When the Night Comes Read online

  Dad told me not to tell Mum I’d done it on the bike. He told me to just tell her that I caught my leg on the fence or tripped on the gravel. I don’t remember getting home to the dark brick-veneer farmhouse, but when Mum got home with my brother my leg was bandaged and I never even had to lie because Dad said, “She hurt her leg but it’s all fine now.” Mum never even looked at the bandage. She just walked into the kitchen and started cooking dinner.

  “Imagine the scar is a picture that you like,” Bo said. “Like a tattoo. Any picture. It has been drawn on your leg and only you can see it. Only you can imagine what the picture is.”

  I looked for a long time, and I tried hard not to cry, because I couldn’t see any picture there. I couldn’t see anything.

  “It must have hurt very much,” Bo said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  When my leg was better, Bo said, “Shall we kill the cactus?” He had a big knife, one of his sharp knives from the ship.

  We walked down the back steps to the yard.

  “You go first,” he said, and he offered me the knife, but I didn’t take it.

  With one swipe, he cut the cactus in half. Then in half again, and again.

  He killed the cactus, cut it up into little pieces. And later, when he had gone, I hacked into the earth with the pointy end of one of the cricket stumps and made sure that every root, every fiber of that cactus was gone so it would never grow back again.

  BIRDS CALL DOWN THE MORNING

  Birds call down the morning

  I feel it lift off me, the weight of darkness

  It is a new day

  “The light gets more every day,” Bo said.

  I looked out from the sunroom to the purple sky, and it was such a relief to see it—the light. The day coming.

  I sat close to Bo at the table, without touching. I wanted to tell him that I was afraid of the darkness. I wanted to tell him but I stayed silent.

  We were still.

  “Yes, the light comes more and more every day,” he said again. “A minute in the morning—a minute in the night.”

  Minutes of time, two minutes a day.

  Two minutes and two minutes and two minutes, until the birds start to sing at 4 AM and I wake with them.

  I thought about before, my brother and me in that small attic room. Sometimes I could not tell if I was asleep or I was awake but we would be there in the dark and my brother would ask me if it was morning or night. I could not tell, and I was not brave enough to move, to get up and look behind the thick curtains. It was always so cold, the air, the room. The night pressing down on us both.

  I would wait and listen, wait to see if I could hear birds in the yard. I would strain to hear them in the silence, and finally they would come—a soft call. A wave would wash over me. It’s all right now—the morning is coming. We are safe.

  My brother and I would get up, get out of that small attic room, and we would put on lots of clothes to keep warm and go down to the kitchen. We’d sit at the round green wooden table that was like my grandmother’s but was not my grandmother’s.

  We would wait for Mum to wake up.

  Bo’s eyes turned to me, but I could not look at them. I could not show him all the fear that was there inside of me. So I kept looking out the window, at the morning, at the day. And he started to talk. He started to tell me about the sea.

  “As we move south on the water, I lose track of the sunrise. At first I say, Yes! I will watch every sunrise. Every one. Then after five days, ten days, depending on the speed we are traveling and how far south we have come, the sun pops up when I am not ready. I wake at three AM and it is already there. I feel cheated then. I feel lazy and think, How have I let myself miss it?

  “But after weeks, time starts to go completely. We are just working, Nella going on and on. Sometimes the sun is always there. Sometimes it goes down for a small rest, a few hours. The days at sea become one giant day. There are just tasks. Simple tasks. Sleep. Make coffee. Wash the roasting pans. Refill the sugar. Defrost the lamb. Cook the soup. Make the eggs—fried, poached, scrambled. Then sleep and then tasks. Sleep, then tasks.

  “My mind stops always thinking, stops worrying. Then I just am. I am just there. I am just a man. Working. Part of the ship. This kind of family. I do not have time to worry.”

  I looked at Bo then, his face calm, talking about his life at sea. I looked at his eyes, gray and blue with movement like the water was there inside of them.

  All the things he told me, I wanted more than anything.

  LIKE SUNSHINE

  My brother watched Leo.

  Watched the large hands covered in flour stretch out the sticky pastry in long, thin strips. Leo shaped it, made small rounds and filled them with custard. He made larger pastries too, ones that were shaped in loops that folded around each other. Then he piped in the custard, so fast and with such precision, and I could smell the sweet almond smell—the custard shiny and yellow with egg yolks.

  When I looked up at the tall man, at Leo, he was on autopilot. He could have had his eyes closed, because his hands knew the way. They were independent from him somehow, working steadily—loop and loop and loop and cut. Loop and loop and loop and cut.

  When they were finished, the pastries were like crowns, emblems of power. Sweet dough loops of magic. Almond flakes, marzipan, more custard, egg wash.

  Leo took the full tray and slotted it in the oven near the top. I could feel the heat on my face all the way from across the galley. He took another tray out, a hot tray—the pastries on it all golden and sun-kissed, the custard bubbling. He set it down on the stainless-steel counter, looked at my brother and winked.

  “Now we taste!” he said.

  My brother’s face burst open into a smile. He moved closer to the counter, a few steps, but I stayed where I was. I watched Leo cut two pastries in half. The custard inside moved like lava—slow and thick—and it pooled on the tray. Leo put two halves on a small plate, pushed it toward us. I knew my brother was staring at the plate and that his small hands were holding on to the edge of the counter, but I kept my eyes on Leo. I watched his face, saw the way he looked down at the pastries—his work. Content. He breathed in, picked up one of the cut halves and took a bite.

  Leo’s eyes closed then. He chewed and chewed, then swallowed. He wiped his mouth with his hand and said a word, just quietly—a word I didn’t know, a Danish word, sólskin, and when he opened his eyes he was looking right at me.

  “Sunshine,” he said, “like sunshine.”

  My brother looked at me, his hand already reaching out for the plate. I moved closer.

  That first bite. Crisp buttery flakes, sweet warm custard oozing—sharp marzipan and almond. The eggs, the sugar, the crunch of pastry—made with big hands. Made with skill and care. Made for breakfast—to start the day—to greet the sun. A magic loop of pastry.

  The light coming through the porthole made the whole galley fill with yellow. I breathed it in.

  A BAG OF MIXED CANDIES

  The wind started to blow ice when I was halfway home from the shop. I hadn’t noticed the streets until then, until the cold wind made my face raw. All I could think about was the white paper bag of mixed candies I had in my hand.

  They were for my brother.

  He’d just sat there on the floor in his school uniform, one gray sock pulled up to his knee, the other scrunched down around his ankle, when Mum came in and burst into tears and told us about Tom Balinski. About how he had been hit by a car on the way home from school.

  About how he was dead.

  He didn’t cry, my brother. I didn’t see him cry. I only saw his body shake—just a shudder, like something very small had collapsed inside his bones.

  The accident was on the news. Flashing lights reflecting off a fallen schoolbag, the emblem of a waratah flower with the Latin words that meant No Man Is an Island shining out in the dark. The man on the TV got it wrong, because he said it was a high school boy who had been hit by a car and
died from his injuries on the way to the hospital. But it wasn’t a high school boy. It was a small boy.

  A boy just as small as my brother.

  Tom had come to my brother’s birthday party three days before. He was like an angel with his white hair and blue eyes—his skin so pale. Not see-through like mine, just creamy and pale. He gave my brother a really huge pencil case. It was all the bright colors in stripes and I knew my brother really liked it because he carried it around with him for a long time after the party, after everyone had gone. And he carefully put all of his pencils and pens inside and put it in his schoolbag ready for school the next day. Monday. Then there was Tuesday and then there was Wednesday.

  The day Tom Balinski died.

  I was on the bus and I had seen Tom and my brother walking out of the school gate together. My brother got on the bus and he waved to Tom and Tom waved back—his hair bright against the gray sky and the gray of his uniform. I remember that it started to rain as the bus pulled away.

  When I got back from the shop my brother was on the couch. He was in his pajamas and the duvet from his bed was over his legs. Molly, our cat, was sitting on him, but when I came close she jumped off and ran away. Molly didn’t like me very much.

  I told my brother that I got him some sweets and I held out the bag. I must have been twisting it over and over on the way home because the paper at the top was all grimy and creased and torn. My brother took the bag in his hand. He held it for a while and then he put it down next to him on the couch. I told him there were no licorice things.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  The next day at school, my teacher, Mr. Peters, said that we didn’t have to do the usual timetable and that we could work on anything we wanted. He asked if we would like him to read to us, and we all said yes. It was the best part of the day when Mr. Peters read. He was reading a book that he had written and it was about some kids who had found a portal through time. I don’t remember what it was called or the names of the characters now, but I remember that I was captivated by it then.

  I listened to the story—to the words spoken in Mr. Peters’s soft, low, rolling voice. I looked out of the window and I watched the sky, watched the clouds moving. I saw my brother’s class walk out across the lawn, all of them. The whole class. Most of them were holding hands.

  Their teacher was Mrs. Davison and she was tall and had long blond hair and she was very beautiful, I thought. I knew that my brother really loved her. I think all of her students loved her. She looked like a shepherd among her flock. She was like a shepherd—the children gathered around her, gathered close, under one of the old chestnut trees where kids played conkers at recess. And they all sat down. Mrs. Davison had papers in her hands.

  Mr. Peters stopped reading. He put the book away but I kept looking out of the window. Even when other kids were busy working on projects, I just sat and looked out of the window. And my brother’s class stayed out there under that old chestnut tree all day. They had lunch together, and in the late afternoon they walked back to their classroom with Mrs. Davison leading the way.

  They were all still holding hands.

  HIS NAME WAS TOM

  The priest called him Tomas, but my brother called him Tom. He was Tom, and they shared a language that was silent to everyone else but them. I would hear them laughing from my room. Little giggles, little stories about things I would never know.

  The coffin was small and white and people stood up one by one and laid flowers on top. There were so many flowers that some fell to the floor and were left behind when the coffin was carried out of the church.

  My brother sat still and Mum cried and I could feel the cold from the stones below my feet move up my legs. My body was going to sleep—becoming stone like the floor, like the walls. The darkness was getting in.

  After the ceremony, my brother stood with some other boys from his class and Tom’s mother talked to them. I couldn’t hear the words, but her eyes were soft. They seemed to be filled with peace—some kind of love. She touched my brother’s curly hair with her hand and smiled. Then she bent down and grabbed him up tightly in her arms. She held him close, my brother’s body limp and stiff. Her mouth was moving like she was singing in my brother’s ear. Like she was praying. It seemed to go on for a long time. And my brother’s body softened, his arms reached up and wrapped around her. He hugged her back.

  When she let my brother go, her face was puffy, her eyes half-closed. She stood up tall and touched my brother’s hair one more time, then she turned and walked away.

  Mum put us in the car and told us she wouldn’t be long. We were in our school uniforms and were meant to go back to school for the afternoon, but I hoped we didn’t have to go. It was getting late and it didn’t seem right that my brother should have to go to school today.

  Well-dressed people in suits and in dresses and hats walked to their cars. I saw the principal of our new school go past. She had a beehive hairdo. She always wore it up like that—in a beehive, like my grandmother did.

  “I just feel bad for her,” my brother said.

  “Who?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. He sat there looking down. The bells of the church rang out in a chord—a simple harmony, over and over.

  “I hope we don’t have to go back to school,” I said.

  My brother shrugged. I saw Mum come out of the church. She wiped her nose on a white tissue then stuffed it back up the sleeve of her cardigan. She always had a tissue up her sleeve in case she needed one.

  “I just feel bad for her,” my brother said again, and he looked right at me—right in my eyes. “We’re not dead but Tom is and she won’t ever see him again.”

  The bells of the church kept on ringing.

  SNOW DAY

  A week after the funeral it snowed. I could smell it before I even opened my eyes. Snow, thick and solid in the window box. So much of it that it covered half my bedroom window.

  It was really there.

  It had begun to fall softly in the darkness the night before, just as bedtime loomed, and Mum told us that it wouldn’t last.

  “It will melt away and be gone by morning,” she said. “It’s nearly summer!”

  And it was nearly summer. It was November. A school night.

  We stood together on the back deck and felt the snow melt on our skin and dampen our hair. It was so silent. A blanket of silence.

  I lay in my bed in the dark and listened. Listened to see if I could hear it falling out there in the night, covering over our car and filling all the stone gutters, dusting the red roses powdery white. I fell asleep trying to listen—willing the snow to fall harder so it would cover up all of the grayness of this place. Until it made these old streets white and clean and new.

  School was canceled.

  We played out in the street all day with kids we didn’t know, kids we had never even met, and West Hobart had never looked so good. So bright.

  A man skied down Hill Street. I watched him disappear and I hoped he knew how to stop. There were no cars, no buses. Nothing but kids screaming and running and skidding over, throwing snowballs and hoping that the snow would stay for weeks and weeks.

  By that night it was just slush, muddied up and used. And in the morning there were only little pockets of frosted snow left in the deep round gutters, wherever the sun didn’t shine.

  The magic was gone.

  We drove to school the next day wearing our gray uniforms that offered no warmth and my brother was quiet again. Quiet and lost somewhere trying not to think about things.

  I could not help him.

  MS Nella Dan

  VOYAGE 2, 1986/1987 SEASON

  10th November 1986

  POSITION: 63° 52.000’ S, 119° 55.000’ E

  CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Vessel moving through leads in pack ice. Occasional small icebergs. Strong winds expected by 14:00.

  * * *

  We feel Nella butt up against the ice, that first big jolt, and Soren calls out, “Mooooose! Mooooose!”
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  Erik answers the call. He runs at Soren, leaps in the air, and their chests smack together in the usual ritual. Thud. Thud. “Mooooose!”

  I’m scrubbing pans, the lunch shift over. Our one hour a day off. Nella lifts up, slides over the ice with a squeal. The pressure of the ship on the ice forms waves underneath and they roll and buck and lash out. We pitch like we are on open water, then steady up—move ahead. Steady. Five knots, slow and steady.

  “Time for coffee,” Soren says, and I say, “Okay,” dry my hands, last pan done. I get out our special thermos—chipped and marked and dented on the bottom from being dropped so many times. I open the lid.

  Soren tells me that we better get that side of beef out of the freezer before we forget and I nod. I look at him. Both our arms come up at the same time. One, two, three—rock, paper, scissors.

  Soren always chooses rock first. Every time. I don’t know why, but it makes it easy to beat him. I go paper. He stands there looking at my open hand. Paper.

  “Best of three?” he says. It is what he always says. I nod. I give him a chance.

  One, two, three.

  This time he goes paper. I go scissors. It just popped into my head at the very last second. Scissors. Two fingers. He shakes his head, always so defeated, starts walking toward the metal stairs. Then he stops, turns to me.

  “I let you win,” he says.

  “Sure,” I say. “Sure.”

  I take a scoop of ground coffee. The smell of it fills my head, my stomach, and I am looking forward to it—fresh coffee. Maybe I will sit in the red booth and read the printed news from home. Maybe I will just stare out at the ice, at the world there moving right by us.