The Railwayman's Wife

by Ashley Hay

  Overhead, the sun is still climbing, and as it catches the edge of a shiny tin roof across the street, Ani looks up from the page, staring straight at the bright disc until she’s blinded by its glare. She reaches for her daughter’s hand again, hanging on, holding on.

  Somewhere in the world, the sun is always rising. Somewhere in the world, the day is getting light.

  Acknowledgements

  The earliest drafts of this novel were completed under the auspices of a Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Technology, Sydney. Thanks to Catherine Cole, Paula Hamilton and Paul Ashton for their encouragement, guidance and supervision both ahead of the project’s beginnings and throughout its span.

  The epigraph from Stephen Edgar comes from his poem ‘Nocturnal’, originally published in History of the Day (2009), and is reproduced here with his permission.

  The poem ‘Lost World’—written specifically for this novel—also came from the talented agency of Stephen Edgar, without whom Roy would never have found such an elegant and appropriate voice. I cannot thank him enough for his enthusiasm and generosity in this.

  The research for this novel drew on a large number of written sources, and quotes several—most crucially D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The text also refers to articles from Smith’s Weekly, 18 March 1944 (the story of the engine driver and his blackberries), the National Geographic of November 1947 (the northern lights), and The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 June 1949 (the newspaper Roy reads on the train). The other poems referred to in the text are Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Everybody Sang’, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘How Do I Love Thee?’, and two by William Butler Yeats—‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ and ‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’.

  The description of Ani Lachlan as ‘an angel from a lost world’ was inspired by ‘Angel’, a poem by Justin Moon; the librarian who wonders to Ani if paradise might be a library paraphrases Jorge Luis Borges’ words from his ‘Poem of the Gifts’ [‘Poema de los Dones’]; Roy borrows Heinrich Heine’s words from his 1821 play Almansor when he talks about burning books; and the extracts on bathysphere diving are taken from William Beebe’s 1934 memoir Half Mile Down. Joseph Davis’s D.H. Lawrence at Thirroul was an invaluable reference and the source of the inspirational information that Yeats’s doctor, too, had found himself in this part of the world.

  Thanks to Julianne Schultz at Griffith Review for publishing an extract from the novel-in-progress in GR30: The Annual Fiction Edition (2010). Thanks to Caroline Baum, Sue Beebe, Tegan Bennett, Lilia Bernede, Ruth Blair, Ilithyia Bone, Leah Burns, Michelle de Kretser, Stuart Glover, Gail Jones, Richard Neylon, Daniel Perez-Bello, Mark Tredinnick, Brenda Walker, Geordie Williamson and Charlotte Wood, and to Gail MacCallum, as always, for all their encouraging and helpful conversation and other things along the way.

  Thanks to Allen & Unwin: to Jane Palfreyman, Clara Finlay, Ali Lavau, Kathryn Knight and Louise Cornege, and to Hannah Westland and Jenny Hewson at Rogers, Coleridge and White.

  Thanks to the whole family—Hays and Beebes, but particularly Nigel Beebe and Huxley Beebe—for the time and space to complete this.

  And thanks to Les Hay for not minding my imagining this story. It is for him.

  This story is a work of fiction. Some of its locations do exist, as did the inspiration for some of its moments. But these events and their characters are the stuff of my imagination.

  About the Author

  Ashley Hay is the author of five books including the nonfiction narratives The Secret: The strange marriage of Isabella Milbanke and Lord Byron (2000), Gum: The story of eucalypts and their champions (2002) and Museum (2007; a collaboration with visual artist Robyn Stacey).

  The Body in the Clouds—her first novel—was shortlisted for a number of prizes including categories in the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the New South Wales and West Australian premiers’ awards. It was also longlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

  A former literary editor of The Bulletin, she contributes to a number of publications including The Monthly, Australian Geographic and The Australian. Her essays and short stories have received various prizes and listings, and have appeared in volumes including Brothers and Sisters (2009), Griffith Review, Best Australian Essays (2003), Best Australian Short Stories (2012), and Best Australian Science Writing (2012).

  She lives in Brisbane.