The Bay Read online

  She wished she had developed a skill when she was younger instead of being a rebel who drifted around on the dole or in low paid jobs. When she met Colin, a schoolteacher, they lived together, and when Kimberley became pregnant they bowed to parental pressure from both families and got married. The pregnancy and marriage coincided with Colin discovering New Age philosophies. He became fanatical about yoga and meditation, began exploring Eastern religions and took the family to live on a rural commune.

  His obsession with Buddhism led him to adopt the Indian name Ashok, and one day he simply packed his bag and went to India, promising to come back soon, when he had completed his studies, whatever they might be. They were still waiting.

  When he did make fleeting visits, Kimberley knew she’d never settle for any other man. Infuriatingly, despite his absence she loved him. Had she found someone else she was sure he’d let her go, wanting her to be happy. Sadly, he was the only man who made her feel fulfilled – when he was around.

  She now lived in a rented house in The Bay and concentrated on giving all the support she could to her daughter. Above all else she wanted Matty to avoid the mistakes she had made, mainly as a result of conflict with her parents. In an odd way Kimberley felt that Ashok was still a part of the family, even though they had seen little of him since he moved to India. Matty adored her father, but as she grew older she was becoming aware of the difficulties he had inflicted on her mother. She lived in hope that one day they would all be together again. Life in The Bay was so relaxed, the weather so beautiful, that it was easy to lose focus and just drift along, day after day, year after year. However, Kimberley increasingly pondered just where her life was going.

  When her teenage daughter appeared Kimberley gave a shout. ‘Here, Matty . . . any luck?’ Matty had been searching for the ‘right’ pink bikini for weeks now.

  She shook her head and looked morose. ‘Can we go up the coast, Mum? There’s nothing in this dump.’

  ‘Now, Matts, we’ve looked in at least a dozen shops. People come here to buy swimsuits because it’s a holiday town. You’re just being too hard to please. It’s impossible to believe that you can’t find a nice bikini.’

  ‘I am not being hard to please. And you know it has to match my shirt and sarong. I did see one . . . but it was nearly two hundred dollars –’

  ‘Forget that!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Matty sighed wearily. There was never anything left over in their budget for even the smallest luxury.

  Kimberley was determined not to make a scene over her daughter’s petulance. She knew Matty was not alone, it seemed part of the early teens syndrome. She thought back to her fourteenth year. Yes, she’d been interested in boys and clothes. But she and her girlfriends and their mums had sewn their own clothes and made do with daggy swimsuits. They didn’t want to draw attention to their newly developing bodies in a two-piece. But she wasn’t going to drag up what Matty called ‘boring ancient history’.

  ‘So what’s next on our Saturday list?’

  ‘The record shop, I want to listen to the new CDs. What are you going to do while I’m there?’

  Kimberley smiled. ‘I’ll go and play at the beach. Bit of role reversal, huh? Or maybe I’ll see if Billy can give my hair a quick trim.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at the Caffe Latte then?’

  ‘Okay. I’ll treat you to a Ginger Nektar.’ Kimberley headed to the hair salon.

  The Teepee had been created by ex-Melbourne hairdresser Billy Bowditch, known in The Bay as Billy Blue Bear.

  About eighteen months ago he’d arrived in his ‘Toorak clobber’ of navy Armani pants, white silk shirt, his sleek pepper and salt hair trimmed close to his head and a silver moustache. He knew The Bay well from many holidays over the years and decided to quit Melbourne and resettle there after hearing so many of his clients lamenting how hard it was to get a decent haircut whenever they visited Beacon Bay. He saw the opportunity to set up as a sophisticated stylist, convinced his wife Paula to sell their slender holding in Melbourne, and they headed north chasing their dream.

  Billy opened his shop in a smart new arcade. Initially, though, he was rejected by the locals as too posh, too Melbourne. When the holiday season dwindled, the salon was empty. He had a younger wife and a five-year-old daughter and he began to question what he was doing in this ‘backwater’. When the rainy season hit, Paula became hysterical at being trapped indoors with a small bored child and closets sprouting green mould on clothes, shoes and bags.

  With time on his hands Billy began to indulge his interest in Native American history. So when a Sioux Indian elder came to The Bay to run a series of sweat lodges, Billy signed up and before it was over found himself on a vision quest. After it he’d changed his whole approach to life.

  The elegant salon became The Teepee, redolent of the inside of a tribal tent – weavings and totems on the walls, traditional emblems painted on the floor, sepia photographs of Indian elders and framed sayings of Little Big Chief. Billy shaved his moustache and let his hair grow. Blue jeans and simple plaid or Hawaiian print shirts became his uniform, and he began collecting silver and turquoise jewellery and wore a particularly ornate buckle on his belt. While he didn’t elaborate on his experiences, it became known that he’d gone through a rebirthing and had been given his totem name of Blue Bear. A discreet logo of an entwined BBB appeared on the door of the renamed salon. Arrangements of feathers, dried twigs and smudge sticks replaced the angular glass vase with its spiky heliconia bloom. Subdued hypnotic, rhythmic music with drumming and chanting replaced the movie soundtracks and jazz CDs. The locals wandered in and stayed as clients. Tourists thought it all very quaint. But Billy survived because he was a good hairdresser.

  Kimberley pushed the tribal rug to one side and stuck her head into the salon. She was pleased to find him alone, hunched over the form guide, the radio tuned to the Brisbane races.

  ‘You going home to tell Paula it was another wild Saturday in the salon?’ she asked with a grin.

  ‘Hey, Kim, come in. Everyone’s watching the dragon boat races across the bay. Want a coffee? I was looking for an excuse to duck out for a fag.’

  ‘I thought you’d given them away. You were on a health kick two weeks ago.’

  ‘I feel great. Been on the aloe vera juice. No more ciggies, just these.’ He picked up a packet of slim cheroots.

  ‘You’re impossible. I’ll have a cappuccino with you. I was thinking I’d get you to knock off the straggly ends.’ She lifted her hair and showed him.

  ‘Yeah, could do with it. Where’s Matilda?’

  ‘In the record shop, she’s exhausted every store along the coast for a bikini.’ Then seeing Billy’s raised eyebrow she added, ‘Wait till your little princess is fourteen. Obsessed with her body, how she looks, what to wear, what people think of her . . . I’m being very patient.’

  They sat down at a table outside the coffee shop in the arcade so Billy could watch his doorway. He’d left the answer machine on.

  ‘Why don’t you bring the portable here? You might miss an appointment,’ said Kimberley.

  ‘Can’t stress out about missing a colour job or whatever. Money isn’t where it’s at, Kim,’ he said.

  She eyed his Volvo in The Teepee parking space. ‘Easy enough to say when you’re comfortable. I have to watch every cent. Matty is costing me a bundle, now she even wants to have her legs waxed!’

  ‘Introduce her to Lady Schick.’

  ‘Oh, they had some beauty consultant come to the school and she put the horrors of razors to them. One of Matty’s friends shaved her top lip and that sent them into a frenzy. Still, I’d rather this than drugs.’

  Billy lit up his cheroot. ‘Your daughter is friends with Erica Bitternden, isn’t she?’

  ‘They’re in the same class, hang out in the same group. I met her mother, Bonnie, at a New Year’s Eve party. She seemed to want to keep to herself. I guess Matty does see quite a lot of her daughter, why?’

  B
illy turned and glanced down the arcade to the Beach Hut, a small shop filled with swimwear, beach accessories, sunglasses, hats and sandals, run by Bonnie. He lowered his voice. ‘Trouble brewing, I predict. I’ve seen it too often . . . I know the symptoms. I went through it a bit myself,’ he said. ‘She’s not there a lot of the time, sometimes a pal turns up and opens the shop for her, but I’ve seen her at the Big Pub more than a little merry.’

  ‘Paula doesn’t mind you hanging out at the pub?’

  ‘I shut shop at four if there’s no one coming in. Pick up my winnings from the TAB, have a few ales and head home in time to walk the dog on the beach with Hope. I don’t wipe myself out. I’ve seen young Erica come looking for her mother after school. It’s not the drinking, it’s the kid Bonnie’s hanging out with.’

  ‘Kid?’

  ‘Young lover boy, early twenties. Nothing wrong with that,’ Billy was quick to add, ‘but the guy is a loser. A junkie. And have you noticed how Bonnie has changed?’

  ‘Can’t say I have. Never seen her at school meetings and I don’t spend time in this arcade like you do. Anyway, it’s her business.’

  ‘Sure, sure it is. But if my daughter was hanging out at her place I’d be worried. No one at home, mother and boyfriend on dope and whatever else. Bonnie can’t handle it. She came up here from Melbourne a few months after me, a straight up and down smart suburban divorcee. Gets bored, buys a business and being lonely she’s a target for the likes of lover boy.’

  ‘Umm. So how has she changed? You notice these female things.’ Kimberley studied Billy, his rough good looks, heavy shoulders, a nice smile. Never pick him as a hairdresser in a million years. Men liked him too. He had as many male clients as women. Billy was blokey without being butch. Loved the horses, beer and fishing. Idolised his daughter, Hope. He was the sort of man women loved to gossip with and quietly share their feelings. He was known to his men clients as ‘The Bear’, and they found him a sensitive and comforting ear to bend about their problems. They respected the fact that he’d changed his way of life and was open enough to embrace an old culture that helped him in the present. Wasn’t their thing, but if it worked for him, fine.

  Kimberley wondered how much Billy really knew about Bonnie and her little shop down the arcade. She felt slightly guilty she didn’t know the mothers of Matty’s friends very well.

  ‘Bonnie talks to me,’ Billy continued. ‘She confides a bit. But just look at the way she dresses now. She was always very smart casual, then casual gave way to hippy and then sloppy. The blonde bob has been let go. Now it’s mad curls, she covers the grey with henna . . . the natural look, she calls it. Looks like she’s wearing a bloody bird’s nest. She’s trying to be one of the young guns.’

  ‘That’s a hairdresser talking. But thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out if there’s a sleepover at Erica’s planned.’

  Their coffees arrived and Billy took a sip before asking, ‘And what news of your old man?’

  Kimberley paused as she thought about Ashok. ‘Probably still has dreadlocks, wearing sandals and a dhoti and omming in some Indian ashram.’

  ‘Is he into dope and stuff?’

  Kimberley looked at Billy’s earnest face. He could ask those sorts of personal questions without offending.

  ‘Nah, smoked joints when we first got together. He always seemed spaced out but he’s just one of those quiet, vague kinda guys. That was when he was called Colin, before becoming a Buddhist.’

  ‘Doesn’t he get in touch with Matty? Teenage girls need their dads.’

  ‘Hell, Billy, don’t make me feel bad. It’s hard enough coping on my own. There’s that underlying accusing look in her eyes when I say, no, she can’t have a two hundred dollar bikini like . . . well, Dad would say yes.’

  ‘Would he?’

  ‘If he had the money, probably yes. Too easygoing, that’s his trouble. A gentle soul. Not the ideal partner to forge ahead with in the real world.’

  Kimberley looked into the foamy dregs in her cup. Matty so adored her absent father, that was the trouble. If he was around more than once a year she might see him for the waste of space he was. Mac referred to him as ‘the guru’ and kept advising Kim to ‘move on’.

  ‘We were really happy with our little daughter in those early years,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘I had to make him see you can’t raise a child on lentils and dreams. So off he went to India on his own. He comes and goes, says he’s researching some sort of book. He lives on the smell of an oily rag over there and I’m on a deserted wife’s pension here in bloody paradise.’

  ‘If he comes and goes you’re not deserted, are you?’

  ‘I am as far as the government is concerned, thank you very much.’

  ‘What happens when he comes back?’

  Kimberley pushed her cup away. ‘Ah, we play happy families for a couple of weeks and then he’s off.’ She stood up. ‘Let’s do my hair, Matty will be back soon. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting, you know.’

  ‘I’ll keep my eyes open for a real bloke for you,’ said Billy, dropping a ten-dollar note onto the table.

  ‘You do that,’ said Kimberley, smiling.

  Holly had no idea what time it was. There was no comforting green glow from a bedside clock. She was sleeping in the annexe attached to the main house while it was being renovated. It still felt strange – being in a narrow bed, alone, with different smells and sounds. The first few nights she’d been nervous, knowing she was in a big empty house on an isolated headland. Curly slept in her basket by the door but the old dog’s deep snuffling snore didn’t give Holly a huge sense of security. Andrew had told her to book into a motel, he couldn’t believe she’d stayed alone in the old house. But Holly wanted to bond with this place that had so much history, that was now such a big chunk of her life.

  She was glad she was alone. If her family was there they might think she was slightly mad because of the way she walked through the near empty rooms, running her hands over the old ledges, windowpanes and balustrades. She’d even sat on the floor rubbing her hands over the worn floorboards, exposed beneath frayed modern carpet. They would come up beautifully with a little sanding and polishing. Everywhere she went in the house she wondered about the family that had lived there. She was beginning to feel a responsibility for Richmond House – to restore it, to maintain it, to stay faithful to those who had built it, lived, loved, cried and laughed within it. This place was a tangible link with the history of The Bay. Gradually her fears had subsided and she imagined the house wrapping itself around her, protecting her. She felt she was one of the family who’d always be a part of this home.

  Holly pulled the cotton duvet up to her chin. The wind must have woken her; it was howling and thrashing at the windows and in the garden. She saw, as they were lit by a flash of the beam from the lighthouse, the tops of the palm trees whipping and bending. Then came the rain, a solid downpour of wind-driven water. She decided to get up and check that no rain was coming in – a chance to look for leaks. The electric lights were few, high and dim, little changed since the 1950s. The last people here had favoured lamps. Holly made a mental note to talk to an electrician about recessed spot lighting.

  One part of the wall of the sitting room in the annexe was trickling water. She turned on the torch, deciding to run along the covered walkway to the main house and inspect it. Curly caught up with her and reluctantly padded behind. But as she rattled the side door of the kitchen, the dog began barking.

  Holly looked back, swinging the torch around in the wet blackness. Curly was standing out in the garden, barking wildly into the storm, looking up towards the roof.

  She called the old dog, who hated storms, but Curly took no notice. There was a warning sound to her bark that alerted Holly. She ran out onto the lawn, her nightdress soaked through in seconds.

  ‘What is it, old girl? What are you barking at, Curly?’

  The dog continued to bark at the upper level. It was in darkness, the outline of th
e roof barely visible in the storm-blacked sky. But as Holly was about to turn away, the beam from the lighthouse swung again over the trees, showing in dim relief the top of the house. Holly was looking straight at the widow’s walk. In the seconds of light she clearly saw a dark figure silhouetted – a figure leaning out scanning the sea. Her instant impression was of a woman, dressed in black, her hair streaming behind her.

  Holly grabbed Curly’s collar and began stumbling backwards in shock, oblivious to the water plastering her hair, pouring down her neck, her eyes riveted to the top of the house somewhere in the blackness.

  By the time the beam swung around again the dark shape had gone. Was it ever there? Had she imagined it through the rain?

  She hurried back to the annexe with Curly trotting to keep up with her, slammed the door and went through the rooms, throwing on the lights. She turned on the radio and went into the shower, dropping her soaking nightgown in a corner.

  Later, wrapped in her bathrobe, a towel around her head, she put the kettle on in the small sitting room and began to dry Curly’s thick wet fur.

  ‘You saw her too, didn’t you, Curly? Looking out to sea in the storm. Who is she, Curly, who could she be?’

  Holly was not afraid. The shower had helped calm her nerves, and she knew there was no strange woman in the attic. She knew what they’d seen. ‘We’ve seen a ghost,’ she said softly to the dog. ‘I wonder if she’ll come back, Curly. What do you think?’

  Holly lifted her head, suddenly aware that the wind and rain had eased, almost stopped. The kettle whistled. The announcer on the local FM station spoke cheerfully. It was 3.15 am.

  Holly settled Curly in her basket then went back to bed with a mug of tea. She locked the door, left the light on and, propped up against the pillows, she tried to imagine being a wife watching the storm, waiting for her loved one to return from the sea in those pioneering days. She tried to imagine the deep worry that must always be at the back of the woman’s mind, while still having to cope with everyday family life until the wait was over. And how were things then? If it hadn’t been a successful voyage there’d be financial worries. Were they thrilled to be together, or had this woman overly romanticised her seafaring husband? Holly thought of all the times Andrew had been away on business trips, how she’d looked forward to his return, planned a romantic evening, only to have him disappear into his office to finish some drawings or plans. Or else he’d complained he was exhausted, he’d eaten on the plane, and gone straight to sleep. How foolish she’d felt at the untouched candlelit dinner, at wearing sexy perfume and nightwear. Maybe Andrew and the children had been right when they told her to find an interest, get involved in something – women’s clubs, charities. Well, she’d certainly taken on something with Richmond House. And she knew they thought it was all too much for her. Not physically, for Holly was trim and energetic, but perhaps because she’d never had to deal with a whole range of problems like those that now loomed outside the home, outside the family.