Stars Over the Southern Ocean

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘Throw it away.’ But then, in the same breath: ‘Wait …’

  Surely it could not be …

  Never. She’d never given her the address. Had she? She’d be grown up now. A woman. Probably married. Esmé would have forgotten all about her years ago.

  Tamsyn wasn’t sure she wanted to revisit those days, anyway, to relive that terrible period of loss when all her world had turned to ashes, when between one breath and the next Kashmir had changed from an earthly paradise to one of darkness and despair.

  And yet …

  ‘Send it on,’ she said.

  What harm could it do, after all?

  The letter arrived four days later. An air letter, postmarked Kasauli.

  Tamsyn held it, turning it in her hands. Mrs Tamsyn Drake, Noamunga, near Boulders, Tasmania. A woman’s hand. A young woman’s hand.

  She opened the letter. She read it.

  Esmé had written:

  My grandfather died and we are moving to Darjeeling, to stay with my grandmother’s sister, Mrs Rose Chatterjee. I know no one in that place and do not want to go but my grandmother insists.

  She wrote:

  I found your letters when I was packing up our things. My grandmother had hidden them from me. I wrote to you many times but only now I find she never sent them. They are still here.

  She wrote:

  I have never forgotten you. If you still remember me, can you help me, please?

  She signed the letter:

  Your loving daughter,

  Esmé

  Tamsyn felt the tears flowing down her cheeks. Flowing fast, as though something of ice in her heart had melted.

  Your loving daughter.

  Too right I’ll bloody help you.

  It would take some doing. Esmé would need a passport. Did Indian citizens need a visa to visit Australia? She would find out. She’d send the money for Esmé’s fare. Esmé was eighteen, legally of age. She could do what she liked. All the same, it would be best if Tamsyn—God knew how—could square it with Mrs Kumar. Good luck with that, she thought. She foresaw endless problems there but she was determined.

  Esmé was of age. If she wanted to visit Australia there was no legal way Mrs Kumar could prevent her. If needs be, Tamsyn would enlist the help of Mohinder Lal, the Delhi-based tour operator with whom she had worked in the past. If necessary, she would bribe him with promises of more co-operation in the future. He would recommend a lawyer, should one be needed.

  Your loving daughter.

  Somehow, somehow, she would make it work.

  She never thought it was going to be easy and it was not, but eventually she managed it. Lawyers were involved in the end, as Tamsyn had always feared they would be, but legally speaking Esmé was indeed a free woman and finally it was all sorted out.

  Tamsyn flew to Melbourne to meet her. The overnight flight from Delhi was due in at seven. Tamsyn waited in the concourse as the passengers began to come through. The early-morning sunlight was flooding the outside street with golden light when she saw a young woman, stylishly dressed in quality Western clothes. She was tall, with unblemished ivory-coloured skin, black hair and oval eyes. She was the personification of beauty and it was all Tamsyn could do not to burst into tears at the sight of her.

  Sunrise

  Such a surprise

  The joy I feel

  Is quite unreal

  Now my darling girl

  Has come home again.

  Tamsyn thought: I believe that’s the first time I’ve had something like that come to me since I left India.

  Perhaps she was coming out of the dark times at last.

  They knew each other at once—that was the true miracle—and it was as though they had never been apart. In Tamsyn’s heart there was no room for rancour that Mrs Kumar had deprived her of ten years of this young woman’s life; no room for anything but joy that, in the face of every probability, they were reunited at last.

  1980–81

  CHAPTER 24

  Tamsyn knew it would take a while to get Esmé’s permanent residence sorted out but had no doubt they would manage it eventually. As a visitor on a tourist visa, she would not be permitted to work, at least officially, but Tamsyn organised her with a part-time job looking after a friend’s kids. It wasn’t much but it kept her out of mischief, as she put it, and put a few dollars in Esmé’s pocket at the same time.

  For years Tamsyn had been working all the hours God gave but, with Esmé’s arrival, she started taking things a little easier. She still worked flat out during the day but a good percentage of her evenings became her own.

  For the time being Esmé stayed in Tamsyn’s spare room and they spent hours talking, finding out more and more about each other. The bond between them grew stronger with every week. They were delighted to discover that in their senses of humour and their views of the world their thinking was remarkably similar; they might really have been mother and daughter, had the few years separating them not made that biologically impossible.

  Tamsyn introduced her to her circle of friends; she made a few of her own. They explored the city together; they often went out to dinner; they became good mates.

  Esmé began taking driving lessons.

  ‘We’ll make you a dinkum Aussie in no time,’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘She’ll be right,’ Esmé laughed, to prove she was already picking up a little of the local lingo, and then spoilt it by adding: ‘I am learning very fast, isn’t it?’

  One weekend they drove over to Noamunga to see Marina: a long haul, but worth it. The two girls, as Tamsyn thought of them, hit it off famously.

  ‘What a beautiful woman you’ve grown to be,’ Marina said, as forthright in her compliments as in her criticism, when criticism was warranted—which on this occasion it was not. Privately, to Tamsyn, she said: ‘Thank God you got her away from that dreadful woman.’

  ‘She did it herself,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘You don’t give yourself enough credit,’ Marina said.

  Esmé was suitably overawed by the power of the surf, flinging itself in endless fury against the land.

  ‘I can see why nobody would want to leave a place like this,’ she told Marina.

  ‘I am delighted to hear you say so,’ Marina said, and obviously meant it.

  ‘Tamsyn moved away,’ Esmé said.

  ‘She was in love with your father. She’d have gone to the Antarctic with him, if that had been what he wanted.’

  ‘A real find, that daughter of yours,’ she told Tamsyn.

  Tamsyn looked at her. ‘Daughter?’

  ‘You told me that’s what she called you in that letter.’

  ‘She did. If it was true, it would mean I had her when I was about twelve.’

  ‘There’s more than one way of being a mother,’ Marina said. ‘You helped her escape. Anyway, you’re much older now.’

  ‘Don’t remind me.’

  ‘In comparison with you, I’m the rock of ages. But don’t worry: you’ll get there, too, in the end. If you live so long.’

  ‘Now there’s a thought,’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘Have you told Charlotte?’ Marina said. ‘About Esmé, I mean?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘How did she react?’

  ‘Like Charlotte. Flabbergasted might be the word. She clearly thought I’d taken leave of my senses.’

  ‘And you? How do you feel?’

  ‘I feel she’s given me back my life.’

  ‘I think so, too. You haven’t been happy for a long time. Now I think you are.’

  ‘I think you might be right,’ Tamsyn said.

  They stayed overnight and drove back the following afternoon.

  ‘I think she loves that place,’ Esmé said.

  ‘You’re right,’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘She never asked what I was going to do with my life, once I get permanent residence.’

  ‘She wouldn’t. She has a horror of being seen to interfere in oth
er people’s business.’

  They drove for a while in silence. There wasn’t much traffic. By now they were well past the roadhouse at Derwent Bridge and were heading for New Norfolk.

  ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ Esmé asked.

  They overtook a timber lorry laden with massive logs.

  ‘Wrong question,’ Tamsyn said. ‘The right one is to say: What do I want to do with my life?’

  ‘I am having difficulty getting my head around that. In Kasauli my grandparents decided everything.’

  ‘Things will be different here,’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘What do I want to do? I must think about that. Think seriously.’

  Esmé was granted permanent residence. Two weeks later she found a job with a literary agent with offices in a side alley off Hobart’s Salamanca Place.

  She continued to stay with Tamsyn for a further two months until she’d scraped together some money, then took a one-room flat in North Hobart, travelling to work every morning by bus. She got on with her life.

  Tamsyn was sorry to see her go, yet happy too. It was the right thing for both of them.

  For Tamsyn, too, had a life to lead.

  1982–90

  CHAPTER 25

  At eighteen, Esmé was discovering what it meant to be let off the leash, with all the challenges, perplexities and terrors that freedom involved. If indeed she was free at all because, in the vast landscape where freedom supposedly lay, it seemed there were areas where it was neither safe nor permitted to go.

  In matters of sex in particular, and at eighteen she was finding sex a major preoccupation.

  What was okay and what was not okay.

  Saying yes or no to the young men, and some not so young, who wanted her to go out with them. Saying yes or no when they wanted to kiss her. When they wanted to do more than kiss.

  To say no when her own feelings urged her to say yes.

  This freedom was a minefield where one false step might destroy her, a minefield all the more difficult to negotiate for being in a different country with different customs and rules from those she had been brought up to accept.

  It was an embarrassment to speak to Tamsyn about these things. She summoned her courage to do it eventually but Tamsyn, alas, was little help.

  ‘It’s something you have to work out for yourself,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I met your father when I was nineteen. We made love many times before we married and I have never believed there was anything wrong in what we did.’

  Esmé’s eyes were round. ‘You made love with my father? On the houseboat?’

  ‘Many times,’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘My goodness me.’ It was the first time in months she had reverted to her old way of speaking. ‘And I knew nothing.’

  ‘You were seven. Of course you knew nothing. We made sure of that. But that was right for us, because we cared deeply for each other. What you have to decide when that moment comes is whether it is right for you, whether you truly care enough to take that final step. Because, if you’re not sure, you shouldn’t do it.’

  ‘But how will I know?’

  ‘You’ll know. No one else can decide for you. Every woman has to work that out for herself. But you’ll know.’

  * * *

  And I, Tamsyn thought, am a hypocrite. How many men has it been? And have I truly cared for any of them? No, I haven’t. Not like Grant. Never again like Grant. But always there has been kindness, affection, a measure of sharing. I have never cheapened myself: that I can truly say. And the advice to Esmé was good.

  ‘I have never felt like that about anyone,’ Esmé said.

  ‘It’ll happen. Within an hour of meeting him, I knew your dad was the one. It’ll happen to you, too. And when it does, you’ll know.’

  ‘And men? How do they feel?’

  ‘Who knows? My impression is that men are different.’

  1993

  CHAPTER 26

  Greg was at his wits’ end.

  Back in September he’d phoned Charlotte for her birthday. He’d mentioned, as he always did, that money was a bit tight—over the years panhandling had become almost a ritual between them—and she’d told him, as she always did, that she couldn’t help him.

  ‘I’d like to, you know that, but Hector wouldn’t hear of it.’

  All very much par for the course. But then she’d said something he hadn’t expected.

  ‘Not to worry! I’m not at liberty to talk about it, but I think there’s a good chance Mum will be in funds very soon.’

  ‘How come?’

  Charlotte with her coy act. ‘As I said, I’m not free to talk, but I think you can take it as pretty definite. But leave it for a few days, eh?’

  Now, when he desperately needed support, Tamsyn had told him she knew nothing about Mum’s sudden riches.

  ‘The only way she’ll ever have a bean is if she sells Noamunga. And I wish you luck with that.’

  ‘Give me two more weeks,’ he told his partners. ‘It’s not the sort of money you can raise overnight.’

  ‘Two weeks?’ Somchai said doubtfully. ‘I suppose that will be okay.’

  ‘But no more,’ Mongkut said. ‘You told us, if we needed money there’d be no problem. Now, all of a sudden, there’s a problem. Please don’t forget: we’re on a deadline here. We’ve put a lot of our own money into this project. We wouldn’t want to see that put at risk. You understand me?’

  Oh yes, he understood very well; understanding was no problem. The problem was not knowing what to do about it.

  There was one last, desperate course open to him. He wouldn’t have put money on his pulling it off but he had to try.

  CHAPTER 27

  It had been a mongrel of a day, driving rain blown almost horizontal by a westerly gale and spume flying over the house. Indoors was a creak of timbers as the old building turned its sturdy shoulders to the storm.

  Around five o’clock there was a break in the weather. Along the western horizon the cloud cover cracked open to reveal a bottle-glass sky, hard and green, harbinger of an even heavier storm on the way, while the rollers—black seas veined white with foam—smashed themselves in a tumult of spray against the shore.

  It was not a day to be out and about but, cocooned in the fire’s warmth, Marina was content. The timbers of the house sang their song, defiant of the weather. It was in conditions like this that she found herself entering another world, half-memory, half-fantasy, in which days and months and years filled her with music of their own. Of arrivals and departures, births and deaths, joys and despair, and of a never-failing beauty that had enchanted her from her first days at Noamunga and that ever since had provided her life with the meaning and fulfilment that enchanted her still. To be was the sole purpose of her life, only that, and it was sufficient, because Noamunga had taken possession of her soul, she its grateful prisoner, and would do so for however much time she had left.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Gregory?’ The last voice she’d expected to hear. ‘What a lovely surprise. Where are you?’

  ‘At Nirvana.’

  ‘Goodness! How are you? Warmer than I am here, I’m sure.’

  ‘Mum, I’ve got a problem.’ Clearly Gregory hadn’t rung for a chat.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, dear. How can I help?’

  ‘I need some money.’

  Marina swallowed a sigh. She loved her son dearly but there were times when she wished he would grow up.

  ‘How much money?’

  A laugh that wasn’t a laugh. ‘Not that much when you consider what’s at stake.’

  Worse than she’d feared. ‘How much?’

  ‘Quarter of a million.’ Little more than a whisper and spoken fast, as though that might make the sum less. ‘Not that much, considering what you get for it.’

  ‘Quarter of a million baht?’ About ten thousand dollars? That wasn’t too bad; the three of them might be able to manage that.

  ‘Dollars.’

>   Good grief.

  ‘Quarter of a million dollars? My dear boy, I haven’t anything like that.’

  ‘But Charlotte told me you soon might, and a lot more.’

  ‘Why on earth would she say such a thing? I’ve never had that sort of money in my life.’

  ‘Maybe she thought you might be selling Noamunga.’

  ‘Did she say that?’

  ‘She went all coy on me when I asked—said she wasn’t free to talk about it—but the implication was clear. I mean, where else would you be able to find that sort of money?’

  ‘I don’t know where she could have got such an idea. I’ll tell you now, Gregory, I have no intention of selling Noamunga. Who do you owe this vast sum of money to, anyway?’

  ‘My two partners.’

  ‘Tell them to wait.’

  ‘They aren’t people you can say that to.’

  ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t be in business with them.’

  ‘Maybe not. But that’s the way things are. I had no choice, really.’

  ‘There’s always a choice.’

  ‘You don’t understand these things, Mum.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I do. How did you get to meet them, anyway?’

  ‘A man I knew recommended them. Men with money, he said, always willing to invest in likely businesses. And he was right. They’ve financed all the development, so far. And they’ve got contacts in the government. You’ve got to have them or nothing will ever get done.’

  ‘And now they want their pound of flesh.’

  Silence for a spell. Then Gregory said:

  ‘Mum, if you don’t want your only son to end up at the bottom of the Andaman Sea …’

  All the time, as Gregory was speaking, Marina was thinking how he’d always been so bright at school yet somehow had never learnt that, if you wanted something, you had to pay for it. As the Americans said, there was no free lunch.