Blueback

IX

In his high school years, Abel Jackson felt like he was holding his breath. It was like diving, only not nearly as much fun. From the moment he left Longboat Bay at the beginning of every semester, something inside him took a deep breath and held on until he got back. Like a good diver he taught himself to relax, to resist panic, to believe he had the strength to do what he needed to do.

During those years he wondered if his mother would marry again. It didn’t seem right that she should live out on the coast alone. She was still beautiful and strong. Men liked her and looked up to her but she seemed to fend them off like friendly puppies. Secretly, Abel knew that he wouldn’t like to go home to find someone else, a strange man, in his life. Still, he did want her to be happy. But Dora Jackson, his mother, never married again.

It was during these years that the developers came to Longboat Bay. They were businessmen and councillors in suits and BMWs who wanted to build a resort in the bay. All the land around the Jackson place was national park and could never be touched. But a hotel and golf course and swimming pool and a marina could all fit on Jackson land. When these men saw Longboat Bay they saw money, piles of it. Rich tourists, they thought, could moor their yachts and sit out on resort balconies here and watch kangaroos grazing at the edge of the forest. International entrepreneurs could play golf and make deals. Helicopters could bring people in daily for whalewatching tours. Charter boats could take fishermen out every morning. And scuba lovers could meet that big old groper the Jackson kid played with every day. To them it was a goldmine, a fortune waiting to be made.

But Dora Jackson didn’t want to sell. The businessmen were friendly at first. Their fat red faces were splitting with grins. They brought flowers and chocolates and bottles of champagne. Little gifts were followed by bigger gifts: a new outboard motor, a wind generator. This is no place for a woman on her own, they said. They offered her good money, but she didn’t sell. They brought experts, tax men, lawyers, agents, but still she told them politely that she didn’t want to sell. The smiles faded. The gifts stopped coming.

And then little things, annoying things, began to happen. The Longboat Bay road began to get rougher and more potholed because the council grader never seemed to come. The mail was always late or wet or it never came at all. Deliveries of diesel fuel and petrol had water in them so that Dora Jackson’s outboards and generators and truck engine began to stall. There were mysterious bushfires in the forest in the middle of winter.

Abel read about it in his mother’s letters angry that he could not be there to help out. At night he lay awake thinking of her and the bay. He knew she would hold out against whatever the money men did. She was stubborn as a tree and just as strong. But he hated how it wore her down, wasted her time, pinched at her nerves. Those men didn’t understand that a place isn’t just a property. They didn’t see that Longboat Bay was a life to his mother, a friend. And maybe a husband to her as well.

Every day at that peppermint tree there she was, thinking about Abel’s father. It puzzled him how a person could do that year after year. But as he grew older, Abel could see how strong her love was for all these things: the sea, the bush, the house, her husband’s memory. It was love that stopped her from being lonely, that made her strong. It was like food to her. Abel knew that it was his mother’s love that kept him going all those dull high school years while he was stuck inland, holding his breath until he was blue in the face.

Abel Jackson’s mother beat the sneaky businessmen. She simply outlasted them. Her calm patience wore them out. They got bored and fed up, and after five years they left her alone.