Digging to Australia (16 page)

Mama looked at me curiously. ‘Let's stop this and play Scrabble,' she pleaded to Bob. I saw her eyes wander towards her macramé.

‘But we're on the track now!' Bob objected. ‘Don't you
care
who did it?'

Mama raised her eyebrows at me, and I looked at Auntie May, who nodded. ‘Home,' she said, looking across at the clock.

‘Yes, Bob, it's time you got Auntie May back,' said Mama and her face showed a mixture of relief that the game was over and sadness that it was time to say goodbye to Auntie May. Bob reluctantly agreed, and we never did discover who had stolen the mail, and Bob said this was because
someone
had gone wrong somewhere, looking darkly at Mama, whose face was quite blank as she helped Auntie May on with her coat.

I was glad when the day was over. I helped Mama clear up and then went up to my room, where the Christmas-stocking presents still lay on my unmade bed. I put on my pyjamas and sat in the midst of the tangle eating my tangerine. Christmas Day was gone and the dread had proved unfounded. It had been no worse than usual. I picked up Johnny's book and read about Steven breaking his glasses and then getting unfairly pandied for it. I thought ‘pandied' a funny word for something painful, it was too much like panda, or candied, a sweet and cuddly word. Mama came hesitantly into my room.

‘What are you reading?' she asked. I showed her. ‘I haven't seen that before,' she said.

‘I borrowed it from a friend,' I said.

‘Ah …' She sat down on the edge of my bed. ‘Enjoyed yourself?' she asked.

‘Yes,' I said.

‘I know Bob's a bit … but that's families for you. And he's good at heart. You must know that. Not bad as fathers go.'

‘Except that he's not my father.' I tried to shift away from her weight on the edge of my bed. Irritation welled up. The day had been all right, I had kept it under control but now it was over and she had to follow me into my room, she had to push a bit further. ‘There's no need to pretend, Mama, I'm not a baby.'

‘No,' she sighed. ‘Of course you're not. That's very true.'

‘You can't say
very
true,' I quibbled. ‘It's either true or not true.'

‘I suppose so.' She sat there for some moments, clearing her throat and sighing.

‘Well?' I said at last. I was cramped by her presence, unable to move or think, unable to rest.

‘There's another present,' she said. She looked down and fiddled with the fringed edge of my bedspread. ‘I didn't want to give it you earlier with Auntie May there – and Bob – and everything. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to upset you – upset everyone – upset Christmas.'

She waited for me to speak, and when I found my voice it was very cold and clear. ‘From her? From Jacqueline?'

‘Yes dear. You were so upset about the letter I didn't want to risk …'

‘Where is it then?'

‘I'll fetch it.' She hurried out of the room and came back with a parcel wrapped in different paper, not Mama's paper. It was dark green with tiny silver holly leaves, expensive, tasteful paper – exactly the kind of paper I'd have expected Jacqueline to choose. On a matching label were the words, written in green ink, in an elegant hand, a grown-up sophisticated version of the writing in her letter: To
Jennifer, With Love at Christmas, Jacqueline
. That was all. I read it and read it, but there was no more to it than that. Still, there was love, and she had remembered. I stared so long at the label that Mama began to fidget.

‘Aren't you going to open it?'

‘I'd rather be alone,' I said, not looking up, not trusting myself to look away from the parcel.

‘All right, Jenny. You can show us in the morning.' Her voice was flat. ‘Night, night,' she said, and I muttered some reply, and she hovered for a moment as if about to kiss me, or say something else, and then went out, closing the door with a disappointed click behind her.

I got out of bed and took the nail scissors from my manicure set, and carefully, very carefully, so as not to tear the paper even slightly, I snipped the parcel open. Inside was a box, and even without the comforting weight of it, I would have known that
this
box could not, would not, be empty. I smoothed and folded the paper and I put it, and the label, in the secret compartment of my trinket box. I made myself wait for a moment, watching the ballerina pirouette to the ice-cream jingle of the tune. My heart was beating so that it hurt. It mattered what was in the box. It mattered more than anything had mattered since I could remember. Eventually I opened the flap on top of the box. Inside, well packed with screwed up tissue paper, was a squat black camera. It wasn't new, there were scratches on it and other signs of wear. It was all the more precious for this. I cherished the hope that it had been Jacqueline's own. She had given me not something shop-bought and meaningless, but something of her own, something that was, perhaps, precious to
her
. I searched through the box and unscrewed every piece of tissue paper, but there was nothing else, no message, no photograph, which was what I craved. But the camera was a sign that I was important, that I lived in her mind just as she lived in mine.

I lay down on my back with the camera on my chest and pulled the blankets over me. I had never had a camera, never taken a photograph in my life. Mama and Bob didn't go in for photography. I realised, for the first time, that there wasn't a photograph in the house: no albums, no framed portraits, no pictures of me as a baby, no pictures of Jacqueline. It was good to have something of hers weighing down on my chest, pressing over my heart, pinning me down. I drifted off to sleep contentedly, but woke up later in the grip of a nightmare, sweating. Johnny was kneeling on my chest, pressing his knees against me until I thought my ribs would cave in and I would die. But it was only the camera. My pyjama top was soaked with sweat where it had pressed. I moved the camera to the floor beside my bed, turned over and lay with my hand upon it, waiting for sleep to return.

18

‘Well?' asked Mama, at breakfast, when it became clear I wasn't going to offer any information.

‘Well what?'

‘What was it? The present.'

Bob slurped the dregs of his tea and tapped his cup to indicate to Mama that he wanted some more.

‘Well?' he repeated.

‘A camera,' I said.

Mama poured the tea. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘of course.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘She had a camera from us for her birthday one year. Was it her thirteenth, Bob? She took it up as a hobby. Photography. She was very keen.' This was the most Mama had ever said about Jacqueline. I was possessed by a desire to know more.

‘Expensive business,' grumbled Bob.

‘Perhaps she still is keen,' I said.

‘Well yes,' Mama agreed.

‘What did you call her?' I asked. ‘Jacqueline, or Jacqui? What did she look like? Do I look like her? Haven't you got any photographs? What happened to all hers?'

‘Twenty Questions all over again,' Bob said.

I looked at Mama, waiting for a reply, and saw that her eyes were very bright and her lips were trembling. She got up and left the room.

‘Lilian …' Bob called after her, but we could hear her fleeing up the stairs and the bathroom door banging shut. Bob raised his eyebrows at me.

‘Sleeping dogs,' he said, ‘best let lie.'

‘Lie,' I said, ‘yes, that's what you've done to me. I only want to know the truth.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Bob said and he looked right at me, hard into my eyes, in a way he hadn't done for months. ‘What's truth got to do with it? Look at you, sitting there radiating self-pity. You've been fed and clothed and loved.
Indulged
. It could have been a lot worse considering. We don't expect gratitude, but do you realize what your behaviour is doing to Mama? And now that girl is sending presents to the house, deliberately provoking, stirring up … We should never have let the cat out of the bag. I told Lilian … And never a word to
us
. Presents for
you
, yes … but never a word to Lilian, her own mother. It'll break her heart.'

I was cold. Bob never said so much. His face was pale and his fingers shook as he lifted his cup to his lips. There were drops of sweat on his upper lip, and a red weal on his neck where the collar of his shirt had dug in yesterday. It was true I hadn't thought about Mama's feelings. She and Bob together seemed nothing but a barrier that kept me from the truth, from my mother, and from my real self.

‘So she didn't send you anything?'

We could hear Mama's footsteps on the stairs. Bob returned his cup to his saucer and his eyes slid away. I was relieved to see him return to his old vague self. ‘Not a sausage,' he said. Mama came in then, and caught the end of the conversation.

‘Well we wouldn't expect …' she said, in her normal bright voice. ‘Now, more toast anyone?'

‘No thanks, Lilian,' Bob said. ‘Sit down and have another cup of tea, there's a girl.'

‘I will have more tea,' Mama said. ‘It's still Christmas after all.' She poured herself a cup and sat down. ‘Auntie May looked well, didn't you think?'

‘Yes she did,' I agreed.

‘For her age,' Bob said. ‘This'll be her last Christmas though, you mark my words. She's had a good innings.'

‘You always say that. And anyway it won't be. She'll go on for years and years,' I said, to try and cheer Mama up, but also because I hoped it was true. I liked Auntie May and the dinosaur gleam in her ancient eyes. I liked to see her perched on Bob's chair, her feet dangling, her little head nodding, beside the Christmas tree.

‘You're off to Bronwyn's tonight,' Mama reminded me. ‘You'd better have a bath before you go, and take your new toothbrush and flannel.'

‘Are you sure you don't mind me going on Boxing Day?' I asked. ‘I don't mind
not
going.'

‘It'll put paid to Village Life,' grumbled Bob.

‘We can always play Scrabble,' Mama said. ‘You like that.'

‘It'll be a case of having to,' Bob said.

In my room I hugged the camera, and studied the tiny numbers round the dial. I had no idea how to use it. I had no money for film, and I could hardly ask for it now. I stood at my window looking through the aperture in the top of the camera. The garden was reflected and condensed into a tiny sharp image more perfect and satisfactory than the sprawling reality. It looked tidied up and far away, like a picture already. The icy surface of the pond at the end of the garden glinted, a tiny pewter speck through the frosty branches of the trees. Jacqueline had probably taken pictures of the garden and of Mama and of Bob and of all the things she'd seen. She might have been to the churchyard. She might even have played in the playground before it was overgrown. She had a life here before me and a life leaves traces. Surely it cannot be possible for a person to simply disappear?

I wandered around the house, with the camera strap round my neck, examining the other traces, the silky threads, the sequins.

‘If you've nothing to do,' Mama said, ‘would you go up into the loft for me? There's a box of bits and bobs I could make use of.'

I went upstairs to the landing and looked at the trap-door in the ceiling. ‘All right then,' I called. My interest was caught by the possibility that there would be more of Jacqueline up there, something more tangible.

‘Bob's fetching the ladder,' Mama said, coming upstairs to watch.

Bob climbed the ladder and pushed the trap-door up. ‘You'll need a torch,' he said, and handed me his new Christmas torch which he'd had tucked in the waistband of his trousers. ‘For goodness sake don't stand between the rafters though, or you'll come through the ceiling.'

I climbed into the dark place where dust lay thick as fur in the spaces between the rafters.

‘Look in the big box,' Mama called, ‘near the top there's a chocolate box with kittens on it.' I leant out and looked down at Mama and Bob standing underneath me, their faces turned up like anxious flowers.

‘Be careful,' Bob warned, and I crawled away from them into the surprising warmth. The dust sifted and stirred. There were cobwebs clotted with fluff, and a spider ran up its invisible thread in the light of the torch.

‘All right?' Mama called, and her voice was muffled. There were chinks of light in places where one roof tile was lapped imperfectly over the next. There was very little up there, as if there had been a deliberate erasing, a jettisoning of a past. I heard, very loudly, the scratching of a bird's feet on the roof, and then its song. The water tank gurgled. ‘Can you see the boxes?' Mama called.

‘Why don't you go up, Lilian?' Bob suggested.

There were some boxes crowded together. The first one I opened and shone the torch beam into glistened with Mama's beads tangled together with some little combs and hair ornaments, miniature scissors, bits of ribbon and the scraps of embroidery silk.

‘Found it,' I called. ‘What's in the other boxes?'

‘Nothing,' Bob said.

‘Crockery,' Mama said.

‘Fishing stuff,' Bob added.

‘Can I look?'

‘If you like.' I opened the lid of a large box. The dust made my fingers feel dry so that I couldn't bear the roughness of the cardboard. The smell of the dust got into my nose and coated my teeth. I shone the torch into the box and saw plates and a bundle of forks and a tea pot with a broken spout. Underneath were some old knitting pattern books of Mama's and an outdated encyclopedia. I was overcome by a great surge of boredom. There was nothing here for me, no great discovery. It was ordinary junk, household flotsam. There was nothing that was particularly to do with Jacqueline. She might have eaten with one of the forks off one of the plates. She might have consulted the encyclopedia while doing her homework. And she might not have done. And even if she had, what then? They were only things. They weren't
Jacqueline
. The traces weren't, after all, important. I crawled along the rafter to the trap-door and handed Mama's box down to Bob.