Dancing on Knives

  Tide And Time

  low tide – 0.6 m

  5.07 pm, Easter Saturday

  high tide – 1.6 m

  11.41 pm, Easter Saturday

  A little before five o’clock, the police arrived.

  Sara was sitting on the floor of her father’s studio, his painting shirt pressed close to her breast. It smelt of sweat, eucalyptus, turpentine and expensive cigars.

  Augusto’s studio had once been the formal dining-room. It was a long room with an ornate ceiling rose and large picture-windows that looked out over the garden towards the sea. Even this late in the afternoon, sun struck brightly through the big windows, each orange-hued ray drifting with tiny motes of dust. Sara was never allowed to clean and tidy the studio, so it was littered with the detritus of ten years of Augusto’s life.

  The bare boards were so thickly daubed with paint it looked like the dried mud of a swamp at low tide. Only here and there, in corners or near the skirting-boards, could the original floor be seen. Under Augusto’s easels the paint rose in hard, mud-coloured mounds like ants’ nests. Here and there were fresh daubs of colour – teal green, trans magenta, green oxide, burnt sienna, jade, gold oxide, phthalo blue, rose madder. Littered across this dried bog of wasted paint were old paintbrushes, their bristles stiff and hard; empty tubes of paint, twisted into grotesque shapes; paint-smeared knives; empty turpentine bottles; grotty tea-towels; brown-stained cups and red-stained glasses; invitations to art galleries that had been folded into paper aeroplanes; crumpled art catalogues; piles of scrunched-up and discarded sketches; cigar butts; a silver champagne bucket filled with a foul sludge of filthy turpentine bristling with brushes; and stained dust sheets strewn like hastily shed clothes across the floor.

  Against the walls were stacked hundreds of unfinished canvases, some stapled onto wooden frames, others rolled and set to lean drunkenly in the corners. One or two leant against the wall face out. There were the familiar bulging lines of Gayla’s curvaceous body, painted with broad, brutal, sweeping strokes, a heavy impasto of white, pink, purple, magenta. At times the paint had been applied so thickly it achieved a three-dimensional effect, as if Augusto had squeezed the paint directly out of the tube and on to the canvas. The shape on one of the paintings was smeared wildly as if Augusto had swept his hand across it in frustration.

  At the far end of the studio was an old couch with a dishevelled blanket and pillow, where Augusto had taken to sleeping. Beside the couch was a collection of empty wine bottles, reeking with cigar butts, and a bottle of Courvoisier brandy, practically empty. Above the couch was a cork noticeboard with photographs, invitations to gallery openings and newspaper clippings pinned all over it. The only thing pinned up that did not commemorate his career was a quotation written in Augusto’s extravagant scrawl. It said ‘Art is the most frenzied orgy a man is capable of’, a quotation from the French artist Jean Dubuffet. Augusto thought the man’s paintings were a load of shit, but the sentiment was good.

  Facing the couch, so it was the last thing he saw at night and the first thing he saw in the morning, was Augusto’s final painting. It had nothing of the loose, frenzied brushstrokes of the Gayla period, none of the white spaces. Although the paint was richly textured and layered, it looked as if each brushstroke had been planned and laid with careful deliberation, with a precise geometric architecture underpinning the arrangement, as deliberate as the use of colour and symbol. Like Augusto’s earlier works, it was strongly indebted to synthetic cubism, with the repetition of the circular shape of the moon, the face, the open palm of the dying woman’s hand. Every inch of the canvas was filled with subtle colour, painted with delicate brushstrokes. Orange flames writhed all over the woman’s pale body like coils of hair or red-bellied snakes. In her glazed, half-slitted eyes the flames were reflected like pin-points of desperation, the last embers of a life about to flicker out. The eyes were terrifying. It was a masterpiece, Sara knew it. Augusto’s swan-song.

  She heard the crunch of gravel and the slow purr of an unfamiliar car engine, and managed to look away from the painting, though she did not get up. The firm tread of feet on the boards of the verandah, a confident knocking on the front door. Sara shrank back a little, hoping Gabriela would answer it and tell whoever it was to go away. The knock came again, louder and a little more impatient. Sara laid the painting-shirt down on the rumpled blanket, and walked carefully down the length of the room and out into the hallway.

  A policeman and policewoman were waiting at the front door, which still stood wide open. Immediately Sara’s step faltered, her heart began to hammer. The police were very polite but somehow this only made them seem more dangerous. She answered all their questions with the faltering evasions, hesitancies, fluctuating colour and unsteady voice of the truly guilty, each blush and stammer discomposing her more. The police said it was only routine questions they had not been able to ask that morning. Sara thought she knew differently. They asked what Augusto was doing up on Towradgi Headland. They asked if Sara noticed anything unusual in his behaviour. They asked if he had any enemies. They asked to look around Augusto’s studio. They asked her about her uncle Alex. The guns at their belts frightened her. Their questions frightened her even more.

  After they had gone, Sara hurried down to find Joe in the milking yards. He frowned at the sight of her.

  Sara grasped his arm. ‘Joe, the police were here.’

  ‘I know, they’ve been poking around down here too. What did they want?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sara answered distractedly. ‘They asked all these questions. They don’t ask questions like that unless there’s something wrong, do they?’

  ‘No way, Sar,’ Joe replied wearily. ‘They always ask questions like that. Don’t you ever watch Cops?’

  ‘But they asked if he had any enemies.’

  ‘So? Pigs have got suspicious minds. That’s why they’re pigs.’

  ‘D’you think – maybe …’

  ‘No, I don’t, Sara.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Try and get it through your thick skull that it was an accident. An accident, do you hear me? And Gus is going to be all right, he’s not dead, stop talking as if he’s dead. It can’t be murder, if he’s not dead.’

  At last, the word was out. Such a crash of cymbals for such a mellifluous word. There was a long exclamation mark of silence.

  ‘It could be attempted murder,’ Sara said quietly.

  Joe’s face shifted. He eased his voice. ‘Sar, no-one tried to kill Gus. You know how treacherous it is up there. He got caught in the storm – remember how quickly it came up and caught us all by surprise? He slipped over, and fell. It was an accident, all right.’

  ‘But, Joe …’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Joe swung a large roll of wire out of the back of the truck onto his shoulder and walked away into one of the sheds. Matthew, stacking sacks of chaff, looked up as they came in. Sara surreptitiously tried to wipe her face clean of tear-stains, but he barely noticed her.

  ‘I reckon we should bring in all the cows from the back paddocks,’ Matthew said. ‘If there’s going to be another storm like last night’s, I’d rather have them near the house. Wanna give me a hand?’

  ‘Can’t. Gotta put the milkers through. They’re bleating the place down.’ Joe spoke with a terseness that showed his mind was elsewhere. Sara was disturbed to see how deep were the lines fanning his eyes. He shifted his shoulders wearily, ran his hand over his forehead and went back into the shed without another word.

  ‘You’ve got dirt on your face,’ Matthew said.

  She put up her hand and rubbed at her forehead.

  ‘Not there.’ He rubbed his thumb gently along her cheekbone. She stepped back involuntarily, her skin burning where he had touched it. He smiled at her and she looked away, swinging her hair down over her face.

  Thunder cracked right over their heads, a fluorescent zigzag of lightning striking down over the sea. She jumped, giving a little cry. So intense
was the shock to her nerves it was as if the scorpion’s tail of lightning had stung her heel.

  ‘Storm’s coming in. Better get those cows in. Want to help me?’

  Her instinct was to shake her head and shrink away, but the idea of going back to the house filled her with misery. At least out here she felt as if she could breathe. And she wanted to stay with Matthew. He seemed to radiate warmth and health like the sun. She did not know how to talk to him, she felt as awkward and self-conscious as she ever had in her life, but still she wanted to bask in that warmth. So she looked at him slantwise and nodded shyly.

  They walked out of the shed. The air was thick and heavy, the sky the colour of over-ripe plums. Lightning cracked again. Matthew led the way into the lean-to, where the trail bikes were kept, pulling one out and straddling it with easy grace. Sara stopped. She had not known he meant to take out the trail bikes.

  He turned at her hesitation. ‘You can ride behind me,’ he suggested.

  Again she felt that delicate knife balance of decision, the desire to be close to him in equal and opposite force to the instinctive recoil of terror. She had exhausted her reserves of fear that day, however, having travelled through some kind of hellish valley of darkness. It was more habit than real anxiety that kept her standing so still and doubting.

  ‘All right?’

  There was an awful moment of suspense.

  ‘OK.’ Slowly Sara lifted her dress and slid her leg across the seat of the motorcycle, holding her back stiff so her breasts would not touch Matthew’s back, which she could see through the loose armhole of his singlet. It was smooth and brown.

  The thrum of the motor shook the trail bike, so she slithered forward and had to grasp his waist. She tried to hold on lightly, but it was an uncomfortable, bumping ride over the rutted track, the dogs mad with excitement. She had to hold on tightly to avoid falling off. He seemed to find each rut and pothole on purpose, so she was flung against him at every swerve and turn. All the way she was aware of his bare shoulder, so close to her mouth, and of the fluctuating space between her and the stony ground.

  Thunder prickled the air. She watched the dogs round up the cows, the bike weaving and jolting back and forth to discourage any stragglers. One of the dogs, a kelpie-cross called Magic, had a second sense where cows were concerned. Sara watched her duck and swerve and creep along the ground, responding to Matthew’s piercing whistle by flattening her ears against her narrow skull.

  ‘Good dog, that one,’ Matthew said, as they skidded to a halt to watch the dogs work, the roar of the motorbike subsiding. The dogs knew their job well – they harried the cows into a tight miserable bunch that trotted obediently down the paddock.

  The sun had slipped below the clouds, gilding the tops of the trees behind the house. Matthew took Sara up the hill towards the house, revving the engine so it roared. Sara clung to him with both arms, her cheek pressed against his back, filled with an exhilaration as intense and irrational as her terror had always been. He came to a screeching halt before the house in a spray of gravel.

  ‘Your royal residence, Your Highness,’ he said with a mock-bow.

  Sara got off the back of the trail bike, her legs shaky, trying not to smile. The twins were sitting on the front steps, staring. They looked sullen and angry. Matthew did not ride away, but sat with the bike humming beneath him, watching. Sara could feel his eyes on her back.

  ‘Hey, boys, what’s happening?’ Sara sat down next to the twins, trying for ease.

  ‘We’re going to go down to the beach,’ Dylan said. ‘Gabriela wants a swim and Joe says he needs a surf.’

  Sara thought of the oblivion of the sea. An intense desire to go down to the shore, away from the shadowy house, filled her. Sara was never afraid of water. Water was rapture. In that magical underwater world, where she drifted among reeds, tensions dissolved, uncertainties disappeared, she was graceful, she was free. She could stay under water for minutes, entranced by the eddies and currents that moved her at will, as much at home as the schools of bright little fish that darted or swayed still, darted or swayed still.

  ‘What a great idea. I could do with a swim, I’m all sticky.’ She looked at Matthew obliquely. ‘Do you want to come?’

  He grinned. ‘Sure. I’m feeling sticky too.’

  Sara flushed and looked away. Everything he said had a low undercurrent of knowing laughter. She wondered if he had noticed her watching him. She hoped not.

  Sara stood up. ‘I’ll go get into my swimmers. Back in a min.’

  ‘No hurry,’ Matthew said amiably.

  Up in her room Sara stood in front of the mirror for a long time, hating her long thin body, the loose faded Speedos that had been her school swimming costume. After a while she slipped down to Teresa’s room.

  ‘Want to come for a swim?’ she asked.

  ‘Nah.’ Teresa was lying on her bed, reading a magazine.

  ‘Can I borrow your bikini then?’

  Teresa looked up. ‘What for?’ Then her eyes narrowed. ‘That Matt guy’s going too, isn’t he? Do you like him? You do!’

  ‘I don’t,’ Sara said.

  Teresa ignored her, jumping up and rummaging about in the mess on the floor till she found her aquamarine bikini, still rather damp and sandy. ‘Here, take my sarong as well. Do you want to put some mascara on? It’s waterproof.’

  Sara shook her head, feeling self-conscious as she pulled on her half-sister’s bikini.

  ‘You look hot,’ Teresa said, grinning.

  Sara felt even more self-conscious when she looked at herself in the mirror. The bikini was very scanty indeed. But Dylan was calling her and so she went downstairs, trying to walk naturally.

  Joe threw his surfboard in the back of the Dodge but Sara had had enough of machines for one day.

  ‘I’ll walk down,’ she said, not looking at anyone.

  Matthew and Gabriela both said they would walk too. It was the first time Sara had ever not wanted her cousin’s company.

  The tide was out, revealing a long, thin crescent of pebbly sand, much broken by rocks and little overhangs of cliff. At one end was the low headland below the house, covered in scrub and leaning out over the rock where Sara liked to sit and watch the sea.

  At the far end was Towradgi Headland, a great dark bulk against the stormy sky. It looked like a frowning man in profile, with a low brow and thick lips. Like every local landmark, every oddly shaped hill, every split rock, every island, every waterfall, the headland had an Aboriginal myth to explain its formation. Nungeena, the artist who rented out Gunyan Cottage, had told it to them over lunch one day, the story of Towradgi, the grieving man.

  ‘It’s a Dreamtime story my aunts used to tell me,’ she had said. ‘Towradgi was once a man who lived round here. He had a beautiful young wife and they were very happy together. One day, Towradgi said to Millindoolah he was going hunting, while Millindoolah stayed and looked for bush tucker. He had a good day hunting and came home with some kangaroo, only to find Millindoolah missing.

  ‘He saw that she’d made camp and had plenty of good tucker and so he looked about to see what had happened to her. Up in the sky was a big storm with lots of lightning, and at once Towradgi knew that she had been taken by Bundoolah, the great storm spirit. Towradgi took up his spear and his woggerah and chased after Bundoolah, but the storm spirit threw bolts of lightning at Towradgi and pelted him with hail and caused the creeks to flood so Towradgi could not catch him.

  ‘Then Bundoolah came to the sea and, with Millindoolah struggling in his arms, went striding out across the waves, for storms can travel as fast across water as they can across the land. But Towradgi could not follow and so he dropped there, exhausted, on the edge of the ocean to grieve for his lost love. And there he remains today, always looking out to sea. And it’s true, I’ve seen it myself, how bad the storms are around it, as if Bundoolah comes back to taunt Towradgi.’

  Whenever Sara saw the sphinx-like profile of the headland she remembered this s
tory, for it did indeed look like a grim, brooding face set in stone. Remembering the story now she gave a little shiver and wondered if the headland was somehow cursed. A grieving man who caused grief to whoever looked upon it. It was a very unsettling idea.

  The water was a strange luminous green, the colour of antique Coke bottles. Sara ran into the water first, wanting to hide her thin body in the waves, wanting to wash away the smell of the day. The twins had brought their boogie boards and slid along the wet sand as the rough waves curled over. ‘Be careful,’ Sara called. The beach had a rip that sometimes caught swimmers with frightening power. Bridget’s aunt had drowned here, many years ago, when she was just a little girl. Sara sometimes imagined she could see her, a girl in an old-fashioned neck-to-knee bathing costume and red hair like all the Hallorans.

  Gabriela swam out to her, thighs huge and dimpled with cellulite below her orange swimming costume. Sara found it hard to look at her.

  ‘I made caldereta de pastor for dinner,’ Gabriela said. ‘Roast lamb always goes down well with boys.’

  Sara smiled rather wanly.

  ‘The twins said the trip to the hospital didn’t go so well.’

  ‘No,’ Sara said wearily. ‘I’m glad I went, though, all things considered.’

  There was a short silence. ‘Your dad not so good?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Sara gave a little shrug. ‘Miracles happen.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ Gabriela said warmly. ‘Remember Grandmama’s story about how Gus was born? Small and blue as a fish, and Mum had to cut the cord? If anyone can come out of this laughing, it’ll be Gus.’

  Unable to answer, Sara stared out at the ocean. Between the stormy sky and the uneasy sea there was a thin line of pure, clear air. Lightning shivered along the horizon. There the water was shimmery-grey; under the storm clouds, it was purple-grey as a bruise; and here, by the shore, it was a pale, translucent green where the long, slanting rays of the sun struck through the waves. Like her with her father, the sea was at the mercy of the weather for its moods.