Seaside Tales of Death or Destruction

By Jane Carmody

The vast sea with its hissing, black swells surrounds us. Its cajoling, alluring, vindictive voice beckons and things happen. Suffusing the subconscious, the sea is rendered as a capricious backdrop to the frailties, failures and fraudulence of the characters as they fathom psychological or physical depths and test their courage to sink or swim.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Feb 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781761092558

Book preview

Seaside Tales of Death or Destruction

SEASIDE TALES OF DEATH OR DESTRUCTION

JANE CARMODY

Ginninderra Press

Seaside Tales of Death or Destruction

ISBN 978 1 76109 255 8

Copyright © text Jane Carmody 2022

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All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

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First published 2022 by

Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

CONTENTS

The Ring of Chains

The Visitation

Something Red

The Lighthouse

Clouds

Accidental Plot

Freya

Duncan Trevaniel

Leagues

Messenger

THE RING OF CHAINS

It was a distant howl at first, like the wail of someone grieving. It grew louder and closer. Through the forest it thrashed, beating back the branches. It rushed into the paddocks, lashed and sucked the moisture from the fern-laden gullies and swept past the ‘suicide gum’ where a worker had swung. Charlotte could hear the chains that were slung over the branch of that tree clanging and rattling. It sent chills up her spine.

She lay in her bed sweating and then felt the slight stir of air around her nostrils as the wind forced a draught through the floorboards, weatherboards and windows. Clattering along like a madman, the wind tossed branches upon the corrugated-iron roof and drummed and rippled under the eaves.

The cotton sheet was pulled up around her ears, but it was no defence against the raucous wind. She crept out of bed and entered the kitchen. As she opened the back kitchen door to the veranda, it was flung back with a jolt, dispersing a harried array of leaves into the room. It displaced the freshly ironed doilies from the homestead that had been neatly placed on the kitchen table.

She feared that the noise would disturb her parents, making them angry to be woken in the middle of the night, especially with the Spencers arriving tomorrow and therefore an early start. For a moment, she stood still and strained to listen for movement in their room above the wind. She braced herself against the door, but she could hear nothing and so she stepped outside as the wind swirled around her light nightdress and flipped back her plaits.

‘Paddy, Paddy,’ she called into the gusts.

From the shed, a lethargic brown mongrel stepped gingerly onto the ground and shook before sitting to bite a flea.

‘Come on, Paddy,’ she said, stroking the beast lovingly. ‘Come in with me tonight.’

The dog stood at the kitchen door as Charlotte took hold of the handle tightly.

‘Come on, come on,’ she whispered, beckoning the reluctant dog inside, ‘but we must get up early so you won’t get caught in here,’ she warned. She hopped back into her bed and stroked the dog as it sat beside her until she fell asleep.

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‘You’re a sleepy head this morning,’ Charlotte’s mother Louisa said without looking up as the child appeared at the kitchen table.

‘The wind woke me in the night. I’m tired,’ she answered apprehensively, noticing that the dog had already been let out.

But Louisa was too busy ironing for the family in order that they have fresh linen to worry about Charlotte having the dog in her room.

Charlotte saw that some of the doilies were soaking again, having been blown to the dusty floor during the night. ‘Do you want me to peg them out?’

‘What? Yes,’ her mother said distractedly.

Charlotte took the doilies from the bucket.

‘Here let me see those,’ her mother ordered and inspected them intensely, before dismissing Charlotte to hang them outside. She then continued to iron. Her cream cotton dress clung to her as though it were squeezing her breath out. Sweat bled through the threads at her armpits and back as she laboured for the Spencers. Beads formed above her dry severe lips. Greasy orbs trickled from her temple and spilled upon the heavy ironing board.

Charlotte lingered for a moment too long before Louisa snapped, ‘Go on, girl, put them on the line.’

She struggled to hold the door as the wind forced it back, creating a mini maelstrom.

‘Shut it, shut it,’ her mother cried while holding down the flapping linen.

Charlotte pulled the door shut while firmly holding the doilies. She stepped onto the creaking dry boards of the veranda. The sun had climbed above the surrounding eucalypt forest casting definite shadows upon the paddock. Charlotte noticed the cows clumped together in large black knots.

It was already hot as Charlotte attended to hanging the doilies. The dirt whipped her bare legs and spun into eddies behind the shed. She carefully attached the washing as the linen flicked with resistance upon the line. She could imagine the doilies flying off into the sky, free of constraints, climbing into the heavens and soaring above the rippling paddocks, swaying forests, trembling lakes and sand blasted beaches. She squinted watching the threadbare clouds stretching upon the blue opalescence. The back door opened.

‘Stop daydreaming, girl. I need your help up at the house. Get dressed.’

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Linen was packed into a lined case and loaded onto the cart along with a tureen of cold meat that her mother had cooked, bread, vegetables, eggs and the carcasses of two chickens. Alexandra, the workhorse, swayed and flicked her tail, quietly enduring tenacious bush flies that crawled into her eyes as the cart was loaded. Normally, Louisa would have walked up the path to the homestead with their load. But it was so hot that she decided to conserve her energy for later when the family arrived, knowing that the ladies might call upon her to help unpack or prepare a meal or do any menial task that they or their long-nosed maid saw fit.

The horse heaved its burden up the hill, scrubbed wet under the harness. Charlotte and her mother were shaken along as the wheels scraped the rutted track. Fraught acacias lining the path tossed their heads as the bracken underskirts snagged. Charlotte’s mother confessed her loathing of the heat as she wiped her tangled hair off her forehead, the lines upon her face growing tense as she drew closer to the homestead. She frowned and shielded her eyes as the cart rounded the bend and the dazzling white of the house against the pressing trees seemed to scorch her eyes.

‘We will go in through the back, it’s more sheltered,’ Louisa told Charlotte. ‘Be careful handling the tureen. It belongs to the family.’

Shrivelled, quivering petals and leaves, blown down from the climbing rose that grew along the back fence littered the entrance.

‘I must sweep them up,’ Louisa commented as she opened the door.

Charlotte wondered why. It seemed a thankless task when more would be blown down and swept away in this wind.

To enter the cool, still house brought little relief for Louisa and Charlotte, as they immediately raised sweat making the house ready. The food was put in the cool room. Louisa dusted the tables and charlotte swept the floors. She took off her dusty shoes, not out of respect, but to feel the cool, smooth polished boards under her feet, unlike the rough boards of her own home. She entered Mr and Mrs Spencer’s bedroom, where the brocade curtains had been drawn back allowing slanting light to cut across the room. Charlotte gazed into the mirror of the carved oak wardrobe and was entranced by the image. Her straw-coloured hair, although contained in plaits, looked wild and unruly. Hazel eyes gleamed and blushed cheeks were flecked with freckles. She was like a sprite amid the gloomy room with its dark panelled walls and grand mahogany bed. As she swept next to the bed, she saw another image in the bevelled mirror of the dressing table which stood opposite the window. But the characteristics of her face were eclipsed by the backlight.

Next, she entered the bedroom of Clare and Esther, the two Spencer daughters. She was at once confronted by the sumptuous porcelain-faced doll that sat upon Clare’s bed. Its impassive vitreous eyes watched as she swished the broom and peeped illicitly into the drawers and fondled tortoiseshell and ivory combs and pins. She glanced back at the imperious doll and then turned away from its knowing stare. A toy pram stood in the corner of the room. Fingering the embroidered coverlet and lace pillow, she successfully managed to