Margie Bates closes the email, and checks her address book for Roger Wentworth’s phone number at the Australian Customs Service.
He answers promptly. ‘Oh, Mrs Bates. I thought it was going to be another media call. We’re being flooded with them.’
‘Sorry, only little old me,’ Margie says, annoyed by his patronising tone.
‘No, you’re fine, Mrs Bates. I’m glad you’ve phoned. Your husband should be congratulated for his handling of events over the last few weeks.’
Margie takes a deep breath, in no mood for platitudes. ‘On the matter of the trial…’ she begins. ‘You’d be aware that the Uruguayan master’s wife has delivered a baby very prematurely and that there’s still every chance the child might not survive.’
‘Yes. Dave told you that, did he?’ Wentworth’s voice is brittle and escalates unnaturally in pitch.
‘No, I’ve been in contact with her.’ Margie proceeds quickly. ‘Is there any way that Carlos Sánchez could be tried in Uruguay? Are you even the right person to be asking?’
‘I can’t see it happening myself. And yes, you should be talking to me—for starters at least. My understanding is that there has to be a preliminary hearing to determine if we’ve got the grounds for a full-blown trial.’
‘Are you saying all this could have been for nothing?’
‘Well, if Dave hadn’t lost sight of the boat…’
‘Yes, I know what you’re about to say.’ Margie inhales the breeze through the open window, focusing on the cooling scent of eucalypts. ‘But what do I tell Julia Sánchez?’
‘You shouldn’t be discussing this with her at all. She needs to be talking to the lawyers who’ll be handling the illegal boat’s case, but, to be honest, I can’t see there’s any chance that her husband will be allowed to return home at this stage. This is an important test case for us.’
Margie sniffs sharply. ‘Perhaps I should contact the media myself and let them know that no one actually saw the Pescador bringing in fish.’
Roger Wentworth says nothing.
‘David told me,’ Margie adds, declaring her hand.
‘That probably wasn’t appropriate.’
‘Appropriate? I wonder how appropriate it was to spend taxpayers’ money chasing a ship halfway around the world when it wasn’t even seen illegally fishing! And Dave’s unarmed crew were never in a position to board. You’re just lucky they chanced upon that naval boat. And what about the hundreds of thousands of dollars that’ll be spent on the legal case? And they could still get off the hook. If you’ll excuse the pun. The papers will have a field day.’
‘Mrs Bates, if I may say, your level of concern for this woman seems unusual. Her husband certainly wasn’t thinking about you or David when he fled south and provoked this chase.’
‘I’m not saying Carlos Sánchez shouldn’t be held to account. He certainly should. As should all the others who are illegally fishing out there right now while we argue about this one boat. I’m simply saying that there are some things – like a father meeting his critically ill child—that are bigger than all this.’
Margie hangs up the phone, proud of her assertiveness, even if it is largely bluff. It won’t hurt Roger Wentworth to sweat a bit. She puts the kettle on for a cup of tea and watches the goldfish swimming in their bowl. Around and around they go. Blub, bloody blub. All this for some stupid fish, Margie thinks. Bonnie wanders over to a patch of sun on the kitchen floor and rolls over to expose her soft underbelly. Margie uses her foot to stroke Bonnie’s smooth stomach and waits for the water to boil. How happy Sam’s dog had been to see her after the hike, she thinks. As she pulled into the driveway, Bonnie had swung her tail in such rapid, excited circles that Margie was sure the dog would take off, propelled upwards, back legs first. She hopes it didn’t give Bonnie a false sense of hope that Sam would one day appear up the driveway again.
Dave once told her that when he was a boy, the family dog, a labrador, had been lost off the back of his father’s yacht during a storm. The conditions had been too rough to attempt a rescue, his father had said. Margie knows it’s why Dave never let Sam take Bonnie with them on the roughy trawler. Sam had insisted that she would be fine on the boat, but Dave was never prepared to put himself in the position of having to make a decision like the one his father had made all those years ago. Margie is pleased now that Dave spared their son that potential loss. After Sascha left him, Bonnie was Sam’s whole world.
The kettle reaches its familiar crescendo and Margie pours the boiling water into a mug containing a Darjeeling teabag. She made the ceramic mug during an adult education course some months after Sam died. Margie inspects her design of black swans swimming around the perimeter. Like most of her art at the time, it used only black—the absence of colour – and white. Recently her paintings have again embraced blues, greens, reds and even a splash of yellow, and she welcomes this as a kind of progress. A rediscovery of colour in her art and in her life.
Margie takes her steaming cup of tea into Sam’s bedroom, which she has kept largely as he left it, although she does come in here to paint and sew. It keeps the room alive.
Today she peruses his bookshelf, almost without realising she’s doing it. Books on hiking in Tasmania, travel and rockclimbing are stacked neatly beside university biology texts and a small collection of novels. She puts down her tea and opens a backpacker’s guide to Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina, and finds several pages bookmarked with scrap paper. They are pages on Uruguay, with sections underlined in pencil. Her son was clearly some way along the path towards organising a trip there. Margie feels the hairs rise on the back of her neck.
A black-and-white photograph of Bonnie devouring a bone stares at her from Sam’s noticeboard. Beside the picture, Sam has written: ‘Life’s short, suck the marrow.’ He was right, her philosopher son. When all this is over, and Dave is back on terra firma, she’ll take a leaf out of Sam’s book and organise her own trip to South America. She thinks back to her hike with Joan and how rejuvenating it was. By embracing Sam’s life and the things he loved, she has found a way of dealing with his death.
She takes a long sip of tea and carries the travel guide into the lounge room. Through the windows, silvery green eucalypts wave their long, thin flags above the velvet water. The afternoon light strikes two kayakers as they paddle at the base of the cliffs in front of her house. Each dip of the paddle flicks a tiny beam of light her way, a flashing morse code. She can see why people get addicted to adventure. It brings them back to life—makes them focus on the here and now.
There’s a knock at the door and Margie heads down the hallway, guidebook still in hand. Through the glass panelling she recognises the outline of Sascha, Sam’s ex-girlfriend. Beside her is another figure—a small child. Margie takes a step back. Perhaps she could pretend she’s not at home. She feels her heart quicken. How can Sascha just turn up without warning, her child in tow, after not saying a word since Sam’s death? Just when I was starting to get my life back together, Margie thinks. She curses under her breath and shakes her hands at her sides, attempting to flick away her annoyance and the underlying fear of facing Sascha again. She sees Bonnie race up the front steps to greet Sam’s one and only true love. Bonnie is all over the child too, turning circles on the front veranda like she used to when Sam arrived home. Margie had forgotten those excited, welcoming turns until now.
‘Hello, Bonnie,’ Margie can hear Sascha saying, her voice frail with emotion. ‘How are you, old girl?’ Sascha crouches down and gives the dog a hug. ‘This is little Scotty.’
Margie wipes her sweaty palms on her trousers and opens the door. Sascha looks up and Margie sees that her face is streaked with tears. The little boy seems confused by Bonnie’s affection, and is using his hands to bat away her licks.
‘Hello, Margie,’ Sascha says, filling the void. ‘I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to come and see you. It’s taken me two years to build up the courage.’ She is crying now and buries her face in Bonnie’s fur. ‘You must hate me.’
Margie feels the tears on her own face. She thinks of Sam and how much he loved this girl. But it’s as if her feet are planted in concrete. She can’t move towards Sascha or even away, and simply stares at the young woman distraught on the doorstep. Sascha’s clothes—a white linen shirt and jeans – are fitted and fashionable, just as she had always worn, and her hair is still long, but, as she stands up, Margie notices small lines around her eyes and a loss of fullness in her cheeks. Sam would want me to give her a hug, Margie thinks, finally extending her arms.
Margie draws Sascha towards her. She smells her familiar summery perfume and realises that she never saw Sascha alone, without Sam. They were a pair: soulmates. Margie feels a gaping pain in her chest, as if she has taken a wound to the heart. She ends the embrace and tries to collect herself, but the hole in the universe beside Sascha where Sam should still be is almost unbearable. ‘How could I hate you when Sam loved you so much. You were a part of our family, like a daughter.’
Sascha wipes the tears from her face with the back of her hand and reaches down to pick up her child.
‘I did wonder though why you never visited after—’
‘Margie, I’d like you to meet my son, Scotty,’ Sascha says, brushing a red-blond wisp of hair from his forehead.
Margie leans forward and strokes the boy’s hair. ‘Hello, little man. You’re a sweet little fellow, aren’t you?’
Bonnie reaches up and licks Scotty’s leg.
‘Bonnie likes you too,’ Margie says.
Face to face with Sascha’s young son, Margie can’t begin to imagine the pain Sam would have felt upon such an encounter. It was enough that he found out Sascha had left him for someone else. Unsure what to say next, she keeps her attention on the little boy. She places the travel book down on the Huon pine dresser by the front door and uses both hands to tickle the toddler’s tummy. He giggles, and Margie is struck anew by the intoxicating laughter of childhood.
She lifts her damp eyes back to Sascha who is biting her top lip, as if trying to stop herself from crying again. Sascha is focused on the travel book. ‘We were planning on going to South America together, before I screwed things up.’
‘Oh, I’d forgotten that. What a time we’ve all had.’ Margie gives her another hug, with Scotty squirming in between. ‘Anyway, what are we all doing on the front doorstep. Come inside. Here, I’ll take the little lad for you.’ Margie lifts him onto her hip. ‘You go ahead, Sascha, into the lounge room and we can have a cup of tea. The kettle’s still warm.’
Sascha walks obediently down the hall, her blue eyes darting into the open doorway of Sam’s old room. Margie watches her in profile as she turn quickly away, focusing instead on the rest of the house. It occurs to Margie that little has changed since Sascha was last here. The black leather lounge suite is still in the corner, and there are the same photos of Sam as a boy in silver frames. Sascha picks up one of the pictures and studies it closely.
Margie puts Scotty on the lounge-room floor and opens a cupboard, reaching up high for a box. ‘I thought I still had them,’ she says, putting some of Sam’s old toys in front of Scotty, whose eyes light up.
Sascha smiles. ‘Thanks.’ She pauses. ‘I’m sorry to land on you like this. After all this time.’ She chews at her fingernails, then closes her eyes and blows her nose hard into an already wet tissue.
‘Well, you’re here now.’ Margie walks into the kitchen and re-boils the kettle. As she makes the tea, she can see Sascha handing Scotty Sam’s toys in the lounge room. ‘Are your mum and dad well?’
‘They’re all right.’
‘They’re very lucky to have such a lovely grandson. Very lucky.’ Margie puts Sascha’s tea onto the table beside her.
‘You don’t see it, do you? I thought you’d pick it straight away.’
‘What do you mean?’ Margie takes a sip of her tea before placing it alongside Sascha’s so she can get down and sort through the toys with two hands. Her heart feels like it will burst with sadness at seeing all the things that Sam used to play with.
‘He’s your grandson too.’
Margie hears the words just as she hands Scotty a wooden train. She freezes for several seconds, before letting go of the toy. Her legs weaken beneath her and she sits on the floor beside him. He gazes up at her face.
‘Ohhh,’ Margie gasps, lifting the boy onto her lap. It’s as if the universe has been created anew right in front of her, as if all the elements have been thrown up into the air and have landed in a different order. The shock is as great as somebody telling her that Sam is, in fact, still alive. She holds the small child close and cries over his shoulder. The smell of his hair brings back a flood of memories. Overwhelmed by the attention, Scotty struggles out of her arms and Margie tries to hide her tears from his worried eyes.
‘Are you sure?’ Margie asks, but she knows it is true.
Sascha nods twice. A small nervous smile has formed on her face. Apprehensive, but hopeful. Her tears, Margie can tell, are again just below the surface.
‘Sam’s boy.’ Margie says the words out loud to cement them in her brain. Looking at him now, his blue eyes and reddish-blond hair, Margie can’t believe she didn’t see it immediately. But she had always assumed that Sascha had fallen pregnant to the young man she had left Sam for. ‘I hadn’t even considered it. Not for a minute.’
‘I found out I was pregnant after Sam and I broke up. And then he died…’ Sascha is crying openly now. Margie puts out an arm and Sascha joins her on the floor, welcoming Margie’s arms around her. Bonnie trots through the back door and, seeing the commotion, joins in.
‘Oh, Sascha. Is that why you haven’t been to visit? Were you scared of what we’d say?’
‘Yes. And the longer I left it, the harder it got.’
Margie waits a moment before asking her next question. ‘And your boyfriend, does he know the truth?’
Sascha wipes her nose with the back of her hand. ‘We broke up long before I had Scotty when I told him I still loved Sam, but by then it was all too late.’ Sascha plucks a fresh tissue out of the box on the coffee table and sobs into it.
‘Then why did you break up with Sam in the first place?’
‘I don’t know. I think I was afraid of how serious we were getting. He was my first real boyfriend. Mum and Dad were telling me I should meet other boys too. Sam said he wanted us to get married, and I was so confused.’
Scotty searches his mother’s face and she holds him tight.
‘Do your parents know who Scotty’s real father is?’ Margie asks.
‘Yes, of course…’
‘Why on earth didn’t you tell us?’
‘I thought it’d just make things harder for you. I thought it’d be the last thing you needed to hear and I wasn’t sure you’d accept me or Scotty into your lives after everything you’d been through. And after everything I put Sam through in his last few weeks. Mum said to just leave it be.’
‘Well she was wrong! How could we not want to know that Sam had a little boy? That we have a grandson?’ Margie’s sadness fuses with anger.
‘I’m so sorry…’
Margie shakes her head. ‘The main thing is that you’ve told us now…’ For a second time, she buries her nose into Scotty’s curls and their comforting scent. ‘My grandson,’ she says quietly, ‘I can’t believe it. Neither will Dave. We’ve also been grieving for the grandchildren we thought we’d never have…’
‘Do you think he’ll be okay about it?’
‘It’ll take a while to sink in, but he’ll be thrilled.’ Margie thinks of Dave and wonders if what she has just said is true. If he’ll be ready yet to open his heart again. Whether she herself is ready. With love comes the risk of loss. She knows it only too well. But closing her heart is no way to live. Given the choice to love again or not, she will always choose to love.