The Lost Swimmer (35 page)

Sally pressed her hand around mine. I felt the warmth and the weight of her. She was beside me.

And Stephen would never be again.

•  •  •

His bloated corpse had been dressed and bathed in formaldehyde. His hair had been brushed smooth, his beard trimmed. His eyes were closed, as if he were only sleeping. He had been kept cool as he waited for me to fly from Paris.

A local fisherman had found him washed onto rocks in a tiny sea cave. There, Stephen had been saved from the sucking mouths of hungry fish, preserved in the salt air, hanging like a weary angel.

Now, in a small room in a Naples funeral parlour, he lay patiently, his flesh white and powdered, lips rouged.

They told me his body had been autopsied. I unbuttoned his shirt to see the pallid flesh, huge stitches holding together the long V-shape where the medical examiner had cut.

I ran my fingers along it and drew the shirt closed, buttoning it up with clumsy hands.

Erin and James, Burton and Maria were waiting outside, but I wouldn't rush. I bent forward and kissed Stephen's lips, lurid, not cherry red as in life. They were cold, a different cold than I'd ever felt before. Unnatural. A dead expanse of dry, chalky ice. A wedge dropped through my heart as his bristly beard stubbed into me, familiar yet alien.

‘I'm so sorry,' I whispered, fighting back the feeling that Stephen wasn't here, that his spirit had flown.

I wanted to hear his voice, to see his chocolate eyes, the way they'd blinked and shone and smiled at me for all these years. Talk everything through. Stephen would know how best to take his body home.

But Stephen had drowned and there was no evidence of foul play. He had gone swimming, a perfectly natural thing to do on the Amalfi coast. He'd run into trouble.

I prayed fervently that it was an accident and had not been intentional. I felt frantic that I didn't know but there was nothing I could do.

I sat beside him for hours, asking him why he'd had an affair, why he'd ended it. Did he really love me more than anyone in the world? Had Priscilla spoken the truth about that?

I loved you more than anyone, Stephen. You and our family. Our small, shining gang. If only you'd shared your problems, not always been the alpha male, coping.

You lost our savings because you wanted to make a better life for us, make us financially secure. You tried. I know you always tried. But the money was unimportant, my love.

I wondered again why he left his clothes in the crevice, not on the ledge. Was it a message? His superannuation and life insurance would more than cover his debts.

You saved our home. But without you, it's meaningless, you fool.

Were you saying goodbye to me on the bed that afternoon?

The neatness of it seemed chillingly like Stephen. He'd made a mess and he'd cleaned it up.

I covered his freezing hand with my own, trying in vain to let the warmth seep into him but his coldness drained the warmth from me instead. I left my hand there; I couldn't let go.

Finally Burton came in to lead me away. I didn't resist, although inside I wanted to scream and rage. Erin and James needed me and I promised myself that no one in my family would ever suffer again like Stephen had. In spite of all my love he'd died alone, unreachable.

•  •  •

The next morning was already steamy at dawn, a damp, thick heat. A gossamer blue mist shrouded the Tyrrhenian Sea, as though the whole world were holding its breath. My family made our way in silence, single file, down the mountain to the private beach at Della Mare. I looked back up at the baking cliffs where I had sat, and slept, while Stephen drowned.

My eyes felt like they were stung by bees, and Erin's were worse. She broke down at the water's edge and I ran to her. The sea lapped calmly against the rusty ladder as we held each other. James stood silently behind us, pale and stoic. One by one we threw flowers into the water: two red geraniums and a small, bright bunch of bougainvillea from me. They floated out towards the string of white buoys, until a wave rolled gently in and drenched them. They disappeared and Erin wailed. I clutched my children to me as I forced away images of Stephen with Priscilla, swallowed the anger that rose like a hungry shark. At least the children would never know of that. But like me with my own father, they had to farewell Stephen when their lives lay ahead of them. A wave sighed and sucked itself back into the sea. How could I ever leave this place?

•  •  •

Marco drove us along the winding coast road to Naples airport. I remembered vividly Stephen's fright the first time he'd seen this road, and my own exhilaration when I conquered it.

‘Maybe you will return one day?' said Marco.

‘Or you'll come and visit us?'

Marco smiled shyly. ‘I would love to see the kangaroos.'

‘Until then,' I said, kissing him on both cheeks and then walking away, not turning back.

I held Stephen through the flight, his ashes locked tight in a bright ceramic urn. If only I could love him as I always had. But his infidelity dragged me down. Was Priscilla the only one, or had there been others? Would I ever know? Did I really want to?

He had always been my rock, but in the end it was Burton who had been right: Stephen was as duplicitous as a spy.

The ashes sat heavy in my lap. On one side, Erin slept with her head on my shoulder; on the other, James stared out into the black night, roughly wiping back tears. Across the aisle, Maria and Burton were asleep, nestled into each other. I reminded myself how lucky I was to have this small pack of people as I battled a thick fog of depression that left my limbs heavy and my throat aching to scream.

I'd entered a new club, one I'd hoped never to join. A widow, whose loved one's death had been sudden and terrible. I was haunted by the vast mess of Stephen's life: his gambling, his affair, his seeming rekindling of his devotion to me if Priscilla was telling the truth. It sickened me that I'd have to see her every day at work – although it would give me the opportunity to force out of her how long the affair had gone on, and how it had started.

I floated between rage and despair. Who was I? A grieving wife, a victim, a fool? Or somehow the person responsible for everything? Perhaps if I'd been a better communicator Stephen might have known I loved him far more than money. I would have stuck by him through financial ruin. I needed only him.

I flicked obsessively through the photos on my phone from the day we'd gone to Pompeii. On the ferry, he smiled, dark eyes twinkling, but there was a haunted look too. What if his death was not an accident? Had he kept swimming in the misty sea until there was no point of return? Or was it just distraction and bad luck that led him into the swirling force of hidden currents?

Why did he say he loved me on that hot, calm afternoon, as we sank into the crisp white sheets and I drifted off to sleep?

•  •  •

The air was soft and clear when I went out, Big Boy at my heels, past the pointed quills of the grass trees that Stephen had nurtured like babies, and climbed halfway up our hill. Inhaling the fresh eucalypt, to a chorus of kookaburras raucously heralding the morning, I opened the urn, made in the shades of the Amalfi coast, vivid blues and yellows, swirls of lively colour that housed the ashes and bones of Stephen. I looked inside at the grey waste, and slowly, deliberately, trying to think of Stephen but with my thoughts flying away, I emptied half the ashes. They fell heavily and I scattered them with my boot, kicking them around until they mingled with the soil, my movements growing more savage as Big Boy backed away. Two kangaroos hopped down silently, stopping as they saw me – a maniacal middle-aged woman taking revenge on her pathetic life. They stood stock-still, and I read the collar of one: BONNIE. One of her ears hung raggedly, stitched and scarred, but otherwise she was strong and healthy. The roo beside her must be her joey, now a robust young buck. Big Boy growled half-heartedly and I grabbed him, but he just hunkered down and put his chin on his paws, exhaling all the air in his ramshackle frame. The kangaroos bent and grazed on the sweet emerald grass. We'd been through so much since that day Bonnie and her tiny joey had come to our hill for the first time. We made a strange vignette. Survivors.

I sat down wearily beside Big Boy and teased the white blaze on the top of his head around my finger. He settled into my lap with a sigh. I thought of my father. The first of all those I'd loved who hadn't survived. I'd always felt responsible, but in my tired fury today I viewed it differently. Dad was a fisherman, he knew the sea and that a storm was forecast – we all knew it, just not how bad it would be, certainly not that the river was flooding upstream, the river that spewed destruction from its mouth when it mixed with the south-westerly gales and churned the waves into a deadly maelstrom. None of us ever questioned Dad; his judgement was infallible. But if I were placed in that position today, would I take my children out in that forecast? In a flash I thought,
No, not ever
.

Dad knew the risks and had made a wrong call. Neither of us should have been on the water that day. In a surge of anger I realised with astonishing clarity that it wasn't my fault at all.

•  •  •

Stephen and I hadn't discussed what to do with our bodies if one of us died, but after an overwhelming tide of business and organisation had been worked through, we held the funeral. I had decided a marker was important, if only so someone could chance upon it, dig it up centuries later to try to make sense of our lives, of how we'd lived. Perhaps they could understand it more than I ever would.

I'd spent my own life unearthing other people's worlds, piecing together a jigsaw of the past. Now it all seemed completely meaningless. I'd noticed nothing of importance, hadn't understood the signs that must have been there mapping Stephen's despair, hadn't been able to reach him.

As archaeologists we imagine history, based on the secrets of discovered artifacts. We interpret and find meaning, always expecting that there is a story to tell. But what we say, how we say it, depends on us, not the people whose lives we dig up.

We tell stories of change, creating order out of chaos. A mirage, a panacea. I'd so desperately wanted Stephen alive, to rescue him. Grief pushing to the edge of reason, shredding rational thought even as I was trying to squeeze everything into a pattern. We can think we recognise someone, only to be wrong. In the twilight of unfathomable loss and exhaustion I'd grasped each report and used it to stand firm in my belief.

In the end we make up what we want to see, and potentially are blind.

Burton and Maria sat beneath a towering, twisted ironbark, holding tight to each other. Maria looked old, like an ancient civil-war veteran. Greek civil war, US civil war, Indian, Chinese revolution . . . My mind flew wildly.

Where was Stephen's passport? Had it been stolen at reception where they never guarded anything? Why couldn't I remember Adriana returning mine? Would the passport turn up one day, having been mixed up in paperwork or fallen down somewhere to be found much later, like an artifact in a dig?

Why had Stephen left his clothes in the crevice?

I glanced at the fake ring he'd given me: it shone brightly and my heart swelled.

James read a beautiful eulogy, and Erin sang a solo like an angel. I said nothing. All I could think was that I would never see Stephen again. And never be able to shout at him – and then forgive him – for his infidelity.

Maria had asked to speak.

‘I only met Stephen once,' she began, her voice rising into the still air, ‘although I've known Rebecca since she was a young archaeology student on digs around the Greek islands. What I do know is how much Rebecca loved him, and what a good father he was. I heard all about everything he did for Erin and James, how he'd ferry them everywhere when they were teenagers and how well he'd look after them and play mother and father while Rebecca was away on her many trips. Stephen was an unusual academic in that he cared so much about his wife's career as well as his own, and encouraged Rebecca to flourish.'

My body was shaking so hard it felt like a seizure. How could I go on without him?

‘Not only was Stephen extraordinarily handsome, even to someone of my age, but I could see he was a charming listener and an astute thinker and someone so generous he would do anything for those he loved.'

And those he was sleeping with
, I thought.

‘Stephen can never be replaced in your lives but his memory, his influence, his scholarship will live on. And what I will say, is we're all going to try to fill the gap and do everything we can for you: Erin, James, Rebecca.'

I attempted to meet her eye but I was crying too hard, a wrenching sobbing, cocooned between my two children, whose hot arms wrapped about me. They were desolate; we would all be haunted, never know the truth. I squeezed them tightly and vowed I would forever try to fill the void.

‘Stephen cared deeply about the future of his family; that was obvious from the first moment I spoke to him. I'll treasure that time. I'm so glad we met.' Maria's birdlike body stood at attention, like a tiny soldier. Had Stephen cared too deeply about our future? Had he been terrified? How could I have understood him so little? His demons were buried deep beneath his virile alpha armour. For an awful moment, it felt like Maria – who had met him once – knew him as well as I did.

Stephen had chosen not to trust me with his secrets, wrapping them up so tightly they crushed him.

I glanced around at our large gathering of family, friends, colleagues – and a new friend, Sally Chesser – the sparkling sea behind them. Even Burton was crying.

•  •  •

When I was ready, a few weeks later, I tore myself out of bed and returned to the campus at Coastal. There was no Melinda to welcome me. She was on remand in a low-security prison.