Tide (14 page)

When they got back from their holiday, Selina and Andy's mother did move in together. They announced to the children that next year they'd holiday somewhere else. It was time for a change. They understood Andy's disappointment, but it was good to broaden one's horizons. There's so much more to see out in the world. Andy's reply: But oceans cover almost seventy percent of the world. You can't deny them. You can't pretend they're not there. They will rise up and cover us all in the end.

Humouring Andy, and feeling she had his measure, Selina said, Then you'll have all the time in the world to spend with them. Let's do something else in the meantime.

Next Christmas they flew to the Australian Alps, and spent their time hiking. As they flew out of Perth, Andy looked down at the ocean and saw the whale's mouth gaping. He looked deep down into its belly and saw himself and Beth cuddling together against the cold, and Sarah asleep at their feet, salt water lapping about her.

THE UNFINISHED HOUSE

The wind tried to wrap itself around the glowing steel frame but couldn't find purchase. It roared up out of the ocean, but failed to get much more than a shimmer from the unfinished house – a skeleton still waiting for flesh. Nonetheless, a high-pitched whistling, as unsettling as a scream, said that house and wind were battling each other in ways that might not be seen or understood.

Sand and limestone and coastal heath and piss-smelling scrub surrounded it, and its empty eye sockets looked out on the blue-black water of great depth that made the immensity of the southern ocean. Even in the high winds, gulls tried to settle on the frame, their corrosive droppings raising flustered patches on the metal. But after fighting the winds for longer than one would think possible, they'd spread their wings and be lifted out at an acute angle, rising slowly and jaggedly like kites.

The house had been left in this unfinished state for five years.

In order to keep upright, Meredith held on tightly to Li-an's arm. He'd brought her down to look at the ocean, but as her hair whipped her eyes and salt formed a patina over her face, she kept glancing back and examining the house. Something wasn't quite right. Didn't fit. Or fitted
too
well. It didn't add up for her.
Not
just a case of not being finished. That really had nothing to do with it. She couldn't work it out. She felt strangely inarticulate.

Li-an's gaze was fixed determinedly on the ocean, and subtly – not so difficult in the strong wind – he angled his arm and tilted, twisting Meredith's body back towards the ocean, make it more difficult for her to twist and look over her shoulder.

Meredith yelled into the wind, Whose house is that, Li-an?

Li-an didn't react. Words were rushed away and shredded before they left the mouth. Meredith forced her lips into Li-an's ear, which she cupped with her hands. Whose house is that?

Li-an placed his arm protectively around Meredith, as if she were about to be blown and dragged down the granite cliffs into the ocean, which was grinding froth and swirling paint far below them, while just beyond the breakers it was throwing reflections of the sky sharply at the cliffs and up at the shining house frame. She almost fought him, but felt vulnerable enough to give way and be taken from the edge of the continent, back up the narrow wallaby path through the scrub. She didn't try to look at the house again. Vertigo had bent her will.

Hubris, said Li-an.

What? asked Meredith, washing the dishes while Li-an wiped.

It was hubris to try to keep the wind and the spray and the ocean out, he said. It might be a long way up from the ocean, but you get king waves here, reach right up over the top of the cliffs and drag anything there back into the sea. They are unpredictable. They come without warning. You might be looking out onto a calm ocean, with sunlight casting its brilliance and blindness on the surface, and then a huge surge will rise up and suck you down. Crushed in the machine of the ocean. It is merciless.

Meredith had been going out with Li-an for almost six months and had never heard him speak like that. He was a taciturn man, and she liked that. Her ex had been a loudmouthed, large-featured man, into body-building. He ran the gymnasium in this coastal town which was working hard to become a small city. Bob had been a picker and a mocker, always finding fault with her clothes, her talk, her body. He'd even said to her one day, I love your tits – they hang just right for me – but I think you need to do some heavy-duty work on your arse … I'll work out a program for you, tailored to fit your defects. Really she'd been with him because, coming to the town to teach, she'd been lonely, and joined the gym for some kind of social contact outside work, only to find that most of the new teachers had done the same, and really didn't feel like talking with each other after spending the day a classroom or two apart. He'd picked her up so easily it embarrassed her.

Li-an actually
was
a teacher, but one who'd been in the town for ten years. He'd been married to yet another teacher who'd died some years ago.

He didn't say much. I talk a lot, she'd say, but I am an English teacher. You're a maths teacher, you don't need to talk much. He'd always frown and shake his head, but they both knew she only said it to stir him up. He almost liked that about her. He needed to come back out of his shell.

Li-an, she asked, days later, tell me the story of that unfinished house. I know you know. I am trying to be sensitive, but it's starting to annoy me not knowing.

It's got nothing to do with me, said Li-an. You've got nothing to be sensitive about.

Then why are you so weird about it?

Weird? What do you mean?

Well, weird … just weird. When we were down there I felt you pulling me away. You wouldn't answer my questions. Then there was the hubris soliloquy the other night. Then yesterday, when I asked to visit that spot again, you got shirty.

Shirty?

Annoyed.

No, I didn't.

Why did you take me there in the first place? It's out of the way, I'd never heard of it before. I needn't have gone there. It's not a local talking point. There are more dramatic and accessible tourist spots with lookouts and no steel skeletons to distract the eye!

Don't
you
get so annoyed, Meredith. I don't like it when you're
annoyed.

She appreciated he wasn't criticising her but was genuinely frustrated by her upset. She wound it down a notch.

Sorry, I wasn't meaning to get under your skin, to turn you inside out, Li-an.

You weren't. You're not. Truth is, I just took you there because it's a spot I really like. It's dangerous, but only sometimes. And I didn't take you to the edge. I love its noise, its lack of calm. And yet it is so lonely and isolated and has its own peace.

You love its contradictions, she said.

Yes. It's almost a paradox.

That works in language and in maths, Li-an?

Nothing to do with either, he laughed, though slightly irritated.

Meredith didn't like it when Li-an got called away on ‘family business' in the city, 500 kilometres north-west. He said, That means you must love me now. Separation anxiety.

Either that or I don't trust you! She laughed nervously.

I'll be in constant contact. Keep your phone with you at all times. I'll ring and text and I can use Skype at my mother's.

Meredith had never met Li-an's mother in the flesh, but knew her well via Skype, though Mother, as she liked to be called, always shook her camera around when Meredith got on to say hello, as if that would bring her into focus in some deeper way. Mother, said Meredith, you're just making it hard for me to see you. When you shake the camera like that you blur. Bah, said Mother.

Since that one and only time with Li-an, Meredith hadn't been back to the unfinished house on the cliffs. As soon as Li-an was ensconced at Mother's in the city, she thought she'd take a drive and a walk out on the ‘wild coasts' (as the tourist brochures advertised), and have a closer look at the house that had so bothered her.

She wasn't sure why she felt impelled to go in Li-an's absence. Why his leaving brought it to mind so strongly. She'd only ever had an urge this strong when she was giving up smoking.

As she was leaving, the phone rang.

Yes, Li-an, I am fine. Are you behaving? You have spent up big at Wooldridges? Your students will love you. More maths problems for them to solve. Yes, yes, my darling, I do believe maths is a beautiful thing!

She got in the car, turned the phone off, and tossed it on the passenger's seat.