The Piano

Beyond a desolate shore, on the edge of a far-off country, in a land of massy fern and flightless birds, a small surf-boat appeared, cutting through the swell and spray. Amidst the riotous sea, Ada McGrath and her daughter were manhandled out of the boat and carried like human sacrifices on the shoulders of the seamen. Ada’s voluminous black skirt spread across the men’s arms and backs; she struggled to maintain some semblance of dignity, determined not to cry out.

The seamen stumbled and braced themselves together against the chaotic waves; two were of African descent, all were battered, tattooed, and tough, some were drunk. Finally, Ada and Flora were set down on the empty black sand, unceremoniously.” Paddington Station,” said one, but Ada did not smile or even hear, absorbed as she was in arrival. The sound of the sea breaking on the shore behind them was thunderous and huge. Ada looked down at her boots, sinking into the wet and silvery sand, the sea rushing in around her, then up at the huge confusion of unfamiliar trees and creepers in the distance.

Ada searched the cliffs—high and rugged and covered with the densest foliage she had ever seen—for some sign of life, fearful of it, yet full of curiosity. She was pale and dark and almost as diminutive as Flora, whose grave face and somber attire precisely mirrored her mother’s. For the moment, Flora was bent on her knees, seasick as she had been almost every day of the voyage. Ada had never set eyes on a country like this, so unlike the stony coves and slow estuaries of Scotland. A green and thick screen of bush met the sky and the sea, and there was nothing, no people, no building, no track, no trace of the human man upon it. She had come to the end of the earth, it seemed, to meet a husband.