Mothers and Daughters (14 page)

Janey sat down on the bed. It wasn’t fair, him always jetting off like he did, leaving them behind, leaving
her
behind. She couldn’t wait to finish school and be free, like him. Her father, she thought, saw the big picture, was involved with big things—not like her mother, who was always fussing over details, hyperventilating if the towels in the bathroom weren’t straight, or Janey’s homework was a day overdue. April was going to be just the same, she could see it already. Little Miss Perfect, with her symmetrical plaits and her pre-ruled margins in her exercise books. She’d never be much of a swimmer though, surely? Oh, they’d moved her into the intermediate squad, which was higher than Janey had been at the same age, but that was just a fluke. She’d get found out. She had to.

Caro emerged from the bathroom wearing eyeliner and lipstick. Lipstick. They were going to the beach, not a nightclub; another fabulous afternoon picking sand out of Amira’s salad rolls and trying not to get fried and listening to Tess going into raptures about shells. It was good to see her again, but honestly, she’d turned into such a yokel—she hadn’t even heard of
The Voice
, and her hair was mostly split ends. It was tragic. That was what happened to you when you didn’t have the internet.

‘Janey, can you run next door to Fiona’s room? I think I must have left my sarong in her bag yesterday. I can’t find it anywhere.’

Caro was bent over in her underwear, hunting through the chest of drawers, bottom in the air. Her Pilates wasn’t going to hold things for much longer, Janey thought. Her mum would have to do something that actually involved a bit of sweat.

‘Can’t you?’ she complained.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Janey, can you think of someone other than yourself for one minute?’ asked Caro, straightening up.

‘Fine,’ Janey said, stung. It wasn’t like her mother to criticise her. She must still be pissed off about that nap. ‘Perhaps you might like to put some clothes on while I’m gone, so I don’t have to look at your fat arse.’ She stormed out before Caro had a chance to respond.

There was no answer when Janey knocked on the door to Fiona and Bronte’s room, so she pushed it open and went in. ‘Fiona?’ she called out. Nothing, though she could hear the shower running in the bathroom. ‘Fiona, it’s Janey,’ she said more loudly, so she could be heard over the water. ‘Mum thinks she left her sarong in your bag. I just need to grab it.’

‘It’s Bronte,’ came the reply. ‘Mum’s at the shop. That’s fine.’

Janey was turning away when she had a sudden impulse. Before she could think better of it, she’d pulled her phone from her shorts, set it to camera, and gently pushed the bathroom door ajar. The shower curtain gaped wetly, and through the gap Janey could see Bronte washing her hair, eyes closed. Janey smirked—Bronte must have worked up quite a sweat in all her excitement over the pictures in the gallery. She raised her phone and silently snapped once, twice. The resulting images on her screen were a bit blurred, but you could see Bronte’s breasts, what there were of them.

Janey backed away from the bathroom door and peered around the room again. There was crap everywhere—at least her own mother was anal about putting stuff away—but eventually she located Fiona’s beach bag hanging from a hook on the back of the door. She reached inside and grabbed the sarong. Nestled underneath was a book,
To Kill a Mockingbird
. Bronte’s school novel, the one she’d been underlining on the beach yesterday. Janey felt a flash of irritation at her for being such a swot, for bringing homework on holiday. It served Bronte right that she’d taken her photo. She wasn’t sure how, but it did.

‘Thanks,’ she sung out and left, the phone wedged back in her pocket.

‘Caro, what about you? In or out?’

Caro swung her head around to find Amira looking at her expectantly.

‘Pardon? Sorry, what did you say?’ She had been gazing out to sea, watching a tiny fishing boat in the distance, lulled by the way it rose and fell on the waves. A dark figure stood at its bow, fiddling with a net or a rope. She wondered if it was Mason. Or would he be at work now? But when she’d run into him around this time yesterday he had just been returning from fishing, so maybe he finished early every day . . .

‘Wajarrgi, tomorrow,’ Amira went on. ‘The resort, remember? I’ve booked us in for lunch there. I was asking if anyone wanted to do one of their tours as well.’

Caro glanced across to the others to see what they thought, but Morag was reading a brochure and Fiona was lying on her stomach with her eyes closed.

‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘What does it involve?’

‘“Cultural tagalong tour,”’ Morag read aloud. ‘“Your local guide from the Djar . . . Djarindjin community will show you ancient sites and tell you tales from the capital-D Dreaming. Visit an Aboriginal community and experience their traditional way of life. Witness cultural rituals and make and decorate your own ceremonial spear.”’ Morag looked up. ‘Open brackets, “spear optional”, close brackets.’

‘Good luck getting that home again,’ said Janey, who’d been listening from where she lay on her towel just outside the beach shelter.

‘Cultural rituals? What, do we get to watch them sit around and drink?’ said Fiona. ‘We could do that back in Broome. Besides,’ she added, rolling over, ‘aren’t we already visiting an Aboriginal community?’

‘Wajarrgi’s different,’ Amira replied earnestly. ‘It’s set up like it was before white people came, with humpies and a campfire and everyone just wearing pelts or loincloths. They perform a corroboree, and afterwards they’ll take you down to the lagoon and show you how to use the spear.’

‘On the fish or each other?’ asked Fiona.

Morag closed the brochure, folding it carefully along its creases.

‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘I don’t know enough about that sort of thing. It sounds interesting.’

‘Me too,’ said Bronte. She was hunched in a corner of the crowded shelter, legs pulled to her chest, clearly anxious to keep herself out of the sun. Caro moved over to give her more room and was rewarded with a grateful smile. It was a shame Bronte didn’t smile more often, Caro thought. She was surprisingly pretty when she did.

‘What does it mean, tagalong?’ Morag asked.

‘That we follow them, in our own vehicle—the transport isn’t supplied,’ said Amira. ‘All the roads are dirt or sand. You have to have a four-wheel drive. If you want to do it I can take you in the troop carrier.’

‘Is that OK?’ asked Morag.

‘It’s fine. I enjoy it. Tess’ll come too, won’t you? She caught a big fish last time we went. We brought it home for dinner.’ Tess nodded and Janey rolled her eyes. ‘God, Tess, you’re practically native. You’re going to be the Bear Grylls of Salisbury High when you come back.’

‘
If
we come back,’ Amira interjected playfully.

‘What do you mean?’ Caro asked, finally paying her her full attention.

‘Oh, I’m joking. Melbourne just seems a continent away sometimes.’ Amira frowned. ‘I suppose it is. A hemisphere, then. A planet. A whole other solar system. Now, what about you?’ she prompted, changing the subject. ‘Are you coming? No pressure, but there’ll still be plenty of time for lunch and snorkelling if we stay the whole day. Wajarrgi’s only fifteen minutes from here.’

‘I suppose so,’ Caro replied. ‘Janey too, if Tess and Bronte are going.’ Janey was rhythmically flicking through a glossy magazine, turning each page almost before she’d had a chance to scan it. She pulled a face but didn’t look up.

‘So it’s just you left, Fiona,’ Morag said. ‘You have to join us. You can’t sit in the restaurant drinking all day.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Fiona, pulling her hat down over her eyes. She was silent for a moment, then sighed. ‘Oh, God, OK then, if you’re going to guilt me into it. Put me down for a bit of black magic—but I hope you’re right about the loincloths.’ She licked her lips suggestively. ‘The smaller the better. I wouldn’t mind getting a glimpse of those ceremonial spears.’

Morag threw the brochure at Fiona and it stuck to her chest, which was glistening with sweat. Fiona peeled it off, laughing, and dropped it at her side, where it joined a couple of apple cores, an empty chip packet and some chewing gum wrappers.

Caro turned away and stared back out to sea. The boat was still there, rocking gently in the swell. She could see a second, smaller figure now, a child. Had they caught anything? She
imagined the tension on the line and Mason bending over to inspect his catch, to haul it in, those broad shoulders taut, the powerful muscles straining beneath his ebony skin. He’d be in shorts again, like yesterday, and nothing else. It wasn’t a loincloth, but it was close . . . She had a sudden recollection of the way the drop of water had inched down his torso while they’d talked on the path the previous afternoon, how she’d watched it as he gave her directions—slipping from his chest to his stomach, sliding into his navel, re-emerging to run alongside the line of black hair disappearing into his waistband . . .

Caro hurriedly stood up, wrapping her towel around her waist. This was ridiculous. She needed a swim. Why was she even thinking about Mason like that? He seemed nice enough, and Amira clearly doted on him and his family, but he was hardly Caro’s type—barely educated, barely groomed . . . she hadn’t yet seen him wearing shoes. She was being silly. She loved Alex, and Mason was clearly committed to Aki if all those kids were anything to go by—five, she’d counted, Tia and then the four small boys. It must be the sun, or being on holiday, or . . . she stopped. What was that expression Fiona had used? Black magic. She turned it over in her mind, then dropped the towel, strode towards the sea and plunged into the water, diving head first rather than letting herself gradually adjust to the temperature as she normally did. When she came up she was blushing. Black magic. It was one of the oldest clichés in the book, and she’d fallen for it. How Fiona would laugh. She could almost hear her cackling,
You just want to know if he’s got a big dick
.

‘Well, what about this one?’ Janey asked. ‘Have you heard it?’ She held her iPhone up to Tess’s ear, watching her critically. A jangle of bass and synthesiser escaped the tiny speaker, shrill and metallic, without any discernible beat. Tess shook her head. Thin-lipped, Janey clicked forward to the next song, almost pushing it into Tess’s face.

‘Oh yeah, I know that one,’ Tess lied. ‘Jago—Tia’s boyfriend—was playing it in his car.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Janey, tucking her phone back inside her bikini top, being careful not to drop it in the shallow waters where they were sitting. ‘You don’t have a clue. Honestly, Tess, you’ve lost touch with everything since you moved up here. Everything! You don’t even have any new clothes.’

Tess lay back, propping herself up on her elbows. The sky above her was blue; always blue. She loved that. She hadn’t missed Melbourne’s winter at all. Her hair fanned out behind her in the sea, and she shook her head slightly, enjoying the drag and the flow of it. The water embraced her, caressed her. Was this how Janey felt when she swam? Somehow she doubted it.

‘Nowhere to go shopping up here.’ She shrugged, closing her eyes. Even wearing sunglasses the light hurt her eyes. No wonder Bronte had retreated back up the beach to the safety of the shelter. That, and she probably didn’t know any of Janey’s top forty either.

‘What about Broome?’ Janey persisted. ‘You have to go there for groceries, don’t you? Surely they’ve got some decent shops?’

‘The elders don’t let us kids go,’ Tess said. ‘They need the room in the car for the food.’ It was another lie. She could accompany whoever’s turn it was to do the shopping if she wanted to, but the fact was that she didn’t. The trip was too long and hot and jarring. Even if it had been easier she didn’t really want to leave Kalangalla. Why be dragging around Coles or getting shooed out of the upmarket pearl stores on Dampier Terrace when she could be exploring the mangroves with Tia, or spearfishing off the rocks, or simply lying in a hammock reading?

Books had been an unexpected source of company when she had first arrived in the north. Before then she’d never read much more than the novels they were set at school, but in those first few weeks at Kalangalla, feeling isolated and overwhelmed by the heat, she had wandered into her mother’s room one day and arbitrarily picked something out of her bookcase. Her mother loved to read; had named her, as she was always being told, after the heroine of her favourite novel by some English guy a century or more back. She must get to that someday, she thought, but there was no hurry. First she had read
Rebecca
, the paperback she had selected at random, her heart thumping in her chest as she suddenly understood what had happened to the first Mrs de Winter. Next her mother had suggested
My Cousin Rachel
, and when she finished that,
Jane Eyre
, amazed and delighted at Tess’s suddenly voracious appetite for text. Then
Penmarric
and
Gone with the Wind
and
The Thorn Birds
, for something more local . . .
Wuthering Heights
was on the agenda, but her mum had told her to save that until everyone had gone home and the wet had begun,
when they’d read it together. To her own great surprise, Tess found herself looking forward to the prospect.