‘What happened to me?’ she’d cry out. ‘I lost my joy and there was no more passion. The only thing that made me happy was my new body.’
At times like this she’d grab Lily or Daniel or Kieran’s hand. There were also rare lucid moments. ‘When I changed,’ she’d say, ‘I longed for things, but I didn’t know what they were. I remembered when I loved with all my heart, but I couldn’t remember what that meant. I tried to get it back. Sometimes I thought that if I could just remember. If I could maybe recite something comforting, that would help. I remembered things my mother told me, that I didn’t even fully understand but they still made me happy and I would begin: Our Father, who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name… But then I’d have to stop because I couldn’t remember any more.’
Ruby’s hands would often go to the diary.
‘This reminded me,’ she said, untying the bag. ‘This precious thing, my diary.’
She smoothed her hands over it’s cover, running her fingers over the little bumps and divots in the leather. ‘Like tree bark, rough but beautiful. I remembered that. And here, look.’
Every day she did this, opening the diary at the first page. ‘My name – Ruby W Sheldon, do you see? And other things helped me remember, like this.’
She opened the book to a page with a little note pasted in. Lily read, ‘To darling Mummy, I wish you the happiest Mother’s Day in the whole wide world; from Minnie.’ There were lines and lines of hugs and kisses, a huge butterfly over the ‘i’ of Minnie and red glitter attached to the edges of the note. Some of that glitter fell onto Ruby’s hands. Ruby stared at the glitter, tears sliding down her face so Lily, not for the first time, had to console her.
‘Look, Ruby, look.’ Hastily, Lily opened the diary to a well-thumbed page and began to read, ‘Listen, this is what you wrote, “Minnie made me laugh today when I told her off for talking too much and not eating her food. She looked at me with her huge brown eyes and said, ‘No, Mumma, Minnie not talk, Minnie’s lips talk.’ ” ’
Lily looked up.
‘Yes, I remember,’ Ruby said softly. ‘I do remember now.’
Like Ruby, many of those who were ageing and dying spoke of the children they’d lost or had given away, and of their partners and parents, their nieces and nephews, cousins and aunts, uncles and grandparents, and of those that had gone before, spinning their history again into a world which for a while had forgotten it’self completely.
It was as if an entire time had been wiped clean, as if children had disappeared off the face of the earth; as if parents had been outcast and their families annihilated. Perhaps because of this, the survivors who remembered often spoke of place, recreating the houses and the city of their childhoods before the Committee had come and the Wall had gone up.
And, like Ruby, there was rawness in the way they remembered. Those who had given away their children found it hard to understand how this had been possible. A few stayed confused and alienated and were difficult to console.
There were few reunions. Those who’d staggered from the wreckage of the past into this new simpler life rarely found people they recognised. This made Lily’s survival and Daniel’s even more amazing.
EPILOGUE
Six months later
The water that had rushed into all their lives had brought great pain, but also it’s own kind of joy. It had scoured away the worst of the past.
Survivors made their way to Sydney from the countryside north and south of the city. They dramatically boosted numbers in the Sydney basin where dozens of communities sprang up on the flatlands between the ruined city and the mountains. Peter introduced a ritual for those who came to their cave system. Each survivor was asked to stand on the rock platform and tell their story.
Many sobbed as they recounted how the waves had annihilated their communities, how they had survived, miraculously, when thousands had perished.
To maintain order, the various communities eventually elected a group to govern, drawn from the established communities existing on the plains around Sydney. Peter and Rosemary were chosen from the cave system to serve on this inaugural governing executive. The executive’s most immediate task was to organise crop planting as well as monitoring the food collection and rationing processes until the first crops came in. As well, they directed the collection of energy, specifically the salvage and connection of solar panels and the construction of wind farms and wave power facilities.
They organised people to help sink wells designed to tap the aquifers unaffected by the inundation of seawater. They also arranged the building of temporary crèches and preschools until more permanent structures could be assembled. Only a few children had survived, but they, plus babies born into this post-Wall world, were a vital part of the new society.
The waterlogged land directly surrounding Sydney was ruined. Nothing would grow where the sea had saturated the soil. It would have to be given time to heal. But beyond that desolation, between what once was and what would be, people were building their new homes, using the tumbledown bricks, the shattered tiles, the scattered iron and wood.
As more people poured in, some of the old cave community chose to leave to build homes on the plains. But many, including Lily and Kieran, Daniel, Rosemary, Peter, Ingie and Merrick, remained. They had grown attached to the cool freshness of the air, the abundant sweet water and, most importantly, the people they now considered to be friends and family.
Rebuilding was slow and people were often hungry, but for the moment, they were alive, eager to cooperate and free of the oppression of the past.
One afternoon, a number of months after the tsunami, Lily was working with Rosemary in the medicinal plant garden at the edge of the gully, planting and weeding. The garden was full of radish and cabbage, wild carrot, hibiscus, nasturtium and common bean, alfalfa, St. John’s wort, quinoa, spirulina and celery. Lily always enjoyed this time with Rosemary, but today she was restless, anxious to return to the cave and Kieran. He had come in before her and was resting.
‘How was your day, Lilla?’ he smiled, shifting on the bed so she could join him.
‘Momentous,’ she said.
‘Oh?’
‘You know how Dan and I always talk about looking ahead, accepting the past?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Kieran raised an eyebrow, rolling onto his side and propping himself up on his elbow.
‘Kieran,’ she paused, bursting with the news. ‘I can tell you now I know for sure. We’re going to have a baby!’
‘A baby?’ he repeated, stunned.
‘Yes. Our baby,’ she laughed with joy.
In that moment, delighted at his reaction, everything that had been dark and cruel in Lily’s life fell away. This child, their child, would receive the precious gift of love from it’s parents, from Daniel and from the whole community. Lily’s silent years were gone and she was home at last.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alison Stewart has lived in Sydney for more than 30 years after growing up in South Africa. Her first book for adults, Born into the Country, was shortlisted for South Africa’s AA Mutual Life Vita Young Writers’ Award. One of her young adult books, The Wishing Moon, was shortlisted for the Australian Multicultural Children’s Award and was a Children’s Book Council Notable book. A manuscript about her childhood, Cold Stone Soup, was a runner-up in the 2010 Penguin/Varuna Scholarship. She has written nine novels, seven for young people and two for adults. She also worked for many years as a newspaper journalist. Alison is married to Sydney Morning Herald journalist Rob Mills and they have two adult children, Georgia and Angus.
The idea for Days Like This came from Alison’s growing unease about our diminishing natural resources, combined with the rise of a heartless individuality. The book explores the consequences – a world where people are shockingly exploited to serve the desires of an elite few. Days Like This was a finalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.
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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2011
Text copyright © Alison Stewart 2011.
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ISBN: 9780857962997
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