The Best Australian Stories (4 page)

When other children appeared, as they did from time to time, over the lip of the dunes, with a dog perhaps, or in groups of five or six, we headed farther on, into what, in our minds, was a true wilderness, where the beach narrowed and sandhills practically overhung the water, where big seas carved out the sand from underneath and made the tops collapse. We found a place behind the first line of dunes that we called the tree cemetery, full of what had once been trunks and branches, and were now turned to stone. We made a fort out of them, mixed with other branches, not so long dead, and dug small caves beneath the tea-tree, and ran in and out of temporary cavities that the sea had gouged.

All through that autumn, the zoo animals were not far from our minds. I pictured them during the long hours I was forced to sit in classrooms, near the door and in constant drafts. The best seats, close to the fire, or in the back corner furthest from the door, were bagged by children I had no wish to challenge, not so much fearing defeat as impatient with a contest that did not seem worth the effort.

The children we avoided on the beach did not want to include us, and we didn't bother our heads with ruses that might have persuaded them. When winter came, and afternoons of sleety rain, they stayed indoors, while my sister and I donned our new plastic raincoats, with pleated hoods that my sister played with, folding and unfolding them. We pulled on the wellingtons our father had bought to save our school shoes, and headed out in all weathers, towards the adventures we'd stored up in anticipation.

Once more, and only once, I recall our mother venturing outside to wait for us. This time we were running well before we got to our street, knowing we'd left it too late and were in for a scolding. Our mother had left the porch and was standing in the driveway, still and black, but this time like the stone trees, rather than a burnt one.

I was punished as the elder, more responsible daughter.

It was the middle of winter when we heard about the second shipwreck. Our mother had just come across the story herself, and became animated as she told us. Even then, I recognised it as the kind of legend that belonged in books. It concerned a pirate by the name of Benito Bonito, who had been forced ashore at Swan Bay some time in the years between 1810 and 1815. His ship had sunk, but he'd managed to reach the shore, carrying treasure, which he'd hidden in a cave.

As legends will, this one had grown many arms and legs. Some said the pirate had later been captured in the West Indies and committed suicide; others that his son had found the treasure and re-buried it, along with three Greeks who were killed in a gunpowder explosion. Another version had Bonito returning for his loot and disappearing into the hinterland, where he took a new name and bought hotels and became respectable and legitimately wealthy; or that he'd set sail once again, only to founder on a northern reef, when this time his gold had gone down with him.

Benito Bonito – my mother strove to get the accent right, the almost repetition – had stolen gold and marvellous statues from a cathedral in Peru, and, one dark night, his boat smashed and crew drowned, he'd stumbled onto our part of the world.

The shores of Swan Bay had been searched many times, but that didn't stop us. Our mother waited for us after school, with afternoon tea wrapped up in a parcel, and cordial in plastic bottles. Plastic had just come on the market, and she loved it. She saved from the housekeeping money to buy small, brightly coloured items, and looked after them, not then, or ever, accepting the principle of using and discarding, of purchases that were not meant to last. We went treasure hunting, and she led the way.

Swan Bay was a long way from our house, and my mother didn't drive. The old railway used to run along it, bringing daytrippers from Geelong. Part of the line was still there. No doubt some of the day-trippers had arrived with picks and shovels. My sister and I were aware of former treasure hunters because our teachers spoke about them. A boy in my class told how his father had gone into debt to hire heavy earthmoving equipment. As he spoke, I saw debt hanging over his family like a fog that would not lift.

We watched our mother carefully, understanding that her interest was a common one – indeed it was the first sign either of us had seen that she was taking steps to be in tune with our adopted community. But we understood as well that there was something strange about it. She ignored, and expected us to ignore as well, the sudden switch from encouraging us to go off on our own, to the assumption that the three of us would repeat the same excursion now, day after day.

A newspaper article had alerted her to the pirate's tale, the same one that had brought it to the attention of our teachers. A water diviner claimed to have found gold with his divining rod. A photograph showed him to be a serious, stout man, holding a piece of wire up to the camera. My sister and I were sceptical, and talked about it when we were by ourselves. How could a silly bit of wire point the way to gold, when big expensive machines had been unable to find it? Yet our mother and our teachers believed what he said. Of course, the diviner did not reveal the spot. He had applied to the council for a permit giving him sole right to dig. The council had refused, and this was how the matter had got into the news.

We were far from alone, on those dark winter afternoons, on the shores of Swan Bay. It seemed that half the town was out there. Embarrassed, my sister and I crouched down and tried to keep our heads covered, but our mother strode out forthrightly, paying no attention to her rivals.

And oh, it was a big bay, long, far slung, cut off from the sea at low tide by a stretch of salt-encrusted mud. Black swans fed on weeds sometimes close to shore, sometimes way out on the horizon. Their silent grace became part of the twilight, as we grew cold and hungry. Our mother always stayed until she could no longer see where to point her shovel. She did not waste time looking for a cave. The cave mouth had been blown up, probably, to hide the gold, she told us, when
we
suggested looking. In any case, whatever caves existed must have been thoroughly explored, and were certain to be empty.

Most afternoons, unless it was raining hard, we set out without complaint, realising, without being able to put the realisation into words, that the hunt was necessary to our mother, and that she would not allow us to deprive her of it. My sister believed she would explain her reasons when the time was right. Neither of us thought that we had any hope at all of finding treasure. Our mother did not want our father knowing where we went, or what we did there. We kept quiet about it in the house. She needed us. We were her cover and her chaperones, and stuck with acting out this role until she lost interest, or gave up, or until the man with the divining rod found whatever there was to find. Every day we expected to see him – this was the one aspect of the project we looked forward to – we would have loved to see him working, or, better still, be shown how to divine. But, though we saw townspeople we recognised in the distance – our mother always chose to dig away from others – him, we never saw. I began to hate the wild-goose chase that implicated us secretly, and that we were powerless to prevent.

While our mother dug at the bit of Swan Bay she'd chosen for her claim, I could not help being conscious of the huge sea at our backs, the rough surf my sister and I had chosen as a witness to our games. She did not look at us, or speak, but went on digging while the brackish and weed-silted water retained some light, and her hole became a cavern.

I'd read about gold-diggers at Sovereign Hill, not much more than an hour away. I imagined a stranger happening on our overturned stretch of sand, in the clear light of morning, a traveller who'd never heard of Benito Bonito. The traveller might shake his head with wonder, might kick at the edges of one hole or another – nothing to say who'd made them, or why they were there. He might shake his head and smile a bit – he'd be a well-seasoned traveller, but curious – and repeat the mystery that evening at an inn perhaps – some place where men like him lighted down for sustenance and comfort.

While our mother worked, my sister and I chased each other to keep warm, up and down the dunes. And that was how we stumbled on the cave.

My sister found it. She was running on a narrow path along the top of a low dune when her foot went through a hole. She shrieked, no longer because I was chasing her, but in surprise and fear. In the dim light, she seemed to be half buried in the sand. I helped her out, then looked at where she'd fallen. The gap seemed wide and deep. Together we tore, shouting our news, down the face of the dune.

We had a torch with us, which we used to light our way back. Our mother shone it round the mouth of the hole my sister had fallen into, which seemed to swell underneath our eyes. The evening grew completely dark around us as the torchlight flickered and it seemed to me, shivering beside my sister, who was complaining that her ankle hurt, that we might be the last three people left on earth.

Without speaking, without warning, our mother disappeared. We hurried to the hole and called out. She didn't answer. I began to go down after her, but my sister pulled my arm, and cried that I was not to leave her. We called again. I lay down on my stomach and put my head into the hole. I saw the torchlight then, and heard our mother's voice. ‘I'm coming up,' she said. ‘Give me your hand.'

I looked for something firm to hold. There were a couple of tea-trees not far away. I made my sister hold tight to the base of one, and grabbed hold of her other hand.

Our mother's face was triumphant in the torchlight, but she refused to tell us what she'd found. Though my sister kept on asking her, I held my tongue, believing there was not, and never would be, anything down there but cold and darkness, and full of anger at our mother's ignorance and spite.

The next morning, she made us go to school as usual, though we were both exhausted, and my sister's ankle had ballooned to twice its size. That afternoon, however, she at last had news that she was willing to share. She'd found a coin, a single one, but it was old, and she was hopeful. The coin was rough and rusted, and she could not read the date. She wasn't going to be like that water diviner, shouting his foolishness to all the world. She was going to get her discovery authenticated first. She'd already been back that morning, but had found no more. She made us promise not to tell a soul. The sand cave had probably been there for centuries. But no one – her face lit up – had gone right to the bottom.

The three of us waited for almost a week. My sister and I said nothing to anybody else. We did not even talk about it much ourselves. Whatever oppressive weight had been growing on our mother had lifted, and she hummed as she moved about the house. We did not go out to play after school. We continued to feel tired, and my sister's ankle was taking a long time to heal.

At the end of the week, a letter came, late in the afternoon. Our mother rushed outside as soon as she heard the postman's whistle. We watched from the porch as she ripped the letter open. She brushed past us, eyes sharp, face cold and hard, and went straight to her and our father's bedroom.

But she came out not long afterwards, and began to get the tea, and talked to our father as though nothing important had happened.

The next day she read part of the letter to us. The coin was English, and had been minted in the year 1854. Perhaps whoever had dropped it had come to Victoria looking for gold. Perhaps, after a sojourn at Swan Bay, he had found gold, at Ballarat, or Bendigo.

*

A few months later, at the beginning of the summer, my father fell from our roof, where he'd climbed to clean the guttering. He broke his leg and for six weeks had to stay in bed. Our mother nursed him cheerfully. It was as though his misfortune – he hated being cooped up, lost one of his jobs, and worried loudly about the mortgage – was her unexpected opportunity. She found work in the newly opened supermarket, and when she wasn't waiting on our father, or behind a cash register, she hurried here and there. Christmas came, and the long school holidays. My sister and I did housework, and sometimes cooked the dinner. It was a very hot summer that year, one heat wave following another. Often we ate salad, which took no more than minutes to prepare. Our father grumbled, but our mother didn't mind. I wondered what would happen when his leg was better. She didn't speak much about her job, but her mouth looked determined.

We were free, my sister and I, to resume our wanderings, once our father was made comfortable and the morning's housework done. But our favourite places were no longer ours. Heat brought the townsfolk to the back beach, to sunbake and to paddle, if not to venture out into the rip. Daytrippers did, and the life savers were kept busy. Our mother did not need to repeat her warning because the wild sea of the winter, which had excited us, and set us apart, seemed to have lost its character. We were embarrassed to remember how we'd pretended to be lions and panthers, how we'd constructed a fortress out of stone and wood.

My sister made friends with a group of girls her own age. They swam in the bay, and lay afterwards on quiet sand. I joined them sometimes. They neither welcomed nor rejected me. It seemed to me both that I was still a newcomer, and that I had lived there all my life.

One hot noon, when I thought my mother was at work in the supermarket – her hours had been extended because of the bumper tourist season – and I was walking home along the cliff top to get my father his lunch, I looked down and saw her in the distance.

She was crouching in the shallows, splashing seawater over her upper arms and chest with slow, sustained, calculated movements, which nevertheless seemed to retain something of the old anxiety I'd felt in her at even a mention of the ocean. She was wearing a floral bathing suit which I'd never seen, and had no idea she owned. The heat haze seemed to squash her into the sea, pressing down heavily on both the woman and the element she'd ventured into. Though I could not see her face, I pictured it as concentrated on accomplishing what to others came as naturally as walking. As I watched, she spread herself out horizontally, and swam a few, unguarded strokes.