One by Andrew Hutchinson

Author:Andrew Hutchinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

I felt her fingers curl between mine and she pulled me to my feet.

‘It’s okay,’ she told me.

‘I made a mistake.’

‘It’s okay.’

The woman led me away from the sounds and the lights and the noise, held on to my hands with both of hers. She walked in front of me, stepping backwards in the moonlight.

‘Come this way,’ she said.

She guided me across the grass and concrete, away from the crowds. She helped me take my shoes off at the edge of the sand and I could hear the ocean but I couldn’t see it any place, hidden in the darkness.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I made a mistake.’

The woman had guided me to a playground, a bordered box of beach sand away from everything. The streetlight above casting long shadows from the slides and swings. The ocean beyond rushed in again.

The woman led me over to an old boat, a small wooden ship mounted on blocks of wood for kids to play in. The boat was painted red and blue, and covered in black scribbles of graffiti. There was rubbish inside it, plastic containers and broken bottles. Tiny green shards of glass.

The woman climbed the stairs up into the boat, threw wrappers and empty cans overboard and swept away the glass, then she took my hand, invited me to climb in. We sat down on the cold wooden floor inside the boat, and she was looking at me now. She was sitting opposite me, staring in the reaches of the light. Her hair blew in the ocean breeze.

‘I used to come here, when I was a kid,’ the woman told me. ‘I used to play in this boat.’

The ocean washed in again.

‘Where’s the water?’ I asked. The woman pointed across to the side.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘This is what you do.’

She lay back into the boat, stretched out along one side.

‘You do it too,’ she said. ‘You lie right here.’ She tapped on the floor at her side.

The two of us lay next to each other on the wood of the marooned vessel, me moving carefully, feeling the crunch of broken glass as I went. We stared upwards, our heads next to each other. The wooden sides framing the night sky.

The sky was mostly clear above, a few shreds of wandering clouds creeping across the stars. The white edges beamed in the moonlight. The constellations and clusters gathered together, billions of them watching on. The wind creaked through the wood all around us.

‘Now, watch the sky,’ the woman said. ‘Watch the sky, and pretend that they’re not moving.’ She pointed. ‘The clouds, I mean. Pretend that they’re not moving. We are.’

The waves crashed in and fizzed up the sand across the way.

‘Pretend,’ the woman said, ‘that the sounds you’re hearing are the waves washing against the sides of the boat as we drift.’ She waved her hand above us. Back and forth. The clouds in the sky above, the boat moving. ‘We’re floating.’

I imagined seeing the land getting further and further away, fading into the distance.

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