Relief

by Anna Taylor

  ‘Seven letters,’ she said to me one morning, sitting at the table with the crossword in her lap. ‘Organic or natural. Seven letters. Any ideas?’

  I had none, and had a mouthful of toast. I shook my head.

  Sal glanced at my face, her cool slanted eyes expressionless, and then she smiled quietly, as if she liked what she saw, or found it amusing at least. She picked up her pencil and went back to scribbling words on the corner of the paper.

  As it grew colder, I saw Bronwyn James less and less. She was above playing bull-rush or tag with us, and the swimming hole no longer provided a meeting place, the murky water’s edge often being laced with ice in the mornings.

  I came across her one afternoon riding her horse down the road. I was on my way home, and heard the clipping of its hooves moving along behind me, getting louder with every step. She drew up beside me and tilted her chin.

  ‘Haven’t seen you around,’ she said, looking down at me from a great height, her knees and feet level with the top of my head. The horse snorted and stamped one foot.

  I agreed with her; we hadn’t seen each other for ages.

  Bronwyn smiled, and bowed her head down towards me so she looked like she could slide right off the horse’s back and land on my shoulder.

  ‘You know, Harry,’ she said, the corner of her mouth twisting into a smile, ‘I kinda miss you when you’re not around.’

  The world seemed to go deathly quiet at that moment, as if all of the air had been sucked out of it. Bronwyn laughed, and then she kicked her heel and took off at a gallop.

  I stood in the middle of the road, watching her bounce away, my chest thumping in time with her long ropey plait. I don’t know if she was teasing, or serious, but for days afterward I carried the knowledge of those words, believing that when I was old enough Bronwyn and I could get married, that we could ride off together into the sunset.

  *

  Things with my father and Sal Chambers didn’t have a notable decline. Perhaps after a couple of months, once we were through autumn and winter, once the daffodils had started poking their heads through the grass, their relationship seemed cooler somehow, but that was a relief to me, rather than a disappointment.

  Sal was still at our house most of the time, and I was still wishing she wasn’t.

  It must have been nearing November, on a blustery Sunday afternoon, that it finally became clear to me that my father didn’t think the world of Sal after all.

  She wanted to go on a day trip, she was determined, so the three of us piled into the car and drove forty minutes to the sea. It was the first time I had ever seen Sal wearing anything other than overalls. She had shorts on that day, and a light knitted cardigan. I could see her knees from the back seat, knobbly and slightly pink. For the entire drive nobody spoke, and every now and then my father scratched the back of his head irritably, as if there was something under the hair that he wanted to get rid of. Sal had her elbow resting by the window, and looked out it, her palm pressed against her cheek.

  When we arrived it was clear that it hadn’t been a good idea, coming to the sea, just as my father had said. From the car park, still buckled up inside the car, we could see that it was exposed and windy, the grey waves roaring, sand rolling in airborne wheels along the beach. It would get in our eyes, my father said, if we tried to walk down by the water. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  ‘Does Harry think it was a bad idea coming?’ Sal said casually, staring straight ahead out through the windscreen. ‘Harry? Do you think it was a bad idea?’

  I said no with as much conviction as I could muster.

  ‘Well, then,’ she said.

  My father tried to smile brightly, and put on his running shoes, and the three of us loped across the driftwood, up onto the grass leading to the cliff-tops. Sal walked with her hands on her hips, hopping across the rocks like a sparrow.

  The grass was long and scratchy, bending double in the wind. It almost came up to my knees. I felt like I was wading through water. It was steep, going up, and my father puffed a little. You couldn’t hear it, his heavy breathing, not above the sound of the wind, but when he turned to smile at me, to make sure I was keeping up, his chest was rising and falling faster and harder than normal, and his cheeks had a rush of pink. Sal seemed to be having no trouble at all. She whistled as if it was all great fun, and swung her arms.

  I’d only ever been to the cliff-tops twice before, and they seemed slightly threatening to me, as if, no matter how far away you were from the edge, you could still fall off. Years later a man tried to kill himself up there, and failed. He mashed his brains and broke his back, and never uttered another word, not even his own name.

  On that day, high up there in the whipping wind, all three of us stayed as inland as we could, without crossing the fences that led to the coastal farms and the small seaside town beyond them. We could only see the far horizon of the sea, where it looked quite calm and flat, and the sky above it.

  We must have been nearing the top when my father tripped, going over on his ankle and stumbling, half falling, a little down the slope towards me. For a moment he looked comic, his face ruddy, his limbs all going in different directions, looking boneless, like soft rubber.

  Sal began to laugh.

  I don’t think she meant to be cruel. I think it was just that he did look funny, for a moment, and she lost a hold of herself, up there above the sea, right in the middle of that wind. She screeched with laughter, her lips spread back across her gums, almost in a grimace. She staggered a little, she was laughing so much.

  My father was hurt and puffing and his face went redder and redder. He examined his ankle, and puffed and grunted. Sal continued to laugh, louder and more hysterically, her feet going round in circles, the sound on an ebb and flow with the wind. I stood in one spot and stared, not sure what the right thing was to do.

  ‘Stop it,’ my father said to Sal, quietly at first, trying hard to steady his voice. ‘Stop it.’

  In her writhing stumbling dance, her mouth still open, the sound still coming out, Sal tried to shake her head, but she only laughed more, bending over double.

  ‘Stop it, Sal,’ my father said, louder this time, with more force. ‘I’m asking you please. Stop it.’

  She didn’t.

  He moved towards her, lurching on his bad foot, and she didn’t step away, just lifted her head to look at him, her laugh so airless now it sounded like she was crying, her hand on her forehead to steady herself.

  ‘Stop it,’ my father said again.

  I looked down back where we had come from, at the grass bending in the wind, and a square of sand, driftwood scattered across it, the car park with our lone car on it, a dull green the size of my thumb. When I looked back, my father’s arm was mid-air, moving towards Sal’s face, and then his knuckles were against her teeth, hard, were skating upwards, dragging her lip with them, right up into her nose.

  She fell back onto the grass, heavily, and said, ‘Oh,’ as if she had dropped something that didn’t really matter. ‘Oh,’ she said again, and then, ‘Goodness.’

  My father stood beside her, breathing, and I breathed suddenly fast too.

  We all stayed stock still for a moment. And then the blood came. It came out her mouth and out her nose, and she said, ‘Oh goodness,’ again, still quite calmly, one hand cupping the blood under her chin, the other making a little roof over her nose.

  My father had never hit me as a child and he had never hit any of the children at school, and I don’t think he’d meant to hit Sal either, just to stop her laughing, but he was suddenly white, bone quiet, as if he’d killed her.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s okay,’ sounding as if he didn’t mean it at all. ‘Harry, stay here. Stay. I’ll get a rag. Stay, Harry. Sal—’ he paused— ‘it’s okay.’

  And then he was off, half running, limping, staggering down the slope, passing me, not even looking me in the face.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he kept calling out as he dis
appeared from view, his voice coming and going, battered by the wind.

  I stood facing Sal and Sal faced me, the blood snaking down her neck and over her hands and onto the sleeves of her cardigan.

  ‘Oh, Harry,’ she said.

  I had no choice. I moved up the slope towards this woman whom I’d never even wanted to know, and stood beside her, facing the car park, so I could look out for my father. A flock of gulls flew over our heads then, quite low, crying out, their wings beating the air. And it occurred to me, just at that moment, that all of their voices together, rippling in the wind, sounded like Sal’s laughter—that they were her laughter—and that they were carrying it away. Sal looked up and I looked up, and then they were gone. There was only the sound of the wind and the grass and the sea, as if it was far away.

  ‘What did he do that for?’ Sal said in her bland, quiet voice. ‘What did he mean by that, Harry?’

  It was the last unanswerable question she ever asked me. I didn’t know why my father had done it, but I knew he hadn’t meant it, not really. Sal was shaking a bit, and because I had nothing to say, I lifted my two hands and placed them side by side on the top of her head, holding her, if you like, like a ball. It was an odd thing to do, I think now, but right then it seemed be the only thing that was right, and she let me, Sal Chambers, keeping her head quite still, despite all that rushing blood.

  The wind whipped at our clothes, and seemed to get in under them so that I suddenly felt cold. I could see my father moving across the sand, dodging the driftwood, up towards the car park.

  ‘What did he do that for?’ Sal said again, almost in a whisper, not asking me now, but asking the grass, it seemed, and the wind and the sky.

  I pressed my hands a little tighter, and felt the slight pulse of her skull under my palms, the softness and the hardness of it, like an eggshell. I looked out for my father, whom I could no longer see. There was only the bare sand, and the driftwood and the car park with our small round car.

  Sal shifted slightly under my hands, and a gust of wind blew a few dots of blood onto my leg.

  ‘Why did he do that?’ Sal said again, just to herself. She put her hand inside her mouth, and felt her tooth, and said, ‘Oh Jesus.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ she said. I think she may have been crying.

  I stared steadily out at the car park and at our car, the grey strip of sea to my left, Sal’s small narrow head beneath my hands. I waited there, seemingly on the edge of the world, for my father to come back, and make it all okay.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Bill Manhire, for your wonderful teaching and encouragement during the writing of the first draft of this book, and Fergus Barrowman, for your patience and kindness.

  For editorial advice and insight—offered with such gentleness and care—thank you Jane Parkin.

  Thank you to the class of 2006 for your continuing support and friendship: Craig Cliff, Gigi Fenster, Tom Fitzsimons, Emma Gallagher, Kate Mahony, Mary Macpherson, Lucy Orbell, Sue Orr, and Abby Stewart.

  Thank you Denis and Verna Adam, Biddy Grant, and my grandmother Bobbie Taylor, for financially enabling me to complete this book.

  Many thanks, also, to Victoria Birkinshaw, Gina Kiel and Harry A’Court for working on the cover, and to Mark Derby for ongoing support, Christine and Adrian Taylor for providing a country writing retreat, and all my much loved family and friends (especially the Bidwill five).

  And finally, this book belongs to three people:

  My mother, Erin, who is always my first and most trusted reader and critic. You have stood beside me offering insights, ideas, and constant energy and enthusiasm. Thank you for graciously allowing me to weave your real life experience into a story in ‘The Beekeeper’. This book would not have been possible without you.

  Loren, who made the diorama on the cover, and who has spent many hours supporting and encouraging the writing of these stories as they limped into life. I feel blessed to have such an affirming and loving sister as you.

  And Dylan, my love, who has tirelessly driven me on when I’ve been close to giving up on the book altogether. You never fail to make me feel happy, no matter how dreary the day has been.

  I am indebted to all three of you.

  Thank you.