Mansfield with Monsters (2 page)

“Oh, go on, Jim! She isn't the same woman!”

“Course she is. I can't make it out. What I think is the old man's cleared out and left her: that's all my eye about shearing.”

Through the dark we saw the gleam of the kid's pinafore. She trailed over to us with a basket in her hand, the milk billy in the other. I unpacked the basket, the child standing by.

“Come over here,” said Jim, snapping his fingers at her.

She went, the lamp from the inside of the tent cast a bright light over her. A mean, pale, undersized brat, with whitish hair, and weak eyes. She stood, legs wide apart and her stomach protruding.

“What do you do all day?” asked Jim.

She scraped out one ear with her little finger, looked at the result and said, “Draw.”

“Huh! What do you draw? Leave your ears alone!”

“Pictures.”

“What on?”

“Bits of butter paper an' a pencil of my Mumma's.”

“Boh! What a lot of words at one time!” Jim rolled his eyes at her. “Baa-lambs and moo-cows?”

“No, everything. I'll draw all of you when you're gone, and your horses and the tent, and that one,” she pointed to me, “with no clothes on in the creek.” She turned and stared at me with a strange look that chilled my blood. “I saw you. The lark saw you too.”

“Where's your Dad?” said Jim.

The kid pouted. “I won't tell you because I don't like yer face!” She started operations on the other ear.

“Here,” I said. “Take the basket, get along home and tell the other man his supper's ready.”

“I don't want to.”

“I'll give you a box on the ear if you don't,” said Jim, savagely.

“Hie! I'll tell my Mumma. I'll tell Mumma.” The kid fled.

We ate until we were full, and had arrived at the smoke stage before Jo came back, very flushed and jaunty, a whisky-bottle in his hand.

“ 'Ave a drink, you two!” he shouted, carrying off matters with a high hand.

“One hundred and twenty-five different ways,” I murmured to Jim.

“She wants us to go up there to-night, and have a comfortable chat. I,” he declared, waving his hand airily, “I got 'er round.”

“Trust you for that,” laughed Jim. “But did she tell you where her old man's got to?”

Jo looked up. “Shearing! You 'eard 'er, you fool!”

“I'd rather not. Let's stay here,” I suggested. “There's something not right with that woman and her kid.”

“Suit yourself, but you'll be spending the night out here on your alone,” said Jim, already on his feet. “I'm not staying out to-night with that storm on the way.”

Jo's mind was already set and his reasons had little to do with the weather. I knew there was no sense in facing the storm on my own, so I followed them both back through the dark paddocks to the whare.

The woman had cleaned and fixed up the room, it appeared almost welcoming in the warm lamp-light. There was even a bouquet of sweet-williams on the table. She and I sat one side of the table, Jo and Jim the other. An oil lamp was set between us, the whisky-bottle and glasses, and a jug of water. The kid knelt against one of the forms, drawing on butter paper; I wondered, grimly, if she was attempting the creek episode. But Jo had been right about night time. The woman's hair was tumbled, two red spots burned in her cheeks, her eyes shone, and we knew that they were kissing feet under the table. She had changed the blue pinafore for a white calico dressing-jacket and a black skirt. In the stifling room, with the flies buzzing against the ceiling and dropping on to the table, we got slowly drunk.

“Now listen to me,” shouted the woman, banging her fist on the table. “It's six years since I was married, and four miscarriages. I says to 'im, I says, what do you think I'm doin' up 'ere? If you was back at the coast, I'd 'ave you lynched for child murder. Over and over I tells 'im—you've broken my spirit and spoilt my looks, and wot for—that's wot I'm driving at.” She clutched her head with her hands and stared round at us. Speaking rapidly, “Wot for—you know what I mean, Mr Jo.”

“I know,” said Jo, scratching his head.

“Trouble with me is,” she leant across the table, “I'm too much alone. The coach stopped coming and with him gone…”

“Mumma,” bleated the kid, “I made a picture of them on the 'ill, an' you an' me, an' the dog down below.”

“Shut your mouth!” snarled the woman. Her face seemed a contorted mask in the light of the flickering oil lamp.

A vivid flash of lightning played over the room and we heard the mutter of thunder.

“Good thing that's broke loose,” said Jo. “I've 'ad it in me 'ead for three days.”

“Where's your old man now?” asked Jim, slowly.

The woman moaned and dropped her head on to the table. “ 'E's gone shearin' and left me all alone,” she wailed.

“ 'Ere, look out for the glasses,” said Jo. “Cheer-o, 'ave another drop. No good cryin' over spilt 'usbands!”

“Mr Jo,” said the woman, drying her eyes on her jacket frill, “you're a gent, an' if I was a secret woman, I'd place any confidence in your 'ands. I don't mind if I do 'ave a glass on that.”

Every moment the lightning grew more vivid and the thunder sounded nearer. Jim and I were silent—the kid never moved from her bench. She poked her tongue out and blew on her paper as she drew.

“It's the loneliness,” said the woman, addressing Jo—he made sheep's eyes at her—“and bein' buried away in this God forsaken place.”

He reached his hand across the table and held hers, and though the position looked most uncomfortable when they wanted to pass the water and whisky, their hands stuck together as though glued. I pushed back my chair and went over to the kid, who immediately sat flat down on her artistic achievements and made a face at me.

“You're not to look,” said she.

“Oh, come on, don't be nasty!” Jim came over to us, and we were just drunk enough to wheedle the kid into showing us. And those drawings of hers were grotesque and repulsive. Childish scrawlings of gruesome, bloody scenes: a lamb nuzzling into its slaughtered mother, a headless hen lying prone beside a blood-soaked stump—all the butchered animals drawn with exaggerated smiles in thick red like a clown's painted mouth. The creations of a lunatic with a lunatic's cleverness. There was no doubt about it, the kid's mind was diseased. While she showed them to us, she worked herself up into a mad excitement, laughing and trembling, and shooting out her arms.

“Mumma,” she yelled. “Now I'm going to draw them what you told me I never was to, now I am.”

The woman rushed from the table and beat the child's head with the flat of her hand.

“I'll smack you with yer clothes turned up if yer dare say that again,” she bawled.

Jo was too drunk to notice, but Jim caught her by the arm. The kid did not utter a cry. She drifted over to the window and began picking dead flies from the treacle paper.

We returned to the table; Jim and I sitting one side, the woman and Jo, touching shoulders, the other. We listened to the thunder, saying stupidly, “That was a near one,” “There it goes again,” and Jo, at a heavy hit, “Now we're off,” “Steady on the brake,” until rain began to fall, sharp as cannon shot on the iron roof.

“You'd better doss here for the night,” said the woman. “You won't be safe down there. Not with the storm like this.”

“Maybe if we wait till the worst of the rain has passed,” I suggested, eyeing the girl pocketing the dead flies.

“There's worse than rain that's out there to-night,” said the woman. Her eyes glowered and glittered in the lamp-light. “You'd best stay here.”

“That's right,” assented Jo, evidently in the know about this move. “We'd best stay here.”

“Bring up yer things from the tent. You two can doss in the store along with the kid. She used to sleep in there and won't mind you.”

“Oh Mumma, I never did,” interrupted the kid.

“Shut yer lies! An' Mr Jo can 'ave this room.”

It sounded a ridiculous arrangement, but it was useless to attempt to cross them, they were too far gone. While the woman sketched the plan of action, Jo sat, abnormally solemn and red, his eyes bulging, and pulling at his moustache.

“Give us a lantern,” said Jim, “I'll go down to the paddock.”

We two went together. Rain whipped in our faces and the wind howled and raged about us as we ran though the deepening dark. We behaved like two wild children let loose, laughing and hooting as though giving in to the madness of the night would save us from harm. We came back still in high spirits to the whare to find the kid already bedded in the counter of the store.

The woman brought us a lamp. Jo took his bundle from Jim, the door was shut.

“Good-night all,” shouted Jo.

Jim and I sat on two sacks of potatoes. For the life of us we could not stop laughing. Strings of onions and half-hams dangled from the ceiling, wherever we looked there were advertisements for ‘Camp Coffee' and tinned meats. We pointed at them and when we tried to read them aloud were overcome with laughter and hiccoughs. The kid in the counter stared at us. She threw off her blanket and scrambled to the floor, where she stood in her grey flannel night-gown, rubbing one leg against the other. We paid no attention to her.

“Wot are you laughing at?” she said, uneasily.

“You!” shouted Jim. “The red tribe of you, my child.”

She flew into a rage and beat herself with her hands. “I won't be laughed at, you curs!” He swooped down upon the child and swung her on to the counter.

“Go to sleep, Miss Smarty, or make a drawing. Here's a pencil. You can use Mumma's account book.”

Through the rain we heard Jo creak over the boarding of the next room, the sound of a door being opened and then shut to.

“It's the loneliness,” whispered Jim.

“One hundred and twenty-five different ways. Alas, my poor brother!”

The kid tore out a page and flung it at me.

“There you are,” she said. “Now I done it ter spite Mumma for shutting me up 'ere with you two. I done the ones she told me I never ought to. I done the pictures she told me she'd shoot me if I did. Don't care! Don't care!”

The kid had drawn a picture of a woman shooting at a man with a rook rifle and another of her digging a hole to bury him in. Beside that was a childish scrawling of the woman hanging by a rope from the old macrocarpa-tree by the creek, and the fourth, final picture showed a mound of dirt edged with paua shells, and the woman, dragging herself out of the earth with red, clawing hands.

“This is what you saw?” I asked. The drunk laughter had drained from me in an instant. “Your mother?”

“She told me I never ought to draw it, but I don't care,” repeated the child, her eyes blue and wild. “And she told me I never ought to bury nothing in my garden no more. It ain't fair. That garden growed me all manner of animals back.”

She jumped off the counter and huddled down on the floor biting her nails.

“You mean she's dead?” said Jim.

“Don't care,” whispered the girl, clutching her knees and rocking from side to side. “She never let me keep nothin' from that garden 'cept her.”

A scream followed by a gun-shot thundered over the sound of pounding rain.

Jim and I ran through to the bed-room. There stood Jo, half-undressed, aiming the rifle at the figure of the smiling woman sitting on the bed, her collar unbuttoned to reveal dark bruising and red-raw rope burn around her throat.

“You stay there! Keep away from me,” Jo ordered, his hands trembling as he clutched the gun and jabbed it at her as though fending off an attack.

“You ought never to leave me,” said the woman, sitting as still as a statue. “It's the loneliness, you see…”

“Stay back, you mad old bitch, or I'll shoot,” Jo warned.

“Leave it alone, Jo. We'd best be on our way now. I don't think shooting her will help,” said Jim, holding his hand out to touch the rifle like he was calming a spooked horse.

Jo turned to face him. “You don't understand, Jim. It's 'er. She isn't the same woman. She isn't flesh and blood. She's something else—something evil.”

The woman's mouth stretched open and she wailed a terrible, inhuman shriek. I covered my ears, as did Jim, but Jo's hands stayed frozen on the rifle as blood started to trickle from his ears.

In an instant the woman flew across the room. She seized me by the shoulders and flung me against the wall as though I weighed no more than a sack of feathers. My head hit the wall and, as I tumbled to the floor, I saw her dash Jim's head against the bed-end and wrench the rifle out of Jo's hands. I heard a gun-shot as the room started to fade from view and I slipped into blackness…

I woke up on a mattress back in the store. My head throbbed. I tried to sit up, wincing at the sharp pain at the back of my skull and remembering that it wasn't just the whisky that'd waged war on my head.

Jim was on the mattress beside me. I shook him awake and slowly, wordlessly he rose. The first light of dawn shone on the drawing beside us. The rain had ceased, the little kid was fast asleep, breathing loudly. We got up, stole out of the whare. We didn't say anything. We were lucky to escape with our lives. We both knew it but dared not say it.

White clouds floated over a pink sky and a chill wind blew; the air smelt of wet grass. Just as we started down the path, I caught sight of something.

“Jim! The kid's garden…”

Jim turned and followed the direction of my gaze. “That… that wasn't there before.”

There was a fresh mound of dirt, large enough for a man's grave, and the colourful upturned paua shells dotted around its base glinted in the early morning sunlight.