Page 20 of The Sirens

19

LUCY

FRIDAY, 15 FEbrUARY 2019

A hand on her shoulder, milk-sour breath on her face.

Lucy flinches, her body jerking backwards. She gropes behind her, reaching into the stream for a rock, something that she can use as a weapon.

But her fingers brush carpet, then the cool of a tiled floor. She opens her eyes to find a man – young, with a lanyard and round, rimless glasses – staring down at her. Sun pours through a skylight, gilding his ears and nose.

The space comes into focus. The rows of desks, the book-lined walls. The humming computers. There’s a pause in the air, as if the room has taken a collective breath. Heads crane over screens, around shelves. A dozen pairs of eyes are trained on her.

‘Take it easy,’ says the man, his hand tight on her shoulder. ‘My colleague’s calling an ambulance now.’

‘Ambulance?’ For a moment the word feels foreign in her mouth; she has to dredge up its meaning. Then, a hot surge of shame in her cheeks. ‘No, please – I’m fine, really.’

She shifts away from his hand, climbs giddily to her feet. The light is so blinding in the room, she doesn’t understand how anyone can bear it. She grips the computer desk for support, nudging the mouse so that the screen flickers into life. The Naiad ’s passenger manifest is still open on her screen.

Eliza Kissane

Mary Kissane

‘Really, I have to insist,’ the man is saying. ‘You collapsed – I saw it myself. It’s a health and safety issue, we have a duty of care …’

‘I’m fine,’ she says, her pulse fizzing. She shuts down the computer, shoves her notebook into her bag and slings it onto her shoulder. ‘Forgot to eat lunch. I’ll get a sandwich from somewhere.’

‘Look, could you just—’

‘Thanks for your help,’ she says, pushing past him. She stumbles into a run, her sneakers slapping against the marble floors, dozens of eyes on her but she doesn’t care. She passes the reception desk, the metal detectors, and bursts out of the foyer and into the bright heat of the day.

She cringes away from the sun, her breathing ragged. Her backpack knocks painfully against her spine. It is after 5 p.m., she realises vaguely. She hasn’t eaten since that morning, but the thought of food brings only nausea.

Their names loop through her mind, a sick mantra.

Eliza Kissane. Mary Kissane.

She is walking back down George Street; a tram shudders past. Shopfronts blare. Her legs are moving almost of their own accord, and it’s not until she sees the concrete sweep of the railway line that she realises where she’s headed.

She passes Circular Quay station with its tourists and icecream vendors, its prowling seagulls. At the railings, she leans her elbows on the rusted iron. A ferry horn blasts, water lapping at the yellow and green boat. On her right, the white sails of the Opera House; on her left, the elegant curve of the bridge.

But Lucy doesn’t see any of this.

Instead, she stares into the water, the shifting mirror of it. The light sparkles on its surface, belying its murky depths. A slick of rubbish, an ice-cream wrapper, a bloated chip, the flotsam and jetsam of modern life.

Lucy imagines broken pieces of history lodged in the harbour’s seabed. The green glass of a rum bottle, a rusted length of chain. The cracked halves of oyster shells.

The present is nothing more than a tide, drawing away from her.

Could they have lived, Mary and Eliza? Did they survive the shipwreck, make their way somehow to Sydney Town, eke out a life on its newly cobbled streets? Did they change their names, leave their origins behind in the Naiad ’s rusting hulk? Or did they die there, their bones long dispersed into tiny grains of sand?

She takes a breath, sucking in the briny air. In a buried room of her mind, there is a recognition that the sea is calming her, is slowing the pound of her heart. The nearness of the water is a balm. Why is it that her body seeks out the thing that would hurt it?

Eliza and Mary must have lived, they must have survived. Mary, at the very least. Long enough to bear children, to pass her memories down the centuries with her genes, to fill Lucy’s brain with ghosts.

But then she thinks of Jess’s journal.

I’m worried that one day, I’ll get caught in the dream. And I’ll drown with them.

Had Jess seen an ending that Lucy has not yet reached?

The dreams – or memories – are beginning to slot together now, like beads on a necklace. She thinks of a rosary, the wooden beads worn to silk by many hands, the click of them through her fingers. But she has never held a rosary, has never said a Hail Mary in her life. This is not her memory.

Another ferry is departing; the horn blasts through Lucy’s thoughts, pulls her back to Sydney Harbour, 2019. She lifts a hand to her neck. The skin there feels bruised, tender.

She checks her phone: 5.20 p.m. Her bus leaves in half an hour.

She doesn’t know how any of it fits together. Jess. The missing men. Mary and Eliza.

But she now feels certain that the answer is in Comber Bay.