Refuge

by Jackie French

  Susannah looked across at Billy.

  ‘I dunno what’s happenin’,’ he answered her unspoken question. ‘No one ain’t come like this before, just appearing in the sea. Each of us was in our own safe beds afore we came down to the beach.’

  ‘Please,’ Nafeesa pleaded, looking from face to face. ‘We have to find my sisters!’ She stared in hope as Jamila stood up. ‘You’ll find a rescue boat? I will do anything! My uncle will give anything! We have to get a rescue boat!’

  ‘There is no boat. Not here. Not now. Susannah will explain it,’ said Faris tiredly. ‘She is good at explaining it. She has been doing it for more than eighty years.’

  CHAPTER 17

  The new chill wind blew stronger. They sat on the beach and ate and drank, while Jamila fed the girl small pieces of bread and cheese and sips of juice, and Susannah talked in her soft voice, with its core of iron, iron that could make the impossible seem real.

  For once Billy didn’t object to questions on the beach. All the rules were broken now or didn’t matter. Nikko sat at Susannah’s feet, making a sandcastle, as though today’s triumph and tragedy had vanished.

  The older boys sat in a small group, their shirts back on. They had dried quickly in the sun and wind, but Faris’s shoulders felt itchy with the salt and sand.

  For a while the boys just ate and drank. At last Billy said wonderingly, ‘She did it, didn’t she?’

  ‘Juhi?’

  ‘Aye. Her. She got back to his world, not hers.’

  Faris nodded. Once he would have thought it a tragedy for a girl to choose a primitive existence over computers and school, the chance to go to university, a house, a car.

  Now … He shook his head. He didn’t understand what Juhi had done, nor did he think she was right. But on this beach he had learned that there were many different worlds to dream of. Juhi had chosen hers. ‘At least we know the doorway still works.’

  Billy shrugged. Once, thought Faris, he’d have said, ‘Who needs it?’ or ‘Better that we threw it in the sea.’

  Billy had changed. We have all changed, Faris thought, even from this morning.

  ‘How are your hands?’ he asked David, suddenly remembering. ‘You didn’t get a splinter in them, did you?’

  David smiled. ‘What are hands, compared to lives?’ He added, ‘My hands are all right.’

  Faris looked over at the girls as Jamila stood up, then helped the new girl, Nafeesa, to her feet. He stood as well, brushing the sand from his jeans.

  Nafeesa looked different too. The food and drink had strengthened her. She had wrapped the shawl around her in a sort of robe. She looked fragile, so thin, but her eyes had a small private fire as she said abruptly, ‘I’m going back.’

  ‘Now? Through the door?’

  Nafeesa looked a challenge at them all. ‘You say the doorway will take me back to the fish box, back to my sisters? If it can do that, I have to go.’

  ‘Not today.’ Faris looked at the thin cheeks, the darkness under her eyes. Her hands still trembled, despite her determination. ‘Didn’t Susannah explain? You’ll go back to the same moment even if you stay here a day or a week. It won’t make any difference to your sisters.’

  ‘It will to me!’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Susannah firmly. Faris looked at her in surprise. He had expected Susannah to urge Nafeesa back, before whatever safe Australia she imagined tempted her to stay. But instead Susannah said: ‘You’ll walk through the door tomorrow, or the day after. Trust me, Nafeesa. Trust us all. You’ll be stronger then. Being here will give you a chance to think. A better chance to survive what happens when you do go back.’

  ‘It will be better for your sisters too if you are stronger, have time to plan what to do next,’ said Faris. Somehow, for some reason, he didn’t want this girl to go. Not yet. He wanted to know her, even knowing that any friendship must end.

  For the first time Nafeesa looked unsure. ‘You really think it would be better for them too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Faris.

  Billy looked towards the west. ‘Sun’s low in the sky,’ he said. ‘We need to be getting back. Look,’ he said coaxingly, ‘these sisters of yours, I’m betting they’ll be waiting over the sand hill for you. You just walk over the sand hill and you’ll see just what you dreamed.’

  ‘And my sisters will be there?’ For some reason she looked at Faris for reassurance, not Billy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Faris said honestly. ‘And even if they are, they won’t be real. But they’ll feel real.’ Then compelled by the clarity of her gaze, he added, ‘For a while.’

  ‘For as long as you want!’ Billy’s assurance had almost returned.

  ‘I don’t understand.’ It was a demand for explanations, not a plea. ‘You tell me that I will imagine my sisters safe, even when I know they are still locked in the box. How can that be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Faris thought of the black wave, of the grey Jadda, of the warm safe Jadda beyond the sand hill. ‘It just is.’

  ‘Come on.’ Susannah took Nafeesa’s hand. ‘You go ahead,’ she said to the others. ‘I’ll send Nafeesa down the sand hill after you. I’ll wait to make sure she gets there safely.’

  ‘I’ll stay with you.’ Faris wasn’t sure why he said this. He did know that he wasn’t leaving this girl — or Susannah either — until he’d seen them safe into their own dream worlds. Too much had happened today, from Nafeesa’s arrival to the dismantling of the doorway, to Mudurra and Juhi vanishing into the same ancient world of the volcano.

  I want bean soup, he thought. I want Jadda. But he wasn’t leaving till he knew the two girls were safe.

  CHAPTER 18

  The three of them waited on the beach side of the sand hill. The cold wind blew gusts of sand at them. They stung. One by one the others left, David first, as always.

  ‘Play well,’ Faris said to him.

  David smiled. ‘I’ll put today into my music. Tomorrow you must come and listen.’

  Tomorrow. It sounded as far off as the moon. Faris shook his head. Overload, he thought, like when you asked the computer to do too much and the program froze.

  Nikko ran off after a quick hug for Susannah and a sudden, unexpected hug for Nafeesa too. ‘I hope you find your sisters!’ he said. Faris watched the little boy run up the sand hill, then vanish over the top.

  Jamila left next, striding down to her city of women. She didn’t sing her song today. Perhaps she too felt strong enough not to need it. Billy left after her.

  The beach looked empty. Faris realised he had never seen it empty before. Mudurra had always been there, strong and certain. The wind ruffled the wave tops, making them tremble.

  ‘Now it’s your turn to go across the sand hill,’ Susannah said quietly to Nafeesa.

  ‘I just walk over the sand hill and my sisters will be there?’ There was no belief in Nafeesa’s voice. No distrust either. It was as though her mind was suddenly as tired as her body.

  ‘Yes. And other good things too. Enjoy them. Tomorrow you can go back through the doorway. But tonight,’ Susannah smiled, ‘tonight be happy. Just for a while.’

  Nafeesa nodded. She began to walk, her thin body swaying in Susannah’s shawl, wisps of hair blowing in the wind. She looks like a queen, thought Faris, or a warrior from a movie. But she was just a girl, caring for her sisters. Which made her, he thought, a warrior indeed.

  She vanished over the sand hill.

  Faris was suddenly desperately curious about what sort of Australia Nafeesa might have dreamed of. A village, like Nikko’s, or modern homes, like his? Her sisters laughing at an Australian buffet, perhaps, with pineapples, or maybe … He shook his head. What foods did they eat in Sri Lanka? He had never even thought to look, never imagined that he’d ever meet someone from there. How could he understand what Nafeesa felt if he didn’t even know what she liked to eat?

  But he did know what she felt. They all knew. In their many different ways they had all felt it too.

 
; ‘I think you can go now —’ he began to say to Susannah.

  He heard Nafeesa scream.

  CHAPTER 19

  He and Susannah ran up the sand hill together. Nafeesa stood at the crest, staring down, the shawl blowing against her legs in the wind.

  ‘What is it?’ called Susannah.

  Nafeesa ran back towards them. ‘There’s nothing down there!’

  ‘You mean just more grass and sand hills?’

  ‘Nothing!’ cried Nafeesa. ‘A wall, a fence of nothing!’

  ‘That’s impossible.’ Susannah grabbed Nafeesa’s hand in her small one. ‘Come on. You walk just a little way ahead of us. That’s all it takes for your world to appear, instead of ours. We’ll watch as your world appears, then follow you into it to see you safely home.’

  We should have done that the first time, thought Faris.

  ‘I can’t go down! Not into that!’

  ‘Just a little way,’ urged Susannah, nudging Nafeesa over the crest of the sand hill. ‘One, two, three … now, we are coming after you. Don’t be afraid.’

  Faris was already following. He stopped, staring downwards. ‘Susannah …’

  She pressed on. ‘They’ll all be waiting for you … Faris?’

  ‘Look.’

  Susannah looked.

  Nafeesa stood at the edge of — nothing. No cottages. No neat street. Just a blur of what wasn’t even air or sand or even darkness. Emptiness could not be seen, yet it was there.

  Faris felt cold crawl through him. Had all their worlds vanished? Had Mudurra’s leaving made everything unstable? Had the others gone into nothingness too?

  And then he realised what was happening. ‘Susannah, there isn’t a world waiting for Nafeesa. She didn’t dream of one! We all dreamed of the Australia we expected. But Nafeesa just wanted to escape the box! That’s why she appeared in the sea. She dreamed of nothing but the air and sea.’

  ‘But we can’t be leaving her on the beach all night!’

  ‘We don’t have to. Your world and my world will still be there. She’d be better with me,’ he added. ‘I’m closer to her time.’

  Even as he said it, he wondered when Nafeesa had come from. Was it far in his future? How long had he been here, before he began to notice the days had passed? Even if she came from close to his own time, Nafeesa’s life in Sri Lanka might have been very different from his own.

  But it didn’t matter. Suddenly he wanted to protect this girl, even if she was a couple of years older than him. She looked after her sisters, but who watched over her? Jadda will look after her, he thought. ‘Do you like bean soup?’

  Nafeesa looked at him in wonder, then nodded.

  ‘Then come with me. I live with my grandmother. She will cook bean soup for us. You can stay with us … just for this night.’ The bean soup would not put flesh on her bones, just as the sun had never darkened Billy’s convict-white skin. But it would comfort her.

  Nafeesa glanced back at the beach, at the doorway leaning drunkenly between the rocks. The cliffs’ shadows had already darkened the gold of the sand. Faris had never stayed so late on the beach before.

  An empty beach, he thought. The beach that Mudurra dreamed of. But now Mudurra had gone.

  ‘One night,’ he said. One night, with bean soup and Jadda.

  He could see when Nafeesa decided to stay. The nothingness took form, houses emerged and orange trees and the quiet munching shapes of kangaroos.

  His world. His safe Australia.

  Faris took her hand. He had never held a young woman’s hand before. Susannah was a little girl and didn’t count. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  They walked down the sand hill together. Susannah watched them go.

  CHAPTER 20

  The storm came swiftly, out of the midnight sky.

  Faris had been dreaming. Or maybe it was a memory, dressed in sleep. His mother had been there, so he must have been young, before he’d gone to school even. She wore bracelets of gold with small red stones. Were they the family bracelets Jadda had sold? She laughed as she held him on her knee.

  His father was there too, not the man with a bloody jacket and worried eyes, but a young man who smiled at his wife and son. ‘Now repeat after me,’ he said to baby Faris. ‘This bone is the fibula. This is the tibia. These are the phalanges …’

  His mother laughed again. ‘Darling, he is much too young to learn anatomy.’

  The young father grinned. ‘Are you saying our son is not a genius? He’ll remember this, won’t you, Faris?’

  And Faris had, even if it needed a dream to bring the memory back. For a moment he tried not to wake, to keep the memory. Even when he knew he was awake, it didn’t make him sad.

  It should have, for those three were gone, the laughing woman, the little boy, the young and happy father. But somehow remembering them had made him realise that life changed.

  Life needs to change, he thought. But it doesn’t here.

  And then he realised change had come here too.

  Thunder muttered above the house. He had never heard a storm here before. Who would want to hear thunder? Rain kicked at the window, like a bully trying to get in.

  His bedroom door opened. ‘Faris?’ It was Jadda, a Jadda with worry behind her smile. ‘Faris, it’s just thunder. Go back to sleep.’

  Another memory pierced him. A roaring from the sky, a small boy hiding his head under the blanket, Jadda coming in to comfort him, Jadda saying exactly what she had said just now.

  But it hadn’t been thunder then. It had been bombs and guns. And the Jadda he saw now was the memory of that Jadda.

  He had known his life here wasn’t real. Not really real. But now even the ghost of reality seemed stripped away.

  He said, ‘Jadda?’

  She looked at him. ‘I love you, Faris.’

  ‘I love you too,’ he said. For it was true. He loved this Jadda, even if she was a memory. And the Jadda of his memory loved him too.

  ‘Would you like me to sing to you?’

  It was what Jadda had asked him as a little boy, scared of the bombs, the rumble of tanks, the chatter that might have been monkeys on TV, or distant guns. He had said ‘yes’ then. But this time he shook his head. ‘No. I’m all right.’

  Someone moved in the hall. He brushed past Jadda. ‘Nafeesa? Where are you going?’

  The girl paused. She wore the clothes Jadda had found for her earlier this evening, before she had fed her bean soup, shown her the bright bedroom with its lace-covered bed, its clean tiles on the floor and rich carpets. Somehow Jadda’s long dress had fitted Nafeesa perfectly, the scarf gold and blue against the darkness of her hair.

  And Jadda was no longer there. It was just the two of them, him and Nafeesa, in the bare corridor with closed doors.

  ‘It’s just a storm,’ said Faris. ‘No need to worry.’ Even as he said it, his uneasiness grew.

  ‘I’m sorry. I left you a note. I didn’t want to wake you. But I can’t stay here any longer. I have to get back to my sisters.’

  ‘Not in the storm. Not at night. Nafeesa, you still don’t understand. You can go back any time —’

  ‘I am going now!’ She met his eyes. ‘You think I can sleep in a soft bed when my sisters lie in a box that smells of fish?’

  He had left Jadda under the black wave. Had told himself it made no difference.

  Nafeesa was right. It mattered.

  The knowledge rocked him, as though the wave had already hit. He shook his head to clear it. ‘Not tonight.’ Would the beach even be there at night? he wondered. The beach was a place of daylight, of sunlit sand and laughter. None of them had ever been on the beach at night.

  Except Mudurra, looking at his avenue of stars.

  ‘I’m going to go through the door too,’ Faris said. ‘Tomorrow, as soon as it is light.’

  ‘Now,’ she insisted. She held out her hand. He had held his mother’s hands, and Jadda’s. Nafeesa’s were warm and strong like theirs, but smaller. Her hair smelled o
f orange blossom, as familiar as if he had known her all his life.

  He couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Susannah, to Billy and the others. Not without telling them that Susannah was right, that Nafeesa was right. Real was what you had been given, what you had to live, taking it with courage, doing the best you could do, even when life became unendurably hard.

  If the beach wasn’t there till daylight, he would wait on the sand hill with Nafeesa till it came back. And if it was there — if Nafeesa went through the doorway in the darkness — he would wait on the beach until the others came in the morning, take the time to say goodbye to them.

  But he had to go.

  He turned, and Jadda was there again. ‘We’re going to live,’ he told her. ‘The wave will come down on us, but we’ll swim up to the surface. We’ll find something that floats …’ He stopped, unable to envisage exactly how they might survive.

  The words didn’t matter. For Jadda was smiling at him, as though she knew he had made the right decision, because this was the right thing to do.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered again and saw Jadda smile.

  He walked with Nafeesa along the silent corridor and out into the rain.

  CHAPTER 21

  The kangaroos had vanished. St Kangarou, he thought. The houses on either side of the street were dark. But the streetlights shone above them, outlining the road. The wind buffeted them. Rain dripped from their faces.

  Nafeesa’s hand was still in his.

  He glanced down. His pyjamas had vanished. So had the new jeans and joggers too. He wore his old clothes, stained and dull from the months in Indonesia. He could smell their sour scent, over the salt and sea.

  Nafeesa’s clothes were grey and shapeless again. They stank of fish.

  The road turned and there was the sand hill, tall but glowing with an almost phosphorescent shine. They began to climb, the rain lashing at their faces. He had never known the sand hill wet before, but now the sand squished under his feet. At last they reached the top. Faris looked down.