Free The Submerged Cathedral by Charlotte Wood

her shoulder next to the strap of her slip.
    After he has gone to his own room she lies in the dark, thinking of Ellen and a German and Thomas. And trying not to think about what Martin’s expression might have been when she did not look at him across the table. Trying not to wonder why he had not said, Of course not.
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    Martin drives the road back to the city in the dark before dawn. Shivering to keep himself awake, trying to warm up, he flexes the muscles of his thighs repeatedly, shrugs his shoulders. He is glad this morning to be driving away from that house, from Ellen’s voice. Rags of mist appear white on the road and sweep up suddenly above the car as he drives. He winds down the window and the icy air rushes in. He can make out the long hump of the mountain range now against the paler dark of the sky.
    He is so tired. He slows the car, pulls over onto the gravel at the side of the road, and gets out, trudges to where the gravel meets the trees.
    He stands there in the quiet, with his hands in his pockets, thinking of Jocelyn looking like a small girl when her sister talks. Thinking of Ellen’s sly voice, her traps. The day to come at the surgery will be long, with all its complaints and smells, and there seems to be so much driving, all the bloody driving.
    The sky is lightening, and he can smell the eucalypts. A bird whirrs. The mist still hangs in the air. If he wanted to, he could step slowly down into the dim fog and the dripping trees, and disappear into the bush.
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    In the weeks before Christmas the weather warms again and Jocelyn takes Sandra to the town swimming pool. She is going to teach her to swim. Sandra has been excited about coming, but the first day they arrive she is too embarrassed to change in the sunlit chlorine-scented rooms, and only after changing in a toilet cubicle will she walk to the pool, holding Jocelyn’s hand. She stands at the edge, watching the other children leaping around in the water. She stands with her hands clasped in front of her thighs, arms stretched, covering her pudgy belly. The bright fibre-glass panels of the fence cast a blue glow over her.
    Jocelyn slips into the water first, the cold stunning her a moment, then lies on her back, trying to coax Sandra in. But Sandra will only sit on the edge with her legs dangling, ankles and feet moving from side to side in the water.
    â€˜You’ll like it, I promise,’ Jocelyn says, praying this to be true. At seven, she herself had taken almost a whole summer to put her head under. She remembers the slow, obstinate fear growing during the walk to every lesson;the determination that today she would do it – but once in the water, thrashed by the kicks and splashes of other children, she’d lose her nerve, rearing up at the last second, breathless and petrified.
    Martin and Ellen had argued about throwing a child in at the deep end. Each remembered the shock of it themselves, the shooting panic and splutter, the terrified disbelief at their parents’ betrayal.
    â€˜But it was good for me,’ Ellen said. ‘You would never have got me in the water at all otherwise.’
    Now Jocelyn and Sandra eye one another across the water, waiting it out. Sandra’s small mouth is set hard, her arms folded with her hands tucked into her armpits. Jocelyn coaxes, jokes. Then flicks water, hoping Sandra will take up the game and kick a splash back at her. But Sandra only flinches and holds herself taut when Jocelyn reaches out a wet hand to her.
    After twenty minutes of sitting in the shallow water watching toddlers with plastic toys and kickboards, Jocelyn water-crawls over to Sandra at the edge. ‘It’s all right, I won’t make you. Just stay there and watch the other children while I do some laps in the big pool, okay?’
    Sandra nods stiffly.
    After swimming a lap Jocelyn lifts herself to hug the tiled edge, looking back at the children’s pool, hoping to see Sandra wading