‘So tell me about Christmas,’ she said. ‘What did you eat? Who was there?’
‘Just me and Stella and my aunt and her boyfriend and my grandmother. We had tea. I mucked around during the day.’
‘What’s your aunt’s name?’ Penny asked.
‘Toni, short for Antonia.’
‘Is she young?’
‘Five years younger than Stella.’
‘What’s she like?’
I thought about Toni. She was like Stella in a way, colourful, attractive, but softer, not caustic, not unpredictable.
‘She’s great,’ I said. ‘She’s a composer. And she teaches.’
‘Does she write songs for your mother?’ Penny asked.
‘Sometimes. She’s mostly quartets and choir music and stuff. Her boyfriend, William, is a pianist,’ I said, anticipating Penny’s next question, ‘and they live together.
‘My grandmother’s a music teacher, too,’ I went on, warming to this. We were sweeping, sweeping, moving back into the easy rhythms we had established before the Christmas break, the tough bristles of the brooms rasping on the concrete floor, a constant familiar accompaniment to our talk. ‘And my grandfather was a double-bass player in the Symphony Orchestra.’
‘This is a really interesting family,’ said Penny accusingly, ‘and you’ve never said a thing. And musical. My family’s just accountants and businessmen right back to the Ark.’
‘Yeah, well, guess what?’ I said. ‘I can’t sing a note. It ran out when it got to me.’
‘Oh, poor old Cat-gut,’ said Penny, pouting. ‘Maybe you got tone deafness from your father.’ She looked expectant.
‘I reckon,’ I said.
‘Tell me about your father,’ she directed, bending again to the broom, manoeuvring an unwieldy hill of sand out the door.
So I told her about my father, Scottish and suave and sweet (according to Stella), and dead in a car accident when I was eighteen months old.
‘I don’t remember him,’ I said. ‘I think of Freddy as my father.’
‘Tell me about Freddy,’ she said.
She was relentless, prodding and probing, true to her New Year’s resolution. And I didn’t mind. It was true what I’d said to Freddy about new friends being too hard because they didn’t know anything, but Penny was different. She made it her business to find out; she simply asked the questions and required answers in her winningly bossy way. After a while I found that I enjoyed telling her about the convolutions of my family, about life with Stella and her variable boyfriends, about the old days with Freddy and how much I missed him, about school and the strangeness of being on the other side of town.
I didn’t tell her everything of course. But sometimes, as we walked high along the sand dunes, looking out over the mixed blues of the sea and sky, the rough afternoon breakers, the Kaikoura mountains just perceptible through the haze, I felt almost the same calm as I did on my bike, ploughing through the miles to and from work.
It’s out of my hands, I thought happily. Penny insists on being my friend. One day she’ll ask the inevitable question and I’ll open my mouth and tell her about Tiggie.
It was soon after work began again that I noticed the black leather bikie wandering up the beach one lunch hour. It was unmistakably the boy from Parklands. Later I saw him in the car-park, astride his bike, ready to rev. Penny and I were walking back to the shed to get the pincers and sacks.
‘Get him,’ I said softly as we passed by the bike.
She attempted a low whistle.
‘But listen to this.’ I told her about the JESUS LIVES!! house in Parklands.
‘And lately, I’ve seen this amazing van coming out of there. One of those old types, smallish and round, Anglia I think, but this one is painted in psychedelic patterns like something out of the sixties. Love and peace, et cetera. Weird?’
‘Weird,’ she agreed.
Two days later we sat on the sea wall with Stefan, eating fish and chips. It was overcast; an easterly raised goose-bumps on our arms. The beach was almost empty, the occasional figure strolling, a dog or two racing up the sand, twisting suddenly to run into the surf. I stared absently at the horizon, enjoying the chips, hot and salty on my tongue.
‘Don’t look now,’ said Penny, ‘but there’s your bikie down there.’
‘Do you know him?’ said Stefan, staring. ‘Don’t stare, Stefan.’
‘I’ve seen him at North Beach,’ said Stefan. ‘He works around there. Weird dude.’
‘Why?’ said Penny, snatching the sauce sachet. ‘Just because he looks different. We can’t all dress Beverly Hills, can we?’
‘Did I say that?’ said Stefan.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ I said, stuffing in the last chip, screwing up my paper. I didn’t hang around when they bickered, it could get very corrosive.
After that I saw the bikie a few times in the distance and once quite nearby talking to Billy, but he had his back to me. His long black hair was very silky.
On Thursday morning in the second week of January I came out of the shed with my broom and saw him pull up on his bike, dismount and walk towards the playground. I ducked behind the whale and stood where he couldn’t see me, watching. It was only 9 a.m. but the sun was well up in a cloudless sky. It was very still and quiet, only the sound of waves breaking gently on the sand, and a child’s voice raised, far away. He must be sweating, I thought, watching him take off his gloves and helmet.
Well, as I said earlier, it was one of those moments — a cliché, really. I could feel the plunge in my stomach, my cheeks burning, probably my mouth fell open. It was a long moment of pure physical awareness. I felt the blood running, warm, round my body, I felt each tiny pale hair on the back of my hands, I felt my skin prickle with heat and then cool swiftly as a wash of concentrated longing settled over me.
He had the palest skin, a shadow of dark whiskers, deep-set black eyes. His shoulder-length hair was plastered damp against his forehead and cheeks. He wore an earring in his left ear. He was the most beautiful boy I’d ever laid eyes on.
He walked away holding his gear, past the climbing frames and swings to the far wall where there was a good view of the beach and sea. I busied myself with the broom, pushing it ahead of me to the cubicles, hoping he hadn’t noticed me pop up suddenly from behind the whale.
Penny was already at work in the Women’s, singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
‘Hey,’ I whispered, tugging at her crop top.
She stopped singing abruptly. ‘Why are you whispering?’ she said loudly.
‘Shut up,’ I hissed. ‘Come with me. Bring the broom. Look busy. Round by the Whale Pool. Pretend we’re sweeping the sides. It’s him.’
I kept my head down, moving the broom vigorously around the sides of the pool.
Penny was an old hand at this sort of thing, I knew. She swept for thirty seconds or so then looked casually towards the wall and had a long stare.
‘Nice. Sort of dark and broody. Looks a bit like Johnny Depp. Not my type. But objectively, very nice.’
I stole a look and was overcome again by his beauty. He did look a bit like Johnny Depp. But better.
‘Oh dear,’ said Penny, looking sadly at me.
‘What?’ I said, worried.
‘It’s the Thunderbolt,’ she said.
‘Uh?’ I took another look.
‘The Thunderbolt. Love,’ she said witheringly into my blank face.
‘Ssssshhh,’ I said, looking down, moving the broom feebly.
‘Well, lust, really,’ Penny went on. ‘Or both. Wouldn’t mind a bit of the Thunderbolt myself. Can’t say I’ve ever really had it for Stefan.’ She burbled on, but I only half listened. I watched the boy over on the sea wall, staring off into some private landscape, unaware of our interest.
‘Yes, you’ve got it bad,’ said Penny, looking at me, faintly disgusted. ‘Fancy you!’ she said.
I smiled at her. She was right, as usual. I tried to analyse the mix of s
ensations I felt round my heart, my stomach, my throat.
‘Bad and sad and mad,’ I said.
Chapter Three
‘So it was Love at First Sight?’ said Miriam.
‘I suppose.’
‘Had that ever happened to you before?’
‘Nah. I was never very interested in boys. That was Stella’s department, she did enough of it for the two of us. And love, or whatever, you get sceptical when your mother’s falling in and out of it.’
‘But what about when she married Freddy?’
‘Oh, I believed in love then.’
‘Why?’
‘Well … they were so happy, we were all so happy.’
I thought of Stella and Freddy laughing, always laughing, singing loudly, cooking together, plotting and planning. I thought of our transformed life, the big house with the sun-filled rooms and the abundant garden.
‘I mean, Stella used to garden,’ I said, registering for the first time the enormity of that small change. ‘We were a happy family—’
I stopped, remembering suddenly Stella planting viola seedlings and Tiggie coming along behind her and carefully pulling them all out and Stella catching Tiggie and rolling round on the lawn with her, giggling.
‘It was such a novelty,’ I said to Miriam Wilkie.
‘And when Stella and Freddy separated?’
‘Oh, well, then … it was all smashed, wasn’t it? Stella ruined it all.’
‘Stella smashed up the family?’
‘It was all a farce, the love she’d professed.’
Miriam was silent, letting those words settle between us.
‘It was such an awful time,’ I said, quickly. ‘It was … terrible, terrible, with Freddy gone and then the fire and Tiggie and everything. And Stella so wrecked. And then we lived with Nan. And then there was hardly any money. It was like being in the dark, like being buried alive—’ I shrugged, annoyed by this leakage, this spill of feeling. ‘It was a lot better after we shifted to River Road and I got the bike and then the job.’
‘Why do you think Stella smashed it all up?’ said Miriam Wilkie, unerringly going for the jugular.
‘I really don’t want to talk about it,’ I said.
‘Why didn’t you want to talk to anyone about Tiggie?’ she asked.
‘I don’t want to talk about that either,’ I said firmly.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What happened next?’
What happened next was that I started acting like a love-sick lunatic. I worked out that the boy in black left his house every morning at 8.15, so every morning at 8.15 I contrived to be riding past his driveway. Sometimes I arrived there ahead of time and missed him, but then, minutes later, I would hear his bike roaring behind me along Queenspark Drive and even this gave me a peculiar pleasure.
I’d always looked forward to work: the searing ride, swim ming in the surf, goofing around with Penny, eating Chelsea buns and laughing at Harris, lolling mindlessly in the sun. But now I woke every morning to something more. I counted how often I might see him: en route to work, maybe before work, at lunch time. Just the thought of it made me happy.
‘You’ll have to find a way to talk to him,’ said Penny, ever practical.
‘Way too frightening,’ I said.
‘Rubbish. You can’t just be content to accidentally-on-purpose glimpse him leaving home and maybe see him sitting on the sea wall.’
‘I wonder what he thinks when he’s sitting there?’ I said.
‘Something very profound, no doubt,’ said Penny.
I punched her softly on the arm. ‘Ohhhhhh,’ I groaned, clutching my middle, ‘he’s so gorgeous.’
‘Yeah, well so are you,’ she said briskly. ‘Be confident. Just bowl up to him, start talking. Guys love it, saves them all the terror.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I said, stretching out on the bench and closing my eyes. It was lunch time and Stefan was at the mall buying our pies.
‘My God, speak of the devil,’ said Penny. ‘Here he is now.’
‘Shit,’ I said, sitting up quickly. ‘Where?’
‘Just kidding,’ said Penny, collapsing with laughter on top of me.
‘Seriously, though, I’ve got an idea. We’ll ask Billy about him. They seem to be acquainted.’
‘Yes,’ I breathed.
‘It’s over with me and Dix,’ said Stella one night after dinner. I had cooked a fish pie, but as usual Stella had only picked at it. She was having her thousandth cigarette of the day.
‘Good,’ I said.
‘Yeah, well, you were right,’ she said, ‘he was pretty dumb, really.’
‘Dix, dick-face,’ I said, making a fastidious face, and we both laughed.
‘He was always at the gym,’ she said, ‘or talking about it. And all that sloppy adoration, you get sick of it.’
‘Well, you’d know all about that,’ I said, trying not to sound too testy. I could never sustain interest in Stella’s men. As far as I was concerned she’d stuffed it with Freddy and she’d never find anyone as good again. And she had nobody to blame but herself. End of story.
‘I think I’ll have a break from men,’ she said, yawning, ‘get a bit of sleep, give up smoking, get healthy.’
‘Yeah, yeah.’ I’d heard it all before. Stella always went through a health-kick after she broke up with anyone.
‘C’mon, Cat-girl, give me a break,’ she said, looking hard-done-by. She stood up and gave a little experimental jump. ‘Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life.’
I softened briefly and gave her a rare hug, feeling her skinny shoulders, smelling her musk oil/cigarette mix.
‘Good mother,’ I murmured into her neck.
She squeezed me hard and I knew she would have tears in her eyes. She got all emotional when we hugged.
‘How are you, Cat-girl?’ she whispered.
‘I’m great,’ I said, tough, dry-eyed. ‘I’m fit and thriving.’
‘Your hair’s grown heaps,’ said Stella, taking a deep breath. She knew I hated her getting emotional. ‘It looks great. And you’re so brown. You look a million dollars.’
I beamed.
‘Are you in love?’ she said. Absolutely no flies on Stella.
‘I might be,’ I said, turning to clear the table.
‘Hey, tell me,’ she said, ‘tell your mother at once.’
‘Not yet,’ I said, pushing open the kitchen door with my bottom. ‘I might some time. If you’re very good.’
His name was Jeremiah Hook. Penny interrogated Billy at morning tea while I went for Chelsea buns, too embarrassed to listen.
‘Coward,’ Penny whispered. ‘And you want to be a sleuth.’
‘Jeremiah,’ I said. ‘Hook. Kinda gothic.’
And worse, his father was a healing preacher in the Parklands’ First Church of Jesus Christ’s Eternal Love.
‘Healer Hook,’ said Penny, vastly amused.
‘He can’t help what his father does,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’ve never heard of the Church of Eternal Love.’
‘He founded it,’ Penny said. She was rather pleased with her detective work. ‘Healer Hook. Billy goes there sometimes, to the church. There are healing ministries every month. Quite big affairs, apparently.’
‘Obviously he — Jeremiah — wouldn’t have anything to do with that,’ I said, very confident of this.
‘Oh!’ Penny yelled, laughing, slapping me on the back. ‘I’ve just thought of something! Oh, this is wonderful!’ She was practically incoherent. ‘You’re Hooked!’ she gulped. ‘Hooked!’
‘Very funny,’ I said.
It made no difference. He was still beautiful. My heart sank painfully every time I saw him, which had been three times this week. He came regularly now, at lunch time, from wherever he worked. He bought an ice-cream sometimes and walked southwards down the beach, or he sat on the playground sea wall, looking into the distance. I was acutely conscious of everything he did, but no closer to speaking to him.
‘No, this
is it,’ said Penny, sobering up. ‘You’ve gotta talk to him. Somehow.’
‘Easier said than done,’ I said, thinking hard.
Freddy’s mother liked to say, The Lord moves in mysterious ways. She meant this to be comforting, though I never found it so. Despite her Buddhist period, Stella had raised me a sceptic and it had stuck. It’s true that during the worst times I had lain in bed trying desperately to summon some supernatural force to move mysteriously or otherwise, wave a magic wand and fix everything, but all I had ever found was silence, infinity, emptiness. I knew there was nothing there.
Stella would have called it Fate. My old friend Carla would have said it was the Stars. Penny pronounced it good organisation but, oddly, I thought of Freddy’s mother when I finally got to speak to Jeremiah. In the end it was so simple, absurdly coincidental, meant to be.
Some lunch hours Penny went off with Stefan. She was diligent about this: they lay round in the sand dunes and related, I supposed, though I could never imagine what they talked about. Privately, I thought Stefan’s days were numbered.
While they got intimate in the sand dunes, I swam. I pulled on my new racing togs in the Women’s, admiring myself in the smudgy, peeling mirror. I had visible calf muscles now, and a hint of pectorals. I felt very pleased with myself.
The South Brighton surf was hard swimming, rough, awash with kelp and other unidentifiable sea growths, but this suited my new puritanism. I swam strongly, curving over the breakers, pushing out to the flat water. Then I swa parallel to the beach, back and forth, a mean, relentless forearm.
‘You make swimming look like a very nasty experience,’ Penny told me.
‘Good for the upper body,’ I told her.
Out beyond the breakers I felt my arms and shoulders and chest expanding, toughening, and I mentally blessed Freddy for swimming lessons.
I floated shoreward on my back, then lay on the sand, looking up at the sky, watching the wheeling seagulls, listening to the buzz on the beach. I loved to lick the salt from my lips, feel the sun and air evaporating the water on my legs, the salt tightening my skin.
I sprayed myself down before work began again, trying to massage the sand out of my hair, which by afternoon had dried to a frizz, exploding round my head like an oversized bright red hat, driving me mad.
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