by Robyn Mundy
Steph watched him pull at the zip of his red coat. What was left of a buckle hung loose. She felt like a castaway, scrambling up rocks to watch them pull away. Habib’s voice rose above the outboard, carrying into shore. Amongst the scraps of words Steph heard her name. ‘Stuff him,’ Tom called back to him. He looked to Steph and raised his arm to wave. ‘She’s worth it,’ Steph heard him say.
9
For a week Steph’s mother had woken in the night to scratching in the roof. Her father was apparently as deaf to the noise as he was to her mother’s concern.
It was so long since Steph had dreamed of anything nice that the interruption to sleep felt all the more unfair. Her mother shook her awake and pulled the covers down below her shoulders. ‘You were laughing,’ her mother said quizzically. A let me in to your world.
Callam. They’d been together at Forty Baskets Beach, in front of the house. Callam was belly laughing—splashing a tall figure that could have been Tom who refused to come into the water. Steph grimaced at her mother’s face inches from her own.
‘Stephie, listen.’ Steph blinked. ‘There.’ Mum gestured to a point on the ceiling. ‘Hear it?’
Steph dragged herself to sitting. She checked the time on her phone, gave a throaty grumble. ‘Middle of the night, Mother. Can we do this in the morning?’
Her mother kept her to her word. Steph returned from the nine o’clock weather to find her dressed in an asbestos hazard suit, a disposable bonnet and booties. Her mother had dragged the big ladder inside.
‘What are you doing?’
Mum sighed, as if having to spell out the basics to a dolt. ‘If a pregnant rat or mouse has found its way here, we’re talking environmental disaster. This island has never known an introduced species, let alone a predator.’
Steph looked nonplussed.
‘Think about the birds.’ Mum snapped her fingers. ‘They’d be wiped out!’
‘What about Tinkerbell?’
‘What?’
‘Cats are predators. What about the sheep and goats and chooks and pigs that used to be here? They’re introduced species. And the horses from the old days? And what about the blackberry bushes? And the Montbretia all the wives planted?’
‘Tinks ate a handful of lizards. At the most.’
‘How could a rat even get here?’ Steph scoffed. ‘We’re in the Southern Ocean.’
‘By helicopter,’ her mother said haughtily.
‘Wearing his personal flotation device?’
‘Funny girl. A rodent could find its way into a packing box. There’s myriad ways.’
‘It could mouse paddle.’
‘Go ahead and laugh.’ She motioned to the window. ‘We’re just twelve kilometres from the mainland. A creature could easily hitch a ride on a log, a bit of flotsam.’
Steph went to laugh but the prickle charged through her before the thought had gelled. ‘A snake.’ Steph retreated to the lounge room and clambered from the chair to the tabletop.
‘Honestly, for a smart girl you can be a trifle idiotic. Snakes don’t scratch and squeak. I need your help, Stephanie.’
‘You wouldn’t be so brave if it was leeches. I’m not going up there.’
Mum clucked. ‘No one’s making you. All I need is for you to hold the ladder steady. Can you do that?’
‘Where’s Dad?’
‘Working on the drain, I imagine.’
Steph’s mother, cautioned by asbestos warning signs stickered to the wall, pulled on mask and gloves. She sounded as though she was talking through a snorkel. ‘My dad used to scoot up here in his work clothes, sleeves rolled up. No one back then gave a thought to asbestos.’ She switched on her headlamp. ‘Wish me the best of British luck.’
‘You’re Australian.’
Her mother’s booty tapped Steph’s hand on the ladder. ‘It’s a saying. Sheesh. Lighten up.’
‘That’s rich,’ Steph started but Mum disappeared through the manhole. Steph sat down to chemistry. The chapter was hard enough without the stomping going on above her head. ‘Find anything?’ she called. No answer.
The phone rang and Steph raced for it. It had taken all her powers to negotiate the use of the phone. And only if she contributed with the money she was earning from the weather observations. Two calls, hardly more than an hour each, and Steph had used up all her wages while Tessa and Sammie had done ninety-five per cent of the talking. Tessa and Sammie had promised—they’d given her their pledge—to call from their home phones the moment their parents went out. ‘Stephanie speaking.’
‘Stephanie West?’ A woman’s voice. Singsong.
‘Yes.’
‘Whose mother was Gretchen Cole?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cathy Innes here. Your mother would remember me as Cathy Smithies. We were on the lights together, many moons ago. Is Mum around?’
Mum had never talked about other children at Maatsuyker. ‘She’s not available at the moment.’
‘Oh.’ Cathy sounded disappointed. ‘Another time, then.’
‘Can I give her a message?’
‘Just a big hello from Cathy. We saw your photo in the newsletter. What sort of day are you having down there?’
‘Windy. It rained this morning.’
‘My mother used to say we had a lean on us when we left Maat.’ She wanted to chat. ‘Makes me homesick for the old times. The old way of life.’
‘Did you know my grandparents?’ Steph asked her.
‘We overlapped for three or four weeks when we were leaving, yes. In fact, your mum travelled back to Hobart with us on the boat.’
‘You and Mum went to school?’
‘No, dear. Hardly any of the lighthouse kids did. My brothers and I were homeschoolers. Dad had us work like navvies so we could get all our schoolwork finished and help out around the place.’ Cathy had a chuckle that made Steph imagine a round-faced girl.
‘Sounds better than boarding school.’
‘I remember when we left, Mr Cole dressed up the lighthouse with signal flags, had the Union Jack flying. Looked a picture from the water. Made your mother bawl and just about set us all off crying, we were so sad to leave.’ Cathy drew a big breath. ‘All water under the bridge now.’
Steph went to say goodbye. ‘I’m sorry you missed Mum.’
‘A shame what happened with your grandfather,’ Cathy said, still caught up in the old days. Steph thought she meant his heart attack. ‘It was a hard, relentless job, the light keeping. None of them were angels. But you’d have heard it all from your mother.’
Steph prickled. Cathy started to tell her more. It felt like a betrayal. ‘I have to go now. I’ll tell Mum you called.’
*
Steph held the ladder. ‘No rodents,’ her mother sang. ‘A welcome swallow’s nest. Five sweet little eggs.’ She was charged by the so-called treasures she had found in the roof. Her mother passed down a crate of old preserving jars thick with dust. ‘My mother used these exact jars. I bet they were hers.’ She handed Steph an assortment of empty flagons and bottles, one still full, unopened, stoppered with a cork. Gull’s Navy Rum. The glass was filthy with grime. ‘Who rang?’ her mother asked.
Should she say? Her mother looked so happy. ‘One of the pilots,’ she lied. ‘Checking the weather.’
‘You’d have to pay me to fly today.’
Her mother hadn’t registered that Steph had packed away her schoolbooks early. ‘I’m going out for a walk.’
Steph ran along the road. The conversation with Cathy had thrown her. There was no way to ask about Grandfather and Grandmother without Mum claiming everything back then was perfect. Steph had figured out a long time ago that her mother didn’t always tell the truth, not the full truth. It wasn’t out-and-out lying. Her mother didn’t see things, especially when it came to Callam. Everything bold about her brother had altered shape. Take a hike, his new friend said to Steph when she’d joined them after school. She’d waited for Callam to tell the older boy she was his sister and
to take a hike himself. Piss off, Callam hissed at her, annoyed and embarrassed by her presence.
According to Gran this second year should have felt easier than the first. By the second year, Gran said, you could no longer look back the way you had the first, thinking this time last year we were all together, this time last Christmas, last birthday. The last of everything, drifting from your reach. You medicated yourself on the distance of time—a sedative that dulled the sharpness then locked you in its murk. It was a kind of worn-out grief you couldn’t easily share, not once the time allowed for sadness had lapsed. And not on a crackly phone with Tessa or Sammie whose jam-packed weeks danced down the line in sequinned colour. Tessa and Sammie had finally asked, How are you, Steph? How are you really?
What to answer? Tell the truth to friends whose lives had grown out toward the air while Steph’s had turned its back to the wind, sheared to match the vegetation on this island. You know, she’d said to Tessa and Sammie. Neither did at all.
*
‘What are the jars in the workroom?’ Dad asked Steph when they sat down to dinner.
Steph pushed food around her plate. ‘Mum found them in the roof.’
Mum called from the kitchen. ‘I bet they were my mother’s jars. The pantry used to be chock-a-block with her preserves and pickles. I’m cleaning them up for the museum.’ Her mother was a little drunk. Back in Sydney she would have wrinkled her nose at boxed wine. Here on Maatsuyker, home rules didn’t always apply.
‘Who was the Pimms drinker?’ Dad said.
Mum put on a la-di-da accent. ‘The ladies of the lights enjoyed a little tipple.’
‘And the navy rum?’ Dad asked. ‘Your old man the soak?’
Mum didn’t answer.
Her father took a second helping of chicken. He saw Steph’s uneaten food. ‘What’s wrong?’
A shrug. ‘Not that hungry.’
He lowered his voice. ‘Are you all right?’
Mum squealed from the kitchen. ‘Look! Look! Look!’
Steph and Dad followed her out through the laundry to the picket fence. The clouds had lifted to a blood-red sky. Against the sunset the Needles stood stark in silhouette. The ocean sat motionless, lush as coloured silk.
‘The mutton-birds,’ Mum cried.
Steph searched the sky.
Mum disappeared inside and returned with binoculars swinging from her arm. ‘Take a look.’ She pointed to the water.
What first had looked like slicks of oil were rafts of birds resting on the water. Thousands in a single group.
Colour bathed the lighthouse. The sun was mostly gone, bulging and heavy, the skyline a fruity haze streaked with painted cloud. In the dimming light Steph spied a needle of white, a spotlight, the movement of a distant vessel. She focused the binoculars: a red hull, a white wheelhouse. Tom.
A patch on the water ruffled as if stirred by breeze. In turn the next patch lifted, and then the next, expanding into wing. The sky was aflutter, a squall of wings rising and streaming their way. Birds swept up the cliff line, washed over the lighthouse, clouded the sky, rushed across their heads. A stream of birds poured past at eye level, darting, winding, tipping, changing tack to avoid colliding in the rush. Like novice parachutists, some thudded hard on the road then tumbled into furrows. Others careered into bushes, breaking branches as they fell. One came down upon the grassy slope, then tumbled downhill and landed in the ditch. A few glided in for a graceful landing on the pathway. Most crashed onto the lawn, or thudded against the rockery, picking themselves up and shaking off their arrival with an ungainly squawk. Immediately they set to, waddling off to find their nest, cooing and crowing to those in the air. The return of the mutton-birds. A sensory assault of chatter and industry, of clumsy flapping wings. No longer could they claim the island as theirs alone. Birds scrambled from the foliage and tore at overgrown branches, scratching at dirt to unearth a burrow. Steph sniffed at something medicinal, an acrid fume carried in the air. ‘What’s the smell?’ It brought to mind sickly syrup laced with anaesthetic and a putrid trace of fish.
Mum looped her arm around Steph’s shoulder. ‘That, my sweet, is the real Maatsuyker Island.’ She rested her head on Steph’s shoulder, the air between them fumy with wine. Her mother sniffed back tears. ‘My darling.’ For a moment Steph thought her mother meant her. ‘My beautiful boy won’t ever be here to see this.’
‘He is here.’ In the light. All around. The realisation inflated Steph. Could no one else feel it? She spoke aloud. ‘Can’t we remember him without always being sad?’ Dad studied her. Neither of them answered.
Steph left her parents, Dad’s arm held around her mother’s waist. ‘There, there, love,’ her father said.
Steph stood by her bedroom window staring at the night. The fishing fleet’s cluster of lights sparked through the dark. She opened the window to the air. The moon had finally appeared, a broad silver blade pressed down on the water. Her mother would spend tomorrow maudlin. Her father would disappear after breakfast, another day of mowing or clearing out the drains. They’d been here a month and only Gran and cousin Lydia had found the time to call. Steph set her phone alarm for morning. The bleats and groans from seals carried through the night, mournful as a cattle yard. She inhaled the cloying smell of mutton-bird, air rancid with their oil. The endless chatter of birds. An orchestra of discord pulsating through the night.
10
The whiff of mutton-bird as Tom passed by a patch of newly excavated burrows. Beyond the smell of birds the fragrance swamped his senses. When the rain stopped and the air stood still, Maatsuyker’s bush released an infusion of tea-tree, bracken fern, mountain pepper berry, freshly mown grass.
He heard a whistle. He looked to see Stephanie breezing down the road, arms flopping, hopscotch across the vehicle furrows, gumboots shiny as a fire truck. She raised her arm and waved, she broke into a run. He watched her smile. He heard her laugh. Tom could not remember anyone, ever, that pleased to see him. It didn’t matter that he barely knew this girl racing down the hill. He felt giddy with feeling. A shadow reared up. It could never be that easy, Tom-Tom. As quickly it was gone.
She showed him the burrow in the wall of the ditch, a movement of grey feathers, a beak.
‘One big rain,’ Tom told her, ‘the whole thing will wash away.’ Brightness vanished from her face and he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. ‘What would you like to do? Have you seen the Light Keeper’s Tree?’
She shook her head.
‘What have you been doing all this time?’ Six weeks she’d been here.
‘Plenty, believe you me.’ She used her fingers to reel off the weather observations, her studies and assignments, her art, cleaning the old lighthouse, helping her mother in the vegetable garden. ‘And my all-time favourite job?’ She made a face. ‘DEMOULDING WALLS. And then I’m in bed by nine-thirty because it’s deathly cold inside the house and I have to wear thirty-seven layers and a beanie and a scarf just to stay alive.’ She stopped to inhale. ‘Then, dring, dring, and it’s pitch black and freezing and I’m out of bed to do the six o’clock weather. And back up there at nine. And again at three and—what?’ she stopped. ‘What’s so funny?’
He elbowed her. ‘That’s why they pay you the big bucks.’
She elbowed him back, tried to muscle him off the road, almost landing him in the ditch. He grabbed her. She squealed and broke free. Even in gumboots she was quick. She waited at the top of the hill, doubled over, laughing.
The light keeper’s track started behind the cottages. A woven mat of clipped ferns crisscrossed the track.
‘Dad’s always doing some clearing or other.’
‘How does he manage on the radio? His voice and all.’
‘He’s taking a break. He’s hoping that will fix it.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Spasmodic dysphonia. It’s neurological. He says it’s like having a vice around his neck.’
‘Has he always had it?’
‘
Just the last year or so. There’s some toxin they can inject in your vocal cords. It’s supposed to make it better for a while.’
Tom swallowed. He felt his Adam’s apple stick in his throat. It sounded bloody awful.
Across the surface of the water, close in to the rocks, pairs of white and yellow buoys arced toward the cliffs. Looking down on it, Tom felt safe. From here the ocean didn’t look so mean.
Stephanie prattled in a way that made Tom think about his boyhood, waiting for his mother to come home from work so he had someone to talk to about his day. Stephanie was telling him about her school. A ski lodge in the snow they all went up to in the winter. She’d missed out on some trip to South America—because of coming here. Tom quietened. The contrast between them felt as stark as Maatsuyker’s two lighthouses: one steeped in tradition, regal and grand; the other utilitarian, built for function. Tom’s biggest school trip was a weekend to an old hydro village in the highlands and on to the dam, air white with fog and so cold it grazed his lungs.
She spoke about her two best friends, how the three of them wagged school and changed out of their uniforms on the ferry. They’d caught a train to Sydney’s western suburbs.
‘Get caught?’ he asked.
‘You’d never run into anyone out there. Tessa said she’d rather be infested by fleas from a thousand camels than be seen shopping at an outlet mall. She tends to be dramatic.’
‘What’s wrong with malls?’ Tom asked. Not that shopping was his strong suit.
‘That’s how it is at our school, Tom. God, you’d never admit you paid twelve ninety-five for a top. It’s bad enough having the other girls call us three the poories. Behind our backs. We told them we bought the tops at DJ’s. Oh, wow, they’re gorgeous. How much? Goes to show.’
They climbed the track until tea-tree and she-oak gave way to native cherries, tree ferns, stately things with feathered limbs that arched across the track. They arrived at a thicket of peppermints lofty enough to filter the light. It was the only place on the island Tom knew of where tall eucalypts grew. Underfoot the track grew spongy with moss and sodden leaf mulch. Tom stopped to tuck the hem of his jeans inside his socks.