Chapter 1.

I drive down the bluff road every morning, the rolling sea on one side, and the green hills on the other. Some days, the sky is painfully blue. On other days, it’s damaged with thick grey clouds and the illicit hint of a coming storm. On those stormy days, the wind stirs the sea and drives the waves so high, they spill over the road, closing one lane, cleaning it.
On those days, the radio station interrupts the procession of golden oldies to broadcast a warning and the town goes down to watch the waves crash over the road. The road isn’t closed that often, usually in the middle of winter with those freezing, bleak storms or in early spring when the weather is playing games with our minds. Then, even the fishermen can’t read the weather. Although they pretend they can.

The beach and the ocean dominate the town and the people who live in it. The sea brings the tourists and the fish. Without either, Match Box Bay, or The Bay as the locals call it, would simply vanish. It’s a personal decision as to whether that would be good or bad.

When you see the ocean everyday, you take it for granted. There are millions of people all over the world who have never seen it, never experienced it; but still, the people who live on the edge of it, think they understand it. People on the edge of the sea are hypnotised by it, always aware of its presence and its unspoken menace...the threat.

Others dream of the idea of the ocean without knowing what it really is; they haven’t lived close enough to it to learn to respect it.

When I was little, I would sit on the sand, my chin on my knees as I watched the waves flow up the beach. I loved the water but also feared it. Terry said that was good, it was good to be afraid of it as it could snatch you away in a second. We never spoke about the sharks as I had nightmares once that a grey shark had my leg in its teeth, grinning at me while it chewed.

Spring is almost over and soon summer will arrive and, with it thousands of tourists. They land like plump white birds and invade the town, making it theirs for the summer months. The population of the town trebles in summer and the cash registers ring.

In winter, I think the town appears half empty, even desolate and lonely. All the summerhouses are closed and windows boarded, every second and third house is vacant.

Summer changes The Bay, changes everyone in the town, especially the young. When I was young, the epidemic of dumping began with the commencement of summer. I used to think the other girls were hypocrites as they broke off their relationship with their local boyfriend so they’ll be available as the boys of summer arrive. There is an air of anticipation and excitement amongst the girls as the thought that the love of their life could suddenly drive into town in a car with a surfboard on the roof, someone new, someone different, and, importantly, someone not from around here. Dreams are stupid.

I wonder if it still happens. Probably does, some things never change.

The local boys take it in their stride, although they don’t really understand and, I think, don’t even think about it or talk it through. Guys are like that. They just spend their days and the nights hunting in packs for any young woman tourist. They watch and stare, whistle and smile, flaunting their sun bleached hair and tanned bodies to the girls from the city. One by one, they break away from the pack as they connect with a city girl, adapting and, some times, pretending to be some thing else, a different person as they insinuate themselves into the visiting families.

Usually they stand by the cars in the car park at town beach so they can watch the girls walk the main street. Surfboards lean against their old vehicles and so do they, wearing just board shorts and smoking, they smile and call out as the female tourists walk by. Some like it and expect the attention; some don’t, especially those with their parents. The father scowl; the mothers would their daughters’ hand and stride quickly away. But the daughter always looks back.

When autumn and winter finally arrives, those locals who have not moved away, find themselves moving back together for the cycle of the winter romance and they silently and secretly dream of next summer, a new summer of hope. In winter, the only cars in the town beach car park belong to the serious surfers. Dressed in their wetsuits, they only live for the waves, driving up and down, constantly looking for the perfect ride.

The town sits in the centre of the small half moon bay, the main street meanders around the edge, buildings on one side and the town beach on the other. There was a lot of excitement a few years ago when McDonalds came to town and somehow managed to get a prime location across the road from the town beach. It’s the only McDonalds for a hundred kilometres and survives on the tourists and they shut down one side of it in winter. There was some talk that a big supermarket chain was going to build a mall near the school and the mayor was desperately trying to get the council to make a deal with the supermarket company. The council wouldn’t compromise and the mall was built at Black Harbour, thirty-seven kilometres away.

Running off the main street are the smaller streets that lead to the newer parts of town. It’s where the school is, houses and two motels including the Sea View Motel. If you drove further, the streets would begin to rise and once you got over the railway line, you would find small hills where the streets dip and fall, especially around the industrial area near McKenzie’s Creek.

On either side of the bay, two bluffs rise like two baldheads. One is covered with newer houses and renovated farmhouses and the other has Danvers’ Caravan Park and the house I live in. There are still fields on our side and I know Danvers has been approached to sell it to developers so people from the city could build modern beach houses but, so far, he hasn’t. He’d make a lot of money but I think he likes his caravan park.

Standing on the porch of my house, you can see the town and the beach as well as the other bluff. In fact, a taller person might be able to see around the other bluff and see the mouth of the river where the fishing boats pull in and unload their catch. Pelicans float in the water around the boats, patiently waiting for scraps while the seagulls keep their distance, hoping the pelicans might go to sleep and leave something for them.

Some days, the pelicans sit on top of the tall streetlights, gazing out to sea and I think they look like they’re guarding the town or something. The tourists are amazed and take photographs and the locals shake their heads when they see it. The tourists always take a lot of photographs during their first few days and then the novelty wears off, the cameras vanish and they even slow down a little when they walk up and down the main street.

I parked my old station sedan under the tree at the back of the Sea View Motel. The only way you could see the water from the motel was to stand on the roof but it was a short walk to the hotel and the travelling salesmen liked it. I walked into the office where Mrs. Jackson, as usual, sat smoking and reading the form guide in the newspaper. I’m not late or early, just right on time which is how I like it.

The guests have to check out by eleven and no one can check in until one in the afternoon so I have two hours to clean the rooms. A small portable radio always sits next to Mrs. Jackson but it’s never on in the morning. The only time I heard it on was when they called me in one afternoon to clean a unit after some outboard motor salesmen died of a heart attack in it. The radio was on then and she was listening to some horse race when they wheeled the body out. I think she bets but I have never seen her do that.

‘Morning, Mrs. Jackson.’ I took the key from the hook behind the counter and unlocked the storeroom to get my cleaning trolley. I don’t like to stand and talk with her, I know she doesn’t like me and it’s better if I’m quick.

‘Morning Jen,’ she said, staring hard at the racing section. ‘Don’t worry about Units four, seven and eight. Nobody in them.’ I made the mistake once of telling her I didn’t like Jen, preferred Jenny or Jennifer so she calls me Jen all the time now, pretending she forgot I told her.

‘Ok.’ I pushed the trolley out. Before I start cleaning, I always moisturize my hands before I put the rubber gloves on. It helps a little to stop the gloves rubbing my skin raw. I think I’ve worn out a million pairs of cheap gloves.

When I finished, I put the trolley back and Mrs. Jackson says, ‘Why don’t you get here earlier? I’d like you here earlier.’

‘Check out time is eleven, isn’t it?’ I shut the storeroom door and replaced the key on the hook.

‘Some check out earlier, you could start earlier.’ I kept quiet, no point in arguing and stood waiting. She kept staring at the ‘paper until she finally looked up. ‘I’ll pay you tomorrow,’ she said with a wave. ‘I’ll pay you for two days then.’

She does this often; you’d think she’d be tired of it. ‘I need it now, Mrs. Jackson.’

She stared hard at me. ‘Don’t you trust me, Jen?’

‘We have our arrangement, cash every day. That’s the arrangement.’ I hated the sound of my voice, knew she liked making me beg for it, making me beg for money I earned.

We stared at each other for a moment and then she pulled notes from the drawer and counted them out. I counted with her, folded them carefully and pushed them into my purse. ‘See you tomorrow, Mrs. Jackson.’

My station wagon is bright yellow so everyone immediately recognizes it. Everybody in town knows everyone’s cars anyway but mine does kind of stand out. Terry basically put it together from pieces at his wrecking yard and gave it to me, even though I didn’t have a driver’s license at the time. Terry is sort of my father, tries to act like it anyway but every one knows he and Lisa adopted me. It’s no secret, I‘ve always known and so does the town, explains why I look nothing like them.

The wagons doors, the fenders and the body were all different colours; a spotted speckled beast and I didn’t like it. When I was five months pregnant, I decided to paint it myself so, I did, by hand and bright yellow paint was on special down at Simpson’s Hardware. It was a big joke around The Bay for a while, people calling it the Canary Car but I ignored them, I thought it looked better and by that time, I no longer cared what anyone thought anyway. I had withdrawn so deep within myself, I didn’t talk to anyone I didn’t have to and if I had to, I volunteered nothing and kept my words neutral and minimal.

I reversed into a car space behind Mrs. Poulos’s café. Andrea ran the small café while Bill, her husband, ran the real estate office. The lunchtime crowd was thinning a little and I began immediately to wash the pans that had been left for me. Mrs. Poulos was the first person to give me a job when things were bad so I’ve stuck with her out of loyalty; she stuck with me when she didn’t have to, when everyone else was trying to talk her out of it.

Andrea bustled in with a tray. ‘Afternoon, Jennifer. How’s Becky?’

‘Growing up fast.’

She grinned. ‘All do,’ she said, a bit sad really seeing she and Bill never had children. She brushed my hair from my eyes. ‘You doing ok?’ I nodded. ‘How’s Thelma Jackson?’

‘Same.’

She sighed. ‘Some people never change.’

Chas the chef watched me as I worked, he didn’t say much but he was pretty good at cooking, the locals liked his food, although I thought it was pretty plain, and nobody cared what the tourists thought. He was Indian, I think, or of Indian descent and liked to sit outside the kitchen door when he was having a smoke, watching the cars crawl up and down the main street. I guessed he was looking forward to the tourists arriving so he could watch the girls in their swimmers.
He never spoke much to me but I suppose I didn’t talk to him either. I used to catch him looking at me and wondered what he was thinking but he never said anything, just went back to stirring or chopping vegetables.

As I was finishing up, Andrea slipped the money under my canvas handbag as she has done for the past six or seven years. I often wonder if Bill knows she pays me.

Her hands were swollen and raw from all her years of work, of making do in a tough town. They came here before I was born, full of ambition and pride along with determination to survive all they threw at them. And they did with a smile and a nod, doing the things nobody else wanted to do until they made the money to finally start their beginning. I admire them because I know what they’ve come from; I’m still there so I can still taste it. Maybe Andrea and even Bill see that.

‘Same time tomorrow?’ I peeled the gloves off, turned them right side around, put them to my lips and blew the fingers out.

‘Same time.’ A pause and then, ‘Jenny?’

‘What?’

‘Bill tells me there is one of those new cottages up on Thomson Street coming up for lease soon. Why don’t you put your name down? It’d be great for you and Becky, better than…’

‘I can’t afford one of those new places.’

‘But…’

‘I can’t.’ I put the money into my purse and slung the handbag over my shoulder. ‘See you tomorrow. ‘

The caravans are aligned down two rows, clothes flickering on plastic covered washing lines, faded yellows and greens, peeling caravans and fading hopes of holidays. Further down is the sprawling grass, just beyond the brick amenities block and the grass is where the campers stay. Just a few dollars a night and they strike their tents with cheerful grins and high hopes.

Roger Danvers walked from his caravan when he saw me pull up and stood, leaning against one of his caravans, looking the car over. ‘The only car I have ever seen with brush marks.’

I ignored him, he always said it when he saw my car, been saying it for over seven years and I didn’t know if he did it out of habit or because he still thought it was funny. It wasn’t until later that I suddenly realised he liked what I had done to the car, that he saw me as someone who was as weird as he was and didn’t care what people thought.
‘Here’s this month’s rent,’ I offered, standing back a little so he wouldn’t breathe on me. His breath sometimes smelt like the rotting meat of some poor animal that drowned in beer.

‘’Bout time.’ He counted the notes. ‘I should increase it,’ he said. ‘Summer’s coming, I’d get more for house from tourists.’

The locals knew the cottage I lived in as Desperation, you’d have to be pretty desperate to stay there was the joke and it was always the last place rented by tourists when Danvers had it available. It had a great view, high on the bluff, next to Danvers’s caravan park overlooking the ocean but it was a beach shack and not much more. It was on brick piles, a timber floor and walls of fibro and weatherboard, the roof tin and a small back porch and a wide front one that almost hung over the edge of the bluff. There was a rusting corrugated iron fence around the backyard where I parked my car and grew my vegetables in the garden I had built.

I rented the house all year round and he knew he was better off with a permanent tenant but he still felt he had to haggle, beat me around a little. I let him do it; I couldn’t afford anything else so I let him have his fun. At least he rented it to me. No one else would lease me a place.

‘Summer is only six weeks, Mr Danvers.’

‘You can make a lot of money in six weeks.’

‘Some do, some don’t.’

‘Maybe I should try.’

‘Maybe.’

And that passed for a deep and complicated conversation for me, and Danvers wasn’t much better. The town thought he was strange but I didn’t care and I realised a while ago that Danvers didn’t care what the town thought. He was probably the only one, apart from me, who didn’t.

The wind came up and some shirts on a washing line near one of the old caravans began to flap, a red dog barked at it and then went back to sleep in the afternoon sun. One of the women, I think it was Marlene was standing on the steps of a caravan, smoking, watching.

He shoved the money into the back pocket of his overalls. ‘Don’t be late next month.’ He always said that.

Bay Books is tucked in a little street that runs off the promenade and has gold lettering on the window. There’s a sandwich board that sits on the footpath that says Second Hand Books – Buy or Swap. Wendy runs the shop, she was, so they say, a university lecturer until she gave it all up and moved to Match Box Bay to run her little shop, to live her dream. She’s been here ten years but will never be seen as a local and lives a life alone with two cats she calls Abbot and Costello. There are wind chimes over the door to the shop and they jangle when the door opens.

‘Hi, Jennifer.’ Wendy puts her glasses on the top of her head when she’s stacking books and forgets they’re there.

‘Hi,’ I answered, fingering the books wedged into the shelves as I slowly walked past.

‘It’s warm, isn’t it?’

‘Summer’s coming early.’

‘I just hope the visitors come early. I need the sales.’ She sighed and looked out the shop window.

‘Any new books?’

‘Nothing new in the shelves but some new stuff is in a box out the back. I had to order it in. I can’t wait for the summer people to come; they swap all the time, always got new stock then.’ She was right and that was the time I loved because all manner of books found their way into Wendy’s shop. There were the intellectually serious books brought from the city for someone to pretend to read on the beach and then swapped for some action story or hot romance. Many were brand new, never read and were probably Christmas or birthday gifts that were hated or read before. I have found some real treasures in each summer.

Wendy squatted down to the bottom shelf, eyeing a space and wondering if she could force more books into it. ‘Have a look in the box, if you like. A dollar each.’

‘Ok.’

This was my one vice – books. I didn’t smoke or drink and I allowed myself three dollars a week for books. I would often weigh the books in my hands, estimating their size by the number of pages, how many pages per dollar, how many days in a week would they fill?

I rummaged through the box. A Burnt Out Case by Graham Greene came to the surface and I picked it up. It was thin but I loved The Power and the Glory so I knew I would take that one and I just wouldn’t read it quickly, ration myself each night.

There was nothing really new in the box, just a lot of old paperback Penguins but I didn’t mind, some of the old stuff was really good. I found a thick one. Ten Days that Shook the World. It looked like history and was really battered but it would last a week.

There was a child’s encyclopaedia, also a little battered but full of pictures and easy to read so Becky would love it.

‘I’ll take these, thanks.’

Wendy examined the books before popping them into a paper bag. ‘You have excellent taste, esoteric but excellent.’

Whatever, I thought and dutifully smiled. I handed the three dollars over and she smiled back. ‘You know I buy books, Jennifer. You could bring some of your books in, you must have thousands by now and I’d give you fifty cents per book or you could just swap for other books, not cost you anything really.’

She was trying to be nice but I didn’t like to lose my books, you never know when you might want to read them again, look something up or something like that.

‘Yeah, I know. Thanks, Wendy.’

I prefer to wait in my car when I pick Becky up from school. The other mothers park their cars and stand outside the school gate, some of them dressed like they’re going on a date. Even now, some of them glance over at me and I guess they’re telling the new mothers about me. It doesn’t bother me anymore, I don’t hear what they say so why should it bother me?

Some of the girls I went to school with are new mothers; just married to boys they had been going with for years and who now worked for the council or for the road company that was building the new highway to Robertson. They would proudly wheel their babies down to chat and gossip with the other mothers, setting up networks for when their kid gets to go to school as well as finding ways to fill in the day. I’ve got nothing to gossip about so I wait in the car.

Becky clambers in, drops her bag on the floor of the car and kisses me because she knows I’ll complain if she doesn’t. ‘I’m hungry,’ she announces.

‘Put your seat belt on. Sandwiches at home or biscuits?’

‘Can’t we go to…’

‘No, not today, sweetheart.’

‘All the other kids get to go.’

‘Becky, we might go next week when I get some more money or for your birthday.’

‘Can I have a party?’

‘Maybe.’ I hated saying no to a simple thing like McDonalds but I had to keep a hard eye on the budget. It was the responsible thing to do but I hated it. The thought occurred to me that I could, maybe, take some of my books and sell them so I could treat Becky.

‘Joshua said you look like a man,’ she declared, feet kicking against the dashboard. That had to be Joshua Jackson, grandson of Thelma. He was just mouthing what his mother and his grandmother were saying.

‘Did he,’ I said, driving away, staring ahead.

‘He said you always wear jeans.’

‘I’m sure some mothers wear jeans, I’ve seen his mother in jeans.’ Not his grandmother though and for that we can be thankful.

‘Why don’t you wear a dress, mummy?’

‘I do sometimes but not for work. They’re not practical for the work I do.’

‘I’ll make you new one for Christmas.’

‘That would be nice.’

I like Desperation; we’ve made it our own. I painted the walls an Irish Cream when Becky was still a baby, I made some bookshelves and managed to cram all the paperbacks into them and we have some reasonable furniture I scrounged from here and there. Mrs. Poulos gave me my bed; in fact she gave me the cot for Becky when she discovered I had Becky in the bed with me. ‘You could roll on her during the night, Jenny.’

‘I’m pretty careful.’

‘I know but let me have a look around.’ She found a cot and later, a bed for Becky when she was too big for the old wooden cot.

Andrea’s heart must be enormous. When she dies, I think they should take her heart out and show everybody, to show them what a real heart should look like.

Sometimes, I wonder why she has done all the things she has for me, I mean, what’s it in for her? She has gone out of her way to help me, I know it’s caused trouble with her husband and probably the town but she keeps me washing pots and pans and paying me.

I’ve kept one wall free and put Becky’s paintings on it from when she first started school. We call it the art gallery.
Becky’s room is currently painted dark blue with small dabs of white paint on the ceiling for stars. I tell her she can paint the room whatever colour she likes. When she decides she wants her room to be a new colour we go down to Simpson’s Hardware and I haggle. ‘What colour is it now?’ Mr. Simpson would ask Becky.

‘Pink.’

‘Pink?’ He would always look at me in disbelief, I know he thought I was nuts but I didn’t care.

‘Bright pink,’ Becky would pipe up with a smile.

‘Bright pink?’ He looks longingly at the stand of premium paints. ‘I suppose you want the cheap stuff tinted?’ I nod. ‘Bright pink?’

‘Bright pink,’ I would say, or orange, blue, black or red. It didn’t matter, it was just colours and was cheap but lasted for months. And we painted it together.

The house came with a cook top and an oven and we have a heater, refrigerator, a radio and a small bathroom with a shower over the bathtub. We don’t have a television or a washing machine. I use the amenities block in the caravan park for washing but one day I’ll buy a second hand washing machine.

The house is simple and it’s ours, our life is simple.

After dinner, Becky drew while I cleaned up the kitchen and we sang along with a golden oldie on the radio. I put a towel on the kitchen bench so I could give her school uniform a quick iron. ‘Read me a story,’ she said all fresh from her bath as I tucked her into bed.

‘You read me one first and then I’ll read one.’ It was our ritual and I wouldn’t change it.

I turned the light off when she was asleep and crept out of her bedroom. The moon was up and the nights are getting warmer so I stood on the porch watching the waves roll onto the beach. In a couple of weeks, families who stay at Danvers’s caravan park next door, real families, those with more than two people in them, will cover the beach.

I could watch the waves forever, the froth and the menace of all that unstoppable water that throws a spray of diamonds over its shoulder with out a backward look. When I dive under the waves, I can only find sand.

There are times when I’m lost in the sea, that rolling water that touches all of us and no one at the same time, I’m afraid of it but sometimes dream of swimming out and never coming back. Maybe that’s why I’m afraid of it.

Tonight, I told myself, I’ll read only ten pages of ‘A Burnt Out Case’.
 

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