Page 36 of The Sirens

35

JESS

MONDAY, 11 FEbrUARY 2019

Jess lifts a hand to her neck, feeling the race of her pulse beneath her skin. Slowly, the room comes into focus. The grey light moving through the billowing curtains, the cat curled at the end of her bed.

What has woken her? Have they come for her, at last?

The digital clock on her bedside table reads 6 a.m. Outside, there is the rush of the tide against the shore, but no other sound.

She sighs, flopping back against her pillows.

It has been six months since she bought Cliff House, six months since she packed the meagre contents of her life into her old Ford and made the journey down from Sydney. The house had stood mostly empty for forty years, the realtor said: the man who’d bought it in 1982 had tried to turn it into a holiday let, and the couple he’d sold it to in 2001 had tried and failed to do the same. The damp, he explained, and the noise. The wind, coming off the sea. It unsettled people, kept them up at night. He hoped she was a heavy sleeper.

She had spent the first two weeks clearing the place out: the house clearly held an allure for local teenagers, and Jess had filled a dozen garbage bags with sticky beer cans and pizza boxes. At some stage, part of the floor had caved in, but Jess couldn’t afford to repair it – the purchase had taken all her savings – and so she’d covered it with a tarp that now filled and slackened with the breeze. She’d planned to remove the wallpaper, but had thought better of it after one section revealed a forest of mould.

But at least the house was clean now. She had half hoped to find some of her parents’ things, but the realtor told her that any remaining items – those that were not stolen – would have been thrown away, or else put into storage. The scratched dining table is, as far as she knows, all that remains of them. Of the life from which they’d fled.

They hadn’t wanted her to come back. Her mother had cried on the phone, her father swearing in the background.

‘What good will it do to go back there?’ her mother had said.

‘I can’t explain it,’ she’d said. ‘It’s just something I need to do.’

For the first few weeks, she’d barely slept, sitting on the back veranda at night and watching the waves, listening and waiting. The dreams had returned, lifting her hopes, but when she was awake she heard nothing, only the rush and roar of the sea.

And so she decided to paint them, the women. As if to let them know that she was there. That she was ready. It would be the opposite of an exorcism. A summoning.

She had intended to avoid the townspeople, to avoid starting new friendships. Though she had sought out Ryan, about whom she’d long been curious. He had been on the Marlin that day, thirty-seven years ago. She wondered if he recognised her; whether he saw a flicker of the infant she’d been in her adult face, though if he had, he’d given no sign of it. Mostly she’d kept to herself, alone but for Dora, the stray who’d nosed her way inside the house in Jess’s first week of living there and then refused to leave.

She hadn’t counted on Melody, her shopkeeper neighbour. One morning in September, her least favourite month, she’d gone to the store to buy tuna (for Dora) and a bottle of wine (for herself). This would be the third bottle of wine in as many days. Two days previously, she’d bought a postcard for Lucy in a hungover haze, and later, at dusk, walked down to the postbox, drunk on Chardonnay and memory. Already, she regretted sending it.

‘You all right, love?’ Melody had asked when Jess paid, counting out the coins in her hand (Melody suffered neither fools nor card machines).

‘Fine, sorry,’ Jess had sniffed, attempting a smile. ‘Bit of a funny day today.’

‘Yeah? Why’s that?’

Jess had felt the full glare of Melody’s curious gaze, bright as a searchlight. She looked around her, even though she knew the store was empty.

‘An anniversary of something.’

‘Ah,’ Melody had nodded, placing the change in Jess’s palm like a gift. ‘I’m sorry. Someone close?’

Jess realised the woman thought she was talking about a death.

She’d thought no more about the conversation until later that evening, when Melody had appeared on her doorstep cradling an enormous ceramic dish which turned out to contain lasagne, a bottle of wine tucked under one arm.

‘Soakage,’ she’d said, stepping inside.

In the end they’d had the entire bottle, Jess talking more than she had in weeks. Melody knew a lot about art, had even done a bit of sketching here and there. They talked about their favourite artists: Cossington Smith and Namatjira (Melody); Werefkin, Carrington and Kahlo (Jess).

‘I like that,’ Melody had said, nodding at the canvas on the easel.

‘Thanks,’ Jess had said, feeling a flush of pride, followed by the familiar vulnerability, a sense of being exposed. ‘It’s not finished, though.’ She thought she’d captured the sea quite well: the shimmering hues that changed depending on the time of year, even the time of day. Aqua and violet and green and pink. She was happy, too, with the movement of it; the muscular waves, the bursts of spray that almost seemed to touch your face. It was the figures she couldn’t get quite right. She’d spent most of the previous day mixing paint with all manner of materials: beeswax paste, even sand. But still, the texture of the skin – those iridescent scales – eluded her.

The failure haunted her. For it meant the painting was unfinished, that she hadn’t captured them. This, she reasoned, must be why they stayed away.

‘Who are they?’ Melody had asked, and Jess felt the conversation being pulled in the direction she’d been avoiding, inevitable as the tide.

‘Well, one is me,’ Jess said slowly, and as she spoke the words she realised that, in a way, they were true. She’d started painting one thing and ended up painting something else entirely. ‘And the other is …’

She paused.

‘It’s all right,’ Melody said, leaning forward to refill Jess’s glass. ‘You don’t have to say. I understand. I’ve lost people, too.’

Jess didn’t know how to explain it. How gaining someone could also mean losing them.

Now, as she watches pale morning light bloom through the window, she remembers what Melody told her the last time they’d seen each other. Her friend had seemed in a strange mood: she’d eaten less and drunk more than usual. A few times, Jess caught the twitching of her mouth, the muscles of her throat working, as if they were trying to push something free.

‘Is something wrong?’ she’d asked, and that was all it had taken for Melody to talk. It had been hard to hear about the cave. The cold slime of the rocks digging into her friend’s back, the lap of the sea. It had been hard to listen, hard not to remember.

Funny to think that they were linked by that place. That they had both lain on those sharp rocks and felt their lives change forever.

But still, Jess hadn’t been able to tell Melody the truth. Just as she still hasn’t been able to visit the cave. Perhaps if Lucy were here with her, she might be braver. She might lead her down the rocky steps, their hands clasped – just like the painting – and show her.

But of course, Lucy is not here.

She thinks back to the phone conversation she’d had with her mother on Lucy’s eighteenth birthday. The deadline they’d set all those years ago – the deadline for telling the truth – had finally arrived.

‘It bothers me, this idea she has of being a journalist,’ her mother had said. ‘I worry – about what it might lead to.’

I’m worried she’ll discover the truth.

‘If she thinks being a journalist will make her happy, then she should do it,’ Jess had said. And then, more quietly: ‘I want her to be happy.’

And she did. She wanted that more than anything.

‘So do I. Which leads me on to …’ Her mother took a deep breath. ‘I know we said we’d tell her, once she turned eighteen. But I’m scared, Jess. I’m scared of how she’ll take this. What it will do to her.’

Jess had said nothing. She was sitting on the balcony of the tiny flat she rented in Sydney’s inner west. The flat that Lucy had visited, not so many months ago. It was dusk, and flying foxes swooped low overhead. The faint meow of a cat carried from the rubbish bins below. Suddenly, Jess longed for something – someone – to hold on to.

‘I see,’ Jess had said. ‘OK. Well. You’re her mother, really. You know what’s best.’

‘Jess—’ her mother protested.

‘It’s fine,’ Jess had said, even as the emptiness spread through her body. ‘It’s what’s best for Lucy, isn’t it?’ She paused. ‘Can I ask one thing, though?’

‘Of course, sweetheart. Anything at all. And darling, you’re her mother. You always will be. We don’t have to decide anything right now. All I’ve ever wanted is to make this easier for you. For both of you.’

‘Then let her be happy,’ Jess had said. ‘Let her study journalism, let her do whatever she wants. Just, please. Let her be happy.’

‘Oh, sweetheart—’ ‘I’ve got to go, Mum.’

And then, Christmas: the little farmhouse smelling of plum pudding and her parents’ fear. Lucy, sitting there cross-legged, scratching absent-mindedly at a silvered patch of skin on her knee. A fork in one hand, her phone in the other, eyes wide as she read out excerpts of the New York Times piece on Harvey Weinstein to their parents. Jess leaned against the kitchen counter, keeping herself separate. If Lucy noticed this, she said nothing.

‘Guys – listen to this,’ Lucy had said, before reading out a quote. ‘Fuck, this would make a good podcast. That’s what I want to do, I think. Make podcasts.’

Her cheeks were flushed, her short hair sticking up from her scalp in gold bristles. Her whole body seemed to thrum with the future. It shone from her like light.

And suddenly, with searing clarity, Jess saw that her mother was right. To tell Lucy now – it might destroy all those hopes and plans, all those dreams for the future. If Lucy knew that the story of her life was a lie, she might lose her passion for seeking the truth.

And Jess couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t take that away from her.

After all, she’d felt such anger, such betrayal, when she’d stumbled on her own truth all those years ago. Anger at the facade of a life her parents had so carefully constructed. But now, looking at Lucy’s innocent, ignorant face, she finally understood their choice. Now, she had her own facade to maintain.

It was then that she thought of Cliff House and wondered who owned it. Whether there was a way she could go back there, back to where it had all begun. Perhaps by understanding where she came from, she’d be able to bear it: letting Lucy go.

And perhaps she’d hear it again. The women’s voices, calling to her. That sweet sound of belonging.

Her phone buzzes, and she frowns as she picks it up from the bedside.

There’s a missed call notification from Cameron, and a voicemail.

Why would he be calling her? They haven’t seen each other for months – not since before she left Sydney, at the same hotel where they’d had their first meeting, after running into each other at a gallery. It had been ten years, then, since the art room in Dawes Plain, since he’d stroked the skin on her knuckles like it – like she – was beautiful.

She didn’t tell him what had happened after he left. He seemed to understand that anything that had transpired in that time was off limits. A sealed part of her.

From there, they met every few months – less regularly, after his marriage, his children. He’d call her from a private number, so that she couldn’t call back and surprise him at an inconvenient time. Mostly, everything was arranged via one of those apps that automatically deleted messages after six minutes. It felt like they were spies.

Jess wasn’t sure exactly why she did it. Sometimes, she wondered if perhaps she was trying to travel back in time, to unravel their knotted history.

She sucks in a breath and plays the voicemail.

‘Jessie,’ he says, and she flinches at the old nickname, the reach for familiarity. ‘I’m in a bit of trouble, babe. A misunderstanding at work. Nothing that won’t sort itself out, with a bit of time. Anyway – look, I’d like to see you. Be good to get away for a bit. Reconnect.’ Another breath. Jess can hear that he’s driving: there’s the tick of the indicator, the whoosh of another vehicle passing. ‘I’ll come to you, see the new place – Malua Street, isn’t it? Probably stop overnight somewhere, so be with you tomorrow. All right. Ta for now, love.’

Jess types Cameron’s name into Google, dread already pooling in her gut. For a moment, she’s reassured by the lack of results, but then she searches Marsden College , where he’s just been promoted to head of the art department. There’s an article from the Sydney Morning Herald , published yesterday.

Protests rock school after allegations.

The letters on the screen blur together, forming impossible, inevitable words.

Allegation of sexual assault.

She thinks of what happened between them, all those years ago. The memory of it – his hands, his mouth – has been buried under more recent encounters. Now, she tries to focus in on it, and all she can remember is asking: Would you? Hurt me, I mean.

And his answer. No.

Had it been assault, what he did?

You were old enough , she tells herself, and the words have the rhythm of mantra, something she’s said to herself before. So this doubt has been there, all along.

She’d been almost seventeen – a young woman – and he’d been just twenty-four. Seven years separated them. What’s seven years? It’s hardly more than the age gap between her parents.

But she’d been a particularly vulnerable young woman. Insecure, confused and reeling. She’d just learned that she was adopted, that her home was not her home. That the two most important adults in her life – her parents – had lied to her.

All she had wanted was someone to look up to. Someone she could trust, who would make everything better.

You were old enough.

But she wasn’t, was she? Not for any of it.

The memories – the memories of the worst year of her life, the memories she tries so hard to tamp down – rise to the surface.

The time in the Sydney hospital. The hushed voices outside the room, the click of pens and the rustling of paperwork. Her parents in their Sunday best, kissing her on the forehead before departing to a courthouse that, in Jess’s mind, imposed on the landscape like a castle. Her parents asking who the father was; her mother saying that Max had told her about the teacher, and that if Jess would let her, she would contact the police, the new school he taught at, anyone who would listen. She would make him pay. Jess had said nothing. Her father had placed a hand on her shoulder and Jess had turned away to face the wall.

She remembers the thin wash of watercolour on paper, her frustration that she could never capture the cave as it had looked, as it had felt. The dreams dwindled, along with her milk.

Around Lucy, she had felt frozen with fear, the social worker’s words ringing in her mind.

Your actions placed your child at risk of serious harm.

She began to wonder if she was cursed, if being abandoned had broken something fundamental inside of her, had made her unworthy of being Lucy’s mother. She was frightened to go near her daughter, frightened that her touch would hurt her, infect her in some way.

When she did try to hold Lucy, her arms shook, as if they no longer recognised her weight.

Back in Dawes Plain, she had hidden in the dark of her bedroom, like an animal burrowing away to die. Lucy’s cries had echoed through the house, Jess’s body aching in answer. Lucy slept in her parents’ bedroom. Jess covered her head with the duvet so that she couldn’t hear her mother’s coo as she lifted Lucy from the cot, or the lullaby she sang as she gave her a bottle.

While her mother crooned twinkle twinkle little star , Jess whispered her own lullaby into her pillow.

I sang you to sleep, and I robbed you of wealth

And again I’m a maid on the shore

When even this hurt too much, Jess reached for the new Walkman her father had left outside her bedroom door. The old one had been lost to Cliff House, along with the schoolbag that contained her journal. He had put a CD in there for her – Nick Cave’s album The Good Son . One of the tracks was called ‘Lucy’, a song she listened to again and again. She wondered what her father meant by this. Perhaps it was a rebuke, a reminder that her baby daughter needed her. Or perhaps he was saying that he understood: that he knew Jess would love Lucy forever, just like the song said, and that until Jess was ready to show that love – to care for her child – he would do it for her.

‘Stay,’ her parents said when she told them she’d enrolled at the College of Fine Arts, only a semester later than originally planned. ‘Be a part of her life. Please.’ But she’d left as soon as she could.

She had needed that feeling again: the feeling that she could make something beautiful, even if her heart felt withered and ugly.

Jess deletes the voicemail. She spends the morning at the kitchen table, sketching. She sketches Mary and Eliza, the sisters who haunt her dreams, whose pale forms glimmer at her already from the canvases on the walls.

But now she draws them differently. With scaled skin and pulsing gills, with webbed hands and sinuous tails.

She pauses to touch her throat, remembering the way her skin had split itself into ribbons, the webs of flesh that had sprouted between each finger. Sometimes she wonders if she imagined it all, the way her body changed, the singing. If it was merely the delusion of a vulnerable teenage girl, bewildered and in pain.

But when she thinks of what has happened in this town – the catalogue of the drowned – she’s not so sure. It’s as if she carries some kind of strange knowledge, in the base of her spine, in the tender flesh beneath her jaw. What Melody told her about her own experience in the cave has only made her more certain.

Eight men since 1960. For the theory to work, there need to have been more. It needs to have gone on for longer. She needs to look at the town records, somehow, all the way back to 1801. Look for any instances of drownings or disappearances in the area. But she has no idea how to go about doing such a thing, no idea how to trawl old records and newspaper articles.

Lucy would know.

Lucy.

As always, the thought of her sits heavy as a bruise.

Jess remembers her as a child. Coming home at the end of each university term was like meeting a new little girl each time. Lucy had been inquisitive from the first: once, she presented Jess with a snakeskin she’d found in the back garden. She still remembers the papery feel of it in her palm, remembers Lucy asking why the snake had abandoned something so beautiful.

‘Well, snakes grow, just like humans do,’ Jess had said. ‘But their skin doesn’t grow with them. So when they’re ready, they shed it, and there’s a nice new glossy skin underneath.’

Lucy had chewed her lip, her eyes wide, scratching at the inside of her wrist.

‘Can I grow a new skin too?’

Jess wishes she could go back in time to that moment, draw the little girl into her arms and hold her close.

Yes, she’d say. You can. Because you’re special. Because you’re mine.

Jess drops her pencil, abandoning her drawing. She scrapes back her chair, the noise startling Dora Maar from her favourite position on the couch. She takes the stairs two at a time and flings open the doors of her wardrobe. She sinks to her knees, scrabbling for the cardboard box amid the detritus of tights and socks. But there it is.

She opens it and lifts the yellowed tissue paper out carefully. The snakeskin shimmers inside.

Jess spends the whole day at her easel.

It’s almost midnight by the time she’s finished incorporating the snakeskin into the canvas. Her back aches and her stomach growls with hunger, but her heart feels so light and buoyant that it might lift her into the air.

She had known that it wasn’t quite finished. She hadn’t yet responded to the emails about the logistics for the exhibition, the exhibition that her gallerist – alarmed by her sudden sea change – had pressured her into having. How could she, when the centrepiece was incomplete?

Raising the hem of her skirt, she compares her own skin to that of the painted figures. It’s perfect. The snakeskin is translucent, shimmering with pink and violet and blue. All the colours of the sea.

She makes herself a piece of toast, carries it up to her bed. Her head and heart are so full of the joy of her work, of capturing the essence of something so exactly, that all other thoughts are pushed from her mind.

Only as she begins to fall asleep does she think of Cameron. But in the dark – with the sea murmuring outside and the warmth of Dora Maar purring beside her – he feels like a spectre, a ghost story.

He won’t come here, she tells herself. The police are investigating – surely they will catch up with him quickly. She won’t have to be involved. There will be no need to confront the things she did, the things that were done to her. She can stay here in Cliff House, clinging to the edge of the world like a limpet to a rock.

Alone, and safe.