Free The Stranding by Karen Viggers Page B

grass track to the road, curious and surprised, until he recognised the woman and saw the defiance in her stance. His stride strangled and his heart knocked and emotion swamped him so suddenly he was bruised by it.
    Jilly. What was she doing here? He didn’t need this. But his heart rolled with hope.
    As he walked across the heath to meet her he noticed she had about her the sharpness and rush of a city person. There was an efficiency and tautness in her stance that he had forgotten. By the primping of her left hand, he could tell she was annoyed by the energetic lick of the wind at her tightly constrained hair. There was a wild moment when his feet tingled to spin and flee through the grass back to the beach. If he did, he knew he would rabbit into the waves and swim out as far as he could go. Straight into the blue and the beginning whitecaps ticked up by the afternoon breeze. But he went on.
    At first there was a thick silence as he stood at the base of the steps with the yellow grasses tickling his ankles, looking up at her and feeling nothing but emptiness. He realised he was looking for something in her face that wasn’t there. She didn’t connect with him at all. Her whole body was wired tight with nerves and anger, and it was hard for him not to cry. The hope he had summoned as he walked back up the path to the house slumped to vague curiosity. On recent form, he expected her to blast him, hammer him to a pulp. He braced himself for it. But she stood taut on the deck, saying nothing.
    Not knowing what else to do, Lex stepped up and hugged her, wrapping his arms around the thin entirety of her, holding her close, waiting for a response. In the space between them there was nothing that he could grip on to. He was expecting emotion and familiarity, but her body and smell seemed foreign, like she was a stranger. Yet somewhere in the tight space of angles and awkwardness, history invaded the hug, but it brought no warmth. It was heavy and immensely sad. Lex held on to her as if he were sinking, then she pulled away and he opened the door for her. While he made tea in the kitchen, she stayed near the windows, stiffly watching him.
    She was dressed in smart beige shorts and a burnt-orange singlet top that sank low at the neckline and hugged her breasts so that he could see the faint crease between them. So, she wanted to scarify him and raise blood from the past. Lex’s hands shook so much the cup clattered as he placed it on the coffee table. He retreated to the couch on the other side of the room, his back to the wall.
    The way Jilly scanned the room Lex knew she was searching for evidence of another woman—perhaps a sunhat, sunglasses, a pair of thongs, a T-shirt thrown over the back of a chair. She’d be disappointed that everything was so male and solitary. A half-empty cup of coffee was sitting on the table. A pair of shorts was discarded in the middle of the floor, and a towel slung on a chair. He’d left a paperback forked open on the couch, a stack of playing cards on the table, and a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. There was nothing that she could accuse him of.
    Seeing her close, he was surprised by the pointiness of her nose. He had forgotten how she plucked her eyebrows too thin so that they seemed like startled birds in flight. There was an austere severity in the way she had dragged her hair back into a ponytail. Growing her fringe out had also given her a sharper look.
    ‘What is this place?’ she asked finally.
    ‘It’s my retreat,’ Lex said.
    ‘I mean, what sort of place is this? Who would live out here? There’s nothing to do.’
    ‘There’s plenty to do. It’s very cleansing.’
    ‘You’re fooling yourself, Lex.’
    ‘I’ve been doing lots of reading. See here,’ he said, moving to the bookshelves. ‘There are all these books on whaling.’
    ‘Since when have you been interested in whaling?’
    ‘I used to cover it on radio every year. Don’t you remember?’
    ‘No. I didn’t