The Burial Read online

  But when Aoife caught sight of Septimus at the window, backlit by a fire, his hair sticking on end, she raised her fist to him, and then she slipped. She fell backwards into the washtub and as she did a contraction seized her. When it passed, her legs and neck and arms went limp and she hung over the tub like some overwatered plant.

  Septimus watched as Mrs Peel disappeared and returned again, her arms full of candles and lanterns. She set them all around Aoife’s feet, exclaiming, None of God’s creatures shall be born in the dark! She went about lighting them like a zealot.

  Aoife had begun writhing and screaming, Get it out! Get it out! And as she writhed a wave of water spilt out of the tub and collected the candles and the lanterns and put them all out.

  Mrs Peel tried to hold down Aoife’s legs but they were splitting around her like scissors in the dark. Aoife did not want the child inside of her and she did not want it out. Septimus clutched his heart and cast his eyes skyward. He saw Centaurus there, marking his bow, and the Southern Cross sparkling like some talisman around an upturned neck. He thought at least the beauty of it augured well.

  In no time, as this was Aoife’s fourth, Septimus heard a trembling wail.

  He jumped up, ran to his furnace, thought to put the fire out, changed his mind, caught his shirt on the tin of the door, freed himself, then sprinted across the lawn. He took the child in his arms and Mrs Peel cut the umbilical cord and then they wrapped my mother in a cloth.

  A daughter, said Septimus, leaning down to Aoife to show her.

  You take care of her, said Aoife. I just want to sleep.

  Mrs Peel helped Aoife inside and Septimus stepped out onto the lawn, my mother curled against his chest. He kissed her damp head and held her above him. She cried and then her little face, still crinkled by the passage of birth, opened up. Septimus saw it as he felt it then: Centaurus drawing his bow among other constellations and firing an arrow straight into his heart. He held my mother and he knew he could never, in all the world, love another trembling creature so much.

  Years later, when my mother asked him what stars he saw on the morning of her birth, he could not describe them. He would only say, Darling, there were constellations wrapped in the visible sky and the sky below the horizon, and they were all spinning by some force and design. There was a carnival, a parade, on the day you were born and it was spinning around the poles of the universe.

  And although Septimus did know what he saw in the visible sky (an archer, a bow sent forth), with his own passage through life he had begun to believe more that there was no design in it at all—that the stars themselves were just nebulae visible but indistinct to each other, silhouettes shifting against other luminous matter.

  But he did not want to tell that to his daughter.

  WITH HER GAZE fixed on the mountains, my mother rode all day. Her eyes grew hot and her neck felt too weak to hold her head. Yellow grass streamed endlessly beneath her and she did all she could not to slip sideways into it.

  She was losing blood. It soaked into her trousers and the thick skin of her saddle. On the brink of passing out, she lay against the neck of her horse. He was a dam of hot and cold and the feeling was not like riding, it was like sinking and sinking was her fear. She fixed her back like a steel beam and faced the distance.

  There was so much distance.

  The mountains seemed further away now than ever and as she tried to focus on the sharp edges of the cliffs where they cut into the sky, they shifted like an unsteady backdrop, one way then another. The sun was full and bleaching and nothing was solid.

  She rode on.

  She held herself upright for as long as she could. But even her determination was not enough. Soon she fell against her horse’s back and dropped the reins completely.

  Houdini, a stallion, a Waler, moved easily from a gallop to a long-striding walk, and the weight of my mother across his back was enough to balance her. He turned east towards the thin arc of river and did not falter from his even step until he reached its bank. Then he shook her from his back and she fell onto the sand.

  Hitting the sand she came to. She did not know where she was. She could see Houdini drinking from a part of the river she did not recognise and edged her way to it, put her mouth against it and drank the water until it revived her. She had enough energy then to peel off her sand-encrusted trousers and turn them over to the shallows. Red clouds bloomed out.

  My mother was not one to say Oh dear or Oh my. She was one to say Fuck. And often. It was a word she had finetuned in prison. Half naked by the river, looking down between her legs, that was what she said: Fuck, Houdini. I’ve gone and bled a trail.

  There is never a good day to die. And you’ll see my mother was not the quitting kind. But there is courage in blood and she had lost so much of it. She did not have the strength to get back on her horse.

  To the north of her were the shifting cliffs and ridges of the mountains. Even if she could have ridden solidly, just to get to the base of the first rise of the mountain range was a whole day’s ride. Beside her was the river. If she rolled herself into it and floated down, it would deliver her directly back to where she had come from, the place to which she could not return. Above her was the clearest, bluest sky with no cloud or apparition and it seemed to be sinking down upon her. She covered her face against it.

  Fuck, Houdini was the best assessment.

  YOU MIGHT LIKE to think of your own mother knitting blankets expanding outwards in all colours while you were in her womb. Or at worst vomiting into buckets. On the eve of my birth, my mother concertinaed my father while I lay inside her. Six foot, eight inches. She brought him down with the blunt side of an axe.

  I was still two moons off by her measure. Already I was large and awkward enough inside her that I was breaking her sleep a couple of times in the night with my knee or my elbow wedged into her bladder.

  Eve of my birth I was wide awake, listening to a thrumming sound that I knew was not the sound of her heart. I stretched out and woke her. Hearing the peculiar sound for herself, she lit a lantern and wound up the cloth wick to cast more light. There were two moths attached end to end and they were beating their wings like a fast-rolling drum and making dust on her pillow.

  She picked up the moths by the edge of their wings and cupped them both in her palm. She manoeuvred a shawl around her shoulders with her spare hand and shifted us all out of bed. Tiptoeing past Fitz’s room she saw his door open and his empty bed and she relaxed, walked heavy on her heels.

  The moon was just a scrape in the sky and a fog rolled around the house so she could hardly see beyond it. She stood on the veranda and threw the moths into the air and she was surprised they did not fly but just dropped to the ground, stuck together, their wings still beating.

  Even with the fog, the air was warm with the turning season and she felt herself being drawn into it. She was barefoot but her feet were hardened and they were as warm in the dirt as they had been in bed. She ran her hand over the great mound that was me and she pulled up her nightgown and squatted and pissed.

  She preferred squatting on the ground to the humiliation of carrying the bedpan past Fitz in the morning. When he was not there, it was her small act of defiance; over the years she had encircled the whole house with her piss, one piss at a time, and she wondered if he would ever pay enough attention to his surrounds to actually smell it. Imagine what he would do then.

  Squatting down in the fog was like squatting in a cloud and the cloud stretched around her. She realised it was more comfortable for her to squat than to stand and she rested there for a while, rocking on her haunches. She felt a drop of water on her face and wondered if the fog was dissolving but then there were heavier drops on her arms and her legs and the far-off sound of a storm breaking.

  She pulled down her nightdress and reached the veranda just before the rain began to pour down. She looked for the moths on the ground. They were gone or she could not see them.

  Her thoughts turned to Fi
tz. They were not thoughts motivated by concern for him but more the mounting concern she had for herself and for me inside her. At this hour, every minute that he was not there was a minute he was growing drunker. And no matter how far gone he was, when he returned to the house he may yet have saved a parcel of fury for her.

  She went inside and rocked from foot to foot by the stove. The light from the fire did not reach the edges of the room and she thought that was a good thing. There was only more dust there and bad feeling. In front of her was the same scene she had looked at for four years or more and it did not please her. It had never pleased her. A rough-hewn table with a bench seat on either side and two wooden chairs at each end, and the ominous opening to the cellar, into which Fitz had thrown her too many times to remember. There was nothing else in the room but another fireplace she had only seen lit half a dozen times and two raggedy armchairs.

  The armchairs were dead weights and they faced each other. One was narrower than the other and Fitz had designated this one to be hers. It had always looked like a trap to her: so low to the ground, so tall at the sides, and it tilted back in such a way that you could not get out of it easily. The fabric was brown and gold, a pattern of leaves twisting around flowers and flowers twisting around vines, and she could still recall the uneasy feeling of when she first sat in it.

  Jessie had just turned twenty-three when, in October 1917, she met Fitz. She was to be his apprentice, breaking in horses for the war and occasionally serving as his domestic. She knew nothing about housekeeping. Every woman vying to leave prison listed housekeeping in her file, regardless of whether she had ever kept a clean house or lived in one. But my mother insisted on listing horse-breaker instead of domestic because it was the work she knew how to do. Although it was a coveted skill—and one Fitz was looking for—she was discouraged from listing her other significant talent, horse-stealing, as it was the thing that had landed her in gaol in the first place.

  As a condition of her release she had to accept an offer of employment, and Fitz’s offer, as it was outlined to her, seemed to be the best by far. It was the only offer that would not have seen her working for salt in some inner-city terrace, lace upon her head, cleaning up another family’s mess or running after another woman’s children. She thought she had escaped some terrible fate.

  On the day of her release, she waited for Fitz with a warden on the sunny side of the sandstone wall of the prison. She clutched her small bag of belongings. It contained a clean shirt, two pairs of socks, a pair of men’s trousers and a dozen soaps that made the canvas bag weigh much more than it otherwise would have. The soaps were the colour of candle wax and they were carved into birds and angels and wrapped in tissue, each one a gift from the other women in prison.

  She leant on the wall and swapped the bag from arm to arm and the warden said, Nervous, Jessie? and she replied, Never!

  There was heat in the wall and more heat in the day. Her thoughts were on the soaps in her bag, the carved angels and birds, hoping that they would not melt like wax before she could get them safely to wherever she was going.

  What is the name of the place? she asked the warden. And exactly how far is it?

  The Widden Valley, he calls it, said the warden. It’s west or north-west of here. You should ask him along the way. Show your interest, Jessie. It will be a good topic of conversation.

  In the days before her release my mother had begun to look forward to the distinct seasons of life in the country. In her two years in gaol, eight seasons had apparently passed, though in her cell it just seemed like one unwavering twilight. The only things that marked a difference for her were the temperature at night, the occasional shifting angle of light on the floor and the number of cockroaches scuttling through her cell.

  But when Fitz pulled up in his cart she forgot the promise of the seasons and the soaps in her bag and everything else. He swung down and landed on the footpath in such a way that he seemed larger than both her and the warden combined. He was the most asymmetrical man she had ever seen. And he was red all over: his hands, his face, his hair. She did not know where to look and she was grateful that the warden led him away from her and into the shade to fill out one form or another while she got her bearings by the wall.

  She thought to run but resisted it. It would only lead her back to gaol. She leant down and grabbed the laces of her boots in case her feet took off without her. She said to herself, Don’t fuck it up, girl, and then she fixed her skirt, smoothed her hair and took off her jacket as beads of sweat sprang from every part of her.

  When the signing was done the warden called her over and said, Jessie, this is Fitzgerald Henry. He is your guardian now and I trust he will be a good employer. He has all the faith of the Crown.

  Jessie shook Fitz’s hand. It was rough and damp. Fitz did not say a word. He just nodded his head and then took her by the elbow and led her to the cart. She glanced at him and then the warden, and the warden waved goodbye and that was that. She was not an inmate anymore; she was an employee. So far, it felt the same.

  Fitz scooped up the reins and stared straight ahead. She looked at him again. His profile was not flattering. She chided herself: Have you learnt nothing yet? Do not judge a book by its cover. You’re not marrying the man; he’s your employer. Be grateful. This is your chance to go straight.

  Fitz used a long-handled whip on the gaskins of the horses and they lurched forward and soon he and my mother were careening through the streets of Sydney. Jessie held on to the edge of the cart and peered out.

  There was so much to take in.

  First, there was a green park which was more like a green knoll where she knew executions had happened and maybe happened still, though now women stood wearing neckties and holding painted signs saying no! and no more of our sons!, and cars were beeping, more cars than she remembered, cars competing with horses and carts, and then a tram travelling so fast it sprayed shit from the tracks all over the road and in the wake of it she forgot herself and covered her mouth with her skirt until she saw Fitz looking at her legs, so she dropped her skirt and covered her mouth with her hand instead and thought what a curious thing modesty was and what a curious thing that she still had any at all. And then she saw women and men meandering along serpentine paths and in a larger park men in army uniform, some alone, some walking hand in hand with their sweethearts around fountains.

  And then there were houses in rows. Flat-faced houses, and further, houses opened up, springing up in spaces with yards and fences between them, and she saw children, children playing with hoops and making games with chalk along the roads.

  Soon the road widened and they were travelling across a flattened field. It was so hot and dry she thought the horses would expire and she asked Fitz to stop and he said, Not until we hit the first rise and when they hit the first rise he said, Just a bit further. It was the first time they had spoken over the cacophony of noise from the cart and the horses, though she was glad she did not have to answer any questions about life in gaol or life before it.

  It was pitch-dark before Fitz pulled up at a hotel and watered the horses. He checked in at the desk and asked for a drink, but the attendant could not serve him because it was past six o’clock and Fitz said, Very well and asked for one room. She had no money to pay for her own and he knew it and she looked at him and he said, Don’t worry, I will sleep on the floor.

  That was her first night beside him.

  He snored and she stared at the ornate ceiling and even in the dark she could make out the detail though it was a strain on her eyes and soon she found sleep. Fitz woke her in the morning and said, Freshen yourself and I will wait for you outside. But she had nothing to freshen herself with except for a shallow dish of water and a hand towel in the room—not forgetting in her own canvas bag were a dozen soaps, but each one was a thing of hope and she knew they were not just hopes for her but hopes for the women themselves and she would not sacrifice any one of them. So she dampened the small towel and wiped he
rself down and she could see streaks of dirt appearing with each wipe as if she was wiping away a day, a week, a month in prison. Near the dish of water was a small vase with sprigs of rosemary. She took one and rolled the woody stem between her hands and under her arms and between her legs. The smell released. It smelt clean. She pinned up her hair and when she was done she hung the towel over a chair and pulled the blanket up over the bed. She took her bag. Fitz was waiting outside the door and he led her down to breakfast holding on to her elbow again, the keys to the room jangling from a silver hoop he had attached to his belt, just like a warden.

  Over breakfast on the terrace, she turned in the sun, one hundred and eighty degrees, and there was a basket of freshly baked rolls and two kinds of jam and tea in individual pots and she ate as many rolls as were on the table. Fitz asked again for a drink and the waiter said, I’m sorry, sir, not before eleven o’clock and Fitz said, Very well.

  Fitz drove all day and she offered to drive but he said, You don’t yet know the roads. That was true but she was not used to being a passenger and her limbs began to shake with the ceaseless motion of it and she regretted eating so many rolls because bread never agreed with her. But she said nothing more, just held on to the side of the cart and closed her eyes for a while and recalled that the furthest she had travelled in two years was twenty laps at a time around the prison yard.

  They reached the beginning of the range and the road wound around and she thought it was an ingenious feat of man to build such a road, but after a while she wondered why he did not think to build a road that went straight over the mountain and came down the other side, rather than one that went in and around bends and cliffs that seemed designed to make a traveller sick and giddy.

  Then she saw an eagle as big as a man perched on the edge of a cliff and she was sure it looked over its shoulder and into her eyes before lifting its great expanse of wings and tipping off into a great expanse of sky. She gasped at the sight of it.