No Room for Ghosts

The afternoon faded, but we didn’t. It felt like another week before it was morning. Molten lava erupted from beyond the horizon, bleeding the sky and bruising the clouds. It fell in shards that glimmered on the surface of the water, washing in with the tide to polish the rocks along the shore. Like a victory banner, it unfurled in brilliant whorls of crimson and violet.
It was thunderous. It was glorious.

We were at the forgotten bay, savouring this new and special kind of dawn. Like shadows, we had slipped from the city by cover of night, fleeing far from the scene of our battle. Now we met a primeval world, where the water was untouched, abandoned by time, where pools continued to form in crescents scraped by the fins of different turtles, and every leaf in the surrounding scrub dripped with gold.

Abigail was skipping along the beach, delighting at the child-sized footprints she left in the silk-soft sand. Sometimes, she would double back, laughing and leaping over her own tracks, creating motifs from lines or circles.

Leanna humoured her, sliding off her shoes and making additions to Abigail’s designs. Sometimes, she would swoop in and catch the child, who was giggling too hard to outrun her, and lift her into the air with rail-thin arms. There was a healthy flush in her pale cheeks, and a grin on her face that was neither harrowed nor macabre. I thought, with a twinge of irony, that she had never looked so alive.

We walked around the curve of the bay in single-file, hopping over the rocks that formed the barricade between the open beach and the private one that belonged to Vaucluse House. Salt grasses swayed as they were tousled by the breeze. Eventually, we passed the spot Leanna had once used as a vantage point, when she had been like a white sail, watching out for other sails that were attached to masts.

This was the place where the children had played.

‘Oh!’

Leanna spotted it first- a tiny cross sprouting from a hillock, where succulents clumped the loose sand together in a mound. Two driftwood sticks had been tied in a crucifix with fishing line and planted there, as if with hope they might grow. Around them, rocks and shells were arranged in a decorative ring. Finally, the finished product was crowned with a wreath of seaweed that had started to go stale.

Abigail stopped and scrutinised the memorial. She stood rigid, like a doll, wrinkling her nose and letting her arms and dress flap freely. Then, she gambolled up the unstable slope and dropped with a huff, like someone had deflated all the air out of her. Sand dirtied the hem of her dress and caked her shins.

‘This was mine,’ she declared, picking up a reddish rock. ‘Daniel took it from my castle. I said to not touch it!’

Her grudge forgotten, she pocketed her seized property and stumbled back to meet a poker-faced Leanna. When she nearly tripped, she flung out an expectant hand, which Leanna grasped in order to right her. Together, they caught up with me, and we progressed further along the beach.

Rain began to drizzle, which was unusual for such a sunny morning. The light precipitation was like mist, or the salty toss of the sea as it rushed itself against the cliffs. Then, as we rounded the headland, it died abruptly. The scene that greeted us differed from our former view of the bay in its perfect clarity.

The ocean stretched in a panorama of deep, fathomless blue, sparkling like a bath of sapphires. Contained by the ivory of the sheltered beach and emerald glimpsed beyond Sydney Harbour, it was set with a tiny island like a jewel, verdant with trees like heads of broccoli in the distance.

Everything was so vibrant that I was overcome before I had a chance to register the details. The spectacular vista would have been enough to take my breath away, were it the first thing I had noticed.

From this angle, standing by the haven of the Vaucluse estate, the entire Harbour was filled with ghosts.

Long canoes cleaved the shining water. Their hulls were carved like split seed-pods lined with rough bark, and they carried shirtless men branded with bands, stripes, and handprints in bright ochre, charcoal black and chalk-white. Some stroked together, calling out instructions across the water, while others seemed to drift in worlds of their own.

Shapes also massed on the lawns of the island, winking into the distance. Looking up towards the historic manor, I counted corseted ladies with bright parasols, brooding war veterans, children with long ringlets, teenagers in denim, and a man in what I thought was a governor’s hat. He seemed familiar from paintings.

There were ghosts from every decade, spanning several centuries, scattered across the slope leading up to the house like a leisurely assortment of picnickers. Some were smiling, while others wore contented expressions, but all were visibly at peace. Further uphill, barely noticeable through the trees, more figures waved out of the open windows.

It was an idyllic, harmonious setting. It belonged in an oil painting, like the ones you see in huge, embellished frames galleries. It should have been displayed where everyone could marvel at it, but, as it was, it was a secret for ghosts alone. The three of us huddled together on the edge of the lawn where Leanna and I had once stood as trespassers. There, we stared out, mesmerised.

‘Where are they going?’ Abigail tilted her head to indicate the canoes, still slicing through the water, tending ever further towards the horizon.

‘Away.’

The voice was serene. I turned and saw a parasol-bearing young woman with ebony ringlets. She wore a black, lace dress cinched in at the waist and a wide skirt that gave her a waspish look. Behind her veil, she smiled kindly, like a younger version of the graveyard apparition.

‘Welcome. I’m the Haven Keeper,’ she explained. ‘For some, this sanctuary is a halfway house. As with these souls,’ she made a sweeping gesture to include the inhabitants of the bay, ‘they stay only as long as they need. Then they move on, going wherever death takes them. Heaven, Dreamtime, Rebirth… The next stage of the journey depends on the individual.’

‘Then, this isn’t all there is?’ Leanna hesitated, as though she hadn’t dared to think there could be more to the afterlife than we had seen already. In a way, I agreed with her. It was so much to absorb.

‘Oh, yes.’ The Keeper’s scarlet lips curved gently as she turned to stroll away. ‘You stay here for as long as you wish. Some people are attached to the Harbour, but there are always other options. In many ways, Vaucluse is similar to a port.’

As if on cue, there was a shout and a dinging of a bell from around the headland, and a flotilla of ships glided in. They coasted on wings as white as fresh laundry, like seagulls coming home to roost. Their hulls gleamed in the sunrise, and their masts shone like rods dipped in honey.

Leanna shuffled in front of me, captivated by the new arrivals. I held her around the waist, while Abigail sat enchanted, leaning into us.

‘Home,’ I whispered, tasting the flavour of the word. Then, a weight dropped like an anchor in my chest, hooking its prongs around my ribcage, and I remembered that I still had a confession to make. ‘Leanna?’

‘Hmm?’

‘I never told you what I found in my apartment.’ I paused, and took her silence as encouragement. ‘I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to kill you. Or at least, most of me didn’t. One of the things I found yesterday was a note I think I wrote. Only, it was in another language –a nonsense language. I couldn’t read it. I used to do a lot of things like that, you see…’

I glanced down at Abigail, and saw that she was toying with the grass, pulling it out in handfuls. I allowed myself to be briefly distracted before deciding that it was safe to continue.

‘There were always huge holes in my memory. There still are. I think that’s partly why it took me so long to get that we were ghosts. When I went back to my flat, I was reminded of things that must have been buried.’ Like our deaths had been a landslide, I thought, grimly.

‘I remembered that, sometimes, I used to sleep with the gun underneath my pillow, because I was afraid of something, but whenever I woke up, I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I blacked it out, but now I know. I was afraid of me.’

I inhaled deeply, and then concluded. ‘Apart from loneliness, that was what drove me over the edge. Of course, I don’t feel this way now.’ It appeared that dying cured you of every illness, and put the broken parts of you back together, so that you were whole. ‘I used to live in fear of what I might do. I guess I knew it would happen sooner or later, and… I’m sorry. I’m just sorry, that’s all.’

Once it had escaped my tongue, the apology seemed like such a small thing. I sighed, feeling Leanna’s warmth against the front of my body, and wondering whether our breath would blow my offering away.

‘It’s okay.’

Although she was as stiff as a mannequin, she squeezed my rough hand in her unplastered one. It occurred to me that it was unnecessary to say more, but I couldn’t stand the silence.

‘That was why I never wanted to make it home that day,’ I added.

‘But, Harvey,’ I expected chastisement, and was surprised by the lilting tone of her voice, ‘you did make it home.’

Leanna smiled up at me, wrapping my arms around her like a cloak. On the grass, Abigail was curled up sideways like a contented cat.

For an everlasting moment, the three of us were statue-still and silent, petrified by the radiant dawn. Although we were ghosts, we had permanence, because we were part of something bigger than ourselves. Something that swelled inside me like an engorging balloon, expanding to encompass first the hill, then whole haven and all the other ghosts, something that transcended time and location.

Hand in hand and head in arms, we nestled on the shore, and watched the tall-sailed ships come in.