have been thrown down the crevices or out to sea.

  From afar, this side of the rock appeared to be straight but now I could see that it curved inwards at the bottom so that you could sit there, lean your back against it, and have a slight overhang protecting you. We moved past it.

  At the base of the cliff there were all sorts of little caves. In their womblike way they were almost welcoming. I sat down. Vince followed suit. If I waited here long enough, maybe I would see something. Sand or the weathering of sandstone had given me a softish place to sit. A little damp with the salt air but it was cosy. I could almost curl up and go to sleep. Except I didn’t want to give Vince the wrong impression. We were sitting close but not touching.

  I wondered what the kids were like who came to the rock, who used this as a place to shoot up. The beach didn’t seem to go with the lifestyle. City streets, garbage bins, back alleys, park benches, yes. Being out here with nature seemed too … healthy. But the beach was one of the zones in between. The zones where the homeless lived. The zone where my father lived.

  We sat there in silence. Talk seemed pointless. The wind blew through my brain, and I became lulled by the chaotic pattern of the crashing waves, the dance of white spray. If there had been conversation, Vince would have pointed out the purely scientific reason for the phenomenon—at waterfalls, wherever water is in this kind of motion, and on the tops of mountains, negative ions are produced. This promotes a feeling of well-being.

  Vince’s arm came across, offering me the bottle of beer. I took a sip and returned the bottle, our fingers lightly brushing with the action. If we stayed here much longer …

  ‘Guess we better be heading back,’ I said, standing up and dusting damp sand off the seat of my trousers.

  ‘Guess we’d better,’ said Vince.

  We began the journey back. Soon the painted face of the rock was lost from view, like the dark side of the moon.

  Just as I was about to climb back to the top, a small object came hurtling over the edge. I didn’t know what it was but instinctively I stepped aside, pulling my head out of range. It landed on the rock platform. I bent down in the moonlight and saw what it was—a syringe. Vince saw it too. I shot a glance up to where it had come from but saw nothing. I did hear something though—the sound of a car driving away. Using his shoe, Vince rolled the syringe into a crevice.

  When we got back to the top the couple on the bench had thankfully gone. It must have something to do with the survival instinct of the species that if sex is going on in your vicinity you kind of want to have some too. I didn’t want Vince thinking that because he was here he’d be the one I wanted to have sex with. We were good mates, that’s all.

  It was getting late now, the air was cooling down. The other cars parked nearby had left as well. It was as if there was not another human being in the world. Like we were standing in the middle of an empty film set. The silent seaside flats, the streetlights, post box, the moon hanging in the air.

  When we got back to the bench, by some miracle, the beers were still there. ‘One more for the road?’ said Vince.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘why not? Let’s go back to the van though, it’s getting cold.’

  The van was now surrounded by boons leaning against their cars, flexing their young muscles, interacting socially, trying to crack onto girls. I didn’t want to sit here and have a quiet drink. ‘Excuse me,’ I said to a guy leaning on the bonnet of the van.

  ‘This yours?’ he said, standing up. I had the keys and I was getting into it, what did he think? ‘Nice van,’ he said admiringly, patting the side as we drove away.

  I drove up to where we’d just come from. This way we could have the view without the brisk seabreeze or the audience. Vince handed me the last beer. Again there was the light brushing of fingers. Well, I could handle it. It wasn’t repulsive or anything. I was sitting behind the steering wheel, nothing was going to happen.

  I don’t know if it was the beer, the setting or the fact that he was a social worker, but I found myself saying to Vince, ‘You know, sometimes I think I’m better off on my own. In a relationship I feel as if I’m losing myself. I married young, I didn’t have a sense of self at all then.’
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  ‘And with Steve?’ Vince asked softly. This was the first time since I’d ended the relationship with Steve that I didn’t close up like a sea anemone the minute someone mentioned his name.

  ‘I don’t know. If it’s not fireworks all the time, what’s the point?’

  Vince stretched his arm along the back of the seat. He wasn’t actually in contact with my shoulder but his arm would have been only a hair’s breadth away. ‘I think we expect too much in our society. All this self-fulfilment and individuation and have a good day.’ The hand had definitely moved now, resting on my shoulder, his fingers idly drawing little circles on my arm.

  ‘You know what the real problem was?’ I said to Vince, and it had only now occurred to me that this was the problem because up till now I’d shoved it all to one side, ‘Maybe I was too much of myself with Steve. He became like a shadow of me. If I pushed he would bend, if I walked one way he would walk that way too. It wasn’t two individuals meeting anymore. It was me and someone who reflected myself.’

  ‘Some people would give their eye teeth to have that happen.’

  I kept thinking about teeth as our lips crashed and we started in on some personal caving, exploring the inner recesses of each other’s mouth. Meanwhile, our hands had found their way under each other’s T-shirt.

  Why was my body responding the way it was? Vince was an old mate, that’s all. Why were my hands, as if they had a life of their own, feeling their way up his midriff, playing with the hairs on his chest? I don’t even like hairy chests.

  Although there was no stopping my hands, I managed to unhinge my mouth long enough to say, ‘Vince, we shouldn’t be doing this.’

  ‘Yes, you’re quite right.’ Another long exploratory kiss. ‘Let’s get over into the back.’

  There was an emergency board meeting happening in my head, so fast it was over before I knew it. One lone voice shouted yes! and without even taking a vote on it all the others followed suit.