The Midnight Dress(31)

Rose could climb to the cove with her eyes closed. She leaps across the rocks, knows exactly where to put her feet. But the sense of satisfaction she felt in the beginning – of arriving at the perfect place and sitting alone, digging her toes into the sand – has vanished. She feels lonely there.

She thinks dangerous black thoughts about her father. She’d like to be away from him. She knows it’s possible. She’s seen kids her age before, on their own, washing at service stations and hitchhiking on the outskirts of cities.

The sound of a boat motor rouses her from her angry thoughts. A tinnie is making its way into the cove, the flat silver water breaking behind it. She sees it’s Murray Falconer and shakes her head. He rides right onto the sand, lifting the outboard in time, smiling broadly.

‘I thought you’d be here,’ he says.

‘What do you want?’

He comes across the sand toward her. His legs are ridiculously long, the hairs on them golden, his board shorts wet. His hair is sticking every which way; none of the blue is left.

‘I just thought I’d visit, that’s all,’ he says. ‘And see if you wanted to go for a boat ride.’

He motions to the old tinnie, the most dilapidated boat she has ever seen.

‘It doesn’t look very safe,’ says Rose.

‘It’s safe,’ says Murray.

‘How old is it?’

‘Dunno, it was my granddads,’ he says.

‘Shit.’

‘Come on,’ he says, ‘I can show you an even better beach than this one.’

The sun is so bright on the boat that she sometimes has to close her eyes. She’s in her worst clothes, her climbing clothes: a pair of baggy shorts and an old black t-shirt flung over a bikini top. Her feet stink inside her sneakers.

‘Don’t look so nervous,’ says Murray.

‘I just don’t want this thing to sink,’ she says.

She hasn’t tied back her hair completely. Tendrils escape and blow across her face.

‘How come you never smile?’ he says.

That question hurts her. It’s been asked before, and the hurt makes her angry. An old bruise touched.

‘It isn’t in my nature,’ she says.

‘Bullshit,’ says Murray, laughing, and he cranks the outboard motor full-throttle. The prow of the boat leaps out of the water and slams down again as he turns out to open sea.

‘You’re a wanker,’ she shouts.

He guides the boat around the rocks and toward the next bay, which is even smaller, a tiny deep water inlet without sand. The rainforest reaches right down to the sea. The boat rocks gently on the waves, making her drowsy. The surface of the water is alive with twisting ribbons of light, and she trails her finger through them. A huge turtle swims beneath the boat, and she peers over the edge until it has disappeared. Murray points up to the rocks where there is the shimmer of a waterfall.

‘Have you ever climbed on the mountain?’ she asks.

‘To Weeping Rock? Yeah. Why?’

‘I’d like to climb there,’ she says.

‘It can be arranged,’ he says in his terminator voice.

She shakes her head and tries not to laugh.

‘Have you heard the legends?’ he asks.

‘No.’ she says.

‘About the rock and why it cries, even when there’s no rain?’

‘No.’

‘There’s this story that the rock is this mother and she lost her children in a flood. They got swept away, and she turned all bitter, and each year takes a child back, or an adult, whoever she can get her hands on as a revenge. Heaps of people go missing up there.’

‘Every year?’

‘Well . . . Maybe not every year.’

‘How many in your lifetime?’

‘Colin Atkinson’s father hit his head on a rock in the big falls, and this other guy, a tourist, he went off the track and never came back, that was years ago.’

‘Hardly an annual event,’ says Rose.

‘This mountain will take you,’ says Murray in a German accent.

Rose shakes her head, but this time she laughs. He runs his hand through his hair, laughs in return, infinitely pleased.

The rain starts when they’re out on the boat. It comes from the horizon, a vast bank of clouds, drenching them to the skin. Rose is embarrassed by her shirt, the way it clings to her. Murray tries not to look. She takes the hand he offers, though, when he helps her from the boat.

‘Sorry,’ he says.

She supposes he’s apologising for the rain.

‘It’s not like you control the weather,’ she says.

The rain doesn’t stop for three days. It falls and falls and does not end. It fills up the agaves’ rubbery throats and fills the potholes and ditches to the brim. It nullifies each and every sound. It thunders on the caravan roof, floods the creek on Murray’s land so he can’t get to school. He is there, waving behind the water, when the bus stops at his turn-off. A wave of celebration. Rose is careful not to look at him for too long.

On Wednesday there is a clearing. The sun comes out and shines with a feverish intensity. The wet land is limp and breathless, still frosted with raindrops, the tinfoil sky repeated in countless puddles. At school, teachers sweat where they stand, delirious-eyed, the fans thump, thump, thump. The girls sit in the shade on the cool concrete, but even Vanessa, so perfect, has tiny beads of sweat along her perfect top lip, which she wipes away with distaste.