Pip: The Story of Olive (22 page)

A woman with lacquered hair and a rubbish bag smiled out from the sign. Pat Peters. Mayor of Noglarrat. Mustard Seed’s wife.

‘Can my spam.
That’s
her?’

Olive looked at the blunt edge of Pat Peters’ shirt pleat. ‘I don’t think she knows she’s married to a man formerly known as Mustard Seed.’ Everything about Pat Peters seemed terrifyingly no-nonsense. She didn’t look like the sort of woman to tolerate bongo drums, people sleeping in abandoned lighthouses or anything frivolous like gluten-free food.

‘She can’t have any idea.’ Pip tilted her head to the side. ‘I bet she’s the type of person who would only let kids have one spread on their sandwiches – jam
or
peanut butter, never jam
and
peanut butter.’

Olive had to agree.

Behind the poster stretched Christowell Avenue. It was a shady street lined with trees. Each tree had a copper plaque, marking the name of a dead soldier who had fought a war in another time and hemisphere. The houses had gardens filled with bony geraniums, hoses that curled like green tapeworms, and lawns that had yellowed off to purple in the heat.

‘How are we going to know which one it is?’ Olive asked.

‘Easy.’ Pip pulled at a bundle of post peeping from a letterbox and held up an envelope. ‘Mr and Mrs J. Phillips. We know Mustard Seed is not at number four.’

‘And that Mr and Mrs J. Phillips have an overdue gas bill,’ added Olive.

They laughed and walked on. ‘Mr J. Anderson Esq
.
Not at number six, either.’

‘Or number eight . . . or ten.’

The girls stopped in front of a house with a scrubbed fence too tall to peek over.

‘
The Hon. P. and Mr W. Peters.
Number twelve.’ Olive’s voice stuck.

‘What’s with the “Hon.”?’ Pip giggled as Olive slid the envelope back into the silver slit of the letterbox.

‘Honourable – for being the Mayor,’ snapped Olive. ‘This is it.’

Olive pressed her face to the gate and looked through its metal slats towards the house. The house was the same shape as the other bungalows in the street, only it had been iced in white paint until it had the patina of wedding cake. Ash-coloured pebbles were raked into sharp lines where there should have been grass. A waxed station wagon was parked in the open garage, a pine-tree air-freshener dangling under its mirror.

Olive started. Next to the car were six bikes, linked by a chain. The bikes were all different sizes but all blue, leaning in a row from tallest to smallest: an unravelled Russian doll.

‘They’ve got . . . they’ve got children?’ she whispered.

‘They certainly do.’

Olive turned. A woman with a handful of cuttings was collecting a bin. She smiled.

‘Two girls, two boys, as regular as knitting. You never saw such pretty babies.’

‘No,’ said Olive. ‘I don’t suppose I have.’

‘Bill minds them – he’s one of those stay-at-home dads. Give the gate a good hard shove; it can stick a bit in the heat.’

‘Thank you,’ said Olive as the bin rattled over the concrete.

Olive leant her cheek against the cool of the gate.

Pip whistled air through her teeth. ‘Four children. What’s with that?’

Four children. Olive had been so caught up in all the extraordinary things Mustard Seed could be and the fact that he was her father, their father, that she hadn’t imagined him as anybody else’s.

She pictured his children now – the You Never Saw Such Pretty Children children – in a line like the von Trapp family from
The Sound of Music
, children in sailor suits with knickerbockers, rosy cheeks, and eyelashes as thick and dark as Amelia’s. A family of curls and dimples. Imagining Bill Peters and his von Trapp family made Olive feel smaller, skinnier, sallower and totally unlovable.

‘I guess we should get this over with, Ol.’

Olive shoved the gate open. ‘It’s all right, Pip,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll do this.’

Pip looked up at the house. ‘Are you sure?’

Olive nodded.

Pip thumped Olive twice on her back –
chop chop
. ‘Okay, well, I’ll meet you back at the poster.’

Olive watched Pip scuttle back towards the gate like a freed crab. At the end of the path, Pip paused and turned. ‘I can’t believe a father of ours has air-freshener.’ She wrinkled her nose and slipped out onto the dead-soldier street.

28

Edges That Would Never
Be Straight

Olive walked up the path with the reluctance of a first-day student. She wished that Mustard Seed lived in the lighthouse after all – not in a house like this, a house with all the warmth of shop-bought cake. The lighthouse might have been scary and tumbledown, but at least it was connected to Mog. This place was not.

Olive smoothed her hair behind her ears with both hands. She rang the doorbell. There was a pause and then a scramble of feet.

‘Dad, Dad, there’s someone here,’ something cheeped.

The door was opened by two children, hazy through the security screen.

Olive swallowed. ‘Um, hi. Is William Peters there, please?’ His name tripped on her tongue, and she wondered whether it would ever be creamy.

‘That’s our dad.’

‘Oh.’ Olive didn’t know where to look. Speaking to the flywire was like speaking to someone blind, someone with boiled-egg eyes. One of the children pressed a nose to the screen, and skin mulched through the holes in the mesh.

Another two children emerged; they were blooming like bacteria.

‘Dad, Dad.’

The lock was unsnibbed and the door pushed open.

Olive stared. The children were a knot of plump limbs, bathers, dark eyes and macaroni necklaces threaded on blue string. They looked thick and wholesome – as if they might just taste of caramel junket. They looked too soft for a shop-bought house.

Olive peered down the hall behind them, trying to take in as much of everything as she could, to sift through later. The house was catalogue-bare, with a spiky rug. An enormous picture of white-slash flowers in scratchy paint hung on the wall near the door.

One of the pretty-as-knitting kids puffed out her chest. ‘Dad’s making us currant muffins. You can have one if you like, when they come out of the oven.’ She twirled a piece of macaroni at her throat.

‘Excuse me, excuse me.’ A man elbowed through the children to the door, wiping white-flour-hands on a block-print sarong. His shirt was open and his skin was deep brown, but it wasn’t smooth like Mr Forster’s – it was thick and spotted. Dark hair swayed about his face and shoulders. Olive found herself staring straight into the black hooded eyes of her father.

‘Are . . . are you William Peters?’ she asked, although instinctively she knew that he was. Her guts clenched.

The man squinted. ‘Who are you?’

‘Olive,’ said Olive, remembering her name and her manners. She looked down and picked at a fleck of dried seaweed on her cardigan. ‘You are, aren’t you? You’re William Peters.’

‘Bill Peters, mainly.’ There was an M crimped between his eyebrows. He took a step in front of his children, rearranging them behind his sarong. ‘Can I help you?’ His voice was textured, as if he’d just woken.

Olive smiled – not a full-teeth smile, but definitely more of a smile than a nod. She knew that her first proper thoughts should have been
my long-lost father sounds like
me; my long-lost father looks like me; my long-lost father
loves me the best of all these kids, and I love him truly and deeply
already
.

She found, however, that she thought nothing of the kind.
My long-lost father wears a skirt
, thought Olive as she stared at the block-print fabric knotted on his hip.
My
long-lost father has swinging hair and wears a sarong like women
in the tropics
. She pictured Pip’s face when she heard about this and bit down to plug a laugh.

WilliamPetersMustardSeed’s tan had taken on a rosy sheen. His eyes narrowed when he saw the badge on her lapel. ‘I’m sorry, but who are you?’

‘Olive
Garnaut
,’ said Olive clearly, hoping to clarify matters. ‘Mog’s daught—’ ‘Emily, Sophie, to your rooms to get changed, please. You know Mum hates wet togs inside – hang them up on their hooks in the laundry. Sam, could you have a look at the muffins? If they’re ready, just one each please – don’t spoil your dinner.’

The children filtered away.

‘Whose daughter?’ Mustard Seed’s voice was tightly sprung.

‘Mog Garnaut’s.’

‘Garo?’ His mouth puckered at the point where the word dug.

‘Garnaut.
Gar-no.

’ ‘Yes.’ He turned and straightened the white-slash painting. There was silence – a silence so still that Olive could hear it. She stepped towards him. ‘Don’t you remember Mog?’

‘No.’ Something loosened in his throat. ‘No, I’m sorry. I don’t.’

‘But you must remember her. Mog. Mog and the vegetable patch and the cake-fork van.’

‘It doesn’t ring a bell.’ Mustard Seed had stiffened. Everything he did signalled that he was uncomfortable. Everything he did signalled that he was lying.

‘Look, I’m sorry but I’m actually busy. I have four kids, Christmas is around the corner, and I haven’t wrapped a single present. I’m really sorry, mate, but I have to go.’

The word
mate
cut through the air like a tomahawk. A blush shot up Olive’s neck. She dug into the backpack, trying to stop her eyes from getting watery. Dads didn’t call their daughters
mate
. They called them ‘princess’ or ‘angel’ or ‘sweet pea’.

Olive sniffed and pulled out one of the photos. ‘You must recall it. You just must. You washed me in the sea and cuddled me while we swung to drums by the fire; brown as berries and swinging free.’ She held the picture out to him. ‘See, here we are. The lighthouse, me and Mog and . . .’

Olive pointed to it so that William Peters or Mustard Seed or whatever he was called could remember.

There was no drum in the photo, no bathing in the sea, no WilliamPetersMustardSeed. She crunched her toes down hard. Olive hated being tripped up by her own dreamings.

Mustard Seed’s face jumped when he saw the photo, and another silence shuffled about the porch. Olive pushed the photo right up to his head so he couldn’t escape.

‘Do. You. Remember. Mog.’ Olive was firm, each word a separate sentence.

Mustard Seed sagged; his hands slunk to his sides.

‘Of course I do.’

She looked up into the beaten face of her father.

One of the caramel-junket children re-appeared at the door. ‘Dad, who is that kid?’

‘Nobody, sweetheart. Just a girl collecting for charity. Fetch my wallet, will you?’

Mustard Seed’s demeanour had changed upon the arrival of his daughter. His gestures were now extravagant, friendly, high-fiving bold. He looked at Olive: it was a look to mute.

Hurt shot up through Olive, from some cavern deep in her gut. She bit the inside of her mouth to try to anchor it; control it. She couldn’t.

‘Nobody?’ she asked. She could feel her anger pushing out. ‘I’m
nobody
? Don’t you even want to know what grade I’m in? Who my teacher is? How I’ve been?’ Her shouts were exaggerated by the silence that trailed them.

Mustard Seed tightened the knot in his sarong. His shirt was starting to darken in bands under the arms. ‘Emmie, fetch the wallet for Daddy, please.’

‘But—’

‘Now.’

He watched Emily pad off down the hall and turned. ‘Look, I’ve got the kids to consider, and Pat. She’d kill me – she’s the Mayor, you know.’ He shook his head. ‘It just can’t be.’

But it can be, it can be
. Olive wanted to beg. She could fit in there. She could help him with the kids. She was good at muffins. She’d spent years pulling them from the Grahams’ oven. In fact, she’d been in training for this very moment.

Mustard Seed crossed his arms. His voice was quiet but muscular. ‘No. It can’t be. The kids have their needs.’

Olive shrank. She reached for her photo and flattened its bent ends against her top. There was in his words the smugness of a high-fenced family life, with drawings taped on the fridge, and pine-tree shaped air-fresheners, and mountains of macaroni necklaces, and no room, no room for any more. There was a completeness about him, about his family. Everything in Bill Peters’ life already had its spot.

‘Here you go,’ said the little kid called Emily as she skipped back up the hall dragging a bag.

‘Thanks, Emmie. Go and help Sambo keep an eye on the muffins, will you? I’ll just fix up here.’

‘I’ll pay, I’ll pay.’

‘Okay then. You can help.’ He looked at Olive and ladled the child up in his arms. ‘Emily’s our baby girl.’ The child was too big to be a baby, but little enough to be held. She looped her arms around her father’s neck.

Mustard Seed flipped his wallet open with his free hand, took out a twenty-dollar note and passed it to the little girl.

She shook her head. ‘No no no.
I’ll
do it! Only golden coins.’

‘Okay then.’ Mustard Seed held out his wallet and she took a fistful of coins.

‘One, two . . . three.’ The little girl counted them out for Olive.