When the Night Comes: A Novel - Tapa blanda

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Favel Parrett was named Newcomer of the Year in 2012 by the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) for her debut novel, Past the Shallows. She lives in Australia with her partner, David, and her two dogs, Dougal and Bear. Find out more at FavelParrett.com.au.

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When the Night Comes

TO THE ISLAND

We had dinner in the canteen, at a wooden table and the chairs didn’t move. They were stuck to the floor somehow.

Mum was quiet, and my brother was quiet, and when we finished eating a man in a white uniform came over and said that the ship was going through the heads soon and that the forecast was for very rough seas. He was only looking at Mum when he spoke. He told her that it was advisable to get the children to bed as soon as possible.

My brother fell asleep quickly, his small body tucked in tight on the top bunk. But I lay awake, waiting for the rough seas. Waiting to see what they would feel like so far down. Flights and flights of stairs down from the canteen and from the windows that looked out to the sky. Down where we were, there were no windows. Down where we were, there were only fluoro lights and bunk beds. The bathroom was down the passage and Mum had left us. She was upstairs somewhere, upstairs above us where there was air, and I wished that she would come back.

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke the whole world was rocking and shaking and I was rolling in my bed. Not just from side to side, but up and down as well. Mum’s bed was still made. She wasn’t there.

When I tried to get out of bed, I fell over and was sick on the floor. My brother was looking at me, his hands stuck fast around the railings of the bunk bed, his face white like death.

“Where’s Mum?” he asked, but I didn’t know.

He got down somehow, down from the bunk, and he didn’t fall. He stood holding on to the bed as the room turned over and over and he got a towel off Mum’s bed and put it over the vomit on the floor. He helped me up and in our pajamas we made it out the door and into the hall. Together we fell against the walls as the ship lunged, and we slowly moved toward the stairs. Up and up, gripping the rail. Up to the deck where the canteen was.

There was hardly anyone around, only a few people sitting in the carpeted lounge, sitting with their heads in their hands. The canteen was empty and I couldn’t tell what time it was. Outside the windows it was dark.

Outside it was black.

Mum was sitting by herself on a bench attached to the wall of the ship under a Plexiglas roof. We sat next to her, holding on to the bottom of the bench tightly.

Mum said that she would just have one more cigarette and then we could go inside. I looked at her white face and her white hands. She was always sitting places by herself in the night—always sitting by herself having one more cigarette.

I told her that I had been sick and she wiped my forehead and cheek and said, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” It looked like she was crying. She said it was just the sea spray and the cold. And it was cold. It was freezing and windy, and the wind cut into your back like you had no skin at all. I could hear the water crack against the ship, feel it hit then hear the spray shoot up. Only I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see anything past the light cast out on the deck.

Out there the world was raging in the blackness.

We were going to a new place.

We were sailing toward it in the night.

An island in the middle of the sea.

An island that was made of stone.

It was only the ship that was keeping us safe. Only thin layers of steel and an engine pumping away in the dark were keeping us above the water, which would gladly swallow us all up like we had never ever been.