By mid-February the full force of summer hit Fremantle. There was no breeze. Wooden beams creaked as they dried out and the sickly whiff of decaying fruit began to smell normal. In yards where nobody thought they’d be seen, women stripped down to their underclothes and flopped in the shade with their limbs at indecent angles.
In the airless nights, Fan was sometimes woken by the low, wordless wailing that leaked out of Grandpa’s sleeping mind. Once, Tom whispered across the room, ‘Can you hear that, Fan? What’s wrong with Grandpa?’ Fan heard herself whisper, ‘Don’t worry about him; he’s an old man and his mind is failing,’ and she wondered which side of Grandpa’s secrets she stood on. In the mornings, nobody mentioned his nightmares, especially not Grandpa, but everyone watched him carefully.
Grandpa seemed to stay out all day at the Commercial. Sometimes he even whistled when he left the house. One morning, after the breezeless heat had kept the whole town awake, Fan waited until she heard him leave the washhouse and close the front door. She put her bathing costume on under her dress. She glided into Grandpa’s room. She pictured herself underwater: fluid, noiseless.
The lid of the trunk lifted off easily. Fan took out the leather bag and removed the bundle of letters and the blue embroidered church. She put the bag back underneath some of his other rubbish and carefully put the lid back on the trunk.
‘Fan, where are you?’ Ma’s footsteps grew louder. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m nowhere, Ma. I’m not doing anything.’ Fan could hardly speak, her mouth was so dry. She fled into her room, hid the letters and the blue cloth under her bed and pulled out her notebook.
‘Your face in a book?’ Ma stood at the door. ‘What a turn of events, Frances.’
‘You’re letting me stay at school – I want to make you proud of me,’ Fan beamed at Agnes. ‘I promise.’
Ma raised her eyebrows at the idea of Fan applying herself, but left her daughter to it. As soon as Ma was back in the kitchen, Fan headed for the beach, the bundle of Grandpa’s letters tucked under her arm.
The water was blue-green with no hint of current, and the air was completely still. A few fishermen dotted the shore. She found a protected spot in the dunes and took off her shoes, then her dress, and spread it out like a blanket. Fan felt tight in the chest and sick in her stomach, but she made herself push on. She’d come this far. She’d kick herself if she was too chicken to see it through.
She laid out the letters in the order they were postmarked. She read them in the order they were written.
‘Coming, ready or not,’ she said to the secrets, and plunged in.
There were some old-fashioned words she didn’t know, but once Fan got used to the handwriting, Eliza’s voice seemed so clear it felt like she was whispering in Fan’s ear.
My dear Edwin.
Da says you are as good as dead to the family but, like progress, I choose to pass him by! I found your letter by the fire. I am supposing he must burn them, if you have written before.
I was pleased to read about your wife and your land. I am glad you are making a life in the colony. They say the climate is good for improving the temperament of a certain kind of man. I pray very little these days, but I pray you will find it a healing place.
There is some sad news. Our mother died soon after you left for the colony. She didn’t suffer. Da gets some help from young Amy Bullock next door.
Albert and Edwin Stewart are settling in with Da, although it is very cramped. They go to the church school and learn writing and arithmetic. Matthew is living with me. He is a sickly boy with a constant cough.
I took them to the cathedral last Sunday and showed them our childish old games. You will be glad to know that I outran them, and that Saint Chad is still dead. I told your boys I always beat you in our silly races, but they did not believe me. I always knew you let me win, old man.
I made a keepsake to remind you of home. Da cleared out so much after our mother’s funeral, but I am sending you all that remained.
With love from your sister Eliza.
Your boys. Did Grandpa have other children in Lichfield? He’d never talked about them. Did that mean Grandpa had a wife in England? She opened Eliza’s next letter.
I am sorry to tell you your son Matthew died of consumption. While it was the consumption that got him, I believe in my heart it was the terrible loss of his mother, and then his father, that killed him.
Albert does not ask me anything and so I leave him be. Edwin Stewart asked me what happened to you and so I told him you are making a new life in the Swan River colony. Da still refuses to have your name spoken in the house.
Albert is learning tailoring, but he shows little skill. Da could be more patient and Albert could try harder. Edwin Stewart has run away again. People blame him for stealing a horse from outside the Cross Keys Inn but nobody saw him do it, and he has not come back to defend himself.
The snow is lingering. The children are freezing and have colds as their clothes are constantly damp. I am expecting another child but am not so well with this one.
I hope you are doing well. There are always stories of men out there making good, even men with your unfortunate start.
She opened the next letter, a different, less educated handwriting. The news got sadder the more she read.
I regret to inform you Eliza died in her confinement this July past. The child a girl died with her. My husband your father Samuel asked me to inform you of this sad news as a duty nothing more as she confessed she were writing to you.
She were buried next to your son Matthew. It were a great turnout to see her laid to rest, Eliza were much loved even with her odd ways.
Samuel said to tell you he will never have your name spoke in the house on account of your hand in the dreadful death of poor Mary Ann.
He said to tell you Albert joined the Navy and vowed never to come back. Edwin Stewart goes by Eddie now and he left too. Good riddance after the thieving the whole town knew was his doing. Talk was he headed for the London docks but we never heard a peep from him.
You were spared the gallows but your father will never forgive you for the shame you put on his family.
Samuel says now all traces of you are gone from Lichfield you do not send any more letters on account of Eliza’s sad passing there be nobody here to want them.
Mrs Samuel Salt (Amy Bullock)
Fan prayed for a different ending – for Eliza and Matthew to suddenly pull through, for Samuel to want Grandpa’s name spoken in the house.
On account of your hand in the dreadful death of poor Mary Ann. Who was Mary Ann? Grandpa had never talked about her. And what was spared the gallows?
Fan opened the letter from New South Wales, the one she’d reimagined so often in the middle of the night, the one she was sure had been written by Walter.
I am grateful for your kindness with the land all those years ago or else I could not of bought my land were I now live. I hope my poor mam can rest in peace now. You will always have a place with us but if you cant beg my forgivness this is the last time you shall hear from me.
Your son.
She re-read Eliza’s letters, and then the letter from Amy.
… on account of your hand in the dreadful death of poor Mary Ann.
She traced her finger over the scrawl on the back of the envelope from New South Wales. It looked like it was Something Farm, then the name of a river, in New South Wales. The round, fat script, and the one letter with a curly tail that dropped down below the rest.
Fan’s finger wrote and rewrote the scribbled address until the name resurrected itself. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled and she suddenly understood. The address was Maryann Farm. She compared the word with the shape of the words in Amy’s letter. She was certain.
It was still early but the sun was beginning to glare off the sand. The dreadful death of poor Mary Ann must have been years ago, years before Ma and Walter were born, before Grandpa came to the colony to seek his fortune.
So, Ma must be right. It probably wasn’t Walter in New South Wales. Who lived at Maryann Farm? Was it Albert or Edwin Stewart – Eddie? Did the lock of hair belong to Mary Ann? Fan hugged her knees.
What did Grandpa do? What were gallows and why was he spared them? Did Ma know any of this? And where on earth was Uncle Walter?
Fan’s limbs ached for Semaphore, its familiar currents and breezes, the jetty that always reminded her how close she was to home.
Everything was the same. The big house at the top of the road, three joined-up houses, Grandpa’s old boots on the step, with their holes in the toes and sagging ankles. Everything the same: the sound of hammers and the boys’ voices in the backyard, Ma shelling peas.
Everything the same, except Grandpa wasn’t in his room. He was sitting near the unlit stove in a chair, reading, with a wet cloth on his head and his feet in a tub of water. Fan waited for a twitch in his neck or a tightening of his mouth. She waited for him to recognise the inky stains of Eliza’s and Amy’s words all over her hands. She waited for something, anything, about the dreadful death of poor Mary Ann to rise up and live in his face, his eyes. But it was the same twinkly eyes as he said, ‘Hello, Miss Johnson,’ his fingers tapping on the cover of his book.
Fan thought she was going to be sick. She pressed her hand to her mouth and ran.
In the outhouse, she read by the very weak light. It was the only place she was sure she wouldn’t be disturbed. These days Ma was always looking over her shoulder or walking into a room so quietly you’d swear she was a ghost. Fan read the letters over and over and whispered names and words to herself to help her remember them later. The next time she heard Grandpa whistling in the washhouse and the tub being filled, she tiptoed barefoot into his room and carefully put the letters back where she’d found them.
In the kitchen, Agnes was slicing potatoes. Fan sat down and started helping. Agnes murmured her thanks.
She heard Dad on the front steps, so she went out to meet him.
‘Dad, what’s gallows?’
‘It’s where they hang murderers in prison,’ George said, pulling off his boots. ‘Why?’
‘No reason. Something at school today.’
‘You finally paying attention in class, young lady?’ he sounded pleased.
‘Yep, Dad. Finally.’
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Fan had never been so scared in all her life.
Fan had never taken much notice of it before, but now the wall that separated the gaol from the rest of Fremantle was everywhere she went. The creamy, rough-hewn stone soaked up the sunlight. It was higher than trees. The shadow of it followed her home to Ellen Street. That wall was everywhere, except in people’s talk. The only place it didn’t follow her was under water, into the cool sand of the seabed.
Edwin didn’t know or care what the barmaid at the Commercial put in that ale, but these days he felt like a different man. His feet still hurt when he walked, but he stood straighter and he smiled more. Every morning he dressed up like it was a special occasion, in his good jacket and a waistcoat. When the wharf bell rang at midday, signalling the shift change, he bid Agnes goodbye with a tip of his hat. Agnes responded with a cheery ‘Goodbye! We eat at five,’ but she hardly looked up and never stopped what she was doing.
The men who drank quietly down the back at the Commercial spent the afternoon enquiring about each other’s families, each other’s ailments. Sometimes, one of them would have news of a mutual friend – usually involving arrest, absconding or death, but news nonetheless – and these anecdotes unaccountably cheered Edwin. ‘The sore-footed tailor was outrun but not outlived,’ he could imagine Eliza saying.
He was always slower on the walk back to Ellen Street, but it gave him an appetite for whatever mess his daughter served up for dinner. He and Fan had invented quite a few new names for Agnes’s cooking. Gristle pie. Crucified mutton. Starvation pudding. Fan would open the door with her face screwed up, her hands around her own neck, saying ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Grandpa, are you still alive?’ He’d pretend to spit onto the plate and say, ‘You must give me the recipe for stewed socks, Miss Johnson. I don’t know how I’ve lived this long without it.’ Then they would laugh and laugh and laugh, putting their fingers over their mouths to remind each other to be quiet in case Agnes heard them. After Fan collected his tray and said, ‘Sleep well, Grandpa. Let’s hope we survive the night,’ he’d pour a drink, as had always been his custom. But for the past couple of weeks, he’d left Eliza’s letters unopened and the past where it belonged.
‘Salt! Is that you?’ A toothless man with a boil on his cheek limped towards his table.
‘I don’t believe it. Look who the Fremantle tide washed up.’ Edwin shook the man’s hand, recoiling slightly at the flaking skin. He hadn’t seen this pock-marked face since he left the Lincelles. ‘Is it O’Neill?’
‘The very same.’ O’Neill beckoned to the barmaid with a tobacco-stained finger. ‘Will you celebrate with me? It’s my birthday.’
‘Most certainly! Every birthday in this godforsaken place is worthy of celebration. To you, O’Neill.’ Edwin lifted his glass. ‘It’s a miracle you’re still alive.’
‘Ah, but folks like you and me, we believe in miracles, don’t we, Salt?’ O’Neill wheezed. He reeked like a corpse. ‘In our case, the miracle of the merciful pen of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.’
‘To our most merciful queen.’ Edwin raised his glass. ‘In fact, to mercy itself. In all the guises we may find it.’
Fan got to the beach just as the first brightness of day hit the sand. She took her notebook and copied down what she could remember as best she could, but pictures came easier and faster to her than words. Perhaps she took after Uncle Walter, whose drawing she had stuck in the back of her notebook. Fan made a page for Grandpa’s Lichfield boys: Albert, Eddie and Matthew. She made a page for Grandpa and Uncle Walter and Ma at East Perth and put a family of Aborigines under a tree at the edge of the page. On the page next to it she sketched a river and Ma’s face on top of the water, a single stick-arm waving above her head.
Maryann Farm needed two pages. She drew a stick figure and called it Albert or Eddie, and a blank-faced woman for Albert-or-Eddie’s wife. She gave them a long and winding river that stopped at their door.
The seaweed that reminded her of Mary Ann’s hair – for that’s how she had begun to think of it – had dried and crackled. She put it in the front of her notebook and on the first page wrote: the dreadful death of poor Mary Ann.
After she’d copied everything she could remember, Fan swam. She let the shoreline be her guide. She pushed herself to swim a little further around the curve of beach. She swam until the ache in her limbs made it impossible to think of anything else.
Agnes was surprised to see Fan sitting at the table long after everyone had finished.
‘Are you going to fetch your grandfather’s dishes?’ Agnes asked.
‘Nah. I asked Tom to go instead.’
‘Have you and Grandpa had a falling-out?’
‘Ma. He’s about a hundred years old.’ Fan rolled her eyes. ‘I made some friends from school.’
Agnes ruffled Fan’s hair. These days, it was permanently frizzed up and sticky with salt water. ‘I’m glad, Fan. It’s about time.’
Fan pushed Agnes’s hand away. ‘We go to the beach. There’s a group of us. I’m the best swimmer, though.’
‘Of course you are.’ Agnes kissed her daughter’s hair. For once she was pleased about Fan’s fickleness. There would always be much more in the world to occupy a young girl’s attention than a grumpy, infirm old man.
The day of Tom’s great unveiling dawned clear and breezy. Tom, Charlie and Lee fussed with the hessian sacks they’d used to cover up the boat. It was about six feet long, maybe more. Longer than Dad was tall. Grandpa stood in the thin oblong of shade by the back door, dabbing a handkerchief to his shiny forehead. Tom tapped a hammer against an oilcan and everyone stopped talking.
‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ Tom bowed like a circus ringmaster. ‘Charlie, Lee and me would like –’
‘And me,’ Ned said, and everyone smiled.
‘The real shipbuilders and my pain-in-the-neck brother would like to show you our fine boat.’ Tom’s sun-browned face widened into a white-toothed grin. ‘She’ll be the best boat on the water, thanks to our dad and the secrets of the Sunderland shipyards.’
‘Get on with it, lad,’ George grinned.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the SS Semaphore,’ Tom announced.
The boys pulled away the hessian sacks. Everyone gasped and clapped. Light broke through where some of the boards weren’t held together properly. The inside was almost flat, and the little keel looked like a fishtail.
‘Some of your joins are all over the place.’ George ran his hands along the timbers. ‘More gaps than boat in this boat, bonny lad.’ Even after twenty years, George still said boat like a Sunderland man. Boouat. ‘I’m dead proud of you, though, Tom.’
There was enough room in the boat for all four boys to sit comfortably. In the breeze, a calico sail flapped on the mast. And below it, something else.
‘What’s that?’ Fan pointed to the thing fluttering underneath the sail. It was blue and about a foot square. Fan stepped into the boat, reached up and examined it. Three spires and three letters. Neat stitching that had yellowed with time. Sweet Jesus.
‘Bloody hell, Ned. Where did you get that?’ Fan asked.
‘Tom said we needed a special flag to tell people who we are.’ Ned climbed into the boat and stood next to her. ‘I looked the whole house up and down, and the yard. Found it under your bed. Tom reckons it’s just right.’
Fan’s heart pounded. Grandpa leaned on the side of the boat. The ropey muscles on his neck stood out.
‘Where did you get that, young Ned?’ Grandpa pointed up the mast.
‘From under Fan’s bed, Grandpa.’
Grandpa’s eyes were cold. He turned to Fan.
‘Did you take something from me, Miss Johnson?’
‘I – well I didn’t put it up there, honest to God –’
‘I thought we were friends, Miss Johnson. Are you a liar as well as a thief?’
‘I’m sorry, Grandpa.’ Fan bit her lip.
‘Do you know what they did to liars and thieves in the old days, Miss Johnson? They put them in boats just like this one and sent them straight to Hell.’ Grandpa lifted his cane.
‘Don’t hit me!’ Fan screamed and jumped out of the boat. Everyone stared at them.
Grandpa’s face seemed to crumble. His cheeks sank, his mouth twisted. He blinked and looked away from her. He shrank like a bag of bones in his old-fashioned clothes.
Fan began to cry. Leaning heavily on his cane, Grandpa limped back to the house.
‘You said you didn’t know nobody in New South Wales, but I know different. Is it Uncle Walter in New South Wales?’ Fan’s voice shook, but she didn’t care.
‘Miss Johnson. I excuse your rude interruption.’ Grandpa was putting on his good jacket.
‘Is it my Uncle Walter in New South Wales? My ma would want to know.’
‘Walter was a good-for-nothing liar and troublemaker. I neither know nor care whether he is alive or dead.’
‘That letter from New South Wales said, Your son. If it’s not Walter, is it Albert or Eddie? How many sons you got?’
‘Stop bleating, child.’ Grandpa put his hat on. ‘I am late for an appointment at the Commercial Hotel.’
‘Were all those stories you told me true?’ Fan shouted louder.
‘In their way, yes, they were true.’
‘They’re either true or they’re not.’
Grandpa began putting his books away in that old trunk. Jesus, was he packing?
‘Whoever it is in New South Wales says you’re his father and he lives in a place called Maryann Farm.’ Fan’s voice was harsh, her eyes fiery. She repeated it for good measure.
‘Maryann Farm. And someone called Amy reckons you had a hand in the dreadful death of poor Mary Ann, whoever she was. So, did you? Did you have a hand in the death of poor Mary Ann?’
Grandpa’s mouth was grim-set. He said nothing.
‘Answer me or I’m getting Ma.’
‘It’s all right, Fan, I’m right behind you.’ Agnes’s face was white. Fan hurled herself into her mother like Agnes was one of Ernest’s windbreaks on a blustery Semaphore afternoon.
‘I think you’d better answer my daughter’s questions,’ Agnes said.
Nobody spoke. Agnes sat on one chair, Grandpa on the other. Fan sat on the end of the bed, kicking the wall with her boots.
‘My son,’ Grandpa said eventually. ‘My esteemed second-born, Edwin Stewart Salt, now calling himself Eddie, who made it his business to take away the only thing I had left. Mary Ann was his mother.’
‘Why did Amy think you had a hand in the death of poor Mary Ann?’ Fan’s kicking got louder. ‘Why?’
‘I saw a picture of her once,’ Agnes said quietly. ‘Mary Ann died. That’s when you came here, wasn’t it?’
‘What does Amy mean by you been spared the gallows?’ Fan was circling, merciless. ‘My dad says the gallows is only for murderers in prison.’
Agnes pulled Fan closer to her.
Grandpa shook his head.
‘Tell me it’s not true,’ Fan said. ‘Tell me, Grandpa.’
‘They got it wrong.’ Grandpa stomped his foot and Fan flinched. ‘It wasn’t like you think. They got it wrong, I tell you.’
‘Was she beautiful?’ Fan could hardly see for tears.
Fan stood up, pushed open the wooden trunk, took out the leather bag and unwrapped the lock of hair.
‘I said, was she beautiful?’
Agnes made a strangling noise in her throat. ‘Fan, leave us alone.’
‘No, Ma.’
‘Fan, I’m telling you to leave now.’
‘Yes, Miss Johnson.’ Grandpa stared at the floor. ‘Mary Ann was beautiful.’
Fan dropped Mary Ann’s hair onto Grandpa’s lap.
‘How much did you know, Ma?’ Fan shouted, and ran from the room.
The air pressed in on Agnes’s temples. She waited for him to speak. He mumbled to himself and fussed with his papers and books.
‘I want you to tell me all about Mary Ann,’ Agnes said. ‘When you met, what she looked like, who she was.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. She took to drink. It was the drink that killed her.’ His face grew redder.
‘I bet your boys don’t give you a second thought, but they remember their mam every day,’ Agnes said tightly. ‘I bet Edwin Stewart calls himself Eddie because he doesn’t want to be called your name, just like I felt about my Ned. And I know what it’s like to lose your mam.’
‘Agnes girl.’ Edwin held out his hand. ‘She died of drink, I told you.’
Agnes stared at the old man in front of her, his blotchy skin, his calloused hands, his jacket worn through at the elbows.
‘I’m not asking you what killed her.’ Agnes grabbed the window catches and pushed it up so hard, the glass rattled. ‘You tell me about her life, damn you. Her life.’
This much he told his daughter: the woman he first saw hurrying along a bridge, the woman with wishes and her hair that was the only gentle thing he encountered in Birmingham. He tried to remain steady, but when he said the name of her village, his voice cracked open with the so-long unspoken and he stammered like a child.
He talked bitterly of the hard years, being shipped around like cattle, Mary Ann heavily pregnant on one of those terrible Irish Sea crossings. Mary Ann was afraid of water, said it didn’t feel natural; she liked to have her feet on solid ground. There were so many postings he couldn’t recount them all. Mary Ann grew to hate it. She cried whenever they arrived somewhere new because she knew they’d eventually have to pack up and leave, and the thought of putting down roots became more painful than she could bear.
He blamed the midwives who gave her whisky for the pain in her insides and the black fog in her head. He blamed the weather, the baby who died, the babies who didn’t die.
He was a hard worker, a fast and reliable worker, he put food in their mouths and a roof over their heads. It was her job to be the wife, be the mother. He blamed the Dublin gin shop, the Edinburgh gin shop, all the gin shops.
The gin put anger in her fingernails and in her boots and made her sleep so much her children went hungry. She was so mad she once walked up the hill to the millwheel and threatened to jump into the icy water. He blamed that woman who helped with the children and who sat with Mary Ann in the afternoons, the pious-faced widow whose name he could no longer remember.
No man deserved that kind of wife. No child deserved that kind of mother. It wasn’t his fault. He did the right thing. Mary Ann was in the grip of drink. She fell down all the time. One morning she fell down and didn’t get up. He fetched the doctor. He did the right thing. Hundreds of people signed petitions. Hundreds of people tried to save him. I did the right thing, he shouted at Agnes again, again, again.
But this much he remembered: coming home after his shift at noon. Mary Ann lying on the floor. The freezing room. Her cough that sounded more like hiccups. He kicked Mary Ann from behind. Once, twice. He slumped to the floor and lifted himself on top of her, rested his head on her breasts. Her heartbeat fluttered like feathers. He shoved her dress up and grabbed her thigh.
Dull afternoon light washed the room, the kind of light that makes dust stand out, and suddenly it swarmed around them like bees. Dust, cobwebs, the shadows of three boys: large, medium, small. Cut from the same cloth.
Mary Ann whispered something and thrust her knee up hard between his legs. He swore at her.
The poker next to the grate was close enough for him to reach, if he wanted to.
‘I told you, she died of drink. Everyone said. She died of drink.’ He sank his head into his hands, but his voice was flinty and hard and still fighting.
Fan drifted – down High Street, down to the dockside, past the hotels. Everywhere she went, the wall of the gaol separated her from the place it hid. She peered into the faces of everyone she passed: the bonneted women, the squealing children, the well-dressed merchants, the man in a stained jacket who sat outside one of the hotels, a couple of coins in his upturned cap.
What did it look like, the face of a murderer? Did it look like the frail man who lived in her house?
The breeze ripped up the ocean and dozens of white-capped waves tripped across the sea in a diagonal line to the shore. It was too choppy to be thinking about a swim, but Fan ached for quiet. She left her clothes in a pile and ventured in.
The sea shoved and pushed. It tried to pull her under, but Fan hit out against it, carved it up with her strong arms, kicked it away when it snapped at her heels. A wave slapped her in the back of the head. She struck out again, but cramps shot through her legs. It was no use. She waded up to shore but couldn’t see her clothes. The current had carried her much further up the beach than she’d realised. It would be a long walk back. Her legs felt heavy. Her hair felt heavy.
Fan spotted her clothes in the dunes. She climbed up, stripped off her suit and put her clothes back on.
It was impossible to picture Grandpa as a young man with the beautiful woman whose hair was the colour of burnt straw. Grandpa was old. His hands shook when he ate. He couldn’t talk without wheezing. His clothes smelled bad. As for his hand in the dreadful death of poor Mary Ann, Fan couldn’t imagine. Sometimes Dad read things out of the newspaper about bushrangers or robbers or worse, but the terrible crimes always happened somewhere else. Not in her house, in her life.
How much did Ma know?
The setting sun pulsed low and pink. Fan shut her eyes and wished for a jetty to the left and a jetty to the right, something to swim towards or away from, a way to reclaim her bearings. But she saw nothing except the blankness of sky and sea. She lay down on the dune grasses and curled up in the warm stillness that the breeze couldn’t spoil.
Agnes held the letter she had written to Annie a few weeks ago. It hadn’t been opened. RETURN TO SENDER!! Annie had written in capitals and exclamation marks to make her point. Who could blame her? She’s served her time, Agnes thought darkly.
She read Eliza’s words out loud to the empty kitchen. Hearing them made it all real. After she’d read Amy’s letter, her heart beat so fast she leaned on the table for fear of falling. She read Edwin Stewart’s letter last, her hand at her throat. Edwin Stewart – Eddie. No wonder Walter had been so angry.
Grandfather Samuel, the tailor from Lichfield,
He was the old-fashioned kind.
Used needle and thread, ’til he dropped down half-dead,
And his eyes were all yellow and blind.
Sons, three in all: large, medium, small.
And daughters, useless, but fair.
Sam Junior the small, no tailor at all,
Ten thumbs and he just didn’t care.
James was the medium, found tailoring tedium,
He spent all the profits on gin.
Eliza, Eliza, oh pretty Eliza,
To love her, some said, was a sin.
Poor Mary, so sad, lost her son, and his dad
And died broken-hearted one day.
After all these years, she still remembered it. No wonder Ernest invented something that could have been sung by a drunk sailor. The truth wasn’t fit for telling. How much had he and Sarah known? Did any of it matter now?
The stove glowed orange. The letters burned quickly. Walter must have known everything. Did he leave Adelaide because he thought she was circling too close to the truth? Agnes stared into the ashes of her family’s secrets until they were dust.
Fan woke up with a headache. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep. Her lips were dry, and her eyes felt gritty. It was raining. She peeled off her dress and ran to the shore in her underthings. In the time she’d been asleep the tide had peaked and was already retreating. A line of shells curved up the beach, marking the place the high tide had dumped them. It looked completely different now. Every day the beach washed itself and made itself anew. Is that what had happened to Grandpa? The others? Did they get off that boat and make themselves into new men?
The water was cold. Always take a big breath before you jump in. Uncle Ernest had taught her that when she was small, Ma watching them from the jetty, her forehead knotted with worry, Uncle Ernest’s skinny chest puffed up like a pigeon.
What about Uncle Ernest and Aunty Florence and Sarah? Did they all know? Or did none of them know?
Fan swam underwater. It felt like forever before the water pressed hard on her ribs. She surfaced and then plunged under again, straight through a whirling cloud of sand.
Fan gasped. Something more powerful than a wave had hold of her body. The rip dragged her swiftly out. Her arms cut into the swell, she kicked, but that only made it worse. She struggled to the surface and fought the urge to cry. The rip had left her much further out than where she’d started. She kept her eyes on the white strip of beach and trod water to try and get her breath back.
Agnes didn’t need to ask where Fan might have gone. She threw some things in a bag and headed for the beach. It was hopeless walking in the sand in shoes, so Agnes pulled them off and tucked up her skirt. A flicker of movement on the water caught her attention. Mermaid hair, two arms. She waved and shouted and ran towards Fan in the water. The sea heaved. The arms and hair disappeared.
Fan let her body slacken. ‘Don’t resist it,’ Dad always said. In a battle between you and the sea, the sea will always win. A whale of a wave threw her into a patch of seaweed. The currents fought each other around her legs. The sea couldn’t make up its mind if it wanted to save her or drown her. She kept her eyes on the shore.
A figure was striding through the breaking waves, shouting, waving. A woman with brown hair. Fan gulped sea water. She turned to the horizon. The sea swelled with a set of waves newly forming. If she could let herself be thrown forward, she might be carried close enough to make a dash for the shore. Or at least close enough to reach the screaming woman walking into the water in her clothes.
The woman waved more frantically. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it was Ma coming to save her. Ma who didn’t own a swimming costume and never so much as got her feet wet.
A wave picked Fan up and threw her forward. She shut her eyes and thought only of Ma, the strength of her arms, the sound of her voice, the smell of her hair.
Agnes kept her eyes on the horizon as the waves broke around her. One of these days she’d chain that girl to a post like a mongrel dog. One of these days she’d give her daughter such a hiding that Fan would never say boo without asking first. One of these days.
She screamed into the waves to try and scare away her fear. She summoned up memories of weightlessness and the peace to be found under an endless body of water. Agnes lunged at Fan and in a tangle of arms and legs and shouted prayers, she grabbed Fan’s wrist. Their feet slipped and they sank. By the time the sea spat them out to the grey sky, they were waist-deep, coughing, and Agnes was pulling Fan along with a strength that surprised both of them.
Agnes wrapped Fan in George’s jumper and put the blanket around both of them. She could feel Fan’s heart beating rapidly against her own body.
‘It can’t be true,’ Fan said. ‘I wish I didn’t know. I wish I didn’t know.’
‘I knew about Mary Ann. I saw a picture of her once. Sarah said she died and that’s why he came to the Swan River.’
‘To seek his fortune.’ Fan’s teeth chattered.
‘That thing your grandfather and Walter argued about – it was him giving his land away. Your grandfather brought a stranger home, but it wasn’t a stranger. Walter said it was Eddie. Da’s own flesh and blood.’
In the sand, Fan wrote with her finger: Albert, Eddie, Matthew. She drew a church with three pointy spires like hats above the names. Agnes wiped the sand smooth and wrote her mother’s name: Cath. She traced her finger over the letters until her mother’s memory wore a deep groove into the sand. She told Fan about the pocket of river hidden between the bent-over trees, the way the light burned on the water. The nights of wishing for Mam to come back. Underneath Cath’s name she wrote Agnes, Walter, and Baby Cath. The story spilled out of Agnes’s mouth and her eyes. It doubled her over. It was so many years buried, but now the story rolled out of her in waves. Fan put her arm around her mother, but she wouldn’t be comforted.
‘What are we going to do?’ Fan asked.
‘Go home,’ Agnes said.
‘Dad will go spare,’ Fan said.
‘Don’t you say a word to worry your father.’
‘But –’
‘Enough.’ Agnes held her hand up in front of Fan’s face. ‘Your grandfather is an old man. In a few months, he’ll likely take all this to the grave with him. We never have to talk about it again.’
That night, Fan woke thirsty and feverish, her nightdress soaked with sweat and her hands prickling with pins and needles. Ma would probably say she’d been stuck in the water too long or had too much sun or swallowed too much sea water, but Fan knew better. It was the secrets. She pulled her notebook from under the mattress and fumbled her way to the kitchen. Two big mugs of water and still the flames licked at her face. Fan scribbled what she could remember of what Ma had told her. Underneath her picture of Maryann Farm she wrote in big letters, Eddie, my grandpa’s son. Near enough to Walter and Ma, she drew a little baby and wrote her name as Ma had said it: Baby Cath.
She thought writing it down would get it out of her, but it stayed stuck in her thoughts. She tiptoed outside to the pile of old scraps Ma kept for the chooks and thought about shoving the damned notebook under it, but she just couldn’t let it go. The only thing worse than getting rid of it would be having no evidence and wondering if she’d dreamed the whole thing up. She padded back to bed and squashed the notebook under the mattress.
Sunstroke and sickness kept Fan in bed for three days. Dr Archer said she’d probably swallowed something nasty in the water. Agnes didn’t leave Fan’s bedside. George came straight home and they took turns dabbing Fan’s forehead with a cold compress. Agnes found Emily’s old blanket. George said gently that it wouldn’t be much help, but Agnes ignored him and tucked it around Fan’s shoulders anyway.
When her fever finally broke, Fan slept for a full day. She didn’t hear her grandfather bring in a jar of ointment. She didn’t wake when he dabbed a tiny amount on her temples and whispered, ‘Forgive me, Miss Johnson.’ Fan didn’t hear Agnes wake suddenly in the chair, nor did she remember Agnes jumping up and shoving the old man away so hard he fell against the wall. Fan did not hear the low noise rise up from the place where all Agnes’s babies were made: ‘Don’t you ever lay a hand on my children, do you hear me? I’ll give you a damned roof over your head and keep your damned secrets, but you stay away from my children, you murdering bastard.’
Grandpa was asleep in the chair by the window. His hair had thinned these past few months and it was obvious he’d lost some weight. His waistcoat gaped where it used to stretch tight at the buttons. She’d never really looked at his hands – his tailor’s hands, as he sometimes called them – but they didn’t look like the hands of a craftsman. His knuckles were swollen, and the skin was covered in faint brown spots. That scar above his right eye. Fan opened the window.
‘Nice and fresh for you, Grandpa? I know how you love the smell of the sea.’
A blast of cold breeze had him rubbing his eyes and muttering.
‘Ma reckons I’m to leave you be and you haven’t got long, so all your secrets may as well die with you.’
‘Your mother is right, Miss Johnson.’
‘First time I heard you agree with Ma.’ For all the anger etched into his face, she didn’t feel afraid of him. ‘Your Eddie got pretty lucky, didn’t he? A nice bit of land for keeping quiet about you.’
‘It was nothing more than a swamp. You wouldn’t raise a dog there. That’s why they sold it to the –’ He folded his arms. ‘Tailors and builders and the like.’
‘All the same, I reckon I deserve something too.’
‘A price for your silence?’ Grandpa said. ‘I have nothing left, Miss Johnson, unless you want to ask Annie for my house, and she is more frightening than all my stories put together.’
Fan named her price. She was surprised at the sureness in her voice. He took his time, but he hobbled across the room and took it out of his coat pocket.
‘Of all the punishments,’ he said, his eyes glassy.
His room felt colder than usual after Fan left. Edwin sat in the draughty quiet until the family noises in the rest of the house died down. The light outside the window changed unnoticed until he blinked and realised it must be almost dusk. He flexed his hands in and out of fists to warm them up and reached for his cane propped against the back of his chair. At least he didn’t have to walk far to reach that confounded window.
At the sound of the predictable-as-dinnertime knock on the door, his shoulders relaxed and he called out, ‘Come in, Miss Johnson!’
Edwin waited, but Fan seemed to be taking her time. Or was it his daughter? He leaned out of the window. Tom was in the yard, hammering planks together. Tom waved, then got back to his hammering.
The smell of the sea was everywhere. It got up his nose, in his mouth, into his lungs. It tickled the back of his neck. He swallowed hard and shut his eyes and held the window frame to brace himself against everything the sea brought with it. Nobody was coming.
For the rest of the summer, the wharf bell continued to ring every morning and George continued to get shifts at the port. The beach launch of the SS Semaphore met with the cheering approval of even the most pessimistic Sunderland shipyard man. Tom skippered his boat with guts and backbone and earned the wordless respect of the other young captains. Ned regularly fell overboard, and Charlie and Lee regularly hauled him up like a wriggling herring.
Edwin continued to have nightmares and Fan continued to tell Tom and Ned it was nothing to worry about. They got Dr Archer back a couple of times and Dr Archer gave Edwin more powders. Agnes ran the house like an army general. It had never been more spotless.
Fan went to the beach every afternoon and swam alone until sunset. She didn’t bother lying about going with friends because it seemed so pointless, compared to the other lies she was party to. Her limbs tamed the currents. Her skin became permanently puckered and her face burned red, then brown. No matter how far she swam, the secrets murmured at her from the deep channels way out where the cargo ships came and went. She thought taking Mary Ann’s hair would feel better than it did, but it gnawed at her insides. Having it turned out to be worse than not having it. She trailed piles of sand into the house every day and ignored Agnes’s shouts about good hidings.
‘Why don’t you just have me strung up from the gallows and be done with it,’ she said once in front of Tom. Agnes left her alone after that.
Agnes continued to write to Ernest and Florence and Sarah, using the thick, creamy notepaper she’d spent a fortune on. It was the kind of paper that would stand the test of time. She wrote more or less the same news every week, except for the week she made a special request. On her way home from the post office, Agnes took a detour and bought two train tickets.
Each evening, Fan looked at the lock of Mary Ann’s hair folded in her notebook. Great sobs rose from her guts and she cried for the woman whose hair was the colour of straw. Fan cried for Ma, she cried for Cath, she cried for Eliza, she cried for Walter. But most of all, she cried for Mary Ann.
They got as far as the track that led to the house before Agnes stopped. The fences were wooden, new, they meant business. Ahead of them, the afternoon sun reflected off a tin roof.
‘You all right, Ma?’ Fan squinted. ‘So many trees.’
‘Not as many as there used to be,’ Agnes said. Her chest was tight, but it wasn’t from the walking or the heat. Looking into the faces they passed outside the tavern and the bootmakers and the grocers, she’d half-hoped to recognise Daisy Smith or one of the Aboriginal children, all grown up and with children of their own. The only person who paid her any attention was a frowning, white-haired woman standing at the door of what used to be Henry Wood’s place.
‘Are you Mrs Wood?’ Agnes called, uncertain.
‘What’s it to you?’ the woman shouted, then slammed the door.
‘Jesus. What a welcome,’ Fan said. ‘We going up there?’ she pointed up the track.
Agnes nodded. Fan held her mother’s hand.
The trees, the track, everything seemed smaller, and Agnes strode like a giant towards the house. The tin roof gleamed, and a curtain flapped at the open front window. It looked like a doll’s house. Agnes stared at the neat fence, the curtain. She slowed down and Fan walked ahead of her.
‘Stop, Fan.’
‘Hurry up, Ma!’ Fan had almost reached the gate.
‘Come back.’ Agnes stood, hands on her hips. ‘I changed my mind.’
Agnes barely heard Fan’s complaints about what a waste of a warm day it was to come all this way for nothing. She was listening to the sound of wind through leaves, the high-pitched calling of grey birds. When they reached the top of the road, past the overgrown ruin where Mad Molloy’s house had been, when they should have turned left because that was the direction for Fremantle, Agnes pulled Fan the other way to where the track gently sloped towards river gums and the faint trickle of water.
Agnes took off her shoes and her hat and sat down on the riverbank. Fan did the same and sat down next to her.
Agnes looked out to the deeper water where Mam stood, her pale skin and blue-black hair beautiful as always. Mam singing, waving at Agnes, beckoning her in. Melting. Everything was the same, yet everything was different. Was it Mam’s laughter, or was it the grey birds?
‘You want to go in?’ Fan said. ‘It looks a lot shallower than you made it sound. I reckon we could walk all the way across and the water wouldn’t even come up to our thighs.’
Agnes didn’t say anything, she just held Fan’s hand and stared into the river. She rested her other hand on her heart. In, two three. Out, two three. They sat like this until the sun dropped behind the trees. Then Agnes stood up and started to put on her shoes.
Fan ripped the parcel open. Sarah and Aunty Florence had packed up some clothes handed on from Florence and Ernest’s two: a couple of shirts for Ned and one for Tom. Florence had also included two beautiful swimming costumes. One was plain blue, but the other made Fan squeal in delight. It had white piping and a hint of a shimmer. She held it up to the light and it looked shot through with silver-green. Fan held it against her body and imagined gliding through the water.
‘Bugger,’ Fan said. ‘It’s going to be too big.’
‘Language, Fan,’ Agnes said. ‘It’s not for you. It’s for me.’
It was choppy out where the boys were sailing, but close to shore the water was blue-green and still. Fan couldn’t take her eyes off her mother in that suit. She looked beautiful and when she walked, she left deep footprints.
‘You’ll be all right,’ Fan said. ‘It won’t get rough ’til the breeze comes in.’
‘Someone’s got to keep an eye on you,’ Agnes said.
Fan took her mother’s hand and led her into the water. They walked in up to their waists. Agnes shimmered and gleamed. Fan slid under the water and her hair soaked it up.
‘It’s wonderful,’ Fan said as she came up for air. Agnes hadn’t moved. She stood with her arms folded across her chest. Fan pointed out to the horizon. ‘You coming?’
Agnes shook her head. ‘Next time, I promise.’
Fan dived down as far as she could. The sea opened up and welcomed her. She looked back at Agnes, who shone in the light, her pale arms waving.
Fan swam out beyond the ridge to where the seabed sloped down into deeper water. The patch of brassy-coloured seaweed made wavy patterns in the clear water. She trod water for a while then reached into her bathing costume where she had hidden the lock of Mary Ann’s hair. It was sodden and dark.
A big breath in. Fan dived down, her eyes open. She dug around in the sand and gently, quickly buried it. One last cloud of sand and the lock of hair was gone.
Fan took her time swimming back to shore. Agnes glistened: born for water, light bouncing off her curves and pale arms. Her mother was a different woman these days. She wanted no reminders of that business in the house, she’d said. Except for Grandpa himself of course, but he hardly left that smelly old room anymore, and when he did, he didn’t look anyone in the eye. He even stopped going to the Commercial. Ma had started taking him his meals, wouldn’t hear of any of them helping her. Sometimes Fan forgot he was there.
Ma grew bigger and more shimmery the closer Fan swam and for a moment she wondered if she should tell Ma about her notebook, hidden away between the bed and the mattress in an old pair of underthings. But maybe Ma wasn’t the only one who could decide what got buried and what got saved. The sunlight caught her eye and she dived under, where the thought disappeared in this beautiful water.