Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page i the alph abet of l igh t a nd da rk Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page ii DANIELLE WOOD was born in Hobart in 1972. She has a degree in English from the University of Tasmania and is completing a PhD in creative writing through Edith Cowan University. She has worked as a journalist in Hobart, Perth and Broome. The Alphabet of Light and Dark is her first novel. Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page iii bet of light a alpha nd da the rk Danielle Wood Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page iv First published in 2003 Copyright © Danielle Wood 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory board. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Wood, Danielle, 1972– . The alphabet of light and dark. ISBN 1 74114 065 X. I. Title. A823.4 Set in 11/15.5pt Caslon by Asset Typesetting Pty Ltd Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page v For John and the seagull Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page vi Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page 1 1982 Cape Bruny lmost dusk, fish-catching time. But Essie has left the A hooks of her handline bare. They are silver and shining, suspended in dark glassy green. On the sea floor an octopus attaches itself to her sinker like a drawstring purse. She tows it slowly to the surface, where it lets go in a pulse of indigo. Her grandfather reaches into a metal bucket, half full of the half-moons of dead flathead, their bodies webbed with mucus. He lays out a fish on a board filmy with clotted blood and runs a flat blade up its white belly.Then he flips the fish over and slides the blade up the back, slicing off a folded fan of spines. His knife twists and severs the backbone. To finish, he stabs the fish through the centre of its map-of-Tasmania head and tears the translucent flesh out of the skin with a fork. ‘Thirty-nine he was when he went to the lighthouse. Not a great age by any means, but he already had the look of an old man …’ Essie hears him without listening. She’s heard the Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page 2 Danielle Wood story of his own grandfather a thousand times before, and knows she will hear it a thousand times more in her life. Her bare heels beat a soft rhythm where they hang against the powder-white hull of the yacht. ‘… shrunken as a salted Yarmouth herring, as if so many years at sea had left him pickled …’ Often her grandfather’s stories wash over her. It’s as if there’s water in her ears and the words float on it, half heard. ‘… lost the better part of his voice in an illness, and a skipper’s not a skipper with no voice to shout “clew up the forecourse” over the top of a howling gale …’ The triangle of a fish head lands on the water beyond the stern. It’s like a kite trailing streamers of guts and raspy skin. Gulls squabble. Essie observes instead the soft bristling fair hairs on her legs and arms. Her ankles have grown beyond the frayed cuffs of her jeans and the skin is covered with small scales of sea salt. ‘… his whole life over again. Thirty-nine years, he lived here.’ Her eyes skim the still water, climb the corroded pillars of the cliff face up to the lighthouse — its white surface bright in the horizontal light of the late sun — and then return to the patch of water framed between her feet. From the corner of her eye she sees him draw the blade of his knife across the fabric of his trousers, leaving behind a cluster of scales. He pushes the blade into a canvas scabbard edged with the vees of his neat glove stitch. The Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page 3 The Alphabet of Light and Dark galley of his yacht is hung with many such scabbards and pouches and Essie likes to think that it is within them that he keeps his stories, tucked down inside with whittled knife blades and oilstones impregnated with years of spit. He looks at her now with that look he sometimes has, with the sad little fold of skin that puckers up between his eyes. When he looks at her like this, she knows he is thinking that her face is like her mother’s. And sometimes she will see the fold twist itself into a knot, and she knows what that means, too.That he’s seen drift across her face an expression belonging to her father. Sometimes he even says it. You look like your father when you do that. And the disapproval stings like salt. But she does it anyway, presses her lips together into a straight line and blinks, slowly, her eyes perfectly still, keeping the lids closed for just a heartbeat too long. She knows that he sees her father also in her strong legs, growing so long now. She knows that he wishes he could tear that part out of her. Her grandfather calls himself Pop to her, but in her mind she calls him by his first name, Charlie. Charlie singes her waist-length hair with a hair drier held too close if she looks like going outside with it slightly damp. He winds her about with scarves, duffles her in coats, suffocates her in his great, woolly,overbearing love. She submits to all of this, patiently, because she knows that the best love is rough sometimes, and scratchy against the skin. ••• Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page 4 Danielle Wood ‘Catchin’ anything darlin’?’ She shakes her head. ‘No? Mustn’t be holding your mouth right.’ He pulls his face into a stupid grin as he flings the other line over the side, baited with thick discs of fish- flesh. And then he’s reeling in, hand over hand, a sandy fish shimmying in the strange thinness of air. He laughs his big laugh, his great big guffaw which comes out with spittle and all. He has to drag the back of his hand over his chin to wipe it off. ‘Got to hold your mouth right, lass.’ She stares at the fish on her grandfather’s hook. Its concertina gills pump a panicked rhythm. She wonders if the fishes left behind, the ones still in the water, are sad for its loss. Charlie and Essie go away together on Kittywitch often, but this is the first time that they have come as far south as the lighthouse. Earlier today he showed her the curve of Lighthouse Bay on a chart, explaining how the cape would shelter them from the wind this night. The chart was not like other maps. All the contours and markings were given to the sea, and the land was a feature- less expanse of pale yellow. She had traced with her finger the outline of the island, inscribing its two halves, the narrow join of the isthmus between them, the heel of the peninsula where the lighthouse kept watch. She studied the chart and saw the truth of it. On the Final Pages 14/5/2003 14/5/03 3:07 PM Page 5 The Alphabet of Light and Dark island there had once been a triangle-shaped house made of wood, with a family that had a mother as well as a father. But now, just like on the chart, her memories are fading into blankness. I am an island too, she thinks. Half her life she has lived without words, with a blue moat of silence all around her. Charlie’s knife comes back out of the scabbard and the last fish, still alive, squirms on the board as the silvery tip goes through the thin resin of its skull. Charlie scrapes and cuts and slices. There is the crunch of spine. His hands are covered with nicks and blood and scabs on old wounds. Essie looks away, to the shore, comparing the out- line of Bruny the way it had looked on the chart with the huddled-beast shapes of its headlands. Looking at the island makes her feel strange, almost like the bottom of her stomach has fallen out.