Emma watched her grandmother, wondering who she could have been waiting for. Him. She’d been waiting for a male. Was it her father? Or a boy who’d left and she’d been waiting his return? Every time Emma tried to reach in to coax the answers out, all it seemed to stir up was a puddle of displaced memories.
Still, she pressed on. ‘Is that where you go when you wander at night from the nursing home? Are you looking for a man or a boy on a boat?’
Gwendoline released a shaky breath.
‘Who were you looking for? Who are you looking for?’
The veil lifted and Gwendoline blinked rapidly. ‘What is it you’re saying?’
‘The boat, Gran.’
‘The boat?’
Emma sighed and squeezed her grandmother’s hand gently. ‘Never mind. You must be tired. I’ve kept you talking long enough.’
‘Is Catherine coming?’
Emma smiled sadly. ‘Not today. It’s time for your nap though.’
Gwendoline slid down onto her pillow and Emma tucked the blankets securely around her. She sat and gently stroked her grandmother’s hair until Gwendoline’s eyes began to close. ‘Don’t forget my roses on Saturday, Emma.’
Emma leant forward and kissed Gwendoline’s cheek. ‘I’ll never forget your roses, Gran.’
Emma’s next day off was on Thursday and she wasted no time climbing into her VW and driving across the city to the Q Station. Morning peak hour had subsided and the traffic was moderate all the way to Manly and up to North Head.
She parked her car by reception and Joan recognised her instantly when Emma called in to say hello. She boarded the shuttle bus and chatted with Ted as they bounced down Wharf Road, but this time she didn’t disembark at the Former First Class Precinct. She stayed on, watching the sights from the window with a renewed sense of purpose that had been sparked by her latest visit with Gwendoline, when her grandmother had announced she’d been waiting for a male on a boat. It was a crumb, really, but Emma had swept it up eagerly.
She disembarked the shuttle at the shower blocks. Rocks crunched under her shoes as she walked past the autoclave and onto the wharf.
She waited there for five minutes, hoping he’d received the message she’d left on the visitors’ centre’s answering machine, and praying that he was at work that day.
It had been a risk going down there again, not knowing if he would want to help her or if she were being a nuisance. He was obviously busy, but when he stepped out of the museum with a wide grin that seemed just for her, Emma released the breath she’d been holding and walked to meet him.
‘Emma.’
‘Matt.’
‘It’s good to see you again.’ He smiled at her, warm air ruffling his hair. He had on cargo shorts, a Q Station polo shirt and work boots.
‘Thank you for meeting me. I wasn’t sure if you’d gotten my message.’
‘The tour ladies passed it on. I was glad you called.’
They stood on the wharf in a pleasant silence until Matt spoke. ‘So did you want to check out the archive room today?’
‘I’d love to. If you have time,’ Emma said.
‘I do. I’m here all day, so I’ve moved my jobs to the afternoon.’ He bit his lip, like he was hesitating. ‘Do you want to grab a coffee first?’
‘A coffee?’
‘Yeah. I just figured, it’s a nice day…’
‘Coffee would be great.’
He looked relieved and they fell into step beside each other, circling back towards the shower blocks. They continued past them to the restaurant and café where the boiler room had once operated.
They ordered lattes and went to sit outside in the sun. The warmth was gentle, the breeze off the water soft. They made small talk about the weather and Matt’s work on the station until their coffees arrived, then they stirred in sugar and took silent sips.
‘So,’ Matt said, sitting back in his seat. ‘Where does Emma live and what does Emma do?’
‘Well, Emma lives in an apartment in Kensington.’
‘Ah, a city girl.’
‘Yes and she works at a café nearby called The Coffee Bean.’
‘A café?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay, so a tough critic! How is our coffee stacking up?’
‘It’s stacking up well,’ she said, realising he might be flirting and she might be flirting back.
He feigned relief. ‘Phew.’
They sipped their coffees again and Emma chose the lapse in conversation to study him. His unexpected interest was a little disconcerting. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had shown her attention, talking, flirting, if that’s what they were even doing. She didn’t want to misread the signs, found the whole thing baffling and was probably reading far too much into it.
God, she was out of practice!
Matt was staring at her and she realised she’d gone quiet for a few minutes. ‘And how about you, Matt? I already know what you do, so where do you come from?’
He leant forward and crossed his arms on the edge of the table. ‘Well, I’m a local boy. I grew up in Fairlight, just around the corner. My parents and grandparents are also local. My great-grandparents were from Mount Sheridan in Queensland, though my great-grandfather worked here at the station before that.’
‘Yes, you mentioned that last time, that your great-grandfather worked here.’
‘For many years, in fact.’
‘I wonder if he knew Gwendoline or her parents. Their stay must have overlapped at some point. It can be a small world like that.’
‘How is your grandmother doing?’
‘She’s doing well,’ Emma said. ‘She still gets confused, usually when her childhood memories muddle with her recent ones.’
‘Is she your mother’s mum or your father’s?’
‘My mother’s.’
‘She must admire what you’re doing for her.’
Emma hesitated. They were entering ground she wasn’t sure she wanted to tread. ‘I guess. I haven’t seen my parents in a long time.’
‘Oh, how come?’
She shifted around in her seat. This wasn’t the direction she was hoping their coffee date would take. It felt like too much too soon.
‘My family died in a plane crash when I was fifteen,’ she said.
Matt looked horrified. ‘Oh Emma, I’m so sorry.’
‘My parents and my twin seven-year-old brothers were holidaying in France. They took a light plane over the Champagne region and it…’ She looked down at the table, the words stalling on her lips.
Matt reached for her hand. She saw it there, folded around her own.
‘The plane came down. There were no survivors.’
‘Shit.’
Emma closed her eyes and breathed. When she opened them again, she searched his face for signs of panic, for signs that he might like to bolt from the table. Too much too soon. She wouldn’t have blamed him.
But he wasn’t panicking. Instead, he was watching her carefully. ‘I’m sorry, Emma. I didn’t mean to…’
‘It’s fine.’
‘No, I feel terrible. I shouldn’t have pushed.’
Emma gave him a sad smile. ‘Don’t feel bad. It is what it is. I’m thirty-two now. I’ve had a long time to get used to them being gone.’
‘Does anyone ever get used to that?’ His hand was still on hers.
‘No. I guess not.’
‘What were their names?’
‘My mother was Catherine and my father was John. My brothers were Max and Liam. They were the funniest little things. Mostly they just drove me nuts. Now I wish I’d taken the time to appreciate them more. I can’t imagine how scared they would have been when that plane…’ She faltered.
‘It probably happened quickly.’
‘After we were told the news, I went to live with my grandmother. The loss hit her hard too. We had each other, but she had the tough job,’ Emma smiled sheepishly, ‘raising a wild, grieving teenager.’
‘I can understand why she
’s so important to you. Why you feel the need to protect her.’
‘She’s all I have left. I can’t imagine life without her in it.’
Matt nodded in understanding.
‘About two years ago, her health began to fail and she was diagnosed with stage four mild cognitive decline. She was living with me, but caring for her became difficult. She’d forget to turn the stove off, almost burning the house down, or forget to turn the bathroom taps off, flooding the place. And it was around that time that she began to wander. Placing her in permanent care was one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make.’
‘But probably one of the best.’
‘I still need to hear that sometimes.’
‘Well, if it helps, I think it’s a wonderful thing you’re doing for her now.’
‘Thank you. Tracing her history is important. Her wanderings are leading her somewhere. I want to find out where. I need to understand them because one day she’ll wander and she won’t come back.’
Matt gave her an encouraging smile and gulped down the rest of his coffee. ‘Let’s get to the archive room then. With any luck, it will have a few stories to tell.’
Matt led the way, guiding Emma through the museum.
‘When I was researching my family history, the archive room came in handy,’ he said as he headed towards the back, past the glass cabinets, old suitcases and gravestones. ‘The museum is ideal for displays and tourist information, but all the good stuff is in archive. Thousands of documents and photographs are stored there, dating back to when the station first opened in 1830. It was all rounded up after its closure in 1984.’
They paused by a door and Matt fished out a set of keys from his pocket. He turned one in the lock and let them into the room. It was dark and cool inside. Emma felt the blast from the air conditioner hit her cheeks.
Matt flicked on the light and closed the door behind them. ‘I just need to sign us in. Everyone who comes in here has to record their visit.’ He paused by a clipboard hanging on the wall and signed and dated the form.
A small sink and towel stood beside the doorway. A sign above it instructed all visitors to wash and dry their hands thoroughly before touching the items.
‘We no longer use gloves when handling old documents,’ Matt explained, turning the tap on and pumping soap from the dispenser. ‘A few years ago, it was confirmed that it might do more harm than good, so now we just wash our hands.’
Emma followed suit, scrubbing her hands with soap under the water then drying them on the towel. She placed the towel back on the rack and followed Matt into the centre of the room. Against the walls were rows of tall filing cabinets and piles of brown, acid-free boxes stacked on top of one another. At the back of the room was another closed door.
‘Where do we even begin?’ she asked, unsure where to cast her eye.
‘I’ve been in here a few times,’ he said, ‘but I haven’t gone through everything.’
‘Where did you find information relating to your family?’
Matt rubbed his jaw. ‘It was a while ago, but I recall starting with the filing cabinets. They’re categorised by year, so it made sense to start there. I found a lot of old carpentry order forms and one or two photographs of my great-grandfather and his workshop, but that was it. I get the feeling he was a quiet man who kept to himself.’
‘Not a bad way to be,’ she said.
Matt moved to one of the tall filing cabinets and opened the top drawer. He walked his fingers along the tabs of the folders, his face set in concentration. ‘What year did you say your grandmother was born?’ he asked, looking up.
‘1919.’
‘This one is 1850 to 1880. It’s too early for her.’ He pushed the top drawer back in and rolled open the drawer beneath it.
Emma stood close beside him. He smelt fresh and clean like soap and shampoo, and she tried not to inhale him so obviously. It was followed by an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the time he was taking out of his workday to help her, all the jobs he’d pushed to the afternoon to walk her through the archive room, and which he’d have to finish later.
‘Thank you, Matt,’ she said.
He looked up in surprise. ‘For what?’
‘For helping me with all this. I know you’re busy.’
‘It’s no problem.’
They smiled, held each other’s gaze, then he went back to the folders.
‘Well, this one’s no good either,’ he said, pushing the drawer back in. ‘1880 to 1915. It must be this one.’ He pulled open the bottom drawer and they both sank to their knees to peer inside. Matt flicked through the folders; 1916, 1917, 1918, then, with a triumphant ‘Ah ha!’ he pulled two folders for 1919 out.
They settled on their bottoms and crossed their legs. Matt handed her one of the folders and Emma opened it. Inside were hundreds of documents separated by acid-free sheets of paper. She extracted each one carefully, perusing it before placing it back between the sheets. Matt did the same next to her, their movements slow and deliberate with the delicate paper.
There was information on passenger arrivals and departures, employee timesheets and the various occupations of staff. Emma found a proposal for a new road in third class, a rabbit infestation report and hundreds and hundreds of supply order forms, everything from tools to food, medical supplies, coal and wood.
‘How are you going over there?’ Matt asked after ten minutes.
Emma let out a slow breath. ‘There’s a lot of interesting information here, but nothing that relates to Gwendoline directly. How about you?’
‘My folder mostly contains log entries for jobs carried out on the station.’ He picked up a sheet. ‘This one’s for the cleaning and washing-out of individual rooms by housekeeping. I’ve got another one here for electrical and mechanical repair of the funicular railway, another here for water preparation for the shower blocks and how much coal was consumed by the autoclave for fumigation. Not much to go on either.’
Emma set down an order form for smallpox vaccines. ‘Gwendoline talks often of a boat. Not boats in general, but a boat. She said that she waited every day at the wharf for the boat to come.’
‘That could mean anything. There were boats in and out of here all the time. Perhaps her mother or father had to leave and she was waiting for them to come back. Maybe it was a child she’d befriended and they had to leave.’
‘I think the person she was waiting for was male. But yes, you’re right, it could have been anyone. That’s what makes it hard. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.’ Emma glanced futilely down at the documents and protective sheets of paper in her lap. ‘Still, it’s the reason she wanders.’
‘This is probably a stupid question, but have you asked her who she’s waiting for?’
‘I asked her just yesterday but she became confused. I can’t get a straight answer out of her.’
‘There’s got to be a trail of her somewhere. Do you know what her parents’ names were?’
‘I’m not sure who her father was, but her mother’s name was Rose. She started working here in 1918 and was a housekeeper in first class.’
‘If Gwendoline was born in 1919, Rose must have fallen pregnant relatively soon after starting.’
‘Yes, she must have. And I know that Gwendoline’s father worked on the station also, because they packed up hurriedly and left in 1926.’
‘Maybe 1919 isn’t the place to start. Maybe we need to look through the entire seven years Gwendoline was on the station.’
Emma cast her eye over the remaining filing cabinets and the hundreds of documents they contained within them. ‘I’m conscious of time. I don’t want to hold you up too much.’
He grinned. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m enjoying this.’
She smiled back and they packed up the documents, returning them neatly to the acid-free sleeves and back into the folders. Matt stood and stored them away in the bottom drawer.
He moved to the next filing cabinet along and retrieved
another set of folders, and he and Emma sat for the next two hours perusing order forms, maintenance logs and passenger manifests, until Emma’s back ached.
They went through the entire contents from 1919 to 1926. They opened boxes and trawled through the many documents and photographs stored in archival albums, but there was nothing they could relate to Gwendoline or Rose, why they left suddenly in 1926 and who Gwendoline could have been waiting for by the wharf as a child.
Matt slid the last album back into its box and fastened the lid. He returned to his spot on the floor beside Emma while she stretched her legs out.
‘This floor can be unforgiving,’ he said.
‘Or I’m just getting old.’
He laughed.
‘Thank you for helping me today.’
‘I’m sorry we couldn’t find anything. What’s the nursing home doing to stop your grandmother walking out the door? Surely they can keep an eye on her.’
‘That’s a whole other story.’
‘And this time, I’m not going to make you tell me.’
Emma chuckled. ‘The facility is reasonably priced and mostly they’re great. It’s just this one thing they can’t seem to get right.’
‘It’s a huge thing.’
‘Yes. It’s dangerous for her and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve tried talking to the director but she always seems to shift the blame, like it’s Gran’s fault that she goes walkabouts.’
Matt looked thoughtfully at the filing cabinets. ‘And you’re sure you don’t know who Gwendoline’s father was?’
Emma shook her head. ‘I don’t recall her ever mentioning his name. And I wasn’t the attentive grandchild that I should have been.’
‘You had a lot going on.’
‘Yes, but before my family passed away, I could have asked the questions. I could have taken the time to sit with her and learn about her childhood. Then when everything changed, I became too lost in my own misery to even be nice. Now I’m worried this is all too little too late.’
Matt reached out and placed his hand on Emma’s arm. It was warm on her skin in the cold room. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself. I didn’t start researching my family’s history until I was an adult. As a kid and a teenager, it was the last thing I wanted to do.’
The Quarantine Station Page 7