The Submerged Cathedral Read Online Free PDF Page B

then said, ‘You two go.’
    Jocelyn began to say no, but Thomas said to Ellen, ‘You’ll be all right, won’t you? Come on, Joss,’ and was down the stairs talking to one of the boater-hatted attendants.
    The attendant held Jocelyn’s arm while she stepped into the flat-bottomed boat. Ellen watched from the bridge, and Jocelyn waved to her and the baby.
    Thomas clambered in, took the pole from the man.
    â€˜Let’s show these bloody poms how it’s done then, eh Joss,’ he said, his voice unchanged but suddenly so Australian, and he flexed a bicep, and they both laughed when he leaned heavily on the pole and groaned, barely moving the boat an inch from the pontoon.
    â€˜Jesus bloody Christ,’ he said through gritted teeth as the punt edged away in the wrong direction. Jocelyn turned to wave again at Ellen, and laugh with her at Thomas’s wobbling and grunting.
    Then the boat turned, Thomas managed a good shove, and they moved smoothly towards the archedbridge. He looked up, blew a kiss to Ellen and the baby, and called out, ‘Half an hour.’
    Ahead of them downstream, clutches of students lounged in the boats as if they lived in them. One punt glided past, two pale girls lying back sleepily on cushions and blankets, sipping champagne. A young man in a green shirt rested his weight on one hip at the end of the boat, pole in one hand, steering effortlessly through the willow-shadowed water.
    Thomas, swearing and grunting, managed with great effort to begin using the pole as a rudder. ‘How do those bastards do it and look like that?’ he grunted, scowling.
    Jocelyn smiled. ‘Do you want me to help?’
    â€˜Of course not. I was a frigging surf life-saver, remember.’
    They both snorted, both knowing he had not been, and Jocelyn turned and lounged, watching the other boats drift, or occasionally circle clumsily like theirs, stuck against one another under one of the narrow stone bridges.
    On either side of the stone embankments stretched the vast, luminous lawns.
    Then Thomas had the hang of it and manoeuvred the boat without looking, and Jocelyn watched him through half-closed eyes, a silhouette of beauty against that river of green.
    Suddenly at a bend in the river, Kings College rose into view, all pale stone grandeur. It loomed higher and higher until it was right in front of them, and Jocelyn knew she would never forget this moment, this gliding by England’s dreaming architecture under her pale-blue summer sky.
    Fifty minutes later they could hear the baby’s wails before they reached the last bridge, and scrambling from the boat onto the pontoon they saw Ellen, walking up and down the bridge, jostling and jogging the baby.
    â€˜Shit,’ murmured Thomas, ‘we’re in for it.’
    None of them spoke in the car on the way home. Ellen was totally silent, staring out at the road ahead while Jocelyn sat in the back, patting at Cassandra under the blankets wound tightly around her in the carry cot, her small red face whitening across the nose as she screamed. Until, eventually exhausted, she fell into sleep, still breathing now and again with a deep shudder.
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    On this Pittwater morning the beach is rimmed with a lace of crushed white shell. Martin lifts her suitcase from the jetty into the room of the boat and they board together. The other passengers don’t look, careful to turn their gaze anywhere but at the doctor’s woman leaving. Jocelyn and Martin watch their house and the beachmoving away. She watches Lion Island as Martin tells her again that he will see her in a couple of weeks.
    After he’s helped load her things into her car – the manuscript in its rubber-banded parcels on the front seat – they kiss there in the gravel car park. His hands rest on her hips until the ferry horn sounds for its return trip. Only then does he walk across the gravel to his car. She starts her engine and then he turns