Bonnie Russell, 1865–1923. Grey limestone. Apex top contouring. An epitaph line that Molly hopes every night in her sleep will turn out to be true: ‘Death is only a wall between two gardens.’ Molly standing in one garden on one side of that wall, here in the Northern Territory, her garden filled with ironwood trees and fern-leaved grevilleas with orange flowers the colour of fire; her mother, Violet, on the other side of that wall, standing among roses, red and pink roses and nothing else. She’s smiling. She’s waiting.
So much love inside a cemetery. So much loss, but so much love. It’s the one thing Violet appreciated about gravedigging. She called it ‘the romance of the cemetery’, though Horace never understood what she meant. ‘Ain’t nuthin’ romantic about it,’ he said. ‘Just holes for dust an’ bones.’ But Violet saw the poetry in the place. She saw those lines on Cherie Lawrence’s grave. 1854–1917. India red granite. A serpentine contour on top:
EVERY DAY AT HALF PAST THREE
A WHISPERED NAME, CHERIE
AND YOU SAIL BACK TO ME
ACROSS THE ETERNAL SEA
A simple line of love for Henry Prendergast, 1866–1909: ‘I miss your hand in mine.’ The simple reflection on the life of Hazel Collins, 1854–1926: ‘Died grateful. Died loved.’
The harrowing epitaphs to children. Violet Hook told Molly that these reminded her to be grateful. ‘Love lies below. Hope flies above’; ‘We held you for a day. We hold your heart forever.’ They reminded Violet of all she stood to lose.
Molly’s yellow lamp lights up the darkened cemetery lanes. Her duffel bag hangs on her back with the strap stretching from her left shoulder to her right hip. Bert the shovel rests like a sheathed sword between her shoulder blade and the bag strap. All these gravestones she knows so well. All these life lessons from people in the beyond. Marion Curtis, 1854–1908: ‘Loved in life, lamented in death.’ Lucille Clifford, 1823–1874: ‘While we have time, let us do good.’ Molly was raised on these lessons, these headstone messages to God. All that trust in faith.
‘Blessed are the pure in heart.’
‘Eternity, be thou my refuge.’
‘I know that my redeemer liveth.’
‘A lonely scene shall thee restore.’
Last words left behind by the dead. Concluding truths after lifetimes endured.
But can she believe them? Can she believe the words of Eunice Milton, 1875–1934: ‘Don’t grieve, for what we lose comes around in another form’? Because Molly likes that one. She wants to believe in Eunice Milton. She won’t grieve the loss of her mother because Violet Hook is still here, in another form. Molly just hasn’t found her yet. But she’s here. She’s come around again.
Now the night sky speaks to her.
‘What makes you so sure, Molly?’ the night sky asks.
‘I can feel her,’ she says, because to respond to the night sky like this is to be graceful and poetic.
‘Where can you feel her?’
‘Everywhere,’ Molly says. ‘In trees, in flowers, in the rocks, in the dirt.’
Molly rushes on with her lamp. ‘Did she come back around in another form?’ Molly asks the night sky.
‘You’ve been talking to the day sky again, haven’t you?’
‘A little bit,’ Molly says.
‘It’s a lie, Molly.’
‘What is?’
‘The day sky. Be wary of the things it tells you. The day sky is an illusion. It’s a trick. You believe it’s so blue and so real you can touch it, but the truth is, Molly, the day sky is just more of me. More black. And the black goes on forever.’
‘A boundless sea?’
‘A black sea with no shore,’ the night sky says. ‘Never ending or beginning. Never to be trusted.’
In the south-western corner of the cemetery she stops at a gravestone. Molly has found the grave she’s been looking for. Thelma Leonard. Upright limestone. Oval top contouring. She places her lamp beside the headstone. She slips off her duffel bag and holds the black tin box in two hands. She runs her fingers over her target connection point, a small hanging padlock at the centre of the tin box. Then, with a fierce swing of her gravedigger girl arms, she smashes the tin box against Thelma Leonard’s headstone.
But the box does not break open. There are items in the box, hard and small, and they rattle and bang against the insides as though Molly’s holding a box of lit Chinatown firecrackers. Molly tries again, with another rabid, wild gravedigger girl swing that dents the box but does not break it open.
‘What are you doing, Molly?’ the night sky asks.
‘I’m putting it all back,’ she says.
‘You don’t have time for this, Molly,’ the night sky says. ‘The pubs are closing in town. They’ll be home soon.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Night skies tell no lies, Molly.’
Molly looks up to the black sky blanket beyond the hanging leaves of the milkwood tree. She looks back down at the black rock frog rock.
‘“While we have time, let us do good,”’ she says. ‘The Japs are comin’. Everybody’s gettin’ out. Stuart Highway’s gonna be full of buses and cars and army troop lorries. They’ll be stuck in town for hours.’
‘What if they’re not in town?’ the night sky asks. ‘What if they’re just at Aubrey’s house, sipping moonshine in the old shed?’
The thought of Aubrey fills Molly’s arms with warm blood and she tenses her muscles and she bashes the tin against the rock so hard her gritted front teeth feel set to crack. This time the box lid bursts open and flashes of gold and silver spread across the dirt. Jewellery. Necklaces, bracelets, rings. Wedding bands. Engagement rings. Victorian engagement rings. Edwardian engagement rings. Molly takes the lamp and runs it over the ground, her fingers scrabbling for the scattered jewellery and carefully placing it back in the box. More than twenty pieces in total. Diamond. Amethyst. Opal. Pearl. Gold and gold and more of other people’s gold, all stolen by her father and uncle and stockpiled in the black tin box until they were ready to take the
