The Coral Bones, page 10
Yesterday was a grouper day. I expect you can tell. On the worst of those days, the ones when I couldn’t even get out of bed, you were there for me without fail. I’d have knotted the doona around my shoulders, pulled the pillow over my head. You would climb back into bed, fully clothed in your pencil dress and court shoes, ready to go out and fight for the rights of your Legal Aid clients. You’d put an arm around me and hug me close. I could smell Chanel on your neck, the residues of conditioner in your hair. You smelled fresh and complex and alien. A person in tune with the world, not dissonant to it. Through the doona and the pillow you’d whisper to me. Hey little kappa, you’d say. I know it feels like you’re falling backwards into the abyss, but the tiniest candle can hold back the dark. Remember that. No, you didn’t say it as poetically as that, but I understood the meaning. What you said is this: It’s daytime, my darling. Your corals are waiting for you. What do you reckon?
If I didn’t respond you would stay holding me, for five minutes, ten minutes. Your phone might vibrate but you ignored it. You’d reach under the cover to find my hand, damp and clammy. You’d squeeze it tight. Our fingers interlaced. Then the release of pressure as you sat up, swung your legs around. I’d hear the clack of your heels across the floorboards, the stairs. The front door opening. Before it closed, you’d call out. Your voice rang through the house, clear and certain. I love you. You didn’t expect a response, and you didn’t need one. (Or did you, Tess? Now I wonder. Did you ever feel you weren’t enough? Because you were, oh I swear you were.)
You coined the term grouper days because groupers are huge and in your opinion fucking ugly, but not the deadliest fish in the sea. You wanted me to put things in perspective, and to make me laugh. You are an advocate of black humour in these situations. I never told you there have been incidents of groupers swallowing their shark cousins whole. It’s a rare enough occurrence, and I wouldn’t want to give the grouper a bad name. But if you ever go diving without me, please keep a respectful distance.
The grouper days first started with the beginning of the bleaching crisis. I thought I’d got past them, but this last year things got a lot worse. Perhaps I disguised from you how much worse. Perhaps there’s been an element of denial. Now I see you fold your arms across your chest and your left eyebrow lifts high. Perhaps? All right, Tess, I’m underplaying. I have been in denial.
I want to digress, just briefly, and tell you about Melissa, a young woman who has come to my scuba try-out the last few Wednesdays. Some people in these sessions take to the equipment straight away, others struggle for weeks, confusing buttons on the BCD and reaching for the air gauge when they want the regulator. As you know, it’s the slow learners who bring me the most satisfaction. Melissa is petrified of going underwater. Her boyfriend has his PADI and wants them to go diving together – it’s clear he is putting pressure on her. I want to give her the confidence to dive, not for him, but for herself.
In the first lesson Melissa couldn’t put her face in the water without panicking. We’ve made gradual progress and this week I finally got her to sit on the bottom of the pool. She plunged back up almost immediately, but just for a second, she was there, fully submerged; and just for a second, she was calm. And before the panic set in, I saw something shift in her face.
This morning when the cockatoos woke, and I with the cockatoos, I lay in bed and imagined the birds’ wings spreading. I followed those yellow crests as they lifted through the air, past the fig tree where they sit and screech, past town houses and city high-rises, above the golden thread of the coastline, above the atmosphere, until they drifted, and I with them, untethered in space. From there, I looked down upon our rugged continent, so far from so much of the world, and running down its eastern flank I found the reef. Our reef. Come with me into space, let me show you.
Look, Tess: all along its length you can see white crescents of ocean, breaking on hidden fortresses like the arched wings of swallows against the sky. There, the ribbon reefs, delicate as spider-silk; there the sprawling barrier reefs, their entrances forged by the ancient rivers that once ran from coast to continental shelf. During the last Ice Age the first Australians would have climbed down to an ocean a hundred metres below; First Nations peoples still pass down stories of the shelf’s drowning. We know of flooded caves, too deep to reach, where people may once have lived. Imagine that, Tess! Imagine the histories waiting to be rediscovered. Look, there: the line where the ocean shifts. Azure to indigo, Holocene to Pleistocene. Tell me you have seen a sight more beautiful than this.
A smile from you, I think. There’s wistfulness in it, and the barest hint of indulgence. We both have our causes – it’s one of the things that drew us together – but I know my enthusiasm drove you to distraction on occasions. One time, launching into my latest tirade about the government’s spineless refusal to curb our coal emissions, you held up your hand and spoke my name. It was a court gesture you’d honed, and I recognised it instantly. You retreated to your study and closed the door. You needed space. If this were a fairy tale, behind that closed door you would have revealed a secret self, neither monstrous nor divine but something private and understood only to you. If this were a fairy tale, some trace of that self would linger now, unwilling to depart. But this isn’t a fairy tale, and after an hour or so you donned once more the Tess known to the world and stepped outside, serenity renewed, and I told you I hoped I’d never face you in court. You laughed then and said you’d kick my arse if you did.
Was it luck, do you think, that allowed us to meet when both our guards were down? To call it luck implies the last decade has been desirable. And given how things have turned out, you might wish we had never met at all.
But let’s keep that memory, if nothing else, intact. It was the late noughties. You were from Sydney, and had all the louche confidence of that city. Over the course of your lifetime you had seen the cultural capital shift between your home and its Victorian rival. Thirty years ago, Melburnians would have scorned Sydney as a vacuum for the arts; today it claims the greater share of the film and fashion industries. You were a teenager when Sydney hosted the millennial Olympics and the eye of the world turned to what you now recognised, in its envious gaze, as a grail of a city. You followed the games obsessively, fixated not only on the exemplar of success these titans represented – a success so tangible you could taste it – but on the taut, muscular, infinitely desirable bodies of the female athletes. You screamed your lungs dry when Cathy Freeman broke the 400m finish line to take gold. A day later Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst stormed the women’s beach volleyball. It would have been a crime for any other country to best them.
After the games your crush on Cathy Freeman waned but your interest in women did not, and you realised at some point there would have to be an awkward conversation with your parents, both of whom leaned towards conservatism. You often imagined how this might play out (Mum, there’s something you should know) but didn’t act on it for another six years. You told them you were concentrating on your career. You didn’t tell them you intended to represent victims of sexual harassment. (Not excusing the guy for filming, Tess, but that skirt might as well have been undies.) Your dedication to study pleased them, but this didn’t prevent your mother from mentioning your school friends at any given opportunity, and in particular the nice young fellas they’d hooked up with – or simply hooked, like a fat mullet on a line. (Dan, what a charmer.) Your affairs during this period had a furtive, undercover dimension. It wasn’t that you didn’t accept your sexuality so much as you didn’t acknowledge it; you had a steely hold on the progress bar of your life and had decided it wasn’t yet time to be led by either the heart or the cunt.
Then I came along. I had just started my PhD in Townsville. It should never have worked. You didn’t like to travel outside of the Boomerang and everyone you had ever met from Queensland was mad as a bag of cut snakes. That summer I was holidaying in Sydney, drawn like a moth to its vibrant gay scene. We met on the dance floor, both of us worked into a frenzy by the vocal acrobatics of Prince. ‘Kiss’ was the track playing when I clocked you. Even if it wasn’t, I’m going to say it was. And in the way a stadium performance by Prince always felt like an impossibly intimate experience, so I felt that you were here in this crowded club entirely for me. I watched your hips, your arms lean and sinuous above your head, your beautiful long hair, every part of you swaying in exhilaration and inebriation, and I wished I could transplant everything about this beautiful city three thousand kilometres north.
I only transplanted one small part of it in the end. (Across the room, you catch my gaze and smile, dizzily. My heart unbalances.) I didn’t know it then, but like so many non-native species introduced to our country, you would thrive in foreign territory more than either of us could have imagined. Mad, bad Queensland, a breeding ground for populism and a chance for you to exercise your intellectual prowess, taking down a few bastards along the way.
Under the disco ball, you begin an uncharacteristic, sashaying walk – the product of one too many vodka gimlets – towards me. I smell the alcohol on you, the sweet sour of your breath. I want to kiss you to the end of the world. Tess, you say. My name’s Tess.
›•‹
As I finish writing this, it’s just gone nine. The dregs of my coffee are warmed by the sun, lorikeets whistle in the bushes outside the window. It should have been you who stayed, but you didn’t want to be haunted by memories. So I remain on borrowed time.
Sitting in your study, my feet hooked around the legs of the kitchen stool, I replay the moment when you entered the house, shut the front door behind you, and saw me waiting. Your hand drifted to your navel. I said: I don’t think I can do this. In the aftermath of those words I watch your face, over and over. I watch you break, and know I am the one with the pickaxe. Could you possibly understand, Tess? Will you understand me now?
I am submerging. Sinking down, sinking deep. Down through the sunlit planes of the Epipelagic, down into the shadowlands of the Mesopelagic, blizzards of detritus from the surface descending all around. So come with me, give me one more chance to explain. That’s all I ask of you, I swear.
Judith
Tailed by Monsters – Becalmed! – Belly of a Shark – Mr Darwin’s Journal and Remarks – Islands in Paradise – Yellow-Tailed Fish – The Sea-Devil of Jamaica – The Girl from Botany Bay
August 28, 1839
For several days our voyage has been shadowed by three monstrous creatures. The channel we are passing through is deep, but the water remains clear to the first few fathoms, and when the creatures rise near to the surface they are visible to us. We can observe their dappled backs, the sinuous warp of their spines, the triangular fins which strike terror into the hearts of sailors the world around. The crew call them man-eaters, and it is easy to imagine they could swallow a man whole. Mr Rush estimates each to be the length of our longboats. Imagine, to find oneself within the hull of the longboat, and glancing over the side to see the monster lurking only feet below! How pale and bloodless our human flesh appears when placed alongside these Olympians, how frail and puny our bodies! I made such an observation to Mr Rush, who agreed they were indeed the finest of swimmers, but Mr Pooke only sneered as is his wont.
Father, of course, is adamant we must catch them. Our fresh provisions are low. We remain some distance from our rendezvous with the store ship, and the presence of the sharks makes it impossible for our fishing parties to obtain new supplies, for all the fish are frightened away by this menacing procession. I have fancied that the sharks take the hull of our ship for one of their own kind, and that is why they follow us – as cygnets stay close to the mother swan. After suffering Mr Pooke’s disdain I prefer to keep my opinions to myself, but I must speak with someone, and when I voiced this notion to Belinda she shrieked and covered her ears. Why do you say such things? What horrors are in that head of yours? And so on, and so on. I was not meaning to alarm her, only to posit a reason for their continued presence. But even the most experienced seamen are nervous to leave the safety of the ship. For my part, I would like nothing better than to join an expedition in the longboat, and would seize in a heartbeat the chance for a closer glimpse of our dread companions. Alas, Father will not hear of it. And he knowing I can fish and shoot as well as any man!
I note that Mr Pooke has not volunteered his services. I would have thought this a prime venture for a naturalist, but at the first sighting he lost all colour and declared it imprudent to investigate further. We do not wish to provoke them, says he. Ha! If Bateman were here, he would call Mr Pooke a sandstone for his cowardice.
g
I cannot pretend to be sorry for the monsters’ arrival. Life at sea has been less eventful than I anticipated, and Father is largely to blame, having grown overly protective of my person during his time away, and believing he is doing his duty in confining me to the ship. I will bring him around. However, I have only lately had time to bring this journal up to date, for I have been fully occupied in nursing Belinda.
We began well, the trade winds aiding us to make good progress north. After a week of fast sailing, I could think of nothing more splendid than to be billeted aboard a ship of Her Majesty’s Navy, out on the open seas with the sun warm on my face and the smell of salt on the air. Whenever an opportunity presented itself, I would make my way to the quarterdeck, moving carefully between the coils of rope and webbings, and watch the froth seething in the wake of the ship. I entreated the sailors to teach me any small thing they could, be it knots or jibs or the working of leather. I strived to see as they saw. One morning, Able Seaman Barlow pointed gruffly to a pod of humpback whales breaching the water in the distance. Out here the world seems vaster than I could have conceived, and when night falls, I’ll warrant there is no more magisterial sky to be found in this hemisphere or the north.
The one blight upon my conscience is Belinda, who has suffered dreadfully with seasickness. I fear she has lost several pounds along with the contents of her stomach, and is looking rather lean. We had barely passed the Heads when she retreated below deck, looking nauseous. For days she was confined to the cabin, groaning and whimpering, and nothing I could say would comfort her. I asked Mr Rush and the botanists if they knew of any remedies to overcome the illness, but they say nothing is to be done: her body must grow accustomed to the sensation of the waves.
This I imparted to Belinda, who whispered that she would never get used to it, and that she was on her deathbed.
Seeking to reassure my companion, I reminded her that Admiral Nelson suffered all his life with seasickness, and only think upon his achievements!
Belinda then gave me a look of such loathing that I thought perhaps she was delirious, and I had become a snake in her eyes; but no, it was only that she did not appreciate the comparison. I promised her she would be well soon. Not soon enough, it seemed: she vomited again, and reader, I cannot be certain that she did not miss the bucket deliberately.
Thus it is that I have had little time for stargazing.
g
Then came three days becalmed, rescinding all of our initial progress. The crew occupied themselves with cards and gambling, the botanists locked themselves in their cabins, and Mr Rush sketched everyone aboard who would sit for him, from Mr Taplin the carpenter to Braxton the eldest able seaman. I asked if he could sketch me, but Father says I am too skittish for a good likeness. This tedious situation had the sole benefit of allowing Belinda to leave the cabin, and for the cabin to be aired. I escorted her on deck. When she saw the outlook, the languid ocean to north, east and south, and to the west the distant line of the coast and a haze of gumtrees unbroken in either direction, I had never seen her look so wretched. I fetched her a stool and leaned her against the taffrail, I brought her water and salted meat to chew and a little wine to fortify her. Belinda shivered, although it was not cold. She said she had been thinking of the passage.
At this I was racked with guilt, for I had not considered the passage in any of my scheming, nor that it might raise unwelcome memories, which with hindsight I see is a terrible lapse in judgement. All too easily I forget that Belinda is not a native of the colony, but was brought here in chains when she was fifteen years of age.
I am sorry, I said – and I was sincere.
Look to the shore, said Belinda. Look at it, mistress. Every tree and shrub the same as far as you can see, and I’ll wager it’s the same were we to come all the way round and back to Port Jackson. It’s enough to send a person to Bedlam.
Do not go mad, Belinda, I beg of you.
Well, it reminds a person what an unnatural country this is.
But Belinda, you would not return to England?
I have not been offered the chance, mistress.
But if you were? I persisted, for her answer was important to me.
Even if I chose not, that don’t mean it’s right I ever came.
You were unfairly sentenced, I agreed.
Belinda shook her head.
Folk shouldn’t live here at all. It’s not natural.
g
Rarely have I felt such gratitude as when the winds stirred, the sails filled, and we were on our way once more. Twice we put in to shore for water. I was raring to join the party, but Father forbade it. Someone has been putting notions in his head about Eliza Fraser – could it be the botanists? Surely not, for they were the first to jump in the longboat and returned with all manner of specimens, some of which I have helped them to identify.
