Jane Downing - The Lost Tribe

THE

LOST

TRIBE

JANE DOWNING

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The Lost Tribe

The Lost Tribe

JANE DOWNING

PANDANUS BOOKS

Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Cover: Nan Douwas at Nan Madol, Pohnpei.

Photograph by Dirk Spennemann

Jane Downing 2005

This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

Typeset in Goudy and printed by Pirion, Canberra National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Downing, Jane, 1962 .

The lost tribe.

ISBN 1 74076 114 6

I. Title.

A823.3

Editorial inquiries please contact Pandanus Books on 02 6125 4910

www.pandanusbooks.com.au

Published by Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200 Australia Pandanus Books are distributed by UNIREPS, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052 Telephone 02 9664 0999 Fax 02 9664 5420

Editor: Duncan Beard

Production: Ian Templeman, Duncan Beard, Emily Brissenden Acknowledgements

The story of The Lost Tribe is entirely fictional, however some readers may recognise my ancient city of Kiti Medolan. I would like to acknowledge all debt to the awe-inspiring ruins of Nan Madol on the island of Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia, which I couldnt resist using as a starting point for my created islands.

I would also like to acknowledge and thank Ian Templeman and the team at Pandanus Books, especially Duncan Beard for his insightful comments and constant support, and Emily Brissenden for her beautiful work on the cover (again).

Lastly, as always, much thanks goes to Dirk Spennemann and Rudi and Wulfi, without whom well, it would be impossible to imagine.

Jane Downing

Many reasons can be given for people turning out the way they do. Reasons and excuses. If Marianne had ever been questioned about her reticence her caution, her adherence to the old clich that curiosity may well kill the cat

she would have been able to cite, chapter and verse, the incident with Great-Aunt Aurora. Who knows. Maybe she had never been the bright, eager child with a storybook imagination. Labelling may well have simply caught up with reality. There is always the clever child in the family, and the sporty one, the pretty one, and Marianne happened to end up being the shy one. It could have happened when she was twelve, as a natural progression from childhood to adolescence.

Or more abruptly on one day: the day she first saw the house she would unexpectedly inherit. That she inherited because of that day? Who knows. But she could have told the story, chapter and verse, if ever shed been asked.

2

The Lost Tribe

When Marianne was twelve, and still climbing trees, she first saw Abbeyleigh. The house, which her mother reverently called the homestead on the journey out, had felt little like a home and had demanded good behaviour with every wrought railing and plaster cornice. Her newly widowed grandmother had returned to live there, in the ancestral home that had long been in the care of the spinster of the family. On the arrival of the family, her grandmother held court sternly inside the strict interiors. But Mariannes eyes were everywhere, and saw that the garden through the windows was one of dreams. The summer outburst of colour could not disguise the branches of countless trees reaching down in invitation. Marianne escaped adults and siblings and strictures at the earliest opportunity, hoisted her best skirt, and climbed.

Mighty trees dominated the garden but the centrepiece was the greenhouse. Marianne had never seen one before; she lived in the suburbs then and had not seen much. She knew of her own paucity of experience because the best of the world was captured by words within the pages of books. She virtually lived in the public library, and she could only hope to one day travel out from it and be allowed to witness the worlds wonders. But here right here in front of her was a small part of the unexpected in the world, this house of glass dancing in a pool of sunlight. It was an ephemeral fairy castle, an inverted looking glass that revealed not what was, but what could be. Marianne started to move down from her perch in the elm tree. The flowers in the greenhouse below The Lost Tribe

pointed curled fingers of sulfur yellow in every direction.

These must be mythical orchids, planted in Sydney but searching out the warmth of the equator, climbing like spiders upwards towards the sky. Marianne climbed like a cat down, down closer to stare at them in amazement.

She did not mean to pry, she most truly did not: she had eyes only for the orchids. She stretched out along a low limb, out from the cloak of stealth and green foliage, her eagerness to see something new casting a human shadow across the silver-shine of glass. Where, below, there had been the stillness of a held breath, there burst a typhoon of movement. Turbulent horror parted the veil of exotic blooms.

The angry eyes of her great-aunt stared directly into hers. The heat dissolved Mariannes curiosity. Leaving her a lumpen, fearful child? The shy one in the family? Great-Aunt Aurora, hollering below in the greenhouse, was not wearing her bright receiving-face nor the clothes of the morning room. Nor was the man. Eve and Adam were angry and ancient in this afternoon manifestation.

Marianne did not understand at the time what she had seen in the greenhouse, only that she should not have seen it. She fled, fumbling and falling, down the tree, away, pursued by blazing condemnations. Sneak, spy, hoyden, perverted child,uncontrollable brat

The story ended. And she spent the next sixteen years being none of those things.

4

The Lost Tribe

Then she found herself in the garden again.

Winter had stripped the trees of their vigour and colour.

Time had stripped them of their mythical proportions.

The adult Marianne walking out beneath the branches of her memorys Eden found the trees beautiful, but common

or garden-sized. A natural consequence of growing up; or a natural consequence of her expulsion from paradise that day?

There was certainly no temptation in the garden. She was the timid one in the family now. She had long since lost the need to climb. She knew the wind would be stronger up in the treetops even below, walking was to the accompaniment of its icy bitterness. She could have gone back inside of course, retreated to the interiors she had long felt more comfortable within. But there was time enough for that. A lifetime now the house was hers.

Besides, they were all in there, and she couldnt answer their questions about the inheritance, because they were the questions she was asking herself.

The straight black skirt shed worn for the funeral, with its discreet back slit to allow short, polite strides was enough reason for failing to climb trees. She approached the greenhouse, in polite strides, by the path and not by the elm tree this time. The glass no longer revealed anything. Grime and murk smeared any visions of splendour. Or anything else.

The Lost Tribe

Marianne felt she almost had to knock before entering.