Tide (9 page)

He didn't take any notice.
Key key key.
His father had put a fork through Mother's inflatable li-lo during a vacation at The Bay. Barbecue the bloody sausages, he'd shrieked at her. Stop lounging about on that thing in the damned sun, turning yourself into a beetroot. And I am sick of seeing those stretch marks. That was thirty years ago, and they'd been the
only
people at The Bay. He'd been a sickly child, and the tattoo of an anchor and a mermaid on his father's left bicep terrified him. His father loathed hysteria, so the boy should have known better than to shriek: he'd seen a pod of dolphins and yelled SHARKS! SHARKS! His father had kicked him up the pants and called him a girl. But he admired his old man, who could build a boat or a cabinet or a cupboard better than anyone else. The glue in his workshop stank like cat's piss, a bit like the coastal vegetation of The Bay. There was something dead about it all. Long dead and stinking to high heaven. Invisible fish corpses littering the
beautiful
white sand.

The trick of loving a place, he decided, is being able to leave it. He no longer wanted to live on the beach, at The Bay. It was an epiphany. He was big on non-religious epiphanies. Couldn't abide religion. He'd seen his cousin Lucinda eaten by a sect. They're all sects, he'd said to his auntie, who belonged to a gigantic sect. He didn't need to say God when he saw something as immense as the Southern Ocean stretching out beyond the headland all the way to Antarctica. That ineffable volume of water. That curving expanse all held in like a bucket of water swinging around your head. Swoosh swoosh swoosh. If the rope had snapped, the bucket could have killed someone! His dad never found out.

Hey, mate, you looking for something?

He was about to say, What does it fucking look like? when he saw the key,
his
car key, held out in front of him like a talisman. But it looked dull, not even a glint in the roaring afternoon sun. Just dull and flat and burnished by sand. A teenager held it in one thin-fingered hand. A hand so white it would be bright red after a day in the sun, smarting with protest. He vaguely recognised this teenager from somewhere. Maybe something to do with the ball he'd kicked out to sea, the ball that dribbled back to land. Yes, that teenager
was
there, on the edges … the edge of the continent … maybe he'd spoken to him. A family game of beach ball. All ages mucking around, having fun. Laughing.

He reached out to take the key, half expecting it to be snatched back. Thanks, he said instinctively, then turned back to the track and his car, turning his back on the rock, the water, the blue and the bay. He wondered how far he could drive before he'd have to refuel.

FERRYMAN

It's not often you see a myth turned to a reality, or maybe realise that ‘myth' is just a word to help us cope with the weird and grotesque. We don't want the mythological coming too deeply into our living days. And the day the ferryman of the Swan River ferry service became the ferried dead … well, it was memorable.

It's not a long haul across the river. The ferry departs on the half-hour either side and takes a bare ten minutes to sail from the Barrack Street Jetty to the South Perth Jetty. Visitors use it as the most convenient way of travelling between city hotels and the zoological gardens. The ferry service's history goes way back; this particular incident took place some decades ago. I was a witness, and it has stayed with me for over thirty years.

Back then, there were no women skippering the ferries as there are now. It was still a man's province, at least in terms of employment statistics, payroll records. But on the day the ferryman last crossed the river to deliver his load of human souls for their tour of the gardens of the tormented and imprisoned birds and beasts, the ferryman was a woman, if only for part of the journey.

I was seated a few rows behind the ferryman, as always. If I did not get my familiar seat, I was disturbed and could not function properly. Most of the regulars knew me, and kept the seat for me. After all, I had always crossed the river from my South Perth flat, opposite the zoo, to my job in one of the earliest high-rise towers built along Saint Georges Terrace as a result of the 1960s mining boom in the north-west. I trained as a solicitor, and I was in on the ground floor when the great iron mines started doing their Japanese business. I went up floor by floor until my view of the river I crossed, there and back every day, was glorious and overwhelming.

I love the river now as I did then. I love the pelicans, the occasional dolphin one sees, even the bronze whaler shark I spotted from the ferry one wintry evening – its fin reflecting the ferry's pilot lights. I am sure that's what I saw. And the yachts and gulls and cormorants. Colours changing with the seasons. I felt every scrap of pollution. I used to be a member of the neighbourhood ‘Keep the River Clean' group – four times a year we did a clean-up along the banks. There is no such group now, but I still pick up what I can, though my movement is so limited.

I was lucky to be sitting in my regular seat, because I had been working a Saturday, which was unusual, and heading back home after lunch: peak time for daytrippers to the zoo. Many tourists and local families just heading across the river on the ferry – kids, prams, the lot. I have to admit, I slightly pushed a kid across the bench to ensure I got my spot, but he was distracted by his sister, who was eating (and dropping) a slice of chocolate cake. There was a greater injustice taking place there than in the closest-to-the-window realm. Their mother looked exasperated, as if she'd made the promise of a zoo outing she wished she didn't have to keep.

Though a pretty woman, she was haggard and worn down by much more than her kids. I noticed she wore no ring on her finger. It wasn't quite the age of women's liberation in Perth then, and I cocked an eyebrow. And she noticed, because she looked embarrassed, told her kids to behave, and drew them nearer to her, leaving a half-person's space between me and the family, which suited me fine.

I turned to my thriller. I always read thrillers on the ferry. True, there wasn't much reading time during the crossing; mostly I'd be staring at the light play on the murky water, or looking up at the majestic trees in Kings Park to the southwest, or the sombre, brooding aspect of the Darling Scarp to the north. But there was always plenty of waiting time, because I'd board the ferry as soon as it arrived from the far bank and the passengers had departed. Being early Saturday afternoon, my usual crowd weren't there to exchange pleasantries, although we kept those to a minimum. We all, all of us men and even the odd office girl, carried paperbacks like Bibles.

I love the moment the ferry shoves off as much as I sadden when it arrives and manoeuvres into place and the gangplank goes down, ushering one off. I enjoy glancing up to watch the ferryman spin the wheel and take the ferry out from the jetty, looking over his shoulder to ensure all is clear. Then he settles in to small-talk with regulars, chastising children, and complaining to the conductor (yes, they had conductors back then!) about a passenger with the wrong fare.

But that Saturday's skipper was one I'd not seen before, and had none of these habits. He was frightfully old. I felt intimidated by this. It made me feel vulnerable in my suit, in my high office tower, and in my flat, the only almost-high-rise on the eastern bank of the river. I was doing well. Not rich, but very well-off. I drove a Porsche, racing up and down the new freeway as if there were no law to constrain me. I'd paid the odd bribe here and there upon being caught. I was living the life. I part-owned a nightclub I rarely visited, but I liked to let my rich mates know. I did well with the women, and had no intention of getting ‘stuck' … But the skipper's sheer age, his shock of white hair and grizzled face, which I hadn't fully registered when boarding, struck me as he swung round to check his wake, catching my eyes with his bloodshot stare. I imagined spittle dribbling from the corners of his mouth.

His death wasn't a possibility; it was inevitable. I was caught in the gaze of a man already dead. The ferry started to veer off course. The ferryman is dead, I called – no, screamed. Some people laughed, and the children next to me huddled closer to their mother.

The ferry was heading down towards the ocean. No-one seemed to notice. This ferry always goes to South Perth, I called. There's never a variation. It takes visitors to the zoo, to see the lions and the polar bears!

Then the ferryman, now crawling along the floor of the ferry, said, Polar bears? Here? In such a hot climate? What are you on about?

I was stunned. The passengers were sitting and chatting, pointing and relaxing, as if nothing were happening. Disaster was imminent. I stepped up to take the wheel of the ferry. The dead ferryman grabbed my ankles, gripped them like steel. He said, And lions? Lions need room, my friend, lions need to roar across Africa, they need space to roam! They will tear a human apart. There are no lions here.

Yes! yes! I called down to him, trying to prise his bony fingers from my ankle, my Italian trousers. Yes! There is a lion, and polar bears, and even rare birds, and orangutans, and a gorilla who smokes cigars and sits in a giant bird cage. A gorilla smoking in a giant birdcage in South Perth? You are dizzy with being so high in your towers. The shaking of the earth, the exploding mountains of the north have unsettled your sanity. You have vertigo!

We are going to crash and sink! I called to everyone.

They looked at me, laughed, then appeared nervous. I don't like that man, called one boy. A large gentleman got off his seat and came over and told me to settle down or he'd ditch me overboard. I frantically pointed to the wizened corpse of the ferryman gibbering out of death at my feet.

The gentleman – the very large and brutish gentleman – ignored me. Shut ya face, mate, or I'll give you a hiding.

Well, at least grab the wheel yourself, I begged. The gentleman looked at me as if I were mad, beneath contempt, and returned to his seat.

I was in tears. I couldn't drag the ferryman off me. I couldn't reach the wheel. It was just a matter of time before the ferry collided with the supports of the new freeway bridge. We'd die, and so would those in cars racing across above us. I opened my hands to the other passengers and implored them.

Then the woman who had been sitting on the same bench as me, she of the squabbling chocolate-cake children, calmly telling them to sit and be quiet, came over to me and said, It's okay, I'll take it from here.

I had collapsed in a heap by then, my body entwined with the gibbering dead ferryman's. He started to roar, and growl, and make bird sounds. Then he was a boa constrictor squeezing the life out of me; then he howled like a wolf. No-one took any notice of him or me.

The lady without the ring on her finger had the ferry in hand. She brought it about, and within ten minutes we were moored at South Perth. She even put out the gangplank, and told waiting passengers on the jetty to hold off until everyone on board had safely disembarked. Then she went and comforted her children before saying to me, You'd better go home and rest.

But the dead ferryman won't let me go, I pleaded.

Don't look at him, she said.

I fixed my gaze on her. She was really something, even with what having kids had done to her. I forgot about the ferryman. I stepped off the boat behind them and heard a man say to his wife, Makes a visit to the zoo worthwhile, this ferry service. And pointing to his watch he added, Look at that, right on time, will depart on the minute. Pity the rest of the public transport system doesn't run as smoothly!

I could hear the zoo animals and birds calling and crying to and against each other. A cacophony. I heard that every moment in my apartment when I didn't have the television or the hi-fi on. Once, it was a pleasant noise – exotic – but I was growing tired of it. Time to soundproof the apartment. After all, where we live is about the address we put on our official documents, which we share with those we need to impress. Nothing more, nothing less.

BRICK

Her husband worked up at the Midland brickworks, which was a fair commute, but she wouldn't leave the area she'd grown up in. Why would you want to stay, given the horror you've been through down here? he'd say. But she wouldn't budge, and he loved her enough to let it go. Again and again. Sometimes he couldn't help himself. What's more, the river down near her childhood home had become filthy and wasn't a healthy place to swim, let alone teach young ones to swim in. But she'd been doing it since she was eighteen, and she was twenty-five now, and it had set in. Furthermore, she'd done her junior certificate off the river beach and jetty down the road, and it was so etched into her fabric … gulls, fish, sand, silt, jellyfish marooned and looking like moon craters. When he was angry after a few drinks, he'd say, It's perverse, it's like you must have liked it, really. Then he fell into despair, and she looked damaged and hurt beyond words, and he felt like drowning himself. He was a scum of a human being.

She worked in tandem with another teacher, a friend, who'd also grown up in the area and who'd also done swimming lessons there. He was gay, so her husband wasn't bothered, but he made crude remarks in other ways. Water off a duck's back, her friend said, as she repeated her husband's bigotries. Her friend was always the only one who'd listened, who'd believed.

The final act required of swimming students in order for them to acquire their junior was a dive off the jetty, into the green-brown waters of the river, down to the silty half-world eight feet below to retrieve a house-brick. She used one that her husband had pilfered from the brickworks. That was his contribution, he'd say – along with his whole life being located in a place he couldn't stand, and putting up with her obsessions. Just a small gesture.

When she'd dived for the brick as a child, she'd failed at first, getting confused and lost, swallowing river water and getting a stomach infection. But by the time she went for her certificate, she was as sleek and efficient as a mulloway; she grabbed that brick as if her hands were magnetised to it, the murk blocking her in no way at all.