Wildlight

by Robyn Mundy

  About Wildlight

  You spend your whole time on an island looking out to sea. Perhaps what you are facing is yourself.

  Sixteen-year-old Stephanie West has been dragged from Sydney to remote Maatsuyker Island off the coast of Tasmania by her parents, hoping to recapture a childhood idyll and come to terms with their grief over the death of Steph’s twin brother. Cut off from friends and the comforts of home, exiled to a lonely fortress and a lighthouse that bears the brunt of savage storms, the months ahead look to be filled with ghosts of the past.

  Steph’s saviour is Tom Forrest, a 19-year-old deckhand aboard a crayfishing boat. When the weather allows, Tom visits the island, and he and Steph soon form an attraction. But Tom must conceal at all costs the illegal fishing he takes part in, orchestrated by his tyrannical brother. And he dare not dwell on his fear of the sea or his deep-worn premonition that the ocean will one day take him.

  Wildlight is an exquisite, vividly detailed exploration of the wayward journey of adolescence, and how the intense experience of a place can change the course of even the most well-planned life.

  Contents

  Cover

  About Wildlight

  Dedication

  Note on Pronunciation

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  About Robyn Mundy

  Also by Robyn Mundy

  Copyright page

  For Ian Templeman, mentor and friend

  1938 – 2015

  Note on pronunciation

  Maatsuyker Island was named in 1642 by Dutch navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman during his exploratory voyage of Australian waters.

  ‘Matsyker’ is the common Australian pronunciation.

  PROLOGUE

  2015

  Stephanie’s focus slides from the sliver of moon to the beacon at the tip of the wing, distant enough to appear as a star. She looks down through the night at a twinkling of lights from some tiny tropical island, barely discernible from this great height. Ferdinand Magellan’s wayward course across the Pacific missed all but two of this ocean’s thousands of islands. Perhaps we navigate life in such a way, alter course at just the wrong moment, blink and miss landfall, pass by unseen.

  Steph reclines her seat, tucks the doona around her feet and pledges eternal devotion to Qantas for the upgrade. Behind her the first dusting of snow on the Sangre de Cristos, the wool coat she shrugged off and left on a plaza bench at Santa Fe.

  On the far side of the dateline floats an image of Sydney Airport, bittersweet with homecomings, a crowd of expectant eyes searching through and beyond her while those incoming, weary from the long haul home, peel away to waiting arms. The cover of the inflight magazine reins her in: a culinary smorgasbord too glossy for melancholy. Stephanie homes in on the cover’s lavish table setting: glass vessels, ultramarines and aquamarines, the sea greens of the ocean. Blown glass, artworks in themselves.

  She raises her seat, riffles through the pages. Harvest from the Haven. She halts at the photo of a man, jeans and jacket, his arm resting on a wooden crate of produce. The likeness is uncanny. Mid thirties, three years older than her—even the age would be right. The face seems oddly set, perhaps self-conscious before the camera; oceans more worldly than the boy she once knew. Stephanie studies his hands. She skims the text. Organic dressings and condiments served in our first-class cabins and Qantas lounges. A name shimmies off the page, her chest held tight by the words. Tom Forrest.

  Her first lover.

  The boy that drowned at nineteen off Maatsuyker Island.

  1

  1999

  Steph wheeled through the sky, willing herself to be fearless and free. Then the helicopter lurched and courage dumped her with a reminder that only a shuddering bubble of tempered plastic separated her from the wilderness below.

  Before the helicopter had left Hobart she’d been reduced from a sixteen year old to a needy child—Let’s get you sorted: the pilot, aftershave overload, threading the seat harness and fastening the convoluted buckle which now Steph wasn’t sure she could undo In The Unlikely Event That The Helicopter Should Be Required To Ditch.

  Under an hour, the pilot said the flight would take. Not even halfway there. She’d kept the swirling in her stomach under control, but civilisation was now a light-year behind and they were passing so near the mountainside you could practically reach out and brush the trees. The pilot turned to her and winked and Steph wondered if he’d wangled things so she scored the front seat. She wanted to motion ahead the way her father did when her mother was driving and talking and pointing out things all at the same time, as if to say, For God’s sake, Gretchen, keep your focus on the road.

  They were lower than both peaks now, weaving around pockets of mist through which the pilot, unless he had radar vision, and Steph hoped beyond hope that he did, could see nothing at all. She wrapped her arms around her stomach which sloshed like a water-filled balloon. Callam would have revelled in this. But her brother was gone, and if anyone remembered the bad things, they didn’t dare talk about them now. Saint Callam, she sometimes felt like saying when her mother went on. If her twin brother really was up there looking down, he’d be laughing his testicles off and going, Scaredy cat chicken shit you’re gonna crash you’re gonna die, and plenty more where that came from. Steph’s head throbbed with the glare. Her stomach pitched and rolled.

  She glanced back at her father wedged in the far corner, gazing out through the helicopter window as if he hadn’t a care. You’d never guess he was as scared of heights as she was. Perhaps that was the definition of adulthood: you just got better at hiding how you felt.

  Why were they dropping? Steph gripped the seat and willed herself to sit statue still, to focus on the waterway below. River? Rivulet? Or a glistening black serpent winding its way to sea? No roads, glimpses of a track; chances were there was nothing down there among those acres of button grass but a wilderness writhing with tiger snakes. And by God, Steph had let it be known, if the island they were destined for harboured a single such creature, her mother would be embarking on this certifiable pilgrimage ALONE.

  Her eyes sharpened on the helicopter door, processing upside-down instructions, trying to make sense of the arrows: one of those levers, she remembered, unlatched the door from its hinges and sent it spinning off into the cosmos In The Unlikely Event That The Helicopter Should Be Required To Ditch. The pilot had acted out each step of the safety briefing, bracing as they prepared to crash, beating his arms above his head like a lunatic as the rotors sliced through water. Steph had an image of herself hurled like a plum through blind darkness, the slam of the Southern Ocean smashing her apart. She had nodded nonchalantly when the pilot explained that she would lose all sense of up and down,
water flooding the cabin, her survival dependent on holding her breath and keeping her wits intact to unbuckle the seatbelt. Wait for the rotors to stop, follow the lifeline of bubbles from your lungs that lead to the surface. What then? she would like to have asked. The one hundred k medley back to Hobart? A bright September morning deflated into grisly ways to perish in Tasmania’s wilderness. They weren’t even over water yet.

  The helicopter veered, the tinny muffle of the pilot’s voice crackled through her headset. ‘Precipitous Bluff.’ Steph opened her eyes to a piercing blue and the glare of morning sun. A jackhammer pounded at her skull. The pulsing silhouette of the pilot’s arm gestured to the right. ‘Ironbound Ranges.’

  Her mother, seated directly behind, tapped Steph’s shoulder. ‘Look. Down there.’ Her excitement carried through the headphones. ‘Louisa Bay. We’re close.’

  Her father reached from the back corner, tapped her shoulder. You okay? he mouthed.

  Steph shrugged. She felt awful. God, now her mother had the video camera pointed in her face. ‘No,’ she said too sharply. The pilot turned at the commotion. Steph scrambled through the side pocket for a sick bag, a tissue, a cloth—please, anything!—but the projection of vomit filled her cupped hands. Her stomach purged a second round. The smoothie her mother had warned her against ordering for breakfast ran curdled over her jeans and inside her new red gumboots. She felt agitated movements from behind; her mother slid an emergency card beneath her chin to act as a drip tray. Steph pushed her arm away. The rank smell permeated the cabin along with the pilot’s disgust. Steph withered.

  From somewhere a towel and water bottle was thrust in her lap. She wiped her mouth and hands, swished water around her mouth, gagged at the prospect of swallowing and drained the putrid mess back into the towel.

  If you’ve had enough practice you can stop yourself from crying, but inside this whirring capsule there was no escaping humiliation. She turned to the window to block out the world, her parents’ reassurances, Almost there, sweetheart. Not long now.

  They were over ocean, skirting a large island. ‘Big Witch,’ the pilot called it. Another ahead. Steph squinted at a cove marked with a gantry, a broken line of railway sleepers carved a scar up the slope. The Gulch, the haulage way: she knew those landmarks from her mother’s old photos. The canopy of green was one of those optical illusions that your eyes struggled to make sense of: you might be peering down at treetops, or you might be looking down at barren coastal scrub that barely reached your knees. Her hands felt sticky. They stank. Steph wanted to brush her teeth. She needed to pee. She took another gulp: the water tasted stale.

  The helicopter rounded a ridge to where two white cottages nestled side by side on the hill, all country garden with painted fences, their perimeters of lawn keeping the bush at bay. A grass road meandered past the cottages then disappeared into bush. ‘Second and Third Keepers’ Quarters,’ her mother said through the headphones, as if the old lighthouse was still manned. Her voice carried a reminder of whose rightful domain this was. Steph and Dad were the newbies. The helicopter tilted at such an angle Steph had to pull back from the door in case it inadvertently opened and flung her out like a Red Cross rations drop. They passed over the old Head Keeper’s Quarters, a solitary cottage flanked by a paddock that abruptly dropped away. Steph saw where grass met cliff, sheer to the ocean below. She craned to look back at a second roof as tiny as a doll’s house, at a path that led from it to a weather screen. The grass road reappeared, arcing downhill toward the southern tip of the island, indigo lapping cliffs on either side. The ocean looked motionless, tiger-striped with foam, still as a dead boy’s breath.

  Beyond the furthest point they circled back beside an ellipsis of rocks: shark’s teeth foaming at the gums where they pierced the blue. The Needles. If Steph hadn’t felt so bad she could have sung the name of those rocks before her mother announced them. They looked like the tail vertebrae of some prehistoric animal. Her mother pointed to the lighthouse perched high above the ocean, shiny, shiny white.

  The cleared areas claimed by the cottages and lawns amounted to a tiny skin graft of civilisation upon a great humpback of wilderness. It was none of the quaint scenes from her mother’s old photo album, the stories Steph grew up with. Devoid of beaches, the place was a fortress, walled by cliffs and a moat choked with kelp.

  Below, a limp windsock gave way to a clearing in the bush that looked too small for a landing pad. The blue nose of a vehicle peeked through the trees. The helicopter hovered, swayed its hips. They inched lower, the pilot peering down through the side window. He manoeuvred the throttle as lightly as a computer mouse. They were even with the treetops, now they were below them. Steph read a painted sign: MAATSUYKER ISLAND. A soft thud, a bounce, the kiss of solid earth, an exhalation as the rotors lowered pitch. They were down. They were safe.

  2

  Steph mistook Lindsay, the outgoing caretaker, for a ranger in her green brimmed hat, a Parks emblem embroidered on the front. Lindsay stood at the door of the Head Keeper’s cottage with her feet set apart. She handed over the contents of the pile one by one and Steph tried to be grateful, truly she did: a threadbare towel, a frayed shirt crumpled and stained, a pair of lilac trackpants that could—that should—have been a Vinnies reject. Steph tried to smile. She tried to be polite.

  Lindsay knew. ‘Best I could find in the emergency drawer. They’ll have to do until we bring down your bags.’

  ‘Do you know where Mum and Dad are?’

  ‘Brian’s taken them up to do the nine o’clock obs. Plenty of time for a shower, get yourself cleaned up. Tummy all settled?’

  Steph closed the bathroom door. The weather observations were her job. She’d done the training in Hobart. They’d all agreed.

  An old-fashioned bath was set beneath a full-length window. Anyone could walk by and look straight in. Away in the distance a spear of land stretched across the blue. Steph huffed. All her mother’s talk of the roaring forties: the ocean glistened, barely a breeze. From where Callam was looking down, Maatsuyker and its surrounds must resemble a smattering of biscuit crumbs brushed off Tasmania’s south-west rim.

  It took an age for the hot water to coat the window with steam and give her privacy. Steph was down to underwear and socks when the door banged. Lindsay’s form filled the scalloped glass. ‘Don’t be too long, pet. We need to conserve our resources.’

  Water? It rained two hundred days a year at Maatsuyker Island.

  The textured glass of the shower cubicle was webbed with cracks, the caddy’s rubber coating flaked off and encrusted with rust. Everything in this house—their house now—looked fit for the tip. Steph picked up a block of grey soap as coarse as sandpaper; it smelled of sweaty socks. She opted for a dried sliver of green that slipped through her fingers the moment it was wet. She placed her foot across the drain to stop it disappearing altogether. Another rap on the door.

  ‘Almost done, Stephanie?’ Lindsay sounded cross.

  ‘Nearly.’ You could never tell with people. Lindsay had seemed kind—grandmotherly—when they’d met at the helipad. Let’s get you cleaned up, poppet. She’d marched Steph and her parents down the grass road, nodding to landmarks as if it were Mum’s first time on Maatsuyker Island. Steph felt for her mother. She looked vulnerable again, her big moment that should have been just the three of them dawdling and detouring, Mum showing Steph every little thing and sighing and saying, That’s the track that goes up to the Light Keeper’s Tree and That’s where we kept the chooks and We even had a pig here for a while and That’s where I used to run down the path through the arbour to get to the lighthouse and meet my dad at the finish of his shift. From ground level the cottages didn’t look as cheery—white walls scabbed with red where brickwork showed through, the paintwork flaking and dribbled with rust. The palings of one fence were gone altogether, the other hung at a lean, patched with fibro sheets.

  ‘Someone’s put some work into that vege patch.’ Her father’s voice sounded hoar
se. His halting speech reminded Steph of a light globe on the blink. Dad brushed away Lindsay’s look of concern with a wave of a hand toward the terraced beds. Patch? Plantation. The vegetable garden took up more space than their front and back yards at home.

  ‘We arrived to a beautiful crop, James. Fresh veges all the way through.’ Lindsay was taken with Dad, you could tell. She would have heard him on the radio. ‘Our turn to do the same for you two.’

  Three, if anyone should bother to count.

  Now, hovering there outside the bathroom, Lindsay had transmuted into the Water Police. Steph imagined her stopwatch running. She reminded herself that by this afternoon Lindsay and Brian would be gone, on their way to Hobart in the helicopter. Whoo hoo, the ghost of a voice butted in. Bet you can’t wait to be on your ownsome with Mum and Dad.

  Shut up, Callam. But her brother was right. Sixteen, the biggest year of her life. To be dragged out of school as if a Higher School Certificate didn’t count. Five months stuck on an island with no one but her parents. Steph mashed the soap through the grate, she drew a stricken face upon the misted glass, the hair a swirl of kelp. Who would be around to help her with the afternoon weather? She needed Brian. She turned off the taps. She needed Brian now.

  *

  Steph followed the path uphill from the house. A posse of green birds flashed by. The whine of the helicopter escalated to a squeal, the air pulsing as it lifted from the helipad. Beneath the fuselage a rope spun ever-widening circles like a carousel ride, its sling load of netting bulging with Brian and Lindsay’s outbound gear.

  The empty weather office reeked of mould. Mum’s sunglasses sat folded on the desk. Steph put them on, studied her reflection in the window. She’d never be as elegant as her mother. Why hadn’t they waited for her? Alongside a computer, the weather logbook lay open. Steph ran her finger along the numbers and codes. She couldn’t remember what they all meant. Another desk was littered with dead blowflies and info sheets about clouds and weather and measuring the ocean swell, the print bleached from sun. The desk would be big enough to spread out her art. Steph opened the locker to a fug of mustiness, to forms and wicks, barograph charts, a pile of old logbooks stippled with mould and warped from damp, the bindings a loom of cotton thread. Somewhere in the collection was the imprint of her grandfather. She tried to conjure an image of him living and working at this place. Zip.