“How many people are there on the island?” Petra asked Matt after a time.
“Including the kids, about twenty-five, twenty-seven, I think.”
“Do you have a school?” Heather asked.
“The older kids go to boarding school. The younger ones are homeschooled, if you know what that is.”
Heather smiled. “I do. I was homeschooled.”
“In Seattle? I thought that was a big city,” Matt said, becoming, perhaps, slightly more friendly.
“I just moved to Seattle a few years ago. I grew up on a small island myself. Goose Island in Puget Sound.”
“What was that like?” Petra asked, genuinely curious.
“We moved there when I was little. After my parents got out of the army. It’s sort of an artists’ colony,” Heather said, digging the experience of telling perfect strangers some of her story. “It was founded in the 1970s but it attracted a lot of ex-servicemen, army veterans with PTSD, that kind of stuff. They have art therapy. And nature. And it’s real quiet. It, um, got a bit too small for me, so I moved to Seattle.”
“I did exactly the opposite,” Matt said. “Like your folks. I moved here. I married in. I’m not one of Ma’s sons. I’m a son-in-law.”
“It’s a bit, um, off the beaten track?” Petra suggested.
“That’s the point,” Matt said. “I grew up in a flat in Melbourne. Single mum. The trams, the cars, people yelling. Does my head in, the city. I came here with Tara, Ma’s second youngest. But she and Ma fought like cats and cats. She buggered off and I stayed. I learned bushcraft out here and I can see a hundred different birds on a morning walk.”
“Bushcraft? Birds? You and my dad would get on famously,” Heather said.
“Sounds like we would. That’s not your dad with you, is it?” Matt asked.
“No! Tom’s my husband!” Heather said, coloring.
“You seem barely old enough to have children,” Petra said.
Heather looked at Tom and the kids. “I’m his second wife. His first, Judith, died a year ago,” she said quietly.
“Oh no, poor little things,” Petra said. “But I am sure you are a comfort to them.”
I try, Heather mouthed but did not say.
Matt tried and failed to light a cigarette. Heather lent him her Zippo, and the cigarette caught.
“Is there an Aboriginal heritage here?” Petra asked.
“No. Look, this is not a tourist destination,” Matt insisted.
“We took care of them lot. We did a black line on the bastards,” Jacko said as he and Ivan swapped places at the tiller.
“Black line?” Heather asked.
“You know about the Black Line of Tasmania, of course?” Jacko said.
Heather and Petra shook their heads.
“Two thousand men under Major Sholto Douglas marched across Tasmania to capture all the remaining Aboriginals. Killed the lot of them,” Jacko said gleefully. “They did the same here on Dutch Island soon thereafter.”
“And the dream lines?” Petra asked.
“We had one come here a few years ago spouting that nonsense. Remember that, Matt?” Jacko said.
“I remember,” Matt said.
“He comes here and he tells us that because we have no natives, we’re a land without a Dreaming. The nerve of him. What a bloody fraud. Ma saw right through him. All his talk about demons and bunyips. Ma had me and Ivan chase him off with our shotguns! Should have seen him run!” Jacko cackled.
“Oh, dear,” Petra said and she looked at Heather, whose eyes widened with alarm. Heather’s feeling of unease was growing as the ferry chugged inexorably closer to shore. To distract herself, she watched as Ivan steered the tiller with his foot and cast a fishing line into the water.
“What is he fishing for?” Heather found herself wondering out loud.
“If sharks are here, it’s probably big fish like salmon and tuna,” Petra said.
“Do you fish, Petra?” Heather asked.
“Oh, yes. Hans and I go fly-fishing in Germany,” Petra said. “You?”
“Not anymore. My dad grew up fly-fishing in Kentucky, but, gosh, the real fisherfolk in my family are from my mom’s side. Her mom—my grandmother—grew up on the Makah Reservation. Mom said they could fish anything out of the sea. Whales, even.”
“He better stop fishing now. We’re getting close,” Matt said. “Last chance for the dunny, everyone.”
Olivia tugged Heather’s sleeve. Heather put up her hand like a kid in school. “Is dunny ‘toilet,’ by any chance?” she asked Matt.