Skylarking (7 page)

She jumped, wobbling already as she left the ledge. One foot down, a little splash as her boot hit the rock under the surface. Both of her arms stretched wide, her face pure determination. The leap to the second rock, her arms out and grasping for the same ledge I had crashed into. I held my breath. Then she was collapsing forwards, dress sodden at the bottom, hands reaching up to the ledge and to me.

I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her towards me as she scrambled the rest of the way up and away from the water. We stayed like that, my arms around her back, her face at my chest, breathing heavily, our legs tangled under us, our skirts wet and heavy.

She looked at me. ‘I did it.' She laughed and grabbed my face with both her hands and kissed me, full on the mouth. Just for a moment.

She pulled away, eyes shining and hair wild, framing her face.

‘I did it!' she yelled again, and threw her arms into the air and whooped with delight, while I sat staring at her, my body filled with the tingling strangeness of her kiss.

And this time it was Harriet who led us back across the rocks, jumping and leaping and calling for me to catch up, while I trailed behind, feeling as though something had burst open in both of us, wondrously, and yet it was not the same thing. As we made our way home, Harriet kept pulling further and further away from me.

THIRTEEN

I
CAME DOWN WITH A DREADFUL COLD
;
THE TYPE
where my face felt stuffed full of damp laundry rags. I could not breathe through my nose, and I snuffled and coughed and moped about until Mother ordered me to bed with a spoonful of Glover's mixture and a washer for my head and told me to stay put until I'd burned the thing away with a fever.

Ordinarily I might have relished an excuse to lie in bed and take one of Harriet's books from my shelf and read and reread the words that lifted me up and straight off the cape and away to adventure. But not even Ralph's adventures on the Coral Islands could pull me from my glumness. For today, I knew, McPhail was escorting all the children to watch the whales off the point at Murray's Beach, and I so dearly wanted to go. He had been fishing out there lately and had told Father that the whales were passing in large numbers, and he offered to take us all down there on an excursion of sorts.

When Harriet came to collect me and found me bedridden, I noticed a quiet triumph behind her concerned face, that she would go to the point with McPhail – she would exclaim as the whales breached and showed their secret skins to the sky and hold her hand to her chest and sigh – without me.

Of course I knew she would not be alone. She would have all the others with her, but they would be distracted and not notice the things that I might see.

Listening to the comings and goings from the kitchen I could hear when they were ready to leave, and I pushed back the blankets and went to the window.

Across the grass, I saw Harriet holding Sadie's reins while Emmaline stood behind her with a basket, a loaf of bread wrapped in a red and white cloth protruding from its side. Albert and James had obviously not deigned to go for I did not see them, but Will and Harry were there, and Lucy sat up on the horse with her arms wrapped around little Edward.

I drew the curtain across and sulked back to my bed.

The day passed so slowly. I tossed and turned, not feverish as much as agitated. I desperately wanted them all to return so that I might know what had transpired. Mother brought me tea and toast but then grew weary with my constant calling out to ask whether or not they were home.

‘Kate, you'll never get better if you don't rest. Lie down, for goodness sake, and sleep!'

But I could not. And it was an endless few hours I spent picking up my book and throwing it aside again before I heard them coming back.

Finally Emmaline rushed in through our bedroom door.

‘Where's Harriet?' I asked, as she strode past me to fling herself down on her bed.

‘She had to go straight home – her mother said.'

Was that true? I thought about Harriet returning from the outing, then slipping away again down the track to meet McPhail where none of the younger ones could see.

‘So, do you want to hear about it or not?' Emmaline's voice cut into my daydreaming.

‘How many did you see?' I asked, even though I could not have cared less about the whales. Surely Emmaline realised this, but she went into great detail about the size and the shape of the pod and did not mention McPhail once.

‘And did you all behave for Mr McPhail?' I asked.

‘I did, if that's what you're asking,' she said impertinently.

‘And how was Mr McPhail?' I was searching for some clue that I might stew over.

‘I hardly saw him,' she said.

‘Whatever do you mean, Emmaline? You went with the man.'

As much as she pretended that she wasn't, Emmaline was flattered by my interest in what she had to say.

‘Well,' she said, stretching out the telling now that she had my attention. ‘McPhail took Harriet off around the point where she would be able to see better, and Harriet told me and Will and Harry to stay with the little ones because it was too dangerous.'

So Harriet had made the most of my absence. I wondered if she had need of a hand to help her up the steep rocks, if she had stumbled a little and found herself falling into the strong arms of the man who accompanied her.

‘And were they gone for long?'

Emmaline sat up on her bed. ‘I can't remember. Gosh, I'm famished. When's dinner, do you think? I'm going to ask Mother.'

And she was off. I would have no more news from Emmaline now that her stomach had her attention. Which left me with my imagination, and that was a far more dangerous thing.

FOURTEEN

S
OON ENOUGH
I
HAD OTHER THINGS TO OCCUPY MY
mind, as September came around and the preparations for Christmas, a grand affair at the lighthouse, began in earnest. Mother always did the pudding, and I helped as I grew older. But this year was to be the first she would let me make the pudding on my own. I was excited, and nervous.

The pudding was the centrepiece of Christmas dinner. Mother said it reminded her of her own mother, and her mother's mother before. I thought of all those women going back in time, making puddings for their families, passing down the recipe. It made me feel small, but anchored. Tied to a thing that went back further than I could imagine. Had any of them thought that sometime in a distant future a fifteen-year-old girl would use the recipe on a light station in Australia?

Mother, Emmaline and I were cutting biscuits from dough when my brothers' calls drifted in through the kitchen window.

‘Boat's in!'

Mother wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Let's see if Patterson managed to get my order right this year,' she said, and set the last tray of biscuits aside. ‘Emmaline, get these in the oven and watch them. And don't you eat any! The captain will be wanting one with a hot cup of tea once we've got the supplies unpacked.'

‘I want to go to the boat,' said Emmaline, crossing her arms.

‘No, you're to stay here. Kate can come and help,' Mother said, ushering me out the door. I smirked at Emmaline behind Mother's back, and she stuck out her tongue.

James and Will were scampering about on the jetty as the supply boat moved closer.

‘Ahoy, Captain!' Will shouted. ‘Got anything special for us today?'

‘Indeed, I have,' Captain Patterson called from the prow as he drew alongside the jetty. ‘You've gone and grown again, lads. What's your mother been feeding you for you to get so tall? You'll be taller than your sister by the next time I visit.'

He tipped his hat at Mother and me as we joined the boys on the jetty. ‘Now, before you go asking, Mrs Gilbert, I've got some terrible news about your Christmas supplies.'

‘Don't you go teasing me or I'll send you away without a single taste of the jam biscuits the girls have made you.'

‘Oh no,' said Patterson, frowning theatrically. ‘We can't have that.' He rummaged around the boxes and sacks on the deck until her found a cloth bag and passed it over the side to Mother. ‘Here they are for you, Mrs Gilbert, as requested. Nothing's missing.'

Mother smiled. ‘Come on then. Let's get this unpacked and we'll get the kettle on for you.'

By now Father and Walker had also appeared and were unloading the supplies. It was a thankless task, the moving of those packages up the track to the station. As always, James found the biggest, heaving it onto his scrawny shoulders and staggering a little under the weight.

‘You'll never get that all the way up,' I scoffed.

James deliberately knocked into me as he went past. ‘What would you know about hard work anyway, Kate? You're just a girl.'

I grabbed a sack of potatoes, bent my knees and pinned my elbows against my side as I tried to lift it to rest against my waist.

‘Whoa there, miss!' called Patterson. ‘Leave that one be – that's work for your father and brothers, that is.'

‘Kate!' Mother said curtly. ‘Just bring the mail.'

I took the small bag she held out to me and stomped up the path after my brothers. I hoped they choked on their jam biscuits.

That evening after Father and Patterson had retired to the parlour with a new bottle of whiskey, Mother assembled the ingredients for me on the broad bench in the kitchen. There were plump raisins, crystalline mixed peel, handfuls of sticky sultanas and clumped black currants. The bottle of brandy stood next to the sugar jar, a small brown paper packet of mixed spices, vanilla essence, and a lemon that mother had reverently taken from the sand-lined box where she kept the fruit wrapped to stop spoiling. Next to these, and arranged like a surgeon's instruments, were the wooden spoon that had been my mother's mother's, the biggest of our mixing bowls and the scales.

‘Off you go then,' Mother said and nodded at the tattered recipe that sat amongst all this on the bench.

The handwriting of a grandmother I had never met told me the exact measurements I would need, the order in which I should do each task. Mother, of course, had no need for the recipe, and yet each year she pulled it from its place, tucked into her collection, and ran her fingers over the lines as though this act might return her mother to her.

I carefully shook the raisins onto the scales. The task of preparing the fruit was no more onerous than any number of recipes Mother churned out of that kitchen, yet there was a special ceremony to pudding making. The alchemic reaction of fruit and brandy and sugar, stirred once for each person we loved and prayed for. My mother's face always became drawn when she stirred for the ones we had lost; she'd cry for my brother then wipe her cheeks crossly, saying she'd spoil the mixture with tears.

Once I'd finished measuring all the quantities and placed them in the bowl, I added the brandy and mixed. The fruit was to bathe in the sweet spicy syrup of brandy and sugar for a month, during which time the bowl would sit majestically in the corner of the pantry covered in cloth. Some days I'd hear Mother murmuring as she bustled about in its presence, ‘Let this be a good year, a healthy year; let us be blessed', and I wondered at the strange power the Christmas pudding had over us all.

A few days later I was checking on the fruit when I heard Mother come into the kitchen, accompanied by Mrs Walker and Mrs Jackson. I stayed where I was in the pantry, out of sight. I was not a sneak, but I did enjoy listening to the way these three women of the light station spoke to each other when they thought none of us children were around.

‘You got the pudding started then, I suppose?' Mrs Walker said.

The kettle banged on the stove, and Mother replied. ‘I'm glad to say it was Kate who prepared the fruit. I'm hoping she'll do it all this year.'

‘Wish I had a girl as old as your two,' said Mrs Jackson. ‘It's not the same with boys, and I've a few years before Lucy can be of any use in my kitchen.'

‘Heaven knows they're not always a help!' Mrs Walker said.

‘But your Harriet is a far sight more inclined to matters of the home and hearth than Kate is,' my mother said. ‘If that girl had her way she'd spend all her days out on the rocks with one of those useless books your sister-in-law sends, Annie.'

Mrs Jackson's voice broke through the others. ‘Well, rock hopping and books won't get her a husband, that's for sure.'

‘Oh, I'm sure she'll grow out of it by then,' my mother said, but her voice had grown quieter.

‘You'll need to make sure of it. Those girls – Harriet especially – they are close enough to marrying age now, and they should be behaving as such. I'll not have our Albert sweet on a girl who doesn't know her place.'

My eyebrows shot up in surprise.

‘Albert's sweet on Harriet?' Mrs Walker asked, and laughed.

‘On Kate,' Mrs Jackson replied, and my heart thumped wildly. ‘He knows a beauty like Harriet wouldn't marry a boy like him.'

There was an uncomfortable silence, then Mrs Walker hurried to cover Mrs Jackson's rudeness. ‘Kate will have suitors enough when it's her time – she's a beauty in her own way.'

‘Enough of this,' Mother said. ‘It's making me feel old to think of my daughter married off. Let's take the tea to the verandah and sit. It'll soon be time to start on dinner.'

I waited until they had gone and then I slipped out of the kitchen and into my room, where I could think more about what had been said. Albert – sweet on me! Was it true? And did it mean anything at all, if he only liked me because he thought Harriet out of reach?

FIFTEEN

T
HERE HAD BEEN TROUBLE WITH THE LIGHT FOR A FEW
nights. It was to do with the mantle and it had my father huffing and grumbling, and we knew well enough to steer clear of him until it had been righted. He had his books out on the kitchen table while Jackson did his shift, and he reckoned he had one more idea of how he might fix it; after that he'd have to send for a new part and it would be at least four or five days of all kinds of business to get our lighthouse to throw its steady light out to sea.

At first Mother tried soothing him with gentle words and the warm touch of her hand on his forearm, but she was stretched herself with getting ready for Christmas and she needed the table space.

Eventually she was short with him, and he stormed out into the night. Mother sighed and, despite the work ahead of her, took to baking to make peace.

By the time I'd finished washing up the dinner dishes, she had a currant pie hot in her hands, and the smell was pastry and egg and the sweet tang of currants all wound into one, steaming and delicious.

‘Kate, would you be a dear and take this up to your father? I'm dead on my feet.'

‘The whole thing? Don't we get to have some?'

‘If you nip up quick you might be lucky enough to get a piece from your father.'

That night there was little wind, a strange thing on our cape, and it was clear and moonless. Out the door of the cottage I had to stop to look up, the pie dish warm through the cloth in my hands. Studding the indigo sky were thousands and thousands of stars. On nights like this, you could almost feel the planet moving on its axis.

During the blue and sunny days, one could choose to forget our place in the universe, the fact of the planets, the complicated trickery of the earth spinning in place and coming around each day anew to face the sun, to face the moon. I must admit to being incredulous when Mr Jamieson first taught us about the universe. I turned, smirking, to Harriet to roll my eyes at what I thought was all a tremendous hoax to catch us out and teach us the importance of listening, or not believing fairytales or other nonsense.

But I came to believe in Mr Jamieson's strange account and, on nights like this, it made so much sense: to see the vastness of the night sky and consider the endless possibilities. In my mind I tried to fathom what Mr Jamieson had said: that when we looked up at the stars, we were gazing into the past. Pinpoints of light in the darkness, so quiet and still, breathing not a word of what the future held for us.

Remembering my errand, I hurried to the lighthouse and ran up the steps to the light. As I approached the underbelly of the tower, the heat of the pie pan seeped through the cloth in my hands and I raced up the metal rungs of the short ladder.

I steadied myself as I came through the trapdoor into the tower, the pie thrust out before me as my offering.

‘Mother's made you a currant pie.'

Father lifted his head from where he leaned over the bench next to Jackson, and his face seemed to soften. ‘There's a good girl. Put it over here – I'll make some room.'

As Father went to move some papers for me, I noticed that Albert was standing behind Jackson. The heat from my palms seemed to travel all over me. All I could think of was what I had been mulling over this past week, what I'd heard that day in the pantry. I wasn't sure where to look when he straightened up and nodded his head at me.

I lowered my eyes to the speckled top of the pie. I tried to inch around him to place the dish on the cleared bench, but the space was small and I could not help my skirts brushing against the back of Albert's legs.

We both shifted hastily away from each other.

‘This'll be the last time we'll try it, boys,' my father said. ‘I need you fresh for your shift tomorrow, Jackson. But a slice of pie will do nicely before we try switching it over again.'

I knew Father kept some kitchen utensils in his bench and I busied myself with working out which drawer held the knife. I pulled the smooth wooden knobs and slid the drawers in and out, seeing papers and ink and pen nibs and string, before I found the one with a spoon, and the long silver blade of a knife.

I sensed Albert come up beside me at the bench as I sliced thick triangles of the pie and wished that Father had some plates so that I might serve with some decorum.

‘That looks delicious,' Albert said.

I relaxed a little. He did not know what I had heard from the pantry; he was not behaving awkwardly.

‘It's Father's favourite. I guess Mother thought he deserved it, since he's been working so hard.'

‘A good wife,' Albert said and nodded as if he were older and wiser than I knew him to be. I suddenly had the urge to pinch him low on his hip, where his shirt met his pants, and tell him he sounded ridiculous.

I offered him the pie pan, turning the cut pieces towards him. Father and Jackson also took slices but hardly glanced up from what they were poring over.

I hesitated, unsure whether I should take a piece for myself and, if I did, whether I should stand or sit. When Father and I were alone up here together, I felt at home, and as though I joined in the reign over the darkness and the black sea. But the presence of Albert and his father interrupted that, and I felt childish, as though this were a place I ought not to be.

Father must have sensed me hovering there. ‘Albert,' he said, ‘will you see Kate back down the tower?'

Albert wiped his hands on his pants and nodded.

‘Take the rest of the pie back for you and your mother and the other children for tomorrow,' Father said. ‘You're a good girl for bringing it up. Tell your mother she's heaven-sent.'

‘There's no need for Albert to see me down, Father. I'll be fine. I always am.'

The kettle would be on the hearth in the kitchen, and I would eat my pie with a cup of tea; Mother might still be up.

‘It's time you were both in bed,' Father said. ‘If it pains you to think you are being escorted, my dear, then consider that you are both accompanying each other.' He left it at that and raised one eyebrow at Jackson as they bent back down over their work.

I saw Jackson smile.

Albert was staring at his feet, chewing the last of his pie, and the corner of his mouth was curling up. They were all laughing at me.

‘Fine. Keep up!' I started down the stairs.

I heard my father snort and then the shuffle of Albert's feet across the timber, but I was already clanging down the ladder and onto the spiral staircase. My feet knew its rhythm and length, but I had to keep my wits about me to move so fast.

The stairwell was dark, and lit only every few turns by lanterns embedded in the thick walls. The noise of our footsteps echoed as Albert gained on me. His steps were louder and less rhythmic, but they were quick.

‘Keep up, you say?' He was behind me now, only a few paces back.

My neck tensed, as it did when Harriet and I played scary games in the dark, imagining ghosts and terrible demons creeping over the sea-cliffs to drag young girls from the cape back down to their watery world. I let out a little squeak and rushed to go faster, my breathing more frantic now and my blood pumping in my ears.

We were approaching the bottom; I could see the whitewashed floor glowing faintly beyond the next curl of iron.

‘You're not that fast, Kate Gilbert.' Albert was on the step behind me now, and could easily have overtaken me if he wanted, but instead he stayed there, urging me on.

We spiralled down around that last bend, and I leaped off the bottom step to rush out towards the open door and the path, the grass beyond. But a hand stretched out clumsily, grabbing at my waist, so that I was pulled around to face him.

‘Got you,' he said, and I felt light and alive and prickling, as if there were salt drying on my skin after swimming in the sea.

‘You did.' I placed my hand on his and removed it from my waist. ‘Good night, Albert,' I said, and moved away because I wasn't at all sure what it was my body was doing and whether I liked it or was afraid.