“I am,” I said. “I want to be famous.”
She didn’t laugh. I loved her for that.
“Never be afraid to follow your dream. Too much of life is wasted.” It was good advice and she’d been giving it to me since I was fourteen.
She wasn’t grandmotherly. Loving, incredibly generous, kind. But she wasn’t a grandmother. She seemed tired, vagueing out in the middle of sentences sometimes. My dad’s sisters discussed locking her up all the time; I knew she’d die if they put her in a nursing home.
“You’ll be marvelous in the Time Ball Tower,” Grandma said. “But do, do make sure you have something to keep you active out there. Don’t let boredom eat away at you.”
She was dressed in a loose-fitting suit, with a dark cravat tied around her neck. I never knew what she would wear. She wasn’t like lots of old ladies, who wear the same thing every day as if they’ve finally identified the perfect outfit and no longer want to think about it.
A large picture window with a view of the water dominated the room, but on an antique sideboard sat a series of beautifully-framed photos. Phillipa liked the one of herself, caught at the moment of highest arc on a playground swing, her hair streaming back, her eyes squeezed tight. There was a large, colorized photo of Phillipa’s great grandparents, her grandmother’s parents, Rossiter and Ruby. Ruby sat, tiny and doll-like, while Rossiter stood over her, one hand on her shoulder, the other clutching a book.
“Poor man. He kept up a good façade, pretending he wasn’t illiterate.” Her grandmother tutted.
“He never learned to read?”
“Never really needed to. It was only people’s expectations. Their judgment. But he was a wonderful storyteller. I’ve always been good at pretending and this is where my gift came from. The ability to pretend to be someone else.”
Sitting beside this picture was a portrait of Harriet, strong and certain. “An inspiration. A woman who eventually escaped her chains and ran free. Somewhere. I love to think of her living out her life, barefoot, untethered.” Grandma sighed at that, as if she didn’t really believe it possible. There was a wonderful picture of Grandma, standing with one foot in the boat, pointing out at the tower. I had a copy of this one myself, because I loved how keen she looked to get out there. It made some sense of my own enthusiasm.
“I beat out a lot of young men for the privilege of going to the Time Ball Tower,” Grandma said.” There were some who wanted to use the stint at the Time Ball Tower as an excuse not to go to war. Weak and pathetic and cowardly. I did more good out there than I could have working for the war effort. We’re keeping society safe, Phillipa. Don’t ever forget the importance of what you’re doing.”
The other nurses hated going into Burnett’s room and were grateful I took the brunt. But I found him easy to deal with. He had so few bodily fluids. Some of my other patients could be stomach-turning. Burnett literally had cobwebs. It was true. No one had been near him in the week I’d been away.
I fixed his bedclothes. Placed a vitamin pill on his tongue.
“Club?” he asked. He’d forgotten to ask me last time.
“Bizarre. Fascinating seeing pictures of the prisoners as they were.”
Burnett said, “They—are—lucky.—Known—for—what—they—were.—When—they—were—real—people.—No—one—alive—knew—me—as—a—young—man.” He blinked.
“What sort of young man were you?”
It was minutes before he answered, as if he was adding up all the words in his head before speaking. I was one of the few who could cope with this. I had endless patience.
“I—was—a—little—shit,” he said.
I laughed.
Renata came in, bringing a small dose of antibiotics. “Strep on the ward again.”
“Kill—me.—Kill—me.—Kill—me.” She was the one who’d do it, he’d said to me.
“Maybe one day,” she said. “How, though? Three days without air? Three months without water? Three years without food? That takes a lot of dedication on my part.”
“Kill—me.—Kill—me—before—you—go.”
“I can’t do that,” I said, voice cheery and bright, mimicking the nurses I sometimes despised. I’m not that kind of nurse, that fake stuff. Even these old patients can see right through it.
“Give—me—blessed—relief.—Release—me.”
“You should do it,” Renata said.
I knew that if I ever did decide to proceed, he wouldn’t have the courage to die.
“No—one—will—come—in—the—whole—time—you’re—gone.”
“Renata will. And she might even take pity on you, who knows?”
It was a thought that concerned me. Would she do it? Given her background, her beliefs?
She wouldn’t do it. He was too important to the town, our cautionary tale. This is what happens, this is why we don’t want to go against God’s will.
I asked her not to. I told her I wanted to be the one, if it was going to happen.
“You know it should be me. And it should happen out there, too.”
If she’d been smarter, she would have figured out a way to be keeper. She could kill the lot of them, every last prisoner out there, and no one would know for months.
“Anyway, time for the Burnett On Display Show,” Renata said.
Burnett tried to sit up as a group of young men were ushered in. Wanting to pretend to be a real man, for a few minutes at least.
The group were caught partying at the old school. They left a mess of bottles, vomit and food wrappings. That’s as wild as it got in Tempuston.
The burned-out, unrepaired primary school served as a perfect place for the teenagers to gather. This was probably deliberate on the part of the adults, keeping the kids contained while giving them the impression of freedom.
You could still see the scorch marks on the walls, and there was a plaque with the names of the children who died around the base of the oak tree in the courtyard. The whole town believed that the school burned down. Renata’s grandmother had gone out to the Tower uninvited and brought a curse down on us. And of course, the keeper had been killed. That was her fault, too, everyone believed. She’d gone out there on her own and back all full of change and vim and whatnot. Wanting to fix things. All she fixed was dead kids in a burned school, people thought. They blamed her, and her daughter, and her granddaughter.
Renata learned to be thick-skinned about it. Any sign of emotion and kids go for the jugular.
This bit of our history was part of our cautionary tales, our do as you’re told warnings, our ghost tales. Telling stories to scare each other off.
I had loved these classes in school. We’d go on an excursion to the museum, one of the oldest buildings in town, and we’d set up in a circle. The lessons were called Local History, but it was just an excuse to show terrible photographs and talk about atrocities. They spoke of lives ended too soon (victims) and of killers taking the easy way out (a quick death).
It was a standard part of our schooling and it surprised those who made it to university to realize that others learned none of it.
Good and evil seems clear when you’re a kid. Wrong and right. The lines are not blurred. No gray areas.
From the age of five or so we knew what the prisoners had done. Hanging out in the burned school we’d take it in turns, whispering stories. Like the one about the man who drove into the lake with his three sons and left them to drown while he climbed out and had a cigarette. When the rescuers came, he complained that most of his cigarettes were wet and was almost drowned on the spot by those men they were so furious with him. They say that those boys haunt the lake, but not everyone sees them. If you see one of those boys, it means your dad hates your guts and wishes you’d never been born.
Then the Ball dropped, and Burnett froze as he always did.
Time passing.
Listen.
The teenagers were ushered out and the two of us were alone again. I watched him fo
r a while, his fingers moving slowly in a small ray of sunshine. The broken one had worked its way loose again, so I tried to attach it. I should have broken it off while the kids were in the room; that would have scared them straight.
I made him as comfortable as I could. “I’m heading out in a couple of days. We’ll need to say goodbye today.”
He’d be here when I got back. No doubt. The other residents? Unlikely. No one lasted long in here.
“Please,” he said.
“Don’t ask me to kill you again.”
“Be careful. Look after yourself. Think of the future. Don’t be too curious. Don’t think you need to explore everything. Don’t go far down.”
His kindness almost made me cry. “I’ll see you,” I said.
I left him.
I did the rounds, saying goodbye to the patients, but yeah. None of them were really capable of goodbyes because they didn’t understand the concept of departure. Departure means the future; it means I am here and then not. All they understand is the present.
I put my head in to say goodbye to the head nurse. I thought I was just being polite, that I’d put my leave form in and there’d been no problem. She’s a Tempuston girl, she knows that people have a year off and come back to their jobs.
But she said there’d been complaints from the nurses (not from the residents; no way they’d come from the residents) and that I should be thinking of other options on my return.
I laughed.
I knew what I’d be like when I came back. I’d be far too good for this place. I did feel sorry for the residents, though. And I’d have to figure out what to do about Burnett.
I had a quickie with my friend Max, 2013. We’d done it before plenty of times and I knew it came without attachments. “Wait for me?” I said, then laughed at his horrified face. “Kidding! You’ll be married by the time I get back.”
“Let’s talk when you get back. We’ll have a lot to talk about. I wish I’d had someone waiting for me.”
We snoozed until the Time Ball dropped, then stretched and got out of bed.
He stood naked by the window but stepped back when the protestors on the street jeered him.
“Ignore them. Let’s have one more for the road.”
He wasn’t usually good at ignoring things, but he managed.
We hung out for a while, hoping the protestors in the street below would disperse. No such luck.
“Awful women,” Max said. “They seriously have no idea. Do they really think they’re going to change anything?”
“At least we notice them; if they behaved like quiet, well-bred women we wouldn’t even hear them, let alone listen.”
“I wish they wouldn’t film everything we do.”
Max had a touch of paranoia.
I’d learned to ignore them, as most did, but this was more intrusive than usual.
The protesters are rarely men. Never have been. There were maybe eight of them today, although do you count children? Because there were two or three of those, snotty-nosed, bored, dirty, being indoctrinated. Renata wasn’t there, but her mother was.
Protester numbers swelled as a keeper prepared to leave; this had always been the case. Some died, others took their place. There were always one or two; never more than ten, even at these times, when they stepped it up a notch.
They’d been violent in the past. They stopped (delayed) one keeper from leaving by attacking him and breaking his leg. It made the keepers more determined and brought calls for the protesters to be sent out there themselves.
Naked, I waved to Renata’s mum from my window, flashing the protesters clustered below.
Nothing deterred them, though. They probably liked looking up at me. Probably fantasized about being locked in a women’s prison, and all the perving they could do there.
I showered and dressed, wanting a swim.
They tried to stop me. Renata’s mum asked about my mother, because everyone knew about the accident of course, but we were interrupted by a rolling gaggle of drunk women, on their way home from. Or to. It was hard to tell. One of them fell over, head first, into the bushes, but none of the others noticed.
I pulled her out, tugging roughly at her. Too roughly, probably, but it annoyed me that she was incapacitated.
So much of our town was like this.
It was one of the reasons I left. Tried to leave.
The tower never left me. I’d dream about it, hallucinate it when I was away. It calls to the best of us, they say.
“You’ll never get a husband if you go in there,” one protestor said. “They’ll smell it on you.” Her comment made me laugh, because look where she was, sat there in the middle of the road with her wild hair, her desperate face. It was only the street sweepers who cared.
“You know this is barbaric. Against God,” Renata’s mum said, as if this was a new argument. “Burnett Barton begs for death, day after day.” Clearly, Renata had passed this on. “It’s not human.”
“Shut it Down. Let them Die,” they chanted at me. It’s familiar. I’ve heard it all my life.
I used to think Renata and I would be friends forever. But you can’t get over this kind of fundamental difference when you’re adults.
“Fucken bitch,” they said as I pushed through them.
“What sort of woman are you?” and quite seriously, one of the children spat at me.
“This is not the way to argue your point,” I told them.
“How, then? How the hell else?” They moved closer to me, and I pulled back.
“Is human life worth this?” they said.
“The people out there are evil. They deserve it.”
“You fucking bitch,” one said again.
“You weak, pathetic, man-loving fuckwit.” This is honestly how they spoke. “Think about what you’re doing. We’ll be waiting for you, you’ll be destroyed by this and we’ll look after your pathetic simpering body until you die.” Renata’s mum did nothing. A woman who’d known me all my life, lets them abuse me like that.
The one thing Renata’s mum had learned over the years was that if you looked crazy, no one listened to you. So, she kept her silver hair in a neat bob. She wore the country women’s outfit of chambray shirt and comfortable pants, or linen pastel dresses (although those were a pain to launder) or paisley dresses in the new no-iron style.
Even so, most people avoided her. Some of the teens went through a rebellious stage and would sit with her, listening to her arguments, hearing her version of history and Renata always supported her.
Her argument: “How do we know they are all not innocent?”
Even though we had all the records.
“Even if they are guilty, surely they’ve paid for their crimes? And who are we to decide who should be there? Give them unto God to decide.” She was all about fate because she was a failed abortion. But you know? A doctor out there in the tower performed late abortions without the mother’s permission. And that’s just the beginning of what he did. He filmed it. Babies dying out of the womb…
He’s never coming home.
He’s never going to die.
Renata’s mum had it tough growing up, with a palsied arm, and one foot shorter than the other. The patience of kids is limited with the imperfect. “Our ancestors have done enough, paid the full price. Should I be paying too for a crime long since paid for?”
“No one wants you to pay.”
“But I am, with my ancestor there. Don’t you see that his suffering is mine?” she said.
Another woman said quietly, “You’re an evil bitch, and you’re a traitor to your sex,” as if women were somehow held to a different level of moral behavior.
The Ball dropped.
I walked away.
I swam further than I’d planned to, but the water was perfect: salty and cold. I swam so far out I could only see the tops of the cypress trees that dominated our town square. I trea
ded water a quarter of the way to the Time Ball Tower, thinking that if it wasn’t for the rocks, I could swim all the way. My arms ached, though, and my legs, so I started slowly for shore.
They were partying around a fire, some friends, some out of towners, and I joined them for a while, drinking the cheap brandy mix they had in a large jug. The protesters never walked on sand (they hated the sight of the Time Ball Tower) so I felt unassailed.
I took some photographs of the Time Ball Tower, wanting to catch it from every angle, at every time of the day.
I’d first been inspired to take photos at about nine, when a newspaper photographer came to the town, interested in Burnett. We had it every year, media coming out on a slow news day for Burnett’s birthday.
I had watched the news photographer closely. She’d walked with her head tilted slightly, as if assessing the scene from an angle would give it new clarity. I loved the way she leapt about with full confidence, seemingly unaware of anything but her subject.
I liked the way she didn’t have to talk to people. She focused on her work. That would be good.
You could hide behind your camera.
“People don’t see you,” the photographer said. “All they see is the camera and they imagine how the photo will look as you take it. You might as well be invisible.”
I loved the idea of being invisible. Not having to react or show feelings. Able to take time to decide how to respond. From then on, I carried a camera everywhere.
I started taking a series of photos of my mother when I was fifteen. My way of fighting back, of proving something. My worth, perhaps, or my existence, even. They were awful, dead-faced snaps. My mother in the bathroom. Looking out a window. Touching a book. The way I did it, she was part of her surroundings. Objectified. I really liked the way they turned out, but others were surprised by them.
I photographed my mother surrounded by flowers, by the good smells. She’d never forgotten the smell of the Time Ball Tower, was always trying to smother it. She only ever wanted perfume for a present. She wore a lot of it. The good kind, not the cheap. She said, “Good perfume has the ability to chase away the bad smells. Cheap perfume absorbs and magnifies it.”
She should have had help a long time ago. It was probably spousal abuse that my father did nothing—she’ll be right—and at the same time hated her for her behavior.
Tide of Stone Page 4