The Curlew's Eye

by Karen Manton

  Greta ran her hand along the trunk. There is nothing ghostly about a split mahogany, she thought. How odd it should fall this night. After the girl became Magdalen, whose grave was sinking.

  28

  The next morning the sun rose with burning clarity. The clouds had been sucked away. The tree was a felled giant between the shack and the new cabin. Greta felt realigned to see it, calmed in some way. The tree was solid. An undeniable truth.

  Raffy came with her to see the garden damage. Two banana trees were flattened. He solemnly tiptoed over the broad leaves. The storm had taken its toll too. Stakes were blown over, shade cloth was ripped free and tossed aside. Stems were snapped, leaves shredded.

  Ronnie arrived early with his digger and the chainsaw.

  Raffy greeted him. ‘Where’s your possum?’

  ‘He’s too big for this pocket now. I left him at Brynn’s for today.’

  Raffy had doubts over the safety of that, on account of the pig that bit.

  ‘Nah, don’t you worry. That possum’s too smart for her. Like you, eh? Too smart for your brothers.’

  Raffy’s grin widened. Ronnie noticed a front tooth was missing. The boy fished in his pocket and held up his trophy. Ronnie bent down to see it properly. His grey eyes were magnified behind his glasses.

  ‘What’s that worth from the tooth fairy?’

  ‘She’s not having it. I’m keeping it in my museum.’

  He pointed to his collection on the louvres. He’d recently added a bandicoot’s skull and a nest.

  ‘I’ll give you a tour if you like. Doesn’t cost a thing.’

  ‘After the graves’, he smiled, and then mentioned to Greta, ‘That storm come in like a tornado along the ridge there. Lifted Dee’s demountable right off the blocks. Set it down facing a new direction.’

  Raffy squinted up at big Ronnie, unsure whether to believe that or not. They had a Six Swans hut, and now a Wizard of Oz wind. And a salmon-coloured castle. His storybooks were leaving deposits all around.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Raffy asked his mother, watching Toby and Griffin run up the hill behind Ronnie’s digger to the sunken graves.

  He wasn’t so keen to join the men and his brothers, offering instead to help Greta with grasshoppers. He was armed with a jar for the job.

  ‘I don’t believe or not believe,’ she told him. ‘Things just are.’

  ‘I’d like to see one,’ said Raffy. ‘I would like a conversation. With dead relatives.’

  He held up the jar for her to see the first grasshopper.

  Yes, dead relatives, thought Greta. They had her in a jar just like that.

  She set to work with besser blocks and a few old screen doors to make shelters over her more fragile plants, and repaired shade cloth where she could. She spoke to them as she worked, her cherry tomatoes, kan kong and Brazilian spinach. Raffy hummed alongside her, checking his tomatillos, their little green lantern husks.

  She thought about his question. And the haunted look of her father after Vivian was gone. His return from a night fishing trip, when the seawater glowed phosphorescence.

  ‘I saw her,’ he’d breathed, walking in the door with that stunned expression, the shining eyes of a convert. ‘Out on the water.’

  ‘Nonsense, Frank,’ his sister replied. She pushed a cup of tea to him like a cure. ‘It’s grief. Does things to your mind.’

  ‘But I saw her.’ And his face turned to the dark window, the sound of the waves beyond the finger of land that separated him from where she had gone. ‘I saw her feet.’

  Greta had seen Vivian’s feet too, luminous under the water. The dream she had that night was so vivid she came to believe she’d been in the boat with her father. She saw herself floating under the stars, and the quick lights in the water were greenish silver, like underwater fireflies. While ahead the mysterious shimmers moved through the dark water: yellow, green, silver light. And then her mother’s feet, right there by the hull, just below the lilting wave.

  There were no more sightings after that for Greta. Vivian was framed and hung on the wall. After a few months she would turn the photo around when her father was out fishing. A blank square or her mother’s penetrating gaze. She could choose which one.

  The graveworkers returned mid-morning. Everything was back to normal, Griffin claimed. He had a rhino beetle crawling up his arm, making a noise between a hiss and a buzz. Greta put on the coffee, and pounded galangal, ginger and miniature chillies in the mortar and pestle for a green pawpaw salad. Her mind was on Maria’s suitcase in the pantry. How to find the right time with Joel; how to explain what she’d found.

  He was outside with Ronnie at the green table. The trill of cicadas drowned out the words she tried to hear. And between these moments, the beat of the pestle, the smell of crushed ginger, the gritty taste of coffee at the bottom of the cup, the girl’s words and face kept coming back to her.

  You will never see me again.

  It gave Greta a feeling she couldn’t pinpoint. Disbelief, perhaps. The future will prove you wrong, Toby was fond of saying. She opened the fridge to find the half a mango cake she’d kept, but only one piece was left. Griffin took it out for Ronnie.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said, ‘can’t eat that all by myself, can I? Any extra spoons?’

  When every crumb had disappeared, he stood up to his full giant height and announced he would deal with the mahogany. He was going to cut flitches for table tops. ‘I’ll give you a dried and prepped one in exchange,’ he told Greta. He had a couple ready at the timber yard.

  The chainsaw’s high-pitched noise seared through the air. Sawdust fountained from the tree and fluttered to the ground, with its fresh wood perfume. It was hard to believe such a mighty tree could be so reconfigured.

  Ronnie said he’d bring Greta some ready-cut pieces of timber for table legs and stump chairs. He was so keen on the idea it started to take shape for her—long and narrow with slightly wavy edges. When he was done she gave him a bag of long purple eggplants and a loaf of home-baked bread.

  Raffy reappeared with his t-shirt stretched into a bowl for red hibiscus flowers.

  ‘You can make tea with these,’ he told Ronnie. ‘Pour boiling water on them and the water turns dark purple. Squeeze in lemon juice and the water turns pink!’

  ‘Magic, huh?’ Ronnie said.

  ‘I’ll make it for Christmas,’ said Raffy. ‘Only nine days away! I’ll show you how then.’ He lifted Ronnie’s hand and placed one of the flowers in his palm. ‘There you are.’

  Ronnie’s smile quivered. He glanced at Greta and back to his hand, to the fragile red love of the flower.

  In the late afternoon, Joel and Gabe drove up to Darwin to see a rodeo. Gabe’s long-lost cousin had come across from Western Australia to ride. Joel thought they might go to a band after, even stay the night. But by 11 p.m. she heard the red ute pull up outside the cabin with an old cassette playing JJ Cale’s ‘After Midnight’.

  He’d parked so close the headlights shone through the flywire to their bed where she’d knotted up the mosquito net and had photos from the suitcase spread out with a fan drying them. She met him on the steps. He smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke.

  ‘Turn the music down, you’ll wake the kids!’ She kissed him so he knew he was loved, and sent him to the shower.

  Back in the cabin she gathered up the old photos with a sense of mild panic and put them loose in their shoebox. The cassettes were in their tin with the bracelets. Should she pack everything away in the case again, put it under the bed? Or leave the contents revealed?

  Leave everything out, she decided. She had opened it and she must show him. The flame in her father’s lantern gave her courage.

  When Joel came back he immediately noticed the case.

  ‘I found it at the hut,’ she said.

  He sat on the bed and slid it onto his lap. ‘In the hut, you say?’

  Greta nodded. His hand smoothed the top.

  ‘It was my mother’
s.’ He opened the lid and saw it was empty.

  His eyes went to the shawl on the chair, the candlestick on the desk, with all its reflections from her father’s lamp; and the small icon against the mirror.

  ‘The hut was flooding so I brought it home,’ Greta told him. ‘I was worried about the photos and tapes.’

  He put aside the case to look in the shoebox.

  ‘I had the photos spread out on the bed to dry,’ she explained.

  He flicked through them, remembering, and then took up the cassettes to read the handwritten titles.

  ‘These’ll keep the kids entertained.’

  He grew quiet when he found the bracelets.

  ‘Lennie made these for Magdalen.’ He undid the ribbon to look at each one closely, as if looking for a catch or join.

  ‘He used to leave her gifts. Chimes mostly, like the ones you found, and little tokens. He’d hide them in a crevice or hang them from twigs, or leave one among the rocks down at the outcrop. They’d meet there in secret. If one of them was early, they’d hide, lead the other through the passageways and around boulders with clues. It was a game. Magdalen spent hours at those rocks. It was her haven, her favourite place.’

  ‘The bracelets were above the bed in the hut,’ Greta told him. ‘One’s missing, I think, the middle hook was empty. There should be nine.’

  Joel shook his head, bemused. ‘Can’t think who would’ve taken them there. Or the case.’

  He gave Greta the bracelet she’d found on the hut floor. ‘That’s the best one, the first. The ones Lennie sent after he left aren’t made so well. I guess he didn’t have his tools or the time.’

  She’d already noted the difference between this beautifully made one and the others. They were roughly crafted and decorated with simpler tokens—a grimy feather, a sharp sliver of bone. A screw fastened with fishing line.

  ‘Who delivered them?’ she asked.

  ‘They came in the usual mail run. We had a mailbox on the highway in those days. One sack for Devil and one for us. Now and then a bracelet arrived for Magdalen, sent care of Devil—so Fedor didn’t find it, I guess. He’d tell Vadik, who would get word to Magdalen.’

  ‘Why would Devil help Lennie and Magdalen?’

  ‘I think Lennie threatened him in some way—real or in Devil’s mind, I don’t know. He had some kind of hold over Devil; knew things he’d done. I used to worry Devil’d take him out one day. Shut him up for good.’

  ‘Did you ever see Lennie again?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, we didn’t.’ He was quiet for a moment, holding the bracelets in his hand like he was feeling the combined weight of them.

  ‘I had to cut them off her once.’

  ‘Cut them off?’

  ‘When she was bitten by paper wasps, down by the creek. Her arms swelled up so bad I had to do it. She never wore them up at the homestead, only when she was on her own or with us. Kept them hidden over at the banyan tree.’

  He showed her a bracelet that had been fixed with wire and leather thong.

  ‘She mended them, every one.’ He sighed. ‘And never forgave me for it, said it was proof I didn’t want her to have Lennie. She couldn’t understand why he had to leave, thought it was because of me.’

  He put them down and stood up to hold the candlestick. ‘Mama’d be glad you found this. She’d want you to have it.’

  Every facet and prism reflected his red shirt.

  His fingers touched the fringes of the shawl. ‘My father gave her this.’ His face was tender, for the love that had been there once.

  Greta waited a moment, and gently passed him the sketchbook. ‘There’s this too.’

  ‘God!’ He smiled at her and shook his head. ‘I thought this would’ve gone up in flames.’

  He sat down on the bed again to turn the pages, remembering the bird children he’d invented, the children who could fly away.

  ‘I can’t believe you drew these pictures. They’re incredible.’ Greta moved next to him.

  He drew them for Magdalen in the beginning, he told her. To amuse her or illustrate the stories on tape. It became his obsession. An escape, perhaps. He’d filled sketchbook after sketchbook.

  He flicked through the pages. Faces of horror and delight, feathered beasts and beauties.

  ‘Go slower,’ Greta said, because she wanted to see the images more closely, the private language between him and the girl who didn’t read. How alive the stories were here in these drawings, more vibrant than words on a page. One thread multiplied into myriad fantastical images and tales.

  ‘When Magdalen died I just stopped,’ he said.

  He turned the last page before Greta could warn him about the photo inside the back cover.

  Greta wanted to say, ‘It’s her, the girl—your sister.’

  But the sad way his fingers touched his sister’s smile undid the words. She didn’t dare tell him yet—I’ve seen her, talked with her, Magdalen who called herself Elena to me. It might cut too deep.

  He held the photo up like a mirror and stared into it. Then he lay back on the bed, with the photo face down on his chest and his eyes closed. He looked as if he were sleeping.

  Greta packed the shoebox, tapes and sketchbook into the suitcase and shifted it from the bed. She undid the knot in the mosquito net to let it fall in place and leaned in to kiss his forehead. His hand shot out and gripped her arm, pulled her to him.

  29

  A few days after the tree fell, Greta began work on the mahogany slab Ronnie gave her. Joel helped her now and then. He seemed quiet after the suitcase. She wondered if she’d been wrong to bring it up from the hut. He was happy for the crystal candlestick to be used, and for Greta to frame Magdalen’s photo and sit it by her father’s ashes. And for the children to pore over the sketchbook. Yet he was weighed down with his thoughts. You have trespassed, the voice in her whispered. Not that he said it. Not that he would.

  These thoughts were preoccupying her the afternoon the children finished school for the year, when Griffin appeared signalling for her to stop. He went before she could ask him the reason.

  Out the front of the shack she saw an off-road motorbike. The rider took off a metallic blue helmet. Threads of blond hair stood up in a static funk. Danny, the brother, returned. He might have ridden out of one of those old family photos, morphed from image to flesh.

  He tousled Raffy’s hair and held his hand out to Greta. His handshake was firm.

  She smiled at this blond version of her husband, slightly taller and thinner, not as muscular. He gave Griffin his helmet to hold while he took in the shack’s new verandah, the cabin and the mahogany tree’s remains.

  ‘Railway van hasn’t left.’ He smiled.

  ‘You won’t know it on the inside,’ said Raffy.

  He led his uncle onto the verandah. Griffin donned the helmet and went to find Joel. Danny gazed out to the escarpment and snatched a glimpse of the old homestead.

  ‘Can’t believe it’s all still here.’

  ‘It might not be,’ said Raffy. ‘You could’ve made it up.’

  Danny smiled quizzically at this boy philosopher and made him happy by sitting in the cane chair the boy offered.

  Raffy fished two oval stones from his pockets to show his uncle. ‘You’d think these were eggs.’

  Danny scooped them up and pressed them against his own eyes. ‘What a very strange creature you are,’ he said in a high-pitched squeaky voice.

  Raffy shrieked laughter and collided with Greta as she passed Danny a beer.

  He drank with a deep thirst.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ said Raffy.

  Danny followed him inside to see the louvre museum. Then Raffy pointed to the photo up on the shelf. ‘That’s your sister.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s her.’

  Next stop was the swan boy which they admired together. Raffy put his hand on his hip like his uncle.

  ‘Your dad could draw all right.’ Danny sipped his beer. ‘Not like me.
I only draw stick figures.’ He struck a stick figure pose and Raffy laughed.

  Joel called from the verandah.

  Danny went to shake his brother’s hand. ‘I’ve moved in already.’

  ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘Three ways.’

  Joel nodded and said, ‘I’ll take you around the place, see what still needs doing.’

  They set off in the red ute up to the burnt-out house, with the boys and Rex in the tray. A car full of brothers.

  Greta wondered if Joel would take Danny to the graves. The girl and Maria kept coming to her. The girl’s lips sewn in blood and black stitches. Maria’s scalp beaded with dried blood.

  They are gone, she told herself. They have been sent back to the deep. Their bones are covered.

  She returned to sanding the table. Scouring the wood to a clean layer was a comfort. Somehow it cleared her thoughts of the dead women. Instead she was curious about this suddenly arrived, congenial clown Danny. Joel had whisked him away too quickly, as if he was on guard, wary of his unpredictable brother.

  ‘You never know what Danny’ll say or do,’ he’d told her in the past.

  They came back before sunset, eager to light the campfire and cook sausages.

  ‘Glad to be here, Danny?’ Greta asked, as the boys slid marshmallows on sticks to hold at the coals.

  ‘Yeah, I am. Best time of year to be here, huh?’

  He looked across the greened-up land, the colours of the escarpment, the strip of gold cloud against the deepening sky.

  Toby took a flaming stick to his uncle, who blew out the fire and popped the melted marshmallow in his mouth, sucking in air to cool it before swallowing.

  ‘Think I might stay on when you guys go. Think I might just live here all my life.’ He grinned at the boys.

  ‘Mick’s business partner Dawson is arriving any day,’ said Joel. ‘Wants to see how much we’ve done.’

  ‘Hope he’s rich!’ said Danny. ‘We’re all getting a cut when they buy it, right?’