Man of Water

Watt, a self-absorbed writer in middle-aged decline, has settled in to his friends’ holiday house to work on a new novel. But days and weeks go by and he achieves little more than a self-serving relationship with a local woman. His talent for procrastination and passivity reaching a terrible climax as he stands by and watches, frozen, as an old man drowns in the local weir. Man of Water unfolds like a psychological thriller, peeling back the layers of Watt’s life to expose clues to the guilt he feels for a long line of abandoned relationships — his mother, wife, son and lovers. As the police, his past and his personal life begin closing in, Watt seeks to escape in the way he knows best — into the slippery world of words. Life is most real for Watt in the stories he writes. Stories of loss and redemption that emerge from one another like Russian dolls, until fiction surprises as fact, and fact becomes fiction. Man of Water is a rich and lively page-turner — razor sharp, insightful and darkly comic.

CHRIS MCLEOD

Fremantle Arts Centre Press Australia’s finest small publisher

Previous works by Chris McLeod Collections of short fiction Homing The Crying Room Novels River of Snake City of Skies

Chris McLeod was born in Western Australia in 1950 and grew up in Katanning. He now lives in the Perth hills. He has worked in psychology, teaching and journalism. Man of Water is his third novel.

The weir

Watt’s dream Watt’s dream is of his mother. In the dream he is returning to her house, the house he once shared with her. He is filled with dread, knows when he enters the house he will find her there. She will be cold. Her face will be stiff, grotesque. She will be dead. In the dream he has been away, should have returned long ago, to face this. What could have been so important to him, to keep him from coming back? There is something, but it is just out of reach, he cannot remember what it is. Perhaps if he had come back earlier he could have saved her. It is too late now. She will have died here, alone. He pushes open the front door, steps into the small lounge. The gas heater in the old fireplace is on. His mother sits on a green and white vinyl sofa, doing a crossword puzzle. She does not look up. In the dream he knows he is being given some kind of a second chance. Rather than being in any way comforting, this knowledge is immensely sad. He cannot stay here with her. He hears the sound of his name. It is not his mother who speaks it. It comes from somewhere inside himself. He drives himself up, out of sleep, into the dark room. A moth is on his face. He feels it flutter against his skin, sweeps it away with a great wounded roar. Rain beats against the window.

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No point trying to get back to sleep. His eyes are closed but he is aware of the gradually changing light outside. He hears the surf. Eventually, when he opens his eyes, the sun has come up. He thinks momentarily of a dry landscape, the sun hanging there, low and red and harsh. He gets out of bed, goes to the window, looks out over the ocean where a few hundred metres offshore a boat is slowly moving north. The water is grey with rain and low cloud. Then he walks stiffly through the small living room and laundry to the toilet, pisses into the cracked bowl, turns, catches sight of himself in a mirror, looks away from the image: greying, thinning hair, watery eyes in a bony face. In the kitchen he fills an electric jug, rinses the worst stains out of a mug which bears a picture of Garfield, a cartoon cat. He thinks of the dream, tries to shake it off. It resists him. The rain intensifies for a few moments, then dies back to almost nothing.

Winter He has been living in Osprey Bay for about six months. The house belongs to friends, Helen and Steve — they use it as a beach house a few times each year but mostly it is vacant and they are happy for him to stay: he can do a bit of maintenance, mow the grass, maybe paint the gutters. So far he has done none of these things.

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He makes a cup of metallic-tasting coffee in the Garfield mug. The mug probably belongs to Chelsea or Megan, Helen and Steve’s daughters. One of the girls has drawn a picture of a house — beneath it she has written, ‘I love you Mummy and Daddy, your the best.’ He mentally corrects the punctuation, as he does each time he notices the drawing. The girls are about seven and nine he thinks, though he’s not sure. Quiet, self-contained children, they have made no effort to engage him on the few occasions he has seen them. Why should they? — he has made no effort to engage them. The drawing is stuck to the fridge with a magnet in the shape of a hand. Other drawings — houses, animals, the family — are taped to walls. Beneath a picture of two adults and two children Chelsea has written, ‘I love you Mummy and Daddy and Megan, I will never let you go.’ He feels locked out by this force-field of family unity. Helen and Steve are old acquaintances. Helen used to teach with him and Clare. Steve was a teacher too in those days. Now he’s a landscape gardener, doing good business with limestone walls and water features. He’s short and slight, with a laid-back, sincere manner. Devoted to Helen and the girls. Helen runs on nervous energy, at one time fuelled by the conviction that Steve was fucking his female clients. He wasn’t, at least not as far as Watt could determine. After a few drinks she would round on him, accusing him of a more than professional interest in some female’s reticulation. He was really quite tolerant, laughing it off in a good-natured sort of way. In public, anyway. Watt hasn’t heard her do this since the girls were born — now she focuses on them with an intense concern for their well-being. After he split up with Clare, Helen and Steve were about the only shared friends who made any effort to contact him. He’s continued to

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see them occasionally, always at their instigation. He imagines they view him as some kind of lost soul. His writing perplexes them. Are you making any money out of it yet? one or the other of them — usually Helen — will enquire. That’s what he’s supposed to be doing now in this house in Osprey Bay. Writing. What a joke. He takes his coffee and sits in the seat closest to the window. The rain is falling steadily now; there’s not much difference between the sea and the sky. Both grey. Both cold. Watt can’t remember a winter like this. It’s rained nearly every day.

The Challenge of the Tiger The house is a small rectangle. Constructed from salmon-pink bricks with an iron roof it perches towards the back of its block, overlooking the ocean. There is no garden, just a tangle of coastal scrub and peppermint trees. Near the house is a patch of overgrown couch grass and dandelions — this is the lawn that Watt has failed to mow; it is a damp and sullen reminder of his neglect. His car, an ageing Holden, inhabits the middle of this patch — he has been unable to start it since he arrived and now the grass has started to grow up around the tyres. A sandy driveway leads down to the road, on the other side of which are dunes and the beach. Behind the house is a shed where Steve

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keeps a small dinghy, some fishing gear, a few tools and a lawnmower. A small concrete tank on a high stand would have supplied water at some time in the house’s history, but now Osprey Bay is connected to the scheme. There is another concrete water tank, still operational, which collects rainwater from the roof. It’s been overflowing since he arrived. Steve, Helen, Chelsea and Megan have stencilled around the outline of their hands with blue paint on the smooth tank wall and have written their names beneath the outlines. They have also recorded their respective heights on the tank. Family holiday mementos, suspended in time. The front door opens on to the main space, a combined living room and kitchen. There are two bedrooms: one faces the ocean and has a military-firm double bed; the other, at the back of the house, has two sets of bunks. Next to this room are the laundry, toilet and shower. There are scuffed grey ceramic floor tiles throughout the house. The walls are rendered with a sand and cement mixture and painted off-white, with a few cracks around the aluminium-framed windows. In the kitchen is a red laminex table, in the lounge a faded and sagging blue and white striped sofa — Steve would have collected these objects from a road verge rubbish throw-out in the city. The beds probably came from the same source, though Helen would have insisted on new mattresses. An old television on a metal stand, a radio and a blondewood coffee table with a smoked glass top complete the furnishings. As well as the girls’ drawings on the walls there is a framed print of Spanish dancers. Also a badly executed painting of a tiger. The tiger is crouching in a jungle scene, looking straight ahead. Its pose is awkward, its dimensions unlikely. A caption names the work: The Challenge of the Tiger. It’s more than likely Steve acquired this dubious piece from a road verge throw-out too, Watt thinks.

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If you move around the room the eyes will follow you, Steve told Watt once. It’s true, they do, after a fashion. The tiger looks depressed.

Guilt The rain has eased to a few sporadic drops. Watt decides to go for a walk; perhaps by the time he gets back he will feel like doing some work, though he recognises this avoidance strategy for what it is. He sets off along the path next to the road at the bottom of the driveway; walking south, the ocean is on his right and the settlement on his left. Osprey Bay is a mixture of beach shacks and modest houses — mainly dating from the sixties and seventies, mostly fibro, occasionally timber or brick — and new homes. Many of these new homes are double-storey, all glass and steel and limestone. In the time he has been here Watt has followed the construction of one such monstrosity. Today workmen are installing the obligatory wrought-iron gates and security system. When it is finished, he thinks, the house will more than likely remain empty for most of the year, gates locked, blinds drawn. There will be no one on the balconies which look out over the ocean, secured against the elements with yet more glass or maybe roll-down clear plastic sheeting. He walks as far as the inlet, sits on a bench facing the water. There is another track he could take; it leads around the inlet for a while then back up the river until it reaches a weir. The round trip is another hour or so, maybe a bit too far today with the rain looking likely to start again. And there’s the work he should be

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doing back at the house: he is getting nowhere with the writing he has set himself to do but there is also the dissertation he is supposed to be working on; its subject, of all things, creativity and writing process. The irony makes him laugh out loud, startling a few seagulls that have come close to the bench. He once wrote a story about a boy and his mother who had come to the city from their country town. They went to a beach where there was a crowd of seagulls. At first the boy gave the seagulls bits of bread from his lunch, but this just encouraged more to gather until they were surrounded by squawking, flapping, fighting birds. The boy in the story hated the angry noises the birds made, he hated the way some seagulls would puff up their feathers and run at the others. The boy’s mother said they were filthy birds, even though they looked clean. It was his mother and himself he was writing about of course. When they moved to the city. When he was eleven years old. This morning’s dream pulls at him as he walks back towards the house. She was sitting there with her crossword puzzle, not looking up, keeping her face from him. That was significant, he supposes, something to do with guilt. His or hers? He tries to fix on an image of her face but nothing comes. He can construct it from the few photographs he has of her but, since she died, he has never been able to really see her face. One of the photographs, a 1940s studio portrait, shows her in an air force uniform. It is a head and shoulders shot, her head tilted to one side and propped by her left hand. You can see the wedding ring. Her face is made up for the occasion: lipstick picking out a cupid’s bow around her lips, mascara darkening her eyelashes. A

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few strands of hair — curled in the fashion of the time — are visible beneath the WRAAF cap. Her eyes are fixed on distance; the future perhaps. Some sadness already showing in them but hope too. A calmness to her, a stillness, a strength he does not remember. And yet she was strong. In her way. The rain begins to fall again as he reaches the house-underconstruction. An attractive woman passes him, heading towards the inlet. They acknowledge each other with nods and half-smiles and, for a moment, he fantasises about her. He gets to the bottom of his driveway just as the rain intensifies, scrambles up to the front door, breathing heavily from the exertion. The tiger challenges his entry with its usual yellow-eyed stare.

An aesthetic of desire His papers and books are spread on the laminex table, in front of a low-powered Apple computer with a small screen. Also on the table is an A4 notebook with a bound black and red cover. It contains jottings he has used towards previous writing; he’s had it for more than twenty years, it’s still not filled. If he were inclined he could track the progress of most of his stories and his two novels: images that appealed to him at the time, the odd phrase, the odd idea. It’s a pretty meagre record, he thinks. Still, the notebook is a reminder that he has been a writer.

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What is he now? A former writer? A resting writer? If so, it’s been a long rest. A blocked writer? That sounds like a plumbing fitting: sorry missus, your writer’s blocked, we’re going to have to do a flush through, might be a bit messy. A writer of learned theses? Hardly. Creativity and Writing Process. Dear God, whatever was he thinking of? Well, the money of course. A postgraduate scholarship, taxfree, enough to get by on if his living expenses are low. He applied for it on the basis of his modest achievement as a writer and his even more modest achievement as an undergraduate student some thirty years ago. He hadn’t expected the university to look twice at his application; surely they give these things to young, keen students with straight As and prospects, not fifty year old no-hopers who haven’t been able to get a writer’s grant for the past five years. But there was the support of an academic or two who had been prepared to say that Watt’s frequently obscure prose was sufficiently interesting to warrant funding. And a bit of luck with the selection process when an offer came up after a no doubt more worthy candidate opted to take up a scholarship at another university. He was in. Three years of regular money without having to work for it or sign on for it. A dream come true. Also an affirmation: his work was valued. Perhaps this could get him writing again. Why had he stopped anyway? No particular reason, there just hadn’t seemed to be any point. The passion was not there, not that it ever had been really. Some kind of a slow-burn compulsion at best. His program would lead to a doctorate. A PhD in creative writing. That sounded a bit flimsy. Still, that wasn’t the issue. And he probably wouldn’t finish anyway. However, despite himself, he felt some enthusiasm. In a flurry of activity he organised the

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move out of his flat in Maylands, put his furniture in storage and arranged with Helen and Steve to come down here. The Osprey Bay house was rent-free in return for the maintenance jobs. He could move into their house in Shenton Park if they wanted a beach holiday, but that wasn’t likely until spring at the earliest.

He has decided to put the novel to one side — just for a while, he tells himself — and make a start on the dissertation.

Last week he borrowed Claudia’s car and drove to the city. He had an appointment at the university to see his academic supervisor, Dr Louise Sparrow, to whom he had been assigned when he accepted his place in the program. He arrived on time but Dr Sparrow, who was deputising for the dean of Arts during first semester, was not in her office. Her secretary made him a coffee. ‘Lou’s very busy, it’s a bad time of the year for her, lots of meetings. But she’ll be with you in a moment. You can wait in her office if you like.’ He sat at a round conference table. Before leaving Osprey Bay he had come up with a list of sources for his proposed dissertation. It was a short list. He knew of a few books of the type wherein writers explain how they go about the business of creating their work — this had always seemed a lot of wank. But he supposed it might be a place to start. And he remembered something about the study of creativity from his undergraduate days as a student of psychology. Maybe he should check that out, though he didn’t imagine too many answers were to be found in that quasi-scientific discipline. Psychologists would want to measure it and poke it with statistical sticks before twisting it to fit the terms of whatever ridiculous paradigm they were currently excited about. Then there were the old stagers, Jung and Freud: surely they would have something to say on the matter. There were also the so-called literary theorists, whom he had made a point of avoiding up until now. Perhaps the good doctor Sparrow could suggest some reading, though Watt was unenthusiastic about the possibility of encounters with Foucault, Lacan, Kristeva, Bakhtin et al. He had once been on a panel at some literary event where a fellow panellist had insisted on talking about what she described as the Kristevan construct of a feminist

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He is required to produce a novel and a dissertation. So far he has made little progress; a few attempts to begin a narrative, but there is really nothing he wants to write about. Most of his previous work was fairly unplanned but he was able to connect with ideas and images which led on to other ideas and images which led, eventually, to some kind of fiction. He has tried the same approach here but without any worthwhile results. Everything he has attempted to write since he has been here is like something he has written previously, though without conviction or energy or heart. And he can find no discipline, apply no concentration. He will sit at the laminex table and stare at the ocean. He will watch the rain. He will walk. He will try to nap during the day. He will brood. All times are the wrong times for writing: if it is morning he will put it off until afternoon, by which time evening seems like a better option. He has no wish to write by evening — he will watch television, or read, or maybe visit Claudia. Though he is not sleeping well he does not take advantage of the early hours of the morning to write; his rationalisation is that he is too tired, the work would be no good. And then another day follows that is much the same. Nothing is done. He despises his inaction, his procrastination.

aesthetic of desire, or some such nonsense. He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. She had nice tits though. Dr Louise Sparrow would probably suggest an engagement with similar aesthetics. There was a photograph of her on the office wall — he presumed it was her. She looked about ten years younger than him and a lot more ambitious. After about half an hour Dr Sparrow’s secretary returned to tell him, ‘Lou is still in a meeting, she won’t be long now. Would you like another coffee?’ He declined, saying he wouldn’t wait any longer. ‘Oh,’ she said, looking surprised, ‘can she email you? What’s your email address?’ ‘No email address.’ ‘She’ll want to phone you then.’ ‘No phone.’ Watt gave his postal address in Osprey Bay. He then spent some time in the university library, coming away with an armful of books. On the drive back he thought fleetingly about the aesthetic of desire and decided he probably didn’t have one. The rain started just before he reached Osprey Bay.

Vulture child Among the books he has borrowed from the university library is one which takes as its subject the psychoanalytic study of creativity. He begins to read an essay by Freud on Leonardo da Vinci. The essay starts with Leonardo’s memory of having been

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visited, while still in his cradle, by a vulture that opened his mouth with its tail, which it then used to strike against his lips. Improbable, he thinks. His own memories go back only as far as beginning school — he would have been five at the time — and having to hold hands with a girl as they marched with other children into their classroom. He remembers her name: Diana Christie. He may have another memory — it seems like an earlier memory — of walking with his mother across open ground. Maybe there are stars. Maybe it is cold. But he is not sure of any of this. He reads on. Freud too thinks Leonardo’s memory is improbable, taking issue with the age of the child and, more strongly, with the content of the recollection. It’s too fabulous, Freud thinks, too unlikely. A vulture indeed. There must be another explanation. Leonardo has imagined the whole thing, made it up, transferred the false memory from fantasy to childhood recollection. Freud slips into his stride: the vulture’s tail represents a penis, the situation represents fellatio, the vulture represents a mother figure. A cow’s udder also gets a Freudian guernsey: he sees it as both penis (its shape) and nursing breast (its function). Leonardo has mistaken a vulture’s tail for a penis which is in reality his mother’s breast. No wonder Leonardo was confused, Watt thinks. Freud isn’t confused: Leonardo’s cradle vulture is clearly a memory of being nursed at his mother’s breast. The proof is there in his art: all those Madonnas, that Mona Lisa smile; it’s his mother’s smile, of course it is; that’s what is driving Leonardo’s creativity, art as some kind of psychic code. Watt is impressed by Freud’s inventiveness, if not by his logic. He thinks about his own memory — if it is a memory — of stars. He has written about

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stars: phosphorescent stars on the ceiling of a room in which a man killed himself. Who is the man in the room? Just a character in a story. Yet all his writing is a kind of code — he has never been able to deal directly with anything. All that disguised stuff. Who is he hiding it from? Who cares? He stares out at the ocean, grey and restless as ever. The sun is behind clouds which pack down to the horizon. Rain, driven by wind off the water, spatters the window glass in front of him. A bird — some kind of seabird — flies south. He reads on. Freud isn’t finished yet. He’s back on to vultures, and why the Egyptians chose them to represent motherhood: they believed all vultures were female, with a unique method of conception: the birds were impregnated by the wind. A useful construct for Leonardo’s times, Freud points out: if vultures could do this trick with the wind, then surely it would not be beyond a human female, one human female at least. The church fathers would have been right behind that. Freud puts it all together. Leonardo — an illegitimate child who spent the first years of his life with his forsaken mother — would have been aware of the Egyptian view of vultures. While thinking about the bird’s fabled ability to procreate without the co-operation of a male, a false memory was born. Its meaning: Leonardo saw himself as a vulture child; he had a mother but no father. Watt thinks of his own forsaken mother, and of himself, her vulture child. The rain continues, like a long, cold prayer.

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A sense of place That evening he visits Claudia. She lives one street back from the ocean in a two-storey house. The walk takes him about five minutes. It’s still raining but only a light drizzle now. She’s expecting him. He’s brought wine, not an expensive bottle. She kisses him at the door. He was surprised to find her living in Osprey Bay. He had met her a few times before his move down here. The first meeting was at a reading at one of Perth’s writers centres. His second collection of short stories had just been published and he had been invited to read with two other minor literary luminaries — a fierce lesbian poet with a one-word name, and a hyperactive writer of adolescent fiction who, he remembers, had assumed a twitchy board-riding stance while delivering his unfortunate prose about spunk-rats and hot chicks. Claudia had been in the audience. She cornered him at the wine and cheese afterwards and told him she wanted to write the way he did. Christ, he thought, spare me that. She wasn’t bad looking though — probably late thirties, long dark hair, good figure, lots of make-up. She had been at various other literary events, always rushing up to tell him about her latest writing projects: dreary-sounding collaborations with other aspiring writers who wanted to produce stories about their grandmothers or explore a sense of place. She was definitely fuckable, he thought, though he did nothing to advance this possibility. A few months ago he had judged a short story competition where he awarded third prize to a story about a reader who falls in love with a writer she has not met. A rather silly premise, but the third best of a bad lot — competent enough

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but stylistically irritating, all short sentences and hanging lines. The entries had pen names so he didn’t know it was Claudia’s work until he had made his decision. At the presentation she told him she felt encouraged, would return to her writing with renewed enthusiasm. He said something vague about all writers needing a bit of recognition. Oh yes, she said, we do. Then not long after he’d arrived in Osprey Bay he’d encountered her in front of the meat section of the supermarket. She told him she had a house in town — it had been in the family for years and she was using it as a writer’s retreat, spending a lot of time here. ‘This is such a perfect place to write, don’t you think?’ ‘It never stops raining.’ ‘But that’s it, isn’t it.’ ‘What?’ ‘The sense of — I don’t know — place I suppose. There’s good energy here.’ Watt said he hadn’t noticed. She invited him for a meal. ‘A roast, perhaps?’ She indicated a slab of bloody meat. What the hell, he thought. He might even get laid. Over dinner she told him her father built the house as a beach shack when she was a little girl and had upgraded it over the years. She and her younger sister had often spent summer holidays here with their parents. These were good times, mostly good, though her parents had split up when she was about ten — that had actually happened here, the physical separation anyway. There had been some big argument and her mother had got on a bus to Perth and subsequently moved out of the family home. ‘Did they get back together?’ Watt asked.

‘No, that was it. Never saw much of Mum after that. Turns out there was a bloke she was seeing. Eventually they moved to Melbourne. There were a few letters, the occasional phone call, birthday card and so on but after a while they stopped.’ ‘That must have hurt. The abandonment.’ ‘I just withdrew. Didn’t let myself feel anything much.’ ‘What about your sister, how did it affect her?’ ‘The opposite to me. She was really upset, acted out, cried for what seemed like years, blamed Dad in some way, kept waiting for Mum to come back.’ ‘That’s understandable. Must have been hard for her, for both of you.’ ‘Of course, but we were different in our reactions. Always have been.’ ‘In what way?’ This information didn’t particularly interest him but her breasts did. He slid a glance towards them as she leaned back, considering her answer. ‘Lots of ways. She’s always been looking for the perfect family — you know, the husband, the children, the house.’ ‘Did she find it?’ ‘She did, thought she did anyway.’ ‘But?’ ‘But it wasn’t real. He was fucking around for years, anything in a skirt. Even tried it on with me.’ ‘Well, I can’t blame him for that. You’re an attractive woman.’ He was shameless, couldn’t help himself. ‘So you had a fling?’ ‘Give me a break, he was my sister’s husband! Not that I wasn’t tempted. He was an interesting man, in some ways. An artist. But no, the guilt, you know …’ ‘Oh yes, I know about that.’

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‘Still,’ Claudia said, looking away, ‘at least she has her children.’ ‘You don’t?’ ‘No.’ She paused. ‘What about you?’ ‘Well, yes, a son, Tim, though I haven’t had any contact with him since he was young. His mother went to live over east. He’ll be twenty-five now.’ ‘That’s where the sadness comes from, in your writing.’ ‘I don’t know about that.’ ‘And the guilt.’ She was sharper than he had given her credit for. ‘You might have something there.’ ‘But don’t you see? These are the things that make us what we are. Make us writers.’ She suddenly stood, came to his side of the table, kissed him on the mouth. He was surprised but responded enthusiastically, allowed himself to be led up the stairs into the bedroom. Once there, his performance was unexceptional: he entered her too quickly and came almost immediately, like a teenager. It had been a while, he explained, somewhat embarrassed. Afterwards he got out of bed and stood in front of the window, looking first towards the dark ocean then towards the lights of the town below. Claudia came and stood behind him, put her arms around him. He moved away from her. He has visited her a few times since then. She has volunteered some more information about herself, though not a lot: she is a nurse, currently on leave from her hospital job in Perth. Most of her nursing work has been with children; at first she found this

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satisfying but now it depresses her, she hates the sadness with which she has to deal; she would like to change the direction of her career, change her life, break old patterns, find meaning in what she does. The men she has been involved with over the years have been unsatisfactory for one reason or another: incapable of commitment or closeness or sensitivity, or married, or damaged, or exploitative, or just wrong. She has not found the soulmate she seeks. But she is still hopeful. It’s not me, Watt wanted to tell her when she said that, it’s never going to be me. But the moment passed. Maybe that’s not what she wants from him anyway. Mostly, she wants to talk about writing. She wants to be a writer, that is what she would really like to do with her life. He hasn’t discouraged her — no point, she’s going to try anyway — but he knows she will never make it. She presses him for information, writerly tips. Such discussions bore him. What can he tell her, or anyone, about how to be a writer? On one occasion he said something about the need to sometimes blur the boundaries between fact and fiction — hardly revolutionary information, yet she leapt on it. ‘What do you mean?’ she said, looking intense. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘just make it up, that’s all.’ Thankfully, she has not asked him to read any of her work and he has not volunteered to do so. She has asked him about the work he is doing. He has told her he isn’t doing any — and anyway, he doesn’t talk about work in progress. They have sex. His performance has improved since the first time but is still nothing special. If she is unsatisfied with this she does not say so and he does not ask. He always goes back to his house afterwards though he knows she would like him to stay. While he was fucking her tonight he thought about Leonardo’s vulture and Freud’s cow’s udder. He did not share this information.

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Afterwards, as he walks home, the rain has stopped though the air is still damp. He notices the stars are out.

Stars It is after midnight when he gets back. For a moment he considers doing some writing, though he has rarely been able to write late at night — more accurately, he has rarely pushed himself to do so. Tonight he is too tired. Maybe he will write tomorrow. He goes to bed, lies in the darkness, listens to the sound of the ocean, looks at the stars. He remembers a room with stars on the ceiling. This room was also in a coastal town, not far from Osprey Bay. Some years ago he had rented a house there for a few weeks — the house belonged to friends of friends, so he got it cheaply. The plan was to write. It was winter. The house was unfurnished so he took a mattress and a few other things — he still had the van at that time. He put the mattress on the floor in one of the bedrooms. When he turned out the light he discovered the ceiling was covered with hundreds of stick-on phosphorescent stars. He had brought a radio with him and listened to a breaking news story about a landslide in the mountains near Canberra; a number of people in a ski lodge had been trapped; rescuers were trying to get to them but there was little progress, the site was still very dangerous. He thought about the tonnes of rock and soil and rubble. Was anyone still alive?

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What were they seeing? Just darkness? He looked at the stars on the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep; it was too cold. After a while he got up and found some newspaper, spread it under the mattress — it helped a bit, but freezing air was still coming up through cracks in the floorboards. The stars on the ceiling began to fade as the phosphorescence wore off. If he wanted to he could find the entry he made in his notebook the next morning. It would probably talk about the darkness, the cold, the terror. It would probably connect the fading phosphorescent stars with the fading hopes for the poor souls trapped by the landslide, and with the fading hopes of those trapped, if any had survived. What a cliche, he thinks, what a crude juxtaposition of image and feeling. And how far from the true weight of the horror. How useless. Yet there was a use, of sorts: he subsequently wrote about a man who killed himself in a room that had phosphorescent stars on the ceiling. He knows he wouldn’t have the courage himself, or the will. But if you follow psychoanalytic orthodoxy, he thinks, you are bound to come to the proposition that an author’s characters are all self-projections. Freud would have been right on to that if he had known about the man in the room with the stars. So what is it about himself that he would like to kill? Which selves? He could make a long list. As usual, sleep is elusive. He lies on his back, takes deep, slow breaths, tries to relax, tries to count his breaths, fails to get

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beyond three or four before his concentration is lost. He feels tension in his chest. His skin grows hot, then cold. He gets out of bed to draw the curtains, looks over the ocean; there is just blackness out there, no stars now, no moon. Surf booms up at him. He lies down again. His heart is beating too fast, blood is rushing, he feels tight. If he could just relax. If he could just sleep. He doesn’t want to take a sleeping pill tonight; sometimes they don’t work and then the next day is a write-off. But if he doesn’t sleep it will be anyway. A write-off. How appropriate. Why not write something now? No, he’s too tired. And what to write anyway? Read some more on creativity, more Freud perhaps? Good God, no. He’ll just lie here quietly, not thinking about sleep, that’s the best trick. The rain has started again, not heavily, just a murmur against the roof.

Julia He starts to think about Julia. He met her at a party. He was young, still a student. In those days his party trick was to look as intense and enigmatic as possible while writing out a few lines of poetry which he would then give to a girl, claiming the work as his own, spontaneously composed. Sometimes the lines were from a poem by Leonard Cohen — he doesn’t remember them in full now, they had something to do

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with some woman’s breasts being like the upturned bellies of fallen sparrows, her eyelashes like the spines of tiny animals. He does remember Julia’s breasts: they were large; nothing like sparrows’ bellies. Pigeons perhaps. He doesn’t remember her eyelashes. He read the poem to her. It worked, despite its anatomical inaccuracy — they left the party soon afterwards and went to her house in Dianella. The house surprised him: it was neat, suburban, not at all like the student and hippie dwellings he was used to. There was a collection of porcelain figures in a glass-fronted cabinet in the living room; a number of dolls were also displayed around this room. Photographs on the walls showed an older couple. She was a primary school teacher, she told him. They drank some brandy. She said she used to live in this house with her parents, but they died in a car crash about a year ago; it was her house now, she had no brothers or sisters. She missed her parents very much. He kissed her. They embraced on a floral-patterned sofa. He touched her large breasts. ‘You don’t have to do anything,’ she whispered to him. They went to her single bed. She said it again: ‘You don’t have to do anything.’ He thought she meant she did not want to have sex. He was quite drunk and fell asleep quickly. In the morning he discovered she had slept somewhere else in the house, in her parents’ room perhaps. When she brought him coffee she was wearing pyjamas — shortie pyjamas? baby-doll pyjamas? — which seemed bizarre to him. They ended up having sex under a frilly pink bedspread; she clung to him throughout with a desperation that unnerved him. There were more dolls in this room, and soft toys.

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He saw her a few more times. On the final occasion they talked about their favourite childhood books: he confessed to an enthusiasm for Biggles and she told him how much she liked the Winnie the Pooh stories. He said he had not read them. She went to another room and came back with a number of books. ‘You’ll love them,’ she said. At the time he was reading Sartre, Camus, Philip Roth, John Barth. He took the Winnie the Pooh books but had no intention of reading them. Soon afterwards he started seeing another girl. A few weeks later he remembered Julia’s books and went around to her house at a time when he knew she should be at school. He left the books in her letter box, without a note. He thought about going to see her but didn’t. About a year later he looked for her name in the telephone book to see if she was still living at the same address but she wasn’t listed. Some time after that he ran into the girl at whose party he had met Julia. ‘She killed herself,’ the girl said. ‘Pills, drowned in the bath. You knew her, didn’t you?’ What if he had stayed with her, would that have changed anything? Of course not. Anyway, he wasn’t with her, not really. He remembers fucking her and his cock starts to get hard. Jesus, that’s almost necrophilia, wrong response altogether. He tries to focus on his breathing again but it is still too shallow, he still feels tension in his chest. He will take that sleeping pill, otherwise he has no hope. He gets up, walks across the cold tiles to the laundry, finds the packet, swallows a tablet, goes back to bed.

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The rain is heavier now. He wants more air in the room but when he opens the window water comes in. The ocean roars in the darkness.

The weir He is awake earlier than he wants to be. There has been heavy rain during the night — when he looks out he can see where water has gouged jagged tracks from the driveway all the way down to the road. The grey ocean is flecked with white. He stares, not focusing on anything. He must get something done today. He will go for a walk first, clear his head, decide what to do. Several cups of coffee do little to enliven him. It’s not raining but looks like it is about to start again. He finds Steve’s raincoat in the laundry — it’s too small but better than nothing. Not bothering to lock the door, he goes out. The air feels damp and cold against his face. There is a fresh wind off the water; as he turns towards the inlet the wind pushes harder against him. Workmen are already on the job at the house-underconstruction. There is someone about two hundred metres ahead of him — a man, he thinks. A dog is with him. Watt sees them reach the inlet then continue on the path that leads up to the weir. He decides to take that path too. He’s not ready to go back to the house yet: Creativity and Writing Process has no more appeal

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than it had yesterday, he’s definitely not up to Freud this morning. Last night Claudia wanted to talk about whether writing a thesis on creativity might be counter-productive to his writing. ‘Is that the problem?’ she said. He said he didn’t know there was a problem. ‘You’re not writing,’ she said. ‘So what?’ he said. So what, indeed. He wonders where this thing with her is going. Not very far, he suspects: he won’t continue to see her after he has left Osprey Bay, but for the present it’s convenient enough. What is she getting from the relationship? It’s not the conversation, that’s for sure. Or the sex. She has this thing about writers and writing; he’s a real writer, as she sees it, the author of books. God help her. She makes all the effort, sets the agenda. He goes along with it, it’s easy enough. But she’s not what he wants, never will be. What is he looking for in a woman? Would he recognise it if he found it? Whatever it is probably doesn’t exist. He’s fifty, for Christ’s sake, he should have found it by now. At least once. And why does he always let women acquire him, if that’s the word? It was the same with Clare; he didn’t particularly want to be with her but she gathered him up. And then she was pregnant with Tim. He was just so passive about the whole thing, yet he knew he wasn’t going to stay around for too long. He managed five years. It should never have happened. Just caused pain. There have been other women since then, of course. He hasn’t been good for any of them. He is on the path that leads around the inlet now. As he moves away from the ocean-front the bush thickens quickly. The trees are quite tall here; redgums, he thinks. There is a plant with small yellow flowers that appears regularly next to the path, and also a purple-flowered creeper. He has no idea what they are. The path

itself is soggy after the rain but is easy enough to negotiate. He does not walk quickly; he is in no hurry. Water drips from the trees but it is not raining at the moment. The inlet narrows to a fast-flowing river. He hears the roar of water. Ahead, through the trees, he can see the weir; as he gets closer the noise becomes louder and he can see where white water is plunging over a buttressed concrete spillway with a drop of about ten metres into a pool surrounded by jagged rocks. There is a narrow walkway across the weir above the spillway, about sixty metres in length. A low railing separates it from the water below. The weir spreads back in a grey-green arc, overhung by peppermint trees. Larger dead trees are standing in the water. A sign next to the path warns of danger after heavy rain, advises against crossing in such conditions. As he reaches the edge of the weir he sees a man about halfway across the walkway, kneeling, trying to raise something from the water. It’s a dog, a large dog. The man is straining, he can’t lift it. The dog is wedged under the walkway, surging water dragging at it. The man has hold of its front paws. Its head and part of its broad chest are visible; the rest of its body is under water, being pulled towards the point where the spillway cascade begins. Watt can see that the man is quite old and is not going to be able to get the dog out of the water by himself. He should help. He doesn’t want to. Reluctantly, cautiously, he steps on to the walkway — it is slippery from the spray being thrown up. The railing offers little protection. Water roars beneath him. The man has not seen him. Watt, gripping the railing, is about

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ten metres from him now. The dog has been almost entirely sucked under the walkway; the man still has hold of its front paws but is leaning closer to the water as he struggles to pull it back. Suddenly he tips forward. Falls. Watt sees him in the water, sees his face. Then a flash at the top of the spillway: man, dog, white water.

But only for a moment. He can’t move. His hands grip the railing. He stares at the man’s shape in the water. Knows, now, he will do nothing.

Watt swivels, searches the foam below. Sees nothing at first. Then picks out the man’s shape under the water, wedged between rocks, face-up, not moving. To get to him he will have to jump down the spillway. It’s too high, he can’t do it. He must do it. He can’t: the rocks, the surging water. Perhaps, if he runs back to the path, finds a way to climb down the bank, plunges into the whirlpool … it may not be too late. He sets off, slips on the wet walkway, almost falls, holds on to the railing, reaches the path. Another sheer drop. Again, he will have to jump. He can’t jump. There’s no other way down. He can’t see the man in the water, he’s too far from him now. He gets back on to the walkway, reaches the place where the man fell, sees him again, his shape, where he was before — still faceup, still not moving. For a moment Watt has the sense of his own body vaulting the railing, falling down the face of the water, entering the cold below, entering the darkness, surfacing, finding the man, pulling his head up, holding him, saving him.

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The king of dissociation

Man of water It has been days now, Watt has hardly left the house. When he has had to go out to buy food and other supplies he has done so with furtive haste, though what he is hiding from is unclear. The police? Hardly — he has committed no crime, at least not in the sense that police might understand crime. The man’s wife, son, daughter, grandchildren, friends? He knows none of these people. Surely they exist, somewhere, but he would not recognise them, nor they him. He imagines them, a host of distressed souls, sometimes silent, sometimes humming with a kind of anger, like bees. Claudia? Perhaps he is hiding from her. He would have to speak, and what could he possibly say? He wants to draw silence around himself, disappear into it. Himself, then? Certainly. But where can he go? Only into sleep. Where there are dreams. Where there is water. (Sometimes he is in the water, swimming. Sometimes he is in the water, drowning. In one dream he is drowning his mother. In another a dog comes paddling up to him, bites him on the leg. Sometimes there are things beneath the water, but he cannot see them. Always the water is heavy, relentless.)

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It is still raining. He watches bank after bank of clouds roll in from the ocean, each one as dark as the last. Sometimes there are breaks in the weather, but they last no more than hours. Watt lies in his dark room, listening to water: on the roof, against the window, in the downpipes, spilling from the tank. Behind this water, the deeper tones of the ocean. And behind this ocean water, deeper again, the water of his dreams. He is a man of water. When he thinks of the weir he thinks not so much of the old man — though he does think of him, sees him — but of himself, leaving, returning along the path, reaching the inlet, coming back to the house. At first, for a few moments, he wanted to run. Perhaps for help. As if there were someone further on who could save the man in the water. Someone else, a higher authority; Watt’s responsibility no more than that of messenger, teller, child. He did run for a while — off the walkway, on to the path, moving like a fifty year old man who has not run for years, all breath and heavy legs, constrained by a too-tight yellow raincoat. Running, perhaps for help. Or from the evidence of his failure to act. Running away. Man of water. Then he stopped running, stood on the muddy path, listened to water falling over the spillway, felt the weight of it, took it inside himself. He walked slowly back to the inlet. A fish broke the surface, hung momentarily in the damp air, then others, then ripples where they had been, then flat water.

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Dead still He has listened to the radio, watched television news bulletins, even bought newspapers when he has gone out. He has been seeking the man’s name, his circumstances, how he was found. In truth, he has been seeking the kind of pale absolution that may come with such information — knowledge that the man has become the property of others: his finders, his processors, those now grieving for him. There has been nothing. Not a word. Perhaps the man lived alone and has not yet been missed. The face Watt saw in the water was sad, surprised. The face of a lonely man? Perhaps. Or perhaps the face of a man much loved: kind father, grandfather, uncle, friend. Watt sees the man’s daughter — yes, it will be a daughter — arrive on her father’s doorstep. She will have been phoning him for days now, will have driven from the city to find out why he does not answer. Watt sees her knock. He sees her go to a place near the front door where she knows the house key is hidden. Inside the house now, he sees her move from room to room. Dad? she is saying. Dad? Dad? She comes to the door of his bedroom. The door is closed. Watt sees her pause there, her hand on the door handle. Dad? she says again. Then she breathes deeply, turns the handle, enters. Nothing. Her father is not there. Watt thinks of his own dream: his mother, her house, the crossword puzzle, the green and white vinyl sofa, the gas heater. His dread. His seeming second chance. The pointlessness of it all. The daughter stands in her father’s room. Watt sees on her face: relief, confusion, worry, pain.

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And what of the dog? Wallowing in pathos, Watt sees the animal sitting loyally by the man’s door. Or lost in forest behind the weir. Do all dogs have a homing instinct? He doesn’t know; he supposes they do. Cats have it, certainly. And pigeons of course. He once wrote a story in which pigeons were nesting in the roof of a house near an airport. In the house lived an old woman. Her son came every four weeks to mow her lawn. Each time he came she made a cake for him — this was difficult as she was very sick. The son was consumed by guilt about the circumstances in which his mother was living — and consumed by resentment too, because of the guilt. There was nothing to like about him. The woman in Watt’s story had a dog, a loyal dog. She resisted the son’s efforts to get her to move to what he thought would be a better place for her. Of course he was making these efforts so he wouldn’t have to feel so guilty about where his mother was living. But, because she wouldn’t be able to take the dog with her, the woman wouldn’t go. The son thought of the pigeons in his mother’s roof, the shit up there, the stench. He imagined the ceiling collapsing. He imagined the house filled with pigeons: cooing, flapping, shitting, sitting on his mother’s furniture. Watt sees them now, in his mother’s house. He sees the man’s body, washed from the rocks beneath the weir, carried downstream, hidden amongst reeds. When summer comes it will be found. He sees the face has gone, eaten by fish, by worms. Then it is restored. Miraculously, amazingly, the man has survived. That is why Watt has heard nothing of a dead man found at the weir: there is no dead man, only a frail old man who fell ten metres on to

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jagged rocks. Who lay beneath the water. Who lay in a whirlpool, dead still. Watt sees his face come and go.

Freud’s pigeons Watt sits at his table, books and notepaper spread in front of him. He has not turned on his computer. It’s raining lightly. He stares out at the ocean. A wind gust pushes a grey shudder of drizzle across the water. White tops on waves. Weak sun behind low clouds. Cold air. He has hardly slept. But perhaps now the worst is behind him. Soon, he hopes, he will be ready to write. Perhaps, from this adversity — and that is all it is, he has decided — will come a flood of words and images and ideas. It has happened before, why not this time? Soon he will be ready to receive the flood. Not yet, but soon. Meanwhile there is Creativity and Writing Process. He yawns, polishes his reading glasses, looks out again at the ocean. A black and white seabird flies past, moving quickly with the wind behind it. He opens a book. Freud instructs: creative writing is wish-fulfilment in disguise, no more than a correction of unsatisfying reality; the author is a slave to unconscious forces; characters may be understood as the author’s doubles, projections of fantasies and ideals. The author drowns in a sea of displacement.

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Art becomes sublimation. Freud considers a writer, Wilhelm Jensen; finds in his novella Gradiva evidence of Jensen’s incestuous desire for his sister. It’s there in the work, Freud says, though disguised, transformed, written as an invented dream, as fiction. This dream that is not a dream reveals all: the author is listening (unconsciously) to his unconscious, unknowingly setting down its desires; Freud is hearing what the author’s unconscious is saying. (The conscious Jensen hears no such thing, declines Freud’s invitation to participate in further investigation. Aha! Freud says. Denial! Proof !) So what? Watt thinks. He remembers the pigeons, the lawnmowing son, the ceiling filled with shit: what is that about? Not desire, that’s for sure. Elements of truth? A periodic table of guilt, more likely. He wonders: did Freud keep pigeons? Were they real? He has lost focus now, he’s too tired. This stuff isn’t going to explain anything. He stares at the ocean: it’s brain-grey, moving like a deep, slow, unconscious impulse. Perhaps he should set down what happened, just a straight account, unadorned. What can he say? He has a mother but no father. Well, there’s an untruth already, of course he has a father, a biological entity if nothing else. Nothing else? At one time they are close: a sperm swims at an egg and Bob’s your uncle. They’ve not been close since then of course. But, hell, these things happen. He is born in the city. His mother takes him to an inland town, loves him, her joy, her sunshine. On clear cold inland nights stars shine on them.

She is poor, gets up at four in the morning to clean the Post Office. Her grim parents provide meagre shelter and Baptist approbation. The state provides nothing. She shrugs, gets on with what needs to be done. And what needs to be done, eventually, is for them to leave the inland town — he must have a better education than it can offer, she says. He is ten. They come to live in Perth. She finds a job: cook and housekeeper at a boarding school. He sleeps in a dormitory, she comes each night to tuck him in. He doesn’t mind. He breaks a branch from a school tree, and for this crime is beaten by the headmaster, who employs a fizzing cane on his legs, buttocks, back. The headmaster is crazy she says, a monster. She takes him from the school. The state, benevolent now, offers a widow’s pension (she is a widow, of sorts) and a small house near the airport. Things aren’t so bad. They watch the planes come and go, talk of other places; it is her dream to travel to England. At night, sometimes, they watch the sky for shooting stars. They acquire a dog, and love it. She plants trees in the grey soil; they grow, most of them. He listens to music on the radio, plays cricket in the street, dreams. A nervous boy, he sometimes vomits porridge into a green washbasin before going to school. She cleans it up. The neighbours are kind, offer cast-off clothes, fruit, vegetables, the Friday night opportunity to watch television. She sleeps poorly. She smokes Turf cigarettes. They play Scrabble, sometimes Monopoly, sometimes Chinese chequers. She does crossword puzzles. He hears her coughing on the other side of a thin wall. He sleeps soundly, wakes late. He is a quiet and unmotivated student but does well enough. A scholarship provides the means for university. He is her life. He meets girls but brings few home; she will embarrass him by talking too

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much, monopolising them. She is lonely; he knows it but does not wish it to be his problem. He talks less to her now. She makes cakes to please him. The balance between them changes. He goes out most nights, often does not come home. If he does she is always awake, waiting for him. She does not speak of his father. He does not ask. He does not care, not really. He moves into a flat with friends, finishes his study, travels to the other side of the country, works in an abattoir, drives a truck, doesn’t work at all, writes some poems. She sends him a letter each week, sometimes he replies. Years pass. He comes back to Perth, marries a woman of whom she does not approve. Too bad, he says. On the eve of the wedding she leaves her body, flies up to the ceiling of her room, sees herself lying stricken on the bed. Too weird, he says, and it changes nothing. The dog is loyal, stays with her, grows old. She grows old. He has a child, a job he hates, an unsatisfying marriage. He travels to England with his wife and son, lives there. She writes to him. Her news is often of the dog, its failing health; she says little about herself. She misses him, she says, misses her grandson. Sometimes he writes back. His letters describe the England she will never reach. He knows she is alone, frail, lonely, probably unwell; he tries not to think about it. In a letter she tells him that the garden of her Housing Commission home has been razed; some bureaucratic edict. Her trees have gone. And the new neighbours are throwing their rubbish over her fence. He is annoyed. Why has it become something for him to worry about? What can he do? He is on the other side of the world, has his own problems. He is still young, why should he have such responsibility: a son, a wife he does not love, a mother. He wants to travel off alone, find what remains of the hippie trail, find himself, become a writer. He makes plans, buys himself a one-way

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ticket to Bombay. A telegram arrives from a hospital in Perth: his mother is very sick. He telephones, speaks to a nurse: she has emphysema, cancer, may die within days; can he come home? In the hospital she is shrivelled, yellow-grey, skin like old paper. She breathes through an oxygen mask, great gulps of drowning air. She has been waiting for him, holding on. She draws him close, whispers his father’s name, dies that night. He goes to her house near the airport. Stands outside, not wishing to enter. Looks for the dog, calls it, but it is not there. Sees Freud’s pigeons on the roof.

The house of truth Is that the truth? Watt ponders. He supposes it is, in its way. In its way. It’s what happened, it’s what he remembers, but of course there is more to it. This is just a hallway: there are many rooms leading off, rooms in a house he cannot fully enter. Or will not enter. The house of truth, a face behind each door. In his story of the pigeons and the lawn-mowing son he tried to enter the house of truth. He did try. He racked the son with guilt, martyred the mother (icing with pathos the cakes she made for the son), offered a self-flagellating ceiling-full of pigeon shit. And yet — and here Watt sees Freud nodding in smug agreement — in all this he has dissembled, represented himself with undue credit: at least the son in the story came to mow the lawn; at least he tried to persuade his mother to live in a better place; at least he was there.

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You see, Freud says, the author has corrected an unsatisfying reality. In the house of truth a door swings open. The face behind it is that of the man from the weir. Pale red worms swim out of his eyes.

The man who wasn’t there Watt decides: He will return to the weir. He will look for the drowned man. He will do it now. It is still raining, though not heavily. He finds Steve’s yellow raincoat on the floor of the laundry, pulls it on over his shoulders without unbuttoning it. It’s tight, like a straitjacket — perhaps he needs one. He goes out through the front door, feels the surge of cold air from the ocean, some spots of rain against his face. He blinks at the light. It’s late afternoon, there should be enough time to reach the weir before it gets dark. He walks quickly to the inlet, begins to follow the path up to the weir. There is no one else on the track. The river, when he reaches it, seems to be flowing even more strongly than it was when he last saw it. How long ago was that? Three days perhaps? Four? He tries to find some kind of temporal marker — a news bulletin, something on the radio. Nothing comes to mind. Was it Friday when he saw the man in the water? Or Saturday? What is it now? Tuesday?

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He hears the roaring begin, then sees white water plunging over the spillway ahead of him. A limp chill runs through his body. The weir is as it was: water gathers behind a wall, drops into a pool, on to rocks, flies up as spray, runs away to a river, to an inlet, to an ocean, to clouds, to rain. That’s it. There is nothing more to know. Or everything. At the beginning of the walkway he hesitates, does not want to move forward, pulls in a breath, breathes out, sees condensation in the air in front of his face. Takes one step. Then another. Moves slowly to the middle of the walkway. Water rushes beneath him. He grips the railing. Looks down. Sees rocks, water. Whatever did he expect to see? The man? The dog? Still there after days? In place, undisturbed? Unseen by anyone else? The alarm unraised? For a moment he is relieved, as if he has been let off, as if he has got away with something. As if something strange has happened with time and he is at the beginning. As if he has a second chance. Like the dream of his mother. But that wasn’t a second chance either. He tries to remember: what was the man wearing? A jumper he thinks. What colour? Brown perhaps. Or green. Or black. Something dark. Dark trousers too? He thinks so. Dark shoes probably. More absence of colour than presence. Like the man himself: the man who wasn’t there. But he was there. He was. It has begun to rain more heavily now. Through the trees he can see low clouds banking in from the ocean. It is much darker.

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Is the sun about to set? He should get back before the light has gone. Man of water, he does not want to be alone in the dark forest. It is too late to search downstream. And how would he get close to the water anyway? If he came back in the morning perhaps … The rain intensifies. A cold squall flies at him. He puts his head down, begins to walk.

Dead man’s float He is almost back to his house, walking quickly. The yellow raincoat pulls at his thighs. He thinks: there is still time to do something about the man in the water, still time to report what he saw. He should do this. He should go to the Osprey Bay police, tell them … tell them what? That he saw an old man fall into the weir, cascade down the spillway, lie broken on rocks at the bottom? That he, Watt, stood, watched, did not act? That he slunk away, slunk home, did nothing? That days passed and still he did nothing? Can he tell them that? Perhaps he should tell them about his dreams of water, its oppressive weight, his feelings of guilt about his inaction, his lack of courage. Would that make him look better? Would that make him look like a man of compassion and sensitivity if not a man of action? A man above contempt? What about suspicion? He needs to be a man above suspicion too; and after this amount of time — three days, four — can that be guaranteed? What if

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they decide his involvement is something more sinister? That this more sinister involvement is confirmed by his failure to immediately report the incident? Is this how police think? It might be. And how would he react then? No, he cannot tell the truth. Not now. It’s too late. What then? Perhaps he can go to the police: a concerned citizen. Tell them he was at the weir, saw something in the water, something dark. A body? Floating face-up (dead man’s float, or must that always be face-down? — he would have preferred face-down), too far from the water’s edge for him to be sure. What about the dog? No, leave the dog out of it, it will complicate matters; it will turn up or it won’t. What happened? Perhaps he had walked to the weir — just a walk, something he does every day — and he saw a body — perhaps a body — in the water. Yes. Where was he? At first he was at the end of the path from the inlet, just near the sign that warns against crossing the walkway when there has been heavy rain. He could see the dark shape about — what? — thirty metres away. Make it forty. Just near the dead trees in the water. And? And he tried to identify what he was seeing, tried to be sure, but it was too far away. So he moved out on to the walkway (quite bravely really, considering the conditions, the sign, the danger). He was a bit closer to the shape in the water now but still too far from it to be sure. It looked like a man. Floating face-down (yes, it will be face-down). Dressed in dark clothes. He thought about getting into the cold water, swimming out to him, pulling him to shore. But if it were a man then he was surely dead (the evidence: dead man’s float). And he, Watt, is not a strong swimmer. It would be foolish, there would be no point. Of course if the man had appeared to be alive, well, then he would have acted. Of

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course he would. He would have plunged in. He would have done what needed to be done, regardless of personal safety. As anyone would. And when did all this happen? Today, this afternoon, now. He has come straight from the weir to report what he has seen. He has done the right thing. As anyone would. Then? Presumably the police will go to the weir to look for the floating man. They won’t find him of course (the man who wasn’t there). Will they become suspicious? Will they make Watt go over his story? Will they take him to the weir and make him show them where the man was floating just an hour earlier? Will he be able to sustain his deception? What if it comes out that he saw the man fall to his death some days ago? How will that look? What will they do then? Watt does not think he is the kind of man to manage such a situation; he is not the kind of man to become embroiled with police and questions and lies. What kind of man is he? He is a man of water. And perhaps, like water, the problem will evaporate. But if — in some unforeseen circumstance — it comes back to claim him, expose him, threaten him, undo him? What then? Too many questions, too many questions without answers; best he does nothing, says nothing. For now anyway. And yet, if the man were to be found … if the man were to be found he would become someone else’s problem, the incident would have some kind of closure. He would be off the hook.

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He is at the bottom of his driveway now. It is almost dark. The house lights are on. Someone is there.

The tiger on the wall They have come for him. He pictures a sad, angry, disgusted gathering of the drowned man’s loved ones: a daughter weeps on the blue and white striped sofa; a son broods menacingly behind the door; a wife sits at the table, writes a never-ending list of the drowned man’s virtues (loyalty, honour, compassion, bravery, love …); friends stand by to support, accuse, hold fast, confront. In the corner Watt’s mother, son and former wife exchange information, purse lips, nod grimly. A policeman prepares charges. Freud makes notes. Watt reaches the house. The radio is on, music is playing, though the sound of rain on the roof is too loud for him to be able to recognise the song. He eases up to the window, cautiously looks inside the house. Sees Claudia. A bottle of champagne is on the coffee table, along with two glasses. He feels a surge of annoyance. What is she doing here? He has made a point of not inviting her to this house — their arrangement, if that is what they have, is for him to go to her. He

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doesn’t need this. She will want to talk about writing. Jesus, that’s the last thing … He opens the front door, comes into the room, drips water on to the floor. The tiger on the wall challenges him but he doesn’t see it. Claudia turns, smiles.

Fellow writer ‘Open the champagne, I’m celebrating,’ she says, holding the bottle out to him. Watt sighs, ungraciously twists the cork, pours two glasses. She has found an electric radiator that was in the laundry. He has rarely used it. It is glowing now beside the sofa, giving off its usual smell of dusty electrics and something like cat piss. He says: ‘Well?’ She picks up the glasses, hands one to him. ‘Well, I’ve left my husband.’ ‘Fuck, I didn’t know you had one.’ ‘I don’t, not in the real sense.’ ‘And what, pray tell, is the real sense?’ ‘Connection, closeness.’ ‘Fuck,’ he says again. He could do without this. ‘And Claudia, how about not coming into my house without an invitation?’ ‘Sorry,’ she says. They are sitting on the sofa. Watt has dried his hair, removed the yellow raincoat, put on dry shoes and socks, turned off the radio,

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turned off the radiator. The cat piss smell has dissipated but the room is too cold. He sips champagne without enthusiasm. She tells him: ‘I guess I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while, turning it over in my mind. You know what it’s like. Anyway, I phoned him today, told him.’ ‘Told him what?’ ‘That I’ve decided to live down here full-time from now on, write, change my life, all that stuff.’ ‘And?’ ‘And nothing much.’ ‘He didn’t react? Didn’t want to know why?’ ‘He knows why. It’s a long story.’ It always is, Watt thinks. ‘This husband of yours,’ he says, ‘does he have a name?’ ‘Kevin.’ ‘Kevin?’ ‘Kevin.’ They both laugh, though Watt isn’t sure why. She says: ‘And I told him something else.’ ‘What?’ ‘That I have a lover.’ She smiles at him. He had not seen it coming, had not seen how it involved him. It didn’t involve him. It doesn’t. This thing with Claudia — it’s nothing, an occasional fuck, a bit of human contact, nothing. Not something to leave your husband for, if that’s what she’s done. Not something to tell your husband about. Definitely not that. Does this mean he will have Kevin banging on his door? An enraged, outraged, cuckolded Kevin.

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‘Claudia,’ he says carefully, ‘this lover … did you …’ ‘Did I tell him about you? I just said there was someone I had met. A fellow writer.’ Of course, Watt thinks, of course that’s what it’s about. This writer obsession. His voice is hard, cutting: ‘Just because someone writes doesn’t mean they are a writer.’ ‘I know that,’ she says, looking hurt. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘that was a bit harsh. It’s just that I haven’t had the best few days.’ ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ ‘No.’ Later, somewhat tentatively, she says: ‘I wanted to talk to you about an idea I’ve had. For a novel, I mean. It’s about a writer and this crazy woman.’ ‘Not now, please.’ ‘Next time then?’ He doesn’t answer. After a few moments she comes up to him, puts her arms around his neck, pushes against his crotch. ‘Maybe we can do something else now,’ she says, ‘cheer you up a bit.’ ‘Look Claudia,’ he says, ‘this isn’t such a great idea.’ She keeps working on him. His cock stirs. They end up in his hard bed. His cock loses interest. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘it’s just not going to happen tonight.’ ‘Just lie here with me,’ she says. She kisses him. He says: ‘I’d really like you to leave, I’ve just got to get some sleep.’ She dresses in the dark room then comes over to the bed and kisses him again. He doesn’t say anything. ‘Fuck,’ he says out loud after she has gone.

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Now he can’t sleep. He has taken a sleeping pill but so far it has had no effect. An electrical storm has been moving closer. He stood at the bedroom window for a while, watching lightning spike at the water. Now, back in bed, he feels the house shake as thunder erupts overhead, a simultaneous lightning flash illuminating the tiger in the adjoining room. As always, its eyes are on him. He can smell Claudia’s perfume on the pillow: a heavy, sensual scent, a turn-on, he wouldn’t mind fucking her now. Why couldn’t he do it earlier? He lies awake. There is a tightness in his chest. He tries to control his breathing. A face comes out of the darkness. He turns away but it is still there. The man from the weir regards him with unblinking dispassion. Then his eyes fill up with worms. Lightning flashes again.

A dialectic of significance Finally he sleeps. Towards morning he dreams he is in the bush. There are trails, dry stone walls, big trees, a white-water creek — it seems to be a national park, though he doesn’t recognise it. He is walking with George Mobus, a poet. Mobus — not known in real life for his generous spirit — is telling Watt how much he admires his work. You simply must start writing again, Mobus says, it is a terrible thing that you have stopped. Watt nods earnestly. They walk

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towards a ridge. Mobus goes ahead, begins to climb a rock-face. Watt watches him: the fat little poet is moving surprisingly well, going up the rocks like an insect. He reaches the top, stands there for a moment, looks towards Watt, gestures that he should join him. Watt is about to start climbing when he sees Mobus fall, plunge silently out of sight on the other side of the ridge. In the dream Watt has the sense that a great man has been lost to the world of literature and that he, Watt, is somehow accountable for the tragic occurrence. He wakes, laughing. George Mobus — good God, whatever is he doing in the dream? A loss? Anyone who knows the poisonous little toad would surely offer thanks for his demise, however achieved. Mobus, the editor of a literary magazine, had once rejected one of Watt’s stories, sending it back with a comment that the work had failed to engage with a dialectic of significance. Watt had subsequently sent him a letter suggesting that he should go and fuck himself, significantly. They had not been on good terms since that time. It is light outside. The rain seems to have stopped. Watt has woken with a morning erection, despite the dream of Mobus. Claudia’s perfume is still on the pillow. He needs to piss, gets out of bed, pads across cold tiles. He makes instant coffee in the Garfield mug, sits staring towards the ocean. Birds are diving at a school of fish about a hundred metres offshore. An idea comes to him. He thanks George Mobus for it. A letter. He should write a letter.

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I am writing to inform you of something that occurred some days ago at the Osprey Bay weir. I think you should look into it. Is that the right tone? What is his persona? A young man? An old woman? Should he give his correspondent problems with grammar and spelling? No, just keep it neutral, no one is going to be able to trace it back to him. Make it a statement of fact, it doesn’t need to be an exercise in creative writing. It was a day following some particularly heavy rain and as I walked towards the weir I noticed the river was running strongly. When I reached the walkway that crosses the weir I saw there was a man kneeling in the middle of the walkway, trying to pull a dog out of the water. From where I was standing it seemed that the man was quite elderly and that he was having a lot of difficulty lifting the dog, though I must say I was too far away to be absolutely certain about what was going on. I saw the man overbalance and fall head-first into the water. He was washed down the spillway. I rushed out, hoping I might be able to help, but when I reached the place from which he had fallen I saw that he was lying face-down at the bottom of the spillway. I called out to him but there was no indication that he could hear me — the falling water was making a lot of noise. Okay, that’s the truth, more or less. He didn’t exactly rush to assist, he didn’t call out, the man wasn’t facedown — but these details don’t matter, surely. He will leave them as they are. Now for the tricky bit: what he did then. How to explain that he did nothing? This will be the dialectic of significance. No it won’t, there is no need to offer any explanation other than the facts: I was not able to assist without putting myself at risk. I tried to find a safe way to reach the man in the water but I could see none. No other help was at hand. I am certain that the man could not have survived. Of course I was very

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distressed by this terrible accident and, because of my distress, I have been unable to report the accident until now. I trust you will be able to follow up by searching for the man’s body. That will do it, Watt thinks, that’s enough. Spineless, pathetic, but enough. He addresses the letter to the Officer in Charge, Osprey Bay Police Station. Dates it with what he thinks is today’s date. Later, when it is dark, he will slip it under the police station door. That will be the end of the matter. His duty done.

The king of dissociation He feels more energised than he has for days, a weight lifted. Getting some sleep has helped. The sleeping pill has left his mouth feeling dry but that is a small price to pay — another coffee will improve things. Even the weather has come into conjunction with his more positive outlook — he can see predominantly blue sky above calm water. He should get some work done today, maybe begin to write something. Even a bit of time spent with Freud et al might be tolerable. But it’s too early to begin yet; his brain doesn’t function well in the morning. Just getting that letter written was hard enough. Worth the effort though. He feels he has achieved a closure of sorts. And that is an ability he surely possesses: the ability to move on, slide away, let go. He is the king of dissociation.

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He raises the Garfield mug. ‘Long live the king,’ he says. A walk will do him good, get the creative juices flowing. He chooses a path that will take him away from the weir. There is a hill on the edge of town — he has yet to climb it, why not do so today? He sets off briskly. After thirty minutes or so he is at the foot of the hill. It is steeper than he expected, a hard climb. A sandy track leads up through limestone and low scrub. About halfway up he needs to take a break, sits on a boulder, catches his breath. He really should do something about his fitness. Perhaps he should take up tennis or something. He used to like sport when he was at school. But it didn’t fit with the image he was trying to project at university: enigmatic, world-weary aesthete; poet of the darkness. What a pretentious young wanker he was. Never really got back to it after that. Too old now, too fat, too tired. Still, he should do something. Eat right, give up the grog, the coffee. Something. At least he doesn’t smoke, gave that away after his mother died. Wouldn’t want to end up like she did. Not that he was ever really much of a smoker, could always take it or leave it, smoked for effect more than anything else. He should have a medical checkup — he’s got no idea about cholesterol, blood pressure, all that middle-aged stuff. And of course he knows nothing about half his genetic inheritance. Good old Dad. How long did he last? Perhaps he’s still around somewhere, a senile, incontinent old bastard in a nursing home. Clare was always on at him to track down his father, find out about him — if not for yourself then for Tim, she would say, it’s his inheritance. Bugger that. Still, she was right, he probably should have made some effort. He didn’t

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though, he let it go, the king of dissociation. What could there be that is worth knowing? Would he understand himself better, who he really is, all that crap? Would he want to? Another climb and he is at the top of the hill; he’s really puffing now, finds another rock to sit on. There is a large water tank up here, some scrubby trees, sand, not much else. He wonders if the water tank is connected to the weir; thinks, for a moment, of a grid, pressure, water humming in pipes, the whole unseen network. Of things held back. Suppressed. Repressed. Connected. The town is spread beneath him; beginning at the inlet it follows the coast north for a while before easing into farmland and some pockets of bush. He can see the roof of his house, its own water tanks, the peppermint trees behind it, his incapacitated car. He tracks a few streets to Claudia’s house, which is at the highest point of the residential area. She will be there now — writing, most likely. Writing what? Something about a writer and — what did she say? — a crazy woman. What kind of crap is that going to be? On the evidence of what he has seen of her work she is never going to be a writer. Not a good one, anyway. So many bad writers in the world, so many notgood-enough writers. Why do they bother? Why does he bother for that matter? Freud says it’s all about the correction of an unsatisfying reality, but there is more to it: a need to be heard, a tilt at immortality, a belief in destiny, early persuasion. He looks inland. When he was eight or maybe nine he entered a children’s essay competition. His mother was keen; her vision for him was writer, man of letters, scholar. Even then. Even there, in their bleak

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inland town. Especially there. A way out. For him. Perhaps for her, who knows? They worked on this together; the topic: England (these were colonial times). He remembers their first line: Oh, how I would love to be in England. Not a promising start. It didn’t improve — a catalogue of facts, a limp past the Tower of London, Nelson’s Column, Buckingham Palace. St Paul’s Cathedral was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. It has a whispering gallery. If you whisper to the wall your words will come back to you. The essay was a winner (his mother was not surprised; her little genius). Well, almost a winner, third place; perhaps there were only three entries. A plastic airline bag duly arrived, his prize. His name in the newspaper too. It was enough, he was hooked, his path set: he would be a writer, he would travel to England. His mother would travel with him, of course. And he fulfilled his destiny, parts of it. Years later he reached St Paul’s Cathedral, the whispering gallery. Sent a silent whisper flying at the wall’s curve: wish you were here. Something like that. Then let it go, the king of dissociation.

Antipodean anomie, the angst of Albion In England there was a hill. In Oxford. Like this Osprey Bay hill, Watt thinks, not like it. The same size, more or less, the same sprung-up detachment from the surrounding countryside. But easier to ascend — you

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could drive to the top, look out over a mannered river landscape, a famous skyline. And on the hill there were blackberries, stinging nettles, secret groves of foxgloves. He was trying to be a writer then, though he had not written anything. He was still young, not yet thirty. Had travelled to England with his wife and son. Should have made the journey years earlier, when he was single, when his single friends were travelling, when it was the right and easy time. But it did not happen — he cannot quite remember why, something to do with money perhaps. And then his life had changed. He had linked with Clare, almost without noticing — she, pregnant with Tim, had decided they should marry. He had gone along with it. Why not? He was pulled — again, almost without noticing — into a suddenly tenacious new orbit, a suburban force-field, a black hole of respectable employment. Surely, later, his universe would revert to its more natural chaos. A few years passed, he grew restless, dissatisfied, suggested change, travel, a new beginning. They would go to England, live there for a while, see what happened. Then travel on, perhaps to Asia, perhaps to America. It would be good for them. This was the time to do it, now, before Tim began school — travelling with a young child would be easy, the boy would love it. Clare was less sure. ‘We’ll try England,’ she said, ‘beyond that I don’t know.’ He exchanged antipodean anomie for the angst of Albion (remembers writing that appalling line in his sporadic diary, his writer’s notebook; the same notebook he has with him now).

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It was cold in England, that was the problem. They arrived in March. After a few freezing nights in a Highgate bed-and-breakfast (the highlight of that time a trip to the nearby cemetery to see the huge stone head of Karl Marx), they caught a train to Taunton. His mother’s father had lived, as a young man, in the West Country — perhaps, Watt thought, he could connect with something, he wasn’t sure what. They bought a car, a green Morris 1100, drove around for a week or so, stayed in more freezing rooms. Tim developed a cough, a deep-down bronchial growl. They arrived in Oxford, spent a night in a caravan where the gas ring on the cooker provided the only source of heating. ‘That’s it,’ Clare said, ‘that’s enough.’ The next morning they found a terrace house to rent — owned and renovated by a plumber, its central heating and double-glazing features were impressive, seductive. They settled in. Tim’s cough improved. Watt found a job.

Headington Hill From his fourth-floor window in the Oxfordshire County Council Social Services Department Watt could look across the rooftops of the university — Matthew Arnold’s dreaming spires — to Headington Hill. Beyond the hill was Blackbird Leys which, despite its bucolic name, was a depressed, depressing housing estate, purpose-built for the nearby British Leyland works.

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Watt had clients there. He was a social worker. He was supposed to know what the burghers of Blackbird Leys should do about their lives. He got the job because he was an Australian. The senior social worker, Ted Brigham, had spent his happiest times in Australia — golden days, according to Ted — before returning to the grimmer, greyer climes of his native England. ‘It was the wife’s idea to come home,’ he told Watt. ‘Enough said.’ Anything or anyone Australian was all right with Ted. Watt had a degree in psychology. And there was no other applicant for the job. His absence of social work qualifications and experience didn’t bother Ted. ‘You’ll pick it up as you go along, son,’ he told him. ‘You Aussies know how to get things done.’ It was a relieving position — the social worker Watt was replacing was on extended sick leave. She had cancer. She was, according to everyone in the department, a wonderful person who worked exceptionally hard on behalf of her clients. Too hard, perhaps — maybe that had caused her illness. Watt didn’t think it likely he would succumb to the same pressures. His clients were going to have to make do. It was just a job, after all. For the first week he was supposed to trail around with Francesca, an experienced social worker. After that he was on his own. Francesca — an intense, somewhat overweight woman, about ten years older than Watt — took him to bleak houses in Headington and East Oxford and Cowley and, of course,

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Blackbird Leys. She took him to the Oxford County Court where one of her clients — a huge West Indian — was on trial for attempting to murder his huge West Indian wife. (‘These people are very volatile,’ Francesca told Watt. ‘They don’t understand limits the way we do.’) She took him to neighbouring towns — in Bicester there was a child abuse case she was keeping an eye on, in Woodstock there was a man who liked to light fires and who was probably going to have to be sectioned. And then, on their last day together, she took him to Headington Hill. She led him past blackberries and stinging nettles to a grove of foxgloves (she told him they were foxgloves, Watt wouldn’t have known). ‘It’s my favourite place,’ she said, ‘so peaceful.’ Watt thought it was rather damp and slimy, though he didn’t say so. Francesca took his hand, placed it tentatively on her ample breast. ‘I know you are married,’ she whispered dramatically, ‘I know I’m too fat, and too old for you. And this is very foolish. And you really don’t have to do anything … but if you would like to … just this once …’ He accommodated her, there among the foxgloves. At one stage she cried out though he was unsure if that was because of his prowess or because she had brushed against a stinging nettle. The words she used — ‘you don’t have to do anything’ — made him think briefly and uncomfortably of Julia. He let the thought slide away. He could see the Oxford skyline in one direction, the grey sprawl of Blackbird Leys in the other. It was starting to rain. And now, on the Osprey Bay hill, Watt can see that rain clouds are moving in from the ocean. He has been up here for longer than he intended, hours perhaps.

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As he begins his descent he tries to remember Francesca’s last name.

Fiction, not confession As he walks back to the house Watt tries to focus on ideas he might use for writing, something to get him going again, engage him, energise him. Something about his time in England, perhaps? He remembers it well enough. Too well. Would it be a good idea to rake it up? Probably not … but still, there’s plenty of material. He’s been avoiding it for twenty years. Maybe he should deal with it; after all, it would be fiction, not confession. The grass around the house needs attention. Now would be a good time, before it rains again. There is a lawnmower in the shed; Steve said something about fuel as well. It won’t take long, half an hour maybe. After that he can settle down to some writing. He’s procrastinating of course. But what the hell, the grass needs mowing. Watt hasn’t mowed a lawn for years. He can’t remember the last time. His mother’s lawn, most likely. He would hire a mower from the closest service station, push it around her garden in the shortest time possible, make her feel guilty about the trouble to which he was being put, ungraciously accept his reward of tea and cake, tell her she should be living in a home unit rather than a house.

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The dog, she would say. I wouldn’t be able to take the dog into a place like that. You need to think about yourself rather than the dog, he would say. And about me, I’m the one who has to mow your lawn. I’m sorry dear, she would say. Steve’s mower is old, heavy, green. Watt drags it out of the shed, inspects it. Is the motor a two-stroke or a four-stroke? How do you tell? Do you have to add the oil separately from the petrol or does it all go in together? And what happens if you get it wrong? There is a can of fuel in the shed. He carries it out, places it next to the mower, removes the lid, tips some liquid on to his hand. It’s red. What does that mean? He sniffs it: it smells like petrol, but what does two-stroke smell like? He can see no opening on the mower where oil can be added. Perhaps he should walk to the Osprey Bay garage, ask someone there. But presumably they would want to see the mower. He would have to push it into town — that would be ridiculous. Why doesn’t he know this sort of thing? Why, as a fifty year old man, does he not understand how to operate a fucking lawnmower? Watt recalls another lawnmower. He and Clare were living in Bunbury — he had been transferred there by the Education Department and was teaching English (reluctantly, badly) at Newton Moore Senior High School. Tim was about six months old. The lawnmower belonged to the house they were renting. The house belonged to Antonio Paccagnello. Antonio loved his house — an ugly chocolate-brown brick and blue tile

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construction on a flat, sandy subdivision behind the Bussell Hotel — and he loved his lawn. He was even prepared to knock a few dollars off the rent if Watt kept the grass in good shape. It was a long weekend. Bored by Bunbury, Watt decided they should drive to Albany, stay two nights and come back on Monday. But first there was the lawn — Antonio, coming to collect the rent on Tuesday, would be unhappy if mowing had not been effected. He pulled the starter cord of Antonio’s mower. The mower burst into life and, shortly thereafter, burst into flames. Watt leaped away from the incendiary machine, stood ineffectually at a distance, waiting for it to explode. It didn’t. It continued to burn, like a mechanical bush. The face of God did not appear. Eventually, Watt found a hose, sprayed the flames, put out the fire. The mower was black, smoking, ruined. Antonio would be dismayed. They ended up driving to Albany anyway, arriving after dark. There was no accommodation, the result of a sporting carnival. Watt drove from motel to hotel to guesthouse to caravan park, Tim cried, Clare became tight-lipped. We’ll go back to Bunbury, Watt pronounced, I know a short-cut, we’ll be there in three hours. His short-cut was a road between Mount Barker and Manjimup, nearly two hundred kilometres of darkness, no other cars, no towns, no moon, lots of kangaroos. The roos appeared in the small Toyota’s weak headlights every hundred metres or so, making it impossible to travel at any speed other than a crawl. It was cold. The heater did not work. Tim, asleep in a cane basket on the back seat, began to wheeze. Watt hunched forward over the steering wheel, peered through the misted-up windscreen, rubbed it with the heel of his hand. The roos kept coming. Clare

sat anxious, silent. At one time she reached out, put her hand on his arm. He ignored it. After a while she took it away. ‘You don’t want this, this family thing, do you?’ she said. Watt said nothing. He imagined himself in the cold air high above the road, watching the car’s light beam cut through the darkness. The journey ended up taking close to ten hours. The sun was coming up by the time they reached their Bunbury house, illuminating the burnt-out lawnmower.

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Very symbolic I’m sure, Watt thinks. He wheels the present machine back into the shed; maybe he will phone Steve, ask him about the fuel. The rain is starting again. Too late to cut the grass now, anyway.

Marooned in marriage, fettered in fatherhood He stands at the window, looking out at the ocean, the rain. The sun, hidden behind grey clouds, will set in a short while. It’s cold in the house. He thinks about putting on the radiator but is deterred by the promise of cat piss odour. How did the appliance acquire such unfortunate olfactory properties? Perhaps — prior to Steve acquiring it from, no doubt, a verge rubbish throw-out — the radiator was in a household besieged by incontinent and/or territorial cats. Watt thinks of a story he once wrote in which a multitude of swarming cats inhabited a house wherein lived a fat mother and daughter. The mother would feed the cats by dropping big bloody slabs of minced meat on to the

kitchen floor. The unhappy daughter practised playing her cello, poorly made notes scraped into the air. Her father — her mother’s estranged husband — lived secretly in a cellar beneath the floor on to which the mince was dropped; neither his wife nor his daughter knew he was down there. He had been excluded from the family, sent packing. Now he was planning an act of revenge against his fat wife. Rat poison was involved. First he would poison the cats. Then he would poison his wife. Then, perhaps — though this bit was never explained in the story — he would reunite with his daughter. She would, presumably, become thin and happy. What was that about? He had not been excluded from the lives of his wife and son, he had left them. Left them in the lurch might be a more accurate description, though Clare was hardly the lurching type; not for long, anyway. When it became clear to her that Watt had no intention of returning to England after his mother’s funeral, or any wish for them to join him in Perth, she had arranged to stay with her mother in Adelaide. It wasn’t a vindictive act, a way of keeping Tim from his father; it was a sensible response to what must have been a terrible situation for her, stranded 20,000 kilometres from home, alone with a five year old child, no job, no support. Not that Watt thought of it that way at the time. He didn’t think about it much at all. He assumed she would cope, in her capable way. And then it wouldn’t be his problem. So why the unpleasant story about the cats and the secret subfloor father? Freud would know what to make of it: Watt is, of course, correcting an unsatisfying reality, blaming Clare for his own feelings of guilt about his mother’s death. After all, Clare had ensnared him, marooned him in marriage, fettered him in

fatherhood. Had he not been with Clare in England he could have been with his mother in Perth when she most needed him. The story, then, is an act of revenge, a statement of his innocence: if his mother’s plight is Clare’s fault it cannot be his fault. The woman’s fatness in the story symbolises all Clare has greedily taken from him (freedom, youth, the opportunity for filial nobility). And the fat daughter? Of course Clare has taken his child too, fed him on lies and misrepresentations, turned him against his father. Watt has transposed fictive girl for real boy as a result of his wish to not identify — and thus possibly hurt — his son. He has protected his son. The reality — the unsatisfying reality — is that Watt took little interest in the boy. The correction sees it otherwise: Watt as fond father, implacable avenger, champion. The cats? Symbolic of self-interest — Clare’s self-interest of course, they are her cats, after all. And so many of them. And so greedy. The bloody mince perhaps a torn-out, tornup piece of Watt’s heart. Why not feed the cats on hearts, then? Too obvious, surely; even the poorest writer aspires to some literary subtlety. The cellar poses no problem for Freud: it’s Watt’s subconscious, of course it is. It also represents an inability to deal with things head-on, a tendency to seek an indirect solution. Which brings Watt to his present issue with the drowned man, the weir, the letter. His indirect solution. Freud can make of it what he will.

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He goes to the table, picks up the letter. A waft of Claudia’s heavy scent comes to him; the bedroom door is open, her perfume still on the pillow no doubt. It is dark outside, the sky merged with the sea.

He finds an envelope in a kitchen drawer, slips the letter inside, walks out through the damp uncut grass, down the sandy driveway. The rain has stopped by the time he turns towards the town centre.

The England stuff It’s easy in the end. Watt simply walks up to the front door of the Osprey Bay Police Station, drops the letter through a slot. The police station is closed, dark. There is no one around. That’s it. Why on earth had he worried about it? Later that night he lies in the darkness, listening to the surge of the ocean, the rain. As usual, he has not been able to fall asleep easily, though with the letter disposed of, the drowned man disposed of, he expects sleep will come in a while. He’s thinking about the cats story again. The reality — satisfying or otherwise — is that he heard about the fat woman and her fat daughter and their mince-fed cats from someone at a barbecue. A friend of Steve’s and Helen’s perhaps; the barbecue was at their house, he remembers that much. What attracted him, stayed with him, were the images of meat hitting the floor, swarming cats, fat women. He wrote the story soon after that, one of his first. It came easily, was done in an hour or so. He was pleased with it, still likes it. Of course Freud would argue that his subconscious was drawn to elements of the story precisely because they

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represented issues with which their author needed to deal; the fiction an inevitable expression of these issues. So what? Even if that’s true — and perhaps it is, in a small and oblique way — it doesn’t explain why he wrote so easily then and seems unable to write anything now. He still has issues — more so now than then, surely — but nothing is happening on the page. There’s the England stuff, of course. Could he go into that, dress it up as fiction, exorcise it? The England stuff. The Oxford stuff. The first few months weren’t so bad. He got the hang of his job easily enough. Most of it was routine — he would visit a client, write a report, sometimes attend court. There was no danger of him succumbing to the pressures of overwork; he was clearly going to avoid the fate of his predecessor. He did no more than was required, sometimes less. Most of his clients wouldn’t lift a finger to help themselves, so why should he go out of his way? One Blackbird Leys family had a hole in the back garden of their council house. How it came to be there was unclear, some abandoned project perhaps. They wanted it filled in. They wanted the council to fill it in. They wanted Watt to intercede with the council. ‘Why don’t you fill it in yourself?’ Watt enquired of the man of the house, a fit-looking unemployed chap by the name of Ronnie or Donnie. ‘That’s the council’s job, mate,’ Ronnie or Donnie replied, somewhat perplexed by the question. Watt persisted: ‘Yes, but you want it filled in. It will only take you half an hour or so, why not do it?’ ‘No mate, you tell the council we want it filled in,’ Ronnie or Donnie countered, moral certainty lending weight to his argument. ‘You just tell those fuckers we want it filled in now. What if Pammy falls into

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it? Be your fault then, too, wouldn’t it, eh?’ Watt supposed he had a point, of sorts — five year old Pammy’s welfare was his province, but he suspected she had more to fear from genetic inheritance and neglect than from a hole in the ground. As far as he could tell she wasn’t able to get outside anyway: her time seemed to be spent listlessly in front of a blaring television. He did nothing about Ronnie or Donnie’s hole problem, though he did mention the issue to Ted Brigham. ‘That’s your English disease, son, your welfare mentality — wouldn’t happen in Oz,’ Ted declared. Watt felt a surge of national pride — the Australian welfare recipient demonstrably superior, hole-filling cheerfully undertaken. Ronnie or Donnie’s hole remained unfilled. Pammy remained on the ‘at risk’ register.

he didn’t. Why was that? Some lurking morality perhaps, sense of duty. The wrong choice, certainly. Anyway, here he was, fucking fat Francesca. Why not? Oxford could have been all right. But in the end it wasn’t all right at all. Two women he didn’t want, a job he didn’t want. And that other stuff. He certainly didn’t want that. He didn’t want the guilt either, the unsleeping dog. It stayed with him, though. He lies on his back, trying to calm his breathing, synchronise it with the breaking surf. Rain continues against the roof, the window.

Watt continued a relationship with Francesca. They would sometimes meet on Headington Hill for a quick lunchtime scramble among the nettles and foxgloves; sometimes — on the pretext of out-of-hours social work commitments — he would go to her North Oxford flat. Francesca continued to apologise for her weight and her age. Watt, though a little disturbed by her intensity, found the arrangement to his liking. He didn’t think there was much chance of Clare finding out — he certainly wasn’t going to tell her. They weren’t going to live in Oxford forever, why not take advantage of what was on offer? Since Tim’s birth Clare had had no interest in sex, so there was a justification if he needed one. It was ironic, really — he’d only married her because she was pregnant. They’d been going out for a few months, he’d assumed she was on the pill. She wouldn’t have an abortion. He could have walked away, should have … the one time in his life

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The rain

The rain The rain comes after they have been driving for an hour; big, summer-plump drops, wipers smearing dusty glass. Then filmingclearing, filming-clearing. ‘That’s typical,’ he says, ‘no rain for months, now this. Still, I don’t suppose it will hurt.’ ‘No,’ she says, ‘I suppose not.’ He finds the gravel turn-off in the dark, the rain heavy, sheeting. Then sand, close to the beach now. Headlights pick out the cottage, the peppermint trees, the water tank on its wooden stand. He stops the car, then gets out and closes the door, extinguishing the interior light. She continues to sit in the dark car. He pauses under cover of the verandah. ‘Hurry up,’ he says. Eventually she goes from the car to the cottage. Rain spars at her, she moves slowly. He has entered before she reaches the verandah. She sees through the open door: the two rooms, a table and chairs, wood stove for cooking and heating, grey vinyl floor. In the other room, a double bed. She used to like it here, the primitiveness, the beach. It seems a long time ago. Inside now: no connection with this strange heavy air. The rain pressing at the roof. ‘Do you remember?’ he says. ‘The first thing we used to do was make love.’ She turns away from him. He comes up behind her and places both his hands around her waist. She disengages them. ‘No,’ she says.

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Rain hammers the iron roof. If there are other sounds the rain masks them; even the sea. He says: ‘Shelley, are you awake?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Does something have to be wrong?’ ‘It seems to be.’ ‘No.’ ‘Something.’ ‘I said no, Alan.’ His voice, the rain, the dark, the heavy air. All around her. She wants to be still, to sleep if she can. But he continues: ‘You just can’t close off like this. Whatever it is.’ ‘Whatever it is.’ ‘You don’t tell me.’ It seems to her that the rain has intensified; flat, relentless. But his voice cuts through it, relentless as the rain, harder: ‘I’ve lost her too, you know.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘We can try again. I thought this weekend. Here. The same as before.’ He pauses, waiting for her reply. The rain answers for her. There is nothing she wants to say to him, or hear him say. He reaches out in the darkness, places his hand on her hip. She does not move. Finally he says: ‘It would be the best thing for us. For you.’ She is at the furthest edge of the bed, her back turned to him. The dark room is like a cage. He moves closer, she can feel him hard against her. There is not enough air in the room. ‘Did you open the window?’ she says.

‘No, too wet.’ ‘I can’t breathe in here.’ ‘It’s all right.’ ‘Would you open it please.’ ‘There’s no need.’ She gets out of bed and goes to the window. Through it, darkness, the sound of rain. Nothing else. She gropes for the catch and levers it up but the wooden window frame sticks. She pushes ineffectually at it. He comes to stand behind her but does not try to open the window. ‘Come back to bed,’ he says. ‘I want the window open.’ ‘No,’ he says. He holds her by the wrist. She cannot see him in the darkness. She stumbles against the bed, pulls her arm away from him. The rain falls blankly. They sit side by side, not touching. ‘Why don’t you relax?’ he says. ‘I don’t feel relaxed.’ ‘Maybe you should try.’ ‘Try, yes. Maybe.’ She could try to have the rain go, the room go, his voice. She could try to be the rain. It wouldn’t matter. He says: ‘Then why don’t you?’ ‘Look, I’m sorry, okay? For everything. Whatever you like.’ ‘We can make it right. You can.’ ‘Make amends?’ ‘I didn’t say that.’ ‘But it’s what you think.’ ‘What do you want me to say?’ ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She thinks: say nothing say nothing say nothing say nothing say nothing say nothing. The rain picks up this tuneless rhythm.

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He says: ‘It wasn’t only you, your fault.’ ‘You don’t believe that.’ ‘It was an accident, that was established. Legally. It was an accident.’ ‘Not for you.’ ‘There’s no sense in blaming anyone now. That’s what I’m saying. We can put it behind us. It can’t go on forever.’ She knows: it goes on forever, the rain, the darkness behind the rain. She feels him pushing her down on to the bed. His hands on her. ‘Come on,’ he says harshly, ‘it stops now.’ When he has finished he turns away from her. Soon he is asleep. She lies very still, very small in the darkness, hearing the rain. * Shelley wakes before it is light. How long has she been asleep? She doesn’t know. It could be any time. She can hear him breathing beside her. She is at the extreme edge of the bed; carefully, quietly, she puts one foot on to the floor, then the other. She goes out of the room, closes the door, sits in the darkness in the other room. The rain has stopped. There is no noise. She puts her hand to her chest, feels her heart beating. Then she goes outside, sits on the bench near the big peppermint tree. The bench is wet, the tree still dripping. She can hear the ocean now. She finds the Pleiades, low on the western horizon. Other stars above her, darkness behind them. No moon. A shooting star arcs down. She makes no wish.

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What he did is unforgivable. What if she is pregnant? It’s unlikely, but possible: contraception is something she has not thought about since … since it happened. No need. At their house in the city she has been sleeping — or not sleeping — in another room. She told him she needed space. He didn’t like it: you’re my wife, he said, as if that explained something. But he didn’t argue. When you’re ready, he said, shrugging. That was six months ago. This weekend was his idea. She knows now what he had in mind. The bastard. The fucking bastard. Unforgivable. As if you can simply replace one life with another. In circumstances like this. In any circumstances. Anyway, it makes it easy for her, the decision, what she needs to do. It has been clear at times, then not clear. There have been other things to think about: too many, not enough. But she has known, oh yes, she has known. She has known: he will not forgive her. She has known: she will not forgive herself. Now she knows she will not forgive him. Now she will act. Today. This morning. As soon as he is awake. Perhaps she will go in and wake him now. No, she will sit here until the sun comes up. Then she will tell him. Then he can go. Unforgivable. * She thinks about the things she will need. Almost everything is here. She will have to get something for cooking — the wood stove is too difficult to manage, too hot at this time of the year — an electric frypan will be enough. What will she be cooking anyway? Not much:

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stir-fries, some vegetables, that sort of thing. She will need something comfortable to sit on — the wooden chairs are too spartan for an extended stay. How long will she be here? Who knows, as long as she needs to be here. Money? She has enough for now. There’s always the dole. She can probably pick up some work if she wants it. And there’s the money that Dad put into a trust for her and Poppy. A rainy day, he said, you never know. Well, it rained all right. She’ll call him, find out how to access the trust. He will be pleased she’s leaving Alan, never liked him. Didn’t say much but it was obvious. He’ll worry about her, down here by herself. Be pleased the house is being used though. His house. She remembers when he built it, when she was a kid, the holidays they had down here. Mum and Dad, when they were still together. Alison and herself. A long time ago now. She can’t believe how calm she is. How clear. The sun is coming up. She can see the ocean, the movement of it. Not much surf. The air is still damp but the rain has gone. An easterly breeze has started, inland air, still cool. Maybe later it will be hot.

‘What do you mean? ‘You know what I mean.’ ‘Jesus Alan, just fuck off.’ He has gone within fifteen minutes. She watches the car swing out of the driveway and follow the beach for a few hundred metres before turning on to the road that leads to the highway.

Alan is awake when she goes into the house. She doesn’t hesitate: ‘I want you to go. Now.’ He doesn’t look at her. ‘Yes,’ he says. She didn’t expect this. Then he says: ‘About last night, I’m sorry.’ ‘You’re sorry?’ ‘That’s what I said’. ‘And that’s supposed to make it all right?’ ‘No.’ ‘It’s too late for sorry.’ ‘Yes it is. For both of us.’

Watt had awoken feeling energised, focused, ready to write. Maybe it had something to do with dropping the letter off at the police station — he had let go of the drowned man, delivered the letter, made it someone else’s problem. Whatever the explanation, he felt better, that was the main thing. Deciding what to write wasn’t difficult in the end. He had abandoned the idea of dealing with what had happened in England. Why drag that stuff back? What good would it do now? No, he would make something up, see where it went. He was supposed to be a fiction writer; he would write fiction. All he needed was a start. And he had one, readymade: years earlier he had written a story in which a man and a woman travelled to a coastal town, not unlike Osprey Bay. He remembered the writing process with that one — he just put them in a car, set them in motion, discovered what was going on with them. It turned out — the writing process decided — they had lost a child. It turned out the woman’s husband raped her at their beach house in the coastal town in a crude attempt to conceive another child to replace the one who had been lost. Why not use that process again? Indeed, why not use that story, take it further? Claudia’s description of what had happened with her family — her mother leaving them — had given him an idea. He would write about two sisters. One sister would be Shelley, the woman in

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his existing story. He would construct the sisters’ characters around what Claudia had told him: one sister looking for a perfect family of her own to compensate for the maternal abandonment, the other drawn to unsuitable men. Both sisters damaged. He looks back over what he has written so far this morning. He’s pleased with it, the way he has picked up Shelley’s story on the morning after the rape. Pretty gloomy subject matter, but isn’t everything he writes gloomy? The thing is, he’s writing again. Why has he been attracted to this particular narrative after all these years? Best not to think about it too much, just let the writing happen. Maybe it is the notion of replacement that interests him, the idea of renewal, however misconceived. A bad pun in the context of the story, but perhaps there is something to it. He is starting to get a sense of the characters, though he still isn’t sure about Shelley. Is she a victim? Or a survivor? How is she going to deal with Alan now? And what exactly has she done? Why has their child died? Her father is already coming through as a sympathetic character, a nice man who is concerned about his daughter’s wellbeing, who has made provision for her financial security. Yeah, well, pretty obvious displacement, Watt thinks, the father he himself might have been. Should have been. But what the hell, he doesn’t have to beat himself about the head with his own issues. There are such fathers in the world, good fathers. And anyway, he’s not writing about himself, he’s writing fiction. Her mother will be a straight steal from what Claudia told him about her mother. He’ll start from there, anyway. Why has she behaved in this way? Perhaps her husband (good father though he is) has mistreated her, perhaps he’s no good in the sack, perhaps she has issues from her own childhood, perhaps she’s just a selfish

bitch. He doesn’t have to know just yet; he will write, find out soon enough. He turns back to his computer screen. A burst of rain hits the window in front of him.

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Later that morning she walks down to the beach. The sand is still damp from the rain. A lot of seaweed has been washed in; when she walks in the shallows it pulls at her legs. Further out, beyond the line of surf, a black and white seabird drops into the water. She watches it rise, fly further out. A few people are on the beach. A woman with two small boys smiles at her. She goes back to the cottage, pulls the sheets from the bed, washes them in the concrete trough near the back door, hangs them on the nylon line between two peppermint trees. Then she takes all the plates and cutlery out of the kitchenette, rinses the dust off them, stacks them on the sink. There is dust on the floor too — she finds an old broom and sweeps it into a corner, along with some dead cockroaches. No mouse droppings, that’s a good thing. She will need to buy a vacuum cleaner. A rug, too. There’s probably a second-hand shop in town, or a holiday season swap-meet: summer has nearly finished but there will still be plenty of tourists around. She’s glad the season is almost over. It will quieten down, be more like she remembers it. The beach doesn’t change, or the inlet. She opens the windows. The window in the bedroom is still difficult to unstick — something to do with the rain, perhaps. But she perseveres and finally manages to move it. Dad hasn’t come down for some time. Can’t be bothered, he told her. She stacks his fishing gear in a corner. Maybe he will come down if she is here by herself. Alison might come too; that will be good. But not just yet.

She goes to bed early. The sheets smell faintly of peppermint. She sleeps heavily, the first time she has slept this way for months. Years maybe. * Weeks pass. She settles into a kind of routine. She will wake early and lie in bed, listening to the ocean. Then she will walk on the beach — she can go south as far as the inlet or north as far as a rocky point that used to be called Black Rock; she doesn’t know what it is called these days. She might swim if there is not too much seaweed and if the water isn’t rough. Then she will go back to the house and have breakfast: muesli and fruit and a cup of tea. After that she will take another walk, a longer one — she might go up to the weir or to the hill behind the town. Or she might just do a circuit of the settlement, perhaps calling in to the bakery or the supermarket on the way back if she needs anything. Sometimes she will buy a newspaper and sit in the town park with it. In the afternoons she will try to meditate — she doesn’t know if she is doing it the right way, but it is good to sit quietly. She will read — Dad has left some books and magazines and she has bought more from the book exchange in town. She has developed a surprising fondness for crime fiction, likes the way the characters move in their prescribed orbits, the way the stories resolve. Morality tales, most of them. Late in the afternoon, if it is not too windy, she will go to the beach again, though it’s harder walking at this time, with the tide in. She will sit on the sand and watch the sunset. Or she will watch it from the house. The way it varies each day intrigues her — the clouds, the light, the colours. She finds herself seeking that moment when the trailing rim of the sun drops out of sight. She has purchased a few things for the house: a sofa that converts

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to a bed, an armchair, some cooking equipment, two rugs, a reading light, some prints for the walls, a radio. All from the Salvation Army shop in town, all cheap, delivery included for an extra ten dollars. When the man brought them he told her he knows her dad. ‘A good bloke,’ he said. He asked if she was planning to stay through the winter; she said she probably would. ‘I’ll get a load of wood for you,’ he said. ‘It gets cold down here you know, freeze the balls off a brass monkey, pardon my French.’ She laughed at that. At night, after her meal, she will write in a journal, try to make sense of what is in her head. She will go to bed early, lie in the darkness with the radio on: some music, some talk-back, a quiz she likes. When she feels ready to sleep she will turn the radio off and listen to the ocean. * She walks into town one evening and calls her sister from the phone box on the highway. Traffic is infrequent but every so often a truck grinds past, making it difficult to hear; she presses a finger to her left ear, holds the phone hard against her right. Light from the phone box spills a little way into the road. Alison is surprised. ‘You’re in Osprey Bay? Still? I thought you were just going for the long weekend.’ ‘I’ll tell you when you come down. Do you think you can make it this weekend?’ ‘What’s this about, Shel?’ ‘Can you come?’ ‘I suppose so, I’m not working until Monday afternoon. Is Alan there?’

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‘No.’ ‘Is there a problem?’ ‘Not now, I’m fine.’ ‘This is seriously weird, Shel.’ ‘I know, I’ll tell you when you get here. And do you think you could call by the house and pick up some of my clothes, winter stuff mainly, whatever you can fit in? There are some suitcases in the wardrobe. And I’d like a picture of Poppy — there’s one in the drawer of my desk, left hand side.’ ‘Is Alan going to be there, at your place?’ ‘No idea. You know where the spare key is. Oh, and you’d better tell Dad I’m still here. Tell him I’ll call him soon, and that I’m okay.’ ‘Are you?’ ‘I think so.’ As she walks back to the house she can see a thunderstorm over the ocean. Lightning forks at the dark water. The storm is a long way out; she can’t tell if it’s moving further away or coming closer. Before going to bed she writes: What changes? Nothing changes. What is there? What could there possibly be? Redemption? Forgiveness? The air here is better though, the sea air. I’m sleeping with the window open. He’s gone. What changes? Later, lying in the darkness, she hears thunder; the storm is closer now, lightning flashes throw shadows against the window. She waits for the rain to start but there is nothing. The air is salty, damp. Her radio is playing softly. *

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‘When I got to your house this morning Alan was there,’ Alison says. ‘I don’t think he’d been up for long. I said you wanted me to pick up some clothes and he said help yourself — not very friendly, though. I said I didn’t have any idea what was going on, which is true. He said I should ask you. So are you going to tell me or is it some kind of big secret?’ ‘Did you remember the photograph?’ ‘It’s in one of the suitcases. This one, I think.’ Shelley opens the suitcase, finds the framed photograph, looks at it for a moment then takes it into the bedroom. ‘Thank you,’ she says when she comes back to the kitchen. When Alison arrived, about five minutes earlier, the sisters had hugged. ‘You’ve lost weight,’ Alison said, ‘as if you needed to. You’re looking good. Not so tired.’ Now she says: ‘Well?’ ‘Well what?’ ‘Well what’s going on. With you and Alan?’ ‘What’s going on is that he raped me. Here, the night we came down. You could call it something else, Alan probably would, but that’s what it was. Then he went back and I stayed. Quite simple, really.’ ‘Jesus,’ Alison says. Then, after a few moments, she goes to Shelley and puts her arms around her. ‘If I were being reasonable,’ Shelley says later, ‘I would say, reasonable as can be, that he was not without some … I don’t know, cause I suppose.’ ‘Oh, come on, not the old conjugal rights crap.’ ‘No, not that. But the right to have a wife, a real wife I mean, a family.’ ‘So he just gives you a good seeing-to, knocks you up and everything is hunky-dory again?’

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‘It wasn’t before.’ ‘Exactly.’ ‘Well, yes, but we’ve been further apart since Poppy died.’ ‘That’s understandable.’ ‘Is it? I don’t know. How are people supposed to behave? Anyway, he was feeling angry.’ ‘With you?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Oh, terrific.’ ‘No, he had every reason.’ ‘Come on, Shel, don’t start the guilt trip again.’ ‘It’s true, though.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I was there. I should have been more careful. I should have been watching her.’ ‘You can’t have eyes in the back of your head.’ ‘And then, when I pulled her out, I should have known what to do.’ ‘You did know what to do. You got her out of the water. You called an ambulance. You acted.’ ‘You know what I mean.’ ‘I know you did everything you could.’ ‘Except save her. Anyway, there’s more to it than that. You don’t know.’ ‘Christ Shel, don’t do this to yourself.’ But she does do this to herself. Every day, every night. She sees the pool, the water, her child’s body floating at the bottom. The water is clear, always clear.

So that’s it then, Shelley’s child has drowned. Fits with the water imagery, he likes that. Is that all there is to it though, just an accident? Well, not just an accident, a tragedy, of course. Where is he going with this? What is it that Shelley knows, that Alison does not know? Is this a complication he needs? And that stuff with the child’s photograph — it wasn’t on display at Shelley’s house in the city and now she has taken it off into her bedroom. Will it be on her bedside table or will it be in the drawer again? Can’t he just let her be a grieving mother? But what would a grieving mother do, anyway? Maybe she would hide the photograph, maybe it would be too painful for her to look at it. Especially if she feels guilty; and he seems to want to make Shelley guilty of something. An authorial projection, no doubt. Still, fuck it, this stuff has to work as fiction. And it does, so far; he thinks it does. At least he is writing. What about the crime fiction reference he has dropped into the narrative. Is that going anywhere? Revenge perhaps? What does he want this piece to become? Shelley doesn’t seem the avenging type. But what type is she? He needs to get hold of his character if this is going to work. She’s been raped, what is she likely to want to do? How far does he want to go into the whole rape thing? Why is he writing about it anyway? And is Alan just going to be an unredeemed bastard or is he going to have a bit of light and shade? More interesting if he does. What’s Alan’s take on all this? Maybe, Watt thinks, he should try to plot it out a bit more, write towards a known point. But that’s not the way he works, that’s not the way he has ever worked. The story will find its own path if he allows it to happen. He just has to trust the process.

*

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The next morning they go down to the beach. There is no wind. They walk at the water’s edge, where the sand is firm. Alison says: ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘Stay down here for a while.’ ‘I mean about Alan, what happened.’ ‘There’s nothing to do.’ ‘Isn’t there?’ ‘If you’re talking about some kind of action, police involvement or something, well no, that’s not an option.’ ‘So he gets away with it?’ ‘I don’t think he’s getting away with anything.’ ‘No?’ ‘There’s no point, Ali. It doesn’t solve anything, it doesn’t change anything.’ ‘Perhaps not, but something’s not right. He’s sitting pretty in the house up there, you’re down here in a beach shack. Is that fair?’ ‘I like it here.’ ‘Yes, but you can’t stay here forever.’ ‘Can’t I?’ ‘You know you can’t.’ ‘I haven’t worked it out yet, what I’ll do. All I know is I have finished with Alan.’ ‘That’s something, I suppose. A lot.’ ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Dad, not Mum.’ ‘More likely, yes.’ ‘He was convinced we’d be swept to our doom if we walked on the reef — the tide would come rushing in and that would be the end.’ ‘Or we’d be trapped on the other side, lost forever.’ ‘I always wondered why it was called Black Rock.’ ‘The colour of the cliff, I suppose.’ ‘It’s dark grey, not black.’ ‘Dark Grey Rock? Doesn’t work somehow.’ ‘And it’s not a rock, it’s a cliff.’

The beach ends at a cliff. With the tide out, a reef is exposed near the shore. Shelley says: ‘The infamous Black Rock. Do you remember it?’ ‘I remember Mum and Dad going on about how we weren’t to go past it.’

Alison says: ‘Did you ever go past it? When we were kids, I mean.’ ‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember.’ ‘I did. You were meant to be looking after me but I persuaded you to let me go up the beach by myself — I’m sure you were pleased to be rid of the irritating little sister. You would have been about ten, I’d have been about seven.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘I got here, to where we are now. The tide must have been out because it was easy to walk around the bottom of the cliff. There was another beach on the other side. I walked along it for a while, expecting something to happen. Nothing did. Then I came back. Big adventure.’ ‘You’ve always been more of a risk taker.’ ‘Secret of my success.’ ‘You’re successful.’ ‘Oh yeah, right. Thirty-five years old, too fat, string of failed relationships, still don’t know what I want to do with my life.’ ‘At least you haven’t stuffed it up.’ ‘Just give me a bit more time.’

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‘No, you’ve been right to get out of things that aren’t working, get away from people who aren’t good for you.’ ‘Everyone I’ve ever been with, you mean.’ ‘The man of your dreams might be around the next corner. Or just on the other side of Black Rock.’ ‘I’m not looking.’ ‘Very wise.’ The sisters laugh. They link arms and begin to walk back along the beach.

Later that day they are sitting in front of the beach house, watching the sun drop towards the horizon through red scalloped clouds. Shelley says: ‘That time you were talking about earlier, when you were seven and I was ten, that would’ve been the last time she came down here.’ ‘Would it? I don’t really know when that stuff happened.’ ‘She left soon after that. We would’ve been here in summer and I remember she wasn’t around for my birthday in April, when I turned eleven.’ ‘How do you remember all this?’ ‘I don’t know. It’s just there.’ ‘It’s so strange, isn’t it, the way she never wanted to have anything to do with us after she left.’ ‘Strange is one way of putting it.’ ‘I don’t have much memory of her being around. It’s always been you and me and Dad. I mean, I remember her being with us, a presence, Mum, but nothing very clear.’ ‘She was tuned out. I think the whole family thing must’ve bored her.’

‘So why did she get into it?’ ‘Good question.’ ‘It’s what women did in those days, I suppose.’ ‘What they still do.’ ‘Mind you, we’re talking about the sixties, not the dark ages.’ ‘There would’ve been fewer choices then.’ ‘Ah, those wonderful choices.’ ‘Well, she certainly made her choice. In the end, I mean.’ ‘Dad never talked about her, did he? After she left.’ ‘Not to me.’ ‘Did you ever ask him?’ ‘I did. I tried to. After Poppy was born.’ ‘And?’ ‘You know Dad.’ ‘Man of few words.’ ‘He didn’t want to know. He said that was long gone and best forgotten, or something like that.’ ‘That’d be right.’ ‘I wrote to her, told her she had a granddaughter. She sent a card back: Congratulations Michelle, on your new baby. She signed herself Alice.’ ‘Amazing.’ ‘Her famous cards.’ ‘I got one for my birthday every year until I turned fifteen.’ ‘It was eighteen for me. Same year, of course.’ ‘You were always the favourite.’ They laugh. Alison goes inside to get another glass of wine. Shelley watches the sun move quickly down the last section of sky. Out near the reef some surfers in seal-black wetsuits are waiting for a wave. The water is red, still.

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*

Shelley says: ‘I wrote to her for more than a year, after she left.’ ‘I didn’t know that.’ ‘I told her all the things I was doing, what was happening at school, who my friends were, all that kind of stuff. Talked about you too, of course. She only answered once in all that time. Not a very long letter either. I told myself she must be very busy, but that she cared for me, really. Then, after I started high school, I stopped doing it, stopped writing, lost the faith.’ ‘She’s a selfish bitch, end of story. We were unlucky.’ ‘Or lucky, depending on how you look at it.’ ‘Yes, probably would have done more damage if she’d stayed around.’ ‘I think she did plenty of damage, as it was.’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘I always wanted the perfect family thing, some kind of compensation I suppose. That’s probably why I ended up with Alan, and why I stayed with him. Why I tried to be the perfect mother — with a conspicuously obvious lack of success.’ ‘Shel.’ ‘I know. But a lot of it was because of her. What she wasn’t.’ ‘That’s not so terrible, wanting to make a better job of it.’ ‘There’s something more than that, something deeper. A need.’ ‘There’s always a need.’ ‘What’s yours?’ ‘The opposite of yours, I think. The need to not commit.’ ‘Not trust?’ ‘I suppose so.’ ‘There you are then. That’s the damage.’

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Watt has been writing most of the day now; he is tired but does not want to stop, not when something is flowing. Where is it coming from? Best not to think about it. Just write. Just let it come. But what is coming? Alison, for instance, with her need to get away from men who have not been good for her, her unwillingness to commit? A perfectly reasonable position, his own, of course. His women. The ones he left. All of them unsuitable, not what he wanted. The damage he must have done to them, Clare included. He doesn’t want to think about that. So why is he writing this kind of character, even casting her in a positive light? — the supportive sister, the free spirit. Pretty obvious self-justification. Yet he doesn’t feel justified. Both sisters are expressing anger towards their abandoning mother, blaming her for what has gone wrong with their lives. They are articulating his own guilt, of course. He doesn’t want to deal with this, never has. So why is he writing about this, too? And Shelley. He still isn’t sure where he is going with her. Something is there, something he should be able to identify, remember. What is it? Who is she? He gets up, puts instant coffee into the Garfield mug, stares out across the water as he waits for the jug to boil. It’s still raining though the sun is setting through some clear sky. For the first time since he started writing this morning he has the feeling he has moved into uncomfortable territory. Surely he can write his way out of it. He’s in control, after all. It’s fiction, after all. He takes his coffee back to the table.

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Later, Alison says: ‘Did you tell her what happened? About Poppy, I mean.’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you going to?’ ‘Is there any point?’ ‘Only if it helps you.’ ‘How in fuck’s name is it going to do that?’ ‘Sorry Shel, dumb question.’ ‘I don’t even know if she’s still there, in that God-forsaken town. Or if she’s still alive.’ ‘Me neither.’ Alison raises her glass. ‘Happy families.’

That night Shelley sits down to write in her journal. She wants to say something about her mother. She stares at the page. There is

something on the edge of her consciousness; something to do with this house, she thinks. Nothing comes. Later, she lies in the darkness, listening to the radio. A bookreading is being broadcast. She tries to focus: it seems to be about Mussolini, or perhaps an Irishman. She can’t concentrate. She turns the radio off. The sound of the ocean is in the room. She would like to sleep. Then it comes to her: it was the holiday she was talking to Alison about. When she was ten. She remembers she was with her sister in the main room of the beach house; they had their beds in there, just mattresses on the floor. Her parents were in the other room. What time of day was it? Morning, she thinks, it must have been morning. Her parents were arguing. She tried to hear what they were saying, crept closer to the door, which was open. She could see them. Her mother was sitting up in bed. She was wearing a dressing-gown that was gaping at the front, exposing her breasts. Her father was standing next to the window. Her mother was laughing now, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. Her father turned, saw her standing at the doorway, started to move towards her — there was an expression on his face she did not recognise. Then her mother looked at her. ‘For God’s sake, Michelle,’ she said harshly, ‘what is it?’ Shelley remembers she ran out of the house, across the road, down to the beach. Alison followed her. She didn’t want her sister there. ‘Go away,’ she said, ‘go to Black Rock.’ Did she say that? She’s not sure. She remembers sitting by herself on the sand. Some small crabs were darting about. She watched them for a while. At first, if she moved, the crabs would rush back into their burrows but after a while they became less concerned about her. There was a limestone rock on the beach. She picked it up and stood with it in both hands.

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* Alison leaves the next morning. ‘I’ve got holidays in a couple of months,’ she says, ‘I’ll come down and stay for a while then if you’re still here. Or you can come up and stay with me. Any time you like, I mean.’ Shelley says: ‘Thanks, I’ll do that if I need to. I forgot to ask, by the way, did you say anything to Dad?’ ‘No. I didn’t get around to it, sorry. I’ll call him tonight, if you like.’ ‘It’s okay. I’ll call him myself. That would be better, I suppose.’ ‘Good luck with that.’ ‘Thanks.’ They embrace, a long hug. The ocean murmurs behind them. Clouds have started to build up over the water, though it doesn’t look like rain.

A crab was close to her feet. She remained as still as possible. The crab’s eyes, on their stalks, seemed to be looking up at her. She let the rock fall. It keeps coming back to guilt. This isn’t what he wanted. Watt sees what is happening: Shelley’s nature is changing, the incident with the crab shows something that was not there before. A darkness. He realises she is going to reveal what really happened with Poppy, her part in it, her guilt. That wasn’t what he had in mind. When he started writing this he didn’t know she was guilty. Quite the opposite. Her child had died. Her husband had raped her. How could she be guilty of anything? Yet she is. He knows that now. He knows what she has done. It’s not too late. He could pull her back. He could allow her to be the character he thought she was. He could allow her to heal, find peace in her cottage by the sea. He could allow her to be courageous, accept the past, face the future with hope. He could allow her to reconcile with her mother, please her father, strengthen the bond with her sister, forgive her husband. Or forget him. Or take revenge on him. Yet none of these ideas will work. They might work for another writer — Watt sees the kind of story this might become, feels regret for what is lost — but he won’t go down these paths. He can’t. Not now that he has seen who she is. Shelley has to be guilty. She will have drowned her child. Or allowed her to drown. Or caused her to drown.

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He likes her the way he thought she was. But that’s not the story. He knows whose story he has started to tell, however obliquely: it’s the England stuff after all. He doesn’t want to do this. He has wasted his time, he won’t go on with this piece. He can’t. It was the eyes that did it, the crab’s eyes. Watt doesn’t need Freud to tell him what they mean. He doesn’t want to see the drowned man from the weir. He doesn’t want to see his own mother. Or his wife. He doesn’t want to see his son. He doesn’t want to see what happened in England. That woman. That girl. He’s dropping an authorial rock on those cold crustacean eyes. His eyes. He’s turning out the light. He stands, slams his chair away from the table, picks up the Garfield mug, throws it against the wall. It strikes the tiger between the eyes. The mug breaks. Coffee runs down the painting.

Nameless He is filled with anger, frustration. What a fucking waste of time. All fucking day he’s been doing this, the first writing he’s done for ages. And now he’s letting it go. Because he’s writing about himself. Because he doesn’t want to.

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He needs to clear his head. He leaves the house and walks along the beach towards the point he called Black Rock in the story; he doesn’t know if it has a name. It’s not raining just at the moment, the sun is almost gone.

perhaps her father. Or it will be no one’s fault, just bad luck. He’ll change that bit about the crabs, re-cast Shelley in her original role of brave victim, grieving parent. But Freud is on to him. No point in writing that story now. The reality will remain unsatisfying.

He’s writing about nothing but himself. He’s the father, of course, that absent but benign figure. Talk about correcting an unsatisfying reality. He’s certainly been absent from his son’s life, but presumably — no, certainly — far from benign. What damage has he done? Who knows? he’s never been there to find out. Shelley’s father, on the other hand, has done no damage. He was there, his daughters love him, he hasn’t caused their problems — it’s their mother who has done that. Talk about projection. It’s the cats story again, in a different guise. All Clare’s fault. Jesus, how pathetic. He’s Shelley’s mother, that abandoner of marriages and children. He would have corrected that unsatisfying reality too, no doubt. Probably would have justified her. Or perhaps engaged with her as some kind of cathartic experience. A purgative — there’s certainly some shit he needs to let go of. He’s Alison, with her failed relationships. He’s probably Alan in some way that links obliquely with what happened in England, that whole sorry story, that rape connection; or maybe, like Alan, he’s just an obvious bastard. And, most significantly, he’s Shelley, the guilty one, the one who caused a child’s death. He did that. In Oxford. He’s guilty as surely as if he’d held her under the water himself. He didn’t do his job. He wasn’t there. He knows, if he goes on with Shelley’s story, he will find a way to justify what she has done. It will be her mother’s fault. Or her husband’s fault. Perhaps her sister will be to blame in some way,

He gets back to the house, finds another cup to replace the Garfield mug which is in pieces beneath the tiger, makes a coffee, stands at the window, looks out at the sea, the sky. The rain gets heavier, lightning jags at the water.

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He gets halfway along the beach when the rain starts again. The sky over the sea is storm-dark. He turns and trudges back through the damp sand. As he goes he thinks of something he read in one of the books he borrowed from the university library: Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian theorist, was proposing a notion of what he called polyphony in relation to Dostoevsky’s fiction, suggesting that Dostoevsky’s characters spoke in their own voices without the imposition of a monologic overarching authorial control. According to Bakhtin, the author was participating as an equal with his characters, listening to their voices, renouncing his surplus of vision. Can an author be that passive? Is he becoming Dostoevskian? He doubts it. Is he going to be able to write a thesis on this crap, let alone a novel or an apology or a justification or a projection whatever the hell it is? He doubts that too. Fucking waste of time, the lot of it.

He goes to bed early that night, curls into a foetal position, falls asleep quickly. Some time after midnight he has a dream in which someone — he doesn’t know who — is filling a large tank with water. The tank is made of glass. Then he, Watt, is inside the tank, is being held under the water. He nuzzles up to the glass like a fish, sees dark shapes beyond it, shadows perhaps; he knows he has to break the glass or he will drown. He pushes with the heel of his hand; the glass shatters surprisingly easily but he cuts his wrist in the process and there is blood in the water. Then he is in a bigger tank and he breaks out of this one too, once more releasing blood. No one is holding him now but he is a long way from the surface. Again he breaks out of the tank, again he is in a bigger one. He is swimming in blood now, the shadows swimming with him. Something is coming up fast from a long way below, something terrible, lethal, nameless. He wakes before it reaches him.

Didcot He gets out of bed and sits in the other room with the light off. It’s freezing. He takes a blanket from the bed and wraps it around himself. The house in Oxford was never this cold. He remembers its double-glazing and central heating with some fondness. Why is he thinking of Oxford again? Why are his dreams becoming so fucking obvious?

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‘Elizabeth Jarman.’ He says the name out loud, the first time he has spoken it in more than twenty years. His voice sounds strange, disembodied, located somewhere above his head in the dark room. She had contacted Social Services, spoken with Ted Brigham, sought help (a rare enough occurrence, most clients were not selfreferred). Ted had passed her on to Watt: ‘A bit neurotic I’d say son, thinks she might harm her daughter — have a word with her though, we have to take these things seriously.’ He drove out to Didcot in the Morris 1100. There were problems with the gearbox or the motor or the wheel bearings or something: the car was making sporadic clunking noises. He nursed it along. As he got closer the nuclear power plant chimneys behind the town came into view: huge, menacing, out of phase with the scale of the countryside. Elizabeth Jarman’s house would have been a charming semidetached cottage were it not for its juxtaposition with the chimneys. It was at the end of a lane, surrounded by fields. The chimneys towered above it, though they were probably a mile or so away. She answered the door with a half smile, indicated that he should come inside, asked him if he would like a cup of tea — a level of gentility unknown among his Blackbird Leys clients. They sat in a well-kept living room and she produced some fruitcake to go with the tea. Elizabeth apologised for the untidiness of the house: ‘It’s so hard to keep things clean with a child to look after.’ It didn’t look untidy to Watt — quite the opposite, much neater than his own house. ‘You have a little girl?’ he said by way of a conversational opening. ‘Yes,’ she said. Watt looked around the room. Apart from a high-chair visible through a door leading to the kitchen he could see nothing to indicate a

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child’s existence. ‘Oh,’ Elizabeth said, interpreting his glance, ‘she’s asleep now. She sleeps in the afternoons and I tidy up.’ He judged Elizabeth’s age to be about forty. She was rather severe looking, slightly built, greying hair pulled back into a tight bun. Ten years ago she would probably have been pretty but now she looked strained, in some way defeated. She balanced the cup and saucer in her lap, a heavy skirt covering her knees. Watt waited for her to start talking about her concerns — she had, after all, made the contact — but she said nothing. Finally he said, ‘Do you want to tell me what the problem is?’ ‘Problem? ‘You were worried about your daughter?’ ‘Oh, she’s all right.’ ‘But you phoned us …’ ‘Yesterday, yes.’ ‘And things are different today?’ ‘Yes and no. Look, I’m sorry to have brought you out here. A wild goose chase, perhaps.’ Watt opened a notebook — he should at least look as though he knew what he was doing, take some kind of case history. It clearly wasn’t going to be an easy session — his clients in Blackbird Leys generally told him what they wanted him to do (expedite a welfare payment, get the council to fill in a hole) or, if he wanted them to do something that didn’t appeal (send their children to school, desist from belting one another) they would generally tell him to fuck off. You knew where you stood. But this woman … ‘Can I ask how old your daughter is?’ ‘She’s four.’ ‘My son is five.’

Elizabeth did not respond other than to nod slightly. Then she said: ‘Oh yes.’ ‘Do you have any other children?’ ‘No.’ ‘And your husband?’ ‘No.’ ‘You’re not married?’ ‘Separated.’ ‘So there’s just the two of you then?’ ‘That’s right.’ Watt was floundering. He knew he should be getting more than this but if the woman didn’t want to talk, what could he do? She seemed competent enough, well spoken, probably well educated. Sitting in front of him she seemed to embody English middle-class reserve. He felt like an intruder. ‘So there’s nothing you want us to do now? Nothing you’re worried about?’ ‘Thank you for coming all this way to see me, but there really is nothing for you to do here.’ ‘Your daughter is all right then? You’re all right?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Well, let us know if you are worried. We could arrange for some counselling, or even respite care if you wanted that.’ ‘Thank you so much, I appreciate your concern.’ She was dismissing him. Perhaps he had failed a secret test. He didn’t mind; what she wanted to do was her business, at least he had responded as requested. He stood and handed the empty cup to her. She wiped the table where it had been standing, using a handkerchief she took from the sleeve of her blouse. Then she walked with him to the door, closed it quickly behind him.

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It started to rain as he drove back to Oxford. Near Abingdon the clunking noise became more insistent and he pulled into a garage. While he waited for the mechanic’s diagnosis he read through the paltry notes he had made at the Didcot house. He hadn’t even asked the daughter’s name.

The Oxford Mail He is not going to be able to get back to sleep now. He goes into the kitchen, checks the time: it’s three o’clock. Fuck, that’s way too early. The rain is belting against the windows, it’s black out there, starless, no moon. He makes a coffee, walks around the house sipping it, then sits at his desk, still wrapped in the blanket. Should he make some notes about this stuff? Why bother, it’s all in his head. After his visit to Didcot he told Ted he had spoken with Elizabeth Jarman. ‘Anything we should be concerned about?’ Ted had asked him. ‘Not really,’ he had said, ‘she’s changed her mind, doesn’t think she has a problem.’ ‘And does she have one?’ ‘Not as far as I can see. She wouldn’t talk about it.’ ‘The little girl is okay?’ ‘Apparently so.’ Ted had raised an eyebrow. ‘No follow-up then?’ ‘I don’t think so.’

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‘Make sure you write it up, lad — we don’t want to get our names in the Oxford Mail.’ Ted’s name not only made it into the Oxford Mail but into the national newspapers as well. The tabloids had a ball: Social workers look away as killer mother snaps. Do nothing Welfare misses mad mother — child dies. Social Services shame: teddy bear girl perishes. Ted caught most of the flak, acknowledging the case should have been handled by a more experienced officer. He said little to Watt after the initial departmental investigation, though Watt thought it a safe bet that his enthusiasm for all things Australian had taken a severe battering. Watt followed the progress of the Elizabeth Jarman case with a mixture of horror and guilty fascination as it unfolded in the media over the next few months: clearly, whoever was interviewing her now — police, lawyers, psychiatrists — were much better at extracting information than he had been. Elizabeth, it turned out, was obsessed by cleanliness. She bathed herself and her daughter compulsively, many times each day. The girl’s name, Watt discovered, was Victoria. When she wasn’t in the bath Elizabeth kept her asleep for as long as possible, doped up with tranquillisers. The tranquillisers were Elizabeth’s — she kept herself doped up too. A few days after Watt’s visit she gave Victoria an extra large dose and, when the child was asleep, held her head under water in the bath, drowned her. She then dried her, combed her hair, dressed her in pink pyjamas with yellow teddy bears on them (the tabloids made much of the teddy bears) and tucked her up (very

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neatly) in her bed. She then let the water out of the bath, cleaned it, filled it with fresh water and got into it herself. She used a razor blade to slit her wrist. When the blood coloured the water she started to scream — strange, high-pitched choking sounds according to the neighbour who heard them and came to her aid. An ambulance was called. After Elizabeth had been taken to hospital the neighbour discovered Victoria — asleep, as she thought — in her room. She decided to take her to her own house while Elizabeth’s situation was being assessed. When she pulled back the bedclothes and picked the girl up she was initially perplexed by how cold she was. The poor little mite was like ice, she told the Oxford Mail.

A disturbing event There was a great deal more information about Elizabeth Jarman that Watt had failed to glean during his visit to Didcot. The English newspapers provided a range of responses, from the outraged to the analytical. He was thinking: I can use this one day, I can write about this. He was thinking: I must forget this. He was thinking: I can never forget this. For a while he kept the newspaper cuttings, but ended up throwing them away. She had been brought up in a well-to-do Oxford family: her father was a consultant at the Radcliffe Infirmary, her mother an editor at Oxford University Press. Neither would comment on

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the case. The newspaper accounts suggested an emotionally repressed family environment, with Elizabeth underachieving in terms of academic success and career aspiration — she had struggled through her training to become a nurse, while her two younger brothers had become successful barristers. They did not participate in her defence when her case came to trial. While working at a hospital in Newcastle she met and married Joe Jarman, a diver working on North Sea oil rigs and a former navy midshipman. Elizabeth’s family were less than impressed by her choice. Consequently, she had little contact with them during the ten years she was with Joe. Elizabeth did not cope well with Joe’s frequent absences — he was at sea for at least two weeks during most months. Her heavy tranquilliser use began during this time — the medication was prescribed to treat an anxiety condition which centred on her belief that Joe would drown. She experienced dream-like episodes during which she could ‘see’ Joe in his diving gear, trapped hundreds of feet beneath the surface. During these episodes Elizabeth reported a feeling of immense weight pressing down on her, which she interpreted as the great pressure of water pressing on Joe. Her feelings about this and other issues were recorded in a journal that she kept — extracts from this journal were read during the court proceedings and reproduced in various newspapers. The picture that emerged was of a woman devoted to her husband and pathologically concerned about his safety, constantly entreating him to seek other employment. But Joe liked diving and the money was good so, despite Elizabeth’s objections, he continued with it. North Sea Joe chose rigs over loony Liz was how one tabloid sub-editor saw it, but a more balanced view of the evidence suggested that Joe was reasonably content

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with his domestic arrangements, for the first few years anyway. He appeared as a defence witness, saying he understood Elizabeth’s anxiety about his work — it was, after all, a dangerous occupation — and acknowledging that his absences must have been difficult for her. However, according to both Elizabeth’s journal (she did not give evidence) and Joe’s testimony, another source of tension between them was Elizabeth’s difficulty in having a child. They had tried from the outset but on the rare occasions when Elizabeth had managed to conceive she had been unable to sustain the pregnancy beyond two or three months. Both wanted children — especially Joe, who came from a large family — but as the years passed it became apparent that it was unlikely to happen. According to Elizabeth’s journal, Joe became increasingly distant from her as a result of her failure to provide children for him. She was aware that she was becoming more dependent, clinging, over-concerned about his safety, worried that ‘the one person who has ever been there for me’ might be taken from her. Aware, too, that her behaviour was at least as likely as the North Sea to cause his loss from her life. Elizabeth saw three psychiatrists during the last five years of her marriage, detailing in her journal her efforts to ‘free myself of this terrible, crippling anxiety about Joe and recognise that it is to do with my own need to feel loved, wanted, worthwhile — all the things my parents did not allow me to feel.’ The psychiatrists gave evidence, agreeing that Elizabeth was not psychotic, at least not at the time she had consulted them. Two saw her as exhibiting symptoms of clinical depression with underlying anxiety, while the third, a Dr Sammarian, noted ‘a fugue-like dissociative condition, circumstantially determined.’ This latter doctor was the last she consulted before leaving Newcastle. ‘Given a trauma of the kind

suffered by Mrs Jarman it is sometimes the case that the mind will, as it were, shut down, block out the disturbing event,’ he testified. ‘While a part of her remained aware of what had occurred, another part appeared to be resisting awareness, denying what had happened to her, denying the results of that event, in this case her pregnancy and the subsequent breakdown of her marriage.’

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Watt had written Dr Sammarian’s words — quoted in one of the better English newspapers, the Guardian perhaps — in his writer’s notebook, along with some of the extracts from Elizabeth’s journal. He finds them now, close to the beginning. His handwriting was better in those days, more legible, less spidery. A disturbing event, indeed, he thinks, re-reading the quote from Dr Sammarian. The man sounds like a textbook on abnormal psychology, no wonder he did nothing to help Elizabeth Jarman. Not that Watt can talk.

Third person Dr Sammarian’s disturbing event occurred while Joe was at sea. Elizabeth had finished an evening shift at the hospital and returned home at about ten o’clock. She let herself in through the front door of the two-storey house, then went up to the bedroom to change out of her uniform and run a bath — this was her routine. With the water running she did not hear the man come

up the stairs behind her. Or perhaps he had been in one of the other first-floor bedrooms. He had broken into the house by levering a casement window near the back door and had apparently been inside for some time before Elizabeth arrived, though subsequent enquiries did not determine how long he might have been there. Neither was it clear whether robbery was his primary motive — there was some evidence of disturbance of drawers, a few items were taken — or whether he had been lying in wait for Elizabeth, perhaps aware of her shift arrangements. Throughout the course of her five-hour ordeal he barely spoke to her. He raped her repeatedly during this time. After he had gone she ran fresh water into the bath and sat in it, not moving, until the sun came up. The report she made later that day to the Newcastle police was tendered as defence evidence at her Oxford trial. This report stated that Elizabeth’s manner throughout the interview was detached, noting she seemed only partially interested in answering questions put to her and was unwilling, or perhaps unable, to provide any useful information about her alleged attacker or the alleged events. She was able to recall nothing of the man’s appearance and had no more than a vague recollection of what had taken place: at first she tried to resist but he was able to easily overpower her, and his sexual violence seemed to feed on her resistance. The report also noted that Elizabeth seemed barely able to relate to the assault; as the interview progressed she began to refer to herself in the third person. Her use of the third person continued in her diary from this point onward. In an extract read at her trial she wrote: He has held

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her there all night, in her room, on her bed, saying nothing to her but bitch, whore, cunt. When she moves he hurts her so she does not move. He makes her do things she can not now recall. Dirty things. She has asked him to stop, to leave, to let her get up from the bed. He says nothing but bitch, whore, cunt. If she moves he hurts her. If she moves he does things to her. She does not move. He wants her to move; she knows she must not move or he will not go. She does not move. In the end he goes. What will she say to her husband? What will she tell him? Will she say she did not move?

The voice of the rain The style attracted Watt. The style, for Christ’s sake. It interested him more than she had done at their Didcot meeting, a triumph of literary sensibility over human connection and professional responsibility. He recorded other extracts tendered at the trial and reproduced in a number of newspapers; for a while Elizabeth’s diary was news. Her defence team was apparently happy to accommodate the media interest — perhaps the diary was seen as helpful in creating a softer perception of their client, an explanation of her subsequent behaviour. The Didcot Devil had her reasons. He reads another extract: Her husband has come home. He has said she must rest, he has said she will remember. She will remember the man’s face, his voice, his skin. How can she remember? She tries; to please him she tries but there is nothing. She closes her eyes, lies still in the darkness, nothing comes. The rain comes, only the rain. Does the rain have a voice?

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He had forgotten those lines; clearly, they are the basis of his story about Shelley, written more than ten years after he had returned from England, though he does not remember using them at that time, or referring to them, or even thinking about them. Yet he did use them, some of them. And used them again just yesterday. Freud was right: he has been writing Elizabeth’s story all along, some version of it; guilt has been at work beneath the words. Elizabeth’s story. The story he failed to hear in Didcot — and it was raining that day, of course it was. Rain on the windscreen, he used that too. But he did not use the details of her life he subsequently discovered by reading the newspapers; he pushed those details as far down as they would go, tried to forget them. Some social worker. Some writer. Some human being. Her husband tells her that all will be well, that he will stay with her, that it is not her fault, all that matters to him is her health, her happiness. But the voice of the rain is louder, harder, and tells her other things; over and over it tells her other things.

Banality When she discovered she was pregnant she said nothing to Joe; at first she said nothing, believing this child would be lost as the others had been. Months passed: two, three, four. She had to tell him.

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Watt finds the diary extract: She has wanted a child, his child, for him. And now, now there is to be one. She has gone to him, told him. Whose child? he has said. She has said she does not know, cannot know, though that is a lie. She knows, she surely knows. And she cannot stop it now, it is too late; if she could stop it she would but it is too late. What will he do, what will her husband do? She has read his eyes. He says he loves her but the rain says he does not. Joe did not stick around. Two months before Victoria was born he told Elizabeth that it would be best for them all — him, her, the unborn child — if they were to separate. He would help support her, he would help support her child, but she could not expect him to live with them. ‘It was more than I could bear,’ he told the Oxford court. ‘I know she had suffered more than me but there it was, I couldn’t be with her after that. I tried but I just couldn’t do it. I pictured her, you know, my wife, with him, in my bed. I just couldn’t stop seeing her. She had changed, too, it was like she wasn’t there. And then the child, that was just too much for me. Even if it was mine. Maybe it was. Maybe we could have found that out. But I didn’t want to know, it was too late somehow. Of course, if I’d known what she would do … but I didn’t know her, you see, I didn’t really know her at all.’ Quite a speech, Watt thinks, reading what he has transcribed into his journal. Why did he record this? He must have been impressed by the sheer banality of Joe’s response. Good old Joe. Still, would he have done any better?

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Psychological camel Dr Sammarian became involved shortly after that. He assessed her as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and suggested she should, if possible, be in a position where more support was available. Could she return to Oxford, to be close to her family? He knew her father; with her permission he would speak with him. ‘She appeared to agree to that suggestion,’ he told the Oxford court. Though Elizabeth remained in Newcastle for two months after Victoria was born, she did return to Oxfordshire, moving with her baby into the house in Didcot. Her father owned both sides of this semi-detached property; the other side was leased to a family friend, Margaret Butler. It was Miss Butler who found Elizabeth in the bath. Why has he recorded Margaret Butler’s name? Surely that is the least significant detail of Elizabeth’s time in Didcot. Why has he not recorded details of her family’s involvement, or lack of involvement? He remembers they would offer no comment to the newspapers but he can’t remember if either her mother or father was involved in the court proceedings. Did at least one of them give evidence? If so, what did they say? Were they able to provide some support? Or did they just abandon her? Why can’t he remember any of this? Why didn’t he write it down? Too close to the bone, no doubt. He was doing some abandoning of his own at the time. Elizabeth got through four years without any incident — or at least any recorded incident — that might indicate her lethal

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potential. There were no more psychiatrists — Watt remembers that detail; no doubt the good Sammarian had finished her off with regard to wishing to see more members of that profession, though she must have been seeing a doctor in order to get the tranquillisers. Or maybe Daddy provided them, his pharmaceutical contribution to his daughter’s well-being. So there she was, dismissed to Didcot, side by side with Miss Margaret Butler, beneath the nuclear chimneys. Joe, meanwhile, remained in Newcastle and found the time between diving engagements to embark upon a new relationship — another nurse, as it happened, a former colleague of Elizabeth’s who had rallied with support in his time of need. They were planning to marry just as soon as Joe’s divorce could be arranged. Watt remembers: this information was, as Elizabeth’s senior counsel put it, the straw that broke the back of her psychological camel. He made much of the fact that shortly after receiving the news of Joe’s connubial intentions Elizabeth contacted Ted Brigham with her concerns for Victoria’s safety. According to this barrister — Porter or Pope or Potter — she had remained hopeful of a reconciliation up until the time of Joe’s announcement. He had maintained some contact with her and had — good as his word — contributed to Victoria’s upkeep. Elizabeth saw hope in this. Then, when he wanted to marry someone else, she saw no hope. That was where Watt came in. Or didn’t, depending on how one views these things. Psychological camel indeed.

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Unsleeping dog In his notebook Watt finds the last extract he recorded from Elizabeth Jarman’s journal: The rain alone speaks the truth to her now, only the rain. After everything it is no accident that she has come here to this place with its dark chimneys, its dark air, its invisible stain. She has come here with the child and only the rain will tell her the truth: the stained child will die here, the air will kill her, every day the chimneys will spew their unseen poison, every night. The rain tells her: there is nothing you can do; let her go, there is nothing you can do. She has tried to keep the child clean and quiet, quiet and clean. But it is not enough, the rain tells her it is not enough, the rain tells her what she must do, the only thing. No one can help her. Even the rain cannot help her, cannot wash away the stain. The air is too strong, too dark, too toxic. The stain is too deep. The extract was dated a week after his visit to Didcot. A week after that Victoria was dead.

What happened then? Watt remembers Elizabeth was found not guilty of Victoria’s murder, due to insanity. There was no argument about that: by the time of the trial she had entered a catatonic state, not speaking, barely moving. She was brought to court only for sentencing. Then she was packed off to a life of incarceration. Perhaps, the tabloids speculated, she would be able to while away the hours with Myra Hindley: A nation grieves while evil pair sit down for a cuppa. Before long the tabloids found other things to be outraged by; the Elizabeth Jarman case stopped being news. What became of her? Is she dead? Perhaps someone has written a book on the case, or a psychiatric study. Dr Sammarian might have done that, who knows? Perhaps, Watt wonders, he should try to find out. No he shouldn’t. That dog can sleep.

According to Dr Sammarian’s evidence this diary extract was clear evidence that Elizabeth had developed a psychotic condition with paranoid ideation. ‘You can’t necessarily see these things coming,’ he said. ‘An incident, a set of circumstances, a predisposition … and seemingly from nowhere you have a full-blown and lethal psychosis. Who could have foreseen what Mrs Jarman was capable of?’ Not him, obviously. And not Watt. Is that an excuse? Watt wonders, closing his notebook, staring at his reflection in the darkness behind the window. Of course it isn’t.

It isn’t sleeping, of course. It’s gnawing at him like it always has, like it always should, like it always will. The unsleeping dog crouches in the Freudian darkness, eating pieces of Watt’s heart.

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A disgrace, a tragedy, a sign A rain squall strikes the window glass, blurring his reflection, liquefying it: man of water, he’s that all right. He should have stood up in England, taken his share of the

blame for the Elizabeth Jarman tragedy. (What else to call it? Oversight? Fiasco? Case? Mistake? No, it was a tragedy, though not in the Greek sense, not ordained, not inevitable, he could have prevented it, should have.) He should have acknowledged his guilt, his incompetence, his extraordinary lack of awareness, his lethal lack of interest. Remarkably, he was not taken to task for what was, among other things, a severe embarrassment for the Oxfordshire County Council Social Services Department. There was the enquiry, at which Ted Brigham took responsibility for putting an inexperienced social worker on so complex a case. Ted was reprimanded and procedural changes were made to ensure better supervision of social workers. Watt was not asked to account for his actions and did not volunteer to do so. In a way, his perceived lack of experience made it easy for the department and its political masters to explain away the Didcot events, sweep them under the bureaucratic carpet. That suited Watt. Man of water, he was happy to trickle into invisibility, ooze, evaporate.

He remembers the moment he made the decision. He was sitting in a cafe on the M1, eating something that came with lashings of grease. He was travelling to Rampton, a psychiatric hospital in

Lincolnshire, where he was to pick up a patient who was being discharged. This patient, Andrew Kafka, originally from Oxford, was considered no longer the threat to society he had been when he had gained involuntary admission due to an unfortunate tendency to break into houses, defecate on the living room carpet and await the return of the householders, who would find him naked in a foetal position beside his deposit. The Kafka family, however, was not keen to be reunited with Andrew — they had trials enough already, as well as new carpet. So he became the responsibility of the Oxfordshire County Council. Watt’s job was to supervise his post-release welfare. He had booked Andrew into Patel’s Bed and Breakfast, an establishment-of-last-resort on Cowley Road, and was now on his way north to collect his client. He was not looking forward to the assignment — according to the case notes, Andrew was physically large, of low intelligence, belligerently encopretic when provoked, reactively encopretic when anxious. Since the drive back to Oxford was likely to make him anxious, or belligerent, or both, it promised to be a smelly trip. Ted Brigham was probably extracting a revenge of sorts with this client allocation. Watt didn’t blame him. Ted had said very little to him since the Elizabeth Jarman trial and the subsequent departmental enquiry, though he had removed him from a number of potentially problematic cases and had placed him under Francesca’s supervision — he was to discuss all his clients with her on a regular basis and she was to report any concerns to Ted. He had been able to slide out of his sexual entanglement with Francesca — his new status as social work pariah had meant the end of her enthusiasm for him; she was unimpressed by his performance at Didcot and was now coldly professional in her dealings with him. The foxgloves of Headington Hill were not

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However, he did decide to put some distance between himself and the scene of his disgrace. And it was a disgrace, however unacknowledged. He knew what it was. A disgrace. A tragedy.

revisited. Watt was quite relieved — he had been wondering how he could end the affair before Clare found out about it. And Francesca really was too fat. He knew Ted, Francesca and the rest of the department would be far from unhappy if he were to resign. Andrew Kafka was certainly no incentive to stay. Maybe this was a sign. On the cafe’s television, a smug Margaret Thatcher was claiming electoral victory over Jim Callaghan’s government: surely another sign that Watt’s time in England was coming to an end. He finished his meal, decided against another stewed coffee, went out to where the Morris 1100 was parked. He kept driving north until there was an opportunity to slip off the motorway; then he began to head back to Oxford via a more scenic route. He would take the rest of the day to get back, maybe have a look at the Cotswolds on the way. Andrew Kafka could stay where he was until someone else came for him. Watt didn’t give a shit, though Andrew probably would. He was finished with social work. He was finished with England. He didn’t want to be married any more. He would go to India, become a hippie, become a writer.

Not fair He got back to Oxford in the late afternoon, went to a travel agent in Cornmarket Street, bought a one-way ticket to Bombay on a flight leaving the next day. Easy really. He would go home and pack, tell Clare what he had decided

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to do. Maybe he would say he needed a break, that the Elizabeth Jarman business had taken a toll on him. Maybe he would keep it open-ended, say he would see her back in Australia in a while. Something like that. She would be all right. Clare was not at home but had left a note for him: Tim very sick, possibly pneumonia. Have taken him to hospital (John Radcliffe). Come as soon as you can. Jesus, he could do without this. On the other hand it gave him some breathing space, he didn’t have to front up to Clare just at the moment, explain himself, talk to her, no doubt lie to her; there would be less stress if he could just leave. He went upstairs, got his things together. Then he made a cup of tea. (A cup of tea. Why is he remembering these ridiculous details?) Then he thought about writing a note of his own. What could he say? Gone to India, hope Tim is okay. Something like that. Terrific. He could slide away now, maybe spend the night at Patel’s Bed and Breakfast — there would be a vacancy, after all. Could he do this? What about the boy? What about his son? He should at least go to the hospital, do the right thing — and it wasn’t just duty, he did care about him, and Clare too, in a way. Could he just leave them like this?

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He took his ticket to Bombay out of his coat pocket, stared at it. There was a knock at the door. It was a like a scene from a soap opera, the circumstances contrived, the timing absurdly coincidental. He opened the door to find a telegram boy with a message from Australia: Your mother seriously ill. Can you return? The telegram was from the senior social worker at Swan Districts Hospital. He remembers thinking: at least one social worker is doing her job. He remembers thinking: I’m going to have to do this, I’m going to have to go back. And beneath these thoughts — deeper, harder, meaner — the thought that he was being manipulated in some way, thwarted, forced from the path he wanted to take; that it was not fair. His mother was dying. His son was in hospital. It was not fair. He wanted to go to India. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

Tiger Tim The sun has started to come up; Watt can see the grey ocean, the grey sky. He has been sitting at his desk for hours. It’s still fucking cold. He pulls the blanket tightly around himself, gets up stiffly, puts on the kettle, makes a coffee. As always, its taste is metallic.

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He came back, that’s the thing. His mother needed him and he came back. Yeah, right. He came back because he didn’t want to feel guilty about not coming back; that’s the truth if anything is. And it was a bit late, just a bit. She got to see her son before she died; big deal. His resentful deathbed appearance was no more than a token, a show — he should have been there for her a long time before that, years before, when it might have meant something, been of some use. Okay, there was a use: she wanted, needed, to tell him his father’s name and she did that, for what it was worth. What was it worth? Something to her, certainly, a confession, maybe an absolution; bit late for that, too. To him? Not much at the time. And now? Not much more. A name, that’s all. Dear old Dad. He’s no more than a name to his own son. Hasn’t seen him for more than twenty years, hasn’t spoken to him, doesn’t know him. The difference is that Tim can hardly be indifferent, must hate him, should hate him. What has Clare told him? Surely nothing good, and rightly so. Still, some children will cling with a shining faith to their absent parent; maybe Tim has done that. Maybe he has built a shrine in Watt’s memory, burns a redemptive candle. He’ll be twenty-five now. Maybe he wants to know his father. Maybe he wants to kill him. What does Tim remember about him? Probably not much, at five memory hasn’t really kicked in. Or perhaps he has constructed a

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Leonardo-like cradle vulture fantasy in which his father is recalled in the guise of a rat or something equally appropriate. Maybe, improbably — despite the years, despite the damage, despite Watt’s absence, indifference, unworthiness — Tim recalls something of an Oxford afternoon when his father made up a story for him. This afternoon (Watt remembers) was cold, luminously grey, close to snowing. Tim was sick — no doubt the first symptoms of pneumonia — and Watt brought the boy into bed with him, told him a story about two tigers, Cyril and Charlie, who not only had no stripes but also preferred swimming, snorkelling and sunbathing to prowling around in the jungle and eating monkeys. Cyril and Charlie were unpopular with the other tigers, though the monkeys thought they were good chaps. Watt made up stirring adventures for them, Tim laughed, forgot for a while that he was sick. ‘Tell me more stories about the water tigers, Daddy,’ he said, snuggling into Watt’s side. ‘Tiger tiger,’ Watt said, ‘Tiger Tim.’ They were both laughing now. Later that night, in the same bed, Clare asked Watt to hold her but he did not want to. They had not had sex for months. A cuddle wasn’t going to fix that.

travelled to England with the boy, then a five year old, and his mother. Watt has a copy of the book that story appeared in; he finds it on his makeshift bookshelf, next to a box of Scrabble that has, no doubt, played its part in happy family holidays for Steve, Helen and their girls. He reads: London spring in name only. Cold far beyond the resources of the coin-fed gas heater in our room; icy wind when we venture out and garbage piled in the streets — a city-wide rubbish collectors’ strike, weeks now; it was in the papers at home but only of passing interest. The reality, the contrast with what we have left, is overwhelming. Talk of rats, a serious health problem. To expose a child to this is irresponsibility, madness. Three days. Already he has developed a cough.

Maybe Tim has read his books. Maybe this is how he has tried to find him. What on earth is the poor boy going to find in that revisionist morass? He won’t find Watt there, not the real Watt; Freud could put him straight on that. He will find, in one story, a tragic, grieving father who has lost his wife and son in a car accident; in another story another father worries about his teenage son, remembers an earlier time when he

Hiring a car, yellow Mini, no particular direction in mind, just to get out of London. Raining, the traffic dangerous, unfamiliar. Joel wheezily asleep in the back, his seat belt too big, useless if we crash. Susan navigating from a small map supplied by the hire firm. Some kind of major circular road, the first exit is to the West Country; taking it, the sky seeming to lift. Stopping, some village, enquiring about accommodation for the night. There is a farm cottage, just outside town. Early evening now, not yet dark. The cottage overhung by a big tree — an oak? an elm? — no sign of spring growth; perhaps it is dead. Crows — do they call them crows here, or ravens? — perching on bare branches. Joel running towards the tree and the birds rising black into the dark sky, his coat vivid red against it. That night lying between us, rasping up breath that hangs like thick steam in the freezing, moonlit air. Later the moon gone, darkness, the sound of his breathing.

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For whom was he writing this stuff? For Tim? To demonstrate fatherly involvement, imperfect though it might have been, to show a kind of love? Once we were a family. Can you see us? Can you see how I tried to do my best, how I worried about you, saw dark omens in the crows, the rats? The situation was real enough. And his concern. But a little later, when Tim really needed him, he would have been on that flight to Bombay, probably wouldn’t even have said goodbye to the boy. As it turned out he was on a flight to Perth instead.

The force of circumstances When did it become clear to him that he wasn’t going back to England and that he didn’t want Clare and Tim to join him in Perth? A few days after the funeral he was in his mother’s house, sorting through her things — some photographs and papers went into a scuffed brown leather suitcase she had brought with her when, years earlier, they had travelled to Perth to start a new life; the rest went to a second-hand dealer who paid Watt five hundred dollars for the lot. He remembers standing in her kitchen feeling sorry for himself when Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone came on the radio — he sang along with it at the top of his voice, identifying with the song’s sentiments of aloneness, alienation, disconnection. Was that when he decided? Not really. He doesn’t remember deciding at all; rather, he allowed the force of circumstances to sweep him clear of all encumbrances.

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The force of circumstances indeed. Put that way it sounds as if he had little to do with it, and that is the way he has always preferred to think of what happened at that time. Clare tried to contact him, leaving telephone messages with several of their friends in Perth. He got most of them. She was wanting to know what was going on. Was his mother any better? Did he need to stay in Perth? — if so, she would join him when Tim was well enough to travel. As soon as she heard from him she would make whatever arrangements needed to be made with the Oxford house. Money was a problem — Watt’s airfare to Australia had depleted their modest reserves. Her messages were concerned, urgent, reassuring: he was to contact her as soon as possible; she was thinking of him, what he was going through; and don’t worry about Tim, he’s out of hospital now, he’s going to be all right. She would have been there for him, he knows that. If he had told her his mother had died she would have been supportive. A good wife. Not that she had got on with his mother, but that’s not the point, and she could hardly be held responsible — his mother had never forgiven her for entangling him in the toils of too-early parenthood. All Clare’s fault, of course, nothing to do with her boy. But he didn’t contact her. He didn’t tell her his mother had died. He didn’t tell her about the hastily arranged funeral. About the unrelenting rain that day. About the two mourners: himself and the woman from meals on wheels who had taken a kindly interest in his mother during the time he had been in England. So sad to be old and lonely like that, this woman told him, such a shame. It was this woman — Watt can’t remember her name — who had called the police when his mother had not answered the door,

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who had travelled to hospital with her in the ambulance, who had visited her every day until he arrived. He hadn’t even known his mother had been receiving meals on wheels.

Twenty years later he hasn’t quite managed to do that. He stares out across the water. The sun has been up for a while now, the light is pale, watery. He sighs. His chest feels tense. Rain is falling.

Eventually, a week or so after the funeral, he wrote to Clare. He can’t remember the exact words though his meaning was clear enough: he wasn’t coming back to England; he didn’t want to be with her any more; his mother’s death had unsettled him, made him reassess his priorities; maybe he would travel to India or somewhere like that; marriage wasn’t for him, or parenthood, he was no good at them; he wanted to be a writer; he didn’t want to be responsible for anyone. He hoped she would be okay with all this. He hoped she would understand. He didn’t have any money at the moment but he would help her out when he got some. He would be in touch. Clare did not reply. Later, Watt was to hear via Steve and Helen that she had contacted her mother, who had arranged for Clare and Tim to fly to Adelaide. That had been that; as far as he was concerned the problem had been solved — she could live with her mother who would help her with Tim. She would be able to get a teaching job whenever she wanted. She would be fine. He was off the hook. He could get on with his life. Later he would get in touch with her, work something out about seeing Tim. But not yet. He wasn’t ready. His mother had just died. He’d had a bad time in England. He needed to get himself together.

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The Gordon strain

Letters A week has passed since Watt left his unsigned letter at the Osprey Bay police station. Nothing has happened to indicate any police action on the issue of the drowned man in the weir, nothing that Watt knows about anyway. He has resisted the temptation to go back to the scene of his … not crime, not anything really, and that’s the problem. Maybe the police are keeping the weir under surveillance, waiting for the anonymous letter writer to appear. Then they could ask some awkward questions. Why didn’t you try harder? Why didn’t you display just a tiny bit of courage? Why didn’t you think about someone else’s needs? Police don’t ask those kind of questions, though someone should. His mother perhaps. Or his wife. Or his son. Or even poor, crazy Elizabeth Jarman. Someone should ask him. And what would he do then? Probably write a letter. Unsigned, of course. He has received two letters. One is from Steve, to let Watt know he is coming down to Osprey Bay with Helen and the girls for the first week of the school holidays, in a few days time. Watt can stay with them in the house if he likes, though it’s going to be a bit of a squeeze. Maybe he’d like to go to Perth — he can use their house in Shenton Park. How is the writing going? Steve asks Watt to give him a call, let him know what he wants to do.

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The second letter is from his academic supervisor, Dr Louise Sparrow. She points out that she will be required to make an annual report on his PhD candidature and postgraduate scholarship. She is sure he is making wonderful progress with his research but she will need to meet him soon to discuss what he is doing. She would be very interested to read any chapters or drafts he may have written towards either his novel or his theoretical dissertation. Will he please contact her secretary to make an appointment. He walks to the town centre after dark, calls Steve from the phone box on the highway, tells him yes, he will take up the offer of a week in Shenton Park. ‘Come early if you can,’ Steve says, ‘we’ll catch up before we head down to Osprey Bay.’ ‘I’ll try to do that.’ ‘You know where we keep the house key, in case you miss us?’ ‘Somewhere near the back door?’ ‘Under the big pot plant. By the way, what’s the weather been like down there?’ ‘Wet,’ Watt tells him.

Faking it There are a few things he needs to do before he goes to Perth. The house has to be tidied up for a start. Watt surveys the results of his six month stay: nothing looks ordered; nothing looks clean; one of the children’s drawings has fallen off the fridge and has

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been stepped on; there is a coffee stain on the tiger, giving it a permanent wall-eyed wink. The wall below the tiger is stained too. He hasn’t even picked up the broken Garfield mug. The garden is worse. There has been a bit of early spring sunshine between the showers during the past few weeks, encouraging new growth in the already rampant grass. He should have remembered to ask Steve about the lawnmower. Maybe he can hire one from the garage. Or maybe he should just go ahead and put the fuel in the machine that’s in the shed. He’ll have to do something about the letter from Dr Sparrow. The truth is he’s got bugger all to show for his time at taxpayers’ expense — a few thousand words of a novel that isn’t going any further and a desultory engagement with Freud and Bakhtin. He’s not going to write a thesis on Creativity and Writing Process, not this year anyway, probably not any year if he’s honest with himself. Its absence from the academic canon will not be regarded as a tragic loss, he suspects. However, the loss of his scholarship would be in the nature of a tragedy; he’s become quite attached to the idea of those fortnightly payments into his bank account. Maybe if he submits the writing he has done — the failed story about Shelley — along with a few unpublished pieces from years ago … yes, he could do that, say it is work in progress, all part of some big plan. Who would know the difference? Not Dr Louise Sparrow, who could then sign off a report on his satisfactory progress, ensuring the continuation of funding for next year. He would know the difference of course, he would know he was faking it. But he’s always known that. He should also do something about Claudia. He should be clear with her, tell her he’s not interested. He has told her, in ways that

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should be obvious enough, but she just doesn’t seem to get it. She turned up at his house again, the day after he had sat up all night thinking about Elizabeth Jarman and England. He had gone to bed in the early afternoon, just dozing a bit, not properly asleep. He heard the front door click open, someone moving lightly in the other room. Not sure what to do, he stayed where he was for a few minutes, trying to work out what was happening. Was he being robbed? Unlikely, Osprey Bay was hardly a crime hot-spot. Still, you never know, some junkie or speed freak might be after cash or property. They weren’t going to find much of either out there, but he didn’t want a confrontation. And what would happen when they got to the room he was in? It also occurred to him, fleetingly, that this visit was connected to his letter; maybe the police had tracked him down and were doing some kind of investigation. After a while the noises stopped. He got out of bed then, tiptoed to the bedroom door, looked out. There was Claudia, standing in front of his desk, reading the print-out of his story. She turned, held up the page she was reading. ‘This is so extraordinary,’ she said. ‘You’re using my story, what I told you about my mother. That’s wonderful! Writers must share!’ They had ended up in bed where, again, his performance had been unexceptional. He told her he was tired, had been up all night. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I could see your light. I was awake for a while during the night.’ He moved away from her, got out of bed, had a shower. When he came out she had dressed and was waiting by the front door.

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‘I’ll leave you to your work,’ she said. ‘I just came to invite you to dinner. How about Tuesday? I really want to tell you about the novel I’m working on.’ Watt said nothing. She blew him a kiss, stepped out into the rain. Today is Tuesday. He doesn’t want to see her but perhaps he should. Perhaps he should let her know he doesn’t appreciate being spied on, having his work read without his permission, being considered part of some ridiculous writers’ duo. The woman can’t even write, for God’s sake. And she’s come into his house again, just let herself in. What the hell does she think she’s doing? What is he doing, for that matter, leaving the house unlocked? He would never do it in the city. What is that, some impulse towards openness, change, revelation of self? Is he inviting scrutiny, invasion? Or is it just a country thing, a sense of belonging to a community? But he doesn’t belong to this community, doesn’t know anyone here apart from a few shopkeepers. And Claudia, of course. If he sees her tonight he can tell her to back off; whatever absurd notion she has about him, about them, is way off the mark. Then he can have his week in Perth, by the end of which time she will have got used to the idea that he was just a passing fuck who has now passed. Not much of a fuck either. Mind you, her car would be handy for the trip, better than sitting on a coach for the best part of a day. He could tell her when he gets back.

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Forgiveness, absolution

For the past few days, since the Elizabeth Jarman night, he has felt a kind of shift, an emotional realignment. Not exactly a catharsis but a stirring of feelings he hadn’t gone anywhere near for a long time. He would like to talk about some of this stuff, talk to a woman. But not this woman. He looks across the table; she’s smiling at him, head slightly to one side. He moves his eyes past her. Why has he let himself get caught up in this? It’s the same old story: the chance of an easy fuck, a woman who ends up wanting more than that. There have been plenty of them over the years — he’s walked away, slid away, none of them meant anything much. Clare was different. Not that he loved her or wanted to stay with her. But she was worth something, had quality, dignity. After he left her she never asked for anything from him, just got on with her life, brought up their son. What could he have given anyway? Not money, not emotional support. She was right to remove herself from his sphere, remove Tim. She has been the winner if there is such a thing. He’s heard news of her progress over the years, mainly from Helen and Steve: she’s done well in her career as a teacher, been a good mother. Never remarried; he can hardly blame her for that. He could have been part of all that family stuff. Would that have given his life

meaning? He got what he wanted, became a writer, no commitment to anyone, no responsibility. It hasn’t made him happy, far from it. He’s always been aware of a need — perhaps inaccessibly deep — to connect with a woman, really connect. Someone special; a soulmate, to use Claudia’s terminology. If he’s honest he will admit to wanting that. He’s never found her, never really looked, always allowed himself to be acquired, however briefly, by women in whom he has no interest beyond the sexual. He has always stayed clear of women who might have more to offer him, except Clare, and she was never what he was looking for. It’s a need he’s denied, sublimated, but sometimes he finds himself feeling it; during the past week he has felt it strongly. If this woman, this soulmate, were here he would be able to tell her about … well, his heart. And what he has done wrong. He would seek forgiveness from her, seek absolution. For his son, for his mother, for his wife, for Elizabeth Jarman, for Victoria, for his pathetic, empty life. And she would listen to him, heal him. But he is here with someone who can do none of these things; perhaps he is subconsciously drawn to these unsuitable women because he does not want to explain anything about himself, expose anything of his heart, do the hard work involved in a real relationship. Of course the fault does not lie with Claudia, or with his other women. It lies with him, with his impossible yearning for something he cannot even clearly articulate. Absolution from what? From blame? From guilt? How can any woman do that for him? Anyway, what has he done that is so terrible? Wouldn’t things have happened anyway? His mother would have died. Elizabeth Jarman would have drowned her daughter. Maybe, in time, Clare would have left him. Who knows? Truth and damage. What is the truth, anyway? What is

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Over dinner he mentions the trip to Perth, asks if he can borrow her car for the week. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she says. ‘I’ve got plenty to keep me busy.’ ‘Your writing?’ He can’t quite manage to keep the note of sarcasm out of his voice.

the damage? Whatever it is, he keeps doing it. He’s doing it now, to Claudia, using her, diminishing her, failing to be honest with her. In the end she will be hurt. In the end he will walk away. She deserves better. They have all deserved better. ‘Do you remember that story,’ she says, ‘the one in the competition? It wasn’t very good, I know, but it was a big deal for me to win that prize.’ ‘Third prize,’ Watt corrects. ‘Yes, I know. But it was the start of something. And I really think it’s going somewhere now. You see, I’ve been working on it, turning it into a novel. That’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you. I know you don’t like to talk about your own work in progress, but I think it would be really helpful to me.’ ‘I doubt it, it’s usually the kiss of death.’ ‘Do you remember? The story was about a woman, a reader, who falls in love with a writer whose work touches her. She tries to meet him, sends him letters and so on but he doesn’t respond and in the end she gives up. She feels unhappy, but happy at the same time, sort of poignant, because at least she tried, at least her life was enriched by his writing.’ ‘Sad story.’ ‘Yes, that’s what I thought. But I’ve been thinking more about it. Why does she have to be so passive about it, so stereotypically female? Why can’t she make something happen? What kind of a woman would she have to be in order to fulfil her desire, which is a relationship with the writer?’ ‘A mad one?’ Watt suggests. ‘Well yes, that’s it exactly, that’s the way I’m taking it now! I am making her mad, deluded anyway. I’m making it so she is

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obsessed with the writer, reading signs from him that aren’t really there, things he says in his writing that she interprets as messages for her alone. And this stuff really happens, in real life I mean. There’s even a name for it — I’ve been researching it on the internet, it’s called De Clérambault’s syndrome.’ ‘I know,’ Watt says, ‘it’s all been done before.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘There’s a novel by Ian McEwan, Enduring Love. It’s about this condition. Brilliant book. You wouldn’t want to go anywhere near that stuff once McEwan’s been there, he’s just too damn good.’ ‘Maybe I should read it.’ Claudia looks a little crestfallen. ‘Maybe you should.’ He stands, pushes back his chair, moves towards the door. He lies in bed, not sleeping. What is the matter with him, why can’t he simply tell Claudia that this relationship, or whatever it is, is not something he will be going on with? What’s hard about that? It would be much kinder, too. And now he’s got her car. He should just take it back tomorrow, tell her bluntly he has no interest in her and catch the bus to Perth. Or maybe he should write her one of his famous letters: Dear Claudia, our relationship can’t continue because I’m looking for a woman who does not exist. You are not that woman. Good luck with the writing. That should clear things up.

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A bad heart It keeps raining all the next day. Watt stays inside the house, makes desultory efforts to clean it, reads, looks out at the ocean, naps. It’s too wet to do anything about the grass — he’ll leave a note for Steve, tell him he’ll get the job done as soon as he gets back. With any luck Steve will do it. He’s restless that night, tense, doesn’t fall asleep until early morning. And then it’s only a light sleep, full of dream fragments from which he wakes suddenly, anxiety thudding against his chest. He listens to the booming ocean, tries to regulate his breathing but can’t get control of it; it’s too fast, too shallow. There is some pain too, an ache behind his ribs. Is there something wrong with him, some medical condition, a bad heart perhaps? Perhaps he is experiencing the lethal first evidence of a congenital time bomb. He could die here, alone. Steve and Helen and their daughters would find him; that would fuck up their family holiday. Or maybe the girls could draw a picture of him, fat and fifty and dead, stick it on the fridge. A bad heart. Yes, he’s had that for a long time. He should check it out, the physical bit anyway; maybe he could see a doctor in Perth while he is there. What’s the point though? A doctor is only going to tell him to lose some weight, do some exercise. He’s not going to do any of that. As for the non-physical bit, he could talk to a woman who understands his heart. He could, but he will never find her. He gets up soon after dawn, puts a few things in Claudia’s Mazda, drives into town, then north, away from the coast, taking a back

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road that will, after an hour or so, bring him to the Albany Highway at Kojonup. For a moment he thinks about going another fifty kilometres to Katanning, the town in which he lived for his first ten years. He could find the tree beneath which he scattered his mother’s ashes, pay his respects, bring flowers. Instead he turns on to the highway, heads for the city.

The obvious He gets to Shenton Park in the afternoon, lets himself into the house. He’s pleased to find the family has already left — he doesn’t feel like being sociable, just wants to take it easy, get an early night, catch up on some sleep. If Steve and Helen were here they would be asking him about what he’s supposed to have been doing in Osprey Bay, his writing, his studies. He’d make something up, tell them it’s been productive so far. Or maybe he’d just say he’s done fuck all. Either way the conversation would be pointless. And there they would be, with their daughters and their ordered lives and their nice house. And there he would be … What exactly is his problem here? Envy, he supposes. It’s quite unwarranted of course, Steve and Helen have been kind, more than helpful; they are about his only friends, really. Yet he doesn’t feel close to them, doesn’t want to see them. What does that say about him? He puts his things in the spare room then goes into the kitchen to make a coffee. He’s been coming to this house for about twenty-five years — in the early days he used to come with

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Clare. How can people be this settled? In that time he’s lived in so many different houses, always renting, always looking to move on. But Steve and Helen have always been here. They bought the property soon after they got together, before the inner city prices went up. What’s it worth now? Must be half a million or so, probably more. The Osprey Bay house is bound to be worth a bit these days too. He’s missed that gravy train, well and truly, never tried to get on it, remembers being scathing about the bourgeois aspirations of those like Steve and Helen who sought to tie themselves to mortgages. Clare wanted to buy a house before they went to England but he was against it. They did look at a few places though. He remembers one in particular, a weatherboard cottage on an acre in Darlington with fruit trees and views across a valley. He liked it despite himself, could see himself there, a writer, part of the arty hills community. Clare liked it too, really liked it, wanted to put in an offer, said it would be perfect for them, for Tim, all that clean air, all that space. They could rent it out while they were away, and it would be something to come back to. He knew she would much rather have moved in straight away and given the trip to England a miss. But she was being reasonable, considerate of what he wanted. He didn’t reciprocate. In the end he just went cold on the idea. He takes his coffee into the family room where there is a large pin-up board taking up most of one wall. There are many photographs on the board showing the girls as babies, then toddlers, then older children. Also photographs of Helen and Steve: Helen has become fatter as the years have passed, Steve thinner. Watt can’t imagine one without the other. Other photographs show people he remembers from a long time ago. Some are of couples he knows are no longer together.

There they are, with their seventies fashions, their hair, their hopes. Most of them were teachers at that time. He remembers being dismissive of their safe aspirations, modest talents. A few of the women were interesting but only as potential sexual partners. Clare was one of those. He was just treading water with these people, he wasn’t like them at all; soon he would be gone, travelling, writing, fucking his way around the world. But in the meantime he was fucking Clare.

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He tries to remember her as she was: quite small, compact, straight dark hair somewhere near her shoulders, he can’t recall the style. He can’t even remember the colour of her eyes: blue, he thinks, but not sky-blue. Sea-blue, perhaps. Or maybe green. Once, in a story, he wrote she had quite gone from him: her smell, her breath against his face, the curve of her spine, her breasts, the way she moved. But she has not gone, not entirely. He remembers their first time, the cry she made when he penetrated her: something like pain, something like surprise, something like triumph. They had a lot of sex in the early days. She was a few years older than him — how many? three? four? — and he assumed she was experienced, though she did not speak of other lovers. She had come to Perth on a working holiday — to get away from her mother, she said — and found a job as a teacher at Scarborough High, his first teaching appointment. Once they fucked in her classroom, after a parents’ night. Laughed about that the next day, their audacity. She was conservative though, in most ways. A Catholic upbringing. An only child, like him. Her father died when she was fifteen; that destabilised her, she said, took away her faith. An uncertain relationship with her mother, who wanted to keep her close, yet could not be close to her.

‘We belong together,’ she said to him. ‘Each of us is a distorted image of the other.’ He can’t remember his reply. Or if he replied. And then she was pregnant. And then they were married. And then there was Tim. He finds a photograph of the two of them. Clare is smiling, has her arms around his neck, is looking at him. He is looking at the camera; his expression probably meant to be enigmatic but ending up as sullen. He thinks he remembers the occasion this was taken: it was here, a summer party in the backyard. He had too much to drink, found himself in the kitchen putting the hard word on Helen. ‘I’m with Steve,’ she said, incredulous at his inability to discern the obvious.

Dream woman He goes to bed early, tired from the long drive and his lack of sleep the previous night. Surely he will sleep now. But when he turns off the light the tension is still there in his chest, in his breathing. He lies on his back, tries to relax by imagining a warm, golden wave breaking over his feet then slowly moving up his legs, his stomach, his chest. The wave dies somewhere near his heart. He tries another one but it’s no good, he can’t hold the image, can’t concentrate. It’s too dark in the room, too airless; he gets up, pulls back the curtain, tries to open the window but it won’t move — probably nailed shut. The brick wall of the neighbouring house is

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less than a metre away; there is a window opposite his room but no light behind it. He goes back to bed, tries again, feels himself sliding towards sleep, turns on to his side, curls foetally. Then jerks awake, anxious, heart pounding, blood rushing. He won’t sleep now, not until he calms down. He gets up, switches on the television, sits with the sound off, watches the screen flicker in the dark lounge room. His breathing is still too fast, his chest still tight. He goes into the kitchen, finds milk in the fridge, heats it in a saucepan, pours it into a cup, takes it back to the soundless television; warm milk: that’s what his mother used to make for him when he couldn’t sleep. When he had bad dreams. After an hour or so he goes back to the bedroom, sleeps this time, dreams he is in a room in a house in a city. Outside his window there is the window of another room, another house. Inside this room a woman is sitting at a desk, writing in an exercise book. It is night. He can see her but she cannot see him, does not know he is there. He has never seen her before this moment, does not recognise her, yet there is something familiar about her; he cannot determine what it is. She is quite beautiful he thinks, long red hair, untied. Not young, but younger than him. He would like to see what she is writing, knows it is important to him. Is it fiction? He thinks perhaps it is but it may be something else. He watches her; she is so absorbed in her task, so focused. There is a strength to her, a certainty, a calmness; and he feels so calm, watching her. She lifts her hand to her face, pushes back her hair. Eventually she stops writing, closes the book, stands, goes to the door, turns out the light. He sits in the darkness of his room. More than anything he wants her to come back but he knows she will not. He wakes with a feeling of immense sadness.

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Is this as close as he will come to her, the woman to whom he will explain his heart, confess? The woman who will forgive him, save him, love him, absolve him. His dream woman. He gets out of bed, glances quickly at the window opposite his room; in the morning light it throws back his faint reflection. He walks stiffly to the bathroom, pisses, splashes water on his face, does not look in the mirror. Then goes to the kitchen, puts on the electric kettle, stands waiting for it to boil.

The real thing He does not phone ahead, just arrives at Dr Sparrow’s office, asks her secretary if he can see her. ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman says, ‘but she is at a conference in Singapore all week, deputising for the vice-chancellor.’ ‘She wanted to see me — she’s my supervisor.’ ‘Did you make an appointment? I thought I had cancelled all her students.’ The woman looks resigned, as if she is used to deflecting the casualties of Dr Sparrow’s schedule. Watt shrugs. ‘Tell her I dropped by.’ He leaves the print-out of his abandoned story along with a few other pieces he knows she will not have seen and a few pages of notes he has scribbled this morning on the intersection between psychoanalytic theory and creativity. The notes came straight out of one of the books he borrowed from the university library; he doubts she will recognise the passage — the book is a psychology text and Dr Sparrow, when she’s not being the acting dean or the deputising vice-

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chancellor, is an academic in the Department of English; compartmentalisation of knowledge should see him through. He’s also written a list of references he has gleaned from the same source. Together with the old favourites — Barthes, Bakhtin, Kristeva, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan — they should give the impression he has been immersed in highly productive and important research. Well, doing something anyway. He returns his library books, borrows no new ones. That’s it for his year’s work, then. Has he got away with it? More than likely. His scholarship should continue, assuming Dr Sparrow isn’t more astute or more interested than he gives her credit for. No, she won’t look closely, she’s too involved in climbing the academic ladder to worry about some shadowy student she hasn’t even met. As long as he creates an impression of industry, as long as the university gets whatever funding it gets for postgraduate students, everyone is happy. For this year, anyway. Next year could be a bit more tricky, unless he comes up with the goods. And who is to say he won’t write something next year? Something worthwhile. He walks across the campus towards where he has parked the car. Groups of students are sitting in the sun on the lawns. Thirty years ago he would have been sitting there too. Thirty years ago he would have been sliding through his courses, doing the minimum of work, throwing in the odd bit of deception, the odd bit of plagiarism. It didn’t matter then, he was young, he didn’t care, he didn’t have to try very hard. At that time he had the sense that he was waiting for something big, something important; he’d know it when it arrived; he’d try then, really try. It would be the real thing. He would be transformed.

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Amends Time has become the problem now. The transformation has not happened; he’s still sliding through, sliding away, not really trying. But he’s running out of time; he’s sliding all right, the big slide, perhaps he’s closer to the end than he realises. How much longer has he got? His mother didn’t make it to seventy, his father … he has no idea. There’s time enough though, perhaps time enough. For what? To find the woman? To write the novel that will win the Booker Prize, dazzle the critics, blaze his name across the literary firmament, sell in vast numbers to a deeply impressed and grateful public? No, he’s had more than enough time already to do these things. They won’t happen now. Not even if he were to try. Not even if he were able to try. But surely time enough to make amends.

funeral procession is forming, perhaps a hundred mourners. How many would turn out for him? Steve and Helen perhaps; at least they wouldn’t have far to go. He can’t think of anyone else. Why would they bother? He goes into the building, says his father’s name to the woman behind the counter, asks her to check it against cemetery records. Maybe his father has been here in Karrakatta all along. Maybe he can find out something about him. Maybe he can tell Tim. That’s his idea. That’s how he can begin to make amends.

He is back at the Shenton Park house. He is thinking of his son. An idea is forming. He goes out, walks past a lake, past shops, across roads, through a gate, through a garden, along a path that leads into Karrakatta cemetery. Twenty years ago — on a midwinter’s day, cold, filled with rain — this was the site of his mother’s funeral. Later, he came here again to sign forms, collect her ashes: they were in an appropriately ash-grey plastic container, much heavier than he expected. He carried her away, drove to Katanning, scattered her beneath a tree. He reaches the administration building from which he obtained the ashes. It is near the main gate; just inside the gate a

His father’s name: William Clarence Gordon. He used the name in a novel, his last novel, written about five years ago. In this novel William Clarence Gordon was the proprietor of a junk shop in a city which had blue skies and a river and an ocean and which might have been Perth but which, due to an authorial reluctance to engage with anything real, was never named. In the back garden of this junk shop was buried the body of a young girl. This girl had been murdered; more than likely she had been murdered by Gordon, a cold fish, an unpleasant man. It was also possible she had been murdered by another character, an artist of sorts who ended up killing himself in a dark room with phosphorescent stars on the ceiling. The artist’s wife thought he was the killer. She left him. She was right to do so — even though he probably wasn’t the killer he was a poor husband, a poor artist, and much too obsessed with himself and his mother. By using his father’s name in this way Watt was making a joke that only he would understand. He was being clever for his audience of one. But what was he saying? Did he understand it? Was he suggesting his father had killed his mother in some obscure metaphorical sense by impregnating her? — it was the

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1950s after all, hardly the most accommodating of times in which to be an unmarried mother, a fallen woman. Or did he mean his father, by his absence, had killed something in him, some love or hope or birthright? And what about the other character, the artist? Was that supposed to be a self-representation? — probably not a killer, in the end more victim than perpetrator. In the end, dead. Freud would see guilt at work there, denial, wish fulfilment. Others would see indulgence, confusion, an attempt to shift blame. But it was fiction, a story, it didn’t have to mean anything. The woman in the cemetery office comes back with a single photocopied sheet of paper. ‘Gordon,’ she says, ‘William Clarence.’ Watt pays five dollars for his photocopy, carries it to a bench beneath a Moreton Bay fig. The sheet is headed Form of Application for Cremation. In the thirty seconds or so it takes him to scan it he learns more about his father than he has learned in the preceding fifty years, though he still doesn’t learn much: William Clarence Gordon was fortyeight years old when he died in Royal Perth Hospital on July 11, 1953; he was a newsagent; he had lived at 54 Nicholson Road, Subiaco; a Reverend Jones, Presbyterian, was to officiate at his cremation; Prosser Scott and Co. Ltd were to be his undertakers; his ashes were to be scattered; he was not a cremation agreement holder; his cremation permit number was 8382; the name of his administrator within the meaning of the Cremation Acts, 1929–35 was Mr A D Gordon of Wingfield Avenue, Crawley. Watt folds the paper, puts it in his shirt pocket. He feels nothing much.

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There is movement in a branch of the tree close to his head. He looks up, sees a grey rat disappear into the foliage.

Golden arm He is awake in the early hours of the morning. It has started to rain lightly, insistently, against the iron roof. Lying in the darkness it occurs to him that the William Clarence Gordon who departed this life in 1953 might not be his father; the name is not especially uncommon, perhaps it belonged to someone else as well. Then he remembers something his mother had told him: after she left the air force at the end of the war she worked for a newsagent. The shop was somewhere in Subiaco or Shenton Park, he thinks. That had to be it. She had worked for Gordon. He tries to recall anything she might have said about this time. Only one thing comes to mind: the newsagent would go out before dawn in his car to deliver newspapers to his customers. He would throw the newspapers with uncanny accuracy; placing them exactly where he wished on driveways, on lawns, in front of doors. He was renowned for this. He had a golden arm. When his mother told him this he had not wondered how she might have known of the newsagent’s pre-dawn prowess with the West Australian. If he had thought about it at all he may have concluded this man’s feats were common knowledge in the suburbs near the newsagency.

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But he did not think about it. He was a child, or perhaps a teenager — he can’t remember when he heard the story. He had better things to think about than newsagents. He thinks about it now, sees his mother — looking something like she did in her air force photograph — sitting beside a man in a 1940s car. A Ford Prefect perhaps. There is a pile of rolled-up newspapers on the bench seat between them. More newspapers are in the back of the car. They are on Railway Parade, travelling towards Karrakatta. The sun is coming up. She hands him a newspaper. He lobs it expertly over the car’s roof. It comes to rest between the legs of a garden gnome. In the early morning light it looks as if the gnome has a huge erection. ‘Oh, Bill!’ his mother giggles. His father reaches out with his golden arm, takes the next newspaper from her.

Rampant In the morning he walks the few hundred metres to Nicholson Road, turns towards the city, counts street numbers, finds 54, a corner property. It’s a house now but it is evident that it was once a shop-front with living quarters behind it. This is where Gordon’s newsagency would have been. His mother would have worked here. Maybe she lived here.

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Maybe he was conceived here. He walks around the corner, tries to see into the garden but the wall surrounding it is too high. After a while he continues up Nicholson Road, turns into Rokeby Road, finds a cafe and orders a flat white. Does he need to go any further with this? Does he want to? He could tell Tim about his grandfather’s golden arm, where he was reduced to ash, even his cremation permit number. Is that enough? It’s not much after twenty years. And would the boy care about this information anyway? Probably not; at that age he certainly wouldn’t have cared. Does he care now? He’s not sure. To find so little is hardly satisfying but it is more than he ever expected to find. He acknowledges a curiosity, something he never expected to feel. He would like to know more about William Clarence Gordon, newsagent, newspaper thrower, impregnator. For Tim’s sake? Well, yes, he supposes so, in an oblique kind of way, principally motivated by guilt. More for himself, really. As always. But how could he find out now? There were a few friends his mother had retained from her air force days — he had made desultory efforts to contact them twenty years ago to tell them about her funeral. He couldn’t locate them then, they would be long gone by now. What about Mr A D Gordon, administrator within the meaning of the Cremation Acts, 1929-35? Would that be Golden Bill’s father? Or his brother? Or his son, perhaps? A son would mean Bill had a wife, a family — they would be thrilled to hear from him. Bugger them. Still, it’s highly unlikely he could simply pick up a telephone directory, find A D Gordon still at Wingfield Avenue, or anywhere else for that matter; it’s

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been nearly fifty years, for God’s sake. He’ll have a look though, you never know. There is perhaps one other way to get a little more information. He could go into the Alexander Library, look at microfiche copies of old newspapers. He has a date of death for Bill; if he looks at death notices for the week or so after that date he might learn something about … well, the names of whoever felt compelled by love or duty to acknowledge his passing. Would there be a notice from Watt’s mother? Perhaps something from Bill’s distraught wife and grieving children. Maybe Mr A D Gordon might identify himself. Maybe a newsagency customer might contribute some lines. Dear William with your wondrous arm Your paper throwing did no harm To cats or dogs or window panes Your golden memory remains Forever straight forever true You’ve gone, we’ve seen the last of you And in those fires you now call home You’ll rise, as rampant as a gnome. What’s with the priapic gnome imagery? And who is really in hell? He wouldn’t want Freud anywhere near this stuff. He pays for his coffee, goes out on to Rokeby Road, gets on a bus to the city.

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Invisible rain He’s been to the microfiche section of the library a few times during the past five years, looking through old newspapers in the hope that some idea might present itself as a possible writing subject. Nothing ever did. But it was as good a way as any to pass time, pretend he was working. The microfiche copies of newspapers are stored in boxes, filed by date. He selects the spool for June–August 1953, takes it into the adjoining room, threads it into the viewer, scrolls forward to the middle of July. It doesn’t take long to locate Gordon, William Clarence, dearly beloved third son of Constance and the late Bernard Keith Gordon, brother of Howard, Alexander, Fred, James, Kenneth, Sydney and Eric. That’s the official family notice, presumably. On the same day, July 14, Constance has a notice of her own: Our Bill, sadly missed. Watt scans the notices for July 15 and 16. They are from Bill’s brothers and their families — obviously a well organised lot, they are all represented. He writes the details in a notebook he has bought on his way through the city. All those uncles, aunts and cousins he’s never going to meet. Nothing for July 17. On July 18 Marge and Helen record that they are fond friends of Bill; deep in their hearts he will always remain one of the best. July 19 brings a salute from Ossie Gallon; he too considers Bill one of the best. Also a tribute to a dear friend from Rita, who states that memories of Billie will remain evergreen. Billie? That sounds rather affectionate, Watt thinks — William Clarence seems to have had some impact on the ladies.

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There is nothing more until July 24, when Valda Moore of Melbourne says farewell to her loved Bill. And that’s it. Nothing from Watt’s mother. One of the best passes from view. Watt returns the microfiche spool, finds another; this one is for March-May, 1950. He locates the birth notices for the end of April, the week following his birthday. There is nothing to announce the joyous occasion of his entry into the world. Not so joyous for his mother, he suspects. Shortly after his birth she left Perth, went to live with her grim parents in Katanning. Not much joy there, either. Still, he made it worthwhile for her, didn’t he? Of course he did. That’s what she said, anyway. He checks the West Australian’s front page for Monday 24 April 1950, the day of his birth, learns that thirty-five people were killed in a plane crash in inaccessible snow-covered mountains in Japan. Not an auspicious sign, if one follows such things. Watt doesn’t follow such things but he remembers a passage in his last novel: the artist’s wife recalls a dream in which her father, a soldier, climbed alone up a snow-covered Japanese mountain, was lost there, died. It all has some meaning, he thinks, some strange connection. But it’s as abstract as invisible rain.

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Weird symmetry Back at the Shenton Park house he looks through the names he has written in his notebook. Bill was one of eight boys. Watt’s mother was also one of eight children. Some kind of weird symmetry there, too. Were they meant to find one another? He doubts it. She was married in 1941. When he was clearing out the house after her death he found a wedding photograph — his mother, in a wedding dress with a veil spiked somewhat like a Great War German helmet, was standing beside a small man in an army uniform. Neither looked particularly happy. It was the first time he had seen the man in the photograph. Attached to the back of the photograph he found a marriage certificate. The groom was Thomas McKenzie Watt, of Margaret River. She had married Thomas Watt, taken his name, given that name to her son. But he was not Watt’s son — she had delivered her deathbed revelation about William Clarence Gordon. Golden Bill had hit the jackpot, not Tommy Watt. She had never spoken to him about her marriage and he had never asked about it. The name was tacit acknowledgement that something of a nuptial nature had occurred — she had at some stage ceased to be Stella May Grover and become Stella May Watt. Mrs Watt. But from as early as he could remember he had known his paternity was elsewhere. He couldn’t say how he knew this — her method of imparting the information was subtle, to say the least — but he knew nonetheless. As a child, as a teenager,

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as a young man, he was not curious — she was his mother, that was all he needed to know. Later he resisted Clare’s attempts to encourage him to find out more. It’s not important, he had told her, it’s not who I am. Maybe not, she had said, but Tim should be able to know who he is. He had shrugged and said something about this being the wrong time. It had always been the wrong time.

He was from Margaret River himself. Would Watt like to join him for a coffee? After all, they shared a name.

After finding the wedding photograph he had wondered what had happened between the marriage in 1941 and his birth in 1950. What had gone wrong? This had never been an issue of particular importance, more a sense of vague curiosity that came into his consciousness from time to time. He had never expected to find out. However, about six years ago at a writers festival in Busselton he was on a panel with three other writers; they each read from their work, spoke for a while and answered questions from the meagre audience. Inevitably, the theme of the panel was landscape — is there anything else that West Australian writers think about, Watt wondered. He was bored, read badly, spoke briefly and unconvincingly about landscape as an interior construct and was largely monosyllabic in his response to questions. After the session he was approached by a man of about his own age who introduced himself as Richard Watt. Richard said he was a writer. Aren’t they all, Watt thought, edging towards the exit. Richard persisted: he had enjoyed the reading and wondered whether Watt was from Western Australia as his talk about landscape had given few clues.

It was the Margaret River connection in conjunction with the surname that caught Watt’s attention, but there was something very likeable about Richard, something seemingly honest, open and unpretentious. Over coffee he told Watt that his first novel had just been published. He had been writing the book for about ten years; it was a relief to finally get it finished. ‘I’ve done other stuff during that time, of course,’ Richard said. ‘You have to, with a family to support.’ ‘So they say.’ ‘Our two girls are both living and working in Perth now, it’s just my wife and me at home these days. She’s got a job in town, which means the financial pressure is off a bit. I keep the farm ticking over, do some contract work around the district, some relief teaching. And during the past year or so I’ve been able to find time to complete the novel.’ ‘Ten years is a long time. I couldn’t imagine having that kind of perseverance.’ ‘It’s what I’ve wanted to do, writing I mean. I’m lucky to have had the opportunity.’ Watt had expected Richard to want something from him, information about grants or agents or contracts or contacts. But evidently that wasn’t his agenda. He just seemed to want to chat. Watt was the one with the agenda. ‘Have you always lived in Margaret River?’ he enquired. ‘Pretty much. Apart from a few years overseas when I was in

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my twenties, I’ve been on the family farm. It’s home, you know.’ ‘You’re a lucky man.’ ‘Yes, I think I am. Not everyone is fortunate enough to belong somewhere.’ ‘And you’ve written about this? In your novel, I mean.’ ‘Among other things. It’s fiction of course, but yes, I’ve written about what I know. I think you have to.’ Watt finally reached the question he wanted to ask: ‘Speaking of things you know, I wonder if you’ve heard of a Thomas McKenzie Watt? He would have been in Margaret River about sixty years ago.’ ‘Yes, Uncle Mac,’ Richard said, sounding surprised.

Or she could talk to my aunt — they are both in Bunbury.’ ‘Thanks,’ Watt said. ‘It would be interesting to find out what happened.’ ‘A bit more than interesting,’ Richard said. ‘I’d want to know, if it were me.’

Watt explained about his mother’s wartime marriage. ‘Can you tell me about your uncle?’ he said. ‘He was Dad’s brother, lived on the farm with us when I was growing up. Lovely quiet man, bit of a loner. I was very fond of him. He died about ten years ago.’ ‘Did you know he’d been married?’ ‘Vaguely. He didn’t talk about it — Uncle Mac kept things to himself.’ ‘That must be what he had in common with my mother.’ ‘She didn’t talk about it either?’ ‘You could say that.’ ‘He’s not your father though?’ ‘No.’ ‘That’s a pity. It would be nice to find a new cousin.’ Richard said this without any apparent irony. ‘If you like,’ he continued, ‘I could ask my sister if she knows anything about the marriage. Our parents are both dead, but Jan might have some information.

They exchanged contact details and Richard promised to be in touch as soon as he had made a few enquiries. Watt wished him luck with his novel, said he would seek it out. He did read Richard’s novel. It was impressive, its narrator a man who drew strength from his connection to those he loved and to the place in which he had grown up. Watt wished he had written it but knew he never would write anything like that — it was about redemption through belonging and he could not begin to imagine how that might be achieved. After a few weeks Richard telephoned him, said he and Jan had gone to see their aunt. ‘She’s an old lady now, in a nursing home, and not all that sharp these days. But she did remember the wedding, in fact she was a bridesmaid. She also said Mac and Stella met before the war, in Margaret River, when Stella was working there as a dressmaker.’ ‘Does she know what went wrong?’ ‘Apparently your mother insisted on remaining in the air force and that was a problem for Uncle Mac. He was in the army.’ ‘Doesn’t seem like grounds for divorce.’ ‘That’s what I said. But Auntie Elsie just said it was the war. That seemed to explain something, to her anyway. Maybe she knows more. I don’t think she really wanted to talk about it.’ ‘Thanks for trying, anyway.’

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‘Sorry we couldn’t get more information. Jan said she will talk to her again — you never know, something might come to light.’ Richard said he would like to keep in touch — why didn’t Watt come down to Margaret River, meet the family, have a look around the farm? Stella was sure to have been there many times before the war, it would be great if he could visit. Watt knew the invitation was genuine. He said he would make the trip, sometime soon. He meant it, too. Richard was a person he would like to know better — a fellow writer but apparently without the neurotic pettiness, competitiveness and self-obsession usually associated, in Watt’s experience, with members of that calling. He was also intrigued by the revelation that his mother had lived in Margaret River before the war — he had always assumed she had gone straight from her unhappy family life as a young woman in Katanning into the air force. But she had gone to Margaret River, met Mac, presumably fallen in love. From what Richard had told him, Mac sounded like exactly the right person for her to marry. She had not been valued by her own family: the only girl, handmaiden to her parents and her brothers, drudge. Mac should have been the answer. So why didn’t the marriage work? He could not imagine her walking out on it but perhaps she was more like her son than he had ever realised. He would like to see the farm, feel some connection with her life sixty years ago. For a while he was fantasising about himself in such a place, part of a warm, close family. Living Richard’s life, or at least the life he understood to be Richard’s. In the end that’s probably why he didn’t go. He didn’t belong there, the connection was not real.

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But he has never quite let go of it. He thinks about it now, sitting in the Shenton Park kitchen, looking at names copied from a fifty year old newspaper. Are they any more real?

Animal dance Between them, Howard, Alexander, Fred, James, Kenneth, Sydney and Eric Gordon — Bill’s brothers — seem to have begot a lot of children. No longer children, of course, most would be past sixty by now, some probably dead. Watt looks at the names, all the Trevors and Grahams and Susans and Malcolms and Jennifers and Colins and Rodneys and Annes. He counts them: there are twenty-two in all. Twenty-two first cousins. He could add them to the similar number of first cousins he already knows about — his mother’s brothers were also prolific breeders. He’s had no contact with any of them since childhood, and not much then. Some of his uncles lived in nearby towns — Narrogin, Lake Grace, Nyabing — so he occasionally saw their offspring. He is hard-pressed to name them now — there was Peter, Robert, Valerie, John, Wendy, George … he can’t remember the others. Dull, unadventurous children. He has no idea what became of any of them. His mother was fond of her brothers, particularly Frank, the youngest, who was killed in the war. Crete, he thinks. But they hadn’t exactly fallen over themselves to help her in any way, shameful unmarried mother that she was. As far as he knows, none had visited her after she left Katanning with him and came to the city. He didn’t tell them when she died. Wouldn’t have known where to find them anyway. Fuck them.

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He stares at the death notices he has copied into his notebook. Why has he done this? These names mean nothing to him and will mean nothing to Tim. Not that he is ever likely to see them — Watt is already losing interest in his plan to inform his son. What could the boy possibly find to interest him in this lot? Clearly, Bill’s brothers were not given to outpourings of public grief. Their notices are all much the same, little more than a list of names. Watt reads a less than fulsome offering: ‘Gordon, William Clarence, brother of Alexander, brother-in-law of Kathleen, uncle of Malcolm, Faye, Gregory and Peter.’ Not a ringing affirmation of the place he held in their hearts. Gregory Gordon. Greg. He knows a Greg Gordon. He was a maths teacher at Newton Moore Senior High School in Bunbury about twenty-one years ago. His wife was Deirdre. They had a son of Tim’s age; Clinton, Watt thinks. Clare had met Deirdre through playgroup and the two families had got together a few times to have dinner at one another’s houses in a vain attempt to relieve the tedium of life in Bunbury. Deirdre was a particularly unattractive woman — rawboned, red-haired, freckled, big. She was also a woman of firm opinions, particularly about the benefits of breastfeeding. Four year old Clinton — a fat, pale, listless boy who put Watt in mind of a milky slug — was still on the breast. Clare, who had been unable to breastfeed Tim beyond his first few weeks, said Deirdre made her feel inadequate. Greg may have felt inadequate as well, and probably was. Watt recalls him only vaguely. He was older than his wife, thinning sandy-coloured hair, a dour, hangdog manner. They seemed to have been thrown together as partnersof-last-resort; Watt could not imagine either being highly sought

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after, or sought after at all. Deirdre was also fond of expounding on how she could have no more children due to the gynaecological carnage caused by her son’s entry into the world; Watt had paid little attention to the grisly details. Greg had no apparent access to his wife’s wounded nether regions — they had been sleeping in separate bedrooms since the birth, he informed Watt on one occasion as they stood together at the barbecue. He didn’t seem unduly concerned by the loss of conjugal rights. Relieved, if anything. Greg Gordon. He probably wouldn’t be too hard to find; Watt remembers something about an impending transfer to a Perth school. More than likely he’s still in the city — he didn’t seem like a man who would take off for Nicaragua to improve the mathematical understanding of shy but grateful natives. He might be dead by now, of course. He might be back in Deirdre’s bed. He might have become a milkman. There is no listing for G & D Gordon in the telephone directory but Watt finds G Gordon in Dianella, North Fremantle, Cottesloe, Lesmurdie and Applecross. Dianella sounds the most likely. He glances at the clock on the kitchen wall — it’s ten thirty, a bit late to ring but what the hell. He dials the number. The phone is picked up almost immediately. ‘Greg Gordon,’ the voice on the line says in a tone that suggests its owner has little expectation those words will bring joy or excitement into the life of the caller. Watt identifies himself, mentions the Bunbury connection. ‘Oh yes,’ Greg says. ‘You remember me, then?’ ‘Oh yes.’ The tone remains flat.

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Watt is undeterred. He tells Greg that what he is about to say may be more than a little bizarre. ‘Alexander and Kathleen are your parents? Your brothers are Malcolm and Peter, your sister is Faye?’ ‘That’s right,’ Greg’s voice shifts from simply depressed to slightly suspicious and depressed, ‘what’s this all about?’ ‘Well Greg,’ Watt says, feeling more than a little depressed himself by the outcome of his detective work, ‘it looks like we are related.’ This information does nothing to raise Greg’s spirits but he does agree to Watt’s suggestion that they should meet. Perhaps Greg can give him some information about the Gordon family? Perhaps a photograph of his Uncle Bill? Greg doubts he can be of much use. ‘I’ll see what I can dig up for you,’ he says with the enthusiasm of a reluctant potato farmer. Watt arranges to visit the next day, leaves his phone number in case Greg needs to get in touch. He puts down the phone and sits for a while in the kitchen. Drawings by Steve and Helen’s girls are prominently displayed — some have been stuck to the fridge with the same hand-shaped magnets that have been used in the Osprey Bay house, others have been framed and placed around the walls. The level of artistic sophistication has increased from the Osprey Bay drawings — clearly the girls are getting older. But the subjects remain the same: the family, houses, animals. In one of the framed drawings a man, a woman and two girls dance in a ring with a dog, a mouse, a cat and an owl. All the dancers look happy, even the mouse, seemingly unaware of its position in the food chain. The sky is deeply blue above the red-roofed houses in

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the background. The drawing, signed by Chelsea, is captioned Animal Dance In Our City. Watt, suddenly maudlin, wonders what drawings Tim might have produced when he was Chelsea’s age. Did Clare put them on her kitchen walls? Where are they now? One thing is for sure: he wouldn’t be in any of them. He is about to go to bed when the telephone rings. Probably Greg changing his mind about tomorrow’s meeting. Fuck him. ‘Yes?’ he answers more aggressively than is necessary. ‘Hello,’ Claudia says. ‘I was thinking about you. Just thought I’d give you a call.’ He’s immediately irritated. Why in fuck’s name is she ringing him here? How did she get the number anyway? She pre-empts his question: ‘Your friends told me how to contact you. They’re a lovely couple, aren’t they. We had a good chat.’ Watt doesn’t respond. The line crackles. Then Claudia says, ‘I miss you.’ ‘What?’ ‘I miss you. I’m looking forward to seeing you.’ ‘Look, Claudia,’ he says, ‘this is a bad line. I’ll have your car back in a few days. Let’s leave it till then, eh?’ She starts to say something but he hangs up the telephone. As an afterthought he takes it off the hook.

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Light Street Greg lives in Light Street. This is the street in which Julia used to live, with her dolls and porcelain figures and Winnie the Pooh books, before she killed herself. Did she do it here? He supposes she must have — it’s not the sort of thing a well brought up girl would inflict on someone else’s bathtub. Perhaps the excruciating dullness of the brown brick and tile suburban architecture drove her to it, along with these bloody lawns with their pop-up sprinklers. Death by water. Death by suburbia. Death by loneliness, more like it. He finds Greg’s street number. No chance of the pop-up sprinklers doing him in — in front of his duplex the grass has died in patches where grey sand shows through, in other patches winter weeds are in ascendancy. There is a lone frangipani in the centre of the area — it looks dead, a multi-forked grey stick, though perhaps it is gathering energy for another futile season of unappreciated growth. The lawn of the adjoining duplex is neatly, reprovingly mowed, its perimeter marked by six Cocos palms, regimentally spaced and aligned. Greg answers the door after Watt has knocked a few times. He looks as neglected and dispirited as his front garden. Never an imposing figure, he seems to have shrunk. Most of his hair is gone, and the bits that remain are too long. He grunts an unenthusiastic greeting, stands aside to allow Watt to enter a room in which the dominant features are a television set, a grubby-looking lounge suite and a large ashtray on a chrome

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stand. The room smells of cigarette smoke, overlaid by stale fat from the nearby kitchen. ‘Deirdre not with you, then?’ Watt enquires, surveying the desolation. ‘Fucked off years ago.’ Watt gropes for a suitable response, falls short, comes up with, ‘She was big on breastfeeding, as I recall.’ Greg frowns, glares — Watt thinks for a moment he is going to hit him. ‘Big,’ he snarls, ‘you could say that. She still had the poor little bloke on the tit at six years old, can you believe that? Stupid cunt.’ Watt finds this flare of misogynist anger difficult to reconcile with the meek and sullen man he remembers from the Bunbury barbecue days, or even with the depressed voice on the telephone last night. He doesn’t want to hear the story of Greg’s sad life, that’s not what he’s here for. But Greg continues: ‘Even that fat cow had to stop eventually. Then she starts going to self-improvement classes, reckons we aren’t communicating properly. All my fault, of course, I’m too withdrawn emotionally, according to her.’ Ah, Watt thinks, a family trait. ‘Anyway,’ Greg says, ‘she fucks off, and good riddance. But she takes Clint with her, doesn’t she. To Queensland. To fucking Queensland.’ Greg is determined to tell more of his story. He hasn’t seen his son for about ten years. At one time, when Clinton was fifteen, it looked as if he was going to come and live with him but it didn’t

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happen and now it isn’t going to happen. He would like to visit him in Brisbane but doesn’t have any money — he had to give up teaching because of stress problems. He blames Deirdre totally for what has happened to him. Watt doesn’t tell him he hasn’t seen his own son for a much longer stretch of time and Greg doesn’t display curiosity about any aspect of Watt’s life. He certainly isn’t curious about their newly discovered kinship, though Watt finally succeeds in broaching that subject: ‘Have you had a chance to think about what we discussed last night?’ Greg looks disinterested. ‘Nah, not really. I know Uncle Bill used to have a newsagent’s shop in Subiaco. We went there a few times when I was a kid.’ ‘What do you remember about him?’ ‘Nothing much.’ ‘Was he married?’ ‘Don’t think so.’ ‘What was he like?’ ‘He was okay.’ Clearly, this line of enquiry is going nowhere. Watt is reminded of his interview with Elizabeth Jarman and his spectacular inability to extract relevant information from her. He decides to try a new approach. ‘Look, Greg, the thing is I’m trying to get some details about him so I can pass them on to my son. Do you remember Tim?’ Greg nods, looks slightly more engaged. ‘Yeah, well he’s interested in all this family stuff — who he is, where he comes from … and my mother never told me anything about my father, apart from his name, so I can’t tell Tim.’ ‘That’d be right. Fucking women think they own it all.’ He

pauses. ‘There’s really nothing much I can tell you. He used to go to the races a bit, I think.’ ‘Where is the family from. Originally, I mean?’ ‘Mum’s parents were both Londoners. Dad’s mother was from Edinburgh. His father too, as far as I know.’ ‘That’s Bernard Keith Gordon?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Tell me about him.’ ‘Never met him. Dad said he was in the British Army during the First World War, survived Gallipoli but got killed in a brawl with soldiers from his own side. Nasty little bastard, apparently. Pisspot.’ ‘What about your parents? Your brothers and sister?’ ‘Parents died years ago.’ There is a flicker of emotion but it doesn’t look positive. ‘Brothers are both lawyers — might be retired now, we don’t keep in touch — money-mad pricks. My sister’s crazy as a cut snake, into all that right-to-life crap, stands outside abortion clinics with placards. She’s in Perth, you could talk to her if you wanted — she used to go in for all that family history bullshit — but you won’t get much sense out of her.’ ‘You don’t have any photographs, then?’ ‘Doubt it. I’ll have a look for you.’ He stands, coughs intensely, shuffles off into the recesses of his bleak house.

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Watt looks around the room. It is unadorned apart from a framed photograph of a younger Greg standing beside a pasty-faced, overweight adolescent. The adolescent looks unhappy, Greg looks grim but proud, his arm around the boy’s sloping shoulders. There are some papers on top of the television set. Watt crosses the room to look at them. A power bill and a telephone bill, both

overdue. Also a newsletter from the Men’s Fraternal Alliance, an organisation strident in its opposition to women in general and women-who-get-custody-of-the-kids-and-a-fair-share-of-theproperty in particular. Watt had been approached by one of this group’s foot-soldiers in the city a few years ago — he must have looked like a prime target for recruitment. They had obviously had better luck with Greg. When Greg comes back into the room he is holding a small photograph. He hands it to Watt. It shows three boys; their ages might be ten, eight and six. They are dressed in identical sailor suits, standing in a line, side-on to the camera, looking at some point above the photographer’s head. The oldest boy has his hands on the middle boy’s shoulder, he in turn has his hands on the youngest boy’s shoulder. The youngest boy’s arms are folded. ‘That’s my father,’ Greg says, pointing to the middle boy, ‘and that’s Uncle Bill.’ He points to the youngest. Watt turns the photograph. Someone has written ‘Howard, Alex and Bill, 1912.’ ‘You can have it,’ Greg says, ‘I’ve got no use for it.’ ‘Would your father be the A D Gordon mentioned on Bill’s cemetery form?’ ‘Yeah, that’d be him. He was good for shit like that.’ Watt takes his photograph, drives off down Light Street. He tries to identify Julia’s house but can’t remember which one it was.

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The Gordon strain That evening he looks at the photograph again. There is a hardness in the boys’ faces that he did not notice when he first saw them. Maybe hardness, maybe something else, wariness perhaps. Greg’s father is touching Watt’s father; for that moment in time they are close, connected. All these years later he’s connected to Greg, however slightly, however reluctantly on both their accounts. They won’t see each other again, he’s sure of that, but Greg has shown him something about himself: he’s a Gordon; at some level of dilution he belongs with these people. It’s not a comforting realisation. Greg is what he, Watt, is becoming, perhaps what he already is: embittered, isolated, filled with unproductive emotions; in his case guilt, in Greg’s anger. He’s never really considered his own anger, never expressed it much. Is it there? Freud would say so, something to do with his mother no doubt, demonstrated in his relationships with women. His strategy has always been to walk away, slide away, not confront. But what if he were unable to do this, what if he had to stay? Could he be angry then? Could he be violent? There’s violence in his writing, plenty of passive aggression, sometimes something more overt. Sometimes something just plain nasty. He thinks about his new-found grandfather, Bernard Keith Gordon. An unpleasant piece of work, apparently. And what about Greg’s father? Greg didn’t want to talk about him, or his mother. Why not? If Watt had to speculate he would lean towards some level of violence — it’s called child abuse now, it was maybe just family life then. And the hardness in the photograph and in Greg. He’s found that in himself often enough. It wasn’t in his mother.

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He’s missed out on the fanaticism though, the need to believe, to belong, to control that has pushed Greg’s sister towards the rightto-life movement, Greg seemingly towards the Men’s Fraternal Alliance. He’s also missed out on the materialist aspirations of Greg’s brothers. Or maybe he just doesn’t know what to believe in. Or maybe he’s just lazy. Is any of this Gordon stuff going to be helpful or interesting to Tim? He doubts it. Is the information that his grandfather was a randy newsagent who possibly liked to go to the races going to improve Tim’s life? Maybe a better idea would be to tell the boy something real. He could tell him about his mother, Tim’s grandmother. Tim should know something about her — Clare would have been able to supply some details, but may not have been inclined to do so. And anyway, there’s a lot she doesn’t know. There’s a lot he doesn’t know, for that matter. He could tell Tim about himself. A straight account, fact, not fiction, not disguised, not filtered, not impossibly coded. He could write a kind of biography. Or a novel that explains everything, wakes all the sleeping dogs, confronts them, diminishes their power. His next project perhaps. He could.

And the stars she saw sixty years ago, above Margaret River. Her wedding stars. Her wedding moon. Back inside the house now, on impulse he finds and dials the number for Richard Watt. He’s not sure why he is doing this, some kind of antidote to the Gordon strain, perhaps. He could have been like Richard, if circumstances had been different. He could have been part of a real family, connected to place, to history, to people. He could have belonged. In Margaret River. On a farm. This is crazy stuff, of course — he is linked to Richard only by the distant fact that their relatives were once married. And unsuccessfully so. And probably hurtfully and destructively so. And yet … Richard, or at least his idealised notion of Richard, is as close as he can come to an idealised notion of himself. He falls a long way short, certainly, but just as he sees his present and future selves leering from Greg’s angry dislocation, so too does he glimpse his past self, his childhood self, in Richard’s apparent contentment. Six years ago he seemed content, anyway. By now he may be fragmented, unhappy, his marriage over, his children turned against him, his house burned to the ground.

He goes outside into the small garden, looks at the city moon, the stars — they are hazy, undefined. In the country they will be sharper, more intense. Or they will seem so, anyway, the same stars. He thinks of stars above Katanning, the stars his mother saw.

It would appear not. Richard is pleased to hear from him, if somewhat surprised. Watt explains that it has been on his mind to ring for some time but, what with one thing and another, he hasn’t got around to it. For six years. Sorry. Anyway, he’s just calling to say how much he enjoyed Richard’s novel. He won’t say too much now but hopefully they can meet some time, talk about writing, talk about life, talk about their weird connection.

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Richard says sure, he’d like to do that too. He sounds the same: calm, together, friendly, interested, real. ‘Come any time,’ Richard says. ‘We’re still here, still on the farm. You can stay if you like.’ He tells Watt he has recently done up the old house that Uncle Mac used to live in — he’s thinking of using it as tourist accommodation, but there’s no rush to do so. ‘Spend a bit of time in it,’ he says. ‘It would be a nice symmetry.’ Watt says he would like to do that. He says he will be in touch. He’ll head back to Osprey Bay tomorrow, finish up there. Then maybe he will take Richard up on his offer.

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The floating Ophelias

Virga There is still so much he doesn’t know. As he drives south he thinks about his mother and Gordon. Did she tell him she was pregnant? Did he know about the birth of his child? If so — and surely it is so — why did he do nothing to support her? He wasn’t married, after all. What a bastard. Just like his son, in both senses of the word in Watt’s case. At least he knows now where it comes from. And what about Gordon’s death? He was forty-eight years old, two years younger than Watt is now. What was that all about? What knocked him off? There is no way Watt can find out, other than by tracking down Greg’s rabid sister — no, he won’t go down that path. Instead he will ascribe every headache to a lurking brain tumour, every chest pain to an incipient heart attack. That’s pretty much what he’s always done anyway. The coincidence is amazing, his connection with Greg, the way he was close to all this twenty-one years ago. He wouldn’t have followed it up then, would have been horrified that Greg was the best the universe could come up with in terms of a discovered relative. He’s still horrified, but it seems more appropriate now. The coincidence with Richard is equally amazing. He’s glad he made contact again. Maybe he won’t let it slide this time. He could go to Margaret River, stay in the cottage, do some writing there perhaps, begin work on this account, this accounting, this truth he will create. Maybe Richard has

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discovered something about Mac that explains the failed marriage, though that’s unlikely. It’s as if all these coincidences, all these threads leading into the past are tormentingly designed to stop just short of explanation, of completion. Like virga, rain that does not reach the ground.

His heart as a weapon This time at Kojunup he decides to make the journey to Katanning — after the events of the week just passed the least he can do for his mother is put some flowers beneath her tree. It’s been twenty years since he left her there, after all. But she will have been waiting, patiently as always. And she won’t have been expecting much from him. He pulls up in Clive Street, buys flowers from a dispirited looking florist who, sneezing over the carnations, tells him the pollen is bad this year. ‘It never stops,’ she says wearily. Watt isn’t sure if she means her hay fever or something more existential. He doesn’t ask for clarification. Then he gets back into the car, lays the flowers on the passenger seat, drives slowly along the street. Almost all the buildings he recalls from his childhood are still there, though in most cases their uses have changed. The scale is wrong now, and the colours. The town looks fake, unreal, diminished. The post office alone seems genuine, if smaller than he remembers — he used to go there sometimes when his mother was cleaning it and wait near the canvas sacks that were fed by the

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mail slots outside. Sometimes footsteps would approach and a letter or parcel would come flying through, drop into the sack. He liked that. There was a smell of floor polish, a hum of the big polisher she used. He felt safe, warm, secret. The Baptist church has become a Chinese restaurant, garishly red and yellow. Goodchild’s fruit shop has become a funeral parlour. Crowe’s butcher shop is empty. He carries his flowers down a lane that used to run beside his grandparents’ house. The lane was once lined by tamarisk trees, planted by his grandfather. The trees have gone. The house has gone too, replaced by a seedy straggle of flats. From the front porch of one of these flats a muscular man in tight black jeans and a checked shirt watches, arms folded. Watt passes the place where the shed used to be — it was separated from the house by about thirty metres, a water tank, a woodpile and some fruit trees. He lived in this shed with his mother for his first ten years, his bed beneath the small window, hers against the opposite wall. His grandparents lived in the house, and even after his grandfather died he and his mother were not invited to move in, though there was plenty of room. In summer his grandmother would stay with one of his uncles in another town and he would go into the house then, sit with his feet on the fox-fur rug — the fox’s head was still attached, mouth open, snarling lips drawn back. There was a stonefish he liked to hold, a memento of his grandmother’s early life in Queensland. He would run his fingers across the spine to test himself against the deadly poison he believed it still contained.

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The lane leads to an old reservoir, the town’s first water supply, long abandoned. He goes down through a dry gully and up the opposite bank. The tree he is looking for is a big eucalypt, he should be able to see it by now. After a few moments he realises he is seeing it — the tree in front of him is dead, a few stripped grey branches still pointing to the sky, rotting pieces of broken wood around the trunk’s base. In his mind he has pictured this place as green, lush, watery. That is how it was in his childhood, that is what he remembers. It was winter when he brought her ashes here. Grey sky, low cloud, just starting to rain. He sheltered under a big tree near a creek, the same creek in which he had raced twigs, hunted tadpoles and gilgies. The tree had been there at that time too; as a child he had climbed it, built a cubby beneath it, used a pocket-knife to cut a heart in its bark, an arrow, his initials, the initials of some girl. Diana Christie perhaps, the doctor’s daughter, the girl with whom he had held hands on his first day at school. Twenty years later, carrying his mother’s ashes, he had glanced at the tree trunk, had seen what might have been the faint shape of a heart. That was what he had wanted to see anyway; in a maudlin moment the heart had significance, emotional weight. The fact that it had been inscribed for a dimly remembered ten year old schoolgirl rather than his mother was a minor detail in the greater scheme of his bereavement — a heart was a heart, a sign was a sign. Of something. Another twenty years later he looks again at the trunk, dead now, silver grey, smooth. There is again a mark, a shape; perhaps it is a heart, perhaps the random trail of a wood borer. The grass around the tree is yellow-green, turning to straw. There is no water in the creek, though it is not yet summer. A crow flies, calling, across the pale blue inland sky.

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He has let her down again then, left her in a wasteland. Why did he bring her back here, to this town with its prescribed flight lines, its suffocating country morality? Surely she was unhappy in this place, would not have wished to return, even as ash. Was he punishing her? For being a martyr? For the drowning intensity of her love? For his guilt? Is that why he has punished every woman who has tried to be close to him? Whatever it is they have wanted from him — love, commitment, his heart — he has been unable to give. No, not unable, that’s too passive. He has used his heart, the absence of his heart, as a weapon. He puts the flowers beneath the dead tree. Then goes back along the lane. The man in the black jeans says something to him; his tone is aggressive though Watt cannot distinguish the words. He lowers his head, keeps walking towards the car.

The immense weight of air, of water The rain starts just before he gets to Osprey Bay. As he drives down the hill towards the town he sees darker clouds building over the grey ocean. Steve has been busy — when Watt reaches the top of the driveway he sees that not only has the grass been mowed but the surrounding undergrowth has been cut and low-level branches lopped from the peppermint trees. Watt’s Holden has also been moved, presumably to enable the mowing. It’s parked beside the water tank now, facing in the

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opposite direction to how he left it. He wonders how Steve managed to do that. He finds the door key in its usual place, goes into the house, surveys the results of Helen’s restoration of order. The tiger has gone, its challenge at an end. It has been replaced by new drawings by Chelsea and Megan, neatly taped to the wall — the wall appears to have been scrubbed, though Watt can still see faint evidence of the coffee stain. His papers and computer are on the kitchen table, though not how he left them; it looks as if they have been moved out of the way for the week and replaced at the end of it. There is a note on the table: Managed to get your car going — distributor cap needed replacing. Seems to be running ok now. We had a good break here, hope your week in Perth was the same. Good luck with whatever you are getting up to down here (you old dog!). Cheers, Steve. Below this, Helen’s more elegant handwriting continues: Claudia seems like a really nice woman, much too nice for you! She’s young, she’s pretty, she cares about you (we had quite a talk!) and she’s a writer. What more could you want? Look after this one! She left something for you — it’s with your stuff near the computer. Watt looks at his papers again, sees the lilac envelope this time.

Though the setting sun is hidden behind dark clouds there is a faint red glow on the horizon. A sharp squall throws a burst of rain against the window glass.

It’s probably a bloody poem or something. He’s not going to read it now; whatever it is, it can keep till the morning. He’s tired from the drive, a bit hungry too. He looks in the fridge. There are some cooked sausages on a plate, a bit of cheese, half a bottle of white wine too. He pours himself a glass, takes the wine and food to the sofa, which has been repositioned to give a better view of the ocean.

He is maybe nine years old, lying in the darkness of his Katanning room. His mother is in her bed, a few metres away. He has been asleep but bad dreams have come and now he is awake, he thinks he is awake. He hears her sobbing, just quietly. A feeling is building around him: it’s as if the air has weight, is burying him. He can’t breathe properly, or move. Eventually his panicking voice rushes up, rushes out of him, calls for his mother

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As usual, he finds it difficult to fall asleep. The rain has stopped but the air still feels damp, heavy. He lies in the darkness, listens to the thump of the ocean — the absence of other sounds brings this into too-sharp focus; he finds himself waiting for the next big wave to boom against the beach. It is as though the water has come closer to him; in his week away the relative position of land and sea seems to have shifted. It feels as if the next wave could come crashing over the house, trapping him beneath its surface in a shock of surging blackness. He thinks about what happened in Katanning. The tree was dead — so what? Trees die. What did he expect? His mother’s voice whispering in the leaves, telling him what a superb choice he has made for her ashes, what a wonderful son he has proved himself to be? The tree was dead: a fact, not a sign, not a judgement. Of no more significance than the shape of a heart on a dead trunk, or, twenty years ago, on a living one. Yet he is disturbed, wishes he hadn’t gone back to the town. Beneath it all, pulling at him, a heavy tide of guilt, of regret.

again and again. She comes to him, holds him in the dark room, in the heavy air. He sees an ice-white moon rising in the black sky behind the window. This memory, if that is what it is, comes out of nowhere. Watt thinks fleetingly of Elizabeth Jarman, her heavy air, her madness. He listens to the ocean moving closer, waits for the immense weight of water to fall on him. The rain starts again. He finally sleeps but wakes before dawn. He has been dreaming of water again, has seen, in the water, the face of the drowned man from the weir. It comes at him with the jolt of an electric charge, forces him awake, his heart racing. He has barely thought of the man during the time he has been away from Osprey Bay but here he is again, accusing as ever. For a moment Watt feels trapped, pinned. Then he breathes deeply, lies quietly, listens to the rain.

A kind of suicide He manages a few more hours of sleep, dreamless this time. When he wakes he is tense, restless. The man from the weir is still in his consciousness, obviously associated with this place. At least it helps make the decision an easy one: he will leave Osprey Bay soon, go to the cottage in Margaret River, stay there for a while, write. Yes, he will write. For himself. For his son.

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He makes a coffee, looks out over the ocean. The rain has stopped but it is still damp, dripping, cold. It will be good to live somewhere less oppressive — these conditions have surely had an effect; it’s really no wonder he has achieved so little this year, become so inwardly focused, so neurotic. It was bad luck he happened to be at the weir that day. Bad luck for the man, too, of course — had someone else been there perhaps that person might have acted differently, might have acted, might have saved him. Perhaps Watt himself might have acted differently had he been younger, fitter, more physically confident. It’s possible. But would the man have wished to be saved? Could Watt have witnessed a kind of suicide? Did the man simply decide to let go? When he realised he could not save his dog, did he decide to plunge to his death alongside his one friend? This was clearly a lonely man — how else to explain what has happened subsequently, or, more accurately, hasn’t happened. Apparently no one has missed him, reported him lost, alerted the police, alerted the media, done the things that are done when one’s loved husband or father or grandfather or friend disappears. It is as if the man did not exist. Perhaps he didn’t, doesn’t. Perhaps, Watt speculates, he has imagined the whole episode, projected his own loneliness, guilt, worthlessness, dreamed this elaborate self-deception. Perhaps the man from the weir is himself, his future self. Perhaps he has, in a psychic pre-emptive strike, committed his own kind of suicide — a painless kind, of course, a metaphoric kind. He has perished rather nobly, really, performing the one selfless act of his life. And what about the dog? What’s that, some form of yapping Freudian accompaniment? It too will represent an aspect of himself — his

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better nature perhaps, his heart if he has one. So … he has perished saving himself. That’s more like it, that’s more in character. No, the man from the weir existed all right. He was there. Watt saw him. He drowned. And he will still be there. Under the water. Under the rocks. When summer comes perhaps the water level will fall sufficiently for his body to be discovered. That’s when questions will be asked. That’s when it would be best if Watt were somewhere else. Not that he has done anything wrong. But he hasn’t done anything right, either. And his letter to the police was a mistake; all it can possibly do is draw attention to himself, suspicion even. The police might be able to identify him. He wouldn’t want that. But it won’t happen — by the time the body is found he will be long gone. He can start the process of leaving today. There is really very little for him to do — the house is clean, the grass is cut, even his car is running again. He just has to get his things packed up — that won’t take long. In a while he’ll phone Richard, confirm that the offer is still good. He can be in Margaret River tomorrow, even today if he wants. All he has to do is return Claudia’s car. He should look at her poem or whatever the hell it is first, he supposes. He’ll think of a few kind things to say about it — that’s the least he can do, she has been good to him in various ways. As Helen said, Claudia is a nice woman. But he doesn’t want a nice

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woman. He won’t be telling her where he is going. He walks to the kitchen, rinses his coffee cup, dries it, puts it in the cupboard. Then he picks up the envelope and opens it. Inside there is a hand-written note: Something to tell you. See me as soon as you get this. Love, C. Watt sighs. More riveting work in progress, no doubt. But yes, he will go to her place now. He wouldn’t mind a farewell fuck. Why not? It might help him to relax a bit. No way to treat a nice woman, of course. But he’s not a nice man.

How fiction works They are sitting on a sofa in her living room. On a coffee table in front of them is a copy of Enduring Love. Claudia points to the book. ‘I’ve read this,’ she says. ‘See what I mean?’ ‘Well, in a way. It is good, like you said. But it’s not the same as I’m doing.’ Watt resists the obvious comment. He doesn’t have to be unkind. She continues. ‘The character in this book, the crazy one who thinks the other man is in love with him, isn’t the same as the character I’m creating. I mean, in this book they don’t actually have a relationship, do they, it’s all in his head. But in my story the woman and the writer do have a relationship, they sleep together, they talk about things.’ ‘So?’

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‘Well that’s different, isn’t it? It’s a different kind of relationship. He really has given her reason to think he’s in love with her.’ ‘But you said she has this De Clérambault thing, this psychotic obsession.’ Watt is losing patience with the conversation. He tries, for the sake of his hoped-for fuck, to keep the irritation he feels out of his voice. ‘What you’re describing sounds like an ordinary romance, if a bit one-sided. Where’s the craziness gone?’ ‘You know how you told me that fiction can take what really happened and make something quite different from the fact?’ ‘It wasn’t exactly the word of God. Pretty obvious stuff.’ ‘Yes, but it was a really helpful comment. And that’s what I’m doing.’ ‘Well, good.’ ‘Do you remember the story you read at the writers centre in Perth, the first time we met?’ Watt shakes his head. ‘Remind me.’ ‘It really affected me. So sad, that stuff about the woman’s child dying. And what her husband did to her. Anyway, I went away thinking what a sensitive, perceptive man you must be. In a way I suppose I got a bit of a crush on you. And then I wrote my story about the woman who falls in love with the writer. That’s all it was, just a story, but I suppose I was saying something to myself about the kind of relationship I wanted.’ She smiles at him. He spreads his hands in a disclaiming gesture. ‘Yeah, well …’ ‘But let’s say I am a bit crazy. Let’s say I write you a letter — now, I mean, after our relationship has started — and tell you stuff about how I had a child who died, how my husband blamed me for it, and how your story created an extraordinary connection between us. Let’s say I think I must be imagining it — like that man in the McEwan novel imagines what passes

between him and the other man — and I fight against it, know it must be crazy to think that way. Let’s say I write my story as some kind of test, knowing you are going to be the judge for the competition. And then you pick it out, and that is proof I’m not imagining it. And then there is more proof when we meet down here — I don’t know you will be here but you just are, like a sign — and more proof again when we sleep together. This has got to really prove something now, doesn’t it, to this disturbed woman, I mean.’ ‘What’s your point here, Claudia?’ ‘What I’m saying is that it could happen, something like this.’ ‘So why wouldn’t the writer just leave, when he finds out she’s a nut case?’ ‘I don’t know, that’s the bit I’m thinking about at the moment. Maybe she gets some kind of hold over him, finds out something about him, something he did in the past perhaps. Or maybe he really does fall in love with her.’ ‘But then that wouldn’t be De Clérambault.’ ‘You said it shouldn’t be, anyway.’ ‘I just said that’s best left to McEwan.’ ‘The real thing, yes. But maybe this woman isn’t so crazy after all.’ ‘Aren’t we going around in circles here?’ ‘Yes, it’s called talking. This is what I’ve been saying, we’re writers, we can help one another, we should talk about this kind of stuff.’ ‘Sorry, I’m just not the collaborative sort of writer.’ ‘But you’ve used things we’ve talked about.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well, after I told you about my mother leaving when I was a child you used it in the piece you are working on. I saw it, you

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remember, when I came to your place before you went to Perth. I thought it was great you did that, I was so pleased. Though if my crazy character was talking to you she’d find plenty of significance in the fact that you were not only writing about her life but also extending the story that brought you to her in the first place.’ She pauses, smiles at him again. ‘I’m just so happy I have been able to re-ignite your writing with something I told you about. Like you said, that’s how fiction works.’ ‘It certainly is.’ Watt is disconcerted, can’t think of a better response. Claudia continues. ‘But that’s not why I wanted to see you as soon as you got back. I wanted to let you know that Kevin is coming down here, probably today. He wants to talk about property and stuff.’ She shrugs, grimaces. ‘Thanks for the tip. I’ll keep out of your way.’ He is already on his feet, moving towards the door. ‘Oh, and this other weird thing happened. The police were here a few days ago, doing some kind of a door-knock. It seems there was a report of a body in the weir or something. I don’t think they’ve found the body, though. That’s bizarre, isn’t it. Why would someone do that, report seeing a body when there isn’t one?’ ‘No idea,’ he says. His heart is racing.

Closeness, connection, his heart Watt lies in the darkness. He can’t get to sleep. He’s on edge, anxious, breathing too quickly. He should have packed up this afternoon after leaving Claudia’s house. He should have just gone.

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Instead, he sat staring at the ocean for a while. Then he went into town, tried to phone Richard. But there was no answer and he decided to stay another night; he’s regretting it now. Before going to bed he switched on the television but couldn’t concentrate. After a while he went outside, looked up towards Claudia’s house. Was Kevin there? What was she saying to him? What was he likely to do? Was he really as accepting of the situation as she had suggested, or was he going to come smashing through the front door in the middle of the night? Not only does he know nothing about Kevin, he knows precious little about Claudia. She’s a secretive one — it took her a while to get around to revealing she was married. What else has she been keeping from him? It’s a long story, she said about her problems with Kevin. What are these problems? Why hasn’t she told him? Probably because he hasn’t asked. But what is going on with her? What if she really has read something into that fucking short story competition? What if she really has latched on to his own story, heard it on some loony frequency as being directed at her? What if she really has lost a child? And then there was her comment about the woman getting some kind of hold over the writer, and what she said about the police. Come on, this is ridiculous. How could she possibly know anything about that, his letter, what he saw at the weir? She could know about the letter: what if she had been in his house when he wasn’t there and had seen it on his desk? That day he climbed the hill, for instance. He wrote the letter that morning, before he went out. And he was gone for a few hours. And the house wasn’t locked. She’d been there the night before, maybe she’d come back. Maybe she’d seen him go out, maybe she’d been watching him … Jesus, this is truly paranoid. Of course she isn’t some crazed stalker, psychotic

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predator, mad woman. She’s what he has always seen her as: a literary groupie, a not-very-good writer. More than that? Someone who wants to change her life. Someone who wants to connect with another human being. Unfortunately also someone who wants a relationship with a writer. With him. God help her. Why are women attracted to men who write about the heart? Doesn’t mean they have one, but the women don’t seem to know that, confuse form with substance. He’s been using the trick for a long time. That Leonard Cohen poem got him into more than a few beds. Including Julia’s, and look what happened to her. Christ, Claudia has much more to fear from him than he could ever possibly have to fear from her. She should stay well away. He’s been using her, of course he has, the way he’s used a lot of women. His sexual gratification in return for … well, not much. Unless you count the damage. And let’s say, just for argument’s sake, she does know about his letter, does threaten to tell the police. So what? It would make things difficult for him — but no more than that if he tells the truth, confesses to his lack of heroic action. That’s not a crime, surely.

accident, like he had assumed? He’s spent the past twenty years feeling guilty about her but maybe she wasn’t so innocent after all. She certainly hadn’t been keen on the idea of an abortion, as he had advocated. No, she had said, I’m having the baby. And that was that, nothing he could do about it except shoulder his burden manfully. Which he had done, for a while anyway. A surprising anger rises in him. Could Clare have done that? Fuck. He walked right into it then, if she did. He’s been casting her as a semi-sainted creature all this time, himself as her heartless abandoner. Which he was. But maybe he’s been too hard on himself. Perhaps, by marrying her, he was compensating for the wrong done to his fully-sainted mother by the arch-fiend, William Clarence Gordon. Golden Bill. Maybe Bill was just stronger, smarter, not about to fall for that old trick. Women. Fuck them. He catches himself muttering those last words aloud. Christ, he’s getting a bit rabid here. Maybe the Men’s Fraternal Alliance could get a new recruit after all. Maybe Greg Gordon could take him along to a meeting, or a voodoo session with female dolls, or whatever the hell it is they do.

There is one thing she could do to him. It comes to him suddenly, alarmingly. She could do to him what Clare did to him all those years ago: she could fall pregnant. Why hadn’t he considered this before now? He hasn’t used any protection, just assumed she was on the pill or something, hasn’t even really thought about it. And she hasn’t said anything. Why is that? Maybe this is what she really wants from him; she is still a relatively young woman, after all, and childless. Maybe this is the basis of her problems with Kevin. Who knows what women are thinking? What had Clare been thinking when she became pregnant with Tim? Had that just been an

The thing is, if that is Claudia’s plan he’s not keen to play his part in it. Assuming he hasn’t already played it. No, she would have said something, surely. Though maybe she tried to, that night she phoned him in Shenton Park. Maybe that’s what she really wanted to see him about today. Something to tell you. She might be biding her time, waiting until Kevin has been dispatched. She’s clearly a strategic thinker, her idea for a novel shows that, if nothing else. But a woman isn’t going to behave in that way. If he were writing her as a character he would try to make her real, make her do what a real woman would do. Which would be to tell him she

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was pregnant. If she was. Then, when he did not behave with appropriate enthusiasm and involvement, to become disenchanted with him. Disenchanted. Well, that for a start. And if not pregnant, how would he write her then? More disenchantment, he is afraid; he can see it coming at him like a cold front over water. It won’t be long before his lack of interest in her will result in demands, tears, accusations. And rightly so. That’s what a real woman would do. That’s what Claudia will do. It won’t be enough for her then that he is a writer; being a writer can take him only so far. A real woman will want more: closeness, connection, his heart. Perhaps that’s the answer, just have women as fictional characters; he’s better with them that way. An idea comes to him: he will write something, about women, about himself, his relationship with them. Make sense of it. Try to. He will do it in the morning.

Damage The rain has started again. Watt tries to concentrate on the sound of it against the roof and window. Eventually his breathing slows and some of the tension leaves his chest. He lies in the darkness. There is an insect in the room; he can hear the whirr of its wings somewhere above his head. Then it is crawling on his face. He slaps wildly at it, feels it squash against his palm. The anger is leaving him, though he would like to know if Clare’s pregnancy was unplanned. Perhaps her willingness to let go of the marriage when it was clear he didn’t want it was an

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acknowledgement of her deception in the first place; she had what she wanted, a child, she didn’t need anything more from Watt. Good rationalisation anyway, gets him off the hook. But he isn’t off the hook. It’s caught deep inside him. He thinks about that kangaroo-infested drive, between Mount Barker and Manjimup, Tim asleep in the back seat of the little Toyota, Clare beside him. His family. On a dark road. Darker than he thought. His family, who he didn’t want. Clare knew that, said so. He didn’t know it at the time, not consciously. But a year later he was gone from them. What if he had stayed, what kind of a life might he have had? A better and happier one, most likely, a life that meant something. Would he have become a writer? Why not, what was to stop him? Clare would have gone along with it, if that’s what he wanted. He never really talked about it with her, just believed the domestic scene to be the death of creativity. It might have been good for his writing, who knows? He didn’t stick around to find out. Why hasn’t she remarried? Or, as far as he knows, even had another relationship? He’s always assumed he’d put her off men for good, and that’s probably the case. But what if it were something else, what if she had never wanted another man because he was the only man she could truly love? Saint Clare, Our Lady of the Endless Vigil. Awaiting his return. He drifts into a fantasy of his restoration to hearth and home. Clare, scarcely changed, in no way bitter or accusing, opens her door to find him standing there. Come in! Come in! she says. Tim, look who’s come back to us! It’s your father! I knew he’d come, I told you he would. A handsome young man joins them. Dad! he says. It’s so good to see you, things are going to be just fine.

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A Restoration comedy more likely. Or tragedy, depending on how you look at it. He didn’t want Clare twenty years ago, why on earth would he want her now? More to the point, why on earth would she want him? Of course she wouldn’t; he had a chance to be part of her life but declined the offer. Declined the offer. Jesus, he did more than that. What has he done? To Clare, to Tim? He has always avoided scrutiny of this issue, made do with the rationalisation that it has been better for them that he has not been around. A clean break; Tim too young to remember him, Clare free to start again. He only would have let them down, one way or another, better to get it over with early. Put that way, it is as if he did them a favour. Perhaps he did. But there must have been damage. There is always damage. He knows that. Eventually he sleeps, dreams he is in a house that is both familiar and unfamiliar. It is an old house, furnished simply in a 1930s style. Through a window he can see farm paddocks and stands of tall trees. He goes to another window and sees there is a river nearby. As he watches, a boat comes into view, slowly moving towards him. When it is nearly level with the house it swings towards the bank and stops beside a jetty. A cabin door opens and a woman comes out. She is wearing a bridal gown and carrying a bouquet of arum lilies. She is followed by a small man in an army uniform. They join hands and walk towards the house. As they get closer Watt recognises his mother. She looks young, she looks happy. They come through the front door and stand together in the room he is in. After a while she sees him, smiles, turns to the

man. Mac, she says, look, this is our boy. The soldier steps forward, shakes Watt’s hand. Good lad, he says, you’ve made us very proud. Watt notices Tim has also come into the room; he is about eighteen years old, looks much as Watt looked at that age. The four of them stand together. A heavy scent is coming from his mother’s bouquet. He takes the lilies from her, tells her they are funeral flowers, not wedding flowers. She looks concerned but he says she should not worry, everything will be all right as soon as he has disposed of them — he knows a place where they will never be found. Then he goes towards the door, aware that a golden light is in the room. Now he is walking beside the river, its banks thick with arum lilies. He is carrying a child; at first he doesn’t know the child’s identity but after a while he stops, examines the face closely, decides it must be Tim, though he still isn’t entirely sure. It’s a boy, anyway, about four or five years old. He’s quite heavy. The river is running through a forest; suddenly the water turns underground and disappears from sight. The track, which started out as wide and easy to walk on, is becoming narrow and boggy. The bush is also becoming more dense. He can’t see what is ahead but he can hear a roar of water. The boy starts to whimper, says there are tigers in the roaring water ahead, says he is frightened. Don’t worry, Watt says, it’s only water; and anyway, tigers can’t swim. Water tigers can, the boy says, clinging to him. After a few more steps the path leads into a clearing with a big waterfall at the end of it. On flat rocks surrounding the waterfall are hundreds of reclining tigers. More tigers are in a pool at the base, swimming easily. As Watt and the boy enter the clearing all the tigers turn towards them — the tigers on the rocks slowly, languidly, getting to their feet, the tigers in the pool gliding towards the edge. A

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hum is coming from the massed tigers, building above the sound of the falling water, a rising, deepening hum. He wakes, his heart pounding. For a moment he is unsure of where he is. Then he hears rain against the window, against the roof. And below that, the deeper note of the ocean. Water is sliding down the window glass, blurring it. The light is dull, grey, he doesn’t know how long the sun has been up. He lies in the half-light for a while, tries to push the dream from his consciousness. The body of a large moth is on the pillow beside his head.

Will he call Richard again? No point, really. He’s kidding himself if he thinks he can just lob on him. He barely knows him, doesn’t know his wife and family at all. He doesn’t belong there any more than he belongs with Steve and Helen and their girls. Perhaps he could travel to Adelaide, to Clare, to Tim, wake some sleeping dogs. Perhaps he could travel to India, better late than never. Perhaps he could just stay here, get whatever is coming to him. It’s unlikely to be redemption, though if he were writing his life as fiction that’s how he would like to end the narrative: his dream woman found, his heart unlocked, his son undamaged. He will write something anyway. He’s a writer; that’s what he does.

What he does In the morning he walks to the phone box in front of the post office, dials Richard’s number — if he goes back to the house and packs up now he can be in Margaret River some time later today. The phone is not answered. Watt lets it ring out before he hangs up.

The floating Ophelias

Maybe he should just go to Perth, crash at Shenton Park for a while. He pauses in front of the new pictures stuck to the wall — Chelsea’s and Megan’s themes haven’t changed: still harmonious family life, still nature. He examines a picture of a dolphin leaping from a particularly blue ocean into a mauve sky filled with red stars. The usual two adults and two children watch from a yellow beach. No, he couldn’t go there, not even for a while, the way he’s feeling.

He has lived in this coastal town for many years, long enough to know its skies and how they change from light to dark to light. In his house there is a wall of glass that overlooks the restless ocean and behind this wall he paints drowned and drowning women. Sometimes he paints the women naked, sometimes he gives them white dresses that gather and flow about them like lovely shrouds. Sometimes (though very rarely) the women are strewn with flowers — his floating Ophelias, he calls these flower-strewn women. His fame has grown, his paintings have become much sought after, they hang on important walls in great cities of the world. He has captured sadness, the critics say, the sadness that is unique to women.

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Because of his fame, women come to his door from time to time. To reach it, they must climb a long, steep path from a beach where waves move endlessly against fine white sand. Behind his glass wall he can see the women climbing towards him, and he will watch them come and marvel at their female grace. He does not open the door to all these pilgrim women but sometimes, having watched a woman ascend, he feels he has no choice. Not all the women to whom he opens the door are beautiful (though most are, it has to be said) but all have a quality of sad beauty that interests him — sometimes it is the way light catches at their hair, sometimes the movement of a shadow across their eyes, sometimes a hesitation he sees near their mouth. They come into his house and he takes them to every room but one; in each room they visit there are paintings of drowned and drowning women. This is what they have come to see, this is what they have expected, but when they see these paintings in such profusion they are overcome with feelings that are deeper than anything they have known. They tell the artist he has seen inside their hearts, the secret sadness there, the grief that is beyond words. But it is not beyond words. They will then, without exception, tell him what it is that his work has so remarkably stirred in them: their sweet first love, lost when they were young and careless and did not know it could not be found again; the child they carried, only for it to be born lifeless; the child that lived, only to die; the child that did not die, only to live in endless pain; the endless pain of a love they could not have; the father who came too close, whose touch was wrong; the mother who would not touch; the unsaid words that would have revealed their heart; the ache they can never lose. He listens to these stories with a stillness the women find comforting; though he does not offer sympathy or advice, they know,

they know, he has truly heard what they have said to him. And there is always one other thing the women want: it is that he should paint them drowned or drowning, naked, or perhaps in a white dress that gathers and flows about them like a lovely shroud. They want to see their face in the water, they want to see the secret sadness there, the grief that is (they think) beyond words. The artist tells them he will do this thing for them, but there are three conditions: the woman may see the painting when it is done but it must remain with the artist to use as he wishes (perhaps it will stay here, in this house, with the hundreds of other paintings of drowned or drowning women, perhaps it will hang on an important wall of one of the great cities of the world); the woman must make love with the artist; the woman must leave the artist’s house after they have made love and she has seen the painting, never to return. Though these are harsh conditions to come from such a seemingly gentle man, most of the pilgrim women agree to them, such is their need to see their secret sadness, if only for one day, to have its nobility revealed. And so they go with the artist to his bed where, he tells them, he will move against them like the sea moves against the fine white sand on the beach below. Some of the women are taken by the poetry, or what they think is the poetry, of these words, though others are less sure. However, they allow him to grunt and suck above them, though often they will be crying long before he has finished. You see, he says then, you see how your sadness has come forth? And then, true to his word, he will paint them drowned or drowning (he decides which it is to be), naked or in a white dress that gathers and flows about them like a lovely shroud (he decides this, too — he is the artist, after all). The women will then stand in front of these paintings, sometimes for hours, seeing, for the first time, the manifestation of their secret sadness. The artist allows them this time

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but when he has decided it is sufficient he asks them to leave. And they do so without argument, most of them. On this particular day rain is falling, as it so often does in the coastal town where the artist lives. He is watching a pilgrim woman climb the steep path towards his door, and, as always, he is taken by her female grace. As she comes closer he sees she is beautiful, with long, dark hair and eyes that hold an interesting sadness. So he opens the door to her, invites her into his house, shows her the paintings of drowned and drowning women. She is affected, as all pilgrim women are affected, cries, tells him her name is Shelley (a name that belongs with the sea, with things that are hidden, he thinks), tells him (as he knew she would) of her secret sadness. Her story is of a child who died, her child, a boy. He drowned, this boy (and so perhaps the paintings are doubly painful for her to see, though she does not say this). She tells the artist the boy’s death was an accident but he watches her with his usual stillness, listens to what is deeper than her words, and thinks perhaps this is not so, perhaps this woman is not telling him everything. He does not care about this; it is the woman who interests him, not her story. When she has finished she asks the artist if he will paint her as a drowned or drowning woman (he knew she would ask this) and he says he will do so, subject to his usual three conditions. She agrees, and they go to his bed where he tells her he will move against her like the sea moves against the fine white sand on the beach below — she does not seem to hear him, makes no response, anyway. Then he grunts and sucks above her, looks into her sad eyes and is done. She does not cry during any of this; it is as if her mind has gone to another place, he thinks. Afterwards he paints her drowned and naked, and then she stands in front of the work, drawing in its secret sadness, seeing herself (she tells him) for the first time. Eventually he asks her to leave but she just smiles at him and says she has come home.

This is not what the artist wants, of course. He broods behind his wall of glass, watches the ocean, watches the rain, tells her he cannot paint; no sad women will come through his door if he is not alone. She must leave, he tells her, if not for him then for her sisters, and for the sake of art. But she will not go. She spends much of her time in front of the artist’s mirror, studying her eyes. Sometimes she will use the artist’s paints and canvas, attempt to recreate what she has seen, what the artist has already rendered in his painting of her. She studies this painting, too, tells him again it shows her sadness, shows her heart, asks him to reveal his secret. He shrugs, says it is only a painting. She sleeps in his bed but he does not tell her now about the ocean and the sand. Sometimes he grunts and sucks above her but this is not what he wants — not for more than a few moments, anyway. Weeks pass, and then months. The artist watches many pilgrim women climb towards him but he does not open the door to them. Eventually — because he needs the sadness of new women, because he needs to paint again — he decides he must act as he has acted in the past when he was unable to persuade a woman to leave. He does not want to act in this way — he truly does not, it gives him no pleasure — but, he tells himself, he has no choice. So he takes Shelley to a room in his house that he has kept locked for the whole time she has been with him. She has, of course, asked him what is in this room, asked him to open it for her. But he has until now refused to do so, telling her it is just more paintings of drowned and drowning women, no different from the ones she has seen. But now he tells her to come with him to the room; he will unlock it; he will show her something she has not seen — and when she sees what is in the room he will give her two choices. She agrees, says the room will surely reveal something of the artist’s heart, something she will need to see in order to better know her own,

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something that will enable her to evolve, transform. He unlocks the door. The room, like the other rooms in the house, contains paintings of drowned and drowning women. But unlike the women in the other paintings, the women in these paintings are strewn with flowers, arum lilies in particular. These are my floating Ophelias, he tells her — you may look at them and then either you must leave my house forever or you must allow me to paint you as I have painted them: strewn with flowers, floating. Shelley enters the room, regards these paintings, sees immediately they have captured a deeper, much deeper sadness than any she has previously seen, including that deep sadness she has seen in the painting of herself. It is truly a transformational sadness, she thinks. Yes, she whispers, yes, losing herself among the flowers. What is your choice, then? the artist asks her. She replies it is her only wish, her only longing, to be painted in such a way. He knew this is what she would say. He tells her she must then come with him to a place, where the delicate and elusive quality of light on the water will allow him to create what she wants. He has lived in this coastal town for many years, he says, and knows its skies and how they change from light to dark to light. There is a pool he knows, surrounded by high walls, surrounded by rocks — if she looks at the paintings she will see this pool — and it is here they must go if she is to become a floating Ophelia, as she desires. She is anxious to go immediately to this place but he tells her they must wait until later in the day, when the sun is at a particular angle and the water in the pool shines in a particular way. Finally he tells her the time is right, collects everything he needs to paint her, and they set out for the pool. He leads her down the steep path to the beach where the water moves against the fine white sand, though he does not draw her attention to it. They go along this beach for some time, heading south. Eventually they reach an inlet. He leads

her along a path beside a river, through dense bush, until the river disappears underground and they hear the sound of roaring water. She thinks it is a waterfall but when they reach it she sees it is a weir from which water spills down a high wall into a pool surrounded by rocks. This is the place, he says. She sees there are arum lilies growing beside the path, she sees the light on the water is as delicate, as elusive, as he said it would be. You must pick a garland of lilies, then plunge into the pool and remain in the water while I paint you, he says. She looks with some apprehension at the water — it must be cold, and the drop is a long one but she knows more surely than she has known anything that she must see the painting, must see herself as a floating Ophelia, with all the guilt and grief and, yes, hope she feels in her woman’s heart: hope that the secret sadness may in time leave her (though she knows it will not); hope that the artist may in time love her (though she knows he cannot). So she picks a garland of lilies, moves with female grace to the edge of the weir and, with only a moment’s hesitation, leaps into the water which immediately closes about her, pulls her down just as the artist knew it would. Within seconds she has gone from his sight. He paints her from memory. The light is perfect. Then, as darkness begins to fall, he starts to walk back to his house. The rain comes just as he reaches it.

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Acknowledgements

The text refers to the following: M M Bakhtin’s Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics; Freud’s ‘Leonardo da Vinci’, ‘Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming’ and ‘Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva’; Leonard Cohen’s poem ‘Beneath My Hands’; Ian McEwan’s novel, Enduring Love. I would like to thank Sylvia and Maddie for reading the manuscript and offering their usual perceptiveness and encouragement. Thanks also to Keith McLeod for his generous and astute reading. Outstanding editorial input from Janet Blagg and Wendy Jenkins enabled me to produce a much better novel than the one that would have existed without their efforts. Karen and George’s beach house got things underway. A grant from ArtsWA assisted me to produce this work, as did a term as writer-in-residence with the Fellowship of Australian Writers (WA).

First published 2005 by FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE PRESS 25 Quarry Street, Fremantle (PO Box 158, North Fremantle 6159) Western Australia www.facp.iinet.net.au Copyright © Chris McLeod, 2005. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. Consultant Editors Wendy Jenkins and Janet Blagg Cover Designer Adrienne Zuvela Cover image Young woman in red dress by Guido Bertram (829020-0010), courtesy of Getty Images. Printed by Griffin Press. Papers used by Fremantle Arts Centre Press are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests; the manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data McLeod, Chris, 1950– . Man of water. SBN 1 921064 00 5. I. Title. A823.3

Publication of this title was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.