The Stranding (22 page)

To distract himself from the weight of memory and grief, Lex took a look around him. All the Merrigan church-goers were seated in the front pews with commanding views of the coffin. Lex summoned an internal smile. He supposed there had to be some advantage in coming weekly to pay your dues to God. Mrs Jensen and her husband were to one side of Helen, and some other people sat on her other side. Lex assumed they were her parents.

The non-church people were crammed into the back half of the hall. Sue was there, of course. She hadn’t been a close friend of the Becks, but she had fostered a working relationship with them, given the proximity of her shop to the butchery. A few of the other people must be farmers who sold meat to Henry. Sue had told him Henry’s meat came through the abattoir further up the coast, but it was all grown locally. Henry preferred to have contracts with farmers he knew.

He noticed Sally there too, with Sash and Evan. Sash looked bored and restless. She probably didn’t understand what had happened to the butcher, and maybe that was just as well. Lex hadn’t known Sally was particularly friendly with the butcher, but he supposed she must have bought her meat from Henry too, like everyone else local. In a small town, perhaps everyone attended funerals.

He searched about for Callista but she wasn’t there. He shouldn’t be surprised. She didn’t like the Becks much. And she probably didn’t want to risk running into him after the storm. Lex couldn’t believe he hadn’t worked it out sooner . . . the fact that she was a Wallace. Everything about the Wallaces and Callista’s defence of them made sense now. Lex wondered where his head had been not to notice. Even so, they shouldn’t have argued after the storm. He should have held back. He should have quietly asked her to leave and left it at that. But he had been unhinged by the wreckage of the house. And they were both so raw from the storm. He shook his head. He was making excuses for himself. After Isabel’s death and the damage he and Jilly had inflicted on each other, he should have known better.

The evening after the funeral was luminescent. The sea was calm and silvery in the late light. Lex left the photo of Isabel on the kitchen bench and went down to the beach. The funeral had reopened all his dark corners, and he had spent the afternoon staring at Isabel’s photo, trying to find the shape of her in his memory. Beneath his skin, sadness was welling. It was mixing with the anger that had been boiling slowly there for weeks now; anger at himself for losing his hold on Isabel, anger for forgetting, anger at Jilly, at Callista.

Trying to let his mind slip with the rhythm of the sea, he walked slowly in the wet sand as far as the lagoon. Down by the quiet brown water, he scooped a hollow halfway up a low dune and sat down. In the lap of the sky he watched evening fall. Beyond the sandbar he could hear the muffled crash and roll of the sea. The lagoon lapped peacefully. In the darkening blue-black sky of early evening a few stars blinked. Way across the lagoon, swans whistled and honked intermittently. Occasionally a fish flipped. And always that steady flush and thump of the sea.

Night slowly whispered across the beach. Lex leaned back in his hollow and tried to release himself into the invisible breeze and the cool air. As dark fell, the skies grew larger, until above him the heavens thrust in a dome, spangled with glittering stardust, the arc of the Milky Way. Confronted with the infinite, he felt the smallness of his existence, his own inconspicuous irrelevance.

It must have been the sea that lulled him to sleep, but he couldn’t tell where consciousness and sleep merged into the vapour of dreams. Helen Beck swept over him, with her desperate face from the funeral and her white hands. Her eyes were madness—black orbs that sought him, delved into him. Then a different mouth floated over him, softer. A smile he barely recognised, but which somehow knew him. The lips were kind, humorous, comfortable. He ought to know this face. It was so familiar. There was a smooth feeling of generous hands running over him, running through him. Of course. It was Callista. Happiness curled into a dull ache that intensified and slowly split open like a chasm. Cold air, turgid with sadness, gushed up, engulfed him, cleaved him open with a heavy strike. Isabel now, flying over. Her face whipping through the heavens. Grief swamped him, like fresh blood. He felt the horror of Isabel’s non-existence and the loss of her. She was being sucked away and he couldn’t reach her. He was calling her name, stretching to touch her. But he was clamped to the earth, sinking knee deep in it, while she arced away, deaf to him, transfixed on something else, somewhere else. She was gone.

He was alone in black emptiness. Hollow. There was nothing.

Seventeen

Callista knew the funeral was going on in town, but she didn’t want to go. She’d never had much to do with the Becks. Sure, she felt sad for his wife. But then Helen was free of him now, wasn’t she? Henry’s death might be a blessing in disguise.

She heard a car coming down the hill and wondered who it might be. Her mother hadn’t dropped round for a few days. But no, it’d probably be Jordi. He’d know she’d be boycotting the funeral.

The gully was humid this afternoon. The rain that had come with the storm had steamed things up and the air was still. Callista could smell Jordi’s sweat as he gave her a quick hug and sat down on the deck beside her.

‘What’s doin’?’ he said.

‘Nothing much. Couldn’t face Henry’s funeral.’

Jordi flashed a smile. ‘Didn’t think so. Knew I’d find you here. Heard you had a blow-up with Lex.’

‘Did you hear the rest? How the house blew in and the bed filled up with glass? It was lucky I wasn’t cut to ribbons.’

Callista tried to sound light about it all, but the events from the storm had clotted in her chest and she had been finding it difficult to breathe.

‘Thank your lucky stars you were out rescuing Mrs B,’ Jordi said.

‘I’m still trying to come to terms with it,’ she admitted.

‘What happened with Lex?’

‘He found out my name at the hospital.’

‘You didn’t tell him?’

‘Didn’t get a chance.’

Jordi grunted. ‘No wonder he threw you out. So the house slips out of reach again.’

‘It wasn’t about the house.’

‘Not even a little bit?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m tired of being alone.’

‘So you’re over Luke then, and all that?’

Callista smarted. ‘What do you mean, over it? Are you over Kate?’

Jordi winced and she wished she hadn’t dug at him.

‘That’s low,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry. But I’ll never be over it. You know that. Didn’t you tell me I had to move on? Lex was my chance.’

‘Was?’

Tears came, sudden as a spring rain shower. ‘He lost a child. And he has a wife.’

‘Ah.’ Jordi’s quick smile was cynical. ‘The plot thickens.’

‘I think they’re getting divorced.’

‘Just as well, given that he’s been entertaining you.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘What was it like then?’

Callista’s tears renewed. ‘It was going well. Sort of.’

Jordi’s eyebrows lifted.

‘He enjoyed the fishing trip. And he’s even been talking about getting a job.’

‘That’s marvellous, now that he’s been here three months.’

She ignored him. ‘It was only when we got on to Wallaces and whaling that things fell apart.’

‘And you complicated it by hiding your name.’

‘You think he’d have been all jolly about it if he’d known?’

‘It didn’t work out too well with him not knowing, did it?’

‘Don’t punish me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been flogging myself enough as it is.’

Jordi frowned. ‘So is that why it’s over? Because you’re a Wallace?’

Callista curled around her knees, miserable. ‘It’s probably the way it all came out that finished it,’ she said. She could remember Lex’s face, white with fury. There had been hatred mixed with all that emotion. Hatred and accusation. She couldn’t see how they could go back after that. ‘Damaged goods,’ she said.

Her tears turned off and weariness set in. Jordi went inside and brought out two glasses of water. He sat back down beside her on the lip of the deck.

‘Dad asked me to help out on the boat,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong with that?’

He spat on the grass. ‘I’m used to going it alone. It’s better that way. Nobody relies on me.’

‘Barry relies on you.’

‘That’s different.’

‘No, it’s not.’

He glared at her. ‘I have my own way of dealing with things.’

‘And how’s that?’

‘It’s my way,’ he mumbled.

‘I thought the boat would make you happy. Not so lonely.’

‘I’ve got happiness, in my own way. I don’t need you interfering in my life.’

‘What? It’s my fault Dad asked you to help?’

‘Mum said you talked to her about it.’

‘For God’s sake, Jordi. I was only trying to help. Same as you help me. I won’t get involved next time.’

‘Good.’

‘Won’t you give it a go?’ she said hesitantly. ‘You might actually like it. And it’d get you away from the servo a bit. You can’t pretend you enjoy it down there.’

He said nothing.

‘Please?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

She put her hand gently on his arm and he let her leave it there for a moment.

‘We have our own path, you and me,’ she said quietly. ‘Our own way.’

Jordi looked at her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You have your path, and I have mine, Callie. I can’t bear the load for you. I have enough of life to carry for myself.’

She watched him sitting there on the step, with his scrawny shoulders squared and his lips firm. There was so much strength in that bony frame and those wild, determined eyes.

‘I don’t know how to fix things with Lex,’ she said.

He glanced at her. ‘That’s easy. Like the storm. Let it blow over.’

‘It wasn’t supposed to go this way.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But life was never supposed to be fair.’

He pulled a joint out of his pocket and lit it.

‘I’m done with talking,’ he said, taking a drag and passing it to her.

They sat for a long time, breathing the bush, watching the light, and drifting into an easy, mindless haze.

After Jordi left, Callista pulled her paints drawer out from under the kitchen sink. Her good paints were stored there, the expensive ones, the ones she saved for best. Dumping the drawer on the table, she threw aside the dusty old cloth covering it. There was an unexpected tingling energy in her fingers as she rolled a few paint-blotched tubes in her hands. She looked at the paints like they were foreigners, not quite connecting with them. Minutes passed as she went through the contents of the drawer: tubes of oils and acrylics, half-cleaned palette knives, new and neglected brushes, a handful of broken sketching pencils, scraps of charcoal, chips of dried paint.

She allowed time to wash over and through her, and waited for the magic to emerge. She emptied her mind until her focus was centred on the tubes of paint and all she could hear was the whisper of her own tremulous breathing. Beneath her skin large events were waiting to disgorge. Huge dark emotions and happenings were brewing. Thoughts and visions shuffled across her mind: order and disorder, love and terror, fear and disappointment, loss. Flashes of angst. Lex. The storm. The black wind on the beach that night.

She wiped the dust from her palette and cracked off the dried clots of paint. It had been a while. More carefully now, she went through the paints. Some were useless, dried out from the last time she had frenzy-painted and forgotten to twist the lids on tightly enough. What a waste. But there was enough.

The old excitement welled in her fingers and tickled in her chest as she began squeezing colours onto the board: black, blue, violet, white, red, yellow. From those she could mix the strong steely blues and turgid purples that she remembered in the sky before the storm as it thickened with furious clouds and stretched itself vertically and horizontally in the escalating winds.

She clunked a canvas onto her easel. Frantically, her hands scattered amongst the brushes in the drawer, scuffing over stiff tips and shakily selecting large sizes. Everything within her was coarse and urgent.

It was then, with a handful of brushes clutched in her left hand, that she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. The wildness in her eyes almost frightened her and she noticed the panicked thumping of her heart.

Slowly she placed the brushes on the table. She lifted the mirror down and set it on the easel. Staring at herself, she slipped off her clothes and stood squarely naked in front of the mirror, resting the palette on her right arm. She dipped and swirled one brush, coated it in black. Wildness surged in her, primitive and strong. She dabbed the black on her breasts, covering the generous bulges of creamy flesh, then made a sludge of grey on the palette and slicked it over her nipples. Concentrating, focused on colour, she mixed blue-black and swiped it repeatedly over her abdomen, up to her chin, dots of it over her face.

Panic blossomed.

She squeezed out more black, painted her arms and legs with it. Then another large squeeze of black slathered thick and slick onto the V of her pubic hair. She caked it—feeling hate and dread and fear and loss and loathing, the choke of grief, rising from the ground up through her feet, blasting out through the top of her head. Her hands were trembling. Her chest constricting. Shivers of horror ran down her back.

She reached skywards as she coated her fingers. Her heart pumping. Eveything breaking out of her, swamping her in black.

Then all collapsed to silence, and she fainted on the floor.

Evening woke her with its cold touch. Her body was stiff but light. The paint was caked and congealed all over her. It was going to be a task to get it all off in the shower. Colours cracked as she shifted to a sit. She pulled up on a chair. The cold had seeped deeply through her and her movements were awkward. But she climbed the steps on feet that seemed unweighted, and the shivering could have been happening to someone else.

After the shower, with skin scrubbed red, she drank a contemplative coffee out in the peaceful dark of the deck. Bush sounds eased through her, the smell of the trees at night, the crackly, busy quiet.