by Jane Rawson
He stood up from the table and it was like tearing skin from flesh, the effort of it. His Mark did not want to be carried up, away; she wanted here and more. But he dragged the two of them from the chair and out the door.
Outside, the old lady and that man he didn’t know were lighting a fire on the ground, even though the night was warm. He didn’t want to interrupt, so he filled the glass himself and went back in.
‘Don’t suppose you saw Ivan while you were out there, did you? I’m not sure he’s had any dinner.’
Henry shook his head.
‘Never mind, another ten minutes won’t do him any harm. I’m sure he’ll let me know if he’s hungry.’ She had a drink. ‘This shade – Aden said he’d had it as long as he remembered, and he would’ve been in his late forties when I knew him.’
‘How did they come together?’ Henry asked.
‘When he was small he used to swim in a big rock pool near his home in Monterey. One day he’d felt a shiver across his skin, he said. A kind of swooning feeling. Not as though anything had touched him, but like his skin was changing into something else. And when he ran his fingers over his back it felt different. Not very different, not so different anyone else would notice, but different in the way you would notice if you’d got a little cut on your lip or a flake of skin sticking out on your nose.’
Henry touched the aching stretch across his back and didn’t know how it might be without it.
‘The strange thing, he told me, was that he started knowing all these things he’d never known before. Not facts. Not things like how much President Lincoln weighed or the cost of tea in China. Feelings, mostly. How it felt to live underwater. Other lives, he said. Other ways of thinking.’
‘We live together in the underwater world,’ Henry said. ‘A planet all ocean: always was, always will be.’ Henry’s Mark was throbbing, rippling, pulsing. ‘Another brain in my brain, another me in me, maybe she is me and I am … I don’t know.’ It almost hurt to talk; he could feel that brain in his now, squeezing out his thoughts.
Mrs Gallwey talked more, like nothing was going wrong. ‘Did you pick yours up in the ocean?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘Always there,’ he said. ‘Since I was born.’ He had to go, he had to be somewhere quiet and dark, let his brain fill with whatever it needed to fill with. ‘I have to go.’
‘Well, wait up a minute,’ Mrs Gallwey was saying, ‘are you sure you’re well enough to …’
Sharp in his head as he ran for the door, one question: ‘Is he still in Sydney?’
‘Is he …? Oh, Aden! No. This was a long time ago, before I was married. His ship went back to California. He was …’
But Henry was over the fence and behind the hedge and into the dark and the rush, the rush of his mind.
There is another, there is another, there is another, there is another.
I am not alone.
CURED
1
There is another.
There is another half a planet away and I live on a little boy who has never been further than the edge of the ocean. How to propel him foot by small foot over half a planet of city, road, ocean, deep river and mountain and desert and lake? I take him to the ocean edge and we watch the boats and I tell him to just put one foot down then another, walk your way onto that ship and we will be on there and gone but he will not.
We rattle about in our house, school, street, we laugh and run and curl for sleep, but I will not let him be. One night he takes a stick and beats me with it to silence me and gives himself so much pain his sheet is bloody and his mother frets.
Take me to the ocean edge, I tell him. Take yourself, he tells me, but his face is grimy-smeared from tears.
I could take myself – I could swim, stumble, fly. I could. But I have been almost a whole lifetime with him, my Henry, my boy. On my own planet I grew to adulthood. Here I have slid down into old age. One whole life, there in my waterworld: a life of every day the same. Then one whole other life, feeling this boy grow under me, learning language tucked here beneath his ear, learning where to put words, thoughts, hands, feet. One safe place smashed by their dirty boots. A new one found – flimsy, see-through, dry and desolate, but still. Still.
Take yourself, he tells me again, and this time his eyes stay dry.
I cling a little harder, bury myself safe inside his shirt, his mind. But I know I did not come all this way to hide among the clothes of humans.
I unwrap myself from him and remember myself back into fleet-footed fur. I am stiff and creaky from long years of stillness. He laughs as he watches and I see his face is not altogether dry. A tentacle unwinds from my grey-furred back and he strokes it back into a vanishing place. He picks me up and holds us nose against nose, my small heart bumping against his thumbs, my life in his hands. He laughs again. ‘Kitty.’ My claws cling sharp in his shirt and a part of me tears away as cat-shaped I wriggle in his hands until my feet are back on ground. When he calls after me I close my ears and run for the ships.
My scampering feet and swift teeth are welcome here. My hardened feline heart. I slaughter rats in the barrels, in the beds. I perch lofty and wind-blown and I clean rough between my claws. I wait and wait and wait and then – finally – we creak and shift, thrown out into the open water.
We are one day and not even one night ocean-going when a rolling tussle with a big fellow, stripy haunches and torn in the ear, tosses me over the edge and into the waves. I am flashing fish, star, worm as I tumble down until I feel my old self creep across my skin and there I am, tentacled and soft and I breathe in over my gills and jet out and I am flying. Then I am not.
It is deep ocean here where I have fallen. I am out of strength out of practice. I sink and sink and the centre of this earth pulls me closer, closer. The dark closes tighter and tighter about me. My body vibrates and ripples in the currents but I haven’t the power to push my way up. The sun, that star, narrows itself to saucer, shilling, dot, gone. I cannot remember what colour I am and whatever it is these eyes will never see it again. Down here among the brightheaded things, the clacking-jawed things, the white-eyed and pale-blooded things I am flattened by all this weight of water above me and I feel it like a dog sitting on my chest, sleeping its warm body over mine. I feel the end of everything and I feel home.
2
Henry’s thoughts rattled around in his head. His head was the same size, but there were half as many thoughts to fill it with. Loose and dry they were, the ones he had left; like gravel and shrivelled beans. Cricket. Tea, and what kind of cake he might eat for it. Rathbone and his marbles; marbles that used to be Henry’s and which he lost because he was distracted because half his mind was missing. The hole in his sock. The blister on his ankle from the hole in his sock. Avoiding Mother and that ointment she’ll put on his blister if she finds out he has it. Times tables. Always taking the long way home, just in case. Sand in his shoes, rubbing holes in his socks. Touch his shoulder, touch his shoulder, touch his shoulder until Father ties his hand to the chair during dinner so he will stop doing that just for one minute.
He didn’t want to draw. One by one, Georgie borrowed his pencils and never gave them back and Henry didn’t even mind. Drawing houses, streets, horses, boys: who cares? He held his breath under the bathwater but it wasn’t at all the same.
Mother gave him scraps to feed the cat he favoured. He knew she wasn’t, but still. Day after day after day he fed her and when she decided it was time she jumped no questions into his lap and turned twice, washed her face, and went to sleep. Her small heart beat against his leg and he knew she wasn’t, but still. He watched Wills stumble after her, falling onto his bottom and crying when she escaped his clutches. He saw Father with her, late, when Henry should have been asleep; Father lifted her by the belly and rubbed her torn ears, told her secrets from his day.
They knew his Mark was gone, Mother and Father. Mother washed his back in the bath and she never said a thing. Father was there one day and said
, ‘Well, well. Maybe she wasn’t lying,’ and he said it very quietly to himself but Mother heard and asked him, ‘Who’s lying, George?’ and he told her, no one, and it’s good that Henry is growing up, he said: he’s looking very well.
After that Father took him to the football again and even asked him to play French cricket in the yard. He would walk into the bedroom when Henry was studying and ask him, ‘What’s that you’re reading?’ and then want to talk all about the Wars of the Roses or agriculture for hours and hours. ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ he asked Henry, not that he’d ever cared before, and he joked that maybe he should become a butcher like Mr Sidney, and Henry felt a bit of sick rise up in his throat. ‘Maybe a sailor,’ he said, and Father told him best not, that he’d already had one narrow escape and then he said more, as though he’d meant himself, George, that he’d had a narrow escape, but Henry had heard it in his voice that he’d meant Henry. ‘If it’s adventure,’ he said to Henry, ‘or travel you’re after, you should try the railways,’ but Henry knew the railways in Australia weren’t worth a penny.
There was even one horrible afternoon when Father tried to explain to him where babies come from. Henry listened, burning with shame that Father could say those things about Mother, and then he made Georgie wrestle with him until well after dark.
Georgie sat with him sometimes now, in the cupboard. Henry would try to remember the thoughts that had been in his brain, and Georgie would draw, and mostly they would sit quietly but sometimes they would work. For two whole months they collected eggs, just the way Georgie had said, from the tiniest wren to an emu egg Mrs Gallwey had given Henry on his birthday after he’d told her their grand plan. The eggs were lined up on the very top shelf from smallest to largest and every day they would open the cupboard to a richer, danker and more disgusting smell. Henry remembered, almost, what joy felt like. One day they brought the cat into the cupboard with them and she batted the sparrow egg around the shelf until it broke, and they wiped it up as best they could but still that same day Mother said, ‘What on earth is that horrific smell?’ and before she could investigate further they took the rest of the eggs and hid them behind the laundry where they could rot in peace. ‘We’ll visit them every day, Henry, won’t we?’ Georgie asked and Henry said of course they would, and Georgie could draw them and Henry would write notes about what happened. Rats, of course, stole them the very first night and Henry wondered, but only for a moment, what on earth the point of his cat even was.
And sometimes Henry’s Uncle William, too, would ask him what he was learning at school, but it was different than the way Father asked. And he would ask, and sometimes Sarah would ask too, if he didn’t care so much anymore about the underwater world, and for a while he would ask to see the picture he’d drawn, but when month after month after month went by and nothing changed he thought it would be better to stop. ‘Don’t show it to me anymore,’ he told them, ‘not even if I ask.’ And he would say, ‘Thank you, no, I don’t want to draw a picture, but if you’d like we could talk about why it is that the sun makes plants grow.’ And Uncle William would tell him all about how sunlight for plants was like food for boys, and they would take the tops of carrots and place them on wet paper and some would be in sunshine and some in shade and one or two they put in the darkest part of the larder, and then they watched and they waited. On the days he wasn’t there, Sarah would draw the plants’ progress. And when the three of them sat down after tea one evening to write their report on how the sun makes plants grow, Henry tried replacing his old sort of joy with a new sort of joy, and almost got there.
He told Georgie and Mother what he’d learned and Mother told him that he and Georgie could have a part of the garden just to themselves and grow whatever they wanted there, and Georgie and Henry planted beans and sunflowers and lavender that made the bees and butterflies come, and Henry began to think, when his father asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, that maybe he would live that long and even like it. ‘Perhaps a farmer,’ he said. ‘Or a scientist. Perhaps I could be a botanist and travel to the far corners of the earth collecting plants.’ ‘Maybe just to the far corners of South Australia,’ said his father, ‘because you can get there by camel.’ And they agreed that camel would be an excellent way to travel and far better than a ship.
3
George was most pleased to find himself cured. Maybe that woman had been Ledwith after all. Or maybe his own damn persistence had got him through this thing. Either way, best not to think back on it; best to just get on.
He should take the family on holiday, he thought, after it had been six months or more without an attack. Henry had been harping on about botany lately: maybe it was time to take the boy on an adventure, set him loose in the bush and see what he came back with. Perhaps they could leave Wills and Georgie with Sarah and just take the oldest boy. Or better yet, why not take the whole family on holiday, Wills, Sarah, William – the lot. If William came they could visit some local pubs.
Speaking of local pubs, wasn’t that the neighbour going into one? People said she was some kind of witch. George roused himself from his daydream and paid for the cloth Mr Barnard had just wrapped for him. Research, he told himself as he crossed the road and went into The Rifle Range. He’d never seen a woman drinking in a pub before and you couldn’t just let opportunities like that pass you by.
‘Missus Gallwey.’ George tipped his hat to her then went to the bar and ordered himself a beer. ‘Is anyone sitting here?’
‘If they are,’ she said, ‘I can’t see them. How can I help you, Mister Hills?’
George sat himself down. ‘Lovely afternoon for it, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I suppose it is.’
‘You come here often?’
‘Not often,’ she said.
‘That was quite a storm we had last weekend.’
‘Quite. Is there something in particular you wanted to discuss with me, Mister Hills?’
‘What do you know about haunting?’ he asked.
‘Haunting?’
‘Or spells. Potions. That sort of thing. Do you know anything about spells to stop a haunting?’
‘I’m not really —’
‘Or rather, not a spell to stop a haunting, but do you think you can stop a haunting just with the power of your mind? If the haunting isn’t a ghost, that is?’
‘Well, I suppose it makes a change from the weather or the price of grain. Perhaps you could be a little more specific. You’ve been haunted by a ghost that isn’t a ghost?’
‘I haven’t. Not me. There was a fellow in the Sailor’s Home a week or two back, said he’d been haunted by a woman —’
‘Oh well, that’s another thing entirely.’
‘No, not like that. Said she was a spirit, he thought, from another plane of existence. Evil, probably. Maybe came direct from hell.’
‘Mister Hills, I know this is difficult for many men to fathom, but not every woman will want to have sex with a man just because he fancies her. Sometimes they say no. Saying no doesn’t make them a, what did you say? A hell spirit from another plane of existence?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Men are prone to overreact. They meet a woman, she’s beautiful, she talks to them and then they think, oh, she likes me, we’ll get married. And she doesn’t return the favour, doesn’t like him as much as he likes her, so then she’s evil, isn’t she. She’s some kind of hell-spawned bitch to spurn him in this way. And he has dreams where he’s tupping her and she laughs at him and then that’s it, she’s haunting him, she really is a witch. Is that what happened with your … friend, did you say it was?’
‘Not a friend. Just a bloke. No, I don’t think it was like that at all.’
‘It was an actual haunting.’
‘Never mind.’
‘Mister Hills,’ she said. ‘I’m not a witch, whatever you might have heard about me. Oh, don’t look surprised, of course I know what people say. That I’m a convict, I’m a witc
h, I’m a whore, I’m a gypsy. You think Neddy doesn’t hear things when he’s out? Do you think people don’t ask him what I get up to, me and Missus Frome both? At least she had the good sense to be a civilised South Australian. There’s no redeeming me, filthy New South Welsh that I am, elderly washerwoman with an inexplicable baby.’ She tapped her empty glass gently on the bar between them. ‘Why don’t you fetch me another of these? I’ve seen some things in my time. Maybe I can help.’
While the publican drew two more beers, George tried to remember how he’d got into this conversation in the first place. He’d been joking, hadn’t he? Haunted. He wasn’t haunted. He had never been haunted! Guilty conscience was all it was, maybe. For having lewd thoughts. Well, more than thoughts. And the meat, of course. Meat. Could you say, that: meat? Flesh, maybe. He was sorry about that, but then again, no he wasn’t. And hadn’t Mr Darwin himself said it was the right thing to do? So yes, illness, lingering, perhaps from all the trouble he’d been through. Whatever the doctor said, it must have done some shocking damage to his lungs and heart. A man doesn’t just bounce back from that in a matter of months. So illness, lingering. And some guilt. And perhaps wanting to make of that time with Miss Ledwith something that it wasn’t. Something other than warm skin and survival. Maybe Gallwey had a point: men did tend to overreact. Whatever it was, had been, it was over now. Done.
He took the beers back.
‘Very enlightening, Missus Gallwey,’ he said. ‘You’ve given me a great deal to think about.’
‘You don’t want to tell me more about this haunting your … friend … has been suffering?’
‘Ah, it’s history now. And as you say, you’re not a witch. What possible interest could you have in the dark turnings of a possessed man’s mind? None whatsoever. A nice lady like you. Cheers,’ he said, and lifted his glass to hers. ‘So tell me more about what Missus Frome gets up to.’