Hindsight

by AA Bell

  PART TWO

  Surreality

  Everything we see is a perspective not the truth

  Marcus Aurelius

  FOUR

  Ben veered into the picnic area on the far side of the bridge to extricate the dragging cans and decorations from his car.

  ‘Did you have to stop here?’ Mira complained. A swarm of ghostly crime-scene investigators prevented her from seeing the bodies beyond the low grassy dune from this angle, but knowing they were down there was enough for her. ‘Forget the café.’ She slipped her hand over her mouth. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’

  ‘Ah, but much better to delay here than back on the isle, right?’ He climbed out, leaving the engine running. ‘Your spare sunnies are behind my seat. Why don’t you play while I’m busy?’

  She frowned, preferring to avoid any risk of seeing two people kill each other, but curiosity about the glasses drew her hand behind his seat anyway, where she found a solid wall of tightly wedged plastic bags. She wondered how many pairs he’d bought, but as she explored, she quickly discovered that many bulged with the familiar soft textures of tracksuits and t-shirts. Clothes from Serenity! And all labelled VIP: Visually Impaired Person. If found in trouble please contact Serenity, phone …

  She fisted the top two bags and threw them out her window, and another two before Ben caught her and took the fifth from her.

  ‘Hey, what’s all this?’ He rustled the bag as if opening it.

  ‘It’s all rubbish!’ She spotted a ghostly bin in the park and made a dash for it with a bag.

  ‘Well, don’t blame me! Petal and the others must have arranged it!’

  ‘Then, you won’t mind helping me ditch them.’

  ‘Seems an awful waste …’ She heard him collect two bags from the ground without following her. ‘Must be a few hundred bucks worth of clothes here. If you must ditch all of them, I suggest posting them back or donating them to charity.’

  ‘Fine!’ She spotted a sheltered park table and veered for it. ‘We’ll leave them here and you call the matron later.’

  Mira hurried past him to empty his car and found a box full of gadgets under the last two bags. The box clanked, betraying its contents: a standard kit of household aids, including a talking kettle, toaster and coffee cup. Feeling inside, she also found a Braille keyboard, mini talking printer and an assortment of tactile games and craft items. A meek electronic voice recited the time, also betraying the presence of a new wristwatch, but most alarming of all, she found a short metal rod with a knob at one end which twisted to make the rod telescope out to full length.

  ‘A GPS cane!’ She bumped one of the control buttons and another electronic voice responded: You are five point three kilometres west-south-west of Serenity. Please state your destination.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  Ben came to her side and snatched it away before she could break it.

  ‘I left all this stuff in my room deliberately!’

  ‘They weren’t to know, Mira. They clearly thought they were helping. I would have packed them too if I’d had time. I thought you’d enjoy that sort of thing if it helped your independence?’

  ‘Sure, on the inside, but out here it makes me feel conspicuous, and I don’t need anything to remind me how blind I can be. I can cope well enough without any of it! And I certainly don’t need a GPS cane reporting my whereabouts back to them!’

  ‘Mira, be reasonable. Ditching the clothes, sure. I can understand that. I wouldn’t want to wear that Serenity label in public either, but the GPS cane is primarily to help you know where you are, and that gear is worth a fortune. You can’t just leave it here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t care if they were solid gold, Ben. I don’t need them.’

  ‘You mean you don’t want to need them.’

  ‘Same thing!’

  ‘I beg to differ. You need to accept your limitations before you can develop sustainably beyond them.’

  ‘And what if this is as good as I get? Have you considered that?’ She shuddered to think of him sending her back to Serenity eventually like damaged goods.

  ‘You’ll do fine. Development is a gradual process. Trust me, these tools will help you slide back into normal society. They’re not just for you, they’re for everyone who sees you using them — as a sign to give you a little more space and consideration.’

  ‘I don’t want to be treated differently! Besides, to slide back implies that I’ve been part of it in the first place. No way. I plan to be a hermit.’

  ‘After you pass the board review.’

  ‘Yes, after I pass the board review.’

  ‘… and you’re sure you won’t need any of this stuff in the meantime?’

  She folded her arms, loving him for caring so much but hating his persistence.

  ‘What if you leave them in my car just in case?’

  ‘Three letters, Ben. G-P-S. That’s how Kitching tracked us back to your beach house.’

  ‘Fine,’ he said, sounding anything but agreeable as he clicked his fingers. ‘Give them here. I’ll take care of them.’

  She handed them over and listened to ensure he took them to the table and set them down, but as she returned to the car and fastened her belt without his help, she heard a soft thump, as if he’d opened and closed the trunk.

  ‘Please tell me you didn’t keep anything?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ He chuckled and gunned the engine, then skidded off to put the violet ghost of Likiba Isle swiftly behind them. Too fast for Mira at first. She closed her eyes for the first two corners, then opened them in time to witness a car collide with a delivery van ahead of them at an intersection. Ben accelerated anyway, oblivious to the ghost of the dead woman at the wheel and her child, who’d been torn in half as he’d passed through their windscreen. Death everywhere and she always seemed to see the worst of it. Mira clamped her eyes shut, unable to bear the sight of passing through their bodies, and by the time she opened her eyes again, she was on a bridge. Below her, a ten-lane highway gouged a scar through another forest corridor, running parallel between the coast and the inland ranges. A long sweeping curve swept them down into the fast-moving traffic, headed north.

  She heard Ben flick the indicator despite having nowhere else to go except a faster lane.

  ‘Don’t!’ she cried as he veered and dropped a keg of fuel out the tailpipe. Then ploughing into the rear of a ghostly horse trailer, she saw twelve heavily rugged miniature ponies, glimpsed inside the first pony’s stomach — dark, but still discernible — and clamped her eyes shut again with her legs curled up on the seat and her face hidden between her knees.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ben said as he eased his foot off the gas. ‘I forgot how you feel about driving.’

  ‘Actually, the faster the better today.’ She kept her head down. ‘I’d ride on a rocket if it could take me home again, but … never mind.’ Even if the developer agreed to sell back some of her parents’ land, no amount of money could resurrect her century-old Moreton Bay fig trees from ashes. Her favourite grove, the central seven, had borne a quaint nest of treehouses, and been embossed in gold along every broad bough with a lifetime of her mother’s favourite Braille poetry. One day she’d conjure the courage to go back there but for now it saddened her to think of them again. Never more would the breeze sing through their leaves now that her ‘poet trees’ lived only in yester-years.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ben echoed. ‘The best I can manage for the moment is my place.’

  Freddie aged into Fredarick and shivered inside his straitjacket. Though he was wearing it again now, it seemed cold to him.

  Mira had gone.

  He tried to meld back with his corner of Serenity — his headphones throbbing with a steady rhythm in a dim attempt to steady his heartbeat — but her face bled through the walls of his dreams to torment him. No bravery left within him. He couldn’t conjure the strength to cry out with another warning. No need anyway, since Mira had become his wrecking ball, swinging away from him. One
tap and his sandstone heart was already crumbling.

  He could feel the rumble of the coming noise, and the echoes of tomorrow’s footsteps in the halls. There was nothing left for him now, but to wait for her return amidst the screaming silence — unless …

  His mind turned to a tactic which had worked for him once before — not with hardball Mira, whose heart was still so hollow it could smash upon the first reinforced wall of adversity. No, he needed to align his plans with the demolition team who’d soon set her in motion — the ones who’d be seeking to engage her services. Or with Matron Sanchez, the only living soul he’d ever entrusted with a full dose of his foreknowledge.

  In the meantime, they all seemed to think that Mira had stretched out to safety, so he needed to fix that. Wrecking ball or rubber band, either way, she would strike home with savage ferocity, unless he could prevent her from stretching out to her fullest potential.

  Inspired, Fredarick glanced to his moon window and saw his spike-haired angel was there, watching him.

  Sorry, he said, guarding his silence by sliding out of his jacket again and speaking only with his hands. I’m good now. He forced himself unsteadily to his feet. Do you wish me to prove it?

  How? she replied, guarding the silence too.

  In writing.

  In Braille, you mean?

  He nodded, since there was no fooling her. I am deaf by birth, mute by choice, and Braille is the only safe code for bleeding my poison into the world.

  Waves clapped against the hull of the ferry, making it dance. Decks bobbed to the rhythm and seagulls cackled overhead, but Mira kept her eyes closed, feeling ill.

  ‘Halfway there,’ Ben said, patting her hand. ‘Only twenty or thirty minutes in this fine weather.’

  She nodded, but this was her second trip to his beach house, so she could judge the timing for herself already.

  ‘It’s not only the motion of the boat, Ben. Your car is wallowing. I feel like I’m riding a drunk duck who’s riding piggy back on another drunken duck.’

  ‘Maybe you should get off one of the ducks? Get out and stretch your legs, I mean. Even with the window down, the air’s fairly stifled on this level anyway. You need to get your head over the side.’

  ‘Good idea.’ She clambered out and stumbled across to the invisible rail.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be moving you to another island,’ Ben said as he joined her. ‘My mother has rented a house on the mainland we could use while she’s at my place, too, but after so long in confined communities, I thought you’d find a city too claustrophobic. Maybe a farm would be a better idea? An old estate maybe, with a house that was built at least a hundred and twenty years ago, so you can arrange the furniture exactly as it used to be. Then you wouldn’t need shades to cope every minute of the day.’

  Mira shrugged. ‘I’ll need time to settle in no matter where we go, so no need to disrupt your home life that much for me. I’ll squeeze in and keep out of your way as best I can.’ Out of his mother’s way too, she decided, since Mel Chiron had seemed a bit too cranky and overprotective even before Ben had been shot.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.’ Ben brushed her hand, his touch light and fidgety, as if nervous. ‘Far from it. I want you to feel at home.’ He brushed her cheek next, making her flinch. ‘Sorry, I wish I could tell you how much …’ He leaned nearer and she felt his soft breath against her lips. She ached for him to kiss her, but the seconds stretched longer than she could bear. A lurch in the ferry could have been excuse enough to fall against him, but just as the invisible deck began to heave beneath her, he leaned away and the air turned cooler between them.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, confirming her fears. ‘I can’t let myself fail you again.’

  ‘Fail me?’ She almost laughed. ‘I’m free now thanks mainly to you. It’s me who should be sorriest. You were shot nearly dead because of me.’

  ‘Oh, this wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t struck my head on the way down.’

  ‘It must still hurt like the devil, surely?’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll endure hell itself if it keeps you safe, Mira. I’m an idiot. If I’d been watching out for trouble that day instead of allowing myself to be so damned distracted by you, I never would have been shot in the first place, you never would have been kidnapped by that damn colonel, and we probably wouldn’t be here, having this damn argument. But let’s not relive moments that we’ll have to endure in our nightmares anyway. Tomorrow starts today and yesterday is history, even if we have to fight so flaming hard to make them stay that way.’

  Mira smiled, remembering the matron’s warning. ‘Is that any language for my guardian angel?’

  ‘There I go again.’ He brushed her cheek tenderly a second time, as if that was as much affection as he dared to show her in public nowadays. ‘I think you’ll need to be my chaperone.’

  ‘You have your mother for that — at least until she moves out to live with her boyfriend.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath. Remember, she’s a nurse, so she’s somewhat more protective than ever lately. I dare say I won’t be able to blast her out of the house until my wound’s healed completely and the scar’s fading. I just wish …’ He patted her hand and sighed. ‘If we’re really good, maybe we can be done with the review committee in six weeks or so instead of months.’

  ‘Yes, let’s be strong then.’ Inside though, she felt weaker than ever.

  ‘Ahoy, Benny!’ called a French-accented woman. Her voice came to them from only a short distance away, yet slightly above them. And she sounded young, about Mira’s age, but with a playful deception in her voice that should have been as obvious to Ben as a bottled blonde or plastic cleavage. ‘Don’t tell me you broke your arm to get out of my abseiling lesson?’

  ‘Hi, Gabion,’ Ben shouted with less enthusiasm. ‘Just a mishap at work. Sorry, I’m a little busy right now. Can I call you later?’

  ‘Oui, naturally. You’ve got my new number at Dead Man’s Beach?’

  ‘Van fourteen?’

  ‘Oui, but I sleep out on my sloop now. The van is only for my bathroom, spare storage and car, so call first so I’ve got time to come ashore — and don’t be such a stranger as you have been lately.’

  Lately? Jealousy flared unexpectedly, but Mira reassured herself that Ben probably had plenty of friends, and possibly also a few girlfriends even if he hadn’t mentioned anyone aside from his surf-loving mother. Thinking about it, though, made her realise just how little she really knew about him outside of his old job as her social worker. Yet how close could the French woman be to Ben as a friend, if she wasn’t aware that he didn’t abseil any more, or that he’d been in hospital for the last ten days?

  The boat lurched unexpectedly on a wave, and in reflex Mira opened her eyes. Through the purple haze of yester-weeks, she saw a two-storey ferry ploughing through choppy waves barely an arm’s length away from her, while she was gliding invisibly parallel as if her drunken duck had taken flight and was keeping pace off their starboard bow. A wave caught the ghostly ferry too, sending it listing away from her, and as she leaned to compensate, the invisible deck shifted beneath her feet in the opposite direction.

  Ben caught her as she fell, and steadied her against the railing.

  ‘Whoa, that was unsettling! Were you better off in the car?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I just …’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Can your friend hear us?’

  ‘No, she’s upstairs with her car. So relax, okay? She can’t lip-read, especially from this angle.’

  Mira turned further anyway and saw two of the ghostly passengers on the neighbouring ferry — a bearded man in a long coat with his much younger, bob-haired girlfriend pressed between him and their railing. They were both looking towards Mira with their backs to the other passengers, and since the man was so much larger than his pale-skinned companion, it was unlikely that anyone else on that ferry could see what he was doing to her with his hands inside her blouse
, making her squirm.

  Please, not here, Mira read from her lips, but ignoring her pleas, he turned her mouth to meet his and in one movement exposed both of her breasts to the bay as he continued to pinch and squeeze her. The woman melted against him but also squirmed more, as if trying to face him without breaking their kiss, but his strong hands were everywhere. He kept her pinned against the rail and as he began to rock a little faster than the pitch of the waves, Mira realised what else he must have been doing to her out of sight between his long coat and the rail.

  Heat flooded Mira’s cheeks and she turned away from them.

  ‘You look like you need to sit down.’ Ben touched her hand, making her flinch, and as Mira sensed him leaning closer, she sidestepped a little further down the rail away from him.

  ‘No, I just saw a couple …’ Turning, she noticed the ghostly couple still at it. ‘Never mind,’ she said, averting her eyes again. ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Ben said, but he sounded a little hurt. ‘First sign of trouble though, I need to hear about it.’

  ‘You bet.’ Glancing ahead, she noticed another ghostly ferry docked at a pier on the sheltered side of the long mountainous island that was also their destination, while another ferry followed behind them and three others headed back to the mainland at similar intervals. Four huge cargo ships also gagged the throat of the nearby river port, while a race of jet skis traced a lace of wakes across the huge bay and a flotilla of catamarans breezed independently from north to south in zippered patterns between the hazards of mangrove islets and muddy shallows.

  ‘It’s so busy out here,’ she said, trying to look anywhere except at the ghostly couple; and yet her traitorous eyes kept straying back to them. ‘I didn’t realise how busy. Last time, I kept my eyes closed the whole way.’