Wildlight Read online

  Keeping up her grandfather’s tradition, her mother had sounded so proud when she’d taken Steph in for training at Hobart’s weather bureau. This sky was nothing like Hobart. This was supersized, urgent, layers of clouds in too great a rush to ever stop. The cirrus was easy to recognise, opalescent, crimped as sheep’s wool, like the photo on the poster of cloud types stuck to the wall. A low bank of powder puffs marched overhead, as sprightly as a chorus line. Across the ocean to the mainland, a steely billow rose to an anvil behind the mountain range. Down low, a band of sea salt hazed the coast.

  Steph paced the short path to the weather screen and looked down across a paddock that angled past the house. Beyond was a wall of green that obscured all but the dome of the lighthouse. The air felt cold. The sun burned her skin.

  She heard voices and saw Brian in his fluoro vest peel away from her parents and race back along the road. She stopped herself from chasing him down.

  ‘There you are,’ Dad called to her.

  Her mother’s gaze shifted to the lilac track pants. ‘Lordy.’

  ‘When’s Brian coming back? Why didn’t you wait? Do you have my clothes?’

  ‘Chill out, Steph. Brian’s gone to get the bags now. Dad’s all up on the weather. He’ll do the handover.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes. Dad.’ His voice rose with indignation. ‘Many thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  Steph trailed her parents to the house. Dad held open the flywire door. ‘Care to do the honours, milady?’ He swept his arm for Mum. ‘Hallowed ground that it is.’

  Beyond fickle, the pair of them. You can’t turn back the clock, her father spouted before they left Sydney. Now, as Mum stepped inside and looked down the hallway, her smile pursed as it had back then.

  Fire extinguishers and safety signs lined the formal entryway. You could bet there had been no OH&S in the seventies. They stepped over loose carpet squares patterned with swirls. Steph could recite a list of her father’s trusty sayings: Nothing stays the same at custard-coloured walls bare except for rusted nails and hooks. You can never relive the past at the crumbling Victorian archway her mother had raved about. Those two ‘chandeliers’: clouded plastic pendants as tacky as toys.

  ‘How do they keep the place warm?’ Her mother’s voice sounded meek. Each room had a chimney and mantlepiece, each fireplace boarded up. Dad gave a theatrical, ‘Ugh’ at the double mattress covered in brown vinyl, the sort you’d have for kids who wet the bed. They followed her mother down the hall.

  ‘Steph, you’ll sleep in my old . . .’ Her mother’s voice trailed. Steph looked in the room. Callam. The last months he was alive you could never pin him down; now he sprang up all the time. A window that looked out at the water, the same as her brother’s room; another that faced the sky. Glossy white bunks like those they had shared as little kids, before Steph had got her own room. Even the ladder on the bunks was a matching shade of blue. Home away from home, Steph might have spouted if it hadn’t felt so raw. Back at home she’d felt invisible, her mother’s focus intent on turning Callam’s room into a shrine. The only thing missing was a donation box for entry. Her mother gripped her sides as though her innards might spill. Dad stood silent and still. A break from all the memories, her mother had said about coming here. A chance to move on. She hadn’t counted on Callam West sneaking in ahead of them.

  No one dared speak as they followed her through the glassed-in porch. She led them to a room piled with junk, the label on the door: Museum.

  ‘My father’s old office.’ Her mother’s voice was flat. Dad picked up a set of signal flags then set them down. The room felt cold and damp. No one’s heart was in it. Steph’s hair hung wet and heavy on the shoulders of an old lady’s shirt that smelled of mothballs. Mum propped herself against the wall like a bird too feeble to hold itself up.

  ‘Twenty-five years, Gretchen. Time marches on.’ Steph caught Dad’s blink of irritation. Her father didn’t want to be here any more than she did. Hallowed ground? The house was as skanky as a Kings Cross backpackers.

  *

  ‘In here, good people,’ Lindsay chirped. The kitchen smelled as good as Gran’s. Lindsay scooped powder into a jug and whisked it into milk. Steph’s stomach grumbled at the tray of scones hot from the oven. ‘Don’t wait to be asked.’ Lindsay slid the tray her way. ‘You’d never have survived growing up in our house. The hoovers, Brian called our two.’ Lindsay began performing Gran’s ritual with the teapot, three turns this way, three the other. Steph felt too hungry to eat slowly. Another failed New Year’s resolution.

  Mum opened cupboard doors. ‘Shall I get the mugs?’

  Lindsay offered a sad half-smile. ‘It’s your kitchen now.’ Steph looked at the dinged furniture, the cracked linoleum. It was hardly worth getting sentimental over.

  Steph took a second scone and followed her father out to a bright sunny room with a washing machine; more plant nursery than laundry. Trays of seedlings topped the chests of drawers. The air smelled earthy.

  Dad inspected the labels. ‘Brussels sprouts. Cauliflower. Cabbage. All Steph’s faves,’ he whispered.

  ‘Hilarious, James.’

  ‘We use those drawers for clothes storage,’ Lindsay called from the kitchen. ‘Only place in the house where things don’t go mouldy.’

  Her mother joined them and stroked the washing machine as if old Casper were stretched out on top, not shipped off to Canberra with his electric blanket to board at Gran’s. ‘Remember, love? We had a twin tub when we first married.’

  Lindsay joined them. ‘Hope you brought a good supply of pegs. I’m down to the last handful. Socks and hankies blown to Kingdom Come, till we knew better. There’s at least two seabirds between here and Hobart wearing Brian’s jocks.’ She turned to Dad. ‘Bri take you through the weather? All clear as mud?’

  ‘Brian will show me, won’t he? It’s me, not James, responsible for the weather.’

  Lindsay raised her eyebrows with a kids these days look. ‘Bri has his work cut out at the helipad. Your food and boxes to shuttle over from the mainland. Our things to go back.’ She turned her attention to Dad. ‘They’re expecting a front later in the day. They want us off ASAP.’

  ‘You could show me,’ Steph tried again, full of encouragement. She didn’t want Lindsay to feel second best.

  ‘We’ll wait and see, eh.’

  Adult code for Fat Chance.

  ‘Heck, I forgot the jam.’ Lindsay raced away. ‘I’ve been saving the last jar.’

  Steph helped herself to a third scone. The rusted fridge was small, decrepit, an inside freezer crusted with ice. ‘How did you survive, Mother?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Everything’s—’

  ‘Primitive?’ Her father filled the gap.

  ‘We were entirely comfortable. And happy.’ Mum looked cross. ‘The house was always toasty warm. Not like now.’

  Steph spotted the phone-fax at the end of the bench. Her mother’s voice distanced to a blur. Steph fired up her mobile. Tessa or Sammie: who to text first? Her mother droned on. ‘Dad baked bread. We had plenty of fresh eggs and vegetables, sometimes we caught fish—he’d throw out crayfish rings when the weather was kind.’

  Steph moved to the lounge room, punching the keys of her mobile. OMG. We’re talking Detention Cntr!!!! She waited for the signal bars. She marched down the hallway and out the flywire door, past a large pantry off the wet porch where Lindsay wobbled on a stepladder, a jam jar in one hand, her free arm wiping dust from the shelf. Steph followed the grassed perimeter of the house, ignoring ocean and lighthouse, holding her mobile above her head and willing God Almighty Or Whoever Else Is Up There to grant her a signal. She angled up the paddock and aimed the phone directly at the tower. ‘Take that.’ A full minute. Nada.

  Steph stormed into the kitchen. ‘Can anyone get a signal?’

  ‘You can chuck that thing in the deep blue yonder, the good it will do you.’ Steam fogged Lindsay’s glasses as she to
pped up the teapot.

  ‘You didn’t tell her?’ her father said to her mother.

  Mum shot him a look.

  ‘Tell me what?’ Steph said. ‘Mum?’

  Lindsay beamed. ‘Ain’t no curv’rage in this purta town.’ She chortled at her own lame performance. Even Dad flared his nostrils with disdain.

  Steph took a breath. ‘The mobile tower is at the top of the hill.’

  ‘Telstra repeater, lovie, for the so-called landline, when it behaves itself. Tasmar Radio repeater at the north end of the island. That won’t help you, neither.’ She looked triumphant.

  ‘Telstra told us that there is mobile coverage. Didn’t they, Mum?’

  ‘I thought that’s what they said.’

  Lindsay motioned to the landline. She had an annoying habit of turning to Dad when it was something important. ‘Linked to mainland Tassie by a series of VHF repeaters. Bri says the signal won’t even support a modem.’

  Steph felt ill.

  ‘Steph, I know it’s going to be different at first.’ Her mother sounded earnest, wanting to avert a scene. Confirmation that it was true. She’d known all along. ‘There’s a lot to get used to. You can ask your friends to phone if it’s important. They can fax you a letter. When I was growing up here we didn’t have—’

  ‘A letter!’ Steph slumped into a chair. ‘No one phones a landline from their mobile. You said it wouldn’t be an issue. You said I’d be able to stay in touch. That’s what you said, Mum. You promised. You swore.’ Next thing she’d be blubbering in front of Lindsay. She wasn’t having that.

  ‘The landline is paid for by Parks,’ Lindsay said. ‘For business and emergency.’

  Her mother looked embarrassed. ‘We have to respect that. We can’t go calling Sydney every other day just to chat with friends.’

  ‘Respect, Mother? How about honesty?’ Mum’s face coloured scarlet. Lindsay looked away. ‘I won’t have any friends by the time I get back.’

  ‘It won’t be so bad,’ Dad chimed in. ‘What with the weather observations, Year 11 studies—’

  ‘Year 12,’ she reminded him.

  ‘You’ll have the island to explore, walking tracks, a bit of brush-cutting, your art always keeps you busy—island time will fly by.’

  Steph flinched when he touched her shoulder. ‘Trying to convince yourself?’

  ‘Come on, Stephie,’ Lindsay said. ‘Not many teeny-boppers can claim their own lighthouse. I bet in your mother’s day—’

  Steph clasped her skull. Teeny-bopper? She was almost seventeen. She checked her mobile for a signal. She was on her own, cut off from the world. She turned to her mother. ‘I’ve given up my life for you. Everything.’

  Her mother sighed.

  ‘My friends, my social life, Lydia’s eighteenth, the most important term of school.’ Steph couldn’t stop. ‘And why? To support my mother on an island that no one’s ever heard of, where there’s no one but my parents to talk to, no email, no TV, no internet. NO MOBILE COVERAGE.’ She glowered long and hard. The flywire door banged. Lindsay paced along the driveway, intent on whatever food scraps she was ferrying to the compost bin. ‘You never once asked if I wanted to come. What I thought. Did you ask Dad before you signed our lives away?’ Her mother turned her back. She stared out through the window. ‘This is all about you, Mum. Pretending you’re still a girl living at a lighthouse, everything sparkly, as if nothing’s changed, as if Callam were right here, squeaky clean and perfect.’ Her mother bristled—Steph pounced on it: ‘Boys’ pranks. Right.’ The stack of money Steph found in her brother’s bookshelf. Every option Steph had conjured to explain that cash was bad. Dad’s look of bewilderment at the sight of it had slumped to resignation. Let’s not say anything to Mum. Everyone tiptoeing around the problem when her brother was unravelling before them. ‘Callam might still be here if we’d dealt with it instead of wishing it would go away.’ The window framed her mother’s back. No response. ‘You got your way, Mum. Five months together in this . . . hovel, so we can all,’ Steph’s fingers marked the air, ‘“move on”.’

  Her father’s focus stayed fixed upon the floor. The heel of a hand struck Steph’s cheekbone. It was as much the shock as the strength of her mother’s fury. Steph cradled her jaw. ‘Tenth birthday. Replay.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ Her mother drew a ragged breath. She never swore. As quickly the savage deserted her, leaving her slack-jawed, her mouth quivering. She looked like a person who’d suffered a stroke. Her father went to comfort her but her mother shoved his arm away. ‘Leave me be, the pair of you.’

  3

  Where do you go when you’re marooned by ocean, cut off from help? Steph reached the road, looked in the direction of the helipad, relived the pilot’s disgust and turned the other way. Her face stung from her mother’s slap.

  She walked the road between vehicle furrows worn through the grass. All around, tea-trees and banksias were sheared to match the angle of the slope; they leaned in unison like swimmers at the starting blocks, stooped with outstretched arms. Bracken, reeds, creepers, ground covers, thickets of shrubs—everything about the bush looked sharp. You could be exiled in a place you’d soaked up through a lifetime of your mother’s stories, hoodwinked into thinking you belonged. She tore off a twig and stripped it of its leaves.

  The road led downhill around a bend, away from the house and the beady eyes of adults. Steph dropped her shoulders, slowed her step.

  Her footsteps startled a tiny mouse that darted from the edge of the road and halted a metre away. There were no domestic animals on Maatsuyker Island. Everything was native. Steph lowered to her haunches, expecting the mouse to scatter. Antechinus. She ignored her mother’s voice and watched the tiny swamp mouse snuffle through grass, its snout sweeping in staccato until it homed in on a spot just centimetres away. The antechinus burrowed at speed, its slender head disappearing into earth and pulling out the tail of a worm. It yanked, stretching the pulpy segment and reversing across Steph’s gumboot, absorbed by the tug-of-war. The worm pulled free—glistening, beaded with soil; the antechinus swallowed it as swiftly as a string of spaghetti, then scurried to the undergrowth.

  The hem of the awful trackpants dragged though wet grass. Steph hoicked them onto her hips and folded the waistband. The ditch on the uphill side of the road looked chiselled from rock. Water burbled along its course and collected in pools dammed by sticks and leaves. When the water broke through she saw it rush downhill, a small raft of debris spinning and toppling. It disappeared into a culvert that ran beneath the road. Steph crossed to where water spilled from its lip to a bank of wet mulch. Darkness threatened to fold around her. She pulled back, tugged at the sleeves of the shirt and wedged her hands in the pit of her arms.

  A row of fuel tanks; a damaged wind turbine, one of the blades a broken wing. The roof of the shed was lined with solar panels. Steph opened the large door to generators, a bank of batteries, a workbench, checklists, logbooks, the smell of age and dust and engine oil.

  This was the end of the road, the lighthouse all squatness and girth, a round of white bouncing in the sun. Steph shaded her eyes. The lower section of the painted brick remained in shadow, its door tied open with a heavy braid of rope that looked a hundred years old.

  Steph circled to the side of the light tower concealed from the road, her back to the ocean so only the Needle Rocks would see her standing chest to mortar, pressed against the round of it, her arms extending across the belly of the lighthouse that felt as solid and unerring as a grandmother. If Callam were looking down he’d say she was acting like some hippie greenie—the kind who’d join a circle to hug some tree in an old-growth forest and sing mournful folksy songs. This was too raw for that. Beneath the flat of her hands, through the texture of brick and mortar, Steph conjured a matriarchy layered with grandmothers and great-grandmothers and all the great-greats before those. She closed her eyes and felt the protrusion of her hipbones, a press of ribs against the structure’s permanence. A flow of air
curled around the tower, soughing, lifting wisps of hair and veiling her eyes. The whisper of the lighthouse carried Callam’s voice: It’s not just Mum’s fault. She tilted her chin to an expanse as white as an apron. She’d never forgive her mother. Not for hitting her again.

  Steph stepped in through the heavy doors. A cylindrical shaft filled the centre of the tower like the funnel of a ship. She turned to a cabinet shaped to fit the circular wall. Each compartment housed a canister, each lid printed with a letter from the alphabet. She shook each one in turn, empty but for Z. She extracted a flag so frail from age that Steph could have ripped the cotton threads. Could have wrecked it there and then. Black, yellow, blue, red: four triangles meeting at the centre. Each signal flag depicted a letter of the phonetic alphabet, each stood for a message in itself that the old light keepers signalled in communication with passing ships. Z for Zulu. The semaphore set they were given years ago. You Are Coming into Danger, Steph would signal Callam from the house. He, on the railing of the swimming enclosure: Altering Course to Starboard, or whatever other flag he had on hand. Why did he have to change? Steph returned Zulu to its canister.

  She climbed the spiral staircase—latticed iron steps that wound around the wall. She didn’t feel fearful of the height because this tower was divided into floors. At the second storey was a table set with three polished lanterns, a visitors’ book waiting to be signed. Each floor felt brighter than the one below, the natural light given by narrow casement windows set deep into the brickwork, by a shaft of light filtering down. Through the pitting and scratches of the glass, Steph spied a band of colour: a red fishing boat moving on the water.