Tim Winton - The Turning

Vic didn’t know why they were all stuck on this trip together but there was no doubt it was Nanna’s idea. She had firm ideas about family, and when she was around everybody else’s ideas went soft.

He wasn’t quite thirteen but Vic knew a thing or two about Uncle Ernie. The oldies kept it quiet but he knew that with Nanna Ernie had protected status. It was as though he could do no wrong. Yet everything Ernie touched turned bad. He liked the nags. He played two-up and always knew a bloke who knew a bloke who had something or other on the highest authority. He was, therefore, always in trouble. It wasn’t unusual to have men come knocking on the door for him as though Vic’s old man was his father and not just his brother. Less than a year ago, just after his sister was born, Vic and his dad had to take Ernie’s truck out in the wee hours to deliver milk for him. Nobody said where Ernie was. Nanna came along of course. She read out the orders by the light of a policeman’s torch, and Vic ran until his throat was raw. The streets were dark and still. His father drove and ran and hardly said a word all night. Vic sensed that there’d been other nights he was spared. Now the milk round was gone in any case.

Vic was always uneasy around his uncle. Ernie was funny. There was always a joke on the boil, something to be kept from the women, but you’d never tell him anything important about yourself. He was always talking, never listening. One Christmas, when Vic was eight, Uncle Ernie arrived out of the blue with a brand new bike for him, a Stingray with a T-bar shift. It was redder than Ernie’s face and seemed to please his uncle as much as him but Vic’s parents were strangely subdued. As an eight-year-old he had wondered if it was too much, too big a gift. He suspected they were jealous or even ashamed of their own thrift. Now he suspected that the bike was hot. There’d never been any gifts since.

Ernie, Vic realized, was a live wire, an adventurer. That was his role in the family. Vic’s father, on the other hand, was the one who tidied up after the excitement. You could see they’d been doing it all their lives.

Ernie and Cleo think they’re irresistible, he overheard his mother say one Easter.

So, said his father, who gets to break the news to them?

Vic sat around with the others as long as he could stand it but when it grew hot even beneath the shade of the tarps he unstrapped his surfboard from the roof of the Jeep and struck off down the beach. He walked until their camp was just a solitary blot in the white distance.

The waves were only small but he wasn’t much of a surfer yet so he didn’t mind. After the hot walk the water was delicious. He paddled out excitedly and caught a few waves but either nosedived or tripped over himself. He even fell off trying to sit on the thing out beyond the break; it was like riding a greased pig. But you had to laugh at yourself. With mile after mile of deserted beach stretching out behind you there was nothing to be embarrassed about. He could have surfed in the nude if he wanted. Out in the calm he dived to the bottom and saw the ripples of the sandy seabed stretching out forever. The water travelled over his skin like a breeze. He felt free and happy.

When he surfaced he was startled to realize that someone was watching him. Up on the crest of the first dune somebody sat with their arms across their knees. He couldn’t make out if it was a man or woman, boy or girl, and he hung in the water, holding his board, waiting for them to move off, but whoever it was stayed put. Vic grew a little nervous. He supposed he could lie here all day if need be; he could maybe paddle out if he felt really threatened but he didn’t get the chance because a big set came through while he had his back to the sea. The first wave sent him bum over breakfast onto the sandbar and snatched the board from his grasp, and the four monsters that followed slammed him, tumbling, along the bottom, holding him down so long that when he finally surfaced, with his shorts halfway down his legs, he gave out a pathetic squeak more embarrassing than the fact of his bare arse. He dragged up his shorts and stumbled, coughing, along the shore to where his board lay washed up.

Over on the dune the stranger clapped. It was a girl and not one of his cousins. He wanted to snatch up the board and walk back to camp then and there but he was winded and weak at the knees, so he sat on the thing with his back to the girl and did his best to ignore her. Bitch. But he felt so stupid with his head sunk between his shoulders out in the middle of an empty beach like this. He was like a turtle trying to pull its head back into its shell. He hunched over, fuming. A stream of water gushed from his nose.

Well, you didn’t see that one coming, said the girl, suddenly behind him.

Vic whirled around and a string of snot and saltwater landed on his arm. While he scrubbed at it with his knuckles, he saw the green polish on her toenails.

Sorry, she said. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.

Vic shrugged. The sun was right behind her head; he couldn’t see her at all.

Nice in the water?

Yeah, he said. Nice.

I was wondering. If I could have a go on that thing.

She stepped over and put a toe on the board. She wore Levi’s and a tee-shirt that said Phi Zappa Krappa. There was a picture of a naked man sitting on the toilet.

Okay, he said.

You sure?

He shrugged again.

Always wanted to try, she said. And Christ, I’m so bored. You know?

Vic smiled hesitantly and wiped his nose twice — once with each hand. He got up off the board. The girl reefed off her shirt and shucked down her jeans. She dropped her mirror shades onto the little pile they made on the sand. She wore a lime-green bikini with little plastic hoops at the hips like that Bond girl. Sunlight caught the fine down on her thighs. She had brown hair that swung across her back. She had real breasts. She was older, much older than him.

Any tips? she said, hoisting the board to her hip.

Um. Don’t fall off?

She smiled kind of sideways at him and walked down to the water. He watched her go, alert to her calves and the way her bum moved. He wondered what it’d be like to have an older sister. How could you stand the sight of all that flesh without turning into some kind of sister-weirdo?

As a surfer the girl was no more a natural than he was. Her hopeless floundering came as sweet relief. When she came back she dropped the board at his feet and squeezed the water out of her hair. There was sand salted down the front of her legs. She was pretty. He didn’t know where to look.

Thought you’d come out and help me, sport, she said, grabbing up her shirt and wiping her face on it.

Sorry, he mumbled, turning away from the sight of her dabbing at her chest with the damp shirt.

What’s your name?

He told her.

From the city?

He shook his head. Not anymore, he said. We just moved down south. Angelus. It’s pretty crap.

He looked at her green-painted fingernails as she flapped the shirt. Something wasn’t right.

She sat on the sand and crossed her legs like a primary schooler or a hippy. She pulled on the mirror shades and then he saw it. There was a finger missing.

What? she said.

Sorry?

The finger?

No, he said.

Bullshit. Come on sport, own up. Here, look.

She held up her left hand. The third finger was little more than a stump.

Vic felt himself grimacing, tried to undo his face but she’d seen it.

Hay baler, she said.

Oh, he murmured, not knowing what a hay baler was. It sounded like a farm thing.

You on a farm?

Kind of. Boarding school, really.

Did it. Hurt?

Like a total bastard, she said. But, you know, all the big things hurt, the things you remember. If it doesn’t hurt it’s not important.