The Curlew's Eye

by Karen Manton

  ‘Yes, but you’ll be getting less,’ said Raffy, ‘’cos you turned up so late.’

  Toby’s eyes bulged fury at his brother, but Danny laughed and licked marshmallow from his fingers.

  ‘What about the others then, eh? No show from them either.’

  Raffy didn’t have an answer. He held out his stick with another marshmallow for Danny.

  ‘You can sleep on the verandah with us tonight,’ Griffin told his uncle.

  Danny nodded. ‘Good idea, I need to turn in—I’m wrecked from the long ride.’

  While Danny had his shower, Greta found Raffy and Griffin at the end of the verandah with their faces up to the lattice. They were looking at the night ruin on the hill. She put her eye to one of the gaps as well.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Raffy. ‘You know how Fedor burned down the homestead?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Danny and Dad. Today,’ said Raffy.

  ‘Axel told me,’ said Griffin. ‘He reckoned it was because Fedor hated everyone.’

  ‘I don’t think he hated anyone,’ said Raffy. ‘I think it was because his heart was on fire.’

  They were both quiet and then Griffin added, ‘I think he was setting it free.’

  Greta wasn’t sure if he meant Fedor’s heart, the house or everyone in it.

  Joel stretched out on the bed, exhausted from the day, from an unspoken tension between him and his brother, perhaps. Greta couldn’t put her finger on it. There was something between them.

  From the desk she looked at his reflection behind hers in the mirror.

  ‘Joel, you know the case?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Are you going to show it to your brother?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘There’s something else I have to tell you.’

  As soon as she said it she wished she hadn’t. He moved his arm from across his eyes to see her. She went to sit close to him on the bed. He sat up against the wall.

  ‘The girl at the hut—the one I told you about …’ She looked quickly at him and then focused on her hands. ‘It was her, Magdalen. I know you won’t believe me.’

  There was a long silence between them. The night insects beat in time with the pulse in her head. He thinks I’m unhinged, she told herself. His voice startled away her thoughts.

  ‘Did she say something to you? Like a message?’

  She took a breath, taken aback. ‘No. Not directly. She was more … cryptic.’ She paused. ‘Are you sure you didn’t see her in the meatworks that night? She was there, saying, “Take me with you.” She was wearing the bracelets.’

  He sighed. ‘I didn’t hear or see anything. Like I said, all I saw was you.’ He closed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For bringing you here. Us. I thought it’d be all right. I thought we’d come and work for a few months then leave.’

  ‘I’m not sorry. The kids have loved it.’ She touched his hand. ‘You should sleep, you’re tired.’

  By the time she’d settled the mosquito net back around the bed he was drifting off. She turned down the lantern. In the ceiling window there were no stars.

  On her way out she heard him say very quietly, ‘Help.’

  Over the next few days, Joel and Danny worked to move cars at the back of the ruin with Ronnie’s tow truck. Mick wanted them gone. On one of these mornings Greta was sitting next to Raffy on the front steps with her coffee when a vehicle purred in and veered up the hill to the homestead.

  ‘Is that Uncle Mick’s friend?’ Raffy asked.

  ‘The one.’

  ‘Flash car, don’t you think?’ Griffin noted.

  Toby came around the side of the shack dragging what looked like a collapsed human dummy. It was a diving suit.

  ‘That’s like a selkie skin.’ Raffy touched it cautiously.

  Greta laughed. ‘She’s a long way from home if it is.’

  ‘There’s SCUBA tanks in the shed,’ said Toby.

  ‘Your father used to dive when I first met him,’ she said, unsure whether that explained anything. She hadn’t realised he’d brought diving gear with him, or hired it. What for? Diving in Darwin harbour? It was possibly a Danny idea.

  ‘Step inside.’ Toby held open the suit for his brother.

  Raffy climbed into it and almost overbalanced. Toby righted him and zipped it up to the neck. Raffy disappeared.

  ‘Let him out, or he’ll cook in there,’ said Greta.

  Toby spread out the diving suit on the verandah floor like a floating man.

  Greta suggested they go to the hill to fly the kite, she could see the trees swaying there. Raffy said he’d rather play marbles by himself under the house, but the others were keen—Toby with his diabolo and Griffin with the kite.

  By the time they reached the homestead, the visitor was leaving. He gave them a broad, artificial smile from behind the car’s closed window. Danny was at the back securing a car wreck to the tow truck.

  ‘Where’s Joel?’

  ‘Around,’ said Danny. ‘He was here a few moments ago talking with the dude.’

  ‘Dawson, was it?’

  ‘Sole buyer! Says Mick’s run into financial trouble.’ He walked with Greta around the side of the house. ‘He’s keen, wants it now. Wants us all out one week after Christmas.’

  Greta smiled, amused. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m not joking. And he wants a fence around the lake for health and safety. As if he’s built all his tourist cabins and the backpackers are arriving tomorrow.’ He entered the old kitchen, saying, ‘Joel’s not happy Mick didn’t tell us it’s a Dawson-only show.’

  She followed him into the gutted living room.

  ‘Sold, sold, sold,’ he said. ‘All this will go.’ He went back into the hallway.

  ‘At least it might help you a little, some money coming in.’ She shadowed him.

  ‘Not much. Mick sold it for a song.’ He poked his head into Magdalen’s room. ‘My sister’s haunt.’

  She peered into the room too. The mattress had been chewed since she saw it last.

  Danny moved to the boys’ room. ‘This is where all the action was—girls sneaking in windows, guys escaping for the night.’ His hand closed around a bunk rung and shook it. ‘Some of us trying to sleep.’ He grinned. ‘Do you have brothers and sisters?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘They can be overrated.’

  He had a quick look at the collapsed bathroom and disappeared out the back of the house. She found him peering through the empty window of a car wreck.

  ‘Joel’s thinking of bringing up his old bomb at the bottom of the lake,’ he said. ‘We’ve done it before. Dragged a car out of the river. Gabe brought it back to life.’

  Greta laughed. ‘It’s parked there in the back paddock, right?’

  Danny squinted at the shadow vehicles. ‘Yeah, one of those’ll be it.’

  Greta stopped laughing. ‘You’re not serious about this, are you? The lake is poison!’

  ‘It’ll be okay if he wears protective gear and washes afterwards.’

  Toby called out from a car roof where he was spinning the diabolo. It whizzed crookedly to Danny, who caught it and demanded the sticks. Toby tossed them over and came to watch his uncle’s style.

  Greta’s phone dinged a message. ‘Your brother Mick,’ she said to Danny.

  ‘You’d better ask Joel to speak with him.’ He was spinning the diabolo higher and higher, never missing a catch. ‘Mick’s not my type.’ He smiled at her, but wasn’t taking the phone.

  ‘I’ll leave you two then,’ Greta said. ‘Put Toby to work, wear him out if you can.’

  She walked down the slope to the newly sprouting turkey bush, and found Griffin. The kite was caught on a tree branch. He was lining the fresh grave mounds with colourful stones and had made a third and fourth circle by Maria’s one.

  ‘These are for the grandfathers.’

  She
smiled. ‘That’s very kind of you.’ Joel had never said where his estranged father was buried. But for Frank she said, ‘It’s not really his place here.’

  ‘Better take him where it is then. He’ll be asking what’s taking you so long.’ He squinted up at her for an answer.

  ‘Do you know where your father went?’ she asked.

  He pointed down to the lake.

  The hill was transformed now the rain had arrived, luminous with young spear grass, and fluorescent cycad fronds atop black trunks. She felt revived walking among them.

  Joel heard her footsteps and turned around.

  ‘Danny’s told me about the sale.’ She passed him the phone with Mick’s message.

  He kicked a stone into the lake. ‘I thought we might have stayed another month or so, if there was money enough. But Dawson wants the space freed up. He might take on Gabe short-term.’ He looked to the homestead. ‘They’re going to bulldoze the old place.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing lasts forever.’

  ‘I hear you’re planning to raise your drowned car.’

  ‘I’m thinking about it.’

  ‘Must’ve been your first, for all the effort.’

  ‘Yeah, I bought it off Mick. Seb and I had it running like a dream, till we trashed it.’

  He sauntered towards the firebreak and then stopped to wait for her. ‘We need a Christmas tree, I’m told. There’s plenty of turkey bush out near the crossing. I’ll take the kids there with Danny, do some fishing as well.’

  The boys set off mid-afternoon with their fishing gear in the four-wheel drive and one of Joel’s cassettes blaring. Greta sank into the hammock for a moment’s peace.

  The gentle rocking made her drowsy. The humidity was intense. Her thoughts travelled out of her brain and floated around her. She drifted into a half dream, where everything was black and white, like a grainy film.

  She was dressed in Joel’s wetsuit and an old metal diving helmet. Her legs moved in slow motion, puffs of sand rose as she walked across the floor of the lake. The drowned car loomed ahead. When at last she reached it she bent to look through the vacant windows, unsure of what she might find. There was nothing but the rusted steering wheel and seats. The boot was open, like an invitation. A suitcase was inside. It was just like Maria’s except the latches were shiny and new. How enticing they were. Greta so much wanted to see inside. But no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t pick open those little latches.

  30

  Greta finished her table the day before Christmas. Everyone helped her carry it onto the verandah. When they’d set it down she ran her hand along the top with pride. There would be a feast. An event.

  Inside the shack, the kitchen was a frenzy of utensils, food and Dee’s recipes torn from magazines.

  ‘This turkey’ll be an experiment in Pavel’s oven,’ Greta confided in Raffy as she wrestled the herb-buttered breast into a butcher’s net.

  He was earnestly stoning cherries for a sauce, using Dee’s cherry stoner. His fingers were smeared in crimson juice. Globules of cherry flesh sat among ousted pips. He’d hoped Gabe might shoot another goose for Christmas, but Gabe was off fishing with Toby.

  Greta waited until late at night to make the chocolate ice cream plum pudding, hoping the ice cream wouldn’t turn to liquid so fast, but it did. Danny found her stirring dried fruit and glacé cherries into melted chocolate. She gave him the spoon to lick. He was all chatter about his family’s Christmases.

  ‘We had two,’ he said, one at Donegan’s, and then Maria’s feast. There was always an argument between Fedor and Vadik. One time they upturned the table, trampling food, plates, glasses. Maria and Joel buried the meal in the garden. Through it all Pavel would play his accordion on the homestead verandah or the shack steps, or down at the theatre of cycads.

  He paused to splash extra brandy into the chocolate ice-cream mix and steal the last red glacé cherries. Greta slid the bowl into the freezer with a good luck wish for it to work.

  Danny offered to help her wrap presents, since Joel was over at the shed finishing a billycart. She dragged a secret crate of gifts from the pantry to the tree. The boys had done well with the turkey bush. Several branches were embedded in a bucket of sand, decorated by Griffin and Raffy.

  Greta switched off the main light in the room. The coloured fairy lights on the tree looked magical.

  Danny sat on the couch. ‘I was a professional wrapper once.’

  She handed him a roll of paper, sticky tape and scissors.

  ‘They sacked me,’ he added, running the scissors through candy-striped paper.

  She laughed and opened the packets of embroidered stockings she’d found in the box from Fishermans Creek.

  ‘Those are pretty flash,’ Danny said of the red, green and white embroidered stockings.

  ‘My mother never liked them,’ said Greta, ‘which is why they’re still in their packets.’

  ‘Our mother knitted us Christmas stockings,’ Danny said, ‘for socks and boiled lollies.’

  Greta could imagine Maria in her armchair in the living room, needles clicking, cursing the wool in this sticky weather. And her mind on Christmases a world away, with muddy snow and rugged-up people huddling around a metal drum sprouting branches and fire.

  ‘I had a pillowslip,’ Greta told him. ‘No knitted stockings in our house.’

  You’re a dead giveaway, she used to think of her father, who’d fill the pillowslip at the end of her bed while she pretended to sleep.

  Danny pulled a length of sticky tape and tore it with his teeth. ‘Is your mother still around?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. Both parents gone. I’m an only child, so it’s just the kids now for me.’

  ‘Better do Christmas perfect then, eh?’

  He ran the scissor blade down the gift ribbon to make bouncing curls. Perhaps he really had been a professional wrapper. When he put the present under the tree, twigs caught his hair. A bauble fell and broke.

  ‘Sorry.’ He tried to steady the wobbling tree.

  ‘Don’t worry. They’re cheap, silly decorations.’

  Greta swept away the pink and gold shards. Danny picked up one of Toby’s devil sticks and hooked a decoration from the tree. He held it out to her like a gift. Greta stared at it, unbelieving. It was one of Magdalen’s bracelets. She looked at the tree more closely. Seven others were hanging from twigs among wooden stars, snowflakes and felt angels.

  ‘How did they get there?’ she asked herself out loud, mortified.

  Danny looked confused, slowly recognising them himself. He went back to the tree and hooked up each one on the devil stick, then shucked them off one on top of the other to make a tower on the floor. The heaviest bracelet fell from the tree by itself. Danny picked it up.

  ‘I found them down at the hut,’ Greta explained. ‘Joel said Lennie gave that one to Magdalen and sent the others to her after he left.’

  Danny sank back into the couch and sighed. ‘Yeah.’ He closed his eyes briefly.

  ‘But I can’t understand how they ended up at the hut.’ She watched him turning the bracelet in his hand. ‘You know Trapper?’

  ‘Real charmer.’

  ‘He said Magdalen was always down at the hut, even after Lennie went away.’

  Danny gazed intently at her, almost the way Magdalen had.

  ‘He seemed to be implying she was having it on with Vadik or Devil, which I couldn’t—I don’t believe. But it was odd.’

  He leaned back, the bracelet in his hand. Then he stretched forward and flicked the stack on the floor.

  ‘Lennie didn’t send those ones. Lennie only ever made this.’ He passed her the one he was holding.

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Devil. For the Devil’s game.’

  ‘Joel didn’t tell me that.’ A liquid chill was moving through her legs.

  ‘Joel doesn’t know.’ He paused. ‘Magdalen was lying dead, in the same bed our mother
died on. Fedor had put her there with candles, for a vigil. He insisted. Said it’s how our mother would have done it. When I came in Sal was standing over her—must’ve come in the window, ’cos Fedor wouldn’t have let her in the house. That’s when she told me what Devil an’ Vadik had been up to. But she put the promise on me, y’know? Magdalen had told Sal, but she made Sal swear she wouldn’t tell Joel. It’d kill Joel if he ever found out, that’s what Magdalen must’ve been thinking. She never loved any of us like she loved him. I don’t mean it jealous-like. It’s just a fact.’

  His words came quickly then, overlapping. Pictures lining up, converging.

  ‘The last thing Lennie told Joel was, “Tell Magdalen I’m coming back for her.” She held on to that hope like nothing else. So you can see how the plan was hatched.’

  The Devil’s bargain. A bracelet for a favour.

  Devil spins a story: Lennie sends his Magdalen a gift when he can, using Devil as a go-between so Fedor doesn’t find out. No letter or note since Magdalen doesn’t read. And no need of it anyway. A gift is worth a thousand words. But nothing comes for free from Devil. Not even a passed-on gift. There’s special favours required, or no Lennie. And no telling anyone what Devil likes for favours. Not a word, or you’re dead, and your brother Joel too. Devil knows how to kill a man and hide the body.

  So Magdalen visits the hut in secret when Vadik gives her the sign. The game is on. Devil is the ringmaster and Vadik peeks through a knothole in the wall. Vadik and Devil make the bracelets at night. They’re not beautifully made like Lennie’s but they do the job. Devil tries the forge bowl once or twice, but doesn’t have his son’s talent.

  Greta sees Magdalen close her eyes against Devil’s spider-leg fingers, whispering, ‘Lennie, Lennie,’ to save herself.

  Roused from his thoughts, Danny slowly stood up. ‘Do you mind if I grab us both a beer?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He went to the fridge and came back with one each. ‘Joel says this is your favourite.’

  She thanked him. ‘Did Magdalen ever notice the bracelets were different?’

  ‘In the end Sal told her. That’s how the accident happened. Magdalen was running from Devil, and came across Joel’s car with the keys in it.’