White Light (6 page)

H
ector and I are on a touring holiday of the south. Since his retirement we have seen quite a lot of the country in our campervan, home away from home. Hector has a story for every place visited. He is a mine of information. Yesterday, we saw the bottomless, blue lakes of Mount Gambier and now we have arrived at the famed Twelve Apostles (although there are only eight), on Victoria's rugged south coast.

There, I might have written that on a postcard. Dear Grandchildren, the weather is a) sunny, b) overcast, c) wet, d) all of the above. Ah! must be in Victoria. Don't forget the date: Fifteenth of January, 1990. I would not write that; after all this time on the road, I am getting a bit fed up with Hector and his stories.

The Twelve Apostles, all eight of them, as you sweep around the coastal cliff top road are certainly a majestic sight, or is that a magisterial one? Hector parks the van and I buy a postcard from the stand in the kiosk. A touring coach has just disgorged its cargo of bus-sick passengers, half of them lined up outside the ladies toilet.

‘Shall we have our picnic?' Hector asks.

‘I should go to the lav first.'

‘Look at that queue,' he says. ‘Let's duck out over this London Bridge or whatever it's called, then have our sandwiches.'

‘Yes, I'd kill for a cup of tea.'

Hector's Hawaiian shirt is a little garish for Victoria, so I ask him to put on his jacket.

The London Bridge is a spectacular limestone archway that leans over the water to a pair of conjoined, rocky outcrops. Although they are not technically Apostles, they do form a pretty distinctive feature of the cliffs and coastline. Actually, it is what they call an isthmus, with a couple of giant cavities burrowing through it like a Swiss cheese and the waves crashing through. I'll take a photo after lunch.

It feels nice to stretch our legs. It should only take a few minutes to wander out there and back and then a lovely cup of Liptons. So, we stroll across the road and down the gravel path and over the London Arch (its other name) and barely thirty seconds after we have crossed it, the ground behind us gives a shudder and a bark, and with a tremendous crash, collapses into the sea.

‘Jesus,' says Hector, alarmingly. Hector never swears. Suddenly, he has his arm about my waist and is bustling me forward. Me, who has not bustled for years.

‘Come on. Quick sticks.'

Behind us, or rather beneath us, the sea is boiling orange and white.

‘What happened?' I ask, frightened.

‘The bridge collapsed.'

It is an understatement but I might as well say it: ‘Lucky we weren't still standing on it.'

‘Yes Caroline, that's the understatement of the year…Jesus.'

‘No need to swear.'

Both of us are trembling with the close shave of it, staring stupidly at the water below. I can smell fresh rock.

‘We're trapped.'

Even I can see how obvious that is. We are now suddenly alone on what is evidently a newly created limestone pillar. An island, albeit a small one. We can still hear bits of the pinnacle, great slabs of rock carving off and falling into the sea. Hector nudges me to what he estimates is the geometrical centre of the island. It is only a matter of about twenty paces in any direction to the edge. It is so narrow I could throw a stone from one side to the other. And I'm not much of a shot. I can barely throw a ball of rolled up socks across the lounge room. Oh, I could if I was angry enough, but Hector hasn't done enough to annoy me yet. Give him his due.

There is another, second archway linking our pinnacle to a smaller one further out to sea, but there is no way I am going to cross that. Hector is right; we are trapped. Exiled. Forty metres up in the air on a teetering limestone tower. Actually, it is only the clouds scudding by that give the impression the limestone is teetering.

Over on the opposite cliff, people are calling, waving. I can see tourist buses and our own little van in the car park. People stand back from the edge because I guess their side of the cliff is still crumbling, too. They wave to us. We wave back. The welcome humanity of it. No man is an island and no woman either, I suppose. There is a slight breeze from the south; on a warm day, this could possibly be described as being as refreshing as the beads of condensation on a cold glass of chardonnay. Only, it's not a warm day. It appears no one knows what to do, neither the people on the mainland, nor us. We can make out the windswept squeak of their voices, but not what they are shouting. The isthmus is gone. We are stuck.

Gradually, it comes to me that I still need to go to the toilet.

‘Looks like we might be here for a while, old girl.'

‘Don't call me old girl.'

‘May as well pull up a pew.'

Hector sits, grunting, on the bare ground. I sit beside him, watching the figures on the far cliff watching us. There is nothing else to do.

‘Wish we'd brought the picnic basket,' he says after a while.

‘Hmph.'

‘Pincher Martin ate seaweed on his rock. I guess we could eat—what is this stuff?—moss?'

‘You can eat moss. I'm sitting here till we're rescued.'

I can be stubborn when I want to be. No one seems to be doing anything. More buses arrive on the far escarpment. There seems to be lots of excitement over there. I guess we can already divide our ordeal, in the manner of the marooned, into the time before we sat down and the time after we sat down. It is, in my experience, an unprecedented situation.

It's strange how ideas come into Hector's head, because out of the blue he says, ‘I wonder if this means there are now nine Apostles?'

‘Oh shut up, Hector. I'm cold.'

‘Do you want my jacket?'

‘And have you catch your death again!'

There is a modicum of warmth where our shoulders touch. Uncharacteristically, he puts his arm around me and gently squeezes.

‘Buck up, old duck.'

‘Don't call me old duck.'

‘Do you know these limestone stacks were formed during the Neogene period between five and twenty-three million years ago?'

‘How do you know that?'

‘I read a brochure last night.'

‘Well, that's not going to help us get off it.'

‘The cliffs and stone stacks erode two centimetres a year. That figure must be an average because that bit,' he waves his arm, ‘just eroded about two hundred metres in one go.'

‘That's not reassuring.'

‘No.'

He glances around to make sure we are quite in the middle.

‘Hector?'

‘Yes, Caroline.'

‘I need to go to the loo.'

‘You should have gone before we came across.'

‘You saw that queue. You were the one who said we'd just nip over and back.'

‘Don't get snappy with me. I didn't know the blasted bridge was going to collapse.'

‘Neither did I.'

Silence for a while. He looks east. I look west. A seagull lands on our island and glares at us as if to say,
Where are your sandwiches?
A part of me wonders, in the manner of the marooned, if only I were a seagull, but I am aware there is no profit to be had from this train of thought.

I shift uncomfortably on my bottom.

‘Try to take your mind off it,' says Hector.

‘All right for you to say.'

‘Do you realise we are the first people ever to set foot on this island.'

‘And the last. No one in their right mind would shimmy up forty-metre cliffs to say,
Ooh, look, there's nothing here
.'

‘I'm trying to be helpful, Caroline.'

‘Well, you're not.'

Pause.

‘Shall we play
I Spy
?'

‘Shut up.'

‘Don't you have a postcard? We could fill that in.'

‘I don't have a pen.'

‘Just like Pincher Martin, ha ha.'

We watch the clouds for a while. One could get too used to that.

‘Do you know that the Twelve Apostles used to be called the Sow and the Piglets?'

‘Why did they change it?'

‘Not grand enough. I don't know. Why do they change anything?'

I am beginning to wonder what might happen if we have to spend the night here. That thought is too awful to contemplate. Surely someone on the mainland is telephoning for assistance.

‘I guess we have naming rights,' I say. ‘What shall we call it, our island?'

‘That's the girl. Let's put on our thinking caps.'

The sweet, chardonnay breeze at our backs has turned into an Antarctic gale. It's freezing, all the way from the South Pole. Perhaps the Twelve (nine) Apostles are icebergs that looked back at Lot's wife.

‘Thinking caps will blow off in this hurricane,' I say.

‘What about—The Windy Isle?'

‘The Island of Hector Moreau.'

‘Nice,' says Hector. ‘The Sandwichless Island.'

‘Island With No Trees. Or toilets.'

‘Or banks. Or anything. We can create civilisation anew.'

‘I was perfectly happy with civilisation the way it was, and then you had to drag me off in a silly campervan.'

Hector is not listening. He is getting into the swing of things. He waves his arm grandly about the new, treeless island.

‘King and Queen of all they survey.'

‘Shut up, Hector… I don't think I can hold on much longer.'

‘Steady on, old girl. I think some of those people over there have telephoto lenses. We'll be on the front page of the local rag for sure.'

Hector is laughing at me. His shoulders are quietly shaking. We could not be more estranged if we were on a desert isle in the middle of the Pacific with a lone palm tree between us. I wonder if I could push him off the edge and blame it on the wind, but there appear to be too many witnesses with telephoto lenses.

‘What am I going to do? I'll get cystitis if I hang on any longer.'

The sound of the waves far below is an agony.

‘You'll just have to hide behind me.'

‘Oh, my Gawd.'

There is nothing else for it. I slowly ease my way behind Hector so we are sitting, well—squatting, back to back. I would give a lot for a palm tree right now. Hector is a slight man so there is not a lot of him to hide behind. He spreads wide the wings of his jacket like a cormorant. I make adjustments to my dress and nether garments and the relief is immediate and profound.

Hector calls out: ‘Island of Pissing in the Wind.'

I jab my elbow backwards and make satisfying contact with his kidneys.

‘Ouch.'

The edge is just there. So easy. The blue lake, yesterday, had been tempting.

At that moment, we hear the chest thumping whap whap whap of a helicopter approaching from the Peterborough direction.

‘Better hurry up, old girl. Here comes the cavalry.'

‘I am hurrying.'

I pray, please don't let them have a TV crew. I smooth my dress down. Hector folds his wings. I guess the Antarctic gale is not quite as windy as I thought because the helicopter, with a sightseeing logo painted on the side, descends towards us. We have to shuffle away from the centre of the island to give it room. This is terrifying because the cliffs seem much steeper than they did when I first looked at them. Precipitous, I think is the word.

The helicopter does dance about in the wind a bit, but finally it touches down on the mossy rock. A search and rescue fellow, or maybe it is a fireman, jumps out and beckons us towards him. The tornado from the rotor blades plays havoc with my dress and my hair. I fear it will get caught in the propeller thingy and have me off, like a loaded Hills Hoist in a cyclone. It is a fair jump from the mossy rock up to the helicopter. I hang in the doorway. Hector and the fireman each get a shoulder underneath my ballast and heave. I tumble, head first up and into the chopper, sprawling all over the floor. Then Hector is there beside me, clinging to my arm and the pilot turns to us with a grin and a thumbs up.

It is hard to believe how short that helicopter flight is. How short and how joyless. I wonder if I could tip Hector out the open door, blaming the blustery conditions, but he already has a seat belt on. In a very brief interlude he learns that the reason the pilot took so long was that he was out surfing. My hair has barely settled by the time we touch down on the other side. The mainland. Civilisation. I am still deeply flushed at the indignity of my rescue. There is an ambulance and the fellow gives us both the once over. They place blankets about our shoulders and ask a few questions but there is not much to say, really, about being stuck on a limestone rock for a few hours with nothing on it but a seagull. Hector makes a joke about returning from exile, about eating moss. People are more interested in photographing the collapsed bridge. That is, its absence. Pretty soon they let us go, and I am more than happy to fade into the general background of the afternoon where the idea of the front page is nothing but a bad dream.

We wander, light-headedly, over to the campervan. When the doors close, the snug fit encloses us like an embrace. It is very quiet. The wind muffled. We both breathe softly together. Another tourist coach arrives and spews out a load of happy photographers. The sea has returned to its normal colour. The approaching dusk is painting the Twelve Apostles a rusty orange. Endless rhythm of the waves.

‘Only a little hurt pride, eh, Caroline?'

‘Only.'

‘Something to tell the grandkids.'

I grunt. The isthmus between us. I am sure my hair must look a fright. Eventually, Hector reaches into the back of the van and hoists the picnic basket onto his lap. He opens it. He hands me a tin mug. He pours. The tea is still warm.

‘Thermos Island,' he says, and it's just the two of us once more.

B
y 9:30 most weeknights, Dean hoped to be warmly ensconced in his bed. Most nights he was. Dean was not the spring chicken he used to be. A sweet dream was forming in the depths of his grey matter, when it was rudely interrupted (at 11:03!) by a tentative knock, like the tapping of the dog's tail on the floor. Dean stumbled from the bedroom, knotting the cord in his pyjamas. The conscious, but slightly frazzled part of his mind knew he should look through the peep hole or at least call out but he didn't. Home invaders wouldn't knock so timidly, would they? He pulled the door open to the night's cold lung and there, beneath his line of vision, stood Bridie.

Bridie was the kid from down the road. She was younger than Dean's daughter Grace (who was at that moment fast asleep) and was known in the neighbourhood as something of a feral child. Words to that effect. Her hair unbrushed and awry, she was dressed only in her school tunic.

‘I've been waiting at home,' she began, ‘and my mum hasn't come back yet.'

Dean blinked. He did not immediately have a response to this information. What mum? He was in two minds about Bridie. The sort of kid who always had scabbed knees and liked to play in gutters. Dean remembered that once she'd brought her pet albino rat to show Grace, only she had dropped it on the floor and a bit of its tail had fallen off.

‘You'd better come in,' Dean said, who had once enjoyed playing in gutters, picking his scabs—all a long time ago. Bridie entered. Everyone else was asleep.

‘Aren't you cold, Bridie?'

‘No, I never get cold.'

‘When is your mum coming back?'

‘In about an hour.'

Bridie looked around and Dean tried not to wonder if she might be casing the joint.

‘Right. So you've spoken to her?'

‘No.'

‘She left you a message?'

‘Deano, who is it?' Shona's sleepy voice mumbled from the bedroom. He secretly hated her calling him Deano. Dean went to her, bundled beneath the blankets. The light bulb set Shona squinting.

‘It's Bridie. Her mum's not home.'

‘I'll make up a bed for her.'

Shona did not move, other than to raise her head a little.

‘No. It's all right, she's coming back. I'll go and wait with her.'

‘Good. Thanks, Deano.'

Shona let her head fall back on the pillow. Dean contemplated leaving the light on. His secret hates were starting to outnumber his public ones.

Outside, the night was freezing. Fog huffed from their mouths as if they were smoking. The dog did not want to come with them. After a few steps, Dean began to feel decidedly uncomfortable being outside at this time of night in his dressing gown. Wind whipped at his ankles, making his pyjama pants flap like flags. In the trees possums worried him.

‘Are you sure you're not cold, Bridie? I am.'

‘I never get cold.'

The kid was perfectly calm and self-contained. She strolled along at his side. Dean told her that she had done the right thing coming to get help instead of sitting at home by herself.

She agreed.

‘When did you last see your mum?'

‘This morning.'

‘How do you know she'll be back in an hour?'

‘She always comes back.'

He recalled seeing the mother with her dreadlocks walking into town. She never drove. No, it could not rightly be called walking; Dean thought the term must be trucking. Perhaps wandering was best, aimlessly or purposefully, it didn't matter, Dean identified with it. Yet, he freely admitted, he didn't know the woman from a bar of soap.

Bridie lived six or seven houses down the street, but there were no other local kids, so it was natural that she should have picked out Grace's house—the animal magnetism of kids. Good fences, good neighbours. Her house was wide open with every light ablaze. The TV deafening. Dean wanted to call out, but in the end just followed her in. Screen door a-clatter behind him. The late news repeated grisly footage of the latest war. Dean would never have let his daughter sit up and watch the war footage, especially so late at night. The house looked like a bomb had hit it. His first thought was that perhaps it had been burgled, then he realised that it was nothing more than an ordinary, domestic mess. The sort of mess he recognised as dormant in himself and had, over the years, successfully repressed. Yes. He certainly did not want to judge anyone else, touch wood, on the strength of their messes.

‘Have you had any dinner?' He yawned.

‘I et some chips.'

They wandered about the house. He was trying not to pry, but now that he was here, by gum he may as well be curious. He wasn't quite sure what he was looking for that would render his own life so uninteresting by comparison. A part of him, the histrionic part, even wondered if the mother might be dead in a bedroom. But no, no, no. The sink was full of filthy dishes. The air smelled of stale smoke. He spied old roaches in an ash tray, crumbs of dope on the table top, empty chip packets scattered about the television. Those were the days. The calendar on the fridge had not a day circled on it. This was as close to anarchy as he could imagine.

‘So you've been waiting here by yourself since you got home from school?'

‘Yep.'

‘Where's she gone, your mum?'

‘Out to a party. She works very hard and needs to take time out to relax.'

‘Did she tell you to say that?' (May as well be presumptuous, he thought, I'm the adult here.)

‘No. It's true.'

‘Does your mum have a phone?'

‘She didn't pay the bill.'

‘Hmm… so you don't exactly know if she'll be home in an hour or not.'

‘I think she will. She always comes home.'

On the news the body count was updated. Pie charts and bar graphs described the state of the conflict. Dean knew they couldn't stay here. Imagine if the mother came back to find a strange man in his pyjamas in her house with her daughter. Besides, he was now witness to her, not to put too fine a point on it, evident squalor. Where would he sit? It was Shona who had met the mother, offered her a lift once or twice, had commented on her dreadlocks. In his heart, Dean had nothing whatsoever against dreadlocks.

‘What happened to your pet rat?' he asked.

‘It ran under the couch and all the other rats that live there killed it.'

Dean looked at the couch. It had an aura, he thought, of many things. He moved away from it. Apart from some newspapers, it was strewn with clothes, clean or dirty he could not tell. Did they move? An open packet of ear-buds lay spilled on the floor. The shade about the light was full of dried moths. He made a sudden, executive decision to return to his own home with Bridie and make up a bed for her on the lounge. (Trust Shona to be right about that, too.)

He left a note on the kitchen bench, first clearing a corner so the note would not be lost in the general clutter. He wrote his phone number, then scribbled it out, remembering that Bridie's phone had been cut off. Then he considered that the mother (he didn't even know her name!) might think he did not want her to contact him, so he wrote another note, this time leaving his phone number intact. He was trying to do the right thing here. It was the bloody mother who was off gallivanting about town, after all. He did not turn off the lights.

After thinking about it for a few steps, Dean went back and retrieved the note, pinning it eventually to the outside of the door where it couldn't be missed. Street lights glowed wanly through the fog. The last train hooted. It was a forlorn sound he never grew tired of. One or two darkened dogs a-yap behind fences. Their paws scratching the gravel. The sound of possums. Back at Dean's house, Bridie said she was hungry. Dean yawned. The kid didn't look sleepy at all. He made her some cheese and pickles on toast, which she proceeded to wolf down. He was now so tired himself that he wondered if he should just go to bed and let her have the run of the place; but all he really knew of Bridie was that she was supposedly feral. Something to that effect. Some gossip. Trust did not come into it. Seemed rather placid, really, kinda sweet, if that word was allowed anymore. Grace hadn't wanted to play with her much since the business of the rat. They had a shared interest in puddles, but that was as far as it went. Grace said Bridie was a little bit weird.

* * *

They were sitting on the floor playing dominoes. The only sound was the soft click of the tiles. It was after two o'clock. Dean wondered if he should take tomorrow—no, it was now today—off but what sort of excuse was that, to sit up with a feral kid till her mum came home? Why didn't she just go to sleep? Dean's jaw stretched as he yawned again.

Eventually there was a knock at the door. Not even the dog moved.

‘Who is it?'

‘Father Christmas,' a voice growled.

Father Christmas? What the—? I don't have time for these—Dean was angry. He threw open the door. A man stepped into the light. He was wearing a leather jacket. Dean took a step backwards at the sight of it.

‘Who the—?'

A map suddenly appeared in his mind, on it were the locations of the nearest blunt instruments. The knives. Just in case.

‘Where's Bridie?' said the man through an odour of alcohol.

For a moment Dean lost it.‘Who the fuck are you?'

‘Where's the kid?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

Glancing at Dean's pyjamas, the man's aggression abated with a hiss.

‘Sorry… Shit… Look, sorry mate. It's been a shit of a night. All there is is this note saying you've taken the kid.'

‘That's right. She's here.'

‘Well, I've come to fetch her home.'

‘Well, I repeat. Who the fuck are you?'

Dean had had time to analyse his feelings about the leather jacket and had decided that it was only a leather jacket after all.

‘I'm Paul.'

‘Well piss off, Paul…Where's the mother?'

‘Mate, look, we've been at the pub, she's drunk as a skunk. Too embarrassed to show her face.'

Paul was now trying as best he could to relay some of this embarrassment. From the far end of the room Bridie called, ‘Is that Mum?'

‘It's a man called Paul,' said Dean. ‘Do you know him?'

‘Hi, Paul,' she called again.

Paul poked his head around the door and smiled at Bridie. The girl picked herself up and walked past Dean out into the night as if the whole thing had been neatly arranged. Parental pick-up after handy child minding. Thanks so much. Owe you one. Toodles. Dean was not sure if he should let the child go, but he could hardly snatch at her.

‘Bridie, do you know this man?'

‘He's Paul.'

‘Mate,' said Paul, ‘it's cool. I'm the boyfriend. Look, we're sorry about the hassle. Her mum's too upset. Domestics. We thought it was a kidnap. She asked me to come. I'll get her to come around tomorrow to explain. Thanks for looking after her.'

After this speech, Dean watched them climb the steps and fade into the shadows. The street lights looked odd at this time of night. Then he went to bed. His side of the mattress was stone cold.

In the morning he felt as though the—what was it?—incident—had not happened at all. He was only reminded of it when Grace asked over breakfast, ‘Have you been playing with my dominoes again?'

When he packed them away he found one of the tiles was missing.

* * *

The mother did not come around to explain anything. In fact, Dean suspected that apart from some general, abstract humiliation, she had no recollection of her part in the evening either. Those were the days. Shona seemed to have no idea what had occurred during the previous night, snoring away in her bliss, only that Deano was in a grumpy mood again. He felt this was an unjust imputation and stewed quietly in his resentment. There was a certain tension about breakfast. Then he saw that he should not, as he would otherwise normally be accused of, be thinking solely about himself. So he thought about Bridie. The poor brat had probably been left on her own more times than she'd had hot dinners and who had sat up with her? Me, me, me. He wondered, is this the sort of case he should report to DOCS, or whatever the bloody authorities called themselves? Child negligence? God forbid Dean should be a witness to anything. And that bloke Paul certainly didn't fill him with confidence. And what would he tell them? That he wandered about the moonlit streets in his pyjamas with the girl shivering at his side?

No, not shivering, she'd said she wasn't cold…

Hmm.

A likely story.

* * *

The first Dean knew of it, Grace had informed him that Bridie, whom she'd never got on with anyway, was moving. Moving? How could such people afford to pack up and move? He knew the answer to that one. How quickly desperation could drive you.

They were having a garage sale. Getting rid of some of their stuff.

After some interrogation, Grace admitted she had never heard Bridie speak of a man called Paul, but then the only thing they'd ever had in common was an interest in puddles. They weren't friends. Didn't he understand that?

So, leashing the dog, wrapping themselves in coats, they took a walk, he and Shona. A nice, sunny afternoon. This could well be the end of everything, he thought. Who cared anymore about desperation? It seemed almost a normal state of being. Shona restrained the dog with both hands. All the furniture at Bridie's house was lumped higgledy-piggledy over the side of the road, down the driveway, leaning into bushes. There wasn't a great deal. Dean wondered if maybe this fellow Paul had gone berserk and thrown everything out onto the road. But no—there was Bridie, amidst boxes, behind a sign proclaiming
4 Sal
. Grace dawdled on, following a drain, as was her right.

‘Hello, Bridie,' Dean said, ‘are you moving?'

‘Yep,' said Bridie, looking at her shoe.

‘How is your mum?'