All Our Shimmering Skies

ALL OUR SHIMMERING SKIES

Trent Dalton

Copyright

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Trent Dalton 2020

Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

Cover photographs © Shutterstock.com

Trent Dalton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008438371

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2020 ISBN: 9780008438388

Version: 2020-11-09

Praise for All Our Shimmering Skies

‘As Australian as outback red dirt and as universal as the sky young Molly Hook’s journey takes place beneath, All Our Shimmering Skies is an open-hearted wonder, by turns heartbreaking and full of hope, no less than an instant classic’ Venero Armanno

‘A glinting, big-hearted miracle of a book’ Richard Glover

‘Australia has a new literary hero. Molly Hook – part Cordelia, part Jo March, part Pippi Longstocking – pulls us into a story and a landscape that is mythic, beguiling and almost hallucinatory in its beauty. And instantly recognisable as our own’ Kristina Olsson

‘Only from the fantastical mind of Trent Dalton could this story be realised with such vivid finesse. My mind is blown once again by his extraordinary imagination and truly engaging characters – this ensemble of angels and monsters will stay with me forever. Trent’s gift is born of a true heart, the most curious of minds and an unashamed gusto for the truth. For me, this is storytelling at its absolute purest and most enlightening: provocative, deeply moving and infinitely insightful. All Our Shimmering Skies is a courageous expression of longing, hope and love against unimaginable odds’

Asher Keddie

Praise for Boy Swallows Universe

‘The best Australian novel I have read in more than a decade … The last 100 pages of Boy Swallows Universe propel you like an express train to a conclusion that is profound and complex and unashamedly commercial … A rollicking ride, rich in philosophy, wit, truth and pathos’

Sydney Morning Herald

‘A towering achievement. It is the Cloudstreet of the Australian suburban criminal underworld’ Herald Sun

‘A story in thrall to the potential the world holds for lightness, laughter, beauty, forgiveness, redemption and love’

The Australian

‘One of the best Australian novels I’ve ever read … The characters are human and complex, the writing is fast-paced and heartfelt, and every sentence is surprising … This book will stay with me for a long time’ The Guardian

‘Filled with beautifully lyric prose … the characterization, too, is universally memorable, especially of Eli and August. At one point Eli wonders if he is good. The answer is “yes,” every bit as good as this exceptional novel’ Booklist (USA)

‘Funny, tender and raw … It is a remarkably compelling story, but what really makes Boy Swallows Universe shine is its use of language. Dalton has invented a kind of clipped, poetic vernacular that colours the entire book … there’s something distinctly picturesque about Dalton’s language that makes it inherently Australian … A wonderful, unexpectedly beautiful portrayal of boyhood and destiny’ Better Reading

‘The book is plotted like a murder mystery, with the requisite twists and turns providing illuminating surprises right to the last page. Scenes are rendered in intimate detail, the characters are as real as your family and the writing is glorious’ Adelaide Advertiser

‘Oh my God. Wow. It’s just superb. I’ve always looked out for Trent’s work because he has a magic about him: what he sees, how he explains things. He can describe a kitchen table in a way that makes you want to throw your arms around it. After reading Boy Swallows Universe I realise that his genius isn’t really just about writing so much; it’s about hope, and his instinctive and infectious “Yes” to one of the most plaguing questions of the human night: can tenderness survive brutality? This novel confirms Trent Dalton as a genuine treasure of Australian letters’ Annabel Crabb

‘As a brilliant journalist, Trent Dalton has always intimately understood how fact is often stranger than fiction. Perhaps it took someone like him to produce a novel so humming with truth. Call it a hunch, but I think he might’ve just written an Australian classic’ Benjamin Law

‘I’ve finally had a chance to immerse myself in this – a truly incredible book, one where I feel I will miss the characters as if they’re real friends. What an achievement’ Leigh Sales

‘Stunning. My favourite novel for decades. Left me devastated but looking to the heavens’ Tim Rogers

‘An astonishing achievement. Dalton is a breath of fresh air – raw, honest, funny, moving. He has created a novel of the most surprising and addictive nature. Unputdownable’ David Wenham

‘I couldn’t stop reading from the moment I started, and I still can barely speak for the beauty of it. Trent Dalton has done something very special here, writing with grace, from his own broken heart’ Caroline Overington

‘This novel is a raucous, moving, hilarious triumph – a major new voice on the Australian literary scene has arrived’

Nikki Gemmell

‘A gothic humdinger, wrapped around a love story, wrapped around a riddle, wrapped around the universe: this is the book that has everything’ Richard Glover

‘Enthralling – a moving account of sibling solidarity and the dogged pursuit of love’ Geoffrey Robertson QC

‘It’s fresh, original, it’s dripping with promise. A voyage of wide-eyed wonder’ Radio New Zealand

‘A true Australian masterpiece’ Marie Claire

‘Boy Swallows Universe is a wonderful surprise: sharp as a drawer full of knives in terms of subject matter; unrepentantly joyous in its child’s-eye view of the world; the best literary debut in a month of Sundays’ The Australian

‘Boy Swallows Universe hypnotizes you with wonder, and then hammers you with heartbreak’ Washington Post

Dedication

For Fiona, Beth and Sylvie

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for All Our Shimmering Skies

Praise for Boy Swallows Universe

Dedication

The First Sky Gift

Molly and the Epitaph

Black Rock Frog Rock

The Seed of a Story

Yukio Miki and the Black Dragon Sky

The Ways in and Out of the Maze

Red Tin Thimble

Graves at her Command

Women and Children First

Night Skies Tell no Lies

Blood Flowers Blooming

The Bone Pillow

War Skies

The Second Sky Gift

The Man Who Hated Gold

Nine Northern Dingoes

Tear Driven

The Admiral’s Frock

The Devil’s Heartbeat

Delirium Tremens

The Third Sky Gift

Ophelia

The Sky Buried Treasure

The Ten Second Sky

Dreams of Love

The Fourth Sky Gift

Everything We Need

The Owner of the Waterfall

On the Plain of High Heaven

Moon Truth

True Love is Buried Treasure

Own All You Carry

Carry All You Own

The First Sky Gift

The Actress and the Poet

Molly and the Epitaph

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

About the Publisher

A bull ant crawls across a curse. The bull ant’s head is blood red and it stops and starts and stops and starts and moves on through a chiselled gravestone letter ‘C’ and Molly Hook, aged seven, wonders if the bull ant has ever been able to see the whole of the sky given all those magic gravity angles bull ants walk. And if it has no sky to see then she will make a sky for it. The bull ant follows the curved bottom of a ‘U’ and moves to an ‘R’ and winds through a twisting ‘S’ and exits through an ‘E’.

Molly is the gravedigger girl. She’s heard people in town call her that. Poor little gravedigger girl. Mad little gravedigger girl. She leans on her shovel. It has a wooden handle as long as she is tall, with a wide dirt-stained sheet-steel blade with teeth on its sides for root cutting. Molly has given the shovel a name because she cares for it. She calls the shovel Bert because those side teeth remind her of the decaying and icicle-shaped fangs of Bert Green who runs the Sugar Lane lolly shop on Shepherd Street. Bert the shovel has helped dig twenty-six graves for her so far this year, her first year digging graves with her mother and father and uncle. Bert has killed a black whipsnake for her.

Molly’s mother, Violet, says Bert is Molly’s second best friend. Molly’s mother says her first best friend is the sky. Because the sky is every girl’s best friend. There are things the sky will tell a girl about herself that a friend could never tell her. Molly’s mother says the sky is watching over Molly for a reason. Every lesson she will ever need to learn about herself is waiting up there in that sky, and all she has to do is look up.

Molly’s bare feet are dirt-stained like the shovel face and there are copper-coloured lines of cemetery clay where her elbows and knees bend. Molly, who is right to consider this rambling and rundown and near-dead cemetery her queendom, hops onto a slab of old black stone and kneels down to put a big blue eyeball up close to the crawling bull ant and she wonders if the ant can see the deep dark blues in her eyes and thinks that if the ant can see that kind of blue then maybe it will know what it feels like to see all of the vast blue sky over Darwin.

‘Get off the grave, Molly.’

‘Sorry, Mum.’

The sky is the colour of 1936 and the sky is the colour of October. Seen from the blue sky above and looking down and looking closer in and closer in, they are mother and daughter standing before a goldminer’s grave in the furthermost plot in the furthermost corner from the gravel entrance to Hollow Wood Cemetery. They are older and younger versions of themselves. Molly Hook with curled brown hair, bony and careless. Violet Hook with curled brown hair, bony and troubled. She’s holding something behind her back that her daughter is too busy, too Molly, to notice. Violet Hook, the gravedigger mum, always hiding something. Her shaking fingers, her thoughts. The gravedigger mum, burying dead bodies in the dirt and burying secrets alive inside herself. The gravedigger mum, walking upright but buried deep in thinking. She stands at the foot of the old limestone grave, grey stone weathered into black; porous and crumbling and ruined like the people who paid for the cheap graves in this cheap cemetery, and ruined like Aubrey Hook and his younger brother, Horace Hook – Molly’s father, Violet’s husband – the penniless drunkards who are tall and black-hatted and sweat-faced and rarely home. The black-eyed brothers who inherited this cemetery and who reluctantly keep its crooked and rusted gates open, overseeing cemetery business from the pubs and the gin bars in Darwin town and from a lamp-lit and worn red velvet lounge five miles away in the underground opium brothel beneath Eddie Loong’s sprawling workshed on Gardens Road, where he dries and salts the Northern Territory mullet he ships to Hong Kong.

Molly plants her right hand on the grave slab and, because she wants to and because she can, she spins off the gravestone into a series of twirls executed so wildly and so freely that she’s struck by a dizzy spell and has to turn her eyes to the sky to find her balance again. And she spots something up there.

‘Dolphin swimming,’ Molly says, as casually as she would note a mosquito on her elbow. Violet looks up to find Molly’s dolphin, which is a cloud nudging up to a thicker cloud that Violet initially sees as an igloo before changing her mind. ‘Big fat rat licking its backside,’ she says.

Molly nods, howling with laughter.

Violet wears an old white linen dress and her pale skin is red from the Darwin sun, hot from the Darwin heat. She’s still clutching something behind her back, hiding this thing from her daughter.

‘Stand beside me, Molly,’ Violet says.

Molly and Bert the shovel, stout and reliable, take their place beside Violet. Molly looks at the thing Violet seems struck by. A name on a headstone.

‘Who was Tom Berry?’ Molly asks.

‘Tom Berry was a treasure hunter,’ Violet says.

‘A treasure hunter?’ Molly gasps.

‘Tom Berry searched every corner of this land for gold,’ Violet says.

Molly finds numbers beneath the name on the headstone: 1868–1929.

‘Tom Berry was your grandfather, Molly.’

There are so many words beneath those numbers: cramped and busy and too small, filling every available space on the headstone. It’s less an epitaph than a warning, or a public service message for the people of Darwin, and Molly struggles to fathom its meaning.

LET IT BE KNOWN I DIED ACCURSED BY A SORCERER. I TOOK RAW GOLD FROM LAND BELONGING TO THE BLACK NAMED LONGCOAT BOB AND I SWEAR, UNDER GOD, HE PUT A CURSE ON ME AND MY KIN FOR THE SIN OF MY GREED. LONGCOAT BOB TURNED OUR TRUE HEARTS TO STONE. I PUT THAT GOLD BACK BUT LONGCOAT BOB DID NOT LIFT HIS CURSE AND I REST HERE DEAD WITH ONE REGRET: THAT I DID NOT KILL LONGCOAT BOB WHEN I HAD THE CHANCE. ALAS, I WILL TAKE MY CHANCE IN HELL.

‘What’s all the words for, Mum?’

‘It’s called an epitaph, Molly.’

‘What’s an epitaph, Mum?’

‘It’s the story of a life.’

Molly studies the words. She points her finger at a word in the second line.

‘A maker of magic,’ Violet says.

Molly points at another word.

‘Bad magic for someone who might deserve it,’ Violet says.

The child’s finger on another word.

‘Kin,’ Violet says. ‘It means family, Molly.’

‘Fathers?’

‘Yes, Molly.’

‘Mothers?’

‘Yes, Molly.’

‘Daughters?’

‘Yes, Molly.’

Molly’s right forefinger nail scratches at Bert’s handle.

‘Did Longcoat Bob turn your heart to stone, Mum?’

A long silence. Violet Hook and her shaking hands. A long lock of curled brown hair blowing across her eyes.

‘This epitaph is ugly, Molly,’ Violet says. ‘Your grandfather has tarnished his life story with bluster and vengeful thoughts. An epitaph should be graceful and it should be true. This epitaph is only one of those things. An epitaph should be poetic, Molly.’

Molly turns to her mother. ‘Like the writing on Mrs Salmon’s grave, Mum?’

HERE LIES PEGGY SALMON

WHO FISHED FOR LOVE AND WINE

THOUGH IT WAS NO FEAST NOR FAMINE

SHE ALWAYS DROPPED A LINE

‘Will you promise me something, Molly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Promise me you will read all of the poetry books on the shelf by the front door.’

‘I promise, Mum.’

‘Will you promise me something else, Molly?’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘Promise me you will make your life graceful, Molly. Promise me you’ll make your life grand and beautiful and poetic, and even if it’s not poetic you’ll write it so it is. You write it, Molly, you understand? Promise me your epitaph won’t be ugly like this. And if someone else writes your epitaph, don’t make them struggle to write your epitaph. You must live a life so full that your epitaph will write itself, you understand? Will you promise me that, Molly?’

‘I promise, Mum.’

Molly wobbles her knees. Molly is restless. Because she wants to and because she can, Molly drops Bert on the dirt and executes a cartwheel beside her grandfather’s grave and her yard dress falls down over her face and she’s blinded and she can’t nail the cartwheel’s landing and stumbles and falls into the dirt in a mess of legs and arms.

‘Not very graceful, Molly,’ Violet says. ‘Those poetry books will teach you how to be graceful.’

Molly brushes her floppy hair from her eyes and smiles. Violet directs the gravedigger girl back to her side with a sharply pointed forefinger. Molly picks up Bert the shovel and resumes her place close to her mother’s hip.

‘Be quiet now,’ Violet says.

The stillness of this cemetery, this sun-baked dead collective. Dry season Darwin and every tree in the cemetery wants to burn. Darwin stringybark eucalyptus trees leaning over graves so old their owners can’t be identified. Woollybutt trees and their fallen and dead orange-red flowers surrounding each trunk like fire circles, growing in gravelly soil for fifty years and climbing as high as the shops on the Darwin Esplanade. Wild weeds and grasses creeping over memorials to carpenters, farmers, criminals, soldiers and mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. Kin.

The earth is swallowing up Hollow Wood Cemetery. The dirt below it has eaten the dead and now it chews on the evidence of their living.

Molly breaks the silence. Molly always breaks the silence.

‘Is my grandfather down there?’ Molly asks.

Violet takes a moment to answer.

‘Some of him is down there,’ Violet says.

‘Where’s the rest of him?’

Violet looks up at that blue sky the bull ant hasn’t noticed yet.

‘Up there.’

Molly flips her head back and takes in the sky, her eyes squinting in the Darwin sun at full height.

‘The best of him is up there,’ Violet says.

Molly readjusts her footing, shifts her right foot back, never turns away from the sky. There’s a single dry season cumulus cloud on the left side of Molly’s sky, a fluffy and heaped floating metropolis of warm rising air that looks to Molly like the foam that forms when Bert Green drops a scoop of ice cream into a tall glass of sarsaparilla. Everything to the right of that cloud is blue. Violet Hook follows her daughter’s gaze to the sky and she stares up there for almost half a minute, then she turns back to stare at something equally expansive: her daughter’s face. Dirt across her left cheek. A blotch of breakfast egg yolk hardened at the left corner of her lips. Molly’s eyes always on the sky.

‘What is this place, Molly?’

Molly knows the question and she knows the answer. ‘This place is hard, Mum.’

‘What is rock, Molly?’

Molly knows the question and she knows the answer. ‘Rock is hard, Mum.’

‘What is your heart, Molly?’

‘My heart is hard, Mum.’

‘How hard is it?’

‘Hard as rock,’ Molly says, eyes still on the sky. ‘So hard it can’t be broken.’

Violet nods, breathes deep. A long silence now. Then four simple words. ‘I’m going away, Molly.’

Molly shifts her bare left foot and turns her head to her mother. ‘Where ya goin’, Mum?’ she asks, her right hand driving Bert’s blade haphazardly into the dirt. ‘You goin’ to Katherine again, Mum?’

Violet says nothing.

‘You goin’ to Timber Creek again, Mum? Can I come, too?’

Violet’s eyes turning up to the sky now. Another long silence.

Molly banging her right heel into the dirt, waiting for her Mum to respond.

And Violet seems lost in that sky. Then she closes her eyes and reaches her right arm out to her daughter and Molly watches that hand come all the way across to rest upon her left shoulder. Her mother’s fingers are shaking. And Molly can see now that her mother’s arms are thinner than she’s ever seen them. Her skin, paler.

‘Why are your fingers doing that, Mum?’

And Violet opens her eyes and studies her shaking right hand, close up, then hides it once more behind her back. She turns her eyes again to the sky. ‘I’m going up there, Molly,’ Violet says. ‘I’m going up there to be with your grandfather.’

Molly smiles. Turns her head back to the sky. Eyes alight. ‘Can I come, too?’

‘No, Molly, you can’t come, too.’

And Molly feels thirsty now and her belly turns inside her and the toes of her right foot dig into the red earth beneath her and she makes nervous fists with her hands and the longest nails on her fingers dig so deep into her palms that they dig through the skin. Turn again to the sky. Turn again to Mum.

‘I’m not coming back down again, Molly.’

Molly shakes her head. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I can’t stay down here anymore.’

Molly raises her eyes to the sky again. She searches for a town up there. She searches for the house her mum will stay in up there. She searches for streets in the sky and lolly shops and liquor stores. The town beyond the clouds. The town beyond the sky.

‘This is the last time you will see me, Molly.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m going away.’

Molly drops her head. Toes digging deeper in the dirt. And she wants to know how her mother pulls this magic trick, how she turns so quickly from the light and into the dark. She’s daylight switching straight into night-time, Molly tells herself. Day sky to night sky, with no living done in between. No time in between. No chores. No afternoon tea. Day sky blue with dolphin clouds to a night sky only black.

‘What are you feeling inside, Molly?’ Violet asks.

‘I feel like I want to cry.’

Violet nods her head.

‘Then cry, Molly,’ Violet says. ‘Cry.’

And the gravedigger girl’s eyes squint and her body shudders like it wants to vomit and her neck jolts forward and she sobs. Two brief sobs and her eyes have to open wide for a river of tears that turn to tributaries that split through the dry dirt and dust on the girl’s face, and these new water lines on Molly’s cheeks look to Violet like the creek systems she would see on her father’s gold fossicking maps as a girl.

‘Keep going,’ Violet says. And the girl cries harder and she puts her hands to her face and fluid runs from her nose and saliva drips from her lips and her mother does not touch her. Does not hold her. Does not reach for her.