Desert Fish (2 page)

Pete is the sort of man who can belong to wherever he is. The first place I saw him was by the weir. This wasn't even a year ago but I was just a girl then, and I had never lived anywhere except my small town with its slow, familiar river. On the hottest days you had to glide out into the deep water to get cool. The shallows smelled of moss and mud and the sand on the bottom stayed warm until you pushed your feet down where the sun hadn't been.

On the day he came, I was the only one there. There'd been no rain and the rocks along the banks were baked a pale thirsty colour. The rapids downstream moved sluggishly and the weir was more like a dam. In places the water just lapped at the top of the concrete bulkhead. When the river got like that people stayed away, cooling off at the swimming baths or in front of a fan. But I felt drawn to it. It was like a dying creature. It had aged in a matter of weeks, shrinking into itself. It gave off a heavy greenish scent.

I turned on my back and moved my arms through the brackish water, closing my eyes against the glare of the sun. When I opened them I saw him cutting his way down the steep track that was scored into the bank. He had a look of someone not from anywhere in particular. His hair was cropped close and the fuzz of it was sun-bleached. His arms were bare and brown. I moved closer to the shore where the tall reeds were, hovering so I could observe him without being seen. You could tell he liked to travel light. He had no bag with him and carried a small lunch in his hands – a tomato and a bread roll. He produced a tin from his back pocket, one that you could wind open with a key. Smoked oysters I guessed, from the colours on the outside. He sat down on a rock and began to eat, biting into the tomato whole and hooking the oysters out with his hands. When he was done he ate the roll, dipping it into the tin and soaking up the oil there. Then he sucked his fingers clean and walked back up the track, leaving the tin on the rock where he'd sat. It was the hottest part of the day but he seemed unaffected. There were no damp patches under the arms of his T-shirt, and as he made his way up the steep bank I saw no wet slick on his back either. He looked like someone who could go anywhere.

After he was gone I came out of the water and pulled my clothes on over my bathers. When I got to the top of the track I looked along the road for him, but there was nobody there. You could see the air ripple above the surface of the road. Tar collapsed into puddles where
the potholes had been filled. It was the middle of the summer and my town was an empty, sullen place. Mostly, people went to the beach during the holiday, renting houses or towing caravans, pitching tents. Swimming in the ocean, and picnicking beneath casuarina trees. It was too hot and stifling to be anywhere but by the sea.

I sighed and trudged back down the track to the river. The tin he'd left behind was hot from the rock and the sun. I don't know why, but I unwound the coiled lid and snapped off the key. If I keep this, I will see him again, I thought. And if I see him again, I will follow him. I dropped the key into my pocket and all the way up the steep track I could feel it there, pressed between my thigh and my cotton shorts.

 

I didn't really expect to see him again. I just wanted to flirt with the possibility when I put that key in my pocket. But when I got home, he was there, in the kitchen with my dad. I was surprised, because it was my mother who had cleaned out the back room for someone to rent, not my father, and there was no other reason for him to be there. My dad didn't want another person in our house and he didn't understand why my mother did. There wasn't much money, but we were getting by. He liked there to be just the three of us. While my mother was shifting linen and vacating drawers, he'd been reading the paper and leaving his dishes about the house. He was going to make sure his disapproval stung anybody who might look at the room.

But now he was leaning back in his chair looking like he was primed to have some fun.

‘He's called Pete,' he said to me, without telling Pete my name. I felt a prickle of discomfort. My dad crossed his legs and drummed his fingers on the table. He looked over to me. ‘He's
in between jobs
.' I crossed the kitchen and ran the water until it was cool, then poured myself a glass. It seemed cheap to me, the way he could do this with a stranger. I hated the way he drew me into it.

Pete had already brought his things in. They were beside the fridge – a couple of airline bags and a newspaper. Up close I could see he was younger than my dad. Late twenties, I thought.

My mother was nowhere to be seen. I shuffled the bags aside with my foot and opened the fridge to get the cool air on me.

‘Don't do that, Gilly,' Dad said. ‘Food'll go off.' He was folding his arms and focusing on Pete. ‘Make us some tea, will you, love?' he said.

I filled the kettle and set the pot and the milk on the bench. Our milk came in a sachet that you had to prop inside a plastic jug. We'd always had bottles until the summer. Now you had to snip the two top corners of the bag and if milk dripped over the lip of the cut and into the jug, it was already sour when it went back in the fridge. The smell became part of the plastic, like a stain. This new packaging had been quite controversial around town. Some people didn't like the idea of milk sloshing around inside a thin plastic skin. A woman
called Vi Dougal from the Christian Women's prayer circle had phoned in to a radio talk show to complain about a man she'd seen sucking milk out of the corner of a sachet, as though it was an udder. It just wasn't right, she kept saying. She had her radio turned right up so she could hear herself back, and her voice echoed into double speak. I wondered what Pete would make of our town.

He had a shirt on now, short-sleeved with a collar. As I put the things for the tea on the table he looked at me.

‘You seem familiar,' he said. I imagined I saw the corner of his mouth twitch and I blushed. He looked at my dad. ‘Does she work in town?' he asked. He wasn't going to play my dad's game.

Dad laughed. ‘Does she hell! She's dropped out of school. Not doing anything yet. She will be though, won't you, love.' He looked at Pete. ‘Between her and her mother, I reckon I'll be able to retire.'

My mother worked in a cafe on the main street. She earned only a little bit of money, but her work was regular and it kept us afloat. I'd left school before I was sixteen. I didn't bother sitting my exams. I couldn't seem to apply myself, so there didn't seem to be any point. But a year had passed and I couldn't find a job. And outside of the rhythm of school, I didn't know what to do with myself. I had been waiting for my life to begin but had no idea how this might happen.

If I'd been a different sort of girl I'd have smirked at what my dad had said, but I just put the tea on the table, the milk too, and my dad picked up the jug.

‘Look at this,' he said. ‘Milk in a bag. Never seen anything like it.' He examined it, and mused, ‘I prefer the bottles,' pausing and adding, with some authority, ‘These bags, they leak. Drop 'em and they'll burst easier than a bottle will break.'

I put my hand to my neck and felt the perspiration there. I wondered if there was dirt printed onto it. The air felt viscous and dust seemed to hang, suspended in it.

Dad put the jug down. ‘How long you planning to stay, then?' he asked Pete.

‘At least until winter. Longer if there's work about.' Pete leaned back into his chair and crossed his legs at the ankles. ‘You hear of anything?'

‘I couldn't help you with that,' Dad said. ‘I haven't exactly been on the lookout.' He jabbed his thumb in my direction. ‘She's the one lookin' for work. Although probably not the sort of thing you'll be wanting to do.'

Dad sounded testy now, and I could tell he was bored. He'd be ready to make Pete out to be a chancer or a waster so he could get shot of him.

‘What d'you reckon, Gilly?' he asked. ‘Is he good enough for your mother?' His tone was mocking.

Pete pressed his lips together and breathed out through his nose, then took a swig of his tea.

I put my hands in my pocket and pressed at the key there. I knew I wasn't supposed to answer my dad, but I did.

‘Go on then,' I said, and my voice came out clear and strong. Dad put his hands on the table and began
to drum his fingers there. ‘But can he pay the rent?' I teased, enjoying this inclusion and the awkwardness I had created.

‘Got plenty of cash to tide me over,' Pete said, looking right at my dad, ‘from the last job.' He reached into his top pocket and retrieved a pouch of tobacco. There was a moment of silence and I could feel the strain of my dad's questions in it while Pete thumbed inside the pouch for a packet of papers and began to roll a cigarette.

‘Oh yeah?' Dad said. ‘So where were you working?' He pulled his own tobacco out of his pocket and leaned forward a little as he tamped and rolled, moistened the gummed edge of the paper.

‘Up north,' Pete said. ‘Managed a caravan park for a few months. Just a temporary position.' Pete rubbed his thumb against his fingers. ‘Worth it for the money.'

Dad lit up and blew smoke across the table. Nodded respectfully. Money could change things that quickly for him.

Pete continued. ‘Did some farm work, fruit picking, you know, on the way down the coast. Thought there'd be more of the same in a place like this.' He was leaning back in his chair and you could tell he didn't care what my dad thought. He was someone who could find money when he needed to and he could probably find somewhere to live just as easily. He didn't need our room and my dad seemed to realise this.

‘Look,' Dad said, sitting up in his chair and tapping his fag on the ashtray. ‘I'll be straight. It's the Missus wants
to do the let, I wasn't all that keen. But you seem alright to me. The room's there if you want it. You can move your things in today.' I suppose he was thinking that if anyone was going to live in our house, it might as well be Pete, with his money and his easy way. And it might as well be my dad who made the decision, since my mother had pushed him into letting the room.

Something had shifted in our house. Everything between my mother and my father was different now, and I had been watching these past few days to see what would happen.
Your father, he just can't help himself, Gilly
. It was what she said when everything was going to be okay.
Don't worry, Gilly. You know it doesn't mean anything.
But nothing had been said so far, and I was tired of waiting. Now Pete had come and I was certain that things would settle.

‘Stay as long as you want,' my father continued. ‘For whatever the Missus said, and I'll have a deposit, you know, for breakages and that.' He tapped his ciggie again and put it to his lips, speaking through the smoke that drifted up in front of him. ‘There'll be work about, if you look. I don't care what you do so long as your rent's paid.'

 

My dad was called Creighton and he was the kind of man people liked but didn't trust. He could get really excited about things, but he was easily bored too. He had a way of dreaming up ventures that blossomed briefly,
like small talk, then fizzled out. His best idea was selling fruit and vegetables door to door. I remember how he leased a Bedford truck and stacked it with apples and oranges, tomatoes and potatoes and carrots, then drove it slowly around the bits of town that were furthest from the shops. He was a novelty for a while and he had a way with people – sharing jokes, carting boxes of fruit and vegetables up the stairs for the women, enjoying the cool drinks offered him after. Only once or twice my father disappeared inside to finish his drink. By the time he came out the sun had moved and customers noticed the sweating apples, the limp lettuce and warm stone-fruit. After that, there was a brief foray into a cleaning business, and an attempt to set up a removal company. But people did their own cleaning in my town, and when they moved from house to house, they liked to pack and lift their own boxes, or ask someone to help as a favour. That was a long time ago. There were no more businesses after that, just odd jobs here and there, ever since.

 

When my mother came back Pete was already moving his things in. I was on the couch, digging my fingers into the holes in the crochet throw. I wanted to make sure she didn't send him away.

I pulled my fingers through my hair and held a strand beneath my nose. The river was still in it, a briny mossy smell. Pete smiled at me and I blushed.

‘Where have you been?' my mother asked from the
kitchen. She was framed, small and neat, in the doorway. She put her shopping on the table and unfolded her cafe apron for the washing machine.

‘Swimming,' I said. ‘Look.' I nodded in the direction of the spare room.

Pete pushed both airline bags under the bed where my mother kept nothing at all, not even dust. He stood up and rubbed at his hands as my mother peered in from the hall.

‘Oh,' she said.

Pete nodded. ‘Hello.'

My mother pressed her hands to the fronts of her hips and I could see she was wondering how to handle this.

Perhaps Pete sensed the awkwardness. ‘I'll be finished in a moment,' he said. ‘I'm just moving my stuff in. Sorted it out with Creighton'. There was no hesitancy about him. He checked his hands and then walked over and offered my mother one to shake.

‘Oh,' she said again. She chewed her lip, rolling the bottom one a little and pressing into it with her top teeth. Then she bit the top lip with her bottom teeth. Her chin went bumpy and her Avon Frosted Grape began to thin until what was left of it had settled into the cracks. She held her tongue and let Pete shake her hand. I could see the skin of her clenched knuckles, raw and angry with the rub of bleach and wood. The gloves had got a hole so she'd binned them and gone ahead and scoured the floors without any.

‘You'll be Maureen.'