The Cicada House by Ella Ward: An Excerpt

The door shot open with Erin’s last big push. Sweet air rushed in from the morning-warm garden. There was jasmine again and the lemon blossom. Also, now, the sharp smell of dew drying on grass.

‘I know, The Cicada House can seem a funny old place. The owners won’t spend a lick of money on it, and Tracey, the agent, doesn’t encourage them. Sometimes I think she’s hoping they’ll just forget about it, you know, accidentally default her the house. Don’t blame her, with the beach path. Have you been down to the water yet?’

‘No. I don’t think I even knew it was there. It’s ...’ Caitlin was embarrassed to feel a tightness form in her throat. ‘It’s all been pretty last minute.’ Her eyes were getting watery. The cold shower. The mice. The outdoor cocking loo. What the hell was she doing here?

If Erin had noticed Caitlin’s fear-frozen face, she didn’t let on. She was a kind woman. It made Caitlin feel like crying even more. Instead, Erin drained her mug and took Caitlin’s, all in one impressive movement. Placing both cups on the back steps, Erin pulled off her clogs and threw them into the corner of the patio with a woody clatter.

‘Well then. I need a cigarette. Wanna see your private beach?’

Caitlin followed the barefoot real-estate agent across the grass and down the path. She was watching her own step with alarm as she was also shoeless and the ground seemed likely to be filled with crawlies hiding in the morning dew. Erin marched quickly ahead, managing to light, hold and smoke a cigarette with one hand while the other swept the spiderwebs out of their path. Caitlin watched Erin’s feet glide over the ground, not pausing for sticks or stones, as the soil quickly turned to sand. She also didn’t stop talking the entire way, punctuating with exhalations of blue-grey smoke as she went.

Erin was right, the beach was impressively close. With every step the noise of the water grew, a shell to her ear bigger than any she’d held before.

She and Paul had beached together, of course. They had beached in Malta, sun loungers unsteady on hot grey pebbles while tinny radios shot out beats of Euro pop. They had waded in Devon, the water so cold it hurt the marrow in her bones and left her toes blue for the rest of the morning. They had even had a postcard-worthy week on the powdery white beaches of Antigua, where sandflies left a breadcrumb trail of welts around Caitlin’s ankles.

But this — this beach — it wasn’t like any of those. As the two women crested a small dune, the smell and the noise hit her at once. An explosion of salt and roar and fish and fizz.

‘Oh,’ Caitlin said softly, unheard behind the waves. ‘Oh.’

It was undoubtably beautiful, but she was uneasy about the wildness of this place. Because while the waves arrived in gentle curls at the shore, she could see them breaking and broiling out in the deep. To their left, larger sand dunes were covered with shifting ripples of long, hay-coloured grass — dry and spiked and foreign. Everything about this beach was different to the ones she’d been to before. Raw and wild. They were guests in this place. They existed for it, not it for them.

Erin bent down and put her cigarette out in the sand, carefully placing the extinguished butt in a small canister she’d pulled from a pocket. ‘Remember camera film?’ she asked, holding the plastic tube up.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Well then, mate, you and I are about the same age.’ Erin laughed and squeezed Caitlin on the top of her arm, like being forty was a secret and a pleasure. ‘Whaddya think of your big blue backyard? It can be a bit wild and woolly out here — but if you get it on the right day, there’s no better place in the world to make everything alright.’ Erin smiled at her, like she knew just how much Caitlin needed to hear that.

Caitlin nodded back, gratefully.

‘Right. I’m off,’ said Erin. ‘You’ll have to come around for a wine soon. I’m getting the feeling you don’t know many people in the area?’

‘No. I’m alone.’ Caitlin hadn’t meant to sound so melodramatic, but Erin didn’t seem to mind.

‘Well, now you’ve got me, and the wild ol’ sea!’ Erin’s arm stretched out along the horizon and Caitlin found herself laughing into the wind, along with the blonde woman whooping beside her.

*

Later that night, Caitlin was asleep again in her bedroom that smelt of pine. The cicadas were silent, and in the stillness that remained, a noise wound its way to her, folding into a dream she didn’t know she was having. Piano music, played ever so gently, like the person making it was holding back almost everything. She lifted her head and opened her eyes, but the music remained. It was a melody she’d never heard. Too tired to feel scared, Caitlin buried back into the pillow, and sleep took her away as the music continued through the creaking and age of the bent tea tree.

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