by Lucy Treloar
‘Cat.’
‘Cat. You might have told me that other time.’
She ignored that. ‘Josh, Luis, Alejandra,’ she said, pointing to the others in turn.
I nodded at them. ‘What on God’s earth brought you out here in this weather?’
‘We’re looking for somewhere to stay,’ Cat said.
‘Is Claudie okay?’
Cat, puzzled, said, ‘Of course.’
‘You were caught in the storm? Is that why?’
‘Not with you exactly. I was thinking of one of the other houses, just for a few nights.’ She looked about. ‘I thought there were more. I remember more.’
‘You remember right. We’ve lost some since then.’
‘But there are still some?’
‘Some,’ I said. ‘Would you mind my asking what you’re leaving behind?’
‘Who said we were?’ Josh asked.
‘You’re out in this weather, you want shelter for more than a night, and there’s a child here without her parents. You tell me what you’re doing.’
‘We can leave. We’ve got other places,’ Cat said.
‘I didn’t ask you to do that. If there are other places, they’d be easier to get to than this, which makes me think the other places are . . .’
Cat glared.
Balls of rain began to hit. I listened to their scattered sound.
‘We need to leave behind some things that are happening,’ Luis said.
‘I don’t pay too much attention to the world – some, but not a lot.’
Cat said, ‘We can’t all pretend.’ Still a spitfire then. The boys shifted their feet like bull calves in a field wondering about bolting, the way they do when they’re spooked.
‘And I’m not going to start pretending to you. I didn’t say I wouldn’t help. You’re here. Only a fool would go back out on that sea. You were lucky on the way here.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ Cat said.
‘You know a little. I could have been more welcoming.’ I touched her upper arm lightly by way of apology, and she put her hesitant hand on mine, which startled me, unused as I was to touch. It was real, then, this strange day. ‘There’s no going further now. You’ll be staying with me tonight.’
‘Grandma,’ Cat said.
‘Too late for that. You can call me Kitty, same as everyone. Rain’s coming.’ I turned and didn’t wait to see if they followed. What else were they going to do?
‘Luis, Luis,’ panted Alejandra, running along, the crunching of her footfall light and fast.
‘What?’ he said.
‘What are those things?’
‘Sculptures, I guess, like art. Someone made them.’
‘Me,’ I said.
‘They have funny faces,’ Alejandra said. ‘What are their faces?’
‘Sh,’ Luis said.
I looked over my shoulder. ‘Skulls. Cattle skulls.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘The bones inside cows’ heads,’ Cat said. ‘That’s pretty gross.’
‘Meant to give pause,’ I said.
‘Is that a wolf, Luis?’ Alejandra’s piping voice.
‘Wolfdog,’ Cat said. ‘Like the island, Wolfe Island. There’s always been wolfdogs here.’
Without turning, I said, ‘Name’s Girl.’
‘Did you hear, Luis? A wolfdog. What’s a wolfdog? Why do you keep looking?’ Alejandra said. ‘Luis, why?’
I turned. Luis’s head was skywards, checking behind. ‘Looking for trackers?’ I asked, and at his wary look added, ‘I’m not completely ignorant. Set your mind at rest. Girl’d hear them, even if I didn’t, which is not likely. Eagles don’t like them either. We hardly see them out here.’ I slowed until they caught up. ‘You’re runners, you and your sister here. That it?’ His face stilled and he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her in close.
‘Is that a problem?’ Cat said.
‘I meant it as fact, not accusation. Doesn’t matter to me. Why would I be against them? They’ve done me no wrong, but that’s not the end of any story, you know that.’ My life was quiet but I’d read enough to know the word and what it meant. If they were runners and people were looking for them, what did that make Cat and the other boy, Josh? ‘And you,’ I said to him, ‘what have you got to say for yourself?’
‘Nothing much, ma’am.’ He grinned. He was one of those boys like a side of beef, hanging there waiting for the admiration to hit him like an appreciative slap, the sort of boy who might have given Tobe a hard time for nothing more than amusement. I know I shouldn’t have judged him straight off like that.
‘You should,’ I said, and saw his certainty waver. ‘Don’t let other people speak for you.’
Cat frowned, like she planned on saying something, but changed her mind, pulling her jacket closer and tucking her chin into its high collar. The wind blew the hair across her face and she let it.
I said, ‘There’s a storm coming. Won’t that be nice for us all.’ I turned again, and the crunching of their feet on the path resumed.
‘Why does the lady speak so funny?’ Alejandra.
‘She doesn’t speak funny,’ Luis said, low.
‘She does so.’
‘Island talk,’ Cat said. ‘That’s just the way they talk here. Always have.’
‘How do you know?’ Alejandra said.
‘Everybody knows. My mother can even talk like that if she wants to, the exact same way. I always liked it.’
‘Some things you can’t forget,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘Can’t take the island out of the girl.’
‘My dad tells her to quit it.’
‘He would.’
‘Ha.’ Cat laughed – a good sound, and there was the pleasure of making someone laugh.
Alejandra darted to the path’s edge, to the old picket fence and the shells lining its base. ‘Look, Luis. Can I have one?’
‘I guess.’ He called louder to me. ‘Is that okay, ma’am?’
‘Sure. They don’t belong to anyone in particular.’
‘What kind are they?’ Alejandra asked.
‘Oyster.’
‘Arster?’
I tried again, bending my mouth. ‘Oyster. A shellfish. Good to eat.’
‘I want to try one.’
‘If you can find one, good luck to you.’
The rain hit my cheek in earnest and I could not help myself and began running. There was nothing for me to escape, but I was fleeing something even if I didn’t know what, and was frightened – not of these people, but of what they might mean.
Above my panting breaths and the whack of my boots and the wind buffeting my hood the little girl called, ‘Why is she running, the lady? Why, Luis?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
They were all running to keep up, as if they thought they might lose me, which might have been what I wanted, even if it was not possible. They weren’t to know that.
I think of that day and what I could have done different. Could I have let them founder on the rocks and drown, shown my gun at the docks, or shot in the air or bellowed at them to get on, to leave on by for the next island (Shakers was not so far away, though as I have said it was not the day for travel in such a boat), or made Girl growl and show her teeth? Did I want company? If I did, it was not in my conscious self. I understood in that moment that if you know someone or have met them, and have no reason to hate or mistrust except because they are human, then it is hard to turn them away.
Chapter 3
They watched at the kitchen table as I pulled a meal together: biscuits and cheese, tomato soup. Cat shook herself into politeness (a glimpse of Claudie reminding her of her manners). ‘Thank you. We won’t be here for long, we hope. A couple of days, or weeks maybe, we’re not sure.’
They were all weary, Alejandra most of all. She rested her head on the table as if it was the softest pillow. Her hands fell in her lap, and her eyes looked about. Cat stroked her cheek with the back of a finger. Alejandra blinked. Luis’s gaze rested on them without moving. Josh pushed his chair back from the table and stretched out his legs, which he crossed and rocked on one heel. I pushed down a forgotten dread of obligation, of people to be tended to and failed. It didn’t matter if I didn’t know them. There would be no stopping it. The windows were filled with thrashing rain and small things – leaves, branches, perhaps a small creature or two – hurtling through the air. They paid no attention to the tumult. The island was just a place to them, shelter, not a living thing under siege.
‘We’ll go looking tomorrow. You want to stay together?’
Luis sat up a little. ‘We don’t want to put you to any trouble, Mrs . . .’
‘Kitty. You’ve got enough of your own by the looks.’
He put a hand to his cheek up near the eye. ‘A fight.’
‘A bad one,’ I said.
He shrugged. The side of his upper lip twitched, pulling at his face. He pressed a hand to it, hard, and when he took it away he had mastered himself. He didn’t look at Cat or Josh then for any sign of understanding or care. Not a one of them looked at any other, and their expressions became fixed.
But Alejandra sat up, as if a shadow was passing overhead, and pushed her face against Luis’s arm and then hid beneath it. He rolled his eyes at the awkwardness. The smallest word, the breath of a memory, could set her burrowing for refuge. I learned that, but this was the first time I saw it, and already I didn’t want to add to her sadness. In a second she was on his lap with his arms around her. He was worn out – no more than seventeen by my estimation – but he didn’t give himself a choice, just shrugged a little, rested his chin on her trembling head and exchanged subdued smiles with Cat. It seemed as if Alejandra’s fears were a regular storm he must deal with.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
Josh might have spoken, but Cat pressed his knee.
‘Sorry to pry.’ I measured flour and butter, sugar and salt, and cut them and rubbed them together, not too fine, then added the cream, lightly, and mixed them in a bowl to make a dough. ‘As long as Claudie knows you’re safe.’
‘I left her a letter,’ Cat said.
‘That you’re here?’
‘That we’re okay, not to worry.’
It would have to do for now. Luis preferred not to speak of private matters – ‘for the safety of some people,’ he said. I considered the load his spirit seemed to carry. He was a serious person and he cared for his sister and when I asked about his family, he met my gaze directly: all things in his favour. ‘We’ll try to let them know. I wonder – might I enquire as to whether I could use your computer, ma’am, if you have one?’ It seemed an effort for him to make this request. ‘We were advised to shut everything down . . .’
‘Sounds awfully heavy,’ I said.
‘Being careful,’ Cat said.
‘Most people have a reason for being that careful.’ They didn’t say anything to that, only looked away vaguely, maybe waiting for my attention to slide by, the way Claudie and Tobe used to if something had happened at school – Tobe in trouble usually, skipping classes to go wandering down to the docks, out on the boats, anywhere to escape a room with a closed door and windows. But it was worse than that now, as if we were paused above something dark.
I patted the dough together and tipped it onto the floured board, dabbed it out with my fingers, cut it and put the biscuits in the oven. ‘You can help next time, if you’d like,’ I said to Alejandra. She stared.
Josh went to the window and put his face to the glass. ‘Looks like there’s a couple of houses to choose from.’
‘They’re standing; doesn’t mean you’d want to live in them, but there might be one that would suit.’
Luis took Alejandra over and they looked through cupped hands against the window, wiping away the moisture from their breaths now and then.
‘What happened? I mean that one.’ Josh pointed. ‘No one there?’
‘No one anywhere. No one but me.’ I didn’t have to look to know the house he meant. ‘Beauforts’ summerhouse – nothing but a shell. The mansard roof was always trouble. Fanciest house on the island but it leaked like the dickens.’ I wiped down the benches. ‘My mother didn’t care for the portico but I always liked it. We had some good times up there – threw a rope over and shinnied up when the summer folk left.’ My mouth was running. ‘As to what happened, it was the same as everywhere round here. The island started falling into the sea. No one likes the ground moving, or water coming through the floorboards.’
I stirred the soup, and got out plates and bowls. ‘If you could set the table?’ I said, but they were all at the window by then.
They would be seeing a ghost town, cold and ruined, when I remembered lit windows, people moving through light, laughing and talking, children running, crowds in summer, parties and festivals, days of men out on the water – winter for oysters and summer for crabs – and women picking crabs and talking: some new way with a mayonnaise dressing, who made the best layer cake, whether Maya and Jesse would make a go of it, take over his daddy’s business now he wasn’t so well, and the new teacher soon to arrive. Wolfe had been a world that things orbited – boats, fish, birds, people, business, life, and all the seasons of those things. If anyone talked of the future with worry, there was always one person to say, ‘We’ll be right. Always have been.’ It seemed like a fairytale now, but there had been a dark side to it all along.
Houses fell into the sea, insurance and health premiums went sky high, government relocation packages enticed the skittish folk, the school closed, and even the church by degrees. They weren’t helping; they were shutting us down. It seems fast written like that, but it took all my years of growing and a few more.
These days, rusted cars and ruins were just things I moved around, no different from trees, though like people variable in the ways they fell apart. Morning glory and orange trumpet vines rampaged in summer, trying to drag things back into the ground, and in winter turned sodden brown. Choked gables thrust out still, tattered curtains licking the air. I’d tried for a while to keep things looking respectable, but it was too much for one. It was hard to see things happening so slow, and I had become accustomed to the dereliction. I would not go so far as to say that I found it poetic, as Hart once claimed, but there was something in it that suited my way of feeling. I was protective of it and would not forsake it, for Tobe’s sake most of all, as if I might still be able to call him home.
I lit the lamps. (It saved power for the freezer.) Outside, darkness began to fold around everything, growing and hiding things by degrees, the smudge of it coming closer, flickering like an inconstant memory, obscuring the island’s shadowy promontories which reached finger by finger into the iron sea. I fed Girl and set the table myself, and by then the biscuits were ready. We ate our meal and didn’t say much, since I had nothing but questions and they had so few answers, though Josh did mention a friend driving them from Calverton and someone in town who’d lent them a boat. Cat gave him a hard glare and he fell quiet.
Later, I made up beds in Tobe’s and Claudie’s rooms. The thought of other people sleeping on the island and the sounds of their whispering voices as they settled kept me awake in the dark, as if my ears were pricked and swivelling like Girl’s. She looked at me – surely I’d do something – and when I didn’t she rested her head on her paws and made a whistling sound in her throat. It seemed like Wolfe was rippling with their presence, as if the island was a pond and they were thrown stones.
At breakfast Alejandra snuck Girl pieces of waffle under the table, while I pretended not to notice. I went upstairs and fetched the box with the keys people had left with me, at first for safekeeping over winter and lat
er after they left for good, so I could show their houses to anyone who ‘might be interested’.
I looked from the landing window towards the island’s north end, where two houses stood at the edge of shallow washes of water, as queer as tombstones against the drizzling sky. From the opposite window Stillwater might have been a watercolour on Wolfe’s south coast.
I went downstairs. ‘Yep, the south end is shot.’
They looked up, startled.
‘A raggedy place no good for boat or person. No, that end I do not recommend. No way to leave the island and the marsh road’s only open once a day. Tides cover it. It might seem quiet now, but we used to have fun . . . Hundreds of people in summer,’ I said.
If I looked out of the window my sister Bette would be strutting the balustrade of Beauforts’ portico, and the rest of us would be drinking sneaked beers below or making out in sandy dips near the marshes, wherever we could find. We mocked the summer folks’ ways, some of that from envy. Bette would be cranky when they were gone and my mother had no patience with that. ‘You should be proud of what you are, and all you want to do is run.’
Girl, as impatient to be out as I was, stood at the door with her nose snuffling the crack to let me know. It was our exploring time of day. I went to the window and watched the rain slow and finally stop. ‘Ready to go looking?’ I called. The wind was still moaning and apart from Alejandra they looked at each other in a raised-eyebrow way from their warm place by the stove, but gathered themselves, putting on jackets and woollen hats and scarves. It would have been hard to face the next unknown thing, I suppose, having arrived at shelter, but it was what they were here for. I opened the door and we went into the blustery wind.
‘Girl, Girl, come on, come with me,’ Alejandra called. Girl let her rest a hand on her head, which she didn’t really care for. She understood before I did that Alejandra needed gentleness above anything. They walked together down the broken road.
Beauforts, as expected, was hardly more than its outside walls, like a well filled with shattered building material. The tombstone houses at the north end were mottled and had a scum of frothing water on their front paths, and the air around them was salt-sour. Cordgrass filled their yards. We pulled our coats in tighter. I would have gone on, but the others wanted to peek in. There wasn’t much between the two houses: their roofs gone and the sky falling through their mangled guts. The stairs had broken loose from the landing in one, ending midair, and the ceilings drooped heavily or had fallen into middens of slats and plaster. Desks and sofas lay on their sides like beasts tied for branding. We began to cough.