‘What do the doctors say?’ her cousin asked.
‘They don’t say much,’ she said at last, ‘things like “We’re monitoring his condition closely”.’
‘Well, that’s all they can say, really,’ Gabriela said comfortingly. ‘And they’re very good there, you know, it’s a good hospital.’
‘Gabriela, he was out all night!’ Sara cried. ‘He was hanging upside down for hours in that storm, blood just pouring out of his head!’
‘He’s in the doctors’ hands now,’ Gabriela said at last. ‘And in God’s.’
‘Oh, don’t talk to me about God.’ Sara dived into the green-illuminated wave, swam down to the sand and hung there, her eyes open. Her hair floated past like seaweed midst a spray of silver bubbles. Down here the world was strange and blue and empty. She remembered the fairy tale her grandmother had used to tell her. ‘There was a wondrous blue light down there,’ Consuelo always said. ‘You might suppose yourself high up in the air, with only the sky above and below you.’
Then the backlash of the wave thrust her into the thundery air, with a slap of water across her face. She was caught unawares by a wave, knocking her down, dragging her under. Sara tumbled into the shore, her hair wrapping about her throat, her arms flailing. Her foot found sand, and she thrust upward, gulping for air as her head broke above the water. Slowly she let the wave roll her over, and sank back below the water, the shore slipping away beneath her stomach. It was gloomy down there, rocks dark menaces rising from the pale sand. She felt the rip tug her away from shore.
Sara had often thought that most people seemed to live their life only splashing about in the shallows. But she … she was dragged down into the fathomless depths again and again, where no light struck and hideous monsters of the deep swam. She tried so hard to stay where she could touch the sand with her feet. But always she was swept out, always she was sucked under.
She turned on her side and struck out for shore, swimming diagonally to the rip. A wave caught her and she rode it in, letting herself be tumbled in the white water.
Her bikini pants were dragged down with sand. Squatting in the shallow waves, she washed out the sand. As if guessing what happened, Matthew dove into the water near her. Sara struggled to drag her pants up again.
‘Want some help?’ he asked, with a wicked, knowing grin.
Hastily she ducked behind Gabriela flushing with embarrassment.
Joe was surfing alone off the rocks, all his restless energy turned to grace. Dylan ran and dived through the water, bodysurfing into shore. Dominic sat on the sand, drawing with a stick, his head bent.
Thunder cracked and whistled to the south. The sun had dropped behind the ridge and all the colour had drained away from the water. It looked like one of Augusto’s ‘black’ paintings, gloomy and filled with menace.
‘It’s going to piss down,’ Matthew said. ‘D’you reckon we should go?’
Sara looked at him and nodded. She felt the drag of the tide on her legs and was suddenly aware of how very tired she was. Matthew turned and shouted to Joe, who lifted a hand and paddled his board around. It began to rain, cold and stinging against their faces.
‘Come on,’ Gabriela called, running out on to the beach.
Sara swam towards the shore, catching a wave that lifted her and carried her forward with a little surge. She did not want to think about her father. Climbing into the warmth and dryness of the truck, Sara dragged a T-shirt on over her swimming-costume and buried her face in a towel. The other door opened, and she looked up, startled, but it was Gabriela clambering in, hair plastered all over her face. She wrapped herself in her towel, saying, ‘Wow, it’s raining, it’s pouring!’
Matthew opened the door and slid in beside Sara, showering her with cold water. ‘The twins said they’ll walk home – they’re wet enough already and there’s not enough room in the truck for us all.’
She nodded and said nothing. He squinted at her. ‘You OK?’
She gave a little shrug.
‘Upset about your father?’
She nodded.
‘He’s pretty bad, is he?’
‘I think he’s going to die.’
He moved closer to her, so that their bare arms and legs touched, but did not say anything. She was glad he did not offer her platitudes.
Gabriela said something about when there’s life, there’s hope, but Sara hardly heard her. She concentrated on the warmth all along her other side.
Then Joe came at last, throwing his surfboard in the back. He clambered in behind the steering-wheel so that they were all crushed together in the front seat. Matthew shifted even closer to Sara, lifting his arm so it lay along the back of the seat. She was so tired she let her head lie back against it, and felt him press her closer, his arm cradling her neck.
It was almost dark. As they headed up the steep dirt track, the sun ahead was a livid red smear across the sky, the sea behind only a sound to unsettle them.
They drove in silence, the headlights lighting up the road before them. Once a rabbit bounded quickly out in front of them, its eyes a sharp green as it turned to stare at the mesmerising lights, before disappearing under the fence.
They drew up in front of the dark, empty house. Sara did not want to get out. Gabriela opened the car door and ran through the rain. Joe leapt out too, grabbing his surfboard out of the back. For the count of four heartbeats, Sara sat still, then she sighed, lifted her head, began to slide along the seat to get out. Matthew followed her.
‘Night,’ he said. ‘See you tomorrow, I s’pose.’
She nodded, though he would have had trouble seeing her in all the rainy darkness.
‘I’m sorry about your dad and everything,’ he said. ‘You’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do to help, won’t you?’
She gave a soft, inarticulate murmur, wishing that she could. But she was mute.
‘Light as a swallow pursued by her enemies, La Sirenita joined in the whirling dance. Everyone applauded her, for never had she danced so wonderfully. Her soft feet felt as if they were pierced by daggers, but she scarcely noticed. Her heart suffered far greater pain.’ Consuelo paused in her story, pressing both her hands against her own heart. ‘Oh, how I know that pain.’
‘What happened?’ Sara asked, sitting up in bed. ‘Did the prince see her dance? Did he see her pain?’
Consuelo shook her head. ‘The prince did not notice a thing. He danced with his bride, oblivious to the little mermaid, whirling about so gracefully on the dance floor. While La Sirenita danced as if she was full of joy, not despair. She knew that this was the last evening that she would ever see him. She had forsaken her home and family for him, she had sacrificed her voice and suffered such terrible torments, but he knew nothing of this. He saw nothing. The merrymaking lasted long after midnight, yet still she laughed and danced on, although it felt as if she was dancing on knives …’
Sara had always thought the story of the little mermaid was the saddest she had ever heard. Consuelo told it often. It never seemed to occur to her that it was a terrible, cruel story to tell a little girl. Indeed, she seemed to linger on the cruellest parts, the cutting out of the little mermaid’s tongue, the bloody footsteps she left behind her as she danced, how she had flung herself into the sea to drown when the prince had married another girl. Yet, when Consuelo told how the little mermaid was transformed in the end to a spirit of air, with a voice of such unearthly beauty no music could ever hope to match it, and how, at the end, she had at last been able to weep tears of joy, the old woman’s own voice quavered with some intense emotion, though whether it was joy or sorrow was impossible to tell. Of all the stories Consuelo told, it was this one which rang the loudest in Sara’s imagination and the one which she remembered most clearly.
Bridget did not like the stories Consuelo told. ‘They are so cruel,’ she said to Augusto once.
‘Life is cruel,’ he replied.
Bridget did not believe in magic, yet believed in miracles.
She was scornful of her husband’s myriad superstitions, yet, whenever she was troubled, picked up and rubbed the rosary beads left coiled on her dressing-table. She laughed at Sara’s stories of ghosts, yet believed in the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Every Easter and Christmas, she packed her four children into her car and took them to the small Catholic church in Narooma, where a faded priest told stories of doom and glory in a faded voice.
Sara tried hard to understand the paradox of angels and devils, heaven and hell, but was left only with the menace of there being a terrible fate for naughty children. And Sara was so often naughty, and tried so hard to be good.
Until the age of ten Sara went to St Agatha’s, a small Catholic day school for girls on the outskirts of Narooma. Her three brothers attended the boys’ Catholic school nearby. The three of them would saunter along the street from the bus stop with their friends, throwing rocks, rattling fences with sticks, teasing dogs through a gate. Sara trailed behind them dreamily, her school hat pulled on crookedly. She had no friends to walk to school with. There was something about her that invited bullying. Perhaps it was because she had no defences against unkindness. Even a giggling glance could be enough to make her flush and stiffen, her feet twisting together, tears smarting her eyes. A few well-chosen words and the tears would fall, which some of the girls found vastly amusing. It gave them a sense of power, which brought its own glow and satisfaction. And no-one wanted to be friends with the school victim.
After Bridget died, Augusto refused to celebrate Christmas anymore. For the first time in Sara’s life the festive season came and passed with no feast, no carols, no presents, no tree, no twinkling lights, no dim, quiet church with the priest chanting and the organs booming. Augusto would not even let them watch television because every channel had a Christmas special, every advertisement a Noël. Christmas passed in a stiff, cold silence.
However, it was not until Sara was preparing to go back to school that she realised how deeply her father’s new prohibition of religion ran. Sara had thought she was going to be a weekly boarder at a private Catholic school more than two hours’ drive away in Nowra, and so she had been looking forward to beginning the year. She wanted to go where no-one knew who she was or how her mother had died, or that her father had brought his long-time mistress to live in their house only a scant month after he had thrown his wife’s ashes off Towradgi Headland. She wanted to slide invisibly into the big pond of high school like a little tadpole, free of the constant teasing of the girls she knew.
However, when she began to chatter about the term ahead, Augusto told her curtly that she and Joe were to go to nearby Nargul High School, while Dominic and Dylan were to be sent to the local primary school with their new sister.
All four of Bridget’s children fought bitterly against his edict. Joe did not care which school he went to, but he felt Augusto was trying to erase Bridget’s memory and he blamed Gayla for the decision. Sara was terrified of strange boys, and dreaded going to the same school as all the girls who had made primary school such an ordeal for her. Dylan and Dominic were the most upset, for how were they to explain the sudden appearance of a sister who was only fifteen months younger than they were?
Bridget’s four children even decided to appeal to their decidedly unsympathetic stepmother, to no avail. Appealing to Gayla was like throwing a ball into a bed of eiderdowns and cushions – nothing returned. There was a curve of her cheek, a moistening of her lips with her tongue, a shifting of her thighs. ‘Your father has made up his mind,’ was all she said, their protests simply waved away.
So, much against their will, the Sanchez family attended the local public schools, where the scandal over Bridget’s sudden death and Augusto’s sudden re-marriage made the five Sanchez children very uncomfortable indeed. Augusto even forbade them to study divinity, asking the school to give them an hour in the library instead. They never went to the little white church again, not even for Bridget’s memorial service which the Halloran family held in angry opposition to Augusto’s wishes. That was when the feud between the Sanchez and the Halloran families really erupted – when Augusto refused to have Bridget’s body buried in the churchyard but threw her ashes into the sea-wind from the top of Towradgi Headland.
Augusto’s hatred for the Church only served to make his children more curious. Sara read books on the lives of the saints in secret, sick with fascination over the descriptions of burnings and mutilations, the martyrdom of countless believers. Sara trembled as she read, afraid her father might be wrong and that a God really did exist.
Joe’s rebellion was much more obvious, being one of rebellion against his father, not his father’s beliefs. He kept going to church, in defiance of his father’s order, and had to bear many furious diatribes in which Augusto worked himself into a lather of rage. He wore his mother’s cross around his neck, on a gold chain, and once tried to say grace before a meal. He only tried once.
After Bridget’s death, any affection Joe had for his father seemed to vanish. He was rude, made insinuating comments, was openly insulting to his stepmother, who merely yawned, and worst of all, tried hard to be accepted by his mother’s family.
It was one of life’s cruel ironies. Thin, dark-haired Joe, who never grew any taller than a shade under five foot, seven inches, wanted desperately for the Halloran family to like him. He fetched and carried for his uncle Alex and his two red-haired derisive sons. He tried hard to play football, and every year failed to make the grade. He made disparaging remarks about his father to Alex Halloran and received a repressive frown for his pains. For more than two years he went to church at Easter and Christmas, and his only reward was to have Craig Halloran cuff him on the ear when he walked past and for his uncle to once or twice notice and acknowledge him.
Joe was not to know that his thin frame, his hooked nose, his long hair, his narrow aquamarine eyes, his quick temper and easy boasting, his fits of restlessness, all reminded Alex Halloran of Augusto Sanchez. He was not to know that any reminder of Augusto Sanchez was salt to a suppurating sore. Yet Bridget’s other sons, who were stocky, freckled and sullen, and disliked their maternal relations, aroused no such bitter reminders in Alex’s mind. He was often kind to them, and sometimes asked them about school or football. Joe grew to hate being short, being olive-skinned, not having red hair.
The Hallorans did not like Augusto. They thought he was sly and oily and immoral. They did not like Joe either. They thought he was weak. They did not know how very difficult it was for him, living at home with his father, trying desperately to save the farm that his mother had loved.
He was constantly begging Augusto, almost in tears, to stop spending so much money. It had been the primary source of tension between father and son, Augusto’s never-ending extravagances. Expensive wine, cigars, brandy. Tubes and tubes of paint that were left lying about without their lids so the vivid colour within set hard. Subscriptions to high-priced art magazines that were never opened. Augusto’s lavish feasts made with rare and costly ingredients that had to be sourced from Sydney or Canberra – veal cutlets in pomegranate sauce, roast duck with figs, truffles in sherry and butter, artichokes stuffed with white pork sausages, roast goose with pears, soup made with lobsters, prawns, mussels, clams, squid, fresh saffron threads, cognac and cinnamon – sumptuous banquets cooked in the dingy old kitchen of a farm where no-one ever came, the remnants of which were fed to the dogs.
Money, money, they were always fighting over money. Joe had worked on the farm ever since he had left school, yet he never received regular wages. Augusto had been happy for Joe to manage the affairs of the farm, but would not surrender control of the income. So Joe had to ask Augusto to sign a cheque whenever he needed anything for the farm, and just hope that the cheque would not bounce. Towradgi had been a battleground, with Joe the perpetual loser.
Sara sometimes thought Joe loved the farm so much because it was like a shrine to their mother’s memory. Af
ter all, Towradgi was where Bridget had been born and where Bridget had died. When the bank had threatened to foreclose just before Christmas, Joe had been in despair and then, when Alex had taken over the mortgage and it looked like the farm might be saved, Joe had been ecstatic. Like Augusto, it was always sol y sombra with Joe.
The house smelt like it had been abandoned for years. As Sara opened the front door, a ghostly grey light spread through the front hall. She heard dust moving in wind-patterns, the sound of rain on the tin roof, the distant melancholy moo of a cow. Slowly she walked inside, turning on the light. The light did not fill the silence.
She ran up the stairs to her own little attic room. She could hear the wind rushing around the tower, and the drum of the rain on the tin roof. It sounded like poltergeists. She was cold, her hair dripping down her neck. She sat on the bed for several minutes before she could begin to change. She could not help thinking about Matthew. It made her restless. There was a strange twist deep in her stomach. Through her window beside her bed she could see the rain passing across the dark paddocks, the tall spears of the poplars bending and swaying on the far hill.
She wondered what Matthew thought of her. Did he think her pretty? She stared at herself in the mirror, seeing her nose springing like the prow of a ship. How could he? She did not think so herself.
Her bedroom was cold. It was a small room, rounded in shape, but with big windows on all sides. It had once been an attic, but Augusto gave it to Sara when Gayla and her daughter moved in, since the old house was then filled to the limits. It was so small there was only room for her bed, and a battered chest of drawers pushed between the windows. But Sara thought of it as sanctuary – while the lights were on.