The Sirens

Wednesday, 13 February 2019

Lucy is rattled to think Jess may not be the biological daughter of their parents, Maggie and Mike Martin. They are older parents and had Lucy in their forties. Though Lucy had known “on some level, that Jess used clothes as a sort of cloak, a way of separating herself from the rest of the world” (94), she did not know they both have the same skin condition. She is convinced they must be their father’s daughters; they all “have a slight but distinctive peak to their ear shape” (95). Lucy remembers that a library book on Jess’s table was checked out to a C. Hennessey. She wonders if Jess dreamed about the Naiad, too.

Thursday, 14 February 2019 

Lucy learns from the diary that Jess enjoyed her art lessons with Mr. Hennessey. She wonders how their father felt to see Jess growing beyond him in skill. Lucy feels shame and hurt when she thinks of how she felt when Ben betrayed her. She notes the linked hands of the women in Jess’s painting on the easel. Her research tells her that when the female convicts arrived in New South Wales, they were made sexually available to the men and treated as servants.

Lucy walks the beach in search of the monument, looking for some clue of how these past women “have infected her mind, and her sister’s, too” (99). A man sitting near the monument tells her that the Naiad’s captain had been put on trial for the terrible conditions on a previous voyage of his. The man, Ryan, knows Jess and gave her his father’s file on the Naiad. He tells Lucy that some people have heard women’s voices in the bay, singing. After their conversation, Lucy realizes he is Ryan Smith, brother to Daniel Smith, one of the Eight. Ryan was on the fishing boat that discovered Baby Hope.

They have been at sea for a week. The women are taken on deck to observe a sailor’s burial, and Mary is astonished at how enormous the sky feels. She recalls Byrne collecting rents for their landlord and tithes for the Protestant church even though Da was Catholic. Below deck, the women discuss the sailor’s death. Eliza notes that Bridie has fresh bread that she earned by having sex with one of the sailors.

Thursday, 14 February 2019

Lucy wakes from her dream of the ship to find she is standing on the deck at Cliff House. She thinks she hears singing from the bay. She’s been reading the file Bernard Smith, Ryan’s father, prepared about the Naiad and has realized that Bernard had been trying to find an explanation for the deaths of the Eight.

1998, 10 July

Jess has become eager for her dreams, which arrive on Sunday night, because Hennessey is with her in them. He showed her a painting of Orpheus and Eurydice, and Jess wanted to believe that Orpheus could save his beloved. Jess is drawn to Hennessey, and, for him, she draws an image that haunts her. Jess has seen this image in her dreams for months but has told no one. She is afraid she’ll wade into the dam in her sleep, “as if the water has been calling [her]” (120), and ties her wrist to her headboard at night. She tells Hennessey that she believes the woman’s name is Eliza. Hennessey touches Jess’s hand and says her skin is beautiful.

Friday, 15 February 2019

Lucy is worried about what Mr. Hennessey might have done to Jess. She feels desperate to connect with her sister. When she revisits her text history with Ben, Lucy deletes the conversation; the picture is of “[a] woman she no longer recognizes” (124).

Lucy receives a letter from the university saying that Ben filed a complaint, and Lucy is suspended. She realizes that she felt compelled to assault him after the student welfare officer made her realize Ben would suffer no consequences for what he did to her. Lucy reflects, “For the first time, she’d experienced the world and its injustice; the way the cards are stacked against her, just because she’s female” (126). She realizes that she doesn’t need university to become a journalist. Other people may want to turn away from the truth, but she wants to know it. 

Lucy wonders if genetic memory can somehow account for the shared dreams. She walks onto the beach, staring at the sea, and almost feels if she reaches out a hand, a woman will be standing next to her: Eliza, her sister.

She takes the bus to Sydney and goes to the State Library with a list of the names of the Eight and the years they disappeared. Malcolm Biddy, who disappeared in 1997, was discovered to have unlicensed weapons and materials depicting child sexual abuse in his campervan. David Watts, who disappeared in 1990, had claimed his girlfriend’s fall from a balcony was death by suicide, clearing him of implication in her death. Lucy pulls up microfilm from 1801 to look for reports on the sinking of the Naiad. When she sees the names Eliza Kissane and Mary Kissane on the passenger list, she faints.

Mary has begun to think of the women below deck as a kind of protective circle. A sailor comes down and fetches Bridie. 

Mary thinks of that night of Samhain, when Eliza began telling the story of a merrow and the fisherman, the story of how their parents met, with a sweet singing voice. Mary had told her to stop. She hated Eliza’s version of their Mam, whom Mary thought endangered and then abandoned them. Eliza pondered the possibility that Mam did not drown but instead went to the “tír fo thuinn,” or “land beneath the waves” (140). Mary and Eliza quarreled, and Eliza ran down to the water and into the stream. Mary went in after her and pulled her onto a rock in the middle of the stream. Then she heard Byrne coming toward them.

Bridie returns, and when Sarah accuses her of being a “whore,” Bridie asks if Sarah wouldn’t do the same to get food for her child. Bridie gives the meat given to her by Wright, the sailor, to Sarah’s daughter Annie. Mary thinks of how their Da tried to take them away from the sea, and now they are at its mercy.

Friday, 15 February 2019

Lucy is embarrassed to realize she fainted and hurriedly leaves the library. She goes to Circular Quay and looks out at the water, wondering if Mary and Eliza survived. She realizes the sea is calming her and “[t]he nearness of the water is a balm,” but she wonders, “Why is it that her body seeks out the thing that would hurt it?” (147). Her neck feels tender.

1999, 1 January

Jess is sleeping over at Max’s for the new year, as is their custom. At Christmas, she challenged her parents about why they have no family, and her mother looked scared. Jess went to her father’s study to look for family documents and found a picture of a lionfish. Her father crumpled it up and threw it away, but Jess retrieved it. 

That night, at Max’s, Jess sleepwalks into his pool. He pulls her out and holds her while she cries. They have sex, and Jess is sorry now that she let him see her skin.

Saturday, 16 February 2019

Lucy debates whether to tell her parents that Jess is missing. She tries to research Eliza or Mary Kissane but finds nothing. She recalls a camping trip she took with her parents and the mournful sea shanty her father sang. She calls Jess’s friend Max but doesn’t reach him. When her mother calls, Lucy doesn’t tell her she is in trouble with the university. Her mother thinks she recognizes a bird song on Lucy’s end of the call.

Lucy visits Melody’s house to talk. Melody describes how her parents used to visit Comber Bay when she was a child, but even though she has been there for years, she is still considered an outsider because her mother was Wiradjuri. Lucy is afraid something has happened to Jess. Melody shares that one of the men who went missing, Bill Thornhill, physically abused his wife. Lucy recalls that David Watts, before he disappeared, had said he was meeting a woman. 

Melody shares the local myth that people sometimes hear the drowned women singing. She looks for a newspaper article about David Watts and finds a picture of Judith Wilson, who adopted Baby Hope. Lucy recognizes the woman in the photograph.