The other side of silence - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 25: After the Crisis
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Chris Womersley
The two properties were separated by nothing more than a large stand of pine trees, and as I padded beneath them and out into the party's penumbra of light and noise I felt as if I were entering an obscure circle of hell: people thronged about in various states of undress and evident intoxication; girls huddled here and there on the lawn. The music was obviously, unbelievably, even louder. I was aware of people observing my progress with slightly bemused contempt, as they might a dog walking on its hind legs, and yet I pressed on.
The house was larger than the one in which we were staying and was lit up like a film set. People danced. A tide of young people ran past me, yelling and calling to each other. They all shone from a day at the beach and were smartly dressed, evidently enjoying the hospitality at the beach house of one of their parents. I crossed the lawn, ducked beneath a tangle of coloured lights strung across the terrace and stood on the threshold to a living room. In the short walk across the lawn I had run through a variety of scenarios, all of which involved me emerging victorious from whatever altercation I was about to engage in, but now I was here, in the thick of it, my resolve ran from me like water. I gazed around at them, at the way they sprawled on couches and bounded up the stairs. It was horrifying in a way that only dimly came to me as I stood there being jostled by passers-by; what galled me most, I realised after several minutes, was that they all had life, were fairly bursting with it, while my daughter, dear Carol, lay crumbling in a box in the earth, cold and alone, miles from us. A couple smiled at me as they squeezed past. I wondered if Marie were observing me through her binoculars and felt my masculine pride under scrutiny, but retreated nonetheless; back to our temporary home, back to bed.
‘What happened?' Marie asked when I was under the covers, ten minutes later.
‘Nothing, really.'
‘You didn't talk to anyone?'
‘No.'
‘How old were they?'
‘Were you not watching?'
‘Yes,' she admitted.
‘Well. They were in their mid-twenties, I suppose.'
Marie drew breath. ‘Carol's age.'
‘Yes. Carol's age, more or less.'
With seemingly endless goodbyes and the slamming of car doors, the party finally dissolved sometime shortly before dawn. Marie and I got up early nonetheless and set out for a walk just after sunrise. The day was misty but, if the past week were any guide, would clear up by mid-morning. We didn't mention the party in detail, or only to say how tired we were. I felt positively ancient, beyond living. We walked along the road for a short distance before cutting down a sandy track to a headland that looked over the curving beach. We stood and the wind whipped about our legs and sang through the stubby tea-trees. Marie peered through her binoculars out to sea in an effort to spot some bird or other she hadn't yet managed to tick off her list. I huddled in my coat and watched the progress of a person surfing far below. A man, I eventually discerned, who determinedly paddled out on his board through the roiling surf and waited for the right wave to ride back into shore. He didn't seem particularly good at it and was dumped repeatedly, often before he even had a chance to ride the board for more than a few seconds.
I found myself willing the surfer on, urging him to stay upright longer, and felt unaccountable disappointment at his failures. After fifteen minutes of this, he appeared to get into difficulty. The board that had been lashed to his ankle came free in a particularly smashing wave and he found himself past the breaking waves in evidently deep water, flailing somewhat, his black, wet-suited arms waving about amid the foam like a beetle drowning in milk. A quick scan revealed there was no one else on the beach, indeed no sign of humans at all as far as I could make out, even though I knew the township was just beyond the scrubby dunes. Immediately I tapped Marie's shoulder and told her there appeared to be a man drowning down in the surf.
She swung her binoculared gaze to where I had indicated. ‘Clive. Have you got your mobile phone?'
I fumbled through my pockets and located the damn thing, as small as a Matchbox car.
‘Call someone. Call Triple 0. Quickly. They can probably get the rescue people out there. A boat. Save him.'
I was wrestling with the mobile phone, struggling with the tiny keypad when Marie, still with her eyes glued to the binoculars, placed a hand firmly on my forearm. ‘Wait,' she said. A pair of gulls wheeled down out of the sky, landed on the grass nearby and shrugged their wings. ‘It's one of them.'
I managed to unlock the phone and was dialling. ‘What? Who?'
Marie's voice was astringent. ‘One of those...arseholes from last night.'
It was extremely rare for Marie to swear. Even throughout the trial, she had managed to withhold her anger, even if I could detect its presence by the tight-lipped set of her mouth. I waited with phone in hand. The wind buffeted us where we stood, out there on the headland, exposed to the elements. We didn't speak a word. I was aware of Marie, my beloved wife, steadying herself against the gusting wind. I was aware of her short brown hair flicking this way and that, of her unzipped jacket flapping about as if the fingers of the wind were searching for something hidden about her person – some grief, most likely – that might be taken away and discarded. Marie kept her hand on my arm. Her grip tightened slightly, almost imperceptibly. I understood at once what she was communicating.
It was then I saw us as if from a distance – as one of the wheeling seagulls might have – two old things in their all-weather jackets on a windswept headland, made tiny by nature. I dropped the phone back into a pocket and we watched, Marie and I, somewhat greedily, I am ashamed to say, as the surfer struggled against the tide, his head disappearing and reappearing within the creaming waves, his dark mouth, visible even at this distance as it opened hungrily for air, until he reappeared no more.
By the time we made our way down to the sand, half an hour later, a small crowd was hovering around the fellow's body like birds. As if she had read my mind, Marie coughed into her fist and began to speak above the sound of the wind. ‘Do you know,' she said with some satisfaction, ‘that the collective noun for herons is a siege? A siege of herons.' Our progress was unwieldy; the sand was heavy and thick, our old bodies tired. We huddled and bent into the whipping wind until we approached the group, who were by now standing around with their arms across their chests, obviously waiting for the ambulance or police. We did not stop. One or two of their number looked up but if they recognised me from the party the night before they showed no sign of it, and we offered no greeting of our own. We kept on and by the time we left the beach, stamped our shoes free of sand and went into the house – now quiet, now peaceful – I expect the ambulance would have arrived and pronounced the fellow dead. ♦