The Ghost's Child Page 5

Instead he was doing handstands by the water’s edge. At the sight of Maddy and her parents he turned upright, and stared as if they were more peculiar than camels. His trousers appeared more than usually scrappy. His nose was peeling from sunburn. “Goodness, it’s a savage,” gasped Mama. “I think I’m going to faint.”

  But Maddy felt a surge of love for the queer smoky creature reflected in the shallows. He would never be angry or disappointed – he would forgive her anything, he would laugh and understand. She skittered across the sand to him, catching his brown fingers in her own. “Mama, Papa, this is Feather!” And instead of being sorry, she was outrageously proud.

  Mama stood rigid on a sand dune. “If this is a joke, Matilda,” she said, “it is in very poor taste.”

  But her father only stood and studied Feather, his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat, saying not a word. Maddy knew he was thinking about their quest for beautiful things. Papa would see that Feather was like a fine brumby colt, something worth catching and owning. He removed his hat, inclined his head and said graciously, “How do you do, Mr Feather. I am Matilda’s father. As her father, I do what I can to protect her, and to make her happy. Sometimes these ambitions clash: sometimes, to protect her, I have to make her unhappy. But this afternoon it is me who is glum, because my daughter has informed me she is in love. As you can imagine, those are worrying words for a father to hear. Love has its drawbacks, as I’m sure you know. But I do want to see her happy, and there’s happiness in her voice when she speaks of you. Maddy says she loves you, Mr Feather. What I would like to know is, do you love her in return?”

  “This is not funny!” Mama screeched, scattering a distant herd of cows.

  Papa and Maddy and Feather paid her no attention. Maddy looked at Feather, wringing his hand, her blood sounding louder than the waves thumping the shore. She knew he could crush her badly now, with just a shake of his head. He had never said the word love, as if it were something too heavy to pick up. If he disavowed her now, before Mama and Papa, there would be nothing left to do but return home and lock herself in her room, and lie down and seep away.

  Feather’s grey gaze left Papa’s shrewd face, and travelled across the sand and up into the hills. From a nearby pillar of stone, a black-browed tern launched itself into the sky. It flew off quickly, calling stridently, its mission urgent. Maddy saw its wings shutter inside Feather’s eyes. He bowed his fair head and she knew he saw everything: the harm he could do her, the cracks pulling through his world. In her mind she saw a wild thing, crouching and snared. Feather sighed softly, and looked up at Papa. “Yes, I love her. I do.”

  “No!” Mama bawled. “No, no!”

  Maddy caught her breath, feeling she might cry. She bit her tongue against shouting the jubilance she felt. Papa was nodding, already making iron plans. “You live on a beach,” he pointed out to Feather. “Clearly my daughter can’t do the same. She is my most beautiful thing, and I want her to be properly cared for. You may think nothing of wind and hail, but Matilda is accustomed to crockery and doors. You are not the man I’d have chosen for my daughter, Mr Feather, though I am not surprised she has chosen you. For the sake of her happiness, I am prepared to compromise – provided you do the same. Prove your love for her, sir, by quitting your undomesticated ways, and live life as a civilized fellow, as the rest of us do.”

  “But Papa,” Maddy started, “the beach—”

  “It is not negotiable, Matilda,” said her father.

  Maddy, wide-eyed, looked to Feather, whose consideration had returned to the straggly hills. She knew someone better than herself would say don’t do it, Feather, don’t agree. But Maddy was herself, and she loved and wanted him, so she stood in anxious silence and said nothing and saved nothing, hungering for him to agree. And when, without turning his sights from the hills, Feather nodded and said, “I will,” Maddy did not feel like the architect of a gaol, but exultant and victorious, and no longer alone.

  Because neither of them wanted to stroll in the park or hear the street sounds or drink iced tea with the neighbours, Maddy and Feather went to live in a quaint cottage in a forgotten field far from town, a place in which nobody had lived for many years. The house had four rooms and a falling-down fence, and its kitchen chimney was plugged by a possum’s nest. A deep black forest of tall pine trees surrounded the cottage and its field, but on a sunny day the ocean could be seen in glittering glimpses between the spindly conifer branches. The overrun garden was jostling with flowers and weeds, and the field was flouncy with blue butterflies. Behind the house was a wide and depthless pond of enigmatic splashings. Maddy’s mother turned ashen when she saw the cottage, and swore she would never come again. “I hope you’re pleased, Matilda,” she said, turning away with a twisting smile. Maddy’s father laughed and laughed at the cottage, like a nasty boy giggling at a doll’s house: but he could not deny that it had several doors and that its cupboards were full of crockery. “I am here if you need me,” he told his daughter, yet Maddy needed nothing more. She was burrowed away from the world that perplexed her; she had Feather, and a forest to keep him secret; for company they had her little cat, Perseus; in such seclusion they would be safe. She slipped her arm through Feather’s and said, “We will be happy here.”

  “If we must be anywhere,” he answered, “I am glad we’re here.”

  And it seemed to Maddy that no two people had, in fact, been happier. She filled the cottage with interesting things she had brought home from her travels, as well as stones and mouse skeletons and empty cocoons that she found on her rambles through the forest with Perseus. Feather pottered in the garden each day, gathering fallen rose leaves and brushing pine needles from the paths. Because the forest threw chill shadows on him, Maddy sewed him a wardrobe of clothes. She chose material that matched his storm-coloured eyes, adding buckles and buttons and many wide pockets in case he found something to carry. The rustling field was threaded with nettles, so she measured his feet and bought boots. He looked handsome as he drifted around the house, his throat and wrists bound by collars, his boots creaking like cellar doors. He looked different from the young man she had found on a beach with a pelican in his arms, the bronze fading out of his skin now, his hair darkened by the forest’s shade. She loved to see him blinky-eyed at breakfast, or frowning at the thoughts in a book. She found herself wishing she had just one friend, to whom she might show him off.

  She sat on the doorstep with Perseus in her lap and watched him work in the field, tilling the soil for vegetables, the grass flattening into paths under his boots. In the garden he rescued beetles from the birdbath, and scattered seeds and biscuits for the animals that visited the garden. He stopped and listened to subtle sounds of the forest, smiling in sympathy, cocking an ear. He tasted raindrops and pine sap and pools of mud, he watched the wind bend the flimsy tips of the conifers.

  He knelt in the ancient flowerbeds, pulling dandelions and buttercups from between shrubs. “What are you doing, Feather?” Maddy asked, when she saw his scratched, smudged hands.

  He said, “I don’t think a garden is supposed to have weeds.”

  She stopped beside him, somehow unsure. She had always rather admired weeds, being something of a weed herself, eking out an existence, not expecting much. After a moment of hesitation she said, “I don’t know why weeds are punished for being what they are. Look at that one, squeezed into a crack – it’s given no tending, but it never complains. Look at this one, clinging to stones – what flower could live fiercely as that? Weeds have roots and leaves and petals, the same as other plants. Why, then, should they be banished?”

  Feather shrugged slackly. “I don’t know. Isn’t it how things are meant to be? Isn’t a garden for jonquils, and lily-of-the-valley?”

  And it was true that all the gardens Maddy had known were completely free of weeds. On their search for the world’s most beautiful thing, she and her father had never stopped to admire dock or shepherd’s purse. Feather could leave the weeds to thrive, she supposed, b
ut then the garden might be ugly, not beautiful. Their house might seem laughable, their life together unconvincing. She wanted herself and Feather to be unassailable, for nothing to be wrong. “I’ll help you,” she said, turning back her sleeves.

  After this, it seemed to Maddy that the cottage was not as nice or as proper as it could be. The windows and walls were grubby, the rooms smelled dimly of earth. She and Feather could not live like birds on the beach – but nor should they live like bears in a cave. They needed somewhere fitting to be. So she filled buckets and soaped surfaces until the glass and walls were spotless; she went to town and bought material to make curtains for the windows. She waited for the possum to venture out one night, then blocked up the chimney and burned the furry, flea-bitten bed. She oiled all the hinges that squawked, and gave the furniture refreshing coats of paint. She worked from morning until midnight, finding one thing after another in need of attention. Every well-finished chore made her feel more certain that theirs was a world that could last. One evening Feather came through the noiseless front door and, seeing his reflection in the newly polished floor, stood still, peering down. “Do you like it?” Maddy asked. She herself was very pleased. Smoothing and polishing the timber had been the work of many days. “Take off your boots,” she told him. “I don’t want you to ruin it.”

  Feather glanced at his boots, which were heavy and stiff as horseshoes and rubbed the skin from the back of his heels. “I like floors when they are still trees,” he said. “I like sunshine on water more than polish from a jar.”

  “So do I!” Maddy said quickly. “I like those things too!”

  Feather did not answer, but stared at his reflection. As if talking to somebody unseen, he explained, “This is how things are meant to be.”

  A blade of unease cut into Maddy’s satisfaction. “You look tired,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to do.

  And in fact they often were tired, and sometimes grumpy for it. The days of sitting together idly watching the waves were a long time in the past. Before there’d been leaks to plug and garments to mend, they’d had nothing to do but linger and talk. Now they toiled and slept, and not much more. They no longer searched for faces in the clouds, or walked through the forest at midnight. They spoke a lot about the house, and hardly ever about the people who lived in it. Maddy stopped confiding in the nargun, because she had no time for anything that wasn’t necessary and real. Perseus would run when he heard the approach of her bustling feet. Feather learned to wield an axe against a sapling for the fire or a rooster for the dinner table. Seeing him in his boots and trousers, his white shirt and leather belt, it was difficult to imagine that he’d once lived by the ocean like a sea-bird or a seal. Clothed and preoccupied, the strange smoky shimmer that swam from him was scarcely noticeable any more. Maddy still called him Feather, but it was easy to forget why.

  Autumn passed, then winter. And eventually there came a day when all the weeds were pulled from the garden, and roses grew instead; when the fetid water had been drained from the pond, and clear water rippled there; when the garden paths curved in tidy lines, without a pine needle in sight; when the picket fence had been nailed, and stood militarily straight. The windows of the cottage were curtained, the floors were marzipan-smooth. The quilts were sewn, the chimneys swept, the holes in the walls were patched. Everything was finally proper, and there was nothing now for Feather and Maddy to do except live. Standing in the shadow of their perfect house, he asked, “Are you happy?”

  “I am,” said Maddy. For how could she not be? She curled her hand in his. “Are you happy, Feather?” she asked. “I hope so.”

  Because she had not forgotten the grave sacrifices he had made for her, the things he’d bravely farewelled; and it did not matter what she felt, as long as he was content.

  He said, “I am happy that you are.”

  But one day she could not find him, and after searching the field and then the forest she found him a long long walk away, sitting on the beach. The sight of him alone on the sand, his knees drawn up, his face turned to the breeze, had once filled Maddy with soaring delight. Now it chilled her to the core. She rushed down the sand and fluttered around him, saying, “Come home, it’s getting late, you can’t stay out all night.” Yet her dismayed heart knew very well that he could, if he wanted to – Feather could stay out all night, all day, forever. He was not afraid of the dark. When Maddy first met him, before he’d been given a key and a door, the clouds and earth had been Feather’s roof and floor, his companions and home. It was a relief when he stood, pulled on his boots, and returned to the cottage with her. He slept soundly that night, his lovely head on plump pillows; but Maddy lay awake watching the spiny shadows of trees quavering in the wind.

  From that day onward, whenever Feather slipped from sight, fear jabbed Maddy like a rusty nail. She would skitter from room to room, calling him. She’d discover him kneeling in the vegetable patch or digging rocks from the field. Hearing panic in her voice, he would look up with confusion. Embarrassed, Maddy would try to pretend she wasn’t worried about anything at all. One day, however, Feather understood – he overheard the whisper that was telling her terrible things. He bent his head to hers and said, “Look, Maddy, I’m here.”

  But another morning, soon after, she found him once more by the ocean. He was standing barefoot on the rocks and looking out to sea. There was surely something out there – Maddy couldn’t see it, but she knew that Feather could. Inside himself, he saw something to which she was blind. He looked at it more devoutly than he ever looked at her. Of all the things that were important to him, this thing was immortal.

  He reached for his boots when he saw her, slipped them on his feet. “I’m here,” he said again.

  Some nights, reading by the fire, she would glance up to see him staring down at his empty hands. Some days, watching through the kitchen window, she saw him gaze searchingly into the sky. He was listening, thinking, remembering: she realized he was pining. She wanted to run outside and strike him, because he was hurting her. It wasn’t right – he shouldn’t want to hurt her, he wasn’t allowed to cause her pain, not when he knew that she loved him, not when she strove so hard to be loved. She said, “You have a life with me now, you’re happy,” in case he didn’t know.

  And then one morning, one terrible day, she found him walking by the water without his boots and shirt, as unkempt as any creature who’d never been inside a house. He looked as wild as he had on the day she’d first met him – Maddy thought she saw a flare of lightning flicker in his wake. Worse than this, though, was the troop of gulls that trotted alongside him. The birds stepped smartly, like busy little barristers, tense chatter rising between them. The flock of birds and the unclothed, unshackled man strode down the beach, full of purpose and determination. There was clearly something important that they needed to do.

  Maddy stepped back among the conifers before she was seen, dizzy with exile. There were things in Feather’s life that he shared, but not with her. Wandering aimlessly from tree to tree, she realized that he would never tell her what he saw when he looked to sea. This thing belonged to him, it was private and important, and he wouldn’t tell her what it was because he was not obliged. “Feather isn’t yours.” The nargun put it succinctly, appearing unbidden by her side. “And you are less important than this mysterious, summoning thing. And whatever it is, its summons is loud. Loud enough to carry him away from you. What shall you do? What shall you do?”

  That night at supper Maddy said, “I don’t like the forest. It is too dark. Let’s go to the desert, where there are no trees or ocean, just the sun over our heads.”

  Feather nodded and said mildly, “If that will make you happy.”

  “Won’t it make you unhappy?”

  Feather said, “It will make no difference to me.”

  And that was how he told her it didn’t matter where they lived – by the coast, in a canyon, on the top of a hill; in a cottage, in a chamber, in a box undergroun
d. In his heart, he would always be looking elsewhere. A sea-bird only cares for wind and water and sky: starved, blind, fallen to earth, its thoughts still turn to flight.

  His words blurred Maddy’s vision, made her feel threadbare and fraught. She couldn’t bear losing him to this shapeless need. She would fight to keep him – but how to battle something that has less substance than air? And if she fought it, and if it died, wouldn’t part of Feather die too? In misery she pleaded, “Tell me, Feather. I’d like to know. Let me take some of the burden from you. Explain it to me.”

  “I can’t,” he replied, quite simply.

  Her shoulders fell, she knotted her fingers. “We can be happy, Feather. You can be, if you try.”

  Like a weary doll he answered, “I am happy, Maddy. You don’t think I love you, but I do.”

  They sat together at the table in sorrow, the lonely fairytale princess and the wondrous being chained to the ground.

  There was no one to whom Maddy could describe her woe: they never had any visitors, and she had no friends who weren’t make-believe or feline. Her mother would only laugh deliciously, as a kind of revenge. She could not tell her adventurous father, because he would be pained, and believe that her troubles were a fault of his own. The iron man, always quick to criticize, would be loud in his contempt of Feather. In the iron man’s world, a healthy young fellow did not spend his days staring moonily out to sea. So Maddy kept her unhappiness a secret to herself. She didn’t want Feather blamed and hounded just for being who he was. And yet, if he were different, things would not be so bad. Everything would be blissful, Maddy believed, if only Feather could forget who he was.

  He walked around the garden as if the pickets were a row of steel bars. He dug the soil and cleaned the birdbath and swept leaves from the door. The sight of him dutifully filling his days made Maddy feel sunken and hollow. She remembered the zoos she had visited on her hunt for beauty – the wolves pacing stone, the waxen starfish behind glass. The animals had been netted from jungles and plains, the sea creatures scooped from the waves. Somehow, they had all been cornered and trapped. Maddy had her own beautiful thing now, something she had cornered and trapped. She should have left him alone, maybe; she certainly had no right to resent his restlessness. But she longed for him to be happy, to be hers: so she would not open the prison of her heart to let him go. “I love you,” she told him, and this was true, and she knew that he believed her; but when she said it she saw the chain around his ankle, a length of links that let him wander, but not far. She did not see the chain around her own ankle, because love is blind.