Wildlight

by Robyn Mundy

  14

  Tom yanked the outboard into life, reversed the dinghy in an arc and motored out from the Gulch. Stephanie sat perched at the bow, gripping the gunnel and looking back at the hill from where they’d come. ‘It’s like a big scar through the bush,’ she called to him above the motor.

  She meant the haulage way. He felt her watching him. Tom’s stomach churned in equal proportions of zest and anxiety. Yes! she’d squealed when he’d told her the plan. She’d raced from the lighthouse, changed her clothes and was waiting with her backpack before he’d had a chance to properly chat with James, assure her father she’d be safe. Have you packed a towel? her mother called after them. Did you get the bread, Steph? Tom wanted today to be good. Let it be good.

  The Perlita Lee bobbed at anchor, water shimmering, her red and white paintwork gleaming in the morning light. Frank was out on deck cleaning salt from the wheelhouse windows. Habib had moved all the pots to the bow. The day off was a bonus that Tom couldn’t fathom—halfway through a fishing stint—he’d grabbed it just the same; he’d run with Frank’s idea. Invite her aboard, make a day of it, we’ll run over the other side for a look-see. Any place you want to go. Frank. Some weeks on top of the world, dealing out benevolence like a croupier with cards. We deserve a day off, Frank had said. That they did. Night and day, working the outside of South West Cape up to Port Davey, two, three shots a night. His brother ought to be stoked: four days and the tanks were three-quarters full with top-dollar fish.

  Frank had changed from his track pants with the tear in the bum. He helped Stephanie aboard. ‘Hi, Frank,’ she said without waiting to be introduced. ‘Hi, Habib.’ Frank gave a nod of approval. Habib bowed and shook her hand and took her pack.

  The wheel was Frank’s throne, but once he moved the Perlita Lee away from the island, the GPS set for Louisa Bay, he motioned to Tom. ‘You take her, mate. I’ll sort a few things below.’

  Stephanie was seated behind the wheelhouse talking to Hab. She turned to smile. The rumble of the engine vibrated through the metal floor, through Tom’s legs and arms. Frank had dismantled half the engine before he’d found the fault. Since he’d put it back together it hadn’t missed a beat. Trust the boat, Tom told himself. His mother would say, Don’t think badly of your brother. Look at everything he does for us. Perhaps this time she was right.

  Tom pushed the throttle hard and felt a surge of power, the same charge he remembered as a boy when Frank had first started on the boats. Back then Tom would blink awake to his Christmas sack hanging off his door. It made Tom squirm to think how quickly he could set his mother’s gifts aside. Waiting in the lounge room was something she could never afford to buy.

  His brother had a sixth sense, as if he knew before Tom exactly what a boy his age would want. His first bike a dragster with blue and black stripes. The next year a skateboard. Then the CD player for his bedroom. The mountain bike whose picture Tom had clipped from a catalogue and taped to his bedroom door months before, hoping Frank would find it. Frank’s benevolence enveloped the house. A ham on the bone that filled a shelf of the fridge. Crayfish. Chocolates. A crate of Tom’s favourite soft drink. A carton of fresh sweet cherries for their mother. One Christmas Frank staggered in from the garage with a new TV. He’d knocked his knuckles manoeuvring the box through the door. Frankie, Mum cried. Oh, Frank. She’d grown quiet, the way she sometimes did at Christmas. Perhaps the price tag of Frank’s generosity and all that abundance amounted, in her eyes, to a hard-fisted reminder that her sons had been robbed of the singular gift every child deserves.

  *

  Louisa Bay. Even on a day as calm as this the waves rolled in; there was no bringing the dinghy straight up on the beach. Hab motored around the sheltered side of Louisa Island and Tom and Stephanie clambered over the gunnel into thigh-deep water. Tom shuddered at the cold. They waded, hand in hand, to the sand spit that linked the island to the beach. Hab gave a wave and angled back toward the big boat.

  Stephanie meandered across the hard sand; he listened to her singing. Tom veered up the beach, past a flock of terns planted near the river mouth. A pair of oystercatchers tottered along the river’s edge, halting to address their reflections skewed across the water. The edge of the river was patterned into rivulets of sand that seemed to shiver beneath the water’s flow. The middle deep and dark, as steeped as a billy of strong tea.

  ‘Tom!’ Stephanie bounced past him, barefoot, she wore a bikini top, cut-off denim shorts. She threw down her backpack and towel, leapt upon the overhang of sand, squealed and slid down to a halt. Along the south-west coast, tannin from peat soil blackened waterways. By the time Louisa River reached the bay, its course ran parallel with the back of the beach like a thick leather belt.

  Tom cupped cold water to his mouth. Stephanie looked dubious. ‘It’s fresh.’ He wiped his chin. She knelt and drank. She was as slender as a waterbird, her body feather pale.

  Tom could see aboriginal middens on the far bank of the river. There were caves if you knew where to look, stark reminders of a bygone time. Beyond the dunes a thick band of vegetation rose to the craggy slopes and bluffs of the Ironbound Ranges.

  Frank had crossed the Ironbounds, had walked the length of the South Coast Track when he was fifteen. In record time, his brother liked to skite. Tom once suggested he and Frank walk it together. Frank shook his head. You’d hate it, Tom-Tom. Mud, mountain ranges, wind and bloody sleet; your tent, sleeping bag, nothing gets a chance to dry. As if Tom were soft, some kind of princess. Subject closed.

  The Perlita Lee stood at anchor, a glare of brilliance, the aluminium dinghy tethered with a painter, bobbing at the back.

  ‘Coming for a swim?’ she said.

  ‘The river? Have you felt it?’

  Steph put her foot in. She gasped. ‘A quick swim.’

  An intake of breath as icy water rose to his groin, ballooned through his board shorts, girdled his waist. Stephanie shrieked with the cold. She was under, she surfaced with a ragged gasp, ‘It’s freezing!’ She swam out a few metres, swam back and grabbed his arm. No. He whimpered. ‘Yes. Yes.’ He plunged through a shock of cold; the current easing him along. It was too cold to breathe properly. He retreated to the edge where he could stand waist deep, the water icy on his legs. He drew her close and she looped her arms around his neck, wrapped her legs around his. He felt her body shivering, her ragged breaths.

  They laid their towels together on the beach. A bush bird trilled; the salt and kelp faded with the warmth. The scent and sound was this, skin and breath, the sun on his neck, an insect droning by. Tom closed his eyes to the softness of her lips. He stroked her arm with his fingers, studied her skin. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the skin that curved toward her breast. She kissed his fingers. He contemplated going further but steeled himself against the thought. Something about the day felt as fragile as a shell.

  They made their way along the length of the beach. Dotterels danced across the sand. ‘Is that Maatsuyker?’ She pointed out to sea.

  ‘Yep. Flat Witch in front of it. Then the Big Witch.’

  She stopped. ‘You can see the sheds at the whim. I’d never thought about people being able to see us from the land. Out there it seems like you’re completely alone, a speck on the ocean.’

  Tom kissed her hair. ‘Imagine how it feels in a boat.’

  He helped Stephanie search for shells but none were to be found, just a scattering of flotsam: a plastic strap, a jam jar filled with tannin water.

  A forested gully marked the far end of the beach, its rock face shiny with water that sprinkled a steady shower onto the sand. Waves washed around a small islet and whooshed through a channel in the rock. A pair of sulphur-crested cockatoos perched above them on a branch. Suddenly the air was filled with wings of white, cockatoos lifting from trees, their raucous shrieks rebounding.

  A cluster of buoys marked a secluded campsite among the trees, protected from the weather by the cliffs. They followed the wall of cliffs through gro
ves of fern, over fallen trunks wound in moss and lichen. The air felt cool. He saw Stephanie shiver. There was something primal about this place. ‘There,’ he said. Two small caves beneath an overhang of rock.

  Stephanie took photos. ‘Did the aboriginal people live in them? They look so meagre.’

  ‘Not sure. I know they used them. For shelter, for cooking.’

  ‘It feels a bit spooky,’ she said, making her way back out to the beach.

  They returned to their towels at the river’s edge. He felt warm and lazy with the sun. She drew a pattern on his tattooed shoulder. ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘I don’t remember. A long story, involving alcohol.’

  ‘My parents won’t let me have one.’

  ‘You don’t want one.’ He pulled at the ugly pair of anchors.

  ‘I’d have dolphins.’

  He kissed her unblemished shoulder. Tom rested his head on the crook of his arms. Stephanie propped against his back.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she said.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘The last time you were thinking.’

  ‘Being here. With you. How it feels.’

  ‘How does it feel?’

  He hesitated. Her hair felt warm against his shoulder. ‘It feels right.’ The way that when the temperature is right you never really think about it.

  ‘My brother,’ she said. ‘He would have liked you.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yep.’ She curled up, pulled the extra towel across her knees. ‘Let’s stay here. Let’s live on the beach. Catch fresh fish. Bathe beneath the waterfall. Sleep beneath the Milky Way.’

  ‘Give it another twelve hours. It’ll be howling.’

  ‘Do you think about next year? The new century?’

  Tom raised his head. ‘I won’t be on a boat shooting pots.’

  She tickled his side. ‘What will Frank do without his Tom-Tom?’

  ‘Frank’s cool,’ he lied. Not lied, exactly, he’d tell Frank he was leaving when the time was right. It sounded easy, saying it to Stephanie. He combed her hair with his fingers. ‘You’ll be at university, being smart.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said. She crossed her arms and took a deep breath. ‘Or I might do something radical.’

  ‘Live on a beach?’

  Tom heard the outboard. He wished time would halt. ‘It’s nearly half past two.’

  She shook sand from her towel. ‘You could come to Sydney. When you finish on the boat. If you want to.’

  ‘I could do that.’ Tom buttoned his shirt. There’d be plenty of work up there. He owned his car, had a stack of savings in the bank. There’d be choices. The beach crumbled into powder beneath his feet. He put his hand around Stephanie’s shoulder, felt her arm around his waist. ‘I’d like that.’

  *

  A large stainless steel shower was built behind the wheelhouse. ‘Use the shower in my cabin,’ Frank instructed her. ‘You’ll have a bit of privacy.’

  There was no soap Steph could find, the moulded cubicle felt unused. Steph spread her things across Tom’s bunk, changed into jeans. The cabin felt dim and airless with the curtains pulled, she caught a whiff of diesel fumes. Steph twisted the towel around her hair, stretched out on Tom’s bed and rested her head on his pillow. Frank’s double bed was at the very front of the boat, Tom and Habib’s bunks within a hand’s reach of one another, moulded to the curve of the hull. Steph listened to the rhythmic chink of anchor chain, the crackle of a radio transmission, muffled voices, ocean lapping by her head against the hull. The boat rocked. Steph hugged her arms. The way Tom looked at her, touched her skin. On the shelf above his bunk he kept his hairbrush, razor, a magazine on four-wheel drives, a book, Van Diemens Land, a photo of a man. She drew Tom’s brush through her hair, imagined his hands touching her—all of her. She wanted it to happen. Her skin radiated heat from the sun. Her scalp tingled. She cloaked the sensation around her, wanting to carry the wrap of it home. Steph crammed her things into her pack. Tom and Stephanie. Stephanie, he called her. It sounded womanly; Steph sounded like a girl.

  ‘Where in Sydney?’ Frank tore the two thick pincers from the crayfish, his hands as tough and thorny as the shell.

  ‘Forty Baskets Beach.’ Lunch was a feast. Two crayfish, sliced meat and cheese, tomatoes, baked bread from her mother and three kinds of lettuce from the vegetable garden. Steph had expected a sandwich, sitting out on deck. Frank looked none the wiser. ‘North Shore,’ she explained. ‘Near Manly.’

  ‘On the water?’

  ‘Behind the beach.’ It felt odd sitting in a circle, the only girl, under scrutiny from Frank. ‘It’s not flash or anything. My parents bought before prices went up.’ A sort of coveting that put Steph on edge.

  ‘Tom tells us you’re going to be a doctor.’ Frank gave Tom a, See, I do listen look. ‘Says you’ve all kinds of talents.’

  Tom picked at his food.

  ‘Doctor good job,’ Habib said. ‘At home, I study at the academy.’

  ‘You?’ Frank sounded incredulous.

  ‘Not to finish.’ Habib gave a gesture and a whistle. ‘Come here, Australia.’

  ‘I thought you’d been a chef,’ Tom said.

  ‘Study day. Cook nights at restaurant of my uncle.’ Habib waved his hands. ‘Now I chef every day, every night. Home from boat. I cook. I clean.’ He turned to Steph and drew a bulging curve. ‘Baby soon my wife. She most necessary rest. Be strong. Good health.’

  ‘Sounds to me like you’re under the thumb, mate,’ Frank said. He turned to Steph. ‘How do you like our little corner of the world? Bit of a change from home.’

  ‘I sort of knew what to expect. Mum grew up on Maatsuyker. My grandfather was the light keeper, in the seventies.’

  ‘So I believe. Back then the light would have been kerosene.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘They’d switched to electric by the time I started. It still looked fucking awesome.’ Frank stopped. ‘Language,’ he scolded himself. ‘Better than the rubbish they’ve got up there now.’

  ‘Mum calls it the Tupperware light.’

  ‘Didn’t matter where you were. Unless there was sea fog, in which case you couldn’t see your hand in front of you, you could see the light from twenty-five, thirty miles away. You’d look up at it, flash, flash, every half a minute, and you knew exactly where you were. When I first started there weren’t that many using GPS, all the fandangle we have now. You relied on the lights. You knew the keepers, you’d have a chinwag on the radio; if the weather was kind you might call in, give them a feed of crays and they’d make you a cup of tea. I wouldn’t even know who’s up there now. Except for you.’

  ‘I never hear you on the radio.’

  ‘Listen in, do you?’

  ‘No.’ Steph blushed. ‘I mean, the radios are on in the house; we have to have them on for Tasmar Radio, or if someone’s in distress.’

  ‘Tom’s the only one that talks, in recent times,’ Frank cackled. ‘I don’t have any friends, do I, Tom-Tom?’ Frank put on a sad face. ‘Joking. Truth is, there are too many dropkicks out there. Eh, Tom?’

  ‘There’s a few.’ Tom started clearing the table.

  ‘We only ever have crayfish at Christmas. I suppose you have it all the time.’

  ‘Hardly ever,’ Tom said. ‘We have whatever’s lurking in the freezer. Or up there in the cupboard.’

  ‘Slim pickings, some nights,’ said Frank.

  ‘Except for Hab’s dinners,’ Tom said. ‘He can make a banquet out of anything.’

  Frank collected a toothpick. ‘As long as it involves rice, lentils or potatoes. With enough spice to blow the roof off your mouth.’

  ‘Tom is good cook,’ Hab told Steph. ‘He this and this and this.’ Habib took imaginary pinches of herbs and sprinkled them into a pot. ‘Good taste.’

  ‘Tom-Tom cooks a mean pizza in his special little oven at home.’ Frank sounded mo
cking.

  ‘Perhaps he’ll cook for me.’ Steph said it as a challenge.

  Tom took her plate. ‘Anytime. Anywhere.’

  ‘You’ll love our pizza oven at home—’ She stopped.

  Frank raised his eyebrows. ‘Off to Sydney are we, Tom?’ Frank looked to Steph. ‘Is he?’

  ‘Not until . . . when he finishes on the boat.’

  ‘Ah.’ Frank wiped his dirty hands on the tea towel. ‘I see.’

  *

  The wind had sprung up, riffling the water. It blew away the smell of diesel. The change in weather matched the shift in mood aboard the boat. Great paw prints of cumulus galloped in from the west. Lenticular cloud looked motionless while alto cumulus billowed into gigantic jellyfish, climbing through the sky.

  They detoured around the Needles so that Steph could take photos of the lighthouse. She zipped up her hoodie, stayed in the shelter of the wheelhouse canopy. She waited for the boat to ride up on a wave then quickly snapped a shot. The tower looked proud and stately perched at the edge of the cliff. Above it their house nestled among the tea-tree. It would have looked the same when her mother was a girl. It would have looked the same one hundred years ago. The paddock the same russet carpet of grass heads and tiny yellow flowers, and perhaps they did or didn’t have the dandelions back then.

  When the paddock was long and unkempt, it brushed against Steph’s calves in a way that made her want to lie down and roll through it. Dad likened mowing the pasture and lawns and road to painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge: you reached one end then started at the other. With the onset of spring, the grass grew almost overnight. Guano from the mutton-birds fertilised the grass and leached into soil. When Dad wasn’t mowing he was clearing drains, another thirty metres, digging out the fetid slurry that with each new downpour unearthed topsoil and guano into milky rivulets.