Dancing on Knives

by Kate Forsyth

  The rain beat at her and she lifted her face to it. On a sudden impulse, she stripped off her clothes. She hesitated a moment in her underwear, before recklessly undoing the strap of her bra and pulling down her underpants. Naked she stood on the shore, the cold rain beating against her, seagulls calling weirdly as they rose and fell in the waves of wind. Then she dived into the cold sea foam.

  The current off the shore was disturbingly strong. She floated in the waves, light as driftwood, rising and falling with the pale green water. One perfectly curved wave, flecked with foam like a horse’s arched neck, lifted her and carried her to shore with a whoosh like flying. She cried out with joy and dived back into the waves, the undertow at once seizing her with its dragging force. Again and again she rode the waves to the shore, rolling against the sand in the foam, diving out again through the swell. She laughed and swam towards the far dim shape of Montague Island, her eyes stinging with salt. Inexorably, though, the current dragged her back towards the rocks at the south end and for a while she let it carry her, rocking her like the arms of a mother. How easy just to sink below the waves. It would be like sleeping, the sleep of a child, without nightmares, like day-dreaming, so soft to slip into, so salty-sweet and soft. She closed her eyes and lazily swam with the current, just a few strokes, just to feel the sea and storm in harmony with her, the deep organ music of the ocean in her ears. Then she opened her eyes and began to swim for the shore. It was a hard battle. The sea was her enemy, clawed waves dragging her down. Unexpected currents seized her legs, spun her around, dumped her under so her hair was in her mouth. She swallowed water, saw darkness in her eyes.

  Just as her arms and legs were tiring, the shore still too far away, she saw a large swell coming, rearing up out of the wild crisscross of currents. She propelled herself forward and felt the wave rise beneath her. She cried aloud in delight as the wave swept her towards the shore, flinging her on to the sand in a boisterous swirl of foam.

  Sara lay naked at the edge of the shore, spreading wide her arms and legs and letting the cold wind and water buffet her. She was scoured clean as a mother-of-pearl shell, clean and empty. The storm had passed. Light drifts of rain still blew here and there, carried by a capricious wind, but the dark clouds were clearing to the east. Sara was cold. She ran along the shore, scrambled into her damp clothes, thrusting her underwear into her pocket. She pulled the oilskin about her like a stiff brown cloak, and climbed the steep cliff path to the house.

  Matthew stood at the top of the path. The wind blew his hair back from his face. He stared at her. She stopped, pulling the oilskin closer. He said nothing, just stared at her, and she pushed past him, her head high. For the first time she did not shake her long hair over her face and peer at him from its shelter. Nothing could dim her exalted state, not even knowing he had seen her naked.

  Sara did not want to meet anyone else, the state of grace still on her, so she slipped in through the back door and crept up the stairs to her tower room. Shaking with cold, she changed quickly, putting on her white dress and combing her long wet hair. The face which looked back at her from the mirror was unfamiliar. Her green-blue eyes were as luminous as the sea, her cheeks flushed with colour.

  Sara went back downstairs, her sandals in her hand. She could hear crying from Teresa’s room, and tapped on the door. ‘Tessie …’

  ‘Go away!’ Teresa shouted.

  ‘Honey, let me in. I’ve got to talk to you.’

  Teresa unlocked the door and let her in. Immediately she threw herself back on the bed, and buried her head under the pillow. ‘Teresa … how long have you known about Dad and Maureen?’

  Teresa sat up and stared at her. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I guessed,’ Sara answered, sitting on the side of the bed. ‘So, how long?’

  ‘About a month, a month and a half, I guess. I saw them one day …’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Teresa looked away. ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’

  Sara felt a pang of bitter regret. She had tried so hard to look after her sister, but instead her sister had felt the need to protect her.

  ‘Did you see them together on Friday?’

  Teresa nodded. ‘I followed Dad to the headland. They had a big fight and I thought, good-o, they’re breaking up. Then Dad hit her. I was scared by that. I came back then. I didn’t know what else to do. We had lunch.’

  Sara remembered how sulky Teresa had been when she had helped set the table, but how she had begun to laugh and chatter as the lunch wore on. She found it hard to understand. ‘Weren’t you upset?’

  Teresa nodded, looking up at Sara with reddened eyes. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘But you seemed happy …’

  Teresa shrugged and looked away. ‘I don’t know. I was glad it was over, and I was glad Dad had finished his painting …’

  Sara thought about how troublesome Teresa had been all year and wondered if the sneaking out of school, the short new haircut that she knew her father would hate, the endless screaming arguments, were all a result of what Teresa had seen.

  ‘And what did you do then?’ Sara asked intently. ‘You were gone most of the afternoon …’

  ‘I went for a walk,’ Teresa said.

  ‘Up to the headland again?’

  Teresa shot her a glance, then shook her head. Sara had to press her before she would answer. ‘I went and watched the twins,’ she said at last. ‘They were with that girl, the one from Gunyan.’

  ‘You spied on them too?’

  Teresa gave a sly grin. ‘Sometimes.’

  Sara was not sure how to take this. Teresa rolled over and rested her head on her folded arms, staring at Sara defiantly. ‘What else is there to do around here?’

  ‘Did you see Dad during the afternoon?’

  Teresa shook her head. ‘He was at the headland, though. I saw him ride up there. And I knew Maureen was still there, I could see her car. It made me so angry …’

  ‘But you didn’t go up there, you didn’t go and confront him?’

  ‘No.’ Teresa looked away. ‘I guess that’s why I took the Dodge, though, and went into town. I had to get out for a while. If I’d known Maureen was going to try and kill Dad, I’d never have done it.’

  ‘So you really think Maureen pushed Dad off Towradgi?’

  ‘Hell, I dunno. She was up there with him, though, she admits it. If it wasn’t her, it was Alex – or fat-arse Harry.’

  ‘Alex says he and Harry were at church all afternoon, with Annie. He says they couldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Then it was Maureen. She was angry enough – at least, she was in the morning. They were screaming at each other then. Mind you, Dad seemed to like it.’ And Teresa screwed up her eyes and mouth, and covered her face with her hand. ‘He grabbed her and kissed her and threw her on the ground, Sara. He … he …’ She could not speak.

  ‘I know,’ Sara answered. She stroked Teresa’s short, dishevelled hair. ‘I know.’

  The Moscow Circus came to Sydney a few years after they had moved to the south coast. Augusto loved circuses and so he planned a trip for them all – the first and only trip back to Sydney that the whole family went on together. The twins were so excited, they were carsick all the way up the coast road, but even that could not dampen Augusto’s cheerfulness. He told them stories about how he had once run away to join a circus.

  ‘I wanted to be a clown,’ he said solemnly, and they did not know whether he was telling the truth or not.

  Neither Dominic nor Dylan really remembered Sydney, so Joe and Sara felt important, pointing out landmarks and remembering places they’d been. They stayed that night at a motel on the Pacific Highway and ate dinner in a restaurant. For the first time they saw Augusto in a jacket and it made him look like someone else. Bridget said she liked it.

  The circus was every bit as good as Augusto promised them. There was so much to see, and all the smells and sounds were foreign, the roar of lions, elephant squeals, jangly m
usic, and the quick exchange of word and command and gesture from the performers. Joe, Sara and the twins laughed and clapped and squealed with excitement. Bridget, a squirming Dylan in her arms, lay back in her chair laughing helplessly as the elephant squirted the clowns with water. Yet no-one laughed at the clowns and performing bears as much as Augusto. No-one watched the acrobats with as much awe and pleasure. He was transfixed by the glowing ring where act followed glittering act, trapeze artists swinging and somersaulting through the upper gloom like angels.

  For weeks after, Joe dreamt of being a ring-master, with a whip and a bright blue coat. Sara wanted to be the girl in a spangled skirt, who did somersaults on the back of a white horse. The twins dreamt of being lion-tamers, though Dominic also liked the elephants, with their tiny wise eyes, and mischievous grins.

  Playing ‘Circus’ was their favourite game for months. Joe misappropriated the stockman’s whip, and cracked it all around while the twins pretended to be elephants, roaring and waving their trunks. The game never failed to end in broken ornaments, grazed elbows and an argument.

  For Augusto, the trip resulted in a painting called Circus Rider. Like Sara, he had liked the girl who rode the horses best. He painted himself as the ring-master, whip in one hand. Augusto often put himself into his paintings – it was as if they satisfied some urge in him to step into that alien reality, that existence so different from his own.

  The trip to the circus became part of the family mythology. Joe, in particular, found the memory a source of pleasure and satisfaction. This may have been because it was one of the last memories any of them had of Bridget – she died several months later, her car arching away from the sullen earth, leaving a path of broken branches and deeply scored gravel, to soar into the blue ether. Consumed in fire. Great globules of flame dropping into the bush. Black smoke that rose in billows, turning orange against the pure blue sky. The red earth scarred and blackened, the twisted metal, the grimy ashes.

  Augusto had taken his other family to the circus too, the very next night, when he was thought to be at a party at his dealer’s. He had a double memory of the circus-rider; he told the same jokes to his different families.

  Sara remembered when they found out, one lunchtime soon after Augusto married Gayla. They were talking about elephants. Sara remembered the expression of guilt that flashed over Augusto’s face as Joe got up out of his chair, his face white and all screwed up. The twins’ faces closed, expressionless, Teresa angry, yelling, Sara crying. She remembered how they felt – as if all their past was tainted, and all their memories illusion.

  Later that day, examining the painting in the living room, Sara saw Augusto had painted Gayla and her daughter as performers peering out from behind the curtain. She could not understand how she had failed to see them before. She could not find Bridget’s red hair, or herself, or Joe, not even the twins. Augusto had not painted them in. They might as well not have existed.

  Sara and Gabriela cooked paella together for lunch. They did not speak much, just busying themselves cutting up the chicken and seafood, soaking saffron threads in water, stirring the steaming rice. Sara felt more at peace than she had for a long time.

  ‘We should ask Matthew up for lunch,’ Gabriela said.

  Sara shot her cousin a look.

  ‘We have plenty,’ Gabriela said.

  ‘All right.’

  So when Joe came up from the sheds, Matthew came with him. Teresa helped set the table, but there was no sign of the twins. Everyone was quiet and tense. Joe would not meet Sara’s eyes.

  ‘This is great,’ Matthew said, spooning up the paella. ‘Did you cook it?’ He looked at Sara.

  ‘I helped,’ she answered.

  ‘You did most of it,’ Gabriela said.

  ‘I only did the chopping.’

  ‘That’s the hard part,’ Gabriela replied.

  An awkward silence fell. ‘Is this Spanish food?’ Matthew asked. When Sara nodded, he said, ‘I know a great joke about Spanish cooking.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Joe said.

  ‘Well, let’s hear it then,’ Teresa said.

  Matthew grinned. ‘OK. An American tourist goes into a restaurant in Spain and orders the specialty of the house. When his dinner arrives, he asks the waiter what it is. “These, senor, are the thighs of the bull killed in the ring today.”’ Matthew put on an exaggerated Spanish accent. ‘So the tourist tucks in and thinks it tastes just great. He comes back the next evening and orders the same meal. When it arrives, he says to the waiter, “These thighs are much smaller than the ones I had last night.” “Yes, senor,” replies the waiter. “You see … the bull, he does not always lose.”’

  Sara could not help smiling. Matthew grinned at her, and she looked away.

  ‘That is a terrible joke,’ Gabriela said.

  ‘All his jokes are terrible.’ Sara busied herself with her bowl of paella.

  ‘It’s racist,’ Joe said.

  ‘Most jokes are,’ Matthew responded. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend.’

  Joe grunted.

  Sara could feel Matthew’s eyes on her. She risked a look at him and he quirked a smile and shrugged slightly. She shrugged back.

  The phone rang. Gabriela said, ‘I’ll get it.’ They all sat tensely, waiting for her to return. She came back in a moment. ‘It’s for you, Sara.’

  Everyone stared at her in surprise.

  ‘Is it the hospital?’ Sara asked, her stomach wrenching.

  Gabriela shook her head.

  Sara got to her feet and went out into the front hall to pick up the phone. Her heart banged painfully against her ribs.

  It was the twins. They were drunk. She found it hard to decipher their slurred speech.

  ‘You gotta come up, Sar,’ Dylan said. ‘We really gotta talk to you.’

  ‘We’re at Gunyan, Sar,’ Dominic said.

  ‘What are you doing? Where have you been all morning? I wish you wouldn’t go off all the time without telling me where you’re going!’

  ‘We gotta talk to you, Sar.’

  ‘Well, come home and we’ll talk.’

  ‘No, no. We don’t wanna come home. We gotta talk to you. Please.’

  ‘OK,’ Sara said. ‘I’ll come up.’

  Dominic’s emphatic ‘Don’t tell anyone’ stabbed sharply through her throat.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just don’t tell anyone,’ he repeated.

  Sara hung up the phone and went silently down the hall, so no-one would see her leaving. On the back verandah, she took off her sandals and put on her boots, even though they looked rather odd under her pretty white dress. As she stepped outside the door, a scud of rain blew in her face. As she walked out to the stile, she saw the Elephant leaning against the fence where Joe had left it after bringing it down from Towradgi Headland. She laid her hand against its battered seat. For the first time she wished she knew how to ride a motorcycle – it would be so much easier to get to Gunyan by road than to walk across the paddocks and up the steep slope to where the old cottage huddled into the side of the hill. One day, perhaps, she would learn.

  The wind blew chill against her face, the shadows of clouds slanted over her. The brown waters of the dam rippled in the wind as if urging her to hurry, hurry. As she climbed, she moved out of the shadow cast by the massive hills, and into a frail sunlight. She was far above the world that she knew, like a god on Mount Olympus looking and watching and deciding the fate of those below.

  The old cottage was crouched below the curved spine of the hill. She turned in at the crooked little gate, feeling a stitch in her side, and an ache in her lungs. The ground was black with rain. She could not see the sea but the taste of it was in the wind.

  Nungeena, her father’s tenant, was sitting on the front stairs, a cup between her feet. She was an Aboriginal woman of about fifty who had returned to Narooma to get back in touch with her roots. She too was an artist, though her style could not have been more different to Augusto’s, being ab
stract, rich in colour, deliberate in brushwork, and drawing upon centuries of tradition and symbol. After many arguments, both pleasant and unpleasant, landlord and tenant had agreed to disagree, particularly since both agreed passionately on the one important subject and that was the stultifying narrowmindedness of those who gave out government grants.

  ‘Hallo, Sara,’ she said. There was a smudge of red paint across her broad, dark face, and under her pale fingernails.

  Sara ducked her head, nodding shyly. She had met Nungeena a number of times but had never actually exchanged a word with her, though she liked to sit leaning against a verandah post and listening to her talk. Nungeena always had interesting things to say.

  ‘How’s Gus? Any news?’

  Sara shook her head.

  ‘I’m so sorry. It’s such a terrible thing to happen. I hope he recovers all right. You after your brothers? They’re in with Nya.’ Nungeena jerked over her shoulder with one thumb. Sara smiled and climbed the steps, being careful not to brush against the woman on her way past.

  The cottage was very small and rather dingy, with a dark, narrow hallway running down the middle of the house with doors leading off on either side. She identified Nya’s room by the music pumping out at great volume. For a while she hesitated outside the door but at last she gained the courage and stepped inside.

  Her younger brothers were sitting on the floor, hunched over a small bowl where Dylan was crushing dusty leaves with his fingers. The room was grey with fragrant smoke. Nya lay on her bed, her legs in their ripped jeans propped up the wall, her curly black hair hanging over the edge. She was a tall, sturdy-looking girl with a warm, open, curious face and a rather mocking smile. Her skin was much lighter than Nungeena’s. Like the twins she seemed to live in old jeans, heavy metal T-shirts and flannelette shirts, though she wore round her neck some kind of talisman carved in dark wood and hung on a leather thong.

  As Sara entered Nya sucked heavily on the end of a joint, before passing it overhand to Dominic, exhaling in one long plume of smoke. Sara said nothing. It was a moment before they noticed her. Dylan looked a little embarrassed, and covered the bowl with his hand, but Dominic smiled at her mistily and moved over so she could sit down. Awkwardly, Sara lowered herself to the ground.