Wolfe Island

by Lucy Treloar

  ‘Kitty, girl.’ He pulled me close.

  I stayed a little later after they’d grown and left home. In the morning I dressed and braided my hair and Hart watched. One day he said, ‘You can’t live in a dream your whole life.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. The whole world does, or tries to. Why shouldn’t I?’

  At the door I turned to look at him lying there with his hands over his eyes.

  ‘Stay,’ he said.

  I went back and kissed him. I didn’t know what else to do.

  ‘It gets lonely, Kit,’ he said.

  That was the night that Tobe met trouble. I will never stop wondering if things might have been different if I’d lived in town all those years. I thought things would stay the same. I didn’t think of Hart changing. The last time I visited, a few years ago now, the key was gone. I turned every stone to make sure, and in the end threw one or two, high and hard. Dogs began barking and two faces – one of them Hart’s, the other a woman with fair hair – came to an upstairs window, what was left of it. She stared as if I was a creature from myth. Hart disappeared. I gave a high whistle to tell Sweetie ‘come quick’, and loped off down the road.

  ‘Kit,’ Hart called, following after.

  ‘Nothing to say. You go on back.’

  He caught me up and took a hold of my arm. ‘You expect me to be here.’

  I pulled free.

  ‘I’m supposed to hang around wondering whether tonight, if I’m lucky, the wind might be blowing in the right direction.’

  ‘I never asked.’ I kept on. Sweetie came out of the darkness, like shadow turning solid, suddenly at my side, touching my hand with her nose.

  ‘What do you think that’s like?’

  ‘Wind’s changed. It won’t happen again.’

  We reached the boat, both out of breath. The darkness was filled with the thrum of a thousand air conditioners.

  ‘You can’t go at night.’

  I got in the boat. ‘I know my way. I won’t trouble you again.’

  That was the last time I saw him or spoke to him. I thought of him, though.

  All the way back after my shopping trip I was thinking about husbands and fathers and sons, secrets too. I felt the pull of Hart still. I missed the soft talk, the quiet moving around each other in the house, or sitting before the fire, getting the dishes done, drawing the curtains so we were warm and safe within.

  We docked. Girl leaped out and prowled the shore of Wolfe, uttering staccato yips I couldn’t interpret. She lifted her muzzle and howled, a sound that made me shiver.

  Luis came out to see. ‘Something up with her?’ He watched her for a moment.

  ‘She just does that, I don’t know why.’

  He had a strange look on his face, almost excited, even hopeful. I’d never seen him look that way. ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘My father got in touch.’

  Chapter 9

  Cat came down to help before Luis could tell me more. He began taking the bags inside.

  ‘Thank you,’ Cat said with distant courtesy, standing by the boat. ‘That was nice of you. No need though.’

  I felt more myself than I had for a while, perhaps from being away from them, and succumbed to a spurt of anger. ‘Listen to me, Catalina, sweetheart. I’ll take this from Claudie; she’s got her reasons, or thinks she has. You don’t. This, the way you’re talking right now, is nothing to do with me. So quit it. Two parents and a world of security, and look at yourself next to Luis. Do better.’

  That made her step back.

  ‘And another thing.’ I let my eyes sweep across her belly. ‘I thought you might be the one to break the run.’

  ‘What run’s that?’

  ‘Having a baby so young. You’ll be seventeen, same as me; Claudie was an old lady: nineteen. When were you thinking of telling everyone? It’s not going to disappear if you keep pretending.’ And I went on by pulling my trolley, Girl at my side.

  I heard more from Luis about his father later that day. Things were still difficult, he said. He was in hiding, but closer to home, and wanted to see his children.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I said. It seemed the right thing even though his face was twisted with worry. ‘How long’s it been?’

  ‘Early last year.’

  ‘But . . . something’s troubling you?’

  ‘He mentioned going home – not home here. Home with him, south.’ He stopped. ‘I don’t understand why he’d say that. It’s not safe. That’s why we left. It’s always been north, never south.’

  ‘What about your mother?’

  ‘That’s what I asked. I’ll write again. I’ll find out.’

  We had a celebration at my place that night anyway. I got out the Camp Meeting Cookbook and cooked up a storm: crab boulettes, angel chicken and a peach cream pie. We had a fire in the yard for the fun of it, and when the flames had died to coals we roasted marshmallows. I told them about a long-ago midsummer night when it had been pale on the horizon and the fire on the beach had burned frail, and we’d done the same. Doree and Bette and I had got up, a restlessness upon us, and gone running down the beach in the moonlight, and our strides felt ten feet long, and we felt ten feet tall, and our shadows were twice that, and we were immortal. (The very next day Bette left the island, she left us all.) Alejandra wanted to try it, the moon being full and bright.

  ‘The beach is gone, sweetie,’ I said, but seeing her disappointment we ran along the road with her to make shadows, rushing into their darkness ahead.

  Afterwards we had hot chocolate at my place, and while looking up recipes Cat found an old flyer in the back of the cookbook. ‘You’ll love this one, Kitty. If the threat of nuclear obliteration is playing on your mind, why not allay your fears by making sure you’re prepared? First find a large stable building.’ (It was like she was reaching out to me and saying sorry both.)

  You can imagine how we laughed about that. ‘Might have been from that Korean scare,’ I said. ‘North Korea was going to bomb Guam, but people wouldn’t even leave the beach. They’d had scares before that came to nothing.’ In my observation people mostly incline towards the thought that things will work out until something happens to them. It’s how we sleep at night. I include myself. The water wasn’t at my doorstep yet. I’d see what difference that made.

  ‘Allow one gallon of water per person and a three-day supply of non-perishable food,’ Cat continued. ‘Wouldn’t want to be carrying that.’

  ‘Especially on foot.’ I stuck the pamphlet on the noticeboard and read it occasionally.

  Cat found me in my makings room the next day. ‘Are you going to tell my mother?’

  ‘Claudie doesn’t know?’

  ‘Of course not. I know what she’d say.’ She put on a velvety sort of voice. ‘“That’s not the person we raised you to be. You’re better than that.” All that shit. Imagine the family meeting. No kid of mine’s ever going to a family meeting. You didn’t have them, did you?’

  ‘One or two. There was a fashion for them.’

  ‘They’re so . . . embarrassing. “How do you feel about it?” “How about you?” “Don’t you think you should be doing your chores, young lady?” “Don’t you think you should quit nagging?”’

  I couldn’t help laughing. She was a good mimic. ‘There’s the health insurance. You might want that. Claudie doesn’t mean anything wrong.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what my mother means.’

  ‘She’s respectable, I mean. She’s like her father.’

  ‘I know that.’ Cat sat so still then and her face was also still. ‘I was thinking about a termination, but a friend of mine nearly died.’ She covered her eyes, then took her hands away. ‘I just want them behind me.’

  ‘Any plans for the birth?’ I asked.

  She took a shuddering breath, and shrugged help
lessly. She had no idea about having a baby – I mean in the logistical sense. It was strange to see when she was so certain about everything else.

  ‘What about Josh?’

  ‘I’ve got some time.’ She started the computer; it was as if she’d closed a door.

  Girl opened an eye. I stroked her side with my foot and went into the garden, where Luis was trenching the edges of a vegetable bed.

  ‘Great job,’ I said.

  He kept on, breathless from going so fast. He said, ‘I do it for my mother, because I promised her. And I do it for Alejandra because she has no one else.’ He stopped and straightened and a look of disgust crossed his face, like some dark thing was nearby. He jabbed his spade hard into the ground and it made that sound I hate, the crunch and hiss of a grave being dug. ‘Yeah, that’s a lie. I do it for myself too.’ He glanced at Cat through the doorway, just a flicker. So that’s the way the wind was blowing. What a mess.

  Two days later, Luis wrote to his father, asking about the change in plan, but his father didn’t mention the south again. He wanted to know about Luis’s life, where he was staying, how his darling daughter was.

  ‘Did you tell him?’ Cat asked when she heard this.

  ‘I didn’t tell him where; I just said near the sea.’

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  I don’t know when the others found out about Cat and her baby. Luis might have known that afternoon we were talking. It might have been part of his anger that day. He was on edge waiting to hear again from his father. There was something going on with Josh, too.

  In the days that followed my trip to the main, pretending seemed to fall away. For instance, I had believed they lived in harmony in the other house. They might have wanted me to. Now they started talking things over with me – little things – and they got careless with what seemed like truly private talk. I began to overhear the hissing ends of conversations or their broken middles.

  Once, Josh said to Cat, ‘They’ve got nothing. They can’t pin it on us.’

  ‘They can’t pin it on me because I wasn’t there. But you – if someone saw you . . . It was a stupid thing to do.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant—’

  ‘The other? Be quiet about that,’ Cat said.

  Another time he said, half pleading his cause, ‘You’ve got to make a statement. Smoke and fire, some noise. Something that’ll make the news.’

  Cat cut him off. ‘If you hurt people, you lose people.’ That was the end of the conversation.

  Most of all, I saw how her attention was sliding away from him to what was happening inside. She grew impatient with him. She’d ask him to do something, and add slyly, ‘If it’s not too much trouble for a jock like you,’ and smile to show she meant it for a joke. That’s the sort of thing I mean. He flared up. I heard him shouting once.

  I took them a batch of cookies. Josh came to the door and took the container from me and ate one: ‘Dee-licious,’ he pronounced, and grinned, presuming he was charming me.

  ‘They’re for everyone,’ I said.

  Luis came outside with a basket of washing. Josh pulled him in close by the shoulder. ‘We’re doing all right aren’t we, man, looking after you and the kid?’ and knuckled the back of Luis’s head and laughed. He glanced at me then at Luis again. ‘Got your backs. Got to look after people.’

  Luis smiled. ‘Sure.’ He rubbed his head and left.

  Josh was like a sail fallen slack. I didn’t think a lot about the way he might have been feeling. He liked my granddaughter and that was something. It was not my place to share my thoughts on Josh with Cat. Better for her to find out for herself. I had spoken my mind with Claudie and it did not end well.

  It was exhausting being around people and noticing them, thinking about them. I felt roughened and coarse now, as if I was rubbing against the grain of Wolfe Island. It used to be that I could forget myself and be, spend hours in the marshes watching the tides and the grasses, birds walking over my feet I’d been still so long, listening to the unintelligible wind. I was part of it then, and insignificant. I missed that. The writing helped a little, but only a little.

  Later that week, from the living room, I spied Luis and Alejandra on the porch, silently rocking, pressed close together. They must have had news. A haze was hanging along the shore, as if a fire was smouldering somewhere down that way. The water was dark grey and the sky a lighter grey, and the vaporous light looked like a shroud around the island.

  I didn’t know what to say so I left them alone, thinking they might like some privacy. A little later they still hadn’t moved, except on the trapped arc of their swing. They weren’t talking. Girl and I went out. Luis lifted his eyes. Girl sat before them, shuffling close to get their attention. She rested her head on Alejandra’s knee.

  ‘What is it?’ I said, and when they didn’t answer I drew up a seat before them – ‘What’s happened?’ – and touched each of them softly on the knee. It woke them from the dark place they were lost in. And now I knew how much I cared for them. Once that’s happened, it’s too late. I was part of it before they said a word.

  Alejandra’s eyes shifted towards me, and she put a hand on Girl’s neck. ‘Girl,’ she said. There was a catch in her voice. It frightened me.

  ‘What? Luis, what?’

  ‘Maybe we should go south with our father. We can start again.’ He pulled Alejandra closer. ‘He will be there.’

  ‘But Mama . . .’ Alejandra said.

  ‘She did nothing wrong – nothing except try to keep us together.’

  I touched his shoulder.

  ‘I heard from the lawyers. Mama said there would be word – she did not know how. “A letter at the post office, a sign in the wind, a feeling in your heart if it is so that I am safe,” she said. Her words. I know what she meant now. I felt things were going bad for her. I hoped I was wrong. But we have word, and I know it is true. Mama and the baby are in jail.’

  They had truly lost everything. I knew I couldn’t do anything, but I asked anyway.

  He said, ‘The legal team are trying to get them released. They don’t know if this will be possible. I hope it will. I don’t know who my father’s in touch with. I’ll tell him.’

  I knew so little about Luis. I didn’t know his family name, or the names of anyone in his life: lawyer, teacher, friend. He could seem aloof, though I believe that was from preoccupation not pride. He was never above any task. He was doing what he could to gather his broken family together. The island was just a way station in his life. What other choice did he have? He had a kid sister filled with fears that only her doll knew. I would do anything I could for them.

  I kept working all week, though the news of Luis and Alejandra’s mother hung over us all. ‘Are we mudlarking today, Kitty?’ Alejandra said each time she arrived. It settled her if she knew what was coming next. She would make plans about where to explore, and whether by boat or on foot, and tell me. When we got back she washed her finds and cleaned them with a toothbrush in a bowl of soapy water. She never tired of it.

  ‘Cat and Josh are shouting again, Kitty,’ Alejandra announced as she and Luis arrived one afternoon. Luis shook his head at her. ‘They are, Luis! You heard them.’

  ‘You don’t say it.’ He went to the computer.

  ‘Why not?’

  But Luis had disappeared from this world.

  He found me outside later where I was hammering some cans flat for a new making. I stopped when I saw the elation he was squashing down. I knew before he said: his father had sent another message. He wanted to arrange a place to meet up. Luis’s manner made me wonder if his father had always been some sort of treat, not to be expected or counted on, as if he was an idea as much as an actual person. It made me sad for Tobe. Hart had been anxious for him, which made him incline towards criticism: work harder, get involved, have some ambition. It had made Tobe
wary. Why would he be otherwise when he could never please?

  Luis would have arranged something for that afternoon if Cat and Josh hadn’t talked him down. He might have been looking for hope; how much he must want to lay down his burdens. After some time he could see the sense in Cat’s suggestion, which was to arrange a meeting place. ‘Not here or in town – somewhere an hour away at least,’ she said.

  ‘An hour away,’ he repeated.

  ‘Harder for someone to trace us. I’m sure they won’t. I’m sure we’ll be fine.’

  Josh offered to drive, but Cat and Luis had things worked out by then. He didn’t like not being the first pick, but held his temper. ‘You should wait and watch to see who arrives. Hang back. You don’t have to be the first ones there,’ he said, and I think we were all surprised by this sound advice.

  They left early next morning, so Alejandra arrived at my place early. She thought Luis had gone to see a lawyer about their mother; I didn’t disagree. We walked up to Stillwater, which I hadn’t properly visited since the day they came, a time that seemed distant and wilder. I pointed out Nate Strudwick’s house and told her about his oyster farm.

  ‘He had a whole boat filled with them. He pulled them up when I came visiting, the whole boat, it came out of the water like a shark.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘We ate a couple, straight from the water. Alive.’

  ‘No! Kitty!’

  We looked across the broken docks. ‘It’ll be out there. And all the oysters, I hope.’

  ‘I’m not eating one.’

  ‘Me neither. Dock’s not safe.’

  He’d been one of the last to leave. He was trying to get some books written first, a trilogy as I recall: Dystopia, Revolution, Utopia, something like that. It was going to make millions, he said. He dressed like someone out of Apocalypse Now, and had nothing but his oysters, the ‘minners’ he raised for fish bait and a typewriter for company. It was quite a few years ago. Perhaps he’d published them by now.