The Break (10 page)

All seemed quiet in the rest of the house. No furry carpet footsteps or waking groans, or whispered voices — that's what he hated most, he couldn't stand not being able to hear what they were actually saying when he heard that vigorous
whispering, always had to creep down the hall and get as close as he could to their bedroom door and catch the louder bits. Curiosity kills the cat, as Nanna Pip would say.

Ferg lay next to Liza, who was flinching her way through another world, and listened to Sam creeping around. He'd never be a burglar, that kid.
He'll be tired tomorrow
, Ferg thought.
Leave him be. If he's tired, he's tired. He'll figure it out himself.

Whoever had come in last hadn't pulled the flyscreen door to properly. It shuddered with the gusts that found their way along the verandah, that found their way to the marri. The wind, seeking out instruments to play.

A bottle of bubbly was top of Rosie's list of things to get in town that morning. She would be starting her new job the next day and thought that was something worth celebrating. Walking past the tavern, she saw the shirtless, dreadlocked, stylisedsunnies guys of every Margies summer, hanging around on the grass, around the wooden tables and benches, with kelpies and staffies tied up all over the place. They came down south over summer and stayed while things were good; three months, maybe six if they met a girl, or if they found a great dope plantation in the forest, or if the surf was really pumping. And the chicks, they adorned themselves with impossibly small shorts and triangle bikini tops, or flowing Indian fabrics, long skirts trailing lightly over the ground behind bare feet. Rosie envied their long hair, their lithe frames, their gentleness.

They weren't the same individuals, but they may as well have been the same people who lay in the same places, in the same sun, from summer through till May every year, when she and Cray and the nine-to-five crowd would come down to escape for a weekend.

But winter wasn't far off, now — the nights were already getting chilly, though the days were clear and blue. And when winter did arrive, Cray'd told her, when the rain came down in one long flowing sheet, unwinding endlessly, the few who stayed migrated inside to the smoky TAB warmth of the tavern, to swing around the pool tables, drinking middies and Jack-Daniel's-and-Coke, wondering where their next buck was gunna come from.

No, those summer hordes would be long gone when the clouds came across the Southern Ocean, sweeping the roofs
of houses on the cape, a grey blanket pushing north along the land; once the town had settled back into the rest of the year — the real part of the year — when chimneys got cranking at three in the afternoon, and people ran from one shop to the next, and when the parallel parking on the highway, and the beer garden at the tav, were empty.

‘A job already, Rosie,' Cray said, raising his glass to her. ‘No grass is ever gunna grow under your feet!'

She laughed. ‘I leave that side of things to you.'

‘It is something I'm quite good at.' He swatted a mozzie searching for a way through his leg hair.

The sun was setting, and the champagne bottle added an elegant touch to the scene out on the verandah. The liquidy sun weighed on Rosie's eyelids.

‘We're going to have to have the folks down soon, you know, Cray. Yours and mine. Separately, of course.'

‘If only we could keep it for ourselves.' He squinted into it, focused on the water. ‘It's … perfect.'

Rosie looked too. Silver glitter flowed over the surface, where the sun struck the sea.

‘Wouldn't it be good to show it off to a few friends, a few doubters?' she said. ‘Marty, maybe? Nat and Salt?'

‘I'm not sure we'll see Marty and Caro anytime soon. But the
folks
,' he groaned. ‘We'd have to
tidy up
. Throw away the beer cans. Plump up the cushions.'

Rosie thought a moment. ‘There aren't any. Cushions.'

He looked behind him, into the lounge. ‘Whatever. You know what I mean.'

She did. She felt it every minute.
Keep everyone away.
Ring everyone and ask them to come, to stay with them, to share this. Keep everyone away.

She wanted both. And when it came to her parents, she needed both. Maybe, now, she could show them what she couldn't say.

Swan Gold wasn't on tap at the hotel, but it was the beer the old bloke behind the bar wanted. Swan Gold. Swan Gold. Rosie couldn't see it anywhere. Dogbolter, Matilda Bay Bitter, Redback, Guinness: the taps glistened with beading icy drops.

‘In the fridge, love.'

What?

‘In the fridge, behind ye.' Phil nodded over her shoulder.

She scanned the stock of cans and stubbies. Hahn Ice. Tooheys Red. Crown Lager. Becks. Bloody everything. Strongbow. Sweet, Dry or Draught. She heard the voice of the ad man, gruff, sexy. Ridiculous, she thought.

Swan Gold
. She took one out and twisted off the top, put it on the bar towel in front of him. He had some coins spread out next to his smokes. She looked at them, at Phil. Was she meant to help herself, or wait for him to pass her the money? He nodded at the coins. If she'd blinked she'd have missed it. Rosie brazenly reached over and took $2.30 from the pile. She had to do it confidently, didn't want to look any stupider than she already did. She felt the others cringing a couple of metres behind her, but staying away all the same. When she wanted help she'd ask. Otherwise she'd fall into the habit of needing reassurance about every single thing she did.
Is this right? How do I pour it again? This one? Is it $2.30 or $2.20, did you say?

As it was, she was learning the tricks every minute.

Phil sighed loudly. ‘Can I have a glass, love?'

He had a twinkle in his eye, so she wasn't in his bad books yet, she thought, taking a middy glass over. Rebecca was suddenly by her side.

‘No, he likes one of these,' she said, putting a smaller,
rounder glass next to his coins, next to his smokes. ‘A
glass
.'

‘Oh.' Rosie nodded. The three of them stood there, nodding at the result: the right beer, the glass.

Cray felt great. It was midday. He stretched out on the couch. His body was coming out of hibernation, thawed by the water, made supple again by all the exercise. He felt more awake, and when he slept, he dreamed. Dreaming had left him while he was out on the mine, apart from the odd nightmare, and he was glad to have it back again. Yep, Greys Bay was suiting him just fine.

He turned his thoughts to Rosie. Her first day at work. He wondered what it was like, if there were blokes on bar stools leering at her. He knew what those public bars were like, and in the middle of the afternoon there'd be a few blokes having their second, or third, beers of the day. Supping companionship.

Rosie working meant it was about time he found work too. Bummer really, he was more than happy to just potter around after an early surf, read, snooze, then enjoy a beer or two on the verandah after a lago — the extra surf you snaffled when the wind swung back around in the late afternoon and the ocean took on the look of a pane of molten glass. In the evening he'd cook up a storm — Thai curries, vegie stirfries, or lamb chops with garlic and rosemary and baked spuds — and relax with Rosie and an ABC doco. And Rosie'd just been telling him last night, when they lay in bed with moonlight on the doona and the sound of surf down the road, how good it was not to have a routine to their day — they could cook dinner as late as they wanted and it didn't matter because they didn't have to get up at seven in the morning (unless Rosie was on the early shift). They could watch crappy late-night TV, they could have breakfast at eleven o'clock, they could sleep in the afternoons. Bliss.

But he couldn't let her slave away on her own out there in the big bad world. The question was: did he go for the devil he knew or meet the one he didn't?

Cray looked through the slender volume of the local yellow pages. There were a few consultancies, mostly specialising in land development, subdivisions, that sort of thing. Going around to newly clear-felled blocks, and then compaction tests, septics, drainage, retaining walls; checking out houses for cracks and faults and below-standard design. Thrill-a-minute.

Cray flopped the book down.
Jesus bloody Christ
, he thought.
I'm only gunna live eighty years. And forty are meant to be spent working; forty trying to make money.
People seemed to do anything to get the stuff, and expected him to do the same. And yet they all had those mugs with
Countdown to the weekend
and
Thank God it's Friday
on their desks. The least you could do, he reckoned, was have a job that fulfilled the basic human need of
pleasure
.

The flywire filled momentarily with ocean wind. Cray tried to suck some into his lungs. It was Tuesday. And Thank God For That.

He flicked through the pages to the surf shops, board shapers and suppliers of all things to do with the hallowed activity. Shaping. He'd shaped a few boards in his time. The rhino chaser was beautiful in the water, smooth and fast; he'd made that. He had design skills, drafting, the mathematics of the thing. Could he?

Triple J was on in the background. They could just receive it, after a hell of a lot of fiddling; it was their only link to home, a common denominator. Cray wasn't really listening, could just hear the buzz of music and a guy's voice. He was dreaming boards, Greys Bay, forever.

Mike left before dusk, passing paddocks and cows and skies of orange-mauve-blue-violet, and houses out in the middle of acres and acres of flat, exposed land. His old bomb, the Sunbird, was ready to blow by the time he rolled into Brenn Head.

He pulled up in the carpark of the Paradise Motel. He'd always wanted to stay there, pink neon sign with flashing palm tree outside the row of sordid illicit-sex and drug-deal motel units, each with a buzzing fluoro strip above the door. He reckoned the palm tree was the anti-Christ in the hospitality industry: it reeked of desperation.

At the motel reception, which was not so much about being received as it was about being sussed out by the guy who ran the joint, Mike paid in full, as per The Policy. The guy took his cash and said quietly, ‘Need anything else?'

Mike took a couple of moments to realise what he meant. The manager was smirking; he knew what Mike was. Sweat erupted at his hairline. It was so easy. Would be so easy.

The sudden cool air outside that reception building had the effect of an icebath on him, thank god. He shook his head like a dog shaking off water after a swim, shook the shithead's smirk out of him.

Tomorrow at the hospital in Margaret River, Mike had an appointment to meet his new nurse. Some specialist in relapse prevention, his GP reckoned.
She'd wanna be a specialist for this hard case
, Mike thought darkly. Would she be nice, he thought, would she be like Annemarie? He couldn't handle some tutting matronly woman frowning at him every time he
had to down his sickly dose. Wait and see, he said to himself. No point jumping to conclusions, just wait and see.

The bed sagged in the middle. Mike sat on the orange candlewick cover. Tiny TV, humming bar fridge. He pressed on the telly — Channel Two was showing one of the
Carry On
movies. Unbelievable that they continued to repeat them, unbelievable that he found himself laughing. No: chuckling — dirtily. Boobs and bums and scotch and nurses and stethoscopes. All very Benny Hill.

The bar fridge didn't have anything in it, but that's what you got for thirty-five bucks. He dug around in his bag and pulled out a bottle of vodka. Surprise, surprise. From one addiction to another. At least this one you could do with family and friends.

By the time Rosie was pelting along Calgan Road in the Woody it was nearly midnight. Apparently, staff drinks after the nightshift were a condition of employment, particularly when the boss had gone home early. It was a good twenty-five minute drive back to Greys Bay, and she pushed it up to 110. The black shapes of trees kept the curve of the road ahead. Moonlight eked through the break at the sky, where the canopy, separated by the snaking bitumen below, did not quite meet.

Rosie looked out for roos and other cars, pressed the radio button to the sound of Ted Bull — silly old coot, but she liked him — and tried to wind down from her evening. She hoped Cray would still be up, but she wasn't counting on it. He liked his sleep, did Cray. Didn't appreciate late-night disturbances or early-morning phone calls, even from well-meaning relatives (especially from well-meaning relatives).
Hopefully he'll have left the light on for me
, she thought.

God, that sounded depressing, like a line out of some old song on the Ted Bull show.

Rosie stood in the garden overlooking the ocean's midnight blue, its creamy hem reaching across the bay. She breathed in the moist, bush-seasoned air. It was so quiet after the radio. Thick quietness. No urban sounds in the distance, no traffic near or far. No voices, even. Just the ticking engine cooling.

Hearing the silence, listening to the lack of sound, almost made her panicky. Greys Bay was remote. No, she corrected: peaceful. Both, she compromised.

The kitchen light was on and Cray had left her a plate of
food with foil tucked around it, and an ‘instruction' about going outside before she went to bed. I already have, she murmured, looking towards the blackness of their bedroom. Cray had this thing about outside: he went out and breathed deeply a few times every night before he went to bed, even when they'd lived in Freo. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This place must be fresh air heaven to him, Rosie thought, imagining him out there on the balcony, breathing, listening to the surf, gauging the wind for tomorrow's conditions.