Drowning

By Tim Devron Green

A whole family's trust is wrapped up in preconceptions and unquestioning blind faith. On one special day, Uncle Patrick drowns near one of Sydney's beaches. The lives of everyone connected to the family and the event change forever. Step carefully into this contemporary world .Often covered-up illicit behaviour and divided loyalties pull you into dangerous waters all over Asia. The two once close sisters pursue entirely different fateful pathways. Lovers and friends are pulled into a whirlpool of dreams and living nightmares. You too will become entangled in their entire tragic journey through the powerful bond of love and a deep secret. Little is as it seems. Are these people trying to run towards or away from their destinies? No-one is unaffected by the intense, disturbing and unfolding drama.

www.timdevrongreen.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Oct 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781785071645

Book preview

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Waving

Uncle Patrick shuffled the Sydney church aisle twice on Sundays, grimacing like he had a pineapple up his bottom. Eyes piously upcast as he passed the plate. Insufferably boring, sanctimonious, basically harmless, everybody felt. Well, almost everybody.

Patrick’s sister, Angela, and her husband, Bernard, had yearned to have their own first baby. Feel its skin against theirs, caress its tiny fingers, finally hear its voice. Their friends found them obsessive. They didn’t care. There had been so many disappointments before Angela went to Bernard’s office one day and told him to come to the park.

‘I can’t. I’m in a meeting.’

‘Get out of it.’

‘It’s urgent.’

‘Not as urgent as the news I have’, Angela insisted.

He went to the park.

‘Open the bag.’

‘What for?’ asked Bernard.

‘Just open it.’

‘Champagne. What’s happened? Your mother died?’

Wouldn’t be sorry about that old witch but shouldn’t have said it.

‘You’re going to be a Dad.’

‘Oh Wow.’

Look at his face light up. He’s as excited as I am.

They played baroque and Lakme to her bulge when the baby seemed distressed. Did she eat healthily? ‘Way over the top’ most said. No alcohol. No smokes. Lots of calcium, iron, zinc and magnesium. Swimming in the ocean, never in chlorine. Exercise but no tennis after six months, just in case she fell. Photos at every stage of pregnancy, lots naked in the garden. Male neighbours suddenly needing to trim hedges.

‘Forget television. Let’s watch the ultrasound again.’

‘Again?’ Oh, all right. You know all the organs are formed by eight weeks?’

‘I was at the same class, love, remember?’

Two friends who had amnios at the same time miscarried but Angela’s own pregnancy was fine. Five months to go. Every friend said take it easy for the last month to be strong for the birth but she was determined to work until the last day. Always stubborn. Do it her way. Even clients advised her to reduce her hours but she wouldn’t. Did she fear losing her identity if she just became a mother? Consciously she didn’t feel that but there was an underlying nervousness which was not just about the birth. Her brother, Patrick, was behaving strangely.

Food bills soared. Every item had to be organic. Their farmer neighbour came round grinning with a bag of sorghum straight off the paddock, hand-labelled, ‘100 percent natural’. They all laughed knowing how many chemicals it had needed. No air-conditioning – as it was considered unhealthy – despite sticking-to-the-sheets nights. A fan was fine to spread the hot air around and create wind chill. Didn’t feel chilly. Chill decidedly absent. Sex too. No, very occasional now. Massage daily on a portable table with mountains of pillows to accommodate the now massive protuberance. A delicate balancing act and Bernard was terrified she would doze and roll off her precarious perch. But they felt so close. So excited, with qualms. He more so as his old Citroen broke down daily but he really wanted to take her to hospital in it.

The night before the baby arrived they went out with their neighbours for a Thai meal close by the Sydney Opera House. Great food but too far from her obstetrician. Of course that’s when it happened. The waters broke in the restaurant and they raced to the maternity ward with a police escort after they were stopped for speeding. Sirens and lights wailing and flashing. Nine hours later Bernadette arrived. Her mother was exhausted and – far from the planned natural birth – had every intervention available. Couldn’t sit down for a week – without an inflatable rubber ring – and vowed never to do that again. Yet her sister, Flavia – ‘F’ – arrived ten months later. As they grew up people assumed they were twins and they behaved like it. Same clothes and hair and same year at school but skin totally opposite. Bernadette white as the wind and Flavia cinnamon.

Bernard was a traveling salesman for a vitamins company, away in shabby motels half his life. Angela gave up her job to be with her kids until high school. Her brother, Uncle Patrick, helped whenever he wasn’t working. Both parents were diet conscious and concerned for the environment. Nannies and baby-sitters were vetted to ensure the children were exercised the right way both mentally and physically. Their food was organic whenever possible and they were not exposed to radiation or anything unhealthy.

Uncle Patrick insisted, ‘Don’t waste money on baby-sitters. I’m just round the corner. Any time. You know that. I love these little girls.’

‘Thanks so much Patrick, but you have your life too. You should be starting your own family.’

‘Plenty of time. Meantime this is fun.’

When the girls were old enough they told their mother repeatedly that he was weird and they shouldn’t be left with him, but she only laughed and said,

‘He’s just teasing you. We all know you’re growing into lovely young girls. He loves you as much as we do. He’d never hurt you. Now no more nonsense.’ Bernard found it convenient to ignore it too as he was really close to Patrick. Fishing together. Beers at the pub. Bowling. No way he would be doing anything wrong.

‘I’d smash any man who tried anything with you girls.’

So the girls made a pact to teach him a lesson.

One day, when they were seventeen Bernadette asked, ‘Mum, can we go to the beach on Thursday?’

‘I can’t take you. I have a mothers’ meeting at the school, remember we talked about it? What about Uncle Patrick?’

‘Could he?’

‘I’ll ask him.’

‘Course I’ll take them. It’s nice they want me to. Will they drive on their L plates?‘

Hands shaking, Flavia noted in her diary,

‘Going to the beach with Patrick. Just the three of us. It’s time!’

Patrick always wore his hair very long at the back and Flavia suggested he tie it into a ponytail with some leather they bought.

‘Cool. Yes. Really cool. Uncle Pat.’

They couldn’t believe how stupid he looked but he was delighted.

Thursday was Sydney blue sky. No wind. Perfect for the ‘red back’ air mattress. Both strong swimmers they knew they could wave to Patrick if they needed him. As they expected no lifesavers on duty, few people on the beach. A nor-easterly wind had been blowing for days, the sea churned up. The red back had two handles each side of the front and Bernadette made her way out about two hundred metres, towing Flavia. They giggled as the waves swamped them and shot spray up their noses.

‘This is it. Are you ready F?’

‘Nervous but ready, yes.’

‘Let’s go then.’

Flavia pretended to be in difficulty ten metres from the mattress, waving her arms and submerging. Patrick thought they had problems and leapt straight in. Powering his way out at first the chop made it much harder for him. Almost spent when he reached them he yelled to Bernie, ‘Get F to grab the handle, quick.’

Flavia grabbed the black plastic. Bernie gripped the other handle and Patrick could only clutch the end of the air mattress to catch his breath. His leg cramped agonisingly and he let out a primeval scream. It was heard on the beach by two board riders and they raced into the water. By the time they arrived Patrick’s head was under.

‘Help us,’ the girls screamed. ‘He’s drowning after the swim out.’ With their hands under his armpits battling to keep him afloat in the frothing water. Coughing, spluttering, crying, eyes terrified. Stench of salt and vomit.

‘We’ll get him girls. You okay?’

‘Yes, but Uncle Patrick…’

‘Doesn’t look good, love. Let’s get him to shore quick.’

The riders – Joe Killarney and Gary – had to drag him by the ponytail between their boards. The effort was huge to get him into water shallow enough for them to stand. The few others on the beach helped pull him onto the sand, where an elderly lady tried CPR and mouth to mouth resuscitation.

‘Call the ambos. They’ll be here in five.’ When they arrived the paramedic continued the effort to revive him but it failed. The girls were in hysterics and the nurse asked,

‘Can we call your folks, love?’

‘Dad’s away but Mum’s at our school.’

Mother arrived to find her beloved brother’s corpse spread-eagled on the sand, mouth gaping, and embraced her sobbing daughters. The newspaper headline read,

UNCLE HERO DIES SAVING TWO NIECES’

‘Good Samaritan board riders’

The verdict at the inquest was accidental death – even though an open verdict was considered – and the girls received heartfelt sympathy from everybody they knew. Hundreds of cards and texts arrived supporting them in their grief but the girls only felt shock, with no sadness, except for their mother.

Young Joe

As a child in southern England, Joe Killarney’s head had resembled a double-handled coffee mug. Ear-pinning at eleven had transformed him into a handsome young lad – and reduced his wind resistance – but it hadn’t rescued his ego. Battered by years of teasing at school and his mother’s jibes about friends who achieved better results despite their inferior social background.

‘Yes, darling, I know your 80 percent in Math’s was good but Bobby got 92 percent and his mother’s just a cleaner.’

Joe’s mother’s snobbery came from ‘expat’ life in Malaysia. Joe found it hard to reconcile her pretentiousness with their humble circumstances. His bed had fifteen blankets in the winter – from the very basic caravan they kept on the Kentish south coast. So heavy that they sometimes stopped his circulation and made exiting bed impossible without help. His elder brothers would lever him out or not depending on their mood. Then his fingers would stretch out to melt the ice on the inside of the window to see if it had snowed in the night. Those were grey misty days of naked trees and frozen clothes on the washing line. His accountant father would take him to the school bus stop, driving so close to the kerb they bounced over all the drain covers. The English winter sun would struggle up as weak as a day with the flu, barely make it above the horizon, before giving up the unequal struggle and sagging down at 3:00 pm. Feet stomping days, breath like smoke, necks disappearing into assorted dark overcoats and scarves.

Being the youngest of four by some years seemed to destine him to crave somebody to look after him. Everybody did to some extent, particularly after his sister, Catherine, died, and he was almost too well-behaved when his brothers left home. From twelve he was effectively an only child and – thanks to his Mum – dreamed of hot, sunny, exotic places and surfing.

Joe’s mother, Margaret, was born in Kuala Lumpur and never got over it. Nor did the family she had.

‘My father had enormous rubber plantations,’ she announced at a family get together, with her Queen Mother accent.

‘Rubbish. He worked for the Chan family as a rubber tapper charge-hand,’ interrupted her brother Frank. ‘And was mixed-blooded too.’

‘How dare you suggest we are anything but pure Caucasian. Francis! Really!’

‘It was Dad’s turban that gave me a clue Marg.’

‘He only wore it when he was, you know, a little, well, he did like a gin.’

Frank wrinkled his nose at her.

Like a gin? Sure. He bathed in the stuff!

According to Mad Margaret or M2, as Joe called her, she had to fight her way through all the servants who attended her. One to plait her hair, one to wash her, one to feed her, one to dress her. She had three sisters and a brother. The house must have been colossal unless her staff slept standing up. And so when she left Malaysia at twenty-one for England, she looked for a man who could support such an existence and, at first, Joe’s father was unaware of her intentions.

However, when she announced they should be married and questioned what steps he planned to take, he affected rapid and large steps sailing to America to work as an accountant on Wall Street. She followed him within days and they were married in Milton, Massachusetts, settling down just in time for a major recession.

‘We should go and live in the south; plenty of servants there.’

‘Slavery ended Margaret. This is not Malaysia. You could learn to cook and iron; other women have managed.’

With her voice high, ‘I am not ‘other women’. I am used to a certain lifestyle.’

‘You could get a job. Two incomes. Buy a house. Have children.’

‘A job!! My father would die if he heard you even suggest I work.’

‘He’d love the idea. All you girls think there’s a prince waiting round every corner.’

After struggling for a few years in America Joe’s parents returned to England and bought a house for £800 in Kent. A modest house, the home Joe and his siblings grew up in. Nice neighbours, educated, business people but ‘not our class’ as Mad Margaret was always saying.

‘Don’t bring them into the house. Play outside; there’s good boys.’

The neighbourhood kids had no desire to come in! The sun room was uncomfortably immaculate, antique furniture, antimacassars, thick pile carpet and a stuffy book collection. Beyond that the house was a messy shambles into which nobody outside the family was ever allowed.

Mrs Brunger did the cleaning with her daughter, Sheila, who was Joe’s nanny. Mr and Mrs Diprose were the gardeners. Mad Margaret often had friends drive over for tea, generally after she had her hair permed and coloured or when she had just added to her shoe collection. They met in the sun room and were never permitted in the rest of the house.

Wrong, the stairs and upstairs toilet and landing were also very ‘Homes and Garden,’ but the bedroom doors were always kept firmly closed. ‘The Colonel’s wife loves my hyacinths. She thinks we should move to Rochester,’ M2 announced to my Dad.

He bristled, ‘Is she going to pay for our new place? We’re putting Anthony through King’s School and that’s a struggle already before Geoffrey and Joe are ready to go.’

‘You should ask for more money. Just give it to yourself – you’re the Managing Director!’

Joe painted his mother as an indolent snob, which she was, but he loved listening to her chat in Hindi to brush salesmen who came to their door. He also owed her a huge debt of gratitude. As a child her bedtime stories fired his imagination. None of your Hans Christians or Snow Whites but tropical storms, rain forests, Rajah’s palaces, snake temples, jungle hunts and exotic fruits of all descriptions.

From his earliest days Joe was determined to have adventures around the world, stretch himself and learn about other cultures. M2 would play wonderful tricks on him too. Tell long stories knowing he would fall asleep and pressing little treasures into his hands knowing he would wake wondering how they came to be there.

One night she spoke of clambering up a mountain to reach a Buddhist temple and in the morning he was clutching a tiny ivory Buddha.

‘She’s barking mad you know. Just like Louise (her mother),’ said Uncle Frank, in his plus fours and regimental tie. ‘They’ll have to cart her off.’

‘Don’t worry, uncle,’ said Joe. ‘I’ll have her put down at seventy-five. Mustn’t have her walking the streets in her nightie giving away the family fortune like Lou-Lou.’

Joe’s father had to work some evenings and the dining room was always toasty warm in winter for his return. It was the only room that was, thanks to a coal fire. Two massive armchairs filled half the space and into the rest was squeezed the dining table and chairs. For four months of the year, on waking up, Joe’s breath would plume white. ‘Make you strong’, Mad Margaret argued and it did toughen him, so he was rarely affected by the cold. His brothers, Anthony and Geoffrey, had fights almost daily and they often tried to force each other’s head through the stair railings. They would also gang up on Joe and put his head down the toilet. His mother was fearless and would walk into the height of battles to stop them.

She came out with some wonderful social gaffes. In front of all Joe’s nieces and nephews at his house – he couldn’t remember who’d died or got married – she announced: ‘My bird bath has been a great joy. We’ve had wrens, swallows and robins but I haven’t seen a tit all summer’. Joe thinks his cousin Andrew actually did wet himself; he certainly left the room in a hurry.

Another time Readers Digest came out with an eight, long-playing record set of the Classics. M2 held forth about their beauty and the brilliance of the playing until months later it was discovered they had all been listened to at the wrong speed.

In fairness to her too, she had pushed their dad to buy the caravan on the south coast, where they spent all their summers swimming, shrimping and riding bikes along the sea wall. And in winter making timber toboggans with steel runners – the envy of everyone on the ski slopes near home.

One thing her kids vowed not to replicate with their own children was the way she compared them unfavourably with other local youngsters.

‘Oh Russell has done so well, Joe. Nine passes in the School Certificate.’ His own seven paled suddenly. ‘John is off to Cambridge.’ Joe had been proud of going to Reading University.

All in all, though, a remarkable lady who saw plenty of life. The years in Malaysia and America. Separated for six years in the war when the Germans bombed the local airport and women and children were evacuated to the country. Loving a drink she once polished off a litre of duty free sherry in twenty-four hours. Formal balls every few months, where she could finally mix with her kind of people. Genteel conversations with the ancient lady from Zimbabwe living opposite, who punctuated her conversations with farts. A retinue of servants they realized their Dad couldn’t afford after he died penniless at sixty-four. The passport she altered – reducing her age by ten years – when suitors started calling, leaving it accidentally out on the coffee table for them to try and resist opening.

But the climax of her life was lunch with the Queen as part of Rochester’s five hundred anniversary celebrations as a city. The photo couldn’t be missed in the entry hall at home. Father in top hat and tails and mother in a stunning new outfit, in front of a gleaming limousine. Joe’s mother passed away holding the commemorative cup from that lunch. Dead at seventy-five, saving him the embarrassment and expense of having her put down. Joe never forgot that M2 gave him a giant inferiority complex but still regretted the morphine overdose.

*****

Before they left home his brothers made it clear that he had no future as he was too soft. They hunted, shot and fished but he hated hurting anything,

Where’s the fun in that? I just don’t get it.

‘Oh, it’s all right to eat fish and rub your tum’ after rabbit casserole but you have to kill and prepare them first, you know. Come on Joe we’ll show you how. Now hold the fish’s tail while we gut it. Don’t run off. Come back here … now. Joe?’

His brothers called him ‘the alien’ at mealtimes as most often he didn’t like the food his mother served up. Vegetables pressure-cooked to various shades of grey with no discernible flavour. Meat tough or gristly or both. Roast for Sunday lunch, cold meat for Monday, mince on Tuesday, curry Wednesday, soup on Thursday. Fish on Friday was a relief. But then so was curry which had only the briefest association with anything meaty. Most days dessert was suet pudding; like face flannels only made palatable by lashings of golden syrup.

So Joe planted his own tomatoes and the cats got rotund with his leftovers. Their own garden also had apples and peaches and a long, fast arm could purloin the neighbour’s raspberries. And Joe loved bread and dripping. His salvation, if a perfect formula for later clogged arteries.

Parties were a different story. Standard fare was cheese and tomato sandwiches and dishes of raspberry jelly with whipped cream. Joe’s record was twenty-four sandwiches into his hollow legs, bloating his feet. Prodding his tummy his brother asked,

‘What do you call your stomach animal or is it an insect, Joe?’

‘Tommy,’ he announced after some thought.

‘So. It’s a tape worm?’

‘No. An insect.’

‘Should be Ivan then. What’s it look like?’

‘Lots of legs and a huge cake hole.’

‘Tommy’ stuck.

Young Bernadette

Bernadette rebelled at six about her organic diet and her Uncle Patrick’s attentions. Her favourite tricks were to projectile vomit at high decibel when they had company. And to run, screaming whenever Patrick came within touching distance. Everybody thought it was hilarious. Well, almost everybody.

Outside home she was ‘Bernie’ and took every opportunity to chomp chips, guzzle cola