Page 14 of The Sirens

13

LUCY

THURSDAY, 14 FEbrUARY 2019

When dawn comes, Lucy’s eyes burn with exhaustion. She’d staved off sleep with a combination of strong coffee and mindless scrolling through the true crime sub-threads on Reddit. She’d also read more of Jess’s diary, frustrated to find no other references to sleepwalking or strange dreams, but relieved that Jess hadn’t recorded any further suspicions about her parentage.

There had been more mentions of Mr Hennessey, though. Jess had started one-to-one classes with him every week, and he’d begun teaching her art history and theory as well. Surrealism, expressionism.

Thinking of the lionfish drawing – the way it had been scrunched into a ball as if to be thrown away – Lucy feels a pang of sorrow for her father. How must it have felt, to know that Jess didn’t need his help anymore? That she had reached a level of skill that he, older, and busy with the farm, would now never obtain?

Of course, there must have been a pride in that. But it would be painful, too. She’s not surprised Jess didn’t want to tell her parents about the extra lessons. Not to mention the fact that she was spending time alone with a male teacher. Though from what Lucy has read, Jess and Mr Hennessey haven’t so much as brushed fingers exchanging tubes of paint. Maybe she was reading too much into it, her interpretation of her sister’s words coloured by her own experience with men.

Not that there’s been more than one. That’s why it hurts so much. Ben had taken more than just her dignity; he’d taken her virginity, too. Did he know, she wonders now, that it was her first time? Did he realise what it meant for her to let him see and touch her naked body – a body that, most of the time, she pretended didn’t exist?

When she’d taken that picture, she’d felt in control, like she was stepping into herself: confident and sexual. Not a girl any longer but a woman, at last. He’d woken that feeling in her, with his fingers and lips and tongue. And then he’d taken it away.

Shame and loneliness pull at her, a buckling inside, like she is collapsing in on herself. There is no one she can talk to about this. She’d tried, at first, with Em, who’d initially been sympathetic. But then she’d said: I get that he shouldn’t have shared the picture with his friends. But it’s not like he actually put it on TikTok himself, is it? I dunno, maybe you two can find a way back from this.

As if getting the guy was all that mattered. Like it would be a happy ending.

Her pain sours into anger. At Ben and Em, but at Jess, too. She was supposed to be here. She was supposed to listen, like a big sister should.

Passing through the living room, she forces herself to confront the canvas on the easel. The sisters walking into the sea towards the Naiad . The brushstrokes seem to move, transforming into the dark, leaping waves.

But it’s the hands that draw her, the way they’re interlinked. Like they’ll never let each other go.

Haunted by her discovery of the Naiad ’s sinking in 1801, Lucy spends the morning reading about convict transportation. Like every Australian, she knows the basics already – British and Irish criminals were exiled to Australia, then just a collection of colonies. She knows about Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, the eleven ships that made landfall at Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, devastating the First Nations communities that had thrived there for millennia.

But she didn’t know about that first night, after the female convicts were disembarked, when the male convicts were let loose on the women, so that shrieks and cries rang out in the dark. Or about the ‘female factories’, where men selected women convicts to be their domestic servants, or their wives.

Nor did she know about the Female Register – the document created by Reverend Samuel Marsden, the settlement’s most senior clergyman, dividing the colony’s women into either wives or concubines, depending on whether or not they were married.

Whores. That’s how these women – some of them mere girls – were seen.

Lucy’s shirt sticks to her back in the heat, her skin fizzing and cracking with sweat. At her side, her fists clench and unclench. She’s walking along Devil’s Beach, far away from the water’s edge, her sneakers slipping on the tussocks of grass that line the dunes. She can already feel the itch of sand inside her socks. It’s windy today, the water a rippling, frenzied blue. Spray licks her face and she moves closer to the road.

From here, she can just make out the corrugated roof of Cliff House, glinting through the trees on the far side of the bay. The view is dominated by Devil’s Lookout: the cragged rocks leading to the thundering sea, the winding steps. The caves like wide-open mouths.

The sight unsettles her, the story of Baby Hope still fresh in her mind. She turns away, looking for the memorial Jess photographed. She hopes that the monument will spark some realisation, some epiphany. That it will unlock some clue as to how these convict women – women who lived and died centuries ago – have infected her mind, and her sister’s, too.

She still feels that other world when she’s awake, like a phantom limb. The clammy warmth of another body at her side, the gnawing hunger in her belly. The creaking of the ship as it founders on the waves.

She blinks the sensations away, focusing on the burn in her calves, the sun so bright that it hurts her eyes.

She doesn’t see it until she’s almost upon it: the granite stone glittering in the light. There’s a park bench next to it facing the ocean, occupied by a man in a striped shirt and floppy hat. She considers turning back but he raises his arm in greeting, the sort of country wave you’d get at home. She’s curious, she realises. It might be good to meet another local. She can ask if he knows Jess, can try and get some more insight into her life here.

She nods at him as she approaches the memorial. ‘Beautiful morning,’ he says, and she smiles in agreement.

He’s slightly younger than her parents, small and wiry, a dark cowlick beneath the floppy hat. Flecks of grey in his thick eyebrows.

She turns her eyes back to the memorial, reaches out a hand to trace the letters.

The loss of approximately 100 lives.

‘Sad, isn’t it?’ the man offers.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Not a nice way to go.’

‘Might’ve been a mercy,’ he says, and she can’t help wondering if he’s right, given what would have awaited the women if they’d lived. ‘The ship’s captain was infamous. They held a parliamentary inquiry after the voyage he’d captained before. Neglected the convicts, crammed them in too closely to make room for the rum he wanted to sell along the way. Fifty died in the crossing from Ireland.’

‘You know a lot about this,’ she says, offering her biggest smile. ‘Are you the local history buff?’

He heaves himself slowly from the bench, and for the first time she sees the walking stick on the ground. Instinctively, she starts towards him to help.

‘You’re all right,’ he says, grimacing. ‘Nah, not me. My dad. He was a member of the local historical society – I mean, society’s some word for it, it was him and two other blokes. The memorial was his pet project. He liked sitting here. Passed away a couple years ago.’

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

‘Thanks,’ the man says, after a pause. Is she imagining it, or is there a glint of suspicion in his eyes? ‘I’m Ryan, by the way. You here on holiday? Not seen you around before.’

‘Lucy,’ she says, shaking the hand he offers. His palm feels weathered and calloused. ‘Yeah – sort of. I’m staying with my sister. Jess Martin, in Cliff House?’

‘Ah, of course,’ he says, a smile transforming his face. ‘Lovely Jess. Well, she must be an expert on the Naiad by now, with all her painting. I gave her one of Dad’s old files. Think he’d have liked that, one history buff inspiring another.’ He scans her face. ‘She didn’t mention a sister, but I can see the resemblance. How is she? Haven’t seen her about this week.’ She pauses. She doesn’t want to tell him that she’s gone away, that Lucy doesn’t know where she is; but she doesn’t want to lie either.

‘Um – busy, I think,’ she says, which she supposes is true. ‘Preparing for this show.’

Ryan nods.

‘ The Sirens , right? She gave me an invite. Sweet of her, but a bit difficult with my leg.’

So, Jess had invited this man to her exhibition, but not her own sister? She hadn’t even told him that she had a sister. Just like she hadn’t told Melody.

‘Do you think many people from the town will go?’ Lucy asks. If she can find out who Jess spends her time with, then maybe she can find someone who knows where she is.

Ryan’s brow furrows.

‘From the town? Her neighbour, Melody, maybe. I think they’re close. But I’d be surprised if anyone else showed up, to be honest.’

There’s an odd hesitancy to his tone. She takes a breath, decides to be bold. ‘I guess Batemans Bay is a long way to travel for an art show.’

Though they both know it isn’t, not really. It’s only half an hour away.

Something shadows Ryan’s eyes.

‘I think it’s more the subject matter than the distance, if you know what I mean.’

Lucy is surprised. ‘Because it’s about the shipwreck? But that was hundreds of years ago. And they put up this memorial, didn’t they?’

Ryan adjusts his hat, looks out to sea and sighs.

‘Let’s just say that the memorial was … controversial. People are a little superstitious, around here. There are some funny stories connected to the Naiad . And then to have an out-of-towner come in, staying in Cliff House and wanting to dredge everything up … you can see how it would get people’s backs up. Locals don’t want reminders of that stuff.’

‘What stuff? What stories?’

Ryan puffs out his cheeks.

‘I’m not saying I believe it. But I know people who say they’ve heard it, standing on the beach at night.’ He pauses, looks back at her. ‘Voices, coming from the waves. Women’s voices.’

She remembers now that this was mentioned in the first episode of the podcast. Some townspeople believe that there’s a supernatural explanation for the disappearances , the host had said, scepticism barely disguised . Two hundred years ago, a ship was wrecked on the reef off the bay’s coast. The more superstitious locals say that if you stand on the beach at night, you can hear the voices of the drowned, carrying over the waves …

It had been one thing hearing that in her car, miles and miles away from Comber Bay itself. Before she knew about the Naiad , before she’d connected the shipwreck with her dreams. But it feels different now, standing on this cliff, the blue turmoil of the waves below.

She swallows. Lucy understands the mindset of small towns, the mythology that a community weaves like cloth. A story repeated so many times that every local knows where to draw breath in the telling. Dawes Plain has its own ghosts. She thinks of the abandoned gold mine near the reservoir, the kids who say you can still hear the echo of metal on rock, even though the mine’s been closed for a century.

She’d never believed the stories. But that was before. ‘Look,’ he says, mistaking her expression for one of incredulity. ‘I was a fisherman, here, a couple lifetimes ago. I never heard women’s voices out there at sea. But I assume you know the town’s history. That’s why people come here. Bloody tragedy tourists.

‘Eight men over almost four decades. And yeah, maybe some of those men drowned. Maybe there’s some natural explanation. But I know that water like the back of my hand, and I never saw anything like a whirlpool. All I’ve got is my senses. My ears, my eyes, you know? And I’ve seen things myself that I can’t forget. That, all these years later, I can’t explain.’

Something darkens his face as his gaze drifts back to the water. She waits for him to continue, her confidence returning. She’s good at this, navigating the terrain of a conversation. Knowing when to push, when to ease off. People like to reveal themselves to Lucy. Girls with drunk, glittering eyes at house parties, whispering about the boys they want, the lies they’ve told. If you create a silence, people want to fill it.

Funny. For the first time, it occurs to her that this – listening, asking the right questions – is a skill she shares with her mother.

Sure enough, Ryan takes a breath. ‘My dad used to say, the sea gives, but it also takes . Exactly the sort of thing an old fisherman would say, I know. But it’s true.’

Lucy wonders if she’s imagined the catch of tears in his voice, but when she glances up she sees his eyes are shining. ‘Sorry,’ he smiles sadly, catching her looking. ‘It’s hard, remembering. Dad was in a nursing home in Moruya. I was working in the mines, down in Broken Hill, before my accident, and so I didn’t see him as much as I should have. And by the time I moved back – well, let’s just say he was pretty far gone.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lucy says.

‘It’s all right,’ he says softly. ‘I just wish I’d been here more. Tried to understand him. He loved it here, even after everything that happened. Anyway,’ he sighs, ‘that’s my reflection done for the day.’

‘I’d better get back, too,’ Lucy says quietly. ‘But it was nice to meet you, Ryan …’

‘Smith,’ he says. ‘Ryan Smith.’

It’s only as she’s walking back towards the house, following the spine of the cliffs, that she remembers where she’s heard the name before. Ryan Smith is the brother of Daniel Smith, who disappeared in 1981.

And he was on the fishing boat that discovered Baby Hope.

The sea gives, but it also takes.