Beneath the Wild Fig Tree, page 9
~
Dad set up the meteorological equipment near the lighthouse.
‘I’m pretty damned sure the people who once lived here would’ve had amazing knowledge about the weather. Colonialism. Like an enormous eraser. Come on, Nicky, what’s happened to your enthusiasm?’
I stomped off, because the truth was, I felt so lonely those first few days, stuck on an island with Priapus and Mum, both far too keen on sharing their passions. We needed visitors and we needed them now.
The island was definitely getting under my skin because that night I dreamed we got wrecked on Misfortune, the wind screaming in an octave close to the edge of sound. The waves were heavy blows in the dark ‘with the kick of seventeen thousand horses’, Wheeler shouted, his wet face against my ear as I choked on spindrift flying off tall black waves. I was up to my knees in water and the boat was sinking. I was screaming for help, but no sound came. I clutched at the starboard gunwale, but the wood crumbled beneath my hands, and I was left holding fragments.
I couldn’t hear the words Mum was yelling, her hair whipped by the wind, and even as we sank, she pulled and cursed the tiller, now beneath the surface. Wheeler was laughing while the wind slashed the sail to ribbons that snaked and cracked above us. He clutched the mast, but it toppled in his hands. ‘Look to the stars!’ he shouted and hurled his compass into the waves.
Then I was rolling in the sea. Misfortune loomed above me. Time passed, and I became conscious of rock beneath me and the cutting wind against my skin.
A man lifted me up. I wanted to say, don’t put me in another boat, but I was mute, in that thin flat space beyond terror, looking at a man with bristles on his chin, who pulled at the oars and talked to two small boys wearing old-fashioned clothing.
They took me up to our house. A lady settled me on the couch.
‘It’s braw,’ she said with a Scottish accent, stroking its fabric while two little boys stared down at me.
‘We must cut off your hair,’ she said. ‘We need a fire to beckon a ship.’
I wanted to ask her where my parents were, but no sound came. My hair was a fire on the hill and the smoke in the sky read ‘save our souls’.
But that couldn’t be, because at the same time the rain was falling.
17
Gadigal Country (The Rocks, Sydney) 2000
Bass Strait (Verloren Island) 1984
The Island Orchestra of Light and Sound
When I phone Freya to let her know I’m safely home, I permit a conversation about the island. We talk about safe things, like the night soundscape – the wailing and cries of the seabirds, the smash of surf and howling gales.
‘Oh!’ she says. ‘And the light! Cloud formations and moonlight, the falls of sunlight on the ocean, the rainbows.’
And an aurora. But that’s not for sharing.
‘Some real adventurers came ashore,’ she says.
The yachts that brought them were mostly Tasmanian or Victorian, and, especially when it came to Steve, I’d have preferred if they’d sailed on by.
‘We were mostly happy then, weren’t we?’ she says.
I don’t respond. It was never that simple. But as she’s read my journals, I suspect she’s trying to reframe my childhood.
Later, Arno phones to find out how my visit went.
‘You sound more relaxed,’ he says.
‘It was the right thing to do.’ I’m trying to be more open, to prove his assessment of me was flawed. ‘And I’ll go again as soon as she’s finished chemo.’
‘Bravo, Nicky!’
‘Do you feel like a South Australian break?’ You fool, I think, don’t go there.
‘Don’t sacrifice time with your mother. It’s far too precious.’
He’s keeping his distance, I can tell. He talks about cycling to Barrenjoey Head and a baby nephew in Italy.
‘And the woman you met when you were there?’ I finally ask.
‘I didn’t say “woman” – all I said was that I had a conversation. You overreact, Nicky. It’s crazy.’
One, I’m sure he met someone. Two, he’s probably already booked his ticket home. Three, I’d never move to Italy. And four, he can’t be trusted.
I cut short the call. Who needs a man anyway?
~
A friend who knows I’ve jettisoned Arno suggests we catch up with our usual bunch for drinks in The Rocks. At a terrace table with harbour views, they get stuck into him on my behalf. ‘So superficial,’ they tell me, and ‘way too conscious of his appearance,’ and, ‘the way he swaggers,’ says another.
They’re trying to be supportive, I get that, but that’s not Arno and these reactions are why I went to ground. As they make sly digs, I recall his clever wit, his lovely accent, and the reassurance of his optimism. I did love his energetic sense of direction and his kindness, but not the way he synced it with criticism at L’Heure Exquise.
I leave early, seeking the solace of my couch, returning to that bundle of Freya’s letters, to one she was writing in front of the fire at the end of August, the house quiet, Wheeler and Kes out somewhere along the isthmus, me apparently in my bedroom reading.
… Nicky complains about history lessons, but she reads about Verloren avidly. We swap facts, steal each other’s books, drop them accidentally in the bath and the sea and abandon them to the sun to dry out. Open any of the books piled next to a chair and there will be tell-tale trails of sand in the creases of their spines. We’ve really aged and dishevelled them!
According to Nicky, the island has ghosts ‘because this book says so!’ Wheeler’s response – put a sock in it and do something useful. Instead she stalked down to the beach, her hair flaming behind her.
He’s making me a cup of tea and I must say it’s cosy in front of the fire, eating our freshly baked bread and chatting, Miles Davis on in the background …
~
The North Verloren Cape Barren goose couple set the sky rattling with their honking at first light. We live inside their territory. As soon as they spot us, they depart, complaining loudly. We’ve called them Philip and Elizabeth. They both have metal bands on their sturdy pink legs.
‘They might get visitors,’ said Dad as we watched them graze. ‘Given their jewellery.’
Just then, the radio crackled into life. ‘All ships, all ships,’ we heard, and swapped channels to hear that there would be snow down to two hundred metres on mainland Tasmania with a gale force warning of fifty knots for all Tasmanian coastal waters. We listened to fishing boats reporting in, and later Dad said that the weather would delay the new firewood supply. Then Bert’s voice came over the radio, and so Dad showed me how to change channels.
‘Rosy Wrasse, Rosy Wrasse, this is the Verloren light, the Verloren light, do you copy?’ he said.
Over the static Bert’s faint voice responded. ‘… Sitting fast in the Tamar River until the weather improves …’
My parents were in their Aran jumpers, but I was in a t-shirt. We were wondering how those Straitsmen who were trying to make good, but also the convicts, plunderers, pirates, sealers and vagabonds coped with this tough environment. Mum said, ‘You’ve got to imagine the lives of good men who valued their Aboriginal wives’ local knowledge was vastly improved.’ And on she went about marriage through the ages.
Dad stroked his chin. ‘I think my novel will be about a Straitsman called Gunther who gets dropped here, forgotten by the mother craft and builds a life for himself.’
‘Right, Mum said. ‘Remember the women,’ and kissed him, before going upstairs to work on her thesis.
~
That night, as the storm raged, we sat close to the fire and played Scrabble, Dad playing ‘Sail On, Sailor’ too many times between turns. But he put his guitar down as messages started flowing from the yacht Birngana en route from Eden to Hobart. We messed with the squelch on the radio and, over the sound of the static and the howling wind, learned that she was being storm-tossed in Bass Strait, that she had engine problems and a ripped mainsail.
‘Rather a lighthouse than a yacht,’ said Mum.
‘Quite an adventure,’ said Dad, a strange gleam in his eye.
‘Forget it, Wheeler,’ she said. ‘Nicky, time for bed.’
~
Birngana sought refuge in the Bay of Fires, but a fishing boat anchored in Sunlit Cove said they’d lost gear overboard, it was hell out there, and one of the crew had busted his thumb.
‘Want to come down to Restless?’ Mum asked me after breakfast.
Tonnes of freshly deposited sand had created a new beach landscape. Boulders that had stood proud had completely disappeared. As we gazed around in amazement, I found I was staring at a dark, solid thing, half buried amongst kelp and driftwood. A sodden violin case. A violin still inside, wet and swollen, although the strings were intact, and the bow was half in place on the inside of the lid. Where the rosin should have been, there was a sea-cold ring, its delicate clasp supporting a single pearl. I slid it onto my finger. It had a simple elegance, and Mum and I were still marvelling at our find when Dad and Kes arrived. He held up a flathead he’d caught at Emita, then tried to strum the violin.
‘None of us will get this to sing,’ he said. ‘We need Anneke for that. She could play a mean violin.’
Mum laughed and slipped the ring on her finger. ‘Your nan once had one exactly like this.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘She reckons she lost it gardening.’
‘You can keep the ring and I’ll have the violin.’
She gave me her most radiant smile and we walked home arm in arm, trailing Dad.
He pan-fried the fish for lunch and we shared it, laughing at his hilarious stories about working in a pub in Dumfries. Dad is such a good mimic.
~
It was a few days before the sea settled down enough for us to row the clinker around to the gulch. Her paint is peeling, she leaks and dribbles, one of the oars is split and she’s generally shabby and unreliable but does her best to lurch along in the approximate direction we want her to go. She’s called the Sophia.
It was fun and when we got there, we hauled her up on the beach that makes itself available at low tide and ate sandwiches on the boulders. Then Mum went home and Dad and I took the boat back to Sunlit Cove, and we thought how much more fun she’d be with a sail.
At Sunlit Cove, I jumped out into the water.
‘Home you go, Nicky.’
And before I knew what was happening he was rowing over to Misfortune. He ignored my shouts and waves, so I stormed up to the house.
Mum and I stood on top of the hill and watched through binoculars as he disappeared around to the eastern side of the rock.
‘That stupid man!’ she said.
We were standing on the veranda, our arms crossed, when he returned.
‘It was fine! Promise! There’s a narrow spot where the boat was safe, but I nearly tripped over a fur seal – looked like a rock until it didn’t.’
‘You cheated me out of an adventure!’
‘I plead guilty. Next time, Nicky.’
‘The cormorants’ nests aren’t just made of seaweed anymore,’ he told us as we walked inside. ‘Some have plastic bait box straps strung through them too. The poor buggers don’t know the meaning of their circumstances. But man, the smell was overwhelming and it’s a discordant orchestra of light and sound over there, all that guano gleaming white, all that racket as they fled into the sky! And the colony has fleas,’ he said, scratching himself. ‘Not sure you would have liked it,’ and he gave my hair a gentle yank.
‘I feel itchy now,’ Mum said. ‘Go and have a shower. Immediately! You’ve probably transferred some into Nicky’s hair.’
While he’d been on Misfortune, we’d decided to go on an expedition by ourselves to Stumpy’s Bay, but later that evening we relented and said he could come too.
It was on this walk that we discovered that we were not alone on the island.
18
Bass Strait (Verloren Island) 1984
Not Alone
The day we went to Stumpy’s Bay the mountain was the palest of purples. A light breeze chopped up the surface of the sea. Mum chanted the names of Verloren’s plants, bedraggled feathers were entangled in the tussocks, and carcasses and bones were everywhere.
‘Somewhere on this island,’ Dad said, ‘there’s a naked goose – and I’m the one who’s going to find it.’
On Loccota, the soft sand made my leg muscles ache and I plopped down against the dune and opened my messy notebook. I breathed in the briny air, so crisp and heady. It struck me with great force that simple moments like this are ineffable but every day I’m here there are still moments that thud with loneliness.
Mum wanted to know what I’d written, so I peered into my notebook. ‘My mother has a nose so long that upon seeing it, a young elephant died of envy.’
She tapped her nose. ‘I couldn’t compete with a proboscis monkey. Whatever you’re writing is perfectly safe,’ and she flicked sand onto my legs.
We had smoko at Sam’s Soak, the lake in the middle of the isthmus dunes. Pipits gave small, forlorn cries. Chats flitted above the tussocks and alarmed geese flew down to the sea.
‘Massage my tympanic membrane,’ Dad ordered. He made me tell him the tiniest details I was seeing, but I started with a large one that was puzzling me. ‘We’re sitting at the lake. It’s shallow and it’s salty, yet it’s higher than the sea.’
Mum was lying with her head against her pack. ‘It’s in a deflation hollow gathering runoff from the mountain. It’s only saline because it’s so close to the ocean.’ She got up. ‘Might get a head start on the two of you lazy lumps,’ she said.
~
The mountain’s presence dominates the entirety of South Verloren. The first beaches on the east coast are a series of coves with smoky cliffs streaked from the runoff filtering through the vegetation above them. Squally Cove is the biggest. We walked along the edge of the poa, following narrow paths worn by cattle, although all we saw was one sheep carrying three years’ worth of wool, tottering along on its thin grey legs, off to the west of us.
‘That old coot will die this summer,’ said Dad.
‘Can’t Sally’s uncle come and shear it?’
‘More to the point are hooves trampling chicks in their burrows,’ he said. ‘Uncle Arthur needs to get his animals off here. These islands rightly belong to the birds.’
We caught up with Mum. I was the first to notice the huge moonbird rookery on the cliffs at Beagle Bay. We clambered up the headland to get a better look and discovered a birding hut way down the slope, half hidden in the poa. It was a ramshackle place made of corrugated iron, all alone on this rugged side of the island. The wind blew through the bent heads of the tussocks. A bit of roof flapped in the breeze, and we could smell bird as we approached it. I was clutching Dad’s arm. Kes was sniffing scents along the ground, tail wagging slow and relaxed, then slow and thoughtful, then tucked under. His hackles were raised as we walked around the hut.
Dad wanted to open the rickety door but Mum said no, that would be trespassing. ‘I can guarantee there’ll be feathers on the floor, the smell of the birds and racks for cooling them,’ she said to me, as we carried on walking.
‘Somebody’s staying there,’ I said. Kes’s tucked-under tail was loud as a shout.
Someone was watching us, and it made my head prickle.
‘When does the birding season start?’ I asked.
‘March. And we won’t be here.’ She told me that I must see it in context, that birding is cultural. It provided much-needed sustenance too.
‘I’d like to prove shearwaters were part of the diet of the people who lived here long ago.’
‘Why don’t you ask their descendants?’
‘That’s a reasonable question.’
‘Those birds have so many names it’s confusing,’ I said. ‘Short-tailed shearwater, sooty petrel—’
‘Yolla, mutton-birds, Puffinus tenuirostris,’ she added.
‘Where do you suppose they are at the moment?’
‘In the Arctic? Maybe on their way?’
‘I think they leave Alaska at the beginning of September.’
We caught up with Dad, who’d stopped where the burrows begin. He reminded me that tiger snakes also live down them. We’d already seen a few lying around, too dormant to care about us, so we stood around for a while admiring their water views.
‘Still,’ said Dad, ‘not much privacy from the neighbours.’Cattle had materialised out of nowhere, hugely out of proportion among the poa. We felt surrounded and hurried over the dunes and onto the beach.
‘These footsteps are fresh,’ Mum said, pointing at the sand.
Beagle is a long, wide beach with limestone headlands at either end. The footsteps emerged from the dunes, stretched along the beach then circled back into the interior.
‘Probably a birder,’ said Dad.
I knew it! One pair. Barefoot. Long, I wrote in my notebook.
‘I’m ravenous,’ Dad said, so we stopped to eat in the shade beneath the headland, treating Kes to peanuts, which he cracked open as deftly as a parrot.
Dad stretched out on a rock with his hat over his head and his feet in the sun. ‘This is the life! Sunscreen my feet, one of you.’
Mum passed me the lotion. ‘You do it. My proboscis is much too sensitive.’
‘It’s a rare nose that appreciates the subtle bouquet of Metatarsal Chardonnay ’46,’ said Dad, from beneath his canvas hat.
‘I’m sure it was intoxicating in 1946, at least to your mum, but the quality deteriorated rapidly,’ and Mum gave the deep, hooting laugh I like so much.
‘Your feet would make a rat retch,’ I said, happy because they were happy.
