Heart of the Grass Tree

by Molly Murn

  Maringani knows that Poll has been waiting for this. She’s seen Poll gazing out across the passage. Gazing home. Making peace with the water. Singing to it. And now all the women are busy attending to Emue and the new wriggling one. William disappeared inside the hut long ago with Anderson—Maringani waited for him, but he never emerged. The other men have started drinking already and follow their own strange loud rhythms. Poll and her own almost walking baby are alone. Maringani watches from the low scrub. Poll is kneeling at the water’s edge, her baby sitting up straight-backed on the sedge cloak spread out on the sand. Poll scoops the water over her shoulders and wets herself all over and then gathers the child into her arms and cradles it. Its round legs kick into Poll’s ribs. Maringani whispers and hopes the boy is sleeping. She hopes Poll can swim like a seal.

  Poll lays the child down onto the sedge cloak, kneels up, gathers the cloak and swings it round onto her back. She ties the cloak up deftly and Maringani can just make out the little boy’s scrubby head at the top of the carrier. Poll begins walking into the water. She turns to look back and Maringani stands up out of the spinifex and rushes to Poll. Maringani strokes her hands up and down Poll’s arms and over the baby’s head and embraces Poll and licks salt from her neck. Poll shakes her head, rubs her mouth all over Maringani’s face and then turns back to the sea. Their two little crowns, mother’s and child’s, bob in the water like seals. Maringani sees the waves washing over the sedge cloak and Poll’s strong arms rising and plunging. Then there are rough hands on Maringani’s shoulders. A gruff voice. Everitt’s. What’s she up ter?

  Maringani thinks it is punishment enough, the sodden empty sedge cloak. But for Poll’s sake she will hide in the knots of the mallee and she will watch. Poll’s nakedness is bright against the tree. The ropes cut into her brightness. The tree is weeping for it knows what it is to be cut. Poll does not cry out because her heart is in the sea. Rolling over and under and over. Everitt seems both to be sagging—drooped ugly spine—and sprung tight—jittery dangerous legs. Poll is no more than a seal to him, thinks Maringani. He is swift, slicing the lobe of Poll’s ear cleanly. Sealers’ knives are always sharp. He sinks to his knees and sobs at Poll’s feet. He smokes and it steadies him. Poll is so still she seems to sink back into the tree, oozing sap. Maringani waits and she waits. When Everitt has lunged away down the track muttering, Maringani loosens Poll’s ropes. Maringani sponges the blood. Wraps the wound. Brings more water. She sings and she weeps. Later, in the wurlie, she places Emue’s baby in Poll’s arms, and finally, Poll sleeps, her ear crusting dramatically. Maringani wonders why William has not appeared all evening. She yields into the sealskins and closes her eyes and nestles up to Emue, who is burning hot, and Maringani tries not to see any more blood. We are trapped by all that water, she thinks. And she imagines a luminous canoe, built from Poll’s doorway tree, taking them all home on the stars.

  King George Beach (Sandy)

  Pearl hovers outside the shed door for a moment. Through the smeary window, Diana is half turned away, her dark hair swept behind her ear. The light behind her is yellow and smudged. Diana is reading something and flicking ash straight onto the floor. Pearl almost walks in, but a familiar feeling returns—of not wanting to pull Diana out of one of her subterranean reveries—and so turns for the house instead. I’ll face her later.

  She enters softly, not sure what she will find, whom she will find. She knows Nico will want a sufficient explanation for her sudden disappearance, and so she is practising a polite, ordered response. Evenly toned. Something adequate like, I didn’t mean to be gone for so long. I’m sorry that I worried you. And not—I wanted to drive myself into oblivion. She couldn’t say that.

  Even now, she doesn’t want to be back here. Even now she is irritated with Nico, though he’s done nothing wrong. But the expectation that she might owe him an explanation at all is suffocating. She knows she is being awful. An awful person, I am. So she is relieved to find the living room empty. A bare, clean living room. The kids’ things packed neatly in the corner, the rugs straight, the cushions fat, and through the window, the sea heaving, the leaves of the scrub nodding and twinkling after so much rain. All morning after their walk she’d helped Uncle Jim clear fallen branches and pile them up in a neat heap—the ground spongy and briny as they trampled a path through the samphire. The wood smoke clinging in the damp air a presage of winter, even though it is almost April. The easy work of it had been soothing—finding a grip on the wet branches, pulling them from each other as if untangling knotted hair, dragging them along the path, heaving them satisfyingly onto the pile—all of this had taken her attention and dulled it. The gentle conversation with Jim, punctuated only by his coughing, by his thumping his chest to clear phlegm. And the shallow lagoon, glittering, a giant hand-print in the sand, was more striking than she remembered it. Cratered like a clay pan. She stood on its crusted edge and made no wishes. For once her thoughts were as flat and as quiet as the lagoon.

  Ah, so you’re back! Lucy slings a cloth over her shoulder, looks at Pearl inquiringly, hugs her tightly. For a long time they don’t pull away, and Pearl is relieved. There’s no telling off. There are no lectures. Lucy smells good like shampoo.

  So are you okay?

  I’m fine. I feel a lot better. Where’s Nico?

  Walking with Joe and the kids. Don’t worry, he’s good. I did as you requested. She smiles.

  Pearl flops into the armchair and swings her legs over the arm rest. Digs her thumbs into her temples.

  No, get up. Come with me out to the shed. See Mum.

  Pearl groans.

  C’mon, while everyone else is out.

  Diana has been sorting Nell’s trestle of beach flotsam—the shells grouped together, the driftwood piled up, sea-eagle feathers all in a woven basket, the stones, glass, bits of netting, shark eggs, fossils, urchins, beaks, claws, skeletons, carapaces, tiny skulls arranged systematically in little boxes. And then a stack of papers on the cleared end. Nell’s green shoebox. Some sketches. Pearl takes it all in—wonders how Diana can already be tidying, rummaging through everything like picking through bones. She bites the inside of her cheek. Says nothing.

  Jesus, Pearl. What were you thinking? Diana regards her sceptically. Nico only just got here!

  Pearl purses her lips. I can’t explain, she thinks.

  Well, I guess grief is selfish, Diana says matter-of-factly.

  Pearl ignores her, and thinks, I could say something to wound you, too, but I won’t. She points to the sketches. What are these?

  The top one is clearly of Nell—peering into the distance, resolute mouth, haughty eyes. A charcoal. The intricate detail, in the hair, the earrings, the lines of the forehead, is not something Pearl has seen in Nell’s work before. It is more Nell than Nell.

  Diana comes to stand next to Pearl. They’re mine, she says quietly. I did them.

  Pearl begins laying the sketches beside each other. They are luminous and shadowy both. Restless. Nell always looking away. And all of them side by side, a kaleidoscope of Nell. The shed heaves and groans in the buffeting wind.

  She was the only model I had.

  When did you do them?

  They’re beautiful, Mum, says Lucy.

  I thought if I could paint her perfectly it would mean … I threw them out in a rage. Found them yesterday. I’m surprised, actually. She kept them. Though she was vain!

  Diana wanders over to the stool by the easel. Shakes the cigarette packet. Casts it aside. Perches on the stool daintily. Pearl knows what she’s thinking. Needs to make this pack last—the shop’s a good hour’s drive away.

  It was when Dad died. I hated Nell. Being left with her.

  To Pearl, the pictures are full of regard for the subject. They shine. Behind Diana is just a haze of graceful rain through the little square of window. Everything still again. The clouds over the bay striated with rose and gold. Soft light.

  Lucy hefts a cardboard box onto the trestle. I found the
se, too. She pulls out tissue paper like stuffing. I thought we could use them for the wake. Lucy unwraps the little packages—tea cups and saucers. She wipes them out with a cloth and begins lining them up delicately. They are an assortment of gold rims, bright colours, geometric patterns, floral designs, fine handles.

  Nell and her bloody cups, says Diana. If you unwrap them, we’ll only have to pack them all up again. Another thing to add to the list. Lucy drops a cup and it rattles loudly in its saucer.

  Pearl tries to control her breathing. Digs her fingers into the skin of her stomach and twists it up. Why’s that?

  God. Because everything has to be packed up. This whole complete mess. Diana waves her arm to indicate the whole of the shed. She shakes a cigarette from the packet and lights it. And before you say anything, Pearl, you know it has to be this way. Diana blows the smoke out long and slow.

  Does it? She faces Diana squarely.

  Well are you going to move in? Take care of the place?

  I live in Melbourne. Pearl brushes sand from the trestle.

  Exactly!

  Lewis’s mum is there.

  Could it be a holiday place for us all? Could it not? Lucy ventures.

  Diana rolls up her sleeves and shakes her bangles to sit low on her wrists. Pearl knows this gesture well—a kind of taking the floor as if she’s about to deliver a monologue. Luce, I’m fifty-two years old. I still rent. I drive a bomb. I work in an art supply shop. We’ll go thirds in everything. I promise. I need this. Or buy me out. Go on, Pearl. Buy me out.

  Pearl opens the green shoebox and unfolds the tissue paper. The red woollen caps are slightly sticky to the touch, sweating lanolin. We grew up here, Di, she says quietly.

  You grew up here, Lucy says quickly. Only you. Not me. Lucy drops the empty cup and saucer box to the ground with a kind of annoyed flourish.

  Anyone seen the glass scraper out of there? Diana nods at the shoebox and looks sharply at Pearl. I’m trying to gather everything precious together. In one special place.

  Why would you say that anyway, about buying you out? You know I can’t afford it. And the bloody scraper. I gave it to Jim. Pearl winds her hair up into a spiral over her shoulder.

  What?

  I said, I gave it to Jim.

  Why? Lucy and Diana ask at the same time.

  I don’t know why. I just wanted to. Except now she misses the gravitas of the scraper in the palm of her hand. I never properly lived here either, Lucy. And we both spent a lot of time here.

  Well, you more so.

  Pearl cannot believe Lucy is being so petulant. How quickly the mood between them changes.

  It was not only that last night Pearl had wanted to drive herself into oblivion, but also she wanted to keep away this inevitable drowning. There is so much water between them all. When she was little, she liked it best when she was here with Nell, and Lucy and Diana were back on the mainland, the shoals and seaways of Backstairs Passage between them. Now they are so near, but still, she cannot get to them. She swims underwater and her lungs burst with holding her breath. Only the light tells her which way to resurface. Suddenly, she misses Nico.

  Ah god! Let’s just get through the next few days. We don’t need to be packing up yet, Mum. Let’s slow things down, Lucy offers. So much to think about, actually. Lucy sighs.

  Typical of you to assume everything belongs to you, Pearl. That scraper was the one thing of my mother’s I wanted to have for myself. And Lucy we do need to be packing now—I’ve only got two weeks off.

  Oh and then what? Pack up and sell in two weeks? Pearl picks fluff out of one of the little woollen hats. They are so fragile now they could disintegrate. She tries to remember their story. Orange-red in colour, they were worn by the Tasmanian women in place of their customary ochre caps, in the sealing days, Nell explained. But why did Nell have them? Pearl closes the lid to the shoebox.

  I just mean, we should do some packing while we are all here together. Diana is quiet now. She seems suddenly small and hunched.

  I’m having no part of the packing up. Of any of it. It’s that I actually can’t. Pearl turns away. She plucks a pelican feather from the trestle and caresses it along the inside of her neck. When she opens the door, it’s like all the water gushes out of the shed, carries her along in its wake. She could ride the wave right down to the ocean until she has no breath left. Dive in like a seal. This is Diana’s decision to make. She knows that.

  Well there is something for you, Diana calls out. She strides over and thrusts an envelope against Pearl’s chest.

  What is it, asks Lucy.

  A story or something. I started reading it last night.

  But it has my name on the front?

  Diana shrugs. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t getting wet inside—shed’s leaking. The black scraper’s in it.

  What?

  It’s in the story. Diana raises her sharp eyebrows into a little triangulated point. Lucy has these eyebrows too.

  Once outside, Pearl realises all Nell’s things have been packed up from the verandah. Her skirt taken from the line. The deckchairs stacked neatly against the side wall. She can hear Lucy and Diana talking in low voices. Today she is ovulating—she can feel it in her breasts even without the reminder that she knows is waiting on her dead phone. If Nico wasn’t here now they wouldn’t have to try. Pearl rips open the envelope. Inside is a little red notebook, the size of her outspread hands. She shoves it under her jumper. Walking towards the dune she remembers something Uncle Jim said that morning. This is sorry place. We are closer to our dead here.

  Pearl is scared that if she leaves the island, she will never come back. Especially if Nell’s house is gone. Jim wasn’t just here for Nell, he had said. He was here on other sorry business. I come here to be close to my nephew. You feel it in your body, Pearl. In your miwi. Tell me about miwi again, she said. You feel it behind the navel. It’s a knowing. About place. It’s everything—your life force. Listen to your miwi. She crouches in the sand and prays not to the water this time but to the dirt. Its firmness. Its heady crushed-grass wet eucalypt smell.

  Nell, she whispers.

  It always takes a day or two, Nico remembers, to leave the city behind. To not want to compulsively check his emails, to not keep thinking about his patients. Leaving his phone in the bedroom just now had taken actual willpower. It takes a while to relax, he reminds himself, and rolls his shoulders. It feels good to walk. It feels good to inhale deeply the after rain smell. Not the rain on bitumen smell of the city, but the rain on sand and scrub smell. Damp beach. He is last in the procession, with Joe leading and the kids in between. The creek will probably be too shallow for catching marron, but they had all needed to get out of the house for a while. Joe’s idea. Pearl’s sudden departure last night has everyone on edge. Lewis walks in front of Nico, helping Ariel keep up—holding her hand to guide her over stumps and moving branches out of the way for her. Nico can’t believe how long Lewis’s legs have grown—how slim and tall and blond and lanky he has become. So different from Nico’s own olive skin, his dark curled hair. How sweet Lewis is being now, and he wonders how much longer he’ll be able to think of him as ‘sweet’. Lewis turns twelve next year and already his boyishness is chiselling into something new.

  Nico had been nervous travelling over. The morning before Pearl left they’d argued. Not argued exactly but acknowledged between them some kind of unnavigable distance. She’d sat on the edge of the bed and said, When I look at you sometimes, it feels like I don’t know you. It was probably the worst thing she’d ever said to him. He wonders how it has got to this. She is so angry with him, is that it? He wanted to say, But it’s you, it’s you who’s different. Instead, he just got up and hopped in the shower. Later, he wrote her a note: Let’s get to know each other? He actually meant the gesture, but wondered if she’d read the tone as facetious. And really he felt she was the one that needed to try harder—she needed to accept that they weren’t going to have a child together.
For some unfathomable reason, it was not going to work. This was a problem he did not know how to fix. And he liked to always be able to fix things—his patients’ sore backs, their headaches. Or broken door knobs, or Lewis’s shoes, or Pearl’s lamp—all manageable. It was a challenge for him to be so unable to intervene on this. He’d given up long ago, he realises.

  Joe halts up ahead and Alfie, who’s been riding on his back, slides down to the ground. This is the spot, I reckon. Joe uncaps his water bottle and takes a swig. His shoulders glisten with sunscreen. He is a man who is never cold. Always in shorts, always bare-armed.

  Yup okay, Nico calls out, catching up with them all.

  Alfie is already shoes off and in the creek. Hey mate, don’t get your clothes wet, Joe says. But it’s too late; Alfie has plonked right in. Ariel helps Joe separate out the nets, laying them side by side. Lewis jumps across a series of rocks to get to the other side of the creek and then scrambles up the steep bank, slipping. Ariel laughs at him. Nico kicks off his shoes and rolls up his pants. The water is warm on top and icy below and tannin-coloured. His feet look particularly white under water. Dead fish, he thinks.

  Where are the yabbies? Alfie says, poking at the water with a discarded branch he’s found floating.

  I think you might be scaring them away, Joe says. Come out of there and help us with the nets.

  Nico lifts Alfie up from underneath the armpits and hoists him out.

  Dad, do you want me to find you a hiking stick? A really strong one? Lewis says, already fossicking on the other side of the creek.

  That’d be great. Nico wades a little deeper. The sun on his neck begins loosening tension.

  I want a special stick. I want a stick, Ariel says, abandoning the nets and making her way over to Lewis.