by Lucy Treloar
About Wolfe Island
Kitty Hawke, the last inhabitant of a dying island sinking into the wind-lashed Chesapeake Bay, has resigned herself to annihilation . . .
Until one night her granddaughter blows ashore in the midst of a storm, desperate, begging for sanctuary. For years, Kitty has kept herself to herself – with only the company of her wolfdog, Girl – unconcerned by the world outside, or perhaps avoiding its worst excesses. But blood cannot be turned away in times like these. And when trouble comes following her granddaughter, no one is more surprised than Kitty to find she will fight to save her as fiercely as her name suggests . . .
A richly imagined and mythic parable of home and kin that cements Lucy Treloar’s place as one of our most acclaimed novelists.
PRAISE FOR LUCY TRELOAR
‘A capacious talent’ The Australian
‘Deeply moving’ The Age
‘This lovely, atmospheric book sings of the inherent human drama, rising fragility of home-country and the recurrent need to flee and to protect. The journey told in this book is so evocative it will stay with the reader as an important literary fable of our period of history, in which a fraught world threatens all of us with flight, exile and bewilderment.’ Tom Keneally
Contents
About Wolfe Island
Title page
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I: The Island
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part II: Journeys
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Part III: Home
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Endnote
Acknowledgements
A Note About Wolfdogs
About Lucy Treloar
Also by Lucy Treloar
Copyright page
For David
The island is sinking. The isles fled away and the mountains were not found.
Revelation 16:20
The strangest thing after living alone for so long: some young people have come to stay and everything has changed.
Kitty Hawke, Notebook of Wolfe Island
Part I
The Island
Chapter 1
My father always said with a name like Kitty Hawke I’d surely fly away. He said my mother should have thought of that before she named me. It was the way on the island, time out of mind. Mothers had the naming of the daughters and the girls took their mother’s name, and fathers had the naming of the sons and the boys took their father’s name. I had some trouble with Hart on this score, since he came from elsewhere, but history and tradition had their way.
My mother was Anna Maria Hawke and my father, an outsider, was Harald Schonfeld. They had no son, just the two girls, Bette and me, both Hawkes, the oldest name on the island, so his name died with him. I don’t know how he felt about that, but I felt some lonesomeness on his account when I saw his name on the gravestone on the main after it was rescued and relocated to be with the others from Wolfe Island, after his bones began to wash loose on the shore and my mother’s soon to follow, how he was the only one of his name there. He came from an island further up which went when he was a child, so it may be that there are other gravestones in other cemeteries of relatives of his I never knew. I hope so for his sake. Or it may be that their bones are now rolling about on the sea floor like piano keys never to make a tune again. Schonfeld’s a good name in its way. It would mean beautiful field, I suppose. The father of my children is named Hartford Darkness – an old mainlander name – and our son’s name is Tobermory Darkness and our daughter’s name Claudia Hawke. She, Claudie, kept up the tradition in the face of her husband’s will, hers being stronger in that small regard at that time. Her daughter, my granddaughter, is Catalina Hawke.
The islands were worlds and you didn’t move lightly from one to the other, and people’s way of speaking wasn’t quite the same from one island to the next. If we ran into each other on the main – a no-man’s-land to us – we saw our resemblance to each other, and heard our own foreignness in each other’s voices and prickled up and felt the eyes of people on us, assessing us for threat in the same way that we did them, resenting them for it and feeling their resentment towards us. We called ships ‘shups’, like we were gulping a sudden mouthful of air; further up they called them ‘shee-ups’ – something like that. And so on. It might not seem like that big of a deal, but these things mattered to us; we thought the way other people spoke ridiculous, but were too polite to comment. We felt the unease of all outsiders then.
My mother was not a worldly woman and my father had to explain to her why a Kitty Hawke might be more likely to fly away than any other Hawke, and despite my reluctance to leave the island even to go shopping, and the unease I felt when Hart persuaded me to go journeying on the main and the relief I felt when I returned, and it seeming that my mother had been right for so long, it turned out as it so often did that my father was right after all, which he greatly loved to be. He would have teased my mother and she would have laughed, not really minding, because him being happy made her happy too. They were good people, and would have been shocked at what I did and what I became. Neither family was known for its murderers. Times are different now. I think that’s what I’d tell them if they were here to ask me.
Slice a life any way you like and it’ll tell a different story. Each cut shows something new; each might surprise or confound. Some parts you must expose with a delicate blade to keep them whole. It’s not an easy task; it takes patience. Not everyone likes to know this. You decide for yourself the things you want to know about yourself, even if not in your entirely conscious self; you choose not to peer down into the mess of it all. That’s what I do, I’ll admit it. I turn away.
Two things come to mind, one real and one a dream and each as true as the other.
The first
I say, ‘Girl, Girl,’ and she comes to me like a myth, her coat sleeked smooth, her tail back out. She is a line, a ripple through the long grass, and butterflies and hoppers rise in her wake, lifting like spume and catching the light. She passes me by with a rush of wind and her sweet wolf scent, leading the way to anything. Bosum’s dock is Daddy’s old piano with its keys unmooring and the black notes are the dark water beneath and Girl is a dance on its broken rhythms. She looks back at me: Come on. We run down the steps to the boat and she drops in and takes her place in the bow facing the main. I loose the old rope and step in, my feet feeling about through my thin soles for the wood and the heaving water beneath. There it is, a rise and fall, a grave pull that goes through me. Then we are together: Girl, water, boat, me.
For a minute we are moving through the salted ossuary of ancient docks: here a ribcage, there a raised arm, and at the ends of each dock the old oyster shanties, which somewhat resemble skulls with their sunken rust-weeping eyes and raddled paint. Lines of silvered posts strike out to sea, and if I were very tall and steady of foot and impossibly agile I would leap from one to the next across the water and at th
e last one turn and see this lost world anew: a low stretch of grasses standing and falling like the pelt of a living thing on the ocean’s surface, and on it, rising from it, my house, high and vast, appearing to thrust what’s left of the island beneath the waves.
I pull away from the island. Soon even the grasses have disappeared and the house is nothing more than a cut-out picture, like a theatre set smacked up against the sky and the sea.
The second
In the distance, in the milky light of morning, he dandles the baby over the smooth cold water and its hovering mist, taunting the baby’s mother. Their high pure screams, mother’s and baby’s, ripple in the still, a queer ancient sound. The mother’s arms are outstretched and her mouth is open and her head tipped back to release her anguish. She is as old as time in that moment, and so am I.
I run. When I get close I roar, ‘Put the baby down. Now I say. Do it.’
‘You going to make me?’ he says.
‘I am.’
He crouches swiftly in the boat, which dips and slithers against its moorings and beneath his land legs. ‘Oops.’ He gives a foolish grin – insolent, you know? – which I imagine he perfected at school, though he is not a child any longer.
The baby is scarlet, screaming, and writhing as strongly as a ten-week baby can.
The man holds her around her chest, a hand beneath each arm, tightly, and lowers her, dipping her feet in the icy water. Her knees jerk up and her screaming cuts off. ‘Oh, you like that,’ he says in a mocking way. He looks up at the baby’s mother and at me, and the sunlight shines into his blue eyes and makes them blaze. ‘What you going to do?’
I feel in my coat pocket for the cold thing nestled in the fur and grip it hard. Everything has led up to this moment and everything will lead away.
Chapter 2
Winter
It was late winter when they arrived, too early for butterflies, a different kind of day. At first light I headed to the main for fuel and supplies, enough to keep me going until the weather warmed and I could get the garden going again, not so much that it sank the boat. Rough weather was coming – it was there in the yellow air and the oily sea – and the wind was gusting by the time I got back. It would have been sensible to stay close to the house, to read or attend to my makings or dig the walled garden or thin the seedlings in the greenhouse, but town made me edgy (all those people in their bright clothes looking at me, their faces saying, My God, who does she think she is?) and storms made me restless. I watched birds wheeling the sky and plummeting to shelter when weather hit, and thought I understood them.
I could have gone inside and made soup and got Girl her dinner, and watched the storm through the windows, but I needed to smooth my feathers, so to speak. I pulled my mother’s rattling old bike from the barn and headed up the road, riding into the weird light as if diving through shipwreck, past ruins scattering roadside and shore. The water champed on the seafront, dragging back morsels. Girl roamed around, hoping to stir up small creatures to snack on. A tiny bird swooped and lifted around me like a dolphin about a boat and I began to belong again. My hair flailed, and there was not a soul to say, Come on now, Kitty, tie it back, it’ll tangle, and I was glad of it. Girl, I should say, is my wolfdog.
I passed the Fisherman’s Confederation Hut where the watermen had drunk at day’s end, crab pots stacked high in the green-gold light, two tatterdemalion shanties on the water, and the meandering marsh walkway, then the silent power station and the old excavator with its head rearing from the western sea. Soon I was swallowed by the sky and marshes and I disappeared even to myself. There was just the briny smell, the whump of air at my ears, like there was some hypnosis in the air. The path dipped and the grit turned to half-frozen slush and dragged on the wheels. The wind whined in the power lines and my coat was a sail and there was still time if I’d known to turn back and live oblivious. But why would I? The island narrowed to its marsh-edged hourglass centre and flared again and then I was in Stillwater (three houses remaining). Beyond Pine Point storm clouds piled like forests of seaweed reaching for the light. That’s when I saw it, a skiff lit by sun, a fair way out still, skittering the waves and heading my way.
The reckless ignorance of being out in this weather told me they weren’t from here. Recalling previous troubles, I pressed my hand to my pocket, feeling for my gun. There, I could look after myself, no need to worry. I could deal with whatever came.
They drew closer, the wind dashing them towards the shore. I pulled my hair back to see. I couldn’t help being curious.
It was a girl at the tiller, with a pale face and long loose dark hair flying. Two boys – young men, I suppose – one dark and one fair, sat on the seat, and crouched at their feet was another dark head, a child. I knew this was strange the same way an animal does, and was wary.
I watched as if they were a thousand miles away. The sea rose and shattered around the boat. More than once I thought they were gone, fighting the grain of the water that way, but the girl held her line, slowing and looking along the shore. Then she caught sight of me and lifted her hand, and there was no pretending any longer that we weren’t in the same world. My arm felt heavy as I raised it and pointed towards the north-east end. They would have foundered otherwise, I’m sure of that. Two lines of government-built jetties were submerged out there, jagged rock banks waiting to tear out the bottom of any passing boat. The boat seemed to pause and I saw the girl’s hesitation, the wish to obey the water’s rush for shore. But she eased off, keeping a respectful distance from the coast, riding the waves, disappearing into troughs and rearing out of them again. With the wind behind me now I rode in the same direction. Girl streaked ahead.
I was at the docks before them. After some minutes they came from behind the low point over the harbour, circling wide and coming in straight, threading down the timbers towards a dock with more meat on it than most. The blond boy sat up straight and turned to the girl. She shrugged, but didn’t reply or look at him and didn’t move her face. She was a fair boatwoman or knew how to hold her nerve; either way it meant something bad had driven them this way. The dark-haired boy steadied the child – a little girl, I saw now – and held her hair while she was sick over the side. The fair boy gripped the side. He stared at my towering Watermen, beings of protection that I had made a few years back. The dark boy’s face was guarded. His glance touched on me and went past, sweeping the island’s marshes. If it was flight he was after, Wolfe Island might appear as much a blind alley as a sanctuary. He looked at the older girl and seemed to gather himself. The little one might be his sister, from his tenderness and their black hair, which was glossy as a starling’s wing.
The boat slumped deeper, and the water fell away in folds as thick as cream, holding and falling and renewing behind them so they seemed to be travelling down a hollowed-out path of water that had been waiting for them. She sidled the boat close, slung a line over a pile and stepped cleanly onto the landing stage, gripping the boat while the others clambered out. The little girl gave a cry as the skiff slid beneath her. The big girl grabbed her hand and heaved her clear. The flying wind pushed them towards me; behind, the yellow water slapped, the sky was low and grey and the light was the same queer yellow as the water. They were a walking dream in it as they passed the Watermen, looking at them and quickly away, understanding the warning that was in them, as everyone did.
I knew the older girl immediately – but none of the others. She had long legs and a long slouching step and a narrow face. Her hair blew across it. She swept it aside and in a swift movement twisted and thrust it beneath the collar of her short black puffer, and kept coming, like she was coming for me. I remembered the exact movement from years before. She had been taking pictures and her hair had blown across the camera lens and she’d scooped it away. It was one of the school field trips that used to visit – maybe four years ago.
The big blond boy, in khakis and a football j
acket, a half step behind, scanned the docks and beyond like he was inspecting a piece of property, which made my neck prickle and Girl’s hackles rise a little. I put a finger on her shoulder. Last came the little girl clutching her brother’s hand, doing a little jog step once in a few to catch up. She wore a pink satchel and held a blanket-wrapped doll in one arm. Her brother was broad-shouldered and heavy-browed and had a kind of deep seriousness about him, as if spirits too high or too low would expend energy he couldn’t afford. He had a black and swollen eye, a cut cheek, and hunched one shoulder, favouring some hurt to his ribs or chest. It seemed he was getting through each moment: now and now and now. I knew that feeling, like blood.
‘How may I help you?’ I called. I only meant to slow them, because I knew from the sickness in my stomach and the dream-like way they seemed to be moving that everything was about to change. The little girl peeked from behind the boy, her skin looking half-drowned from seasickness and misery.
‘You,’ I said to the big girl.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Kitty Hawke, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’re my grandmother.’
She came closer and I knew she was telling the truth. She had flecks of green in the brown of her eyes, which were wide like her mother’s. Last I saw her that I knew of – much more than four years ago – she’d been a tiny thing, spitting and hissing like a kitten, refusing to be dolled up in pink, and Claudie was in a state because she had no idea what to do with her fury. That child swayed from memory, across a chasm. This girl didn’t know me, or I her, and I felt a fool now for not recognising her when we last met. I don’t know where the years went. They’d moved before she started school – a nine-hour round trip at least – too much for one day and no welcome at the other end. I could never find a time that suited Claudie.
‘Claudie’s girl,’ I said. ‘Catalina.’