Wildlight (2 page)

The cleared areas claimed by the cottages and lawns amounted to a tiny skin graft of civilisation upon a great humpback of wilderness. It was none of the quaint scenes from her mother’s old photo album, the stories Steph grew up with. Devoid of beaches, the place was a fortress, walled by cliffs and a moat choked with kelp.

Below, a limp windsock gave way to a clearing in the bush that looked too small for a landing pad. The blue nose of a vehicle peeked through the trees. The helicopter hovered, swayed its hips. They inched lower, the pilot peering down through the side window. He manoeuvred the throttle as lightly as a computer mouse. They were even with the treetops, now they were below them. Steph read a painted sign:
MAATSUYKER ISLAND.
A soft thud, a bounce, the kiss of solid earth, an exhalation as the rotors lowered pitch. They were down. They were safe.

Steph mistook Lindsay, the outgoing caretaker, for a ranger in her green brimmed hat, a Parks emblem embroidered on the front. Lindsay stood at the door of the Head Keeper’s cottage with her feet set apart. She handed over the contents of the pile one by one and Steph tried to be grateful, truly she did: a threadbare towel, a frayed shirt crumpled and stained, a pair of lilac trackpants that could—that should—have been a Vinnies reject. Steph tried to smile. She tried to be polite.

Lindsay knew. ‘Best I could find in the emergency drawer. They’ll have to do until we bring down your bags.’

‘Do you know where Mum and Dad are?’

‘Brian’s taken them up to do the nine o’clock obs. Plenty of time for a shower, get yourself cleaned up. Tummy all settled?’

Steph closed the bathroom door. The weather observations were
her
job. She’d done the training in Hobart. They’d all agreed.

An old-fashioned bath was set beneath a full-length window. Anyone could walk by and look straight in. Away in the distance a spear of land stretched across the blue. Steph huffed. All her mother’s talk of the roaring forties: the ocean glistened, barely a breeze. From where Callam was looking down, Maatsuyker and its surrounds must resemble a smattering of biscuit crumbs brushed off Tasmania’s south-west rim.

It took an age for the hot water to coat the window with steam and give her privacy. Steph was down to underwear and socks when the door banged. Lindsay’s form filled the scalloped glass. ‘Don’t be too long, pet. We need to conserve our resources.’

Water? It rained two hundred days a year at Maatsuyker Island.

The textured glass of the shower cubicle was webbed with cracks, the caddy’s rubber coating flaked off and encrusted with rust. Everything in this house—their house now—looked fit for the tip. Steph picked up a block of grey soap as coarse as sandpaper; it smelled of sweaty socks. She opted for a dried sliver of green that slipped through her fingers the moment it was wet. She placed her foot across the drain to stop it disappearing altogether. Another rap on the door.

‘Almost done, Stephanie?’ Lindsay sounded cross.

‘Nearly.’ You could never tell with people. Lindsay had seemed kind—grandmotherly—when they’d met at the helipad.
Let’s get you cleaned up, poppet
. She’d marched Steph and her parents down the grass road, nodding to landmarks as if it were Mum’s first time on Maatsuyker Island. Steph felt for her mother. She looked vulnerable again, her big moment that should have been just the three of them dawdling and detouring, Mum showing Steph every little thing and sighing and saying,
That’s the track that goes up to the Light Keeper’s Tree
and
That’s where we kept the chooks
and
We even had a pig here for a while
and
That’s where I used to run down the path through the arbour to get to the lighthouse and meet my dad at the finish of his shift
. From ground level the cottages didn’t look as cheery—white walls scabbed with red where brickwork showed through, the paintwork flaking and dribbled with rust. The palings of one fence were gone altogether, the other hung at a lean, patched with fibro sheets.

‘Someone’s put some work into that vege patch.’ Her father’s voice sounded hoarse. His halting speech reminded Steph of a light globe on the blink. Dad brushed away Lindsay’s look of concern with a wave of a hand toward the terraced beds. Patch? Plantation. The vegetable garden took up more space than their front and back yards at home.

‘We arrived to a beautiful crop, James. Fresh veges all the way through.’ Lindsay was taken with Dad, you could tell. She would have heard him on the radio. ‘Our turn to do the same for you two.’

Three, if anyone should bother to count.

Now, hovering there outside the bathroom, Lindsay had transmuted into the Water Police. Steph imagined her stopwatch running. She reminded herself that by this afternoon Lindsay and Brian would be gone, on their way to Hobart in the helicopter.
Whoo hoo
, the ghost of a voice butted in.
Bet you can’t wait to be on your ownsome with Mum and Dad.

Shut up, Callam. But her brother was right. Sixteen, the biggest year of her life. To be dragged out of school as if a Higher School Certificate didn’t count. Five months stuck on an island with no one but her parents. Steph mashed the soap through the grate, she drew a stricken face upon the misted glass, the hair a swirl of kelp. Who would be around to help her with the afternoon weather? She needed Brian. She turned off the taps. She needed Brian now.

*

Steph followed the path uphill from the house. A posse of green birds flashed by. The whine of the helicopter escalated to a squeal, the air pulsing as it lifted from the helipad. Beneath the fuselage a rope spun ever-widening circles like a carousel ride, its sling load of netting bulging with Brian and Lindsay’s outbound gear.

The empty weather office reeked of mould. Mum’s sunglasses sat folded on the desk. Steph put them on, studied her reflection in the window. She’d never be as elegant as her mother. Why hadn’t they waited for her? Alongside a computer, the weather logbook lay open. Steph ran her finger along the numbers and codes. She couldn’t remember what they all meant. Another desk was littered with dead blowflies and info sheets about clouds and weather and measuring the ocean swell, the print bleached from sun. The desk would be big enough to spread out her art. Steph opened the locker to a fug of mustiness, to forms and wicks, barograph charts, a pile of old logbooks stippled with mould and warped from damp, the bindings a loom of cotton thread. Somewhere in the collection was the imprint of her grandfather. She tried to conjure an image of him living and working at this place. Zip.

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.