I'm running a serial on A WineDark Sea over the next month or two. The Seal Wife is a previously unpublished novella that I wrote a few years ago. I love this story, and it has not found a home and perhaps it belongs here anyway. The Seal Wife story lives in four sections: Transmutation, Autopilot, Pearl and Finn, and The Seal Wife, and is set in a place a bit like Waychinicup. Freely read, or if you are feeling generous, a donation linky thing is at the bottom of each episode (thanks Alex, for this idea) and you can find episodes by clicking on The Seal Wife in WineDark Tales on the sidebar.
The Seal Wife *1
Transmutation
Gun smoke and blood and that silence
of Silas dying ... straight through the neck. He never uttered a word. The
stink of seal skins and abandoned carcasses blended with sulphurous smoke.
Julian stood with the shattered stock in his stinging hands and watched the
blood spill out of his brother’s smashed throat and leach into the sand that
was white as the home country snow.
Julian was clearing Boss’s gun, some relic
from the wars; a dirty, rusted thing with a jammed ball. Nobody could get the
thing out and Boss was getting cranky. So Julian had a go to break from pegging
out the skins on craggy, mulga wood racks. Silas lurked behind the skin racks
like a maid in rows of white sheets. Julian didn’t even see his shadow, his fur
clad feet squeaking in the fine beach sand.
Boss took the shattered rifle out of
his grip and made him sit on the crunchy, dried kelp. “You’re on parole, aren’t
yer mate?”
“So to speak.” Blowing up the
Chinaman’s toilet should have been a mere prank but was near fatal for Ah Kit,
who was sitting on it at the time.
“Your brother’s dead. You’ll swing
for this.”
Julian stared at him. “It’s your gun,
Boss. You ast me to clear it.”
“They’ll call it manslaughter,
prob’ly. We’ll take the boy into town for yer. Take the dinghy.”
Amidst the mutterings of the sea and
night time bird alarms, Boss pushed the little boat lurching into the surf and
stood watching the young man leave. A swollen moon hung over the sea, leaving
ladders and rippling pools of light.Julian rowed past the breakers. Boss’s figure his hands on his hips was
silhouetted against the shore.
Their older brother Andrew expected
to take the helm from their father. Andrew grew into the role with the natural
arrogance of one whom inheriting land and cattle is a given. Julian worked
hard. He bossed his little brother and in moments of unbearable hierarchy he
beat up on him. Silas – every mother’s favourite. Julian thought he needed
toughening. Julian saw life as an entity that hurled injustice at him. He
received the back of the hand but no land at the end of it. Conversations at
the family table passed over and around him. The oldest and the youngest sons
were like points of reference in a sky full of stars and he was nothing, just
black space. His first moment of being the sun and the moon was when he brought
home a wife. Frannie, who heaved her candy striped breast once or twice and
then produced two bonny sons, needed a home to put them in. So away sealing he
went. Anything to make some money.
Julian rowed and drifted and wept for
his brother, not his brother, his mother and then for himself as he thought of
her greater love for Silas and how Boss had dumped him as carrion. He slept,
his head jammed into the bow against his oilskin. And so, for two days, the
little boat bore the wretched man and all the possessions that Boss had thought
well enough to deposit; the fiddle, an axe, the water flask, a sharp knife,
some biscuit and the weight of having slaughtered his brother and fled.
He hauled against the oars and vowed to
keep rowing until he found somewhere that was nowhere. He kept to the smooth
line of water where the outgoing tide met the incoming one. A brindle mountain
rose into the sky, tipped with streaked granite the shape of a woman’s perfect
breast, the nipple proud and pointing west. Stones the size of grand beasts
peppered the hillside, exposed by the blackened patches of the hunting fires.
They would come looking for him. He
knew that. Men on horseback, with the trackers who rubbed foul fish oil into
their skin to keep themselves warm.
The trees talk to each other apparently ... they communicate via an interweb of mycelium, the world's biggest single organism. If a tree is being hassled by insects, this internet of fungi lets neighbouring trees know of impending attack, in time to produce a pesticide to ward off the aggressors.
But what happens when the mycelium becomes the enemy? Armillarus luteobobolina attacked the old Marri on the beach track and now it is dead. The beautiful sheaves of orange mushrooms, perfect, succulent, a ladder of fungi, climbing up the craggy bark like marauders up a castle keep. No hot oil poured upon their heads as they cancered the ancient king. They will feast on his bones for another decade.
On the veranda, looking at the Marri tree and thinking about the word anticipointment. Maybe angrypointment would suit. The M word. Mad, sad and dangerous to know. But Oxford tells me the word means 'a woman in control: of animals, children, servants or submissives.' Perfect then. Not flotsam then.
'Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves.'
Dogberry knew a thing or two, he did, if only he could get his thoughts in order.
And me, glowering on the veranda, thinking my filthy, disordered thoughts.
A car alarm went off, again. The owner has been out at the mouth, at the ocean, for days now.
A big spider struggled across the concrete, carrying a beetle roughly the same size. The car alarm stopped. The spider shuffled in front of my chair, past my feet. A tiny chocolate-chested wren flashed to my feet, glanced at me with white rimmed eyes and snatched the spider, booty and all.
It was September and didn’t even feel close to
an end of the dark winter. As we know now, things got worse but this is a good
story in the midst of all that; the day I found my friend again. It’s a good
story, I told myself. It’s something good to hang onto, a story of reconnection
and warm wonder in all the black chaos of the Monkey year.
Walking up the track at Broke Inlet that
September day, I saw her standing in the doorway of one of the old huts. She
was unmistakable. Tall, curvy, a hank of long black hair over one shoulder, and
something about the way she stood. Of course it’s you, I thought, miles from
anywhere, at Broke Inlet. Of course. We both yelled out each other’s name at the same time.
She is all freckled, with freckled irises too. We
sat on the veranda and smoked a rollie. It was her birthday. For an hour or so
we went through the missing fifteen years. Her partner, wearing rubber thongs
and wielding a rake, set fire to the bracken around the hut while we talked.
She and I looked at each other; less teeth, more wrinkles, both still the same.
‘There are a lot of things I don’t remember,’
she said. ‘The last series of grand mals
I had, twenty in a week I think, took care of memory. ‘The good news is I can
get my driver’s license soon,’ she said. ‘I haven’t had a seizure in five
years.’
When I left, I stopped a little way up the
track and turned. ‘I knew I’d see you soon,’ I called.
‘Why?’
‘You’ve been really close in my mind recently.
I knew I’d see you soon.’
It always lurches to the uncanny for me in
these situations. Thoughts of an absent friend will enter my mind unbidden,
repeatedly, and I will know that they are close, somewhere. It’s usually only a
matter of days before I encounter them.
I’d been wondering how to find her. I didn’t
know her married name. Fifteen years ago she moved to Laverton with her new
husband and baby daughter. We’d drifted away from each other in the previous
year, through circumstance and social circles. But when she moved away it was
in the days before mobile phones, and she ceased contact with me.
This time I made sure she had my number and a
few days later she sent me a message with photographs of her children. I
replied with pictures of Pearlie, Stormboy and my granddaughter Gracie. She was
bringing the kids down to Broke Inlet in a few weeks, she wrote. She couldn’t
wait for them to meet her old school mate.
I felt profoundly grateful and warmed by her
welcoming me back into her life but also apprehensive because I wasn’t sure why
she had stopped talking to me all those years ago. I knew we would have to
bring it up at some stage. Mainly though, I was just happy to see her, because
being with her felt like we’d never been apart.
I bought some glitter stuff for her daughter.
It was hot that day when I returned to the inlet from town and there she was,
with her family. She leapt out of the foul wheel drive and danced towards me
with her same shoulder shrugging walking dance, swaying her black hair.
Her son, elfin, quiet, ten. Her daughter,
awkward, funny, warm, fifteen. They played Scrabble together at the kitchen
table, the wood stove home to a lit candle, a scramble of dogs around their
feet. She had the makings of a silverside going and her partner lit the fire
outside so she could heave the camp stove full of meat and vegetables onto it.
Across the track, Johnboy and his nephew were
firing the slope of bracken next to their hut. Johnboy’s mastiffs lay close to
the flames licking across the litter, watching their master, their paws nearly
touching the ash. Johnboy and the younger man leaned on rakes and watched the
fire, or hacked into an outbreak with their tools. The afternoon sun streaked
orange through the trees and smoke.
Her daughter had already told me how she loved
photography and I urged her to come out and see this beautiful scene of smoke,
trees and light. She shyly took some photos and Johnboy just as shyly stepped
behind a tree.
‘Let’s go and light up that old wood,’ her mum
said to me. There was a pile of rotten, white-anted wood behind her partner’s
hut. We chucked in some twigs and a fire lighter. As the flames took hold, both
of us reefed over the timber and back into the pile.
‘About
your memory … do you mind if I prompt you sometimes?’ I asked. I had some
photographs of the old days at my place but I hadn’t brought them. I wasn’t
sure what she wanted to leave behind.
‘Oh totally, that’d be great. Remind me, did
you have a son?’
‘Yes! He’s nineteen now.’
We talked about other things and then she said,
‘When was the last time I saw you?’
‘I saw you the day your daughter was born. And
then I saw you in the main street about two weeks later. She was in a stroller.
You had your hair in two plaits. After that, I didn’t see you for a while and
then I heard you’d moved away. You just sort of slipped away. I thought I’d
done something wrong, or been a crappy friend. I dunno.’
‘Oh no,’ she stoked the fire with a length of
two by four. ‘It was nothing like that. My husband isolated me by cutting off
my contact with friends. Plus he had other women. He’d been having them the whole
time we were together. So I was paranoid too. A double whammy.’ She looked
quickly at me. ‘Did you -?’
‘Bloody hell no! I only met him twice, I think.
Anyway. No.’
Back in the hut, I said that I had written some
books. ‘Ah that’s brilliant Sarah! We always said you were gonna do that,
didn’t we!’
Her daughter looked up. I really, really like
this kid, I thought. There is something of her mum in her. Those days on the
beach at Muttonbird Island.
The next morning, I brought over my books to
show my old friend but her daughter snatched them and looked through them
intently. She took photographs of the covers with her mobile phone. I couldn’t
stay long. I had to go into town, to work.
She came outside with me, and the children
stayed at the kitchen table. ‘You know, after you left yesterday, she asked me
about aunties and godmothers,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t have any, of course. My
family … well you know what the story is. She's never asked me about this before. She said “Mum, do you think Sarah
would be my aunty?”’
Broke me in half, this did. I opened the door
and her daughter looked up.
‘I’ll be your aunty/godmother,’ I said to her and she just beamed out at me like a torch.
I didn’t hear from them for another month. But
you know, during that time I felt weight, a heavy guilt that I didn’t even
realise I was carrying for fifteen years, fall away. Recently she sent me a
message saying they were coming down for Christmas and New Year. The text
message was full of smiling emoji’s and love hearts. It was their first real holiday
together, she wrote. Her son was stressing about ten days without Wi-Fi but
he’ll be okay. ‘My fault. I’m hoping this will be good for him. Hanging out to
see you sweetie xxx.’
Yesterday I dropped in to see Johnboy who is
back at the inlet for a few days. It’s always a tussle getting in his front
door, keeping his three dogs inside and Selkie out but we managed. His nephew
put on his boots and went to the stove, put the kettle on.
‘Wanna cuppa?’ Asked John.
‘Sure. How are you going?’ I asked. This query invariably
draws a negative response, as Johnboy’s shoulder and spine give him constant
pain. Yesterday he just shrugged. His three-legged mastiff bitch hopped over to
me and I put my hands around her big head.
‘Got some bad news about your mate over the way
there.’
‘Oh no! Are they not coming down?’
Johnboy looked at me strangely. His wild hair
stood up on end from having just got out of bed. ‘She’s gone.’
I must have been staring. ‘Gone.’
‘They turned off her life support on Friday.’
He picked at his fingers. ‘Cerebral haemorrhage. Tuesday.’
I slumped in the nearest chair, covered my face
in my hands. In the cool afternoon, I suddenly felt feverishly hot. I took off my jacket. Johnboy
brought me a box of tissues because I must have been sobbing by then, and his
nephew brought me a coffee. I chilled, fast, and put my jacket back on.
‘Pig hunters, staying in their hut, her fella's mates, they told
me this morning,’ Johnboy said. ‘I thought you were working today. I was gonna
come and see you a bit later.’
Another dog wriggled by my side, hoping for a
pat. Johnboy and his nephew were telling me about their travesty of a vegetable
patch this season, how the potatoes were swamped and the tomatoes were only
this high. The pup had been chasing cattle.‘Have a lolly,’ John pointed to the box of sour
worms on the laminex. ‘They’re good.’ Then he talked about breaking the sand
bar out at the cut and his nephew talked about the new shockies and springs on
his car and occasionally one of them would stop and say ‘Sorry.’
I got up and took the coffee mug to the sink to
rinse out. I looked out the meshed window to the hut across the track, where
she was to be in five days’ time, with her lovely man and her two children.
Three months ago now. Her, my old friend,
standing in that doorway, with her long black hair slung over her shoulder, calling my name.
Let the water come up.
Let the water come up and I will swim around inside my house and out through the open window into a drowned forest, like a seal navigating waving halls of kelp, my eyes oiled against the sea, a single balloon of air escaping my nostrils, searching the briny-filled tree homes of black cockatoos and bees,
Sometimes I don't feel comfortable in this part of the country. Windy, hot days mostly. It is not my home ground: the high primary dunes behind the granite bosses, heath scrub sprinkled with azure scaevolas and pink pimelias. Here I keep waiting to experience 'deep nature' and it eludes me. There is always something to do, or worry at, or obsess over. The country is kept closeted with cathedrals of karri columns, and where there are no tracks, with impenetrable, luminous green karri hazel. It is extraordinarily beautiful but offers no easy congress, with its 1080 baits, blister bush and no clear view for a snake-free footstep.
On the Bloodroot track as the season changes, I see the tiger snakes and dugites, or their subtle serpentine imprints in the soft black sand. The fright sight thrills me to the soles of my feet.
After the bar broke, I walked along to the west along a vast sandy shore, an undersea country only the day before. Past the huts that no longer stood abandoned but crowded with four wheel drives and jetskis on trailers, red plastic drums of fuel lined up on the gravel. I ignored all this action and walked to the shore, looking out to The Cut, where the sand bar had held the inlet away from the sea until yesterday.
The yellow sand I walked upon rippled with water sculpture. Trees previously submerged a metre or so up their trunks now stood high and dry, their gnarled root systems exposed by the worrying wind waves during the winter months. I crossed a creek shining peacock blue with the oil of tea tree and climbed a rocky outcrop. A car coughed into life behind me.
On the other side of the rocks lay a huge golden beach that wasn't there yesterday, studded with short peeling paperbarks. An undersea Port Royal born in the night and revealed again to the sky.
There was a deep stillness, as though the inlet and her entire cohort had woken shocked and sobered by the events of the previous night. Even the birds were quiet. I stepped down the sides of the largest rock worn smooth by water, its higher seams filled with small abalone shells and sticks. I wanted to be on this beach, wondrous with its undersea ripples. There was that human part of me that wanted to be the first to pluck her unblemished cherry but also, I felt like a wild thing, or more, simply a thing at the beginning of something, enmeshed like amoeba in this system.
Behind me the four wheel drive chugged over the rocky outcrop, straight up one side and down the other. Four young men, heedless, elbows out of windows, can of beer in hand. I stared and they hardly acknowledged me but the driver nodded as the Nissan's fat tyres slouched into the golden sand. The driver revved the motor and moved into third gear, spraying sand away from the tyre tracks and then they roared onto the beginning of the new world, carving donuts around the weathered paperbark trees.
