A family comes down to the same idyllic beachside block every summer holidays to relax, sunbake, swim and fish. It all sounds rather ordinary. Except that – consisting of same-sex parents Mum and her crippled partner Jill, a pair of attractive twin teenage daughters and their laconic half-brother – this is not your ordinary family.

Maria, the more adventurous of the two girls, quickly falls for one of a tightknit group of locals. Only later does she realise that their game fishing and dive tour business is merely the front to a highly lucrative way of storing and distributing illicit drugs offshore – and only later does she experience a violent streak in the man she has fallen for. She finds the combined lure of money, power and excitement irresistible – right until her boyfriend’s mysterious night-time death on a little-used railway track that runs right across the lagoon where her half-brother Jon and his friend Shane often like to go fishing.

No-one is left quite the same, especially not Shane, a somewhat dreamy boy of fourteen who spends his summers at his grandparents’ house set amongst mangoe trees, passionfruit vines and pineapples.

What starts off as occasional night-time fishing expeditions with Jon, develops into a much deeper involvement in the lives of the entire family. During this anything but ordinary holiday, he learns about life, love and violence, as well as the unforeseen consequences of impulsive action.

Lisa

“A man died because of me,” says my twin sister Maria.

The three of us look up at her, but are all too tired to respond – or even to think straight. We are crabbing our way up a steep ridge of sand, the final barrier between us and the unseen beach beyond.

The blood pounds in my ears, beating like a bass drum over the sonorous murmurings of the still hidden ocean. Soft warm folds squish out between my toes as I struggle to hold onto each footprint stabbed into the thick sand. My breath comes in shorter and shorter spurts as we close in on the crusty ridgetop above.

Then, at last, it is wind-in-the-hair flying, all four of us, down towards the great open beach and the surging seas.

We tear past the secluded dunes where Mum’s partner Jill likes to heave her twisted body before flopping down with a book, heavy breasts lolling naked in the sun.

Past the lookout where Mum sets up her easel, keeping Jill company whilst painting seascapes thick with ridges and whorls that buyers back home secretly want to run their fingers across whilst they are considering whether the piece will suit their rich people walls.

Down, down to the beach where Maria now sprints across the warm sand flats.  The three of us fall behind and I find myself loping alongside my languid brother. His dark-haired friend Shane is glued beside him, looking compact and sturdy compared with Jon’s own skinny frame.

I cast a quick glance across at my brother. His big googly eyes are fixed on the sea. I giggle inside my head. He’s imagining all the fish he is going to catch these holidays.

Maria holds her head high with jaunty pride. Her arms float in the air and her legs dance below her red bikini. As we jog along in her lingering trail of sensuous abandonment, I remember back to the party last week, how some guys seem to instinctively pick up on the hidden yearning beneath her happiness.

We are turning sixteen together this summer and I am reminded, yet again, that she is the hotty of us two. Not that I mind, not that I am bad looking or anything, and I love my sister and all – I tell myself fiercely – but Maria has that extra aura that the guys latch onto.

Whereas me – well, almost as good a bod except not quite as curvy. My mirror in the morning shows a face that is ever so slightly tilted. A nose that is a smidgen too long. Grey-green eyes that see too much. I have learnt that guys don’t like that – eyes that see too much.

We catch up with Maria. I can feel crunchy patches of shell amidst the slaggy sand. It feels so good! Good to be finished another year of school. Good to be barefoot after wearing shoes for so many months. Good to be free at last!

It’s a wild old beach, coarse yellow sand topped with crushed shells and strewn with armfuls of pungent seaweed. There are only a few other bobfuls of people scattered about the rough-edged scallops of seashore. Pieces of driftwood lie abundant around our feet, newly stranded versions of my friends and I, now that we’re being swept out into the unprotected oceans of adult life.

I pick up a piece of the cast up timber. Smooth and warm to the touch, it feels like balsa.  I squint up close and see tiny critter holes and a patch of miniature barnacles clinging doggedly to the underside.

Even whilst we’re being thrown about by the ups and downs of life, we can all still help others in this world. Just as this obliging piece of wood has been a home to so many other creatures whilst floating across the endless seas. I run my hands around the soft bleached curves.Somehow it feels as if I’m stretched out in front of a beach fire at night, stroking my own warm legs.

Jon comes out of his habitual daydream torpor and responds at last, “Come on, Maria, whaddya mean someone died because of you?”

Jon is our half brother to be totally accurate, though I hardly ever remember the distinction anymore. He is a year younger and has matted brown hair on his head that doesn’t take to washing much, a gangly body ending in big sloppy feet and long nervous hands.

Good hands, though, for threading fishing hooks and for casting a baited line out to the muddy flathead and silvery bream that feed under the blackstar skies of the warm summer nights. I don’t go with him anymore, now that he has his summertime mate Shane to tag along on his nocturnal fishing expeditions. Shane hardly says a word most of the time, but he seems to be good company for our brother who is otherwise surrounded by all us females.

Maria stops prancing along the tideline and the four of us collapse on the sand, bubbling with laughter, filled with the exhilaration of our very first day on holidays together, stupid with happiness, feeling that delirious abandon that comes with the start of our summer break.

The long break – when classroom walls, teachers and school rules are all frazzled away by the sun, smothered in hot sand, blown away by the southerly buster and blotted out by the shrill daytime rasp of cicadas. When our bodies are jolted into hot new moods and fresh rebellions. When we overdose on the beach and crash back into our camp beds in the hot afternoons, besotted with drunken drowsiness.

When, upon waking, we lie on our backs in a slow rising stupour, with hot wet dreams fading and the shadows of forked tree branches tossing mindlessly on the tent roof above us. When eventually we cast ourselves back into the real world with big sugary cups of lemony tea, crumbly biscuits and a game of cards whilst big black flies bumble their way blindly across the gauze behind the backlit tent flaps.

Dizzy from all the running and laughing, I am the first to go quiet. Jon is lying where he collapsed, long limbs askew. Maria props herself up on her backward leaning arms, looking contentedly at her tanned torso and legs stretched out in front of her. I kneel alongside. I scoop up sand and watch it cascade down like a waterfall between my fingers. Shane completes the circle, his legs crossed, looking like a supplicant on the sand.

“I was with Terry,” Maria says.

Ah yes, Terry – I remember him, a newly fledged cop adrift in the city, a bit too big and full of himself.

“Well, he was supposed to be covering some safe house near the airport. But he spent the night with me instead. Some gang got to the witness inside the house and beat him up, then killed him. Terry got into heaps of trouble back at the station over that.”

I glance towards Shane through the strands of bleached hair hanging down in front of my eyes. He is looking like not being sure whether to believe Maria or not, but too shy or worshipful to say so.

Unaccountably annoyed, I straighten up, leap to my feet and find myself running along the hissing sand, my feet encased in the foamy edges of the sea. What’s going on with me?

Shane

Shane is having a bad night in Grandad’s toolroom. Adjacent to the house but with its own plywood-clad door and dusty window panes, the little toolroom is usually a peaceful refuge for him. A tucked-away quiet space where he can read his books and regain the solitude that his soul craves. A safe place to escape the petty family arguments that occasionally spill over when families of different generations are squeezed together in the one house for the Christmas week.

He doesn’t normally mind sleeping here. Except tonight. Except right now. Again he hears the slow rustling sound from somewhere in the total darkness. It sounds scarily close to his camp bed. It is late and Shane knows that everyone in the house alongside has retired to bed.

Shane’s mouth is dry. His skin crawls. He lies completely still. He thinks of the acres of ripe mango trees, golden pawpaws, spiky pineapples and lush green undergrowth that surround the house. He thinks of the snakes that hunt in and amongst the verdant tropical vegetation, including death adders and even a huge taipan that his Grandad has warned him about, the deadliest of them all.

The boy gingerly stretches a trembling arm towards the little rickety bedside table. He stabs clumsily at the switch until the reading light flickers on. After his eyes have adjusted to the sudden throw of yellow light, he sees the well-ordered racks of spanners, saws and other tools hanging on the walls around the camp bed. The workbench has the usual neat rows of bottles containing screws, bolts, washers and nuts sorted by size. The orchid calendar hangs on the back of the door, just as it should. Two decades worth of old Farm Weekly magazines are piled up in the far corner.

But no snake. Nothing to explain the intermittent rustling sound. He switches off the light and the little room plunges back into darkness.

His tortured mind paints a picture of a reptilian head raising itself alongside his low camp bed, with long forked tongue slipping in and out, probing the night air, sensing the warmth in the bed, sliding its long thick body between his sheets and lying next to him, perfectly relaxed but at the same time poised on a hair trigger to strike at the slightest hint of movement from his naked petrified body.

The scared boy squeezes his eyes shut and shudders at the imaginings of his impressionable mind.

There it is again – a louder crackling this time. He jerks across to the light switch and turns it on. The sound seems to be coming from the little waste paper basket nearby. He leans across from his bed for a closer look – very slowly, heart racing, chest tight, ready to recoil in an instant.

He only sees a plastic bag slowly unfurling from where he had crushed it into the waste paper basket earlier that evening. It is crackling sporadically as it opens out.

A plastic bag, that’s all!

He releases a pair of pent-up lungs in a long slow sigh of relief.

He sleeps badly for the rest of the night, however. First he is standing frozen at the bottom of a deep pit surrounded by hundreds of venomous snakes, unable to move his shivering torso even a millimetre without risking instant death. Then he has escaped the pit and is running down a winding trail in the verdant hills, between walls of green oaks and sweet pink cherry blossoms. Scores of malevolent death adders sunbake in his path as he sprints down the endless trail. He leaps desperately into the air as they raise their fat-arrow heads to strike, his bare feet clawing for space just above the slashing scimitar of deadly curved fangs.

Shane wakes with a pleasurable morning hardness between the fresh sheets. He hears fruit doves calling from the trees out the back. His own short-sightedness means that he has never seen them as anything more than blurry colourful blobs in the canopy, but the gentle womp-a-oo sounds are reassuring and he feels at peace after the traumatic night.

He is struck by a happy thought. I’m going to Paringo today! He dresses quickly. He lifts the coarse woven basket from the usual place near the back door and wanders down the easy slope that runs past the vivid green of the passionfruit vine, heading along the sandy trail to the huge shady mango trees that stand sentinel alongside the creek. The odour of ripe fruit hangs heavy amidst the sharper pungent smell of fruit bat droppings. Stepping carefully amongst the long blades of patchy grass under the big trees, he selects the best of the fallen fruit to take back to his grandmother’s kitchen. On the way back to the house, he looks up at a morning sky dressed in sun and gauze. Jon said we might do some snorkelling if the weather is good.

“Thanks Shane” his grandmother says, unpacking the basket of mangoes, her white hair brushed back and tidy.  “Did you sleep ok?”

“Fine,” he says, not altogether truthfully. They are always the first two up in the morning. Grandma because of her sore hip, Shane expectant for what the new day would bring. She takes down the packet of biscuits from the kitchen cupboard and hands him one, looking with benevolent pride at her rapidly growing grandson now taller than her own ageing frame.

Armed with his biscuit, Shane heads to his grandfather’s study. The bottom bookshelf is mostly taken up by burgundy-coloured Readers Digest Condensed Books. Shane’s favourites are Old Yeller, the story of an endearing dog with no pedigree and an inordinate fondess for raw eggs, and Eagle in the Sky with its high-adrenalin flying and heroism.

He sees his grandfather’s collection of well-thumbed Zane Grey novels sitting alongside. His eyes shift the shelf above and he finally chooses Trustee from the Toolroom, the title of this Nevil Shute novel reminding him of his own toolroom drama of the previous night.

“Morning Grandad,” says Shane as his Grandfather comes into the study. “Good morning Shane,” comes the courteous, if somewhat remote reply. His Grandad is a tall man with a somewhat austere bearing as befits a practising magistrate. He carefully selects a Senoritas from the silver case that sits amongst the orchid stamps and stamp albums on his desk.

Knowing that his Grandfather prefers to smoke his first cigar of the day in peaceful contemplation, Shane takes himself out onto the little front deck, where he bends himself over the Nevil Shute novel and gnaws hungrily on the hard biscuit, impatient for the rest of the household to wake up.

At last he is called to breakfast and puts aside his book with a thud. He gulps down his cereal and then polishes off his runny yellow eggs and wholemeal toast. Eager with growing anticipation, the boy helps clear the table and then – at last – with the morning rituals over, he is finally free to spend the rest of the day with his friend Jon and the twin sisters down by Paringo beach.

Shane bounds down the back stairs and jogs past their shady front lawn, newly dotted with pink rain lilies from the summer storms. On reaching the road, he walks happily along the grassy shoulder as the road meanders down the hill, leaving behind the sprawling lush growth of Stamfield Heights.

He is looking forward to leaving behind the predictability of his grandparents’ house, swapping it for the spontaneity of a rough campsite running on holiday time.

Their Mum is an artist. She builds up a collection of paintings each summer holidays that she can sell when she returns home. Shane especially likes the tossing, churning waves that so often dominate her seascapes. Her penetrating grey eyes are a little quizzical when she looks at him, but her face is relaxed and humorous, so he doesn’t mind too much.

Jill is their Mum’s partner. She stays in the background mostly but is nice to everyone, including Shane. She looks a few years older than their Mum, maybe because of her crippled back and leg.

After twenty minutes of happy contemplation, he reaches the sandy flats below and takes the first turnoff to the dozen or so new houses that have sprung up at random amongst an incomplete network of side streets and dead-end roads. The houses stand like stark islands amongst the long grass, unkempt weeds and forlorn for-sale signs. He sees streaks of red soil on the cream walls where heavy afternoon storms strike the uncovered earth.

As he passes by the last of the houses, Shane finally allows his thoughts to turn to the twins. To a studious, rather shy fifteen year old boy like himself, the girls appear as exotic as a pair of beautiful birds of paradise. They are unbearably alluring at times but, being a year older, he feels an unbridgeable gap.

Whilst both are stunning in their own way, they are not identical. Maria is the more vivacious and worldly. She lives a life that is far beyond his experience. On the beach, he often catches himself staring too long at her curvaceous unapproachable body barely capped in her bikini. Lisa is the quieter and more observant of the two, taller than Shane and more gawky than her twin sister, with long bleached hair.

Shane reaches the end of the tarred road. A dirt track starts here and runs all the way out to a handful of cracked tin shacks, roasting out on the floodplain near the lagoon.

Stepping off the bitumen and onto the track, he walks a couple of hundred metres further before turning off the track.

Mum and Jill’s old caravan is always the first thing he sees. Despite its weathered appearance, the caravan still manages to look rather grand. It is anchored alongside a stoic red Holden Kingswood up in the far leftside corner. There are two big tents near the middle of the block, tethered taut against the vortex of salt-laden winds that often blow down from the ridge.

Shane’s heart lifts when he sees the family gathered together on the wooden benches and fold-up chairs around a big picnic table. They are finishing up breakfast, sitting under the only large shady tree on the block, a pleasant place to relax when the heat of the afternoon sun makes the interior of the tents unbearable.

The remainder of the block is mostly sand, but for a few patches of hardy kikuyu grass. There is a pit toilet at the back of the block, surrounded by four poles and a sagging blue tarp for privacy.

Shane alway makes sure he wears shoes and takes a torch when he accompanies Jon on his nighttime fishing expeditions. This is because snakes hunt through the humid warm nights, leaving freshly carved sinuous tracks in the sand that create frissons of fear the next morning before being obliterated by the footprints of the day.

One day they’ll build a house on the block, so their Mum tells Shane, but in the meantime it’s pretty basic. The family has been coming down to Paringo every summertime holiday ever since…oh, ever since the big bust-up between Lisa’s Mum and Dad he supposes.

Looking behind the block, Shane sees the long ridge running parallel with the beach, side flanks rising up just beyond the back of the campsite. It is covered with littoral forest, including banksias and hakeas that nectar-seeking birds find irresistible each day. Gazing up towards the summit of the ridge, he can sees occasional flourishes of the invading bitou bush and a few small patches of bare sand glowing in the morning sun.

He steps onto the campsite and walks awkwardly toward the family.

Their Mum is the first to see the dark-haired boy shyly approaching. “Hi Shane,” she says and they all make him feel welcome at the breakfast table.

Lisa

I look at Maria, all curled up and out of it on her camp bed, and I’m suddenly worried for her. Leaving last night, she had that strange repressed excitement that I’ve gotten to know so well. She returned in the early hours this morning, it’s one of the diving guys for sure, with their huge mansion up the river with its boatshed, jetty and dive boats tied up alongside.

Most days, I see their big boats threading their way through the channels of the estuary on their way out to sea. Or, on those out-of-bounds days when pitiless lines of solid swell crunch all along the outer sandbar, then their boats stay tied up and we might hear throaty throb of their motorbikes passing out the town or sometimes we might see them surfing the waves that curl around the sheltered side of the point.

Tourists can see their big Sea Sport Charters signboard near the cafe, advertising wreck diving and game fishing charters, along with their mobile phone number. There’s a map at the bottom too, showing the different wrecks you can dive and the offshore blue water currents you can fish, including a picture of a giant marlin frozen in mid-leap. The owners and boathands seem nice and all, but locals tend to leave them alone. We weren’t the only ones to hear rumours after another charter operator had his boat destroyed in a mysterious fire last summer.

I hear the frying pan clatter onto the gas stove outside and the sound of water splashing into a saucepan from our solitary tap clamped tight on a little white post at the far end of the block. Good, this means Jon is starting breakfast. I’m looking forward to my first cup of coffee for the day.

I kneel alongside Maria’s bed. “Hey shoofie,” I murmur, gently stroking the loose hair off her face and kissing her lightly on the temple. But Maria doesn’t stir, so I stand up and get dressed.

Looking in the mirror hanging off a cross pole in the tent reminds me of when I was getting changed for the beach the other day. Shane happens to pass by the open flap of the tent and sees me standing there topless in front of the mirror. His eyes widen but he doesn’t say anything, ducking quickly away. Now each time I look in the mirror, I think of him looking at me. I can’t shake the feeling. It’s annoying.

Maria stirs and rolls over. I sees the bruises on her upper arm.

Mum

“We’re going snorkelling soon,” Jon tells Mum as he slopes across and brings her a basin of water for the breakfast dishes, “Just as soon as the tide drops.”

“OK.” Mum starts washing the breakfast things at the one end of the table, whilst watching the four of them continue their game of Careers at the other end.

Shane is a nice kid, she thinks, shy and naive in many ways, but intelligent. He’s loosened up heaps since Jon first brought him back to the camp and found a rod for him to borrow. Part of her envies the boy’s innocence. You wish kids like Shane could be protected from the world forever. But you realise that he’ll be buffeted by the ups and downs of life soon enough – and that makes you want him to lose that innocence and toughen up a bit.

Her own kids have already experienced some of life’s rough edges. Mike is out of their lives now, thank God, but you look at them and you see they still need time. Maybe there will be parts that will never heal. That’s what makes her hurt inside, the deepest kind of hurt, much worse than anything he could have done to her directly.

Jill, ever-quick to perceive her feelings, comes up alongside Mum and takes up the drying cloth. “Look at them kids,” she murmurs, “playing at life.” She has the most serene mind of all, thinks Mum, she gives me shelter from my mental storms of guilt and suffering, I can paint again because of Jill.

Jill used to be a champion triathlete before a car clipped the edge of her early morning cycling peloton. They said she would never walk again but she forced herself out of the wheelchair after a couple of months and later cast away the stick. She limps at every step and Mum knows just how much agony her back gives at night, but her spirit propels her through life. Just like her powerful shoulders take her twisted body out through the surf, as fluid and effortless like a seal.

“Yeah,” Mum says slowly, seeing the game of Careers and the piles of coloured playing cards scattered across the table in front of the kids.  “Love, Fame and Money. You’re right, there isn’t much else to life. Not when you think about it.”

“Most of us would be striving for at least one of those three” says Jill, stacking the plates.

“Well, at least we have the first one covered,” Mum says, turning to stroke Jill’s mussed up hair and giving her a quick kiss.  

“Kids are desperate for all of them, though,” says Jill returning to the plates and cups, “that’s why they all want to be a rock star. Then they have everything straightaway- wealth, fame and tons of love.”

“Looks like Lisa’s cornering all the love in this game,” Mum says, looking across at the board. “Mmm, in more ways than one perhaps,” replies Jill softly, with a quick glance towards Shane.

“Too young for her,” Mum says dismissively, with a quick look at Shane all the same, “I see the fame is going Maria’s way,” she says, eying her daughter’s growing pile of stars.

“For sure,” says Jill, “and it looks like the boys aren’t getting much of anything,” laughing.

Mum hangs up the drying cloth and they take up their favourite chairs under the tree, Jill slowly easing her body down onto the cushion, with another firmly pressed against her sore back.

“Life’s like that, though, most young people not getting much of anything I mean,” Mum says, her voice tinged with some bitterness, “Soon reality sets in and they’re stuck in a mundane job, struggling with the mortgage and arguing with their partner.”

“They still hang onto their dream,” Jill says quietly, looking at her, “They dream of paying it off, winning the top job or having that romantic fling – it’s the dream of love, fame or money that keeps most people going.”

“And if they can’t find love, fame or money, what then?” Mum asks rhetorically, “Then they find a way of exercising power instead.” She is thinking of Mike.

Jill stays quiet and, for a brief time, the morning hangs twisting on a thread.

 “Maybe the Buddhists have the right idea,” says Mum at last, resigned, “of avoiding all earthly desires and attachments.”

“Mmmm, yes I suppose so. The Dalai Lama once said something along those lines, that too much attachment is an obstacle to achieving peace of mind, but I think the price of solitude is way too high for most people,” Jill’s face smiling and content in the dappled shadows.

The day is just starting. Mum feels lazy sitting there under the tree. But that’s what holidays are all about. A little later she’ll take her easel down to the beach and do some painting, she promises herself.

The kids finish their board game. Jon and Shane get up to collect some snorkelling gear together. A gust of wind scatters the paper money around the board and Maria tries to grab it before it all blows off the table. Lisa and Shane come over to help and the three of them pack away the game together.

Camping gives them freedom and fun, muses Mum. But there is the wind, the rain, the flies and the mosquitos, a pit toilet and no hot showers. One day we’ll have a house here, she tells herself fiercely. Maybe not this coming year but the year after. There should be enough put away by then. Trouble is, the kids will be pretty much grown by then. She hopes they’ll still come.

Once they have a house on the block, the kids can safely leave the game on the table and not have to worry about their love, fame and money all blowing away in the wind.

Shane

The girls are in their tent, getting changed and applying their sunblock. Still embarrassed from his recent accidental sighting of Lisa, Shane is taking care to stay well clear.

Jon is slowly losing his patience. “How can they be so slow?” he asks, gazing across at Shane with bemused protuberant eyes. Shane shrugs.

He admits to himself that he doesn’t understand the whole boy/girl thing. On the one hand, he’d hate it if Lisa thought he was stalking her or something. And yet he’d be happy and proud if a girl thought that way about him.

Jon is fretting. “By the time we get there, the tide will be starting to come in again and the currents will be getting stronger. We really need to leave now.”

As if on cue, the twin girls emerge from their tent. Soon the four of them are walking along the beach to the point, carrying their masks and fins. They step carefully around the sharp edged mussels, taking care not to slip amongst the patches of algae. Crabs scuttle around to the opposite side of the wet rocks as they pass.

Jon has his favourite fishing knife and a hessian bag with him. Shane is surprised to see Maria has a handspear with her, she looks more purposeful than he has seen her before. She is just as beautiful but there is something more about her, she is a hunter now as well.

They pass where the surfers leave the shore to paddle out to their point break. The four clamber across rocks fringed with sea squirts that Shane delights in squeezing with his toe as they pass. By the time they arrive at Little Bay beyond the point, the tide has already started covering some of the outer reef.

Walking down to the water’s edge, Shane spots the skeleton of a leafy sea dragon, almost as long as his foot, lying desiccated in the sand. Excited by the find, he points out the sandy skeleton to the others.

“Oh, look at that!” exclaims Lisa. They wonder whether to take the emaciated skeleton back to the campsite as a momento. But in the end they decide to leave it where it belongs. Shane lets it down gently down onto the sand and holds his fingers to his nose for a moment, breathing in the smell of salty decay which he finds mysterious and evocative. Jon is chivving them along, “Come on, we’d need to hurry, the tide’s coming in.”.

Shane hasn’t been to Little Bay before but it looks like a fine snorkeling spot, a pretty basin of smooth clear blue water protected by a broken line of rocks less than a hundred metres offshore. They fit their fins and walk out into the little shore break, Jon giant-striding ahead, whilst the other three walk backwards, leaving large duck imprints in the wet sand. They rinse and don their masks, and then slip into the underwater realm. Fish roll their eyes to keep the human invaders in view as they accelerate past them across the sandy shallows.

Finning their way into the blue deeper water, the snorkelers slowly thread their way between the rocky reefs, covered with fleshy multi-hued sponges, soft corals and delicate sea fans. Sea anemones close around Shane’s probing finger. Little schools of tiny fish dot the underwater garden with shards of colour. He peers down into the rocky cracks, keeping well away from the big black sea urchins with their long spines.

Shane loves this feeling of being immersed in the sea . There is a part of him that is irresistably attracted to the solitude of nature – and to the ocean in particular.

He tips over and dives down to an overhang, holds on upside down and peers underneath, jolting into flight a pair of indignant spiny rock cod. A school of batfish wavers back and forth in the gloom. He sees Maria nearby, jabbing her spear into cracks in the reef.

Shane comes up for air, looks for the others. He sees Jon pointing to the pair of tell-tale orange jointed antenna of a crayfish sticking out from a narrow crevice below him. Jon dives down and starts probing with his knife. But the crevice is too deep and he gives up, moving further along the rocky wall and quickly fading from Shane’s sight.

Shane suddenly finds himself at the outer edge of the reef. He hears the constant crunching sound of parrot fish chewing away on the branches of dead coral in amongst the sand. A baby moray eel sticks its head out to watch him go past. The current is definitely stronger out here and he begins to feel uneasy. He swim-kicks hard to get back to the more protected inner part of the bay.

Once he’s back in the calm water, he takes a rest and hovers above the sand. A couple of trumpet fish glide across near the surface, tiny fins shimmering. A little blue-spotted ray undulates fussily below him. Shane lifts his head out of the water and spots the girls, already at the shoreline, now clambering out of the water.

But he can’t see Jon anywhere. Whilst kicking his way back towards the little beach, he tell himself that his eyes are poor, that he can’t easily spot people far away. He reassures himself with how much more familiar Jon is with Little Bay, that he is sure to be ok. But he also remembers the strength of the currents near the outer edge of the reef and, no matter how hard he tries to convince himself of the contrary, he knows that Jon is not as good a swimmer as he is.

Climbing out, Shane is temporarily distracted by the sight of a crayfish spiked at the end of Maria’s hand spear, “Wow, well done!” he exclaims.

“Thanks,” says Maria smiling, gorgeous and proud for a moment before looking past over his shoulder, “Where’s Jon?”

“I don’t know,” Shane says hopelessly, and turns to look out across the bay, where the rocks are being covered over by the incoming tide. The three of them scan the sea. A breeze ruffles the empty water and panic starts to grip his chest and squeeze tight.

“We gotta get help,” Lisa says finally, her face tight and pale. They drop everything and start running back across the little beach. They slow down for the rocky section between the bay and the main beach beyond. As he runs, Shane slips between the rocks, his knee stings and his right hand feels bruised from where it stopped his fall.

Maria is first to reach the rocky platform that links the point to the main beach. Clambering up, the three gather together and look out over the ocean, breathing hard and with hearts racing. Apart from a group of surfers clustered around the point break, they see nothing, except the hard glittering expanse of endless sea.

Jon

Drifting helplessly in the swift current and buffeted by the never-ending chop of the seas slopping all over him, Jon tries again to head back towards the shore. But the shoreline has shrunk so far into the distance that it looks remote and alien to his salt-stung eyes. His puny kicks in its direction seem futile and ridiculous, as though he is trying to cross the cosmos to a distant planet. Even though there is no-one around, he feels embarrassed even trying. The massive shoulders of ocean swell roll past him in slow heartbeats of unstoppable power, indifferent to the tiny speck of human life floundering about in its surface.

He is racked by one of nature’s most primeval fears, the fear of total abandonment. With his body starting to tremble with exhaustion, Jon realises with a dull jolt of pain that he can’t possibly get back to the beach on his own.

Reaching down, he tries to remove the fin from his right foot. A lift in the swell and a sudden slap of surface chop buries his head in water. His snorkel floods before his head emerges coughing and spluttering. It takes all his energy to stay afloat; he feels like there is a heavy anvil pulling him down into the depths below. He tears off his mask in panic, throws it wide and thrashes around in the wide open sea, wide-eyed and screaming hoarsely, “Help – help me – I’m drowning – H  E  L  P!”

Then he sees his Mum in his mind. She looks serenely down at him. My son is more than this, she seems to say. He stops thrashing. He works at removing the fin again. He feels an agonising shaft of pain as cramp convulses his leg and frantically massages his contorted limb, flailing to stay afloat. His head is being dunked again and again. After what seems like an endless age of agony, the cramp subsides, leaving a heavy ache in his muscles. Then the fin finally slips off and, feeling totally spent from all the effort, Jon turns to face the now even more distant shoreline.

Whilst waving the fin above his head, he has to kick his legs continuously to stop himself from sinking. He suddenly feels intensely vulnerable to sharks coursing in the depths below, hidden from sight.

“Fuck, why did I throw the mask away?” he berates himself with a sudden flush of anger. He steadies himself by counting. Ten seconds waving the fin above his head. Then ten seconds rest. Ten seconds waving. Ten seconds rest. On and on. It helps him somehow.

His arm tires and it becomes a gigantic struggle to wave the fin. He has to rest for longer – pushing out his rest breaks to twenty seconds, then thirty and then forty seconds until he eventually can’t be bothered to count any longer. The current has pushed him south of the point. He is so far out now that only a thin strip of the main beach is visible, and then only for a brief moment when the swell lifts him to its highest point.

A feeling of warmth and comfort steals over him, replacing the loneliness and despair. The fin bobs uselessly alongside his arm. His hand gently lets go of the foot strap. He closes his eyes and feels his body slipping down a long blissful slope of lassitude, when something suddenly grasps his arm tight. “Shit, not a fucking shark!” Jon blurts out in panic, the sudden onslaught cutting through him like a cold knife, his whole body rigid as he recoils in terror.

“Whoa, whoa mate, it’s ok – relax, it’s ok, just relax” comes a voice. Through his half-closed eyes, Jon sees the blurry silhouette of a surfer astride on his longboard.

“Is he alright?”, comes a second voice. “Yeah, I think so,” replies the first, maintaining his vice-like grip on Jon’s arm whilst himself slipping off the board. Then he is alongside Jon in the water, helping him onto the board. Jon struggles to clamber up the slippery smooth edges, then lies face down, panting in short sharp breaths. He feels himself sliding sideways off the surfboard and instinctively sprawls his legs out in a desperate bid for balance.

Still immersed in the sea, his rescuer moves round to the front of the board and hangs on, grasping each side of the blunt nose, acting as an anchor to stop it from tipping Jon off.

“Are you alright?”, he asks Jon.

“Thanks,” Jon says at last, “I’m ok.”

The surfer gets Jon to slide forward on the knobbly wax and pulls himself up behind the exhausted youth. He starts paddling. The other surfer paddles alongside. The chop keeps slopping across the top of the board and Jon hangs on the front with aching fingers.

His rescuer stops and takes a rest. After a brief exchange of words, the two surfers swap boards and the other surfer climbs up behind him and takes up the paddling. Jon notices through his blur of exhaustion that the arms and torsos of both surfers are covered in tattoos.

The rhythm of the swell becomes shorter and more urgent. With an effort, Jon lifts his head and the beach is now close. He sees misty spray hanging aloft where the waves are breaking. An unbroken crest seizes them from behind and the board surfs it briefly, before being left behind, sagging in the trough. Another wave picks them up but again they drop back as it heads to the shore. The  surfer on the shortboard is hanging back, waiting and watching.

Jon hears rhythmic grunting behind and feels the board jerk ahead with the renewed urgency of the surfer’s paddling strokes. They reach the break zone.  There is leftover foam churning in the water around them. Hearing a wave break behind, Jon turns his head and sees a wall of whitewater bearing down. He clutches on desperately as they are buried in the dark turbulence, unable to breathe. Just as Jon feels his grip weakening, the board accelerates clear and they emerge into the sunlight and are tobogganing along, just ahead of the wave whilst his lungs greedily suck in the life-restoring air.

Sand looms ahead and Jon hears the surfer shout a warning, just before the board suddenly turns sideways and flips upside down, tossing him loose. The water holds him down in a maelstrom of brown bubbles and gritty sand, but the surge carries him into the shallows and Jon is lurching and retching whilst he tries to stagger to his feet.

Maria and Shane propping him up, one on each side. He feels blessed relief and his legs give way. Lisa is saying something from far away, that Jon doesn’t understand.  He sees tears running down Lisa’s cheeks.

He feels himself laid gently on the clammy sand.

Maria

It is agony for Maria standing on the rock platform watching the two surfboards pitching in and out of view amongst the ocean swell. The two guys are mere dots on their boards, way out in the open ocean. They stop and are picking something up out of the water. Then they turn around and their boards aim for the beach. It takes an age before Maria sees there is someone slung on the front of the longboard, unmoving, and she feels a chill of dread ripple through her body.

They run down onto the sand and to the waters edge, Maria waving and shouting, with Lisa and Shane jogging silently beside her. People cluster nearby, look out to sea and murmur with one other. The two surfboards are now hanging back, waiting for a break in the surf. Maria recognises Jon’s boardies but the body is inert. The surfer starts paddling in and then, miraculously, Maria sees Jon raise his head and turn to look behind at the wave. She feels tears of relief pricking the back of her eyes and can’t shout anymore, there’s a huge lump in her throat.

Another wave breaks behind and washes over them. But the board quickly pops out in front of the whitewash and, amazingly, Jon is still hanging on. The surfer turns his longboard broadside before hitting the beach. Jon spills off and they lose sight of him in the churning water. But then he is washing up in the shallows and they run and grab him as he staggers to his feet.

They lay him down on the coarse sand. Shane rolls him onto his side, props him on his lower leg, removes the one fin. Jon squints at them through his salt-encrusted face and bloodshot eyes. They fuss over him, incoherent with relief, and he smiles back at them, with a weary but happy smile. He feels the warmth of the sun bearing down on his pale and shivering body.

The little crowd starts to disperse. Before she leaves, a lady hands over her water bottle. Jon sits up and drinks greedily before being seized by a convulsive coughing fit. He recovers and Lisa gently pours the remaining water on his face, carefully rinsing the salt from around his eyes.

Maria sees the two surfers nearby. They have tatts down their arms and on their bodies.  Lisa is the first to get up and go over, she gives them each a big hug, laughing and crying at the same time. They look embarrassed, but pleased all the same. “It’s all good,” Maria hears them tell her twin sister.

She steps across to add her own, inadequate gratitude. Their faces look familiar but she can’t place them for a moment. “Hi Maria,” one of them says and then it is all falling into place.

Lisa

With Maria and the two surfers taking Jon back to their campsite, Shane and I have to return to Little Bay to collect the gear we left there. I feel exhausted, my emotions only only barely held in check.

“Those two guys must be from the dive boat crew,” I burst out when we are out of earshot, “Maria knows them.”

“You mean from the house up the river?” Shane asks, puzzled by my vehemence.

“Yeah,” I say, feeling unaccountably angry and betrayed, “She’s been seeing someone up there. That’s how come the two surfers recognised her.”

Shane watches me uncomfortably. His dark hair is “Well, I’m glad they found Jon,” he says awkwardly, “The guy with the longboard just happened to see something moving in the corner of his eye. They couldn’t work out what it was at first.”

“One of the guys joked that it was a shark, but then it started to look like a person waving something, before they lost sight of him again amongst the waves. They saw him waving again and that’s when two of them started paddling.”

“They told me he was sliding under the water by the time they got to him,” he finishes off quietly.

 We’re now crossing the rocky section before the little bay. “It’s weird,” I say, “These two guys just rescued my brother from drowning –  why am I so angry at them?”

Shane gazes at me attentively and stays quiet for a while.

“Maybe the person you’re really angry with, is Maria,” he ventures timidly, “You don’t know any of them, and she’s your twin sister and all.”

“Now those same bastards have gone and rescued my brother!” I cry out in frustration. We reach Little Bay. Our towels and clothing are where they left them, but Maria’s spear and the crayfish are gone, we can’t find them anywhere.

Someone obviously saw the cray as being just too tempting. It is trivial compared with what has just happened but nevertheless the theft becomes the final straw for Lisa and deep sobs start to shake her body. Shane moves forward involuntarily and tentatively puts his arms around her, holds her awkwardly. Lisa yields briefly, surprised by the strength in his compact body, before giving him a tiny push. He quickly releases her.

They pick up their gear and trudge wearily back across the point, then along the beach and finally across the sandy ridge and back to camp – silent in the pregnant afternoon of a tumultuous day.

Shane

“Sei unser Gast und segne uns was du bescheret hast.”

As they bow their heads around the dinner table amidst the mouth-watering aroma of roast duck and peas smothered in rich gravy, his Grandad asks God to be their guest and to bless what He has provided for them.

His eyes still closed, Shane thinks to himself that if God does exist, then His choice of who should save Jon’s life today was a mischievous one.

Allowing Lisa to rest her body against his, was an equally mischievous act on His part. Having felt her compliant body briefly pressed against him, accompanied by a storm of intensity ringing a thousand shivery gongs all the way up his nerve endings and into his brain, Shane now craves Lisa’s touch.

He admits to himself that he was partly to blame for Jon’s disappearance by not keeping a closer eye on him whilst snorkelling. He thanks God twice – once for having Jon rescued and once for that hug on the shores of Little Bay.

They open their eyes and raise their heads to eat.

“Well, Shane, are you going down to Paringo again tomorrow?” asks his Uncle Gerald innocently.

They know about the near-drowning, of course, Shane having described the day’s dramatic events after returning to his grandparent’s house at dusk. He knew the family would quickly find out if he didn’t tell them, but had been reluctant to do so – knowing full well how worried this would make his Dad.

“What if that had been you, lost at sea like that?” his father exclaims, “You could have drowned. You shouldn’t swim there, it sounds much too dangerous.”

“I’m a better swimmer than Jon,” Shane argues, “Anyhow we know about the current now, so we won’t go out that far again.”

“You’d better not,” his father growls unconvinced, his mother looking on anxiously.

“No, he’s not going down to Paringo tomorrow” his Dad now answers Uncle Gerald around the dinner table, “He’s coming to the airfield with me tomorrow. I’ve got to sort out that GPS and I’m going to need his help.”

Intent on seeing Lisa the next day, Shane’s heart sinks but he realises this is churlish of him. He knows that not everyone arrives at their Christmas holiday destination in a light airplane, and he enjoys spending time in and around the pretty little Piper twin engined airplane that his Dad half-owns and fully loves.

The local airfield is just a single grass strip cut into the sugar cane fields, forty minutes drive from his grandparents house. A winding dirt road leads from the main road to a little hangar halfway along the strip. The hanger holds at most three small aircraft. There are no facilities and avgas has to be hand-pumped from a drum.

All in all, it is very primitive and Uncle Gerald and Aunt Jen had admitted to feeling very uncertain when arriving in their car to pick them up the previous week.

“We arrived a little earlier than the time you gave us,” Aunt Jen tells them, “I don’t mind admitting we were quite worried when we got out the car. The airfield seemed quite deserted.”

“There was no-one else there,” exclaims Uncle Gerald, “not another soul”.

“It was so very quiet,” Aunt Jen says.

“Then we heard a slight drone. It got a bit louder and then we could see a tiny speck in the sky, coming towards us.” says Uncle Gerald. “Your plane got bigger and bigger, and then you zoomed over us a couple of times, right on time. It was very impressive.”

Whilst his Dad didn’t mind impressing his brother-in-law, he was not needlessly reckless. “I needed to make sure the strip was clear of obstacles,” he explains, “there are often sheep and cattle wandering across little strips like this. That’s why I flew over a couple of times before landing.”

“And such a lovely landing it was too,” beams Aunt Jen, “Settling so softly into the grass – you disappeared completely, we couldn’t see or hear you again until you arrived at the hangar.”

“Extraordinary to think you travelled all the way from Sydney in such a tiny plane,” mutters Uncle Gerald, shaking his head.

“The weather is the main thing we have to worry about,” says his Dad, “We copped a bit of rain around Coffs but otherwise the weather was fine. We stopped to refuel at the Gold Coast – that’s when we phoned with our updated arrival time.”

“It was a good estimate, too, you landed almost to the minute,” says Uncle Gerald.

“It’s not hard when there’s no traffic or speed cameras to slow you down,” laughs his Dad, pleased.

The chief pleasure of flying in a light aircraft though, thought Shane, was that you flew so low and could see so much.

He remembers the visual splendour of lines of swell wrapping around rocky headlands, turning into slow-breaking long ribbons of white along the sandy beaches – the convoluted inlets and estuaries with shallow sandbars and tiny boats frozen on the surface – the occasional shipwreck buried in the sand or half-hidden under the sea with a little ring of white around it – the tidy little towns that you wanted to beat up (oh, just for the joy and freedom you are feeling right now) – tiny stick-like bridges over the looping rivers and slow trudging beetles lined up along the long ribbons of road.

From his place at the head of the dinner table, his Grandad – the local district magistrate – starts talking about his day in court. Amongst those appearing before him that day was a man that the police had caught with a guitar case filled with drugs. “Drugs are popping up everywhere now,” he snorts, “and high quality import stuff too, the local police haven’t seen anything like it before.”

“That’s not good,” says his father, “That means more crime. You’ll have to be more careful about locking your doors when you go out. You’d better get the balcony door fixed,” he adds uneasily.

His Dad worries a lot. Apart from when the relatives come to stay for Christmas, his grandparents live by themselves, just the two of them. It is an idyllic and peaceful life, but Shane can see how thieves could easily conceal themselves amongst the lush vegetation whilst they cased the house for opportunities.

“Before you know it, drugs will be in the local schools as well,” adds Aunt Jen, who teaches at a high school in Brisbane.

“Well, I haven’t about it in the schools, not yet anyhow,” replies his Grandad, “But the crime rates in local districts are already rocketing up, especially break-and-entry. The perpetrators are usually new offenders, people I haven’t seen in court before. They evidently stealing to support their drug habit.”

“What are the authorities doing about it?” demands Shane’s mother.

“Don’t worry, they’re working on it. They’re mainly trying to find where it is coming from,” replies his Grandad, “They have to find the route, cut it off and arrest the people bringing it in.”

“You would think it would be pretty risky for them, transporting it up here,” his father says thoughtfully, “There are only two main roads coming into the area after all – the coast road and the inland road – neither of which carry much traffic. You’d think it would be dead easy for the cops to identify any suspicious vehicles coming in and search them.”

“Maybe they fly it in,” says Shane diffidently, “Maybe they land at the same strip we did. Maybe they get the drugs in that way.”

“That’s possible I suppose,” says his Dad doubtfully, “It might be worth the police checking on recent air movements, see if there is anything suspicious like unexplained arrival patterns or planes not filing flight plans.”

“They would have to store the drugs somewhere, they’d need some kind of distribution center” chimes his Grandma, ever practical, “and in  a small community like ours, you’d think the neighbours would notice something suspicious, with all the comings and goings.”

“You’d think so,” replies Grandad, “but the police have been working on this for almost a year now and appear to have made no progress whatsoever. All they’ve managed to do, is to catch a few small-time dealers, like the young man appearing before me in court today.”

Shane

The next morning the little Piper Twin Comanche is sitting sweetly where they left her three days ago before Uncle Gerald and Aunt Jen picked them up. The flying machine is still safely pegged down in the grass with her nose facing into the prevailing nor’easterlies. His Dad unlocks the cockpit and unfastens the seat belts that stop the control surfaces from banging around in the wind. They remove the reflective shields that protect the instrument dash and red leather seats from the sun.

Soon, thinks Shane, I’ll be old enough to learn to fly. Meantime he does the walk around check together with his father. They check all the control surfaces move freely and are secure. They check the engines, one on each wing, verifying the oil levels in both. His Dad runs his fingers gently along the edges of the propellers, checking for any nicks or chips. The tyres and suspension oleos look ok and the cover flapping in the breeze is removed from the pitot head. After unscrewing the cap to check the fuel levels on each side, his Dad drains some fuel from the bottom of each wing tank into a glass jar.

Water in the fuel can lead to a complete loss of power, often at the most critical phase of flight when the nose of the aircraft pitches up after takeoff and with the aircraft dangerously close to stalling speed due to the extra air resistance of the extended undercarriage and flaps.

Working together, they remove the nylon rope tie-downs and plastic pegs, packing them into the little cargo hold and climb back up into the cockpit.

His Dad takes the left seat as pilot-in-command. Shane inhales the familiar smell of leather, sweat and avgas as he takes his seat on the right. “Now, we need to get this GPS working properly,” his father says. “I’ve plotted the coordinates of three different landmarks,” stabbing his finger down on the map, “and we need to check the GPS readings against what they ought to be.”

The aircraft already has the dual ADF and ILS navigation systems required for instrument flight, but his Dad thinks that the handheld GPS would be a handy additional navigation resource if they can get it working properly.

His Dad runs through his memorised pre-start checklist. Then he opens the throttle ½ inch and pushes the pitch and mixture levers fully forward. He turns on the fuel pump briefly until the gauge registers before turning it back off. The magnetos, responsible for delivering a life-giving stream of spark impulses to the engines, are switched on. Then his Dad looks out to the left, says loudly, “Clear left!” through the little open hatch at the bottom of his side window and presses the starter switch.

Shane holds his breath as the small battery in the baggage hold behind them musters up all the power it can. The propeller turns over slowly and jerkily. Shane knows that the little battery can only sustain this amount of current for a very short time before it runs out of cranking capacity.

The engine fires and Shane breathes again. His Dad quickly readjusts the power levers, babying the engine up to 1000 rpm whilst at the same time checking that the oil pressure is on the rise.

The second engine starts more easily, the alternator from the live engine streaming power back into the battery whilst its twin cranks over.

With both engines now roaring happily in unison, the radios, rotating beacon and other electricals are turned on. The gyro compass is set to the magnetic heading and the altimeter is set to the Paringo airfield altitude.

After making a brief radio call in case of any traffic in the area, his Dad pushes forward the throttles. They taxi back along the runway for takeoff into the wind.

The little plane turns around at the end of the short strip and comes to a stop. After setting the handbrake, his Dad pushes the power levers forward to 1800 rpm and briefly switches off the magnetos one at a time, making sure the rpm drop is within limits.  Then he takes the power up to 2100 rpm. The engine roar intensifies and the airframe begins shaking with eagerness. His Dad tests the propeller pitch controls whilst Shane exults in the power of the sturdy little flying machine. The power is dropped back to 1500 rpm and the feathering mechanism for both propellors is exercised. After verifying that all the engine monitoring instruments are in the green zone, the two engines are dropped back to fast idle.

His Dad now goes through the final pre-takeoff checklist, including closing the little window by his side, securing the aircraft hatches and making sure their seatbelts are tight.

Shane can’t help feeling that each repetitive act of performing the checks carefully and diligently brings its own intrinsic rewards – both the satisfaction of doing something well and the deep surety that, with these checks done, both fate and the machine will look after the man.

“We’ll do a short-field takeoff,” his father says, “Probably not necessary with only two of us on board, but good practice anyhow.” He taxies to the very end and turns around. He stomps on the toe brakes and moves the power levers forward to near takeoff power. The aircraft shakes and bounces crazily in one spot, like a dog on a tight leash mad to be released.

“Paringo traffic, this is PA-30 Piper Twin Comanche Lima Victor Bravo taking off runway 06 for VFR operations to the east below 3000 feet.”

He slips his feet off the brakes, waits a couple of seconds for the aircraft to start rolling and then applies full power. The engines are transformed into a pair of snarling demented demons and the aircraft bounces along the rough ground.

Shane constantly flits his gaze between the long grass rushing by and the airspeed indicator slowly winding up.

The airplane is becoming skittish on the ground by the time his Dad pulls back on the control wheel. The little twin climbs out, glorious in the golden sun above the green sugar cane fields.

The undercarriage lever is flicked up and Shane hears the groan of the retraction mechanism. The flaps are cleaned up and the fuel boost pumps switched off. They are at 300 feet above the ground and his Dad eases back to climb power, the dials now showing 2500rpm at 25 inches manifold pressure.

They level off at 1500 feet, the cowl flaps are snapped closed and the aircraft trimmed for cruise. The transformation from ground lumberer into sleak, streamlined flying machine is complete.

His Dad finds his grandparents’ house hiding amongst the thickly forested ridge below and throws the airplane into a steep turn, pivoting around the house on a wing tip. As the world turns beneath them, Shane sees the Paringo development nearby and finds the little block with its toy caravan and two tents. He wonders what Lisa is doing right now, whether she notices the little airplane twirling round and round in the sky above.

They fly to the lighthouse. This is the first of the landmarks chosen by his Dad. For the next fifteen minutes, Shane is kept busy moving the antenna around in the cockpit and writing down sets of GPS coordinates as they visit each of the three landmarks in turn. He is glad when they finish. As he expected, he is starting to feel a bit nauseous from all the looking down and writing.

Some fluffy white cumulus clouds are starting to appear in the sky around them as the earth below warms up in the mid-morning sun.  His Dad goes into fun mode and throws the airplane around in the sky, mounting mock attacks on the clouds like a Spitfire pilot in a dog fight. Shane likes seeing his father in one of his relaxed and happy moods, doing something just for the joy of it.

There are some fishing boats in the sea below. They are close together – unusually close – two of them so close they almost seem to be touching. Shane wonders if they are clustering around a tight ball of fish. Or maybe one of the boats has broken down and the others are lending a hand. Shane writes down the GPS coordinates, just in case, or maybe just because it makes him feel important.

Maria

“I’m going down to the river house, Mum,” Maria says laconically.

From the other side of the table, a faint shadow of worry ripples across her Mum’s face.

“Have a good time” she says, “When do you think will you be back?”

With that ruthless instinct programmed over so many generations of ancestral youth, Maria ignores the quick flit of concern on her mother’s face.

“Oh, this  avo, I’d expect,” she replies cheerfully, “Before it gets dark at any rate.”

Maria walks along the track and takes the side road with the big Sea Sport Charters sign. She reaches the riverside mansion, takes a breath to settle herself and presses the buzzer near the gate. The gate slides smoothly open, she walks around the big house and feels a kick of joy at seeing Jacko leaning over the back railing with a cigarette. He is motionless, but his profile has the watchful coiled-up energy of an animal living in dangerous parts.

Maria climbs the oiled wooden stairs leading up to the deck that wraps around three sides of the house. Jacko unbends from the railing and they kiss whilst the late morning sun sparkles on the river behind them.

“There’s coffee inside,” says Jacko.

She pours herself a cup from the pot before returning out into the sunshine, feeling Jacko’s eyes on her, knowing she looks good, knowing that he wants her.  The two-way radio crackles inside.

“The boats due back soon?” she asks when he comes back. The two boats generally leave early in the morning and return by lunchtime – unless they have a full day booking, which happens less often.

“Sea Manta is clearing the sandbar now, Sea Dolly is a couple of miles away,” says Jacko curtly.

He is second in charge and responsible if anything goes wrong. But with the boats returning safely on such a fine day, she wonders why he seems tense. She shares her body with his, why can’t he share his thoughts with her? 

The penthouse on the third level upstairs belongs to his boss, but from what she can tell, the boss seems to be away most of the time and leaves the day-to-day running of the sea charter operations to Jacko and his two offsiders, Blair and Lennie – all three of them living in the house throughout the summer tourist season.

There is also Blair’s other half, Vicky. Tall, with furrowed brow and glossy black hair, she helps with the bookings and with the catering aboard the boats.

The rest of the boat crew arrive each day in the pre-dawn darkness, amidst the crackling roar of their Harley motorcycles and souped-up cars. The Paringo locals don’t complain about the noise – not even when the weekend parties carry on into dawn with the local streets full of bikes and cars coming and going.

Sea Manta rounds the bend and comes slowly towards them, engines throbbing. Jacko and Maria stand together and watch as the engines are thrown into reverse and the hull gently recoils off the tyres that protect the side of the wharf. One of the men steps off the boat and secures the lines before they help the passengers off the boat.

Then Vicky escorts the visitors to the little carpark alongside the boat shed. Blair and his boat assistant unload the scuba tanks, wetsuits, BCDs and regulator rigs, carrying them into the boatshed alongside. Maria hears the compressor start up as they connect the first scuba tank for refilling. They will be rinsing the rest of the diving gear in big basins of soapy fresh water and hanging it up to dry, ready for the next outing.

Jacko finally leaves his observation post and Maria accompanies him down to wharf where a heavy scent of diesel and salt hangs in the air. She helps Vicky unload plastic catering containers and rubbish bags, whilst Jacko collects the paperwork and strolls across to the boathouse to catch up with other crew. 

“How was it?” Maria asks Vicky, donning a pair of powdery rubber gloves and helping her tidy up the last few loose ends aboard the boat.

“Not bad,” says Vicky, “Did the warm-up dive on Turtle Reef and then across to the Solander wreck. Visibility was pretty good, lots of fish”.

“The clients looked happy and all,” says Maria, retrieving a couple of loose polystyrene cups from the deck.

“Yeah, only thing is the girl’s wetsuit leaked and she got a bit cold. She was okay after a warm shower,” replies Vicky.

Cold, then warming up – like the relationship between Vicky and herself, thinks Maria.

Vicky was very obviously the dominant female when Maria was invited to their party last week. She barely acknowledged Maria’s presence that night, smoking cigarette after cigarette and talking loudly amongst the guys, with only an occasional speculative glance in her direction. Maria trying to stay inconspicuous all the while, sipping drinks with Jacko before they slip outside onto the deck together for the first irrevocable kiss, Jacko hugging her hard and tight.

They can restrain themselves no longer, bump their way upstairs to Jacko’s room, shutting the door on the blaring music, Jacko throwing her onto the bed. He strips naked before her whilst she lies there – watching – his strong lithe body – his penis hard. He rolls her over roughly, tears at her zip.

She turns and sits up, the dress slips over her head, she kicks her shoes off, sprawling, feeling voluptuous still. Her underwear still on, he lies on her, kisses her, smothers her, she feels the hardness through the taut fabric of her undies. Her heart races and she hears herself moaning, quickly puts her hand over her mouth. But it doesn’t matter – the music outside – she takes her hand away, her bra comes off and he sucks hard on her nipples, hurting her. His hand slips down inside, sliding over her soft pubic fringe. She feels his finger inside her moist cleft and rubbing on her clitoris, inflaming her own mini-erection. Scarcely aware now, with body wracked and mind buffetted, her hips lift automatically as the panties slip off her buttocks and down her smooth legs, past her knees and they are left dangling from her one ankle. He enters her and comes quickly. Too quickly – bites her lip, eyes glazed, hot and wanting still.

He is still breathing hard and ragged when his penis goes soft, but his body remains hard and she runs her fingers over his back, feeling the scars. He withdraws and moves onto his back beside her, resting his arm across her soft belly, with hand draped across the soft fur of her mound. She wishes he would say something, he hasn’t uttered a word since they came upstairs, but his face is withdrawn and inscrutable. She snuggles up instead, inhales the rich odour from his body, kisses his neck, feels him relax slightly.

Two nights later they have sex again, this time after snorting coke beforehand. He gets rough with her. Too rough, she cries out involuntarily and he slaps her, hard, she sees bruises the next day, feels tainted, not only by the coke. But she loves him, forgives him, craves him even more than before.

“Jacko wasn’t brought up – he was dragged up,” says Vicky later that day in her gravelly voice, with something approaching sympathy. Maria smiles a quick thank you, thinking to herself that Vicky’s own childhood might also not have exactly been a bed of roses. Maria senses the importance of showing pluck whilst at the same time not getting competitive with the older woman. She knows that she cannot rely on Jacko’s status alone to stop Vicky from bringing her down if she showed any signs of weakness or disloyalty. She has to work at gaining Vicky’s respect and winning her over as an ally.

Blair comes out of the boathouse. He acknowledges their presence with a wave and bends down to connect the fuel bowser to the boat. Maria sees his belly hanging out from under his shirt. It might not be a good look but Maria knows that everyone, even Jacko, accords respect to their chief dive master.

“Blair has taken that belly of his down under the water more than a thousand times,” Jacko had said, “I know he’ll bring the clients back safe and that’s more important to me than how he looks.” Blair is so irreverant and bawdy on land that she finds it hard to envisage the highly disciplined, safety-conscious dive master. She is also surprised how two such opposites managed being a couple, Blair being the perennial joker and Vicky with her hard-edged personality and chain-smoking cynicism.

The money must help. She had heard Vicky talking of their travels to Venice, the Caribbean, Rio and god knows how many other places.

Maria can’t help being impressed at the amount of money flowing through Sea Sport Charters. She sees the crew coming and going on their high performance motorbikes or in hotted-up muscle cars. Then Jacko, with a black Maserati tucked away in the garage, a Harley parked out on the driveway and three apartments – one in Noosa, one on the Brisbane waterfront and one he rents out on the Gold Coast, if she remembers right. As for the boss, Maria has heard that he flies in with his own helicopter, landing on the smooth circle of tarmac on the far side of the boatshed, near to the dive training pool and close by the ramp where their three shiny Jetskis are parked.

The two boats have all the latest electronic navigation gear, including onboard sonar equipment, fish finders, dive computers, a satellite dish and dual display consoles bigger than her television screen at home.

She remembers a comment from amongst the feedback sheets in the boathouse, “GREAT day fishing, thanks guys, your Furuno gear beats anything we have back home…Larry.” Whilst she saw many favourable comments whilst flicking through the clipboard, this was one that stuck in her mind, probably because this guy Larry was all the way from the Bahamas.

They finish tidying the boat. “All good,” says Vicky, “time for a coffee.” They return to the house and Vicky busies herself with a gurgling coffee maker inside whilst Maria stays out on the deck, glad to get away from the dominating presence of Vicky for a while.

The second boat is rounding the bend. Sea Dolly is soon docked behind Sea Manta and three guys climb onto the jetty. Although it is a bit too far to be sure, Maria thinks the tall one is Lennie, one of the surfers that helped rescue Jon. Maria can’t see any guests and the new arrival is much quicker to offload than Sea Manta, with just a couple of scuba tanks and BCDs making their way into the boathouse.

A couple of motorbikes roar off through the gate, with the remaining guys trooping up to the deck, Jacko leading. Vicky brings out the coffees and Maria helps by cutting a large cheesecake into appetising slices of generous proportions.

“How’s your brother?” asks Lennie whilst offloading a large black leather bag from his shoulder, to land with a thud on the decking next to his chair.

“He’s good, thanks,” replies Maria, flashing him a quick look of gratitude, “he still looks tired and all, supposed to be resting today but says he’s going fishing tonight.”

“Hope he’s not going to be the bait this time,” chortles Lennie, easing himself down into the chair and resting his tattoed arms on the smooth glass table in front of him.

“Did you see that big school of hammerheads out there again today?” asks Jacko.

“Nah, not today, they’ve probably moved up the coast by now” says Lennie, “There was something, though – a plane came buzzing over us a couple of times.”

“Yeah, we saw it too,” says Blair, caught between mouthfuls of cake destined for his capacious stomach, “Couldn’t work out what he was up to either, a little twin engined job.”

A sudden uncomfortable silence fell. “Probably just sightseeing,” says Jacko, then offhand, “You didn’t happen to catch the rego by any chance?”

“No,” says Lennie, “Didn’t think to look. I’ll write it down next time if you like – it flew pretty low.”

“If there’s a next time,” says Jacko, “Meantime, lets sort the business stuff.” Lennie quickly downs the remainder of his coffee, lifts the leather bag off the deck and they leave the table together.

Maria watches Jacko slide the glass door closed with a click behind them, sees them walking towards his study. There is something conspiratorial in the air. The others know something she is not privy to, she can feel it all around her, hanging there, palpable. She thinks of the second boat – how it docks without any paying passengers, Lennie returning with a leather bag of something for Jacko and the barely perceptible step-up of tension when they mention the plane.

“Best not to ask, darl,” says Vicky through a cloud of pungent cigarette smoke, after seeing Maria’s questioning look following Jacko and Lennie inside.

But she does ask, after lunch when they lie together lazy and replete, lying prone across the bed gently stroking the golden hairs on Jacko’s stomach silhouetted against a patch of mid-afternoon sun on his skin.

She asks, and she feels the stomach muscles tense into patches of knotted rope under her fingers. He leans across to open the bedside table and she rises into a kneeling position next to him so not to impede his movement. She is admiring her own body in the wardrobe mirrors when he rolls back smooth and quick.

He draws the curved tip of the blade around the contours of her right breast. A whimper escapes from her lips but she is unable to move. She sees a hairline of blood arcing across the bottom of her breast, following the course of the blade like the red condensation trail behind a high-flying silver jet. Her heart throbs in her ears. You need to learn what you don’t need to know.

Now she is sobbing, terrified, alone in the room – the knife is gone, Jacko is gone and gusts from an approaching rainstorm buffet the bamboo slats, banging them to and fro inside the windows.

Shane

It is dusk and the bright spot of Venus hangs above the fading glow in the west, slowly dipping in servitude to the hidden sun. A pair of spur-winged plovers cry mournfully as they flap over the razor-edged reeds sticking up above the marsh that lies alongside the railway track.

The two dark silhouettes stop short of the railway bridge. Jon carefully places his tacklebox on a nearby sleeper. He lays his fishing rod down on the stone ballast between the rails. Unencumbered, he eases himself down on one knee and leans with the side of his head over the rail, holding his right ear just millimetres above the smooth cool metal, listening for the faint vibration indicating an oncoming train.

Shane tries to help by looking into the deepening gloom but feels defeated by the fuzzy limits of his poor night vision.

“It’s OK,” says Jon, switching on his head torch and hoisting his tacklebox, “I can’t hear anything.”

When he had stepped onto this bridge for the first time, following a person he had only just met that day and didn’t know how much he could trust, Shane had felt compelled to ask “How often do they come through?” His had voice sounded a little higher than usual in his ears.

“Three times a day,” came the reply, “One train at around ten at night and the other two during the day. I always listen regardless, just in case. You never know, the previous one could be running late or they might decide to put on an extra service or something.”

Jon retrieves his fishing rod and the two boys propel themselves onto the railway track across the water. Their footsteps slap on the sleepers in nervous rapid succession through the gathering darkness. Not having access to a boat, this is the only way to cross the wide estuary and reach the fishing spot on the other side.

The old bridge was built during a time of economic constraint, the cross pieces hang over vertiginous empty space outside each of the two steel rails. Channelled between the rails, Shane can see the sheen of water through the wire diamonds of a layer of coarse mesh between the cross girders. Although he knows the metal mesh will stop him falling through even if he mis-steps, he cannot help feeling he is walking across an endless tightrope suspended in the blackness of space.

Suspended more than ten metres above the water, with no part of the naked metal bridge reaching higher than his ankles and with a dizzying dark void all around him, Shane keeps his terror at bay by focussing on the reassuring outline of Jon a couple of steps ahead. The oddly comforting smell of salty estuarine air wafts up to the bridge from the black water below.

One final obstacle awaits them on the other side, the black circular maw of a tunnel that cuts through the remnants of a rock cliff on the outer bend of the river. Whilst the tunnel is an intimidating fifty metres of total darkness, Shane consoles himself with the feel of solid earth under his feet again. Their head torches illuminate the narrow passage between the edge of the railway track and the smooth rock wall. He sees the bolt-hole when they reach the halfway point – a safety recess dug into the side of the tunnel – in case you find yourself trapped inside and need to take shelter from the terrifying nightmare of a train thundering through so proximate as to suck you off your feet into a maelstrom of buffeting air and rip your body apart. But the tunnel sleeps peaceably for the present and they see the dim light of the opening ahead.

They emerge beneath the dark sky and clamber down the embankment towards the estuary, slipping and sliding with loose ballast rattling about their feet and Shane struggling to keep his balance whilst clutching onto the rod. Soon the slope flattens out and he can relax, feeling relieved not to have fallen on the way down. The railway footing ends in a smooth brick wall, standing two metres above the water. This is where the estuary curves around towards the sea, where the water is deep and the fish plentiful. Already hearing little sloshes and an occasional splash, Shane feels the excitement rising and exclaims, “Hey Jon, sounds like they’re biting tonight, whaddya think?”

“Yeah, looking good,” says Jon thoughtfully, surveying the water as they come to a stop at his favourite spot, half way along the curved brick wall.

Jon opens his tacklebox and selects a hook from the top tray and makes towards Shane’s rod.

“I can do it you know,” Shane protests.

“Be quicker this way,” Jon grunts.

Shane isn’t sure whether Jon doesn’t trust him to get it right or whether it is the thought of someone else’s hands in his precious tacklebox that Jon doesn’t like. He watches with resignation as Jon pinches the line to make a loop and pushes the very top of the loop through the eye of the hook. He folds the loop over the hook and pulls it tight. He then extends the double line the length of his forearm and ties it off, forming a side branch that hangs off to the side of the line. He takes a second hook from his tacklebox and repeats the operation so that there are now two hooks dangling off to the side, half a metre apart.

Finally, he attaches a small sinker to the end and pulls out enough line from the reel to fasten a white and red float above the two hooks.

“OK, it’s ready for some bait now,” Jon says and moves across to his own rod.

Shane cuts two slices of flesh from the bait fish and threads each hook through one of the strips of meat. He cuts a length of black cotton and carefully winds it around the bait, trying to make sure the bait stays on the hook for as long as possible even when under determined assault from the many nibblers in the water.

Preparation over, he lifts the rod and traps the line beneath the fingers of his right hand. This stops the line from running out as he unclips the reel with his left. He half turns with the rod pointed behind him and casts out in a long arc, releasing the trapped line as the tip of the rod comes overhead. The thread helps make sure the bait stays on whilst flying through the air and it drops into the nighttime water with a satisfyingly gentle plop.

A feeling of boyish anticipation wells up in his chest as, within just a few seconds of closing the reel, he feels some cautious little nibbles jerk the tip of the rod to and fro. Resting the line gently across his fingers, he stands above the dark pool of water, expectant, waiting for the big one.

There it is! A firm wrench on the line and he yanks the rod up but he is too slow. Some desultory little nibbles return after a brief pause but soon even these cease and looking across at Jon’s twitching rod, Shane knows it’s time for him to reel in and replenish his bait.

“How you feeling after yesterday?” he asks Jon, whilst cutting away the old cotton and skin from the hooks.

He speaks softly, knowing how much Jon hates loud sounds that could make the fish shy away from his bait.

“OK, I guess,” says Jon, his gaze still out on the water, “But I don’t mind admitting it was pretty scary. I’ve never felt so alone before.”

He pauses whilst feeling a few determined tugs on the line.

“I really thought I was a goner,” he adds musingly, evidently deciding the bites were not worth striking on.

“Until the surfers arrived,” says Shane, as he threads new bait onto his hooks.

“Yeah, I was really out of it by the time they got to me, I thought it was a shark grabbing my arm at first! Even after seeing them I wasn’t sure they were real,” says Jon.

“Maria seemed to know them from somewhere,” says Shane, casual, offhand.

“Yep,” says Jon shortly before striking on his first big bite and reeling in, fast.

Jon finds a pair of empty hooks at the end of his line and squats down near the bait. Shane hands over the bait knife.

“She’s seeing someone at the boathouse place,” he says at last, “Mum’s not too happy about it, she thinks it will come to no good.”

“What do you think?” asks Shane, getting to his feet with his rod.

“I don’t know, we’ll have to wait and see I suppose – you can’t really stop her,” replies Jon.

The line whirs above him as Shane casts out again. He sits down on the edge of the wall and looks up at the stars whilst he waits for the fish to start biting again. He sees Orion, the great Hunter, clear and high in the sky.

“What are you looking at?” asks Jon.

“The stars, there’s Orion right up there,” Shane replies, pointing.

“Which one’s that then?” asks Jon, curious. The older boy does not seem to mind that Shane knows more about the night sky than he does. Obscurely pleased by this, Shane points out the constellation, sitting right up near the zenith of the sky, complete with a brilliant three-starred belt and nebulous sword looking even fuzzier than usual to Shane without his glasses.

“Does it always sit up there?” asks Jon.

“It’ll slowly move during the night, along with the rest of the sky,” replies Shane, “But, yeah, in summer you should always be able to find it somewhere in the sky, usually pretty high up.”

“The stars in the sky don’t really move, though, do they?” asks Jon, “It’s the earth that is spinning, right?”

“Right,” agrees Shane, happy at Jon’s evident interest, “Just like the sun seems to move across the sky in the daytime, so all the stars seem to move acrosss the sky at night.”

“But the stars also change with the seasons,” he continues, “So as autumn comes along, you’ll notice Orion slips down a tiny bit night after night until you’ll find that Scorpio replaces it by winter time.”

Shane loves watching this stately progression through the seasons – the haughty Orion gradually losing its dominance to the young upstart Scorpio. Scorpio rises higher and higher from the east, carving its great curving S across the clear brilliance of the chill skies when winter sets in. Scorpio is the most beautiful constellation of all, thinks Shane to himself, the most feminine, even with the involute sting in its tail.

“And winter is also when you see the Southern Cross best,” says Shane half to himself, “It’s so much higher up in the winter sky than now,” he tails off – not sure if Jon is still listening – thinking of the iconic Crux rising up proud from its position of lowly summer somnolence.

But Jon is listening.

“The moon is high in winter”, says Jon, “That’s something I’ve noticed, the moon being so high and bright during winter nights.”

“Yes, everyone knows the sun is highest in mid-summer but not everyone realises that the moon gets to be at its highest in mid-winter,” says Shane, “Its all to do with the tilt of the earth.”

“Here I’ll show you,” he continues, and unable to restrain himself, puts aside his rod and retrieves a float from Jon’s tacklebox. Jon half-raises a preemptory hand but  drops it with resignation, his initial annoyance at this flagrant transgression tempered by the obvious enthusiasm of his dark-haired companion.

Shane illuminates the tilted float in the beam of his headtorch. “See how the top gets the daylight but the bottom gets all the nightlight,” he pronounces proudly.

“You should be a teacher,” Jon says mockingly, but impressed all the same, “Now put that float back where it belongs and pick up your rod, before it falls into the water.”

Shane obeys. He decides to reel in and pulls back hard on the rod first – like he sees Jon do – in case he can snag a nearby fish with the unbaited hooks. After replenishing the hooks and casting back in again, his thoughts return to the cosmos above.

“It’s weird to think some of those stars might not be there anymore,” he says reflectively.

Jon, who generally prefers more peace and quiet during his nighttime fishing than he is getting on this particular night, is tempted to stay silent but finds himself unable to leave this remark unchallenged.

“What do you mean?” he eventually asks, suspicious.

“Some of those stars are thousands of lightyears away,” explains Shane, “Meaning it takes that amount of time for their light to get to us. So what we are seeing now, is the way those stars were thousands of years ago. Some of them could have exploded into tiny little bits in the meantime and we wouldn’t know, not for another few thousand years at least.”

Jon digests this slowly. “They are really that far away that their light takes thousands of years to get to us?” he asks.

“Yes,” replies Shane simply. “Even the light from our own sun takes a bit of time to get to us. So if the sun suddenly exploded at 12 noon tomorrow, we would still see it shining nicely for another 8 minutes or so, just like it always has, even though it doesn’t actually exist anymore.”

“Would we still be going round the sun, even though it didn’t exist anymore?” asks Jon.

Impressed by the depth of Jon’s question, Shane replies “Yes, because gravity also travels at the speed of light. So the earth will still feel the gravity of the sun for another 8 minutes, even though the sun has disappeared completely.”

“But after that, we’d all be doomed,” says Jon.

“Pretty much,” agrees Shane, “We’d all end up as shredded stardust. Which is kind of ironic, since we are mostly made of stardust.”

“I though we were mostly made of water,” says Jon dubiously.

“Well, that’s true,” concedes Shane, “but water comprises hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen part of water comes from the big bang and the oxygen part comes from stars.”

“Oxygen comes from stars?” queries Jon, “I would have thought stars would burn up any oxygen around them.”

“Oxygen burns here on earth, but it’s the other way round on stars,” responds Shane, explaining, “Stars start out getting their energy from fusing hydrogen into helium. Once the hydrogen runs out, the star has to start fusing its helium into heavier elements like oxygen to keep on shining.”

“So, instead of burning up their oxygen, stars burn helium to make oxygen,” he concludes grandly, whilst Jon looks at him somewhat disbelievingly, but interested all the same.

“Apart from hydrogen,” Shane continues, “everything else we’re made of came from the innards of stars, even the calcium in our bones.”

“Except that the insides of stars can’t make anything heavier than iron,” he corrects himself, “So for anything heavier than iron – like the copper in our blood for instance, or the gold in our jewellery – we have to rely on huge stellar explosions and intergalactic collisions and the like.”

“How do you know all this?” asks Jon, impressed despite himself.

“From books and the internet and stuff,” says Shane, a little self-consciously.

“Well, I don’t know, it all sounds a bit like science fiction to me,” says Jon a little doubtfully.

Shane is about to reply but an exclamation suddenly erupts from his companion who is pulling back on a rod that is all bent over and quivering.

“Got something?” asks Shane, pleased for him but a little envious as well.

“Looks like it,” mutters Jon distractedly as he cranks the reel. The fight is over almost as soon as it begins, and a dripping flathead as long as Jon’s forearm emerges from the water, spiralling up through the air before being lowered onto the bricks, where it lies flapping feebly beneath Jon’s shoe whilst he pins it down and extracts the hook from its mouth.

Shane switches on his headtorch and is starting to lean over for a closer look at Jon’s catch when he feels a hefty tug from his own rod. It comes alive with a shuddering succession of sharp tugs and sustained lunges.

“It’s all happening,” he gasps, caught off-guard, fighting to keep hold of the bucking rod.

Jon looks up anxiously from his flathead. “Loosen off the tension, loosen the tension!” he shouts. Too late – the line suddenly goes limp and Shane stands as though paralysed on top of the wall.

Rod hanging from numb hands, he stares in disbelief at the darkly inscrutable waters below. He realises that he was too slow, that he hadn’t even thought of loosening the line until it was too late. He berates himself silently – for having no commonsense, that it was all very well him knowing that people were made from stardust but when it came to practical things like landing a fish, a fish that had been obliging enough to hook itself on his line, he was hopeless.

Jon comes alongside and pats him on the shoulder. His commiseration helps ameliorate Shane’s sharp disappointment with himself, helps turn it into wry acceptance instead.

“That was a big one,” Shane says ruefully.

“The fish that gets away always is,” replies Jon, with a touch of irony.

“I didn’t mean that,” says Shane hastily, “You’ve got yourself a really nice one there.”

“The old flathead might not look very pretty but he is a tasty little beggar,” says Jon equably. Shane continues to ruminate over what might have been, whilst Jon replaces the missing tackle on his line.

“Good as new”, Jon says laconically, laying down Shane’s line. He returns to his flathead, gutting knife in hand.

“Thanks,” says Shane gratefully and baits the hooks. He feels a little quiver of anticipation return as he casts into the shadowy waters. It is that time of night when the very air itself stops breathing. Everything is hushed and quiet around them, all he can hear is the faint warbling of reed frogs from the marshlands.

Shane sits on his jacket, watching the blurry stars ripple in the black water around his float. He tries to imagine the gigantic paroxysms of nuclear-fueled violence pulsating throughout their massive cores, the unimaginable convulsion rent in the cosmos itself when a large star reaches the end of its life and explodes in a succession of cataclysmic detonations of energy, sending huge shockwaves many lightyears across the surrounding void to collide with vast veils of surrounding dust to form new stars, new planets, new life and culminating in the peaceful calm of two teenage boys fishing in the eveing shadows of an old railway bridge.

The fertility of violence, he thinks to himself.

The tug when it comes on his line is gentle, probing. Then nothing. He waits in an agony of suspense until he feels the next bite – much firmer this time. He lunges backwards on the rod, feels the answering pulsations of a firmly hooked fish. Shane clambers to his feet, Jon looking up queryingly but – I’m ok he says silently in return – I feel calm, I’m in control. He loosens the tension knob, lets the fish have a run. Leans back on the rod again, hears the line spool out briefly, tensions it up, winds in the slack, then loosens it and lets the fish run again.

He feels the fish tiring, the pulsations damping down, the pull lessening. He winds it in, Jon standing alongside, they see a silvery flash in the water below before it takes one last desperate run and he almost loses it, only just loosening the tension in time. Then he is hoisting it up out of the water, a bream with broad silvery body and yellowish fins dangling in the light of his headtorch.

“Good work,” says Jon, “Good eating and looks like its legal size too.”

After gutting his bream, Shane clambers down to wash his hands in the water. He feels sleepy all of a sudden and is glad when Jon looks at his watch and decides to call it a night.

They pack up and sit down to wait for the ten o’clock train to go through. Shane is the first to hear a barely perceptible vibration in the air. He glances across at Jon and then they both look up and see the faint glow in the sky above the far side of the bridge. The patch of light brightens and the rumble gets louder and louder until Shane feels the ground vibrating beneath him. He feels compelled to rise to his feet and to look up towards the now vibrating bridge.  A warning peal of the siren and suddenly an unstoppable colossus is pounding towards them along the elevated crossing, the whole metal structure shaking and clattering wildly above them. The diesel engine sweeps heedlessly into the tunnel where it is briefly muffled before emerging triumphant out of the maw on the other side, a giant iron juggernaut thundering away into the darkness and distance, the stars left dizzy in its wake and the odour of burnt diesel frothing about through the fouled nighttime air.

Jon and Shane toil up the slope. Jon carries the tacklebox whilst Shane has their evening catch sloshing about in an open bucket. With senses still reeling in the aftermath of the charging train, Shane pauses at the foreboding entrance of the still-smoking tunnel. Even though he knows that the next scheduled train is many hours away, he still feels relieved when they have passed back through the tunnel and over the bridge and he can step off the track and look forward to a mug of Milo when they arrive back at the campsite.