Saga, page 3
‘I will, Jimmy, and thank you again. For everything.’
Mr Riggs shut the heavy double doors of the Glasgow Poorhouse behind us after telling me that I’d better be on my best behaviour and work hard or they’d want their money back and I’d be sent off to the prison to be hanged. Of course I didn’t believe him but promised I would make good of my position with the coffin-maker. As the ghoulishly dismal Norbert Lester led me away to my new life, I gave one look back to the gloomy stone building that had housed thousands of shattered dreams over the years.
The shopfront was bare and only the swinging wooden sign beside the doorway, shaped like a coffin with the words ‘Lester, Undertaker’, gave a hint of what lay behind the closed shutters and the crimson crepe-draped doorway.
We entered a showroom full of coffins sitting on black trestles, all hewn from different woods, some more ornate and highly polished than others. Most lay open and I was just tall enough to peek inside to see where the dead rested in their final sleep and marvelled that it looked more comfortable and clean than anywhere I had slept on any night of my life. On the walls were shelves that carried ornate nails, coffin plates and a large array of polished handles. There was a strange smell of false cleanliness. I covered my nose for I felt like sneezing.
‘Epsom salts and arsenic,’ Mr Lester said. ‘For the preservation of bodies.’
I felt ill to the stomach.
Following him into the little parlour behind the shop I was pleased to be away from the room and breathed in the welcoming smell of cooking meat and garlic. Sitting at the table was a fierce-looking man, probably about twenty, the same age as Jimmy. He had an overly large head and very small eyes and he reminded me of a potato.
‘Who’s this?’ he asked with a look of disgust.
‘What’s your name again, girl?’ Lester said.
‘Mercy.’
‘Mercy. She’s my new assistant. She’ll be the new mute, she’ll write obituaries and sew shrouds and the rest of it. This is my son, Terry.’
‘What’s a mute, Sir?’ I asked, confused.
‘It’s a mournful child who follows the funeral cortege looking like their heart is breaking from grief. You’ve got the face for it.’
I was too tired to be offended, and pleased to have my face instead of Terry’s ugly mug. Mr Lester took a dim lamp and showed me to my lodgings, which was, to my dismay, a stained mattress in a cupboard at the top of the stairs. A moth-eaten grey blanket was balled up in the middle of it. I tried to think the best and all I could come up with was that I would be relieved to sleep without the sound of forty girls snoring.
‘I’ll get you my late wife’s black mourning dress and you can make adjustments to it. You’re much skinnier than she was. It must look fine and dignified. You must look like a perfect china doll. A sad one.’
‘I’ve never seen a doll, Mr Lester.’
He regarded me from beneath his hooded eyes and made a noise in the back of his throat.
‘Get to sleep because tomorrow you start work and we work from sun-up to sundown and sometimes in between if a person is selfish enough to die in the middle of the night.’
That night, my very first outside of the poorhouse, I slept lightly and dreamed of ghosts and ghouls.
The day of the memorial service was almost worse than the day of the phone call because it was so raw. So final. When the news had come through about the accident, part of me kept thinking it was a mistake. One day a person is there and the next they are gone. It’s a simple enough concept but not something I’d come to grips with – until Paisley died.
I was sitting on a fold-out chair in the park, surrounded by remote family members – distant cousins three times removed and great-uncles I never knew I had – all of us looking at a photograph of a beautiful girl who is gone and all that is left is an urn with ashy remains. I finally realised that death is real. Too real. The mist drifted out to fill the gorge beyond, making everything feel even gloomier.
My aunt was speaking. I don’t know where she found the strength to stand up in front of all of us. But she did for her daughter. For my cousin. Paisley’s boyfriend, Ben, sat up front, wearing dark sunglasses. He sported a sling and a bruised cheek. It wasn’t his fault. The other driver had been texting and speeding. But reassurances weren’t going to ease his pain any time soon.
I felt pressure in my chest and my jaws ached from clenching back my tears. If I had let them fall I would have drowned in them.
‘Thank you all for being here today.’ Aunt Kirsten’s face was like stone, and her voice quivered on the breeze. ‘Some of you have come a long way and it means a lot. My daughter was born here in the mountains, it was one of her favourite places. I wish we’d never left. Then perhaps …’
I looked out at the vista opening wide like a never-ending forever at Govetts Leap lookout. Canyons and gorges dipped and soared as far as the eye could see, dusted with cloud and mist.
Forever is a myth. None of us have forever. My cousin didn’t even make eighteen. That’s not enough time to discover much at all. We were two-and-a-half years apart. She was about to start studying law. Now she was gone. One day she was laughing on the other end of the phone and the next her father was telling us she was dead.
‘The love that she experienced in her very short life was boundless. Paul and I will miss her more than … more than …’
Uncle Paul stood up and put his arm around her but she shook him off gently, sniffed back her tears and continued.
‘We are all part of a big, beautiful picture. We are all connected. We are all one. Today she will fly free over these beautiful mountains, free as a bird. But she will always be with us, in us, part of us and looking out for us. She was my sunshine. My light. My darling, darling girl. I love you to the end of forever, Paisley. Fly free.’
I sobbed as I looked at the beautiful, smiling face of the girl who was like a little sister to me. Mum squeezed one hand and Dad squeezed the other. I dropped my head to my mother’s shoulder and shuddered as quietly as I could. My best friend, Cait, sat behind me and I felt her warm touch on my shoulder. I don’t think I could have gotten through the past week without her.
We all walked to the fenced area of the lookout, arms holding one another for support as if we were all so emotionally delicate that a gust of wind could whisk us off our feet. We watched as Aunt Kirsten and Uncle Paul each took a flower and threw it into the breeze. We all followed suit. The plan had been to scatter Paisley’s ashes but Kirsten couldn’t bear to do it and wanted to keep the urn at home. I took a peace lily and threw it from the lookout and watched it flutter away into the deep gully. I murmured the word ‘Paisley’. She was really and truly gone.
Back at our house in Blackheath the caterers had prepared food for those who wanted to remember and share our special memories of Paisley. Paul and Kirsten were staying in the guest cottage for the weekend and my mum’s parents were staying in my room. I wanted to lock myself upstairs, hide under my doona and ignore all these people who reminded me of Paisley. Instead, I was on the back deck by the trestle tables of food, dreading having to socialise. All of the Muller side of Paisley’s family looked like Nordic creatures from an ABBA music clip. Our McLeod mob were mostly louder and redder. There was the very loud Great-Uncle Murray, the sheep farmer who was laughing like a donkey. Some random twin second cousins who looked like cops in their ill-fitting suits.
‘You’re Mia, yes?’ A blonde girl asked as she came up to Cait and me. She seemed vaguely familiar. Her eyes were red and she looked like she was in pain. I nodded.
‘I’m Emily. We met last year at Paisley’s birthday in Bundanoon.’
I was pretty terrible at remembering faces. I forced a friendly nod of acknowledgement and cringed a little as Paisley’s boyfriend, Ben, came over as well. He’d taken off his sunglasses to reveal a swollen eye and a cheek covered in angry bruising. I didn’t know what to say to him. I’d met him a couple of times. He and Paisley had come for a weekend just a few months earlier. It made me ill to imagine the trauma he had gone through less than a week before.
‘Ben.’ I gave him a weird, uncomfortable cross between a smile and a grimace.
‘Mia.’
We stood in awkward silence for a few moments and I reached out and took a spinach and cheese pastry, although food was the last thing on my mind. Emily took one too.
‘These look good.’ There was an edge of fake enthusiasm. ‘Did your mum make them?’
‘No, the caterers did.’
‘It’s an amazing house you’ve got. And I love your pink hair. Is that new? It was red last time I saw you, I think,’ Emily said.
‘Yep.’ I answered. ‘I change it up pretty often. Oh, this is Cait.’
‘Hi.’
‘I’m really sorry about your friend,’ Cait said in a tiny voice.
We fell once again into a pit of silence. Chewing. Avoiding eye contact. Swallowing.
We were all unsure of what to say. I knew that talking and putting things out in the air sometimes helped to ease the ache.
‘It feels surreal,’ I said. ‘Just like a nightmare.’
‘I avoid the nightmares by not sleeping,’ Ben muttered.
I felt a stab of sadness.
‘I’m so glad her parents got back together, hey?’ Emily’s eyes fell to where my aunt and uncle were standing, talking to some of the relatives. ‘Imagine how hard this would be for Kirsten without Paul by her side. My god, I can’t believe Paisley’s gone.’
Emily’s face crumpled and she dabbed at her eyes. Ben put his good arm around her, wincing.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked gently.
He nodded but his lips were pursed and his eyes were tight with pain.
‘Are you guys going to uni next year?’ I asked, trying to work in a neutral conversational diversion. ‘Cait and I are going into the second year of our Arts degree. We’re at New South Wales uni.’
‘I’m hoping to get into primary teaching at Wollongong,’ Emily said. I really could imagine her as a teacher.
I looked at Ben but he looked uncomfortable and he adjusted his sling, talking into his chest.
‘I applied for a psychology degree at Sydney uni but … now I think I’m going to defer and work on my own psyche for a bit.’
‘That’s probably a good move, Ben.’ Emily rubbed his good arm.
‘Are you getting some support?’ I asked and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he muttered, still not looking up. ‘Everyone’s been really great but you know … you still can’t help.’
‘None of this is your fault, Ben Digby,’ Emily said firmly. ‘I know you are feeling guilty but any one of us, anyone driving on that road at that moment, could not have done any more than you did. You are a great driver. That other dickhead—’
‘Let’s not.’ Ben shook his head. ‘Not now. Now is for these delicious-looking whatever-they-ares.’
He flashed a wooden smile and popped a mini quiche into his mouth. Whatever he was going through he wasn’t about to share it with us. The pain behind his dark eyes was so obvious.
After dinner we all sat in the formal living room and passed around the old photo albums. All the distant family members had left. Friends had gone back to the Southern Highlands. I was exhausted. Grief is very tiring. When Grandma brought the pile of old albums downstairs I thought it might all get a bit maudlin but it turned out to be quite nice. There were lots of Paisley and me as toddlers, playing in plastic pools.
‘I like this one. See Paisley’s fringe? Remember the day I cut it off and you went out of your mind, Gran? She looks ridiculous.’
My grandmother smiled. Grandma Fiona was a classy old lady. She’d been a lawyer in her day and was a no-nonsense sort of woman. Some might have called her ‘hard’ but I think ‘tough’ was a better word for her. My grandfather was an ex-politician so between them they were a fairly daunting duo. Quite serious. Their two daughters were very different. Kirsten was the eldest and a bit of an old hippy and my mother was an ex-actress, funny and gregarious. Both very colourful characters.
‘Paisley was so angry at me,’ I whispered.
‘I told her she looked like a little baby bird with frown-fluff and she got even angrier at me.’ Kirsten laughed and I could see she was trying hard not to cry.
‘I missed so much of this,’ Uncle Paul muttered sadly, lingering over every photograph like he was scanning it permanently into his brain. ‘So many lost years. All my own fault.’
‘But it’s lovely you had a reunion and I know Paisley was thrilled to get so close to you again.’ My mother twirled her glass of red wine in her hand and gave Paul a warm hug.
Aunt Kirsten stood up and put her empty wine glass on the edge of the mantelpiece and looked at me.
‘Mia, my lovely, lovely niece.’ She gave me a sad look. ‘Can we have a little chat? Out in the cottage?’
I was startled. It felt silly but I felt like I was in trouble for something. Kirsten shot a look at her mother, Grandma Fiona, then to my mum and something passed between them. I felt unnerved and a bit wary. Mum stood up and took my hand.
‘Um, sure.’ I stood up, letting my mother lead me as we followed my tall blonde aunt out of the room and onto the back deck.
Kirsten took my other hand and we all walked down the path to the well-lit stone guest cottage.
‘How’re you doing?’ she asked.
‘How are you doing?’ I repeated.
‘It’s … there’s no word for it.’ She shook her head and squeezed my hand hard. ‘No word terrible enough to describe the pain in my heart. I know it’s not the end for her. Paisley is in another realm, in nature, in us. But none of that helps. I can’t even say her name without wanting to scream.’
Kirsten stopped suddenly and gripped my forearm.
‘Look!’ she gasped and stared up into the shadowy branches of the overhanging tree.
I squinted and tried to focus. Then I saw it. The owl. It was resting on a branch, glaring at us, huddled beneath a thick coat of dappled feathers. If it hadn’t been for the orange glow of the round light on the path we wouldn’t have noticed it.
‘Lovely,’ Kirsten whispered. ‘It’s a sign. I think it’s a messenger from Paisley.’
I knew Kirsten was all about signs and portents but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this owl was a regular visitor to the big composting station, coming to scavenge and feast on the rodents and possums that scurried about in there. The ninox strenua, or powerful owl, stared at us with her big yellow eyes. I knew my birds. I gave Mum a fierce look as she went to open her mouth and ruin the moment. She gave me a knowing nod.
In the cottage, Kirsten, Mum and I sat on the end of the wide bed. I was trying not to laugh because the whole thing seemed strange and melodramatic. My aunt took something out of her suitcase and placed it on the doona between us. It seemed to be some kind of box wrapped in a soft red scarf.
‘Not that long ago I gave this to my daughter,’ she told me. ‘And it’s time to introduce you to the Sisterhood too, Mia.’
‘The Sisterhood?’ I gave a nervous laugh.
‘Yes, Mim,’ Mum said sombrely. ‘It’s time.’
‘What is it?’ I frowned and shook my head. ‘Is this for real? Mum, what’s going on?’
‘It’s something of a family tradition that involves handing down something very special to a girl in each generation.’
Kirsten carefully unwrapped the box to reveal the strangest book I’d ever seen.
‘Wow, that looks really old,’ I whispered.
‘Ancient.’ She carefully began turning the pages, which seemed to be made of the very softest leather. ‘All these names. Your mothers and grandmothers and aunts and cousins. All the women who have come before you.’
Her finger traced the final name. Paisley Muller-McLeod, Katoomba.
Just above Paisley’s name was Kirsten’s and beside it my mother’s name, Agatha McLeod, and beneath it, my name, Mia Isabella May Stewart, Katoomba.
‘My name.’
‘And mine. And Kirsten’s. Grandma Fiona showed us the book when we were little girls. Oh, we had so much fun imagining who all these women were. Gran kept it locked in a safe.’
‘And then she gave me the book when Paisley was born,’ Aunt Kirsten explained.
‘May I?’
I touched the book. The material felt cool beneath my fingertips.
‘Go ahead. It’s completely fascinating. All these women lived in different places and different times. Here, look, your grandmother was very proud of this one.’
‘Is that Jeanne d’Arc? As in Joan of Arc?’
My mum winked.
‘The actual Joan of Arc?’ I gasped.
‘Yes, Mim. It gets hard to read back around the seventeenth century because it’s so faded but this is our maternal bloodline. The Systir Saga. Our sister story. I gave the book to Paisley last year and we wanted to show you too. I know that Paisley thought of you as a sister. You are now the only girl left in this generation. Paisley loved you very much.’
‘She felt like a sister to me, too.’ I held back a sob. ‘Both being only kids and all. I wish we’d spent more time together in the last few years. Less than three hours away. It always felt so far. I was so slack after I started going to uni.’ An awful thought dawned on me. I remembered Paisley telling me about an old book when she’d last visited but I hadn’t really listened. I didn’t understand what she was so excited about. She’d mentioned ancient grandmothers and witches and I’d blown it off as if she was being kooky like her mother, who was into weird new-age nonsense. I didn’t listen. The few years between us had become like a gulf after I’d started studying at uni. I was so busy and felt so much more ‘worldly’ and I’d let our relationship fray at the edges. I wished that I’d taken more notice. My throat tightened and I tried hard not to burst into tears.
