Stars Over the Southern Ocean

by J. H. Fletcher

‘Quite sure; he’s well regarded. Anyway, the pain is going to come whether I’m here at Noamunga or in Launceston or Timbuktu. That being so, I might as well stay where I want to be.

  ‘Now, can I tempt you to a slice of this delicious cheesecake?’

  ‘You don’t think you’re being selfish, thinking only of what you want? What about the rest of us? Don’t we have any say?’

  Charlotte hadn’t meant to say it but exasperation had got the better of her and somehow the words had just slipped out. Watching her mother, she saw steel enter into what until that moment had been Marina’s smiling face.

  ‘I suppose the simple answer is no, I don’t think you have any say. You’ve all gone your own ways and I’m delighted you have. Each of you has made me so proud, not only of you but of the thought that your dear father and I must have done something right for things to have worked out as well as they have. But I don’t think that gives you any right to tell me how I am to live what remains of my life.’

  * * *

  It was an ugly exchange, putting the spoilers on what until the last moment Marina had naively allowed herself to hope might be a pleasant get-together with no strings attached. Such foolishness … Charlotte, the arch-manipulator who persisted in her own naive belief that no one else was aware of her devious nature, would never have driven all this way without an agenda.

  It made Marina cross. Did her daughter truly imagine she could talk her around so easily? She must think Marina the biggest fool alive if she believed that!

  Somehow, she was unsure how, they maintained the facade of mateship until Charlotte set off on her long journey back to her ostentatious house on the banks of the Tamar River, but neither of them was fooled by the smiles and parting kisses; Charlotte had come to Noamunga for a purpose. She had failed and it was not in her daughter’s nature to forgive that too easily.

  Marina waved her off, watched as the BMW—roof closed against the probability of rain—lurched up the track towards the summit of the ridge, then turned back towards the house. For a few moments she did not go in, allowing the wind and surf to purge the bad thoughts that had sneaked in while she wasn’t looking. They served no purpose, after all; Charlotte had been born with a devious nature. She would never change and Marina should long ago have given up any hope that she might.

  She thought how they were all fools, in their own way: Charlotte, believing the world accepted the image she had woven of herself as the loyal little wifey, slavishly obedient to her husband’s every whim, while in reality seeking endlessly to push both Hector and herself higher and higher up the corporate ladder in her pursuit of more money, more status, more everything; Tamsyn, who for so many years had not moved on after the death of her true love and had descended into a waspish discontent that had never before been part of her true nature—although that seemed to have been restored by the miraculous reappearance of Esmé Drake, the delightful child who had become not only a delightful adult but a strikingly beautiful one, too; Gregory, with his romantic dreams and reckless nature that were certain to cause him problems in the future, as they already had in the past; each of them seemingly incapable of making the most of what they had, of realising that true happiness existed in the appreciation of what they possessed and not in endlessly hankering for what they did not.

  And what about you, old woman? she asked herself. So quick in your criticism of the children; what about you?

  The doctors had given her six months. Six months at the outside. Of course the children were concerned about her, all alone and so far away. Was she right to let them put up with that because of her selfishness? She had lived at Noamunga for over half a century. Why was it so important that she should spend her last months there, when it meant giving endless anxiety to the kids? To Tamsyn in particular, but to Charlotte also, to a degree, when she could spare the time from her endless plotting. Even Gregory, drifting far above the earth on his personal version of cloud nine, would be concerned for her wellbeing, whenever he got around to thinking about the real world at all.

  So why was she determined to stay on? She didn’t have to think to know the answer to that. Because to leave it would be to turn her back on her life, its joys and sorrows, everything that had made her the woman she was. Here she had lived with her life’s love, perhaps the only man on earth who could have enticed her from her forest home and bring her here in those long-ago days before the war. Here she had known joy and despair beyond measure; had experienced the storms and clear skies, night-times and silver dawns of her life; had given birth to her three children in this house anchored to its rocky base between wind and water. Here she had taught herself to take charge. Yet the truth was as she’d told herself when she came back from the hospital: that she had never owned Noamunga, whatever the lawyers might say, but rather that Noamunga had owned her and would do so until the end.

  If that was selfishness, so be it. Here she had lived and here, when the moment came, she would die, like others before her: their neighbours the Reinhardts, whom she had never met and, not long after her arrival, Jory’s mother.

  1939

  CHAPTER 30

  Jory was at sea and Marina was out of doors, bottle-feeding a lamb that had been rejected by the ewe. It was February, a warm day, the sea relatively calm. Marina sat on a conveniently rounded rock at the water’s edge, enjoying the sun’s heat on her neck. Head bent, she was attending to the wriggly lamb, the teat in its mouth, when she heard a footstep grate on the shale behind her. A shadow darkened the sun.

  She felt a sudden shortness of breath; a tightening of the skin, and the muscles beneath the skin.

  ‘I need you in the house,’ Marrek said. ‘She’s not looking too good.’

  The blood, which had stalled in her veins, began to flow again.

  ‘I’ll come at once.’

  She carried the lamb with her and left it, tottery on its pipe-cleaner legs, in the small bed she’d made for it in the kitchen, handy to the range. She rinsed her hands and hurried into the bedroom.

  Her mother-in-law was lying on her back, eyes closed, the eyelids like purple plums in the chalk-white face. She breathed and was still. Breathed and was still. Her only speech was a dirge of moans; her only movement the spasmodic kicking of legs under the covers.

  Helplessness was a heavy cross to bear. She looked at her father-in-law across the body of the dying woman and knew there was nothing they could do.

  ‘I’ll sit with her,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t handle this,’ Marrek said. ‘I’m going out.’

  Coverack man or not, he was clearly distraught in the presence of his dying wife. Marina knew where he was heading.

  Consolation—if that was what it was—lay in the latest jar of home brew, a lethal concoction, oily and gin-clear, with the explosive force of cordite. It made the kitchen stink for days after he’d made it. She had no idea what went into it; the one time she’d tried it she’d felt it melting the brain in her skull.

  Marina sat and waited. She thought to hold the skeletal hand and hesitated—the two women had never had the chance to grow close—but eventually she did so. There was no response but she felt better for having done it, for having drawn closer to the dying woman on her last journey. The breathing came, and was still. Came, and was still. And, at the last …

  Silence.

  She folded the dead hands beneath the sheet. She covered the dead face. She went out to give Marrek the news.

  Jory would be at sea for another ten to twelve days so they couldn’t wait for him to get back before burying her. Marrek said she had wanted to be buried on their land, so he dug a grave in the corner of a paddock where the soil was deep enough. Marina wrapped the body in a bed sheet and together they carried it to the grave. A rasp of the spade as Marrek filled it in. A calling of gulls; the rhythmic rumble of the surf; the grating of the shingle as it was sucked this way and that by the breaking waves. Finish; there remained no physical evidence she had ever been.

  Marina was
uneasy. ‘You never thought to give her a proper funeral? Like at the church?’

  ‘I got no time for churches,’ he said. ‘Or the busybodies that runs ’em.’

  It was true that Ellen Trevelyan, formerly Wicks, was dead but lived still in the stones and rain, the breakers’ roar, the soil that would be enriched by the dissolution of her flesh. She had changed the world by the simple act of being, as everybody did, and in that sense would remain, part of all things. As, when their time came, everybody did.

  ‘Want to say anything?’ Marrek said.

  ‘No,’ Marina said. It was not her place.

  ‘That’s it, then. Not a bad woman, all things considered,’ Marrek said.

  Let that, with the gulls, sea and wind, be her elegy.

  A week later Jory was home three days ahead of schedule. He was distressed that his mother had died in his absence but unsurprised; they’d been expecting it for years. Marina walked with him to the grave. Nothing to see, but the air held memories. Jory did not speak but took a rock, large and flat, and placed it on the grave, working it into the soil so that it was securely anchored. There. They stood a moment longer, then returned, hand in hand, to the house.

  A week later he went back to sea.

  CHAPTER 31

  With Ellen in her grave and Jory back at sea, Marina and Marrek were alone in the house. It made her uneasy; he did not lift a finger against her but his eyes followed her, while his presence stole the air from her lungs. She decided she must get away from the solitude that was solitude no longer. She would get a job. But doing what? And where?

  The only possibility was in Boulders, and Boulders was an hour’s walk. Most likely a wet walk, too; in that district rain fell over two hundred and fifty days a year. There was always Walter Wilkins’s truck but Marrek only used that occasionally and it was out of bounds the rest of the time. The horses were out of bounds, too, and in any case the stabling costs would make the idea of getting a job impracticable.

  ‘No worries,’ Marina said. ‘I’ll walk.’

  She walked over the hill and down the other side into Boulders and by luck found a job at the newsagency, where the assistant had resigned the previous week to get married.

  Every morning, rain or shine, Marina left Noamunga at six o’clock with a piece of honeyed bread to chew on and was at the shop in Boulders in good time to arrange the newspapers and have a cup of tea before the shop opened at seven-thirty.

  After Marina arrived soaked a couple of times, the shop owner, Horace Pope, sold her for three shillings a vast waterproof cape that had belonged to his mother, taking the money at a shilling a week from her wages.

  ‘Catch your death, standing around in them wet clothes,’ Horace said.

  More to the point, the customers felt uncomfortable, being served by a drowned rat. But Horace’s Chinese wife thought differently.

  ‘Wet women bring good fortune,’ said Alice Chan, who came from Hong Kong and was into things like omens and good-luck signs.

  ‘What?’ Marina said.

  ‘Well-known saying,’ Alice told her. ‘Rain washes bad spirits out of the hair.’

  Marina preferred her hair to stay dry, never mind the bad spirits, but in general terms she and Alice got along well. She even persuaded Alice to teach her the bare bones of her language, out of interest and because it amused her to think that one day they might be able to chat to each other without anyone else knowing what they were saying.

  ‘I’ll teach you Cantonese,’ Alice said. ‘The dialect people speak in Hong Kong.’

  It was the first time Marina knew there was more than one way of speaking the Chinese language.

  ‘Many, many ways,’ Alice assured her. ‘Teo Chew, Hokkien, Hakka, Mandarin. Many more besides.’

  ‘That is remarkable,’ Marina said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Alice agreed complacently. ‘It’s well known, Chinese peoples are the most remarkable on earth.’

  Time passed. Jory came and went. Marrek had so far kept his distance but Marina kept her fingers crossed.

  She saved up and bought a second-hand bike. She still had to walk some of the steepest bits but was able to whizz downhill and it cut the journey time by half. They were into winter, now. Winter 1939. May, June, July. Storms raged; sea foam reached the door more than once; Marina was scared for Jory’s safety; one pitch-dark morning on her way into Boulders a howl of wind almost blew her off her bike.

  That was a storm for the record books. It continued all day and into the night, which came two hours earlier than usual. The wind had grown so wild by evening that using her bike to get home was out of the question. Alice suggested she stay over but she didn’t want that. She had no change of clothes, no toothbrush or anything, and sleeping on the couch in the cold storeroom at the back of the shop didn’t appeal. There was also the problem of Marrek. As men went, he didn’t go far but he was Jory’s dad and with no phone at Noamunga she couldn’t let him know what was going on. She doubted he would worry but he might, and she felt she should at least make the effort to get home. A wet and windy business, no doubt about that, but she’d manage.

  ‘She’ll be right,’ she said.

  Draped in her waterproof cape, she headed out.

  Well.

  The gale was ice cold and came in violent gusts that made her stagger, while the rain fell unceasingly. The force of the wind made it difficult to keep the cape wrapped securely around her and in no time she was soaked. She pushed on up the track out of Boulders in a roar of wind, shoulders hunched, head thrust forward defiantly. Storm was a natural hazard yet the way it came at her that night made it seem personal. The assault grew more violent when at last she crested the rise and headed downhill towards Noamunga. The night was black yet she could see the white wilderness that was the sea. The roar of the gale; the roar of the sea; the unrelenting hammer of the rain: Marina defied them all. She fell once, when her foot skidded on a rock, but managed to get up again. She forced her way downhill through the tumultuous night until at long last she reached the house. The suds of the windblown surf were about her feet and she had to use all her strength to force open the door against the pressure of the gale. No sooner had she done it than the wind hurled her through the doorway into darkness, the door crashing shut behind her. All was dark, the fire a glow of dying embers, and when she tried the light switch nothing happened. The generator must be out, either because of the storm or because Marrek hadn’t braved the weather to switch it on. She stood with the run-off from her saturated cape puddling the floor about her.

  Silence. Where was Marrek?

  ‘Dad?’

  She didn’t think of Marrek as her dad and never would but called him that because she knew it pleased Jory that she did so.

  ‘You here?’

  It hadn’t entered her head that anything could have happened to him—she had always thought her father-in-law as indestructible as the rocks that made up the foundations of his house—but now she felt concern. He wasn’t an old man, exactly, but he wasn’t young either, and in weather like this …

  ‘Are you here?’

  This time she shouted the words with the full force of her lungs, yet still the house remained silent. There was a candle in a holder on a table near the door. There were matches. She groped her way. Feet wet, numb fingers clumsy, but she found them, struck a match. The candle flame lit the room. She looked around. No one.

  Now she was alarmed. ‘Dad?’

  Why would he have left the house in such a storm? Marrek wasn’t a man to reason with, an arbitrary being at war with everyone and everything, with unexplained resentments erupting periodically, but even so …

  Foul weather or not, she had to find him. If he’d tried to turn on the generator and failed; if an extra-strong gust had knocked him off his feet; if he’d had a heart attack … If, if, if.

  A lighted candle wouldn’t last a second in conditions like these but she had a torch in her bedroom and went to fetch it. And paused, frowning.


  Between the wind gusts she heard a rasping sound.

  A snore?

  She went to his bedroom door and listened, ear pressed to the wood. It came again, then again. Marina rubbed her hand over her face. A snore was what it was, sure enough. Marrek was asleep in his bed which, given the storm’s fury, she would have thought impossible. She was unsure whether to laugh or stamp her feet, whether to tiptoe away or throw open the door and punch his head. Asleep, while she’d been fighting the storm?

  The generator. Was it working or not? Only one way to find out.

  She put wood on the fire, took the torch, forced open the door against the wind and went out into the darkness. A wilderness of wind and water. A thought: where did gulls go in weather like this? Answer: as far inland as they could. At that moment she wouldn’t have minded doing the same.

  And what of Jory? Boats sank; fishermen drowned. It happened all the time. She closed her eyes and leant back, fighting the storm with all her strength. It frightened her even to think about it but there was nothing she could do. It was thirty yards to the generator shed; it took her five minutes to get there, the wind threatening to hurl her down at every step. There at last, she put the torch down, grabbed the generator handle and hauled it round, needing all her strength for the heavy pull. Nothing. Did it again. Still nothing. Once more. Felt the resistance before the generator rumbled into life. The lights came on. Thank goodness.

  She battled her way back to the house, went indoors. The fire had burnt up, the blazing logs spilling heat into the chilly room. Marina unbuttoned her cape and let it fall. She was chilled through; she took off her top clothes and fetched a towel. She crouched as close as she could get to the flames, unfastened her shirt and rubbed herself hard, feeling the grateful tingle of heat as little by little it embraced her.

  Now she was languid, drifting on a soft tide of warm air, listening to the throb of flame in the fireplace. The door of Marrek’s bedroom clicked open.