by Anna Romer
‘Gloria’s waving her tentacles,’ I told him. ‘Almost as if she’s dancing.’
That made him smile. Releasing my wrist, he lay back on his pillow and let out a sigh. ‘You said you found a letter.’
I took it out of my pocket. ‘The one you sent to Edwin, it’s here. Hanley, who was the woman you wrote about?’
Hanley didn’t look at the letter. Instead, he closed his eyes and began to speak, stumbling over the words, his voice a wheezy rasp.
‘Not a woman, at least not quite. A beautiful girl, clever and funny, kind-hearted. So like her mother. Back in Glasgow . . . we had a little house. My wife, Posie, had come from money, but she swore our modest life made her happy. After the war I was restless. I took a job in an accounting firm, started off small, working my way up, and for a while it was enough. Then I started hearing tales about Australia . . . streets paved with gold, nuggets free for the picking. I envisioned my wife and daughter in finery, saw the three of us living like royals . . . and couldn’t wait to pack my bags.’
Without his glasses, his eyes looked naked. He rubbed them with shaky fingers. ‘It was quite a different story when I arrived, of course. I went up to the Ballarat goldfields, but they’d abandoned the mines so I panned the creeks for a while. A wretched time, it was. Near starved to death, froze in winter. Even caught a lift down to Wonthaggi to the coalface, but the rotten conditions there, and gold fever, I suppose, drove me back to Ballarat. For a while, I worked a stint on the sewers. Ironic, isn’t it. I came to dig for gold, and ended up shovelling drains. All the while, dreaming that the next lucky nugget might be mine. I was a Scotsman, I declared. It wasn’t in my blood to give up. But truth be known, that old tin shanty had become my home. I had nowhere else to go.’
He drew a handkerchief from his pyjama pocket and wiped it over his face, then took a rattling breath. ‘Late in 1931, I started heavy on the grog. A man had a mind to drink himself into an early grave, didn’t he? A brutal time. There were no jobs. Everyone was hungry and destitute. Somehow I scraped through, although countless didn’t. Then the Salvos found me, cleaned me up. Saved me, so they did. In return, I offered back the only thing of value I possessed – my life, though there are many who’d say even that was worthless. I trained as an officer and spent the next thirty years doing the Lord’s work. Counselling anyone who needed a kind word.’
He coughed, reaching for the water glass beside his bed. After a noisy drink, he replaced the glass and settled back into his pillows. He looked at me. ‘But you didn’t come all this way to hear that, did you?’
I shook my head. ‘Could you tell me about the letter?’
His mouth tightened, turned down. Then he nodded. ‘I’ll be glad to get it off my chest. Perhaps then I’ll find peace.’
There was a silence. I waited, but Hanley did not go on.
‘In the letter,’ I prompted, ‘you asked Edwin about someone’s final moments. Someone you loved.’
He nodded, but made no attempt to elaborate.
I slid my hand into my bag, retrieving the section of photo I had cut from one of the enlargements. It showed only the girl, her face framed by long fair hair, her eyes large and dark, almost reproachful. I placed it on the bedside table.
‘She was your daughter, wasn’t she? Orah.’
Hanley’s gaze flicked to the photo, then away. He nodded, and seemed about to speak. But then his chin pushed up, began to tremble. A long silence followed. The old man seemed in the grip of an internal battle, his lips drawn against his teeth, his eyes squeezing shut. Finally, he flared his nostrils and drew a shaky breath.
‘I failed her . . . in the worst possible way.’
‘How do you mean?’
He sank deeper into his pillows. His eyelids fluttered. ‘If only I hadn’t gone to see her. If only I’d stayed away, let her be. A man doesn’t know, though, does he – what the future will bring. He thinks only of the moment. So when I got Edwin’s letter saying she was alive and well, living right here in Australia, I had to see her.’
He paused and wiped his eyes with shaky fingers, looked across the room. ‘Is Gloria still there?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Still dancing?’
Mid-morning sunlight filtered through the curtains, and a solitary beam shone into the fish tank. Even from here, I could see her: a golden shell the size of a finch’s egg, twirling in the slipstream of bubbles, her pale tentacles waving about in the water.
‘Yes, she’s still dancing.’
Hanley nodded and then, pulling in a raspy breath, continued. ‘When I left my girl in Glasgow all those years before, she was just a tiny wee thing. Eight years had passed since then, but when Edwin’s letter arrived, I only saw that little child . . . had visions of her trailing after me around the shanty, cute as a button, brightening the place with her golden curls and quick blue eyes. But the girl I found at Bitterwood was almost a young woman. I got a shock. She looked so much like her dear mam. Clever, too, and politely spoken. Immediately I saw she was better off with the Briars. Edwin and his wife clearly loved her. They’d provided a comfortable home, education, food on the table – far more than I could have offered in a month of Sundays at my humble shanty. So I decided to leave the next morning. I planned to explain my situation to the lass, and then say my fond goodbyes . . . Lord,’ he added in a strained whisper, ‘if only I’d stuck to my guns, instead of listening to Edwin—’
‘What happened?’
Hanley collected himself. ‘Later that night, his lordship knocked on my door and suggested I leave immediately. Without a word to the lass, he advised. He slipped me a bundle of notes – almost thirty pounds, I counted later, a king’s ransom. A man was torn, wasn’t he? I found myself over on the headland with a bottle for company, trying to clear my head. It was a crook business, sneaking off in the night like a thief. Wrong, you know? Funny about that . . . Leaving her should have been easy. After all, I’d done it once before. But it tore me apart all the same.’
He drew a shuddering breath. His gaze roamed the room, and then finally came to settle on the photo. His mouth shook and tears began to seep from his eyes.
I couldn’t stop the words. ‘What happened to her?’
Hanley didn’t seem to hear. ‘I spent my life chasing riches,’ he murmured. ‘All the while failing to see that the grandest treasure of all had been right there before me all along.’
‘Your daughter.’
He seemed to shrink into himself, somehow grow smaller. With trembling fingers, he reached for the photograph. He fumbled, unable to pick it up. I passed it to him, and he held it up close to his eyes for the longest time. He began to cry, noisily, wetly . . . and with the unself-conscious abandon of a small child whose heart was breaking. Then, in the faintest rasp of a voice, pausing occasionally to regather himself, he resumed his story.
32
Bitterwood, 1931
Orah hurried along the road, glad of the bright moonlight. She noticed an old utility parked beyond the hedge, and ran towards it, her satchel banging against her side, her shoes sliding around her feet.
‘Pa?’ she called hopefully. ‘Pa, wait!’
The vehicle was empty, and the only reply was the swish of waves on the beach far below. She was trembling, out of breath. Stopping, she rested her hands on her knees and tried to breathe slowly. Her hair had escaped its ribbon and whipped her face in the wind, blinding her. She paused to retie it. That was when she saw – at least, thought she saw – the solitary figure on the seaward edge of the headland. She started running towards him. Her body felt stretched out of shape, as in a dream; her legs too long for her body, wobbling all over the place, her arms weak and trembly. She wanted to call out, but her breath was trapped in her throat.
She ran along the headland, hearing the boom of water on the rocks below. She staggered, almost tripped. Her head ached horribly. She had been so angry, so hurt. Edwin had lied, and Clarice had been part of the lie too. They had betrayed her, and she hated them, hated their woefu
l excuses.
Your father was in a terrible state, ill and destitute, barely able to care for himself, let alone provide for a daughter—
Orah didn’t care. Soon she would be living with her father, helping him find his pot of glorious gold. She was clever, hadn’t he said so? She could cook for him, look after him, make his bed and shine his shoes. Use the skills she had learned at Bitterwood to restore him to the pa he had once been, with his rosy face and scratchy beard and bear hugs.
‘Pa!’
He turned, seemed to freeze on the spot.
Orah ran the last few feet and flung herself into his arms. ‘Pa, why didn’t you wait? I was so worried. I thought—’ She stopped. Her father’s face was ragged. Orah became aware of the smell, a tart unpleasantness that made her eyes water. She took a step away, searching her father’s face, seeing – not the joy she’d hoped for, but alarm.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘How did you know I’d be up here?’ There was no warmth in his voice, no pleasure.
‘I just . . . found you.’
His face twisted. ‘You’re no different to your mother. You’d hound a man into an early grave, wouldn’t you? I only came here to see that you were all right, lass. That’s all. I’d not intended to take you back with me. The shanties are no place for a young woman. You’d be a hindrance, a liability.’
‘Liability?’
Pa seemed to wilt. ‘You’re nearly fifteen now, Orah. A pretty thing, too,’ he added in a softer voice. ‘A man would have to spend all his time fending off unwanted attention. You see how it is, girl? I can’t take you with me, I won’t.’ He seemed about to take a step towards her, but then staggered sideways.
That was when she saw the bottle. It was almost empty, just the dregs of a brownish liquid at the bottom. She looked back at her father. His pale hair was stark against the shadows of his face, and his whiskers were now as white as those of an old man.
‘Pa?’
‘You shouldn’t have come after me,’ he said harshly. His lips drew back from around his teeth, and he spun away from her. Orah feared he meant to fling himself from the cliff edge – but his arm swung out, and he hurled the bottle. Orah watched it arc over the waves and then drop, disappearing into the water without a splash.
Pa turned to face her. ‘Go back to the house.’ Then he said, more softly, ‘I can’t take you with me, Orah girl. It’s madness out there, a man can barely fend for himself, let alone take care of a lass. Go on with you now, get back to your people. Back to where you belong.’
Orah gritted her teeth. ‘They’re not my people. I belong with you, Pa. I’m not going back, I’m coming with you. I don’t care about the madness, as long as we’re together.’
He pushed past her and began to stalk back along the headland, the reek of drink and sour sweat gusting around him in the wind. Orah ran after him, grabbed onto his sleeve, not letting go when he tried to shake her off.
‘Please, Pa—’
He yanked hard and tore free, shoving away from her. Panic rose up, pounding its fists against her ribs. She sobbed, tasting the salty breath of the sea, the fusty dampness of the sand somewhere below.
She ran at her father again and seized his arm. ‘I don’t want to stay here! Please take me with you. I don’t belong with them; they’re not my family. Pa, please, it’s what I want. Don’t make me stay, don’t leave me behind.’
Her father let out a sob – harsh and ragged, not even human, more like the cry of an animal – and the sound turned Orah’s heart to stone. She let out an answering cry of her own, a wordless plea snatched away all too quickly by the wind.
‘Please, Pa. Take me with you.’
She tried to embrace him, but he veered away with a shout. Too near the edge, but that didn’t stop her lunging again. She had to make him see reason, had to make him understand. The salt air stung her eyes, and she felt the ocean breeze lick its hungry tongue along her skin. Her legs shook beneath her, but she couldn’t give up; wouldn’t. Pa was escaping, more than a body length ahead of her now. She ran after him, barely noticing the loose stones beneath her feet, the slide of her shoes.
‘Pa, please—’
Thrusting out her arm, she launched herself at her father’s hunched shoulders and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. Pa roared and swung around, his arm raised as if he meant to strike her.
It happened so quickly. One moment there was solid ground beneath her feet; the next, her foot met no resistance, sinking into nothingness, its momentum pulling her with it, plunging her downwards into the dark. The sea roared in triumph, its booming cry swallowing the scream that tore from her throat. The world split open, the starry sky spun, and the rocks below whirled up to greet her.
The Queen had only to name the girl. Give her a name, and the child would be hers. So many lovely names, they crowded her mind, teetered on the tip of her tongue . . . but each time she tried to utter one, any one, a face popped into her mind’s eye. A small face with faded freckles, and eyes once as dark as the wild kelp that grew beyond the shore, now as dull as a spent penny.
—The Shell Queen
33
Bitterwood, June 1993
A storm blew in as I drove back to Bitterwood. Black clouds rumbled across the sky, turning afternoon to night. I barely noticed. Hanley’s account of Orah’s fall had shaken me and I couldn’t settle. For a while I stalked around the house, trying to pull myself together, but as the sky darkened and the storm closed in, the uneasy thump of my heart only grew louder.
After collecting the icehouse keys from their hiding place in the pantry, I took my flashlight and went into the garden. The sky was mottled now, crowded with deadly looking black and purple clouds. Rain began to fall around me, and a freezing wind caught leaf drifts and whipped them into the air, blinding me.
Thunder cracked in the distance, and by the time I reached the hollow beneath the dead oak, I was wet to the skin. I hesitated there on the brink of the orchard, but the wind strengthened at my back, pushing me forward. I took a few reluctant steps, then halted again.
The old oak creaked in the gale. As I watched, one of its upper branches splintered from the trunk and shattered onto the mound below.
Taking a breath, I walked towards the icehouse.
Unlocking the door, I went in. The din of rain faded. As I trod into the cold darkness, shining my torch around, the calm seemed eerie, abrupt after the wildness of the storm outside.
My light fell on broken bottles and the ruined shelving from which they had fallen. I noted blackened concavities at the base of some support beams. Edwin had tried to burn the icehouse, but the damp air and solid constriction had prevented its destruction. I thought of the album, and his attempt to burn that too, and wondered again what tracks he’d been so desperate to erase.
The air smelled sour. Burned wood, ash, stale smoke. A hint of kerosene. I pressed my hand to the wall, touching the cold stone, taking comfort from its solidness.
I reached the steps and trod down.
At the bottom, the air was noticeably colder, damper. I rested my palm on a support beam. It was rough and splintery, and as I lingered, spidery legs darted across my wrist, ticklish on my skin. I gasped, and then huffed out a laugh. A cockroach, a spider. The stuff of nightmares for some, but not for me.
I continued along the passageway. Veils of cobweb loomed in the light. I was staring so hard into the blackness that sparks flashed behind my eyes.
Deeper underground I went. The weight of cold pressed around me. No one had breathed this air for a long time, perhaps decades. The smell of earth and stone, a greasy odour, faintly mouldy, sat heavily in my lungs. I fought the urge to rush back outside into the freshness of the storm and expel it from my body.
At the end of the passageway, I followed the bend around to the right. The ground sloped down, and the low ceiling forced me to stoop. The support beams were closer together, and I wondered how my grandfather, with his impossibly tall frame, had manoeuv
red his way through this cramped narrow space.
I paused, shining my light ahead into the dark.
The passageway ended. The cobwebs thickened here, as though I was entering a large subterranean web. Directly above me, muffled by many feet of stone, thunder boomed.
The support beam nearest to where I was standing shuddered. Earth rained down from the ceiling. I stepped out of its way, brushing sandy dirt from my hair, but another deafening crack overhead startled me and I dropped the torch. As I bent to retrieve it, something glittered on the ground. A shard of glass, I thought at first. Kneeling, I looked more closely.
A tiny padlock.
Tarnished, encrusted with dirt, half-buried between the flagstones. I tried to pull it loose with my fingers, but it was stuck fast. I patted my pockets, found Edwin’s keyring, and used the end of the large key to scratch away the solid packed earth. Thunder rumbled overhead, and as I kneeled on the ground intently digging, I became aware of a faint shrieking sound, perhaps the trees outside bending in the wind.
The padlock loosened. It was attached to a chain. I tugged on it gently, scratching around it with the key until finally it came free. Holding it in my palm, I examined it under the torchlight.
The chain was broken, but there was no mistaking it. The delicate links, the padlock clasp. I breathed a shaky sigh, and felt the hairs stand up along my arms. My mother’s bracelet.
‘You were here,’ I whispered.
I shut my eyes and my mother appeared before me. Her fair hair floated out from her face, rippling in the current. Her eyes were open, blue as the water in which she drifted. She was reaching for me, her large freckled fingers so near that all I had to do was lift my hand and grasp them. But something held me back.
It’s not her, my father said from the darkness. That’s not my wife in there . . . You’ve made a mistake.
I shook my head to clear it, and got to my feet. Weighed the broken gold bracelet in my palm, and then slid it into my pocket. I knew she wasn’t down here. I knew that when my father had seen her body that day at the morgue, he had been in denial, his ability to grasp what had happened diminished by grief. The woman whose ashes we had farewelled at the crematorium, really had been hers.
