Ember Island

by Freeman, Kimberley

  Tilly felt the ground fall away from beneath her. Not a family. But that was precisely how she’d been imagining the three of them. Now Sterling was pushing her away, with vague reassurances of “fondness” and a time in the future when there might be a chance for them to be together. Well, she was having none of it.

  She threw her sherry glass on the floor. It shattered into bright pieces. “You impossible man,” she shouted. “How dare you play with my heart in such a way?”

  And Sterling was shocked: she could see it in the way his pupils dilated, in the way his skin turned pale. He had not seen her angry before. She had managed her temper so well for so long. “Tilly, I never meant to play with your heart. I admit what I did was immoral—”

  “No it wasn’t. It was beautiful and you know it was. Don’t reduce it to a sin, a shameful secret.” Sobs bubbled up now. “What have I done in my life to deserve such raw treatment at the hands of men? Are you all as cruel and thoughtless as each other?”

  Sterling fell silent, realizing that anything he said would become fuel on the fire. She glared at him as the broken glass glinted on the rug between them, catching the lamplight. Nothing she could do or say would change his mind; and why should he anyway? It had been doomed from the start. He knew nothing about her shameful past. He didn’t even know her real name. Her shoulders drooped.

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I will clean up that mess on the floor.”

  “Don’t concern yourself,” he said, not meeting her eye. “I’ll get the staff to do it. Go. Find some peace and comfort on your own.”

  Palming tears off her face, she ran from the parlor. She should have known nothing would ever come of her feelings for Sterling. Her future would not exist until she had atoned for her past.

  •

  That night, her sleep was riven with nightmares. She woke again and again from fragmented sleep, in and out of images of fire and broken glass, of ghostly shapes condemning her, of Sterling and Nell on a ship receding further and further into a foggy distance while she sat upon the cold shore frozen with misery.

  When dawn finally came, she lay awake, eyes on the canopy of her bed, and sifted through the terrible images. Why would she have such a night of terrible dreams? She wasn’t ill. She hadn’t drunk too much sherry. There could be only one reason. God was punishing her, showing her that she was not worthy of love or comfort because she had committed a terrible sin. He knew what was in her heart, even if nobody else did.

  She feared the future. She feared Judgment.

  Tilly knew exactly what she must do.

  •

  All through the next day, Tilly’s mind flicked on and off her plans. She watched Nell drawing in a sunbeam that fell through the library window and stroked her hair gently, her mind wandering elsewhere. Out in the garden, in the cane fields, in the mangroves, on the bay. Afternoon came. A fresh wind from the southeast. The season was turning. Soon it would be Easter and Nell said the damp clinging heat of the wet summer would be behind them. Tilly could see the trees moving in the wind outside, the palms, green and golden, flapping madly.

  “Time to finish up,” Tilly said, right on the dot of four.

  Nell sprang from her seat. “See you at dinner.”

  The nape of Tilly’s neck prickled with anticipation, as if any moment a firm, hot hand would come down on it, stop her, press her down. She moved out onto the verandah, breathed the sea-salted wind. The garden, that place she was forbidden from entering, waited. She couldn’t see Hettie, but she would be in there. Somewhere.

  Tilly took her time, made sure that Sterling wasn’t about to step out of his office, that Nell wasn’t about to burst onto the verandah demanding Tilly come and read with her, that Mr. Donaghy wasn’t about to walk up the stairs. But it was a quiet and empty afternoon, almost as though the world was retreating in the face of the dry, cool season that was nearly upon them.

  One foot in front of the other, into the forbidden garden. Down past the roses, past the Grecian woman, past the shady magnolias, past her own tidy, colorful plot. And there was Hettie, kneeling on the grass, pulling weeds and collecting them in a wooden bucket.

  Hettie glanced up and smiled. Tilly skidded to the ground next to her, adopted an urgent voice. “I’m not meant to be here.”

  “Why?”

  “Sterling thinks we have become too close.”

  Hettie’s forehead wrinkled in concern. “Will they take me out of the garden?”

  “No, I made him forbid me from coming here instead. Listen. Carefully. I have to tell you something.”

  “What is it?” Hettie’s gaze was fully upon her, round eyes, dark strands of hair loose and trailing across her florid cheeks. “Is it something bad?”

  “No, it’s something good,” Tilly said. “I’m going to help you escape.”

  TWENTY

  Fields of Fire

  2012

  No matter how afraid I was of Elizabeth Parrish, I had a deadline to meet. I was up and down like a roller coaster. One day I’d write seven hundred words and be unable to sleep for excitement; the next I’d delete half of them and then patrol the house, poking around skirting boards and between bricks that Joe had uncovered, desperate and unable to produce a word.

  It was afternoon on a bad day when I walked down to the pay phone at the Stockade shops, intending to call Marla and tell her I was giving up. That she would have to let publishers in twenty-three countries know I couldn’t do it, and I would have to sell my apartment and pay them all their money back. Then Elizabeth Parrish couldn’t hurt me. I’d be free.

  Fortunately, before I reached the pay phone, I ran into Lynn McKiernan, Joe’s mum. She and Julian were coming out of the post office.

  “Nina!” Julian shouted, racing up to me and grabbing me in a hug.

  “Hello, dear,” Lynn said. “What a lovely surprise to see you.” Lynn, too, gave me a hug. I’ve not ever been a particularly huggy person, but in my current state of mind, all of this impromptu hugging was bliss.

  They stood back, and Lynn said, “What brings you down here?”

  “I was going to make a phone call,” I said, “but now I’m not so sure it’s a good time to make it.”

  Lynn didn’t press me for further details. “Julian and I are about to sit down for afternoon tea at the café. We’d love it if you joined us.”

  “They make great strawberry milkshakes,” Julian told me, persuasively.

  I thought about Marla, the carefully rehearsed sentence I was going to say: Marla, I’m sorry but I am leaving the publishing world and I want to cancel all my contracts. And then I thought about having afternoon tea with Lynn and Julian and there was no contest. “That would be really nice.”

  The café was tiny, with a bell over the door that jingled as we went in, and four little tables crammed in front of the glass-fronted cake case. A red soft-drink fridge hummed loudly. Sounds of clattering trays and running water came from out the back.

  “This is our favorite table,” Julian said, dragging me to the one closest to the front window. “Nanna and I always sit here.”

  “I’m sure I’ll like it too.”

  A waitress came and took our orders, then retreated behind the counter to slice cakes and make a pot of tea. Julian would have dominated the conversation, but Lynn firmly but kindly told him it was time to let the grown-ups talk. Lynn gave him her phone to play with. Within seconds we heard the sound of cartoon birds flying into brick walls.

  Lynn shook her head in awe. “Children are amazing, the way they can work those technological things out. Julian fixed my video player the other day.”

  “It’s not a video player, Nan,” he said, not looking up. “It’s a Blu-ray player.”

  “Well, whatever it is.”

  “Dad bought it for her last Christmas,” Julian said.

  “That was sweet of him,” I said.

  “My Jonah is a sweet lad,” Lynn said proudly. “I have the best son and the best grandson in the world
.”

  “You’re very lucky.”

  “Lucky doesn’t begin to describe it,” Lynn said emphatically. “How my boy and I could have missed each other, after all those years of me longing for him.” Her eyes welled. “I never did understand why I had been born with such a desire to be a mother and all the wrong insides to fulfill that desire.”

  Julian glanced up, made uncertain by her tears. “Nanna?”

  “Oh, you know me, Julian. Always blubbing.” Lynn rubbed his head. “You adorable monkey.”

  Julian made a monkey noise and returned his attention to the phone.

  “But eventually we found each other, Jonah and I,” Lynn continued. “And it was all for the best. You don’t have any children, Nina?”

  “No, I don’t.” Treading carefully now. “I still feel like a child myself. I think I’d be a rotten mother.”

  Julian said, “No, you wouldn’t. You make great Legos.”

  I laughed lightly and the mood lifted. Our pot of tea arrived, and chocolate cake, too. Julian ate like a horse, then started fidgeting violently, bored by our adult conversation.

  “Outside with you then,” Lynn said. “I’m going to have a second cup of tea. How about you, Nina?”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  Julian ran outside and across the street to the leafy edge of somebody’s farm. Within seconds he was inside the barbed-wire fence and climbing a mango tree.

  “Is he okay to be in there?” I asked, my city-girl instincts about private property firing up.

  “Oh, that’s fine. The barbed wire is to keep cattle in, not children out. That’s Reg Byrd’s farm. He couldn’t care less if Julian climbed his trees. And, frankly, Julian misses out on so much stuck over here on this island, I’m loath to stop him larking about.”

  I stirred sugar into my second cup of tea. “You think he misses out?”

  “Yes, as Joe did before him. Over on the mainland, he’d have friends, he could go swimming in a pool, skateboarding in a skate park, see a film before it came out on video . . . He’s only going to be a little boy once. It seems a shame to waste it over here.”

  I watched out the window. Julian had started running some kind of climbing circuit. Up one tree as far as he could go, then back down again. Then to the next tree and up that one, and so on. He moved further and further down the fence line. “He doesn’t look as though he’s wasting his boyhood to me,” I said.

  Lynn turned and watched him a while too. “It was different with Joe. He was always quiet, bookish. I didn’t feel quite so much that I was repressing his spirit, letting him grow up over here. It only became apparent later that we hadn’t given him enough opportunities. He was sharp as a shiny pin, that boy. Not like Dougal and me. And yet it took him so long to get going.”

  “He’s doing a PhD. That’s a big thing.”

  “He’s thirty-four. He spent a few too many years in his twenties helping Dougal on the farm, not sure what to do with himself. I think we should have sent him to boarding school back in the city. He would have figured it all out earlier. He wouldn’t have met that woman.” Her mouth went into a hard line.

  I presumed she was talking about Julian’s mother and I said gently, “But then he wouldn’t have had Julian.”

  She sighed, and sipped her tea. “Of course, you’re right.”

  “Who was she?” I asked, more curious than I had a right to be about Joe’s past.

  “Andrea? She was the girl next door. Literally. Her father and Dougal were good mates, but I never liked her mother. Thought she was better than us. Thought Andrea could do better than Joe. She and Joe were on and off for years, then finally the little fellow came along and suddenly I was babysitting two and three nights a week because she ‘needed a break.’ We still thought things could work out. We paid for a wedding.” She shook her head slightly, angrily. “Paid a bomb for it. Booked the little chapel down the road, made invitations. Two weeks before the wedding, she disappeared. Left a note saying it was all too much. Abandoned them both.” Again, Lynn’s eyes welled and I came to understand that she was a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve. “Can you imagine? Walking away from that darling little boy? Well, we all tried to give him more than enough love, so that he wouldn’t die of sadness. He remembers none of it now, and I don’t want her ever to come back. It would just confuse him.” Lynn picked up her napkin and dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose noisily. “On the day he was supposed to marry Andrea, we couldn’t find Joe anywhere. He went down to the chapel and, even though he’s not a religious man, he sat in there all day crying. Since he came out, he hasn’t shed a tear. He’s just got on. I’m so proud of him.” Now she sat back in her chair, blushing. “Here’s me rabbiting on. You can’t get a word in, you poor thing. Dougal’s always telling me I talk too much.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “You talk precisely the right amount.” My thoughts had got caught on one of her ideas, the way seaweed catches on a rock. The chapel.

  “Oh, you’re a sweetheart. No wonder our Joe likes you so much.” And then, when I looked away awkwardly, she added, “Surely it’s not a secret.”

  I looked into my teacup, deliberately avoiding her gaze. “I have a boyfriend,” I said, and I knew it sounded like a lie or an excuse, or both.

  “I know. The poet. You’ve been here quite a while now, Nina. Is the poet going to come visit you?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her the truth, but it was easier simply to say, “I don’t think so.”

  “And do you think you’ll stay? Starwater’s a lovely old house.”

  “It is,” I said. “I would love to stay, but I . . .” I thought about all the work I had left to do in the three weeks remaining. All around the world, publishers were gearing up to edit, translate, print, and promote my book. “At the moment the future’s pretty uncertain.”

  Lynn nodded. “That’s good, though. It means anything could happen.”

  I tried a smile. “Yes,” I said. “I guess you’re right.”

  •

  I went back to Eleanor’s “secret confession”: I imagined myself slipping away from classes and coming here to write on the walkway, hiding my stories in the warm, dark ceiling. Had Eleanor in fact hidden some of her papers in the ceiling of the chapel? She had owned it until the 1930s. It had sat empty all that time until she donated it to a small group who thought the island needed a church.

  While I was trying to write, my mind kept returning again and again to the chapel. Was there something up there? What if Elizabeth Parrish got there first? I couldn’t concentrate. At sunset I left the house.

  The chapel was small and hunched next to the much larger stockade. I didn’t know much about churches, but assumed that somebody would be in who might let me have a poke around. Especially if I told them I was Eleanor’s great-granddaughter. The front door was closed but not locked. I pushed it open, then let it bang shut behind me. I found myself in almost darkness. Only the faint glow of the sky through the windows lit my way.

  “Hello?” I called.

  No answer. I advanced down the aisle, over uneven stone tiles, and found a box full of candles. Light a candle for a prayer. $2. I picked up a candle and put it in one of the empty iron holders, then lit it with a match from the box that lay next to it. I turned around to look.

  The church had a smell like old wool and secondhand books. The pews were neat but scarred. Little leather-covered psalm books were stacked at the end of each pew. In the back corner of the church was a wooden chest overflowing with faded children’s toys. Cold air reflected off the stone walls.

  “Hello?” I called again. Then turned to the back of the chapel where Jesus hung on his cross. This was a new Jesus, all white and gold enamel paint. Not the one Eleanor had mentioned. I looked up at the ceiling, and could clearly see the outline of a ceiling hatch. Did anyone still use it? I supposed that electricians and termite inspectors probably did. Would they have found any papers stashed up there? Kept them? Thrown them away
as rubbish? Given them to the local pastor?

  I looked around for a chair or something else to stand on. There was nothing, unless I wanted to drag a pew up here. But then I realized the toy box might give me the height I needed. I walked back up the aisle and tipped the toys out. Clowns and teddies landed on the floor. A chunky plastic airplane burst into noisy life. Zoom-zoom. Come fly with me! My heart skipped a beat. I dragged the empty toy chest up the aisle in the flickering candlelight, dimly aware that if anyone walked in right now I would have to do some fast talking. My pulse picked up its rhythm. I positioned the chest under the hatch and climbed on top, reached up carefully to ease the hatch down. A ladder—a steel one—was bolted to the inside of the hatch. I released the latch on the side and it slid down and banged loudly on the chest.

  I tested it for strength, then climbed up. I was in complete darkness now, so I eased my mobile phone out of my pocket and switched it on so that its face could give me a little light. I crouched, reaching above me to feel where the roof was. I shone the phone around. Electrical cables, insulation, rat droppings. I crawled around, poking in corners. No papers. Nowhere for them to hide.

  When I came to the little door that led to the ceiling, I almost didn’t bother to go out. No papers could have survived the elements out there, but the bolt slid easily and I was curious. I crawled out onto the roof, and stood up in the last light of the day on an iron walkway with a safety rail. The bay was pale silver-blue, the clouds pink and yellow over the mountains on the mainland. My heart slowed a little as I breathed the sea air. A sailing boat glided past in the distance, its sails white against the darkening sky.

  I turned my phone on again and crouched down, running the light all along the corners of the walkway, just in case. Just in case.

  Right at the end of the walkway, the light picked up a shape. I got on my knees and held the light close. A little painted face looked back at me from the gap between the brickwork and the iron walkway. I reached in, and pulled out a wooden cat, about the size of two fists.