Wildlight (16 page)

*

A group of girls squealed and hugged. Two boys perched at the hall steps like groomsmen at a wedding, high-fiving each student as they emerged from the final exam. A stranger patted Steph’s back. ‘Well done.’ She felt vacant and stunned from concentration, but she turned and smiled, the thrill and relief and all these happy faces contagious as she made her way to the street. It was over! The kerb had turned into a taxi rank of parents’ cars, eyes searching expectantly, an arm beckoning, a mother clasping her daughter, a father ruffling his tall boy’s hair. A shimmer of goodwill radiated from the crowded square. The prospect of summer holidays rose like a weather balloon.

Students peeled away. You could sense the buoyancy in the way people walked and talked and how riffles of laughter split the air. Even those leaving on their own punched trills of numbers into mobile phones, backpacks bobbing down the street.

Steph made her way down to the water. She was off to Salamanca to eat lunch, to window shop, to celebrate. She’d find a public phone and call her parents. She had some money to phone her friends at home.

A refrigerator truck pulsed a warning as it inched back toward the edge of the wharf. Below, men from a cray boat hauled up heavy crates. Steph recognised two blue boats tethered side by side. Here, at the fringe of this small city, the rainbow of coloured hulls clashed with the image of vessels pitching and tossing through cascades of spray. Pockets of conversation from tourists glanced through the air, some in different languages. Passers-by slowed to inspect the flotilla of working boats, to photograph handmade craypots and cages crammed with fishing nets and buoys—mementoes from an ocean that in this tranquil setting gave no clue of hard-bitten lives. Steph’s focus sharpened on the curve of red, the white of the wheelhouse: the
Perlita Lee
was tied up to a second wharf beyond.

Tom wore white rubber boots, an old T-shirt and jeans. Steph waited on the wharf as he finished hosing down the deck. He clambered up. He still hadn’t seen her. He stood at the tap gazing up toward the mountain. She covered his eyes. ‘Guess who?’

Tom turned. He shook his head in disbelief. ‘I was thinking about you. Right then. I didn’t think I’d see you again.’

‘Had enough of me?’

‘I meant after last time. I meant—what are you doing in town? How long are you here?’

‘I’ve just finished exams. I’m hitching a helicopter ride back with the Tasmar Radio guys. Tomorrow.’

‘When tomorrow?’

‘Early, if the weather holds.’

‘Are your parents here?’

‘Just me. I’m staying at Mum’s old school.’

‘We just got in last night,’ Tom said. He looked dazed to see her.

‘Lots of crayfish?’

He gave a wry smile. ‘Never enough, according to Frank.’

Steph looked about. ‘It feels a bit strange.’

‘What?’

‘Being here instead of there. With you.’

‘Can you wait?’ he said. ‘While I finish up?’

‘I’m totally free.’

‘No hot dates?’

‘Never know your chances in the big city.’

He beamed at her. ‘Would you still let me cook for you?’

Steph affected casual disinterest. ‘Depends what’s on offer.’

‘Wood-fired pizza? Tom’s Garden Restaurant.’

‘I’d need to phone my parents. The school won’t let me out without a leave pass.’

Tom helped her down onto the boat. ‘Mum’s in Melbourne for the week.’

No need to tell her parents that.

Tom watched Stephanie fold her arms around a small freckled girl with red plaits, huddled on the front step of the boarders’ house. ‘You sure you’ll be okay, Marcie?’ she said gently. The girl nodded. She’d been crying.

Stephanie got into his car. As they drove away she turned back and waved. ‘Is she all right?’ Tom said. ‘Does she need a lift?’

‘She was meant to go home today. There’s some trouble with her parents and now Marcie doesn’t know when they’re coming to get her.’

He’d driven Stephanie home from town two hours before, then dashed home to shower and change and shop for dinner. In those two hours she’d changed into someone older. Her legs looked longer in tight jeans. She wore makeup and earrings, she looked different with her hair tied up—she looked much like her mother.

Perhaps it was the change in pitch from afternoon to evening—colour speared across the sky—that made Tom feel alive with promise. They’d spent the afternoon along the waterfront walking, talking; he’d blinked himself back into being when she’d pointed to yachts sailing on the water, a dog wading in the shallows, barking at the seagulls. Tom had been locked in a bubble of disbelief that she was there beside him, talking and laughing, her fingers snagged in the belt loop of his jeans as if nothing, nothing at all, had shifted in the way she felt toward him. They’d danced around talk of the boat; he hadn’t mentioned Frank and she hadn’t asked. Now, here in the car, the night sky charged with indigo, Tom felt renewed, a second chance that glistened like a cliff face after rain. ‘How long do you have?’

‘My leave pass expires at midnight.’

‘Cinderella,’ he said. The sky was clear, the forecast good. Tom spoke to make conversation. ‘How’s it looking for the morning?’ He’d already checked the weather. He already knew the answer.

‘They rang just now. Seven-thirty at the heli place.’

‘Ships in the night, you and me.’

She kissed his hand. ‘There’ll be a next time.’

‘Can I drive you out there?’

‘Really? You want to get up that early?’

‘I’m awake at four. Once a fisherman—’ He stopped. Every word counted. Everything felt breakable. Beneath his skin Tom felt bruised and weatherworn. It was more than the physical aftermath of heaving across an ocean, growing wet and cold then thawing out with a deck shower whose water never grew hot enough. Putting on the least rank of your work clothes. Tom was tired of crap tinned soup, he was tired of baiting and stripping and shooting pots. Baiting them again. A kind of fatigue that went beyond flesh and bone: it came from tight-lipped days and restless nights of trying to withstand the final stretch with Frank.

It had all gone belly up the day Stephanie came aboard the boat, when she let slip Tom’s plan to leave. He could have expected an earful from Frank but his brother was too cunning for that. His punishment had taken the form of a public exhibition of the man Tom Forrest had become. The degradation of stealing pots made all the more tawdry before the girl Tom wanted to impress.

The fishing went on, but Frank sensed a shift in Tom—Hab felt it too. Tom and Frank were a continent buckling, a tectonic rift, one half wrenching itself apart, whatever the collateral damage. Perhaps Frank had cause to be pissed off with Tom, but he’d played it wrong. He’d forfeited the fucked-up obligation Tom served for a lifetime of big-brother benevolence. Frank had given Tom his exit plan. As soon as Hab’s wife had the baby. When Hab came back to work. Tom wouldn’t leave Frank short-handed. He owed his brother that.

‘Are you all right?’ Stephanie said.

He squeezed her hand.

Tom parked the car on the road; he led Stephanie down the side of the house.

‘Wow.’ She slowed at the sight of the garden. ‘Is all this your mum? Or you?’

‘Some of both.’ He’d forgotten how this garden might look to someone else. Even around the perimeter of vegetable beds, spring onions vied for space between rosebushes and azaleas; garlic filled the gaps between the lavender and ranunculus; across the back trellis snow peas curled around the dried remains of his mother’s sweet peas. Tom walked Stephanie past the fruit trees to the glasshouse. He showed her the seedlings and herbs, grumbled about the valuable bench space taken up by his mother’s orchids and African violets she rotated from indoors to the glasshouse to guarantee perpetual blooms. ‘The place needs weeding,’ he said as an apology.

Stephanie fingered through the old shoeboxes—seeds stored and dated in recycled packets Tom saved from the kitchen. In a dishevelled kind of way the place held an order. He could put his hands on anything.

‘All this.’ She looked at him in a way that lifted Tom. ‘This is you. This is how I think of you.’

He took a deep breath. The air trapped by the panes of glass felt warm and dank on his skin. He pinched off herbs, cupped the aromatic rub to his nose. ‘What?’ he said to her smile.

She rubbed her fingers. ‘That thing you do. Sniffing leaves. I love it.’

The promise of a giant moon glowed beyond the old iron rooftops of the street. Pizza dough proved in the warmth of the kitchen; it swelled above the rim of the bowl. Stephanie stretched out on the lounge room rug, searching through CDs. ‘Tom?’ She held up Mariah Carey, acting out a look of
death by hopelessness
.

‘It’s Mum’s. I’m more your Whitney Houston kind of guy.’

‘Tell me you’re joking.’

Stephanie watched him as he floured the bench and rolled and stretched the dough. He spooned homemade sauce across the base, giving it the flourish of a painter. He’d never cooked for anyone but his mother. Or on the boat, for Frank and Hab, but that was fuel that filled your belly and didn’t count for anything. Beastie Boys pumped from the CD player. The big speakers were last year’s Christmas gift from Frank. The only other females Tom could remember in this house were Aunt Fina from Melbourne, and Frank’s wife Cheryl when she and Frank first started going out. In the years they’d been married Cheryl had never visited; Frank always showed up on his own.

Beyond the patio, the adobe oven pulsed with heat. Tom raked the coals to the back. A rush of sparks flared up into the night through the open chimney. He used a metal paddle to position the granite tile and slide the pizza in on top.
Built yourself an igloo,
Frank had mocked Tom’s home-built oven. He’d never seen their mother turn on Frank to give him such a dressing-down. Tom knew she fretted. Nights, she’d look up from the television, rest her knitting in her lap.
Is everything all right with you and Frank?

What could he say? She was mother to them both. Tom watched mozzarella melt and spread. His gut twisted at the echo of his brother’s latest declaration—
Forrest Brothers
—Frank had hyped up on the boat trip home after another top catch. Tom had stayed silent, hadn’t flickered at Frank’s bait that snagged like a dirty hook. Thank Christ for Cheryl, who would look at the books and tear down Frank’s grandiose talk of a second boat with the fierceness of a Tassie devil. The last thing Tom wanted was to skipper his own vessel. He’d served his time. He was sticking to his exit plan.

The air beyond the fire grew damp. Stephanie shivered. Tom brought his Gore-Tex jacket from the chair. ‘It will be too big.’

‘It’s toasty.’ She turned up the padded sleeves.

She set the tiny patio table with a cloth and serviettes, found cushions for the wrought-iron chairs. ‘Shall I light this?’ She held up his mother’s votive candle.

‘Go for it.’

She held the match to the wick. ‘Make a wish,’ Tom said, unable to stem ingrained habits. Stephanie closed her eyes in concentration.

Her hair smelled of wood smoke, his hands of fresh herbs. They stood together at the open oven, his girl blanketed in his jacket, the night air aromatic.

*

Steph followed Tom through the kitchen. She’d stacked the plates from dinner on the sink, left her scarf and backpack on the table. She felt her heart pulsing in her chest. She hoped she wasn’t trembling.

Beyond the brightness of the kitchen and lounge the house changed mood. This narrow hallway, these dark wooden doors. She felt a heaviness distinct from the night and put it down to first-time nervousness.

Tom opened the door to his room. A night-light at the floor cast a reassuring glow. Steph paused. His bed. She took a breath.

‘Are you sure?’ Tom said softly.

She couldn’t trust herself to speak. She squeezed his hand. As sure as a girl could be before leaping off a cliff.

*

‘Back in a minute.’ Tom grabbed his keys and went out to the car. He searched the glove box, looked behind the seat. Where? He’d gone into the chemist before picking Stephanie up—a lady with a baby had watched him knowingly from the other side of the shelves. Lubricated, Ribbed, Form Fit, Ultra Thin, illustrated packs of twelves and twenty-fours bearing a form of intimacy that spoke of late-night American TV, not him, not this tonight. Tom had prickled with uncertainty—he’d grappled with his own presumption at how the night might go. He thought to slink out of the pharmacy and leave it all to chance. But wasn’t the onus on
him
?—
safe sex
, they harped on in his final year at school. If he hadn’t been prepared, if things had gone this way—which obviously they had, or would, if he could only find them—then what? He’d picked the plainest pack, blue and white,
Chekmate
, trying to find meaning in the misspelled name. He’d waited till the girl had finished serving at the counter. No, he didn’t need a receipt, thanks. No, he didn’t want a bag. He’d put them—

Stephanie looked at him enquiringly. She was curled against the pillows where he’d left her, still wearing his jacket. She reached into the pocket. ‘Looking for these?’ she said shyly. He gave a feeble simper. Chekmate.

*

Steph lay across his radiating chest, the race of his heart beating in her ear. ‘Okay?’ he said. Steph nodded. Tom pulled the bedcovers over her shoulders. Should she feel more special? Womanly? She felt unlinked from her body, a little dreamy, the way she felt on New Year’s Eve after guzzling champagne. Tom had read her inexperience from the start. He hadn’t laughed at her awkwardness. He’d whispered she was beautiful. He’d touched her skin, he hadn’t hurried her. Everything was caring.

His breathing had eased, his chest rose and fell in a sleeper’s rhythm. Steph felt wholly alert. She turned her ear to the sounds of the house: a creak of timber, a branch scraping the gutter outside the window. Around her—in the smell of the air, the set of old drawers, the flattened pile of the old-fashioned carpet—was the contrast of Tom’s growing up to her own. His room was neat, unadorned—personality withheld. Tom’s selfhood was the greenhouse, the garden—an outdoor oven he’d built himself. Steph looked around the walls. The bedroom had no posters, no art on any wall she had seen.