Page 43 of Return to the Waratah Inn

A man turned to look at him, his face drawn. “She’s not breathing.”

“Have you tried CPR?” Alex asked.

No one responded. They all looked stricken, panicked. He pushed his way through the group and dropped to his knees beside the woman. Another woman wailed.

“Give me some room,” he said. “And call triple zero. We need an ambulance.”

A teen boy ran up the beach. Alex hoped he was going to make the phone call, but he hadn’t said a word. Alex pressed his hands to her chest and began compressions.

Twenty minutes later, a paramedic took over working on the woman, pushing down on her chest in quick compressions, his navy uniform stark against the golden sand. Alex stepped back, breathing hard from the exertion. He lifted both hands to his forehead, watching the whole situation play out before him as though it was a movie. Not real. None of this was real. Too many memories. It haunted him.

“Thanks, mate. Good work,” said another of the paramedics.

Alex gave him a nod. He drifted away from the crowd and sat down in the sand. He bent his knees and linked his arms around them, his eyes never leaving the woman’s still frame.

“Wake up,” he whispered beneath his breath.

His throat ached. He fought back the images that flashed across his thoughts. His wife, lifeless on the sand, him doing chest compressions, the gulls hovering, their rhythmic squawks haunting, under a brilliant blue sky.

Unblinking, he sat silent and still. The family crowded around the woman, holding each other, crying. Their tears made his heart ache.

Finally, the paramedics carried the woman’s lifeless body off the beach on a stretcher, with her family members trailing after them. All of a sudden, he was alone on the beach. The crying, the shouting, the stress—all of it gone in a few moments. Twilight had come, and the evening was quickly falling into shadow. The wind whipped his hair into a frenzy and sent particles of sand to sting his bare cheeks, arms and legs.

He stood to his feet slowly, with a grunt. Then he collected his lone surfboard and wandered up the beach. His things were still there in a little rucksack stuffed behind a rock. He collected the rucksack and continued to the car park, where his ute sat alone. For the drive home, he left the radio off, his eyes wide and dry, his throat still aching. Memories threatened to overwhelm him, but he pushed them back to the edges of his consciousness. Not now. He couldn’t go there. He had to return home and be cheerful, loving and present. He couldn’t fall apart.

As he pulled into the garage, he noticed the house was dark and quiet. He padded barefoot into the kitchen. The air-conditioning was on, and he shivered in the cold as goosebumps pimpled the bare skin above his board shorts.

He carried his wetsuit to the laundry, then headed for the bedroom. Kate was fast asleep on the bed with Noah wrapped in a bunny rug in his bassinet. Alex stood over him, looking down, taking in his sweet chubby cheeks, his dark eyelashes, the tufts of dark hair on top of his head. His heart squeezed with love for the little boy.

Then he returned to the kitchen and poured himself a finger of Scotch in the bottom of a large glass over ice cubes. He studied the amber liquid, then added another finger, and another. He took the glass outside and sat in the humidity of the evening to sip it slowly. Mosquitoes buzzed around him. He slapped them when they landed on his bare skin. Bats flapped by overhead, silent except for the sound of their wings. The trees across the street shushed as they bowed in the wind. And gradually, as he sipped, the panic and the memories faded, and his shoulders released their tension.

Chapter Twenty-Three

November 1953

Marrickville

The hum and bustle of the busy maternity hospital was part of Mima’s everyday life five months later. Her stomach had swollen to what seemed like an impossible size, although everyone told her she was healthy. The doctor on staff at the hospital called her strong, yet still seemed concerned that she wasn’t eating enough. Mima didn’t want to tell him she had no choice in the matter. She ate what she was given, and Mrs Thompson didn’t appreciate complaints or requests for more.

On her hands and knees, she pushed the scrubbing brush over the black-and-white chequered tiles in the married maternity ward. Up and down, up and down. Both hands were chapped and dry from the constant scrubbing of floors, bedpans, walls, clothing, and linens, and the heat of an early summer’s day had sweat already streaking her dusty face.

Each bed was full today. Married women lay in repose, some in early labour, others with nothing much to do but wait for the doctor’s rounds. Midwives bustled between the beds and ordered Mima and Fran around.

“You missed a spot here.”

“You’re moving too slowly.”

“We need this room, ladies. Hurry it up, please!”

The barbs were thrown at random, in a hiss of a whisper as the women hurried past Mima and Fran, who scrubbed on hands and knees in their long, fitted pants with elastic waistbands and airy smock tops. Mima’s hair was pulled into a ponytail, and Fran’s was clipped back away from her face. Her dark curls clung to her sweaty neck, and she had shadows beneath her large brown eyes.

Mima was worried about her. She was due around the same time as Mima. Both had two months to go. But she was thinner than she should’ve been and looked tired all the time. When Mima looked in the mirror, she saw much of the same in herself—the ghost of a person she vaguely remembered stared back at her, all angles and bones with big eyes, hollow cheeks and an enormous stomach. Who had she become?

As they finished their work in the maternity ward, they backed out through the doorway, still scrubbing and pulling the buckets with them. In the hall, they stopped short when Fran backed into something solid. She hesitated to look behind, and saw Mrs Thompson, hands on her ample hips. A walking cane dangled from one hand. Mima shuddered at the sight of it—she’d received the end of that cane on the back of her legs often enough to know not to disrespect its owner.

Both women rested a moment on their knees. Mima looked down at the floor, waiting. She knew what was coming. It was best to avoid Mrs Thompson, and they often managed to go the whole day without running into her. But this time, they hadn’t heard her heels on the tiled floor or seen her skirts swishing towards them around her plump, stockinged legs in time to change course.

“You’re taking your time today, girls. Chop, chop! I need this floor sparkling clean. I hope I won’t find streaks when I inspect your work later.”