Deeper Water (19 page)

Standing there, I felt like a child. Baby-girl again. And in a minute he disappeared, lost in the darkness of those paddocks, a shifting shape against the night.

I walked for a bit, away from the shack, disorientated and shivery. It was hard to comprehend that all the feeling I’d stored within—the heat, the longing—could lead to those few minutes with Billy. It seemed a violation somehow, though I’d brought it on myself. I wandered in the dark, empty and aimless, my belly churning and raw. Inside, I was all commotion, but on the outside I felt numb. Stopping a second, I touched my fingers to my face, tracing its familiar contours, pinching the skin on my cheeks until the numbness receded. Then I lay down on the ground. The grass was prickly beneath my back, stars bright, sky black and vast. The smell of earth and growth and darkness was all around me. And despite what I’d done with Billy, I closed my eyes and thought of the stranger.

In that place behind my eyes all sorts of things were possible. Images could rise and fall, spaces could fill and empty. Words could trail across the sky. I could call him to me and he would come. I could bid him to stand naked and he would heed me. I could press my tongue to the hollow of his throat and feel the shudder of his body against mine. Behind my eyes he was not retreating. He was upright and fearless, and he didn’t look away. I imagined him holding up his hands in surrender, his pale body gleaming in the night. And in that secret place, I wasn’t stymied by my lacks. I could reach out for him and my hand would find his touch. He would speak words to me, soft and low, and I would laugh in the face of time and all those who had gone before and failed.

When my eyes opened, my body was alive. The ants had found me even in the dark. I could feel their light tread upon my skin, see the flicker of their movement. I thought of Anja and the kiss. It played on me uneasily, an anomaly, tricky to define. In another time and space I might have reached down and brushed the ants away, but on that night I welcomed them, blending into the dark. Spreading my arms wide, I surrendered to the ground beneath me, to its accommodating touch. And suddenly I wished I was naked, that I could feel each blade of grass—that the bristly edges of things would relieve my need.

Quickly, I pulled my singlet free, slipped my skirt off. Turning over I felt the roughness of the paddock on my breast, against my pelvis, my belly, my knees. I pushed down against it, willing the earth to conform to the curves of my body. Stretching myself out to feel every undulation. My hands slid out into the grass, feeling the strands between my fingers. My nakedness pressed into that midnight paddock. I lay face down, breathing against the earth, and I conjured him again behind my eyes.

He was beneath me and I could surge hard against his form. It didn’t matter the force with which I pressed, or the weight of me, he took it all and then some. And when I opened my eyes, his were right there in front of me, blue and bright and clean as the day we met. I had never been absorbed by his mouth, it wasn’t lush and soft like mine, but behind my eyes I was drawn to it, and slid my cheek against his lips.

Scraping there against the grass, I felt the tide of my body swell. Pulling to some external point, humming with need. My nipples grew hard against the blades, and I raised myself so I could move my breasts against the green tips. Swaying there a while, I savoured the touch.

I turned over, naked and open, and sat up a little to look down on my form. In the dim moonlight I was lovely, no stains or marks or defects, though the imprint of the grass pressed against my knees. I gently rubbed them. And then, without another thought, I finally touched myself, wet and mysterious in the dark. It was sore down there, tender, and I steered clear of where he’d been inside me. I thought of the water hole, and all the pockets and crevices of the creek bank. I imagined the swell of the flooding creeks, the way the water rose to fill spaces that were invisible before the rain. All those secret hollows. I touched myself and in my mind the velvet of the water ran all around me.

In an instant the darkness of the sky was illuminated by a lone strike, and I knew with certainty that it would storm. The clouds would roll in and the clear, starry night would turn wild. I waited a few moments, my fingers stilled, and then it came. A strike of lightning and the rumbling echo of thunder. My fingers sought that wet place. I watched the sky and the lingering image of him dispersed into the air, though my body sat hungry and heavy with pleasure, my breathing short and light. I had found my rhythm. A drop landed on my cheek, then my belly, and I smelled that deep lushness that comes just before the rain.

My body quivered with readiness, my breathing harsh. All at once the rain crashed around me, an avalanche of sound. I opened my mouth to receive the drops, the water rushing across my face in lines. I felt it slide against my body, smooth and slippery, and then it was upon me—the shuddering spasm of ending. I heard myself moan. Sitting in the rain, quenched and dripping, I threw back my head and laughed.

That night I slept like I hadn’t in years. Tucked up and naked under my doona, my pile of wet clothes hidden in the corner, I didn’t even think about my lost undies, not once. But when I woke up it was the first thing that popped into my mind, and I hoped they weren’t in some obvious place turning starchy in the sunshine. Though on reflection, the shack was a lost kind of place, and I couldn’t imagine who might pass by it to see.

The storm was over, come and gone fast in the night, and I lay there for a few minutes, just enjoying the feel of my skin on the sheets. Lifting the doona, I peered at myself, and in the cool morning light I seemed unchanged from yesterday, but I knew I wasn’t. My body, so familiar, had become new. I sniffed at my arm and it smelled like the rain, clean but with a touch of the earth. I rubbed the back of my hand across my face, and I don’t know why but I touched it with my tongue. It didn’t taste like anything much and, truth be told, I was a little disappointed.

Even though it was Billy who’d had me at the shack, I didn’t think about him. I didn’t even think of the stranger. I just lay under those covers and thought about me, and all the ways I could have my own pleasure. I thought of the coolness of the creek water on my skin, how when I plunged down fast and burst back out, my whole body tingled, and if I sat in the sunshine afterwards the goosebumps on my arms and legs would spread out, hairs standing on end. Those dots would sweep from my extremities in towards my core, and I could watch them stretch up my thighs in a wave until the gentle kiss of the sun would smooth them all away.

I thought about the places in the creek where the ochre rocks had been ground down to pebbles, where it was soft and pliant under my feet, and how, if I sat in the shallows, the pebbly soil would shape itself to my form, accommodating me like the palm of a giant hand.

And I was held.

I thought about Anja’s trees, how they seemed to reach out their branches to her, and when I was with her, to me too. How if we stretched our arms out and touched them, then maybe as the branches overlapped in the canopy, we’d be touching them all. I wondered if Anja would come back inside. If she would ever slip into my bed in the night like she had in the past, but most of all, I wondered whether, if she did, I would tell her these things about my body in those secret waking moments. I’d thought we’d shared everything, but now I knew we’d only shared what it was we’d known about ourselves, and all those deep-down unknown things—just as startling, just as true—we’d shielded each other from, as we’d shielded ourselves.

The day went by in a haze, and if Mum noticed anything she wasn’t saying. It started off sunny, but by the afternoon the sky looked grey. Yet the rain had changed its meaning for me and I was looking out for those first fat drops, filled to the brim with longing. Images of Hamish still flashed inside my mind, but I pushed them away. I concentrated on what I’d learned of Billy—the soft undersides of his wrists, the scrape of his beard against my cheek. I was waiting for the night ’cause I knew he’d come again. I knew how we’d done it wasn’t good, the muffled fumbling, his breath against my neck, but I was hopeful. When I pictured the shack, stowed full of my desires, it was in a rainstorm, the pounding rhythm of the rain hard against the busted-up tin roof, and my secrets washing away, washing down the hillsides in rivulets. I wondered where we would go, Billy and I, and I wondered whether his hands could become like the water in the creek, finding my invisible places.

By lunch time my body was humming, but I was feeling anxious too. Anxious about Anja and how she was holding up. I hadn’t seen her since Old Dog died. Seven days at least. A week was the longest we’d ever been apart. Even when she went to school, we’d always seen each other in the afternoons.

I took a walk up to the door house, careful to keep out of sight. I’d tied up the pup beforehand, not wanting her to give me away. I was worried about Anja’s dad, worried about what had gone down. The closer I got, the more uneasy I became. Jumping at shadows and the rustling of leaves. When I saw the house I stayed in the cover of the trees for a minute, listening, but I couldn’t hear a thing. There was no sign of life at all. Hesitantly, I made the bird sound, our secret call, and I half expected to see Anja’s form shuffle out from somewhere and come towards me but there was nothing. Not the slightest movement from within.

After a while I crept closer, poised for flight if Anja’s dad should rear up out of nowhere, but he didn’t. In the end I inched forward and peered in one of the windows. Inside, the house was in disarray, broken plates, bits of food, clothes everywhere. No sign of Jim. I figured he must have taken off to get supplies. There was only so long he could go without a drink.

From when she was real little, Anja had kept that house in order—she said it made her feel like the insides of her brain were less crumbly. Judging by the mess, I don’t think she’d been there for a while. I snuck away and headed further up the hill to see if she was at the hut, but it was deserted like the house. There was a sleeping bag on the floor, and a make-up bag on top of the piano, so I figured she’d been using it as a base. I looked around for a piece of paper—or something—to leave her a note on, but I couldn’t find a thing. In the end I got a stick to scratch a message in the dirt of the doorway. I didn’t know what to say, what could possibly cover the appropriate ground, so I settled for—
Anja, I miss you.
Thought it was best to keep to the one thing I knew. Then I hobbled back down the hill, staying in the shadows of the trees and thinking of how to go about bringing Anja back. I fretted about it all afternoon, but as dusk came, and the dogs started up their howling and Blossom whimpered and snuffled around my feet, the only thoughts I had were of Hamish and Billy and how all the secrets I’d stored in the shack had finally broken free.

I was wide awake when he tapped on my window, already dressed and ready to go. His tap was quiet and I slipped out noiselessly so the dog didn’t even stir. Together we drifted across the grass till we were out of earshot.

‘You came,’ I whispered, once we were far enough away.

He looked at the ground and nodded. I’d left his torch behind in my room ’cause I rarely used one, even on the darkest night. I seemed to know my way round in the dark, like there was a map in my brain of the lie of the land, and my body followed it instinctively. I wondered if Billy was the same.

‘I forgot your torch,’ I added. ‘Sorry.’

He flicked a switch with his thumb, lighting up a patch of grass, but looking up at my face. ‘Got another one,’ he said, and I supposed then that he didn’t know my place well enough to have the map.

‘Alright,’ I said, but even I wasn’t really sure what I meant.

The torchlight on the grass was stark, washing out the colour, and even though I could see him better I wished he’d turn it off. There was something in the way he was looking at me, something weighted and full. I wondered again what he saw in me, what vision he held behind his eyes.

‘You want to?’ He pointed the torch out towards the paddock, towards the shack and what had gone before.

I hesitated a second ’cause I wanted it to be different.

‘Let’s go somewhere else,’ I said, and I stepped out of the torchlight into the darkness, wondering where my feet might carry me.

‘Where?’ he asked but he stepped along behind me.

I shrugged in the blackness and kept moving forward, the grass flattening beneath my feet.

‘Turn off the light.’

He flicked the switch and blackness engulfed us. I could hear Billy’s tread behind me, not too close but not too far. I stopped a second, getting my bearings, and he stopped a second too.

‘You listening?’ I asked. ‘You listening for my steps?’

He was still, not making a sound, holding his breath, and I knew that was his answer.

I walked downhill, slowly across the paddocks towards the creek, Billy at my heels. The moon was slender, the stars dimmed by clouds, but after a while my eyes adjusted and I could see the silhouettes of the trees in the distance, the soft undulating shape of the land. In any case, I didn’t need my eyes—I could hear the lilting tinkle of the creek, and that was where I was headed.

Night swimming was a particular kind of pleasure. Our summers were so agreeably warm that it was perfectly lovely to swim in the night if you could brave the unknown blackness of the water. In the day, the creek shimmered with sunshine and you could see through the glassy water all the way to the bottom. The world you were moving through was known, the perimeters visible. But at night there was none of that, you could vaguely make out the lines of the waterway but nothing much else. The water seemed mysterious, bottomless even, and everything had to be sensed. It was easy to get caught up thinking of critters—eels, catfish and the like, even things as weird as bunyips, or some other kind of creatures of the deep.

Anja and I sometimes came down here for a lark. After the sun had set. It was a part of the creek we didn’t normally swim in, surrounded by trees, less exposed. We’d head down at night and scare ourselves silly. So maybe there was some part of me that was testing Billy, seeing how he’d hold up.

When we got to the water, Billy stepped up silently beside me. I looked across at the shadow of him and then I dipped a toe in. It was fresh and cool and the thought of stripping down and wading in got my heart banging away in my chest. Billy bent down to take his boots off. The moment was closing in around me. I pulled my singlet over my head, stepped free of my skirt and undies and hung them carefully over a baby-sized palm tree that had grown up on the creek bank. I was naked there beside him then, but I didn’t wait to see if he’d noticed.

The rocks in the shallows were rounded and soft, but with my wonky foot, one wrong step and I’d be over. Arse-up. The thought of such an inelegant entry made me giggle a little, and I heard Billy startle behind me at the sound.

‘You right?’ he asked.

I turned around and smiled at him, still stranded on the bank, but I knew he couldn’t see my face.

‘You coming?’ I asked, wading out further into the deep.

He hesitated a moment, watching me, then pulled off his shirt, yanking it with one hand at the back of his neck, like my brothers used to, and then in a flash his pants were gone too. I could see the outline of him against the hills, poised and ready, and I wondered if half the reason for my clattering heart was just fear. What did I know about Billy anyway? I swam further into the deep, out where I couldn’t stand.

‘You can’t dive,’ I called, treading water. ‘It’s shallow till you get out here.’

Billy felt his way forward, wary as a cat. I dipped my head under the water, feeling it rush over me, and then slipped back to the surface.

‘Marco.’ His voice was husky, unsure. He must have lost sight of me. I watched him for a second, the water slapping softly against his thighs.

‘Polo,’ I called out, finally, my voice high in my ears like a child’s.

He pressed forward, coming nearer, but disappearing further down into the darkness too.

‘Marco,’ he said again.

He was close now and I quietened, hovering there in the water.

‘Polo,’ I whispered. He stretched out his hands towards the sound of my voice, but couldn’t quite reach me.

‘Marco.’ This time his voice was soft. He knew he was near.

‘Polo.’ I said it under my breath, but he inched closer, until his fingers grazed my cheek. He cupped it softly in the dark.

‘I can’t see a fucking thing.’

I smiled beneath his fingers, turning towards the shape of his hand.

‘Come here,’ he said, simple as that. ‘Come on.’

I moved towards him in the water, slowly, and he slipped his hand from my cheek, down my neck and along my shoulder. I got so close my knees bumped into his beneath the water. He slid his hand down my back, holding me there before him.

‘You right?’ he asked. ‘You right, after last night?’

I nodded, but it was dark.

‘Mema?’

‘I’m right.’

I edged a little closer, felt my nipples brush his chest. The humming inside me was getting loud. I wondered if Billy could hear it.

‘Go under,’ I said, and reaching up I pushed my wet fingers into his dry curls. He had a bush of hair, Billy did. I suppose it’s no surprise that I liked it. I pushed his head down, gently but firmly, and he let me. Beneath the water he smoothed his hands along my sides, resting them on my hips, and slowly his head went under, all the way. I leaned my body into his face, my submerged breasts against his closed eyes, and the hum of me grew and grew. When he needed air, he came back up, and I let him, wrapping my arms around his neck. Even in the water he smelled of wood shavings. I suppose it’s no surprise that I liked that too. He moved one hand up along my side, smooth as a fish beneath the water, brushing his thumb against my nipple. I had to turn my face away. That’s when I started trembling.

‘You’re slippery as an eel,’ he said against my cheek.

‘You ever caught one with your bare hands?’ I’d never done it, but I knew some of the boys had.

‘Yep. They wriggle like hell and you’ve just got to hold on tight.’

He squeezed my breast in his palm and pulled me in towards him, slipping a hand along the small of my back.

‘They make good eating if you cook ’em up right.’

I didn’t like to think of a cooking eel. The image disturbed me. I could feel his erection against my belly and it made me want to get moving.

I slipped from his grasp and he let me. I swam towards the bank with the pebbly ochre rocks. Crawling a little way up, I turned over, feeling the pebbles sink beneath my weight like a sponge, the bottom half of my legs still in the water. I leaned back on my palms, shivering all over, but not from the cold.

‘Come on,’ I said, like he had to me. ‘Come here.’

I could hear the sluicing of the water as Billy moved towards me, the shadows of his shoulders visible in the moonlight. I wanted to reach down and touch myself like I had the night before, feel all that velvet wetness envelop my fingers like the waterhole itself, but I waited. He climbed out of the water and sat beside me. After a few seconds he leaned over and kissed my shoulder.