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hona and Dean live in Abigail Street, a street that is twenty houses long on either side. It is a short, shady side-street cutting between two main roads that bludgeon their way through the suburbs away from the city. Abigail Street is cool and quiet, while at either end, especially at peak hour, there is mayhem.

The shade is the result of a row of Morton Bay figs that buckle the footpaths of Abigail Street. The trees are on death row, having been placed under a council intervention order into their longevity. These trees have proved an ideal habitat for a colony of fruit bats that each year come to feast on the ripening figs. Every night, particularly during the full moon, the bats swirl drunkenly through the sky like the opening credits of an old Vincent Price film. In daylight they hang from the trees like blackened tumours. In the words of local residents the colony has grown into a plague.

If she happens to leave it out overnight, by morning Shona's washing is a mess. Her uniforms particularly vulnerable. Dean's car is also a mess. Every car in the street is a mess. A siren is set up in order to scare the bats out of the branches with short, sharp blasts like a ferry's foghorn. It partially works. The bats fly about frantically for a while, then settle again to their gorging. Unfortunately, neighbourhood children are also woken by the sudden noise and the locals begin to see there are pros and cons to this and other solutions.

One evening, after a visit to the theatre where Steven Berkhoff tries to terrify them with dramatised tales of Edgar Allan Poe, they find themselves driving up Abigail Street at bat hour. They are everywhere. Suddenly, out of the distorted moonlight, a drunken bat falls from the sky and smacks against their windscreen. Shona screams. The bat's face is pointed, like a fox's muzzle. Its ears are sharp and, well, bat-like. Dean slams on the brakes and the bat, dribbling rabid saliva and fig juice, slides down the glass and off the bonnet, wings outstretched as if trying to hang on.

Other people have had similar experiences.

There are so many bats that their urine is starting to kill the fig trees. It looks as though the leaves, yellow and withering, have been sprayed with Agent Orange. The Botanical Gardens are apparently facing a similar problem. This is when their neighbour, Ian Ikin, contacts the council. He demands something be done about the bats. They should be sprayed with a natural solution of python excrement and shrimp paste, he says. The council demurs. Their solution comprises a proposal to get rid of all the fig trees, to pave the entire nature strip with asphalt. There is a chorus of protest.

One of Shona and Dean's neighbours is a family of Plymouth Brethren. Scarf people, the children call them, although not to their faces. They appear to have no opinion whatsoever on the problem of the bats. Dean likes to think facetiously that the bats are the agents of Satan come to test the resolve of the Brethren. On the other side are the Ikins. They are the ones who lobbied for the siren. The siren has been borrowed from a vintner friend of theirs who uses it to frighten birds from his vines. When the figs themselves come under threat the Ikins are the most vocal in defending the trees and the amenity they give to the local area. You can't underestimate, they say, the value of shade.

There is bat shit all over the footpaths of Abigail Street It stinks of sour, fermented figs. Shona has to dodge the lumps as she walks from the car to the front door. Bats squeal in the trees, hanging there like great drips of bitumen. She shivers involuntarily. The invisible whump of their wings as they flap up the street is unsettling, especially after a long night shift where she has otherwise been dealing with patients' greatest fears. Nurses often work with the human condition in extremis. Her nerves are simultaneously exhausted and frazzled. The last thing she needs is bats.

In the Ikins' house music is blaring. She wonders if she should phone, ask them to turn it down. But she doesn't. On the other side, in the Brethren house, all is dark. The Ikins and the Brethren (actually called the Braithwaites) do not get on ideologically. Shona and Dean are the meat in the sandwich. The Ikins have no children. Shona and Dean have two. The Brethren have eight. The Ikins' yard is messy with straggly native banksias, acacias and wattles. Pebble paths wind among them and they have a birdbath, empty now due to water restrictions. Ian Ikin is vocal in using his lack of ownership of a lawnmower as a measure of his carbon footprint. The Brethren's yard, by contrast, is clipped and shorn and barren. An expanse of couch lawn, bordered by a couple of pot-bound buxus shrubs. In their windows the lace curtains are never parted.

Mr Braithwaite owns a muffler repair shop in an outer suburb. Owns is perhaps the wrong word. The Plymouth Brethren (Inc.) are probably the owners and Mr Braithwaite just manages it. Dean took his car there once when it sounded as though it had a chest infection. The most unusual thing about Braithwaites' muffler shop is that they have no credit card facilities. There is no eftpos machine and no computer. There is a sign on the wall behind the receptionist's head that reads: No cheques. Cash only. Dean recognises the receptionist and realises that she is Braithwaite's daughter. One of the eight. He also realises that she is pregnant. Dean has to catch a taxi to the bank to withdraw the cash in order to deal with this primitive system of doing things. Do they have some religious dispensation from accepting cheques? What a crock, he thinks. They have hydraulic lifts, don't they? They have pneumatic spanners.

Later that night Dean vents his innocuous spleen to Shona over the inconvenience.

âI had to get a taxi all the way to the bank and back. You'd think they'd give me mates rates, being neighbours and all, but no.'

How dare, he wonders, they refuse to take his money?

How, Shona wonders in return, did he not know the girl was pregnant?

âIt was pretty obvious once she stood up.'

âNo,' Shona corrects herself, âI meant how is it that we live next door and never even noticed? What sort of neighbours are we?'

âOnes who respect their privacy.'

Shona doubts this. She worries about the breakdown of community values, about how neighbours are becoming clusters of strangers, wary of each other.

Later she says,âI wonder what hospital she's booked into?'

âProbably yours. That's the closest.'

âI wonder who the father is?'

âOne of these other hanky-heads,' Dean says. âThere's cars pulling up there all the time.'

âI would have thought that a group like the Brethren,' says Shona, âwould be pretty vigorous about knowing who the father is.'

âHanky-panky,' says Dean, for no other reason than it is there to be said.

Shona and Dean actually like living next door to the Brethren family. There is no noise. There is barely any sign of people living there at all. Occasionally cars do gather and people stream into the plain, Besser-bricked house and not a sound comes out. Dean has an image that the interior walls must be made of egg cartons, like the makeshift sound studios of his youth. But of course he has no idea. He has never peeped inside, though he has looked over the back fence. It is just as barren. Not even a sandpit for the kids. Isn't there something about them rejecting activities associated with fun? Fishing, for instance? Well, what are pneumatic spanners if not fun?

âI wonder which one is the grand Pooh-bah?' Dean asks one day, peering through the kitchen blinds as the cars begin to arrive.

âI don't think they have any ministerial order,' says Shona.

âThen why don't the men have to wear hankies on their heads?'

âI don't know.'

Shona is a nurse at the Prince of Wales hospital. She has just finished a stint in Oncology and a few months ago moved to Maternity. She likes the Maternity ward as it always gives her a feeling of hope. One day, she notices a young girl in the Tresillian unit. Actually it is the scarf wrapped tightly across the girl's head that makes her look twice, and she recognises one of her neighbours. The girl's shoulders are hunched forward, as if she is trying to take the weight of the smock off her breasts. Shona recalls that awful sensation. She makes some congratulatory noises but is embarrassed, not only by the girl's rejection of her interest, but because she does not know the girl's name.

âDid everything go well?' Shona asks.

âYes, thank you.'

âDid you have to have stitches?'

âNo.'

âIt's just that you're here in Tresillian.'

âWe're just trying to find some alternative feeding method.'

âOh, well good luck,' says Shona, not wanting to intrude. âAnd congratulations.'

âYes. Thank you.'

Shona walks off on her sensible rubber soles thinking: I could rot in my house before this girl came in to check on me.

Without this fortuitous meeting, they would not have known there was a baby. There is no fanfare. No cots or prams or newborn paraphernalia wheeled into the bland brick house. No relentless midnight screaming. The Ikins want to take a bottle of champagne in there. By force. Shona says she does not think it would be a welcome gesture. So they drink the champagne themselves. Wetting the baby's head by proxy.

âI wonder what they've got hidden in their garage?' says Dean. âI bet they've got fishing rods in there.'

After a few bottles they hear themselves getting a little raucous; however, from next door there comes nothing but a stony silence.

As a trial run, the council comes with a cherry picker and half-a-dozen men in hard hats with chainsaws who cut down one of the fig trees. Admittedly it is dead, but that does not stop the Ikins working the phones. The Tree Preservation Officer is called to Abigail Street and work is put on hold. He detects a small contradiction in that the residents want the grey-headed flying foxes gone, but not the habitat to which they are attracted. He'll have to think about it.

As part of her duties Shona is always pleased to be rostered on to Home Visits. It gets her off the ward. Unsurprisingly, according to the logical sequence of events, one of her visits is to the house of the Braithwaites. Maddeningly, Shona has to travel all the way in to the hospital only to be given the address right next door to her own home. She drives back happy to think that afterwards she might be able to steal a cup of tea in her own kitchen, put a load of washing on. The street looks different in the middle of the day. She cannot believe how much sky there is above her yard. Sawdust from the amputated stump of the fig tree blows across the road.

She knocks on the Braithwaites' door and it is some minutes before the lace curtains flicker and an eye peers out. More minutes before the girl, a crimson scarf tied over her head as if holding down a haystack, opens the door. Beneath her scarf, her long hair hangs free, brushed and electric down the length of her back.

She stands back and ushers Shona inside. Entering slowly, Shona lets her eyes adjust to the dimness. She blinks. She has never seen a room like it. In the main room (it can hardly be a room for lounging in) there are about thirty hardbacked chairs lined up side by side around the walls of the room. There is no other furniture. No pictures. No table. Just the rectangle of chairs. In the middle of the room on a mauve bunny-rug, like some sacrificial offering, lies the baby. There is some whispering from the far end of the room. Shona glances up to see the door quietly close. She coughs, trying to break the ice.

âYou worked at the muffler shop, didn't you?'

There is a whispered snort from the far room. Shona can sense there is not a man in the building.

âHow do you know?' asks the girl.

âMy husbandâ¦ Oh, never mind. What seems to be the problem? I saw you were in Tresillian.' Shona feels as though her voice is too loud.

âMy baby won't feed properly.'

Shona can see she is young. Perhaps nineteen or twenty.

âLet's have a look.'

She goes to the tiny, swaddled bundle on the floor and kneels beside it. Carefully unwraps the soft blanket. She peers closely. She starts. The baby is yellow but not jaundiced. It looks tiny and withered, pixieish, with pointed ears and, Shona sees, a pointed muzzle. Like a bat.

âWhat's wrong with her?'

âThey say it's something called Edwards Syndrome.'

Shona has never heard of it.

âThe doctors wanted to keep her, but my mother said it was time to bring her home.'

âEdwards Syndrome?'

âIt's chromosomal.'

Shona stares at the shrivelled baby, then says, âI'm embarrassed to have to ask this, but what's your name?'

The girl balks. âSusan.'

At that moment, the door at the far end of the room opens and the mother, Mrs Braithwaite, and two other women who look just like the mother bustle in. They all wear identical crimson scarves and ankle-length skirts. One of them holds a tray rattling with teacups. They fuss around Shona and the girl and the baby, which no one picks up.

One of the aunts (they can only be the mother's sisters) asks Shona to take a seat, any seat, over by the wall.

âWill you take tea?' asks the aunt.

âYes I will, please.'

The aunt pours from a plain pot and for a moment that is the only sound.

âMilk?'

âYes, please.'

A cup of tea is thrust into her hands. They sit in silence for a moment with hot cups in their laps.

âThe issue,' says Mrs Braithwaite from across the room, âis that the baby won't take the breast. It is too large for the mouth. The teat of a bottle is also too large. So what alternatives are there? We were thinking of an eyedropper. Or there is formula, and perhaps a siphon.'

âWell, premature babies need all the colostrum they can get,' Shona began.

âThe baby is not premature. She went to full term. She is five weeks old.'

The baby, as Shona looks again, is small enough to hold in one hand. She has seen zucchini that are larger. The eyedropper is not such a silly idea.

BOOK: White Light

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