Inconsolable (2 page)

She was not passing this responsibility on. Disliking Gabriella wasn't irrational, it was healthy. The woman swooped in from nowhere and took Foley's promotion out from under her because she was a friend of the mayor's, and now Gabriella very clearly wanted Foley gone.

And Foley wasn't going anywhere. Which was the metaphysical, and the actual physical, truth. She was in a battle to the death at work, and on her hands and knees on a rock ledge, suicide distance from plummeting to the sea.

Freaking superb
.

But pitting herself against Gabriella and not being able to follow through was definitely a career-limiting move. She crawled forward, took hold of the rough stone edge of the ledge and brought her legs around to drop them over and sit. She made a hmmm noise, as though she'd actually achieved something and looked at her watch. It'd taken fifteen minutes to travel sideways maybe two car lengths and sweat was running down her face.

Now she could see the rest of the tarp, a rusty, wrought-iron table, and two chairs, and an old barbeque cooktop. She peered over the ledge and a drop of sweat rolled down her jaw and off her chin to splash on the rock below. The distance between her dangling feet and the second ledge was about the same as stepping up onto a kitchen stool. The ledge she was sitting on would be about chest height.

“Mr Drum. I'm almost there. Sorry it's taken so long. I was checking out the view. I can see why you'd want to live here. Magnificent, isn't it?”

She smacked herself in the head.
Lame, so lame
. That'd sounded all right in the car on the way here. She pushed off the ledge and there was another tearing sound. She was safely on the lower rock platform but now frozen with a different fear. Her unsexy underwear would be on display. She felt her backside, screwing her head around to look and yes, she'd torn a hole in the bum of her pants. Could be worse. She could be wearing a g-string and there'd be bare white, fleshy, backside flashing. As it was, black undies under black wasn't so bad and her jacket covered the damage. If she remembered to stand straight and not lean forward she'd be fine. Except she'd have to walk back across the ledge or he'd get an eyeful of Bonds Cottontails.

She patted her face with a tissue. She wasn't going to think about the trip back to the path. She was going to go flap Mr Drum's tarp and hopefully take a seat at his table and they'd talk about how it was dangerous for him to continue to live here. She'd tell him council was concerned for his welfare and ready to help him move to more appropriate accommodation, especially before Sculptures on the Coast kicked off, when there'd be thousands of people, including the visiting Danish Royal Family, trouping all over the park and the coastal walkway.

“Hello, I'm here.”

She walked forward and put her hand to the tarp. The ledge was much wider and deeper than she'd expected. He had to be asleep, or there was one big cave behind the tarp and he still couldn't hear her.

“Hello.”

She stepped around the tarp, which was more of a windbreak than anything else, and the cave came into view. Shallower than she'd thought, less sheltered. There was a camp bed and a sleeping bag, a zipped suitcase, an esky, a torch, some kind of lamp, and a pile of books. No rubbish, no discarded crap, no hoarded junk. Not a single empty alcohol bottle or can. It was surprisingly neat, functional and heartbreakingly sad that someone would want this hunk of exposed rock for their home. It was also annoying free of life forms.

Why couldn't an unemployed hermit squatter be home when you needed him?

2: Sting

The beach was officially closed. The lifeguards had packed it in for the day. Now it belonged to joggers, sweethearts strolling, surfers and locals who'd swum here for years and knew how to read the sea. This was his favourite time of day in summer. The worst of the heat fading, the humidity easing with the setting sun, the sky gone shades of pink or orange, the beach returning to itself after hours of strutting the charm and acting the showplace for visitors from all around the world.

He was one of the many joggers who now pounded the impressive curve of shoreline when he saw them. He knew they'd all been stung. The way they shook their limbs, contorted, folding in on themselves. The child, the worst, screaming in panic. He kicked his jog into a flat run as the father grabbed for a handful of sand.

“Hey,” he called. “Don't use sand. You need to wash it off.”

He got blank looks from the adults and the kid continued to scream. Tourists. Beside them now, he tried again in his halting Japanese. Telling them it was a bluebottle and they needed to wash the tentacles off, not scrub at them, not touch them or they'd be stung again. He squatted down so he was face to face with the kid. She'd been stung across her head and neck, one of her eyes was swelling and the blister of the bluebottle was trapped under the strap of her swimmers.

“It hurts, yes. Let me help you.”

He looked up, met the mother's eyes and got a nod that was more a surprised tearful whole body shake than assent, but it would do. He picked the kid up and turned to carry her into the sea.

“Everything okay? Oh, bluebottle. Can I help?”

Another jogger, a woman. He moved passed her, beckoning the parents. “I've got it.”

“After this hot water, not vinegar.”

He knew that. Vinegar was for deadly box and Irukandji jellyfish, stopping their tentacles releasing venom. He gave the woman a nod and copped a sting across his arm as the kid squirmed. He carried her back into the sea, the two adults holding on to each other, following.

He showed them how to wash the tentacles off, but got stung himself a couple of times. The little girl never stopped screaming and he didn't blame her. Bastard bluebottles bit like a whip and stayed with you like an electric current made of shimmering knifepoints.

When the family was tentacle-free, but still reeling from the pain, he led them to the public changing rooms where there was hot water, lucky that the council rangers hadn't yet locked the facility for the night.

He washed his own stings while the family stood in hot water showers. Then he took his t-shirt off and soaked it in hot water and told the mum to hold it over the child's face to bring the stinging down.

Twenty minutes of hot water treatment later, they were still scarred in red stripes, but the panic of the pain had passed. Back on the beach they exchanged names more formally and he waved off any hint of obligation. Anyone would've helped them, another person almost had. It was nothing. And just random luck he knew enough of their language to be useful.

He left them and continued on his run. The tide was coming in. By morning the beach would be fringed by bluebottle blisters and plenty more people would get stung. The lifesavers would be here to manage it, but he'd come and lend a hand too. Only fair. There was so much to make up for and this was nothing.

If he could, he'd take the tentacles of every bluebottle that washed up, wrap them around his body, and revel in the pain to stop anyone else getting hurt, especially kids.

It would be the right thing. But it was also impossible. He could be stung a million times and not fix all the hurt he'd caused. He could be stung to within an inch of a heart attack from shock and it wouldn't be enough to make up for what he'd done.

Nothing ever would.

He looked at the angry red welts on his arm and chest. They'd fade to nothing. You'd never know he'd been stung. And that was the problem. Guilt should leave a mark so decent people would know to stay away from you. Instead it soaked through your skin and only stained where you could hide it.

He finished his jog, his stretches and a meditation, and on the way home ran into Scully. A swarm of Irukandji jellyfish would be more welcoming.

“Playing the hero, Joker.”

He bent to pat Mulder. The best thing about Scully was his fox terrier.

Scully grunted, but that was his default, along with his incongruously cheerful, underfed, dirty Santa Claus look. “No one is going to give you a medal.”

“Don't need that.”

“Go back to where you belong, you fuckin' idiot.” Scully walked on, but Mulder gave him a look that said I'd take more pats if you'd care to give them until Scully's gruff, “Mully,” sent him off after his master.

At home, he prepared and barbequed a fish he'd caught earlier that day. He had two juicy peaches for dessert and only one was bruised.

It was a fine warm night after a scorcher of a day and he knew he'd find it hard to sleep. He knew he'd dream. The kid's screaming was still in his ears; the sound of injustice, an undeserved anguish, a bitter tutorial for innocence in the ways of the world.

He'd dream about hopeless shouting, about heads turned and silences that were more upsetting than all the noise. About protocols and practices that were evil, criminal but entirely legal. About letters that came in the mail with nooses and bullets and blades.

It was better to stay awake than go to that place again. He'd worked so hard to leave it behind. Shed everything he'd loved to pay the price. So instead of sleep he read; through the night and into sweltering heat of the apricot dawn. A favourite. A classic. A well-worn friend. Through the injustice and into the clarity of a clean new day.

It was more than he deserved.

And then she came, and she was too.

He was standing in the sun trying to understand how the night could so easily become a host for his terror, smothering him to a crouch, when the day was so fresh and perfect and he could stand tall again. He sipped coffee. He'd need more than the one cup he was allowed today. It was still early but the beach was already waking. The regulars, the locals, taking ownership. He'd go down when the tourists, the daytrippers, arrived and earn his keep.

Sometimes they came under the railing; occasionally his camp was raided, not that there was anything of value to take except his books and his torch. He was on his third torch. The books, old, grubby and torn, they never touched. One time someone wanted to interview him for a film. Women never came. They had more sense. But she came.

He heard her first. Talking to herself, or maybe to God. It was a shock to realise she was talking to him, calling him.

She wore Skins and a t-shirt, runners on her feet. She had a shiny brown ponytail and she was smiling at him. She was the woman from the beach last night—hot water, not vinegar—and she was looking at him as if he knew the secret to an eternally happy life.

3: Unlikely

Foley wasn't making the same mistake as yesterday. She'd ruined a suit, given herself a case of sunburn that still glowed through makeup, and had to slink back to the office, gaffer tape her pants back together and admit to Gabriella that she'd failed.

Today was going to be different. She staged a pre-work raid. Early enough to catch a hermit squatter at his camp site before he went wherever a hermit squatter went during the day. She also wore clothing and footwear more suitable for scrambling over rocks. Plus she had an offering. Today she wasn't going to be Frustrated Foley; she was going to be a winner.

She saw him the moment she ducked under the railing and stepped out on the first ledge. He stood one level down, right on the edge of the cliff face, looking out towards the beach. He was sipping from a mug, casual as Sunday morning, with death at his toes. She gasped aloud, then slapped her hand over her mouth because what if she startled him and he fell. But he turned her way anyhow and surprise made her shout through her hand again.

It was the bluebottle man. The man from last night who'd helped out those tourists.

She held her hand up in greeting. “Good morning. How are you?”

Was he visiting Mr Drum too? Foley had heard him speaking what sounded like Japanese. Hermit squatter men didn't speak difficult foreign languages, did they? Maybe she needed a third bacon and egg roll.

“Can I come down? Is there a special way to do it? I brought breakfast.” Hell, she was prattling, but she'd only caught a glimpse of him last night and he was covered in screaming kid. He wasn't covered in much at all now. A faded pair of board shorts and an expression of disbelief. He was tall, built, deeply tanned, bearded and heavily muscled.

“Are you Mr Drum, uh, is he here? I'm Foley.”
I feel like a dope
. “I brought bacon and egg rolls.”

He stared at her as if she was cloud that might burn off in the sunlight and he was waiting for her to disappear. And she stared back. If he was Mr Drum, he was one sexy homeless guy. Neither the rangers, nor the lifeguards who knew of him, had bothered to mention that.

She raised her hand with the cardboard tray. “I brought coffee too.”

He moved quickly then, as if coffee was abracadabra, disappearing under the top ledge. Before she could think about taking another step away from the railing he was standing on the level with her.

He was barefoot, his hair was long, grown out of a once decent cut, curling about his ears and neck and sun-bleached in a paint chart of variable caramels, sands and honeys. His beard and mo were neat, clipped, not hipster, 1800s, Ned Kelly.

He had the palest eyes, grey as if the sun had stolen their depth and faded them to half-strength. She took a step towards him and he lowered them, embarrassed maybe. She didn't want to make him feel that way. He was down on his luck. She wanted to help him.

“Hi, I'm Foley.” She should've said where she was from, but those lowered eyes cut. She didn't know who this man was, but he was big and beautiful and reticent, and she'd done nothing to threaten him except arrive.

His chin came up. He held out a hand to shake. “Hello Foley. I'm Drum. You don't need to come down, but if you want to I'll help you. There's an easy way when you know it.”

He spoke softly, politely. Correctly, like a man who'd had a good education, a man who didn't need to live in a squat on a cliff top. She would feed him first, talk to him, and then help him.