by Meg Mundell
PRAISE FOR MEG MUNDELL
‘Meg Mundell’s The Trespassers dissects the horrors of our commercially driven, punishment-focused migration system through three fine-grained human stories. Compelling writing and flinty observations make this chilling story all too believable.’ – Jane Rawson
‘Stylish, assured writing that rewards close reading. Mundell is a fine observer, and her descriptions are insightful and fresh. You will be held captive by this book – the story never flags. In a genre that is becoming increasingly popular, Mundell’s work stands out for its literary quality.’ – Graeme Simsion
‘Beautifully written and absolutely gripping. I could not put The Trespassers down.’ – Favel Parrett
‘Original and compelling, The Trespassers is a thrilling novel with a brave and tender heart.’ – Anna Krien
‘A thought-provoking near-future thriller. The Trespassers is a riveting read.’ – Jed Mercurio
‘Black Glass is a superb debut. Meg Mundell has invented a compelling futuristic version of our urban world that is not only original but frighteningly recognisable.’ – Chris Womersley
‘Brooding, surreal and unsettlingly vulnerable, Black Glass marks the arrival of a striking new voice. A brilliant debut.’ – James Bradley
‘Black Glass is thoughtful, intelligent fiction.’ – Sophie Cunningham, Readings Monthly
‘Things I Did for Money is a collection of exciting and imaginative stories from one of our most innovative writers. This is a book for readers hungry for a highly original voice.’ – Tony Birch
Meg Mundell is a writer and academic based in Melbourne. Her first novel, Black Glass, was shortlisted for two Aurealis Awards, the Barbara Jefferis Award and the Norma K. Hemming Award. She is the author of the story collection Things I Did for Money, and her fiction, essays and journalism have been widely published, including in Best Australian Stories, Meanjin, The Age, The Monthly, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and Australian Book Review. Meg is also the editor of We Are Here: Stories of Home, Place and Belonging, a collection of writings by people who have experienced homelessness.
For Andi and Charlie, who carry the light
Don’t lie down on the sands where the hole in the sky is.
Too many people being gnawed to shreds.
Send me your voice however it comes across oceans.
Safety, safely, safe home.
– Carol Ann Duffy, ‘Who Loves You’
1
CLEARY
Small for his age, and Irish too, Cleary was one of the last to board the ship. He stuck close to his ma as the queue shuffled along the dock between the chain-link fences. More than once he found himself pinned against the mesh, strangers’ bodies pressed in tight around him: manky coats, a wide backside, a woman’s perfumed hip. Beyond the fence the wharf dropped away to the river below. And everywhere, mixed with the dank scent of river water, the smell of other people.
There were kids in the crowd, the young ones clutching a soft toy or a parent’s hand, the older ones shifting their backpacks and yawning. Painted on the ship’s hull was a red star, and an unfamiliar word: Steadfast. Overhead a forest of masts and sails soared into an overcast sky, but the vessel itself seemed too narrow to hold all these people. Cleary recalled a magic trick he’d once seen in a Dublin train station, a traveller pulling an endless string of scarves from his mouth – but here the flow ran backwards. Could this skinny ship really swallow them all?
Space was tight, and the rules were strict. Suitcases stowed below, each passenger was allowed a single piece of hand luggage: essential items only, portable memories, treasures small enough to pocket. Only one toy per child, and no devices – they were banned. You could bring an old-style watch or closed console, but no tabs or linkups, nothing that hooked into the stream. This was for privacy’s sake, his ma had said, to stop the snoops from gossiping. This morning the guards had scanned everyone, kids included, and seized two devices from their mortified owners, smashed them to bits on the cobbles while everyone pretended not to notice.
The English were boarding first. On the gangway a heavy-set man in an Arsenal tracksuit stumbled, dropping to one knee. Below on the dock the waiting Scots and Irish raised their arms in what looked like a cheer of encouragement, but probably was not. As the man tried to regain his feet he lurched against a woman dressed in black, knocking something from her grasp: a white box flew out over the rail, lost to the river below, and people peered down to see what had landed in the water. The woman in mourning gear pressed a hand to her cheek, like a person with bad toothache.
Cleary had become an expert watcher. He spotted an object down there in the murky water, now floating free of its box: a fancy cake, like the ones in shop windows, a pale mound topped with pink swirls. It listed sideways; the sea gave one rude belch, and the cake vanished, leaving a few sad bubbles in its wake. Nobody was laughing now. People turned away, as if embarrassed by its fate, and the woman in black stood motionless on the gangway until her husband took her arm and led her gently onto the ship.
The Scots were next to cross. As they shuffled through the last turnstile they waved back at their loved ones on the dock. From this distance, with the masks, you couldn’t read their expressions, let alone their lips, but the ones left behind had a lost look. They dabbed their eyes, or hugged each other, or stood very upright, as if to prove that saying goodbye was nothing to make a fuss about. Further back, behind a line of police, a handful of protesters waved placards. Cleary strained to read the block letters: Ship rats! Deserters! Travel makes trouble! Close all borders!
This city they were leaving was not home. Beyond the barricades and old brick buildings rose Liverpool, a place they’d only seen in passing. Getting here had taken ages. All those appointments back in Dublin, the endless questions, his ma surrendering their data: gene profiles, health records, head reports. They’d jogged on a treadmill, been poked with needles, had their eyesight and hearing checked (he’d failed that one, of course, but his ma had argued their way through, shown his apt tests and references). They’d touched their toes, puffed hard into a tube, had their irises scanned, worn monitors for weeks. And these past few days at the depot, more tests and meds: mouth swabs, skin scrapes, pills to swallow, a nasty jab that left him feeling faint. They’d coughed into bags, pissed into containers. They’d even shat in one – that hadn’t been easy.
Now, finally, they were off. As the last of the crowd trickled aboard the ship, Cleary felt a great tiredness sweep over him and pictured the cabin where they’d sleep. A round porthole, soft beds, a vidscreen. A table set for two, plates piled with roast meat – the real stuff, made from actual cows – plus spuds and gravy. And for afters, fancy cake, just like the one that sank. A rare treat, proper cake. He planned to have three pieces.
His ma tugged his arm. They cleared the final turnstile and there was the gangway, sloping up to the ship. She stepped onto it right foot first, for good luck, and Cleary did likewise. They crossed the strip of grey-green water onto the deck. A silver-haired man with rosy cheeks saluted them, gold braid on his cuffs and shoulders, and Cleary returned the salute. The captain, he must be.
The deck smelt of salt and wet rope, and here the mood had shifted. Passengers emerging from below had a distracted air, and those who’d jostled to board now stood at the rail, gazing landward, as if they wanted to cross back over. As if they’d changed their minds, or left something important ashore.
Now the dock was almost empty – just a scatter of police and workmen, and the people who’d been left behind. The gap between ship and dock was too wide to jump, the water beneath them a broad moat, the gunwale like th
e parapet of a castle. As the drawbridge was reeled in, Cleary gave his subjects below a kingly wave. A few strangers waved back, and some raised their heads as if calling out, masked messages he couldn’t guess at from this distance.
As workmen swung the last of the cargo aboard, a flurry passed along the deck: vibrations, heads turning, fingers pointing. Craning his neck, Cleary tracked the fuss to its source. Splashed down the side of the dock, invisible from dry land, ran a violent slash of red; tall as a house and shining wet, the crimson bolt streaked down into the waterline.
Blood: some huge sea monster slaughtered here, thrashing itself senseless against the dock before sinking to the bottom to die.
Fear jellied his muscles. His mind filled with footage of the serpent, some diabolical creature of the deep, blood erupting from its mouth. His granda had told him about these monsters: huge mutants that patrolled the pitch-black reaches of the ocean floor, their genes scrambled by generations of toxic spills and sickened prey. Granda saw one once, out past Skibbereen: scared the bejesus out of him. The old man had rolled his eyes back in their sockets, acting out a monster driven mad by hate and hunger. A creature like that: it could creep up behind you, burst out of the water and snatch you off the deck, crack your spine with a single crunch.
Cleary’s ma shook him, breaking the spell. She mimed a sweeping motion, then pulled her mask aside to mouth some words. He concentrated on her lips: Pain … it’s pain! What did she mean? She swiped an imaginary object back and forth, and he twigged: Paint, she was saying. It’s paint, sweetheart – just paint. She slipped her mask back into place, glanced around to check no-one had seen. Just paint being shipped off to some far-off factory or port: a load of spilt paint.
He took long breaths, as she’d taught him. Sensed his heart slowing down. These episodes of fright were sharply felt, but never lasted long; the crack soon mended, the world restored, by his mother’s steady presence.
Crewmen were unmooring the ship now, tossing thick ropes across the gap, and tugboats nudged in close to tow them out into the harbour. And just like that, they were off – at sea. Or floating down the river, anyway.
He’d planned to feel a bit mournful at this point but instead felt a buzzing in his chest, anticipation cut with the afterglow of fright. He couldn’t shake the image of that monster, a slippery mass of muscle rearing up to fix its mutant stare on him. One snap of those jaws and he’d be gone. Better keep his eyes peeled.
No-one had come to wave them off. The trip across to England was too expensive, the curfew rules too strict. The night their ferry left Dublin his gran and granda had been invisible in the crowd. His ma had cried, though she’d tried to hide it. Leaning against her legs he felt her sobs gradually ebb away as Dublin’s lights shrank to pinpoints then vanished into the drizzle and darkness. It’s not forever, my love, his gran had jotted in her spidery hand. You’ll be back home before you know it, when you’re a bit taller.
Now they slid past rusted ships, old cranes pointing up at nothing. Once clear of Liverpool they’d sail out past Holyhead, skim the Irish Sea, then head down through St George’s Channel and on past Ireland, get one last glimpse of home if the weather would let them. Cleary saw his granda’s finger tracing a line across the old globe on his desk, out through the Celtic Sea and on into a wide expanse of faded blue. When they reached the open water they’d be allowed to take off their masks.
How did the captain know which way to sail? Were there rocks in this channel, lurking beneath the floating rubbish? Cleary had always hoped to find a message in a bottle, but there were too many bottles here, like a layer of scum on soup, and no way to check what any of them held.
They were passing Holyhead when the deck boomed and reverberated beneath his feet. All around him people waved their arms, or blocked their ears, or clutched at each other, or just stood there staring landward as the ship’s guns fired out a last farewell.
BILLIE
Billie flinched as gunfire split the air, covered her ears against the racket. Some ritual of departure, she guessed; shooting blanks, but loud enough to burst your eardrums. In the aftermath a hush descended and people gathered along the rail to watch England disappear.
She tracked the land’s slow retreat, the churn of grey water unrolling in their wake. The ship skimmed through floating debris, clearing a temporary trail that vanished as the rubbish reconverged, like a zipper gliding shut. Seagulls wobbled overhead, filling the air with rusty screeches, and a sharp wind whipped her hair around.
People were clustered across the deck, the tribes already seeking each other out, a subtle sorting of accents and allegiances. Soon there’d be nothing but saltwater on every side, nine long and lurching weeks of it, with a ship full of anxious strangers for company. Sixty-odd days before they reached their destination, a far-off place that shimmered indistinctly in her mind: a blur of images and clips, promises and rumours.
A container ship swept past, heading into port, its rust-streaked hull towering high as a cliff. Two seamen in high-vis vests stood on the bridge, their faces bare, and a few passengers waved up at them. But there was no response, just a moving wall of rust and those two immobile figures staring down.
‘Cheer up, ya grumpy bastards!’ yelled an English voice behind her. ‘It’s not so bloody grim up north.’ There was laughter, half-hearted jeers, the passengers united against this sullen giant.
Their own vessel’s crew stepped around their human cargo, immersed in a world of sweat and grunt, the verbal shorthand of their work. Billie read this as reserve, rather than hostility. But top brass were another story. Back at the depot she’d been processed by the first mate, a pallid specimen with an acerbic manner and a voice to match: Cutler. All spotless uniform and murky innuendo, the kind of guy who had a hard-on for his own epaulettes. She’d dealt with the interrogation as civilly as she could.
‘So, Glasgow,’ he’d begun. ‘Going downhill fast. People getting desperate. No work, no food.’ His knuckled hands ugly paperweights, pinning her docs to the desk.
‘Same story everywhere,’ she’d answered. ‘All the big cities have gone to the dogs.’
He ignored this. ‘Spent some time up there myself, a few years back. Grim place in the winter. Still, has its charms.’ He surveyed Billie in a way she did not like. She sat very still. ‘And you can hold a tune, I’m told?’ he asked, peering at his screen.
There’d been some music at the depot, harmless stuff, nothing political: old ballads from home, heather and myrtle, warbling blackbirds, some Burns. A singalong to make the wait go faster. Some fellow Scots had packed a fiddle and guitar – no wind instruments allowed, bagpipes now dubbed ‘bugpipes’ by a germ-spooked world – and an older guy had invited her to sing with them. How he’d picked her as a singer was anyone’s guess. They’d shared their whiskey too, generous slugs in lukewarm tea, but kept the noise low, finished well before lights-out. No sense in drawing undue attention to yourself.
So what did this bampot want? Her papers were in order, nothing left to chance. He must be bluffing. ‘I’ve sung in choirs since I was a wean,’ she offered.
He’d raised his eyebrows. ‘Ah. That must have come in handy at the hospital. Remind me why you left that job again?’ An abrupt shift.
Don’t blink. ‘Lay-offs,’ she said. ‘It’s all there in my profile.’
‘But sickness … that’s Scotland’s main growth industry, isn’t it? Why would your hospitals be ditching staff?’ He was enjoying himself.
She’d kept her voice level. ‘All the big hospitals had lay-offs. Mostly HCAs – health care assistants, they call us, like nurses’ aides. Austerity measures.’ In fact the lay-offs had been minimal, but the justification rang true. The outbreak had decimated the Scots economy. Treasury knew lives could not always be saved, but money could. The bug had a talent for metamorphosis, unleashing a rolling pandemic that mutated as it spread, and anti-virals were usele
ss against the newer strains. Staff called quarantine the death wards.
‘Well,’ said the first mate, ‘I hope growing cabbages beats wiping arses for a living.’ Then added, mock polite: ‘No offence.’
She stole a glance at the ceiling. No doubt this was being recorded. His needling could be a tactic, a test to weed out hotheads and troublemakers. Trying to push her buttons, but too ignorant to know their true location. She’d worked the death wards. In that place, shit was the least of your worries.
‘Right,’ he’d announced, evidently tiring of his game. ‘You check all the boxes medically, and nothing major shows up legal-wise. No serious black marks …’
Billie fixed her eyes on his uniform pocket, the Red Star logo, as he signed her off. No point in getting upset. Keeping your gob shut was a fair price for a fresh start.
It had been a lonely six months. Her exit from work was not easily explained, and that silence had proven fatal for several friendships. She’d thought they were a tight group, the death-wards crew – persona non grata to the general public, sharing the dry humour of exile. Disconcerting, how easily she’d fallen from their ranks.
A mistake. That’s what had landed her amongst this shipload of strangers, all seeking to leave bad luck and poor choices far behind them.
Now she was one of them – squinting up into the sails, stepping cautiously on the shifting deck. Parents and kids, childless couples, solitary specimens like herself, all with the unmistakable whiff of poverty, the mended clothes and bad teeth, the weary expressions. That hard-won look. Most had been settled for generations in the homelands they were leaving; amongst the pale-skinned majority were darker gradients, proof of forebears who’d made similar journeys. All of them now tracking in the long-dissolved wake of migrants who’d braved this route centuries ago, for a similar mess of reasons. They shared an air of quiet defiance, a readiness to trade hopelessness for mere uncertainty; a faith that given the chance, they would do better somewhere new.