1
A blue sea, splashed with sunlight.
An empty beach. White sand, stretching north and south, disappears into
the afternoon haze.
The Pacific Ocean. If you swam due east you would reach New Zealand. If
you missed New Zealand your next stop would be South America.
Seagulls on the wet sand wait and hope as the breakers lift and curl
and throw themselves on to the beach.
Crabs scuttle and hide. A cuttlefish’s dry, brittle flesh is
gouged and
torn by beaks as sharp as fishermen’s knives.
He wonders why the beach is empty. He has walked ten miles through the
bush to get there, but still is surprised to find himself alone.
This is a pilgrimage.
Why here?
He sits leaning against a paper bark tree. Its bark, breaking away in
broad, thick strips, is soft against his back. He looks up into the
branches of the tree. Its dark leaves are lit by the sun. Light and
shade flicker across his face.
Here he is alone. It is what he has been looking for, but now that he
has found it, it is a surprise. He knows it will not last.
The sea is empty, all the way to the horizon.
It is not safe to swim. He can see the current: hard, fast-moving,
dangerous. He is a big man, and strong, and loves the sea, but the surf
is menacing, driven by far-away storms. By day you see and hear
nothing. At night you see the lightning flickering silently over the
horizon. Still you do not hear the thunder or feel the wind.
Once before he had sat beneath this tree and watched the sea turn pale
then dark and hard as the sun at his back set behind storm clouds.
A summer evening; hot, still and humid. He had sat there, waiting for
the storm, sensing it beyond the mountains to the west. It was too late
to look for shelter, too late to fear the lightning.
Where had he thought he would spend the night? He had not thought. Then
or now.
He had waited for the storm to break. The rain came first, a wall of
water beating at the ground, churning up the dry creek-beds, ripping
through the branches of the trees. The sea disappeared as if it had
ceased to exist. Somewhere nearby, a tree exploded in a blaze of fire
as lightning descended on him and thunder cracked in his ear, flinging
him sideways.
After the storm, he had walked on the beach. The sand was warm. He
stood by the water’s edge, watching the storm move out to
sea. Behind
it the sky was clear. The moon rose out of the storm clouds, dazzling
on the white sand. Far out to sea, lightning lit up the clouds from
within or leapt forth and plunged down into the sea. He could no longer
hear the thunder. Only the lightning remained, and clouds as huge as
twenty mountain ranges piled one upon another, and the brilliance of a
night that would never grow dark.
The smouldering stump of the shattered tree had dried and warmed him.
He had slept briefly, waking as the dawn spread across the sea, the sun
climbing into a cloudless sky.
This time there is no storm, only the imprint of the storm there in
front of him, in the rip that would sweep him out beyond the horizon,
towards New Zealand or South America.
He is here to say farewell.
It is time to move on.
Here he is at peace, as he rarely is. Here he can understand what it is
he needs, why he cannot be still, why he must always move on.
Here, drifting, dreaming, dozing against the paper bark tree, by the
empty beach, by the blue, empty sea.
2
The summer had turned into autumn by the time Vic arrived in Cairns.
It was no trouble getting a job; the place was booming and the tourist
boats were crying out for deck hands. It was harder to find somewhere
to live, with everything being turned into hotels and apartments. In
the end he rented an old, ramshackle house at the back of the show
grounds, out on the edge of town. It was nothing special but it was
quiet and strangely peaceful. When he stood on the back verandah, he
looked out through a screen of bougainvillaea and across fields of
bright green sugar cane. The red volcanic earth spread through the
fields as far as he could see, turning to dust that hung in the air
over the harvesters or formed long, billowing trails behind the
tractors and narrow gauge trains that hauled the cane to the mill.
Beyond the cane fields, the forest-covered mountains had their tops in
the clouds.
On his days off, he sometimes walked into town and sat on the
Esplanade, looking out over the mud flats or the shallow water as the
tide came in, letting his mind drift, letting go of so much that he had
held on to, and with it the restlessness that had made him move on
again. At other times, he went into the garden and sat under the tall
mango tree that sheltered the house. He stared up at the mountains,
getting to know them as they opened up vividly at the touch of the sun
then suddenly darkened again as the south-easterly wind enveloped the
peaks in dense, heavy clouds and the smell of distant rain drifted down
over the sunny coastal plain.
As he had expected, he got occasional letters from Lottie. What she
wrote was straightforward enough, but behind the words he sensed the
sorrow and the gap he had left in her life. He wrote back letters that
were meant to be impersonal but which he saw had their own hints
of loss and longing. Though not for Lottie, he was sure. More for
something he had never had than for something he had lost.
*
The vivid evening light faded as Leonora looked out over the city from
her hotel room. In the distance the cane fields were burning. Beyond
them, the mountains were silhouetted against the darkening sky, blue
turning rapidly to black. She stretched her arms and legs, feeling the
ache in her muscles from a day spent swimming in rock pools and crater
lakes and under pounding waterfalls. Soon she would go white-water
rafting, despite what they said about broken noses and dislocated
shoulders.
Her mother, preferring to travel in comfort, did her sight-seeing
separately, especially since she had met Tony Tomaselli, the builder.
The developer, her mother liked to say; the architect.
Soon Tony would arrive in his Mercedes and take her mother out to
dinner. Leonora on her own would walk down to the Esplanade and choose
somewhere for herself: fish, flesh or fowl; French, Japanese or Thai;
somewhere bright and warm where she could enjoy the throng of sunburnt
men and women fresh from diving on the reef, or bungy-jumping or
canoeing down the rivers, self-conscious in their Passions of Paradise
or A J Hackett tee shirts.
She had grown used to Cairns and what it had to offer: its luxury
hotels with their tropical gardens; its cheap backpacker hostels and
dive shops; its restaurants as good as any in places twice as
expensive; its pubs and bars and night clubs, noisy and smoky and
smelling of stale beer as she passed by on the pavement. She had made a
habit of getting up early to sit and watch the sun rise crisp and cool
over the still sea. She was entranced by the early morning tranquillity
of the waterfront, before the tourist boats shook themselves into life
and set off towards the reef and the islands. At that time there was
hardly anyone else around, just the occasional fisherman gathering
prawns in a net in the shallows, or a sweating Japanese jogger, or the
Council workmen, clearing away the empty bottles and other reminders of
the previous night’s pleasures.
Away from the sea and beyond the shopping centre, the back streets
surprised her. On the dark verandahs of scattered wooden houses, men
sat sprawled in vests and shorts with the racing turned up loud on the
radio. Children in bare feet kicked balls or played cricket in back
gardens that disappeared into tall grass and tangled thickets of scrub
and vines and trees with unknown names. Once a leering old man had
caught hold of her arm. She had pushed him away with such force that he
had fallen hard against a broken fence. She had kept on, ignoring his
cries for help, walking towards the mountains where the houses climbed
the foothills in dispiriting, treeless rows.
In the early evening, she liked to stroll along the waterfront that was
now so busy, full of people like herself, drifting, thinking, watching.
Groups of divers spread their gear on the grass, cleaning and sorting
and arranging. Others loudly swapped stories, drank, laughed, played
music, sang and danced. An aboriginal man made long, low,
mournfully-beautiful sounds through a didgeridoo while the birds
roosted noisily in the trees above him. Japanese and Korean tourists
gathered round and asked him questions. He did not answer them, even
when they tossed their dollar coins on to the blanket by his feet.
Night after night Leonora stood in the shadows and watched the
aboriginal man, looking but hardly seeing, content to let the sound of
the strange music drift over her, drawing her into a world that was
filled with terror and beauty, inextricably intertwined.
Then the aboriginal man went away, up to the Daintree where his family
lived, and in his place was a huge, broad-shouldered man, no longer
young, who sat hunched over his guitar like a relic of the sixties and
sang to himself and sometimes looked up and out over the sea, smiling
as he sang.
*
Vic Townsend saw the woman standing in the shadows, watching him,
listening to the words he could hardly hear himself.
He tried to ignore her but found he could not. There was something
unusual about her, something distinctive. When she came out from under
the trees and passed by, looking not at him but over his
shoulder, it was her eyes he noticed: deep and dark and sparkling, but
threatening at the same time. He shivered, wishing he had not seen, but
turned and watched as she walked across the street and disappeared into
the night market.
When Vic got to work next day, he found the boat had engine trouble. He
could take the morning off while it was fixed, they said.
He walked up the Esplanade to the café’s spreading
out over the
footpath. He ordered breakfast and took his mug of tea across to the
only empty seat. As he went to sit down, he saw her there, the
dark-haired woman from the night before.
‘The shy musician!’ she said, raising her cup to
him and laughing at
his confusion.
He hesitated but sat down anyway. She was English, despite her
Mediterranean features and dark hair. In the bright morning light, her
dark eyes no longer disturbed him. He smiled, feeling himself relax.
‘I play for myself,’ he said. ‘I
don’t expect people to listen.’
‘And you resent it if they do?’
He laughed. ‘No, I don’t mind.’
Leonora waited for him to go on, but he picked up his tea and drank it.
He seemed to be thinking of something else, as if she was no longer
there.
A Chinese woman brought his breakfast of bacon and eggs and hoped, in a
light, chirping voice, that they would have a nice day. Vic smiled his
thanks and turned back to look at the woman sitting opposite him. She
was eating a bowl of fruit salad. ‘Good?’ he said,
looking at the
chunks of fresh papaw and pineapple and the slices of banana.
‘Yes, it’s good.’ For a moment she was
disappointed, thinking this
man’s huge frame enclosed no more of interest than she would
find by
picking up one of the young tour guides or the blond attendant at the
hotel pool or the Vietnamese waiter who had smiled at her the evening
before. She must be getting old, she thought, if she expected men to be
interesting as well. As well as what? she wondered, and smiled to
herself. Then she turned back to this giant of a man and saw
a strange, restless look in his face. Perhaps it was worth persisting
after all.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.
‘Vic,’ he said. ‘Vie Townsend.’
‘I’m Leonora. Leonora Stanislavski.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Vic asked her. She was
beautiful, he
thought, and was surprised at himself.
‘I’m here with my mother. She lives in Sydney and
likes to travel, so
we meet up in strange places.’ She thought of their time in
Como at the
end of the northern summer, and of Mario, the doctor she had met, too
young and too beautiful to last, with whom she had climbed the
mountains by day and rowed on the lake at night, swimming in water so
cold she felt her heart contracting with every stroke she took. She
looked out at the sea and back at the tall man, Vic, and was happy to
be there. ‘We’re here for another three months, and
then it will be
somewhere else. Maybe South America.’
‘Three months!’ Vic said incredulously.
Leonora shrugged as if to excuse herself, though she did not feel
defensive. He would do the same if he had the money. He was not the
type to work just for die pleasure of it. For her it was three months
to rest, to reconsider, to see what might become of her. And to think,
from time to time, of the life she had left behind in London.
They finished their breakfast and went over the road to sit and look
out at the sea that glittered under the low sun. Leonora put on her
sunglasses and a hat. The trail of boats out to the reef was already
under way, making waves that spread slowly across the bay and washed up
against the sea wall in front of them.
Vic hoped they would not get the boat fixed in time. He could happily
spend the day sitting peacefully with this woman, looking out over the
bay. And it would be rougher than he liked, going out in the afternoon
when the wind had picked up. They would shorten the journey, maybe just
going to Fitzroy for a bit of snorkelling. He preferred the outer reef
where they did the scuba diving, down through the deep coral to huge
caverns and hidden grottoes and the occasional lurking shark.
‘Have you been out to the reef?’ Leonora asked him.
He laughed. ‘I work
on a boat. What about you?’
‘I went with my mother on the fast
catamaran,’ Leonora said. ‘Then on my own on one of
the slower boats.
We went right out where you could see the surf breaking on the outside
of the reef. The water was so deep. And cold after a while.’
She smiled
at the memory of it and at another much stranger memory: Mario and his
moonlit face as she emerged naked from the water in Lake Como, his
hands rubbing the warmth back into her limp, frozen body, the moon
drifting silently in and out of clouds that merged with the mountains
around her and above her, so close she could raise her hand and touch
them, and yet so far away, so far away...
‘Did you like it?’ asked Vic.
‘I loved it,’ Leonora said, and did not know
whether she meant the
slow, languorous drifting down through the schools offish and the
coral, or the dark, cold, miraculous moment when she had glimpsed
eternity - or was it only mortality? - as the water of the lake closed
over her and drained the life out of her. Before she was saved, she
thought, and did not know whether to appreciate or regret it.
Vic looked at her face, which was beautiful: strong and clear and
alive, despite a strange twist to her mouth, but also somehow
unsettled. It was her deep, angry-looking eyes, he thought, and the
darkness of her hair that shaded her, even in the bright sunlight. And
then she laughed, and it was impossible to believe her face could ever
contain or express anger, despite the eyes. If he felt uneasy, it was
because of his own uncertainty, his own fear, his unwillingness to see
what another human being might contain: joy, love, happiness even;
things he had never really understood and which had -forever, it seemed
- hung over him, threatening whatever peace he managed to attain. He
could never tell her that, however; thinking it was disturbing enough.
‘I’d better go to work,’ Vic said, his
uneasiness making him restless.
‘I’ve got to help them fix the engine.’
He needed to get away, as if
she had already become too much for him, this strange English woman who
was almost too beautiful to bear.
‘Shall we meet for dinner?’ asked Leonora.
‘At the Asia House? Around
eight o’clock?’
‘Yes,’ he said, surprising himself,
‘eight o’clock will be fine.’ He
stood up, towering over her as she got up and reached out to shake his
hand. She laughed, in away that made him feel comfortable, and he
smiled at her and turned away and strode off down the road towards the
wharves.
Leonora walked back to her hotel. She picked up a couple of letters
from London that she read over a coffee in the sunny, palm-filled
atrium. She composed brief replies and took them to the desk to be
faxed so she could forget about them. Her mother was not back from her
night with Tony Tomaselli but had left a message: Tony was taking her
to the Whitsundays for a week or maybe two. It was a kind of
celebration, she said.
Leonora took the lift to her room and changed into her bikini. She
picked up her book and suntan cream and went down to sit by the pool.
The blond attendant nodded but did not speak. From time to time he
strolled up and down by the pool, flexing his muscles. He was no longer
interested in her, not since the arrival of a group of young French
women who happily displayed themselves in as little as they could get
away with. Leonora smiled to herself and settled down to her book, only
emerging from time to time to do a few lengths of the pool or to sit
and dream in the warmth of the Jacuzzi.