Tim Winton - Eyrie

It is.

On the bloody river?

Exactly. I’ve got a point to prove.

You blokes, you’ve all got that, she said, bracing against the smacks and bumps.

It was funny, in its way, seeing her scowl and wince, clutching the child in fear, but after a short while he relented and eased off the throttle to slap along sedately. Kai stared at the tiller, the wake, the scum of rotten leaves at his feet. Was he anxious? Keely thought perhaps he could have launched somewhere closer to where he planned to take them. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that the jaunt upstream might be a trial. God, he thought, negotiating the slop from a passing ferry, don’t let me make a meal of this.

But by the time he had them round the bend and into the lee of the limestone bluffs of Blackwall Reach, the boy had lifted his head a little and Gemma managed a game smile. Keely pointed to the teenagers jumping from the cliff above them, yodelling as they fell. The water boiled where they speared in.

Keely motored over as a pale youth broke the surface with a hoot and gave Kai a thumbs up. The boy seemed at a loss to respond.

You want to steer? Keely asked.

Kai shook his head.

It’s twenty metres deep here, he said. At night you can hear fish down there, big mulloway, croaking in the dark.

The idea did not seem to appeal to the boy.

Is there really a bird? asked Kai.

We’re getting there, mate.

But is it true?

You’ll see.

You promise?

Hold onto your hat, said Keely, banking out across the channel to the next bay. It’d been months since he’d seen the ospreys he had in mind. Maybe he should have checked first to spare himself a disaster.

Christ, said Gemma. Look at those houses.

Keely grinned. He thought of Balzac’s line — behind every great fortune, a great crime . Where was Jehovah when you needed Him for a good old-fashioned punitive landslide? And, yea, swept were the wicked unto the darkest deeps.

He steered wide of waterskiers and wankers on jetskis, slowed down to take in the terraces and lawns, the swanky boathouses. Gemma turned in her seat, gazed up, wide-eyed, beginning to enjoy herself. He eased them past a chaotic and giggly regatta of little sailboats at Freshie, rounded the point into the next bay. Here picnickers sprawled on blankets beneath the peppermints, dragged kayaks across the obstacle course of fig roots at the bank. Keely didn’t cut the outboard until they were past all of it, deep into the slough where the shore was obscured by a confusion of native cypresses, melaleucas and gnarled gums. Above them a limestone ridge whose brows knitted, hatching everything before it in flickering shadow.

Is everything orright? Gemma asked.

Will be in a moment, he said. Are we looking? Do we have our eyes open?

The breeze wafted them by slabs of stone, blond tablets freshly pupped from the bluff. They lay in a monumental jumble at the water’s edge, misted with dancing insects. There were jellyfish all round the boat, big as pumpkins, and Keely breathed in the estuarine miasma of algae, cypress and invertebrate slime that reminded him of holidays, exam week, summers gone. He watched their faces. Gemma wore a look of heroic forbearance but the kid blinked miserably.

I’m no good at this, Kai said in little more than a whisper.

Keely wiggled his eyebrows in encouragement, but the kid didn’t appear to appreciate the suspense. He caught Gemma glaring at him, face like a spanked arse. Christ, he thought, how many promises had this kid seen come to nothing? He hadn’t thought of that. This better bloody work.

Lie back, he murmured, trying to reassure himself as much as the boy. Both of you. Just lie back and watch.

What for? asked Gemma. What’re we lying down in a boat for?

Just for the view, he said with a brightness that already felt thin. Up ahead, the ancient marri upon which all his hopes rested began to emerge from the shadows, more skeleton these days than living tree, a barkless grey column topped by contorted white limbs that towered out across undergrowth, rocks, shadow, water. He’d come here a lot with Harriet, then alone sometimes when he visited Doris. Back when he actually bothered. You could hike down the scree-slope from the road, but the view from the water beat everything. That tree, he thought. It stood before whitefellas even dreamt of this place. It was here when the river was teeming, when cook-fires and dances stitched the banks into coherent song, proper country. Just to see it was a mental correction, a recalibration.

The boat yawed, the tree hung right over them. And Keely realized he’d been seeing it for seconds already, seeing it without taking it in at all. Thank God. There it was on the outermost limb, the same colour as the bleached and weathered wood, motionless, watching them, plotting their drift, not yet deigning to stir. The bird of his married years, the stolen weekends, of even the long puzzled silences near the end.

Still there. What a bird.

But what was it seeing? Three bodies in a silver boat? Or just background, faunal wallpaper, nothing of the slightest interest?

The raptor unfurled its wings, propped, let out a scratchy cry. Beside him the boy gasped. His face suddenly open.

There!

Look at that, said Keely. I told you.

Will it get me?

Get you? No. You don’t look much like a fish to me.

It’s creepy-lookin, said Gemma.

Nah, said Keely. It’s beautiful.

And it was. A severe, stately bird, watchful, poised, tensing even now.

Osprey, said Kai.

The creature tilted its head, twisted slightly, then gathered itself. It rose, languid, powerful, to reach into the air.

Osprey, said the boy.

It climbed without effort, wheeled up past the supplicant fingers of clifftop trees and retreated to the shadows, leaving only a harsh cry to signal its presence.

Did we scare it? asked Gemma.

Nothing scares him, said Keely. He’s just seen something else, I’d say.

The boat drifted back into the noonday light. The boy blinked skyward. And then the chalky flash blew past them, hit the water in a weltering flare and hauled itself up again, climbing off at a loping tangent with something shining but doomed in its talons.

Keely refrained from commentary. The act itself was enough. The boy and his grandmother craned their necks, watching the sky, waiting for more.

By the time he’d taken the others home, returned to Doris’s to park the boat and flush the outboard, left the keys to the Volvo under the mat and caught the train back to Fremantle, it was past mid-afternoon. His exalted mood had decayed somewhat; he was ravenous and the sun had gotten to him, but for all that he felt better than he had in weeks. He showered, gulped a couple of beefy brufens, made a sandwich and sat in his armchair sipping water.

At dusk he was still there. Half the sandwich dry and curled in his lap and the pint-glass capsized on the carpet beside him. He brushed the bread away, glanced an uneasy moment at the new watermark and went out onto the balcony to clear his mind.

Dreams. Feverish sequences. Beyond him now; he didn’t care to recall.

In the mild evening breeze he caught a flash of movement at the edge of his vision. Kai. A few balconies down. Dressed only in shorts. Actually, truly there. He smiled but the kid seemed not to notice. Keely felt strangely self-conscious, anxious that something about his being out here wasn’t quite right. He was dressed, wasn’t he? Awake. And sober. What else could it be unnerving him butthe queasy scraps of dreams? But this harried feeling, why wouldn’t it let go?

It was none of his business whether the kid was out there or not, but he wished Gemma wouldn’t let him do it; it wasn’t safe. And he hesitated, reluctant to move for fear of startling him. But Kai was facing his way. Such an odd, affectless gaze. It felt awkward, even creepy, to just stand there, not acknowledging him. Keely raised a hand. Kai lifted an arm from the rail, returned the wave shyly, and went inside.