Salvage (2 page)

She raised hers, with barely a tremble, and said, ‘Old times.’

They fell quiet, and she concentrated on the blinking green light of the beacon not far from shore that marked the passage between them and Moreton Island. It was a busy strip of sea, with boats making their way to or from Brisbane farther down the coast.
How nice
, she thought,
to have someone show you the safe way to go
.

‘You’re on the pill again,’ Richard said, gazing out across the sea. Moonlit clouds glimmered on the horizon, suggesting the chance of a squall. She thought maybe she could see the flicker of distant lightning.

The moment stretched out, the sheoaks whispering. She sipped her drink, then said: ‘Just to be safe.’ It’d been weeks since they’d had sex. She’d vomited afterwards.

‘It’s been four months, Mel. Almost five. The doctor said it was okay to try again.’

Tears pricked her eyes. She remembered his most recent invasion, his sperm on her thigh. She’d scrubbed the flesh raw, once she’d finished heaving.

‘Mel, you do want to try again, don’t you?’

She couldn’t look at him, though she felt his attention on her.

‘Of course.’ She pulled her feet up on the rail so her legs shielded her body. She tried to tuck her dress between her ankles, her thighs pressed together. ‘Just not yet.’

‘Then when? Tomorrow? Six weeks? Six years?’

‘When I’m ready, all right?’

‘Jesus, Melanie, a lot of women have miscarriages at some stage. Half don’t even know they’ve had one.’

She closed her eyes, wishing she could likewise shut her ears against his recital. ‘It was a stillbirth, Richard. Thirty-three weeks. I bloody well know I had it.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’ He took a deep breath, a swallow of wine, and when he spoke, his voice was again neutral, under control. ‘The doctor said it was normal. Sad, but normal. We can try again. We can still have a family.’

She rested her head on her raised knees and regarded him through her fringe. The smell of mosquito repellent hung heavy in the air. Tiny black shapes darted around them, searching for a chink in the noisome shield. She tried to see Richard’s features in the half-moon of shadow: his squarish jaw and generous lips and intelligent, lively eyes. His voice, while even, sounded taut and thin, not gentle and deep as usual, able to provoke a laugh or a sigh with equal ease.

‘The doctor said it was okay.’

‘I know what the doctor said, Richard, I was there. I was there when they gave me my dead baby and asked me what her name was.’

‘Jesus, not this again. How many times can I apologise? I couldn’t help being away. I couldn’t know it would come early.’

‘
She
didn’t come early, Richard.
She
died. Inside me.’ The grief robbed her of any more words. She turned away from his brooding presence, both hands clutching her locket.

‘Fuck.’ He sprang to his feet. She winced as his chair scraped across the timber deck. ‘I need a bourbon.’

He paused at the sliding door. ‘Would you like anything?’

She shook her head, then heard the door slam, the tumble of ice as he scooped it from the bucket, the mumble of the television. 

Not a good start. But then, what had she expected? It had been Richard’s idea to come here, back to the place where their daughter had most likely been conceived. She had only to shut her eyes and she could replay that night, Richard ramming into her with such fierce urgency. The bedhead thumping the wall as he drove between her legs. They’d still had their shirts on.

The wine shifted in her stomach, her failed, empty stomach, and she felt her dinner lurch. She fought the nausea down and tried to think of nothing, nothing at all.

Richard came to the door.

‘Mel, I’m sorry.’

She nodded.

‘Come inside, hey.’

‘I like the sound of the surf,’ she said.

‘You can hear it inside. It’s cold out there, hon.’

‘In a minute.’

‘Okay, fine. I’m taking a shower.’ After a moment, he added, ‘Don’t stay out too long. Those fucking mosquitoes will eat you alive.’

The door shut gently behind her. She sat and marvelled at the stars and the soft smudge of the Milky Way that couldn’t be seen from the city. It was humbling, that sky. Humbling and lonely. 

A cry pulled her to her feet. One hand grasped her locket, the other the verandah rail. Her heart hammered. It couldn’t be!

The high-pitched wail came again, from out in the dark.

A curlew. Just a curlew. 

Pursued by the baby-like call, she hastily gathered the plates and retreated inside, her entire body numb. She hadn’t even felt the mosquitoes.

Melanie washed up while Richard showered. She emptied the scraps into the bin under the sink and started to scrub the dishes. A clatter from the bathroom: sounded like a shampoo bottle rattling across the floor of the stall. She suspected Richard was masturbating. He did it in the bed beside her some nights, as though the sight and sound of him wanking would get her all hot and sweaty. Once it would have. Those early days had been heady, no holds barred. They had explored each other in all manner of ways. She smiled self-consciously at the memories as she worked her way through the glasses and plates. Picnic blankets and car seats and mats on the living room floor, his office, a beach. While their friends played volleyball nearby and then hooted and whistled as the pair of them appeared out of the dune, holding hands, running to wash away the evidence in the sea. He had taken such delight in pleasuring her, in seeing her come on his hand or cock or some plastic toy they’d bought for the thrill.

Melanie stared out the kitchen window at the phosphorescent whitecaps and tremulously opened the sliding frame to let in the sound. No bastard curlew. Just the surf.

Five years … the sex had slowly ebbed. Until all that was left was the quick thrust and shot of the late night fuck, and then Richard snoozing by her side as her fingers moved quietly, secretively to ease the ache his penetration had stoked but not sated. The play had changed, and he’d become needy, wanting her to go down or roll over, leaving her to herself once he was spent. She began to wonder if he even cared if it was her; would any wet, welcoming orifice suffice? When he’d decided they should have a baby, she’d agreed readily enough. A baby would bring them together.
A joint project
, Richard had joked. She would’ve preferred a full partnership.

Melanie sniffed, wiped suds from her hands and pulled the plug, watching the water empty like so many of her dreams, then refilled her glass. The shower had stopped. She got into bed, wine on the side table, book propped up against her raised knees.

Richard appeared, wearing a towel around his midriff. He glanced at her, legs up under the sheet, book in place, and shook his head before padding across to the fridge to get a drink. She heard ice cubes crack into the glass, taken from the bucket-load he’d picked up at the store rather than the fridge’s inbuilt ice maker. She studied his shoulders, wide and muscular and still damp from the shower, beads of water in his hair, trickling down his well-defined spine to vanish beneath the towel covering his arse. 

‘I’m going to check my mail.’ He sat at the table, laptop open, its lid towards her.

She nodded and began to read.

They ate breakfast in a preoccupied silence, he skimming papers, she listening to her iPod and reading her book between mouthfuls.

‘Juice?’ he asked, and she nodded and kept reading. A line later, he got up and went to the fridge to fetch it.

‘Shit, is that all the bacon we’ve got? I was going to make filet mignon tonight.’

The dish was a personal specialty though he rarely made it these days. It was Melanie’s job to cook, except on Fridays when it was late night trading at Shelley’s Books. Richard’s overtime had increased as her pregnancy progressed. He’d made it sound like a sacrifice, shoring up their future and guaranteeing he’d be able to spend more time at home when the baby came. But the baby hadn’t come. Little Claudia had been buried in an indecently small casket, and Richard’s time at the office had continued undiminished.

The last time he’d cooked filet mignon was when he’d invited Leanne over. She’d arrived still wearing her unofficial uniform of above-the-knee skirt, black stockings, black jacket, white blouse. Her concession to informality had been, apparently, to undo the top buttons of her blouse to reveal a silver St Christopher’s medal hanging bright against the tanned skin above her push-up breasts.

Good old Leanne, apparently the only person at the office, if her mentions in conversation were anything to judge by. What he’d thought bringing her to dinner would achieve was anyone’s guess. Leanne had no children. She and her engineer partner never planned to, as far as Melanie could tell from the stilted conversation around the table. It was a relief when Leanne and Richard flowed into work talk, freeing her to clean up and retire to the sofa to read. Sarah McLachlan played on the stereo, masking their occult discussion. Leanne was there, Melanie had realised, entirely for Richard’s own comfort.

‘Mel, is this really all the bacon you bought?’

She thumbed down the volume of her iPod. Was it an omen or just coincidence that McLachlan’s ‘Silence’ should be playing? ‘I guess so.’

He checked his watch. ‘I’m going to drive down to the shop and pick up some more, make sure we’ve got enough for the week.’ For a moment, they regarded each other, both waiting for something more. ‘You want to come?’

‘I thought I’d go for a walk, before it gets too hot.’

He nodded. ‘See you when I get back, then.’

‘Okay.’ She offered a smile.

Tension she hadn’t been aware of faded from her shoulders with the sound of the Jeep’s engine. She regarded the breakfast dishes and decided they could wait. She cloaked her boardshorts and shirt with a serape, snatched up her straw hat and sunglasses and left the cabin. This time of the year, there shouldn’t be too many people on the beach. Jack was the only permanent resident at this tip of the island, and the tourists wouldn’t arrive en masse until school summer holidays started in a couple of weeks. Weekend visitors would most likely cluster near the township, although a chain of a half-dozen World War II bunkers strung along the dunes did draw the curious.

She toyed with the idea of visiting Jack to thank him for letting them stay, but decided against it; she didn’t feel like company. Instead of the road that linked the holiday cabins, she followed a narrow path through the brush. Wind-warped trees clacked overhead; fallen twigs dug into the bottoms of her sandals. She glimpsed a tin roof through the scrub, but couldn’t hear anything. As far as she and Richard knew, they were the only ones here apart from Jack himself, who lived in a shack at the northernmost end of the retreat, about a kilometre up the beach.

The path opened up through a dune held in place by a rampant rubber-leafed vine and clumps of spindly grass. The tide was high, probably on its way out. The water had carved a lip in the sand about as deep as Melanie’s knee. It was as though the sea was fighting the grass for the dune, and the sea was winning, bite by inexorable bite.

Two white-headed eagles wheeled over the water. The beacon held its position offshore. A tanker, faint and two dimensional in the haze, hovered on the horizon as it made its way through the passage with the dun and olive camouflage splotches of Moreton Island as a backdrop.

There were people at the southern point of the beach, near one of the bunkers. Melanie could see the shapes of children, a dog, a kite. She turned north and walked, blinking in the glare of sunshine off waves, ignoring the few people she passed: two fat men in togs watching her from the grassy bank; a young couple fondling each other through their bathing suits; a woman walking her German shepherd through the foam.

When she’d finally reached an unpopulated spot, Melanie took off her sandals and let her toes sink into the sand, delighted when a tongue of water lapped over her feet. Only after it had receded did she realise she’d laughed out loud. How long had it been since she’d done that? Smiling, Melanie walked without thinking, weaving along the swash, her shadow falling across the deep navy sky and cotton-ball clouds mirrored on the wet sand. The eagles swooped overhead, wings outstretched to catch the drafts. Her heart ached to share such freedom.

Melanie walked.

When she returned to the cabin, Jack’s rusted Land Rover was parked beside Richard’s Jeep. The two men were sitting at the weathered timber table on the deck. Jack wore his usual ensemble of shorts and a loose, button-up shirt. A blue heeler, muzzle resting on his front paws, lay at Jack’s feet. The dog opened one eye as Melanie approached, then lifted his head and panted a greeting, tongue lolling.

Jack’s leathery brown face split into a gap-toothed grin as she mounted the stairs. He doffed his faded cap so she could kiss him on the cheek, his salt-and-pepper stubble spiking her lips. His wispy grey hair seemed thinner than she remembered.

‘Jack, it’s so good to see you.’ She patted the dog on the head and was rewarded with a welcoming yelp. ‘You too, Friday.’

‘It’s been too long, Mel.’ Jack replaced his cap and appraised her. ‘You look good.’

She forced a smile. ‘Must be the sea air.’

‘Jack just dropped by to see how we were getting on,’ Richard told her.

‘And to cadge a beer.’ Jack hoisted the stubby gripped in his thick fingers.

‘He’s going to stay for lunch, aren’t you, Jack,’ Richard said.

‘Great,’ Melanie said, and meant it. For a horrible minute, when she’d seen the two figures on the deck, she’d thought of Leanne. ‘Thanks for letting us have the cabin. Richard needed some time away. We both did.’

‘Any time, you know that. Got the place to yourselves, too, pretty much; only got one other couple in Elysium. No one else is due in till the holidays.’

‘Sounds good. Some time alone is what this is all about.’

‘I hope I’m not intruding…’

‘God, of course not, Jack. You’re like family.’ She squeezed his forearm, feeling the cords of muscle, noting the sun-bleached hairs against the deeply tanned skin. ‘You’re always welcome.’