Desert Fish (19 page)

I heard her come out and sit down by the telephone table but she never made a call. I wondered again if what she'd said was true, if maybe she did know where he was and simply wasn't saying. I lay there in the dark for ages, trying to make a plan, but that baby kept moving, clouding my concentration. It wouldn't lie still for a second. It lolloped and squirmed as if I could never give it enough space.

There were weeks to go before it was over and there wasn't a thing I could do before then. He had left that money and I'd found him. He hadn't known that baby would be in me, and I hadn't expected Nora to come between us. Now, I just needed to be alone with him, with no-one else to complicate things.

I turned over on my side and stretched out a little and the baby grew still, but this calm filled me with such a sharp-edged frustration, such a strained and focused impatience, that if I could have reached in right then and there and pulled her out of me, I think I would.

Slowly the afternoon passes. Outside, the light remains sharp, the air in the car hot and still. I try to sit forward but I'm weak. Pete adjusts the seat for me and pours the dregs of the tea from the thermos. It's lukewarm and the bitterness is hard to stomach, even though I'm thirsty. I drink it slowly and Pete gives me a biscuit.

‘See?' I tell him. ‘I'm fine. It's just tiredness. Or shock, maybe. From the heat,' I add, so he won't think I want him to say something else.

He smiles a thin perfunctory smile that shows he's not reassured. He's got the map out and he opens it across the steering wheel, adjusting a lever so his seat slides back.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I was looking at this earlier while you were dozing.' From beneath the map he retrieves the magazine. ‘Gilly. When you were talking about bridges, well, it got me thinking.'

I nod.

‘I drove over one when I was coming home. It was about seven miles on.' He traces his finger along a line on the map.

My heart begins to race. ‘Yes,' I say, ‘but we're stopped here and the car won't go.'

Calmly, Pete continues. ‘Gilly, that magazine made me wonder. The pictures with the pools. I looked at it while you were dozing and I reckon it's worth the risk. I'm going to walk to that bridge. Then I could follow the creek bed for a mile or two. It's a long shot, but it might lead to some water.'

‘Seven miles!'

‘It might give us some time, Gilly.'

‘Can you remember if there was water there last time you passed it?'

‘It was dark then. It was before dawn and I didn't see.'

‘And it'll be dark by the time you reach it this time, too.'

‘But Gilly, if someone comes, you can tell them where I am. You can show them on the map.'

‘You might lose your way.'

‘I have to go. I have to risk it.'

‘But you can't leave me here, Pete.'

‘I'm just trying to give us a fighting chance.'

‘That's not true. You can't wait to get away.' My head is rushing as I get out of the car. I pace, just a few steps at a time, animated by anger, irritated by the sticky feeling between my legs, and furious with Pete: how he always
finds a way to run off and now, after everything that's happened, he's doing it again. ‘“Give us a chance”,' I mutter, mimicking him. ‘You just can't help yourself.' I open the door again and reach in for the bottle of water. I swig at it, drinking deeply before Pete is there beside me, snatching it away.

‘No, Gilly,' he says, deep and low. ‘We're rationing that, remember?'

‘Well if you're off to get yourself some of your own you won't need it now, will you?' I grab it from him and it falls, water leaking into the red dirt before Pete picks it up again. He caps the bottle tightly and throws it into the car, then swings his arm so his hand lands flat and hard against my cheek.

‘Do you want to die, girl? Because that's fine by me, but I'm not about to.'

I'd run if I could, but the sore stitched-up feeling is sharper than ever. My breathing is shallow from the pacing and slamming and the close, dark anger in me. I walk instead, taking small steps but moving as quickly as I can to put some distance between us. Tears cut a path down my dusty face.

After a minute Pete comes after me. He strides up and walks alongside me in silence.

‘Gilly,' he says, softly, putting his hand on my arm so I stop. ‘Gilly, don't cry. I'm sorry.' He leans in and licks a tear from my face. How rich that gesture seems. How full of promise. Just when I thought I'd gone too far. ‘I'm sorry I said that. I don't want you to die. Don't waste your
waters, Gilly. You'll dry out.' He pushes his thumb along beneath my eye and licks that too, then runs his fingers through my hair.

‘Why did you go like that?' I ask. ‘Nora was so pleased with herself.'

‘Come back to the car,' Pete says. I press myself to him and he puts his arms around me.

‘You keep leaving. You never say. It was all I could think about at the motel. Whether you'd come back. Where were you all the time?'

Pete looks down. ‘Nowhere,' he says.

‘How come you never took me with you?' I can hardly bear to look at him.

‘Well, I did, didn't I? You're here, aren't you, Gilly?' Pete says. ‘With me. And look where it's got you.' He takes my hand. ‘I wasn't going to leave you just now,' he says. ‘I wanted to give us a fighting chance. But it doesn't matter. There probably isn't any water there anyway. I don't know what I was thinking.'

‘You could have told me you were going that first time.'

‘I know.' He sighs. ‘And I'm sorry, Gilly. It wasn't the right thing to do. But I'd had enough. It was just … it was suffocating. I had to get out.'

‘Does that mean me? Did you find me suffocating?'

‘Come back to the car, Gilly.'

‘Is that why you kept going away at the motel?'

Pete stands back from me and folds his arms. His voice hardens. ‘God, Gilly, the first night there was as much as
I could bear. You touching me all the time. I didn't go anywhere. I just drove. Geez, I came back, didn't I? Isn't that enough for you?'

My arms go weak. Anger fizzes in me. ‘It's so simple for you, Pete, isn't it? Leaving like that? You do it with such … such ease. Even Nora says so.' I look up at him, I look right in his face. ‘Do you always just run off when things get tough?' I ask.

Pete meets my eye without difficulty. ‘What's between Nora and me is between Nora and me. It's pretty straightforward as far as I'm concerned, and it's nothing to do with you.' He unfolds his arms and runs his hand along his scalp. ‘You might be right, Gilly. Maybe I do run off when the going gets tough. But from where I'm standing, you're not so different to me. Are you?'

Ashamed, I drop my gaze to the ground, saying nothing. Something small and fast scuttles from beneath a rock. A beetle, perhaps. I catch my breath as it flickers across the dirt and burrows into the sand. It takes me by surprise. I check to see if Pete's seen it but he's got his face in his hands, rubbing his fingers against his forehead. The look of him brings me back to our present.

He's wrong, of course. I haven't run away. I've chosen to be with him. I can't change my mind now. What I have done is irreversible.

But it might still work out. It might be okay. After all, he came back for me. We're here, and he's seeing me, touching me.

He takes his hands from his face.

‘Maybe someone will come soon,' I say. ‘That's what you want, isn't it?' I take his hand and press it between mine. ‘We'll be okay. They'll find us soon. I know it.'

‘Come on,' he says, taking my hand. ‘Let's go back to the car.'

The water comes from nowhere. There is a hillock, its sloping sides peppered with low vegetation. In front of it is a stretch of sand. And then, random as the scattered clumps of saltbush, a small pool appears. Grass, short and coarse, crowds the perimeter, giving way to reeds where the water begins. The surface is flat and glassy as any garden pond. In the centre of the pool the reeds thicken into a kind of island.

When I think of it, I can't work out if it's a dream or a memory of one of those pictures in the magazine. I'm not afraid of them now, those strange desert pools, or the fish. Goby, gudgeon, perch: each image was labelled and I could see they were real, with fins, scales, gills. They had glistening staring eyes and I wasn't sure if they were alive or dead. Perhaps they were photographed and then thrown back in. I wondered how they came to be in the desert, and how they managed to stay alive there, those oddly ordinary fish.

I wake in the car, still exhausted after my brief hot run along the road. The blanket remains fixed over the windscreen but Pete has opened my door and slung a towel across the top of it to make a sort of tent of additional shade. In the dirt, a long thin line of ants moves between two rocks. I watch as they crawl in formation. Then the rock, which is their destination, appears to grow smaller. A lizard, thin and brown, unwraps itself from the outside edge and darts away beneath the car.

There are so many things I didn't notice when we first stopped. It seemed so empty and because that was all I wanted, I never saw the details. There are patches of spiky grass, not cowering in the hard light, or drifting up and out like the softer grass at home. Here it grows in narrow clumps and even where it thins to almost nothing it doesn't bend or soften. It holds itself straight, as if it is being tested by the sun. As if it is saying,
I can take it
.

 

I thought that baby would be inside me forever. I felt I might always be heaving her bulk around Pete's empty house with just Nora for company. Until one night I lay in my narrow bed and felt I was being pulled down through the layer of cheap foam, through the scratch weave of the carpet tiles, in a way I couldn't control. I thought that if I got up, that pulling-down feeling might leave me and eventually I eased myself out of bed and lumbered across the room to the window.

It was a clear November night, a Saturday. Nora had a friend over, a woman from work. She'd told me they'd be watching a film and I knew to keep to my room. When I opened the louvres, I could see in the distance where someone had let off some fireworks. The sky was etched with threads of colour; they dragged downwards until they faded, leaving pale negatives printed in the blackness. I put my hand on my swollen middle. A kind of stillness had settled there. Soon something would give.

‘Are you alright?'

I jumped. I hadn't heard the door. Nora could move so soundlessly when she wanted. She floated there in the doorway and I blinked hard.

‘I just need to pee,' I said, and she moved aside for me.

‘Thought you were asleep,' she murmured, still waiting beside my door when I shuffled my way back to bed.

‘No.'

She held up a can. ‘I can make you a shandy?'

‘No,' I said. I knew it wouldn't help. I couldn't sleep. Everything was chasing me: darkness and the sparkle of the lights in it, the waiting dawn and all the wasted days without him slipping by, flickering until there was only this one day left and I wanted it behind me. Done with.

‘Call me if you want anything,' she said, and I thought I detected a note of kindness.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Thanks.'

‘See you in the morning,' she said, and turned and disappeared back to the living room. I heard her friend speaking, the low sound of their laughter over the telly.

I lay there for hours, not quite sleeping. I don't know when the television was switched off, or when the house went quiet. But eventually a pale dawn crept into the sky and something changed. I got up and that dragging sensation did not shift. There was no pain but only an urgent feeling, a need to be somewhere else.

‘Nora.' The curtains were drawn but soft light spilled in from the hall. The air was heavy with the smell of beer and sleep. Nora lay across her bed. Her friend was curled beside her. They were both still fully clothed. Their bodies were not touching but there was something intimate about the arrangement of their limbs that I thought I was not supposed to see. I stepped back into the hall and shuffled back towards my bedroom, calling a little louder. ‘Nora. Nora. I have to go now.'

Nora roused. ‘Geez,' I heard her groan, ‘you do pick your times, don't you?' But she got up and I gathered some things while she changed and I was glad she was coming with me. I didn't want to be on my own.

 

They put me in a small white cubicle and Nora completed all the paperwork. ‘I'll do it,' she'd say to whoever came with another stencilled form for me to complete.

‘Who are you?'

‘Her sister-in-law. I'm looking after her until my brother gets back.' She never looked at me and nobody argued with her.

‘Get her into this,' they told her, posting a white smock into her arms. ‘We'll be with you in a second.'

She was embarrassed, I could tell, but I didn't care. I took the garment from her and eased my own loose dress over my head. The gown tied behind my neck and gaped across my back. I had an intermittent gripping sensation now. It travelled across my lower belly, and I was struggling to stay calm. I didn't want Nora to see me on edge.

She stood in the corner and folded her arms, watching her feet. I wanted her to make a joke, about the way my knickers were bunched up my backside and blooming out the back of the gown. Or how my legs were so big now, pale drumsticks tucked beneath the bulk of me. But Nora would never do that.

‘I'll be off when they get back,' she said. ‘I'll come and see you in a few days, yeah?'

‘Yeah,' I said. I looked around and found a stool, eased myself into a precarious squat.

Nora looked away.

‘You will, won't you?' I said, suddenly frightened that this was a farewell. That she might not come back and where would I go then? ‘And you'll tell Pete, won't you?'

‘Of course,' she said, but she wouldn't look at me. I heard her hesitation. ‘When he calls.'

I got up, panicked, meaning to go to her. I wanted to do something rash, unexpected: anything to make her tell me where he was, to make her promise she would bring him back. But as I stood there I felt a distant popping
sensation and from somewhere came a splashing sound. When I looked down the floor was awash with a pale thin fluid.

Nora's face turned a dull grey shade. ‘Jesus bloody Christ,' she said. ‘I'll go and get someone.' She ran from the room. Her footsteps sounded along the hall and I heard her shouting, ‘Nurse, Nurse,' in a voice that wasn't hers.

I wanted to laugh at how Nora had come unstuck, at how I had made her run away. But then somehow, though I was wet through and dimly aware that I would soon be swept far beyond myself and anyone else I knew, I saw that Nora had left her bag on the cabinet, and I found myself walking through the still-warm puddle on the floor and opening it, searching for an address book, a diary, an envelope, just in case she had lied to me. Searching for anything that might tell me where Pete was.