Read Online Animal People by Charlotte Wood - Free Book Online Page A

Thai waiter at their regular Tuesday night restaurant had noticed the little pot of her belly and asked her, delighted, if she was pregnant. She blushed a fierce red as she laughed it off, saying gaily, ‘No, just fat,’ waving away the waiter’s embarrassed, bowing apologies. Stephen saw her swallowing tears, and her smile was tight until they left the restaurant. But in water, Fiona’s body came sensuously alive; she swam in a strong, easy stroke, lounging in the water, utterly at ease. Each morning the girls went next door for half an hour while Fiona took the five-minute drive to the beach in her bathers, strode down to the sand and kicked off her thongs. She dropped the car key on its pink tag on to the towel, pulled a yellow rubber swimming cap down over her ears as she marched to the water. She high-stepped purposefully through the shallows, and as soon as the water reached her knees she launched herself and dived.
    The first time Stephen watched her do this, he was seized with marvelling lust. That first time, when Fiona had called to him and he swam out to her, the light, shameful fear rose in him as it always did when his feet could not touch the bottom. He had grasped her slippery body and she held him too, mistaking his grip on her for one of desire, and she laughed when he joked about his fear of water, about his having been an inland child—the ghastly lessons at the Rundle pool, and the swimming carnival near-drownings. She thought he was exaggerating; he could never speak to her of the real fear that gripped him when a wave rose before him, when all he could see before it gripped and hurled him was the yellow beacon of her cap, and he fought the panic in himself while he gasped and pedalled water, floundering back to shore. Where he would thrust the air back out of his lungs and force his heartbeat slow again, and pretend he had not been terrified.
    Now they took the girls to the beach together, and Fiona would swim out to the perilous dark water, slipping over and under the waves in her sleek dips and dives while Stephen splashed in the foaming shallows with the kids, crouching and shouting with them as the waves broke about his hips. Lifting the girls high—first one, then the other, both Larry and Ella kicking and shrieking with thrill, shouting throw me, throw me! He would throw them, chilled with fear himself every time as he watched them fall and plunge, and he would be on the verge of diving to find them when they would burst up, water streaming from their wide grinning mouths and the starfish lashes of their open blue eyes.
    It was after one of these swims when they sat on the sand, the girls squatting on their heels digging holes nearby, that Fiona had suggested Stephen move into her place.
    He squinted at the water while his breath caught, and then made a joke about being terrible at housework. He felt her waiting for him to meet her gaze, while he watched the girls. He stared and stared at them, but could not look at her. Then she said, quite calmly, ‘It’s okay, Stephen. You don’t have to.’ And she’d got up and walked back to the water and flew beneath a wave, and was gone. Then Larry had leapt up and run, and Ella followed her across the white crush of the ocean’s edge. They were like their mother: they hurled themselves to the waves, while Stephen sat on the sand, helpless with apprehension and envy. Fiona had not mentioned it again.
    The cars crawled towards the traffic lights at Hunter Street. Last week at these lights he had seen a man leap from his car and charge up to the driver’s window of the vehicle in front of him, screaming you fucking moron, and then, lightning-fast, throw a punch through the open window. The car had suddenly screeched off against the lights, on the wrong side of the road—Stephen admired the driver’s quick thinking—and left the punching man standing alone in the street. He had had to walk back