Deeper Water

by Jessie Cole

  From when she was real little, Anja had kept that house in order—she said it made her feel like the insides of her brain were less crumbly. Judging by the mess, I don’t think she’d been there for a while. I snuck away and headed further up the hill to see if she was at the hut, but it was deserted like the house. There was a sleeping bag on the floor, and a make-up bag on top of the piano, so I figured she’d been using it as a base. I looked around for a piece of paper—or something—to leave her a note on, but I couldn’t find a thing. In the end I got a stick to scratch a message in the dirt of the doorway. I didn’t know what to say, what could possibly cover the appropriate ground, so I settled for—Anja, I miss you. Thought it was best to keep to the one thing I knew. Then I hobbled back down the hill, staying in the shadows of the trees and thinking of how to go about bringing Anja back. I fretted about it all afternoon, but as dusk came, and the dogs started up their howling and Blossom whimpered and snuffled around my feet, the only thoughts I had were of Hamish and Billy and how all the secrets I’d stored in the shack had finally broken free.

  I was wide awake when he tapped on my window, already dressed and ready to go. His tap was quiet and I slipped out noiselessly so the dog didn’t even stir. Together we drifted across the grass till we were out of earshot.

  ‘You came,’ I whispered, once we were far enough away.

  He looked at the ground and nodded. I’d left his torch behind in my room ’cause I rarely used one, even on the darkest night. I seemed to know my way round in the dark, like there was a map in my brain of the lie of the land, and my body followed it instinctively. I wondered if Billy was the same.

  ‘I forgot your torch,’ I added. ‘Sorry.’

  He flicked a switch with his thumb, lighting up a patch of grass, but looking up at my face. ‘Got another one,’ he said, and I supposed then that he didn’t know my place well enough to have the map.

  ‘Alright,’ I said, but even I wasn’t really sure what I meant.

  The torchlight on the grass was stark, washing out the colour, and even though I could see him better I wished he’d turn it off. There was something in the way he was looking at me, something weighted and full. I wondered again what he saw in me, what vision he held behind his eyes.

  ‘You want to?’ He pointed the torch out towards the paddock, towards the shack and what had gone before.

  I hesitated a second ’cause I wanted it to be different.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ I said, and I stepped out of the torchlight into the darkness, wondering where my feet might carry me.

  ‘Where?’ he asked but he stepped along behind me.

  I shrugged in the blackness and kept moving forward, the grass flattening beneath my feet.

  ‘Turn off the light.’

  He flicked the switch and blackness engulfed us. I could hear Billy’s tread behind me, not too close but not too far. I stopped a second, getting my bearings, and he stopped a second too.

  ‘You listening?’ I asked. ‘You listening for my steps?’

  He was still, not making a sound, holding his breath, and I knew that was his answer.

  I walked downhill, slowly across the paddocks towards the creek, Billy at my heels. The moon was slender, the stars dimmed by clouds, but after a while my eyes adjusted and I could see the silhouettes of the trees in the distance, the soft undulating shape of the land. In any case, I didn’t need my eyes—I could hear the lilting tinkle of the creek, and that was where I was headed.

  Night swimming was a particular kind of pleasure. Our summers were so agreeably warm that it was perfectly lovely to swim in the night if you could brave the unknown blackness of the water. In the day, the creek shimmered with sunshine and you could see through the glassy water all the way to the bottom. The world you were moving through was known, the perimeters visible. But at night there was none of that, you could vaguely make out the lines of the waterway but nothing much else. The water seemed mysterious, bottomless even, and everything had to be sensed. It was easy to get caught up thinking of critters—eels, catfish and the like, even things as weird as bunyips, or some other kind of creatures of the deep.

  Anja and I sometimes came down here for a lark. After the sun had set. It was a part of the creek we didn’t normally swim in, surrounded by trees, less exposed. We’d head down at night and scare ourselves silly. So maybe there was some part of me that was testing Billy, seeing how he’d hold up.

  When we got to the water, Billy stepped up silently beside me. I looked across at the shadow of him and then I dipped a toe in. It was fresh and cool and the thought of stripping down and wading in got my heart banging away in my chest. Billy bent down to take his boots off. The moment was closing in around me. I pulled my singlet over my head, stepped free of my skirt and undies and hung them carefully over a baby-sized palm tree that had grown up on the creek bank. I was naked there beside him then, but I didn’t wait to see if he’d noticed.

  The rocks in the shallows were rounded and soft, but with my wonky foot, one wrong step and I’d be over. Arse-up. The thought of such an inelegant entry made me giggle a little, and I heard Billy startle behind me at the sound.

  ‘You right?’ he asked.

  I turned around and smiled at him, still stranded on the bank, but I knew he couldn’t see my face.

  ‘You coming?’ I asked, wading out further into the deep.

  He hesitated a moment, watching me, then pulled off his shirt, yanking it with one hand at the back of his neck, like my brothers used to, and then in a flash his pants were gone too. I could see the outline of him against the hills, poised and ready, and I wondered if half the reason for my clattering heart was just fear. What did I know about Billy anyway? I swam further into the deep, out where I couldn’t stand.

  ‘You can’t dive,’ I called, treading water. ‘It’s shallow till you get out here.’

  Billy felt his way forward, wary as a cat. I dipped my head under the water, feeling it rush over me, and then slipped back to the surface.

  ‘Marco.’ His voice was husky, unsure. He must have lost sight of me. I watched him for a second, the water slapping softly against his thighs.

  ‘Polo,’ I called out, finally, my voice high in my ears like a child’s.

  He pressed forward, coming nearer, but disappearing further down into the darkness too.

  ‘Marco,’ he said again.

  He was close now and I quietened, hovering there in the water.

  ‘Polo,’ I whispered. He stretched out his hands towards the sound of my voice, but couldn’t quite reach me.

  ‘Marco.’ This time his voice was soft. He knew he was near.

  ‘Polo.’ I said it under my breath, but he inched closer, until his fingers grazed my cheek. He cupped it softly in the dark.

  ‘I can’t see a fucking thing.’

  I smiled beneath his fingers, turning towards the shape of his hand.

  ‘Come here,’ he said, simple as that. ‘Come on.’

  I moved towards him in the water, slowly, and he slipped his hand from my cheek, down my neck and along my shoulder. I got so close my knees bumped into his beneath the water. He slid his hand down my back, holding me there before him.

  ‘You right?’ he asked. ‘You right, after last night?’

  I nodded, but it was dark.

  ‘Mema?’

  ‘I’m right.’

  I edged a little closer, felt my nipples brush his chest. The humming inside me was getting loud. I wondered if Billy could hear it.

  ‘Go under,’ I said, and reaching up I pushed my wet fingers into his dry curls. He had a bush of hair, Billy did. I suppose it’s no surprise that I liked it. I pushed his head down, gently but firmly, and he let me. Beneath the water he smoothed his hands along my sides, resting them on my hips, and slowly his head went under, all the way. I leaned my body into his face, my submerged breasts against his closed eyes, and the hum of me grew and grew. When he needed air, he came back up, and I let him, wrapping my ar
ms around his neck. Even in the water he smelled of wood shavings. I suppose it’s no surprise that I liked that too. He moved one hand up along my side, smooth as a fish beneath the water, brushing his thumb against my nipple. I had to turn my face away. That’s when I started trembling.

  ‘You’re slippery as an eel,’ he said against my cheek.

  ‘You ever caught one with your bare hands?’ I’d never done it, but I knew some of the boys had.

  ‘Yep. They wriggle like hell and you’ve just got to hold on tight.’

  He squeezed my breast in his palm and pulled me in towards him, slipping a hand along the small of my back.

  ‘They make good eating if you cook ’em up right.’

  I didn’t like to think of a cooking eel. The image disturbed me. I could feel his erection against my belly and it made me want to get moving.

  I slipped from his grasp and he let me. I swam towards the bank with the pebbly ochre rocks. Crawling a little way up, I turned over, feeling the pebbles sink beneath my weight like a sponge, the bottom half of my legs still in the water. I leaned back on my palms, shivering all over, but not from the cold.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, like he had to me. ‘Come here.’

  I could hear the sluicing of the water as Billy moved towards me, the shadows of his shoulders visible in the moonlight. I wanted to reach down and touch myself like I had the night before, feel all that velvet wetness envelop my fingers like the waterhole itself, but I waited. He climbed out of the water and sat beside me. After a few seconds he leaned over and kissed my shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know what you want, Mema.’ He sounded stranded, alone.

  I didn’t know how to explain it. I was humming so bad by then I couldn’t fathom he didn’t hear it.

  ‘You got to touch me,’ was all I whispered in the end, but it seemed to be enough.

  I sat there, quivering, feeling all those pebbles beneath my skin, the water lapping softly at my legs, and he reached out a hand and ran it along the length of me. From my collarbone all the way down, over my breast and belly, across the patch of my hair and down further still along my leg, until his fingers hit the water. In my mind I could see his hand, brown and firm with its bristly dark hairs.

  ‘Like that?’ he asked, his breathing hard. He leaned over to kiss me, tentatively, like I might become like that slippery eel and slide away.

  ‘Like that,’ I said against his lips, ‘but more.’

  He slid his fingers back up my leg, stopping then at the base of me, where all my liquid pooled. He pushed the back of his hand against me, firm but questioning, and then he turned his palm over and pressed his fingers inside.

  ‘You’re so wet,’ he groaned against my neck. ‘Fuck.’ But he didn’t touch me the way I wanted, so I shifted a little, wiped the pebbly soil from my fingertips against my thighs, and touched myself, his fingers there beside mine, pressing still into my wetness. He turned on his side towards me and I could feel the hardness of him against my leg. It had bothered me before, his erect flesh a kind of intrusion, but in that moment I liked it.

  He pushed his fingers deeper inside, and as I touched myself everything built around me. The feel of the bank beneath my body, the air against my breasts, the water slippery against my legs, and the darkness of the sky above. It all pressed in against me, and his body too, until I was lost somehow in the feel of things.

  ‘Baby,’ he sighed out, all low. ‘Baby.’

  It was a little odd to hear my nickname in amongst that eddy of feeling, but it didn’t bother me.

  ‘Climb up on me,’ he whispered.

  And I didn’t see why not.

  In no time at all that hard part of him was inside me, and I looked up at the sky, dark and starless, my fingers still touching that nub, his breath coming hard and fast against my breasts, and somehow, despite the absurdity, it felt right. I rocked against him, and the humming built, and I could hear myself making sounds like his, until it all burst, like it had the night before, even without the rain.

  He quietened then, as I sat on my knees astride him, my body liquid and shuddery, him still hard and throbbing inside me. He listened, his breathing unsteady. Running his hand down my side, he grasped my foot, my wonky misshapen foot, holding it like a treasure in his hand.

  ‘I don’t want to come inside you, Mema,’ he murmured. ‘That was bad of me last night.’

  I wasn’t sure what to do about that—it not being my area of expertise.

  ‘I brought condoms this time.’ He squeezed my foot between his fingers. ‘But I left them in the pocket of my pants.’

  I looked towards the bank where our clothes were and I didn’t much feel like swimming across. Neither, I guessed, did he.

  ‘Up you get,’ he lifted me off him and lay me back on the pebbles of the bank. My limbs were heavy and the feel of the stones against my back was soothing. He knelt between my legs, looking at me under that sliver of moon, running a hand down my body just like I was the clay.

  ‘I’ll pull out,’ he said, before he pressed himself inside. He moved hard and fast then, shoving against me like I was a keyhole he couldn’t unlock. And I waited, sated and still. A little sore. In the end he pulled out, like he said he would, sprinkling himself over my belly in a final groan. And I hugged him, ’cause it seemed a small miracle in that moment that he should care about me so.

  When his breathing slowed he lifted his head. ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble.’

  I thought about that, just for a second. ‘Us, you mean. It’d be our trouble.’ But I knew it wouldn’t, I knew it would only be mine. ‘We’ll know in a few days.’ I pretty much bled like clockwork.

  I slipped out from beneath him and back into the water. It was colder the second time around, less welcoming, and I ducked under, trying to brush all the sprinkles and pebbles from my skin. Hamish’s ochre-painted face flashed in my mind. I felt hollow when moments before I’d felt full. I thought back to the press of the pebbles, Billy’s hand stretching down the length of me, trying to hold it all in my mind.

  Scrambling up the bank, I shook off the drips, pulling on my singlet, shivering a little.

  Billy clambered up beside me, shaking the water from his ear.

  ‘Don’t rush off,’ he said, reaching out a hand. ‘I’ll walk you home.’

  ‘It’s alright.’ I leaned forward and gave his fingers a squeeze. ‘It’s in the wrong direction.’

  He pulled on his clothes, not looking at my face. In a minute he was ready.

  ‘Mema?’

  I couldn’t think what he might possibly want to say.

  ‘I could cook you up that eel. I know how to cook them right.’

  Fishing was one of my least favourite things.

  ‘I don’t eat meat.’ Around here it was hard to explain that particular aversion.

  ‘Vegetarian?’

  ‘Yep.’

  In the moonlight I could see him shake his head. That had put a spanner in the works.

  ‘They’re just animals, Mema.’

  I nodded. ‘We all are.’

  I thought of the way he’d held my foot, held it like it was the best part of me. It made me want to give him something then, something nice to say goodbye. I patted my pocket, the secret one sewn into my skirt. There was a rock, a little heart-shaped stone I’d found somewhere on my travels. I unzipped the pocket and pulled it out.

  ‘Here.’ I pressed it into his hand. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  He turned it in his fingers in the dark, bemused.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, though I don’t think he knew what it was.

  I turned around and headed up the hill. And on my way I thought of how everything had pressed in against me, how it had seemed for that moment that some kind of barrier had collapsed, particles had merged between the world and me, and I wondered if Billy had felt like that too.

  It was very hard to tell.

  23.

  When I rose from my bed the next day, there was a mound of
fine brown pebbles on the pillow that must have fallen from my hair as it dried. I looked at it in the bright morning light and a part of me felt faintly disbelieving. It was as though I had split into two people. My days and my nights somehow coming unhinged. After I’d dressed I pulled the sheets from the bed and put them in the washing machine. I’m not sure why, but it bothered me, this evidence of what I’d done.

  I started my morning rounds—feeding Thor and the pup, sweeping the floors, letting the chickens out—and by the time I came back inside, Mum was already in the shed, pottering. In a week or so we’d head off to the market, sell some mugs and pots, replenish our supplies. I looked out the window of the kitchen at the roll of the hills, wondering about Anja and where she could be. There didn’t seem to be anything else for it, I’d have to go into town. Hunt her down. I needed to get a lift, but I couldn’t decide who I’d rather ask—Mum or Sophie. I was pondering it when I heard Rory’s voice, bright and springy at the back door.

  ‘Mema, I’m here!’ He liked to announce himself. I picked him up to hug him and he snuggled in against my neck.

  ‘You smell funny.’ He wrinkled his nose.

  Still holding him, I sniffed at my arm, same as yesterday—creek water with a touch of earth.

  ‘Do I?’

  He wriggled out of my arms and onto the floor as Sophie stepped through the door with Lila.

  ‘Mummy, Mema smells funny.’

  Sophie laughed at that. ‘You little bugger, leave your auntie alone.’ But when she looked across at me, I felt caught in her gaze. I held out my arms for the baby and Sophie handed her over, leaning in towards me to take a sniff.

  She smiled then, kind of sad-eyed. ‘Mema’s like a flower.’

  ‘What?’ Rory said, peering up at me.

  ‘She’s in bloom.’ Sophie said, scuffing up his hair.

  My face was suddenly hot.

  Rory seemed to consider Sophie’s words, but he didn’t say any more.