Wildlight Read online

  The top steps led to a structure twice her height—the lens rested on an enormous iron cog. Steph ran her fingers over prisms. She pulled back at the disconnect, the moment before your brain makes sense of something, the way you sometimes can’t distinguish hot from cold. It was the contradiction of each rib: the feel of sharp angles against a sweep of soft bowed curves. Steph saw where bubbles had been trapped in the glass. The sensation was electric; she felt it grip her gut; a shard of something vital and prophetic. Steph picked up a cloth. She rubbed at the glass until it gleamed. The keepers—her grandfather—would have taken turns at polishing the glass. The ribs shimmered with rainbow edges. Her mother’s parents were long gone before she and Callam came along. She imagined them as carnies at a fair, packing their belongings and trundling to the next stop. Maatsuyker Light Station had been their final posting before Grandfather died. The single physical link Steph could claim was the ink bottle her mother gifted her when she and Callam turned ten. Callam’s lip had stuck out at the nautilus shell Mum had saved for him. Her brother had no time for shells.

  The ink bottle came from Deal Island in Bass Strait, the tiny glass vessel washed up in a storm—still stoppered and filled with violet ink when your grandfather found it amongst the thrown weed. Perhaps it had come from a voyage in their Great Explorers book. Steph pictured an old wooden ship with Steph herself its figurehead, she and her vessel ploughing uncharted waters.

  She’d relented, loaned Callam the ink bottle which he’d soon forgotten and shoved to the back of his desk amongst everything else. She’d gone into his room to reclaim it, lain on his bunk, tipped and tilted the tiny bottle before the light until he’d come in and demanded she get off his bed and grabbed the bottle from her. If she’d had another chance she would have let him keep it. Waited until he’d forgotten it again. Instead Steph fought him—It’s mine!—yelling just as many names as Callam called her, he taunting her from the other side of the desk. The slow-motion replay of the bottle hurtling through air—perhaps he really hadn’t meant to let it go. A shock of violet streaked across the doona, the wall, splattered across floorboards and patterned the rug like the tangled tentacles of some mythical jellyfish. Steph was on her knees and picking at glass as if desperation could reverse the outcome. She heard Callam race down the stairs: Mum, it was her! It was her!

  Her mother’s shock at the damage to the room turned to rage when she connected the violet with bits of broken glass. Thirty years I take care of that bottle and you smash it in an instant with your selfish stupidity.

  If Mum had asked, Steph could have explained. But it was like trying to reason with Callam once he’d crossed a certain line. There was no space for anything but the force of her mother’s hand that knocked Steph’s head against the ladder of the bunk. Mum marched her by the arm to her room. The door slammed and Steph curled on her bed. When the light dimmed and she opened her eyes her father was beside her, stroking her hair, sitting her up and prising open her fist. Why? he asked. She shook her head. She hadn’t realised she’d been gripping broken glass.

  He bound the bloodied hand in a towel and put her in the car. At the hospital she buried her face in the weave of his jacket, tweezers nipping at a dartboard of glass. The pain of turning ten was indelible; Steph opened her hand to a crosshatch of tattooed violet scars.

  She moved out to the lighthouse balcony and stepped back in fright. It hadn’t seemed scary from inside. The lawn below edged against the cliff. A long way out to sea a single shark’s tooth pierced up through the ocean, a lone pyramid of rock distant from the Needles. Directly below the lighthouse, Steph followed lines of foam to the red fishing boat. It manoeuvred so near the rocks it looked to nudge them. A figure on deck tossed a craypot overboard. She heard the engine rev and watched the boat swing away as lithely as a dolphin. Clusters of orange buoys trailed in an arc.

  The figure looked up to the lighthouse. Steph lifted her arm to wave, grew self-conscious when the person continued looking her way without waving back. Wind ruffled the ocean surface. Beneath the thickening cloud shadows turned the ocean into something menacing. She moved to the sheltered side of the lighthouse.

  Footsteps tolled on the iron stairs. ‘You up there, Steph?’

  Steph slid down to sitting. She drew her knees to her chest and fixed her focus on the ocean.

  It took a sideways glance to see her mother’s eyes puffy and red. Her mother placed a bag of clothes at the balcony door. ‘Thought you could use these.’ Her voice was soft and kind. Her mother was like an ocean wave, surging forward, building momentum until something—someone—in its path caused all that energy to break. Her mother leaned against the railing, as bold as Callam. ‘The lighthouse was my special place.’ Mum pointed to the single tooth of rock. ‘The Mewstone. Shy albatross nest out there. On a clear day you can see all the way to Pedra Branca.’

  Steph wouldn’t be coaxed into conversation. She turned her head at the cry of birds, gulls circling the red boat below.

  ‘Guess what? Brian’s found some time. He asked if you’d like a run-through with the weather.’

  Mum waited. Steph shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it matters. Absolutely. The weather is your job. Dad and I are just the backup team in case you need our help.’ Her mother motioned to the cray boat. ‘Wasn’t expecting fishing boats for another month.’ Mum knelt down beside her. ‘I overreacted. If I could take it back I would. I’m sorry. We’ll work something out with the phone. We will.’

  It might be years again of calm, swimming safely at the shore until you’d forgotten what it signalled when water sucked back from sand. She watched the red boat. Steph shook her head. She wouldn’t let her mother off.

  The figure on the deck disappeared into the wheelhouse. The boat motored out of sight beneath the headland.

  Her mother went to go. ‘They’re leaving after lunch. What would you like me to tell him?’

  Steph resisted.

  ‘Yes? No?’ Her mother waited. ‘Steph?’

  The weather. She needed Brian’s help to get started. She didn’t have the luxury of holding out. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s at the weather office. He’s waiting for you.’ The buoyancy in her mother’s voice. Steph had traded her resolve for a few tips on weather and a decent pair of jeans.

  4

  The old sash window rattled loose and banged down in its frame. Steph hunched beneath the bedcovers, waiting to be showered with glass. Her shoulders ached. Her back felt stiff. Tension. This place was weird. The bunk had magically vanished, replaced with an old slat bed her parents must have carted down from one of the other cottages. Steph had scoffed at her mother’s suggestion of an electric blanket. It’s not the South Pole, Mother. Her mother let it pass without the usual argument, which made Steph wonder when and why resistance had become her default stance. She should feel grateful for the hot water bottle Mum had slipped beneath the flannel sheets. If it had been Tessa or Sammie’s mother, Steph would have thanked them. You could talk to Sammie’s mum. She never pushed. She didn’t have issues. The only time Mum listened to anything Steph had to say was when they argued. That’s all her mother knew. Not the real Steph. There was no point even trying.

  Sheets of rain beat against the windows of the adjacent porch. When she looked through the old sash windows in the daylight, the ripples of glass blurred the world and turned it dreamy. Perhaps old glass held a memory of its molten self. Perhaps, ever so slowly, glass continued to flow.

  The other window that faced the ocean took the brunt of the wind, a convoluted pull-up, push-out arrangement that thudded and wheezed like a punctured lung.

  The rain had begun when the helicopter left. All that afternoon and evening. All day yesterday. All last night. Steph pulled her mobile from under the pillow and checked for a signal. Dream on. Beneath the covers, the light of the phone illuminated the cocoon of bedding, the nails of her hands gothic in the glow.

  The wind shrilled like a cas
taway woman. According to her mother the island had a ghost. Steph saw her own hair tangled with baubles of kelp, her sea lettuce dress streaming and fluttering in the wind. She could feel that woman’s suffering. She could hear it. Or was it seals bleating on the rocks below?

  Allow yourself plenty of time before the observations. Brian had offered advice before he’d left. The first few weeks everything takes twice as long. Five-thirty. Steph pushed her head out from the covers. Cold air stung her nostrils. Black as midnight. She wanted to slide back down, stay in hibernation, emerge when the sentence was over and go home to sun and warmth and their house at Forty Baskets Beach within view of the Manly ferry. A reedy shaft of light arced the black. The darkness of its wake felt as thick as a newly tarred road. A Tupperware light, her mother called the automated lighthouse. In my day, the real lighthouse, ships could see the light all the way from the horizon, forty ks away.

  ‘You awake, Stephanie?’

  Steph groaned at her father’s hoarse whisper from the opposite side of the door.

  ‘Twenty to six,’ he said. ‘Like a hand with the weather?’

  Who wouldn’t huff at the intrusion? ‘I can do it. I’m already up.’ Steph pushed back the doona. Ventured a toe. Floorboards? Slabs of permafrost.

  *

  When the hood of her jacket blew back, she turned against the wind to draw it back on and tighten the toggles. The moment she faced forward the hood swept from her head and filled like a sail, its drawstring cutthroat at her chin. Hair whipped Steph’s face. She couldn’t see. She released her grip on the handrail and instantly realised her mistake. A gust punched her off her feet and skittled her hard into a woody bush. Steph felt her arm hooked beneath her body, her shoulder throbbed. Her headlamp lay loose on the ground, an icy spark of light glowering at the foliage, catching darts of rain. Her face felt wet and raw. She pushed to her knees. Retrieved the lamp. Crawled back to the handrail. She needed shelter. She needed to climb back into bed. Steph could hear her mother fretting: What if it had happened at the cliff edge? Steph did imagine, with a rush of vertigo, being carried off like an article of laundry.

  Above the scream of wind, beyond the house, who would hear her cry for help? No admiring audience. It wouldn’t be like Callam. No one would even know. Drama queen, her brother’s voice mocked inside her head. Every dare, lies and deceit; what she’d let herself be party to those last few months. Hoping it would wash by and Callam would be Callam again. Steph clambered to her feet, ignored the flapping hood, wet hair thrashing at her face. ‘You’re still fourteen,’ she shouted back. ‘You’ll always be a kid.’ She gripped the rail but it hit her like a squall: Callam’s face, the imprint of him fading to blue like a poster left out in the sun. Sometimes Steph could only conjure scrapings, just ugly chipped-off flakes—not good things, not the funny boy he was before he turned, whose belly laugh would make her laugh, who’d jig around the house and drive them all mental because he couldn’t stay still. His voice would scrabble in her head, ridicule, then puff, he’d be gone, sometimes for days. Needles of rain stung her face. Steph wiped her eyes, adjusted her lamp. She leaned into the wind and continued up the path.

  It took twenty minutes to even make out the clouds in the dark, and then Steph took a stab at their height. It was too dark to see the ocean, let alone measure its swell or gauge its state. And now the Stevenson Screen—the wooden box that held the thermometers. Steph braced against the slatted frame, feet set apart against the buffeting. At first sight of these white-painted slats you might expect the drone of bees, shelves glistening with honeycomb. She removed the nail that held the screen door. The frame was stuck fast. She tugged until the door jerked free; she almost lost her footing. She held the door steady against wind that tried to tear it backwards off its hinges then slam it down upon her head at each sudden lull. Record the thermometers quick smart, Brian had said. Get the door shut before the wind affects the readings. Five point five degrees Celsius. Steph dug in her pocket for the cheat sheet. Her fingers felt wooden. The pen refused to write. The paper was sodden. Five-Five. Steph recited the number as a mantra. She shone the headlamp upon the minimum thermometer. The early morning observations were supposed to be quickest, the easiest of the three. Steph closed the screen door, replaced the nail. Should she have reset the thermometers? There was no one to ask. Her brain ached with uncertainty, the sequence of tasks. She held the handrail and let herself be shunted by the wind, reciting her mantra, to the shelter of the weather office.

  Steph could not recall a day of her life that had started in the dark. She wiped her face with a towel on the hook and checked for signs of blood. The windows warbled. The weather office felt ready to implode; she could feel the built-up pressure in her ears. She took up binoculars and traced the shape of the Needles, her focus shifting to the two low-lying rocks alongside. These two rocks, one small, one larger, were used as a reference to measure the swell. Steph set the stopwatch on her phone and timed the crests of waves—spindly lines of lace, froths of foam amid the gloom—cascading over rocks. She watched for minutes to be sure. She saw how the waves came in sets, nearly always washing over Moderate Rock and through the notch of Heavy Rock. Four metres, wave trough to crest. Twice her height. Could that be right? Steph checked back through recordings in the logbook: two metres, three metres—there: four point five. And on the next page, highlighted in fluoro, a recording of ten metres.

  Beyond the Needles, way out to sea, a small light seesawed in the swell. The beam lit the waves then lurched skyward. Through binoculars Steph saw a spotlight positioned high upon a mast, a white wheelhouse and darker hull. Craypots were stacked upon the stern and bow—the red boat she’d seen on her first day.

  She keyed the recordings into the computer. She pressed Send and logged the transmittal time. How was it that an electronic message could be zapped to Hobart in a nanosecond, while the same island was deprived of mobile coverage? Telstra had some serious explaining to do. Beads of rain dripped from her hair. Steph wiped the keyboard dry. Nine a.m. she’d be here to do it all again. Hardly worth the effort of going back to bed.

  5

  Tom gripped the new knife. Frank shouted from the wheelhouse. ‘For fuck’s sake, cut it!’

  The steel blade caught the sunrise. In a single action Tom severed the nylon rope—a clean cut that parted float from craypot. The plastic buoy slid over the gunnel and plopped to the water, as carefree as a beachball. Carried inshore by current and swell, the buoy would turn and bob like a Sunday swimmer, its tail of cut rope slowly unravelling with the water’s sway. By the time it reached shore—anywhere between the three southerly capes—its appearance on that rugged coast would seem no less an act of nature than other fishing flotsam washed up in a gale.

  The longer end of rope belonged to a new craypot stripped of its first bounty for the season. The pot balanced on the gunnel awaiting the final letting go. Tom had spent the winter collecting tea-tree from the bush, stripping branches and steaming them into rounds. He’d grown quicker, thought himself adept at making stick craypots, but even his best could not compare to this, the craft that distinguished one of Bluey MacIntyre’s pots.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Frank bellowed. ‘Chuck it. Let’s piss off out of here.’

  It wasn’t enough that they’d robbed Bluey of his catch: a score of new shellers too fragile for export but good enough for local market, extras undersized that any other fisherman would set free. The new quota system had split families, cast friendships adrift, had turned Tom’s brother into the hardened nemesis of any fisherman around the state who had voted in the new order. Save the new orange-handled knife his brother had gifted him, inscribed Tom Forrest to mark Tom’s second season on the boat, Frank had snubbed yesterday’s official opening of the season. They’d been crayfishing against the law for weeks. Half the fleet must know it. The person he’d seen looking down from Maatsuyker’s lighthouse would know it. Tom released the pot and watched it surrender its existence in a spiral
of bubbles. His brother could as easily risk his life to finish you as save you. You were in or out with Frank.

  Frank cranked the engine. Tom joined him in the wheelhouse, slid the door shut. They steamed away from Bluey’s patch.

  Trouble was, Tom liked Bluey MacIntyre, the old man of the fleet. He’d been fishing this coast for close to fifty years. This was Bluey’s third term as association president—he’d made it his mission to champion the crayfishing quota. Bluey had called meetings around the state and gone on tour to convince the members that stock numbers were at a critical low. They could scoff all they liked at the Fisheries’ report, call it bullshit government propaganda, but was there a fisherman in the room, Bluey had looked Tom in the eye and held his gaze, who could honestly claim they’d seen signs of larval settlement in the water these last seasons? They were decimating their stock, destroying their livelihood, wiping out their kids’, their grandkiddies’ future. I’m not pointing the finger. He’d thumped a freckled fist against his chest. As much my doing as anybody’s. What Bluey said, what Frank seemed deaf to, made basic sense to Tom, a logic that hadn’t needed a mind-numbing semester of environmental science to see that a sustainable limit would ensure a fishing future; a limit, Bluey said, that would better protect lives by doing away with this mad stupid pressure we all feel to go out in marginal conditions. Smaller boats are at the greatest risk. Heads had bowed, feet scuffed at the unspoken reference to the Hadleys, father and son lost last season when their boat took a wave. But Frank no longer owned a small boat. He’d borrowed big to buy and refit the Perlita Lee. He had to catch more crayfish or he’d drown, regardless.

  Frank’s wife Cheryl had turned up at the boat launch with a salon tan that flouted Tassie’s winter. When Cheryl had wobbled around the vessel to see the stern unveiled, Tom had guessed she would soon turn sour.