Three's a Crowd (11 page)

When we finally arrived at the beach, Geordie's pessimism about the wind seemed unfounded. The sky was an unclouded blue and the sea almost flat, with just the slightest of swells rippling gently against the sand. The flags were further up the beach than usual. The sandbanks had shifted and the current had scoured deep channels across the usual swimming spot. There was no sign of Drew.

“He mightn't have set off as early as we did,” Julie said. “They were all still partying on when Geordie, Ian and I left.”

Out of habit I checked that Brat was slathered with sunscreen and that he kept within the flags. More and more family groups arrived and spread along the beach. There were no boards on the beach and despite Brat's pestering none of the boys unloaded theirs from the van.

“No, you can't have a board to play with,” Geordie kept repeating to Brat, over and over again. “The currents are all over the place today. Not right for kids, aye.”

Around noon, a slight offshore breeze got up. It flattened the swell of the surf so that it had an oily, slightly ominous look. Faint streaks of ragged clouds appeared across the sky. The tide came full in and Geordie was proved right – the currents were all over the place. The calm surface of the water was deceptive. The beach patrol was busy collecting unsuspecting and inexperienced swimmers whom had been whirled out to sea.

Drew still hadn't arrived. I started to feel insecure. Perhaps Louise had enticed him into keeping her company for the day? Perhaps he had changed his mind? Perhaps he had an accident on his motorbike? That would be distinctly dreadful. The worst thing about my fears was that somehow I couldn't say anything to Julie. I just knew that she wouldn't understand.

The boys were on patrol. Julie had fallen asleep and Brat was practising duck-diving in the water. I stared half asleep as his skinny legs waved above the water. I decided I would always be able to identify Brat by his skinny, knobbly legs.

A motor boat puttered into shore up from the flags. I saw Brat turn and stare. He and other small boys gathered around it. The guy pulled the boat further up on the sand and then spoke to Brat who pointed to me. The guy straightened up and waved. It was Drew. I stood up quietly without waking Julie and hurried down to meet him.

“Hi, Amanda,” he said with a smile as he gestured to the boat. “Ready?”

“Where are we going?” I asked as I helped him push the boat back into the water and climbed in.

“Up river. The tide's in and there's no swell, so we'll be able to go through the inlet without any trouble.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

The mouth of the river which became the inlet was only about a mile up from the surf club. If the tide was out the mudflats made it impassable for boating, and if there was decent surf running it was dangerous to get through. Today, the conditions were ideal for the small motor boat to pass in and out.

The motor puttered into life and the boat chugged and swayed away from the shore. We were approaching the wide inlet to the river. The boat rolled, too much for the slight swell. A dripping head appeared over the side.

“Can I come too?” Brat asked with his cheeky grin.

I stared at him in horror. He must have clung unnoticed to the side of the boat as it moved away from the swimmers and out to sea. My objectionable little brother was stuffing up my plans yet again.

 

 

“I intended to drop you back at the beach on my bike,” Drew explained. His gaze flicked dislike over the grinning Brat. “It won't carry three of us though.”

We had left the inlet behind and were puttering up Tarron River. It became very hot and still, oppressively so, and the colour had leached out of the sky so that it matched the river. The water swirled like a muddy silk taffeta under the movement of the boat. There was no sign of life and the dense banks of trees lining the water muffled any sound. If it wasn't for Brat in the boat with us, we could have been the original Adam and Eve.

I was so upset with Brat that I couldn't even speak to him. Drew had taken his arrival on board remarkably smoothly, especially since Brat had flatly refused to be dumped at the inlet to walk back to the surf beach.

“Mum said you have to look after me at the beach and I want to come with you,” he had argued, so he stayed in the boat with us as an unwelcome guest.

Although we had been travelling upriver for half an hour, the cluster of fishermen's shacks, shops and camping grounds were a lot further inland on the high ground. Down here, between the township and the sea was nothing but the flood plain, with the river winding its tortuous way through.

After a while Drew turned the boat along the bank until it edged into a narrow deep creek.

“We're here,” he announced.

There was a small landing with an old boat shed behind it but no other sign of life. A winding foot track led away from the river. Drew's motorbike was chained to a tree beside it.

“A friend loaned me the boat,” Drew explained. “I just rode straight here on my bike. “ He put an arm around me and led me along the track to a clearing by the side of the creek. He indicated a small hamper and rug. “It's our afternoon tea. You unpack and I'll find something to keep Brat out of our hair until we're ready to leave.”

I spread out the rug and unpacked sliced fruit cake and two plastic glasses. There was nothing to drink in the hamper.

“What are we drinking?” I demanded when Drew walked back without Brat.

Drew smiled and produced his silver flask. He poured its contents into the plastic glasses.

“A bit early in the day for whisky, isn't it?”

“Some of Mr. Lessing's good quality whisky.” His blue eyes focussed on me with an unnerving intensity. “Just a pledge to friendship. I'm sure Mr. Lessing doesn't mind donating his whisky to a wonderful cause.”

“A pledge to friendship,” I agreed and pretended to take a sip.

Mr Lessing's whisky was very potent. Drew gulped his glass down like a dose of medicine and then studied me. I wished that I had remembered to wear my shirt. The intensity of his gaze had my knees going boneless again. I stared into his black-lashed incredibly blue eyes. My throat was suddenly dry. “I pinched the cake from Louise's supper,” Drew said proudly.

I can't honestly say that he made a pass or anything. When we gazed into each other's eyes we sort of gravitated against each other. I felt tingly sparks of awareness of his nearness. This was definitely love. My first experience of it.

“Amanda,” he murmured.

“Mandy,” came the shriller echo, like a mosquito whine on the edge of my consciousness. I sat up suddenly. “Mandy,” shrieked Brat's voice again. “Quick! I'm scared!”

Drew shrugged and flashed me his even white-toothed smile. “Great timing, your little Brat.”

He pulled me against him. “With luck and no paddle he'll stay lost. It's us who are important right now.”

“Lost,” I repeated like an idiot.

“He's probably floated off somewhere. I left him playing in the old canoe,” Drew said with a laugh.

I stared at him in horror. The idiot thought he was being funny! “In the river?” I gasped.

Drew's pleased smile was sufficient answer. I remembered the tide. It would have turned by now and be racing remorselessly towards the bar of the inlet. I realized it wasn't my agitation that was causing my hair to fly about. That off shore breeze had strengthened, enough to cause the protected trees along the river to toss about restlessly. The sullen surf would be lifting to fight it as the wind pushed the tide through the entrance at the inlet.

I wrestled free of Drew and stared down at him. My heart was hammering so hard it was choking up my throat. I felt as if I had just been split down the middle.

On one side of me, fury was building at the way Brat was ruining my date again, and on the other side of me an even colder fury was rising at the contemptuous note in Drew's voice when he used the term ‘brat' about my brother. The other guys used it with amused affection and admiration. Drew actually meant
brat
when he said it.

“Come on,” I demanded. “We'll catch him in the motor boat.”

“No we won't,” Drew said, still with his charming smile and without moving. “The gauge is on empty. We just made it back here. Why worry about the brat?” he coaxed. “He'll be all right. It'll take hours for the canoe to drift as far as the inlet.”

“We can go by bike across to the beach.”

“My dear girl,” Drew said, still smiling. “It's a two-hour drive along a winding dirt track back to cross the bridge, and then another hour back to the beach.”

This was true! We were on the wrong side of the river. If we had to go back to the bridge to cross it was hours out of our way. I tried to remember exactly where we were along the river in relation to the beach road. It would be quicker to cut across.

“Your phone,” I demanded. I could ring the club and get the guys to head to the inlet to try and beat the canoe there.

“Left it back home to recharge,” Drew said with a shrug.

“How very incompetent,” I sneered, remembering my charged phone sitting in my beach bag.

“Where are you going?” Drew called after me as I sprinted along the creek and dived into the river. He was genuinely bewildered – the creep!

The tide was pushing out fast. I'm a strong swimmer but it took all my strength to make the other bank. I clambered out and jogged for the high embankment that marked the road. Surely if I reached the road I could flag a motorist down to drive me the rest of the way? However, when I reached the road there was no traffic heading beachwards.

I waved frantically at cars coming from the beach, but they just waved back and sped past me. I jogged, sprinted and sometimes walked until I got my breath back, and then I sprinted again. My bare feet became very painful, and then I couldn't feel them for numbness. They were unimportant anyway.

I cringed as I realized how selfish and irresponsible I had been. What did I have against my own brother anyway? Brat wasn't really a pain in the neck – everyone else thought his pranks were just funny. He was only ten years old, and he was my only brother. I did care about him. He shared his sweets, and loaned me his ghastly dinosaur soft toy for comfort when I had my last cold. He was a quick-witted gutsy little kid whom everyone else liked too, except for that smiling version of Murray the Murk. In fact, Drew was worse than Murray the Murk. Murray wouldn't endanger a kid's life like that.

My imagination leaped ahead to the way the offshore wind and the tide would sweep the flimsy canoe into the destructive barrier of surf. I shivered. Brat wasn't a bad swimmer for a kid but he wouldn't be able to handle that. The lump in my throat got worse. We wouldn't be a proper family if anything happened to Brat. How much time did I have left? I put my head down and tried to force myself to move even faster.

At last I heard the sullen thunder of the surf and struggled down the slope to the clubhouse. Geordie's van was in its usual position. I rushed through the clubhouse, but no one was around.

The beach was deserted. The flags had been taken down, and the ‘Beach Closed' notice was up on its board. Julie was still sprawled in her usual position, and Geordie and others waited by her.

“Where were you?” Julie asked as I stumbled down to them. “We've decided to go home. Where's Brat?”

“F-floating down the Tarron in a canoe and n-no paddles, if he hasn't tried to swim for it,” I choked. ”And the tide's moving really fast and the inlet is going to be a mess with that wind against it.”

“Hmm,” Geordie said as he scowled at the surf.

“The rubber duckie – move,” Jeebie said crisply. The foolish grin was missing from his face and he looked completely different: a grim determined steady-eyed stranger.

In a well-synchronised team, George, Jeebie, Sandy and Murray ran up to the clubhouse and manhandled the rubber duck down the beach. No one bothered to say anything. The engine chugged into life as they swung aboard, and it bounced across the waves towards the inlet.

I sprinted after them along the beach, leaving Julie following more slowly. When I reached the inlet, the outgoing tide had left a widening patch of mud flats. I squelched through the soft mud towards the water. The river poured through the deep channel of the inlet to attack the high surf in a confused swirling boiling cauldron.

The rubber duck vanished into it, and I heard the engine whining its protest as it got bounced around. Almost exactly at that moment the canoe came sweeping down the river, the small figure leaning well over to keep it balanced against the current.

“Brat!” I shrieked.

A swimmer appeared through the angry surf. Someone had dived from the rubber duck as it bounced and whined its protest through the cauldron. I stood up to my knees in the soft mud and watched. It was probably Geordie, deciding he could move faster than the rubber duck. He was the strongest swimmer in the club.

Head down and arms flailing the swimmer churned his way against the tide, and eventually reached the canoe. Brat leaned over and the canoe rolled and sank with him. Two heads bobbed up, the smaller one clinging behind the swimmer. He swam out of the welter of surging water across to where I waited. The engine of the rubber duck whined its exertion as it bounced out of the cauldron and droned its way parallel with the beach back to the clubhouse. It was not George! It was Jeebie who had swum in to rescue Brat. He waded out of the water with Brat clinging to his back.

“We swam out of it,” Brat yelled as he jumped off Jeebie. “Did you see me steer that silly canoe down the centre of the current?”

I glared down at him. I was in my usual state where I couldn't make up my mind whether to murder him or hug him. Julie sniggered and turned and jogged back ahead of us. I ended up just patting his skinny shoulder. If I hugged him I would embarrass the brat. Although he deserved some embarrassment.