Air cheeps from his ears again. The water vibrates against his skin as he rushes all the way to the pale sandy seabed.
Georgie hung upside down against her harness with her whole weight against the clumsy latches into which her fingers could not fit. Air burbled and boiled somewhere in the cabin like the sound of a human voice. You could feel the weight of the motor dragging you down. Spritzing bubbles. Everything blurry. Ears hurting.
The doorway was just a rectangle of pale blue light now. She watched it as passively as you would a TV or a computer screen. She was calm, so calm—and then not calm.
The thud of the plane hitting the bottom kicked the air out of her; she felt her last breath run up her chin and across her breasts and she saw the shadow coming for her like any ordinary saurian nightmare. She lashed at it, fought it off while it clawed at her. Such a hot darkness and so insistent upon her. It pressed itself furry against her face. She saw red eyes within the black wavering blur. Georgie could feel it snapping her free from herself; she sensed her last awful unbuckling, the yanking sensation of coming unstuck.
But air against her lips. Hotter than water. It boiled through her teeth and into her throat. It blew her open. It was like an electrical charge. For a moment she thought she saw his face in that hoary mass before her eyes. She felt his lips pressed against her. Luther Fox.
She felt herself come unglued, felt the grip of his hands upon her arms. She was floating into that pale blue screen, into the soft world outside. Georgie Jutland drank his hot shout and let him swim her up into the rest of her life.
HE LIES with his head against the deck and does not breathe. The sky is behind her. She’s real. She’s not real. The others have faces they don’t seem to own yet. One of them looks as though he’s still waiting to be rescued.
Georgie looked at the martyred jut of his hipbones, the twigs in his hair, the livid ulcers all down his thin legs. The boat was moving now. The sea behind them was glossy with fuel and a final coil of bubbles that twisted on the surface. The pilot shook. Jim Buckridge held his head in his hands. The fishing guide worked the tiller and licked his lips as though lost for words.
She looks in from the sky. Eyes wide as a fish’s. Real or not, he should breathe. He feels his lips split in a smile. Soon. There’s plenty of time for that.
Georgie saw his eyes roll back and his hips lift toward her. My God, he was blue. The bleeding pilot drew his legs back in horror and Jim Buckridge bellowed. Georgie froze. She was as stuck as she’d ever been in her life. Luther Fox began to convulse.
Well, said the guide. You’re the nurse.
Yes, she thought. This is what I do.
She fell on Luther Fox, pressed her mouth to his and blew.
She’s real.
acknowledgements
I would like to thank Robert Vaughan for his generosity and his friendship and for the many days and nights on One Tree Beach where this story took shape.
For editorial advice I’m indebted to Jenny Darling, Howard Willis, Hilary McPhee and Judith Lukin-Amundsen.
I thank my children for the years of encouragement, for the little notes in the drawer and for their gentle patience.
This book is for Denise who endured it and made it possible.
There is no town called White Point in Western Australia, nor a place by the name of Coronation Gulf. This is a work of fiction and its characters are imaginary.
permissions
The epigraph is #1695 by Emily Dickinson. Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1951, 1955, 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
The lines quoted from ‘My Country’, by Dorothea MacKellar, used with permission of copyright owners of the Dorothea MacKellar Estate c/o Curtis Brown (Australia) Pty Ltd.
Lines quoted on pages 217 and 292 are from ‘The Absolute Explains’, by Thomas Hardy.
The first poem quoted on page 223 is from ‘The Maldive Shark’, by Herman Melville.
On page 223 the excerpt is from ‘The Truth the Dead Know’, from All My Pretty Ones by Anne Sexton. Copyright 1962 by Anne Sexton, © renewed 1990 by Linda G. Sexton. Reprinted by permission Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from ‘The Lifeguard’, from Drowning with Others by James Dickey. Reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press.
On page 344 Luther Fox quotes from ‘The Book of Urizen’ by William Blake.
Excerpt from ‘The North Wind Is Tossing in the Leaves’. Music/lyrics by John Wheeler/William G. James (W/C 100%). © 1968 Chappell & Co. Ltd., London/Sydney.
The lyrics quoted on page 336 are from ‘Nobody’s Fault but Mine’, by Blind Willie Johnson.
While all efforts have been made to contact copyright holders of material used in this work, any oversights will be gladly corrected in future editions.
Tim Winton, Dirt Music
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