The Curlew's Eye

by Karen Manton

  There was a reef there, where the waves turned rough like the beach near the river mouth.

  Joel stood to brush sand from himself and see where she meant. ‘That’s quite a way.’

  ‘I like a long walk. You can drive over when you’re finished here. Take a look at the surf. There’s a lighthouse the boys might like to see.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ He looked out to the horizon where clouds were gathering. ‘That cool change’ll be here soon.’

  Already they could feel the wind’s new direction and a drop in temperature.

  ‘Will your camera be all right if there’s a downpour?’ He pointed to the bag over her shoulder.

  ‘I’m taking my chances.’

  He lifted her cap and kissed her nose. ‘We’ll see you there.’

  She walked close to the waterline, where the foam sneaked over her toes. The tide was coming in. A child shouted for her to beware a flying cricket ball. She ducked just in time. The smell of freshly ground coffee wafted from the beachfront cafe that had been a store when she was young. It had a balcony now and tables with brightly coloured umbrellas. She passed the pine trees in front of the labyrinth and church. The bluestone wall ended. The white-yellow dunes of her childhood loomed near.

  The sandhills had more vegetation than she remembered. Coastal tea trees had taken root, and the green-blue grasses were a thick chorus, all blowing in one direction. She paused at the tallest slope, where she and Gavin used to toboggan on plastic bags. In the wind she heard his excited shrieks, that distinctive shout.

  Behind the dunes the caravan park flag flapped, its ropes clanging against the pole. It whipped so fiercely she thought it might rip.

  She hurried on to the point, eager to leave this beach and find the surf around the corner. It took her longer than she expected to climb across the rocks. She kept losing her footing and changing her mind about which way to go. Waves licked at the rock platform. Spray flew to her on the breeze. Puffs of foam wobbled in rock pools. Sun-hot stones bit her underfoot. She was puffed out by the time she jumped down to the sand on the other side. A timber post met her there like an entry guard, decorated with a seaweed scarf and a small tower of sea-smooth pebbles and shells. Raffy would like it.

  Ahead of her the crescent beach was cast in a mist of spray and sunlight. Perfect waves curled and broke along the slope of the shoreline. Shells rattled backwards with the retreating water, only to be flung forward again with the thud of a new wave. Midway along the beach, wooden steps led up to a slat path that wound back through dune grasses to a car park she couldn’t see.

  The next point was a cliff with the lighthouse perched on top. It was automated now; no lighthouse keeper lived there. When she was young she had thought of the lighthouse as a friend, the searchlight that might find her mother out there in the ocean. She had trusted it. Until the nightmares came. Then she was creeping behind the rocks at the bottom of this cliff, trying to escape the fierce light with its endless sweeping rotations and glaring truth.

  She listened for her children’s voices in case they had arrived at the car park above. They would go to the lighthouse first, she predicted, before coming down to the beach. Each boy would want a turn with the tourist binoculars and have to hunt for coins. She could smell a hot chips or doughnut van. It made her hungry.

  The wind sang a high-pitched tune and flicked her hair back from her face. Her eyes stung.

  What are you waiting for? she heard Magdalen say, so close she might be hiding behind that tumble of rocks outside the cave entrance. It had been blocked off with a metal grate. The creeper was gone and there was no signpost as there had been in Vivian’s photograph. The sign hadn’t been there when Gavin found it either, a year after Vivian’s death. What a discovery that was, and how excited he was to show her this little haven where an animal or shipwrecked soul might shelter when the tide was high and furious. For a child aged twelve and her nine-year old friend it was perfect, especially when sandstorms swept along the beach or the weather turned quickly into lightning and rain.

  Closer, closer, the voice inside Greta said.

  Inside her and outside her, flitting across the rocks in that singsong way that could be Gavin or Griffin or Magdalen.

  When she first saw the cave all those years ago, it had looked like a mouth, and the sandstone rocks above made eyes and a nose. The clinging creeper was hair. Now it was an erased face, swept flat by the wind, the waves, an invisible giant hand. Stones and rocks were piled up in front of the grate.

  Greta remembered her camera and fumbled with the lens cap. It dropped on the sand. She picked it up, blew away the grains and put the cap in her back pocket with her father’s watch. Her fingers had that annoying tremor when she tried to focus. She could have sworn Magdalen was behind her. I will look in a second, she thought. Click.

  They think the cubby is for just the two of them, Greta and Gavin. But the older boys move in on them like engineers. Muddy Cooper reckons it’s his, because it was his dad’s idea to dig out a tunnel for hiding contraband stuff. The vines hanging from the rocks were a useful curtain. Hardly anyone knew the cave was there back in the day. There were no steps up to a car park.

  He says he and his mates are going to start up the tunnel again. He declares Greta and Gavin are out of the picture. They watch from a distance and spy from behind rocks. There are fights and secret conversations among the older gang. But in the end the project is their bond.

  Over the summer the cave deepens. The boys bring in spades and mattocks. They drag railway sleepers from the old train line and carry them to their tunnel. They use them for supports inside.

  One morning Greta asks to see the progress. She’s chased off with rocks and flying seaweed and verbal abuse. She reports back to Gavin. The place they’d thought was theirs is even more forbidden.

  Until the day of the football match. The bus draws away to cheers from a small crowd of parents and locals whose boys are fighting for a place in the finals up in the big city. They head for the pub to wait for news of victory.

  Gavin and Greta aren’t waving off the footy team. They’re sliding down dunes on plastic bags.

  ‘Let’s go to the point,’ says Gavin when they have wearied of their game.

  He flies off with the wind, an eager sprite. Greta can’t hear all the words of his song. The wind snatches them away. Sand streams ahead in floating ribbons. Clouds move swiftly in from the horizon. The waves leap higher and alter in colour from turquoise to navy blue. By the time the children reach the point the moods of the sea and sky have turned. The clouds are one great stretch of deep grey. Underneath, the waves heighten and curl white lips. Lightning forks into the sea.

  ‘Let’s hide in the cave around the point,’ Greta says. ‘Wait for the storm to blow over.’ Rain stings her face. Gavin looks uncertain. His plastic bag flaps in the wind.

  ‘We can leave the bags here,’ she says, and weighs hers down with a rock, signalling for him to do the same.

  They start the climb around the point. It’s high tide. Waves spill across the reef ’s rock pools and tumble into crevices. Now and then a bigger wave races up to break against the first line of boulders. Water splashes over the children. Greta feels a shudder beneath her. The weight of the sea is pressing in. It is a relief to reach the other side and clamber down. Rain bites into her skin. She struggles up the sand to the cave. The wind buffets her sideways.

  ‘What if the others find us?’ Gavin is breathless at the entrance.

  ‘They’re gone for hours.’

  ‘They’ll kill us.’

  ‘They don’t know we’re here.’ She grins. ‘Anyway, it’s just till the rain stops.’

  She smooths away her footprints. Gavin leaves his. He relaxes once they’re inside. He’s curious about this tunnel, the wooden supports, the packed sand and earth walls.

  ‘Pretty fancy,’ he says from further in.

  Greta’s hair brushes the ceiling. The smell of the walls changes. They are damp and earth
y.

  ‘Don’t go too far,’ she says, unsure of the darkness ahead. ‘I think we should go back.’

  She retreats closer to the entrance. The temperature has dropped, and she’s cold. She faces the sea and sits on the ground, hugging her legs. Outside the waves leap along the shoreline, foam chasing foam. Rain darts inside on a slant. The wind whistles and keens. Lightning skits across the water.

  Her mother disappeared into a storm like this. Greta used to think a similar one might return her. She’s given up on those fantasies now.

  ‘I wonder how far it goes?’ Gavin calls to her.

  ‘Come back now,’ urges Greta.

  ‘You’re such a scaredy cat!’

  He disappears.

  ‘Gavin!’

  She creeps in after him until it seems like night. Beyond her is utter darkness. Suddenly Gavin jumps back to her with a curdling scream. She shrieks and clutches her head. He laughs and dances about, bumping into her.

  ‘We should go back out,’ she says again. ‘I can’t see in here.’

  ‘I’ve got a lighter.’ His thumb flicks at one he’s stolen from his mother. ‘Come on.’

  Greta looks back to the entrance, the rocks there and the waves beyond.

  ‘It’s not much further,’ he says. ‘I just want to see how far they’ve gone.’ He flicks on the lighter. The flame wavers in front of his face. He’s braver than she knows.

  Thunder reverberates through the tunnel walls, the roof. Grains of sand sift onto Greta’s hair. Gavin’s thumb works at the lighter, bringing up a flame, losing it. His face is a flicker of light, dark, light, dark.

  ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Give it to me.’

  She pushes down the button. The heat burns her thumb. She lets go and tries again. She might hold the flame this time. A smack of thunder sounds outside. The tunnel shudders. The ceiling showers sand. Greta runs, but she is too late. The roof parts, and the walls come marching in.

  ‘Greta … Greta!’

  Her ears popped. Joel’s voice was urgent.

  Everything tilted. The sea was climbing to the sky.

  Joel was at her back. He wrapped his arms across her chest. Her legs were all pins and needles. She regained her balance, though he kept her resting against him.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be here yet,’ she said.

  ‘I thought I’d better follow you.’

  ‘Where are the children?’

  ‘Eating hot chips.’

  She looked behind her to the cliff steps. There they were, stepping down to the sand, holding out their hot cups to the wind.

  ‘There’s a plaque up at the lookout,’ he said.

  The unexpected collapse of a tunnel. One child dead, one survived. He could see the twisted mess of her.

  Dark clouds hovered low over the water. Lightning flared and crackled across the waves.

  ‘I can never get away from it,’ she said at last. ‘No matter how far I go.’

  The taste of sand was in her mouth. Everywhere was the water, spreading and rising.

  ‘Then bring it with you,’ he said.

  Around her was the scarred arm, the feathered wing of him.

  They huddled against the gale and the wave and the tide. The sharp grit and points of shells bit into her feet. Fine grains of sand blew loose across the rocks, stinging her bare skin. She could see the hungry wave coming for her. She could dive into that cloud of foam, let the tide swirl and pull her in, the rip snatch her body out.

  Behind her were the voices of her children. They were running across the sand. She could hear their words, somersaults in the air.

  A last curling wave broke upon the rock, shattering spray and water.

  She took in a sharp breath of the salty wind and clutched the feathered arm, ready to wing away.

  37

  Greta set the film in the camera and wound it on. The river was a calm presence under the dawn light. She walked beside it to the waves and the sound that had gone into her from when she was in utero. Draw back, breathe in, curl over. Break, foam, stream forward.

  She took her time with the camera. The early sun was in her favour. Toby framed a few shots and then lost interest. She went on alone. A montage was forming in her mind. Of her mother’s prints, her own, her sons’—in black-and-white film. The untrained eye wouldn’t be able to tell whose photo was whose. Or when they were taken. The day, the hour, the year.

  She looked at the world through her lens. Black swans, feathers ruffled like wavelets on the river. A pelican on a marooned wooden post. Clouds scudding overhead. The unpieced house on the sand.

  There’s only the shadows and the light.

  At the car Joel spread a map across the bonnet. Griffin leaned in to look at his mother’s circle around their next destination.

  ‘Will we ever go north again?’

  ‘Eventually, I reckon.’

  ‘We’ll head back home there one day, is that it? Back the way we came?’ Griffin asked.

  ‘Nah, different way next time.’

  Greta called to ask them all to smile. She was a few metres from the car, with the camera focused on them. Click.

  Out on the river there was a disturbance among the swans. One took flight, and suddenly the sky was full of the sound of flapping wings, as they rose in a cloud of black bodies and song.

  Take me with you, take me with you.

  The car groaned through its gears up the main street. A familiar rattle began under Greta’s boots. In the side mirror she watched Fishermans Creek recede—the sand and green-blue water, the beachfront cafe, the bluestone church, the fish-and-chip shop with its ice-cream light, the post office and pizzeria and Welcome to Fishermans Creek sign. They grew smaller and were gone.

  All that was left were the black swans. They flew en masse, a vast cape of dark wings, calling, calling the way on.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Cultural note: this text mentions the name of a person who has passed away.

  The first night I spent in Darwin, the heart-rending cry of a curlew went right through me. I still remember the outline of trees and the stars above at that moment. Since then, every time I hear a curlew wail it stirs a poignancy, not only on a personal level, but for many losses—human and environmental, including this country’s wounds from the past and now.

  While writing this book I had several encounters with curlews, and with every draft they emerged in the story more strongly. The bird’s gaze reminded me of the saying ‘the eye is the window to the soul’, and the Irish proverb ‘the eye of a friend is the best mirror’. Increasingly, I felt the curlew’s impact on Greta, with its cry calling up grief to be held and healed by acknowledging it and carrying it in a new way.

  Associations of the curlew’s cry with loss, grief and separation, and new beginnings or change are found around the world, including in my northern hemisphere heritage. I want to clarify that my interpretation is not through the lens or perspectives of Australian First Nations’ Traditional Knowledge, stories and culture, in which curlews often have a significant role. The character Brynn does acknowledge these stories in a general way, but owns her ignorance of deeper cultural meanings. Her words ‘a curlew who stole the moon’s heart’ refer to a Wambaya story Indilyawurna and Wardangarri [The Curlew and the Moon] as told by Molly Nurlanyma Grueman to Rachel Nordlinger, Tennant Creek, May 1992 (transcribed in A Learner’s Guide to Basic Wambaya, Rachel Nordlinger, 1998); and later published as a book by Papulu Apparr-kari Language Corporation (2006). Thank you to Molly for her storytelling, Rachel for her insights, and Papulu Apparr-kari Management Committee for approving its mention.

  The description of the bush stone-curlew and quote ‘cryptic plumage’ on p. 76 are drawn from: P. Menkhorst et al, 2017, The Australian Bird Guide, CSIRO Publishing.

  As well as the curlew, this story was inspired by a friend telling me about a dam with clear, toxic water, the genesis of the transparent lake in this tale; and my interest in liminal spaces. They became the heart of thi
s story and its ‘not-knowing’, in-between places, that ‘could be a dream or could be real’. Just as visions and nightmares relocate and morph aspects of nature, towns and people—Lightstone, the old property and Fishermans Creek are collages of the imagination, not real points on a map. For the same reasons, the characters have no surnames or exact heritage disclosed. As in a dream, some have stereotypical, surreal or veiled aspects, and their exchanges might be fleeting yet leave a message or mark.

  My thanks to Tibby Quall, Dangalaba Elder, Kulumbiringin tribe, Gulumoerrgin (Larrakia), for your wisdom and advice, and for listening and talking about this story with me, especially around curlews and cultural perspectives. Thank you for your calm, knowledge and blessing.

  Thank you also to Uncle Speedy McGuinness, Kungarakan Elder, for conversations about this book, and a shared appreciation for ancient stromatolites and cycads, and the life they inspire.

  I acknowledge the Country on which this book was written, and Elders past, present and emerging who nurture these places; and the languages, culture and people before and continuing there—including Gulumoerrgin (Larrakia), Kungarakan, Rak Mak Mak Marranunggu, Warai, Ngarrindjeri, and Boon Wurrung/ Bunurong.

  ‘Always was, always will be’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To all those people who have helped bring this book into being over seven years, thank you. I could not have done it without you.

  Thank you to Allen & Unwin’s team—Jane Palfreyman for your enthusiasm and expertise, Ali Lavau for illuminative editing and encouragement, and Tom Bailey-Smith for your tireless and cheery professionalism—you are legends. Christa Moffitt, thank you for the beautiful cover, and Mika Tabata for adapting Isak’s map. Thank you also to Jenn Thurgate, Deb McInnes, the Marketing team, and all those who have contributed, and to Wavesound for the audio book. Melanie Ostell—agent extraordinaire—thank you for hours of work, savvy editorial and publishing advice, commitment and care. Thanks also to Sophie Hamley and the NT Writers’ Centre Hachette Mentorship for guidance. I greatly appreciate everyone’s devotion to literature and championing this work.