The Stranding (27 page)

There must be some way for Helen to be empowered now that Henry was gone. But Callista was appalled to see in herself that same powerlessness, even beyond Luke. She had tiptoed around Lex’s edges like a mouse, afraid to tell him who she was. The old powerlessness was still with her too. Had she learned nothing from Luke?

And yet lately her painting had given her new life. It was a fresh feeling, vital. The storm paintings had sung out of her, even though they had been hard work. Ridiculous as it sounded, it had been glorious creating moods of colour and light. The brush had felt strong in her hand. The colours were beautiful.

But Henry was something else. Each time Callista’s anger passed, it left her weak and lethargic. She tried to set him aside, attempted to block out the black emotions he stirred in her. But he nagged at her and depressed her. Eventually she was backed so far into a corner trying to flee that she realised she had to confront him. That he wouldn’t wait. She couldn’t paint the commission for Helen until she started another painting of Henry. There was so much of him she had to purge in order to master the painting that Helen needed. She had to work on the truth before she could muster a convincing lie. The decision felt good. She could hide the work afterwards. No one need ever see it.

She set up a canvas and started on Henry. She would paint him lit starkly with white light against black. For wasn’t that how he was? A man of studious contrasts: black and white, good and evil, life and death.

With fresh insight after Helen’s revelations, Callista now understood how to paint him. She used her hatred, the new anger at Henry Beck, and directed it all at him. The black and white was potent. No subtle shades of grey for Henry. She pulled him out of darkness in a way he would have understood: in stark sharp lines and rigid boundaries between black and white. Henry Beck was the clot of all the negative emotions she had carried through her life.

She kept at him doggedly, building up his features, shaping his face. And now, finally, she could paint his eyes.

Twenty-one

On the way home from work one Friday, Lex saw a young woman along the highway looking for a lift. She was standing by the 100-kilometre sign with her pack propped up against the signpost. He started to slow down. She was wearing torn-off denim shorts and a black singlet top with a low neckline, dusty hiking boots and creamy-coloured woollen socks. Lex took it all in, admiring her relaxed, unself-conscious, semi-seductive pose. Her legs were long and brown and appealing. As he pulled up he saw her hair was twisted into a mop of dreadlocks with beads sewn in like little nests. Her face was brown and heavily freckled.

She yanked open the back door of the Volvo, threw her pack in and slammed the door. Then she hauled the front door open and swung into the front seat beside Lex. There was an air of slackness about her that he couldn’t name. Nonchalance? Confidence? Youthful ignorance? Youthful arrogance? He put the car in gear and pulled out onto the highway. The girl rolled down her window and crooked her elbow out.

‘How far are you taking me?’ she asked.

Lex was uncomfortably conscious of the taut muscularity of her thighs and calves just a hand’s breadth away from the gearstick. There was not a hair on her legs. It was a long time since he had been this close to a young female body.

‘My turn-off is about six kilometres down the road.’

‘Bullshit! Why did you pick me up then?’

‘Does your mother know you’re out hitching on country roads alone?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘You’re lucky I’m a nice guy. There’s plenty around that aren’t.’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ she snarled. ‘Let me out then.’

She swung open the door while they were picking up speed on the highway. Lex was surprised but didn’t slow down. He knew she was bluffing and he wasn’t ready to let her out yet. She was interesting.

‘Want some dinner?’ he asked.

She pulled the door shut. ‘I suppose I have to eat. Not much open around here.’

‘Nothing. Next town’s about forty ks away.’

‘And you were going to dump me six ks out of Merrigan. Thanks a lot.’

Lex wasn’t sure quite what he had intended to do. ‘So is that a “yes” to dinner?’ he asked.

The girl grunted impatiently. ‘Do you want me to beg?’

He swung the Volvo onto the Point road. They hammered too fast onto the dirt and skidded slightly on the corrugations. The girl’s open window sucked in the dust. In silence they drove through the bush and then over the rolling hills towards the sea.

‘Do you live at the end of the earth or something, man?’ she said, finally winding the window up.

‘The name’s Lex. Lex Henderson.’

‘Shit. Fancy name. Are you descended from royalty or something?’ She laughed. It was hard and detached, like she’d already lost something of herself in the few years of her life. ‘I’m Jen. I suppose we’d better get to first names since you’re going to feed me. And, by the way, I’m vegetarian. Can you cope with that?’

Lex rolled his eyes. ‘It’ll stretch me, but I’ll give it a go.’

They pulled up on the grass outside the house. It was a calm evening, with the sea a blue-silver and the light melting to apricot on the horizon.

‘You going to take me to Eden after this?’

‘I’ll think about it. Depends on how well you behave yourself.’

‘Scoutmaster.’ She pulled her pack out and followed him inside. ‘Nice spot,’ she said. ‘Except for the trash-heap next door.’

‘My neighbour’s too old to fuss over tidiness.’

‘Looks like it. You should clean it up for her—an able-bodied man like yourself.’

Lex wasn’t sure he felt comfortable about her reference to his body. And he wasn’t sure he liked her critical young eyes checking out his belly and thinning hair. He gave her a beer then started rustling around in the pantry for vegies to chop. While he worked in the kitchen, she poked around the bookshelves and squinted at Callista’s paintings on the wall. He admired her easiness as she wandered around the house, touching things and exploring like a child.

‘Not a bad set-up,’ she said, glancing his way. ‘You on your own here?’

‘Most of the time.’

‘That sucks.’

She grabbed a book from the shelf, sat on the lounge and spread her arm along the back of it, drinking beer and staring out to sea. She made no effort at conversation and no offer to help with dinner. The silence didn’t bother her. She read the book intermittently, like she was waiting at a bus stop.

When dinner was ready, Lex laid two bowls of pasta on the table.

Jen didn’t look up from her book. ‘Mind if I just sit here with it on my lap?’

He sat down at the table and chose not to answer.

‘Okay,’ she said, standing up on those long lean legs. ‘I’ll eat with you.’

They ate for a while in silence.

‘Are you studying?’ he asked to break the silence.

‘Nah. I’m an activist.’

‘What does that mean?’ He masked a smile by plunging a forkful of food into his mouth.

‘I demonstrate.’ She was gobbling her food. ‘This is good,’ she said, mouth full. She waved her fork around as she spoke. ‘When there’s an important social issue going down, like . . . I dunno . . . logging, abortion, social injustice, higher fees for students . . . well, I’m there.’ She stuffed more food into her mouth. ‘I was studying law. But it was too boring, and then I got busy demonstrating. Too many issues to make a contribution to. Plus they give you good food and somewhere to sleep.’

‘Who’s they?’

‘Whoever’s organising the demo. Especially if it’s at an out-of-town location. That’s why I’m heading to Eden. Logging demo. But they’re not so good on the transport side of things. If you don’t catch a lift with the first load heading out of town, you have to make your own way down.’

‘So you’re a woman on a mission.’

‘You could say that. Saving forests this week.’

Food kept disappearing into her mouth. Lex had never seen anyone eat so fast.

‘Are there any seconds?’ she asked.

‘Help yourself.’

She leapt up with her mouth still full and came back holding the pot. He watched in disbelief as she set it on the table and ate directly out of it with her fork. The eating involved such measured concentration there was no room for talk. Then she looked up at him with a smile that twisted her mouth.

‘You think I’m sexy, don’t you?’

Lex didn’t answer. He hadn’t anticipated this switch in the conversation.

‘Ever had sex with a young woman?’ she asked.

He laughed. ‘Yes. When I was young.’

Jen was annoyed at his humour. She obviously didn’t like being laughed at.

‘In my experience, older men are pretty keen on younger women.’

‘Not all older men,’ he said. ‘How old do you think I am?’

She shrugged. ‘I dunno. Fifty?’

It was a payback dig.

‘Close,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘Twenty. But I’ve seen a lot of life.’

She was as defensive about her age as he was.

‘Want to try it?’ she asked.

‘Try what?’

‘A young body. Then you can take me to Eden.’

He stood up and cleared the table. ‘I’m a bit beyond teenagers.’

‘Why did you pick me up then?’ she asked.

Lex stood the pot in the sink and ran cold water into it. He wasn’t sure why he had picked her up. ‘You looked like you needed a good feed,’ he said, scooping up the keys to the Volvo. ‘Let’s go then. Get this over and done with. Call it my contribution to the conservation effort.’

He dropped her in Imlay Street near the phone booths. There were plenty of bright lights, but he felt a bit guilty about abandoning her alone and at night, although she seemed unconcerned.

‘Your taste in music’s shit,’ she said, after she had dragged her pack out and slung it on the footpath.

‘Thanks.’

She smiled. ‘Catch you in another lifetime. Maybe you’ll break out next time. Sex can be just for fun, you know.’

‘Thanks for the advice,’ he said dryly. ‘No doubt it’ll carry me into a wild and wonderful future.’

She tossed back her dreads and laughed. ‘Now you’ll remember me every time. I have that effect on people.’

She was so full of brash confidence. Lex rolled up his window and cruised down the street. He was still feeling a little guilty when he U-turned down the end and came back through town to head home. Jen was where he’d left her, sitting on top of her pack jabbering into a mobile phone. So much for isolation, she’d be fine.

He had just turned onto the highway when he remembered the Eden whaling museum Jimmy Wallace had mentioned on his tour. He was all the way down here, he might as well stay the night and go to the museum in the morning.

He checked into a motel.

The Eden Killer Whale Museum was on Imlay Street at the far end of the shops. It was easy to find; a building painted creamy-white, with a short white lighthouse beside it. Perched on the edge of a steep hill, the museum looked out over the moody grey waters of Twofold Bay, the old whaling grounds, a fitting place for a memorial to the past.

Just after opening time, Lex paid his money in the quiet foyer. He was amazed at how cheap it was. Only six dollars. Something like this would be significantly more expensive in Sydney. And, being a weekday, there was nobody else around. He’d have the entire place to himself. He took the brochure from the lady at the front desk and wandered into the display hall.

Two things confronted him immediately: the long skeleton of Old Tom, the killer whale that used to assist the whalers, and a full-size replica of an old-time whale boat.

Old Tom’s skeleton transfixed him. It was hard to extrapolate from the smiling skull and the long stretch of vertebrae to the picture of a killer whale on the placard on the wall. The skull could have belonged to a large porpoise. The flippers looked like stubby hands, and the main feature of the killer—the long dorsal fin—was missing. In life, it was a slab of cartilage. Therefore, in death, it was absent from the skeleton. Lex just couldn’t see this string of bones as a formidable killer whale, or orca, as people preferred to call them these days.

He walked around the length of the skeleton, running his hands along the wooden bar that fenced him off from it. On the far side, he read the placard and then moved forward to inspect Old Tom’s teeth on that side. They were large white pegs and Lex could see they would have been mean weapons. The interesting thing was that Old Tom’s teeth were worn where he had taken a line from the whale boat many times to help tow the whalers quickly out to sea when there were whales about. The killer had wanted to hurry up the process of landing a meal.

In the corner by Old Tom’s skull was a box that was playing a recording of killer whale calls. Lex stood by the box a long time, reading and rereading the wall-hanging about Old Tom and letting the sounds wash through him. They were very different from the calls he had heard from the humpbacks off the Point. The killers were much more conversational: trills and squeals, reverberating clicks, repetitive hollow whines, grinding noises. He listened to the calls as if hearing these voices over and over might help him understand what they were saying, as if it would help him understand the link between these whales and the whalers. A relationship of mutual benefit. A symbiosis.

Eventually, he wandered back around to the whale boat and the series of framed photos along the wall. The boat was long in this room, and it seemed large until you imagined it out on the sea, with six oarsmen, a harpoon on board, and a whale at least two to three times bigger than Old Tom alongside. Once Lex added an image of waves and a vision of enormous uplifted tail flukes, the boat became small—a meagre weapon against a whale. In his craziest dreams, Lex couldn’t imagine himself out there, rowing across the stormy bay trying to make ground on a pod of travelling whales. He’d be terrified. When this boat came near to a whale, the harpoon would be fired, and then, if it made fast, the boat could be towed all around the bay and out to sea, until the whale became exhausted and was sufficiently weakened by internal bleeding to slow down. Then it would be the job of the headsman to lance the whale—the final blow.