North of Nowhere, South of Loss

“Leave her alone,” Beth says.

Peggy makes a sign with her finger. “Well, fuck you, Miss Tooth Fairy Queen.”

“Girls,” Matron says. “Jam pudding and custard for those who leave clean plates.”

January presses hotly and heavily on the wide verandah. Beth, in cotton shortie nightie and nothing else, lies on the damp sheet and stares through the mosquito net at a tarantula. How do they squat on the ceiling like that? If it falls, it will fall on Peggy’s net. Please fall, Beth instructs it. She beams her thoughts along the road of moonlight that runs straight from the louvres to the eight hairy legs.

Night after night, the tarantula will show up in exactly the same spot, but is gone by day. There’s another. It has been camped below the louvres, opposite Corey’s bed, for six nights. Then suddenly both of them will pick new stations. Or maybe they change shifts. Maybe there are hordes of tarantulas waiting their turn in the crawlspace below the verandahs? What do they see from the ceiling? Ten bunks on the east verandah, ten on the west. Do they sidle in through the glass louvres that enclose the verandahs? The louvres are always slanted open to entice sea breezes. Is that how the spiders get in? And where do they hide by day?

No one worries about them. Or perhaps, Beth thinks, no one admits to worrying about them, though everyone takes note of where they are before the lights go out. As long as she can still see, by squinting, the filaments of spiky hair on the spider’s legs, Beth can stop the tide from coming in. She can keep back the wave that has her name on it.

Beyond the spider, beyond the louvres, she can see the tired palms that bead the beaches together, filing south and south and south to Brisbane, reaching frond by frond by a trillion fronds north to Cape York. She can hear the Pacific licking its way across the mangrove swamps and mud flats, though the tide is far out. God, it’s hot! She reaches to her right and yanks at the mosquito net, tucked under the mattress, and lifts it to let in some air. Uhh … bite! Bite, bite, bite. God, they’re fast little blighters, noisy too, that high-pitched hum, it could drive you crazy in five minutes flat. She hastily tucks the net in again and swats at the stings. Greedy bloated little buggers. By moonlight, she examines the splats of blood on forearm and thigh.

“Who’s making all the fucking noise?” complains someone, drowsy.

“Can mosquitoes spread AIDS?” Beth asks.

“Ahh, shuddup ’n go to sleep, why don’t ya?”

But if dentists can … ? Beth wonders. She is fighting sleep, she is fighting the wave coming in.

She fans her limp body with her cotton nightie, lifting it away from herself, flapping air up to the wet crease beneath her breasts. There is no comfort. The tide is coming in now.

Every night the tide comes in. It seems to well up from her ankles. She feels this leaden heaviness in her calves, her thighs, her belly, her chest, it just keeps rising and rising, this terrible sadness, this sobbing, it can’t be stopped, it bubbles up into her throat, it is going to choke her, drown her, she has to stuff the sheet in her mouth to shut it up.

Then she goes under the wave and sleeps.

Black water. Down and down and down.

Beneath the black water, beneath the wave, in a turquoise place, the pink flamingos swim. Their breath is fragrant, like frangipani, and when Beth vacuums the bright pink ribbons of their spit, pouff, tables appear, and waitresses in halter tops and gold lamé shorts. This way, the waitresses say, and Beth follows, though the sandy path between the tables twists and turns. There are detours around branching coral, opal blue. Here and there, clamshells lurk with gaping jaws. At every intersection, the bright angelfish dart and confuse.

“Where is he?” Beth calls, and the waitresses turn back, and beckon, and wink. “Is he waiting for me? Is he still here?”

The waitresses smile. “He is always just out of reach,” they murmur. “See? Can you see?” The waitresses point. And there he is beyond a forest of seaweed, fiery red. He sips a piña colada that wears a little purple paper parasol like a hat, but when she fights her way through the thicket of seaweed, he’s disappeared.

“Terribly sorry,” the waitresses say, winking, “but he’ll be right back. Dental emergency. Floss on, he says, and he’ll join you as soon as he can. He really really likes your work. He really likes you, you know.”

And all the waitresses line up and link arms and kick up their legs in a can-can dance. He really really really really likes you, they sing, but they roll their eyes to show it’s just a sick joke and then she sees that the waitresses are Peggy and Liz and Corey and Matron herself and she throws the piña colada at them and they disappear.

But their laughter stays behind them like the guffaw of a Cheshire cat. Sook, sook, sook, it splutters, hissing about Beth’s ears. We can hear you crying in your sleep.

No, Beth protests. Never! Never ever.

Nevermore, the waitresses sing, offstage. He’s gone for good.

No, Beth argues. That isn’t true.

And see, he’s coming back, he is, she can’t mistake his coat, there it is, yes, white against the brilliant coral, starch against sea-hair flame, but she won’t turn her head, she’s not going to make a fool of herself, she pretends not to see. She wants to be surprised. She wants to feel a light touch on her cheek and then she will turn and then …

And then? And then?

The dream falters. The water turns opaque with thrashing sand. Shark, perhaps? The pink flamingos avert their eyes. There is something they know, it’s no use pretending, the suck of the sobbing wave is pulling across the dimpled ocean floor. But still he taps her lightly on the arm. “It’s all right,” he says. “You’re such a funny little thing, Bethesda.”

And so she turns. But it isn’t him, it’s Giddie.

“Oh Giddie,” she says, resigned. “I might have known.”

“G’day, Beth.” It’s his lopsided grin, all right, and his bear hug, which haven’t changed. It’s the same old dance. Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you? the waitresses sing. We’re back again, he’s back again, all together now, the old refrain. “C’mon,” Giddie says, pulling her, and the waitresses twirl. Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the dance? “C’mon,” Giddie says, and now they’re swimsliding down and around, it’s a spindrift sundance ragtime jig, it’s the same old tune going nowhere. Shark time, dark time, lip of hell; they are going, going, gone. “C’mon” he says, and it’s the edge of nothing, the funnel, the whirlpool, he’s gone over, he’s pulling her down.

“No!” she screams, struggling. “No! Let me go, Gideon, let me go!”

But he won’t let her go and she’s falling, plummeting, there’s no bottom to this, it’s forever and ever, amen, though she makes a last convulsive grab at the watery sides — Gid-ee-oooooon! — and crash lands on her bed.

She gulps air, trembling, the sheet stuffed into her mouth.

Heedless, the sobbing wave rushes on, noisy, shaming, a disgusting snuffling whimpering sound, the sound of a sook.

No, wait. Wait. It’s not Beth’s wave. It’s not Beth.

She listens.

Sue, she thinks.

She must warn Sue: keep the sheet in your mouth. They don’t forgive, they’re like the fish on the reef. Remember this: the smell of injury brings on a feeding frenzy. They go for blood. You have to keep the sheet in your mouth.

“What are you reading?” he asks, and Beth startles violently. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry. What a jumpy little thing you are, Bethesda.” He sits down beside her on the sea wall, the hum of the esplanade traffic behind them, the tide lapping the wall below their feet. “Is this all you ever do in your lunch hour? Read?”

She says primly: “I’m watching the tide going out.”

He grins, then offers: “I’ve offended you. Would you like me to leave?”

“No,” she says, too quickly. Then, indifferently: “If you want. It doesn’t matter.” She tucks the book into her bag and sets it on the wall between them. “It’s me, I was rude.” She is angry, not with him, but with herself, for the thing that happens in her throat when he says her full name that way. “You gave me a scare. I didn’t think anyone could see me here.” She gestures toward the pandanus clump behind them, the knobbed trunks and spiky leaves rising from a great concrete planter with a brass plate on its rim: Rotary Club, Cairns District. She trails her finger over the engraved letters and says, inconsequentially, “I used to have to be a waitress at the Rotary dinners in Mossman.” She rolls her eyes. “Grown-up men, honestly. They sing the stupidest songs.”

“Oh God, I know. They tried to get me to join. One dinner was enough. They were raffling a frozen chicken and throwing it round the room. Playing catch.”

“In Mossman,” she says, “they had this mock-wedding. Fundraising for a playground or something. You should’ve seen the bride.” She shakes her head, incredulous. “Mario Carlucci. His father’s a cane farmer but Mario’s in the ANZ bank, he’s the manager already, everyone says his father got it for him because the Carluccis have the biggest account. Anyway, Mario, he’s about six-two, and they made this special dress, satin and pearls, with you know …” She gestures with her hands.

“Large mammary inserts,” he says drily.

She laughs. “Yeah.” She looks at him sideways. “You seem like you should be an English teacher, not a dentist.”

“What!” he says in mock outrage, his brows working furiously. “Fie on thee! Out, out, damned spot, you’re fired.”

“You’re funny.”

“You’re pretty funny yourself, Bethesda.” He smiles and she swings her eyes away, nervous. She focuses on the Green Island ferry, in the distance, nosing in toward the wharves.

“Look, Beth,” he says, “I don’t want to pry, but I’ve been making a few inquiries, and from what I hear, that hostel is pretty awful. I wondered if you’d like me to—”