“Like a fucken baby,” she said. She sat at the next table to Dora and ate, watching her. Dora felt uncomfortable and quickly drank the last of her coffee, wanting to leave.
“You an addict?” Freesia said to her. Dora noticed the woman didn’t say, “have you ever been,” because once an addict, always an addict. She shook her head. “This is what it feels like. It gets in your blood, buries itself into your brain. It’s like a tiny man in your head pulling the levers.”
“Okay,” Dora said.
“I haven’t slept in years. It’s the things I’ve seen. No one should see what I’ve seen.”
Dora didn’t really want to know what this woman had seen. Her head was already full of images she couldn’t forget. Her daughters, looking so serene, undamaged. But on the inside? Where she couldn’t see, could only imagine? On the inside. The dishes on the kitchen bench from breakfast that morning, whole poached eggs congealing, toast with a single bite taken. The coroner’s report stated her girls had empty stomachs, but she had relented, driven through McDonald’s for Egg McMuffins and considered herself a saint for not saying, How do you eat that and not what’s at home, but at the same time glad because their last words to her were “Thanks, Mum.”
“So, how’d you find us, Dora?” Freesia said. “We’ve all got sleep issues here. People who can’t sleep are like backpackers and homeless people, they share information about good places to stay. Someone told you about this place, right? It’s word of mouth.”
“My sister-in-law suggested it. Don’t know where she heard about it.”
“Does she hate you?” Freesia said. “She must hate you.”
Dora thought about her sister-in-law’s face, so filled with disgust her eyes were almost gone. “No, she loves me,” Dora said.
“Well, you’re welcome no matter what,” Roy said. “You’ve got the best room in the house.” Freesia laughed, as did Larry. Roy joined in. “When someone shifts out or dies you can have their room, I promise.”
“Who was in my room before me?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I feel like they are still there. Someone in my room I didn’t invite.”
“We don’t think about that. There’s only now, who’s there now. Otherwise we’re all living in the shadow of others.
The smell of breakfast followed her back to her room.
SECOND DAY
WEDNESDAY
NIGHT
In the late afternoon, once she’d listened at the door to make sure the hallway was clear, Dora left to go to the shops. She needed some basic things: packaged food for dinner, or tins, although she was tired of tuna and it made her think of her youngest daughter, how she’d cried about eating the lovely big tuna fish and how they’d all laughed at her.
She saw the sign on Roy’s closed door—private staff only—in the same lettering as all the other signs. She heard movement behind the door and walked quickly to get out without being seen, but it was too late.
“Ah!” he said. “Going for a walk?”
“Just getting a bit of shopping.”
“Excellent idea. I might join you if you don’t mind. Give us a chance to get to know each other.”
His hair had lost its neatness and hung in his eyes. He was dressed in baggy tracksuit pants and a loose T-shirt that once had a logo but now was faded beyond legibility.
“So, you first or me?” he said as they walked. She shook her head, mortified. She wouldn’t speak about her life, not to this man or to any other.
“Me, then. Now, the thing you have to know about me is that I am a great believer in fate.”
He told her he was the grandson of a woman who was cut from her hanged mother’s stomach. No sign of the father, probably a prison guard. Nobody took responsibility. Nobody owned up. That baby was only saved because there was a midwife watching the execution and she noticed the dead woman’s stomach moving. “Cut her open!” she called, and the baby was set free, born screaming like the demons were taking her.
Kept in care by nuns, she was always a very cautious girl. She never broke the law. She became a nurse herself and kept herself to herself until the butcher asked her to marry him and she did. He was a handsome man, ruddy-faced and fit. She was strong and healthy; she’d never taken a drink, not a single time.
Their child was Roy’s father, who grew to be a very handsome young man. He became an actor and a model. He had six children by six different mothers. Roy was the last of them, born when his father was over fifty and ready to settle at last, but too late, a heart attack took him before Roy’s third birthday.
“I am a great believer in fate. Fate had that nurse at my great-grandmother’s hanging. Fate kept my father alive long enough to help make me, and fate has kept me alive. I’ve always known I had to do something with my life.”
“So you’re running a rooming house?”
“You know it’s more than a rooming house. You wouldn’t have come, otherwise. You need help to sleep. Everyone does who comes to me. You will sleep well here at The Angelsea. No doubt about that at all. It’s my little contribution.”
In the small local supermarket Roy bought cigarettes and the newspaper. Dora bought cheese crackers, bananas, beef jerky. Her oldest daughter hated bananas, even the smell of them, so they’d never had them in the house.
“I might go for a walk around the block,” she said. “I’ll see you back at the house.”
If he insists on coming with me I’m moving out, she thought, but luckily he didn’t.
•••
There was no sign of Roy as she approached The Angelsea on her return. It was a hard walk up the hill and she had to pause a few times. But she liked the feel of her muscles, liked the sense of actually working at something, if only for a little while. She hadn’t been able to see the building well the night before, but now she saw it was four storeys tall, made of dark red brick, marked with decades of pollution. There were many small windows. The walls were covered with ivy and there was moss in the mortar. A veranda graced the front, the floorboards damaged by the sun, almost burned in places. The railings were recently replaced; someone wanting to keep it safe, so that no one could fall or tip over the edge.
The front door was quite small. It used to be the servants’ entrance, decades ago. But so many rooms had been added and other houses built around The Angelsea, the original front door and foyer—Dora’s room—were blocked off. Rickety stairs clung to the side of the house, in dark shadows.
Taller buildings surrounded the house now, blocking most of the light.
The sun was beautifully warm and she sat on the front step, closing her eyes and letting it wash over her.
Luke appeared behind her, like a ghost.
He said, “Bloody lovely isn’t it? That sun. Makes you forget for a minute, doesn’t it?”
She didn’t ask him forget what? He really was almost handsome.
But his eyes were ringed with shadow and his face gaunt. Those eyes were green, and his hairline was good. He was tidy and clean, with a neatly-ironed, well-fitted shirt. His haircut was military. She could see his scalp. He wore tight black jeans.
“Home from work already?”
“Yeah, I’m on a disability so I work short days. Blinding headaches. Nothing like coming home to The Angelsea to make a headache disappear.” He winked at her; she’d have to get used to that.
“Shouldn’t it be ‘Anglesea’? I’ve been wondering about that.”
“Yeah, poor bastard can’t spell. Apparently there was a famous shipwreck at Anglesea so he named the place after that.” Dora noticed the name was painted on a piece of driftwood she imagined must have come from the wreck. “Got it wrong. He shoulda just named it after our own shipwreck. Most of the town call it Shipwreck House, anyway.”
They both turned to look down the hill. Dora could see some piles of metal on the ro
cks and on the sand down there. The beach was almost inaccessible, even by water.
The Barlington had struck ground there, all lives lost. At the time there were no communities in the area, so the shipwreck went unnoticed for weeks. Some may have survived the accident but couldn’t find a way off the beach. It was the smell, they said, that led to the eventual discovery. Plus the clothing rolling into the beaches along the coast.
“Half the house is decorated with stuff he’s pinched from down there. Pays the local kids to risk their lives getting it. Like those.” He pointed at four large broken lights, anchored to the wall near the door.
Dora realized she needed to respond to him, so said, “Are these old ship danger lights or something?” She hated herself for the “or something.” Her therapist had told her she needed to regain herself by standing by her own statements, but she couldn’t help it.
“Yes! Fat lot of good they did. He pinched them from the crash site. He calls it beachcombing. Other people might call it looting. He used to have them set up to flash until one poor bloke killed himself over them.”
“Like a fit or something?”
“Nah, he was a train driver, caused an accident, killed a heap of passengers. Apparently he reckoned the lights flashed wrong, but no one believed him. Gets the sack, wife leaves him, he comes to live here. Takes a room on the fourth floor, with a window looking down onto the water. It’s my room, now. Of course Roy has to set those ship lights going so that every night the poor bastard up there watched them flashing on and off, on and off like train lights. Hung hisself. Up in my room. I dunno if you believe in ghosts or not, but sometimes I reckon he’s there. Only he knows if it really was his fault. Who knows. Maybe it was deliberate. Maybe he just wanted to see what would happen. We’re all a bit that way, aren’t we? We’re all so bored we’ll try anything.”
“Speak for yourself!” she said.
“You can come have a look if you want.” He looked at her expectantly.
“I guess I could take a look,” she said. She shuddered. The air was growing colder. She stood up and they went inside. The ticking of the clock seemed louder.
“Maybe someone’s having an afternoon nap,” Luke said, and she wished she was confident enough to ask him what he meant by that. A nap sounded good, though. Sometimes a nap worked.
Four flights of stairs to his room. The stairwell was dark and smelly, as if someone had used the ground floor for a toilet and the smell rose all the way up. The lino was old and slippery, so she clung on the handrail, when it was there. She grabbed Luke’s shirt, and he took her hand. His was warm and dry.
“This is me,” he said, pushing the stairwell door open. The sign said fort floor. “Nice and quiet up here. Just the woman next door.”
She didn’t know who he was talking about but had no more questions.
His door was solid, old, scratched with names and dates. He pushed it open.
Inside it was bright. He had a lot of windows, none of them with coverings. “Nice during the day, a pain at night,” he said. “And you can’t open any of the windows. Roy thinks it’ll stop suicides, but it doesn’t.”
She could see now, as the sun fell, that artificial light poured in, even though they were four storeys up. Strong street lights and the security lights of the garment factory two doors down.
“Wow,” she said. The room was obsessively neat, with all the books color-coded, glasses lined up on a small table, nothing left on the floor that shouldn’t be there. It was four times the size of her room, but still small. No bathroom, no kitchen. Navy memorabilia filled the walls and made up most of the furniture; trunks, khaki rugs, anchors, plaques, knives, and what looked with a tiny replica landmine.
“If the ghost isn’t here, he might be marching up and down the coast hill. You can see the track they’ve worn. See?”
Looking down, there was a path in the long grass.
“They?”
“Roy. And tourists sometimes.” She could see other debris too: wood, metal, piles of each. He stood closer to her. “Near midnight, other times too, you can see ghosts walking up from the wreck. Over and over, trekking up and down. Roy reckons they need to speak their last words, but no one can hear them. I think they’re just . . . lost.” He was very close to her now. She stepped away to really look at him. His knuckles were unmarked, no scars, which was a good sign.
“Can you see them?”
“Not down there. But they come visit, up here at the house. Roy’s pinched so much of their stuff they think this is where they belong.”
His room smelled of Febreze. It was chemical, fake, but a nice change from mold, smoke, frying onions, sewage.
“It’s moments like these I don’t hate Shitwreck House,” he said. She laughed.
“Would you like a drink?” he said. He lifted two nice glasses from a tiny covered table. Each had an anchor etched in gold. “I’ve got some vodka left over from something. Pinched it from my parents. They’re pissheads who always forget what they’ve got.”
“I’d love to meet them,” she said. “You can tell them I’m your fiancée, and they’ll pull out the champagne.” Being with him, with anyone, was almost painful. But there were moments of pleasure in company. When the other person momentarily made her forget. So she smiled and put on the face that said, “I am an ordinary person capable of talking to you.”
“We don’t even know if we like each other yet,” he said, handing her a glass full of vodka, no mixer. The glass had the word Oceania etched above the anchor. “Roy collected them,” he said. “He reckons from the wreck, but I reckon from the op shop.”
“What’s a man like you doing in a place like this?” she said, instantly regretting it. No past, no future, just the present. In her real self, her real life, she wouldn’t even contemplate sleeping with him. But here, time was contracted. Relationships would form and fall apart quickly.
Here, she was who he thought she was. Not who she really was.
And she knew she’d sleep with one of them. A couple of them, probably. Sex gave her a momentary feeling of being appreciated. Regardless of what happened before and after, you were loved in that moment. Even by someone who despised you.
She drank that glass and another, and then felt so good she stepped up to him and kissed him gently on the lips. He put his hands on her shoulder.
“Are you sure? I always like them to be sure.” It wasn’t until later she wondered who “they” were and how many there had been.
She nodded. He kissed her, holding her enclosed in his arms, then his hands moved down and cupped her arse. He had big hands. They felt so different from her ex-husband’s. He had small hands, long fingers, he didn’t have a gentle touch.
This man had a gentle touch.
From below, someone thumped. She could hear a muffled “shut the fuck up” and she blushed at the idea whoever it was could hear what they were doing.
“Don’t mind her. Fucking lunatic. Fucking monster. If she’s gonna whine, I reckon I’ll wear my army boots. In fact, I might as well wear them.”
He pulled a pair of boots on and stood, naked, before her.
Dora laughed till she wept as he danced for her.
Then they made love again.
He fell asleep straight after. She watched him, almost angry with envy at his peaceful face. She wondered what it would be like to sleep like that. She didn’t want to mistrust a man again so soon.
She pulled her clothes on and went to the toilet. It was nicer than the one on her floor. Smaller, but then there were only three rooms to service. It felt warmer, too, maybe because the heat rose through the house. There was spare toilet paper on a stick by the bath.
His door had snicked shut. She knocked quietly but didn’t want to waken him, so headed downstairs. Once near her bedroom she realized there was no way she’d sleep. She felt wired, wide awake, excited. Sh
e went down to look at the site of the wreck, following the path worn by looters, tourists, and, according to Luke, ghosts. The streetlights provided more than enough illumination for her to find her way.
It took longer than she thought and once she reached the edge of the cliff, she lost the energy to walk all the way down. She could see that the metal was very rusty, the wood mossy and cracked. Dora wondered that what was left of the vessel was still there. It was pulled up high on the beach where the tide couldn’t reach it. Perhaps this—along with the containers, jars, and remnants of many other things she could see—was the real rubbish, all the good stuff long since taken.
She heard someone coming and hid behind one of the large bushes that lined the path. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She felt dirty and tired and not up to speech.
It was Roy. He held a large hook and seemed to be dragging something, but she couldn’t see what. Behind him she thought she saw a line of bedraggled people. As they passed her she felt overwhelming sadness. Helplessness. Once they were gone she headed back to the rooming house, but the smell of fried food drew her to an all-night taxi drivers café, thankfully almost empty. She bought herself half-a-dozen dim sims to take back to her room.
Once there, she heard the clock ticking loudly and found herself chewing in time.
She checked her phone, but no one had called. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but the upstairs neighbor sounded like he was dancing in army boots.
The thought of it made her smile.
THIRD DAY
THURSDAY
BREAKFAST
Dora felt a physical reluctance to wake up, as if she was burrowed deep in a safe hole and someone had a rope tied around her ankle and was forcibly dragging her up to the surface. She’d slept, at least; she remembered dreams of ghosts with their fingers bitten off by thieves stealing their rings. And she had short nightmares of home, her daughters sitting at the bench eating breakfast, that she managed to rouse herself from. She was up early enough to shower before breakfast and did so, although she was made to feel uncomfortable by water already on the shower floor, and the faint scent of someone else’s toilet visit. She didn’t wash her hair because her towel was still damp, but she dressed in clean clothes and felt quite bright.
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