Lucy Clarke - A Single Breath

‘Nice of ya to suggest it.’ He reaches for the whisky bottle and pours himself a glass. She can smell the pungent vapour as he lifts it to his mouth. ‘We had a memorial here.’

‘Did you?’ she says, surprised. ‘Where?’

‘Top of Mount Wellington. Just a few of us.’ He takes another drink, emptying the glass.

She’s hurt that she didn’t know about this, wasn’t invited. She would like to know who came to mourn him, what was said, whether there was a burial of any personal items, but Dirk is up on his feet, saying, ‘I think we should have a drink to Jackson.’

He leaves the room and returns a moment later with a spare tumbler. He grabs the whisky bottle and Eva tries to tell him that she’s driving, but already he’s splashed whisky into her glass and is refilling his own. ‘To Jackson!’ he toasts.

Eva takes a small sip. She’s always hated whisky and the taste turns her stomach. She breathes steadily through her nose until the nauseous sensation passes, then discreetly slips the glass aside.

As they continue to talk, Eva watches the alcohol working through Dirk. He becomes more expansive, sip by sip. ‘I remember Jackson diving for his first abalone,’ Dirk says, resting the whisky glass on his knee. ‘He can’t have been more than 8 or 9, and he dived right down to this shallow ledge. There they were – all the abs just lined up – so he found himself a sharp stone and he prised the biggest one of them all right off the rocks. Came up grinning, holding it in the air like a trophy. He was too excited to stop diving, so he slipped it in the pocket of his swimming trunks and kept on going.’

Dirk asks, ‘You ever seen an abalone?’

She shakes her head.

‘They’re as big as your hand, shell on one side, and a dark tough mollusc on the other. When Jackson was done, he ran up the beach to show Saul and me, trying to pull this ab from his pocket. But it had suckered onto his thigh so hard that he had no chance of getting the thing off. I yanked his chain for a while, telling him that it’d take a month of being out of salt water for the ab to loosen its grip. Should’ve seen his little face! Course, in the end it came off. But it left a big old bruise that lasted the summer. We used to tease him that it was a love bite,’ he says, his face creasing into a smile.

As Dirk continues to talk and drink, his eyes become glassy and she catches the beginnings of a slur to his words, but still she listens closely. Even when the whisky causes him to muddle his sons’ names and he tells her Saul was always the traveller, Jackson the Tassie boy, she doesn’t interrupt. Eva will do nothing to stop his flow, because she is just grateful to hear the words of somebody who loved Jackson as deeply as she did.

‘Were Saul and Jackson close once?’ Eva asks.

‘Tight as a mussel. Did everything together. They were an enterprising little duo. Used to get up early and snorkel off the jetty down at Wattleboon, looking for lost squid jigs to sell to the tourists and make a bit of extra pocket money.’

‘But they haven’t been close for a while?’

He shakes his head sharply.

‘Is Saul still living in Tasmania?’

‘Yeah. Works over at the university in Hobart. Doing some big project on cephalopods. That’s squid to you and me.’ He takes a glug of whisky and she sees him wince, placing a hand over his stomach.

‘Hobart. Is that where he lives?’

‘No, no. Moved to Wattleboon Island. Built himself a place out in Shoal Bay.’

Eva’s head tilts. ‘That’s where you used to have a shack, isn’t it?’

‘Yeah, beautiful place.’ Under his breath he adds, ‘But too many bad memories for me.’

‘I’d like to meet Saul.’

Dirk’s expression turns wary. ‘Why?’

‘He was Jackson’s brother.’

‘Nah, don’t think he’d be too keen.’

‘It’s important to me.’

He looks at her closely. ‘Sorry, Eva, but I think you’d best forget about the idea.’ He lifts his glass and downs the whisky.

*

Jackson had told her that his father liked a drink, but he’d never explicitly said Dirk was an alcoholic. But he is; she can see it in the high colour of his skin, the broken veins across his cheeks, and the way his fingers cling to the glass. It hurts knowing Jackson left out this information, as if he didn’t trust her enough to show her the darker corners of his family life.

She wonders how Jackson would feel now if he could see his father getting steadily more drunk after Eva has travelled thousands of miles to meet him. A quiet anger simmers inside as she thinks about her countless calls that went unanswered, and the invite to the memorial service she’d extended to him – but that wasn’t returned.

It feels like a personal affront to Jackson, and before she can check herself, she is saying, ‘You didn’t come to our wedding.’

Dirk shrugs. ‘England’s a long way. A lot of money.’ He pours himself another whisky, the neck of the bottle clattering against the glass. He swirls it around and then takes a slug. Is that his third or fourth since she’s been here?

‘Weren’t you interested in seeing who your son was going to marry?’ she presses Dirk, wanting to understand his absence.

‘Y’know what?’ he says, and there’s something in his tone she doesn’t like, a loosening, as if whatever he’s been holding back is beginning to spill out, dragging with it the sharp edges of his thoughts. ‘I wasn’t interested. Because I didn’t want him to marry you.’

Her eyes widen.

‘I thought he was bloody mad! And I told him.’ He shakes his head. ‘You two should never’ve got married.’

She feels as though she’s had the breath kicked out of her. ‘What?’

Dirk runs a thick hand down the length of his face, exhaling loudly. Then he gets to his feet and crosses the room unsteadily. He sets his hands square on the windowsill and looks out onto the street.

‘Dirk?’ She shakes her head back and forth. ‘Why are you saying this?’

He shrugs. ‘I’d never have seen him again. He wouldn’t have come home when he was married. That’s all.’

Tears burn the back of her throat.

When Dirk turns, his expression has softened and she thinks he’s going to apologize. But then he says, ‘Listen, Eva, I can see you loved Jackson. And I’m sorry for what you’re going through. I am. But my boy’s dead. You being out here isn’t going to make that any better. So I reckon it might be best if you go now, don’t you?’

A knot of anger is wedged into the pit of Eva’s stomach as she replays Dirk’s words: You two should never’ve got married . She keeps reminding herself it was the whisky talking, or perhaps the lash of his grief, but the remark has left her unsettled.

She is even more determined now to try to find Saul. As she leans her elbows on the ferry railing, watching Wattleboon Island come into focus, she wonders how Jackson would have felt about her coming here to meet the brother he hadn’t spoken to in over four years. The few times Jackson mentioned Saul’s name, his expression darkened, as if Saul’s betrayal still had the power to wound him.

The island reveals itself by degrees; first the forested sea cliffs rising up in the distance, then the green curve of the hills. Jackson had talked about his summers spent here with a sense of nostalgia, as if the island were both treasured yet also lost to him – a place he could never get back to.

From her pocket she takes out the free visitors’ map she’d picked up at the ferry building and unfolds it, the edges flitting in the breeze. The map shows one road running the fifty-kilometre length of the island, and stemming from it are veins of unsealed tracks and four-wheel-drive routes leading to secluded inlets and bays. Looking at the key, she sees there is a pub, two cafés, a doctor’s office, a general store and a community hall. Most of the symbols denote boat launches, surf spots, camping areas and hiking trails.