The Bay (3 page)

‘It's not going to fall over,' she said crossly.

Andrew let it go. ‘What are you going to call it?'

Holly's face cleared and she took a sip of champagne. ‘I'm going to keep the old name, Richmond House, that was part of the deal – after the whaling company. There's a remnant of rainforest at the back of the property where a special butterfly still breeds because of the trees and vines. I thought I'd use the butterfly as my logo.'

‘Sounds like you've thought a lot about all this,' he said quietly.

‘I have, Andrew. You might be surprised. I'm going to make this work.'

She lifted her chin and he was struck by her almost youthful determination. In the soft light she looked a very young woman. How different would their lives have been if Holly had been this strong minded and independent in the early days of their marriage? He raised his glass and downed it. ‘I think I believe you.'

They both looked at the dog, one of the few things they had in common these days.

Curly glanced from one to the other and gave a hopeful wag of her tail, her eyes seeming to say, ‘Tell me we're not getting back in that car.'

Andrew read the signal and laughed. ‘Nearly there, old girl. You're going to like it up here anyway – a whole beach on your doorstep. Scruffy real dogs to play with. None of those poncy clipped and pouffed-up poodlely things like in the old neighbourhood.'

Holly smiled at her dog. Lazy and fat Curly may be, but when Andrew went back to Sydney she'd feel safer having a dog around. Thinking over Andrew's comment she said, ‘I wonder if the neighbours are going to be scruffy real people too.'

‘You chose The Bay knowing some weird people live there. Attracting up-market visitors to Richmond House might be a challenge.'

Holly began gathering their picnic things together. ‘Andrew, I don't want to hear negatives now. We're here, we've made the commitment. It's up to me to make it work.'

Andrew stared at his wife. Why was she suddenly seeing herself as a businesswoman, a proprietor of an elegant, successful beach B & B? He shrugged. He had his own reasons for agreeing to this mad scheme. It would be a tax loss and keep Holly occupied and far from Sydney, which suited him just fine.

The sunrise was filtered by fingers of milky cloud, like a coy young woman peeping through her hands, half masking her face. The quiet sea was streaked with splashes of pale gold sunlight. Nola Florens glanced down at her matching gold chiffon caftan, now wet and sandy and clinging to her legs. Sitting in a golden sea in a golden dress, she mused, rather pleased with the image. Then she stretched her arm and the light caught the gold bracelets and gold rings. She raised a crystal champagne glass to toast the dawn of the New Year. It was empty.

She waved it behind her head and heard the clink as the bottle was lifted from the ice bucket by the boy.

Andre had been nodding off at the picnic table near the sand. It had been a long night. By now he was utterly bored with the antics of Miss Florens, who was capping off the partying with what she cheerfully described as a ‘sit-in with Mother Nature, darling'. It involved enjoying the caressing wash of the incoming tide while sipping a fine French champagne.

As he walked barefoot in his tuxedo to refill the glass, pants carefully rolled above his ankles, he studied the sea. Might be worth a surf later in the day. A few breaks getting up. How much longer was he on call for? he wondered. Not that he really cared, he was being paid by the hour. Easiest money he'd ever made – after he'd paid for the hire of the penguin suit. He'd driven Nola Florens to a few of the parties given by out-of-towners, posh people from Sydney and Melbourne, and followed her around topping up her glass from her own vintage champagne. He'd then driven her back in her Daimler at dawn to her penthouse overlooking Mighty Beach, thinking that was it. But no, she wanted to ‘soak up the sunrise'. He hoped none of his surfing mates would see him in this gear playing flunky to The Bay's rich and reclusive Nola Florens. She made curtains or something. What a waste of money. He silently poured the pale gold liquid into the glass and retreated to his seat under the pandanus palms to daydream about how he'd spend such a fortune as this woman possessed.

Nola Florens took a sip and raised her glass to the sun.

It was a cruel light that showed the relentless march of time. But this woman in her seventies looked remarkably youthful. Surgery, money, careful living or all three had preserved her well. Her lips carried the remains of bright lipstick, which had been applied with a shaking hand, and like a child's casually coloured picture, it had gone ‘outside the lines'. This was not the result of the champagne but arthritic hands.

It had surprised the social world when Nola Florens had retired to this remote coastal town where she knew no one. She had created a business and an image for herself, not only in Australia but overseas as well, and she had ruled the social scene in Sydney for many years. Yet no one suspected that behind the glamorous queen of design there was a lonely and sometimes frightened woman.

But all that had changed when she moved to The Bay – its lifestyle, the gentle landscape, the live and let live attitude of the locals. She had a good feeling about this year. Ly the clairvoyant had told her she wouldn't be on her own. Good friends were coming her way. Nola smiled as another little wave slapped over her feet.

The lights of the Holden station wagon wavered over the dirt road in a valley behind The Bay. The beam was watery in the pearly dawn. The man behind the wheel nodded for a moment, swiftly caught himself and reached for the can of beer between his legs. But his concentration had gone and the car took over, trundling across the road. And while he wasn't driving more than 50 ks, Eddie was unprepared for the rather graceful nosedive the car took off the dirt and into a shallow canal.

There was a choking kind of protest from the engine, as the car settled in the mud. Eddie looked down, amazed he was wearing his seatbelt; definitely must be running on auto. He had no recollection of buckling up. Too often he didn't bother with his seatbelt as he cruised through the back roads around the banana and sugarcane plantations. He turned off the ignition and groped for the can of beer that was now somewhere on the floor of the tilted car. He had trouble opening the door, so wound down the window and thrust his legs through it, congratulating himself on his great foresight in driving an old manual. He would never have got out this easily in a modern car with electronic windows.

Actually this was all he could afford. A documentary filmmaker didn't make a fortune trying to raise awareness of the plight of refugees or Aboriginal reconciliation, especially when he lived away from the mainstream. Eddie was also broke because his ex-wife had emptied their savings account and wiped him out with alimony and child maintenance. The demands for money for Alice's singing and ballet lessons, horse riding and school skiing trips – for God's sake at ten years old – had run over him in an avalanche of incomprehensible paper. And while he adored Alice and had regarded her as his own for the past seven years, the fact was, she wasn't his child. She was part of the package – or should it be ‘baggage' – that he'd acquired when he'd impulsively married Laura.

Laughing-eyed Laura, who'd swung into his life in Melbourne, motivating and pushing him to give up the photographic studio and get out there and make films as he really wanted to do. She'd pushed him to fill in forms, hassle for funding, persuade a corporate bigwig to back his first project. And it had paid off. He'd won awards, had lots of pats on the back, the documentary was screened on public television and it felt great. Except he hadn't made a red cent. He was offered a job with one of the networks to work with their investigative affairs unit – regular pay, travel, interesting work. Laura, however, who'd only ever dabbled at jobs, was convinced one day he'd go to Hollywood. He'd told her that was the last thing he wanted, but Laura only seemed to hear what spun around in her own pretty – he didn't say ‘empty' – head. She had sulked, withheld herself and looked so hurt that Eddie asked her to marry him. She said yes, but knocked the job on the head. He'd be selling out, he was just starting to follow his dream, she didn't want to live in the suburbs.

It had been her idea to move to The Bay . . . creative atmosphere, cheaper living, healthy lifestyle, Alice could go to the Steiner school, they could set up their own mini production company. Eddie had been reluctant, but gave in when Laura had pointed out that here he was, yet again, staying in his comfort zone, afraid to take a gamble. Where was his faith in his abilities, his vision? He could give her no coherent argument that sounded strong enough, and when they drove up and Laura took him to the hills and showed him the farm she'd seen advertised in
The Beacon Bugle
, he'd had even less reason to protest. She had it all worked out. The property was big enough for Alice to have a horse, they could turn the barn into a studio for him, grow their own vegetables, even revive the neglected avocado plantation. Laura could take a course in ceramics, or spinning – something rustic and rural. What she'd always wanted.

Eddie had gazed in amazement at his trendy urban wife. It seemed a big jump from caffe lattes with her girlfriends in South Yarra to the green tea and brown rice set scattered in the hills above The Bay.

Laura had insisted on handling the paperwork of the purchase in case Eddie got cold feet. It was only later they discovered that the creek had been diverted and they'd lost access to ‘natural spring water on the property'. Other nightmares emerged over the following eighteen months.

Two years later Laura was ‘sick and tired of being stuck in never-never land'. She wanted out – of the hills and the marriage. She was bored, he hadn't made a successful film again and she had lost patience with the endless waiting involved in getting a film up. So Laura and Alice had moved down to the beach. She'd found a small unit, Alice went to the public school and took surfing lessons instead of horse riding. Occasionally Eddie brought her back to see her pony at the farm, but Alice announced she didn't like horse riding any more.

Far from getting into a small business as she'd planned, Laura drifted around The Bay, having vegetarian lunches with friends – a bunch of women who all seemed to Eddie to be on the dole or living on their ex-husbands' money. They spent hours prattling over where they were going in life while never moving from the cafe. Or else she talked of ‘finding herself' by taking courses in healing, weird health practices or spiritual enrichment.

Eddie sank to his knees in squelchy water and gazed at the wall of green sugarcane on both sides of the road. He got back onto the verge, sat down and reached for a joint in the old tobacco tin in his shirt pocket. Inhaling deeply, he decided this was not an auspicious start to the New Year. Then he reconsidered. No, this was possibly a very good start to the year. He wasn't dead. He thought back over the evening. Who was the girl he'd been kissing in the laundry up against the washing machine? Did she ever tell him her name? Doesn't matter, he probably wouldn't recognise her if he saw her again anyway. Nose ring, green hair with feathers in it. Nothing unusual. He wondered how Laura had spent the evening. He'd collected Alice from school a few weeks back and she'd said that her mother had some nice smart friends visiting from Melbourne to ‘play with'. She'd taken Alice shopping for new clothes.

Eddie was feeling quite calm now. He knew everyone who lived along this road. Since Laura had moved out he'd become even better friends with the neighbours. They had adopted him and took turns sending over home-grown food and home-made jams and pickles. Eddie figured somebody would come by eventually. He curled up on the damp grass, pillowed his head on his arms and began to drift off to sleep. A last thought came to him – snakes; the cane fields were full of them. Then he recalled they wouldn't come out till the sun warmed up; late morning. Hours away, it was just past dawn. He dozed off.

Amber slithered down the sand dune at the far end of Mighty Beach to the north of The Bay. A rocky point divided it from the bay itself and Mighty Beach seemingly stretched into infinity, almost to the Queensland border. It was protected by a kilometre of native bushland, though small tracks made by fishermen, beach walkers and nudists were known to all the locals.

She glanced at the sky. The sunrise was going to be a washout, clouds everywhere. Hadn't stopped the crowd assembling, by the look of it, though. Must be close to three hundred people – upright and moving people. In the dim light she could make out prone bodies rolled in blankets or flat out on the rain-soaked sand – nowhere to crash, no money, or merely unconscious. She'd lost touch with her girlfriends from the party. Maybe they'd decided not to come down to Drew's dawn celebration, Salute to the Sun, a group yoga and spiritual ‘awakening of the spirit' to a new dawn, a new year. It was to be followed by a cleansing plunge in the sea and a shared breakfast under the marquee erected at the top end of the beach near the sea wall.

The rolling waves were sludgy; it was too overcast. Great shark-feeding conditions. Amber decided she would have to see in the year uncleansed until she hit the shower back at the beach house. She fell into the last of three lines of casually dressed people of all ages – visitors and locals mingled. She hoped she didn't look as bad as some of the jaded partygoers; she had grabbed a couple of hours sleep around 2 am. The healthy self-righteous types who'd spent the night drinking wheat grass juice or had seven hours sleep were in the front row.

Drew, the yoga master and well-known local identity, was sparkling with silver and gold glitter in his hair, over his shoulders and across his smooth bare chest. Had a devotee flung it or had he assiduously placed it himself? Amber decided Drew was always too perfect to allow himself to be randomly decorated. The shining shoulder-length curls, the perfect teeth, the fine features, high cheekbones and smooth eyebrows, and the always freshly washed look of him reminded Amber of a TV ad for some cosmic cosmetic. Ooh, she liked that. File that away under brand slogans.