Past the Shallows (19 page)

He sank down in the water, muscles relaxed, no longer fighting. And he dropped away from the light and away from the air.

Ready now.

W
ater spewed from his mouth, breath making him gasp and cough. He was being lifted, carried, his body swaying from side to
side.

But his eyes were heavy.

The world was still too far out of reach.

He was thirsty. So thirsty. His lips cracked and stung. He felt a hand under his head, lifting it up and something cold touched
his mouth. Water. He swallowed it down but now he felt cold. His body started to shake, to twitch. Pins and needles in his
limbs moved down to his hands, his feet. Ripples of cold and feeling. He cried out and someone touched his head, stroked his
hair. He still couldn’t see.

He heard footsteps. Voices. The buzz of lights.

He fell into nothingness again.

It was Joe looking down at him. Joe.

‘Thank God,’ he said, and his face was weird. It was swollen and blurry and his eyes were thin, almost closed.

Miles looked around the room. He looked at the grey walls and door, at the low white ceiling. Uniform squares with hundreds
of uniform holes in each. He was in the hospital.

He tried to sit up but his body wouldn’t work. Only his head would move. Only his fingers. They stretched out and curled back,
felt the sheet beneath him smooth and crisp and tucked tight. He made a fist and tried to hold it.

Joe reached out and touched his arm.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Miles opened his mouth to speak but no sound came. His throat was tight. He didn’t know what Joe was talking about and now
the hand touching his arm was hot. It was burning him.

‘He looked peaceful, Miles. I mean, he was perfect. They found him on one of the reefs out near Acton and he was perfect.
Nothing had touched him.’

Miles closed his eyes and tried to breathe. He was in the water.

Harry was in the water!

He started screaming.

The sound bounced off the walls and off the floor and whipped around the room like a storm, but it didn’t feel like it was
coming from him. The sound was coming from somewhere else – from someone he could see.

A boy lying on a bed. A boy that couldn’t be him.

The sound grew fainter, died away until it was nothing but a whisper he could barely hear. And he felt heavy and tired then.
He felt warm.

It was warm in the car. It was snug, with all the bags and clothes packed in around them and Miles looked at Harry. His eyes
were heavy, falling into sleep. But the car slowed down. It stopped, and Miles couldn’t tell where they were on the road because
it was so dark. He thought he could hear the river, but maybe it was just the wind in the trees. Maybe it was the ocean. And
the passenger door opened and someone got in. A man.

‘Ready?’ he said, and Miles could just see Mum smiling in the dark, see the white of her face. And she said, ‘Yes, my darling.
Yes.’

And the man turned in his seat. He reached over and stroked Harry’s cheek. He looked at Miles.

It was Uncle Nick.

And Miles wanted to stay awake and listen to the songs on the radio, to be awake when they drove over
the mountain so he could see the city, because Mum said the lights of Hobart were really something. She said you could see
all the lights of the wharf and all the big tankers and ships. Ships that sailed to Antarctica and to Argentina and Scandinavia.
Ships that were as big as factories.

But the road was windy and the headlights were soft and it was so warm. And he wanted to say, Wake me when we get there, but
he forgot. And something pulled tight around his neck, around his chest, and all the bags were falling. All the bags were
pushing him down.

Everything went quiet and black then.

Until he heard Harry cry.

Until he heard Harry.

Miles opened his eyes and it was dark. It was nighttime. He sat up and he could see a figure asleep on a chair next to the
bed in the glow of the low grey light coming from the hall. It was Joe. He was still there.

Miles leaned back against the pillow quietly but Joe opened his eyes. He sat up and grabbed the side of the bed.

‘Are you OK?’ he said, and he turned on the lamp. ‘Do you need anything? Are you hungry?’

Miles shook his head. He blinked his eyes against the light.

‘You came back,’ he said.

Joe nodded. He looked down at his hands and let go of the bed. Miles knew they were shaking.

‘The wind was too strong,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get through the strait. I couldn’t leave.’

And Miles knew it was lucky Joe hadn’t been lost out there, too. He was lucky.

‘It was Dad,’ Miles said, and Joe stood up out of the chair.

‘I know. It’s OK. I know what happened.’

But Miles shook his head. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘Uncle Nick was there. He was in the car. I saw him there but I forgot.’

Joe opened his mouth but he didn’t speak. He stood for a minute then he sat back down on the edge of the chair, and Miles
told him about the crash – what he remembered now.

How when he’d opened his eyes again it was dark and there was no sound. No horn, no headlights. But he could see someone was
looking down at him. Someone else was there in the car. Dad.

‘He left us there,’ Miles said. ‘He took Nick away and he didn’t come back.’

And Miles remembered waiting in the dark and in the cold, and how he’d called out for Mum over and over but she didn’t answer.
She never answered. And he was too scared to reach out and touch her. He was too scared to move. And he found a blanket on
the floor and wrapped it up tight around Harry. And he tried to stay awake.

T
hey slept on Joe’s boat.

Miles didn’t know what was meant to happen now. Granddad’s house was empty but they moored in close at Lady Bay and he spent
the sunny parts of the day up at the house on the verandah. But he liked the boat, the way it felt. Joe had begun building
it when he started his apprenticeship and it had taken a long time. All these years. The wood inside golden and soft. The
galley and the workspaces, the small kitchenette and the bunk beds. All wood. All made by Joe. And here it was waiting to
leave again.

Miles sat on the bed. Joe was studying a roll of charts at the table, taking notes. He was using a ruler to mark out the path
he would take to wherever it was he was going. Marking out the fastest path away from here.

Miles stood up suddenly.

‘I’m coming with you,’ he said. ‘To the house.’

Joe looked across at him, his eyes wide. He put his pencil down, leant his hands against the table.

‘OK,’ he said.

Miles didn’t look at anything on the way in the van. He didn’t look out the window at the road or the sky or the trees or
the river. He just looked at nothing. At his legs and at the inside of the door. He felt sick.

It was Harry’s funeral on Friday. Friday, in the cemetery where Mum was buried. Where Granddad was buried. Lots of people
would be there and they would all be crying and they would all be saying how terrible it was. Harry wouldn’t want those people
there, Aunty Jean and the relatives from town. And Miles didn’t want to see them. He didn’t want to think about any of those
people.

When they pulled up the drive, neither of them moved. They sat in the van for a long time, silent, and Joe’s face was still,
his eyes tired. Miles watched him stare at the house.

‘What do you think happened to him?’ he said. ‘To Dad?’

Joe shook his head.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and he blinked his eyes clear. ‘I hope he’s dead.’

The door wasn’t locked and the house was quiet and cold. It smelled of damp. Miles almost expected Dad to be there somehow,
sitting in his chair in the gloomy room. Sitting there waiting. But he wasn’t. There was no one. And it felt like a long time
since anyone had been there. Since it had been a place where people lived. A place where he had lived.

Miles walked over to the framed photograph of Mum on the sideboard and picked it up, took the photo carefully out of the frame.

‘Cloudy,’ he said.

And he knew he was right, now. He remembered. How Nick had grabbed Mum up and hugged her and how she’d laughed. How she’d
pushed him away. And he didn’t know what that meant, if it meant something or nothing. But he wanted to keep it, the photo.
He wanted to take it with him.

Joe moved close, took the photograph out of his hands. When Miles turned around he could see how much they were the same,
Mum and Joe. How much they looked the same. Their eyes and the colour of their hair. Their skin.

‘Do I look like her?’ Miles asked.

Joe looked down at him and nodded. He handed back the photograph. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

The bedroom was exactly as it had been. Piled neatly in the corner of the room were Harry’s show bags, still half full. Harry
was always saving everything.

Miles let the bag he was stuffing with clothes fall to the floor.

‘We don’t have to get everything now,’ Joe said, and he bent down, picked up the bag. ‘I’ll come back tomorrow, OK?’

Miles sat down on Harry’s bed. The doona was cold under his hands and he dug his fists into it.

‘I don’t want to go to the funeral, Joe. I’m not going. I don’t want to see those people, Aunty Jean and relatives I don’t
even know. I don’t want to see them.’

Joe put the bag down on the bed. His voice was soft.

‘Stuart will be there – kids from school. And George. You might regret it, not going. Not saying goodbye.’

Miles tried to look at Joe, but his eyes were raw. They wanted to close. There was too much light.

‘I’m staying here,’ he said, and he felt Joe sit down on the bed.

And he was staying. He was going to stay with Harry. Stay here. Joe didn’t understand. He didn’t know. Harry might come back,
come here. Like Mum. Remember, Harry? How Mum came back? She came back sometimes when we couldn’t sleep. I know she did.

‘I didn’t mean to fall asleep,’ he said, and the weight of his body gave way.

But he felt an arm around him. He felt it tight.

‘Let’s just go, Miles – you and me.’

He listened to Joe talk about all the places they would go, the tropical islands and the clear warm water, the big bright
lights of new cities. The free open space of ocean. And he knew that Joe was going to take him with him, now. Wherever he
went.

He leant his head down against his brother’s shoulder. He let himself cry.

M
iles stood on the deck of Joe’s boat and looked out at the water. His eyes moved over it slowly, carefully. The bay was calm
now, still, and it was hard to believe that the swell had ever been so big, that there had ever been a storm. But Miles could
see where it had been. What it had touched. Boulders the size of cars had been pushed over so that the shellfish and plants
living safely underneath were now stuck metres above the water, exposed to the sun. Hip-high piles of kelp, ripped loose from
their roots, blacked out the beach, and whole trees, leaves and all, lay battered and smashed on the rocks.

Joe said it had been the biggest swell he had ever seen. Banks that had been working forever were wiped out – gone. The whole
coastline had been changed.