by Jessie Cole
‘There’s frogs in the camphors. Endangered frogs.’ In the brightness of my room it sounded like a feeble defence.
‘They’re noxious weeds, Mema.’ He said that like there was no possible response. It was irrefutable. ‘You know what’s funny?’ he added. ‘I reckon it’d cost more to run the machinery and truck the chips from the paddocks than the mill would be making from burning the stuff.’
I didn’t get what he meant.
‘The whole scheme will be running at a loss.’
‘What?’
‘Well, if it costs more to chip up the camphors than they are making from burning them, that means someone is probably subsidising the whole deal. Government or someone.’
‘Because it’s green?’
‘So they say.’
I thought about that for a minute.
‘But everyone keeps saying it’s about the money.’
‘Well, it is, but not in the way you’d think.’
None of it made any sense.
‘Billy, you know it’s not okay, right?’
He just shrugged. Turned half away from me, I could only see the side of his face.
‘Mema,’ he said my name like it hurt, ‘sometimes I just want …’ He lingered there, out of reach, searching for words. ‘Just … be with me awhile,’ he started again. ‘It’s all over and in a flash you’re gone.’
It was true. When I was with him there was a part of me that kept an eye out for the exit. It made me jittery even thinking about it.
‘I don’t want to feel stuck.’ I didn’t know that until I’d actually said it. ‘Any more than I already do.’
‘But I won’t hold you to nothing,’ Billy said, finally. ‘Sometimes I just want to be near ya.’
I smiled then, but I knew I must have looked sad. All the mismatched desires, sitting heavy on my chest.
‘Guess I should let you rest.’
He was right that I was tired, so I didn’t try to change his mind. I kept thinking of the frog man and how I was going to have to call him. Step outside my comfort zone, swim against the current. Billy was peering at my face, trying to read it.
‘I’m sorry I told Johnno, Mema.’ I could see he was ashamed. ‘It was all just so weird I had tell someone.’
I guess I knew what it was like to hold a secret.
‘I didn’t like seeing you so torn up out there,’ he whispered. ‘You two looked like bushrangers on your last legs.’
Tentatively, he stepped up towards me, leaning down to give me a kiss on the cheek. Careful, like I was made of glass.
‘The last stand.’ I sighed, closing my eyes, breathing him in.
I liked the feel of his face up close to mine but he shifted away, walking across the floor. I heard him grasp the door handle, but he didn’t turn it. I opened my eyes. His face was full of things he’d never say, as though he was the poet and I was the muse, but we didn’t share the same language. Turning the handle, he opened the door and stepped across the threshold.
‘Well, see ya tomorrow,’ he said from the other side. And I suppose that’s what we had—the possibility of tomorrow.
I closed my eyes. Listening intently, I heard the faint slapping of his feet on the front steps, slipping out into the night.
28.
The morning after the fire, I woke at dawn and trekked straight up the hill to find what was left. It was strange seeing all the burned tree trunks scorched black and leafless where usually it was so green. I tried to focus on the bright shoots that would soon sprout, on the regeneration, but it was hard standing there amongst the wreckage. The door house was mostly gone, just bits and pieces littered about. Jim was nowhere to be seen and I was glad. They’d usually keep him in the lockup till he dried out. I hoped he’d come up and see there was nowhere left to be.
I walked past the rubble, looking for Anja’s hut. Further up the hill there were still patches of green. The fire had hopped from spot to spot, not burning the whole place through. It took me a while, but in the end I found it. Still standing, even though the flames had come close. I stepped through the door and the weight of Anja’s absence hit me in the belly. Even with everything that had happened, the force of the feeling took me by surprise. There were traces of her scattered about. The odd stray lipstick, a few dirty clothes. I gathered them up for safekeeping. Her mother’s old piano seemed to fill the space, and I thought of all the ants living inside. How invisible they were unless you banged the keys. And that got me thinking of all the other things I didn’t see.
I shook my head, trying to clear it and then stepped back out the door to find Anja’s hollow. After some searching I saw it, the space that had always been her safe port. Not burned out, but scorched in places. It was a big old eucalypt, turned a soft grey colour, completely hollowed out on the inside. One side of it was split and if you were small enough you could squeeze through, right into the middle. I peered through the split but it was hard to see inside. In the end I pushed myself through. I didn’t much like small spaces, though I’d been in there with her from time to time. It smelled like the forest floor—of soil and damp. There wasn’t much room to move, but I crouched down low, thinking of how Anja used to sleep in the hollow when she was real little, curled up like a frightened animal. Then I saw it. Her special box, pressed up against the side of the trunk. I pushed it through the split and squeezed myself out.
It was a little smaller than your average shoe box, and worn with love. I knew what was inside, all her treasures, much the same as mine—special sticks and rocks and seeds, a few polished-up gemstones from her dad, the odd piece of jewellery. And the note her mother left behind. Sitting on one of the roots I opened the lid to check. It was all there, just as I’d pictured it, but right on top was a snippet of paper with my name.
Mema, it said, look after this for me.
And I smiled, knowing she’d expected me to find it. I hugged the box to my chest, holding all those pieces of her close. Putting the lid back on, I tucked the box under my arm, picked up her other things and headed back down the hill. My heart was lighter after that. Anja had left her treasures in my keeping. She didn’t feel so gone from me.
In the afternoon the SES came to fish out Hamish’s hire car. I could hear the sound of workmen on the bridge and I wandered down towards the creek to see what all the ruckus was. Frank was there too, his truck parked off to the side, surveying the procedure.
‘Mema,’ he said, touching the brim of his hat.
I smiled hello. Didn’t much feel like talking. A couple of the men nodded in my direction.
‘It took them a while to locate the vehicle,’ Frank said. ‘That silvery brown colour, it blended right in.’ He looked across at me, unhurried. ‘Wedged down deep it was.’
I guess Frank was thinking it was a near miss. That it could have been Hamish they were fishing out and not just some big chunk of steel.
‘One of them swam right down and attached the winch.’ He pointed to the line of cable coming out of the water. ‘Job’s almost done now.’
The SES blokes had parked their truck on the other side of the bank so they could hoist the car straight out of the water. Someone turned the winch on and the slow whir of it filled the air. At first nothing happened, as though the cable was endless, but eventually it got tight, and even though the car was underwater I swear I heard the grating of metal against the rocks. Suddenly it slid into view, a monster from the deep. The cable strained, the hum grew louder, and in a few seconds the boot of the car broke the creek’s shimmery surface. Then it was halfway up the bank, scraping backwards along the grass, water streaming from around all the doors and windows.
Out of the creek it didn’t seem so ominous.
‘Big fish,’ Frank said. ‘Quite a catch.’
But it was about as far from a living thing as I could envisage. I wondered about Hamish’s laptop and his phone, whether they’d be trapped inside, waterlogged and useless, but I didn’t cross the bridge for a closer look.
/> ‘Frank?’ My voice came out quiet, his name my first word of the day. He turned to face me in that slow way of his. ‘Do you think you could teach me to drive?’
When Frank smiled the lines on his face spread upwards in waves.
‘Mema, it’d be my pleasure.’
The car was right up on the bank by then. It seemed oddly untouched and new. Frank and I stared across at it, waiting to see how they’d haul it away. It took a while, but eventually the men got it up onto a trailer.
Then it was gone as though it had never been.
At dusk the creek takes on a certain colour. Velvety brown. Without the dappled sunshine, its depths are muted and mysterious and all the creatures seem to come closer to the surface. The catfish linger on their nests and the eels float by like black ribbons. The turtles perch on the flats of exposed rocks and the kingfishers fly past like the brightest of talismans. Sometimes you can fool yourself into believing that the water is not alive with other beings, that when you step in, the world is all your own. But at dusk you can’t forget. As the creek envelops your body and you slide into its depths, you know that you are sharing—that the world has many eyes, but not all of them are on you. Small leaves and berries fall from the trees, and even their tiny weight creates a stir in the water, a multitude of small circles spreading across the surface until their edges meet and meld.
By that shadowy time the terrain has altered. Infinitesimally, the rocks have shifted and the current ebbs around them in different-shaped swirls. Stepping in, you must tread carefully, for by evening the creek is new.
They say every hero has to leave home, but I haven’t gotten there yet.
I think of the world, big as those expanding rings stretching out into the unknown. In my mind I see them widening and widening, but then I remember the world is a sphere and eventually the rings are going to blend together somewhere on the other side. Maybe I could start thinking of the whole universe, all the stars extending out forever, infinite. But that seems a bit much to swallow.
I’m just taking things one step at a time.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Australia Council for the Arts who awarded me a Book2 grant in order to complete this manuscript.
Big thanks also to Varuna, The Writers House, where I spent two weeks on a fellowship program, early in the process.
To my writers’ group—Siboney Saavedra-Duff, Lisa Walker, Jane Camens, Helen Burns and Michelle Taylor. I feel so lucky to have landed in your company.
Thanks always to Jan Smith, Varda Shepherd, Louise Nicholls, Michael Elliot, Iris Winter Elliot, Danika Cottrell, Jaali Da Silva, Jacob Cole, Billie Cole, Brett Adamson, Bradley McCann, Luke Wright, Christina Bandini, Nadia Bandini-Peterson, Romy Ash and Anna Krien for friendship, inspiration and support.
To Moya Costello for opening my eyes to so many different texts, my agent Jenny Darling for her straight-shooting, tenacious support, and the wonderful Peter Bishop—always such a wise voice in my ear.
For the beautiful cover photograph, big thanks to Lilli Waters.
Many thanks also to Catherine Milne and the whole team at HarperCollins, who showed such commitment and enthusiasm for this book right from the start. Special thanks to Jo Butler, who brought Deeper Water through acquisitions, and to my editor, Mary Rennie, who consistently offers such thoughtful, tender guidance.
And, as always, a very special thanks to my family.
Q & A with Jessie Cole
What do you think Deeper Water is about?
On the surface, I think Deeper Water is a story about awakening. Mema’s awakening to the world outside, but also her sexual awakening—her belated initiation into womanhood and all that it entails.
As a novelist, I’m very interested in infatuation and desire—how easily these feelings can spring up within us, and how often they leave us perplexed and disorientated—as well as how sexual freedom can sometimes play out quite differently for men and women. I’m also curious about what a blossoming sexuality might be like one step removed from popular culture.
But on a deeper level, I see the book as an examination of modern life, of all the ways we’ve invented to disconnect ourselves from nature. Living the way I do, encased in forest on the periphery of modern existence, raises a number of questions. Primarily—how is it that we humans have come to see ourselves as so separate from the natural world? What do we gain by this? And what is the cost?
Tell us a little about Mema. Is she based on anyone you know?
Mema is a combination of influences. Having been home-schooled and living out in the bush, she’s very unworldly, but at the same time she has an innocent knowingness. She grew up in the aftermath of a time and place where there was a lot of social experimentation—‘free love’ and the like—and so, in a sense, she’s seen quite a bit on an emotional level, even though she hasn’t strayed far from home.
She’s not based on anyone I know, but the idea of her came from a teenage girl I used to see about town who had a limp. She was very appealing, in a Peruvian princess kind of way, and had a gentle-seeming self-assurance. I was fascinated by her. I think ‘familiar strangers’ can be really rich sources for the literary imagination. Even though I’d never spoken to this girl, and certainly didn’t know her, I began to wonder about her life. How did she feel about her misshapen foot? Did it change how she moved through the world? I got to wondering if all the boys in town found her as alluring as me—or if her limp made her somehow off limits or damaged-seeming. And once I began pondering all these things, Mema’s voice just seemed to come to me. Clear and unhindered. It’s been a good few years since I’ve seen this girl. She must have moved away, but I still look for her and wonder how she is.
The landscape is beautifully detailed. Is it a depiction of your childhood home?
It is an imagined landscape, but is loosely based on a property I know well—the childhood home of a close friend. It’s not very far from my place, geographically speaking, and there are aspects of the landscape in Deeper Water—like the creek system—that certainly occur in my home too, but overall the world of the book really only exists in my mind. I wanted to give the reader an experience of immersion in the natural world. I didn’t want the book to be overtly descriptive—to tell the reader what the landscape was like—I wanted the reader to be in it. To create this experience, I definitely called on how it feels to be inside my own personal landscape, my childhood home and homeland. That said, the towns that are closest to where I live are actually quite culturally vibrant places, which isn’t really reflected in my novels at all. I suppose I use some aspects of these towns and leave out others, and in the end the towns in my novels become utterly fictional places.
What fascinates you about the concept of women living without men?
I don’t really think I’m fascinated by the concept of women living without men. I think it’s more that it’s quite reflective of the world I inhabit. On a day-to-day basis—apart from my sons—I don’t come in contact with too many men. This might be symptomatic of my rural area, which has very high rates of single-parent households, or it might just be my particular circumstances, cloistered away in the forest.
In contrast, as a child in my community I always felt like the only girl among a horde of wild boys. Largely, this was circumstantial—most of my parent’s friends had male children—and I have really strong memories of feeling a deep affinity with these boys, but as I’ve gotten older that sense of closeness and understanding has dissipated. It’s partly that the boys all just moved away, but somehow in that process, masculinity has begun to seem more and more foreign to me. Unfamiliar and exotic. So, I think it’s more that I am fascinated by gender—and masculinity, in particular—and, of course, I have a real stake in understanding it because I’m trying to raise two boys.
Mema discovers throughout the course of the novel that she does not know herself as well as she thought. What are you using Mema to say about how we understa
nd ourselves and our motivations?
One of the big things I was grappling with in this novel is that we don’t always know very much about ourselves. That often we think we are being honest with those around us, but there are things rolling around in the depths of us that we can’t acknowledge. They are like secrets about ourselves that we don’t even know. In a sense, I’m talking about the primal emotions that drive us—instincts and urges that we are often completely unconscious of. I find this stuff confusing, on a personal level. It’s been my experience, in the last few years particularly, that all these things I thought about myself—or ways I defined who I was—were simply not quite right.
So, in Mema’s case, she thinks she’s relatively emotionally self-sufficient, not prone to passion or being in love, not especially sexually alert, but all of a sudden she realises that in many ways she is exactly the opposite. And she wasn’t lying to those around her, or hiding things, she just wasn’t aware of them herself. I think we unconsciously shield ourselves from the parts of ourselves we find hard to manage or accept. And so, in some ways, Mema is ambushed by this incredible surge of feeling-eroticism-passion that she wasn’t aware she was even capable of.
In a wider sense, I’m interested in how sometimes that unacknowledged underbelly of feeling can propel us in directions completely in opposition to our own moral code. I think as humans we tend to overestimate our rational selves. We believe we’ve overcome our animalness, but I suspect that’s less than true.
Was the writing process for Deeper Water influenced by the success of your first novel, Darkness on the Edge of Town?
Darkness on the Edge of Town was written at a time when I believed publication was an impossibility. This belief was partly fuelled by my geographic isolation—I knew no writers, I had no contact with that part of the world. But it was also informed by the prominent myth that ‘aspiring writers never get published’. I’d been hearing that phrase so long I had absolutely accepted it. Because of these two things, I wrote with a sense of absolute privacy. I believed no one would ever read it. I made no attempt to censor myself, and didn’t judge the writing either. I just experienced it. It was an incredibly invigorating way to write. Joyful, even though the text itself was quite dark.