Little Wing (3 page)

Martin sat on the old brick path and sipped tea. He opened a tin of tobacco and rolled a narrow cigarette, but pinched it out after a few puffs.

‘Well, that's me,' he said. ‘What about you?'

Emily looked up.

‘You've let me do all the talking.'

‘There's nothing much to tell,' she said. ‘I'm staying up here with my godmother. Having a kind of holiday.'

That wasn't exactly the truth but it wasn't a lie, either.

Martin lit his cigarette again and squinted through the smoke. ‘Cat hates me doing this. It's one of my bad habits. I only do it when Pete's not home.'

He stubbed out the cigarette and put it into the tin, then went inside and came out with a notebook. He scribbled something into it, paused to think, and scribbled again.

‘What are you writing?'

‘It's a kind of journal. It's where I hang out. I've just written:
Mist has lifted – beautiful spring day. Who is here with us: a small brown bird perching on the lemon tree. There's a trail of ants along the path. A girl with brown hair (Emily) sits on the back doorstep, a smudge of yellow paint on her foot.

‘Staying home all the time sucks something out of me. So I try to stay in touch with the world by noticing things and writing them down. I record who is here with us. Who is sharing this world. With us humans, I mean.'

Even with the sun on her head and feet, Emily felt dark and cramped. She thought that Martin had a largeness to him – a big airy space inside. His chest must never be constricted by sorrow. Inside, he was all rolling hills and gentle breezes.

They did an entire first coat of the room by the time Martin had to pick Pete up from pre-school. As Emily washed yellow paint from her hands at the garden tap, Martin said, ‘Want to come for the walk?'

In the hallway, he put on a hat and coat. He looked at Emily's thin polar fleece jacket, and reached out for a long wool scarf, which he handed her. ‘You need a hat,' he said. ‘Pick a hat, any hat.'

Emily chose a knitted one with rainbow stripes. Martin straightened it for her, turning up the brim so he could see her face. She felt like his child; at any moment he might lean forward and pat her on the head.

He took long strides, and Emily had to hurry to keep up with him. They were late arriving at the pre-school, and almost all the children had gone. ‘Dad!' called Pete, running to the fence. When he saw Emily, he stopped. ‘You're wearing Cat's hat,' he said.

‘Pete, it's all right,' said Martin. ‘Emily didn't have a hat. I said she could wear it.'

‘But Dad – she can't keep it! It's Cat's.' He shoved ahead of them and walked quickly along the footpath, so that all Emily could see was the severity of his back, with a small black backpack bouncing along on top of it.

Back at their house, Emily unwound the scarf from her neck and draped it over a peg. She removed the rainbow hat and placed it next to the scarf. She wondered if she ought to go now, but followed Martin and Pete to the yellow room where Pete was standing in the middle of the floor saying, ‘Wowee! Wowee!', his hands on his hips.

‘It needs another coat tomorrow,' said Martin. ‘Since you'll be at home you can help if you want.'

Pete looked at Emily. ‘But not her,' he said quickly. ‘We can do it by ourselves.'

‘Pete, that's not nice.' But Pete had already run out of the room, and Martin looked at Emily and grinned ruefully.

The days were lengthening, and it was still warm. Emily knew she should go back to Charlotte's place, but she hadn't the energy for it. Martin and Pete sat out on the grass sharing a plate of cut-up oranges; she lay under the lemon tree close by and closed her eyes. The dread that she had lived with for months settled even more insistently into her chest, so that she felt that she would soon stop breathing.

Then she noticed the sweet, sharp smell of skin, and opened her eyes. It was Pete. He stared down at her and held out a section of orange, asking if she would like some.

She didn't reply, and he pressed the wedge of fruit onto her opened mouth and squeezed. Juice ran into her mouth. She closed her eyes and swallowed, and lay there with her mouth filled by the skin of the orange.

‘Is it nice, Emmy? Is it?'

Pete patted her face. His hand was soft. She felt she hadn't been touched tenderly like that for a long time. She kept her eyes tight shut, but tears came from under her eyelids.

And then Pete asked her why she was sad, and it seemed to her that no one had ever before noticed that simple fact, but she couldn't speak.

‘Dad . . . why is she sad?'

Martin said, ‘She just is, Pete. Everyone gets sad sometimes.'

And they both sat there with her for a long time, and didn't press her to say anything, and after a while she got up and said goodbye to them and left.

T
oday i told Matt about you. i watched him closely for his reaction, for any sign that you might not be welcome to him.

You can't count his initial hesitation. Then – Are you sure, he said.

– i'm sure.

– We'll keep it, yeah? was the first thing he said.

And then he hugged us close.

– Yeah, i said.

It was such a relief to tell someone.

5

Emily lay in bed and listened to the sounds of Charlotte's house. Even if Emily hadn't been there, it would still have sounded exactly the same. Sometimes she felt that she didn't exist, that she somehow filled no space in the world.

A door opened and closed with a hollow sound. The toilet flushed. There were footsteps down the hallway.

The sounds were remote and peaceful, and Emily, who had spent what felt like most of the night awake, turned over and closed her eyes again.

The cat had deserted her; it yowled in the kitchen. The refrigerator door opened and closed. A dish rattled.

She stayed in bed until well after Charlotte had gone out to her shed, and after dressing she just had to get out for a walk. She didn't enjoy walking, but it helped her not to think. She trudged to the lookout, stayed for as long as it took to glance down into the valley, and then went back. Something took her to Martin's place.

It was a week since her last visit, and on the way up the hall Martin showed her Pete's room, where the painting had been completed. It was a bright, glorious yellow.

‘It's beautiful,' she said flatly.

Emily knew that the room, so optimistically bright and still smelling of fresh paint, should be admired. But she didn't
feel
it was beautiful. Its freshness and hopefulness rather oppressed her. She lay down on Pete's bed and closed her eyes, and when she looked up, Martin was standing there with two cups in his hands. Not tea this time, but hot chocolate.

They drank it in the back yard. For a little while he allowed her to sit hunched with her hands pressing the sides of the warm cup, and he didn't try to rush in with words; he waited for her to speak, and when she didn't, he squeezed her shoulder softly and said, ‘I was planning to replace some rotten boards in the bathroom. Want to help?'

They worked quietly. He asked her to hand him the tools, and got her to measure the length of the new lining boards. ‘I try to get stuff done while Pete's not here,' he told her. She said nothing, just watched him. He bashed his thumb with the hammer and laughed. ‘Shit!' He sang a song while he worked: ‘Eagle Rock'. But without any backing music it sounded thin and wistful.

After a while she drifted away, back to Pete's room, where she lay on the bed listening to the sounds of hammering and sawing. The rhythmical sounds, and the way the timber house moved in response to the hammering, lulled her to sleep. She felt someone come into the room and drop a soft rug over her feet.

When she woke it was a different time of day, and the whole quality of the light had changed. Pete was standing next to her, saying, ‘That's
my
bed, Emmy! It's mine!'

‘I'm sorry.'

But he forgave her quickly.

‘Draw with me, Emmy! Draw with me!' A piece of paper was thrust at her, and soon she was crouching on the floor beside him. She was astonished at how physically she felt his presence – he had a ripe, yeasty odour, and when he leaned against her he was surprisingly heavy.

He scrawled over the paper, making a random pattern, and Emily filled in the spaces that were formed with squiggles, spots and stripes of various colours.

‘What are you drawing?' said Martin, coming into the room with a plate of cheese on toast, which he placed on the floor next to her.

‘It's a map,' said Pete. ‘A map of where you're going when you don't know where you are.'

‘Write that,' he ordered Emily. So she wrote at the top: A Map Of Where You're Going When You Don't Know Where You Are.

She'd slept through lunch and was starving hungry. She crammed cheese on toast into her mouth while she wrote, and spots of grease appeared on the paper.

That night she switched on the lamp beside her bed and found a piece of paper. For a while her pen hovered and was unable to make a mark. She struggled for words. In the end she wrote:

Dear Matt,

i hope you are well. i think about Mahalia all the time. i think about both of you, and i'm so grateful that you are there for her. i know you'll be looking after her really well.

i can't come back just yet

i'm sorry

Emmy

i want everything for you. The moon and the stars and the sea and the entire universe. i want everything for me too. i want you and Matt and me 4 ever and ever.

Having you with me makes me greedy for life – more greedy even than i used to be. i want Everything. Nothing less than Everything will be enough. Not just for now, but for the whole of my life.

6

Her mother rang.

Charlotte took the call. She signalled to Emily, but Emily shook her head and went outside to get away from the conversation. It was very early spring, and the earth was still cool. Blossoms had struck out bravely, only to be withered by blasts of cold.

Two little girls played in the garden next door. They had constructed a cubby with a blanket nailed to the fence. Emily peered surreptitiously through the palings. The children had tiny plastic plates filled with grass and flowers, and small cups of water. Four dolls sat obediently in a circle. Two pairs of small human hands ministered to them. Their voices floated through the fence, piping and childish.

Then they noticed her watching them, and ran inside.

Charlotte came out and hesitated under the clothesline. ‘I wish you'd spoken to her, Emily. She means well.'

But Emily had slammed out of the garden, her feet pounding along the path.

Martin took one look at her face and suggested that they go for a walk. Emily had come without dressing for the weather, so he found her a jacket. Again, she wore the wool scarf from the peg in the hall, and Cat's rainbow hat, and Pete didn't object this time. He was like a puppy, eager to be off.

In the park Pete ran around and around in circles, his feet scattering pigeons. Martin chased him, veering off at one point to run over to where Emily leaned against a tree. He tried to pull her out to join them.

‘Bet you can't catch me, Emmy!' Pete yelled.

Emily's heart wasn't in it (she had no heart), and her legs were heavy and reluctant. But by the time Martin and Pete had collapsed on the ground, and Emily came panting up to them, she was surprised to find a faint purring in her chest, a few bubbles of air that made her remember what her life had once been like.

She waited on the grass while Martin and Pete went to the shop in the street opposite to buy iceblocks, and she and Martin sat on the grass to eat theirs while Pete went off to the sandpit to play. He sang to himself, and laughed. Emily noticed how many times in a day Pete laughed – he was always finding something to delight him. Grown-up people laughed very rarely. It was a long time since Emily herself had laughed at anything at all.

‘Can't you talk to me, Emily?' said Martin. ‘I might be able to help.'

But she shook her head.

‘Smile, then.'

Emily turned up the corners of her mouth.

When Pete ran over and said, ‘Emily, what's the most delicious icecream flavour you can think of?', she replied with a show of energy, ‘Vegemite! What's yours?'

‘Broccoli,' he said, entering into the game. ‘Guess what flavour Cat would like?'

She shrugged.

‘Sardine!' he said, and ran away, laughing.

I
t's done! My parents know about you, and of course they say we're too young. My mother (my father just sits there looking stunned and sad) thinks i should have you adopted.

i will never let you go.

7

One day Emily stood in the doorway to the kitchen while Charlotte brewed up rosehip tea.

‘I'm adopted, aren't I?' she said accusingly.

The lid of the small china teapot made a chinking sound.

‘Emily! Whatever makes you say that?'

‘I am, aren't I?'

Charlotte came over to her. She put both arms round Emily.

‘No. No you're not. You're definitely not adopted. I should know – I saw your mother when she was pregnant, and I was there just after you were born. Why on earth do you think that?'

‘Oh. Just because. Because she was so old when she had me. And because she didn't have any other children.'

Emily's mother was years older than the other mothers of people her age. Sometimes she was mistaken for Emily's grandmother. She and Charlotte had been at school together, but Charlotte's children were all in their thirties, all with husbands or wives and good jobs, having countless children between them.

‘She wanted a child for years. And when you came along at last when she was well past forty, it seemed like a miracle. You've no idea how much you were wanted, Emily.'