by Karen Manton
She could hear Joel muttering in frustration. She took him a glass of cold water filled with softly hissing ice.
‘Thanks, you’re a legend.’ He drank thirstily. His shirt was sweat-soaked, his skin streaked with dirt.
A pile of rocks they’d both dug up over the past week were behind him. Greta was edging her garden beds with them. Griffin was making towers with the smaller stones. Odd little cairns would mysteriously appear by the front steps or the water tank, under the darkroom or along her garden paths.
‘They’ll do me in, these endless rocks.’ Joel took up the spade.
For every one lifted out, another surfaced. Greta imagined them shifting underground and discussing where to emerge next.
She started filling the wheelbarrow from the pile. ‘That girl was here last night.’
‘What girl?’ He kept digging and didn’t look at her.
‘The one I told you about—the one I met near the banyan tree when we first came. She was on the verandah, looking in. Round midnight.’
‘Better lock up then, or hide things.’
He swapped the spade for the crowbar to edge around a stone and lever it up.
‘I don’t think she wants to steal.’
‘What is it she wants then?’
‘I think she wants to look at us,’ she said. ‘You in particular. And Griffin.’
He crouched to lift out the stone. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I thought you might know.’
He grimaced with the twinge in his back or what she’d said, perhaps, and let the rock drop onto a pile.
She left him to his digging and pushed the wheelbarrow across to her garden. The rock-lifting was giving her new muscles. Every day Griffin challenged her to an arm wrestle. Arm strongii, he called her, after the cycads. She must ask him about the species down in that hidden valley, near the hut where the girl might hide.
She couldn’t understand why Joel would avoid talking about the girl. Over the years she’d learned to decipher his silences, his cryptic answers. He was hiding something. She wanted to hook it out.
She glanced over at him. He was digging with a passion, like he might excise an enemy. We are both wrestling with the ground, she thought, asking for some kind of leeway. And above us the white clouds plume, islands in the sky.
A koel bird called its pensive hopes of rain. Greta hoped these stones didn’t mind being removed from their private underworld and relocated, unasked.
A shout came from Joel. The crowbar somersaulted up into the blue, then dived to bounce across rocks. He was staring into the hole he’d dug. She went to him and saw the rock embedded in both sides. It could be a hidden reef.
‘We’re going to have to haul that out with the four-wheel drive,’ said Joel.
They took turns levering and digging to break more dirt around it and pass a rope underneath. When the rock was chained up to the car, Joel signalled for Greta to move forward. The vehicle strained, the tyres kicked up dirt and the rock jolted out. There it was, an uprooted giant’s tooth.
Greta lay down next to it to watch the clouds. They were connected within the rock somehow. She could feel the hum of the hidden world underneath her. She wondered if Hazel would teach her something about this country. She mightn’t want your questions, a voice in her said. Taking up her time. Pressing on wounds.
She went to find Joel in the shower. The water wasn’t cold but still it was a relief. She could feel her thoughts becoming calmer, a sense of logic returning. Everything is relative, she told herself. The temperature of water, the nature of ground. Rocks versus sand.
The air inside the shack was warm, oppressive.
Joel turned on the fan and filled a tea towel with ice for the rash on her neck. She felt the heat sucked away. She picked up her father’s watch from the bench.
‘Forget them,’ he said, reading her mind about time and children coming home on the bus.
He kissed her, and she felt a wave of warmth for him under the tangle of her questions. He’s always been a good kisser, she thought. He carried her off with him, and tripped on the swag.
‘Don’t break your kneecaps,’ she said as they fell.
A tear of sweat dropped from his chin to her chest. She glanced over his shoulder to the beanbag dented with the shape of a child, Griffin’s open bird book on the floor. Brynn’s spiky-skinned, yellow-green jackfruit on the kitchen bench.
‘You’re distracted,’ he said.
The sheets were a damp twist. The swag was a thin excuse for a mattress. She rolled him under her and sat up. The fan whirred air onto her back.
She pressed his hips close, to feel his bones against hers.
What had she been thinking earlier, to cast him as a stranger? The heat must have turned her head. He was the same as he’d always been, this man she’d plucked from the ocean all those years ago. He was returned, familiar.
11
It’s all about light and darkness. About making the invisible visible.
Her mother’s words kept finding her out, here in the van. This is the problem with the dead, Greta thought—thirty years later and a few thousand kilometres away they sneak in to see how you’ve set up your darkroom.
The windows were covered with foil and she’d built a cover over the exhaust fan to keep out the light. She hadn’t painted the walls black, leaving them off-white to see better under the safe light.
Keeping the chemicals cool was her challenge. Her developer, stop and fixer solutions were in bottles, jugs and trays on ice. Twenty-three degrees by the thermometer—not bad for the tropics.
She’d just finished checking her timing charts when Toby knocked. Greta hesitated. The air conditioner rattled on the wall.
‘Can I come in?’
She opened the door, remembering her mother’s darkroom, the fierce instructions not to interrupt. She turned up the exhaust fan to suck away chemical vapours. Toby sat down to watch.
The image must be protected.
She gave her mother’s answers to his questions about the lightproof bag, where she hid her hands to cut open the film canister, and wind the film onto a spool to put inside the developing tank. Even the camera is a miniature dark room, she explained.
There is so much light in our world. So much exposure.
Vivian didn’t use a lightproof bag. Total darkness in the room was her way. Greta disturbed it only once, opening the door to let harsh light flood in. It came back to her—the quick shout, silent fury, ruined negatives quivering in the bin.
Greta went through the steps with Toby, pouring chemicals in and out of the tank, tipping it slowly back and forth—one, two, one, two, like a metronome. She kept her eye on the mobile’s stop watch.
Time and temperature. If it’s not right the image will distort. This is science, not art, she used to think, impatient with the many exacting steps.
‘You will never be Vivian.’ The art lecturer had winced at her slapdash ways, skipping exposure texts, guessing times.
When they’d finished and rinsed the negatives Greta pegged them on a line strung from one end of the van to the other. Toby peered at them closely, deciphering images. Here was a cycad’s head of fronds, the thick fingers of pandanus roots. They didn’t look real, more like X-rays of an alien forming in its pod, morphing into an unknown creature. The curlew was a white ghost, the scraggly turkey bush a filigree of fine white bones. And the day sky behind the bird was as dark as night.
‘It’s weird, all reversed,’ he said. ‘The dark is the light, and the light is the dark.’
Greta felt old next to this child of a digital era. She opened the door to air the van while the negatives dried. Toby came outside with her to search the sky for the Southern Cross, the pointers, planets. She remembered her mother’s shadow on a dune, the red glow at the end of her cigarette.
When they were ready to print, Toby switched on Henry’s orange safe light. Greta chose a negative of Magdalen’s birth car to position in the enlarger.
‘Wow,’ he whispered, when he saw the light shine through the negative and the image appear underneath on the photographic paper.
When the exposure was done and she switched off the enlarger’s light, he was shocked to see the picture disappear.
‘Trust me, it’s there,’ said Greta.
The latent image, secretly in the paper. She remembered her own wonder when she used to watch her mother working. It had gone into her at an early age, the magic of light and mirror and lens, the luring of an image from white nothing.
She slipped the paper into the developer solution and gently moved the tray. There was a second of waiting, of wondering if it was a hoax, a mistake, and nothing would appear. But suddenly shadows emerged. Lines, shapes took form. From nothing came the shadows of rocks, the car, clouds above.
‘I can see it!’ Toby smiled.
He kept time for her, calling out when to lift the paper with tongs and move it on to the stop, then fixer, then rinse trays.
She pegged up the finished image. Toby stared at it, transfixed. Protection. Concealment. The invisible made visible.
‘I never knew,’ he said. ‘I never knew what it truly was.’
It appealed to the illusionist in him. Toby the magician, with his box of secret drawers, his sleight of hand and clever card moves, had found something akin to a new trick.
He chose the lake for the next print.
The poison water looked other-worldly in its ethereal projection and the dim orange light. And again when it reappeared in the developer tray with the spiky pandanus and dark trees around it.
‘It’s like a memory,’ Toby said. ‘Or a daydream. You can choose when to start and stop it.’
‘You’re so right,’ she agreed.
Latent memory. Switch it on and off. Project the picture you want, fix it.
Toby pegged up the finished print. Its steady dripping had a beat. He wanted to stay longer, to watch her develop a sheet of thumbnails.
‘Next time,’ she said gently, and he left then.
Now the darkroom was hers. She took out the next sheet of photographic paper. A metallic taste was on her tongue.
Careful with that negative, her mother would say. You’re too quick with it.
There were no scratched negatives or careless tones of grey in Vivian’s work.
Greta adjusted the enlarger’s lens to focus a cycad, the fine cross-hatching patterns in the trunk, the elaborate seed necklace. She admired these plants that survive months without rain, and burn yet live. Resilience. She wished she had more of it. There were people who thought she was strong, adventurous. But inside she was something else.
The quietness of the room, the darkness inside and outside, took her into another world. She lost track of time with the gathering prints. It was the witching hour and she was inspired.
She kept the bush stone-curlew until last. The quick appearance of that cautious bird gave her goosebumps. She pegged up the photograph. The dark room, the equipment, film and chemicals, the hours of labour were all worth it for this one image. Suddenly she felt a connection with the unkempt feathered messenger who called out its sorrow to her in the night. In this dim orange light, in this strange, dripping atmosphere, there was something in that haunting eye that could be a mirror.
12
‘We’ve been here a month, did you know?’ Toby called over his shoulder. He had a towel around his neck and goggles pushed up on his forehead. If you asked him who he was, he’d say Chuck Yeager.
‘Time flies when you’re having fun,’ Greta said.
‘I think it’s slow,’ said Raffy. ‘The hotter the day is, the slower the time is.’
They were all feeling the heat of the build-up, and going to the creek often, especially now it was the October school holidays. This morning Greta had suggested they go through the gap in the fence and try to cross the rainforest bridge over the pool of water there.
The excitement of the idea was so strong the children didn’t want to play too long in the creek. The two younger boys were drying themselves when Toby returned from a brief wade upstream. He’d spotted a fence ladder on Trapper’s side.
They all went to look, careful to stay close to their bank.
‘It’s like a stile in a storybook,’ Raffy said.
‘Why is it there if he doesn’t want us trespassing?’ asked Toby.
‘So he can climb over,’ Griffin suggested.
‘He fossicks on this property,’ said Greta. ‘And if you see him, I don’t want you talking to him.’
‘Why not?’
She led them away without answering, hoping their excited voices hadn’t travelled up to Trapper’s ears. She went through the gap in the fence first. ‘Go straight across and wait for me on the other side.’
Joel had assured her there would be no crocodiles but she didn’t want to linger on the bridge to who knew where.
It swayed under their feet. Greta kept her eyes on the shadow water. They passed the shaggy trunks of paperbarks, the corkscrew necks of spiralus pandanus. The forest darkened around them.
A few metres along, Raffy stopped. ‘What is it?’ he whispered, staring at a large shadow hanging among dark, leathery leaves just ahead of him. He hugged his towel to his mouth. His skin was beaded with creek water.
‘It’s a car, don’t you see?’ Toby was incredulous that his brother hadn’t realised.
The rusted carcass hung upside down, clutched by a tangle of branches, woody vines and green tendrils. Headlight casings protruded with a gaping stare.
‘It’s old,’ said Toby. ‘Older than those wrecks up at the homestead.’ He put a hand over his mouth. The homestead was out of bounds.
Greta let it pass. ‘You’re right. It could be from Second World War days.’
‘Take a picture,’ whispered Raffy.
Toby wasn’t waiting for photos and carried on across the uncertain footbridge. Greta framed the car in the viewfinder. There wasn’t enough light, it would be a shadow. As she took the shot Griffin’s foot broke through the bridge. Half of him disappeared into the water. She hurried to pull him up. A white graze on his back inked with blood.
‘Go on, Raffy.’ She lifted him over the gap.
He hurried on to Toby, who’d reached an archway of light.
‘Are you right to keep going?’ she asked Griffin in a low voice.
He’d cut his shin. Watery blood trailed to his foot. But he assured her he wasn’t hurt and limped on through the forest and out into sudden daylight.
‘What is this place?’ he wondered out loud, taking in the small flood plain ahead of him, the pandanus laden with orange fruit, the rock face that rose to the outcrop.
There was only sky and sun above the cliff. No shack or homestead. No world on the other side. Vines hung down from crevices in the rock. A brave, slender tree reached out for sunlight, straggly roots clinging to stone.
It was the hut though, that excited Griffin most once he saw it. Greta had almost expected it not to be here, to find that the rocky labyrinth above had sucked it into a crevice, or the magical wings of the geese had vanished it away.
The soft ringing of chimes wafted towards them. As they drew near, Greta saw several sets dangling from the verandah roof’s beam. Most had just one or two threads knotted with a shell or wishbone, a few shards of brown bottle glass or tiny mirrors, a twist of rusted metal or a bolt.
Toby slipped inside before she could tell him to wait.
‘There’s nothing in here,’ he protested when she called him out.
She glared at his brazenness. He sulked to one side of her, and then followed Griffin to the mango tree. A flock of magpie geese saw the boys coming and waddled away, pink faces raised, bills tapping at air.
Raffy stayed near Greta to peek through cracks in the hut walls. He wouldn’t go in without her. She hesitated. There was no door, only the dark entrance. She leaned in a little way.
‘Hello?’
No reply. Just a slender bre
ath of wind that brought the smell of magpie geese and made the chimes sing, Come in, come in!
It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust from the glare outside. Shapes came to her slowly. A curtain wavering at her left. A round table with two chairs. A concrete trough, identical to the laundry one at the shack. A window above it with three closed louvres draped in cobwebs. An aluminium teapot alone on a shelf under the trough. She picked it up and looked inside for damp tea-leaves. None.
‘Do you think someone lives here?’ asked Raffy.
‘Maybe,’ said Greta. ‘Maybe not.’
Raffy looked at her. ‘That’s a funny answer.’
It seemed lived in and abandoned at the same time. She couldn’t decide if the girl had been here or not.
He moved to rifle through clothes on a rack—a pair of overalls, a couple of dresses, a workman’s shirt. He waved the shirtsleeve at her. A microbat flew out and terrified him, swooping low, brushing his hair.
He fled behind the curtain. ‘Look! Someone sleeps here!’ cried Raffy.
The bat was forgotten. He held the curtain aside for Greta to see a single bed pushed snug into a narrow alcove. It had a faded pink chenille bedspread. Propped against the mould-speckled pillow was a threadbare calico rabbit with gangly arms and legs and drooping ears. One eye was missing. The bedhead had a shelf. A musical trinket box sat there, similar to one Greta had as a child.
Above the bed, nine nails were hammered like pegs into the alcove wall. A wire loop hung on each, except for the middle one, which was empty. It could have been a game, like hookey, except that the loops were decorated with charms, like minuscule replicas of the trinkets on the chimes outside. They were bracelets, the same kind as she’d seen the girl wearing.
Raffy sniffed the air. ‘This place smells of something.’
Greta agreed. There was a damp smell to the room. Watermarks stained the lower sections of the walls. And the bed had an odour that reminded Greta of the girl. Raffy moved away from it.