‘It’s rising too fast, we’ll drown if we don’t get out now,’ Pearl cried as you sloshed through the sodden hallway. That was just an hour ago, your mother’s well-loved carpet already a slithery green.‘Take nothing.’
Take nothing. Easier said than done.
Now Pearl has balanced herself into the little rubber dinghy; she clings, holding it steady while in you climb. You’re both shivering, both silent except for curses, grunts, monosyllables. The storm has abated a little. But the clouds remain monsters, threatening with frenzied fists.
The water continues to swell.
Through the mist rising from the river, heavy as a drunk, you both stare at your house. Born there; the cradle of many Christmases, every birthday. The rickety jetty – built by your grandfather’s father – collapsed today just after you trundled across it, the lawn it led to is now underwater, a dominion of fish and seaweed. Pearl peers upriver, assessing the danger, deciding which way – how – to proceed.
This mist – it’s not usual around here, not this time of year. For a split second your head spins; it’s not a river you’re gliding along – it’s the ocean, all oceans together, Pacific, Atlantic, Indian – its darkest depths spooling; there are no banks or levees on the other side, no rescuers or Red Cross or ambulance; you imagine yourself floating, or perhaps it’s your sister instead, her bearing peaceful, pearly, crustaceans clinging to her face –
‘C’mon, Frances,’ says Pearl. ‘Concentrate! We’ll just…’ She searches around. ‘We’ll just go with the current. Jesus. We should never have fucking sold Dad’s boat, I tried to tell him…’
A dog yaps continuously; you pray it’s safe. Then: a sound like the embankment opposite rupturing. Through the uncanny fog the waterfront houses, old and fibro and ramshackle – are sinking. Crumpling, as if fainting from heat or shock.
The river has already forced itself through your home’s front windows, the wooden sills bend, buckle, but for the moment it holds. Please God.
You try to sit safely in the dinghy, but the plastic bag, buried beneath your tshirt, cuts into your stomach. As water fills the dinghy your feet freeze, even though it’s high summer. Pearl’s bare calves are striated purple. Every part of you is sodden, your back is itchy, sharp pains slice your knees. But strangely, strangely, the bloated water suddenly is tempting. As it has been a few times this past year. After Mum’s and Dad’s deaths. After the bills kept arriving, the debts kept piling. All you have to do is roll gently over the side; in you’d go, down, down. Instead you cling to the dinghy’s rope handles, grit your teeth, keep searching for a sign of life, a saviour. Perhaps salvation will rise from the pockets of tiny whirlpools; more likely the opposite. A swallowing.
Anyway. There are no such things as saviours in this backwater.
Pearl is sweating, her muscles bulging as she attempts to stabilise the boat with the plastic oar. ‘Look,’ she shouts. The house next to yours is collapsing like tissue, folding into itself. Like it’s haunted. As you twist to view the whole shoreline the bag slips partly from your tshirt. You quickly shove it back under the wet cotton.
‘Oh god,’ Pearl shrieks. ‘I should’ve got my credit cards.’
There’s food and water in the small foam esky. That’s all you had time to collect. You packed a suitcase with jackets and tampons and canned food, with plates and knives and shampoo, but it was too heavy for the tiny dinghy, made it sink. So you have nothing except that esky.
And what’s in your tshirt.
Pearl hasn’t noticed yet.
The river, swollen yellow with branches and debris, plastic bags and worryingly vague chunks carries you along the shoreline. Pearl lowers the oar, rests, her head in her hands. She peers up, her face contorted. ‘Our life, Mum and Dad’s memories, they’re gone!’ she wails. Snot dribbles at her mouth.
Suddenly she stares at your belly. ‘What the hell’s that?’
‘Nothing. We should get going. Let me row for a bit.’
‘What the hell?’ she repeats, half-stands.
‘You’re gonna sink us!’ you scream. Flopping back down she whips her hand at your tshirt. The book, in the plastic bag, tumbles. You grab it quickly as you both jerk back, desperately trying to retain balance.
‘You’ve got a fucking book?’ she screams.
You hug the volume to your chest.
‘Don’t worry about Mum’s photos, you told me. Forget the letters and cards she kept all those years. As long as we save ourselves. I left everything behind! All my beloved works! And you bring a heavy book!’
‘It’s a memory. Of Dad. Just something small.’
She presses her forehead with her fingers. ‘I really don’t believe you,’ she mutters. ‘So what book is it? What’s more important than Mum’s jewellery, than my…’ She’s lost for words. Waves lap at the dinghy’s shallow sides, the rain thickens. The fog wraps you both coldly.
‘It’s the, er, Patrick White,’ you whisper. ‘My favourite – his favourite.’
‘Fuck!’ she screams. ‘That’s it? That what you grabbed? And I left all my art there, all of it! Years and years I worked on my paintings, it nearly killed me, and now they’re gone. Gone!’ Sobbing, she hangs her head till her fringe hovers at her chin. ‘You’re so goddam selfish.’
‘No, no,’ you say, ‘It’s not what you think.’
‘And which one is it? Not that Voss piece of shit…’
‘No, it’s –’ you say, then stop suddenly. ‘Look!’
The silhouette of a canoe emerges from the fog, a few metres away.
‘What is that,’ you begin to ask, your spine chary, unnerved, but Pearl cuts you off and yells, ‘Yoo hoo! Help!’ She stands and waves her arms. ‘Help, please! Where should we go?’ The dinghy wobbles perilously, water slops in. Your thighs are a glaring white-blue against the surge of brown river.
A man slumps in the canoe, listing. He doesn’t move; perhaps he’s dead. Pearl yells again. Eventually he squints; his forehead and hair mottled red with what you realise must be blood.
‘Oh god, are you okay, mate?’ calls Pearl.
‘I can’t find my wife,’ he croaks. ‘Have you seen her? Blonde hair…’ He points distractedly at his own head.
‘I think you need a doctor!’
‘I should’ve got outta the way when the roof fell,’ the man laughs shrilly. His eyes roam over your dinghy, then on Pearl, then you. He frowns, a blink of recognition flares across his pudgy face. Abruptly he grabs his oar and spins his canoe around, the thud of the oar on the stern board echoing as he frantically rows away. ‘Gotta go, gotta find the wife.’
‘What? Wait!’ Pearl yells as the man disappears, a blur in the mist. ‘How weird,’ she murmurs, and rests the oar on her lap. ‘Do you know him?’
‘No, of course not,’ you snap, then hug your tshirt.
The dinghy floats, wobbles nowhere, motioning with the stream. No sounds except slurps and pats of rain and the occasional hawk. The birds have largely deserted. You search for cats, dogs, something alive along the swollen embankment. But after a dead sheep drifts past, then a bloated kangaroo, you give up.
‘Oh fuck,’ says Pearl.
The centimetre of water in the dinghy’s bilge is deepening, sloshing high at your rubber boots. You both use your hands, cupping the water to empty it, but it refuses to ebb. Pearl gasps, points to a tiny tear in the port side, then stares around madly. ‘We’ve got to get across to the other bank, we’ve gotta get out!’ Her voice, her body, her everything is too edgy for the fragile vessel.
‘Calm down,’ you demand.
But the dinghy’s keel is sinking. The embankments are mud, a slippery slide of sediment. And the river is widest at this curve, expanding like a pumping wound.
‘We’ll never make it,’ says Pearl, ‘We’re gonna drown!’
You begin to reassure her, tell her you’ll row your way to a tree that’s fallen in about a hundred metres away and will possibly provide a bridge, or at least an escape of sorts. But her panic stinks like bad sweat and the next minute she’s on you, ripping at your tshirt, the dinghy convulsing as she grabs the book and tosses it far into the river. ‘Everything’s gotta go!’ she shrieks.
‘No!’ you scream.
The book is spreadeagled, slowly submerging, its hard cover wide open in a call for help. But as it sinks it isn’t pages that float to the surface but hundred-dollar bills. Dozens and dozens, gliding, then drifting, away, away, and vanishing.
‘What the…?’ says Pearl. ‘Is that…cash?’
You punch your fists at your head, at her. ‘It’s mine! I’ve been saving it! And you just fucking threw it all away!’
The water laps at Pearl’s calves as she remains erect, motionless. ‘Where the hell did you get that much money?’
‘Does it matter now?’ You’re howling.
The confusion in her eyes morphs into understanding, then fury. ‘Oh Frances, so it’s fucking true. That guy…’ Her voice trails downriver after the damaged man and his canoe.
‘So what?’ you snarl. ‘At least I had money! We’ve got nothing now, nothing! The insurance…you know we don’t have any! Oh god!’
‘So it’s whore money!’ she spits. ‘I knew it! I never said anything but I heard the rumours…Christ, Frances. And you hid it in a book?’
‘How else was I to survive in this arsehole of a town? There’re no jobs here, you know that! Mum and Dad left us nothing, just that shitty house. What else was I to do?’
But she isn’t listening anymore. The dinghy coasts with the current, neither of you moving, the oar listless in the deepening pool drowning your feet.
All of that for nothing – for nothing – is all you can think. Those nights of discomfort, humiliation; that dirty money for a new clean life, gone.
‘We should try and get to that tree,’ says Pearl, after a time.
You nod, then heavily release yourself backwards, into the undertow.
Photo by Wes Warren on Unsplash
