A Single Breath

by Lucy Clarke

  Her hand, still outstretched, is now empty of the wineglass she’d been holding. Dark red liquid drips from her fingers. She draws her hand level with her face and inspects it. There is not a single cut or nick.

  The wine has sprayed over her clothes and puddles on the floor. For a moment, she just stands there, blinking at the mess.

  Eventually she propels herself into action; she fetches a dustpan and brush and sweeps up the broken fragments, which slop and drift on the spill of wine. Then she returns with a wad of tissues and crouches to mop up the rest of the liquid.

  Eva notices that a slash of red wine has spilled right over the inscription of Jackson’s name in the floorboard. She pauses as an image slips into her thoughts: Jeanette kneeling here as a teenager, her brow creased in concentration as she carves Jackson’s name into the wood. She pictures the penknife gripped in her pale hands. She would have bent low, carving the letters one after the other, blowing away the fresh shavings, her lips close to his name. Saul had told her that Jeanette had had a crush on Jackson since they were kids, and that the connection was still there when they met up years later.

  But Eva had been in Jackson’s life for just two short years. Two years that were built on a bed of lies. What claim did Eva ever really have?

  She mops up the wine, but it’s already seeped deep into the inscription, staining Jackson’s name blood-red.

  “DAD, YOU REMEMBER EVA,” Saul says.

  Dirk pulls himself out of his chair. He smiles and stretches out his hand. “Good to see ya, Eva.”

  “You, too.”

  There is a beat of silence.

  “So. How are you feeling?” Eva asks.

  “Strong as an ox.” Dirk glances toward the bay, where a brilliant red sun is disappearing into the west, fringing the sky with pink clouds. “Good place to recuperate.”

  “It is,” she agrees.

  Saul asks, “Can I get you a drink, Eva?”

  “Please. Water would be great.”

  Once Saul’s left the room, Dirk turns to Eva. “I just wanted to apologize—I wasn’t on my finest form when we last met.”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  He clears his throat. “Neither of us probably want to get into everything that’s gone on, so all I’ll say is—I’m sorry that you’ve had such a rough time of things.”

  “Thank you.” She doesn’t want to push Dirk to talk, not when she’s just arrived, but there are things she needs to know. For now, though, she lets him change the subject.

  “It’s great being back on Wattleboon after so long,” he says.

  “Saul tells me you used to have a shack here?”

  “That’s right. Built the place over twenty years ago. Such a surprise to see it still standing.”

  She tilts her head. “How do you mean?”

  “Saul’s not told you about his project?”

  “No?”

  “The old shack used to stand right here where the house is. Saul dismantled the whole thing and rebuilt it at the edge of the garden. I’m calling it my holiday home! Isn’t that right?” Dirk says as Saul walks in carrying a glass of water for Eva.

  She turns toward him. “Did you? Rebuild the shack?”

  “Thought it’d be a shame to get rid of it.”

  She thinks of Jackson’s talk of rebuilding the shack. Was that actually Saul’s dream he’d borrowed? “How long have you been planning it for?”

  “Been thinking about it for years. Just haven’t had the time until now.”

  She swallows. “Can I see it?”

  “Sure,” Saul says. “It’s just off to the left of the garden, beyond the bushes.”

  A minute later Eva is standing in front of a rustic shack with a tin roof. She steps forward and places a hand on the aged wood, feeling the texture and grain against her skin. So this was the old shack.

  She’d loved listening to Jackson’s plans to come back out here one day and make it good for his father. But it had been a shallow promise, she realizes, because Jackson never intended on coming back to Tasmania.

  It had been Saul’s dream. Saul who had quietly gotten on with it. Saul who had brought his father back to Wattleboon after all these years.

  THE CANDLES AND MOSQUITO flares are lit and the sound of crickets fills the air. Saul sets down a large oven dish.

  “What we got?” Dirk asks.

  “Flathead fillets with rice. No fat, no spices, easy to digest. You should be fine with it.” Saul removes the foil covering and the smell of freshly steamed fish rises into the dusk.

  Eva passes plates and cutlery and they serve themselves with a big metal ladle, the handle clinking against the china dish.

  The fish tastes incredible, just lightly seasoned with pepper and lemon. Dirk eats slowly, working the food over in his mouth before swallowing. He and Saul talk about their day, and as Eva listens, a sharp feeling of guilt needles its way beneath her skin. What would Jackson think if he could see them all here: his wife; his brother; his father? And what if he could see her hand hidden beneath the table, held by Saul’s? Her loyalties sway and shift and it makes her feel unsteady.

  Later, when the plates have been cleared, Saul brings out a colander full of plump strawberries and blueberries from the berry farm at the end of the road. Eva picks at them absently, her gaze drifting over to the dark garden.

  A movement at the edge of her vision makes her blink and refocus. She stares toward the bush, where she senses the shadow of something—or someone. Her skin prickles from the nape of her neck to her fingertips.

  Saul and Dirk are still talking, neither of them seeming to notice anything. Her eyes strain against the darkness; she can’t see what it is, just something darker than the charcoal shade of the bush.

  She feels her fingers loosening, letting go of Saul’s hand. Her mouth turns dry and it is difficult to swallow. She needs to get up and walk over there, but she knows Saul and Dirk will think it odd. She tells herself to relax. No one is there—it’s just the shadows of the trees, or an animal. But she cannot explain the strange chill that skitters down her spine.

  Beneath the table her knee twitches with the urge to go over, to be sure. Without deciding to, she finds herself rising to her feet, crossing the deck and climbing down the steps into the garden.

  Away from the candles, the darkness feels complete and she narrows her eyes. The shape is still there and she edges closer.

  “Eva . . .”

  She jolts back, her heart pounding at the familiar timbre of the voice. She’s unsure whether it came from in front of her, or behind.

  “Eva?”

  She turns, realizing it is Saul. He has half risen from his seat and is looking at her from the deck. “Everything okay?”

  She glances back to the tree line, desperately searching out the shadow—but it has vanished. She shakes her head, unsure whether there was anything there, or whether it was her imagination taunting her.

  Her hands are trembling as she returns to the deck. “Wallaby. Thought I saw a wallaby.”

  Dirk seems to accept this and tells her there’s plenty of them at this time of night, but Saul’s gaze lingers on her.

  Eva slides back into her seat, her breath short. She pours herself a large glass of water, and as she lifts the glass to her mouth, the candlelight plays over her forearm, showing the trail of goose bumps lining her skin.

  27

  As Saul and Dirk continue to talk, Eva slips her hands beneath her thighs, sitting on them to stop the trembling. She concentrates on slowing her breathing, trying to shake the eerie feeling that Jackson is there, watching them.

  Guilt. That’s what is causing her mind to play tricks on her. She feels guilty about her growing feelings for Saul, as if by being with him—allowing herself some happiness—she is betraying Jackson. Tension builds in her temples and she can feel a tightness spreading across her forehead, reaching down into her eye sockets.

  “Eva?”

  Dirk is saying something to h
er now and she turns to face him, shaking her head. “Sorry?”

  “I was asking whether you were missing your work. You’re a midwife, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” She shifts, drawing her hands onto her lap. “I do miss it. A lot,” she says, realizing just how true that is. “But I needed a break.”

  “Did you always want to be a midwife?”

  “No, not really. I trained to be a paramedic to begin with, but it never felt quite right.”

  “How d’you mean?” Saul asks, beside her.

  “As a paramedic you’re thrown into people’s lives at a point of crisis. You deliver them to hospital—and that’s it.” The breeze stirs her hair and she smoothes it behind her ears. “I loved parts of the job—like having to think on my feet and working under pressure—but I found myself wanting to know more about the patients. Find out what happened to them. I remember I was working this one night shift in Poplar when we got a call out for a woman in labor. When we got there she was already in the final stages. I was just a trainee at the time but the paramedic I was with knew the woman wouldn’t make it to hospital. We had to deliver the baby right there.”

  She remembers the rush she’d felt knowing she was going to help bring a baby into the world. “I didn’t even do much. The midwife arrived a few minutes after us and took control. But I’d never seen a baby delivered before and it was just so incredible. Such an amazing experience. Afterward, I remember seeing this woman holding her new baby—Ziad, she called him—and I just thought, ‘This is what I want to do.’ ”

  That’s the story she’s always told people, but she wonders now if there’s another layer to it. Perhaps it wasn’t just a single defining moment; rather the desire to be a midwife had always been within her. Eva’s sister had died at birth because of a complication with her delivery that could’ve been avoided. Eva had seen how her sister’s death had ripped apart her mother’s world. Maybe, in some small way, being a midwife was about trying to fix what had happened.

  She pushes the thought aside, knowing she’s becoming too introspective tonight.

  Dirk says, “Jackson told me you were a fantastic midwife.”

  Her breathing shallows at the mention of his name. “Did he?”

  “He said women were always asking for you to deliver their babies.”

  Questions about Jackson’s past spin around and around in her mind, like a Ferris wheel she can’t stop. There are things she needs to ask Dirk. She knows that now isn’t the right time, not with Saul beside her, but she cannot stop herself. “Did Jackson talk to you much about his life in London?”

  “He’d call every few weeks or so. I guess he’d tell me the bits he wanted me to hear. I knew all about his job and what he thought of the city. But there were gaps.” Dirk leans back in his chair and folds his hands in his lap. “Like I said, I knew about you from the start—that he’d met someone. We spoke on the phone, didn’t we?”

  She nods. It was before they were engaged. She had picked up the phone while Jackson was in the shower. It’d been a brief chat as Eva was conscious she had answered a long-distance call.

  “But he never told me he’d proposed. I only knew he’d married you a few weeks after it’d happened.” He places his hands flat on the edge of the table and looks at her. “I’d have stopped him if I’d known. It wasn’t fair to you, Eva.”

  “I wrote to you,” she says. “I wrote letters every couple of months.”

  She sees Dirk’s eyebrows lift.

  “Jackson never sent any of them, did he?”

  “No. He didn’t.”

  She had expected this answer, yet her cheeks still burn with humiliation at how wholly she’d been deceived.

  A moth flies too close to the flame, singeing its wing. It spirals downward in a staggered dance of death, landing in a pool of melted wax.

  She feels a tightness in her chest as emotions she’s tried to keep contained are beginning to push out. She hears Saul shifting, the brush of fabric against the chair as he leans back. She knows she should end this conversation, but she can’t stop herself. “Why did he marry me?”

  Dirk exhales. “He told me he hadn’t planned it—the proposal—it just happened. And then he realized he didn’t want to undo it.”

  She’s thinking back to the hailstorm on Clapham Common, where they’d sheltered beneath a row of trees as tiny icy spheres bounced against their shins. They’d clung to each other, and pressed into the warmth of Jackson’s body, Eva had forgotten about the cold, the sting of hailstones, the roar of wind in the sky. Because there was only Jackson.

  That’s when he’d said to her, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” She’d looked up at him and said, “I want that, too.” And then he’d asked her to marry him. There was no ring and he didn’t get down on one knee, as he didn’t want to let go of her, even for a moment, and she’d said, “Yes. Yes a thousand times.”

  Wasn’t that real? How do I know! How can I ever be sure about any of it? Tears begin to fill her eyes and she bites hard on the inside of her cheek, desperate not to cry.

  “I know he hurt you,” Dirk is saying. “It was wrong of him to marry you. Christ knows why he didn’t get a divorce first, get everything square. But then men do foolish things when they’re in love.”

  She is aware of Saul sitting near her shoulder, his presence like a heat in the darkness.

  Dirk looks directly at her as he continues, “And he did love you, Eva. That’s why he took the risk of marrying you. Because you were everything he wanted.”

  Eva stays very still. Her pulse ticks in her throat.

  “There were lies. Lots of them. But that part is the truth. He loved you.”

  She has needed to hear this for so long. It’s as though something tight and knotted inside of her loosens. Despite everything, he had loved her. It counted for so much.

  There is a sudden scraping of metal against wood. Saul pushes back his chair. The flames of the candles jump as he stands. He says something about a drink, and then heavy footsteps disappear inside the house.

  EVA REGRETS ASKING THOSE questions in front of Saul. But having Dirk here to talk to makes her marriage feel real and not just a shadow of something that she’d once believed in.

  A mosquito buzzes near her ear and she brushes at the air. She pulls her wrap from the back of her chair and drapes it on her shoulders.

  “It’s hard for Saul,” Dirk says. “Hard to lose someone you love when you’re on bad terms.”

  “I know about their feud.”

  “Bloody pigheaded, the pair of them. Broke my heart, them falling out. They were thick as thieves once. I think Saul forgets all that now. But I don’t. You should see the pictures I’ve got, wonderful ones of them fishing down the jetty, building dens, surfing. They did everything together.”

  “I’d love to see them sometime,” Eva says.

  “Yeah? Well, I’ll dig them out for you, then. Be nice to show someone.” Dirk slips a bottle of painkillers from his shirt pocket and snaps two pills onto his palm. He swallows them with a swig of water. Then he pushes his glass aside and places his elbows on the table.

  “I know Jackson messed up. He treated you and Saul terribly. But don’t go thinking too badly of him. He was a good lad at heart. He loved his brother, too. He really did. Saul cut himself off completely, said he didn’t even want to hear Jackson’s name. But Jackson, he wanted to know everything he could about Saul. What he was doin’, where he was travelin’, whether he was happy. Jackson may not have apologized, but he knew his mistake.”

  The crickets singing in the bush, a loud orchestra of them, suddenly stop as if the conductor has asked for a pause. The silence is surprising. Eva tilts her head a little to check it’s not her ears. A moment later, they start back up and Eva wonders what made them stop.

  He continues. “Saul, he doesn’t like me talkin’ about Jackson. But I’m getting old, Eva. I realized that in hospital. I don’t want Saul to be bitter about the past, not lik
e I’ve been. It won’t do him any good. I think it’d help him if he could forgive Jackson for his mistakes.”

  “They’re not mine to forgive.”

  They both turn. Saul is standing in the doorway. The light is behind him and Eva cannot make out the expression on his face.

  “It’s not up to me to forgive him for lying to Eva. Or to forgive him for walking out on Kyle. What happened between me and him—that’s just one event. Maybe I could let go of that. Maybe I already have. But just because he’s dead, I’m not going to shine a golden light on his memory.”

  Dirk shakes his head. “Come on, son. He was a good boy at—”

  “Was he? Sorry if it upsets you hearing this, Dad—and you, too, Eva—but Jackson was a cheat. He lied to us all. He let everyone down. How can anyone walk out on their own child and not look back?”

  “There’s more to it than that,” Dirk says in a low voice. “You don’t know all the facts.”

  “So tell me.” Saul steps forward, triggering the deck floodlight, and Eva can see his face is rigid. “You’re the one who suddenly wants to break down the silence, talk about our feelings, when our whole lives you’ve barely mentioned our mother’s name. You want to talk about that now, too?” he says, his voice rising.

  Dirk swallows. “You’re right. I haven’t been able to speak about her. Because saying her name out loud leaves a hole in me. I thought it was better to try and forget. But it didn’t work, did it? All those nights you had to pick me up off the floor are proof of that.”

  Dirk shifts in his chair, wincing a little. His voice is softer as he says, “I’m sorry. For all of it. And maybe it’s too late to teach you any different, but I don’t want that for you, Saul. Coming back out to Wattleboon has made me see that. You need to face your demons, not let them reduce you into something you’re not. You want to know about your brother, how he could leave Kyle? Just walk away?”

  “Yes.”

  Dirk pauses. Then, “He found out Jeanette was lying to him. Always had been. Kyle wasn’t his. There was some other bloke from Taroona that she was messing around with at the beginning. He’s the father—not Jackson.” Dirk looks directly at Saul as he says, “That’s why he left.”