The Submerged Cathedral by Charlotte Wood

eat, so they shove things from the car inside the opening of the tent, and clamber in to sit on their piled blankets with a bottle of sherry and a lantern and an ashtray. They dig channels with a spoon in the sand floor to direct the rivulets of water away, and then perch on their blankets, a packet of biscuits between them. As the rain beats down through the night they get drunk, and became hysterical when a little channel overflows or one of them touches the canvas to send the water pouring in. Eventually one or other of them dozes, the lamp still lit, clutching suddenly at the noise of a thunderbolt and the snapping and dripping of the canvas through the night.
    In the morning the storm is gone and the sky is cloudless. Jocelyn leaves Martin snoring in the tent and walks along the waterline, watches another pelican’s wavering landing.
    She finds a few bits of miraculously dry kindling beneath the truck and manages to light a fire for the billy. Sits on an upturned bucket and closes her eyes, listening to the quiet and the birds and the riffling water.
    They travel many miles like this. On the last night, at the campfire, their conversation takes turns, resting and murmuring, and with a stick Jocelyn shifts and nudges at the small caves of light within the fire. They sit with one another beneath the trees in the ball of the night. The earth imperceptibly turns.
    â€˜Ah, Christ, tomorrow.’ Martin sighs, reaches out a hand to receive hers and she sees his skin in the red firelight, as though he is from another land. They are beautifully tired, have travelled so far just to sit here together on this sandy soil, this place where it is darkest and most alone.
    She moves to lie against him, feeling his pulse through her own skin, and they watch the flames. Around them the high lacy walls of the bush, the trees’ quiet shifts and cracks, the starred sky.

Thirteen
    T HE TOWN’S OUTSKIRTS come as a flat relief; the haggard bowling green, the new industrial buildings soft in the evening light. Both their backs ache, they have driven many hours today, eating sandwiches as they travelled, stopping only minutes for petrol.
    Through the afternoon they have begun, separately, to think about the days to come; Ellen’s moods, Sandra’s tantrums. Jocelyn has been rehearsing in her head the guilty conversation, Ellen’s taut face and curt replies. Jocelyn will cook them a nice dinner, will insist on Ellen’s going early to bed, will play with Sandra, will let Ellen be right. Will finally finish the baby’s room, smooth a white newborn’s quilt over the cot. The baby will soon be here; it will have perfect lips and be rocked to sleep.
    There are no lights on at the house when they drive in at a quarter to seven. At the front door Jocelyn takes down a note, written in a neighbour’s hand.
    Please come and collect Sandra.

Fourteen
    I N THE HOSPITAL corridor the air goes meaty, whistles. Martin is not there behind his words. The baby. She is feeling the down of hair on her own face. Her brain coils, slithers. He is standing there like a piece of something. Glass? Her heart understands something, begins juddering in her chest. She tries to make him out, in the corridor, in a hospital.
    Died. Is dead.
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    Breath comes in and goes out.
    Her voice says, ‘Where?’ It is not her voice.
    The piece of glass says, ‘She’s in there, I’ve told her.’
    Hospital light greenish over them in the hallway. Martin is pointing an arm back at a door. He wants her to walk through it. She moves her legs.
    He turns and walks down the corridor, away from her.
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    Through the door is a room with six beds, six women. Jocelyn has to look around for a minute before she finds Ellen, at the far end of the room. Outside the window glows the pale ball of a streetlight, as though this is any ordinary night.
    Ellen is lying on her side, knees slightly bent, her hands together under her head in the