An Open Swimmer (9 page)

They caught their reflections in the glass doors, and inside smelled of things Jerra remembered: postponement, the brittle smell of rotten wood, the smell of blackened lemons. Doors were open and thin heads protruded from stiff sheets, noses and cheeks twitching.

46-B. The B was coming off. Sunk in the bed, the hairless old man watched them come. His eyelashes were gone and the eyes were those of a reptile or a bird. His father's would be the same. Hands, the colour of ash, clawed the sheets.

Jerra followed in and leant on the bedside cabinet. It creaked.

‘Hullo, Dad,' said his father. ‘How's things?'

The mouth contracted.

‘Hullo, Grandad,' said Jerra, trying to keep the lips from his own teeth.

It was cold in the little room. On the cabinet stood a cactus in a Vegemite jar. He squeezed, carefully, the firm flesh. He glanced at his mother, who smiled, lips dry and pale. A stocking was slipping, he could see. She smiled again.

‘How's
he
been?' the old man rattled.

‘Jerra?' his father asked. ‘Oh, he's fine, aren't you, Jez?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Job . . .'

‘What was that, Dad?' asked his mother.

‘A job. Has he . . . ?'

‘He's workin' on it,' said his father, looking sideways.

‘Get him something to do, Tom.'

Thin membranes fluttered.

‘I can't do it for 'im, Dad. Boy's gotta find something for himself. He's had work. Fishing. I told you about that. Might even go back one day, eh son?'

‘Don't let 'im sit around. Doesn't do us any good.' The old man tightened his grip on the sheets. ‘You gotta do something, Jerra.'

Jerra nodded, managing not to look away.

‘Jump in.'

His mother clasped the knuckles on the sheet.

‘He's doing his best, Dad,' she whispered.

‘Jobs are hard to get,' said his father. ‘I don't want him settlin' for anything. Like me.'

She glanced.

‘I never did much,' said the old man. ‘You get old 'fore you get around to doing anything.'

Jerra almost smiled, leaning on the cabinet, but the cactus caught him.

‘Didn't do anything
wrong.
Not a bad man . . . sometimes you almost think you can see . . . the light on the surface . . . too far away . . . Oh, why do they give me the pills?'

Tears. A nurse came.

‘Come on, Mr Nilsam. Cheer up, shall we?' She folded him neatly into the pillows. ‘I think it's time for your medication. And a rest, eh? A nice rest?'

She was still at it as they went up the corridor.

T
HE FUNERAL,
a few weeks later, was the third Jerra had been to; it was almost as hurried as Jewel's, though there was no embarrassment, only resignation and dull skies. His father was tired. Jerra noticed his patient handling of the relatives, the jolly handshakes, the meaningful sorrow-filled glances. At the cemetery Jerra's mind strayed from the burnished RSL badges and Glo-mesh handbags to Jewel's funeral where he had stepped in time with the other men, the coffin not quite resting on his shoulder, his arms aching to keep his corner up, and he saw in front of him the reddening neck of his father, red, he thought then, because his father was older than the others and was feeling the strain, but it was the same unmentioned colour that had come into his face the first day in the big house in Nedlands, and the day, a week later, that Sean moved in. Jerra often saw his father with that complexion in his younger days, standing at the window overlooking the jacarandas, hands fisted in his pockets. No, he thought, watching the serpentine movement of the Glo-mesh skin in front of him, Dad wasn't angry then, but something stuck in his guts. He knows a few things, my poor old man.

The will was read two days later.

After the relatives had left, and the lamingtons gone, Jerra's mother came up to his room with an old wooden box. Her face was dark, cut deep under the eyes. She was out of breath from the climb. Freckles of dust had settled on her forearm; her hair was limp and dull.

‘There are these,' she said. ‘You were to get them all, but most of them are lost.'

‘What are they?' Jerra got up.

She set the gritty box down on the bed, took out the tiny, dark key and laid it on top.

‘His diaries. Your father might like to look at them, later, too.'

‘Finally got it sorted out, eh?'

‘Hmm. Vultures, they are. Never see them otherwise, still, there wasn't much to argue over. That upset them.'

‘Anybody have anything to bitch about?'

‘No more than usual. Mabel had a migraine, Jean was disappointed.'

‘No more than usual.'

‘Uncle Jim was there. Brought a gigantic wreath for the family.'

‘The Power, eh? Where'd he fly in from?'

‘Don't know. Nice of him, anyhow.'

‘Oh, a nice man, is ol' Jimbo. He's not even family; what was he doing involved with that?'

‘Bit hard, aren't you? He's done us well. He was probably just there to see we all got a fair deal. His solicitors are the executors.'

‘He's a snake.' Like his wriggling son, Sean. No, he thought. He's a fox – with rabies. They both are.

She blew the tiny balls of dust from the hairs on her arm.

‘Better get on with me work.' She opened the door. ‘And be nice to your Dad, Jem. It's all been a bit hard on him.'

He opened the box. Inside, smelling of age and storage, were three parcels in dark, frayed envelopes. He opened them all, carefully fingering the paper. Two were bound ledger books, like thick, hard, exercise books, and the third was a small note-pad, gritty and soiled.

He glanced at the florid figures, the brownish ink. One of the larger books, ending in 1949, had been torn in half. He was revolted by the smell of the paper. He put them back in their envelopes, and the envelopes in the box.

Jerra met his father on the way down to the toilet. They nodded, his father haggard from the shift.

‘Comin' down to the shack? My holidays start next week.'

‘Orright. Yeah, that'd be good.'

‘Have to take your chariot. Your mother's going to Mabel's.'

‘Sure. Needs the run.'

‘Don't leave the packing to the last minute.'

‘I'll start now.'

Rain roared like a breaking wave, hammering on the tin. Jerra crossed the lino, his feet bare. He packed the bait into the freezer. A strange smell, whitebait and newsprint. He pulled the greatcoat tighter around.

His father came in, shivering.

‘Have to bail the bloody boat out before we put it in the water.'

‘Heavy, orright.'

A backwash of thunder. Rain spraying.

The tilly flickered on the table. Rain was still pummelling the darkness. Jerra watched his father twist and knot, holding swivels in his teeth, looping, splicing.

‘Why back and over?'

‘When the fish hits here, see, it flips the hook this way. Always a chance of weakening.'

Jerra held out the garlands of hooks, gangs of barbs glinting in the lamplight.

‘Vicious looking —'

‘Vicious eaters.' He showed the marks on his fingers. ‘Tailor. Slice up fish bigger than 'emselves.'

‘Funny how the vicious ones have better meat.'

‘Eat better.'

Smooth skin of the river parted behind, an incision folding back to the banks. The engine chuckled just how he remembered it from his boyhood. The river coiled out to the estuary channel. The estuary was a broad teardrop, meeting the ocean at its narrowest point.

Jerra sat in the bow, trailing a hand over the smooth flesh of water. Old pickets stood out on either side of the channel. Across the estuary, at the deep cut to the ocean, Jerra stood and rattled the chain over. Rope burred on the gunwale, vanishing in the green. It found bottom, slackened, and floated taut in the tide.

‘Here,' his father said, ‘I'll lash it.'

‘I —'

‘Here.' The old hands, shiny with their hardness, twisted the rope into a good knot.

From the estuary channel another motor.

‘That bloke with the pelican still lives here, eh,' said Jerra, glancing up.

The hooked neck of the pelican showed plain against the grey smudge of boat and water.

Tailor scudded near the surface. His father brought one over the side. It whipped in the bottom of the boat. A moment later he had another.

‘Wassamatter? Forget to bait up?'

‘Do you yet.' Jerra grinned.

‘Wup!'

The surface broke and his father was dragging. A whiting rippled out of the water, gills fluttering.

The bird croaked. It shoved up from the clinker-built dory, pushing it askew as it lifted, circled high, then came low over the water, following its own shadow. Between the shoulders of the breakwater, it skimmed out towards the sea. The fisherman passed them in the cut, rolling in the swell as he went into open water. His hat was over his eyes, and he stood straight in the stern, clasping the tiller.

Whitebait skipped together. It was like a handful of gravelstones hitting the water. Jerra nudged the whiting with a toe. The pale yellow pectorals fluttered.

‘Nice looking fish.'

‘Yeah,' said his father, bent over the gunwhale, rubbing the skin under his throat.

‘Wish Mum would come, sometimes.'

‘She's got other things.'

‘Not any more. I'm not a baby any more, and Sean's pissed off to his pooncy townhouse in South Perth.'

‘Yeah.' His father bent over, a hook-shape, looking into the water.

The lead sky could support itself no longer. Rain broke the water like a million whitebait. Jerra and his father pulled their greatcoats tight, lifting collars.

‘Should try for a kingie on the tide,' his father said.

‘No need.'

‘Good on the clean tide.'

‘Oh, these littluns'll do.' Jerra looked into the grey-green. The thought of a kingie excited him. But frightened as well. What if he proved himself deluded?

As they were paring out the guts, dropping it over the side, scaling and washing the herring and tailor and whiting in the stinging cold water, the fisherman came back through the cut, lolling in the swell, with the pelican perched in the bow on the nets, fish grummelling down its throat. His father nodded. The fisherman may have nodded back; it was hard to tell with his hat so big and low.

‘Saves on an echo-sounder,' said Jerra.

Fillets lay flat on the table. His father was trimming pieces, nipping off tails. Rain
fell still. A tiny crab clattered across the lino.

‘Moving around in the rain,' said Jerra.

‘Little buggers.'

‘Still no wind.'

‘Good tomorrow.'

‘If we catch the tide.'

‘What about some fish?'

Jerra steered out to the estuary channel and his father took over.

‘Lots of shallow banks,' he said. ‘Can't be too careful.'

The channel was too murky to tell. Jerra moved up to the bow, a little peeved. Birds milled on the flats, strutting the thin strips of beach, lifting their wings.

‘What about trying towards the flats?'

‘The cut will be better.'

‘Might be crabs at the flats.'

They headed for the cut.

In the first hour, Jerra took two big tailor on the flick-rod. Then nothing. Water surged thickly in the cut; the granite boulders of the breakwater were dull in the brief moments of sun.

‘Jim owns the house in Perth, doesn't he, Dad?' It seemed a logical enough conclusion: the sudden move from the North Beach house in Jerra's last year of primary school. Mail for Jim. Jim at the funeral. All the uncomfortable talk. Sean's mocking glances.

‘A favour. We did him one when Sean needed a home.'

Jerra couldn't say anything more.

Another motor. It was raining. They couldn't see.

His father slept on the bunk. As he slept, Jerra brought out the box. He laid the diaries on the table.