The Bodysurfers Page 7

  At the north end of the beach nude swimming was now well established. Self-consciousness lessened as the weather grew still hotter. Brian began to recognise individual bodies as he jogged through the nudists each day.

  Each day he still watched for the postman. There was no reply from Anthea, but the postman did bring a reply from one of the youngish idealistic female letter-to-the-editor writers. She explained that she was the ‘co-ordinator’ of a school for creatively gifted children in an inner-city suburb. The school had an Aboriginal name. She invited him to an ‘open day’ at the school next month. She knew this was imposing on him, but could he possibly donate twenty or thirty of his cartoons for auction on open day? The proceeds would go towards improving still further the school’s cultural environment. The ‘friends’ of the school already included many leading figures in the world of the arts, and she was sure he would want to be included among them.

  He threw the letter away.

  The mosquitoes’ aggression grew and the smell of burning mosquito coils pervaded the cottage. Brian was very restless and lacked the concentration for work. He found himself waiting for the publication day of Anthea’s magazine, the first Wednesday of the month. On publication day he went down early to the village to buy a copy, to receive information about her.

  At first he was struck by relief to see her byline on a fashion display which had been photographed on the island of Moorea. So she had travelled again recently, or not so recently — the magazine, though a monthly, was produced three months ahead. It was now November. She had been on Moorea perhaps in July.

  The photographer also had a byline. Max Lang. Brian, a tremor in his chest, saw he was the same man who had accompanied her to New Caledonia. His photographs showed sleek models frolicking in turquoise lagoons, riding outriggers, slithering onto rafts. Tahitians gambolled democratically with them. Bare breasts were equally common on Polynesians and Caucasians. The photographs picked up the sheen of sweat on muscles, breasts and upper lips.

  Brian looked beyond and around the edges of the photographs and clearly saw Anthea in a Tahitian print bikini directing these photographic sessions. She had a hibiscus in her hair and a drink waiting under the palms. She had a deep tan from nude sunbathing and laughed happily from behind big sun-glasses. She basked in the desire of rangy Club Med organisers and sulky Tahitian boys.

  In the air space in front of the photographs he saw the photographer, Lang, clicking his camera. He was bare-chested, with a gold chain or two around his neck, a local necklace of shark teeth. He had a fashionable three-day beard growth. He was wiry, and brown from nude sunbathing. He was elegantly shabby and wore cut-off jeans and espadrilles in case of coral cuts. He pushed his sunglasses back on his wavy hair while he took pictures. He wiped spray from his lenses with a devil-may-care red bandanna. He had a drink waiting under the palms and the night planned.

  Brian tossed the magazine aside and drank half a bottle of brandy. His temples pounded. He thought long and deeply about Anthea; at the same time he doodled with a nylon-tipped pen. Quick violent cartoons appeared: of carnal abandonment and mayhem involving people real and imaginary, sharks, deep-sea fish and cruel serrated objects. Anthea’s body was the central motif. He drew it from memory, in fine detail, from many realistic angles, attempting to capture filmy textures, velvety anterior and ventral tissues and tiny blemishes he had once caressed. He brought out his old steel-nibbed pen, his full range of pencils. Representations of Anthea filled his drawing pads; her face peered at him from a dozen angles. Brian’s mind was fired with energy. His pen raced over the paper until it ran dry, and he grabbed up another. He drew his savage cartoons until he heard the kookaburras tapping their beaks on the verandah rail at dawn. His eyes suddenly burned with fatigue and he collapsed on the sunroom divan.

  When he woke at noon he remembered past misty progressions of time in a new sequence and with abrupt clarity. The cartoons disturbed him more than he thought possible. He stumbled down the track to the beach. In the humidity the dog chose to ignore him. The beach was baking and crowded. Trudging through the sand fully dressed, he stared into the faces of naked women and muttered her name. Private tears shot from his eyes. Acting on the complaints of their wives and girlfriends four men bustled him from the beach. They pushed him fiercely towards the road but his demeanour turned away overt violence and they merely swore at him and shook their heads. On his hazy way home the dog rushed him. He flapped haphazardly at it and it tore his calf.

  In the sunroom he placed the cartoons in his folio of work accomplished, then locked the door and kept out of the room. Now he stayed indoors all the time, opening the front door only to feed the birds, and trying not to think of the cartoons or the images they represented. In another moment of clarity a few days later, however, he burned them in case the authorities, in possession of his postcard to Anthea, should want to speak to him again and came up the peninsula to continue their inquiries.

  The View from the Sandhills

  I’m admitting it, I’ve seen some great tits and some of the bushiest boxes you could imagine on the sly. Speaking of which I saw that Anne Lang from that Channel 9 current affairs show’s tits this close last summer. She was arguing with a bloke, skinny, looked like a poofter to me, and they walked past me in the sandhills with her knockers swinging away without noticing me.

  I do like a big tit, I must say. I make no apologies on that score. All these skinny modern chicks with their perky threepenny bits do nothing for me. I suppose you’ll read something into that but I’m old-fashioned that way. And I do like a big nipple, brown for preference, something with a bit of suck in it. I’m not fussy, I don’t mind a bit of droop, not if they’re worth drooping, but once the sag sets in, finito. Give me your forty-year-old who’s looked after herself any day and you can keep your teenagers. I saw a woman once, a dago, with the biggest brownest nipples you’ve ever seen. I was still inside then, watching TV, the ethnic station, Channel 0, by accident one night. This woman was getting into bed with some wog shepherd up in the mountains and her tits nearly filled his wooden hut. The word spread like wildfire and next night every set in the jail’s on Channel 0. Everyone passed up those rootable girls on Dallas and Channel 0 turned out to be a desert of no tits, no English — just a screen full of Yugoslav jugglers!

  I wrote to Anne up at Channel 9 and mentioned I’d seen her at the beach, enclosing a snap of her for proof, and trusted she was OK, what with her crying that day and everything, but I didn’t get a reply. Your boyfriend looked a right animal, I said, and doesn’t deserve someone with your figure and ability. Looks aren’t everything in men, I said, something I learned in jail. I mentioned that with her mature bustline, if she’d excuse the expression, and ample curves, she’d be better off getting into films and not wasting her career on those television homosexuals. My advice is you need a real man, I said, if you don’t mind me saying so, and I went on in that vein for a bit, mentioning a few legendary blokes I knew inside over the years and what they used to get up to.

  I’ve seen many a strange sight at the beach. Many’s the fuck I’ve snapped over the years, though they’ve dropped off lately since nudism’s become popular. All doing it at home these days I reckon. ‘Excuse me, Mum, the boyfriend and I are toddling upstairs for a quickie.’ They’re shameless, these young chickies, suck off anyone right off the street and not turn a hair. When I first got out it did surprise me that even Catholic women say ‘shit’ these days, but, no, brazen women don’t upset me. Quite the contrary. I’m dead against mock modesty. Women used to stand on their dignity too much, don’t I know it!

  You have to get there early or all the good spots are taken. The same dozen or so turn up most days. I reckon about fifty per cent are there to see the men. We women-lovers are a dying breed, the whole world’s turning poofter. And lesbian. You’d be surprised at the amount of twat tickling that goes on any warm day. I see a couple of girls come out of the surf away from the main beach holding hands and frolicso
me and I think, hullo! Here we go! First they dry themselves, then surprise, surprise, they need some suntan cream applied. Don’t forget all those vulnerable little nooks and crannies! By the time they’ve oiled each other they’re so steamed up, kissing and going down on it they don’t even notice me, not even standing up, not even once when I came twice not thirty yards from them. I think it’s something in the sun does it to them.

  I get the 8.15 bus from the station and I’m on the beach by nine. I usually take my camera and a good pair of Jap binoculars, a bit of lunch, a magazine and a couple of those little cardboard packs of Milo with the drinking straw attached. One of the new-fangled things I do like since I got out is the way they have these little cardboard packs of juice and what-have-you that you stack in the fridge. Even Milo now. I like my Milo. Before I went inside it only came in those green tins with a bloke carrying a bull on his back. Milo was hard to get inside. Plenty of tea full of pieces of twig and hessian bag and horse shit for all I know, and a jar of Nescafé if you buy it with your laundry wage, but Milo, no. I whack all this in a plastic bag and I’m off for the day.

  As you’d expect, when I first got out I was all over the place like a mad woman’s lunchbox. Sex on my mind the whole time, racing from one beach to another, must have trudged over every sandhill in the state! Now I mostly concentrate on the one beach. Don’t think I’m going to give the beach away! They’ve got these sort of vigilante groups now and they come at you all fury and saggy balls, not even stopping to put their pants on, with the intention of beating the shit out of you. They really get them in a knot. A few times I ran for it but I got wise in my old age. Now if they see the sun glinting off the binoculars and scramble up the sandhills after me, by the time they get to me I’m reading my TV Week, sipping my Milo.

  ‘What’re you doing, you bloody pervert?’ they say. Insults don’t hurt me in the slightest. ‘I beg your pardon, mate,’ I say. ‘I beg your pardon.’ I act a bit put out but not aggressive. If you stand on your dignity people lose their nerve and shuffle around. It’s hard to be belligerent with no pants on. After a while they go back to their volleyball. Once, just to be cheeky, I took a snap of them all stomping away, all those indignant arses wobbling down the hill. I look at it sometimes for a laugh.

  Never show weakness. I learned that inside. Lesson Number One. Stay wary for trouble, yes. Pretend ignorance of everything that’s going on, certainly. But never show weakness or you’ll have more cocks up you than Dora on pay night.

  There’s another lesson, one I taught myself. Live inside your head. It’s stood me in good stead. Now I’m philosophical about interruptions. Get a good fantasy going and you can always start again. Keep the memory for later, that’s what I’ve developed. I’ve developed a photographic memory of women’s bodies.

  Remember that TV commercial where this woman comes in after a hard game of tennis? Brunette mature type, glowing with perspiration, moist forehead and upper lip? She takes the sweatband off her head and walks into her bathroom talking loudly to no one like they all do, shrugging self-consciously about being hot and sweaty.

  But with a little knowing smile. Do I know that smile! Well, she steps cleverly out of her clothes and into the shower so you can’t see anything, and next thing she’s standing in the bathroom with a yellow towel wound tightly round her tits, her wet hair slicked back, rubbing deodorant into her ultra-smooth armpits.

  Believe me that I can fill in the gap between her giving that little smile and when she’s all spick and span and wrapped up in her towel. Actually, I keep her in the little tennis frock a bit longer than when she’s on TV, and ask her to keep her sandshoes on.

  When she comes into the bathroom her sandshoes make little squeaky sounds on the floor. Dianne likes to bend over the washbasin and splash water on her hot face and I come up behind her and pull down her frilly tennis pants. Even though she acts surprised at me being in the bathroom, Dianne’s all hot and moist from the tennis and I go right up her, a tit in each hand.

  She’s desperate for me as it turns out. The bathroom is gleaming, very modern, gold taps and big soft towels everywhere. Dianne is so impressed she pleads for another one right away. We generally sink onto a heap of soft towels with Dianne moaning for me. Her thighs are tanned and strong from all that tennis but my superior strength never fails to amaze her. We’re both insatiable — her husband’s a stockbroker or lawyer or something who doesn’t give her much — so we have another one in the shower after Dianne’s gobbled me and I’ve spent a lot of time soaping and sucking her big nipples.

  But unfortunately time’s getting on. Dianne’s got a big dinner party to organise for the Liberal Party and the children to be picked up from private schools. She wraps the yellow towel around her, kisses me sadly goodbye and I leave the mansion by the back door. C’est la vie. I’m not jealous of anyone in this world. I could’ve been a lawyer or doctor myself if I’d put my mind to it. My mother maintained that it was the Depression that kicked me off on the wrong track. I thought a lot of her. The last time she didn’t want me to leave jail so I didn’t pursue it. One day she came to see me out at Long Bay. ‘How long have you been in altogether, Paddy?’ she asked me. I told her twenty-three years. ‘What a wasted life,’ she said.

  You would have heard that it was only when she died that I tried to get out, put my case to the Parole Board. It might sound funny but when she said I’d better stay in for the good of the family I went along with it. I could’ve got out years ago but it was my way of paying her back for causing her all that trouble. When my mother was dying she told my sister, ‘Paddy did a lot of bad things and a lot of good things. Paddy could’ve been better.’ She had a very strong personality.

  On the matter of my urges, as you put it, one day a few weeks ago I decided to get a bit closer for once. I surprised myself. Take it in easy stages, I advised myself. I wandered down to Tamarama beach from the boarding house and just got in amongst all the bare tits, bold as brass. I just walked in among all the girls and sat down. It’s only topless, not nude, mind you, they wear these little skimpy strips of cloth barely covering their cracks, but you can imagine the rest. I lay there so close I could’ve reached out in any direction and just grabbed a nork. I was relaxed but nervy, if you know what I mean.

  But it got me going, I can tell you, those plump bodies gleaming with suntan oil, that sweet coconut smell, it was heaven. I like to crack a nice fat in public, the sun beating down and all, roll my bathers right down to my stalk and think away, get a bit of a throb going. Look Mum, no hands! I was teasing myself thinking I could just lean over and fasten onto a nearby tit or tweak a bunch of that pubic hair they don’t mind flashing. Except probably the girl wouldn’t even blink. Up close their faces are pretty but vacant, all thinking of being fucked rotten, but half of them wouldn’t know if you were up them with an armful of cane chairs, as the saying goes. You could be in, out, and in bed with a good book before they finished their ice-creams.

  Anyway, these two young sluts started giggling at me, taking the piss, so I got up and left. Fifteen or so and tits no bigger than mine, in any case. No sweat. That’s women all over. They didn’t worry me, but why stress myself is how I look at it. There’s no hurry.

  I’ve looked after myself. Lean but wiry, my mother used to say. I exercise every day, take vitamins and that ginseng stuff for vitality. My sort of olive skin takes a good tan so I wear shorts all year round. I eat plain food, lots of yoghurt, and I always keep a couple of those health bars in my pocket. A woman I used to write to in Long Bay said I had a very trim physique for a man my age. She admired my sensitive fingers. Surgeon’s hands, she said. She was an official jail visitor, not bad looking, blonde, fortyish, spoke in a flirty broad way. I took her words for gospel and wrote back that I wouldn’t mind sticking those surgeon’s hands right up. Surprise, surprise, the superintendent gets the letter and I do an extra two years.

  C’est la vie. I wouldn’t mind seeing her down at the beach one lonely night
, snatch like a clam, I’d reckon. I’ve kept the address but I’m not stupid. They’d trace it to me. Perhaps a few random phone calls, hankie over the phone and some hot suggestions just to juice her up. That was a joke, that’s never been my scene. All my ones have asked for it, you can look it up in the evidence. Anyway, that’s all in the past and it’s no use crying over spilt milk.

  You’d understand that I wasn’t programmed to do a crime of a violent nature. It’s not something I can figure out. It’s odd but these things happen. The remarks got to me, sure, the jibes, but it was the screaming made me go black and when she fell she hit her temple and it bled a lot. It was more an accident.

  I keep getting the feeling you think I have trouble relating to women. Well you can scotch that one. Actually I’m thinking very seriously of going up the north coast and getting a partner to live with me. Getting a shack near the sea, doing a spot of fishing. I hear you can get an island girl to do your washing, cooking and so on for six bob a week. That’d suit me, grass skirt and bare tits. I sometimes wonder about my wife, where she is. She was only twenty-one when she left. She would never divorce me, being a Catholic. I could see us living together up the coast. I dream of her, our year together. I think of heaven sometimes. Funny, imagining her as a mature middle-aged woman.

  Sweetlip

  I am outlining the inquiries I have made since speaking to you after the cremation service.

  As Director of Security for P & M may I suggest this report be kept confidential, perhaps restricted to the Board of Directors.

  Many remarks recorded here, especially some by the family, were either hearsay or pure emotional supposition. There could be legal and other worries for us in their circulation. The resort is, of course, part of the Dunbar Group of companies, of whom we are more than aware in the present takeover climate.