A Single Breath

‘You’ve got to do what feels right for you, not what your mum wants.’ Callie pauses. ‘What would Jackson have said?’

Without hesitating Eva says, ‘Go. He’d have told me to go.’

We talked about taking a trip out to Tasmania. You wanted to meet my family, go for drinks with my friends you’d heard stories about, see the shack on Wattleboon where I’d spent my summers.

People often think of Tassie as Australia’s poorer brother because the climate is cooler and the cities are smaller and less sophisticated. Its brutal history as Van Diemen’s Land is never forgotten. Yet I’ve always loved it for exactly those reasons – it’s wild and rugged, with a shadowy past, and enough raw wilderness to lose yourself in.

I’d love to have hiked with you in the eerie beauty of Cradle Mountain, where moss drips from the trees, or shown you the wombats that amble on the tracks around Wineglass Bay. We could have been tourists together and taken a boat out along the east coast to see the whales cruising by, or eaten soggy fries and gravy from Buggy’s Takeout in Hobart.

You used to ask me so many questions about Tasmania, as if by trying to understand the place you could piece me together. But there was a lot I didn’t tell you about my life there – whole chunks of time that I left out, people’s names I never mentioned, things I wanted to forget.

I’d’ve liked to have shown you every edge of Tasmania because I know you’d have fallen in love with that little island in the sea. But the truth is, Eva, I never planned to take you there. How could I?

4

There is a bus ride to Gatwick, a long wait in the overcrowded fug of the departures lounge, a plane seat with a dusty headrest, a bleary-eyed refuelling stop in Dubai, a further twelve hours in the same cramped seat, a frantic run to the domestic terminal in Melbourne, and then a smaller plane heading finally for Tasmania.

As they descend through broken white clouds, Eva peers through the scratched window of the plane. The Southern Ocean meets the winding Tasmanian coastline that unfurls in a mass of inlets, bays and wind-ridged channels. She sees farmland, forest, tree-lined hills, and only a scattering of houses. What strikes her is the space. Almost a quarter of Tasmania is classified as a national park, an isolated island wilderness, dropped off the coast of mainland Australia.

She feels the symmetry of her journey, which is unfolding in reverse of the flight Jackson made to the UK two years earlier. That’s how they’d met: on the plane, with Eva boarding in Dubai after spending a week there with Callie, who was working on a shoot.

She had a pounding hangover made worse by the depressing thought of returning to Dorset, where she was still living at her mother’s while she tried to save for a place of her own. She barely registered the man in the seat next to hers as she sank down and took out her book. It was only when he introduced himself that she’d turned and looked at him properly. He had pale blue eyes that were clear and cool against his tanned face, and he smiled as he shook her hand, showing a row of strong white teeth.

‘I should warn you,’ he’d said, the drawn-out vowels of his accent warm in her ear. ‘I’ve a low boredom threshold – and I got on this plane in Australia. If you want to request a seat change, now’s your chance.’

She’d felt herself smile then, and when she glanced down, she saw he was still shaking her hand.

Like any traveller, he didn’t want to talk about where he was from, but where he was going. He asked question after question about England and so she’d told him about the hectic pace of the capital and how it sprawls out for miles and miles. She told him that Big Ben isn’t actually the name of the clock tower, but the bell within it, and that parts of the Tower of London are over 900 years old. She told him what she loved about England: the culture, the history, the mixture of cities and agriculture. And what she hated: the pigeons, the weather, the political correctness gone mad.

In return he told her that he was a marine biologist and she was captivated by his stories about working off a dive boat on the Great Barrier Reef, where he led tourists in coral restoration projects, or the three months he spent teaching teenagers to dive at an outdoor experience camp on the east coast of Tasmania.

After the drinks trolley had passed, he poured her a glass of red wine from a miniature bottle, then leant back in his seat and said, ‘So tell me, Eva, what is it you love about being a midwife?’

She liked the question and the way he listened closely as she answered. ‘Everyone assumes it’s the babies – that all midwives love newborns. But for me it’s working with the women. I get to share one of the most intimate and important experiences of their lives. It’s a privilege.’

Jackson had studied her for a long moment and then his gaze trailed to her mouth.

She had felt heat rise in her cheeks. ‘What about you? Why marine biology?’

He’d not answered right away, just sat there, thinking. Then he smiled as he told her, ‘It was a book that made me want to study it.’

Eva had tilted her head, intrigued.

‘Most Saturday afternoons me and my brother would go to a second-hand shop looking for good finds. Sometimes we’d pick up old reels or bike parts. This one Saturday, I bought an old khaki backpack for a dollar. When I got it home, I found there was a book stuffed inside. It was called The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson, an American marine biologist. It might sound stupid now, but at the time – I was 13 – it felt like that book was meant to find me, as if it had stowed itself away. I wrote my name in it and read it cover to cover. I swear I looked at the sea differently after that.’ He paused. ‘It seemed like a mystery waiting to be explored.’

It was then, that moment sitting beside him in the narrow space of their plane seats, that Eva felt something sway and tip inside of her.

When they got off the plane in London, they were still talking. They went through passport control in different lines, but met again after customs. Eva was staying the night in Callie’s empty flat, so they shared a taxi through London and he stared out of the rain-smeared window, not hiding his wonderment at the grandeur of the city. Before she got out, he asked for her phone number.

He called her the following morning and they spent the next three days in bed together, only leaving to buy croissants and fresh milk. When she finally returned home to Dorset, it was to pack up her things and move to the city with a man she barely knew.

Falling in love took her by surprise with both its strength and its suddenness, so unlike the steady relationships she’d ambled through previously. It was as if she’d slipped into a parallel world, one where only she and Jackson existed. In those first few months they mapped each other’s bodies, created a dialogue punctuated with their own private jokes, filled a past they hadn’t shared with the sheer and vivid pleasure of the present.

Now Eva feels the bump and jar of the plane as the wheels touch tarmac, wind roaring against the wing flaps.

‘Welcome to Tasmania,’ the captain says, and Eva feels her heart clench.

*

It is only mid-morning when Eva arrives at her hotel, so she dumps her luggage, peels off her winter clothes, and steps into a cotton dress. Her legs look pale and dry as she slips on a pair of leather sandals, then leaves to get her bearings in Jackson’s city.

Hobart, Tasmania’s capital, is set on the banks of the Derwent River, with the foreboding presence of Mount Wellington towering behind it. She heads out along the marina, the warmth in the air easing the tension in her muscles. Expensive yachts and tourist boats are moored beside battered fishing vessels, and shadows of fish circle in small shoals, breaking the surface to pick at sodden crusts of bread.

It’s a Saturday, but there’s still none of the rush or frenetic pace of a city. Everyone seems to be milling around in cafés, men wearing trainers or hiking boots, and women casual in flip-flops and shorts. After London, Hobart feels like a village – small, informal, laid-back.

She drifts on towards Salamanca, where a market fills the street. The air swirls with scents of fruit and sugared doughnuts – the faint whiff of the marina hovering in the background. She barely registers the stalls selling olives, vintage handbags, beaded jewellery, antique books, or the shoppers with colourful bags swinging from their hands. All she feels is the empty space at her shoulder where Jackson should be.

She imagines the warmth of his hand around hers as if they were walking together. She’d have persuaded him to pause at the antique jewellery stall so she could sift through old brooches and beautiful pocket watches, and he’d have wanted to buy her the prettiest one with money neither of them had. As they walked together he would’ve whispered a private joke about the man with the handlebar moustache selling cider, and then tugged her forward to introduce her to a friend he’d caught sight of, proudly saying, ‘This is my wife.’

When Eva looks down, she finds the fingers of her left hand are unfurled at her side as if reaching for him. She quickly stuffs her hand in her pocket and hurries from beneath the canopies and out into the open air.

She lets her legs carry her forward, moving through the modest city shopping centre onto tree-lined residential streets, and eventually into a well-maintained park where groups of young people loll on the grass talking and listening to music, cigarette smoke drifting into the air. Two women in tie-dyed skirts stand beside a table stacked with books, where a hand-painted sign reads: FREE BOOKS

.

Feeling the wooziness of jet lag suddenly overtaking her, Eva finds a bench in the shade of a large gum tree and takes a moment to rest. Eating nothing but plane food for the last thirty-two hours has left her feeling queasy, and she thinks she’ll buy some fresh fruit and then return to the hotel and give in to sleep.

First, though, she takes out her mobile phone and tries Dirk. She wasn’t able to get a hold of him before she left England, and as the phone rings and rings, she pictures a man standing with his hands in his pockets, a slight stoop to his posture, watching her number flashing up but not answering it. With a stab of frustration she ends the call, deciding she will go to his house instead.

She is slipping the phone back into her pocket when it suddenly rings.

‘Yes?’ she answers, expectant.

‘You’ve landed?’

‘Oh. Mum,’ Eva says, pushing a hand back through her short hair. ‘Yeah, a couple of hours ago.’

‘How was the journey?’

‘Long. But fine, really.’

‘Are you at the hotel?’ her mother asks, a slight shrillness to her tone.

‘No, I’m sitting in a park. I went for a walk.’ She glances at her watch and realizes that if it’s midday here, then it must be midnight in England. ‘Mum,’ she says, suddenly wary. ‘What is it?’

There’s a pause. She hears her mother draw a breath. ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she begins. ‘They’ve found a body.’

*

Eva runs a deep bath, pouring in a miniature bottle of the hotel’s bath oil. Steam swirls in lemon-scented clouds as she peels off her clothes and steps in, hot water creeping over her ankles and shins. She lowers herself down, leans back against the tub and groans.

A body.

It washed up 200 miles along the coast, just beyond Plymouth. It was on the late news this evening, her mother told her. They’re doing tests to confirm the identity and should know the outcome in a few days.

Eva had wanted this news.

But also not wanted it.

She bends her knees and slides under the surface of the bathwater. Her short hair fans and swirls around her face. Warm water fills the pockets of air in her nose and ears, popping and tickling, pressing against her eyes and the seal of her lips. Underwater she’s aware of her pulse amplified in her ears.

She makes herself open her mouth. Water spills over her tongue, the insides of her cheeks, the roof of her mouth, the back of her throat. She wants to sit up, cough, open her eyes – but she holds herself still.

Her lungs begin to ache and she feels the weight of water holding her down. Her body fires out panic signals, sparks of pain shooting into her nerve endings.

She thinks of Jackson beneath the cold, brutal waves, his large hands flailing for purchase, the weight of his clothes and boots dragging him down. She pictures his eyes bulging in terror, salt burning them as he fights to live.

Then she imagines that moment when there are no more sips of oxygen to absorb, and he inhales – freezing salt water sucked deep into his lungs.

She bursts from the bath, water sloshing over the tiled floor, her mouth wide open, gasping.

This is how it felt, Eva, when I went under. The icy shock of that sea was immense. My whole body contracted – my heart squeezed tight, my muscles clenched, my tendons constricted. With that first smack of water, all thought was flushed out.

The sea was bitter and relentless – shifting, pulsing, whirling, gripping me, yanking me under. An attack from all directions. My clothes became a fishing net, tangling me further. I kicked and thrashed, my breath ragged, limbs turning hopelessly. It was like no sea I’d ever known.

I don’t know whether it was minutes – or even just seconds – before the water started to numb me to the bone. My body convulsed with shivers, the fear of death ballooning in my brain.

I fought for as long as I could, your image bright in my mind. But gradually all the pain and struggle seemed to slide away with the heat of my body, the fight in my muscles – and I gave up.

That’s all I can tell you, Eva – eventually I gave up.

5

Eva parks the hire car on the opposite side of the street from Dirk’s house but doesn’t get out. Her palms are damp from where she’s been gripping the steering wheel and she wipes them against her jeans.

She studies Dirk’s house, which looks tired in the afternoon sunshine. Red flakes of paint peel away from the blistered siding revealing a white undercoat. The front garden is overgrown and two plant pots lie broken on their sides. The curtains are open, which she hopes is a sign that he is in.

Feeling queasy with nerves and expectation, she climbs from the car, crosses the street, and walks the short length of the pathway to his front door. There is no bell, so she knocks, then stands back with her arms at her sides. She hopes Dirk will be in; she’s eager to hear his voice, to see Jackson in his face.

She wonders what they’ll talk about, whether there will be any common ground beyond Jackson. She tries to remember the walks Dirk mentioned in his letters, or the name of the book he was enjoying when he last wrote, but her mind feels permeable, facts and information draining away. She’d like to establish a connection, something enduring so that they can have a reason to keep in touch.

She hears movement from inside, as if a chair is being scraped across a floor. A moment later the door is opened by a man wearing a flannel shirt tucked into belted jeans. He has no shoes on and his grey socks are thinning at the toes.

Her breath catches as she sees clues of Jackson locked within the angle of the man’s nose, the line of his brow, the shade of his eyes. ‘Dirk?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m Eva Bowe. Jackson’s wife.’

His brow furrows into rows of deep creases. He rubs a large hand across his forehead, as if he’s trying to release a memory of this arrangement. The skin on his cheeks is bright red, broken capillaries spreading like a map over his face. ‘What … what’re you doin’ here?’

‘I tried calling.’

He looks past her as if he expects to see more people. ‘You’ve come from England?’

She nods. Her toes squirm in her sandals as she tells him, ‘I flew in three days ago. I … I wanted to come to Tasmania. See where Jackson was from. See where he grew up. Meet you.’ She is babbling and stops herself.

Dirk stares. ‘It’s a long way.’

‘Yes,’ she says.

He steps back from the doorway. ‘You’d better come in.’

He leads her into a small living room where a timeworn green sofa faces the window. A whisky bottle and glass stand on a side table and a television plays on silent, some daytime game show with an overdressed host. A pile of videos is stacked at the bottom of the unit, and somehow the sight of these relaxes her: Dirk is a man who still hasn’t made the switch from VHS to DVD, despite having had more than a decade to do so.

‘Sit yourself down,’ Dirk says, pointing towards the sofa.

‘Thank you.’

He switches off the television and stands in front of it, wiping a hand over the sides of his thinning steel hair. He rolls his shoulders back and stretches his chin away from his neck. He’s a big man, tall and broad. She imagines that once he’d have had a muscular build, but now it seems as if all the muscles have sighed, slumping comfortably into old age.

‘So. You’re Eva.’

‘Yes.’

He digs his hands into his pockets. ‘Wanna drink?’

‘Water would be great.’

He trudges out of the living room and she releases the breath she’s been holding. From the kitchen she hears a cupboard being opened, the clink of glass, the whir of a tap.

While she’s alone, she takes in the room. There are no paintings on the off-white walls, and the carpet is thin underfoot. A brass barometer stands on the windowsill next to a model boat with a broken mast. On the dust-filmed coffee table a bunch of dead lilies stands in an empty glass, and she wonders whether they’ve been there since Jackson’s death.

Dirk brings in two glasses of water on a tray. He sets them down beside the flowers and his hands shake as he passes Eva her glass. He looks older than she’d imagined, more weather-beaten and tired around the eyes.

He remains standing, saying, ‘Bit of a shock, this.’

‘Yes, sorry. I did call, but there was never any answer. I couldn’t even leave a message. I thought about writing … but I wasn’t sure a letter would reach you in time.’

‘You’d be better off sending a pigeon,’ he mocks. ‘What is it you’re doin’ here?’

‘I …’ She falters, the abruptness of the question throwing her off her stride. She moves her thumb back and forth across the cool curve of the glass. ‘Jackson and I had planned to come out here together in the autumn, so I thought … well, I thought I’d come anyway …’

Eva shifts on the sofa, unsure what else to say. Her eyes dart around the room and fall on a photo that’s tacked to the wall. ‘Jackson,’ she says, her head swimming with the pleasure of seeing his image here.

Dirk turns to look at the photo. ‘Australia Day that was taken – 19 he was.’

In the photo Jackson looks fresh-faced and tanned, free of the creases that were beginning to branch out from the corners of his eyes and mouth. He is half smiling, his lips turned up towards the left. He’s standing on a sun-scorched lawn wearing a blue vest that swamps him. His hair is chin length, longer than she’s ever seen.

Eva leans closer, noticing something else. In his right hand he’s holding a half-smoked cigarette, his easy grip suggesting a comfortableness that comes from habit. She had no idea he used to smoke. She feels oddly exposed by this lack of knowledge. She wants to ask Dirk how long Jackson smoked for, yet knows there would be something humiliating in the question.

She pulls her gaze away from the cigarette and focuses on Dirk, who is saying, ‘I miss him like hell.’ He carefully lowers himself into the chair opposite her, asking, ‘What happened that day? Can you tell me about it?’

‘Yes. Of course.’ Eva puts down her water and locks her hands together in her lap. ‘We were visiting my mother for the weekend. She lives on the south coast, in Dorset. Jackson had got up early to go fishing.’

‘For what?’

‘Bass or pollock,’ she answers, pleased by the question. Dirk was a fisherman once. ‘He was casting off some rocks – but it was a rough day. Strong winds, big swell. He got knocked in by a wave.’ She twists her wedding ring around her finger. ‘A lifeboat came out and the coastguard helicopter. They searched all day …’

‘He was always a strong swimmer.’

‘The water temperature – it was only about eight or nine degrees. He was in winter clothes. It would’ve been hard for anyone to swim.’

Dirk shakes his head, saying, ‘After all these years running boats, I never lost anyone. And then Jackson –’ he sighs heavily – ‘he’s just line-fishing and goes down.’

‘His body,’ Eva begins, then hesitates. She is still waiting for confirmation that the body washed up near Plymouth has been positively identified as Jackson. In a matter of days she will know. Finally know. And then what? If it is him, will she fly home – have some sort of funeral service so the body, or its remains, can be buried? She realizes there’s no point telling Dirk about it yet, not until she has the facts. ‘I’m still hoping his body will be recovered.’

‘Don’t matter to me,’ he says with a shrug. ‘The ocean’s a good place. I’d rather him be in it, not buried in some bloody awful coffin stuffed in the ground for the maggots to get.’

Eva thinks about this for a moment and wonders if maybe he’s right. Perhaps Jackson would’ve preferred that. She finishes her water and says, ‘The memorial service for Jackson was beautiful. A lot of people came.’

Dirk nods.

‘There was a guest book. I haven’t brought it with me – but if you’d like to read it, I could send it to you?’

‘Nice of ya to suggest it.’ He reaches for the whisky bottle and pours himself a glass. She can smell the pungent vapour as he lifts it to his mouth. ‘We had a memorial here.’

‘Did you?’ she says, surprised. ‘Where?’

‘Top of Mount Wellington. Just a few of us.’ He takes another drink, emptying the glass.

She’s hurt that she didn’t know about this, wasn’t invited. She would like to know who came to mourn him, what was said, whether there was a burial of any personal items, but Dirk is up on his feet, saying, ‘I think we should have a drink to Jackson.’

He leaves the room and returns a moment later with a spare tumbler. He grabs the whisky bottle and Eva tries to tell him that she’s driving, but already he’s splashed whisky into her glass and is refilling his own. ‘To Jackson!’ he toasts.

Eva takes a small sip. She’s always hated whisky and the taste turns her stomach. She breathes steadily through her nose until the nauseous sensation passes, then discreetly slips the glass aside.

As they continue to talk, Eva watches the alcohol working through Dirk. He becomes more expansive, sip by sip. ‘I remember Jackson diving for his first abalone,’ Dirk says, resting the whisky glass on his knee. ‘He can’t have been more than 8 or 9, and he dived right down to this shallow ledge. There they were – all the abs just lined up – so he found himself a sharp stone and he prised the biggest one of them all right off the rocks. Came up grinning, holding it in the air like a trophy. He was too excited to stop diving, so he slipped it in the pocket of his swimming trunks and kept on going.’

Dirk asks, ‘You ever seen an abalone?’

She shakes her head.

‘They’re as big as your hand, shell on one side, and a dark tough mollusc on the other. When Jackson was done, he ran up the beach to show Saul and me, trying to pull this ab from his pocket. But it had suckered onto his thigh so hard that he had no chance of getting the thing off. I yanked his chain for a while, telling him that it’d take a month of being out of salt water for the ab to loosen its grip. Should’ve seen his little face! Course, in the end it came off. But it left a big old bruise that lasted the summer. We used to tease him that it was a love bite,’ he says, his face creasing into a smile.