Murmurations Read online

  Carol Lefevre holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, where she is a Visiting Research Fellow. Her first novel Nights in the Asylum was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and won the Nita B. Kibble Award. As well as her non-fiction book Quiet City: Walking in West Terrace Cemetery, Carol has published short fiction, journalism, and personal essays. She was the recipient of the 2016 Barbara Hanrahan Fellowship, and is an affiliate member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, where she was Writer-in-Residence in 2017. Her most recent book, The Happiness Glass, was published by Spinifex Press. Carol lives in Adelaide.

  Also by Carol Lefevre

  The Happiness Glass (2018)

  Quiet City: Walking in West Terrace Cemetery (2016)

  If You Were Mine (2008)

  Nights in the Asylum (2007)

  First published by Spinifex Press, 2020

  Spinifex Press Pty Ltd

  PO Box 5270, North Geelong, VIC 3215, Australia

  PO Box 105, Mission Beach, QLD 4852, Australia

  [email protected]

  www.spinifexpress.com.au

  Copyright © Carol Lefevre, 2020

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

  Copyright for educational purposes

  Information in this book may be reproduced in whole or part for study or training purposes, subject to acknowledgement of the source and providing no commercial usage or sale of material occurs. Where copies of part or whole of the book are made under part VB of the Copyright Act, the law requires that prescribed procedures be followed. For information contact the Copyright Agency Limited.

  Edited by Susan Hawthorne and Pauline Hopkins

  Cover design by Deb Snibson, MAPG

  Typesetting by Helen Christie, Blue Wren Books

  Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  ISBN: 9781925950083 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925950090 (ebook)

 

  For absent friends

  ‘The change in the behavioural state of one animal affects and is affected by that of all other animals in the group, no matter how large the group is.’

  “Scale-free Correlations in Starling Flocks”

  Proceedings of the National Academy of

  Sciences of the USA, June 29, 2010

  107 (26) 11865-11870

  Contents

  After the Island

  Little Buddhas Everywhere

  Evening All Afternoon

  Glory Days

  The Lives We Lost

  This Moment Is Your Life

  Murmurations

  Paper Boats

  After the Island

  Emily rose from her seat near the back of the chapel the moment the funeral service was over, and was able to slip outside without having to speak to anyone. There was to be a reception, but she didn’t want to eat or drink anything within the crematorium’s grounds and among people who worked with Doctor Cleary, or who had known his wife. She didn’t know how anyone could eat and drink in such circumstances. Then, being the doctor’s secretary, people would have come up and spoken to her, for many of them had been surprised at the suddenness of Mrs Cleary’s death.

  It was late afternoon, with the sky already growing dark. At the bus stop opposite the crematorium gates a cold wind stirred flurries of fallen leaves; no one else was waiting. Emily peeled off a glove and slipped a hand inside her bag to touch her rosary. The beads were made from real rose petals, and the faint perfume they transferred to her fingers was a familiar comfort. Large black birds flapped and shrieked in the treetops further along the road, as Emily said the Our Father and three Hail Marys for the dead woman. The bus appeared then, and a short time later she stepped with relief into the eerily empty interior of the automat.

  Emily rarely saw any staff at the self-service café, though she assumed there were people working behind the scenes – there would have to be. The thing she loved about it was that you could fit coins into a slot, turn a knob or press a button, and the glass doors fronting the compartments filled with sandwiches, pieces of pie, and cellophane-wrapped slices of cake, would slide aside, so that you could reach in and take whatever you had chosen. In Emily’s life there had been so few opportunities to choose what she would eat, or to choose anything at all, that this simple procedure struck her as the essence of luxury. Also there was no need to make conversation with a waiter, or at the checkout. Of course, the food always had a faintly stale taste and texture from being kept, and if you wanted a hot meal this late in the day you were out of luck.

  Emily peeled the soft leather glove from her right hand – the gloves, a parting gift from Sister Lucy, gave her a throb of pleasure each time she put them on or took them off. She stowed it in the pocket of her green coat, pressed a coin into the slot of a vending machine and turned a knob to release a slice of cold apple pie; the pie would do for her evening meal. Emily waited while a machine dripped coffee into a thick white cup. The china here was chunky – less likely to chip, she supposed – though if she ever chose cups and plates for herself she would like something finer, something with a pattern.

  Settled at a table with her back to the darkened windows, she started gratefully on the pie. Eating now would save her from the ordeal of tea time at the rooming house, which today, of all days, she wished to avoid. Old Mrs Swithing, her landlady, loved to pick over the details of a funeral – how many were there, what the casket was like, the flowers. Emily imagined the old woman’s whiskery chin tilted towards her across the table, the claw-like forefinger hooked in the handle of a bone china cup. The sharp black eyes would bore into her as she awkwardly spooned up vegetable soup, or that dreadful broth that smelled of old dishcloths the cook sometimes inflicted on them, and which Emily believed was a punishment, though what their crimes might have been was beyond knowing.

  If she timed it right she could slip upstairs while they were all in the dining room. Then if anyone knocked at her door she could say she had a headache and was going straight to sleep. It was a nuisance being surrounded by people who favoured endless rounds of cards to reading, who watched the worst television programs, or simply sat and nattered about their dull present lives and duller pasts. Emily had a new book from the library; it was about the interpretation of dreams. Reading it would take her mind off things.

  Her first weeks as a medical secretary had been alarming. She’d had to learn a complex vocabulary of illnesses and medications; then, after typing letters and notes that documented the relentless creep of various diseases, it wasn’t long before she’d begun to experience her own unpleasant symptoms. Emily would finish a letter and then open the medical dictionary – it had been given to her to help with spellings, but she had started using it to research her suspected illnesses. When Sam the cardiologist’s secretary caught Emily looking up ‘brachycardia’, she had burst out laughing.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she said, “we’ve all had it. We’ve had everything! It’s a side effect of the job, but it eventually passes.”

  Sam and Mel and Maureen, the personal assistants of doctors with different specialities, had been typing these letters and notes for years.

  “We’re survivors of every disease in the dictionary.” Mel smiled. “We’re practically immortal.”

  They explained to Emily that having been p
rivy to the intimacies of medical examinations, and personal records, they had now seen and heard everything.

  “And some things twice!” Sam gave her snorting laugh.

  Being a medical secretary was an education, Maureen said. The things people got up to, you wouldn’t believe!

  Timidly at first, Emily had begun to join in their conversations in the small, windowless room where they took their morning and afternoon tea breaks, gradually getting to know the other secretaries and their situations – Sam, thick orange foundation applied over white, acne-damaged skin, was in her early thirties, and anxious about having children; Mel, as fine-boned and flighty as a young filly, was grieving the recent death of her father; Maureen, gooseberry-green eyes and a sharp tongue, was homesick for Ireland and regretted leaving it to follow a younger lover. Between them, they had, as they often reminded her, seen everything, but Emily privately thought that none of them had seen anything quite like the death of Mrs Cleary.

  At the end of Emily’s first week, Sam had found her in the tea room with her hands shaking as she poured herself a mug of strong black tea.

  “Is everything all right?” Sam said. She was a farm-bred girl, ruthless in her dealings with the patients but kind and caring with colleagues.

  “Yes,” Emily said, swallowing hard. “I’m just recovering from an esophagogastrectomy.”

  “Oh, nasty,” Sam said. “Here, have a chocolate digestive.”

  Emily had bitten into the biscuit and gulped a mouthful of the too-hot tea, puzzled about why she hadn’t confided the real reason she was so upset. It hadn’t been the complications of the cancer she’d been typing but an abrupt break in the recording, with Doctor Cleary’s dry, measured voice interrupted by a series of clicks, and then a hoarse whisper, a woman’s voice, in Emily’s ear.

  If you hear this message, if he doesn’t find and delete it, I beg you to listen. My husband is—

  Emily had thought she must be hallucinating. She had reversed the tape, tapped replay: there it came again, the same urgent whisper, abruptly cut off. A shiver ran through her. Could it be true? Was it an accident? A joke? At the time, Emily had concluded that the voice must belong to Mrs Cleary, for who else would have access to the doctor’s dictation machine?

  During the funeral the vicar had said that Mrs Cleary, whose name was Erris, had been fifty-three. A colour photograph at the front of the chapel beside a cascade of orange flowers had been too far away for Emily to gain more than an impression of straight brown hair framing an angular face. In the tea room on the morning of the funeral, Mel had whispered that she’d thought Doctor Cleary’s wife could have been older. None of them had seen her in recent times. A weakness for alcohol was mentioned. The longest serving secretary, Glenna, had added that poor Mrs Cleary had let herself go. Emily had supposed she meant that the doctor’s wife was overweight, but now she thought that Glenna might have meant something else.

  All the specialists at the public hospital worked long hours, and they often dictated their letters at home, even though for confidentiality they were not supposed to. In the weeks following that first encounter with the woman’s voice there were other incidents – once, in the middle of a letter about gallstones, the voice broke out in the background, an incoherent babble that dissolved into a howl. The dictation had been halted, the tape rewound a little, and the gallstones letter begun again in a tired voice. But Doctor Cleary hadn’t wound the tape back carefully, so that the interruption had not been entirely erased. Twice more there were furtive messages addressed to whoever was typing the doctor’s correspondence.

  If anything should happen to me, I want you to know that my husband—

  Though frightening in its intensity, the voice was well-spoken, and Emily sensed someone who might, under ordinary circumstances, appear calm and capable.

  Each time Emily was about to unburden herself to Sam or Mel she was overcome by reluctance. She hardly knew Doctor Cleary, yet his gaunt face, his rounded shoulders tensed like those of a man walking in a rain storm, had roused her sympathy. He had a haunted look, and there was a frailty about his slender wrists that made it difficult to believe he could ever be violent. Nevertheless, Emily had put those tapes into a yellow envelope, and slipped them into an empty pocket in her filing cabinet.

  Doctor Cleary had not played the organ at his wife’s funeral as he often did when there was a special service in the hospital chapel. Emily had seen him play twice, and had thought how relaxed he looked, leaning forward to read the music while his fingers roamed the keys with a sure touch. Perhaps it was the sound that cheered him, for the measured tread of a hymn could calm even the most agitated soul. Or else it was the pale yellow light falling through the stained glass windows, the intricate red and gold embroidery on the altar cloth.

  Having all her life attended twice-daily prayers, Emily had soon established a routine of sitting for a few minutes in the hospital chapel after work, and she sometimes slipped in there during her lunch break. After the island, there were so few quiet places in this new life of hers, and the scent of candle wax, the perfume of the fresh flowers arranged by a team of elderly volunteers, was soothing – if she closed her eyes she could imagine she was at home. Except that there was no Sister Lucy, no Mother Stella Marie. Sister Lucy had warned her that she would be lonely at first, but all these months later the ache of their absence was undiminished.

  “Just remember, love, how you are making us proud!” Sister Lucy had said. “And how we will pounce on you with hugs and kisses when you come back to visit!”

  Emily had been saving so that she could return at Christmas. The other secretaries were already making holiday plans: Sam’s enormous family all converged on the farm; Mel was taking her widowed mother out for Christmas lunch at a posh hotel; Maureen was flying to Ireland, and Sam said she’d be surprised if she ever came back. They’d asked Emily what she was doing, and she’d answered that she would be spending Christmas with family. They knew she came from the island, but she had never yet spoken about the Star of Bethlehem. Mrs Swithing knew, of course, being a distant relative of Mother Stella Marie. Over the years, a steady stream of young men and women from the home had travelled to the mainland; they had stayed at the rooming house at a special rate while they settled into their first jobs and found their feet. To Mrs Swithing’s credit, she had never spread it around where they’d come from.

  Whenever the little buzz of panic began in her chest, Emily would close her eyes and visualise something she loved at home. Often it was the statue of Mary holding the infant Jesus on the wall of the small courtyard: the pair stood in a boat, for this was Our Lady Star of the Sea. There were nearly always fresh flowers laid across the boat’s prow, or at Mary’s beautiful plaster feet, sometimes put there by the nuns, but more often left by the wives and children of the island’s seagoing fishermen, those silent, salt-roughened men who on sunny days sat mending their nets along the quayside. The faces of the mother and child were exquisitely moulded, and Emily had liked to pretend that this was her own mother, and that the infant Jesus had been modelled on her when she was a baby.

  The Star of Bethlehem stood on a spit of land that jutted from the island’s rugged coastline. At high tide it was cut off, unless you were prepared to risk the path through the dense belt of blackthorn, and the bracken-laced pines that covered the hills behind. For decades, troubled women had plodded across the wet sand at low tide. On dark mornings, or evenings, drenched with salt spray, they had left newborn babies for the nuns to find, or sometimes handed them over to Mother Stella Marie in broad daylight. When the tide was high a brave and desperate woman might tackle the path through the woods. Sister Lucy thought Emily’s mother must have come that way late one night, for the tide had been full when Emily was discovered on the kitchen step at dawn. She’d been well wrapped up, not crying, an infant only a few hours old.

  The kindness of those women who had raised her was a light inside Emily – bright and steady as the flames of the votive
candles at the foot of the blue-robed Virgin in her niche inside the chapel, or the tall candles on the altar that had never been let go out since the chapel was consecrated. Their affection sustained her on days when her pride in holding down a job, in her precarious independence as a young woman with her own door key, even her pleasure in the books she devoured in the evenings, and the modest luxury of the automat, threatened to collapse. In those moments Emily was herself an island; a girl alone; a girl whose mother had struggled through a pitch-dark wood to deliver her to strangers.

  At times the weight of this knowledge threatened to crush her, as it had crushed others who had been raised at the Star of Bethlehem, soft boys like Arthur – who might yet be alive somewhere – bright girls like Linnie, who was not.

  Before she died, Doctor Cleary’s wife had been admitted to hospital; she had come in through the Emergency Department late at night, and by morning had been moved to Intensive Care. Emily had absorbed this information in silence, sipping strong black tea during the morning break.

  “Was there an accident?” Mel asked Sam.

  Emily held her breath as she waited for Sam’s reply, afraid that what she was about to hear would compel her to take some action she could not yet visualise, though she knew it would mean telling about the tapes.

  “I heard it was a brain haemorrhage,” Sam said.

  Emily breathed again. Surely a brain haemorrhage amounted to natural causes; it was nothing to do with those tapes, and the wild allegations of harm.

  When the others returned to their desks Emily sat on for a few minutes in the empty tea room, since she had no letters to type that morning. With her eyes closed she ran through the home things that held her steady: Our Lady in the little boat with her child; the window at the turn of the first floor stairs where you could watch the wooden boats of the island’s fishing fleet bravely setting out at dawn and coming home again at dusk. She and Linnie had often squeezed onto the window seat after prayers to watch for their favourites. Emily’s was yellow and green, a fishing boat called Gypsy Dancer; Linnie’s had been red, the Bonnie Bride.