by Tracy Farr
He nods at her, shrugs, all in one movement. She taps to send.
Kurt nurses his second coffee. Marti waves and clicks her fingers in the air to summon more wine.
Luce watches her uncle walk from the clearing. He takes a track that might lead to the beach. He holds his phone in the air, and out to the side, then peers at it, then pockets it, then takes it out again. Luce looks over at Kristin in the car, with the baby. She should be used to it – the baby feeding – but she isn’t, and it makes her feel a sort of shame.
She chooses a track that leads off in a different direction from the one Paul took. The track is narrow, sandy underfoot, with the same thin crust of darker, sodden sand over dry white sand that was in the clearing. The scrub gets sparser as the track starts to climb the side of the sand dune, then before she knows it she’s up above the scrub and the stubby trees, out on a great lift of bright white dune dotted with beach plants here and there: pigface and lupins, cattails, marram grass.
She climbs, up and up, then down into a valley in the dunes and she rests there for a while in the quiet, alone, just standing there, as if the world has gone away. She listens to the waves. They boom in, crashing, bigger than the waves in their bay. This is a wild bit of coast, big surf that comes in from the south with the full force of the ocean behind it. She shivers, though the sun’s on her.
She climbs out of the dip and up the angle of the next dune, higher than the first, and her feet dig into the sand as she climbs, and the dry sand underfoot squeaks and sends another shiver through her.
And she comes to the top of the dune, and there, off in the distance, on the point at the end of the far, far curve of the great long bay, is the lighthouse. She can’t see its detail – it’s too far off for that – but she remembers it: the limestone blocks of its base; the great red and white lift of it; the feel of thick paint (like candle wax, molten then hardened, liquid then not) under her little hand as her dad lifted her up to touch the first red stripe.
She reaches her arm out towards the lighthouse, pincers thumb and forefinger together and squints her eye along her arm, to take its measure, to pinch it. She looks down in the other direction along the bay, and sees the tiny dot that is Paul, walking on the beach. She measures him too: a tiny man on a beach, but as big as a lighthouse, from where she stands.
On the top of the sand dune, Luce plants her feet so she’s as stable as a lighthouse, and draws herself up as tall, and she sings, quietly at first, because she doesn’t want them to hear her. But Paul’s far away, and she knows Kristin and the baby can’t hear her – they’re in the car – so she sings louder and louder, sings the baby’s song.
And she gets louder, and louder still, until she’s shouting out to sea. As she sings, she turns slowly on the sand dune, arms out, like Julie Andrews on a hilltop wearing a curtain, or like a lighthouse beaconing into the night.
When Paul and Luce arrive back at the clearing – both of them popping out of the scrub track and into the open ground at the same time, as if they’ve responded to an offstage cue, or a siren’s call – the baby is fast asleep in its car seat, and Kristin is busy. She’s picking up the burnt-out cans and bottles from the firepit’s charcoal and ashes, and from all around the clearing. She’s already filled two shopping bags (taken from her stash in the boot of the car), and has started on a third. Luce stands at the edge of the clearing and watches Paul take the bag from Kristin. She watches him snake his arms around her, and kiss her on the top of her head, and she watches them both stand still like that, together, in the middle of the clearing.
Kurt drives Marti’s car back to the house. Marti snoozes in the passenger seat, her mouth open, her glasses crooked on her nose. The bottles of wine in the box on the back seat chime against one another, all the way home.
Burst through the door
They all arrive back at the house together, though the two cars come from different directions.
Kurt and Marti are first. Iris hears the car pull in on the gravel, and goes to open the front door for them. She sees Kurt step out of the driver’s seat, duck around and open the door for his aunt. He carries in a box of wine, plants a kiss on his mother’s cheek as he passes her in the doorway of the house. Marti breezes past Iris and blows her a kiss (blackcurrant, tobacco, a hint of vanilla, oak and plum notes) on her way to make coffee.
Next Paul pulls their big car in and parks on the gravel. He goes to the boot and lifts out shopping bags filled – as far as Iris can see – with rubbish, while Kristin unclips the baby in her seat, and lifts her out and swings her up and around, the baby pouring gorgeous liquid giggles.
Then Luce is up and under her. She bursts through the door like a flash of light. There’s high colour in her face (is she sunstruck, just a little, or is it the cold?). She stands in front of Iris, her eyes wide and shining, her arms held out from her body, in an upside down V.
‘We went to the lighthouse!’
She whispers it, then her arms are up and she hugs Iris, hard, her face beaming, her cheek cold against Iris’s warmth.
Then just as quickly her arms drop, and her face goes back behind its mask, hiding itself, and she steps away, and skips to her room, where Iris hears her humming.
Stitch Luce
Take up silver thread, and gold, for Luce. Stitch her as Saint Lucia, a crown of candles on her head, marking the year’s midnight, lighting the year to come. Stitch her with a smile, and with song. Make her with stitches small and true, well placed. Stitch a lighthouse behind her, tiny to indicate distance, but float it in the air, ungrounded, like a medieval painting. Stitch its rays, beaming, bringing light.
To the bay
Luce walks away from the house, through the gate, and follows the river towards the sound of the ocean, to the bay. When she gets to the sand, she takes off her shoes, ties the laces together, loops them around her neck so that the shoes both hang in front of her, banging her chest. The sand is sun-dried now, fine powder underfoot, sticky still with the feel of salt. She lowers herself to sit on the sand, pulls her knees in under her chin, hugs them tight. She cups sand in her hands and drifts it down onto her feet, feels the tickle of it, then the weight. She covers her feet with sand, up to the ankles. She draws her finger through the sand to trace a line down the top of her right foot. The sand falls back, fills the space her finger leaves behind, covering her trace.
She looks out at the ocean, stares dead ahead. There isn’t anything you can see, if you look straight out from here. Not land. Just sea and sky that go blue, all the way to Antarctica. Or maybe Africa. With nothing in between. Somewhere out there, but further than Luce can see, is her dad. Somewhere out there, and one day she’ll see him again, and she’ll know it’s him, and he’ll know it’s her. He’ll walk up to her – slowly – and he’ll put his arms around her (tightly, slowly, but not creepy), and he’ll hold her so tight she’ll think she can’t breathe. But she will. She’ll breathe in the smell of him. And it’ll mix with the smell of her, and be perfect.
Kurt walks around from the far side of the bay, and as he rounds the point, he sees Luce sitting there on the beach, small and quiet, her back rounded, rocklike, solid, grounded.
He lifts his hand to hail her and, catching the movement, she lifts her face to him, and it is full of light.
He walks towards her, his almost-sister, moved by the tractorbeam pull of blood and love.
‘Are you going back? Paul said could you go back. The party. To help set up.’
She has to shade her eyes from the sun. It’s shining behind him, so he’s in shadow, lit from behind so she can’t see his face, or anything but his outline. It’s like talking to a special effect. He’s a tall black shape, a curve, a line, and the sun behind him makes him shimmer, like a mirage in an old desert movie, or a genie from a bottle.
‘Yeah, alright. I’ll head back.’
He stands there, still for a moment, then his arm moves to his glasses, nudges them in the way he always nudges them, always has, ever since she can r
emember. His arm drops back down by his side, then reaches out from his body, his hand towards her, sitting there on the sand, reaching towards her hand.
‘Come on.’
She puts her hand out and rests it in his. They’re the same shape, with the same long fingers, and they fit together like twins.
‘In a bit. I want to –’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. You go. I’ll see you back there.’
‘ ’Kay.’
Kurt’s hand moves away from hers, slots into his pocket. Then he moves, and the sun is no longer behind him, and she can see him – the detail of him, but from behind, so she’s missing the look on his face – as he walks away towards the path that leads along the river and back towards the house.
When Kurt reaches the track at the top of the beach, where it meets the river to follow it home, he turns and looks down the slope of the sand, past the great stones that both interrupt and anchor it, to the sea.
He pushes his glasses, puts his hand back in his pocket, then lifts it again – push, pocket. The shape of Luce appears up out of the curve of the bay, unfurls like a great round stone coming to life, until she’s standing, straight and long and true and fine, facing out to the sea and the sun.
Then he hears it, faint at first: three notes in descant, rising to the sky.
Luce stands and sings – for the last time alone – the baby’s song that she has made, singing out to the ocean, pouring crystal notes out into the blueness of it all. She sings for the baby, and she sings for Rosa, and she sings for herself and for Kurt and them all. And when she’s finished, she sings it again.
He stands, watches, listens. And maybe it’s Luce singing; or maybe it’s just the sun, as it dries up all the rain; but everything clears, and he knows that it (whatever it is – the feeling, the darkness) will come back, but it’s lifted, for the moment. Into his mind comes the image of his mother stitching, running stitch that is visible on the fabric face, making shapes and words, but invisible where it runs underneath.
Iris is on her way to the bay, to find them both, Kurt and Luce, when she hears it. She stands with her hand on the latch of the gate, and listens, for a moment, before she walks towards the song.
Along the path by the side of the river she walks, and she comes to Kurt, standing there at the top of the bay, listening to Luce, and she stands with him too, and they lean into one another, and he hums under his breath, matching Luce; and Iris holds her own, holds her breath, and listens to the sound of their voices, together.
Stitch music
Take up blue thread for the bay, and black for notes, and stitch music, voices merging. Stitch the stave, and stitch each note fat – egg-shaped, stone – upon its line. And stitch the ocean at the bay. Turn the stave into horizon, striations of sea and sky and stone. Stitch the bass clef a drape of seaweed; stitch the treble clef broad at base, neck-fine above, tail trailing below like the feet of a fat black swan, paddling under the water’s surface.
Mark it with B
While Marti cuts the cake horizontally through its middle, Iris draws a B onto brown paper, in the centre of a pencil circle she’s drawn, marking the size of the cake. She sketches the slope of the back of the B, then its full breast, and its fuller belly below. She fattens the lines, thickens them, makes them curve. She adds curlicue serifs breezing out from the B’s back – but not too fine, so they’re thick enough to cut.
Marti’s knife slices through to the other edge of the cake, and she flips the two halves apart, the insides egg-pale, flour-soft, circled round with gold.
Iris holds the paper up, shows it across the table.
‘B for Baby.’
‘B for beautiful.’
Now Iris cuts – blunting tiny silver scissors meant for thread – around the B, releasing the shape from the paper, while Marti whips cream, and they both laugh again at her paddling arms, her bingo wings. Marti spreads jam, blood-red, rose-red, to top one half of cake. Iris snip snip snips to cut the centre from the belly of the B. Marti scoops cream, satin-stiff on a broad metal knife, and spreads it thick on top of the jam. She licks the knife, her eyes closed, licks her lips. Iris snip snip snips to cut the centre from the breast of the B. Marti lifts the bare half of the cake and flips it, then centres it above the laden base, and she places it, carefully, to crown the baby’s cake.
Now Iris holds up the paper B, suspends it above the cake. As she holds it, the paper starts to curl at the base, moisture lifting it up, tugging with life. And she thinks of a long-forgotten fortune-telling fish, a novelty tucked in a wax paper sleeve, in the back of a drawer of the dresser in the house where she and Rosa stayed for a time, long ago, far away. She thinks of its red cellophane curling in the palm of her outstretched hand, and of matching its curve to the words on the wax sleeve in which the fish hid: lucky in love; warm of heart; full of grace; fair of face; sharp of eye; quick of mind; fleet of foot; just and fair.
And she places the B in the centre of the top of the cake; she rests it lightly, then shifts it slightly, into its perfect position. She presses down its lifted curve. And Marti rains icing sugar over it all, the cake and the B and the plate and the table, and Iris’s hands by the plate, and they laugh at it, at the too-much of it, and at the scrape of the spoon against the metal mesh of the sieve. And they sing, or at least they think of singing:
Pat it and prick it and mark it with B
And put it in the oven for Baby and me.
And when everything’s covered in white, Marti lifts the paper B with both hands, as careful as Iris has ever seen her; and there’s the golden B left on the top of the snow-white cake. They both hold their breath, and Iris holds her hands cupped under the lifting B, to catch anything that falls.
Stitch them all together
Almost done, now.
Stitch lines onto the quilt. Like lines on a map marking height of the ground (the level of the ground, where things are the same), lines join them. All together now, on the blanket for the baby.
Fix the backing to the blanket, now, fine wool to sit soft against skin, and to mask the stitches’ backs. Fold its edges over, and stitch it around, neat and strong. Stitch a tiny bee – slip slip slip, bee for B for Baby in a few quick stitches – in one corner of the blanket’s back; and stitch a trail of running stitch behind it and before it, looping and crossing itself, escaping off the edge, taking flight.
How will she stitch herself? She’s already there, in the stones, in all the stitches. On the blanket’s backing, she stitches an eye – eye for I for Iris, Eye-Rice – in the bottom right-hand corner, like signing a painting. Eye for an I; for I will watch over you, little one. The sister of my son. The daughter of my son’s father.
Then she leaves the backing fabric unstitched, unfixed along one edge, so she can reach up inside and finish it, once she knows the baby’s name, and can stitch it, front and centre; then she’ll stitch them all together, happily, forever.
While we name you
‘Will you get the cake –’
‘Not yet!’
‘Glasses then. Plates.’
They have opened the heavy wood and glass doors along the side of the big room, the music room, so the room only has three walls, now. Luce has cut coloured paper into fat strips, looped them to form paper chains, hung them across the top of the doors, so they frame the outside. Across the room, the table is covered with an old batik sarong, pale in patches from sunlight. There’s a jug in the centre of the table, thick acid-green, filled with branches from the garden, soft cattails from the beach, early freesias that Luce found around the edge of the garden. A big glass bowl, thick blue glass from the 1950s, is filled with ice (bought in a bag from the petrol station), a bottle resting there, waiting to pop. Rosa’s book is on the table, propped open at the back, on a stand.
Luce unpacks plates from a box, wipes them with a tea towel and stacks them on the table.
Marti arranges forks for the cake, glasses for toasting.
Kris
tin holds the baby, who is sleeping through it all.
Next to the piano, Kurt and Paul prepare to sing. Iris stands in the doorway, leaning on its frame, and watches them. She leans in, leans towards them. They both stand, Paul and Kurt – father and son – close to one another, closer than she has seen them for a long time. They stand by the piano. Kurt hums a note. Paul hums it. Paul reaches out to the piano and hits a key. They both drop their hums to match the piano. They look at each other. Kurt counts in, one, two, three, then a fourth beat with his finger, then he starts – Kurt does – at the high end of his range, on a wobbly note that strengthens and holds, then Paul comes in under him, supporting the sound but not taking over.
Kurt closes his eyes as he sings, as if he’s forgotten anyone else is there. When he’ d started, he was standing awkwardly: one hand on his chest, the other hanging by his side; almost Napoleonic or as if recovering from a stroke. The hand is still on his chest now, but it’s activated – feeling his breath, working it. The other – the hand by his side – is now tapping the rhythm of the song, tapping in counterpoint.
Marti’s voice joins them – in this old song, that the Diamonds always sing – then she walks across the room, to stand with them. Marti and Paul bookend Kurt, their arms around him, smiles big as the day, or the year. Marti’s free hand is moving, marking time, her fingers picking notes from the air, pinching them, then letting them go.
Their three voices match in the way that only blood can make voices match. They loop together, the notes in the air; they fit. If you looked at the waves their voices made – the recorded sounds, displayed as signals on a screen – they would share signatures of waver and quaver and lick and tone that would match them, as surely as DNA profiles, as father and son, and as sister and brother, twinned.
