Sheerwater

by Leah Swann

  A succession of sheepless fields, wire fences, leafless trees and, once, the dead mirror of a billabong the colour of andalusite accompanied the sound of Lawrence’s feet on the long road. Each step a spondaic slap: one, two, one, two. A verse in this meter would be the dullest in the world but the rhythm soothed Lawrence and the landscape’s blandness was sweetened by the thin and exquisite taste of imminent revenge. Exquisite. The word came from the Latin verb exquirere – to seek out – and could apply to an uncommon delicacy, carefully selected: a perfect description of his future revenge on Ava.

  He whetted his appetite by cataloguing her wrongs. Kicking the roadside stones, his backpack burning into his shoulders and the wind stinging his face, he wondered what it was he missed about her. When he’d tracked her to that New Year’s Eve party ten years ago he’d been possessed by a feverish hunger that he’d felt for no other woman, before or since. Her presence affected him like a potent infusion. It set him quivering, alert, aware of a tickling heat at the base of his spine, and he kept smelling her in the same way as an animal smells another animal, his nostrils opening and drawing in her scent, which was very faint, like almonds. This faintness pleased him. She was barely there.

  But this quality alone was not enough to explain his obsession.

  As their relationship had progressed he came to appreciate how Ava understood things about him. She knew she was the cause of the crude rage that left him pacing, wordless, with balled fists, after he’d seen her speaking to other men. She once said he was like a book with every second page blank – a statement he’d found both intriguing and disturbing. He often could not remember things other people claimed he’d said or done. It was not forgetfulness of the usual order; it was absence. Ava saw that.

  But then she’d turned on him, like every other woman, starting with his own idiotic mother. The retreat began when he’d shown Ava his revenge project. In a lined exercise book he’d made a grid with two columns and listed the name of each teacher, parent or classmate who’d done him wrong. After he’d paid them back, he marked the box next to the name with a tiny x. That little cross, crisp and green on the white page, thrilled him. At its cathartic best this focused his diffuse anger on a single guilty party. Revenge was pure and wild justice.

  ‘But Lawrence,’ she’d said. ‘This is just – so mean! I can’t believe you do this. You don’t really do this, do you?’

  So he hadn’t told her about what he’d done to his French teacher.

  When Lawrence was sixteen, in year eleven, that arsehole had given him a grade that ruined his school report. His father cuffed him and his mother was cold when they handed him the transcript: five As and an F for French. Outraged, Lawrence had written to the school principal accusing the teacher of being a sexual predator. He created a detailed log of after-school tutoring sessions. The specific dates – and the French teacher’s vitriol – gave his story veracity. The teacher was forced to hit the road, and Lawrence hit the counsellor’s couch and used the opportunity to learn the language of victimhood.

  Not telling Ava this story had spectacular, if unexpected, results.

  Lawrence and Ava were dining in a restaurant courtyard for his birthday when this same French teacher had accosted him, his fury undiminished by time. He’d grabbed Lawrence and knocked out his knees from behind so that Lawrence fell forward, and literally kicked his arse, to the astonishment of the other diners.

  Ava leapt to her feet and cried: ‘What are you doing?’ She flung herself between Lawrence and the French teacher like a shield – it was actually sweet – and the man was unable to get in another blow.

  ‘Lying little shit!’ the French teacher had shouted at Lawrence as he was dragged off by a burly waiter. ‘Fils de salope!’

  Blood dripped from Lawrence’s forehead where he’d knocked it against the corner of a table. As he got shakily to his feet he remarked: ‘Some unresolved sexual tension.’

  He told Ava his well-rehearsed story about the teacher’s sexual conduct towards him and it called up in her a new depth of protectiveness. For years afterwards she had put even his most savage fits of temper down to the abuse and it had worked to his benefit. Until it did not. Until something shifted and he sensed that Ava had begun studying his every move. It made him feel claustrophobic; it was the suffocating female gaze, the measuring gaze. They all did it – his mother, his wife, and even that detective watching him yesterday as he smoked a cigarette, her eyes crawling like beetles over his fingers.

  By the time Lawrence arrived in Sheerwater the sea winds were roaring and the oversized runners had rubbed massive blisters into his toes. He was certain that Teddy and Max would soon be restored to their mother by some do-gooder and this thought, combined with the pain in his feet and the wind in his ears, enraged him. Why should he tramp for miles in the dark in savage winds to take back his sons? Why should I plead for what is mine?

  His temper worsened when the local motel owner refused to let him have a room without ID. ‘There’s a homeless shelter at the church up the road,’ the woman said, barely looking up from her phone.

  The motel foyer was warm and sheltered from the wind. All Lawrence wanted at that moment was to take a shower. He bit down his anger, jammed the fishing hat back on his head, and made his way to the street she’d directed him to – Smoky Point Road. A bed for the night in some shitty homeless shelter, how’s that, Lawrence Bain? he thought, forgetting he’d dressed this way on purpose. Ava was responsible. ‘The bitch will pay.’ He said it aloud in four short stabs like a rapper, the syllables rolling off his lips.

  Outside the church, Lawrence accepted a bowl of soup. Reverend Caleb led him into the hall and they sat side by side on a decommissioned wooden pew while Lawrence ate the beans and vegetables, hot and tasteless. The room was long and had unpolished floorboards that smelled of wet clothes steaming. A few no-hopers in dirty old clothes sat by a gas fire. Six or seven mattresses were made up with rough bedcoverings: blankets, doonas, sleeping bags. Lawrence kept his pack under his feet. Would the Reverend check him for weapons? He thought of the blade in his pack, cool and sharp between his folded jeans and t-shirts. He thought of the photographs of Max and Teddy and imagined creating a photo to terrify Ava, perhaps of their corpses floating past the Twelve Apostles.

  In reality he’d never lay a hand on his boys. He would raise them to be sons of Apollo, gods of athleticism and learning. He was formulating a plan – they’d hitch north and get lost somewhere like Lightning Ridge, where they’d live under the radar, without a phone line or electricity. They’d hunt kangaroos and grow spinach and he’d homeschool the boys in Homer and Shakespeare and Nietzsche and Euclid, teach them to play the piano; they’d be geniuses, and one day the sons of Lawrence Bain would stun the world. But until then, Ava would not know if they were alive or dead. She’d once confided to him that each child felt as close to her as one of her own limbs. Well, he was ready to amputate. Ava had been appointed to help him out from under the long shadow always clouding him – and she’d failed. He could not do it on his own. No matter how hard he ran, he could never outrun it.

  Lawrence put the spoon into the bowl and placed it on the floor by his feet.

  ‘You look tired, friend,’ said the Reverend.

  Lawrence gave a slow nod. Yes, he was tired. This room seemed like a lucid dream. It was a room adrift, a room in a boat, a transient place for his transient state.

  ‘So – do you know people in town?’ the Reverend went on. ‘Or are you just passing through?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk.’

  ‘Do you have anything on your mind? I’m a good listener.’

  ‘I’m a bad person. I lie,’ said Lawrence. In his experience, there was a certain sequence that you must follow to gain the sympathy of the virtuous. First, they wanted to hear about how badly you’d behaved. Remorse was their currency.

  ‘I’ve told lies too,’ the Reverend said. ‘I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of. Christ’s forgiven
ess is for all of us. Even the worst among us.’

  ‘What, even the rapists, the paedophiles, the murderers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s crap. Nothing is for nothing.’

  ‘Christ says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Christ is the sacrifice.’ The Reverend placed his hand on Lawrence’s shoulder. ‘You can sleep here,’ he said, gesturing to a mattress with a pillow and a brown sleeping bag set out on it. ‘You’ve come to a good place. I’d like to pray for you now, friend.

  ‘God, we commend to you this man who is hurt, and suffering, and needs comfort. Let whatever is hurt in him be healed . . .’

  As the Reverend prayed, Lawrence felt something cold gliding through him. He both loathed the prayer and wanted it to continue until he went to sleep. He watched the Reverend through lashes like prison bars. How little this man knew, this leader of the people, so deeply sunk in his religious delusion. The Reverend had no clue about the injured predator contained in Lawrence’s neat male body.

  How despicable the crumpled brown sleeping bag looked. How many people had used this sleeping bag before him? He didn’t want to get into it. He didn’t want to smell it.

  ‘What’s that outside?’ said Lawrence, interrupting Caleb’s prayer. ‘There’s a terrible wailing. It’s getting on my nerves.’

  ‘Some of the women are singing.’

  ‘Could you ask them to be quiet? I need to sleep.’

  In the Reverend’s smile Lawrence saw the arrogance he so often saw in those who failed to sympathise. It’s all so easy for you now, Reverend. Don’t you know, you stupid man, that a time is coming so deformed and unnatural that people will sicken themselves with mutilation and indulgence and kill their own offspring and lie down with robots? That’ll stamp out your gentle expression, you holy fool; you can only fight evil with evil and you won’t. Nothing in you can cope with what the world is becoming.

  ‘You wouldn’t want me to silence them if you knew the story,’ the Reverend said in the insufferable, kindly tone of someone used to having his wisdom received with gratitude. ‘A woman has lost her children. You may have seen it on the news? Those dear women are our elders, singing a traditional song to call the boys home.’

  SIMON

  Simon drew up his twitching legs and tried to rest on the hard bench in the hospital hallway. He watched a nurse return to the nurses’ station. For a shadowy moment he saw the soft smudge of blue by her head, the colour of compassion, before she switched on an overhead light and the blue was blotted out.

  His eyelids were heavy and sleepless. The past two days were engraved on his mind like letters in a book, and he felt that if his stupid trembling hand could somehow turn the page he would see those lost boys, he’d find them. He needed a drink. If he had a drink, just a nip, he could help Ava, he was sure of it. He pictured a tall glass full of merlot and the last drop falling in and sending ripples that flowed outwards and returned like fate. He could almost taste the sweet red fermented fruit, the smooth tannins, the soft finish. He bared his teeth and felt his upper lip curl inwards. He sat up and put his head in his hands and rocked a little. He couldn’t stand it. He just couldn’t stand it for one more minute.

  And then he heard his name. ‘Simon?’

  It wasn’t Ava, or the nurse. It was the deep and quiet voice of his brother. Simon looked up and saw Caleb standing there in the hospital hallway. It was so late, how did he know to come?

  Caleb sat down beside his brother and put his arm around him. ‘Are you alright, mate?’

  Simon couldn’t speak. He was embarrassed to find he was weeping.

  ‘Is it bad?’ Caleb whispered. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Yeah. Just – stay? Till it passes.’

  ‘Sure. Of course. I just came by to check in on Ava and see if you were still here. You’ve been so good, standing by her, Simon.’

  Caleb leaned in closer and Simon gripped his brother’s hand like a child holding onto something, anything, to stop himself falling. He thought of the waves crashing against each other at Smoky Point, all that deadly water rising tall and sucking him down and rising tall, and he knew he had to get out of it, if he could just get out of it . . . It would pass, it would pass, it must pass.

  ‘It’s like – I am – in the eye of my own storm . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Caleb. His voice was quiet. ‘But the storm is in you, Simon. So you are bigger than the storm. You must meet the eye of the storm with the eye of the self – the part of you that can witness what you’re in the grip of. That’s the part of you that’s struggling towards freedom.’

  Simon couldn’t speak for a few moments. If he’d been able to speak, he’d have begged Caleb not to let go – even though he knew his brother would not dream of leaving him.

  They spent half an hour like this – or maybe it was only several minutes. Simon wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was his gratitude for Caleb, and how he always affirmed that there was something in him worth saving.

  ‘You’re almost through this, Simon. You’re going to turn the corner. And then you’ll be free. You’ll be free to be yourself again. Nothing else matters, not the big, important job, or problems with Olivia, nothing. Just hold on now, hold on, for yourself. For Ava, that woman suffering in there, who needs us, who needs you . . .’

  Caleb talked for some time, with Simon gripping his hand. Simon thought of Ava, and how his own pain was both mirrored in and thrown into perspective by the enormity of her suffering. Although he’d been beside her for most of the past twenty-four hours, all that time she’d seemed unreachable, a figure isolated on a desolate clifftop surrounded by crackling white static swirling like dust or snow. Could he break through into that lonely place and save Ava, just as Caleb was saving him now? He felt his body easing, the convulsive need passing. His cheeks were wet and he let go of Caleb’s hand to wipe his face with his sleeve.

  ‘Caleb, I just don’t know where I’d be without you.’

  His brother smiled and handed him a tissue from his pocket. ‘Why don’t you come home with me, get some sleep?’

  ‘No, I’ll stay here so I’m around when Ava wakes up. I told her I’d take her wherever she wants to go tomorrow.’

  Caleb nodded. ‘Get some sleep if you can.’

  Simon watched his brother’s tall form retreating down the hallway. He folded his jacket to make a pillow and lay down, stretching his legs over the bench. He felt lighter and clearer than he had for a long time. Clear – and restless. Some threat simmered, formless; something outside of him that carried its own mist and would not let itself be seen.

  Day Three

  The shearwater’s strength was fading fast as she crossed the southeast coast with thousands of others, thousands of miles streaming behind her. The bird was exhausted and starving and in some essential respect her body was closing down as she cut through the dense and wet air. She had seen light, salt, rock and water and been at one with these elements. She had journeyed north and returned seven times and she was almost there, the mineral cliffs shining far below the dark span of her wings, her organs failing one by one, the empty gut, the breathless lungs, the bleeding heart.

  It was over.

  The bird’s body plummeted from the sky like rock and broke on the rock. Her dashed brains stained the sandstone red. As though her fall was a signal, others now dropped exhausted from the sky, crashing into cold water they no longer had the strength to skim and dance over. For weeks the feathered corpses of shearwaters would be sighted half submerged by sand on the beaches. These deaths were few compared to the thousands who returned safely to their hidden rookeries that night before the third day broke, their great velvet wings almost touching the spouting water at Smoky Point and swerving west over a fringe of exposed limestone reef that formed rocky platforms and pools where fleshy molluscs and sea urchins dwelt soundlessly in fissures. Their shadows turned the glittering water black as they rose and swooped towards the dune grasses to the nests of the years before and th
e years to come.

  GERALD

  In his bed next to his wife, Gerald woke to birdsong. Never a man to lie in, he sat up and rubbed his eyes. A bright strip of blue below the blind. The first clear light he’d seen in what seemed weeks. Maybe longer. Enough to make the heart beat a little faster. He listened for wind. Nope, no wind yet today. The day still and clean, unspoiled. What day was it? Now that he was retired the days segued into one another endlessly. He missed the crisp distinction of workday and weekend. Missed the rhythm. Still, it hardly mattered. He was free. The only reason he needed to check the day of the week was to choose which of his mates to ring for a game of golf. Some of them still worked. The local GP had certain mornings off.

  Gerald’s watch said six am. Too early to ring anyone yet. He glanced over at the bedside table and noticed that the cordless phone was missing from the stand. What a damned nuisance. His wife was still asleep, the lilac print on the back of her nightdress rising and falling, her hair a fine rope of silver-white. He wanted to wake her and ask her where she’d put the phone. She was so vague, always leaving lights on, letting the dog out when he should be in, or in when he should be out.

  ‘Tillie,’ he whispered. He knew he shouldn’t wake her but couldn’t help himself. Hated to look for things alone. Never found them. ‘Where’s the phone?’

  His wife rolled over. You’d never guess she’d just been asleep. Tillie went from sleeping to waking in a seamless second with no fog in between.

  ‘I used it to ring Gill Cartright yesterday before we left,’ she said. ‘To check she knew there was a fire. I put it back on the hook. Unless you used it?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t use it,’ said Gerald, irritable. ‘What would I use it for?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  He sighed loudly. His wife said, ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘I’m not unwell. Why would I be unwell?’