The Submerged Cathedral Read online

  Sandra’s face crumpled, she let out another melodramatic moan, sobbing, ‘But I WANT you!’ and then gasped, hysterical, as Ellen leaned out of her chair with a raised hand and lunged at her. She stumbled, howling, out the door.

  Martin had shifted in his seat at the dining table, folded his arms again over the Saturday paper. Jocelyn put down her coffee cup. Ellen had grinned tightly at them from her chair.

  ‘Just another afternoon in motherhood’s paradise, darlings.’ Lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply as she began again to read.

  From upstairs came the sound of Sandra’s fury, of a door repeatedly slammed, her screams echoing through the house and across the garden. Martin got up from the table.

  Minutes later Jocelyn found him in his room, pushing his clothes into a bag.

  ‘You’re not leaving.’ Trying to force kindness into her voice.

  ‘I have to get some stuff ready before Monday.’

  Her goodwill deserting, she flared. ‘For God’s sake, Martin, she’s just a child. That’s what children do. You just have to ignore it.’

  He stood up suddenly. ‘It’s not Sandra, Joss. It’s Ellen. Why doesn’t she bloody well do something?’ He jammed the clothes in harder.

  Jocelyn took a breath to defend her sister – the childhood reflex.

  Martin said, holding her hands, ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just today, I can’t stand it. Next weekend will be better.’

  In the driveway they kissed through the window of the car before he drove off. This time Jocelyn did not fight the imprisoned feeling: she may as well have manacles on her wrists.

  When she came inside and stood with her arms folded in the living room, Ellen said lightly, without looking up, ‘What’s Martin’s problem?’

  Jocelyn stared at her, shaking her head. ‘He can’t stand being around you two fighting.’

  Ellen kept reading, said, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’

  Jocelyn walked from the room, slamming the door behind her. She stalked into the glasshouse, slamming that door so hard one of the glass panes cracked. Not noticing Sandra watching her from her bedroom window.

  Later in the silent evening Sandra creeps down from her room. Jocelyn walks past the living room to see Sandra on her mother’s knee, Ellen with her arm around her, murmuring into her hair.

  Something about this conciliation makes Jocelyn’s own rage rise up again. For they have each other, through their moods and tantrums, and Jocelyn is only the aunt, with their meals to cook and their clothes to wash, and Martin driving as far away from her as he can.

  On Tuesday Ellen says, ‘I feel so tired. I can’t bear the idea of another month of this.’ She looks pale.

  Good, thinks Jocelyn. They have hardly spoken since the weekend, except in terse, necessary phrases over meals or housework.

  Ellen says, ‘Is Martin coming on the weekend?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jocelyn does not look at her sister.

  Martin telephones on Thursday. ‘Let’s go away for a few days. I can take until Wednesday,’ he says. His voice is excited. ‘I’ve thought out the route, we’ll go west, camp along the way.’

  Jocelyn holds the receiver in her hand in the dark hallway. She thinks of a grey road and the pale country opening up around them, a fire at night.

  ‘Ellen won’t like it.’

  Martin groans. ‘Jesus, she’ll be fine.’

  ‘I know, but I haven’t been very nice.’

  ‘Look, I’ll talk to her. We’ll leave early Saturday. She’ll be fine.’

  Jocelyn returns to the living room, says to Ellen, ‘Martin and I are going away for a few days, camping.’

  Ellen looks up suddenly. Her hand comes instantly, protectively, over her belly.

  Jocelyn says, ‘It’s only for a few days, Ellen.’

  Ellen first says nothing; then, very quietly, ‘Do you have to go?’

  Jocelyn closes her eyes. Guilt seeps in, she wavers. And then, remembering Ellen’s dismissal of Martin on the weekend, she hardens.

  ‘Yes. I think you’re being a bit dramatic. It’s only for a few days.’

  Ellen says nothing, turns to stare into the fireplace.

  Later Jocelyn lies in bed, reasoning with herself. Calls up images of Ellen’s sarcasm, of Martin’s car pulling away down the drive, pushes away the picture of Ellen’s face by the fire this evening and how tired she looks. Thinks of Martin’s skin, beneath the canvas of a tent, and the sound of trees moving through the night.

  In Ellen’s bedroom after a late dinner on Friday evening, Martin presses on her belly. The baby has turned around again, its head nestling under one side of her ribcage.

  ‘Good as gold.’ These silly phrases that come from his doctor’s mouth.

  Ellen sits up, pulls down her blouse. She yawns, it is eleven o’clock.

  Outside in the driveway the car is packed with Martin’s small tent and a few things; Jocelyn is washing dishes in the kitchen below them.

  To Martin, Ellen looks utterly healthy; it is Jocelyn who has shadows under her eyes. ‘You just need some more rest,’ he says. He starts to put away the stethoscope, makes his movements brisk.

  She nods, smiles an apology. ‘I’m sorry I’ve made things difficult for you and Joss.’

  He shakes his head, glances at her and then down at the bedspread, waves away her words.

  She nods again. ‘Thank you, Martin, I do appreciate everything you both are doing.’

  He nods, says again, ‘Get some rest.’ A formality has fallen over them now. He puts a hand on her arm, tells her to go to bed.

  It’s dark in the morning when Jocelyn and Martin drink tea across the kitchen table from each other. The room is cold, there’s fog outside, lit white by the moon.

  Jocelyn smiles over her cup, whispers, ‘It’s like going on holidays when you’re a kid.’ He grins back in the gloom.

  Some hours later the light pales as they drive through the first town, its clock and civic hall small but majestic in the rising morning.

  Martin is singing ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ to her in a loud voice, his hands on the wheel.

  She’s smiling through the glass of her window over this small town, its dried-out golf course, its upright buildings.

  She joins in. ‘In other words, darling, kiss me …’

  The car enters a long ragged avenue of eucalypts, leaning high above the road, a canopy over Martin and Jocelyn and the Sinatra song below.

  They drive west and the air warms, grows hot. On the second afternoon the car jostles over sandy soil beside a vast platinum lake. She watches a pelican in its long, low sweep from air into water, its landing, erect drifting. From the stippled sheet of water the trunks and broken branches of dead trees lift like flower heads, and everything has a sheen in this late afternoon sun.

  They set up their camp by the lake. The heat is heavy, and now, out of the rushing air of the car, they are both sweating by the time they pitch the tent. The idea of a campfire is unbearable.

  ‘I’m going for a swim,’ she says, and after a minute he follows her, over the tussocky sand to the water’s edge. They undress, hang their clothes on a dead limb. There is a tide-mark on the trees which, from a certain angle, accords exactly with the horizon behind. She walks into the cool water. Martin wades in behind her, they are silent with heat and tiredness from the long day’s driving. The tree limbs are broken against the sky.

  This flat silver water moves over her body like a blade, and she sinks slowly to her knees with the tight thread of the waterline moving across her skin. Martin floats on his back. For an instant she sees them, two naked and new-made beings, lying baptised in a silver garden.

  And then the water ripples, the air cools.

  ‘Thank God,’ Martin moans, then upends ducklike, kicking a splash for the breeze. Jocelyn stands to cool herself in it, hand over her eye into the sun, water at her thighs.

  ‘Do you think it’s a storm?’

  Martin looks. And it is true, a huge, dar
k wall of sharp-edged cloud to the north. He groans, ‘That would be bloody right.’

  The breeze is stronger, the water is gooseflesh now. They scurry back over the sand, clothes bunched in their arms, he slaps her bottom and they screech as he scrambles to overtake her. The absurdity of a storm, biblical in its sudden looming. And now it’s a wind, not a breeze, and they shimmy their wet bodies into the dry clothes that stick to their skin.

  The cloud breaks before they have a chance to eat, so they shove things from the car inside the opening of the tent, and clamber in to sit on their piled blankets with a bottle of sherry and a lantern and an ashtray. They dig channels with a spoon in the sand floor to direct the rivulets of water away, and then perch on their blankets, a packet of biscuits between them. As the rain beats down through the night they get drunk, and became hysterical when a little channel overflows or one of them touches the canvas to send the water pouring in. Eventually one or other of them dozes, the lamp still lit, clutching suddenly at the noise of a thunderbolt and the snapping and dripping of the canvas through the night.

  In the morning the storm is gone and the sky is cloudless. Jocelyn leaves Martin snoring in the tent and walks along the waterline, watches another pelican’s wavering landing.

  She finds a few bits of miraculously dry kindling beneath the truck and manages to light a fire for the billy. Sits on an upturned bucket and closes her eyes, listening to the quiet and the birds and the riffling water.

  They travel many miles like this. On the last night, at the campfire, their conversation takes turns, resting and murmuring, and with a stick Jocelyn shifts and nudges at the small caves of light within the fire. They sit with one another beneath the trees in the ball of the night. The earth imperceptibly turns.

  ‘Ah, Christ, tomorrow.’ Martin sighs, reaches out a hand to receive hers and she sees his skin in the red firelight, as though he is from another land. They are beautifully tired, have travelled so far just to sit here together on this sandy soil, this place where it is darkest and most alone.

  She moves to lie against him, feeling his pulse through her own skin, and they watch the flames. Around them the high lacy walls of the bush, the trees’ quiet shifts and cracks, the starred sky.

  Thirteen

  THE TOWN’S OUTSKIRTS come as a flat relief; the haggard bowling green, the new industrial buildings soft in the evening light. Both their backs ache, they have driven many hours today, eating sandwiches as they travelled, stopping only minutes for petrol.

  Through the afternoon they have begun, separately, to think about the days to come; Ellen’s moods, Sandra’s tantrums. Jocelyn has been rehearsing in her head the guilty conversation, Ellen’s taut face and curt replies. Jocelyn will cook them a nice dinner, will insist on Ellen’s going early to bed, will play with Sandra, will let Ellen be right. Will finally finish the baby’s room, smooth a white newborn’s quilt over the cot. The baby will soon be here; it will have perfect lips and be rocked to sleep.

  There are no lights on at the house when they drive in at a quarter to seven. At the front door Jocelyn takes down a note, written in a neighbour’s hand.

  Please come and collect Sandra.

  Fourteen

  IN THE HOSPITAL corridor the air goes meaty, whistles. Martin is not there behind his words. The baby. She is feeling the down of hair on her own face. Her brain coils, slithers. He is standing there like a piece of something. Glass? Her heart understands something, begins juddering in her chest. She tries to make him out, in the corridor, in a hospital.

  Died. Is dead.

  Breath comes in and goes out.

  Her voice says, ‘Where?’ It is not her voice.

  The piece of glass says, ‘She’s in there, I’ve told her.’

  Hospital light greenish over them in the hallway. Martin is pointing an arm back at a door. He wants her to walk through it. She moves her legs.

  He turns and walks down the corridor, away from her.

  Through the door is a room with six beds, six women. Jocelyn has to look around for a minute before she finds Ellen, at the far end of the room. Outside the window glows the pale ball of a streetlight, as though this is any ordinary night.

  Ellen is lying on her side, knees slightly bent, her hands together under her head in the way that Jocelyn has seen Sandra sleeping. Jocelyn wants to turn and walk out of the room, out of this building, out of the town into the bush, climb a tree, hide in a cave.

  As she walks over she sees one of the other women is feeding her baby, its small head downy and snuffling at her breast. The woman cradles her child and looks carefully at her orange bedspread as Jocelyn passes.

  She walks around to the chair beside Ellen’s bed. Ellen is staring, eyes open and wet. Her face is grey, her hair damp. Jocelyn pulls out the chair and sits down.

  ‘Where’s Martin?’ Ellen says. Jocelyn shrugs.

  She puts her hand out and Ellen takes it, pulls it to her and holds it under her head between her own two hands.

  Jocelyn remembers her childhood nightmares. Think of something nice.

  The baby at the next bed starts to wail, its mother shushing and shushing it. A nurse comes and draws a curtain around Ellen’s bed.

  Jocelyn sits there in the chair with her fingers in Ellen’s two praying hands under her face for a long time.

  The next-door baby settles. Beyond the streetlight the moon comes up outside.

  Fifteen

  MARTIN IS STANDING hunched over the fire, head touching the mantelpiece and arms up like someone sleeping on a desk, when she comes in. He straightens slowly.

  The air moves between them, into their separate bodies. Deathly as water.

  ‘Where’s Sandra?’

  He points upwards to the bedroom, she nods.

  The hallway beyond the dining room is piled with the mess of their trip: the tent-bag, the swag, their bag of dirty clothes. It seems something from her childhood, when they drove up to the house this evening, a memory of years ago, not hours.

  He has a drink in his hand, pours her one. She takes it, seeing her own fingers move.

  She sits down, watches the vaporous brandy, its slow gold wave.

  ‘Did you talk to George?’ she asks him. The air moves. He looks at her, her red eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘He tried forceps, but it took too long. Died soon after he got him out. Just after seven. Just as I got to the delivery room.’

  He doesn’t say, Just in time to take in this memory I will never lose, that wet weight in my hands.

  He pauses, says instead, ‘George doesn’t know what exactly happened. He’s done it before …’

  Martin is very small in this room with its rushing air. She knows his answer before she asks him, the coral rosettes of the carpet swell.

  ‘But you know. If we were here, you could have done it,’ she says. She knows it, but cannot stop the awful bloom of his one word:

  ‘Yes.’

  In the morning Jocelyn does not wake Sandra, but she comes into the kitchen anyway, hair unbrushed, and dressed for school. Jocelyn puts her arms around the girl. Sandra stays there, leaning against her body.

  Jocelyn says, ‘You don’t have to go to school today, sweetheart. Do you understand what’s happened?’

  Sandra stares back, says, ‘Yes. Is Mum in the hospital still?’

  Jocelyn nods, stroking her niece’s arm.

  ‘I want to go to school then,’ Sandra says.

  They walk to the scrap yard, and Sandra moves to the crocodile, climbs and straddles its ridged back. Jocelyn follows, unsure of every movement.

  She sits down behind Sandra, sideways on the crocodile’s tail.

  Sandra says, ‘Where’s the baby?’

  Jocelyn breathes out. Takes another breath.

  Then Sandra says, ‘I know it’s dead, but where is it?’

  She turns and runs her finger over the bronze rises and dips of the crocodile’s back, and Jocelyn touches her own finger to the small hollow in the nape of San
dra’s neck. ‘I don’t know,’ she says.

  ‘Was it a sister?’ says Sandra.

  Jocelyn begins to cry.

  Sixteen

  THE FLYSCREEN DOOR bangs through the night. Somehow he has come back here, driven through the afternoon into the evening, finally parked at the roadside near the jetty. Slept in his car waiting for the first-light ferry, climbed aboard in his slept-in clothes, said hello to the captain. Walked the jetty after the boat had trundled back across that small body of water, come into his house and fallen onto the bed, slept through into that night and the next day.

  He wakes like this three mornings in a row, blindly, as if drunk, knowing something terrible has happened. His blurred thoughts shift tectonically, the masses of his memory faltering, fault lines dividing. And then he is awake and he has always known this blood-red, rotting truth.

  He walks to the kitchen. Pulling out a chair takes all his strength; it is the heaviest thing he has ever touched. He does not eat. Feels the acid of vomit jerk upwards through his oesophagus, charges across the room to lean exhausted and spitting quietly into the kitchen sink. Feels the decaying film of his blood.

  There is only the webbed realisation. His thoughts spread in rivulets, but stop at the edge of it. Only the hospital, the green light of the corridor, a baby’s feet, Stop.

  Seventeen

  ELLEN STAYS IN the hospital bed for a week, getting up only for the toilet. Nurses come and tidy up around her. After two days their movements are brisker when they draw back her curtain. Their voices are deliberately bright, and have grown louder, as though her time in bed has made her into a child.

  ‘Perhaps they are right,’ she tells Jocelyn, taking the magazine from her and putting it on the cabinet with the others. It is the Australian Women’s Weekly. It has a photograph of the Queen on the front. She is pearly skinned; she has a crimson cloche hat and matching lips. Her hand is a white glove.