The Submerged Cathedral Read Free

this eight weeks of English bloom. Jocelyn now leaves it barely tended.
    Her pulse is all through her body and Martin is waiting for her to speak. She stares into the fireplace, thedamp paper smouldering. She holds her left hand in her right, fingering the knuckles. The skin of her hands is dry, her mouth is dry.
    Martin cannot wait this out. ‘What do you think?’
    Jocelyn takes his hand in hers, stares out of the window again at her mother’s flowers. She can’t say, There was a ring . She can’t say, I couldn’t get it off .
    â€˜I can’t get married,’ she says quietly.
    Oh, his beautiful face. He is staring at the floor, rubbing his lips, very gently, with two fingers.
    â€˜But I will come back with you. To live.’ She says it fast.
    He looks up at her now. It is 1963. They both know what she is offering: to hurl her reputation, and his with it, over the precipice of those sandstone cliffs below this mountain house.
    He can’t believe what she is saying. ‘ Why? ’
    The azaleas waver at the window. She is ashamed, she picks at the hem of her skirt. There is silence. ‘Because marriage is ordinary,’ she whispers then.
    She lifts her head, steady, and meets his gaze.
    He takes her hand. ‘But what about the neighbours?’
    â€˜I don’t care what they think. If you don’t.’ Her voice small.
    â€˜What about your job?’ He is stroking her hand as if to comfort her.
    She sits back, crosses her legs in front of her, lights a cigarette. She is fighting the urge to cry. ‘I’ll make sure they don’t know. It’s miles from the city, isn’t it? I can have the post redirected, tell people I’m spending a summer by the sea. People do that, don’t they?’
    A hand of flame leaps as the folded paper beneath the kindling catches. The wedding party shrinks and shrivels, the bride’s veil aflame.
    Jocelyn exhales, watches the smoke plume to the ceiling. She cannot say anything more. It is her turn to wait, and breathe, chewing the inside of her lip. Please.
    Then Martin moves slowly on his knees towards her, pulls her close till she climbs onto his lap, and he wraps her around himself, his arms round her waist.
    They are clung together on the edge of the cliff. They jump.
    â€˜Yes,’ says Martin. ‘Yes.’

Three
    T HE WORLD’S LARGEST and most famous coral formation is the Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Queensland . She holds her pencil above the line of words, over those underwater sunrises lining the continent’s northeastern coast.
    Proofreading this part of the manuscript is easy during these first Pittwater days; here it is easy to remember that the whole country is bordered by blue ocean. She works in the shade of the verandah while Martin spends his days in the city.
    It is early October, but the air is hot and bright.
    Coming here that first day, when she stepped onto the ferry at Palm Beach, she crossed more than that strip of green-black water. Martin was already on board, holding out his hand to her, her luggage waiting on the boat’s wooden deck behind him.
    His neighbours, seated with their city shopping bags on their laps, turned their heads to watch the arrival of the doctor’s mistress . She saw them watching, and her breath went shallow. And then she saw Martin’s open, steady hand, and he beamed at her. She held out her own hand and put it into his, and he held it fast, and as she stepped across that gap she knew her childhood was finished.
    He held her hand all the way across the water to the little jetty at his beach, and she tried not to feel her fingers quivering under his. She lifted her head to face a woman looking at her across the decking boards. Jocelyn forced herself to smile, and the woman looked away.
    They were the first to alight, and the people watched them walk the length of the jetty, Jocelyn’s suitcase between them, before they began to