Ember Island

by Freeman, Kimberley

  Then Joe cut the motors and we were drifting lightly, bobbing on the waves. He went to the other side and beckoned us. “Loggerhead turtle,” he said.

  “Where?” Stacy cried, leaping to the other side of the boat. Shoulder to shoulder we stood, peering at the water, following Joe’s finger.

  “I see it!” she said. “Look at that!”

  Then I saw it too, its barnacled brown shell and its big black eyes, then it had dived under again.

  “Is it time for our picnic?” Stacy asked hopefully.

  “Great idea,” said Joe.

  There wasn’t really anywhere to lay out the food, so we sat like three birds on a wire on the long bench, picking what we wanted out of the picnic basket and chatting. Joe didn’t have any champagne, but Stacy and I got stuck in. Joe seemed to enjoy our company, laughing good-naturedly at our silly in-jokes, his body close enough to mine that I could feel the heat of his skin and smell the sunshine-and-salt scent of his hair. I needed more of this: more silly joking with old friends, more Joe, more moments in the sunshine. I’d become a hunched creature of the city, turned in on myself, like something out of a Poe story.

  But then Joe stood up suddenly, a startled expression on his face as he peered off to the east.

  “What is it?” I asked, following the direction of his gaze.

  He was back at the engines a second later, starting them up, then returning to the wheel. “I saw a flipper.”

  “Whales?” Stacy squealed.

  “Hang on.” He turned the boat and we sped out further into the bay. The speed and motion didn’t agree with the champagne and lemon curd tart in my stomach, but I held on.

  A few minutes later I saw it myself. A great hump breaking the waves, its flipper raised almost as if it was waving, then disappearing again. I was utterly unprepared for how I would feel. I had seen photographs of whales, I knew what they looked like. But this, here in the wild open sea, thrilled me in a way that was both deep and natural.

  Stacy clutched my arm. “It’s a whale,” she said, “a real one.”

  “You must have seen so many of these,” I called to Joe. “Do you still get excited?”

  “Yes, every time,” he answered. “You never get used to it. They are magnificent.”

  He knocked back the speed and we slowly approached the place we’d seen the whale. Then he cut the engine and we waited, holding our breaths.

  With a huge watery gasp, a gray-black back cut up through the waves and sprayed water everywhere. Stacy yelped with fright and I found myself laughing and laughing.

  “Other side!” called Joe, and I turned to see another one, swimming below the water, close to the other side of the boat.

  Now Stacy clung to my arm. “They can’t tip the boat, can they?” she asked.

  “It’s never happened,” Joe answered.

  The closer one skimmed up through the water and sprayed through its blowhole.

  “It’s breathing,” Stacy gasped. “Just like us.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty close,” Joe said, getting ready to start the engine again.

  Then the first whale broke through the water, its huge bulk impossibly airborne in a glorious arc, its white belly visible as it backflipped into the sea and disappeared, showering us in seawater.

  My heart thundered as the water dried salty on my skin. Words and meaning failed me. I felt as though I had just seen through all of the artifice of civilization, all the way to the other side where nothing was as important as the pulsing sea and the brazen sky. Stacy’s death grip on my arm tightened.

  “Oh. My. God,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, because it was the only word I could think to say.

  Joe smiled, as happy as if he had orchestrated the breaching creature himself. “He came to say hello,” he laughed. “Lucky you.”

  •

  After our boat trip, Stacy invited Joe up to Starwater to have dinner with us, but he said he’d promised Julian he’d be home by six so he parted company with us on the road home. I was more disappointed than I could understand. I kept thinking about him, his face turned to mine, the sunlight in his hair, telling me the whale had come to say hello. He had become entwined with my memory of that experience, that deep and thrilling moment. Why was I thinking of him like this? Why couldn’t I get my head and my heart to agree?

  •

  I couldn’t sleep. I think my blood was still jumping from the encounter with the whale, but it might also have been that these days I didn’t sleep that well. Too much on my mind. Tomorrow was Monday, and the moment Stacy got back on the ferry, I had to get back on my computer and write the damn book that I couldn’t write.

  It was two in the morning when I stopped trying to sleep and got up. I switched on my laptop, thinking I might even write something, but ended up standing in the kitchen staring at the bench while the kettle boiled. Made tea. Stacy, roused by the sounds of my soft clattering, came out.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “Can’t sleep. You want tea?”

  She hoisted herself up on the kitchen bench. “Yeah, thanks. You want to talk? Is this about Joe and all the babies you can’t give him?” She smiled, expecting me to laugh along with her I suppose. But I was tired and overwrought and my breath began to hitch.

  “Oh no, Nina. I’m sorry,” she said, reaching for my hand.

  “It’s not that,” I said, forcing a deep breath. “It’s the book. The book I can’t write. I’m going backwards. I’m going to fail.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “I promise you, I am. I can’t do this. I’ll have to pay back my advances: publishers in twenty-three countries have given me advances, and some of them were enormous. I have a mortgage on my Sydney apartment. I’ll have to move. I’ll have to find another job. I’ll have to face my mother, who always knew I’d screw it up eventually.”

  Stacy waited for her mug of tea, waited for me to sit on the opposite bench, and said, “And if all that happens?”

  “It would be awful,” I snapped. “It would be the end of everything.”

  Bless her, she let me snap at her and kept her voice gentle. “No. It would be the end of something, absolutely. But you’d still have so much. You’re young, you’re healthy, you have friends.” She smiled. “You’d still have me anyway. And you’d still have this place: you own it outright. So what if your mother and your publishers and whoever else is disappointed in you? If they abandon you, they weren’t worth having.”

  I frowned. I could see how what she said made some kind of sense, but it didn’t bring me any comfort. Stacy didn’t have to live my life. I was stuck here in my head with me, and not a single other soul in the world knew what I had done and maybe it would never come out, but I’d still know.

  “I’ve known you for ages, Nina,” Stacy continued. “You were always way too critical of yourself. You don’t need to be. I think you’re great.”

  “Thanks, Stace,” I said, cupping my cool hands around the warm mug. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

  “That’s okay.” She slid down off the bench and tipped her tea in the sink. “Sorry, too many sugars.”

  “Don’t you have two?”

  “One.”

  “Oh, that’s right.”

  “Lack of sleep interferes with your judgment. So don’t go getting too depressed. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “It is the morning.”

  “You know what I mean. Good night.”

  I watched her go, heard her door close quietly. I drank my tea, sitting on the bench, turning her words over in my mind. Then I put my cup in the sink and went down to the living room, where Joe had now removed all the plasterboard. With the torch in my hand, I carefully ran the beam over the mortar. I knew if I found anything, it would just be Eleanor’s diary. Still, desperation drove me to keep looking, fantasizing about that moment that my hand would close over the papers that would make everything all right.

  •

  Monday mor
ning I saw Stacy off, then returned to my office determined—determined—to make today different from all the other days. I could hear Joe working at the far end of the house, pulling off plasterboard and throwing it on the pile out the window. I wanted to go down there and sit and watch him. Watch his muscles moving under his sun-kissed skin, breathe in that warm, earthy scent he had. The magic of the weekend would come back; the expectations of the world beyond the island would recede again. But I had obligations, long-overdue obligations, and being near Joe was starting to feel dangerous.

  I was desperate enough to try any strategy to get going, so I put aside the new book. It was a complete mess, anyway. In my fear and self-doubt, I’d cut out a huge section of it, and that now seemed like a bad idea. Instead, I opened a copy of the first Widow Wayland book, and I started typing it out. From the first line. All over again.

  I didn’t really know what I was hoping to achieve, but I thought that maybe I could trick my brain somehow. If I went through the motions of putting these words on the page, the way I had five years ago when I’d started out, it might awaken a mechanism in me: switch on whatever piece of machinery I needed to write another one.

  The best part about this new plan was that it had me sitting at my desk, working in flow, doing something. Time flew. When Joe poked his head in and said, “I’ve got enough of Mum’s leftover cottage pie for both of us,” I realized I’d worked for three hours straight.

  I smiled up at him. “I have had a great morning.”

  “That’s great,” he said.

  “And I’d love to share your mum’s cottage pie.”

  “It’s heating up now,” he said.

  “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

  He withdrew and I sat there staring at the words on the screen in front of me. I actually had a sense of accomplishment, even though nothing had been accomplished. Now I was full of confidence, I could go back to the new book that afternoon and get some words down. I knew it. Sort of.

  No, dammit, I knew it. I opened up the file of the new book, and I cursored to the front page and I boldly typed in a title: The Unquiet Field. Then I cursored to the bottom. I had stopped in midsentence. Gripped with the same bold feeling, I completed it. Hit the full-stop key with a flourish.

  Hard return. New paragraph. Eleanor ran, faster than she had ever run. Resisting and resisting the feeling that this was a bad sentence. She sought shelter in the . . . what was the word for the entrance to a church? And shouldn’t I make some kind of witty or philosophical reflection on the role of the church to shelter souls? If only I knew more about the Middle Ages. If only I was more widely read, smarter, more creative. I took a deep breath, forced myself to stop the spiral. She sought shelter in the {foyer: check this later} of the church, and watched the rain team down. No, that wasn’t right. . . . teem down. I sat back. That didn’t sound right somehow. Nothing I did sounded right.

  “It’s ready.” This was Joe, in a quiet voice, from the door. “I can put yours in the oven to stay warm if you’re working.”

  I thrust back my chair. “No, I’m coming.”

  We took our plates out to the verandah table. I sat across from him but my eyes were drawn off into the distance to the restless sea. We ate in silence for a while, then Joe said lightly, “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when I first came to see you, you were happy and smiling. Then when I came back . . .”

  “Oh. Yes. I guess I wasn’t as happy with my work as I’d thought. On reflection.” I noticed his hair was full of white plaster dust, and resisted the urge to reach across and brush it out with my fingers.

  “I suppose that’s life for an artist? Sometimes it flows and sometimes it gets all stopped up. And then you drink whiskey.” He flashed his warm, sexy smile.

  I diverted my gaze to my lunch. “I guess so. I never feel much like an artist.”

  “No? Not after all those books?”

  “There are only three.”

  “Three more than most people.” He finished his meal and pushed away his plate, then said, “And your boyfriend, the poet? Does he get writer’s block too?”

  I sighed, put down my spoon. “I never saw Cameron with writer’s block, no. But I need to be honest with you. He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

  Joe tipped his head curiously, waited for me to finish.

  “Your parents were . . .”

  “I know. Overbearing and pushy.”

  “I should have told you all the truth.” I jabbed a finger in his direction. “But I’d like to remind you that it was you who started the lies, telling them I was a journalist.”

  He chuckled softly. “Yeah. Blame me.”

  We ate in silence a few more moments, then he said, “So, does that mean you’re single?”

  “It does. But I’m not . . . it ended badly. I need a lot more time. I . . .”

  “Of course . . .”

  “It’s not that I don’t . . .”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  We couldn’t look at each other, made awkward by the half-finished overlapping sentences we had spoken. I felt sad, but relieved.

  Joe picked up his plate and stood. “I might go . . . um . . .”

  “Leave your plate. I’ll clean up.”

  “Thanks.”

  I watched him go, a pang in my heart, but knowing it was for the best.

  •

  Mail arrived in a big chunk twice a week. Bills forwarded from my home address, royalty statements from Marla, and the usual helping of junk mail anyone receives. I always opened it immediately. If I let it sit on my desk, wrapped in a rubber band, I wouldn’t be able to work. Today, in amongst the business mail, I had a pretty card from Stacy. Folded neatly inside was the original correspondence about Elizabeth Parrish’s attempt to access my papers and a copy of Stacy’s refusal letter. I put them aside and pinned the card where I could see it, and got back to work.

  It was only after dinner that I came back to the journalist’s letter. I intended to glance at it and then throw it away, but once I unfolded it, something caught my eye.

  . . . access to the papers of Nina Jones and Eleanor Holt . . .

  I went back to the start of the letter and read it carefully. Stacy hadn’t mentioned that detail, because she didn’t realize how significant it was. Elizabeth Parrish had put in a request to see not only my papers, but my great-grandmother’s.

  A chill walked up my spine. My worst suspicions were confirmed. Elizabeth Parrish and I were looking for the same thing.

  And if she got to it first, I was ruined.

  THIRTEEN

  Another Island

  1891

  Tilly sat on the wooden bench inside the dusty church hall, her hands clasped in her lap and her heels lined up neatly. In the last several weeks she had made a study of physical and mental self-control. On and off boats and trains, looking for a place to settle and start a new life. Somewhere warm, because the chill of regret never went away and her bones were aching from it. Mrs. Fraser’s women’s boardinghouse on the bayside of Brisbane had provided a comfortable if modest new home. Mrs. Fraser herself was solicitous, a little nosy, but had a big hearty laugh and provided a solid meal every night.

  Tilly knew her money wouldn’t last forever, which is why she had applied for this position. It wasn’t the first position she’d applied for. She had been offered a job as a lady’s maid at a prosperous cattle station in the west, but decided on the day before she was due to leave that neither the hot dust nor the servility would suit her. It happened that on that day, she saw the little advertisement in the Courier: a governess was required for a twelve-year-old girl, and French and embroidery were a must.

  She could be a governess; she knew it. She was clever, she liked children, and it meant she wouldn’t be a servant.

  Now she sat, soberly dressed in a black wool skirt and navy walking jacket, her hands sweating in her brown suede gloves, watching as one by one the other applica
nts were called. Tilly began to be convinced she could not secure this position. The other women were older, with stern faces and bristling résumés. Tilly had nothing but the letter she had been sent, confirming the place and time for the interview. She pulled it out of her pocket and unfolded it. Sterling Holt, Superintendent, Ember Island Government Facility, Moreton Bay.

  Sterling Holt had thus far been a disembodied voice on the other side of a door at the end of the church hall. One by one, the other applicants went through that threshold and returned again, their faces unreadable, and let themselves out of the hall and into the bright daylight. Until only Tilly was left.

  “Chantelle Lejeune,” came the call from the end of the hall.

  Tilly stood. She had become used to being known as Chantelle Lejeune, yet every time she heard the name said aloud, she felt the deep stirrings of guilt. Perhaps it was an appropriate punishment that, in order to escape what she’d done, she had to spend the rest of her life being reminded regularly of the woman whose death she had caused.

  She entered the little room at the end of the hall and closed the door softly behind her, turning to catch her first glimpse of Sterling Holt. He was backlit by a small window, a man with a tall, proud back, dark brown curling hair parted on the side, and thick sideburns. He smiled up at her, taking her off guard. There was a kindness about his eyes she hadn’t expected from his gruff voice.

  “Good morning, Mademoiselle Lejeune,” he said.

  She pulled off her gloves and laid her hands in her lap. Her wedding ring now lay at the bottom of the ocean. “Good morning, sir,” she said.

  His eyebrows shot up. “You’re not French? I had assumed, with that name . . .”

  “My father was French but I barely knew him. I was such a little thing when he died. I grew up in Dorset with my mother’s family.” The lie came easily; she had rehearsed it in the mirror enough times.

  “But you speak French?”

  “Oh yes, sir, fluently.”

  A weary expression crossed his brow. Perhaps he had been subject to a number of false claims of French fluency today, because he then asked her, in French, who her favorite French writer was.