Читать книгу A Single Breath - Lucy Clarke - Страница 18

Eva drifts through the shack as her mother continues talking. She catches the words scan, due date, trimester – words she associates with work, not her own pregnancy.

She pauses by a photo of her and Jackson she’d brought with her from England. It was taken last summer at a 1920s-themed jazz festival in London. In the picture Eva is wearing a drop-waisted flapper-girl dress and a beaded headband, and Jackson has one hand around her waist, and with his other he’s touching the brow of his black hat, laughing. There’s sun flare behind them and they both look tanned and happy, in love.

Tucking the phone under her ear, Eva takes down the picture. It’s housed in a thin glass frame, and she uses the hem of her dress to clean her fingerprints from the glass. She moves the fabric in slow circles until it is polished clear, and then she sets it back on the shelf.

‘So you’ll be coming home?’ her mother is saying.

‘Home?’ Eva repeats, tuning back in. ‘No. Not yet.’

‘What?’ The pitch of her mother’s voice rises.

‘It hasn’t changed my plans out here.’

‘What about your scan?’

‘They do have hospitals in Australia,’ she says, rolling her eyes. ‘Anyway, Callie will be out here in a few days.’

Eva doesn’t need her mother to worry about all the details; she just needs to hear someone tell her, This is fantastic news! You’re going to be a wonderful mother, Eva.

‘You’ll worry me to death travelling around out there on your own, pregnant.’ Her mother’s emotional fragility has always meant any problem instantly becomes hers. The pregnancy would become about her anxieties, her involvement, her fears. ‘What about if you have your old room back and I make the spare into a nursery –’

‘Mum,’ she cuts in firmly as she pushes away from the wall and steps out onto the deck. The beach is empty and sunlight shimmers tantalizingly over the bay. She’s been on Wattleboon for three days now and already feels a strangely intimate tie to this island, knowing that Jackson spent his summers here as a boy. He would’ve played on many of these beaches, surfed and dived in the waves, fished from the jetty and from his father’s boat. And now, all these years later, Eva and the baby she carries inside her are also here – walking the same shorelines, seeing the same vistas. It’s as if she can feel Jackson’s footprints still warm under the sand.

She tells her mother, ‘Right now this is where I want to be.’

*

That evening, Eva grabs the bottle of wine she’d bought earlier and sets out along the shore towards Saul’s house. He hasn’t visited her at the shack and has only cast a cursory wave in her direction when he’s been going out diving in the bay. It feels as if he’s purposely keeping his distance.

The smell of seaweed is ripe in the air and crabs scuttle between the tide line and their holes as she passes. At the end of the bay, stone steps cut into a rocky, tree-lined hill. She follows them up into Saul’s garden. Set back in the gum trees is a modest wooden house built on stilts. A wide deck runs along the front and the whole place blends so seamlessly into the surroundings that it could almost pass as a tree house.

She finds Saul gutting fish on an old wooden workbench, beside which is a faded blue kayak. He has his back to her and is wearing a dark T-shirt with canvas shorts, his feet bare. She watches him for a moment, her gaze lingering on the broadness of his neck – the shape so like Jackson’s. Her fingertips twitch as she imagines touching the soft dark hairs at the nape of her husband’s neck, then running them beneath the starched cotton of his shirt collar, where the smell of aftershave always lingered on his skin.

Without realizing, Eva sighs and suddenly Saul’s head snaps up. His hair is mussed around his face, the dark brown sun-lightened in streaks. ‘Eva.’

‘Hi,’ she says, uncertainly. ‘I … I brought this.’ Saul stares at her, then at the bottle of wine in her hands.

‘It’s for you. To say thanks – for the shack.’

‘You didn’t need to,’ he says almost tersely.

Realizing he can’t take the wine because his hands are bloodied from gutting, she draws it awkwardly to her side.

‘Dinner?’ she casts into his silence, nodding towards the fish.

‘Yeah.’ There’s a pause, then, ‘Did you wanna …?’

She hadn’t meant the question as a self-invite and feels her cheeks reddening. Yet at the same time she realizes that she would like to stay – to have a chance to talk. Eventually she says, ‘That’d be great.’

Three lime-green birds burst from a tree behind them. Eva turns, watching their brilliant wings beat at the sky.

‘Swift parrots,’ he says, following her gaze. ‘Arrive every spring. Come over the Bass Strait from the mainland. I think they’re nesting in one of the tree hollows behind the house.’

The birds make a high-pitched piping noise as they disappear into the canopy of another tree at the far side of the garden.

Eva takes in the rest of the surroundings. ‘Lovely place you’ve got out here. This is where you used to come as kids?’

He nods.

‘Where’s the shack?’

‘Used to be right where the house is now.’

‘Oh.’ She remembers Jackson pulling her onto his lap and telling her, ‘Owning a shack is a Tassie thing. They’re bolt-holes, a place to disappear to when you’re craving some space, some wilderness.’ He’d spoken of his plan to one day do up their old shack for his father. ‘Dad loved that place once. Maybe he could love it again.’ Eva had noticed the sadness clouding Jackson’s expression as he’d said that, and realized how deeply he missed his father. She’d threaded her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. ‘What was that for?’ Jackson had asked.

‘Just for being you.’

Saul says, ‘I’m gonna run these guts down to the water. Go in and grab a drink.’

Inside, the house smells new, like freshly sawn wood. The living-cum-dining room has sliding glass doors that lead out onto the deck. In the corner of the room there’s a wood-burning stove and two baskets of kindling and logs. The place is furnished simply with a wide brown sofa, a low coffee table in a grainy wood, and a large bookcase lit by two old fishing lamps.

Photos hang from the walls in glass frames: an underwater shot of sunlight streaming through the sea’s surface; sand dunes so vast and perfect they look like a mountain range under fresh snow; a photo of Jackson wearing a heavy backpack as he stands in front of Machu Picchu.

Saul has a good collection of marine books – The Australian Fisherman, A Biography of Cod, Sea Fishing, A Reflection on Freediving, The Sea Around Us, Knots and Rigs, Shipwrecks of Tasmania – but also a wide range of fiction spanning the classics to modern literature.

Then she sees a name on a book spine that catches her attention: Lynn Bowe. Saul and Jackson’s mother.

She sets down the wine bottle and carefully slides the book free.

Jackson had told her that their mother had been a writer. Apparently she loved coming to Wattleboon because the space helped her think. When the boys were little she’d take them up to a clearing on one of the capes and they’d spend the afternoons reading or drawing while she wrote.

On the inside sleeve there is a black-and-white photo of a graceful woman with long hair swept into a simple chignon. She has the same dark eyes as Saul, large and serious.

Turning the page, Eva reads the dedication: For Dirk. Always.

She tries to place the man she visited with his thinning socks and whisky breath as the beau of this beautiful young woman. She knew from Jackson how devastated Dirk had been by Lynn’s death. She was the head of their family, the sun around which the men orbited.

‘My mother,’ Saul says.

Eva turns, startled.

Saul stands in the doorway, his dark gaze pinned on her. She feels heat rising in her cheeks. ‘She was very beautiful.’

‘Yes,’ Saul agrees. ‘She was.’

She wants to say something more, but then Saul turns and moves into the kitchen.

*

He washes his hands and dries them on a tea towel, then begins roughly chopping red chillies, garlic and a bunch of coriander.

Eva leans against the kitchen counter and offers to help, twice, and the second time Saul tells her she can make a salad just to give her something to do.

He begins stuffing the fish with the chopped herbs and spices, finding it odd having a woman in his house after so long.

Eva asks, ‘Did you catch those today?’

‘Yeah. Aussie salmon. I got out with the spear gun after work. I was lucky – they were just schooling right out front.’ He lays each fish on a large square of tinfoil, thinking of the shoal that had curled above him, their silver tails catching in the sunlight. He’d hovered there, just watching. Some days he didn’t even pull the trigger; he just liked seeing the way they moved through the water, scales glinting. ‘Do you prefer it to line fishing?’ she asks, drawing the knife through the tight red skin of a tomato.

‘Feels like a fairer fight,’ he tells her. ‘You only spear what you can eat, plus there’s no bait involved. If you come back with nothing, well, just means the fish were havin’ a better day than you.’

‘You were diving without a spear gun that first morning I was here.’

He nods. ‘Sometimes I just go out for a freedive. You know, breath-hold diving – no scuba gear.’

‘I’ve seen a TV programme about that. Isn’t it where people are diving down to crazy depths?’

‘Some people are. The record for freediving – and this is without weights or sleds, just literally swimming straight down and then back up on one breath – is one hundred and twenty-one metres.’

‘No? They must have incredible lungs. Do you measure how deep you go?’

He drizzles chilli oil over the fish and squeezes a couple of wedges of lime on top. A nick on his forefinger stings as the lime seeps into it. ‘No, I’m not interested in that side of it. I suppose I like it because there’s no tank involved or gear to mess around with. Plus, you see more. Fish can be put off by the bubbles when you’re breathing off the tank.’

Eva scoops the tomatoes she’s sliced into the salad bowl, then begins chopping the lettuce. ‘What do you see around here?’

‘Wattleboon’s cold-water diving, so it’s different from the tropics. You get rays, tiny handfish, gummy sharks, sea dragons.’

‘Sea dragons?’

‘They’re related to the sea horse family, but the dragons are bigger.’ Saul rinses and dries his hands, then pulls a sourdough loaf from the bread bin and saws hunks from it. ‘Wattleboon is one of the few places in the world where you find them. It’s a good place to freedive.’

‘Jackson said he loved coming out here as a boy.’

There he is. Jackson. Cutting straight back into the centre of Saul’s thoughts like a cool knife.

Saul had been at his father’s house when the news from the police came through. Dirk was watching the television, beer in hand, as he reached for the phone. Saul had felt a shift in the air, as if all the windows had suddenly been closed. He turned and saw his father sitting up rigidly. Dirk’s mouth opened, but he didn’t say a word. He simply held out the phone to Saul, who took it and listened to the distant English voice of a police officer talking about fishing, a wave, an accident. Saul asked where it’d happened, who’d been there, whether a body had been found.

Afterwards he realized that he’d asked more questions in those few minutes than he’d asked about his brother’s life in years.

‘Saul?’ Eva is saying.

He is standing stock-still, the bread knife in his hand.

‘I’m gonna light the barbecue,’ he says quickly. He swaps the knife for the tray of fish, then strides from the room with his eyes lowered.

*

They eat on the deck, watching the dusky pink clouds feather away into night. Saul says very little and Eva picks at the fish, a faint feeling of nausea hovering nearby.

When she’s eaten as much as she can manage, she sets down her knife and fork, then slides her sweater off the back of her chair and pulls it on.

‘We can go inside,’ Saul says.

‘No, it’s nice out.’ She looks up at the emerging stars; there are no clouds tonight and she thinks in another half-hour the night sky will be dazzling. Citronella candles burn at either end of the table, and the air swirls with a lemon scent.

In the quiet she hears the stirring of the bay and the chirp of crickets in the bush. ‘When I met your dad,’ she says, glancing across at Saul, ‘he mentioned he doesn’t come out to Wattleboon any more.’

He nods slowly.

‘Is that … because of your mother?’

Saul leans his elbows on the table and looks out towards the bay. ‘Her ashes were scattered up at the cape. I think he’s always felt guilty about not going there since.’

‘I wish I had Jackson’s ashes,’ Eva says, the admission surprising her.

Saul turns to look at her.

‘It’s just …’ she says, ‘maybe it would help.’ She draws a candle towards her and runs a fingertip around the warm, supple wax close to the wick. ‘A few weeks after Jackson drowned, I walked down to the beach where it happened. It was freezing. There was frost on the sand, but the sun was out and the water seemed peaceful. I remember just standing there, staring at the sea, thinking how impossibly serene it was – yet only weeks before …’ She pauses, swallowing hard. ‘One minute I was standing on the shore, and the next I found myself wading in.’

She feels Saul’s gaze move over her face as she continues.

‘I know it must sound crazy, but I needed to be in the sea to feel what Jackson would’ve felt.’ She’d wanted to feel the water soaking his clothes, the cold turning his muscles to lead, the waves pulling him under.

‘You needed it to feel real.’

She nods, pressing her fingernail into the candle. ‘It’s hard – there not being a body.’ She digs out a warm lump of wax that she rolls between her thumb and forefinger until it hardens. ‘But it’s good to be out here, seeing where Jackson grew up. There are so many things I never asked him – so much I want to find out.’

Two years. That’s all she’d shared of Jackson’s thirty years of life. A fragment. Her hand travels to her stomach and she realizes the need to build a connection with his past is even stronger now.

Inside, a phone rings. Saul looks relieved by the distraction and leaves the deck. She hears him answer, saying, ‘Dad?’

Eva leans back in her chair looking up at the stars, wishing Jackson was with her, wishing she could share the news of their baby with him. Over the past few weeks she’s learnt a lot about loneliness. It isn’t just about remote places or a lack of contact with people – it’s a sensation that something has been carved out of you.

When Saul doesn’t return, she begins clearing the plates from the table, scraping the fish bones back into the foil and then stacking the plates. She carries them into the house – but pauses when she catches her name.

Saul is talking in another room and Eva hovers, listening. ‘She came out here like you said … Yeah, Thursday.’

Saul exhales hard. Then there’s the sound of footsteps pacing back and forth. ‘No. Course I didn’t!’

Eva holds her breath, straining to hear.

The footsteps stop. ‘Just that one time … No, haven’t heard from her since.’

When she hears him finishing up the call, she backs out of the house onto the deck, and returns the plates to the table, pulse racing.

Saul comes outside with his hands dug into his pockets. He shifts his weight as he says, ‘I’ve got a bit of work I need to get done for tomorrow.’

‘Then I suppose I should be going,’ she says curtly.

‘I’ll see you down the steps.’

Before she can tell him that she’s fine on her own, he’s taking a slim flashlight from his pocket and leading the way. He shines the light behind him so that she can place her feet in the beam. ‘Careful,’ he says. ‘Some of the steps are a bit loose.’

They descend in silence, the air growing cooler. When they reach the beach Saul stops to face her. Away from the candlelight, the darkness suddenly feels consuming. She thinks of the strange lie Saul just told his father and a prickle of uncertainty travels over her skin.

Jackson’s voice echoes in her head: You can’t trust him. He’s a liar.

She feels a surge of hurt and confusion over the oddly abrupt ending to the evening. Her teeth clench around the words she wants to say. Yet something pulls her back.

Saul is her – and her child’s – only link to Jackson. She feels the fragility of that connection as if it runs between them like a single fine thread. She needs to hold onto it tightly so it doesn’t slide out of her grasp.

*

Back in the shack, Eva shuts the door firmly and switches on all the lights. She tugs at the cord of the blinds, disturbing a moth that flies straight towards her, its dusty wings brushing at her cheek.

Eva shivers, turning a circle in the room. Alone. I am alone. She tries to keep her breathing level and push away the hollowing sensation of loneliness.

She sucks in a deep breath and crosses the room to the photo of her and Jackson at the jazz festival. She angles it towards the light, longing to be back there with the sun on her skin, hearing the rhythm of the music, feeling Jackson’s arm around her waist.

In the light she can see two marks on the glass either side of the photo. They look to be thumbprints, as if someone has just plucked the photo from the shelf to look at it. Her brow furrows as she remembers polishing the frame this morning, removing every trace of dirt and grease. How can there be thumbprints?

Perhaps she’d made them just now as she’d picked up the picture. Holding the frame, she places her thumbs in the exact spaces where the marks are.

Yet the prints don’t fit; hers are almost half the size.

She brings the frame even closer to the light so that she can be sure. She is almost certain that these are not her thumbprints.

She sets down the photo with a sharp shake of her head. She’s being absurd; they must be hers. No one else has been in the shack.