The Break (19 page)

Around them, people turned to and away.

Rosie wanted to reach out to Liza and unfold her and bellow. She wanted it to be day and she wanted to see the ocean,
see
it, lay her eyes on it, rather than be subjected to this, its blackening, oblivious rhythm.

A stenographer's notebook appeared next to Rosie's elbow.

‘I didn't know you were here too … it's Rose, isn't it?'

She peered at the woman. ‘Rosie. Sorry, who are —'

‘Katrina King from Channel Six. When did you get here? We arrived half an hour ago, we had to charter a flight to Brenn Head.'

‘Oh, no, no, I'm …' She looked at Liza and Ferg apologetically. ‘Let's go over here, these people aren't —'

‘You know them? Is someone they know down there?'

Rosie steadied. She hoped that by lowering her voice Katrina would drop her own a few decibels. ‘Everyone knows everyone down there, actually. It's not just their children, it's their friends' kids … it's —'

Katrina King flipped open her notebook.

‘No, no, I'm sorry, I'm just talking to you as …'

Katrina looked up. ‘Aren't you reporting this?'

Rosie felt a cold sweat break out. People might think she and Katrina were colleagues. ‘No. No, I'm not reporting it. I live here now.'

Rosie hadn't even thought about the
Southern Way
until then.

There were enough reporters here, she knew, enough reports being filed, enough being phoned through to the jaws of newsrooms. The world knew what was going on (it had already been given a name: The Greys Bay Cliff Collapse), and the local people certainly knew what they needed to know. That their loved ones were buried where they'd sat watching an inter-school surfing carnival ( just hours ago, sifting sand through their toes); that their oldest friends were grappling
through the rubble on their behalf, trying desperately to find a warm limb somewhere, trying impossibly to keep a clear head as a mate's son was found.

Rosie looked at Katrina and said, ‘I know you're here to report, but, look, take it easy on these people.' She leaned in slightly to her, and Katrina met her confidence like a magnet. ‘They can hardly face each other right now, let alone outsiders.'

Katrina nodded, though looked as if she still needed some convincing. Rosie saw with relief that most of the reporters were talking to local police and SES guys rather than to families direct.

Katrina's eyes scanned the clusters of people.

Rosie moved away from her. She went back to the edge, leaned out again over the Koppers logs to see what headway had been made, what boulders pulled, but she knew from the silent work going on down there that no one else had been found.

Lit up, the red and white television helicopter came around the headland. It blew the tops off waves as it cut a path across Surge Point towards the tiny emergency colours of the rescuers.

There was a quietness down on the sand, as boulders were delicately shifted and special maps and local information studied under torches. A muffled voice had been heard, by two or three of them. The maps fluttered as volunteers crowded around the SES leader. A
voice
, someone said.

Members of the crew began to look up, hair blowing. Water came up at them, slapping the sand and limestone harder and higher. A television crew roared above them, black eye of a camera aiming down. Above them, in the carpark, families watched the scene, pressing hands to their ears.

A voice.

Sand stung the rescuers' skin. Loudness filled their ears and every crevice of limestone remaining. Hopelessly, they waved, pointed, directed, ordered, prayed, begged that chopper to turn away.

Some of the onlookers openly seethed into the night, promising retribution. Others bloated with fear. Rosie tried to hide, collecting mugs, filling them, ferrying hot water from the general store in saucepans, buckets. A woman laid her hand on Rosie's arm. Katrina walked through the glarily lit crowd. One of the dads spat at her feet.

In the middle of that dark night Cray and Rosie walked up the steep hill, shushed by the grey shapes of bushes, to their house.

Every time Rosie started to say something about it, she'd think of something else that had to be said, something else to be worried about. Cray would look up, ready to listen, and she'd shake her head, unable to begin all that needed to be begun.

Not many others were still waiting when Liza and Ferg were approached by the police officer, Ferg's old mate from way back. Jesus, they'd gone to school together, Ferg had always given him shit about being the town copper, the Law Enforcer of Margaret River. It used to make Ferg chuckle, given the stuff they'd got up to as kids.

Now, their kids were the same age. And Ferg thought he was going to crack like something dropped when he saw his mate, the town copper, coming over with that steeled face. As the head copper he'd been doing this all night, Ferg had seen him, going to people. He looked around. There was just him and Liza left. And, slumped against the fading duco of the Sunbird, Mike was just behind them.

 

 

 

Mike stirred the plunger of coffee. Ground beans swirled, sucked down into the vortex. The spoon made an unlikely cheery sound against the glass. In the lounge, there were pauses strung together without any talk, the fullest silences air could hold. Mike put the pot down on the low table in front of them. Bright colours, a comic of Sam's, loudly caught his eye. He wondered, for a horrible moment, if he should move it, take it away. He looked at the counsellor, a middle-aged local woman who had driven from house to house to house since the collapse, had sat among terrible silences for days. How would hiding Sam's stuff help? Mike averted his eyes, his mind, left the comic where Sam had chucked it.

He pushed the flyscreen door out into the cool wind. Breathed. He wasn't thinking about it anymore, he kept it that distance from him — there but not there. A bird trying to land, unable to find a safe spot. He had to check the trees, he thought. The Tassies.

That bird hovered close when he found himself driving Ferg's ute between the blue rows. The last time he was in these trees he'd almost lost it. It couldn't get worse than this, he'd thought at the time; he'd finally made it to the sludge on the bottom.

He'd thought that once or twice before, he remembered now. But things truly couldn't be worse than this. Somehow, the kind of anger Mike had felt that night had drained away. All those years. He didn't have the energy anymore.

He changed gears, coasted through the rest of the rows. Didn't miss a one. Up and down, down and up like snakes
and ladders, in his brother's ute. Pruning wayward branches, fixing fences, repairing the nets. His job for now.

In town, people cried when they came across each other in the supermarket. Kids and adults flocked to the surf shop, to the local schools, to lay flowers at their closed doors, to talk to people they loved, who loved them, to say things they couldn't — hadn't — said before. Families stuck together, went out together, crunched along the beach together, huddled together. Kept each other within reach. People cried at the oddest times, and everyone came to know there was nothing odd at all about this. People punished themselves for being able to carry on.

The emergency crews dealt with their own traumas. The twenty-year-old who pulled his father's body from the layers, and then climbed the path to tell his mum. The guy who reached his hand into a small hole in the rock pile and felt another grasp around it. He didn't go back to being the same man. She never left his head, that schoolgirl, who rasped her way out of the darkest place she would ever find herself; her mother's grey body a metre away. No one knew what to say to her father in the weeks following, just hugged the little girl till tears squeezed out of the corners of her miraculous eyes.

In Margaret River, in Greys Bay, nine people — five adults and four kids — would never come home from that surf carnival, from that cave, from that beach.

Hotels and B&Bs filled up with reporters and cameramen. TV stations televised special bulletins showcasing the updates of roving reporters, SES leaders, geologists, the guy who drove the bulldozer. Those interviewed spoke in unfinished sentences. Town spokespeople entered the spotlight in an attempt to shield the families, but still there were glimpses of broken husbands, parents, and children who understood something dark and lasting.

The site was cordoned off with orange flags. You couldn't recognise that bit of coast anymore; the rocks had changed its shape forever.

No one surfed out at Edge or Surge points.

Families went back to the carpark and leaned into the wind. Climbed gingerly down the path, a friend either side. They washed their faces in Hut's water, cupped it in their hands, hoping there might be something left to touch, to keep; something left.

On the day of the memorial service, the people of the town gathered in the carpark, overlooking the water, the beach, the endless limestone coast. Politicians came in suits and reporters came with back-up reporters.

Under the ultramarine sky that spring morning, a halo of kids, dads, daughters, sons, brothers, mates, floated out on the water, surfboards keeping them up. Cray went out too, swung his arms over and over into the water, pulling himself further out, through the green, the green-blue, the blue. The water breathed like a lung, moving them with it, and their circle
widened a little, came in a little with every breath. A school of small silver fish darted in unison across the circle, slipping sideways from the shadows of the boards. The sharpness of the water caught between wetsuits and skin like cold comfort. They held hands, that human wreath, just beyond where the waves tumbled and crashed onto the shore.

A special church service was held after the beach ceremony. As people hugged each other and leaned against cars, friends, Ferg knew he just couldn't go home.

The parents of the children who had died stood together. Locals, old friends. He couldn't bear to go over there, to say their children's names, to hear Sam's, to be consoled. To utter a word, a sound. He didn't have it in him.

Home. On his own with Liza, and Pip and Mike, and the trees, and the marri, and the terrible silence. Liza, who stood next to him now, barely there.

Liza hung at the edge of the carpark next to Ferg with her back to the beach. Mike walked over slowly with Pip, his hand close to her elbow.

‘I'll bring the car over. You guys stay here,' Mike said, and made towards the Sunbird.

‘Home?' Liza spoke to no one in particular.

No
, Ferg thought,
anywhere but there.

‘Aren't we going to the church service?' Pip said.

‘Church service?' Liza turned to Ferg. ‘We're not going to that …' She looked confused. ‘Are we?'

‘Well, yes, I thought so,' Ferg mumbled.

‘A
church
service, Ferg.'

He was quiet. Pip took a few steps away and pretended to rummage about in her bag for a tissue. Other people moved away from them. ‘It might help,' he said.

‘Help what?'

‘I don't want to go home.'

‘Help Sam? Will it help Sam?'

‘Don't, Liza. Please.'

‘Church isn't going to help us, Ferg! Nothing's going to help us.' She stared at him. She wasn't even close to crying. She hadn't made it to believing yet. ‘We're fucked, Fergus! I don't know about you, but that's
it
as far as I'm concerned. I'm not trying anymore.
No more!
'

Mike's car crawled up. He crunched up the handbrake, stayed sitting in the car.

Ferg stood in the middle of the carpark, his hands swinging by empty pockets, the saltbush brushing next to him like steel wool.

‘Don't, Liza, not here …'

‘Off you go to church, Ferg. Go and listen to some guy trying to explain it all away, as if Sam's not really —' She swung around, to the white rubble and orange flags, her voice stolen by the wind.

No one in Margaret River or Greys Bay rang in sick at work; no one was at work. Businesses were closed, some for weeks. Workmates didn't need an explanation.

After a few days, Cray went to the shaping shed, but couldn't imagine he'd actually work. Each time you saw someone you hadn't seen since the cliff collapse you'd have to go through it all again. Cray looked at the blank he'd been shaping on the day of the collapse. It was as if time had stopped since then, and all of a sudden he felt renewed energy to get back to it, to fire up the planer, pull his goggles on, and get back to normal.

Rosie wasn't going back to journalism ever, she had told him. The
Southern Way
editor had rung her to see if she'd do another Coffee Time column, but she thought it was just a ploy to get her in the office to report on the cliff collapse. She wasn't taking any risks. She loathed the whole business. Anyway, who would want to have a friendly chat for Coffee Time now? Who could muster the energy to look back over their lives and see how they'd become who they were, when one of their grandchildren might have just had the last breath pushed out of them? Rosie couldn't see herself writing feel-good features for the local rag when there were obituaries on the previous page.