The Curlew's Eye

by Karen Manton

  He went quiet. The Christmas lights shivered on the turkey bush.

  Greta could see the girl fleeing the hut, crossing the rainforest bridge, ducking through the gap in the fence to find Joel’s car parked there like a miracle. She saw Magdalen at the wheel, erratic, panicked, driving to the mango farm. There had been no joy ride, only a desperate escape by a child who ended up wrapped around a tree trunk, engulfed in flame.

  Danny closed his eyes.

  Greta thought, He thinks Joel’s told me the car crash was on the property, at the tree. He thinks I’ve known all along.

  And she couldn’t remember now if Joel had told her it was the highway or she assumed it.

  Danny opened his eyes and sat forward, clutching the cold beer. His fingers were wet with condensation. ‘Later I had this weird thing where I wondered if Sal had been there in the room with Magdalen’s body or not. It got me thinking—maybe she wasn’t really there. The mind plays tricks, you know.’

  Greta knew. Magdalen was looking down on them from beside her father’s tin.

  ‘But then who else told me what happened? Devil and Vadik, the bracelets and all that. She must’ve been there.’

  He gulped his beer, downing the forbidden truth.

  ‘I never saw Sal again after that. Or Devil.’

  ‘And Vadik?’

  ‘He hung out down the hut, horizontal drunk twenty-four seven. I went there once, had him up against the wall, when Fedor comes in and says, “Let him go.” I’ll never know why I did.’

  ‘I met Vadik once,’ she said softly. ‘Not long after Joel and I first got together. He was in a hostel in Adelaide. Sick with a racking cough and skinny as death. He’d tracked Joel down, wanted him to visit.’

  She remembered the old man clutching Joel’s arm, the cracked lips spitting unintelligible whispers, until the cough took over and he lay back defeated.

  ‘I hope he burns in hell,’ said Danny. ‘Him and Devil both.’

  There was a creak on the verandah floor. Greta looked up, anxious. Was a child out there listening? She stood up and opened the door. No one was on the verandah or to the side of the shack. She went back to Danny and the Christmas tree.

  ‘I thought I heard someone.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘No one’s there.’ Her fingers adjusted an angel on a precarious lean.

  He took a sip of beer.

  ‘I won’t say anything,’ she told him.

  The Christmas lights winked.

  Somewhere inside her a voice cried out, How does this happen?

  Magdalen. What are you doin’ here, girl?

  The child’s shadow is in the doorway. She’s carrying a suitcase and wearing a moth-eaten velvet dress of her mother’s, olive green with three-quarter sleeves. Sally wasn’t expecting her.

  Magdalen doesn’t enter. She’s shocked to see Sal is back.

  I’ve come to get my present from Lennie.

  She’s taking in the purple flower across the woman’s right eye and cheek.

  Sal in turn is struck by the change in Magdalen. She’s been away a few months, Sal, since Devil busted her collarbone. Long enough for the girl to be different, to be no longer a child. But still. The hint of blue eyeshadow, the pink lipstick, painted fingernails—none of it matches the kid Sal remembers.

  Four bracelets sit tight up each of the girl’s arms. She’s nervous, her fingers hover up and down the bangles.

  He’s sending them to me, she says, and pulls one bracelet lower to show Sal. He’s sending them till he comes back for me.

  Sal is quiet in the dark of the hut. She hears a tremor in Magdalen’s voice. She wonders if Fedor knows the girl’s down here, or the brothers. She’s wondering if the girl’s willingly dim.

  Lennie’s not comin’ back, love. Lennie’s gone.

  Sally takes hold of Magdalen’s arm. The girl’s pink mouth grimaces.

  Don’t be angry with me, Sal. It wasn’t my idea.

  She tries to pull away, but Sally’s grip is too tight.

  He said you were gone. He said it was all right by you, an’ if I just do a little bit like he says, Lennie’ll come home.

  Sally wasn’t letting go.

  Magdalen sobs, caught.

  It wasn’t my idea. Promise. Devil said I had to or he’d tell Fedor ’bout Lennie taking me with him.

  She whispers the last words, twisting away in case Sally strikes her.

  Instead the older woman takes her out to Lennie’s forge bowl. She stirs the coals with the poker and fishes out a rough circle of metal.

  That’s not Lennie makin’ you bracelets, girl. That’s the Devil’s work.

  Magdalen stares at Sally.

  Never tell Joel, she whispers.

  Suddenly she turns and runs.

  Magdalen! Sally calls. Magdalen!

  But the girl has gone—past the mango tree, up between the cycads that lead to the outcrop above. She’s left the suitcase behind.

  When Devil stumbles out from the rainforest bridge and along to the hut he finds Sally at the forge bowl. She’s holding the poker like a weapon.

  You keep away from that girl, you sick fuck, she says.

  He swipes at her once, close as he dares, then takes off up to the outcrop.

  Magdalen doesn’t see Devil sneak into the haven of rocks where she hides. Her ear is pressed against a rock wall to listen. She does this because the stone will help her hear underneath the watery sounds that plague her ears. She’ll find the right notes, clear as bells tinkling through the rock—footsteps, whispers, a soft whistling.

  There’s still a flicker of hope in her that it is Lennie playing their old game of seeking each other out in narrow gaps and hidden alcoves, the dark spaces.

  A shadow appears at the end of the corridor. The afternoon sunlight is behind him, sifting through the trees. He’s a silhouette moving through the dust motes. She knows this gait.

  He whistles an odd little song. Magdalen, Magdalen.

  The air smells of his sweat, his alcohol breath.

  Magdalen, I have a present for you—it’s from Lennie!

  He kneels in front of her, holding a bracelet.

  She doesn’t take it.

  His hands swim to her. Grab her wrist and force the bracelet on.

  The fish knife is so swift he doesn’t even see it.

  Fuck! Aiya!

  His shrieks spike around the rock walls.

  She’s stuck me! She’s stuck me like a pig!

  The warm rocks have dulled their colours. Devil’s hands are striped red.

  Magdalen is quick to disappear. She knows how. He will never find her in this labyrinth of secret chambers and passages that only she can navigate. Her breath is loud in her ears, and the hum deep inside the stone walls leads her on.

  Behind her she hears Devil calling, his footsteps pursuing her. She must be fast, and not take a wrong turn.

  She emerges where the rock formations end, where the land leads down to the lake.

  Joel, Joel, she breathes, willing him to be there.

  Her feet are swift across the ground. She believes in the earth, the stones that have eyes and whisper the way.

  And there it is suddenly, his car, stopped at the edge of the lake, with the driver door open and the keys still in the ignition.

  31

  ‘Here we are then, the orphans of Christmas,’ announced Brynn, unwrapping a ham on the bone.

  Ronnie’s face calmed when she appeared. He was spruced up in a cornflower blue shirt and jeans that hadn’t been worn often. He’d brought a CD player for carols. Toby put it on an upturned crate near the table. Joel found everyone a drink and Greta raised a toast to friends and to Christmas. For a moment they were hushed by the escarpment’s sunset colours, the brilliant white trunks of the ghost gums and the warm glow of the termite mounds.

  ‘Best time of day,’ Ronnie said.

  ‘Best time for Christmas dinner, I say,’ added Brynn. ‘Too hot earlier.’

  ‘We
’ve been down the creek,’ Griffin told her. ‘Gabe caught the biggest fish.’

  ‘With some help from you fellas,’ Gabe said.

  He’d arrived early that morning, making a trio of older brothers to mirror the younger. He gave each boy a lure for a present. They’d gone downstream to a magic spot he knew. The three boys were all smiles on legs when they returned, with Raffy holding a fish that was almost as tall as him.

  Griffin and Raffy claimed seats next to Gabe and Danny.

  The mahogany table was looking festive. Maria’s candlestick was among an odd assortment of crockery, cutlery and glasses from the op shop. Raffy had found a pair of pâté knives, one with Santa on the handle, the other with a reindeer.

  The turkey was sliced and the cherry sauce admired. The barramundi was a glistening pride on the baking tray.

  ‘Will you eat the eye?’ Raffy asked his uncle.

  ‘Yes,’ said Danny, and he dug it out with the tip of a sharp vegetable knife and sucked it while Raffy looked on, revolted.

  Toby called on everyone to pull their bonbons. The volley of crackers confused the dog and frightened the chickens tiptoeing along the verandah.

  ‘Who let them out?’ Joel shooed away a hen with his bare foot.

  ‘It’s too wet in their hutch,’ Griffin told him, planting a bright orange paper crown on his father’s head.

  Joel seemed relaxed enough. Greta kept glancing at him, wondering if he’d heard the horror tale Danny had shared the night before. It gave her an unreal feeling, as if there were two of her—one Greta going through the motions of Christmas Day, from opening presents, to chasing overexcited children to preparing food; and the other under water, trying to catch up with the dark shape of her husband swimming into the deep ahead of her. What did you hear last night, what did you hear? she asked him through the watery silence.

  ‘Come on now, eat up,’ Greta urged.

  Before long, remnants of meat and limp salad were scattered across plates. Toby slipped morsels to Rex under the table.

  ‘You’ll make that animal sick,’ warned Greta.

  ‘If you feed it my ham I’ll chase you with a stick,’ said Brynn.

  ‘Dad’s father chased him round the garden with an axe once,’ piped up Griffin. ‘And when he couldn’t catch him, he chopped down Uncle Pavel’s banana trees. Every one.’

  ‘Those were the days, eh, bro?’ Gabe raised his beer to Joel.

  Danny raised his beer too. Joel smiled and swigged away the memory.

  ‘If you can get through Christmas without any blood on the floor, that’s a good thing,’ declared Brynn.

  Ronnie chuckled and nodded.

  There’d been no blood on the floor for Greta’s Christmases, no axe-wielding relatives. It was the undercurrents, the silences, the voices behind a closed door she remembered. Either at her aunt’s place, where there was a sea of unknown faces and discarded wrapping paper, or at home alone with her parents, where the turkey was undercooked and the oven out of gas. Her mother would drink the last of the brandy, gather up the plates and take them outside. Then the sound of each one breaking. A sharp crack over the tap above the gully trap. One, two, three.

  And her father would say, ‘Come on, Gret. Let’s see how it is out on the water.’

  ‘Time for ice-cream cake, Mum?’ Toby asked.

  The adults claimed they couldn’t eat any more. But when Griffin brought out the pudding there was a change of mood. It hadn’t quite set with so much brandy in it, but was a hit all the same.

  A soft rain began, thickening to a downpour. They were cocooned in together, melting into the humid atmosphere with leftovers on plates, perspiring faces, snippets of talk and dripping candles. Raffy yawned and slid onto his mother’s knee. His paper crown sagged over one eye. A blue stain marked his cheek.

  Toby came out from the Christmas tree with presents for Gabe, Brynn and Ronnie. Greta stirred, suddenly shy. Raffy offered to unwrap Brynn’s present for her. Each one was a framed photo of a car wreck with a dramatic cloudscape above it.

  Gabe nodded to Greta and thanked her. Ronnie did the same. Brynn was distracted, pulling another bonbon with Griffin.

  ‘You know something,’ Griffin said to her. ‘A while ago I saw Trapper’s cow eating your pumpkin, back behind his fence.’

  ‘Ha! I might have guessed!’ She raised her glass. ‘Here’s to a happy heifer.’

  It was past midnight when Ronnie guided Brynn to his ute to drive her home and the children stumbled across to the cabin, lugging their Christmas booty. Danny and Gabe followed Greta inside, bringing dishes.

  ‘Thanks for the feed,’ said Gabe as she parcelled up leftovers for him.

  Joel went out to wave him off. He came back with the last dishes and promised to wash them tomorrow.

  He kissed her lightly on the nose.

  ‘We’re up early don’t forget,’ he reminded Danny on his way down the steps.

  ‘You should both sleep in,’ Greta said. ‘It’s Boxing Day.’

  She returned to the table, poured herself a drink and pushed one over to Danny. Maria’s candlestick was between them. The CD player sang on. O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about what you told me last night,’ Greta began.

  ‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ he cut in quickly. ‘I don’t know why I did.’

  ‘Where did Devil go after Magdalen’s accident?’

  The candle flame wavered. Wax pooled around the foot of Maria’s candlestick.

  ‘He … disappeared!’ His hands glided through the air like a magician.

  ‘Not that anyone would miss him,’ Greta said.

  ‘Nah, no one’s missin’ Devil,’ he agreed. ‘Except Vadik. He might’ve missed him.’

  Greta remembered Joel clutching Vadik’s wrist to make him let go of her shirt.

  Danny leaned down to ask Rex how he’d liked Christmas. Their noses almost touched.

  ‘Yeah, Devil never came back after Magdalen died,’ he went on. ‘I heard a rumour he was out the back of Pine Creek.’

  ‘Gold country.’

  ‘I saw him once, not far from there.’

  ‘You saw him?’

  ‘Yeah. Strangest thing. I was down that way with Gabe. We were drivin’ past these old gold digs, stopped for a break. Heard that laugh, you know, the Devil laugh.

  ‘He was just a shadow at first, by this fallen-down house. Then he moved and I saw it was him. No doubt. He comes down all smartass-like, says he can smell us. It was hot and still, and we’re looking at him when a breeze picks up, rattling dead leaves over the stones. Devil didn’t like it, started cursin’ us both, said we were hexing him. And then he dared to sleaze on about Magdalen. That was it, I snapped. I wanted to kill him, you know? He takes one look at my face, and runs. I went after him. The ground there—it’s all cut up, loose stones. You can’t put your foot down solid. We were slipping all over the place. I was thinkin’ one of us’ll fall, break an arm, twist a leg. But I wanted to get him. Not for me, for Magdalen.’ He took a breath. ‘I was real close and he was panting hard like he might collapse, when he looked back at me. His face was white, terrified, you know? I’d never seen him look like that. “You’d better hurry up, Devil,” I said, and reached out my hand, and fffwit—he’s gone!’

  ‘Gone?’ Greta saw the ground suck him under and zip up the gap.

  ‘Mine shaft. Even if you had X-ray vision you couldn’t have seen it, there was that many branches and leaves covering it. Would’ve gone in myself if Gabe hadn’t grabbed me. So the two of us are staring down this shaft. You couldn’t see a thing. It was dark as night. I said to Gabe, “Fuck! I killed him!”

  ‘He had to hold me up I was that freaked. And he said, “Nah, that Devil killed himself. Stepped in the wrong place. That wasn’t you, Danny.”’

  A beetle flew into one of the candle flames and dropped to the hot wax, fizzing.

  ‘I asked him again, “Gabe, was it me that did it?” Because I
’d been so close, my hand ready to grab him, ready to smack him one.’ He punched his fist into his hand. ‘I see it sometimes.’ He sighed. ‘Like I said, sometimes the mind plays tricks.’

  A light breeze wafted through. The candle flames leaned then bounced upright again. ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ drifted out to the dark.

  Rain fell again around the shack. The green tree frogs started up their chorus.

  Danny stood to leave. The dog was ready to walk with him, tail wagging. ‘I’ll see you then.’ His fingers might touch her hand. ‘Thanks for Christmas.’

  He walked across to the cabin where the children had put their swags with his in the spare room. She stayed on alone, listening to the rain. She couldn’t go to Joel. Not yet, with all she now knew. What she couldn’t fathom was why—why had Danny let her in on it? So she could tell Joel without Danny breaking his promise to Sal? She wasn’t sure she had the right to do that. She was carrying secrets that weren’t hers. I trust you.

  Rain mist blew across the table. The candles went out. At last she went to the cabin. Joel was asleep under the mosquito net.

  She lit a candle on the desk, and quietly opened the top drawer. A gecko clicked from the ceiling. Her hand felt for where she’d hidden Magdalen’s first bracelet. She slid it over her wrist, and then slipped under the mosquito net, careful not to disturb Joel. She wasn’t sleepy at all. She could stare through the skylight at the stars all night. Her fingers slowly turned the bracelet around her wrist.

  There was something still alive about the girl, something near, despite her grave being refilled, tamped down, fenced in by new stones.

  ‘Are you still here?’ Greta whispered into the dark.

  She’d expected the silence that followed. And yet she had a distinct sense that Magdalen wasn’t finished with leaving.

  32

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Greta asked Raffy.

  She’d slept in. The sun was well up and she could hear the steady hum of a tractor down the hill.

  ‘They’re taking that car out of the lake,’ said Raffy. ‘They’re going to drag it up.’

  This must have been the talk between the men yesterday after the meal. She’d seen Joel, Ronnie, Gabe and Danny in a huddle, intent on a project.