I’ve still to finish your books, lambsie, the ones you don’t know about yet. Oh, when you told us you were going travelling! For a moment, my blood stopped, I swear it did. Thinking you might have plans to see the Top of the World, where the sea people come from. Your people. But you and Wendy, you have other plans. Asia—for now, that’s your wide world. India, where all the quinies wear silk.

So I’ve time before you come back. Before you decide, perhaps, to turn the other way, look to the cold north, to that other place. When I can gather the things in my heart to write this one last thing, it will be done, and I will give the books to you when you return. Will ever you read them? I canna say, but I hope.

I drink my tea, I chat to your friends, hide my ill-shaped hand under my shawl. I watch the buzz of strangers, their hugs and laughter, their tears. I promise myself I won’t embarrass you, lambsie. But when you kneel down beside this wretched contraption, your blue eyes smudged dark, your water eyes, those worry eyes that are your mother’s and I’ve not seen so much in you before … Well, they are gone, my promises.

Do you remember what it was you whispered? Not for long, Grunnie, I’ll be back by the spring. You’ll be all right, you will, won’t you?

And so I will, my Laura-lamb.

~

When you and Wendy went through the doors with your passports in your hands and we could not see you any more, when your friends waved and left for their Christmas trees, when Kathryn and Jessie slipped away to blot their patchy faces, it was just Clementina and me. She huffed into a seat beside the wheelchair and sniffed, reached across to pat my hand.

I looked at her and all those years between us, swilling back and forth like the surge of the sea.

Well, quinie, she said, here we are.

CODA

Coda

2011

FIRE

Brukie’s Sandy

That boy, that Brukie’s Sandy, he took his time drowning, as is the way of the young and the strong.

1

Laura

The gathering is small. Laura glances around her. The older we get, she thinks, the fewer there are to remember. And Aunty Jessie was so very, very old.

A drizzle of rain. Appropriate. It should rain at funerals.

She trails the procession across the rolling green lawn, long black coats, like a winter uniform, speckled with a light mist. No-one has thought to bring an umbrella. In the distance, half a dozen kangaroos disappear into a stand of wattles. This place is more like a park than a cemetery.