The Submerged Cathedral Read Online Free PDF Page A

chlorophyllic.
    The next evening he hands her a heavy parcel from Dymocks. She unwraps the paper and holds the enormous book in her two hands. Botanica Australis . Plants of Australia.
    â€˜For your garden,’ he says.
    And in this moment she knows he is the only one.
    In the morning she is up before him, reading the book on the verandah as he kisses her and leaves for work. She looks up and can see him at the jetty, stepping onto the ferry, black bag dangling. He is always the last to get on board, and once there makes his way to the back as the ferry turns around, churning water. He stands in the sun and she can see him leaning over the railing, looking across the silver water to the shore. She watches until he blurs and the ferry disappears from view.
    The manuscript lies open on the table, but she pushes it away to make room for the book. She spends the day turning its pages, staring at the photographs, reading, reading.
    Â 
    But before Martin comes home that afternoon a letter has arrived, addressed in Ellen’s scrawly blue hand.
    Jocelyn sits on the verandah watching the Barrenjoey headland in the fading light.
    Martin swings his bag on his walk along the sandy track, up the steps, sees her face.
    â€˜Ellen is coming home,’ she says.
    He leans on the verandah rail, waiting to understand her small voice.
    â€˜I have to go back to the mountains,’ she says. He can hardly hear her.
    On the table the letter lies open like something on fire. Ellen is coming home, bringing her small daughter, leaving her husband, and three months pregnant.

Five
    M R H O STANDS in his singlet, leaning slightly, breathing heavily while Martin listens to his lungs. The man’s shoulders and arms are hard-muscled from years of fast and flaming work in Chinatown kitchens. Uncomplaining, but never quite comprehending Martin’s words, Mr Ho has watched, then followed Martin’s gestures to stand, remove his shirt, bare his back, take a deep breath, exhale, then again.
    Under the stethoscope his breathing is almost normal, a little crackled. As if for luck, Martin rests his hands on Mr Ho’s tawny skin for a moment while he thinks, then pulls the man’s white singlet down for him. Something is not right.
    Mr Ho dresses, moves to sit again, coughing into his chest.
    Martin chats brightly as he writes the prescription. ‘Bronchitis. Bad chest,’ he says, patting his own chest. Mr Ho nods slowly at each syllable, takes the paper from Martin.
    Once he has left Martin’s doorway there’s a yelp from the receptionist, Susan, a young woman who wears black eyeliner and her blonde hair piled high on her head. Martin steps through to see Mr Ho holding out a wooden box to Susan.
    That evening as Martin drives through the city, across the bridges and north along the coast road, he knows suddenly it is not bronchitis that has hold of Mr Ho’s breathing. He wants to turn the car around immediately. The wheeze, and that uneasy space in his own certainty when he lifted his hands from Mr Ho’s skin, have moved and wavered in the back of his mind since, and now the pattern has cleared. Tomorrow he will get Susan to write to Mr Ho and call him back in, order an X-ray. It is early enough. Not all omens are bad ones.
    His headlights wash the road pale, and the eucalyptus leaves glitter as he drives.
    Tomorrow Jocelyn is leaving Pittwater for the mountains.
    They have argued about it. Ellen was a grown woman, could surely look after herself, he’d said. And Jocelyn was a grown woman too, not a servant.
    â€˜But she’s my sister,’ Jocelyn said, looking out of the window to the sea.
    And then he had said (so stupid , he knows it), ‘If we were married I could forbid you.’ Hated himself even as the words came out, as he stood by the mantelpiece picking at the paint with his fingernail. But they were there, in the air.
    Jocelyn stood up, and met his eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said.