A Single Breath

by Lucy Clarke

  “It’s for you. To say thanks—for the shack.”

  “You didn’t need to,” he says almost tersely.

  Realizing he can’t take the wine because his hands are bloodied from gutting, she draws it awkwardly to her side.

  “Dinner?” she casts into his silence, nodding toward the fish.

  “Yeah.” There’s a pause, then, “Did you wanna . . .?”

  She hadn’t meant the question as a self-invite and feels her cheeks reddening. Yet at the same time she realizes that she would like to stay—to have a chance to talk. Eventually she says, “That’d be great.”

  Three lime-green birds burst from a tree behind them. Eva turns, watching their brilliant wings beat at the sky.

  “Swift parrots,” he says, following her gaze. “Arrive every spring. Come over the Bass Strait from the mainland. I think they’re nesting in one of the tree hollows behind the house.”

  The birds make a high-pitched piping noise as they disappear into the canopy of another tree at the far side of the garden.

  Eva takes in the rest of the surroundings. “Lovely place you’ve got out here. This is where you used to come as kids?”

  He nods.

  “Where’s the shack?”

  “Used to be right where the house is now.”

  “Oh.” She remembers Jackson pulling her onto his lap and telling her, “Owning a shack is a Tassie thing. They’re bolt-holes, a place to disappear to when you’re craving some space, some wilderness.” He’d spoken of his plan to one day do up their old shack for his father. “Dad loved that place once. Maybe he could love it again.” Eva had noticed the sadness clouding Jackson’s expression as he’d said that, and realized how deeply he missed his father. She’d threaded her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. “What was that for?” Jackson had asked.

  “Just for being you.”

  Saul says, “I’m gonna run these guts down to the water. Go in and grab a drink.”

  Inside, the house smells new, like freshly sawn wood. The living-cum-dining room has sliding glass doors that lead out onto the deck. In the corner of the room there’s a wood-burning stove and two baskets of kindling and logs. The place is furnished simply with a wide brown sofa, a low coffee table in a grainy wood, and a large bookcase lit by two old fishing lamps.

  Photos hang from the walls in glass frames: an underwater shot of sunlight streaming through the sea’s surface; sand dunes so vast and perfect they look like a mountain range under fresh snow; a photo of Jackson wearing a heavy backpack as he stands in front of Machu Picchu.

  Saul has a good collection of marine books—The Australian Fisherman, A Biography of Cod, Sea Fishing, A Reflection on Freediving, The Sea Around Us, Knots and Rigs, Shipwrecks of Tasmania—but also a wide range of fiction spanning the classics to modern literature.

  Then she sees a name on a book spine that catches her attention: Lynn Bowe. Saul and Jackson’s mother.

  She sets down the wine bottle and carefully slides the book free.

  Jackson had told her that their mother had been a writer. Apparently she loved coming to Wattleboon because the space helped her think. When the boys were little she’d take them up to a clearing on one of the capes and they’d spend the afternoons reading or drawing while she wrote.

  On the inside sleeve there is a black-and-white photo of a graceful woman with long hair swept into a simple chignon. She has the same dark eyes as Saul, large and serious.

  Turning the page, Eva reads the dedication: For Dirk. Always.

  She tries to place the man she visited with his thinning socks and whiskey breath as the beau of this beautiful young woman. She knew from Jackson how devastated Dirk had been by Lynn’s death. She was the head of their family, the sun around which the men orbited.

  “My mother,” Saul says.

  Eva turns, startled.

  Saul stands in the doorway, his dark gaze pinned on her. She feels heat rising in her cheeks. “She was very beautiful.”

  “Yes,” Saul agrees. “She was.”

  She wants to say something more, but then Saul turns and moves into the kitchen.

  HE WASHES HIS HANDS and dries them on a tea towel, then begins roughly chopping red chilies, garlic, and a bunch of coriander.

  Eva leans against the kitchen counter and offers to help, twice, and the second time Saul tells her she can make a salad just to give her something to do.

  He begins stuffing the fish with the chopped herbs and spices, finding it odd having a woman in his house after so long.

  Eva asks, “Did you catch those today?”

  “Yeah. Aussie salmon. I got out with the spear gun after work. I was lucky—they were just schooling right out front.” He lays each fish on a large square of tinfoil, thinking of the shoal that had curled above him, their silver tails catching in the sunlight. He’d hovered there, just watching. Some days he didn’t even pull the trigger, he just liked seeing the way they moved through the water, scales glinting.

  “Do you prefer it to line fishing?” she asks, drawing the knife through the tight red skin of a tomato.

  “Feels like a fairer fight,” he tells her. “You only spear what you can eat, plus there’s no bait involved. If you come back with nothing, well, just means the fish were havin’ a better day than you.”

  “You were diving without a spear gun that first morning I was here.”

  He nods. “Sometimes I just go out for a free-dive. You know, breath-hold diving—no scuba gear.”

  “I’ve seen a TV show about that. Isn’t it where people are diving down to crazy depths?”

  “Some people are. The record for free-diving—and this is without weights or sleds, just literally swimming straight down and then back up on one breath—is one hundred and twenty-one meters.”

  “No? They must have incredible lungs. Do you measure how deep you go?”

  He drizzles chili oil over the fish and squeezes a couple of wedges of lime on top. A nick on his forefinger stings as the lime seeps into it. “No, I’m not interested in that side of it. I suppose I like it because there’s no tank involved or gear to mess around with. Plus, you see more. Fish can be put off by the bubbles when you’re breathing off the tank.”

  Eva scoops the tomatoes she’s sliced into the salad bowl, then begins chopping the lettuce. “What do you see around here?”

  “Wattleboon’s cold-water diving, so it’s different from the tropics. You get rays, tiny handfish, gummy sharks, sea dragons.”

  “Sea dragons?”

  “They’re related to the sea horse family, but the dragons are bigger.” Saul rinses and dries his hands, then pulls a sourdough loaf from the bread bin and saws hunks from it. “Wattleboon is one of the few places in the world where you find them. It’s a good place to free-dive.”

  “Jackson said he loved coming out here as a boy.”

  There he is. Jackson. Cutting straight back into the center of Saul’s thoughts like a cool knife.

  Saul had been at his father’s house when the news from the police came through. Dirk was watching the television, beer in hand, as he reached for the phone. Saul had felt a shift in the air, as if all the windows had suddenly been closed. He turned and saw his father sitting up rigidly. Dirk’s mouth opened, but he didn’t say a word. He simply held out the phone to Saul, who took it and listened to the distant English voice of a police officer talking about fishing, a wave, an accident. Saul asked where it’d happened, who’d been there, whether a body had been found.

  Afterward he realized that he’d asked more questions in those few minutes than he’d asked about his brother’s life in years.

  “Saul?” Eva is saying.

  He is standing stock-still, the bread knife in his hand.

  “I’m gonna light the barbecue,” he says quickly. He swaps the knife for the tray of fish, then strides from the room with his eyes lowered.

  THEY EAT ON THE deck, watching the dusky pink clouds feather away into night. Saul says very l
ittle and Eva picks at the fish, a faint feeling of nausea hovering nearby.

  When she’s eaten as much as she can manage, she sets down her knife and fork, then slides her sweater off the back of her chair and pulls it on.

  “We can go inside,” Saul says.

  “No, it’s nice out.” She looks up at the emerging stars; there are no clouds tonight and she thinks in another half hour the night sky will be dazzling. Citronella candles burn at either end of the table, and the air swirls with a lemon scent.

  In the quiet she hears the stirring of the bay and the chirp of crickets in the bush. “When I met your dad,” she says, glancing across at Saul, “he mentioned he doesn’t come out to Wattleboon anymore.”

  He nods slowly.

  “Is that . . . because of your mother?”

  Saul leans his elbows on the table and looks out toward the bay. “Her ashes were scattered up at the cape. I think he’s always felt guilty about not going there since.”

  “I wish I had Jackson’s ashes,” Eva says, the admission surprising her.

  Saul turns to look at her.

  “It’s just . . .” she says, “maybe it would help.” She draws a candle toward her and runs a fingertip around the warm, supple wax close to the wick. “A few weeks after Jackson drowned, I walked down to the beach where it happened. It was freezing. There was frost on the sand, but the sun was out and the water seemed peaceful. I remember just standing there, staring at the sea, thinking how impossibly serene it was—yet only weeks before . . .” She pauses, swallowing hard. “One minute I was standing on the shore, and the next I found myself wading in.”

  She feels Saul’s gaze move over her face as she continues.

  “I know it must sound crazy, but I needed to be in the sea to feel what Jackson would’ve felt.” She’d wanted to feel the water soaking his clothes, the cold turning his muscles to lead, the waves pulling him under.

  “You needed it to feel real.”

  She nods, pressing her fingernail into the candle. “It’s hard—there not being a body.” She digs out a warm lump of wax that she rolls between her thumb and forefinger until it hardens. “But it’s good to be out here, seeing where Jackson grew up. There are so many things I never asked him—so much I want to find out.”

  Two years. That’s all she’d shared of Jackson’s thirty years of life. A fragment. Her hand travels to her stomach and she realizes the need to build a connection with his past is even stronger now.

  Inside, a phone rings. Saul looks relieved by the distraction and leaves the deck. She hears him answer, saying, “Dad?”

  Eva leans back in her chair looking up at the stars, wishing Jackson was with her, wishing she could share the news of their baby with him. Over the past few weeks she’s learned a lot about loneliness. It isn’t just about remote places or a lack of contact with people—it’s a sensation that something has been carved out of you.

  When Saul doesn’t return, she begins clearing the plates from the table, scraping the fish bones back into the foil and then stacking the plates. She carries them into the house—but pauses when she catches her name.

  Saul is talking in another room and Eva hovers, listening. “She came out here like you said . . . Yeah, Thursday.”

  Saul exhales hard. Then there’s the sound of footsteps pacing back and forth. “No. Course I didn’t!”

  Eva holds her breath, straining to hear.

  The footsteps stop. “Just that one time . . . No, haven’t heard from her since.”

  When she hears him finishing up the call, she backs out of the house onto the deck, and returns the plates to the table, pulse racing.

  Saul comes outside with his hands dug into his pockets. He shifts his weight as he says, “I’ve got a bit of work I need to get done for tomorrow.”

  “Then I suppose I should be going,” she says curtly.

  “I’ll see you down the steps.”

  Before she can tell him that she’s fine on her own, he’s taking a slim flashlight from his pocket and leading the way. He shines the light behind him so that she can place her feet in the beam. “Careful,” he says. “Some of the steps are a bit loose.”

  They descend in silence, the air growing cooler. When they reach the beach Saul stops to face her. Away from the candlelight, the darkness suddenly feels consuming. She thinks of the strange lie Saul just told his father and a prickle of uncertainty travels over her skin.

  Jackson’s voice echoes in her head: You can’t trust him. He’s a liar.

  She feels a surge of hurt and confusion over the oddly abrupt ending to the evening. Her teeth clench around the words she wants to say. Yet something pulls her back.

  Saul is her—and her child’s—only link to Jackson. She feels the fragility of that connection as if it runs between them like a single fine thread. She needs to hold onto it tightly so it doesn’t slide out of her grasp.

  BACK IN THE SHACK, Eva shuts the door firmly and switches on all the lights. She tugs at the cord of the blinds, disturbing a moth that flies straight toward her, its dusty wings brushing at her cheek.

  Eva shivers, turning a circle in the room. Alone. I am alone. She tries to keep her breathing level and push away the hollowing sensation of loneliness.

  She sucks in a deep breath and crosses the room to the photo of her and Jackson at the jazz festival. She angles it toward the light, longing to be back there with the sun on her skin, hearing the rhythm of the music, feeling Jackson’s arm around her waist.

  In the light she can see two marks on the glass either side of the photo. They look to be thumbprints, as if someone has just plucked the photo from the shelf to look at. Her brow furrows as she remembers polishing the frame this morning, removing every trace of dirt and grease. How can there be thumbprints?

  Perhaps she’d made them just now as she’d picked up the picture. Holding the frame, she places her thumbs in the exact spaces where the marks are.

  Yet the prints don’t fit; hers are almost half the size.

  She brings the frame even closer to the light so that she can be sure. She is almost certain that these are not her thumbprints.

  She sets down the photo with a sharp shake of her head. She’s being absurd; they must be hers. No one else has been in the shack.

  9

  A week later, Eva is leaning back against the sun-warmed hood of her car, watching the Wattleboon Island Ferry plow toward the shore. Callie is on board. She’s flown in from the UK to spend a few nights here before they travel on to Melbourne together.

  As Eva waits, she twists her wedding band between her thumb and forefinger. Then she slips it off and angles it toward the sun to read the italicized inscription.

  This day and always.

  Today should have been their first wedding anniversary. How short always turned out to be. She presses the ring to her lips, feeling the smooth warmth of the metal.

  Months ago, Jackson had arranged for them to spend their anniversary in the Tower Lighthouse in Dorset. They’d first stayed there on their wedding night, laughing as they’d climbed the spiral staircase up to the glass lantern room, the train of her dress making a low swoosh behind her. They’d drunk champagne and watched stars glinting through the skylights.

  But tonight the starlit room at the top of the lighthouse will be empty.

  Engines churn as the ferry draws into the dock, the thick smell of diesel swirling in the air. A loud wolf whistle makes Eva look up. Callie stands on the deck in a pair of dark glasses, waving with both hands.

  Eva slips her wedding ring back on. Then she takes a deep breath, snaps her heels together, and salutes.

  She sees Callie’s head tilt back as she laughs.

  When the passengers disembark, Eva rushes forward, throwing her arms around her friend.

  “It’s so wonderful to see you,” Callie says, keeping hold of Eva’s hands as they step apart.

  “I can’t believe you’re actually here!” Eva says. “How was the flight? You must be shatt
ered.”

  “I’m fine. Absolutely fine. How are you? I want to hear everything! How’s Tasmania?”

  Just seeing Callie here—someone so known to her, so constant, so familiar—undoes something in Eva that she’s been battling to keep locked away. Without warning, her smile begins to falter as tears fill her eyes.

  Callie reaches a hand to Eva’s arm. “Darling, what is it?”

  “Nothing,” she says, blotting at her face with a sleeve. “Sorry! I’m just happy to see you.”

  “Tears of joy?” Callie pushes her sunglasses onto the top of her head and peers at her.

  Eva had planned to tell Callie about the baby after they’d had a chance to catch up. But now Callie is fixing her with her pale stare and Eva knows she’s going to have to say it right here as the cars from the ferry crawl past.

  She clears her throat, shifting on the spot.

  “Oh my God!” Callie’s hands fly to her mouth. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

  THEY DON’T RETURN TO the shack right away. Callie insists on a detour. “I think it’s this one,” she says, pointing to the turnoff.

  “Are you going to tell me where I’m actually driving us to?” Eva asks, swinging the rental car onto the unpaved track. A cloud of dust trails behind them as they fly along, sending gravel spraying.

  “Nope. It’s a surprise. All will be revealed when we get there.”

  “You’ve only been here an hour and you’re already bossing me around.” Eva puts the car into a lower gear as the road ascends, cutting through a forest of gum trees. “How do you even know where this way leads?”

  “Research. You know I don’t rest. Information is my sleep.”

  Eva slows the car a little, nodding to Callie’s right. “Wallaby.”

  Poised at the roadside, the wallaby watches them through large brown eyes. Then, in a flash, it springs across the track and disappears into the bush, its heavy tail thumping the ground. Callie smiles. “God, it feels a million miles from life in London.”

  They drive south for another five or six kilometers before the trees begin to thin. “First glimpse of the sea,” Eva says, looking west over wild, scrub-lined hills that roll away into the silver shimmer of the sea below. “I haven’t been this far out yet.”