The Bodysurfers Read online

  As a boy his happiness had been bound up in the ocean, the regular rising and curling of waves over sandbanks and reefs, the baking sun, the cronies lounging against the promenade, the bunches of girls gossiping and flirting on the sand, the violent contrasting physical pleasures of bodysurfing. In his twenties and early thirties he had still never tired of watching the surf. Like flames it had the capacity to induce a calming trance. It held in store everything from a happy domestic weekend, healthy dawn exercise, to a snappy hangover cure. But over the past few years, through work and travel and the particular, strangely inevitable manner in which his marriage had frayed, then unravelled, he’d lost the habit of those peculiarly satiating Australian days.

  He’d liked sharing them and Angela had lost interest; or perhaps among their other discarded mutual interests they had just forgotten them.

  Lydia was a bodysurfer.

  Lydia had become a keen bodysurfer since knowing him. She had a history as an initiator of extreme physical incidents, as an experimenter and a changer of circumstances. She had already tried abseiling, hang-gliding, show-jumping, scuba-diving and their sexual counterparts. From his watchful position ten years further along the track he could detect in her a vulnerability to danger and a risky wilfulness with the potential to carry her, and others, over the edge. But they matched each other perfectly, blended harmoniously, gripped and floated. In the surf her recklessness made him laugh, the way she launched herself into definite dumpers, surfacing shakily in the foam with a breast out of her bathers, her hair in her eyes and a fist raised in mock victory.

  Sitting yawning with his ten-year-old daughter in the quiet early sunlight he tried to pin down the exact sensation of those old ocean days. It was a combination of the exhilarating charge of the surf, the plunge on a wave, the currents pummelling and streaming along the body, the skin stretched salty and taut across the shoulders, the pungent sweetness of suntan oil, the sensual anticipation of future summer days and nights. Certainly he had never been as happy since. Therefore he could hardly be blamed for trying for that feeling again — the harmony and boundless optimism. And he had got it only half right.

  Helena snuggled up to him in their warm patch in the treetops. Birds squabbled around them but they seemed the only humans awake anywhere. The world of sea and bush was comatose. He thought of Lydia buried in the valley of the saggy double bed; Paul in his sleeping bag, mouth open, hair awry; Tim flushed and cupid-lipped on the night-and-day. And Angela in her shared Mosman bed under the Amish hand-sewn quilt he had bought her in Pennsylvania. In white stitching the old Amish lady had signed her quilt ‘Mrs B. Yoder’. They didn’t believe in cosmetics, cars or radios but Mrs Yoder took American Express. He did not want Helena and Timmy snuggling under the quilt for early morning cuddles with the occupants. He did not want the quilt involved.

  Kissing the crown of Helena’s head, he inhaled her parting. ‘Want a swim before breakfast, my sweet?’ he asked.

  She was delighted. ‘A secret swim,’ he told her. Somehow he wanted to bind her in a conspiracy. He wanted to serve her up private soothing information about their present and future. Holding hands they padded barefoot down the road to the beach. Cool clay squashed under their toes as the sun began to slant over their path. Crows and currawongs fluttered clumsily in the bushes. Under the cliff face the sea baths were like glass. Helena was the bolder. Without hesitating she ran to the deep end and dived in. The coldness shocked him when he joined her; he had to swim three lengths of the pool before his circulation adjusted to the temperature. His daughter’s body gave no hint of the cold. She had been having swimming coaching and he was surprised at her new neat prowess, the precise arm strokes slicing into the pool, the efficient three-stroke breathing. When they climbed out she flicked water at him, giggling coquettishly, wiggling her chubby backside and smoothing back her wet hair in parody of a hundred women in shampoo commercials. He noticed her breasts were just starting to grow and she flapped her hands over them while she jigged about. It jolted him that she would cease being a child. It was only the other day she’d been born, a month overdue, in the end chemically induced. She hadn’t wanted to join the world then. If only he could warn her, ‘Stop now while there’s still time. You don’t want to get into this can of worms.’

  As they left the beach he was still phrasing what he wanted to say to her, at the same time hoping that his message was somehow being telepathically understood, absorbed through the pores.

  Finally he said, ‘I love you, my sweet,’ brushing sand from his feet.

  ‘Me too,’ she said. ‘Daddy, can I play the Space Invaders?’

  At the beach store she played a video game while he bought milk and the papers. The picnic ground murders were still page one of the local paper. Tests were proceeding on the woman’s body to determine whether she had been ‘assaulted’ prior to her death. The extent of the ‘injuries’ made this difficult. Police asked citizens to immediately report any vehicle with suspicious dents or bloodstains.

  Hand in hand they walked back to the shack. ‘Can I have my ears pierced, Daddy?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps when you’re older. It doesn’t look nice on little girls.’

  She was still whining as they walked inside. ‘I don’t want to hear any more about it,’ he said.

  Their mid-morning procession to the beach gave the impression of a cartoon jungle safari. Balancing his surfboard on his head, Paul amiably led the single file, followed by a talkative Helena with her flippers and swimming goggles, Lydia carrying her big bag of beach paraphernalia — towels, suntan cream, insect repellent, baby oil and magazines; Tim, the youngest, travelling light and scot-free as usual, dragging a stick in the clay, and David, bringing the Esky of sandwiches and drinks. They had decided on a picnic lunch. ‘Bonga, bonga,’ boomed the father, imitating native drums. ‘Bonga, bonga,’ repeated Helena and Tim all the way down to the sand.

  Now the beach was warm, and in its most populated section near the baths, relatively noisy. Children splashed in the baths and shrieked in the shallows. Small wavelets plopped on the shore. Paul had already observed from the balcony the sorry state of the waves but had perversely brought his board anyway, as if to indicate to this soft elderly crowd that this was by no means his element. They dropped their things on the sand and the younger children raced into the water. With a superior grin at the sea Paul flopped down in the sand. ‘Top waves, Dad.’

  ‘Give us a break,’ his father said, collapsing too.

  Next to him Lydia was arranging her towel on a level patch of sand, ironing away lumps and wrinkles and placing her beach appurtenances within reach. Then she removed her bikini top and, her breasts quivering, the nipples wide and brown in the sun, she sat down. Reaching for the suntan cream from her bag, she rubbed some briskly into her breasts with a studious circular motion, paying attention to the nipples. More cream was squeezed onto the stomach and legs, even the tops of the feet.

  David was slightly unnerved, as usual, by the act of public revelation (there always seemed to be some sort of statement underlying their sudden exposure among other people), but he had never realised how much her naked breasts actually moved. They had three definite motions — they were simultaneously bouncing, swinging and shivering. From the prim, diligent way she pursed her lips while she applied the cream she seemed to be either terribly solicitous of them or disapproving of their independent lives.

  David avoided looking at them too openly. Ogling was out of the question. He did, however, glance surreptitiously at his elder son, but Paul, though hardly able to miss them, was staring coolly seawards.

  Completing this display, still with a frown of concentration, Lydia flicked a grain of sand from one glistening aureole, spread more cream deftly over her face, and then lay back on her towel with a sigh of contentment. ‘I wonder what the poor people are doing,’ she said.

  I wonder if women know what they’re doing, David wondered. How did those tits which had been used to sexually tem
pt him at 3.00 a.m. suddenly at 11.30 become as neutral as elbows? Who’s kidding who? He was too far gone at thirty-eight, especially after the past couple of years, to read the fine print any more, much less try to keep up with the constant changes in the rules. They were amazing, leave it at that. He was awestruck by the grey areas, the skating-over, the 180-degree turns that women made these days. The breakup and his new status, or lack of status, had made him hypersensitive to the female dichotomies — fashion versus politics, the desperate clash between ideals and glands — and their magical sleight of hand which not only hid it all and kept the audience clapping but left you with a coin up your nose or an egg in your ear.

  Lying back under the sun he had to smile at the way Lydia pretended she had no exhibitionist’s flair, that she didn’t love to flaunt what she had, come on strong. He remembered the actual broad-daylight fuck precipitated by those exposed breasts not long ago on Scarborough Beach down south during their search for the perfect shack. They were sunbaking like this after a surf. A nipple brushed his arm accidentally, then insistently. Then began a sly stroking of his thigh, feathery touches over his groin. The sun, the ocean, the whole salty, teasing, teenage delight of it all! They’d got up without a word and strolled determinedly to the end of the beach and, behind a low cairn of rocks barely higher than their horizontal bodies, momentarily hidden from at least fifty beach fishermen, surfers and swimmers, had a most satisfying quickie in the sand.

  Their single-mindedness had surprised and amused him later. ‘I thought that might work,’ she’d said, grinning as they sauntered back to their belongings. ‘Was that like your adolescent days? I must say you were very neat — not a drop of sand in me.’

  Tim and Helena ran up from the shore, sandy and squabbling.

  ‘He’s using bottom words again,’ Helena complained. ‘He’s saying poo and bum and vagina all the time and he keeps throwing sand.’

  ‘I didn’t say vagina, I said Virginia.’

  ‘You said vagina!’ Abruptly she began to cry, turning away from them and sobbing despairingly.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Tim screamed. ‘You’re a liar!’ Overcome with rage and emotion, he fell on the sand and kicked and threshed, his yells turning to shrill cries as he kicked sand in his eyes.

  ‘My God!’ shouted David, jumping to his feet. ‘What’s got into you both? Do you want a hiding?’

  ‘Shee-it,’ Paul said. ‘He does that all the time lately. What that kid needs is some discipline. Come here, stupid, and I’ll get the sand out.’

  Lydia had her arms round Helena. ‘No one will play with us, Helena sobbed. ‘It’s boring here.’

  Lydia said, ‘I feel like a swim. Let’s go.’

  The father sank back on the sand. Leaning back on his elbows, breathing deeply, he watched the trio race each other down to the water, Tim stopping sharply at the edge, hanging back and then wading in gingerly, the others plunging in recklessly. Lydia and Helena surfaced and pushed back their hair and jumped and splashed like any ten-year-olds. They shared unselfconsciousness; if anything Lydia seemed the wilder and giddier, standing on her hands, somersaulting and gambolling, and all the time her breasts swung and fluttered in the sun and water.

  Tim was beginning to grizzle at being excluded. Sighing loudly, Paul sauntered down to him, hoisted him up in his arms and strode into the water, joining the splashing females. Paul tossed his little brother around like a beach-ball while Tim shrieked with excitement.

  Squinting against the glare, David was relieved and gladdened to see his children and Lydia frolicking together in the sea. It wasn’t a familiar scene from his marriage, more like one from his own early childhood, a link to it, a summer holiday at the seaside, a rare time when adults dropped their guard and pretensions and acted the goat. He was aware of the sting of the sun on his neck and this too made him happy; the clean buff-coloured sand, the fringe of gum trees, the dusty blue labiate hills, the turquoise vista of the Pacific all uplifted him. Buoyant, he looked over his shoulder and through the jacaranda picked out the balcony of the shack where his and Helena’s red and blue towels were drying on the railing. A warm haze gave the shack’s roof an uncertain wavy outline, and parrots still screeched in his trees.

  Oddly drawn to this setting, attracted to it but, perhaps because of its newness, detached from it, he half-expected to see his children, Lydia, even himself, stroll out on to the balcony and wave a jaunty towel. But they were playing in the sea. He was lounging on the sand. Paul was lifting Tim on his shoulders. Paul’s tanned back and shoulder muscles were suddenly sharply defined by the weight, and patterns of sinews moved in his arms and shoulders. Among the shrill giggles his deeper laughter rang out. Lydia was similarly hoisting Helena on to her shoulders — with difficulty — and the action threw back her shoulders and pushed out her chest and almost collapsed her in splashes and giggles.

  David watched the couples face each other — grinning, dripping knights on horseback — and heard the yells of encouragement, the snorts and laughter, and saw the infection of excitability strike them. He sat in the sun with a cold constriction in his throat as the riders wrestled and the horses alternately collided and retreated, striking and sliding against each other in the shallows, softness against muscle.

  If David could have spoken satisfactorily to Lydia next morning he might have described his dream that night thus:

  It began with me driving an Avis car fast and north through scrubby country on a hot, dry day. The highway was clear, the airconditioning cool, and on the radio old favourites kept my fingers tapping on the wheel. Bugs smeared themselves on the windscreen, but I obliterated them with automatic spray and wipers, the wipers stroking as elegantly as conductors’ batons. The car’s tyres made a satisfying drumming sound on the tarred joins in the highway paving, a repetitive noise of power and resolve. All this registered on me strongly — the sense of purpose was heightened because the car had been freshly cleaned and the hygienic vinyl scent of the upholstery was high in my head.

  I drove for a time, for what seemed like an hour, and from the changing vegetation — the trees were becoming even more stunted and sparse, the wild oats and veldt grass fringing the highway ever dryer and barely covering the sandy ground — I gathered that I was nearing the coast. An arrowed sign said Aurora—10 km and I followed it, turning left off the highway.

  A wind sprang up as the car left the protection of the hills and it whipped sand drifts across the road. The road cut through sand dunes spread patchily with pigface and tumbleweeds and led obliquely to the sea — every now and then I saw a slice of blue between the white dunes before it disappeared again. Another, bigger sign said Aurora — 5 km below a logotype of a leaping dolphin against the sun, and I followed it, the car planing occasionally through the sand drifts.

  Soon I came to an indication of habitation: a gold dome-shaped building, a sort of civic centre, flying a flag carrying the dolphin-and-sun logo. Before its entrance was a statue carved out of limestone, apparently of King Neptune. Surrounding the gold dome was a flat grassy field, which was kept green and free of the sand drifts, I presumed, from the parallel lines of sprinklers and the presence of five or six heavy rollers, only with great municipal perseverance. As I pulled up two children came over one of the adjacent dunes and slid down it on sleds until they came to rest on the grass. I called out to them, wanting to ask further directions, but they grabbed up their sleds and climbed back up the dune as fast as they could struggle in the sand. I tried the gold building next. From a sharp cloudless sky the sun struck its gleaming surface with such a dazzling glare it was impossible to approach it without squinting. Anyway, the front doors were closed — presumably it was some sort of public holiday here — and the only other sign of life was a nervously hissing bobtail goanna which displayed its blue tongue at me from a clump of pigface by the entrance. A thin pungent smell of decaying seaweed was carried to me on the breeze.

  The road circled the gold building and continued, so I drove on, st
ill travelling slantingly towards the ocean, and around the next sandhill I saw the first rotary clothes hoist sticking up in the dunes like a lone palm in the desert, and then more of them, some skeletal, others blooming with washing, and, behind them, facing the sea, a scattering of suburban houses straight from the middle-class outskirts of any western city in the world. In this moonscape the range of architectural styles was unusually extreme, even impressive, in its randomness and unfittingness to the arid environment and climate: mock-Tudor nestled hard up against Mediterranean villa, then came three or four bleak, windswept blocks dotted with FOR SALE signs, a Cape Cod or two, some ranch-modern experiments and an Australian-Romanesque edifice. They did, however, have some features in common: two shiny cars and a cabin cruiser on a trailer sat in every driveway. A sprinkler whirred in each front garden; there were no fences but walls had been cleverly erected to shield the grass and the cars from the sea breeze. The backyards had no shelter and, while the sprinklers whirred in the front, the clothes hoists, with a steady grating hum, spun like catherine wheels in the wind. It was easy to see which way it blew — the clothes hoists all leaned like cypresses from the sou’ westerly.

  Suddenly the sledding children returned: they were Max and Paul. This was no surprise, the appearance together of my brother and my son, both now the same age — about eight or nine — and similarly skinny, brown-skinned and with their freckled and peeling noses and cheeks coated in zinc cream.

  ‘In there, you nong,’ Max said, pointing out a pink-brick home with a 1950s skillion roof. Max was right in that it was my mother who came to the door in a Liberty print brunch coat over a swimming costume, gave me an amiable kiss on the cheek and led me inside.

  I know I must have seemed exasperated. ‘God, I’ve been searching for ages,’ I complained. I was actually immensely relieved. Relief flooded over me and intervening time was abruptly concertinaed into days, hours. ‘You made it a bit difficult.’