The Curlew's Eye

by Karen Manton

  The bird wailed once more.

  ‘Again! It knows you’re listening.’

  Greta thought of Hazel’s poisoned water, people who’d lived in this place before it was made farmland, before they were uprooted, shifted. And those who’d come after. A family unravelling on a hill. Her own family, herself. ‘There must be stories for that cry.’

  ‘For sure. Different stories and meanings for different people and places, you know? About how the world works, or a sign. I heard one about a curlew who stole the moon’s heart. Don’t quote me, ignorant whitey that I am.’ She paused as if the bird might sound again. ‘We can’t know the deeper meanings. But they’re there.’

  ‘We don’t know the stories under us,’ said Greta. ‘Right with us, all around. Bring in our own instead.’ She was thinking of The Six Swans, Pavel’s whimsical castle, fairytales in Raffy’s book. ‘Those old paperbarks, the black cockatoo, the boulders down by the creek. They’re the fabric underneath, holding us, know it or not.’

  ‘Listen to you, drama queen!’ Brynn stubbed out her cigarette and turned to the shack. ‘I need a drink. I hope you’ve got one for me.’

  Greta walked beside her, shining the torch along the ground.

  ‘There’s something in that curlew, though, you’re right,’ Brynn added. ‘Doesn’t matter who you are.’

  A cane toad hopped in front of them. Brynn tried to kick it but missed. ‘Bastards. They’re all the way over in WA now, can you believe it? No more frill-necked lizards at my place. Wiped out. Gone.’

  She checked the melons by the water tank. ‘Here’s a couple of fruit starting!’

  Greta lit the candle on the green table and cleared Toby’s juggling balls and cricket bat from the chairs. Brynn left a little jar of billygoat plum seeds on the table for the children to plant.

  Joel came out with three beers.

  ‘Why thank you. I’d take you home if I thought you’d finish anything,’ Brynn said to him, lighting another cigarette. ‘What’s the story with that cabin? Your woman needs space.’

  A breeze floated through the verandah. The chimes tinkled. Joel took a swig of his beer rather than talk about the cabin. Brynn flapped away her exhaled smoke. She was amused by him.

  ‘I’ve heard about you. The kids told me everything.’

  He tried to look light-hearted. ‘Yeah, they say my reputation precedes me.’

  ‘Brynn’s a relative newcomer,’ Greta smiled. ‘She’s only been here eight years.’

  She saw Joel realise Brynn was a joker, and relax.

  ‘I’ll be back to work then. Measure up a few things for that cabin.’

  Brynn let him go and settled into a cane chair. She blew a smoke ring that Raffy would admire.

  ‘When’s that man of yours off to Connor’s, did you say? I know you told me.’

  ‘In a fortnight.’

  ‘Are you up for it?’

  ‘Have to be, I guess. Though I am a southerner, as you point out. I’d be a liar if I didn’t say the thought of it makes me edgy—here on my own with the kids. The grass gives me nightmares. Fire. And Trapper storming in after his wandering cow.’

  ‘Trapper’s cows are on the loose?’

  ‘Only one that I’ve seen. Down at the creek, near the mango farm, with a few other wild roamers.’

  ‘Jumped fence for a new herd, eh? Can’t blame her.’

  Greta laughed. ‘Cow politics, Tori tells me. Didn’t like her own boss or thought she’d be one herself.’

  ‘Just like us,’ said Brynn. ‘Grass is always greener.’

  Yes, thought Greta, just like us. She had a vision of her and Joel with the boys in the back, driving through barren land, heading for where the road converged into a green mirage.

  15

  Greta swung an old tyre into the back of the red ute. She was taking another load from the homestead to use for planters. She’d just called Janna, and heard about her father’s place at Fishermans Creek—how the soil had shifted and the house collapsed. And Janna’s ex wanted his shipping container back in the new year. Greta had promised to organise the removal of her mother’s photos, her father’s furniture and boxes.

  ‘You must enter the art and craft show too,’ Janna reminded her.

  ‘I’m hardly a local anymore.’

  ‘Place where you’re born owns you forever.’

  Greta was thinking on that when she heard Tori’s troopy drive in after picking up the children from school. The car stopped at the shack first, and then revved up to the homestead. Greta could see Toby and Axel were with her. The younger ones’ voices drifted from the shack.

  ‘Thought I’d deliver him direct,’ said Tori, opening the back of the troopy. ‘Come on, tough guy, out you get.’

  Toby sidled out and looked away from the two mothers. He had a bruise on his cheekbone.

  ‘What is this, Toby?’ Greta asked.

  ‘You wouldn’t get it!’ He shrugged her off.

  She felt a pang watching him slip away towards the shack. Axel loped down the hill after his friend.

  ‘They’re at that age,’ Tori observed.

  Greta wasn’t ready for that age. She was caught up in the one before it.

  ‘There was a flare up,’ Tori said, sticks that went too far. ‘It’ll blow over. Rhianna’ll call you.’

  ‘Toby,’ Greta sighed. ‘Only the second week of term.’ She shook her head about him locking horns with Joel, his brothers, now schoolmates.

  ‘I brought home young Raymond too. I didn’t think you’d mind. He wanted a play with Raffy. I cleared it with his Nanna. Gabe’ll give him a lift home; he’s minding the place next door while he’s in town.’

  ‘Ah good, they’ve been asking for a while now. I’ll go down and find them all something to eat.’

  Tori brushed her hands lightly and squinted at the disintegrating home, the cars doing the same.

  ‘Can you believe this tip of a car joint? I mean the whole darn place. Must be hundreds of dumped cars, I reckon.’ She swept a fly from her face. ‘Gawd. Lars and his cars. Seb and his hot wheels, back in the day. An’ then the wrecker’s yard!’ She clicked her tongue. ‘Not that all this junk is theirs. If you wanted to steal, dump and burn, this is where you did it.’

  ‘I can’t see how we’ll move them all before we go.’

  ‘Is that a joke? You’ll be dead before that happens.’

  ‘Mick wants them cleared.’

  ‘Mick.’ Tori blew out his name. ‘Mick’s a Sydney man now. Trust me, the cars are here to stay.’

  She walked around the front of the homestead to have a look at the old place. Greta went with her.

  ‘Hard to believe he did this, isn’t it?’ Tori glanced at her friend.

  Greta didn’t know what she meant.

  ‘Fedor! Settin’ fire to the house. After Maria died, and Magdalen.’

  ‘Fedor lit the fire?’ Greta was shocked.

  ‘Joel never told you?’

  ‘I assumed it was a bushfire.’

  ‘That was no bushfire. That was Fedor.’

  Greta stared at the ruin, trying to absorb the words.

  ‘Yeah, ol’ Fedor. Didn’t like somethin’, had to kill it.’

  ‘He didn’t like the house?’

  ‘Didn’t like the memories. On the anniversary of Maria’s death, Fedor just loses it. Makes a pile of her clothes, books, sheets, jewellery, headscarves—anything he can find—and starts a bonfire right there in the living room. In the dead of night. All Magdalen’s stuff too. Up in flames.’

  ‘God.’

  ‘He was tormented, you know? Possessive. Especially with Maria, like someone might take ’er off ’im. Hate ’n’ love, the two together. God, did the shit hit the fan with Pavel for bein’ too kind to Maria. Talkin’ too much together, playin’ that accordion. Fedor kicked ’im out. That’s why Joel and Pavel built the shack.’ She sighed. ‘I never could work ’im out, old Fedor. You know, livin’ in this house, workin’ so hard, till Donegan’s
goin’ broke an’ gives Fedor a deal to buy the block and the house, even the meatworks, though that was finished. But soon as ’e owns the place, he burns it out!’

  Greta was silenced.

  ‘I have to take my kids and go,’ said Tori. ‘Our house is full of hungry workers.’

  Greta drove the ute back down to the shack with an odd feeling. Why hadn’t Joel told her Fedor lit the fire?

  He and Gabe were finishing the cabin roof. The heat and sunlight up there must be intense, she worried. Gabe arrived early every day and had a coffee and a quick chat with the boys before joining Joel. They worked with an old rhythm, a synchronicity. And a pride in their craftsmanship, erecting wall frames plumb and straight, cutting timber for roof battens. It was the little house with no history, no blood and salt on the kitchen bench, no bullet through the floor.

  She parked the ute. Toby was sitting on the step, checking his toolbox of lures and fishing gear.

  Griffin rushed out to her all excited. ‘Come inside.’ He ushered her to the main room. ‘Look up!’

  Sunlight flared down through a skylight in the roof.

  ‘It’s a stargazer window!’ Griffin gently pushed her to stand directly under it.

  Joel’s face appeared in the square of light. He kissed his fingertips and pressed them against the perspex.

  I do love you from this angle, she thought.

  Raffy tugged her hand. A shy boy stood next to him.

  ‘This is my friend Raymond,’ he said. ‘He’s here till Gabe finishes work.’

  She recognised the boy she’d seen riding on the back of the mobility scooter on the first day of school.

  ‘Hi, Raymond.’

  ‘Hi,’ he whispered.

  ‘We were going to draw pictures on the steps under the verandah,’ Raffy continued. ‘But my chalks are stolen.’

  ‘They’re not stolen!’ laughed Griffin. ‘You leave them out everywhere!’

  ‘Can we buy more?’ Raffy’s eyes shone with hope.

  ‘I think you need to put them back where they belong, Raffy.’

  He sighed. ‘Anyway, we’re off down the creek for a fish. You could come with us to be croc spotter.’

  ‘There’s no crocs in that creek,’ Toby called from outside.

  Raffy pressed his face against the new flywire. ‘Miss Rhianna says you never know what’s lurking.’

  Toby and Griffin kept ahead of the younger boys and especially Greta. At the black boulders they turned right towards the secret valley.

  ‘We’re going upstream,’ Greta insisted, pointing the other way.

  Toby gave her the look of death. Griffin hovered near him, uncertain. She stood firm. Toby huffed exasperation and pushed past her to march upstream. He called the others after him. They would go up near the mango farm, he yelled, away from adults. He glanced behind him to see who were his allies. Raffy and Raymond stayed by Greta. As they were about to enter the water, Raffy spotted a set of slender bones on a flat rock. They were picked clean, and arranged in a pattern.

  ‘Who did that?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘A bat maybe, or a possum.’

  He paused, considering it.

  Greta waded into a shallow rock pool and sat with her back to a frothing tumble of water. The heat, Toby’s defiance, Fedor’s fire were snatched into the babble of the creek.

  Next to her a St Andrew’s Cross spider web stretched between the paperbarks. The trees were very close, quiet guards, shedding skin and standing in still water at the creek’s edges. A rainbow bee-eater darted from a tree branch to the water and back again.

  We live in paradise, she thought. Immediately she heard women laughing from Trapper’s side of the bank. She half expected to glimpse them watching her from behind the pandanus leaning over the water, but she saw no one, just brown ferns clinging to rocks, waiting for rain to turn them green.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Raffy, bemused.

  ‘I thought I heard people laughing.’

  ‘It’s the creek gone inside your head.’

  He and Raymond sat on a rock midstream to cast their handlines and their hope. She waited to hear the laughter again. People from before, she felt, but here now. She wished she could know them, talk to them. Ask them about this place.

  Griffin and Toby’s voices drifted down the water to her instead. She watched Raymond and Raffy, heads close together, all concentration on threading hook and sinker onto the line. They could be Gabe and Joel, she thought.

  She imagined them here, with Danny and Lennie too, and Magdalen watching from a warm rock, a red dragonfly hovering at her toes. Joel was telling his boys last night how he used to come down to the creek and the dark boulders at night, to smoke tobacco sneaked from Fedor. It was one of his favourite haunts. Sometimes he came alone, sometimes with the others. Or just Magdalen. Greta could see her moving between the old rocks, resting her ear against one to hear its inner hum.

  The longer I’m here, the more your family seeps into me, she’d told him.

  The hour ran on swiftly with its minutes, the sound of the water, her thoughts. Suddenly she remembered she hadn’t asked Gabe when he would be leaving. She called out to the boys nearby and further off. Toby and Griffin yelled back they’d be there soon.

  ‘We’ll go ahead,’ said Greta to the younger boys.

  She meandered uphill after them. Raymond turned to look back at her. She smiled at him, and he grinned back so broadly she felt carried.

  ‘Gabe’s left already!’ Raffy called from the top.

  ‘Not to worry,’ Greta assured Raymond. ‘We’ll take you home. I have to go to the post office. We can buy ice creams.’

  Aunty Hazel wasn’t at her usual seat on the shop verandah. Greta hoped she wasn’t sick. She gave Toby money for the ice creams and went into the post office. Dee had a magazine open on the counter. A photo of a hairless cat had caught her attention.

  ‘Can you believe it exists? Who wants an animal like that? It’s unnatural. People have gone unnatural.’

  Dee rewrapped Greta’s parcel of jewellery to fit in a smaller envelope with a cheaper rate. Greta thanked her profusely, paid, and ushered out Raffy, who’d come to find her with his dripping ice cream.

  On the verandah they met kids from school, at a table with a woman who had a box of hot chips open for everyone to share.

  ‘There’s Sandy, Aunty Hazel’s daughter,’ said Raffy.

  Sandy called them over and offered them chips. ‘I was just sayin’ next year when I’m teaching part-time, we’ll go out on bush days with Aunty Hazel, so she can teach us a little bit about her country, plants she knows, what they’re called in language. We might make a little book for people.’ She smiled at Greta. ‘Get you whitefellas learned up, eh?’

  ‘See,’ said Griffin, on their way past Uncle Pavel’s castle to the tall slide in the park. ‘We should be calling things by their right names. Trees. Birds. Dragonflies. So we’re talking their language, you know.’ He was quiet for a minute, then added, ‘Language comes from the land and the animals, Aunty Hazel told us that.’

  He ran from Greta then, to mark a football careering across from the oval. The next generation, thought Greta, they show us the way. She sat at the picnic table to watch them playing.

  You could stay here, the voice in her head said. You could make this your children’s home. Learn with them.

  She thought of Uncle Pavel building his castle in the thicket just behind her. Was it his ode to Maria, to a fairytale that never came to be? Make a wish. Or was it inspired by the stories she told Magdalen, the castle where the swan boy lived ever after with his sister and family?

  When they pulled up at Agnes’s place, her mobility scooter was parked in the front yard.

  ‘Gabe keeps Nanna Agnes’s scooter running like a dream,’ Raffy explained. ‘She’s going to take us to Darwin on it one day, isn’t she, Ray?’

  ‘Nah, you’re crazy!’ laughed Raymond.

  Greta wondered if Gabe was rel
ated to Agnes and Raymond. Everyone around here seemed to have a connection, a vast network of relatives.

  Not you, came that voice again. Only child with your own children your only family.

  A mother dog trotted around the side of the house, with a host of puppies scampering after her. Raffy opened the car door and hopped out so his friend could slide across the seat. They both went to the house. The front door was open. A girl appeared there. She waved to Greta.

  ‘Thanks for having me,’ Raymond called.

  Raffy came back to the car.

  ‘That’s Lanie,’ he said, clambering back in. ‘She’s the fastest runner.’

  ‘Fastest swimmer too,’ added Toby. ‘She’ll thrash everyone at the swimming carnival.’

  After the children had gone to bed, Greta went to the darkroom to find Henry’s slide viewer. She was curious to see the slides from Magdalen’s jewellery box, after what Tori had told her. She slotted in the homestead first. The saturated colours made the house look surreal.

  Pavel only took one roll of Kodachrome, Joel had told her a few days after she’d found the jewellery box at the hut. Fedor crushed the camera in a fury over a photo of Maria.

  It didn’t make sense to Greta, the obsessive, angry love of Fedor, his pyre of belongings.

  ‘He wasn’t always like this. It was that prison, what they did to those people,’ Maria had told her children.

  What prison, where? The details were sketchy. It was never talked about. All Joel seemed to know was that Pavel secured Fedor’s freedom and the three brothers escaped across borders, ending up hidden in the same freight train as Maria, who’d survived her own journey across mountains and sea. It was just her and her suitcase and the songs in her heart. Questions made her nervous. Fedor didn’t suffer them either.

  ‘Why do you need to know? Why? Here is enough for you. Here where I have made you the new life.’

  The past was not discussed.