The Submerged Cathedral Read Online Free PDF

‘Perhaps that’s why we’re not.’ And she went into the bedroom to begin packing her things.
    An animal’s eyes flash from the undergrowth in his headlights. He jams the brakes, but it disappears.
    It is not forever , she said more than once, after his apologies. So. He will travel up to the mountains as he has before, on weekends. Will talk to George about more locum work.
    Not all omens are bad.
    When he reaches home he leads her, covering her eyes, to the kitchen, and then uncovers them to see the live mud crab, stunned and shifting against the sides of the sink. Two hand-spans across, bronze, slow and prehistoric. It was in Mr Ho’s newspaper-lined apple box on the back seat of the car all the way back from the city, its great pincers bound tightly to itself with brown string, the wiry antennae searching and bending. Then on the ferry, the odd other passenger coming to stare into the box besidehim and give a little shriek at the moving dark mass.
    Now in the kitchen he and Jocelyn drink riesling while he tells, laughing, about Mr Ho trying to give the crab to Susan, the man’s bewilderment at her horrified squeal. Mr Ho told him how to cook it, gestured how to kill it first, with chopsticks, but Martin thinks the knife steel will do it. The animal shunts in the sink. Martin talks on, how the pincers could break your fingers, how the crabs are caught with poles in the oozing suck and pop of the mangroves.
    Neither of them says anything about tomorrow.
    Jocelyn walks out to the sand’s edge to watch the last ferry come in while he crashes about in the kitchen, swearing. She goes back in once during the procedure; the great creature has a bunch of tea towel viced in one pincer. Martin hoists the towel and the crab hangs there, unmoving. Martin’s giggle is unconvincing. He holds a long kitchen knife in his other hand. Jocelyn goes back out to the porch and watches the ferry passengers wheel-barrowing their supplies through the moonlight away from the beach, torches bobbing. The ferry heaves away from the wharf, whirling water.
    An hour and a half later they sit, with large dinner plates and the nutcracker, at the porch table in the lamplight to eat. Martin is flush-faced, and insects tap in quiet circles against the house.
    The moon is up. The white humps of the upturned boats glow violet in the sand at the edges of the lawns and the water moves like oil, slapping at the beach. In the bedroom Jocelyn’s suitcase lies packed, Botanica Australis wrapped in a petticoat underneath her clothes.
    Before eating, they talk about her trip back to her sister, as if it’s a weekend away. They speak brightly about the road, how the neighbours who had reluctantly accepted the dog will be happy to give him back, about airing out the house. But as Martin listens to her voice as she talks about Ellen he feels some part of her confidence faltering, some child’s timidity emerging in her.
    They sit in the lamplight, eating. After the first exclamations and overworked smiles – Jocelyn toasts Martin and his crab in a too-loud voice – they fall into silence and eat doggedly, passing utensils back and forth, the cracking of the creature’s skin sounding out across the sand and the waves.
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    On Jocelyn’s second weekend of the long-ago visit to England the sun had come out.
    They had driven to Cambridge through the summer morning, and Jocelyn had never felt such soft light on her skin. The three of them stood on the bridge, leaning over, looking down at the punts. The water glimmered andthere was quiet laughter and the knock of poles against the wooden boats.
    â€˜Let’s have a go,’ Thomas had said. Ellen rolled her eyes.
    Jocelyn held out her arms for the baby. ‘You two go, I’ll take Cassandra. It’ll be romantic.’
    But Ellen shook her head. ‘It’ll be time to feed her, she’ll scream.’ She paused, watching Jocelyn and Thomas,