The Ghost's Child

by Sonya Hartnett

  “Even our poky little town had newspapers,” Matilda explained. “My father had them delivered to the house every day. I read them, and I was amazed. While I’d been gone, such a foolish thing had happened. Someone had fired a gun and killed an heir to a throne, and all the countries surrounding the street corner where the heir died had used his death as a reason to pounce into war – as if war is a child’s game played with sticks and stones, and its hurts can be healed with a kiss. But this wasn’t a game at all. Every day the papers printed lists of men who were maimed, missing, dead; and the lists grew longer, and never seemed to stop growing.”

  “So did you want to become a soldier, and help win the war?” The boy smiled at the idea.

  “Not exactly,” Matilda replied. “I was brave, but not that brave. Besides, the men who were so wantonly slaughtering one another were still gentlemen enough to believe that a battlefield was not a nice place for a lady… But the women in those fighting countries were helping in other ways. With the men gone, it was they who were driving the trucks, running the factories, harvesting the fields. It was they who were manufacturing the ammunition. And they were caring for the soldiers who were sent home broken, unable to play that awful game any more.”

  The boy nodded, and lay down again, his hands folded under his head.

  “I told Papa I wished to go where I’d be useful.” Matilda closed her eyes and saw the dining table, the candlelight, the roast lamb and jug of mint sauce, the expression on her father’s face. “I knew I could do something more important with my life than paint watercolours and attend the theatre and shop for buttons and bows to match a new dress.”

  And she had wanted to crowd her hours with noise and busyness and a thousand thoughts that were not sunk nose-deep in the past. “That was a good idea,” said the boy.

  “That, perhaps, is a good idea.” Mama licked a scarlet drop from her chin. “The first good idea you’ve had in a long time. Send you away. Give everyone time to forgive you.”

  Papa sighed, and the look on his face was sad but accepting, because he understood that his daughter needed this thing.

  So within a few weeks Maddy was aboard ship once more, sailing, this time, for a certain destination, on a boat which had an engine, and thus no need for wind. But Maddy, standing on the deck, spread her hands to Zephyrus, and let him rush through her fingers. She stood at the railing and searched the horizon, but from the deck of a big metal ship such things as spellbound islands are frivolous, and never exist.

  She found a place where she could be useful in a grand stone house circled by a park of elm trees and grass, a place where soldiers who’d been injured in the war were sent to learn the laws of their new legless or armless lives. Maddy washed the men, and wrote their letters; read to them, and wheeled them around the grounds in chairs. She spooned supper to their lips and wiped their stained, scarred cheeks. She held their hands when they woke at night, soaked and shouting with nightmares; when fever made them call for their mothers it was Maddy who dabbed their faces and cooed them back to sleep. She wore a white dress, learned to roll cigarettes, went whole nights without sleeping, slept on a cot; and let clouds move over her past.

  It was a new world inside the grand house, more indomitable and more traumatic than any world Maddy had known. She saw men struggling to surface from drowning despair; men who, suffering dreadfully, nevertheless managed to laugh. These men had lost much, but had somehow kept their humour, their goodness, their trust. They had not let anyone take from them these things that were most worth keeping. They made Maddy, sometimes, ashamed of herself.

  Soldiers often arrived at the house with their heads balled in bandages, having been blinded by poisonous gas. Something about these patients kept Maddy awake at night. It troubled her to think they would never see stags or cathedrals again. They would never see rain falling, or rivers, or woodland meadows or shooting stars, things that are meant for everyone to see. They would never see the faces they’d loved to see – their sweethearts, their children, their dogs. These men had lost something bigger than an arm or a leg: they had lost sight of beautiful things. Maddy covered her eyes and imagined her life without the images collected inside her head: and the vacuum of blackness she saw there made her gasp.

  At the end of the war, Maddy wrote to her father announcing that she wanted to be a doctor. Eyes and eyesight, she’d discovered, interested her. Maybe, if she learned enough about sight, she could give it back to blind men.

  Her father, receiving this letter, rolled his own eyes to the ceiling. The iron man would have preferred that his dreamy daughter and wayward child come home to occupy herself with nothing more challenging than trying on pearls. But her other father, the one who had once given Maddy a mirror, wanted her to be happy. So he called upon his influential friends and made donations where they counted, and Maddy enrolled at university to learn about skeletons and senses and germs. She learned how people live, and why they die; she learned about infection and cancer, tuberculosis and haemorrhage, and the body’s armies of cells. She cut open dead people, and sewed them back together; she stared into bottles of pieces and parts. She learned how babies are formed and born and raised; she learned the many ills of the old. She ignored the teasing of her fellow students, who thought doctoring was best left to boys. When they badgered her with questions, intrigued by her aloofness, she told them nothing about herself, and eventually they let her be. Maddy did not want friends or adversaries, let alone a beau. She wanted to understand eyes. She sat with her books in her chambers at night, making notes and concentrating until her own eyes grew blurry and she sagged in her chair. Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying. When the wind rumpled her papers and the pages of her books, Maddy would smile and murmur tolerantly, “Yes, Zephyrus, I know.”

  Sometimes, when things were difficult, she thought about Feather. It rested her to think of him. She saw him standing in the breeze, the wind ransacking his hair. She saw birds wheeling in squally circles over his head. She wondered what he was doing at that moment – sleeping maybe, or swimming. She’d look away from her work, as if she might glimpse him, but see just a window, a wall.

  Her father died suddenly, not long after a brass plate bearing Maddy’s name was screwed to the door of her white-walled surgery. She read the black-edged telegram and wept so fiercely she thought she would crinkle like a leaf and blow away. For weeks she dreamed of Papa, a tall broad man scaling pyramids and the Eiffel Tower. “Look up, Maddy, look up!” he called, as he climbed higher and higher. His loss reminded her of other things. Years had passed, but she thought of the fay – no longer tiny, but older, and running, a plucky mischievous creature with unruly hair. She kicked a chair helplessly, and hurt her foot. Where there’s life there is loss. Had Feather said that? His words in her memory were imperfect. Take pride in knowing you’re capable of love.

  In the beginning, the blind ex-soldiers were reluctant to be treated by her. There was still something barbarous and odd about Maddy; and she was youthful, and not stern, and she wasn’t a man – in short, she was nothing a doctor should be. At first, only the poorest and most hopeless let her shine her torch into their eyes. Yet word soon spread that Maddy was a good doctor, because she didn’t tell her patients to accept their blindness manfully, but let them howl and curse over the damage done to them. She understood that grief can live on long after it’s ceased to be spoken of, and she encouraged her patients to speak to her. Gradually her waiting room became full – not just with ex-soldiers, but with infants born eyeless, and children who’d played with crackers, and elderly people whose vision was failing. She peered into grey eyes, hazel eyes, green and blue eyes, and eyes the same midnight colour as her own. Looking into pupils, Maddy pretended she could see everything her patient had seen, and might one day see again. She operated, stitch
ed, unwrapped bandages, let in light; she experimented with potions and pills. Often, however, she admitted defeat, and told her patients to look around while they could. Her young patients raved against their fates, the older ones accepted theirs with grace. The old people were coming to the end of their lives, and they sometimes talked about dying. When they wondered if there was a Heaven, Maddy said she supposed there could be. So many fabulous things existed – krakens and waterfalls, the sunny smell of wheat – why shouldn’t there be a Heaven as well?

  By the time she was a middle-aged woman, Maddy was quietly famous in her field, respected for her innovations and expertise. Every few years she embarked on a sea journey. Sometimes she voyaged with friends or colleagues; mostly she set out with no company except the ghost of her father. She travelled to relax; she travelled to refresh her cache of the world’s most beautiful things. Cruising oceans, she looked through portholes for a glimpse of an Island of Stillness. She didn’t expect to see one, of course, and she never did; it was just something to do to pass the time. It was hard for her to picture Feather’s face now, and impossible to hear his voice. But whenever she happened to think of him, Maddy still felt a swirl in her heart. And although so much had faded from her memory, she knew that if she saw him, she would remember. She would remember his voice as if she had never stopped listening to it.

  And when she thought of Feather, she thought of the fay – tall now, and occasionally rebellious, headstrong and casually kind. She would close her book and turn off the lamp and curl up under her blankets, and call herself a silly fool, and listen to the night.

  Maddy’s mother lived to become a crabby old woman. Her day-nurse found her one morning propped on her pillows, glaring at a ladies magazine, cold as yesterday’s dinner. Maddy didn’t weep fiercely at the news of her mother’s death, feeling only a sense of regret for what might have been. She did not understand why Mama hadn’t been happy with what life had given her, and knew she would have departed this world with a sniff of disgust. But she hoped there really was a Heaven where Mama could go, some exclusive resort where wealthy ladies found plenty of faults about which to satisfyingly complain.

  After her mother died, the big seaside house in which Maddy had been born stood empty, and had to be sold. Maddy came home for the first time in untold years. It was eerie and enchanting to be returned after so long. Everything was altered, but still smelt the same – the wide rooms of the house, the eucalypt bushland, the cove with its rocky beach. Maddy was no longer young, and it took her many painstaking and tiring weeks to deal with the furniture and artworks and chinaware. In the attic, opening case after case, she felt herself travelling through time. A part of her hoped she would find the felt giraffe she’d forsaken as a child, but she didn’t. But she did discover a box full of knick-knacks that had once decorated a cottage in a forest.

  As she untied the cord that bound the box, Maddy was holding her breath. As she folded back the lid, she sniffed pine cones and pond water, muddy boots and a vegetable garden. Rummaging inside the box, she found a brass kaleidoscope, and a sepia photograph of a girl at the helm of a boat. For a moment, gazing at these relics, everything was keenly real, and happened only yesterday.

  She tied up the box and set it aside with the keepsakes she would send home; all else was auctioned, and the proceeds donated to Mama’s foundling mites. The house by the ocean – the finest house in town – was sold and signed over to a new family. As Maddy walked down the carriageway for the final time, she realized she was no one’s daughter now. She stopped calling herself Maddy, and turned into Matilda.

  She had booked a cabin on a ship, meaning to sail away. But the day came to leave, and she didn’t leave: instead she found a sweet-natured house in the suburbs, and decided to stay. Matilda was nearly old now, but like a child she’d become filled with a yearning for home. She had seen as much of the world as she needed to, and given sight wherever she could. When she could not give sight, she’d tried to give mettle: change your sorrow into joy. Now she wanted to be where she felt she belonged, where her father had walked, where a nargun had guarded her, where her life had been untame and secure.

  In the years that followed, Matilda made some friends; the mellow shuffle of time softened her, so she became talkative and genial. Her house was filled with interesting objects, and she always ate fresh food. Each morning she did the crossword before setting out on a brisk walk. She drank a glass of wine in the evening for the sake of her blood, and visited her dentist once a year. She threw scraps into the garden for the birds, and always stopped to pat a dog. When television was invented, she went out and bought a set. She took photography lessons and painting lessons, and gave to charities; she read books about biology and well-lived lives. She pottered in her garden, planting bulbs and sweeping and turning a blind eye to the weeds. She needed stronger glasses, and tablets for her arthritic knuckles. Now and then she was absent-minded, which she never used to be. She would find herself leaning against the broom, drowsy with daydreams. Things she assumed she’d forgotten began returning to Matilda clearly. She recollected feelings, scents, colours and sounds – dancing in gilt palaces, yawning in fuggy libraries, diving in a white drift of snow. The heave of the ocean under her feet, the brashness of salt in the air. In the corner of her eye, a marlin leapt from the waves.

  Leaning on her broom, Matilda remembered sailing away on the Albatross, leaving Feather marooned by peace. Although she was proud to have known him, there had been times, when she was younger, when she’d wished she never had. She had despised the sadness that hung inside her like old lace. It had taken such a long time to alchemize her grief into acceptance and forgiveness, gratitude and finally joy. But she had never doubted for an instant that she was lucky to have felt such love.

  Matilda was standing on the mountain top, and looking back along the path she’d walked she was satisfied with what she saw. Her life had never been mystifying, as she’d once girlishly wished it to be: it had been, in its way, quite ordered and clear. There were things missing from it that she’d expected to have – things other people secured easily, but which she had been left without. Yet she believed she had lived a fulfilling life, a worthwhile life, a brave one. She had tried to be the person her father hoped she could be. Her heart was no longer a prison, but something without walls or a key. When Matilda thought of Feather now, which she almost never did, it was with soft affection and admiration for him, and a wisp of pity.

  Matilda’s eyes were so heavy she could hardly keep them open. She had a recollection of deciding to make dinner, though she wasn’t particularly hungry; she fancied she could even recall chopping broccoli and stirring a pot. But there was no plate on the table before her, and no taste in her mouth. She wondered muzzily if she was remembering something done another day.

  The boy was sitting up straight on the settee, and he appeared to be waiting for her.

  “And now you’re here.” Her voice sounded mumbly, she hoped she was making sense. She seemed to have grown inexplicably more feeble in an afternoon. Here she was, half-asleep, and it wasn’t even dark outside.

  The boy smiled, his grey eyes curving into crescents. Although he was waiting, he didn’t seem impatient – he was not a foreboding guest at all. “You were pretty when you were young,” he said, surprisingly. “Why didn’t you ever find somebody else to like?”

  Matilda’s hands made a church steeple. “Oh, I liked. Some of the soldiers I met at the grand house during the war – some of the doctors and scientists I knew in later years – they were clever, funny, generous, good men. One or two of them I liked very much indeed. But it was never such love that made both of us want to stop searching for love.”

  “Huh.” The boy said uncomfortably, “I wish it had been.”

  “Thank you,” said Matilda. “Sometimes I did, too. But life is not a story, and things don’t always turn out as you’d prefer. That doesn’t mean you have failed, though.”

  “Hmm.” The boy looked unhurr
iedly around the room. “But you’re happy,” he stated. “You’ve been happy with your life.”

  Matilda weighed her reply. “I’m happy to have been alive. I’m happy to have had the chance.”

  He looked at her. “If I ask a question, will you answer it?”

  “Of course, if I can.”

  “All right.” He shifted his slight frame. “Which did you need more: Feather, or the fay?”

  It was something she had thought about before. “The sky needs the moon and the sun equally,” she said. “Everyone needs food, but water as well. I needed Feather to keep me warm; the fay is the one I would have kept warm.”

  “I understand,” said the boy.

  Matilda sighed and smiled, knowing something was ended. She felt very welcoming towards her guest, though he had arrived so unexpectedly, on a day when she had given scant contemplation to anything beyond the weather and supper. She knew that part of her must have always been waiting for him – waiting forever, for years. “You’re not as old as you should be,” she observed.

  He said, “I am the age you most often imagine me.”

  This was true. She’d imagined him as a tiny, pale-faced infant, and then as a slender boy. She’d imagined him as he would have been by now – very grown up, a proper man, maybe a doctor like herself, with tall children of his own. She would be a grandmother, a whole other person to the one she was now, somebody with photographs cluttering her mantel, the focus of loud attention at Christmas time.

  But most often she had imagined him the way he looked this evening, sitting lightly on the settee: a fair-haired child of eleven or twelve, someone old enough to hold a serious conversation, too old to hold her hand – but young enough to want to be with her, young enough to play. He wore clothes of the type she’d have chosen for him, good strong boots, hardy red shirt, trousers that would last. He would have a coat, too, and she wished he would wear it more often. She had given him, over the years, so many Christian names, each dependent on her mood. There was no single word that seemed to permanently suit the delight that filled her on the day she had stood by a window and felt the shiver that was him.