Navigational

Navigational

Stuart Luijerink

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-5439-5175-2

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54395-176-9

© 2018. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

To my darling Roslyn.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 1

A sense of anticipation kept him following the line of the dirt road, though it was pitted with pot holes and unyielding outcrops of exposed sandstone. It afforded him the consistent sensation of moving forward amidst the smell of the fresh sea air, some way back from the sand dunes, amidst a thick scrub of serrated Banksia, tickling Casuarinas and wayward Scribbly Gums. He suffered from the dilemma however, that the road could take him too far, the prospect of retracing one step being far more onerous than that of taking another forward, so he began to make small forays beneath the warble of the Currawongs, where the undergrowth thinned, hoping to see at least a foundation stone somewhere amidst the trees.

The heavy duffle bag on his shoulder was an unwieldy thing in the jealous scrub. He was soon back out onto the easy circumstance of the road, trudging on in the late, autumn afternoon. It was from out here that he eventually spied the broken, tiled roof of the old church, clearly rising over a thick curtain of Banksia with low, defensive leaves, that had him forcing his way through the softer fronds of the Casuarinas, before the remains of a path eased his way through to the charred, solid walls of sandstone.

The entrance to the old church was unobscured and he stepped across the threshold with a feeling of conquest, easing his duffle bag down from his shoulder and leaning it against the inner wall. The remnants of a heavy, timber door lay wasted in ash, together with a couple of blackened tin cans, in a circle of stone.

At the further end of the church a great swathe of light cut high, across the pale honeycomb sandstone of the upper walls, as half the roof had fallen in and a scattering of earthen tiles lay littered about the floor where an alter must once have stood. The distant sigh of the surf ebbed through the open ceiling, but the faint smell of urine maintained a stifled air, like a surf club outhouse.

The paving of the sandstone floor ground beneath his feet as he turned, walked back to the circle of ash and stared out through the vacant doorway. Despite the sounds and distractions of all that lay beyond these walls, he stood within a cell of silence that he weighed against his purpose. It argued with him not to settle in a single moment, but to wander still, measuring the space in his footsteps and gauging the texture of the stone at his fingertips. It was a small church, one easily filled by a single voice, even with half the ceiling open to the sky. The high windows were long, narrow and opaque, yet strangely unbroken, though sheeted in filth, while the arching shapes of lower windows were filled in with rubble and mortar.

He had envisaged it to be a space void of distractions, settled upon the margin between bushland and ocean, but the reality was something harsher than he had reckoned upon. There was a feeling of abandonment brooding amidst the shattered roof tiles and the ash. There was a sense that here was a setting that had been discarded, and that to dwell amidst it could be no more than to loiter. He sensed a formidable isolation that ran against his instinct, however, in his mind’s eye, he saw not what it was, or had been, but what it would become, and what he would realise in the shaping of its circumstance.

He walked back out into the scrub and gathered an easy load of kindling and dry brush, which he brought back to stand in one of the dry corners closest to the doorway. Then he placed several handfuls of twigs and leaves within the circle of ash and went to fetch a large box of matches from a plastic package tucked away in his duffle bag.

Breaking a good quantity of leaves in his hand, he struck a flame and gently held it amidst the kindling until several edges were caught up in the glow. With a whisper of his breath, he brought the fire to life and cautiously settled more kindling at its margin, then waited until it crackled, before placing something heavier upon it.

Pushing the encircling rocks closer into the centre of the fire, he took an old pot, an apple and a small flask of water from his bag, replacing the matches, and set a makeshift billy upon a cradle of stone above the flames. Then he took an old, folded, grey blanket from the duffle bag and lay it as a cushion upon the floor, at one side, close to the wall. When the water began to bubble and steam, he lifted the pot gingerly from the fire with a stick, threw in a handful of tea leaves, and stirred it.

He sat by the wall, sipping upon an enamel mug full of black tea and munching upon a sweet, crisp apple. Already the walls did not look upon him with such stark indifference as the scrub gave its attentions back to the call of the birds and the muted rumble and hush of the surf, perpetuated in a long, slow rhythm that held the measure of a deep and restless balance. What mass and will, of ocean and of earth, it takes to define this grumbling shoreline, he mused.

Rubbing his back against the rough sandstone wall, he felt the therapy of a crude massage flow through his muscle tissue, waking the notion of a woman’s arms closing about him from behind, but he immediately shut it down. It would be a good thing to go for a swim in the surf while it was still light, but the water would be very cold. His legs ached now that they had been granted their ease. They wanted a good half an hour to recover from the trudge out here over the broken road with his duffle bag fully laden...

He sipped at his tea, then sucked at his teeth. He’d go swimming when the weather warmed up.

***

She felt like languishing. It was a grey day and she was still suffering from the flu, but a sense of impending exposure goaded her into rolling out from under the covers and bringing her feet down upon the cold floor boards. She didn’t want to be found still convalescing after three weeks.

Avoiding the mirror, she drew on her sky blue Chinese, silk dressing gown with the peach coloured dragons breathing their gold embroidered fire across the horizon, and wandered into the kitchen. She lit the gas stove, feeling that a piece of vegemite toast and a cup of tea were manageable. Through the window above the sink, she could see the resolute Grey Gums tossing in the wind, particularly at the crest of the hill. It’s too cold to sit out on the veranda, she thought, besides, it’s awful to look out over the ocean on a grey day. I’ll sit at the piano and really look as if I’m doing something.

When she had everything prepared, she carried her tray out to the sitting room and placed it upon the chair beside the piano stool, then sat down before the piano and began her toast. She carried a feeling of guilt, disobeying the voice that had presided over her youth, now reprimanded her for bringing her butter and vegemite fingers within the vicinity of the keyboard. She licked them to spite it.

The disorder of the room cut into her thoughts as she glanced to her left. It was a month since anything had been cleaned. The effort required to begin dusting and scrubbing, the notion of it, weighed upon her. She was not equal to it. The interminable battle with disorder..., it was like holding back the borders of a frontier.

Giving a sniff, she sat up straight and began to play something mild and appeasing, the melody sounding gently beneath her touch.

It filled the emptiness, entwining itself around her spirits and wafting up into some outer silence. It was such a subtle, wandering harmony, dipping and turning like a feminine dancer with a lyrical symmetry that swelled and broke with her mood, then regathered, as if in resurrection. The defences set within her everyday composure began to subside, leaving her open to experience the delicious whim of the melody.

She stumbled where her memory failed her and fell to silence, feeling a rap run through the glass beside her and jumping in an unguarded moment.

Remaining seated upon the piano stool, she leaned across and tugged at the sliding, glass door, feeling the cold air invade the room as her visitor stepped in.

‘Hello. I thought you’d come round the front.’

‘I thought I’d come round this way so that if you weren’t up, I wouldn’t disturb you.’

‘Of course I’m up, it’s the middle of the morning,’ she replied indignantly. ‘My tea’s cold,’ she added, picking up her cup and half eaten toast, then rising to her feet. ‘Do you want some?’

‘A quick one.’

‘What do you mean a quick one?’ she called, walking out into the hall, ‘I can only make the standard cup.’

Thomas looked out through the glass to the faded wooden slats of the balcony and over the dancing tree tops below, to the grey mass of the ocean. It would be nice to live out here, he thought, as he leaned over the piano and pressed lightly upon the keys. The discordant soundings persuaded him to desist, knowing how Prue disapproved of any noise that offended her sensitivities. She was over sensitive really, that was probably why she lived out here..., a high minded person, but intolerant.

He wandered through the room, skirting the small Persian rug and entering the hall that led down to the kitchen.

‘Don’t come down here,’ she called, upon catching sight of him, ‘I haven’t been up to cleaning yet and I don’t want you to see the state of the kitchen.’

‘I want to use the bathroom,’ he called back.

She shut the door with her foot, allowing him to advance down the creaking floor boards and turn left, just short of the kitchen.

By the time he re-emerged, Prue had carried a tray through to the sitting room and was pouring the tea.

‘Did you have any other calls to make down here today?’ she asked, keeping her eyes upon the cup and levelling off with the tea pot.

‘Not any more,’ he replied, helping himself to a ginger nut as he eased his middle-aged back into the seat opposite her, ‘I’m not taking on any new patients.’

She handed him his tea.

‘Thank you,’ he said, in his reserved fashion, ‘I always enjoyed coming out here. So many families have insisted on hosting, once their sick kids were tucked up in bed. I’ll miss that part of the practice.’

Prue watched him as he spoke, listening to a sudden warmth in his dry voice. She had half an ear on what he was saying, and the other on the sound of the rain sweeping across the trees of the hinterland. It would be here in a moment, pattering upon the iron roof.

Thomas watched her as she shook her head indignantly. Her eyes tended to peer from the shadows of her slightly sunken cheeks, which were full, though now low of their mark, and, as the rain began to drum upon the roof above, she appeared to take occasional glances up toward the white ceiling boards, before meeting his eyes briefly, then glancing away.

‘Somebody asked me for my support in the local elections as I walked past the shire offices this morning. There are so many alliances, and most of them are independents.’

‘I’d like to support some unpresumptuous soul who wasn’t concerned about promoting themselves. I’m sure we’d end up with better government.’

‘Is someone like that going to capture the confidence of their constituents?’ Thomas replied. ‘What’s more, whoever’s presiding over the status quo at the moment will be withstanding a tremendous amount of pressure from all the factions and lobbying parties. If they’re not equally assertive, they’ll be pushed aside.’

‘Why is it that everything of prominence always has to be underwritten with the most self-serving…, wretchedness,’ Prue said, with annoyance, partially spurred by the insistence of the rain. She could already see a dark patch appear on the ceiling above the coffee table. It hadn’t dripped yet, but it soon would. The vase beneath it would have to act as bucket and ornament. The thought of a week of heavy rain had unsettled her. I’ll have to sell this place, she thought to herself. I’ll have to wait for a long period of sunny weather to dry the place out, then put it on the market.

‘The more you see of life, you more you realise we’re in a nature documentary. People preening themselves and forming alliances and casting an eye about.’

‘Oh well, I couldn’t care what they were doing. So long as they collect the garbage. Try to get them to actually do anything for you beyond that, you’ll be wasting your time.’

‘There are a lot of good ones of course,’ Thomas observed, ‘often they simply get outmanoeuvred. After a lifetime of treating symptoms, I’d like to be involved in a grass roots programme to address diet and social engagement,’ he added, catching Prue’s eye as it returned from a momentary glance at the ceiling. He sensed her preoccupation, empathising with the flicker of abstraction that suggested some private quandary. ‘I’d better get back. Thanks for the tea Prue. I can see you’re on the mend. Try to eat more avocado as it’s packed with vitamin C.’

‘Thanks for popping in,’ she said, getting up as he did, whilst feeling relieved that he would not witness any of the drops that were likely to come from the ceiling.

‘Pleasure. I’ll drop in again, though I come out here less as I wind things up.’

‘Better come out the front way. I’ll lend you an umbrella.’

‘I’ve one in the car.’

‘Yes, but you’ve got to get to the car,’ she said, stepping out into the hall, and pulling a folded umbrella from the stand beside the front door. ‘Here you go,’ she advised, handing it to him, then pulling open the door. ‘Keep it in your car next to the other one, and drop it back in next time you’re in the area.’

‘Righto. See you then,’ Thomas said, with a smile, as he stepped out into the rain, popping the green umbrella up over his head.

She watched him rush out to his old, white sedan, then closed the door. I’ll have to sell this place…, she resolved, a full layer beyond her earlier resolution.

***

He began walking toward the headland with the dirt road no more than a couple of hundred metres to his left, though it would soon pull away with the broadening escarpment. Even though his intention was to establish a direct route through the scrub, the notion of the road’s unobscured passage stayed foremost in his thoughts, especially as the terrain became more difficult to negotiate.

He could hear a gurgle of running water somewhere ahead. Skirting an outcrop of rock and an awkwardly placed Scribbly Gum, he was forced to backtrack around a small, sharp gully through which cut a thin, ebullient creek. Some way back he found an easy, stony flat at which it was an easy thing to cross and he stopped to gauge his distance from the church. It would be difficult to divert the water course to his door, given all the rock that would obstruct the construction of a channel..., he could pump it up to a more advantageous height, then pipe it over..., or he could perhaps divert it slightly, someway upstream and bring it down in a closer line with the church...

Mindful that he may need several hours for his exploratory journey, and wary of finding his way back in the dark, he decided to follow the creek down to the dunes, then make his way over the open sand as far as the headland. Once he had climbed up as far as the houses at its shoulder, he could survey the surrounding terrain and have an aerial picture of the best paths through the scrub. Even though the creek bed was awash with the morning`s heavy rain, it was such a modest water way, that it was an easy thing to pick a passage down between the rocks and avoid any back tracking, or clinging undergrowth.

When he reached the dunes, he clambered over the leafy, low runners covering their leeward side and looked out over the long beach-scape which ran close to the northern headland, but at least several kilometres to the south. The beach itself was deserted. Beyond an apron of fine sand stretched a white ruff of wash and a gathering swell that amassed into a precipitous wall of turquoise blue, then broke with a muted thunder on a broad front, pushing the shoreline forward before gathering once more in its pendulous motion. It was a welcoming thing to catch sight of the ocean, and somehow appeasing to his restless urge. The scent of the damp-cooled breeze was wonderfully fresh, and the surf gave way to an unobscured horizon that was a welcome contrast to the constant opposition of the scrub.

The crown of the dune was sparsely tufted with spindly grasses, so he progressed easily across to the steep rock face of the protruding headland. Here he had to traverse a stony ledge that disappeared into a crowd of Banksias and emerged to climb terrace after terrace of flaking sandstone with its adornment of Angophoras and Acacias rooted in the bare rock.

He had a notion that the houses up on the shoulder of the headland must have some pathway down to the beach below, and he tried to find some trace of it in his ascent. Sometimes he definitely seemed to be proceeding up a well-defined trail, but then it would peter out or disappear into sheer sandstone, so that he was forced to back track once again and find a new way.

It was no longer possible to see the cluster of houses above him, but he began to hear snatches of harmony, intermingled with the twitter of birds in the sparse vegetation and the buffeting sea breeze. As he continued in his ascent, he recognised the cascading rhythms of piano music sounding discernibly from the heights of the headland, followed by quieter passages that were harder to distinguish. He found that succumbing to the gravity of this music, afforded him the easiest way up and presently he struck a well-established path that broadened as the shoulder of the headland began to round out.

Breathing heavily from the ascent, he paused by the low, twisting bow of an Angophora and lifted his hand to rest upon its smooth, russet bark. Looking back over the landscape, he could make out the old church building down there amidst the scrub, with its gaping roof half fallen in. Out beyond the sand dunes lay the broad, blue expanse of the open ocean, whilst the escarpment rose wilfully above the coastline on the other side.

Up here the vegetation thickened into a forested stand of Scribbly Gums, Angophoras, Grey Gums and Bangalays, but he could see the elevated veranda of the nearest of the houses and it was from this residence that the piano music originated. It was obviously the sound of somebody practising, for as he approached the foundations of the dwelling perched above him, he could hear that cascading harmony repeated ponderously, as if in seeking some poise within turbulence that was cut short and gone over once again.

He skirted around the house, which was actually a single story timber cottage settled well below the road. The headland itself extended another few hundred meters out toward its seaward edge, and the road traced this distance, past four well dispersed bungalows, then ran down the spine of the hill, and around the quiet bay to its north.

Before the next house, which was tucked away much closer to the road, stood a couple of small pear trees, still holding the last of their fruit. At their base lay strewn a yellow scattering of rotting pears, their flesh half picked away by birds, and the flies swarming busily over their remains. Turning his attention to the tree itself, he brushed aside the heavy leaves and plucked one of the soft, fat fruit from above his forehead. It was split at the bottom, opening easily in his fingers, and he bit into the sweet, juicy flesh appreciatively. He was aware that somewhere down at the house, a fly-screen door swung on its hinges and he heard a blustering voice call out, ‘Hoi! You’re on private property!’

Looking down to the front veranda, he could see a silver haired man staring up at him indignantly. Though the eyes challenged him through a heavy squint, the man did not advance from the safety of the veranda, watching intently as the pear was eaten.

‘They’re rotting,’ he called back, dropping the pear at his feet and sucking at his teeth.

‘Never mind that,’ the reply came sharply.

He reached up again and picked another pear from the tree, but as he pulled it open between his thumbs, he could see the worm holes ooze with liquid, so he discarded it and chose another.

Not turning back to the veranda, he inspected his pear closely and gravitated towards the road, following it down around the quiet bay and then inland where its patchy bitumen ran into the more recently repaired tar sealing the road into town.

Within a kilometre the scrub gave way to empty paddocks with broken, wire fencing and a blaze of long grasses consuming discarded car wrecks. There was no hint here that you were near the sea, except for the gusty, tangy air. The houses came in a crowd of fibro or wood, all crowned with corrugated iron rooves painted a bulldust red, or hardware green, or mostly not at all, but sporting vast rusting birthmarks. Many still had water tanks, despite the fact that they were obviously not a necessity. He could see one idling by a fibro cottage not far back from the road and he thought to duck in to give it a tap because he felt sure it was empty and wondered at its condition. It wouldn’t be too hard to get it out to the church, if the owners were willing and gave him a hand.

A large mongrel stood up on the doorstep and began advancing toward him with its tawny ears pricked up and its muzzle raised. As he turned, he could hear a rousing bark come at him in a rush. It’d be on a chain if it was vicious, he thought, but he was glad to regain the road without incurring any more than a fury of barking at his heels and he resisted the urge to stoop down and pick up a rock. He just kept walking, past a row of Norfolk Pines, and onto a footpath.

The dog proved to have no interest in coming so far as the footpath, so he was left to peruse the houses of the street that were beginning to cluster together into an untidy suburbia. He could see a burgeoning pile of railway sleepers stacked up in a half demolished shed, just to the side of the next yard. That would be a handy store of timber to reconstruct the church roof with, he conjectured, especially as it was crowding the place out. There was a wheel barrow rusting beside the house, and parts of a rotary hoe strewn in the grass.

The next place had a more generous garden, bordered by hydrangeas. The iron rooves here were more carefully painted, but many of the deep, wooden verandas suffered heavily peeling paint and missing cross railings. A comfortable silence confirmed to the passer bye that he was on the outskirts of town and the occasional motorist who rolled past, turning left at the first intersection, demonstrated the fact that the gravity of commerce lay still a little further inland. There was a small shop on the corner however, so he pushed his way through the rainbow coloured, plastic fronds that hung over the doorway in defence of the flies, and nodded to the pretty, plump woman who stood stacking a shelf with boxes of tissue paper.

‘Hello,’ she said, with a distracted smile.

‘Do you have any fluorescent torches?’ he asked, scanning the compact space around him that was stacked with groceries.

‘I’ve got some waterproof flashlights above the cigarettes behind the till,’ she replied, then brought her chin down to steady the piled boxes in her arms. ‘Just a moment while I finish with these, I have to keep them torches out of the way of sticky little hands.’

He stood patiently for a moment and looked at her legs whilst she continued with her shelf stacking. She was in her early thirties, perhaps half a dozen years younger than himself, but even closeted behind the denim of loose fitting jeans, the girth of those legs did not prevent his gaze from skipping on to a box of apples standing on the floor just to her left.

‘Did you want it for fishing?’ she called, without turning around. ‘If you just wanted something for camping, I’ve also got some of those little, pen sized ones somewhere. You can hold them in your mouth and keep your hands free, but they don’t give much light.’

‘I actually want a temporary light source, that’s why I’m looking for a fluorescent bulb. I need to be able to turn it on at night and leave it on for a couple of hours.’

‘Oh, you won’t want one of those little ones then,’ she remarked, placing the last rolls of tissue upon their stack. Then she turned and walked over to the counter, the faint smell of soap powder wafting about in her wake.

‘These are the waterproof ones,’ she continued, taking a large black torch down from above the cigarette cabinet and placing it down beside the cash register. ‘They last for ages because the batteries are so big.’

He looked down at the torch and sucked at his teeth, deciding to repeat himself once more. ‘You don’t have one with a fluorescent bulb then?’

‘These’ll last all night,’ she was adamant.

The sound of the plastic strips at the door distracted her.

‘Hello!’ she called, with enthusiasm, as a middle aged woman in a blue track suit and auburn hair entered the shop and approached the counter hurriedly.

‘Sue, I ran out of ciggies yesterday, but every shop I passed I thought, No, wait until you’re passing back through Sue’s. So how’s that for a loyal customer,’ she called. ‘Sorry love,’ she added to him, as a packet of cigarettes were procured for her from the casing.

She handed over a note and took her change eagerly. ‘Ta. I better get on! See you.’

‘See you later.’

‘This is not what I need,’ he said, nodding toward the torch, ‘but thanks all the same.’

‘Where exactly did you want to use it?’ she asked quizzically. ‘You might be better off with something that plugs in.’

‘I’m out at the old church,’ he replied, folding his arms.

‘Fishing or surfing?’

‘Neither.’

‘We used to play out there when we were kids. Used to get that lovely smell of timber that used to fill that church, even when it was empty and all the pews were pushed up to one end. The light streamed in from those high windows,’ she said, with that sad fondness for something once cherished and now half forgotten. ‘I had heard that it has that derelict smell about it now...I think I’ve got one of those fluorescent torches out in the back toilet,’ she added, caught in the rising tide of her memory. ‘It’s only for black outs. You can borrow it if you like and just buy some spare batteries.’

She looked to him with her lips pursed and her bright eyes lifted, as if to demonstrate that he was welcome to borrow the torch, but it meant nothing to her if he did not.

‘I’ll give it a try,’ he replied appreciatively, ‘and I’ll take some apples with the batteries.’

‘Just a moment,’ she called, moving off down a stunted aisle and disappearing through a small door at the back of the shop.

He stood eyeing the waterproof flashlight for a moment, then walked over to the box of red apples upon the floor and bent over them to pick and choose six without a blemish.

He took his apples to the counter as she returned with a red, plastic torch the size of a book. It had a long, fluorescent bulb running down one side, and she offered it to him as she came, then put his apples in a bag and placed a packet of batteries beside it.

‘Thanks,’ he said, with approval, weighing the torch in his hand, then handed her a note.

She rung the sale up on the till and handed back his change, which he took with a nod.

‘See you,’ she called, as he left the shop and began retracing the line of the road.

***

The slant of sunlight cut across the bleached veranda floor boards. It was strong enough to warm her toes without burning her skin. She sat with her head in the shade, a cup of tea at her side and her toast on a plate just below her elbow, on the floor. It was a low, long, cane chair so that she could easily reach down and feel whether she had honey or vegemite beneath her fingertips. She always ate the latter first, having enough experience of life not to consider a variation of fundamental breakfast protocol.

The worst of the weather had blown away days ago, yet the smell of damp earth was still in the air, and the rustle of leaves in the morning breeze, was half mute with moisture. She looked out over the tops of the twisting Angophoras and ragged Scribbly Gums, beyond the scrub and sand dunes below, onto the broad backed ocean that was alive in the early light. It would be a pity to leave this for the city, she thought, it would be like unfastening a long pair of wings and packing them away. She wrapped both hands around her tea and let the warmth of the vapour curl around her chin... It would be hard in the city..., this place would barely be worth the deposit on something that overlooked the water there...

Reaching down, she picked up the last corner of her vegemite toast and nibbled it away, then licked at her fingertips. It would be easier to generate work..., but then you’d have to earn a lot more just to pay the bills... it would cost a lot anyway if the roof got any worse...

She looked to the distant flock of clouds that were grazing their shadows upon the sea. For the moment she could move the coffee table under the leak in the sitting room and put a large, decorative bowl there in wet weather. Perhaps that would suffice for years...

Taking a sip of her tea, she began on the honey toast. Probably she could sell up now. Sell up in a patch of fine weather..., or she could have the roof looked into, but then she could hardly say that she was unaware of its condition if she did sell...

Down in the scrub, she could see the stocky figure of a bushwalker approaching the creek. He stopped short of the water and pulled his T-shirt over his head before tossing it down on the bare rock. The distance down from her veranda to the creek was enough to render his features near anonymous, but she could tell that he had a beard and that his flesh was relatively white. His shorts also were discarded in the sun, and he walked naked across the pitted sandstone, his two beards advancing to the edge of the creek, one above the other. He was not a tall man, but he was beefy and she sensed the way his flesh recoiled from the water as he bent down and began to bath himself in an invigorated flurry. The water caught white in the winter sunlight, hanging in the air for a moment before cascading down about him, and he seemed to slap it against his thighs and his torso, pushing it up across his skin purposefully.

She took a thoughtful sip of her tea. Reaching down to her plate upon the floor, she strolled about the crumbs with her fingers searchingly and realised that she had finished the last of her toast.

He was washing his hair now, bending his head low toward his scooping hands, then flinging it back and shaking it almost in protest, so that she wanted to bring her own head out into the sun just to warm a sympathetic chill. She stayed just as she was however, her imaginings of an embarrassing moment, even from an impersonal distance, holding her in the shadow.

He was quickly out of the water, still slapping himself, then holding his arms out wide, whilst walking from one end of the sandstone outcrop to the other and back again.

When he pulled on his shorts, his skin must have still been damp. A twitch ran through her toes involuntarily. How awful to be camping through all that rain, she mused. He picked up his T-shirt and hauled it on, his hair darkened sleekly with moisture.

The phone rang from inside the house, but she still felt too inhibited to rise to her feet, as if to do so would be to declare herself. He wasn’t even looking up toward the veranda, and he was such a distance that he could hardly notice her if she were to jump up and wave, but all the same..., she let the phone ring and watched him disappear back into the scrub.

She turned in her chair, leaning over the cane arm of the lounge so as to collect up her screen. ... bedding and stratification being a key element in the formation of Detrital accumulation, converting sedimentary particles into rock..., she began, and went on to read five pages of detail which belonged in completely dispersed sections of the thesis. It would all have to be painstakingly prized apart and reassembled. She wondered if she might not put this one aside and begin on something which could be more quickly completed and charged out, but experience led her to suppose that the next one would be just as bad, so she continued on, getting up to slide her chair across the floor boards every so often as the sunlight turned with the hour, about the veranda’s edge.

***

‘Apparently he’s already hung a blanket over the door so that you can’t see in,’ she said softly.

‘Hmmm,’ he murmured in reply, as his wife paused in her conjectures. He was almost amidst the haze of sleep, but the warmth of their bed in the crisp darkness, kept him contentedly flirting with consciousness.

‘He’s cleared a path through the scrub, in from the road,’ she continued, ‘and he was out at Sue’s little shop the other week, wanting to fit the place out with lights... ‘

‘... Matthew...’

‘Hmm,’ the image of the scrubland about the old church crowds his mind. He pushes through the serrated Banksia to make his way in from the dirt road. It’s more overgrown than he remembers..., usually he can see the top of the church from here, but not yet..., not yet... He feels the feathery fronds of the Casuarinas tickle at his brow as he wanders further in..., he should be there now..., should be standing before those solid, sandstone walls..., but they are nowhere...

‘He doesn’t fish...,’ her voice pursues him gently, as he delves deeper into the scrub..., beyond his expectation..., beyond that point at which he feels that he has come too far. His urge is to veer a little to one way or the other. He slants to the right, every tree he approaches sees him widening his course to the south and pressing forward against the conviction that he has totally missed his mark.

The presence of the sand dunes somewhere ahead weighs upon him, he anticipates their proximity and prepares to turn away to the left in the hope of now coming upon the old church from behind. He cannot see the road, though he must be facing it through the scrub..., at the very least he must end up back at the dirt road..., though he is sure to find the shell of the church well before then.

He stops in an effort to stifle an aimless sense to his wandering. He is aware that something else is making its way amidst the undergrowth..., something more subtle in its movements than he... He moves toward it, mindful of the sound of a breaking through dry twigs as he goes. He still anticipates the definite line of a wall..., a high and steeply sloping roof, half fallen away, but nothing rises even to match the height of the modest trees... Here amidst the tawny green foliage, a blotch of persuading silk-sky blue secures him..., here is his direction..., though she has her back to him, she seems unstartled by his crackling approach. The dressing gown is distinctly in his focus, more through recollection than immediacy... the peach coloured dragons breathing golden fire across a horizon of blue silk... and the fizzy mass of her hair, spilling over the gown, swamping her inadequate shoulders.

She must turn in this noise, though she is intent upon her purpose, which seems to be..., seems to be... a gathering of Banksia pods. She tests them on the lower branches, sending the serrated foliage into a flurry if they should come away in her hands. He has gained her shoulder... tries to turn her politely around ... tries to turn her in acknowledgement... tries to map an expression upon pale, owlish features that do not avail themselves to him, tries to gauge a response to his attentions...She neither resists, nor responds, leaning forward to grasp at another Banksia pod and testing its resolve, her dressing gown hanging loosely open before her.

The pod does not give way and she lets it go, moving slightly to her right to seek another. The silk