Silver Bay Page 16

  I ran longer and harder than I generally do, shedding layers of clothing as I went, but did not feel noticeably more exhausted. I needed the physical effort, the time to think. As I ran along the dirt track that split the pavement from the beach, I pictured the new resort, perhaps some low-cost housing to accommodate the staff. Australia, I had discovered, had the same problem as England with housing affordability. Perhaps we could offer some watersports-related shops and cafes. Maybe, if the returns were great enough, a medical centre. As I headed back, I tried not to look at the Silver Bay Hotel. It the development were to go ahead it would be at best overshadowed, at worst demolished.

  Twice, people whose faces I now recognised - dog-walkers, fishermen - lifted a hand in greeting, and as I waved back, I wondered what they would think of my plans. To them I was not the English stranger, the fish out of water, the proposed fiance, the stickybeak, the thief of other men's women. As I ran through a list of urgent phone calls I had to make - to Dennis, to the financial department, to Mr Reilly to arrange another meeting - I thought again about those waving people and asked myself, Who the hell are they waving at?

  Somewhere along the Silver Bay coast road I had had a revelation. For months I had been obsessed with this development, had thought about it only in terms of what it meant to my career and my company. Now I had been confronted with the potential cost. And I saw that my first concerns were no longer money and ambition, but something infinitely more difficult: successful compromise. I wanted Kathleen and Liza to be as happy with this outcome as the flint-eyed venture capitalists. I wanted the whales and dolphins to continue their lives, unaffected by it. Or, at least, as unaffected by it as any creature can be when it lives in close proximity to man. I hadn't worked it out yet, but with my head full of conservation areas and commemorative museums I felt I might at last be grasping towards something.

  I returned at eight thirty, wet with sweat, brain numbed with effort, half hoping I could fetch myself breakfast without bumping into anyone. I had timed my return, I am ashamed to say, to coincide with Liza and Hannah's school run and it was my best chance of finding an empty house.

  But Kathleen was still sitting at the kitchen table, her own breakfast long finished, her grey hair tied back and a dark blue sweater announcing the arrival of winter. She had set me a place, with coffee and cereal. Another place setting sat ostentatiously beside it. 'Kept that one quiet,' she observed, from behind her newspaper, as I sat down.

  How could I tell her it was as if I had forgotten?

  Twelve

  Greg

  You'd never have noticed the scar on Liza McCullen's face if you hadn't been right up close to her, never run your hand down her cheek and pushed her hair behind her ear. It was pretty faded now - a good few years old, I reckoned - about an inch and a half of slightly raised pearl-white skin, a little jaggedy as if she'd never had it fixed up properly when she hurt herself. Half the time she wore her old baseball cap so that that part of her face was always in shadow. When the hat was off, her hair was always in strands round her face, whipped by the wind out of her ponytail. When she laughed, you could barely notice it because of the creases the sea and the sun had blown into the corners of her eyes.

  But I saw it. And even without the scar you'd have known there was something a bit off-key about Liza.

  The first time I met her she was like a ghost. This may sound a bit fancy, but I swear that you could almost see through her. She was like sea mist, like she wanted to vaporise into air. 'This is my niece,' said Kathleen, as we all waited for our beer one afternoon - like, that was all that would be said about the arrival of someone most of us had never even heard existed. 'And this is her daughter, Hannah. From England. They'll be staying.'

  I said g'day - a couple of the other whalechasers echoed me - and Liza nodded this weird hello, not looking anyone in the eye. She was about as done in by jet-lag as it's possible to be. I'd seen the kid a couple of days before, hanging on to Kathleen's hand, and I'd guessed she belonged to one of the guests. It was a bit of a shock to discover not just that she was Kathleen's family but that someone else had been there all along. I checked her out a little (she was blonde and leggy - just my type) but there was nothing much to her then. She was pale with big old dark circles round her eyes and her hair hanging in curtains round her face. I was more curious than, you know, interested.

  But Hannah - I loved Hannah the moment I saw her, and I'm pretty sure she liked me too. She stood there, tucked behind Kathleen, with those big brown eyes as wide as a possum's, and she looked like if anyone said boo! to her she'd fall over and die of fright. So I knelt right down - she was a tiny kid then - and I said, 'G'day, Hannah. Did your auntie Kathleen tell you what's right outside your room?'

  Kathleen looked sharp at me, like I was about to say the bogeyman or something. I ignored her, and carried on: 'Dolphins. In the water out there in the bay. Smartest, most playful creatures you can imagine. If you look hard enough out of your window, I betcha you'll see them. And you know what? They're that smart they'll probably stick a nose up to check you out too.'

  'The bay's full of them,' said Kathleen.

  'You ever seen a dolphin up close?'

  She shook her little head. But I had her attention.

  'Beautiful they are. They play with us when we take the boats out. Jump around, swim underneath. Just as clever as you or me. Nosy, but. They'll come and see what we're doing. There's pods of them that have lived in this bay thirty, forty years. Isn't that right, Kathleen?'

  The old lady nodded.

  'If you want, I'll take you out to see them,' I said.

  'No,' came a voice.

  I stood up. Kathleen's niece had come to life.

  'No,' she said, her jaw set tight. 'She can't go out on the water.'

  'I'm safe as houses,' I said. 'You ask Kathleen. Been doing dolphin tours for nearly fifteen years. Hell - me and the Mobys are the longest-running operators here, next to Kathleen. And the kids always wear lifejackets. You tell her, Kathleen.'

  But Kathleen didn't seem quite like herself. 'Everyone needs a little time to settle in. Then we'll think about nice things for Hannah to do. There's no rush.'

  There was a weird silence. Liza was staring at me, as if daring me to suggest any other trips. It was as if I'd suggested doing something terrible to the little girl. Kathleen smiled at me, like an apology. She seemed about as out of her depth as I'd ever seen her.

  I'm a simple bloke, not the kind to dig my way into a mess. I decided to make it an early night with the missus. That, of course, was in the days before she was out giving it up to her keep-fit instructor.

  'Good to meet you, Hannah. You keep an eye out for those dolphins, now,' I said to her, tipping my cap, and she gave me a little smile that wiped out everything else around me. Liza McCullen already seemed to have forgotten I was there.

  'Hey, Greggy. You seen this?'

  I was sitting in MacIver's Seafood Bar and Grill, a five-minute walk up the path from Whale Jetty, trying to shift my sore head with a pie and a coffee. I figured it might work as a cross between breakfast, which I had missed, and lunch, which I rarely ate. It had hardly been worth going home; I had left the bar after a lock-in with Del, the owner, some time after two that morning, and virtually retraced my footsteps there as soon as I could get myself out of the shower.

  The bar was quiet, the sun still casting long shadows over the bay, the stiff winter breeze keeping what remained of the tourists away from the front, so he walked over and sat down, shoving the newspaper towards me across the table.

  'What?' I was having trouble focusing.

  'The front page. About this big old development in Silver Bay.'

  'What are you talking about?' I squinted, pulled the paper towards me and scanned the front-page story under the headline 'Major Tourist Boost For Town'. It said that a multi-million dollar development had been approved for the land along the bay from Kathleen's. A major international corporation had got planning per
mission for the development after an unprecedented series of offers to safeguard the nature of the town and the sea life around it.

  Vallance Equity, the financiers behind the plan, have put forward a proposal that includes a new Museum of Whales to raise awareness of Port Stephens's sea creatures among tourists, whale-friendly watersports, with all instruction including whale safeguards, and a series of add-on benefits, including funding for a new library and a school bus for Silver Bay Elementary School.

  'We're hoping that this is just the beginning of a fruitful partnership with the local community,' said Dennis Beaker of Beaker Holdings, one of the British-based developers. 'We want to take the relationship further to provide a benchmark for responsible building in the area.'

  Mayor of Silver Bay Don Brown said: 'We deliberated long and hard about the appropriateness of this development. But after a lengthy planning process we are happy to welcome both the employment and infrastructure benefits that the new hotel complex will bring. But most of all we welcome the companies' responsible and thoughtful attitude towards our waters.'

  '"And the sizeable back-hander I've got stuffed in my back pocket,"' mocked Del. 'Kathleen know about this?'

  'Dunno, mate. I've - I've not been down there for a few days.'

  'Well,' said Del, 'I guess she'll know now.' He slung his tea-towel over his shoulder and waddled back towards the grill, where a burger was sending sparks up into the extractor fan.

  '"Whale-friendly watersports"?' I said. 'What the Sam Hill are "whale-friendly watersports"?'

  'Perhaps they're going to teach them synchronised swimming,' Del chuckled, 'or train them to pull waterskiers.'

  My brain had started to clear. 'This is a bloody disaster,' I said, reading on. 'They've bought up the old Bullen place and the water round it.'

  Del said nothing, flipping his burgers. I kept reading. 'We'll need permission to get the boats out next. I can't believe what I'm seeing.'

  'Greg, you can't say the town doesn't need the business.'

  'You reckon?' I suddenly saw the Bar and Grill through the eyes of a visitor. The linoleum had been unchanged for the fifteen years I had lived in Silver Bay, the tables and chairs more comfortable than stylish. But that was how we liked it. How I liked it.

  Later I walked down to the ticket booth. Leonie, a student, was manning it for the winter. You could usually find some dolphin-mad teenager to work there for a pittance. 'You've got four this afternoon,' she said, waving a docket, 'a family of six for Wednesday morning, and a two for Friday, but I've told them I'll have to confirm that because the forecast's not so good.'

  I nodded, barely seeing her.

  'Oh, Greg,' she said, 'Liza's coming up this arvo. She wants to talk to you and all the other guys about this development thing. I think she's a bit worried.'

  'She's not the only one,' I said. I lit a tab and went to sit in my truck.

  The first time Liza McCullen and I went to bed she was so drunk that, to this day, I'm not sure that she remembered afterwards what we'd done at all. It was about a year after she'd got here. She'd warmed up a bit - less a tropical warmth than a kind of Arctic thaw, I always say - but she was still pretty cool with everyone. Not a great one for conversation. She'd started going out with Kathleen on Ishmael. Kathleen was showing her the ropes while the little one was at school, and the more time she spent on the water the happier she got. I made a few jokes about her being competition and all, but Kathleen gave me the eye until I made some Shark Lady crack. Then she'd ask me why I couldn't go and spend my measly dollars in some other bar. I think she was joking.

  By then Liza would talk to me a bit. She'd sit out some nights with me and the other whalechasers - Ned Durrikin and that French girl with the moustache were running Moby Two - and chat a little - 'Hi', 'Yes', or 'Thank you' - it was like getting blood out of a stone.

  I used to crack jokes at her all the time. By then she'd kind of got to me - I like to make a girl laugh - it bugged me that some nights I could barely raise a smile. I'd been working on her so hard that, if I'm truthful, it was probably about that time that Suzanne got fed up. I'd stay all night outside Kathleen's, sinking a few, and before you knew it I'd be home half cut and Suzanne would be sitting there with a face like a smacked arse, the dinner so charred you could have drawn pictures with it.

  But that night you could tell something was different. Liza hadn't come out, and Kathleen was tight-lipped and said she was staying in the house. So I went in, and sat down where I found her in the kitchen. I didn't say anything about the fact that she was checking out some photograph because when I came in she shoved it into her jacket pocket, like she didn't want anyone to see, and her eyes were all red, like she'd been crying. For once in my life I managed to keep my big gob shut because I had a feeling like something was different and, if I was careful, it might work to my advantage.

  Then, after she'd sat there for a few minutes, and I'd tried not to shift about on my chair (I've hated sitting still since I was a nipper), she looked up at me, her big eyes so sad they made even me want to weep, and said, 'Greg, will you help me get drunk? I mean, really drunk?'

  'Well, now,' I said. I slapped my knees. 'No man more qualified in the whole of Silver Bay.' Without a word to Kathleen, we walked down the track, got into my truck and drove to Del's, where she sat and knocked back Jim Beam like it was going out of fashion.

  We left after the bar shut, and by this stage she was so far gone she could barely stand. She was not a silly drunk, like Suzanne, who would sing and get fresh, which, I'd tell her, just wasn't pretty in a woman, or even an angry drunk. She acted like whatever was getting to her was eating at her from the inside.

  'Not drunk enough,' she mumbled, as I shoved her into the truck. 'Need some more drink.'

  'The bars are shut now,' I said. 'I don't think there's one open this side of Newcastle.' I'd had a few myself, but there's something about watching someone who's really out to sink them that puts you off getting too drunk.

  'Kathleen's,' she said. 'We'll go back and drink at Kathleen's.'

  I didn't imagine the old Shark Lady would be too happy at the thought of us raiding her bar in the small hours but, hell, it wasn't my decision.

  It was still hot enough that your clothes stuck to you and we sat outside with our beer. In the moonlight I could see the sweat glistening on her skin. Everything felt odd that night, like the atmosphere was charged, like anything could happen. It was the kind of night where you get a sudden storm at sea. I listened to the waves breaking on the beach, and the crickets, and tried not to think about the girl next to me, swigging hard at her beer. I remember that at some point we had taken our shoes off, and it was someone's idea to go paddling. I remember her laughing so hysterically that I couldn't be sure if she was actually crying. And then, as she lost her balance under the jetty, she kind of fell against me and I still remember the taste of her lips as she reached for mine - Jim Beam and desperation, I told myself. Not a pretty mix.

  Not that that stopped me.

  The second time was about six months later. Suzanne and I had split up for a while, and she was staying with her sister in Newcastle. Liza had got even more drunk and I'd had to hold back her hair while she was sick before she was together enough to come back in the truck. Didn't stop her finishing a bottle of Mr Gaines's finest shiraz at mine. She was a strange one, though - stone-cold sober every night of the week, but now and then it was as if she'd decided to knock herself out cold. That night I woke up in the small hours to find her weeping in bed beside me. She had her back to me, her shoulders were shaking and her hands over her face.

  'Did I hurt you?' I was half groggy with sleep. You don't like to find a girl weeping after you've given her one, you know what I mean? 'Liza? What's the matter, love?'

  Then, as I touched her shoulder, I realised she was asleep. It freaked me out a little, so I called to her, then shook her.

  'What?' she said. And then, as she looked round the room, 'Oh, God, where am I?'
>
  'You were crying,' I said, 'in your sleep. I thought . . . I thought it was me.'

  She was already out of bed, reaching for her jeans. Honest, if I hadn't been so drunk myself it would have been insulting. 'Hey, hey, hold your horses. You don't have to go anywhere. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.' I saw the white flash of her brassiere as she hooked it over her arms.

  'It's nothing to do with you. Greg, I'm sorry, I've got to go.'

  She was like a man. She was like me when I used to go out on the lash, before I met Suzanne, and wake up with someone I'd have gnawed my arm off to get away from.

  Ten minutes after she'd left I realised she didn't have her car. But by the time I got downstairs she was long gone. I reckoned she must have run half-way down the coast road to get home. She would do that, like she had no fear. ('Why should she?' said Kathleen, cryptically, when I asked. 'The worst has already happened.')

  The next day, when I sat down beside her on the bench, she behaved like nothing had gone on.

  Four more times she had done this to me. Not once had we been together when she was sober. If I was less of a looker I reckon I'd have been a bit worried.

  I guess I should have got pissed off, but you couldn't with Liza. There was something about her. She was not like anyone else I knew.

  When she finally told me about the bub, she was sober. And she told me not to say a word. She wouldn't answer questions. Didn't even tell me how the little one died. She just told me because I'd got mad and asked her point-blank why the hell she had to get so drunk to go to bed with me.

  'I don't get drunk to go to bed with you,' she said. 'I get drunk to forget. Going to bed with you is a by-product of that.' As straight as you like, as if none of it would hurt my feelings. 'And don't go asking Hannah about it.' She looked like she regretted telling me already, which was a bit much. 'I don't want you stirring things up. She doesn't need reminding.'