Heart of the Grass Tree

by Molly Murn

  Hey careful there, it gets a bit deep in the middle, Nico says.

  It isn’t deep, Nico, see? And Ariel almost flits across, nymph-like. She can’t make it up the steep bank, though, and slides down to the water’s edge. Lewis, help.

  Righto, who wants to lay a net? Joe says.

  I do, I do. Alfie jumps up and down.

  Ariel? Do you want to? Joe says, holding up two nets. She is crossed arms and frowning. I want a stick and Lewis won’t help me get up this crazy side. Her voice wobbles.

  Joe sighs. Ary, we’ll find sticks in a minute. Let Lewis alone. He’ll be done soon.

  I actually think it’s a bit stagnant, Joe says quietly, coming to stand beside Nico.

  Best continue with the plan though, right? They both laugh.

  Yes, hopefully we don’t catch any, Joe says. Not sure I want to eat something outta here.

  Nico agrees. So still it’s like soup.

  Alfie struggles with the bucket-shaped net. It’s almost half his size. Joe huddles over him and they wade a little further along, fussing with the net together. Midges fly up, disturbed. Nico carries a net over to Ariel, and she smiles up at him gap-toothed. Lewis, did you find me a stick? And she stands up enthusiastically.

  Yep, Ariel. And got this one for you too, Dad. Lewis leans over and extends the branch out to Nico. It is mostly straight and sturdy—just a little bent knob in the middle.

  Hey, nice one. I love it. Come on you two, this net’s yours.

  Ariel and Lewis inspect the creek together finding a good spot. They carry the net between them, the hiking sticks having now been carefully lined up on the bank of the creek, ready for the walk home.

  Do you think Pearl will be back by now? Lewis calls out.

  Nico shrugs. Yeah soon, I think. But he doesn’t know. As soon as he’d seen her waiting for them at the ferry terminal yesterday, pacing, he knew she was … something. He’d embraced her and she was all jumpy and eyes flashing. On the drive home, he’d told her that he could take more leave. Stay longer. She dismissed him and said Lewis couldn’t miss so much school. Did she even want him here? He was starting to feel so out of place with her. This whole thing is an effing mess, he thinks. At breakfast Joe had told him that Lucy was pregnant. Thirteen weeks. Luce is worried about telling Pearl, he had said. Thinks she might be too upset at the moment. He asked whether Nico agreed. Nico suggested it would be better to just tell her. She’ll be pleased for you. No, Joe said, Lucy doesn’t want to yet. I’m just giving you the heads up.

  Nico is sitting now on a sandy patch, elbows resting on knees, and drops his head in his hands. It’s ridiculous actually, he thinks. Why tell me and not Pearl? He considers now that perhaps Pearl is in worse shape than even he realised. Theirs was a private grief, he’d thought. Even Lewis is worried about her. Every hour since waking he’s asked when Pearl will be back. Nico stands suddenly, wishing he’d brought his phone.

  I reckon we should head back soon.

  Lewis glances up, surprised. Straightening, he pushes his wet jeans up to his knees, jamming them into place. Dad, you should just go back. We’re okay here. Bring us the burley first, though.

  Nico splashes into the creek. He crouches and helps Lewis tie the stocking of burley securely to the drop net.

  Poor things, Ariel says. They won’t be able to get out. Joe stands behind her now and puts his hands on her shoulders. Alfie is still digging around with the branch, looking worried.

  That’s the point, Ary, Lewis says, positioning the net carefully against a slimy rock, pinning it down.

  And for a moment Nico remembers the cracking sound as he’d cut through the head and thorax, of marron, a few summers ago when Joe had first shown him how to split them open. It had been like dissecting a kind of alien. He’d worried at his knifing skills, but quickly learnt the swift flicking action of the wrist. It was messy work, yet he much preferred it to fishing, which he did not enjoy at all. The interminable waiting, the dealing with the hooks and the blood and the scales. The sad fish eyes. But this he loves. That a brown creek like this holds such delicate crustaceous secrets is a kind of impossible wonder. He wraps his arms around Lewis and kisses the top of his head.

  I’m heading back now. That okay?

  Joe nods. Yeah course, we’ll just pack up here and see you back there. Joe gives Nico a look that says something like, Everything will work out okay.

  Don’t forget your stick, Nico, Ariel calls out. Yours is the biggest one.

  The stick is actually useful. He walks in a kind of swinging rhythm, leaning into the staff and punctuating his steps. Punctuating his thoughts with the crunch of shell grit underfoot. He is hungry again. He never eats as much at home as he does here. It’s like the body wakes up. Nico focuses on dropping his shoulders, opening his chest, keeping his pelvis even. So many hours he’s spent adjusting other people’s spines and hips and necks that his own body is all cramped up. He’d like to feel better; he’d like to rest. He’d like Pearl to let him in, let him stay. For such a long while he’d loved her before they were together. And it’s like that time all over again. He keeps waiting for a sign that she wants him.

  The last part of the walk is steep and he slows, his lungs working hard. As the back paddock, the shed, the house, the washing line, the muscular sea come into view, he sees Pearl sitting on the dune, knees drawn in close. Her shoulders are fine and straight. Her hair is brassy. She’s strong, he remembers. But he makes a promise to be gentle with her. He catches his breath. The island will work its way on us as it always does, he reassures himself. I’ll wait.

  When Pearl and Nico visited Nico’s relatives in Crete, Pearl had missed Nell terribly. Achingly—and she couldn’t articulate to Nico her strange mood that wasn’t quite homesickness, but was a restless longing nonetheless. She wanted Nell to trample alongside her in the aromatic wildflowers that grew on the mountains; she wanted Nell to cradle in her palm the white round stones Pearl collected along the coast. And she wanted Nell to lie in the sweet tickling grass that smelt so much of home and look up to cypress trees (not like home) growing haphazardly from rock faces. She wanted to share with Nell the feel of the island’s ancientness. She wanted Nell to know this island as she knew her own. All its ragged edges. And its nostalgic light. She wanted Nell to know it so that she herself could understand it too.

  It was Nell who had shown Pearl the quiet private things of her childhood island. Not the ‘grand swathes’, as Diana mockingly called Nell’s constant imparting of local history, but the small gleaming things. Bright salt-encrusted rock pools, rubbery shark eggs, lichen-covered boulders lying prone like seals, hard sandy roads that shone in the night from the quartzite, soak holes, she-oaks, abrasive cliff tops, bush tracks, Waubs Wall, ruins, lagoons, sea glass, fleshy leaves of pigface, salt pans, Lubra Creek, dank wind shelters and blonde grassy paddocks. In Kissamos, Pearl tore out handfuls of dittany of Crete to make into a therapeutic tea and wondered how she would describe the mountainy taste of it to Nell. She also couldn’t wait to tell Nell about its most enigmatic quality—it was used to expel arrows from the body. This quality was first noticed by shepherds whose goats went straight for the herb when they’d been accidentally struck by an arrow. It was a wound-healer, used to heal Aeneas in Virgil’s Trojan Wars. It was barely palatable, said Nico, but Pearl loved that such an unassuming flower, woolly and velvety and pungently carpeting the mountains, could bear such history. At the palace of Knossos she had leant against a portico and, weary and heavy with menstrual pain, had cried and the tears as they dried made her cheeks tight and hot. It was a combination of physical exhaustion—sunstroke even, as she found the ruins of Knossos to be dusty and glaring and overwhelmingly desolate—and a sense of displacement.

  Later in the hotel room, she’d tried to explain it to Nico. It’s that I can’t fully connect to the idea of this being both a mythological site, birthplace of Zeus even, and a living, functioning, twenty-first-century island with traffic and cities and pollu
tion and so many layers of ruins. I can’t fathom it. It makes me feel very small somehow.

  I know what you mean. The first time I came here, I was completely spooked. Nico stood framed by the alcove doorway. She thought of Adonis, the way his hair curled at his neck and his shoulders so shapely and young. Was this a ridiculous impression of him to carry around with her from that time, she wonders now. It had been their first time away together without Lewis. For a brief moment she had Nico all to herself.

  But you’re from here. Well it’s in your blood anyway.

  I guess. It is in a way. But mostly because the climate, the colours, the smells are so familiar. So much like home—Australia, I mean. Nico came to sit beside her on the bed. He picked up one of the blue and white woven cushions and held it at his stomach.

  It is and it isn’t. The mountains feel different. It’s like wandering in a biblical landscape. Pearl drew up her knees and leant against Nico.

  Earlier than that even. And it’s not because you studied Ancient History, right? It’s something you feel?

  Yeah.

  It’s like, we can know something because it is a grand narrative, documented, archived, critiqued, passed along through popular culture—and we can know something. He took off his belt and the buckle clunked on the terracotta floor. He unbuttoned his jeans.

  Pearl smiled to herself and thought about the philosophy lectures she’d struggled through as an undergraduate. Episteme and gnosis. The different kinds of knowing. She hadn’t really understood them. Perhaps only intellectually.

  Gnosis, she said.

  What?

  Doesn’t matter.

  Nico rolled onto his side and ran his thumb along her cheekbone. Pearl’s hair was still wet from the shower and she shifted closer to Nico, out of the wet patch on the pillow. The blue shutters were open, and the breeze coming through prickled along her skin. He put his hand flat to her breast and she felt her womb tighten, against the dull thud of cramps.

  Our little funny island, Nico. I miss it when I’m here. Moreso than in Melbourne.

  I know. It’s … enigmatic.

  Not just that. Compared to here, its story is so quiet.

  Untold maybe?

  Pearl turned her back to Nico, and he wrapped tight around her, pressing his hand between her legs. The wetness was more than just blood and he slipped easily in. Pearl’s thoughts emptied like her skull was a bowl of light, and when Nico stopped moving for a moment, holding her firm against him, his arm hooked under her breasts, she clutched at him deep inside and she came high and juddering and loudly, and he moaned. Lying spooned against her, the wetness between them pooling, he whispered, Don’t worry, Pearl. It’s early days. We can keep trying. We will keep trying.

  But it’s like everywhere we go, I lose something.

  You haven’t lost anything. You just got your period again.

  He turned her towards him and cupped her face with both hands. Pearl, it’ll be okay. Look how perfect you are. He ran his hand over her hips and grinned, his teeth shining.

  And lying there on those dense white sheets, the boats clanging in their moorings outside the window, she’d already lost hope. But she said, I promise not to worry. Then closed her eyes and saw a little girl on the mountain, picking wildflowers, and she was running away from Pearl like Crete was her place and she could never leave. Nell would know what to do. Gnosis. Tell her a story and make things all right.

  So it was by accident that I finally did see Sol again. I had only been back from the mainland about eight weeks and was still light-headed and weakened by that terrible flu or breakdown or whatever it was that came over me on my return. But I’d managed to convince Father that I needed an outing, that I needed to get some sunshine and do something normal, and so he’d taken me with him into Penneshaw to collect the post and buy some flour and a few other things for Mother. As we entered the general store, everyone turned to look at me. May Walker the post-mistress, and Aunty Hettie, and Aunty Hettie’s grand-niece Charlotte with her new baby boy, Elijah—and even he gawped at me with his brown eyes. I could not take my gaze from that baby. He was older than mine would be, and his nose ran with clear snot and Charlotte looked tired. How was it that Charlotte, that whiny girl not much older than me, got to hold on to her child? And mine cried for me somewhere else. Father laid his hand on the back of my shoulder. Well good day to you all, ladies, how are we all keeping?

  Good afternoon, Peter. Nell. Dear girl you look terrible. So thin. I heard you took ill. Very sorry to hear. Are you feeling any better now? May said, taking off her glasses and squinting at us, a stack of post dangling in her hands.

  I, um, yes I’m—

  She’s just grand now thank you, May. Having an outing. Getting some air. Father leant into me and whispered, Go take a little walk, darling. Stretch your legs. I’ll get what we need and meet you back in half an hour or so, yes?

  I nodded and kissed him quickly on the cheek. Okay.

  But as I turned to leave, Hettie called out, Nell.

  Aunty? I said quietly.

  I felt Father stiffen. No more questions, Hettie. She’s not herself yet. Still recovering.

  Aunty looked so much older, and as she spoke her eyes were milky or glassy or something. Tears? And I wondered what she wanted to say.

  It’s okay, Father. I’m okay.

  Aunty Hettie came towards me and took hold of my hands. She was short and compact, and her high cheekbones were shiny like a burnished apple. Come see me for a tonic. You need something. Day after next. You’ll bring her to me won’t you, Peter?

  I hadn’t seen Hettie since I’d been sent away. I wanted to ask her about Sol. I wanted to ask her about everything, but Father and May and Charlotte were all staring at us too warily. I couldn’t speak.

  Mrs Walcott. Thank you for your concern, but Nell is just fine now. She’ll be right as rain soon. Just needs some more rest, Father said, a little too roughly.

  Right as rain. Right as rain, I thought. What does that even mean? I am not right. Not right. Not rain. There’s never any rain.

  I would like that very much thank you, Hettie. Father will bring me, won’t you Daddy?

  Father shook his head so imperceptibly that I pretended not to notice. Aunty smiled and let go of my hands suddenly and nudged me towards the door with a nod. Good girl.

  Before Father could protest any further, I stumbled out into the glare and silver ribbons danced in my line of vision. My head throbbed and I dug my palms into my temples a little too viciously. I stood very still and let myself adjust to the brightness, the scooped deep sky, and the platinum mirror of ocean. When it was this hot, I felt exposed. My eyes watered and my scalp itched with sweat. There was just the slightest wind coming off the sea, but all it did was dry my lips. I steadied myself on the railing outside the post office and looked over towards the mainland. I could just make it out, fawning provocatively in the far distance. My baby was over there. And here I was imprisoned by sea walls on this island that a year ago had been all I needed. Sol and me, our honey, and this little piece of island flung out to sea—that was all we both ever needed. Now I was exiled and my entire being from deep in my chest poured out towards Adelaide and to that little boy I never held. I understand now what Emue might have felt then, the pull of the other side, like an enchantment. A fierce and endless and overwhelming pour of energy, white and hot, but useless and pointless and completely unmanageable. I gripped my chest with both hands and twisted my fingernails deep into my skin. It was satisfying to feel my nails draw blood. It stung pleasurably. I looked down the road that led to the sea and there he was. Sol.

  I knew that lanky body anywhere—the deep runnel between his shoulder blades. Blue shirt clinging. Narrow hips. Impossibly long legs. Bare feet. His dark hair had grown longer, I noted. Sol was striding purposely (I assumed) up the road that led to ‘The Aboriginal’—the pocket of land on the eastern side of Penneshaw.

  I didn’t call out to Sol, didn’t chase after him.
Just watched. Mute. He hadn’t seen me, so very cautiously I began to follow him. I had imagined this moment many times, but never like this. He was supposed to turn up at the girls’ hostel and rescue me, and if not there, once I was home, he was supposed to tap on my bedroom window or just walk brazenly in against Mother’s wishes and hold me hard against his ribcage. It was not meant to be like this. I didn’t call out because I wanted to observe him. I wanted to know how he was in the world without me. Foolish, foolish girl, I was. It was then that I lost him. Not when I fell pregnant, not when I was exiled in shame on the mainland, and not upon my coming home and during those weeks of breakdown, but in that half an hour after I first spotted him walking along the coast road. It was right then that I lost him.

  I wondered where he could possibly be going, and because he was walking so briskly I, too, sped up to not lose sight of him. My body was not used to exercising. It was strange feeling so unlike me. Before, I was strong. You’ll get your strength back, darling, Mother had said. I hoped to somehow defy her. My thigh muscles burnt and my hips ached.

  But Sol. Where was he going? I was crazed with all sorts of reckless thoughts. And as he rounded the shoulder of the bay thick with vegetation, I lost sight of him. I hiked up my skirt, scrunching the material in tight fists, and half ran half walked after him, my boots scuffing in the dirt. The hair in my bun fell loose. Everything was so very still. Poised. No wind. Even the sea was compliant and gentle. Flat as glass. No sensible person was out in this heat. What was Father thinking, sending me out for a walk? I wondered angrily. I was drawing too much attention, so he got rid of me. And Sol, wouldn’t he have seen our cart in the main street? Why hadn’t he tried to find me? As I approached the edge of the beach, I could just make out Sol, that blue shirt again, between the tangled trees. I stopped for a moment and caught my breath, my heartbeat thudding loudly in my ears. At that moment he turned and looked over his shoulder, as if he knew he was being watched, and then he stopped completely and turned back to face the ocean. He faced the sea for a good couple of minutes like some kind of sentinel, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. I held my breath; the trees held their breath. The sky waited. Then he began walking again, away from the beach and up the hill that faced the shoreline and that was dotted with just a handful of houses. Sol Sol Sol, I whispered desperately. Turn around.