Wildlight

by Robyn Mundy

  Too many hard memories to settle back there. When Tom came home from travelling he helped his mother sell up and shift to Melbourne. He drove up here to Camden Haven, tracked down old William whose bushwalking days were behind him. William drove him out here, a sale sign nailed to the gate. They parked on the rise beyond a derelict timber cottage with a rusted-out tank. William pulled out his thermos to share a brew. Where they sat overlooked rolling pasture, a winding river, swathes of unlogged bush. What someone like you could do with a place as fine as this. Tainted money from working on the boat that Tom had never touched. Money that could be changed to something good.

  Tom once believed that if a person clocked up enough good then maybe, just maybe, it could cancel out the past. But his brother lingers, ghostly as a shadow. Some nights he slides into Tom’s dreams, steals air from his lungs. Unfinished business, William liked to say.

  Tom snaps off a Tiger Green. He pares it open with his pocketknife. He prides himself on the heirloom varieties he’s championing around the markets—species not groomed for some citified mode of perfection, but tomatoes that taste the way tomatoes were intended. The heirlooms are a different league to the sorry specimens that line supermarket shelves, chameleons selected for their staying power—forget goodness and taste. Tom catches himself. As forthright as William was, banging on about the virtues of organic.

  The old man grew frail before Tom’s eyes. He was chairbound by the time Tom pegged out the foundations for the house. Propped beneath the old canvas brolly doing his utmost to supervise. In that final year, afternoons together at the hospice, their talk held an intimacy. Plenty of well-worn stories, yes, but moments of William’s life Tom had never been privy to. The trouble with memories is they can work against you, the old man said. People you cared about, things you’ve lost.

  They spoke of Frank. Tom begrudged Stephanie for some of what had happened. She would have known of Frank’s death, he told William. She must have heard talk on the radio among the fishermen. She left that island and never once contacted him. Just pissed off and got on with her future.

  Tom could have predicted the old man’s response. We don’t get all we want in life, Tom. No one’s to blame.

  Not that long ago he typed the name on the web. The world teemed with Stephanie Wests: attorney, movie producer, project manager, embezzler, ophthalmologist, realtor, an obituary for a grandmother, a scholar in Bristol, a designer in Fort Worth, a glass artist in Santa Fe, New Mexico . . . the bristle at the sight of her. Blue jeans, long hair. Skinny still, wearing an armful of silver bangles. He looked over the studio’s web page, clicked her portfolio, he read of her studies at the Canberra glass school, the move to America, workshops she ran for Bullseye Glass. He looked through photos, installations, high-end galleries with work that sold for thousands. He closed off the page and returned to his business, newly determined to focus on his own wellbeing. The good things. The big new deal with Qantas. Gourmet outlets. Internet sales that had tripled in eighteen months. New enquiries each and every week.

  Vehicles crunch over gravel. Tom hears voices, laughter, his dog being made a fuss of.

  ‘Morning, Tom.’

  ‘Morning.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Forrest,’ spouts the new work experience kid.

  Sheesh. ‘Tom is good,’ he tells the kid. He whistles his dog. She bounds ahead of him, sits rigid at the gate, her tail sweeping gravel, while Tom slides the sign to Open. The old metal honesty box he fashioned from salvaged bits of tin still sits nailed to a post. A measure of the distance he’s come, he likes to think of it. For the less informed, a mailbox. He fishes out an advert for chopped firewood, for someone’s lost cat—a shifty-looking beast with a knotted face, answers to the name of Satan. Good luck with that one. Tom nods to Yvette driving in, her back windscreen sporting a line of My Family stickers: a zany Mum, Dad with his surfboard, an unruly assortment of kids, pets and geese.

  They’re as good as family, his team, solid friends amongst them. Tom’s made it this far without having wronged anyone. Strong prospects for the future, a decent house, the world’s best dog, a girl who’d quit her job tomorrow and move up here for good. Tom slows, slides his boot across the gravel. A girl antsy for him to say the word.

  He makes his way back toward the sheds. Zulu blasts ahead to round up Yvette and chaperone her to the showroom. He wishes William were still around to set him straight.

  29

  A twinkling of lights from some tiny Pacific island, barely discernible from this great height. Had Steph turned a moment later to look out the cabin window she would not have known it was there. Perhaps we navigate life that way. Perhaps we change course at precisely the wrong moment, blink and miss landfall. Perhaps returning is a bad idea. But Santa Fe is behind her, too late now to change her mind, her apartment rented for the year, farewell drinks and a cake decorated with a map of Australia.

  She reclines her seat, tucks the doona around her feet. Her thoughts drift to that other farewell, a spill of pledges that could have swayed her to stay. Steph had moved beyond herself, had risen through the night and looked down upon the pair of them, the strange turnabout of roles. She’d felt disdain, a momentary surge of pity, not for him or her but for all of them. She’d looked to herself, the wasted time, months of wretchedness she’d brought upon herself. She’d taken a step away, shrugged off the woollen coat he’d gifted her last birthday and laid it on the plaza bench. A silent declaration shored up by her refusal to shiver with the sharpness of the air.

  The cover of the inflight magazine. Glass vessels the colour of the ocean. 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, even the age is right. Oceans more worldly than the boy she once knew. Steph 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.

  *

  Sydney. International Arrivals. A wall of waiting faces. Lydia!

  On her cousin’s hip a toddler in pyjamas and a dressing-gown, holding up a monkey balloon. His nose, the shape of his chin: little jigsaw pieces of Callam. ‘Crazy woman.’ Steph hugs her. She strokes the boy’s fine hair. ‘I would have caught the train and got a taxi up to your place.’

  Lydia snorts. ‘You have an accent. You even look American.’

  ‘Not true.’

  ‘You do. Squeaky clean, in a hip kind of way. Way too glam for the likes of us, isn’t she, Nicky?’ Nic buries his face in his mother’s neck.

  Lydia lives north of Forty Baskets Beach. They drive across the Harbour Bridge on a spring-filled morning. Steph is transfixed by cobalt water and the pulsing brilliance of the sky. The light makes her squint. She looks down at coloured spinnakers as ballooned as blown glass, at the Manly ferry trundling across to Circular Quay, a constant through her girlhood. A lone paddler glides in the glassy green that edges the shore. Steph wishes she could gather every artist from Santa Fe, portal them here to witness this magic.

  For years she has distanced herself. Left Australia for her art and in the doing fell for New Mexico: Land of Enchantment. She feels the first tug of everything she’s left behind.

  Sydney’s air feels maritime, moistened warmth against her skin. She peels off to a T-shirt, glass foundry attire as worn as her boots. She wears Santa Fe old: denim jeans, old pueblo turquoise and silver. Too glam?

  Nic is out to it, slumped in his car seat. Lydia’s eyes rhythmically glance at the rear-view mirror. Motherhood. Her cousin looks serene, radiates contentment, everything in Lyd’s world is proper and right.

  ‘So,’ her cousin says. ‘Ready for Canberra?’

  ‘I am. I’m excited about it. Heard from Gran?’

  ‘She’s slowing down. She says she still gardens every day. She’s over the moon about having you back to stay. She’s asked us all down for Christmas. Your mum and dad are flyin
g over from the west.’

  ‘I can’t remember the last time we were all together.’ Steph looks from the waterway to a shiny, shiny headland verdant with green. ‘If ever I forget how beautiful this is, remind me of this moment.’

  Lydia smiles. ‘My mission is to never let you go.’

  The morning light, the first flush of lilac painting leaf-bare jacarandas, children playing in the park as the car weaves around the water’s edge. The smell and feel of oceanic air washes through Steph with childish squeals from summers at Forty Baskets Beach. Mum and Callam, Dad and Steph: never-again lives through a pungent gauze of memory. The words spill before she can stop them: ‘Can we drive past my old house?’ To punish herself? Can home ever be more than a catalogue of loss?

  *

  ‘It makes no sense.’ Lydia puts down the Qantas magazine, pours her tea. ‘If Tom Forrest survived—returned from the dead, whatever—you’d have heard about it, read it in the papers.’

  Steph has no explanation. She spent the last half of the flight in a light-headed whirl, reeling between the present and the past. She couldn’t get warm, she couldn’t sleep, her mind scrambling for answers to questions Lydia now asks. ‘Perhaps it never made the news in Sydney,’ she tells her cousin. ‘Perhaps we missed it. When we came back from Maatsuyker everything was manic. The house sold in the first week. Dad flew off to his new job in Western Australia. I left for Canberra to start at the glass school.’

  ‘Stephie, if this is Tom . . .’

  ‘It is. There’s no mistake.’

  ‘Have you told your parents?’

  ‘Not yet. When they get back from their trip. I need to come to terms with it myself.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘I have eight days before Canberra. I could go up there if I wanted.’

  Lydia studies her. ‘To what end, exactly?’

  ‘He and I—we were kids back then. I was so confused. I didn’t know how to deal with things. Nothing got resolved. I always regretted that we never had the chance to talk.’

  Lydia turns to the photo. ‘He’s not nineteen, Steph. He has a new life. He could be married with a family. Imagine how I’d feel if some old girlfriend knocked on the door asking after my husband. Perhaps you should ask yourself what you hope to gain. Weigh up the consequences.’

  Consequences. She hasn’t paid much heed to those in recent times. But how can she deny the past? How can she brush off a person and the memories of a time and place that meant so much? ‘Tom was the first man I loved. I’ve gone through my adult life believing he was dead. It’s like a weight, a longing deep inside me that’s never gone away. It feels monumental, Lydia. Something I need to face, not shut away.’ Steph studies her coffee. ‘What do I hope to gain? I want to see him, talk to him. Set things straight. I want to know he’s happy. No agenda. Nothing more than that.’

  Her cousin throws her a look Steph knows from their girlhood: I don’t buy that.

  *

  Camden Head Pilot Station: Retreat accommodation, short or long term. She clicks through photos. A refurbished timber cottage, an historic signal shed that sits on a headland of rolling lawns and bushland, that overlooks the ocean. Steph keys in her credit card number. Her fingers hover above the keyboard. You can’t relive the past, her father’s trusty saying. She makes the payment and closes the screen.

  30

  The tight arses stake out their route. Tom recognises the woman, hair the colour of bruised potato, a serial sampler who brazenly snacks her way through the Sunday markets without giving up a coin. She makes her way to his stall, rubbing his neighbour’s sun cream into her liver-spotted arms.

  Tom opens a jar of salsa and hands the woman a plastic spoon. ‘Tomatillo and roasted jalapeño chilli. From our new range.’

  She screws her nose. ‘Not too hot is it?’

  ‘Most manage.’

  She spoons the salsa across a lavash cracker and studs the surface with marinated feta. ‘In for a penny.’ She crunches and swallows, grunts an appraisal. ‘Wouldn’t say it’s my favourite.’ She ignores the tongs and helps herself to a stack of extra crackers. Off she totters toward Annie’s homeopathic balms.

  Why suffer this gig for a paltry handful of sales? A day of the weekend when Tom could be doing better things. The money is in contracts. The exposure from the Qantas deal alone has been worth trialling new recipes, forking out for fancy jars and customised labels he’s come to better understand as branding.

  The woman moves on. She’d be given short shrift in Annie’s mild-mannered way. Perhaps Tom does know why he puts up with this caper. For all the things you can never put a ticket value on. Musings with Annie over a your turn to buy the coffee and a slice of her homemade cake, a chinwag with the mayor, talk of a fundraiser locomotive ride to Kempsey, a barbecue, a working bee, an invite to someone’s house for dinner. The woman from twelve months ago he pegged as just another tourist—which she was until she tasted the first sampler, and then another and another, purchased one of each and asked for a price list and quizzed him with a volley of astute questions. She riffled through her handbag, pulled out a card. I’m on holiday until next week. Give me a call after that. Qantas Q-Catering. A chance meeting with someone who could just change your life.

  Tom takes a deep breath, pushes against the tightness strapped around his chest. He hasn’t slept. His gut’s been churning since he left the house this morning. He checks his watch. If only he could gauge the difference between anticipation and dread. Tom heels his boot into the grass beneath the trestle. How do you begin to fathom the obscure trail of dots that reconnects a person with your life? She was Stephanie’s friend first, a small girl who scored a stack of unwanted signal flags. Love flags, she chose to think of them. She claims destiny reconnects people, that some overarching guardian has the whole thing figured out.

  Destiny, no. A trip down to Hobart the year before last, a new line of preserves that took out trophies in the Fine Foods Fair. A stranger tapped him on the shoulder. A small woman. Red hair. It’s Marcie, she said expectantly. Tom drew a blank. Maatsuyker Island, she blurted, undeterred. I was there with Stephanie. You drove me back to school. The signal flags.

  Marcie. The name was gone but the day thudded into place. That was a lifetime ago, he said. She asked him out for coffee and as she talked, Tom felt oddly buoyant by the line she cast back to his past. She was wholesome, sweet, a reminder that there’d been moments of good amongst the bad. One small untarnished link. When they went their separate ways Tom found himself walking to the docks, past fishing boats tied up at their berths. If the Perlita Lee was still around she was nowhere to be seen. He found Bluey’s boat and slowed. The new owner, a man Tom didn’t know, refused to look up from his work. It was he, Tom, who was the stranger, one more gawking tourist to be ignored.

  Marcie invited him to lunch the day he flew home. He found her pretty, vivacious, he felt bolstered by her energy and was taken by the way she enthused about Maatsuyker—the thousand details she remembered. Several of the signal flags lined her hallway. A single day on that island that she carried like an amulet. She made it known to Tom that she was unencumbered, good riddance to a worn-out relationship. Tom breathed in all that zest and chatter, smitten enough to phone her when he got home.

  Easters. Long weekends. January. Visits in July to escape the winter chill. He’s grown accustomed to Marcie’s comings and goings, the whirlwind of her presence, bursts of chatter and ideas for jazzing up his house. He likes showing her around, a drive up to South West Rocks to her favourite place for lunch. Mostly he likes the everydayness: preparing a meal for someone other than himself, the curve of her body against his in the bed. On his birthday last she arrived with a puppy from her father’s farm. Named and registered. You’d never have decided if I’d consulted with you first. The world’s biggest ditherer, she called him. Now Tom can’t imagine his day beginning or ending without that crazy hound. He tries to assemble a My Family sticker. Tom. Marcie. Zulu. Her hints at chil
dren waiting at the end. He draws a ragged breath, checks his watch again. Marcie’s not good at being made to wait.

  Finally Yvette arrives to take over the stall. ‘Have I made you late?’ Yvette states the blinking obvious. Tom peels off plastic gloves, kneels down to Zulu tethered to the marquee pole, laid out in a sulk. ‘You look after Yvette. Just a few days.’ A picture of abject misery. You’d think she was being banished to the vet.

  ‘The boys had tennis and halfway there Tyler discovers he’s left his racquet at home. Kids. Anyway, never mind. A flight to meet. Drive carefully. Have fun. Go, Tom. Go.’ She shoos him away. ‘And don’t even think about work,’ she bellows after him.

  Crunch time.

  *

  Steph wanders the markets. Only a small part of herself is attuned to marquees emanating a potpourri of goat milk soaps and scented candles, the glitter of restorative crystals. An elderly man shows off his turned wooden bowls; a bearded greenie sells pump packs of lemon myrtle moisturiser with utilitarian labels. All around her is local produce—even jalapeño chilli that makes her forget this is spring and swamps her with longings for fall. You’re here, Steph. Be in the now.

  Her accommodation at the old pilot station is a five-minute drive to this tidy town. Cottage roofs reflect banks of photovoltaics alongside old-fashioned chimneys. People walk at a leisurely place, they smile unguardedly. You wouldn’t be dead for quids, the rental car man bragged about the sunshine when he met Steph at the train.