Islands

by Peggy Frew

  The sun shines. The ferns make lace. The tree-trunk marks have their own brown gloss. The ground steams.

  Not far from the train station there is a path. It can take a while to feel alone. In the bush. Completely. Everything else left behind.

  Ferns have curling shoots, tender, private. The ground is damp, the tree trunks marked from drips, deep brown.

  The sun begins to shine. Everything goes lacy, glossy, and steam comes from the earth.

  Keep walking.

  Not far from the train station there is a path. Leave everything else behind and walk until you are completely alone. Completely.

  Tiny green hairs inside the curls of fern fronds. Damp ground. Tree trunks streaked dark.

  Shining sun, steaming earth, lacy ferns, bark brown and glossy.

  Look up. There are places for climbing.

  Not far from the station there is a path. It doesn’t take long to feel completely alone. Just you. Completely. Everything else gone.

  The insides of fern fronds curled and new. Lush damp ground. Dark wet bark.

  Sun in everything, lace, gloss, steam.

  Run. Laugh, your hair pink and gold.

  Not far from the station there is a path. You trail behind the others so you can feel what it would be like to walk completely alone, to not have to jostle and shove, to not have to tear everything up with your noise.

  You blunder your finger at the curl of a frond. You want to lie right down in the rich leaf pulp, which is steaming, and just watch. Grimmo comes back to check on you. Oh yeah, he says, it’s kicked in. You can’t speak, you close your eyes and there is a net of fleshy purple flowers, squelching open and shut.

  Ahead, higher, the voices of the others rip the soft air.

  Not far from the train station a path swarms. Get in it. Be conveyed. A tunnel, a passage, glittering white. Papery wavings.

  Put your finger in a just-born green curl. This air, tissue layers, dancing spangles, should be dense, should mean wading, slowness, but it has no weight—it allows, lovingly it swirls and resettles. Nothing is still. Nothing is just one colour. Black, white, yellow, crimson, blue, silver. In the air, the trees, the ground, on the underside of every leaf. Colours, and millions of tiny suns. Quivering orbits, somersaults, vibrations. You could watch them forever, but now look up at this lace, green, woody, wet-gold, quivering. And the hearts of the trees, brown and deep.

  How far up have you gone? Your feet don’t even touch the ground.

  Not far from the station there is a path. You have been here before but that was with Grimmo and the others. Now you are alone, in the bush, completely. Everything else left far behind.

  Oh God, it’s all still here. It’s even closer. Those fronds curling whether anyone sees or not. The damp ground, the saturated bark.

  The sun again, steam and gold and dapples, who needs acid, your heart is a puppy, you have to skip to keep pace.

  This time you will climb higher—far, far up.

  Not far from the station is a path. You know this path, but still it’s a surprise how quickly you feel alone in the bush. Completely. Away from everything.

  The tiny fronds curled new and uncaring. The ground damp and rich and uncaring. The trees with their drip marks not caring who walks between them.

  Where is the sun? You need its dapples, its gloss, its heat on the ground.

  Far, far up, what if it’s not the same as before?

  Not far from the station there’s a path and walking up it is different each time.

  You are alone in the bush, completely, everything else very far away.

  You are alone but the rest of the world feels close.

  You are with Grimmo and the others, big and loud, every step blaring.

  You are tripping, time slowed to syrup, one leaf a universe.

  You are drunk, listing to the edge of the path.

  You are stoned, dry-mouthed, laughing into your sleeve, the trees smeary, the ground jittering.

  You are sober, silent, small on the hillside, nothing but legs, lungs, heartbeat.

  Each time there are fern fronds curled tight and new. Each time the damp ground, the marked trees.

  Each time you are climbing far, far up, to something.

  Not far from the station there is a path. You barely take two steps on it and the rest of the world is wicked away. You are alone in the bush. Completely.

  Hello, ferns. Hello, tender curling shoots. Hello, ground, always damp. Hello, tree trunks with long brown stripes.

  Sun this time, that’s nice; hello, sun. Switch on the dapples, the gold spray, the warm and dewy loveliness.

  Up you go, far, far up, to something beautiful, or bad, or to nothing.

  Not far from the station there’s a path. And here you are, on it again. You should feel alone. Completely alone, in the bush. But of course you’re not. Can you feel us, watching?

  Ferns, ferns, ferns. Ground, ground, ground. Trees, trees, trees.

  Sun. Or no sun. Beautiful or ugly, nice or not nice.

  Far, far up, an ending. Or not.

  Not far from the station there’s a path and God you are sick of walking up it.

  Even baby fern shoots can be ordinary. The brown drips on tree trunks, boring, boring, boring.

  The light is grey and flat, the ground slippery with decomposed leaves. Something is wanted of you—we want something of you—but you just keep walking, as boringly as you can.

  You yawn.

  Far, far up will be the same flat light, the same wet ordinariness. Good.

  Not far from the station there’s a path and you thought you knew what to expect but it doesn’t like a smart-arse. You are alone in the bush, completely, the rest of the world left behind. You will need to take this seriously.

  You thought you were finished with those ferns, but they catch at you all over again, their newness, their aloofness, their frailty. And this ancient hill clangs cold emptiness through you, forgettable speck. The trees nurse their dark lines.

  The sun comes out and everything is so beautiful you can hardly breathe.

  Get up there, far, far up, to where you’re supposed to be.

  Not far from the train station there is a path. You have to walk a long way up it before you feel completely in the bush. And then not quite completely—the rest of the world is not all that far away.

  Fern shoots curl. The ground is soaked, as if it could never be dry. Dirty brown stains on the tree trunks.

  There is no sun. The ferns drip. The trees are ugly.

  Far, far up, there is a place, very steep, for running, blindly. Not far from the train station there is a path. You could never be alone on it because terrible things wait behind the trees. You want to go back to the rest of the world but you can’t.

  The vile curls of ferns, the wet marks on the tree trunks, poison.

  Fragments of light vanish. The ferns offer their awful secrets. The trees come closer.

  Far, far up is a place for slipping and falling.

  Not far from the train station there is a path. A person would have to walk some distance up it to feel completely in the bush. Completely. The rest of the world very far away, left behind.

  Ferns curl. The wet ground is not as cold as might be expected. The tree trunks bear dark lines, descending.

  When the sun goes down the ferns still curl, the trunks still stand. The ground stays strangely warm.

  Far up, there is a place, between rocks, that no searcher, none of us, would ever find.

  Not far from the train station there is a path. Which leads around and around and up a steep hillside, a path soundless with leaf mould, cut between ferns and tall, patiently dripping trees. Further along, higher up, there are vertical slabs of rock, slick and wet, and huge boulders sunk in greenery, and from time to time the feeling of space off to one side.

  Higher, higher. The path becomes less certain. The air sharpens. There are places for looking out, and down. There are places for being careful. There are places wher
e the ground is very suddenly just not there.

  Far, far up, you stand on the edge of a place for slipping and falling. Far, far up, you sit on the branch of a tree. How you could get there, so high, we have no idea.

  Far, far up, but not as far as the places for slipping and falling, you are in between two rock faces, at the bottom of a long and secret drop, in a private hollow, very tight. You are upside down. We can’t see you but we know you are there.

  You are a girl, pink-blonde, gappy grin, long limbs and flat chest.

  You are a baby, soft and curled.

  You are fifteen, slight, with small curves like add-ons, gnawed fingers, obstreperous hair.

  You are whole. You glow and are well.

  You are thin and broken. One of your legs is bent the wrong way. One of your arm bones sticks out. One of your eyes has been swallowed by the pale slug of its swollen lid. One side of your head is pushed in.

  You needed help but you didn’t want it.

  You wanted help but you didn’t know how to ask for it.

  You didn’t need help; you would have been okay.

  You look at us. You smile. You are sweet, you are lost, you didn’t mean anything, there was an accident.

  You won’t look at us. There was no accident, nothing accidental happened.

  You look directly at us and you are so angry we can’t look back at you.

  You will never forgive us.

  None of these things is the truth.

  There is a truth but we can’t get to it.

  And this isn’t Belgrave. This isn’t anywhere.

  But this is all we have: the train station, the path, the ferns, the ground, the trees, the places for falling or resting or hiding or flying away from.

  (Or choose a different starting point: the city street, the car of the drug dealer, the park at night, the bus terminal, the bridge over the river.)

  This is all we have, these infinite strands of possibility—to fabricate, to arrange and rearrange, to worry at, to tend.

  Which is tedious, painful and exhausting, and which makes us feel sick.

  Which is necessary.

  Which has no ending.

  What else, then? Anything else?

  Yes. We still have:

  —You in my arms at three months, gummy blind smile into sunlight, the milk in my body pulsing, ready, thick with love.

  —You at Nan’s on the couch with your cut leg, after the stitches—after the blood, the screaming, Dad bundling you into the car, beach towel soaking red. All of that over, everything hushed and gentle, but the fright still there, the seriousness. The blue bedspread brought out to tuck around you, the hospital bracelet proud on your wrist. For once not shy of tenderness, I give you an apple, and gravely you accept it. Thank you, Junie.

  —Your skinny fingers, your elbows, you angling yourself around the bannister in your pyjamas, morning hair, toast crumbs. Taking my big hands with your very small and sticky ones: Dad, look, my tooth is almost falling out.

  —Pot smoke. School uniforms. You on the roof beside me, your arm against mine for a moment, warm.

  —The kitchen at Avoca Street on a Sunday morning, late. You coming in, smelling of cigarettes, shadows under your eyes, your clouded gaze, Hi, Mum. You leaning into me, your arm around my neck, your teenager’s fingers—bitten nails, half-moons of chipped polish, cheap ring from St Kilda markets—in my hair.

  And even now, without you, we still have:

  —A golden evening, three parrots skimming dauntless under the backyard grapevine, their calls brazen, explosive, the ruffled air cool on my cheek. ‘Mum!’ calls Cal, amazement in his round eyes, his splayed, fat fingers. ‘Did you see that? Those bright birds?’

  —Breaking down in the hills near Dev’s bush block and standing alone by the side of the road in the humming slowness of a summer afternoon. Purple clouds, green light, the smell of rain, the tick of the car’s engine. Camphor laurels garlanding the fence line. Two horses jumping a narrow creek bed—red mud, dry stones—and cantering, with playful head-shakes and flags of tails, diagonally up the slope.

  —Buskers in Toronto’s Union Station, a string quartet playing The Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams. The smell of hot chocolate, the timeless, expectant busyness of train stations. The violin reaching, trembling, higher, higher, over the weaving crowds.

  Damp earth. Sun, leaves, sky.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was written with the generous support of the following organisations: The Australia Council for the Arts; Varuna, the National Writers’ House; The Henry Handel Richardson Society of Australia; The Trawalla Foundation and the Stella Grass Trees Writing Retreat; Bundanon Trust’s Artists-in-Residence program.

  Thank you:

  Jane Novak, Jane Palfreyman, Ali Lavau, Christa Munns, Sandy Cull, Tegan Bennett Daylight, Louisa Syme, Kate Ryan, Claudia Murray-White, Rowan Frew, Mick Turner.