drowning – SANDERLINGS

1966, Sydney.

The police station was hot, dim, and riven with dead insects. Yellow papery coils, dotted with dead black, spun from the ceilings. Fly screens clung to the open windows keeping the hot air in and the hotter air out. Cockroaches scattered through the reception area, twice on the end of a passing policeman’s boot.

We don’t want to take up too much of your time, Inspector Connolly said to Janet’s father as he led the family through a series of beige corridors to a room with a fan and a dusty Venetian blind. The Inspector motioned to her parents to sit down opposite him at the wooden table in the centre of the room. Edward ignored the Inspector and leant against the wall by the window, cracking his knuckles and crushing something dark and crunchy between his fingers. Janet joined her parents at the table. She was on the Inspector’s right, so close that she could smell his sweat and the faint smell of carbolic soap.

The Inspector took a small notebook from a drawer in the desk, opened it up and laid it out on the table in front of him. Just a few details, he said. And then you can be on your way. You’ll be needing time to settle in. He took a pen from the pocket on his chest. Janet’s mother blew her nose into a small white cotton handkerchief. She hadn’t stopped snuffling since Philip had disappeared into the Indian Ocean. Janet’s father put his arm around her mother’s shoulders. She slumped into him. Her father’s eyes were rimmed red. His chin stubbed grey. He hadn’t shaved in days.

Janet watched the Inspector write down her parent’s words. He had round, child-like writing that wasn’t joined up. The blue ink smudged on the page from the Inspector’s sweating hand. He didn’t always get her parent’s words exactly right. She wondered if she ought to tell him. Correct him. Point out his errors. It might matter later. If this went further.

‘And you, Janet?’

‘Sorry?’ Janet said, suddenly flustered. She hadn’t understood that the Inspector had turned his attention to her.

‘Did you want to add anything?’

‘What?’

‘To your parent’s account. You were the last person to see your brother alive?’ Janet was sure Edward was looking at her. Staring as he crunched and crackled whatever was dead between his fingers.

She said, ‘I’ve said it so many times.’ The Inspector put his pen down and touched Janet’s arm.

‘I know, lass,’ he said. ‘It’s not easy. A tragedy like this. I need to go through the formalities, though. To help you,’ he paused, ‘your parents, you know…’ He stopped mid-sentence. Janet shook her feet out of her sandals and pressed her bare soles into the cool of the linoleum. She wanted to lie down. To rest her face on a cool white linen sheet. For Inspector Colin Connolly to stroke her back. For Colin Connolly to drape a damp towel over the back of her neck.

‘Janet,’ the Inspector is talking to you.’ Her father was irritated. He looked at Janet and frowned. ‘For Christ’s sake, Janet, stop bloody dreaming and just tell him so we can get out of here. Your mother’s exhausted.’ He took his arm from her mother’s shoulder and shook a finger in Janet’s face. ‘We’re all bloody exhausted. And you…’ His finger was trembling. blurring in front of Janet’s nose. Her mother interrupted.

‘No, Eric, we said we wouldn’t.’

‘Look at her, will you? Look at her!’ Her father, his cheeks red, stood up.

‘Not now, love. Please.’ Bernadette tried to pull her husband back into his chair. He shook her free. The Inspector frowned. Stretched his arms out, his palms up, in peace.

‘You’re all upset. Please, folks. Please sit down. We can finish this another time.’ Janet’s father sat down heavily on the chair. The legs scraped hard across the floor. Janet looked down to see whether they had left a mark. His hands, flat down on the table, were dancing. Fingers playing some wretched tune on a long-abandoned piano.

‘You speak to her again, Inspector. She knows more than she’s letting on.’

The Cloud. Episode 25

1966. On board the SS Himalaya

The on-board search for Philip started immediately the alarm was raised by Janet’s hysterical parents. Every crew member available examined every nook, every cranny, slowly, methodically, going from bow to stern. All of them calling his name. Philip! Philip! Everything combed through. Every passenger shaken out of sleep. Every cabin checked. Philip! Philip! Every lifeboat investigated. Every pile of sheets and towels lifted and shaken. Philip! Philip! Every lifebuoy counted. Every lifebelt storage cupboard emptied and repacked. The engine room checked, pipe by valve by piston. Philip! Philip! The swimming pool dragged. The bar shelves scoured. The map cupboards in the bridge rifled and scanned. The galley’s fridges and freezers all examined. Philip! Philip!

And, as dawn troughed up the sea and powdered up the sky, two small boats were launched to search the ocean. Six men went out and six came bouncing back half a day later. Their lips were as tight as the heft in their brows and they shook their heads, silent, on return. Janet was interviewed twice, maybe three times, by a man in uniform who was blind in his right eye and over-compensated with the penetration of his left. She muddled through her words, weeping and shaking, her mother on one side, her father on the other.

Yes, she’d seen him leave the dining area last night. Yes she’d followed him out onto the dim deck. There’d been two people, maybe smoking, at the far end. But maybe not. She couldn’t be sure whether one of them was him. Was it him? The man’s left eye probed and pierced.

How far away were you? You must have recognised your own brother?

She wasn’t sure, she replied. She’d approached the two, maybe two, then turned, changed her mind. She’d had a headache. She’d sat somewhere, in the lee of the wind.

Where did you sit? How long did you sit for?

She couldn’t be sure. The men at dinner. So tedious. She’d had such a headache.

You may have been the last person to see him alive. Try harder to remember.

She was trying. She was doing her best, she said. Over and over. Leave me alone, I can’t bear it. Her father put her arm around her. Her mother said something about leave her, leave her be. We’ll try again later.

In the end, the Captain admitted defeat. He was sorry, he said to Janet’s still hysterical parents, but they’d need to continue on. They were too far from land for any coastguard vessel to be of use. But he’d made the calls. Followed protocols. He offered his sincere condolences. Whatever they needed, he said, with a small bow, they only had to ask. There’d be a ceremony for Philip the following day. Of remembrance. The Chief Mate would organise it with the Chief Steward.

Janet’s father just stood, silent, looking out of the porthole, his fingers picking and picking at the hem of his jacket. Janet’s mother slumped in the chair in the Captain’s cabin. Her head was down on her knees, her hands over her ears. Janet put her hand on her mother’s back, felt the wretched heaving of her spine as it surged forward and back, forward and back. There were two Janets now. The inside one and the outside one. The outside one had just become a liar. A comforter. A sister who mourned her brother. The inside one, the one that knew the truth, the one that could tell the truth, was clawing and cleaving to get out. Or stay in. Janet couldn’t really tell.

To be continued.