From the Wreck

by Jane Rawson

  ‘Ow!’ he screamed, then hushed himself. ‘Mark, stop!’ The limb retracted and again the floor went shimmery, feverish, furniture and walls wobbling like he was seeing them through the heat of a room on fire. The shape solidified. The shape made a woman and the woman made no sense. A small child’s drawing of a mother; a figure seen through sleeplessness and tears.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ Henry asked, and reached out a hand to touch the familiar skin of his Mark.

  ‘Bridget Ledwith!’ the woman slurred at him.

  Henry laughed and laughed. ‘No, it isn’t!’

  ‘It is!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Look, it’s what your father thinks Bridget Ledwith looks like. Stop laughing!’ She was still slurring, and stumbling about like her legs were made of rubber.

  ‘You have to stop!’ Henry could barely breathe. ‘You have to stop! Aunty Sarah will come down, or Uncle Henry. Oh! Oh goodness, you look so stupid! Oh. Do you want something to eat? Oh, oh never mind, I don’t think you could eat without chewing your lip to bits.’

  ‘Henry! I am a witch, a tempshtress. Monster of the sea! All mystery lurks in my skin. I am siren!’

  ‘Really, though. Really. You have to change back. What if Aunty Sarah comes down?’

  The Ledwith creature collapsed in on itself, returned to its blobby self, then smeared itself once again over Henry’s back.

  I can’t believe … Henry began to think.

  It’s true, his Mark told him.

  Henry felt a creeping shame for his father. He felt a little bit sorry for him. His fear retreated, two, three steps, when he thought that this, this bizarre apparition, had held his father in thrall for a decade or more. His father was a strange, stumbling human being. His father had no idea either what to think or feel or be.

  ‘Good morning, Henry,’ his Aunty Sarah greeted him, and the edge of sadness in her voice reminded him that a whole handful of his guts had been removed. His brother, Georgie, had drowned in a ditch and it was all his own fault. What right had he to be laughing on a sunny morning over a boiled egg when Georgie was just three days in the cold, hard ground? Georgie, who would never see or eat another egg again.

  ‘Could we visit Georgie’s grave?’ he asked, suddenly overcome with the feeling that he needed to take one, two, twelve, one hundred eggs and lay them over poor little Georgie’s poor dead face.

  ‘Of course, if you want to,’ she said. ‘But you should have some breakfast first.’

  ‘I did that already, Aunty Sarah,’ he said, and began to tidy the remains of his meal away.

  ‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘Aunty Sarah? How long can I stay here for?’

  ‘As long as you want, darling. As long as you want. We love having you here.’

  ‘Do you think I should go home?’

  ‘Only if you want to,’ she said.

  ‘But what about Mother?’ he asked. ‘Does Mother need me there?’

  He could see her hesitate, search her mind for words. ‘Your mother is very, very sad,’ she said. ‘She needs a lot of time to sleep right now. I’m not sure she really knows what’s going on around her …’

  ‘You mean she doesn’t really know I’m not there?’

  ‘Darling, I think right now she might not notice if you’re not there. But very soon she’ll start to notice again, and yes, then she’ll need you at home. But perhaps for now, it’s better that she only has to care for Wills. It’s easier for her not to have to worry about whether you’re eating a proper dinner or whether you’re going to school. Perhaps it’s better if Uncle William and I worry about all of that.’

  There was a moment of awkward silence and Henry wondered if he could perhaps grab an apple from the larder and slip out of the house, but he’d left it too late and Aunty Sarah said, ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’

  ‘Don’t you think I’m too sad to go to school?’ he said, and he hoped that Sarah hadn’t heard him dying laughing just twenty minutes before. He was sad, though; he really was.

  ‘How about we strike a deal, Henry,’ Sarah said. ‘You drink this cup of tea –’ she poured it for him – ‘and put on your school clothes, and then we’ll go visit Georgie’s grave, because I think that’s a very reasonable request. And once we’ve finished there I’ll walk you to school and explain to the principal why it was you had to be away for a little while. Does that sound fair?’

  That did sound fair, and Henry said so.

  ‘Aunty Sarah,’ he asked, but then wasn’t sure how to continue.

  ‘What is it, dear?’

  ‘Could we … That is, would you … Aunty Sarah, I … did you know about the eggs? About Georgie and the eggs?’

  She looked at him kindly, but as though she had no idea what on earth he was on about.

  ‘Georgie loved eggs,’ he said. ‘He just really did. I don’t know why. But there was nothing he loved on earth more than eggs. Chicken eggs. Those tiny eggs left by wrens. We had an emu egg once, Missus Gallwey gave it to us,’ and then he remembered he wasn’t supposed to see Mrs Gallwey. ‘But chicken eggs, those were his everyday, simple favourite.’

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘Could we take him an egg?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Oh, Henry,’ she said, ‘we can take him a dozen eggs if you want.’ And Aunty Sarah held his face between her hands and kissed his forehead and he felt a long breath squeeze out of him and tears poured out of his eyes. She wrapped him up in her arms and pressed his face against her belly and he cried and cried and cried. And some of it, most of it, was for Georgie, but there was a whole other part of his heart that wept for the Mark he carried on his back and the strangeness of his mind and the way he wished he could just be like every other boy. If he could just be good. If he could only be good.

  6

  In the little town of Hahndorf, Beatrice had felt herself in one of those rare moments where it was possible to see two futures, one laid over the other. It was simply a matter of taking the tiniest of steps left or right, and one or the other would disappear forever. She had stood for days, utterly immobilised.

  Her sister’s husband, it turned out, owned a small sausage manufacturer in town, supplying much of the surrounding countryside with traditional German smallgoods. He was doing very well for himself. Anne-Marie was sleek and glorious, her hair shone and the welter of small, sticky hands grabbing at her skirts and her belongings did nothing to erase the soft glow her face had taken on. She had become some kind of maternal saint. Perhaps, Beatrice thought, it was possible to overlook the annoyances of such a boisterous horde of children if one had first, money, and second, a husband as handsome as hers undeniably was. Hector was handsome in face and shape and manner. And so much space – their house sprawled over rooms and rooms, with servants preparing food and then cleaning it all away again.

  There was a cottage. Small, Anne-Marie said, but they would love – if Bea wouldn’t mind the smallness – for Beatrice and Ivan to live there. It was empty right now: the widow who had lived there, who had managed their sausage store in town, had married a second time and moved to Ironbank. Hector had been looking after the shop. Of course, if Bea would like to look after the shop? Hector would be happy to provide the cottage, already mentioned, and a sizeable allowance. As Anne-Marie’s sister she would be welcome to stay as long as she wanted.

  Beatrice had sat in the soft armchair by the front window of the cottage and looked out over the Hills. She had thought of all those cousins Ivan would have, to play with and to entertain him. He would come home to the cottage for dinner, and maybe not every night, and he would sleep tight in his bed and then, after breakfast, off he would go again. And Beatrice? She would have all this. This little house to herself. More money than she had ever had. The view of the Hills. People coming and going in the shop.

  She would have to behave. She could not bring down shame upon her beautiful glowing sister and her handsome, g
enerous brother-in-law. None of the people – none of the gentlemen – coming and going in the shop could also be coming and going in the cottage. If she drank, no one must know. From day to day to day, nothing much would change.

  She could be respectable. Respectable, comfortable Mrs Gallwey, that lovely widow with the adorable grandson.

  She had walked to the big house, found Ivan, and taken him wriggling into her lap. He had escaped and run away with Hans, the littlest of Anne-Marie’s boys.

  Anne-Marie had brought her a cup of tea – Beatrice was never sure whether Anne-Marie made these cups herself or whether a servant, just offstage, handed them to her on a signal – and sat beside her. ‘He is welcome to stay with us, dearest,’ she had said, ‘even if you choose not to.’ And Bea had wondered what it was in her face, her clothes, her bearing which showed that however much she pretended, she would never quite fit.

  ‘Don’t decide now,’ Anne-Marie had gone on. ‘Ivan is here for a visit – some fresh air, a little time with his cousins. You, I expect, must return to the city. Return later to fetch him, or to settle permanently yourself. Or if you do not —’

  ‘It won’t take him long to forget me,’ Beatrice had said.

  ‘You have given him a wonderful start in life,’ Anne-Marie had said, ‘but perhaps it’s best for everyone if he doesn’t spend any further time living in – did you say a stable? – in a stable with nothing but elderly women for company. Perhaps best for you too, dearest, not to live that way. No, don’t start that again – I know you’re a grown woman and you have the right to live however you see fit. Of course you do. Perhaps for once you could put your comfort ahead of your rights? Well, never mind.’

  Comfort first, rights second – it was an interesting idea, she thought, as she shifted around on her chair at The Rifle Range Hotel, trying to find a spot where her behind was not assailed by splinters. This pub. The chairs, hard wood, some with the remnants of ancient leather upholstery, now largely torn away. The sticky, stained carpet with the cloth all torn where the feet most often trod. The dirt-crusted windows. She remembered that comfortable armchair, that beautiful view. She could not remember now why she had come here. It wasn’t for the company – the room was empty aside from Bea and the publican. She should get a jug of beer or a bottle of gin and take it home. Back to Mrs Frome, Neddy, the empty stable. A night of quiet sleep and then tomorrow, more of the same. Perhaps a conversation with Henry Hills. If talking to a school-age child was the most she could hope for, Hahndorf probably was the superior option.

  That poor family. George had come in while she was trying to decide whether to have another drink or head back to the stable. He looked drunk already, but perhaps it was the grief. She avoided catching his eye.

  7

  He would never be whole again. All that anger that had made him, all the pain he had felt – he saw now it was a warm bath and a cup of tea compared to this. He was dry flaking skin stretched loose over a rack of bone, shuffling from here to there and back again. A dead man in a pile of dead men, waiting to be tipped into a pit and finally given some peace.

  He did not greet the publican, his old friend. He would not look at people and see that sick sweet look of sympathy crumple their faces. He asked for what he wanted and did not raise his eyes. The Gallwey woman, staring at him.

  He had been trying to fix it, hadn’t he? That was it. To do the right thing. His boy, his eldest, marked by evil, and he had left it too late. If he had taken the knife to him sooner, little Georgie would live still. But he hadn’t had the nerve. He hadn’t had the steel in him. He kept seeing the boy beneath the mark, the face like his, his mother’s beautiful eyes, and he turned the blade away. Now he had one son dead and another a murderer and his wife looked likely never to rise from bed again. He clutched the thought of little Wills to him, wondered if one small boy might swim free of the wreckage.

  He knew it wasn’t Henry’s fault. It was all his own. He had brought that thing into their homes and their lives. He had overlooked it, let it grow; in his own weakness and hubris he had nestled it in the heart of his family and let it feed from them. It had eaten the soul of one son and used it to murder the other.

  Not it: she. She had eaten the soul of one of his sons. She had murdered the other. And George, fixed on his own petty suffering, had made it happen.

  8

  Henry would wait under the parlour window while ‘Bridget’ talked to his father and told him the curse was lifted. Father would be overcome with joy and he and Bridget would shake hands or perhaps embrace, and Henry could go home again. That was the idea Henry and Mark had come up with between them. But Henry had been waiting a full ten minutes now and there was still no sign of either his father or his Mark.

  He’d spent twenty minutes being nervous, alert, worrying that his mother or some other relative would come down the side of the house and find him crouching there, but after half an hour the nervousness had run out and now he was throwing lumps of gravel at the apple tree to see if he could knock a piece of fruit to the ground.

  A grey and white cat ran full pelt around the corner and leapt into his lap, put her paws up on his shoulder and rubbed her nose against his cheek.

  ‘Kitty!’ he said, and scratched behind the cat’s ears. ‘Whose kitty are you?’

  The cat rubbed even more insistently.

  ‘What? What is it?’

  The cat drove her claws into his leg and he recognised, for a second, a flicker of himself in her green-yellow eyes.

  ‘Is it you?’ he whispered, and the cat purred louder than he knew a cat could purr.

  She jumped off his lap and ran to the corner of the house, then sat there waiting for him. He followed her, ducking under every window, skirting every door, until they were out the front and then down the street. She held her tail high and he followed her standard the way a loyal soldier would.

  ‘I can’t go in there!’ he told her, as she slipped through the door of The Rifle Range Hotel. She scampered out through the door again and led him to a spot by the back door where he could peer through a window.

  Henry watched as the cat blurred itself into a lump and then once more into the form she claimed was Bridget Ledwith.

  ‘Really?’ Henry said.

  ‘Really,’ the woman replied, and this time her words sounded like words and her lips moved the way lips should move.

  ‘You’ve been practising!’ he said, and she curtseyed and lifted the edge of her blue-flowered skirt.

  She stumbled a little on the edge of a raised cobblestone, he saw, as she tiptoed down to the pub’s front door, but for the most part she looked like a slightly unsteady human woman.

  Henry dragged a crate from a pile of rubbish by an outbuilding and propped it under the window. The sun was dimmed by clouds today, brighter inside the building than out, and he felt safe perched up there and watching the play unfolding before him.

  Father had his head down when Bridget walked in, looking at something in the bottom of his glass. Bridget stood, swaying slightly, and Henry could see she wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. The publican called out to her, ‘Miss, can I help you? You shouldn’t be in here,’ and Henry felt shamefully relieved that she would have to go and Father would never see her and the whole plan would have to be cancelled.

  ‘She’s with me,’ he heard someone say, and Bridget tottered in the direction of the voice. He pressed his face against the glass so he could see around the corner, see who was talking. Mrs Gallwey was there, and Bridget sat down on the chair beside her. Henry tried to press his face closer but he couldn’t hear the words they said.

  9

  ‘Would you like a drink, dear?’ Beatrice asked the very strange-looking young woman who’d stumbled into the bar. The woman nodded and Bea waited to see if she would pull a delicate purse from the folds of her terribly outmoded frock, but she didn’t.

  Bea went to the bar and ordered them a glass of beer each. She nodded to George Hills while she waited
for the beers to be pulled, and he blearily nodded back. His head was sinking towards the table again, and it was only midafternoon. He shouldn’t be in here, she thought. He needs to go home, to be around that sensible wife of his. He’s here too often and he’s drinking too much. Of course he was sad; of course he was destroyed. This was no way to repair it. Still, it was none of her business.

  She put the glasses on the table.

  ‘Thank you,’ the woman said.

  ‘My pleasure. Beatrice Gallwey,’ Bea said, and held out her hand to be shaken. The woman took it, and her hand was limp and sandy and slightly chilled.

  ‘My name is,’ and she hesitated, ‘Bridget … Sidney. Bridget Sidney. That’s my name.’

  ‘Well, Miss Sidney, it’s lovely to meet you.’

  Silence sat between them.

  ‘I was hot,’ Miss Sidney said, ‘and hoped to sit down for a moment.’

  Bea looked out the grimy window at the rain that was just now beginning to fall from the heavy sky.

  ‘I’ve found the tearoom on Military Road to be a little more sympathetic to the plight of an overheated woman,’ Bea told her. ‘They don’t really allow ladies in here.’

  ‘You’re a lady, aren’t you?’ Miss Sidney asked.

  ‘Of sorts. I haven’t seen you in here before. Are you new to Port Adelaide?’

  ‘I … I was here before. Once. I came in a boat. No, I went in a boat. A ship. I was here and then I went in a ship and I was gone and that was the last time I was here. Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘I see. So it’s been some time?’

  ‘I suppose that’s right. That would be right. Time. Time has passed, yes. Or we have passed through it. But not here. I passed through time, but elsewhere.’

  ‘Elsewhere?’

  ‘Yes, in another place. That’s where I was.’

  ‘And now you’re back. In Port Adelaide. Where you were before – before the time passed or you, perhaps, passed through the time. Which you did somewhere else. But now you’re here.’