Night Swimming Read online

  ‘If birds can eat it, we can eat it,’ says Grandad. I’m not sure about his logic but he’s determined.

  I wade through the long grass, letting Stanley walk behind so that if a creature is in the long grass it’ll take me, not Stanley. I flinch as the birds in the tree fly off, then I pick some of the most edible-looking bits of fruit, still not entirely sure what they are.

  When I walk back to Grandad he insists on both of us eating some. The fruit is hard and tart and unpleasant, but Grandad appears to enjoy it.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ he says.

  I think, just because we can eat it doesn’t mean we should. He seems pretty pleased with himself, so I say nothing.

  Then he’s moving off again.

  I’m worried about Grandad walking too far with his bad joints, but he just gives me a brusque I’m fine. So we head into town. Maybe someone will give us a lift back.

  And there’s Iris busking in the main street, right here, right now, standing right outside her parents’ restaurant. I’m overcome with the sensation of having stood up too quickly. She hasn’t seen us, yet. She’s plucking at the mandolin strings, the case open in front of her, waiting for change.

  ‘Grandad, Grandad,’ I hiss. He doesn’t hear me, or if he does, he doesn’t acknowledge it. I look horrendous: when Grandad decided he was going for a walk, I was parked in my trackies in the lounge room, ready for a nice Sunday at home with a good book, some mindless pop music on TV and a packet of assorted cream biscuits to enjoy with my cuppa. It is absurd to presume that a creature as resplendent as Iris would be as attracted to me as I am to her, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily want to look gross every time we meet.

  Grandad shuffles on. Stanley saunters. We are headed straight for her. I resign myself to my fate, hurriedly finger-combing my hair, which immediately springs back into haphazard waves.

  I haven’t heard anyone play the mandolin before. It reminds me of a banjo, but prettier. Iris’s voice is high and quiet and lovely, completely different from her singing as directed by Clancy for the musical.

  She grins when she sees me. After the end of the song, she does a little curtsey. I can’t hear myself think, my heart is pounding so loud, so I can’t come up with anything to say. Stanley investigates the handful of silver coins in the case, which I sincerely hope he doesn’t eat. The goat has got no sense. Everything is food to him. Grandad stops and looks in the front window of the restaurant, disoriented by its presence. There was a clothes shop here years ago, but they never sold much of their middle-aged women’s clothing, made up of floaty, pastel layers, with crinkly fabric and ridiculous prices. The woman who owned it eventually gave up.

  ‘Who needs a man when you have a mandolin?’ says Iris, after we’ve been standing there in silence for a minute.

  I shake my head, smothering a laugh.

  ‘Sorry. I inherited a talent for dad jokes from my dad. And my mum, too, really. The whole family is a font of terrible jokes, puns and all derivatives thereof.’

  ‘You met my grandad?’ I ask. Of course she hasn’t. Why am I speaking like this? Could I occasionally speak in a full sentence? ‘Grandad, this is Iris. Iris, this is Cyril.’

  Iris half-curtseys. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Arrow.’

  Grandad nods. ‘Beautiful day,’ he says.

  ‘It is,’ says Iris.

  ‘Leg’s giving me curry,’ he says, and continues walking.

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ I say. ‘He’s like my mum. But vaguer. Not that you’ve met my mum. She’s like Grandad. But sharper. That probably explains nothing. We’re very to-the-point, our family.’ Not including me.

  She crouches to give Stanley a scratch behind the ear. ‘Cyril seems nice. This goat fellow’s pretty cool, too.’ She smiles up at me. ‘Is this the famed Stanley?’

  ‘It is,’ I say.

  ‘I better catch up with Grandad. Good luck with the busking. That was good, the song. Sorry, I have no money on me.’ I look down, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says, like it’s ridiculous even to suggest. ‘Next time. We should catch up. Just you and me. I feel like you know more about me than I do about you. You’ve seen me at the restaurant and playing mandolin and singing and…you’re a bit of a mystery, young Kirby.’

  I could laugh. I am anything but. ‘I’m just boring,’ I say.

  This doesn’t stop her from smiling. ‘Maybe I could visit you at work?’ she says.

  I just nod. Then I’m chasing after Grandad.

  I ask Mr Pool if it’s okay for Iris to visit, and he actually seems pleased. A few days later Iris texts me: is this morning all right? I formulate four different messages until I settle on one that seems vaguely appropriate. Sure. I’m aware that it’s a ridiculous amount of thought for one word.

  Mr Pool is having a cuppa and I am varnishing a side table. A travel writer is being interviewed about Myanmar on the radio. Out of the blue, Mr Pool starts talking. He’s been melancholic all morning, and now he’s speaking to me about something that is not instructional or morning tea–related. It is entirely out of character.

  ‘I might give this up,’ he says. ‘Supposed to be retired. And what am I doin’? Still working.’

  ‘Keeps your brain active, though, doesn’t it?’ Grandad always says that about reading the paper. It hasn’t done much to help his brain, though. Or maybe it has. Maybe his memory would be even worse, if not for his dedicated paper-reading.

  ‘You could always take over.’ This is a huge statement but he delivers it with total nonchalance, not even looking at me. ‘End of this year. Work here, give me a few percent to use the shed, and you could deal with the city folk easy. If you wanted to.’

  My brush pauses mid-stroke. More accurately, I pause. Mr Pool’s confidence in my abilities gives me a thrilling flutter in my chest, but when I imagine being in charge, being self-employed, pottering about the shed on my own, it doesn’t fill me with joy. It doesn’t seem as worthwhile as working alongside him.

  I nod, but before I get a chance to properly respond, there’s the sound of knocking against the open tin door of the shed.

  She’s wearing gold ballet flats, a dress patterned with pineapples, a yellow cardigan and a white beret, which she takes off before stepping into the shed. Silhouetted against the sunlight, Iris reminds me of Jesus, if Jesus was an Indian girl in country Australia, wearing a dress with pineapples on it.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, smiling. ‘No one answered at the house so I thought you’d be in here. Mr Pool, is it? I’m Iris.’ She crosses the shed towards him and he puts down his tea to shake her hand.

  She runs a hand through her hair, pushing it over her shoulder, smiling at me. I realise immediately that Iris coming to visit me at Mr Pool’s is the greatest disaster to ever befall me.

  Mr Pool gives her the grand tour, which is really not all that grand at all. But it’s more than I’ve heard him speak, ever. He has me demonstrate various parts of ‘the process’.

  I’m hyper-aware of Iris’s proximity, the heat radiating from her skin. Even if I’m not looking at the curve of her neck, I’m thinking about the curve of her neck. Not too much of a problem while I’m lacquering, apart from the fact that I do a couple of layers too many, but the combination of Iris-plus-power-tools is too much for my brain to handle; I should know it will only end in disaster when Mr Pool suggests I demonstrate the circular saw.

  To say my mind is not exactly on the task when I cut myself, blade tearing straight through my safety gloves and into the skin beneath, would be fairly accurate. Once I’ve done it, everything moves very slowly. I turn off the saw. I take off the glove. I look at my hand.

  Even though I can see the blood, I don’t quite comprehend its significance. At first I’m not sure that it really is blood; I might have got jam on my hand at breakfast and only just noticed now. Once I work out—no, that’s not made of raspberries—I think it’s not that bad; there is just a dribble, only enough to cover the end of my finger.


  Then I realise that the reason the end of my finger isn’t visible is that the end of my finger is gone. I feel like I’m looking at the world through a kaleidoscope, and think idly to myself, so this is how spiders see. I go from perfectly fine to incredibly woozy in one second flat. Then I’m on the ground and Mr Pool is looking terrified, which is not a confidence-booster, and Iris just looks focused.

  The blood is the wrong colour. If I saw this blood—the stuff seeping from my finger—in a film, I wouldn’t buy it. Too thin, too red. Not enough blue food colouring, not enough cornflour. Looks like tomato soup mixed with strawberry syrup. But there seems to be a lot of it. Is it a major injury? Have I cut an artery? Am I bleeding to death? How long do I have left?

  I have a problem with blood. No, I don’t have a problem with menstrual blood; that’s a perfectly ordinary and predictable thing, nothing to be concerned about. I have a problem with blood when blood should not be outside someone’s body, particularly when that someone’s body is mine. Once, when I was a little kid, I accidentally stabbed my finger with the safety pin of a badge. Just seeing the tiny bead of red on my fingertip was enough to make me faint. I fell flat on the tiled floor of the bathroom and woke up with Grandad standing over me, feeding me a Freddo frog. He thought I’d had a blood-sugar low.

  Remembering that makes me sad now, because Grandad no longer has the wherewithal to come to anyone’s rescue; if someone fainted he’d just be dazed and confused. But Grandad might outlive me, based on the look of this wound. That’s good. I don’t want to have to see Grandad die. I would much rather be floating on a cloud with a harp and a halo, waiting for the rest of the family to show up, than sticking it out down here without them.

  ‘You’re sounding a lot like Clancy,’ says Iris.

  ‘Am I saying this out loud?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ says Iris. ‘Very much so. I’m sure they can hear you in Canberra.’

  ‘You know you’re very beautiful,’ I tell Iris. ‘And you, too, Mr Pool.’

  Iris manages a smile. Mr Pool is looking oddly pale, and it strikes me that he would have made a wonderful goth in his youth. He has wrapped my whole hand in gauze. I ask him if I’ll have to have it amputated. He ignores me. Maybe I only thought that.

  ‘Trip to the vet’s is in order, I think,’ he says.

  Iris finds the end of my finger under a table in the shed. Mr Pool drives us around the corner to Fields’ Veterinary Practice, and Mr Fields stitches it back on. I feel like Frankenstein’s monster, with my separate pieces sewn together. I will never be a hand model now.

  Everyone but Mr Pool and me has a grand old chuckle about it, like it’s a hilarious joke and not a serious, possibly life-threatening injury. Mr Pool has stayed pale for three-quarters of an hour.

  ‘No more visitors in the shed,’ he announces, once we’re outside the vet’s. ‘It is a work area only. And I don’t want to see you for a week.’

  Mr Pool has never behaved like an actual boss before, and I don’t think I like it; being forced to take a week off seems like a bad thing, even if he’s only concerned for my welfare. He is certainly not going to let me take over if I can’t manage a basic wood-cutting task without lopping off the end of a finger. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.

  He takes out his wallet and presses six fifty-dollar notes into my good hand.

  ‘I haven’t done the work, Mr Pool. You’re paying me for nothing.’

  ‘Paid leave,’ he says. I try to shove the money back at him, but he’s resolute.

  He offers to drive me home, but I insist I’m fine and Iris says she’ll walk me back and make sure I don’t collapse.

  On the walk back, Iris’s arm hovers at my back, like I might go over any second, but she never quite touches me. I’m feeling more stable now, but I’m half-tempted to take a dramatic tumble so she has to hold me. I resist the urge.

  I stop when we’re outside my house. She looks up at the house and smiles. It’s a sight.

  ‘I’m so sorry I got you in trouble,’ she says. ‘And I’m sorry about your finger.’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s fine. Chicks dig scars.’

  Iris goes to smile, but remembers the gravity of the situation. Instead, she puts her tongue between her teeth, like she’s concentrating on something.

  ‘Can I ask a huge favour? You reckon you could call past Clancy’s on your way back?’ I ask, fishing the cash from Mr Pool out of my pocket. ‘Give him the money, to give to Mrs Hunter? He can use it to hire out the pub for his play. Our play.’

  ‘Sure.’ When I hand her the money she seems disappointed, like maybe she was expecting me to ask something else of her.

  I realise she’s got blood on her lovely pineapple dress, a burgundy smear against the orange of the dress. She speaks before I get a chance to apologise.

  ‘I better head off then.’ She stands there for another thirty seconds, glancing from my face to my damaged hand and back again. Then she turns, her dress fanning out around her, and walks back up the gravel road.

  I want to call out and invite her in for lunch, but having her in my vicinity is excruciating, and I feel an absolute idiot for maiming myself in front of her, and I’m also in need of a lie-down after my ordeal.

  When I get in, Claire is visiting, sitting on the couch with Grandad. Her belly is evident under her T-shirt. Every time I see her I am amazed that she is currently manufacturing a human. Something pretty magical about that.

  ‘Heard about your accident,’ she says. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’ll live,’ I tell her, while I’m giving Maude the requisite belly rub. ‘There is a supernatural force in this town when it comes to gossip. It only happened an hour and a half ago.’

  ‘Speaking of,’ says Claire, hands jumping out of her lap with excitement. She glances at Grandad. ‘Excuse me, Cyril, do you mind if I just…’

  Grandad is focused on the TV screen. Claire gets up and ushers me into the kitchen. The table is cluttered with paperwork, but Mum is not here.

  ‘Tea?’ I offer.

  She nods. ‘I came over to see Nathan, but he’s with your mum out in the shed and I can’t stand the smell when they’re making soap. Especially now, with the bub.’

  ‘It’s probably the lye,’ I say, as I grab the teapot off the drying rack and flick on the kettle. ‘It’s revolting.’

  Marianne is sitting on the windowsill meowing plaintively to be let in. When I go to the door and open it, she loses interest and wanders off, tail high. She is a cat, after all. I would expect nothing less.

  Claire sits at the table. ‘Anyway. Judy from the bakery told me that Irini told her that her son’s seeing your mum.’

  ‘Judy’s son?’

  ‘No, no, Irini’s. Your mum is seeing Nick.’

  I almost drop the sugar bowl and biscuits. ‘My mum never sees anybody. Wait, what does “see” even mean?’

  ‘They’re going out. Or they have gone out. Parmas at the pub. My dad reckons he saw them. I know your mum doesn’t see anybody, but it seems unlikely that both Judy and my dad would be fibbing, doesn’t it? I know my dad’s a bit of a drinker but Judy’s information is usually reliable. And it makes sense. She and Nick would’ve gone to school together.’

  ‘They’re probably just friends.’ Why didn’t she tell me? My heart is racing.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s possible. You’ve been busy with your play.’

  ‘It’s weird. Is it weird for me to think it’s weird? Am I an awful kid?’

  ‘I don’t know! My parents have been married to each other forever. They kiss in front of me and gross me out, but it’s been like that as long as I can remember. I mean, sorry, gosh, of course, not to be thoughtless about your dad. But your mum! I hope she and Nick get married. Here, I’ll make the tea. You’re injured!’

  ‘You’re pregnant.’

  She rolls her eyes at me. ‘I can still make tea.’

  I sit down, floored by the idea of my mum having some secret dat
ing life in our town that I’m the last to know about. I do not want to think about it. ‘Maybe we should just discuss your wedding. How about this engagement party?’

  ‘Ah!’ Claire puts the carton of milk down with such enthusiasm that it sloshes onto the table. ‘We’re having it at Saffron Gate. Ms McIntyre is delightful. She’s going to decorate.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The mum. She’s from New Zealand. She’s lovely.’

  ‘So’s the daughter.’

  ‘I know. I saw her playing a banjo. It’s funny, isn’t it, when new people come to town? It’s exciting, but it changes things, just that little bit. It’s like the town’s a different place from when we were kids.’

  I shrug. ‘Maybe we see the town differently because we’re older. Maybe we’re too nostalgic about the good old days. Like Grandad. By the way, it’s a mandolin, not a banjo.’

  Claire smiles. ‘No, they were the good old days. You were quite the netball player for a littlie. You’d follow me around and we’d save baby birds that we took up to the vet’s.’

  I laugh. ‘They never needed saving. We just abducted them.’

  ‘Well, I know that now. Remember everyone swimming at the river and arguing over how to build forts. Then they collapsed half an hour later. Summer was the best.’

  ‘Yeah, because you had kids your own age to hang out with rather than me stalking you.’

  I am joking but Claire takes me seriously. ‘That’s not the case at all. You’re a good friend. But new people do change things a bit. Sometimes you get tired of the same old faces and the same old gossip. Like who’s getting divorced. Or Clancy and his alien hoax.’

  ‘It’s really not Clancy. I thought it might’ve been Nathan.’

  Claire laughs. ‘I doubt it. He’d be terrible at geometry.’

  She keeps talking—about how at four months now the baby is the size of a mango, but it’ll be papaya-sized in a month, then the size of a small watermelon. I’m not so sure about the fruit imagery. Maude stares at us from the doorway, waiting for a biscuit crumb to be dropped. As Claire prattles on, all I’ve got in my head is the fact that everything seems out of my grasp (and not just because I maimed my hand earlier in the day): Grandad going into care, Mum having a relationship I know nothing about, my total lack of ability to rein in my crush on Iris. Not to mention now knowing where my dad is, and having no idea what to do about it, or whether I might have permanently damaged my job opportunities with Mr Pool, now he knows I’m an idiot who has the coordination of an elephant seal and cannot be trusted with power tools.