River's Edge

Penelope Hanley

A place of silence it was, their place, with water green and shimmering, bush wrens flitting in the trees, and dragonflies hovering above the river. Backpacks on to leave their arms free, they flew along the bank, leaping from rock to rock to get to the best part of the river. They ran along beside the water, they climbed from boulder to boulder, yellow lichen bright spots on the grey rock, and above them the limitless blue sky.

On and on they went, past the gums, past the bracken, jumping and balancing on the rocks, and then along the stretch of sandy path with the lizards lying in the sun and the wattle birds cackling above them until finally they were there. They dumped their gear under a casuarina and took out their towels. Then off went their shoes and shirts, their jeans and underwear. They walked down the warm sand to the bank.

They stepped in and glided their nude bodies into the olive green depths, sighing at the cool, elemental bliss of it, they lifted their feet off the sandy bottom and stretched out fish-white limbs. Then they were breathing great gulps of bright air and slicing their arms through the water, the sun in their eyes and laughter in their hearts.

Matt and Rosemary breaststroked to the centre of the river and stopped, silent with the joy of it, of being back in their summer place, the cold of winter gone. The silky Murrumbidgee water slid over their bare limbs, they turned and tumbled, flipped over and under, then floated on their backs, ears below the surface and eyes full of sky.

The air still, the water smooth, and their smiles of wonder at this after the winter of wool and Gortex, electric heating and dried out air, mornings of frost and reluctant car motors, nights of drizzle and chill. All that was over. Now they were skimming through the water, carefree and cool. They came to a huge rock near the far side, its top breaking the surface. They reached for it and for each other, leg sliding against leg, and their lips meeting, soft and tentative, as if they’d only just met, their hot mouths above the cold wet up to their necks, up to their chins, and then the kiss going deeper, deeper, then Rosemary lost her grip on the grey rock and started drifting off in the current.

Matt grabbed for her but too late, he’d lost his footing too, and they laughed, and swam back to the rock. She climbed up on it and crouched, dripping and shining in the sunlight, her long blonde hair like wet driftwood. With straight back and slim hips, she stood up and dived, shooting like a dropped sword through the deep, translucent green, then glided up and up, to burst into the bright air smiling.

She swam, he followed, and they didn’t stop till their feet hit the sandy bottom near the river’s edge. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Then a long deep kiss till they were breathless with yearning, they were dazzled by the sun and burnt by the water, they were caressing, wet, hard, happy.

Up close he lost years, became a schoolboy, vulnerable, persuasive, intent on getting his way, no matter how much she might resist. She wasn’t resisting now. That was in the past. That was the summer before. She pushed through the water away from him, then stopped and turned to face him. No resistance now, things had changed.

She swam into his arms and he held her, weightless, the water up to their necks, his toes tipping and turning on the silty bottom. Then they swam back to the bank, emerged and ran up to their things. They spread their towels on the warm ground and fell upon them panting.

Matt upended a bag of green grapes onto a metal plate. Rosemary unwrapped some cheddar and put the yellow chunk beside them. He pulled her to him and they rolled around on the towels, tumbling like puppies. Suddenly Matt held her close and still. ‘There’s a guy, just there,’ he whispered. It was a man close by, nude as they were, watching them intently.

The place had a reputation for being a gay rendezvous but few came there and those few stayed away from them. Rosemary had been self-conscious until Matt said, ‘Relax, if they’re looking at anyone’s body it’s mine, not yours.’ The problem was the occasional straight man who liked to watch.

Again and again, in search of privacy, they had tried to find a way across to the unpeopled far river bank. At no place did the semi-submerged rocks make a complete stepping-stone path across the water and it was too deep to wade across. Rosemary looked around. There were a few men about, with eyes only for each other. Except for that one. He was a large man and he lay on his towel under a tree. He wore reflective sunglasses and a straw hat pulled down low. Even though she couldn’t see his eyes Rosemary was sure he was staring straight at her. Without moving his head the man pulled open a can of beer, put his lips to the hole and drank.

She shivered and put on her big cotton shirt. Matt drank an orange juice. They lay on their towels, talking softly, looking at the river. A man of about forty walked into view wearing beige trousers and a shirt and tie. He stopped and looked about him, his glance taking in the half dozen naked men reclining on rocks or on their towels, as well as Rosemary and Matt. He walked purposefully to a eucalypt about half-way between them and the river and sat down cross legged under it.

‘He must be a pervert. It shouldn’t be allowed!’

Rosemary squeezed Matt’s arm. ‘Hey, don’t get worked up. D’you think he should be arrested for wearing clothes?’

‘Sitting around in all his clothes perving on naked men. It’s weird. He’s probably a pederast,’ said Matt.

Rosemary sputtered a mouthful of chardonnay. ‘Shhhhhhh! He’ll hear you. Oh my God, don’t look, he’s got a camera!’

‘No!’ Matt swivelled.

Rosemary did up another button on her shirt. ‘No, it’s not a camera – he’s not a pervert, not a pederast – he’s a birdwatcher.’ The man looked through a pair of binoculars at a thornbill some distance away. Rosemary and Matt laughed. Matt undid the button she’d just done up.

‘I’ve had an idea,’ he said. ‘We’ll swim to the other side of the river, and you can wear your towel on your head to keep it dry. Then we’ll have privacy plus something soft to lie on.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now.’

Rosemary finished her grapes and stood up. She bent from the waist and wrapped her large towel around her hair, twirled the ends and tucked them under. She unbuttoned her shirt and dropped it, then went to the river’s edge and stepped into the shallows. Matt followed. She leant into the water with her arms out and began breaststroking across the cool expanse.

The white terry-towelling tower on top of her head was heavy. The man in the straw hat was staring. When she turned she could see this, and that all the other men were too. Matt swam by, not taking his eyes off the spectacle. When she heard him guffawing, mirth erupted from her. The towel was getting wet, and of course, heavier. The cold unwieldy weight was pulling her down. Her giggles were turning into watery snorts. On and on she swam, getting tired from the great wet burden on her head, heavy on her neck, straining her shoulders, threatening to overbalance.

Helpless, she panted, trying not to laugh. She swallowed some water. She knew she looked ludicrous. It was intolerable. ‘Stop making me laugh,’ she gasped, even though he was too far away to hear. She felt ridiculous. She was furious. The wet towel was a monstrous weight. It wasn’t funny. She was so terribly tired. She would be dragged down to the bottom and die laughing.

After water-logged aeons of floundering and flailing, of sputtering and panting, of exhaustion and anxiety, finally, finally she reached the far bank. She was gasping. She was weak. ‘You bastard, making me laugh. I could’ve drowned!’

Matt held his hand out to her and she climbed up the riverbank. Against her will she found his mirth infectious. They held each other while they laughed. ‘It’s not funny! It was awful!’

She bent and unwound the towel. Carrying it on her shoulder she staggered along the bank with him in the sun-dappled shade. Matt took her hand and led the way, treading lightly on the pine needles. He stopped abruptly. ‘What’s that bird?’

They looked for a moment before it flew off. Rosemary said, ‘That was a silver-crested, pickle-dicked, sugar-frosted warbler. – My husband was a bird watcher.’

‘You mean, is. Your husband is a bird watcher. You still have a husband, remember?’

She shrugged. ‘Come on, Pickle-Dick, let’s find this perfect place.’

Matt didn’t move. ‘Bryan is or isn’t a bird watcher?’

‘Nah, he’s not.’ Rosemary stopped too.

‘He’s not but he used to be?’

She draped the towel protectively around her body. ‘He never was. My first husband was a bird watcher.’

Rosemary started walking again. Matt followed. ‘You didn’t tell me you’d been married twice.’

‘You didn’t ask.’

‘I did ask.’

‘Well, you didn’t ask how many times.’

‘Sometimes I could slap you.’

‘Don’t even think about it.’

‘I bloody-well will think about it!’ Matt grabbed at the towel, tore it off her body, marched to the river’s edge and hurled it with force into the water.

‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ Rosemary wrapped her arms around her breasts, feeling exposed. She walked to the bank and watched the sodden towel sink slowly out of sight. Matt dived in and swam back, his arms slicing fast through the water.

Rosemary followed, slow and miserable. When she emerged and had walked back to their things she stood, naked and dripping, looking at Matt drying himself. He finished and flung her his towel with some force. She caught it like catching a ball thrown too hard. ‘Thanks.’

‘Yeah, you should be grateful.’ Then he lobbed a series of questions at her with clipped rapidity. ‘Who…? When…? Why…?’ He had to know. She was a mystery to him. He needed to know everything and know it now.

‘Stop interrogating me!’ Rosemary was doing up the buttons on her shirt.

‘You’re always so secretive. I just need to know the answers to some pretty basic questions.’

‘The questions are too hard. Relationships are too hard. It’s all too hard! I’d rather not talk about things so much, it gets too complicated. I just want things to be simple.’

‘Things are simple. Leave your husband. You left the first one, you can leave this one too. Leave him right now, get divorced, and marry me. It’ll be Third time lucky. Simple enough for you?’

‘You’re asking a lot.’

‘So do you. Asking me to put up with this second rate existence. I’m second rate to you, it’s your second husband who’s first rate.’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘Well, I want some changes.’

‘I need time to think.’

‘Do you regard me as a mistake?’

‘No.’

‘If I’m not a mistake, marry me. I thought you loved me.’

‘I did. I do! But…it’s hard. I need more time.’

Matt was shoving his things into his backpack. ‘Soon it will be too late, Rosemary.’

*

‘What’s the matter, Rosie?’ Rosemary and Bryan were preparing dinner. ‘You don’t think working on toxic blue-green algae’s an important contribution to society?’

She wrinkled her nose. ‘Pushing papers about blue-green algae around a desk. Being a bureaucrat is boring.’

Bryan finished slicing tomatoes and crushed a garlic clove. ‘The work needs to be done if the problem’s to be solved. It’s worthwhile, meaningful work. What more do you want?’

‘Excitement.’ She chopped the end off a cucumber.

‘You’ve a low attention span, Rosie. You’ve had so many jobs. What do you want to be when you grow up?’

‘Well, with a mother who sold sweets for a living and a father who was a dentist, I’m entitled to be confused.’

‘Are you confused about me?’

‘What do you mean?’ She held her knife up.

‘This is the first time in ages you’ve been home early. You’re easily bored, Rosie. Are you bored with me?’

‘No.’ She went to him and ran a hand through his greying hair. She put the knife down and put her arms around him. ‘Of course not. I love you.’

*

After they’d made it up they came to the river again. This time they swam to the far side of the river with only a thin towel to lie on when they got there. Matt wore the turban this time. When he took it off his head it wasn’t nearly as wet as Rosemary’s had been. He took her hand as they stepped lightly through the serene bush until they came to the trunk of a big old casuarina. Water glimmered through the trees. They stood silent in the shady place. Bush wrens hopped about. A fish jumped above the river’s surface with a splash. They absorbed the peace, the privacy, the quiet.

Matt put the towel down over the pine needles. They lay side by side, naked and happy. He dipped his hands gently through her long wet hair. He stroked her smooth skin, the curve of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, her hipbones and thighs. Her hands went over his body, hot and hard, with patches of bright fur. His thighs felt like suede. The hair on his chest was springy with the healthy vigour of a young animal. He was beautiful, he was glorious, he was going wild and hard with desire, she loved him, she needed him, she couldn’t give him up.

They were panting, they were urgent. Their legs moved against each other’s in impatience. She trailed her lips down his body, from throat to chest, waist to stomach, and lower, teasing, then more firmly, getting serious. She trailed her tongue back up along his side, licking his neck and ending up on his mouth, in his mouth.

A few minutes into this kiss, when they were moving, when they were concentrated and needy, when they were panting, when they couldn’t wait a second longer, they heard a stick snap. An animal? They moved slightly apart and turned around. The man in straw hat and dark glasses was standing close by, watching them, his hand wrapped around his erect penis.

Disgust and fear knotted Rosemary’s stomach. They stood up, grabbed the towel and walked quickly away without looking back. They ran along the bank, then she wrapped the towel around her head, and they slipped into the river and swam back.

*

Bryan was standing at the living room window drinking a scotch when she came in from work the next day. ‘Can you pour me one too?’ she asked. She took her coat off, draped it around the back of her chair, and sat down.

‘Ah, lovely,’ she said, sipping.

He was staring at her with intent. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. He didn’t reply. She allowed seconds to pass. ‘Hard day at work?’

‘No worse than usual.’

She swallowed some more scotch. More seconds passed. She couldn’t look at him. Suddenly he reached into his briefcase and took out an A4-sized envelope and lay it on the table. ‘There are photographs of you in there, getting some swimming practice in the Murrumbidgee.’

A wave of red heated her face. She could say nothing.

He took the photographs out and pushed them towards her. ‘Are you in love with him?’

She couldn’t look. ‘No. I don’t know. You…you spied on me.’ With shaking hands Rosemary gulped her drink.

‘I’m an academic. I did the research.’

‘You hired someone to, just like hiring a Research Assistant?’

‘Yes. He thinks he’s a P.I. But he’s really just an R.A.’

‘It’s not the same! There’s nothing unethical about hiring a Research Assistant. But a Private Investigator following and snooping, it’s disgusting.’

‘I needed information. What’s unethical about that?’

‘You don’t pay money to spies to snoop on your wife!’

‘Because you should be able to trust your wife?’

‘Bryan, I’m sorry. It was a mistake. I made a stupid mistake.’

‘Deception. Disloyalty. Betrayal…’

‘Yes, terrible things, I acknowledge that. But...’

‘You wouldn’t be acknowledging anything unless I’d found it out for myself.’

‘I was going to tell you.’

‘How can I believe anything you say again? I need to be able to trust…I’m not sure I could live with…’

‘Please Bryan,’ she was crying now, ‘I’m sorry, I was lonely, I’ll never lie to you again, I need another chance.’

‘It’s always your needs, never anyone else’s. You’re selfish. I was lonely too, you know. Who wouldn’t be lonely with you? With you it’s: “Don’t leave me alone – Don’t come too close!” You want me to be there but you won’t give of yourself. You take me for granted. You use me.’

‘I don’t. I love you.’

‘You’ve a funny way of demonstrating it.’

‘Please, Bryan, you must give me another chance!’

‘I’m really not sure, Rosemary.’ She flinched. It was years since he’d used her full name. It sounded so formal and cold. Her stomach lurched and she sobbed into a tissue. He said, ‘I think it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a time.’

She looked at him, her insides hollow with bleak disbelief. ‘You don’t mean it.’

‘I do.’

‘Please, no. Whatever I did someone got hurt. That’s why I wasn’t honest with you sooner.’

‘You’ve never been concerned with other people’s hurt, Rosemary, you’ve always just pleased yourself.’ He got up and walked to the window.

She put her face in her hands and wept. ‘Bryan, I did a stupid thing. But I love you! You’re my world!’ He had his back to her, he was looking out the window at his garden. She said, ‘Do you want a trial separation? Time apart so we can…’

He turned around. ‘I want a divorce.’

*

On the Friday afternoon after she’d left she was paddling down the Murrumbidgee in her canoe. Every day since leaving she’d done this. It used up the time after work and tired her out physically so she could sleep.

The canoe slid through the pale water and odd thoughts surfaced like fish. Was it the watcher on the bank who’d been the private investigator? What better disguise? No disguise at all, just his naked body. Clever. Maybe his beer can was really a camera. Terror knotted her stomach whenever she thought about him. Creepy guy. Voyeur cum stalker cum private investigator. Creepier and creepier.

Before him, she’d had a world where everyone was happy. But it was a fragile equilibrium, conceived in deception and sustained by Bryan’s ignorance and Matt’s complicity. She’d maintained the balance of her neurotic needs and the hearts of two good men for a time but ultimately her behaviour was unsustainable. There must be a better way.

She’d broken it off with Matt the night she left. Bryan had been devoted, affectionate and loyal, and she’d taken it for granted, had stopped really seeing him, had stopped really being with him. She loved him but had been frightened of letting him see the real her. If people got too close that’s what happened, and that couldn’t be a good thing.

The unthinking physical activity of rowing freed her mind to delve into dangerous waters like these. Bryan was right: she didn’t want to be alone but she didn’t want anyone to get close either. She was a long way down the river now. On and on she paddled, the exterior serenity a balm to her interior turmoil. ‘You’re terrified of intimacy,’ Bryan had said.

She recalled him in his garden, whistling. He hadn’t been whistling lately. Her fault. She’d been stupid and selfish. Now she was alone, adrift, rudderless. She was terrified of losing him for good but more terrified of going back to ask forgiveness.

The fast-flowing Murrumbidgee was considered safe from blue-green algae, but here where the drought had made it shallow, where the current slowed almost to stillness, the water branched out into a billabong and she drifted to a stop, horrified to see blue-green swathes of toxic algae. She’d seen enough pictures of it and here it was, nutrient-enriched from phosphate fertiliser run-off, an impact of European farming methods in a country unsuited to them. Here it was, spreading like a cancer.

She leant forward in fascinated disgust and caught some strands in her paddle. It was mucousy, slimy, repugnant. Two dead fish floated belly-up. What if it spread from the rivers to the sea? She knew from her work that this was possible. She recalled science fiction films like The Blob and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. This thing was monstrous and implacable, it was taking over the waterways of Australia, killing fish and suffocating rivers, damaging people’s livers and skins and poisoning small mammals. She would look at the papers on her desk in a different light now.

She turned the canoe around then looked up. The man in the straw hat and sunglasses was standing on the bank. This time he wore an open short-sleeved shirt and sandals. Looking at the skin stretched tight on his big inert arms Rosemary was put in mind of a shark. She pictured him lazily patrolling his patch of water, watchful, steady, slow and menacing.

Her mind raced. Trivial thoughts mixed with her terror. She hated being stared at. But he must be disappointed in her T-shirt and khaki shorts. Even so she felt exposed. So he wasn’t the private investigator. Bryan never wasted money and he had all the information he wanted. It must have been the birdwatcher.

Every cell of every nerve in her body was urging her to flee but she forced herself to sit still. She gripped the paddle, squared her shoulders, and looked straight at him. He scratched his shoulder. His other hand was on his penis but to no effect. Rosemary stood up. A risky thing to do in a canoe but without shifting her gaze from him she rose slowly. She began lifting her paddle. It made a gentle rippling as it came out of the water. Slimy strands of toxic algae clung to it.

Rosemary had no plan. She didn’t know what she would do and she didn’t know what the man would do. She held the paddle up and held her gaze steady. Then the man did a surprising thing.

He took off his sunglasses. She was close enough to see the colour of his eyes, pale blue. They looked frightened. He stepped back, faltered on a stone hidden in the grass, and put his arms out for balance. His penis was like a grub in a bird’s nest. He turned towards the trees. Over his shoulder he flung her a resentful look, then hurried into the bush and disappeared.

Rosemary sat down and let out a long breath. Her legs felt weak now, but the rest of her felt brave and calm. She began paddling back up the river.

*

When she arrived at her house the sun was setting. Small white butterflies floated above the jasmine. She stood for a moment, thinking. Knocking on the front door would be too formal, but using her key too presumptuous. She walked around the side to the back gate. There he was, bent over his garden, picking orange flowers. Her heart contracted.

She opened the gate and walked in. When the latch clicked he looked up. Their glances locked. He straightened his back and hurried towards her with his nasturtiums.