When the Night Comes Read online

  I follow the road, my big boots crunching in the loose frozen dirt. Summer. Minus one degree, but that sun is streaming down, melting everything on the surface, slick and slippery.

  The sound of the resupply echoes all around—the truck engines, the cranes, the beep, beep, beep of reversing machines. A hive of engines working around the clock until the resupply is done. But as I move closer to the hill, get farther down the road, the silence starts to win. I can feel it come down over me, over the place, like double glazing. My breath loud, my heart beating in all this cold silence.

  The hill of stones is there, ahead. I’m getting closer.

  My foot slips out from under me and I land hard. I’m on the ground, still. Black ice. I didn’t see it on the road but I can see it now. I try to feel if anything is wrong, if anything hurts. What would happen if I broke something? How long would I have to wait? How cold would I get? I look up at the blue sky, no clouds now, only slight streaks of translucent gray and pink. I get up slowly and breathe. I’m just winded. I tell myself to walk slower, to be careful.

  No need to rush, no need to end your season early and be sent home. But part of me wants to run, get to the hill as fast as I can. It’s as if someone is waiting for me up there, something important that I might miss.

  A hill of stones—a hill made of stones.

  The road ends.

  A line of ice to cross, covered in thick crystals, hard snow that never melts in this cold dryness. I can see footprints, tracks to follow where people have been. The snow is deep and crisp right up to my knees and it’s hard to walk. Lines of penguin tracks crisscross the human path, little feet skimming across the top surface of frozen white with ease. Little feet waddling, not plodding. Little feet dancing, not sinking down like my heavy feet.

  I plod on, step by step, sinking down. I keep going and when I look up, I can see flashes of white against the sky, against the rocks. Flashes of white, the air alive with them. Tiny pure-white birds, here at the end of the earth. Snow petrels. A nesting ground.

  The ice thins. The rocks begin, like a desert, brown and dry. I take my hat off, let my head feel the cold air. I’m hot, but I keep climbing. I can see the nests in the rocks all around. Baby snow petrels somewhere safe inside. Safe and warm somehow. Babies so small, so perfect and white. I’m careful not to get too close, not to disturb them. I keep walking up, away from the nests, and when I reach the top the view hits me with full force. The whole of the rich blue bay, still. Perfect. Nella Dan there in her spot, reflecting red off the water. The sky cloudless. Giant white cliffs running on and on, then out to the horizon, icebergs lined up for all of time, blue and brilliant white taking up the whole scene. Every blue that there is—that exists. One million shades of blue and white. The scale of it all measured against me, one man standing here. Just one man, small and breathless.

  I find a big flat rock, sit down with this place humming through me. And they come. Snow petrels swoop down from the sky, arc in circles above my head.

  I stay still, let them surround me, and all is silent except for the sound of wings beating against the cold air. Wings of snow-white feathers, these perfect creatures at home here in the strangeness of this place. So white they disappear when they fly over ice, invisible except for their small black eyes looking down, their black beaks pointing.

  Papa—I am here.

  A story told long ago. But I remember. The feel of my bed, and the smell of the feathers in my pillow. My father’s voice, deep and far away, carrying me to a kingdom of ice.

  A hill made of stones.

  “If you climb it, if you make the journey, you can see far into the distance. You can see the whole of the bay and the icebergs along the horizon. A vast city of icebergs stretching out for as far as you can see.

  “Then, if you sit still, if you wait and are patient, the little angels come down from the sky and fly around you. They come so close, their wings almost touch the skin on your face. They come down to say hello.”

  “Are they really angels, Papa?”

  He touched my head with his warm hand. “Time for sleep,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and dreamt of falling snow that turned to pure-white birds. I watched each snowflake fly away one by one, and I wished I had wings so that I could go with them. I wished that I could follow.

  This place, alive and real. Just like he told me. Just like he said.

  And I am here.

  Papa, I am here.

  THE SUN ON THE WALL

  There in the dark attic room

  A beam of light from the air vent projected the sky

  I watched, my eyes wide, as a silent movie rolled out across the wall

  The clouds morphed and moved like gray smoke, weightless

  A perfect orb of light grew bright—burned gold

  And I could feel it

  It was the sun

  Rising—coming now

  The night was over

  A HOUSE ON THE HILL

  We will be happy here,” she said, and I said yes.

  A room of my own in the small white cottage on the hill. Closer to the sun—to the light. Up high in West Hobart, looking down on the city. A little stone cottage of our very own, with no lodgers and just us—my brother and me and Mum and our new cat, Molly. A sunroom out the back with a glass wall that let in as much light as there was, and Mum hired a piano. We put it in the sunroom and I could play it after school. There was a new round table and four chairs, a tiny kitchen, a little balcony, stairs that led down to a brick courtyard and a square of lawn with red roses, and I thought, Yes, we will be happy here.

  We were going to a new school. A school with uniforms, and everything would be different.

  “We will be happy here,” she said.

  Darlington Cottage.

  It cost $53,000, which was almost all the money that Mum got from the settlement. Still, there was some left for a car. A car, which was really something after not having one for so long. Part of the school fees came from a scholarship, and the rest was to be found somehow. It would be found.

  Moving in.

  Mum said it was the first house that had been hers, and that made her smile very much. My brother and I could feel it—that maybe things would be different now.

  My room was painted sage green and it had a built-in bookshelf next to the fireplace. My brother’s room was painted blue and he had a bunk bed. He decided to sleep on the top bunk.

  And he was going to have a birthday party—his first real one. A birthday party in a house that we owned.

  It was our home.

  THE MOUNTAIN

  Mum drove us up to the top of the mountain in the new car. Bo was back and he could only just fit in the front seat even though my brother and I were small enough for him to push his seat right back. The car only had two doors. You had to pull the passenger seat forward to get in and out of the back. But we had not had a car the whole time we had lived in Hobart and it was nice to feel the road underneath me and look out of the window. The road took us up slowly in wide circles of green to Fern Tree and then onto a steep rocky road where the trees thinned out until there were just shrubs and huge boulders and the sky, which was clear.

  When we got to the top, Mum parked the car and we all got out. Bo stretched his legs. He jumped up and down on the spot and clapped his hands together.

  “Cold up here,” he said.

  My brother pulled his beanie out of his pocket and put it on. I zipped up my parka and put the hood over my head.

  I had only been to the top of the mountain once, with school, and we had walked there from Fern Tree. It was a long walk and it was very cold. We had to huddle away from the wind behind rocks and cook our lunch on Trangia stoves that ran on denatured alcohol. We cooked two-minute noodles and ate them quickly and they were good but everything smelt a bit like metho. After lunch we were warmer and it was easier to walk the rest of the way up.

  Our outdoor education teacher, Mr. Janik, told us that the windch
ill at the top of the mountain, even on a very sunny day, could take the temperature down by fifteen degrees and could cause hypothermia in no time.

  “You lose most of your heat from your head,” he told us. “You must protect your head.”

  I asked Bo if he had a hat, but he said no.

  “I am very used to the cold,” he said and he winked at me.

  Past the parking lot, flat square rocks ran on like a giant’s pavement and they went for as far as you could see. We started to walk on them, and up close the rocks had cracks and crevices large enough for shrubs to grow in and the surfaces were covered in circles of white and gray lichen. The sun was shining down on the rocks and that felt good. We walked on the rocks and looked down the mountain at Hobart and the river. It was a clear view, not like when I had come up with school. That day we had not been able to see anything but cloud, and the wind was so strong that you could lean right into it and not fall over.

  Mum and my brother stopped walking after a few minutes and said they were going back to the car because Mum was cold. Bo and I kept walking. He walked easily on the giant rocks and I kept up. I had my walking boots on. Soon the crevices got big enough that we could jump down into them. It was like a maze of rocks and it was sheltered from the wind. I noticed that there were lizards on the rocks—skinks the color of rust, eyes wide and still, trying to get warm.

  Bo sat down in the sun and looked out toward the back of the mountain.

  “You could easily get lost here,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. People did get lost up here. Sometimes they even died.

  We didn’t talk for a while after that. I wanted to ask him about the ship, about where they were going next and what it was like. But silence was easy with Bo. It was not lonely and I could think. I could think about the sky and about the light and how things changed. I could stop holding myself so very tightly.

  “So, you are starting a new school—and your mum will be going to university,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I know she is excited,” he said.

  I looked out at the endless square shapes cracked and worn by a million years of wind and rain. The rock I sat on felt cold against my hands. I wondered how cold the rocks became at night, if the lichen on them froze and what happened to the skinks then. Where did they go at night? Some of the stones were shaded by larger stones and they would never see the sun at all. They were hidden and stuck in the shadows. Never to be touched by the light.

  “I guess we should go back,” Bo said and he stood up. He took my hand and helped me up and together we climbed out of the labyrinth.

  Back on the flat slabs of granite, the wind had died down and it really did feel warmer now. We walked slowly to the car and I could see parts of the Derwent River below, reflecting the sun so brightly that it made me squint. The water looked like melted gold.

  “I like this mountain,” Bo said. “Denmark is very flat. But we are just small and there are mountains all around us. The countries around us are giant mountains and if we want to go to the mountains, well then we don’t have very far to go. We just take a ferry and we are there—in the mountains.”

  Bo started to laugh so hard then, and it made me laugh too, even though I didn’t know what was so funny.

  But I liked the mountain. It was nice to look up and see it when it wanted to be seen. Because it could disappear whenever it felt like it—be completely gone under thick cloud or fog, making Hobart flatter, grayer. And when the mountain reemerged it would be different. Changed. Maybe dusted with snow—or just a dark raw shape—a face of long stones. But sometimes it would be golden with the sun—lit up under a blue open sky. Cold and clear and full of light, radiating out.

  THIS IS COFFEE

  How do you drink that stuff?”

  My mum poked her tongue out at Bo and told him that she liked it. She heaped a teaspoon of the dry brown granules into her little teacup. “I like it,” she said again.

  Bo shook his head.

  “First, you don’t own a whisk, now this!” He was smiling and his voice was loud and happy. He waved me into the small kitchen.

  “Even a child will know,” he said. “Come. Smell this,” and he held the tin of International Roast instant coffee under my nose.

  I breathed it in. It smelt like coffee. I was used to making it for Mum in the mornings and then after that she had tea for the rest of the day.

  “Now,” he said, “smell this!”

  He picked up a knife and slit open the shiny red square packet that was on the bench. I could smell it even before he brought it near, something rich and earthy and strong. It filled my head, filled the room. It sent me spinning.

  “This is coffee!” he said.

  Mum was smiling now, pouring hot water into her cup, putting in her artificial sweeteners, click, click.

  “This is coffee,” Bo said again as he heaped a big spoonful into the filter paper that was folded carefully into the lid of his black thermos. He picked up the kettle and poured the water in very slowly.

  “I’ll be finished mine by the time yours is ready,” Mum said.

  With that he put the kettle down and grabbed her cup and tipped the contents down the sink. Mum started to laugh. She held on to Bo and she looked small there against him. He put his arm around her, leant his head down to the side so that it was resting on hers.

  “You don’t even have a whisk,” he said.

  THORNS IN MY SKIN

  I fell on the cactus in our backyard.

  My brother and I were playing cricket, just the two of us. I was bowling and he was batting and I went to catch the ball and I tripped backward and landed on the big cactus in the corner of the yard.

  My leg burned and when I looked there were hundreds of cactus thorns sticking into the flesh of my calf and my ankle. I tried to pull a few out with my fingertips, but the thorns were too small—too fine. They sank down into my skin and were lost beneath the surface.

  My brother ran over and said that my leg might turn black and drop off because cactus plants were poisonous. He said he saw that on a program on TV once. He helped me up the back stairs and we went inside. We sat on the couch and I tried to watch TV—tried to concentrate. My brother kept looking at my leg to see if it was going black. It wasn’t, but it was red and swollen and it hurt a lot.

  After about an hour we heard keys in the door, but it wasn’t Mum. It was Bo. He was carrying bags of shopping and when he walked into the living room he told us that Mum was still at the library and he was going to make us dinner.

  “She hurt her leg,” my brother said.

  I sat in the bathroom on the edge of the tub.

  It was the nicest room in the house, our bathroom. The warmest and brightest. It didn’t really belong to the cottage because it was an extension, like the kitchen and the sunroom. It wasn’t made of stone. Being in that bathroom was like being in someone else’s house.

  Bo brought the kettle, a yellow bucket and a box of chamomile tea into the bathroom. He found the tea in the back of the kitchen cupboard. The box was dusty. There was a picture of white flowers on the front. Bo took the tea bags out of the box and tore them all open so that the tea was loose. It looked like chopped-up straw or chaff when it came out of the bags. It smelt like that too. Like horse feed or cow feed. Like wet alfalfa.

  “Whenever I had a splinter, my grandmother would soak my finger in chamomile tea,” he said. “It draws out the splinter.”

  When the hot liquid cooled enough he told me to put my leg in the bucket. He asked if it was okay and I said yes. The warm water felt good against my skin.

  “There are so many little accidents on the ship,” he said. “I am good at fixing people up.”

  Bo stayed with me in the bathroom. He sat on the bench next to the sink and the sun was coming in through the window and in through the skylight and all the wood paneling held the warmth. I almost felt sleepy then. I wanted to close my eyes.

  Bo started talking about his
home, when he was young, about how the summers were bright and long, and even though there was plenty of light to go around, he never wanted to sleep. He never wanted to miss a minute of the sun.

  “I would make myself stay awake in the night and in the day,” he said. “I wanted to take in the light. But I could not last without sleep. I would go down to one of the little bays near my house. I would go down and lie on the sand or take out our small wooden rowboat that was on the shore. Those little bays were so calm—calm and sunny and bright—that I would fall asleep not meaning to. I would just fall asleep, dreaming about the light.” Bo smiled then. “It was my home.”

  I tried to imagine this place in my mind, a small island that was light for the whole of summer, and I knew I would like that very much. To be in the light. I would like that.

  The mixture in the bucket was almost cold and Bo told me that I could take my leg out. He said that it had been in for long enough and he knelt on the floor. He handed me a towel and I carefully wiped my leg. He was so tall and he had to crouch down even when I lifted my leg right up. He took every thorn out one by one with Mum’s tweezers. He did it very slowly and carefully. Some of the spines drew blood when they came up. I tried not to look.

  When he got to the end of my leg, he held my foot up and touched the scar near my ankle. It was jagged and white and it made the flesh of my leg dimple in where it drew the skin tight together.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “I had an accident,” I said.

  He nodded. He didn’t ask me any more about it. He didn’t ask me and I did not tell him about how Dad would sit me on the petrol tank of his motorbike and how one time, when we were going up to the very back of the farm, I slipped down and my leg got stuck in some part of the bike—some moving part that I couldn’t see. But I could feel it, my skin ripping. I screamed out for Dad to stop, but he couldn’t hear me, or at least he didn’t stop, not until we got there, up the hill to the back of the farm. By then there was a ring of flesh scraped from my calf and blood seeping into my shoe.