Salvage (4 page)

About midday, she huffed to the kitchen and washed down a sleeping tablet with half a cup of tea, then crawled back to bed. From the kitchen window she saw a slate-coloured ocean flecked with white, roiling grey clouds, trees bent in the onshore wind. She pulled up the doona and let the pill do its thing.

The tanker split open like a pea pod, spilling a flood of goo into the sea. But as the liquid washed towards shore, she realised it wasn’t oil, but viscous blood. As she walked, the thick, stringy liquid oozed up between her toes and splashed over her ankles. A bird caked in ichor struggled on the beach. She picked the animal up and felt its sticky, squirming weight. Its feathers stuck to its body; its feet pedalled feebly. It opened its beak and squawked a baby’s cry.

She woke gasping. The shrill ring of the phone stabbed into her skull like a migraine. She tried to ignore it, consumed as she was by the clammy sweat and heaving lungs left by the nightmare. The sleeping pill clung to her awareness. The phone persisted, penetrating the fug. Finally, unsettled and dishevelled, she shambled across the room to answer it.

Richard: ‘Are you all right?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ She was aware of her slurring, her tongue thick and ungainly.

‘I just thought … no matter. Listen, this is a real clusterfuck here. I’m not going to make it back tonight.’

‘I didn’t expect you to.’ She hung up. The kitchen utensils from last night’s dinner still littered the bench. The knife she’d cut herself with on Friday, glistened. She peeled off the bandage and squeezed the wound, but no blood came. The nick was a mere pink line on her finger.

She poured a glass of wine and stepped out to watch the late afternoon sunlight sparkle on the white caps. The clouds seemed closer, lower, thicker. The wind blew wet and crisp. The sun spearing in from the west made the gathering storm, all glowing pinks and greys, seem surreal over the deep-green ocean. Seagulls wheeled and side-slipped like kites. The surf sounded excited, like a crowd warming up before the main event. 

Melanie drained her glass and walked to the beach. It was bare. Maybe the looming storm had chased everyone away. She looked north, almost expecting to see the white-shrouded neighbour who had so inflamed their interest the night before, but the beach remained empty, sand skittering across the softer heights of the dune.

The ocean grew darker as the sun sank. Plovers made their ratchet cry in the dusk but she couldn’t see them, couldn’t see any birds at all, not a single living thing. She kicked off her sandals, then kneeled and put them side by side near the flaking, weather-beaten ‘Guests only’ sign that marked the path to Eden. She left her cabin key there too. She began to unzip her tracksuit top, then stopped. She approached the water, hesitating at the first frigid licks against her feet. She’d just get to the beacon, she told herself.

Melanie waded in, knocked back a few steps by each wave, the freezing water stealing her breath as it splashed higher. Finally she had to swim. The beacon flashed. Green means go. She forced another clumsy overarm stroke.
A moth to the flame
, she thought. Her pants slipped down around her thighs; her sodden top made it almost impossible to even dog paddle. Her breath came in ragged fits as icy salt water filled her mouth and throat, making her splutter. With each cough, she took in more. And more, her body growing heavier, and heavier, and the sea pulling her down…

A wave picked her up, rolled her. She glimpsed a figure on the beach: a pale phantom. Richard? She tried to call to him. For help? Simply goodbye? She didn’t know, no words came, no sudden flash of insight. Watery fingers pulled at her clothes and her body, reached into her nose and mouth and throat, stabbed her eyes. The horizon blurred into sky and sea. All was grey deepening to black, growing darker and darker, colder and colder, quieter and quieter. 

The current pushed her, pulled her, this way and that, but inevitably downwards. She kicked at the constraint of her pants around her legs, then fell limp, her energy spent, her desire leached into the sea, seduced by silence. It was easier to simply rest, relax, surrender.

Melanie spluttered back to wakefulness, groaned, then vomited, leaving her throat painfully raw. She shut her eyes until the vertigo had passed and she could feel the moist, compacted sand under her, and the icy tongue of the sea lapping around her legs and waist.

She was so cold. Frozen, except for the burn in her lungs. She coughed some more and tried to move, failed. And then she felt a presence near her head.

Richard? Her body managed to find enough hot blood to flush her cheeks with embarrassment at the thought of her husband seeing her so bedraggled and pathetic.

But when she raised her head, ready for his jibes or, perhaps worse, his pity, she found instead a young woman crouching on the balls of her bare feet studying her as a child might examine a jelly fish. It wouldn’t have surprised Melanie if the woman had picked up a stick and started prodding her.

Shame welled up inside—relief that it wasn’t Richard, but still shame that someone should see her like this. Another wave foamed around her thighs. Had the ocean thrown her to the very edge of its domain? Or had she crawled free, driven by some primitive urge even after consciousness had abandoned her?

‘Why did you swim in your clothes?’ the woman asked.

Melanie shook her head, remembering taking off her shoes so carefully, but feeling shy about removing her clothes, of not wanting to bare her failed body to even the elements. Her pants were gone; she was wearing only her tracksuit top, t-shirt and knickers. She had to cover up. She had to get out of the water. Melanie heaved herself forward and the woman hopped back out of reach, as though this strange specimen might be contagious.

Wise woman. You don’t want what I’ve got.

Melanie looked behind her as she hauled her feet from the water’s reach and her jaw tightened bitterly.
False promises
, she thought. Not even the ocean wanted her. She was denied even that.

Melanie focused on the woman through swollen, stinging eyes, picking out details in the wan light of the cloud-masked moon. The stranger’s sand-encrusted hem was pulled up around her knees revealing tight, pale calves. Slender wrists and long, thin hands with graceful fingers extended from loose sleeves. A concession to the beach, the top buttons of the bodice were undone, revealing the suggestion of small but shapely breasts. No bra or bikini top underneath. Slender, graceful neck. Dainty face with wide, curious eyes under heavy brows. Her hair flicked in the breeze, stuck in the corner of her sensuous mouth. Melanie couldn’t guess her age, but her brutal, innocent curiosity could have belonged to an eight-year-old. 

The woman brushed the hair from her cheeks and asked, ‘Are you happy to be alive?’

Melanie stared at her, feeling the pain in her chest, the incredible lassitude in her muscles, the weight of her sodden clothes holding her down. The woman’s pointed question sliced through it all. Such a strange question, so confronting. Not, you’re lucky to be alive; not, how are you feeling? or, are you okay? 

Are you happy to be alive?
How could she answer that?

‘I don’t know,’ she said, and coughed up thin phlegm. She wiped her mouth with her arm, leaving her lips gritty with sand.
Maybe I have drowned
, she thought. Maybe this was a delusion that came with death, and this stranger was a part of it, some kind of angel sent to determine where her soul best belonged.

‘I don’t swim,’ the woman said.

Melanie blinked, then made herself smile.
Keep the angel happy.
‘Neither do I, apparently.’

The woman smiled back, revealing brilliant white teeth.

‘I am glad you are alive,’ she said. ‘You should get out of the cold. Here.’ She stood and extended a hand. Melanie summoned her reserves and took it. The woman was stronger than her winnowy frame suggested, effortlessly hoisting Melanie to her feet.

‘My name is Helena,’ she said.

‘Melanie.’ She brushed sand from herself, but it clung tenaciously to her saturated clothing and skin. ‘I saw you the other day, I think.’ She glanced away, suddenly coy. ‘Here on the beach, at sunset.’

The woman shrugged. ‘I like the beach.’

Melanie wished she had pants; the contrast between her exposed legs and the weight of her sodden jacket made her feel pulled in two directions. At least her jacket covered her knickers.

‘My cabin isn’t far,’ Helena said.

‘Neither’s mine.’

The woman regarded her, head to one side. The action, combined with her wide brown eyes, reminded Melanie of a labrador she’d had as a girl, the sad confusion as to why it couldn’t go for a run or have that sliver of ham.

Melanie conceded. ‘Thanks, it’s very kind of you.’

They walked up the beach in the gloom. Helena would stop every so often and stand with her nose pointed into the moist breeze, eyes shut. ‘I like the smell of the sea,’ she said. ‘I wish I could swim.’

‘You aren’t from around here?’ Not with that accent.

Helena gestured towards the horizon. ‘I’m from over there. But I like it here. I don’t want to leave.’

‘I know what you mean. I’m on holiday, too.’ Melanie tried to identify Helena’s accent. Greek? Italian? ‘We’ve got a cabin for the week.’

Helena nodded, which Melanie took to mean she was the same. She wanted to ask how old she was. The woman had a quiet reserve that suggested she was perhaps even older than Melanie, but her body was so lithe, her features so fine… She had a flash image of Helena as a bent, lined, crag-toothed villager cradling a pipe or glass of ouzo, but just couldn’t make the image match.

Helena looked into her eyes, as though feeling the scrutiny, and smiled. Melanie abandoned her question at that beaming generosity and simply smiled back. Warmth crept through her; the warmth of company, she realised. To have been so alone in the waves and now to be with someone who actually gave a damn. The universe had given her a reward for surviving, for choosing to live.

But she hadn’t chosen. The sea had chosen for her, had spat her out like a sour grape. She thought again of Helena, naked in the twilight, embracing the elements, and was surprised at her sudden rush of jealousy and the guilt that followed on its heels.

‘Are you cold, Melanie?’

Melanie’s smile grew broader. She liked the way Helena said her name, pronouncing each syllable, as though feeling the shape of the word.

‘A little, yes.’ Was it the trembling that had given her away? The goose-pimpled legs? The clatter of her teeth?

‘You should get warm.’

Helena led her unerringly through the dark up to a path through the dunes. The scrub closed in around them, branches whispering and cracking. Melanie forced her exhausted, weak legs to keep up. The woman moved with such easy grace. She had a dancer’s body. Melanie wished her eyes would adapt to the shadows quicker, bit back complaints when fallen twigs and pebbles jagged her soft soles. She remembered only now that her sandals were back at the beach, with her keys.

‘Not much farther,’ Helena said. They scrambled up a rise and then they were out of the scrub and onto a threadbare lawn, more dirt than grass. An A-frame timber cabin sat on the far side with a spacious deck and attic window facing the sea. The carport was empty; the building’s windows were unlit.

Helena led her up the stairs. A sign labelled the cabin Elysium. A bamboo wind chime rattled in greeting. On the other side of a thin screen of trees, the ocean rippled darkly. The orange corona marking the village at the southern tip of the island barely brightened the night.

‘Come in, Melanie.’ Helena slid the glass door open for her.

Melanie stepped inside, grateful to be out of the wind. Drops of water dotted the polished floor where she stood hunched and shivering in the kitchen.

Helena entered, closed the door and walked across the darkened room with barely a sound. She struck a match, the smell acrid after the freshness of the night air. Melanie could detect an under-layer of pungent incense, something floral but stale, like dead roses.

A candle ignited, and then another, the light blooming to cast soft shadows around the single, open plan room. The cabin had a large living area and kitchen downstairs, while the bedroom was above on a mezzanine reached by a set of wooden stairs. Melanie could just make out the edge of a massive bed behind the wire-and-timber railing, two backpacks propped like burst scarecrows at its foot. A couple of bottles of wine stood on the kitchen bench under the window opening onto the deck. A dining table sat bare except for a dog-eared paperback, a purse and two iPods.

‘You got the luxury cabin,’ Melanie said. ‘With the loft.’

‘I like to be up high, to feel the wind and see the ocean,’ Helena said. ‘The bathroom is this way.’

She picked up the nearest candle, a thick burgundy one smelling of roses, and led Melanie to a door at the far side of the room. An undulating moan came from the laundry opposite.

‘The door,’ Helena explained. ‘It doesn’t shut properly. The timber, it is out of shape.’

‘Have you told Jack?’ Melanie asked, forcing the words through her chattering teeth in what she hoped sounded normal on this abnormal night.

‘The noise does not bother me. Here.’

She entered the bathroom, put the candle on the bench by the sink and dug in the cupboard. ‘There are towels. I will find you some clothes. I’m sorry, I have only a few with me. We travel lightly.’

‘Thanks,’ Melanie said. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘Would you like tea?’

‘Lovely.’

We
, she’d said. And there was aftershave and a razor, two sets of shampoo, on the basin. She hoped Helena’s boyfriend—husband, Jack had said, she remembered now—didn’t arrive too soon. Helena had seemed accepting enough of Melanie’s situation, but she couldn’t handle a grilling from a strange man. Facing Richard would be bad enough.

‘Switch on the light if you like,’ Helena said. ‘I prefer the softness.’ She shrugged, an endearingly whimsical gesture, and left.

Melanie pushed the door shut, kept the light off—she could do without that harsh exposure just now—and stripped, bundling her wet clothes in the basin. She cast a longing glance at the Jacuzzi in the corner before easing herself into the shower cubicle once she’d got the temperature just right. The water pump hummed as the jet of steaming water kneaded feeling back into her numb flesh.