Digging to Australia (21 page)

‘Australia!'

‘Couldn't get much further away, could she?'

‘Like Peggy.'

‘Mmm?'

‘The ancestor!'

‘Oh yes … rather different circumstances.'

‘But still, Australia.' Although, as Mama had said, she couldn't be further away, it made me feel nearer knowing where she was.

In the garden, all that time ago and without knowing what I was doing, I had been digging my way to her.

‘She may not live there,' Mama pointed out. ‘She may only have been visiting. Working, or on holiday or something. Now eat your sandwich.' There was a tomato cut fancily up on top of the bread. ‘It's a tomato rose,' Mama explained.

‘She lives there all right,' I said. ‘I can feel it in my …' I stopped and shivered.

‘Well you might be right. Eat your lunch, then have a bath and come downstairs.'

‘Maybe,' I said. I waited until she was out of the room before I got the letter out from under my pillow and read it through. And then I hid it in my trinket box. I didn't believe Mama. It was her way of making it right, putting herself and Bob in the right. Her version of the truth. Only
her
version.

I bathed and washed my hair and brushed it flat. It made my head look small, the wet hair clinging darkly where it had been so fair before. Mama went out to telephone Mrs Broom and put her mind at rest.

‘I've invited Bronwyn to tea,' she said when she returned.

‘But I don't want her,' I said. ‘I can't stand her.'

‘Don't be silly,' Mama said. ‘She's your friend. And it's the least I can do after all the worry you caused her poor mother.' Bob rattled his paper and I shut up. He hadn't directed one word or glance at me since I'd been down. He was dressed respectably, but oddly, in trousers and a purple blouse of Mama's which was softer round the neck than any of his shirts. He had lost weight over Christmas, and he and Mama were only waiting for the January sales to buy him some new shirts.

‘What shall we have for tea?' Mama asked. ‘What does she like?'

I shrugged. I didn't want Bronwyn in my home, or in my room. She was a liar and I didn't trust her. I hated the thought that she knew about Jacqueline. I wished there was a way that I could stop her knowing.

‘I don't know why you're sitting there frowning like that,' Mama said. ‘You'll age dreadfully if you don't watch your expression. What about corned beef and bubble and squeak? Give the turkey a night off?'

Bob grunted approvingly and waggled his foot so that his slipper fell off.

‘Where's your charm bracelet?' Mama asked. She sat down on a low stool in front of her macramé – which was growing in a long lumpy swath from the back of a kitchen chair – and began knotting.

I paused and then felt a dull shock like the sound of a very distant bomb. I had worn the bracelet to Bronwyn's house and I hadn't seen it since. I certainly hadn't had it on when I arrived home. I craned my mind back to the night before. I remembered it being there as I ran along the road with the dog at my heels, I recalled the way it clashed against my wrist. The memory of a sensation bothered me. There was the cold feeling as I cut my thumb, and it came to me that the bracelet had slid off at that moment, had fallen into the suitcase with Johnny's belongings. I even remembered the clink of it, heard but not comprehended at that moment in the dark and the panic.

‘And baked Alaska,' Mama said. ‘No. Too fussy. What about a good old apple tart?'

‘And a drop of your nice custard, Lilian,' Bob added. He folded the paper onto his lap to tackle the crossword.

‘Jennifer can make the tart,' Mama said, and I got up immediately since there was a certain prickle in the air, a certain behave-yourself-or-elseness.

I switched on the transistor radio that Mama kept on the kitchen windowsill.
Hancock's Half Hour
was on and I half listened, and even obediently chuckled as I rubbed fat into flour, my wounded thumb held clear, and rolled out the pale pastry to line the pie plate. All the time I knew that I was going to have to go back to the church and retrieve my charm bracelet. I didn't want to. I didn't
think
I wanted to. I was confused. I didn't even know whether or not I was frightened of Johnny. He wasn't a killer, I knew that much. So there was no need to be afraid. He was a friend, supposed to be a friend. He was a better friend than Bronwyn. Bronwyn only wanted me because she had no real friends. She made me do things, go to tea at her house, tell her my secrets, laugh at her mother – and now she was worming her way into my house so that she could mock Bob in Mama's blouse. I sliced the apples fiercely and made a good apple tart with cinnamon and brown sugar and a handful of sultanas, and I put it in the oven to bake. I switched off the radio.

‘Bits of wondrous rarity in old English, Lilian? Four letters. What do you think?' I heard Bob say, and I was stirred by an exasperated fondness.

It was mid-afternoon, still light. There was time before dark to get to the church and retrieve my bracelet. If I ran I could be back before the apple tart was cooked. With any luck Johnny would not yet have returned and that would be good. It would be best, after all, not to see him again. Or not for a while anyway, not until the queasy feeling I had about the bones faded away.

I put my head round the sitting-room door. ‘I'm just going out for a few minutes,' I said.

‘Oh no you don't,' Bob said. He scribbled viciously in the margin of the newspaper.

‘What?'

‘You're not going anywhere, young lady. After your performance I'm surprised you've got the face to suggest it! You're staying put.' He sounded like a bad actor laying down the law, not like Bob at all.

Mama pushed her glasses up her nose and looked at him with surprise.

‘Understood!' he insisted. I nodded.

‘Where were you going, dear?' Mama asked.

‘Just for a walk.'

‘Well not now,' she said, nodding towards Bob, who had bent his head over his paper once more.

‘All right then,' I said. ‘I don't care.'

‘Bronwyn will be here soon, anyway,' she soothed. I paced around the house like a prisoner, thinking furiously. I must get the charm bracelet back before Mama realised it was missing. ‘Eighteen karat, that is,' Bob had said, and I had promised to care for it, and there were all the charms to come. I knew I must get it back but there was some relief in the knowledge that I couldn't go now. I couldn't go alone.

I went into my room and squinted out at the garden through the camera. Mama tapped at my bedroom door and came in. She stood awkwardly.

‘Well?' I said.

‘Are you all right, dear?'

‘Yes, why shouldn't I be?'

‘Well … Bob … you know. He's cross. He was
so
worried. And he's upset about your hair.'

‘I don't see why. It's my hair. I don't see why I shouldn't cut it.'

Mama sat down on my bed. ‘It's just one of his little foibles – women and hair. You know what he's like.' I shrugged. ‘I've wanted to have mine cut for years. A nice tidy perm. I look a sight, I know I do.' Her hand went up to her thin hair, and she tucked a loose wisp behind her ear.

I looked at her critically. ‘It would look better,' I said. ‘Why don't you ask Bronwyn? She does her mum's.'

‘How you dare even suggest it!' Mama exclaimed, and then added wistfully, ‘It'd be more than my life's worth.' The resignation on her face made me crawly in my stomach. ‘I think yours is rather nice, actually,' Mama admitted. I let her stroke it. ‘It suits you short. Why don't you let me put a couple of rollers in for you? Give it a bit of a lift. Bob'll come round in time, you'll see.'

‘If you want,' I said.

Bronwyn's mother walked her to the door. ‘Praise the Lord that you're back safe and sound,' she said to me. ‘You did give us a turn, disappearing like that. And I would have blamed myself if anything – you know – had happened.' She looked tired and her eyes and her nose were twitchy and pink.

Bronwyn raised her eyebrows at me and I looked away.

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘It was very stupid.'

‘Where were you?' Bronwyn asked.

‘She was just walking,' Mama said quickly. ‘Won't you come in for a cup of tea, Mrs Broom?'

‘Betty. No, I mustn't stop, thanks all the same. I'm off to a meeting. I'll call for Bronwyn at …?'

‘Eight o'clock?' Mama suggested.

We went into the kitchen with Mama to look at my apple tart which was cooling fragrantly on the table, but Bronwyn fidgeted and fretted. She wanted to get me alone. ‘Can I see your bedroom,' she asked, and Mama said, ‘Go on, Jenny,' and I had no choice but to lead her up the stairs. Hardly anybody from outside ever came into our house and it felt strange. I saw it all afresh and was quite proud because it was so much brighter and warmer than Bronwyn's house. A window was open in every room, as always, but it wasn't damp and cold. The radiators, Bob's pride and joy, pumped heat around the house, compensating for the draughts. Bob was always bleeding them and listening intently, his head cocked to one side, judging the health of the system by its gurgles and groans. I had never seen it as something to be proud of before, but Bronwyn was obviously impressed. She stood with her bottom against the radiator in my bedroom, looking round at my things.

‘This is my camera,' I offered.

She took it from me and turned it over in her hands. ‘Not new,' she sniffed. ‘Where's your ring?' I opened my trinket box, and we watched the pirouetting ballerina for a moment before I opened the secret compartment and took it out. ‘Pretty,' she said grudgingly. She tried it on all her fingers but it would only fit her little one. She handed it back. She picked the lipstick up from my dressing table.

‘You can have that if you like,' I said.

‘Really?' She wound it up.

‘I don't like the colour,' I said.

‘Really? I think it's fab.' She put it in her pocket quickly. ‘Thanks.'

She opened my wardrobe and looked through my clothes, then, satisfied with her investigation, she took off her shoes and curled up on my bed with her feet underneath her. ‘Go on then,' she said.

‘What?'

‘Where were you?'

‘Mama told you. I was walking.'

She looked enormous and mottly in my bright painted bedroom. Her eyebrows were heavy and dark and she was wearing a too-tight dress that emphasised her chest. It had big orange flowers splattered all over it, there was one on each side just where her nipples must be.

‘Pull the other one,' she said. ‘I know
you
. You had some plan, didn't you? That's why you left.'

‘I left because you're such a liar.'

‘Am not. Im-ag-in-ation, that's all it is. Vivid, Mum says.'

‘What's a lie then, if it isn't imagination?'

‘What's this then?' She picked up
Alice in Wonderland
.

‘A story,' I said.

‘Lies.'

I paused, considering this. I thought it quite a good point, for Bronwyn. ‘Don't be daft. It's not
pretending
to be true. That's the point.'

‘Nor was I.'

‘You were!' I exclaimed.

‘Was not.'

‘Were.'

‘I never thought you'd believe me! A big twerp, that's what you are.'

I opened my mouth to reply and then closed it again. It was no good. She had it all worked out so that she was in the right. I picked the book up and put it in its place on my shelf.

‘So where were you?' she insisted.

‘I could tell you anything,' I said. ‘I could make up any story I like. How would you know if I was telling the truth?'

‘Go on,' she said.

‘I have a friend who is building a huge pair of wings so that he can fly. He lives in an unholy church. I slept there all night, and in the morning I found human bones buried in the floor.'

Bronwyn pulled a face. ‘Stop mucking about,' she said.

‘It's true,' I said. ‘Truer than gangsters and America and all that.'

‘I didn't want to come here,' Bronwyn said, looking away from me and chewing viciously on a fingernail. ‘Mum made me. She wanted us to make it all up. Be friends again.
She
likes you for some reason.'

‘I didn't want you to come,' I said. ‘It was Mama who invited you, not me.' I went to the window and stood looking out at the damp garden.

‘Don't care,' she replied, and we were silent for some time. I could hear her swallowing and shifting her weight about. Cooking smells drifted upstairs.

‘Where's the toilet?' she said at last. I told her and she went out. I heard the lavatory flushing and then her exchanging a couple of words with Bob on the landing. She came back into my room with a scarlet face. ‘He's naked,' she squeaked. ‘I just saw your granddad, starkers!' and looked at me as if she expected shrieks of glee.

‘Oh,' I said. ‘So what?'

‘I saw his, you know …'

‘So?'

‘It's my first
real
one.' I heard Bob padding across the landing and closing his door.

Bronwyn flopped down onto my bed. Her stomach rumbled. I knew she'd tell someone at school. If she could find anyone to talk to. Such information was hard currency in the playground.

‘Have you really started?' she asked.

‘Started what?'

‘
Periods
of course.'

‘No. That
was
a lie,' I said.

‘Well I
have
, really,' she said. ‘Shall I prove it?'

‘Tea's ready, girls,' Mama called gaily up the stairs.

‘Come on,' I said. Bronwyn followed me out onto the landing and put her hand on my arm.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.