Promise (18 page)

She sat up to watch Pat driving her car between the bamboo clumps. She wondered if turning away from her maternal desire had something to do with not wanting to meet Dave’s kids. When she saw Dave again, she’d ask to meet them. She’d been silly not to.

The sound of the car engine faded. She was stranded now, and it was a relief to have no means to get away. Even if Pat and Sabine asked them to leave, they couldn’t go until he retrieved her car.

•

Anna hung a sheet over the window in the bails, a mosquito whining around her head. She wedged the cloth in a gap between the frame and window. The sheet didn’t reach all the way across the window and a strip of light from the house shone in on one side.

Sabine and Pat were still on the verandah where they’d all eaten dinner together. Sabine had made a herb omelette, ratatouille and green salad, and Charlie had pushed the food around her plate, complaining about not being allowed to eat more cake.

‘What’s that noise?’ asked Charlie from the queen-sized bed, where she sat cross-legged on the dark blue bedspread.

Something scurried in the corner.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Anna. ‘Maybe a cockroach or a little mouse. Shall we tuck the mozzie net in? There’s a few mosquitos hanging around.’

She pushed the cotton netting between the mattress and the wooden bedframe. At the top of each corner post of the bed was a point of delicate entwined twigs. The timber had been freshly oiled and smelt of orange. The bed was a commission that fell through and Pat hoped to sell it to someone in Byron Bay.

Since she’d last seen the bails, Pat had lined the walls and ceiling and painted everything white. Through the blue wooden door was the dirt yard where cows used to gather each morning and afternoon for milking. This valley was once patchworked with farms supplying cream to the butter factory in town. When Pat bought the place, a handful of dairy farms were still working, but all the properties were now hobby farms or communities like Pat’s, the forest reclaiming what once were lush cow paddocks and banana plantations.

‘I don’t want a mouse in the room,’ Charlie said, peering into the corner, her face strained.

‘Well, even if it is a mouse, it’s not interested in us . . .’ There was no way Anna could exclude a mouse from the bails. The gap under the door was big enough for a small cat to squeeze through. She didn’t let herself think about the snakes.

Charlie’s shoulders slumped. ‘I hate it. I want the caravan. Or the room inside. Why can’t we sleep inside again?’

Anna heard the door shutting over at the house and the outside light flicked off. ‘It may not even be a mouse. It might be a gecko.’ She clapped her hands at the mosquito whining about her head. ‘We’re out here because it’s a bigger room.’ And, she suspected, because Sabine preferred not to have them in the house.

Smoke from the mosquito coil drifted towards the bed. Anna had forgotten how toxic they smelt. She moved it to the corner near the door and tried to make her voice casual. ‘Charlie, where do your mummy’s mum and dad live?’

‘Mummy doesn’t like her. She’s mean to Mummy. I only meeted her one or two times and I don’t even remember.’

‘Mummy doesn’t like her?’ Anna wondered if Gabby’s mother used to hit Gabby or lock her out at night. She remembered Charlie crouching by the fence in the dark backyard, telling Anna how she’d pleaded to be let into the house.

Charlie shook her head and lay back on the bed.

‘Charlie, you know, some people might think that I’m your mummy. Like Michael might think that.’

The girl stared at Anna. ‘You’re not my mummy.’

‘I know. I know. You have a mummy. But it’s probably okay if people think I’m your mummy because we don’t want people to find us. We don’t want the police to find us.’

She hated having this conversation, because she liked to think that their relationship was founded on truth. ‘We know I’m not your mummy.’

‘I want them to find us. I want Mummy to find us.’

Shit
. ‘But then Harlan would find us.’

Charlie shook her head. ‘No. Not him.’

Anna reached to the shelf by the bed and shook out the light blue t-shirt that the kid next door had unwittingly donated. ‘Let’s pop a clean t-shirt on you, for your jarmies.’ She wondered how the neighbour-girl would feel when she discovered that her things had been plundered. Anna hoped Sabine had left a note or something.

‘What’s a gecko?’ asked Charlie.

‘A small lizard.’

‘How small?’

‘This small.’ Anna held her thumb and finger apart.

‘Where is it?’

‘Over there, I think.’ Anna needed to sleep. ‘Here, let’s get this t-shirt on you. That one you’ve got on is all dirty from the day. It’s been in the creek. This one smells of soap and the sun.’ Anna pressed her nose to the soft fabric.

Charlie blurted out. ‘Mummy bited me.’

Anna pressed the t-shirt to her chest. ‘Oh, Charlie.’ She lifted the mosquito net and sat on the soft mattress. ‘Did she bite your leg?’

‘And here.’ Charlie tapped her upper arm then forearm. She whispered, ‘It really hurt.’

‘I bet it hurt.’

‘She said she wouldn’t do it again but she did . . .’ Charlie pressed her lips together as if trying not to cry.

Anna stroked the girl’s bare leg. ‘I’m sorry that happened.’ What could she say?

Charlie shrugged her shoulders and lay down.

‘Let’s get the clean t-shirt on and you can go to sleep.’

‘I don’t want to.’ Charlie rolled onto her side, her legs clamped together.

‘Come on, it’s so much nicer sleeping in clean clothes. I’m going to wear the t-shirt Sabine gave me.’ She patted the girl’s leg again.

Charlie kicked out at her. Her heel caught Anna hard on the thigh.

Anna recoiled. ‘Hey! Don’t
do
that.’

Charlie kicked her again. Anna dropped the t-shirt and took hold of the girl’s foot. ‘Do
not
kick me, Charlie.’

Charlie jerked out of Anna’s grasp and thrashed her legs wildly until she became tangled in the mosquito net and dragged it down on top of them.

‘Stop it! Just stop!’ said Anna.

‘Fuck off! Fuck off!’

Anna reeled back.

‘Fuck off!
’ Charlie’s voice was full of venom.

Anna got out from under the net as Charlie slid off the bed. The girl fell to the concrete floor, on her good arm, then staggered up and banged into the wall by the door. She stepped back and threw herself against the wall again, her shoulder making a terrible hollow sound on the timber boards. Anna tried to grab her but Charlie scrabbled at the door handle and ran out into the night. Anna blundered after her, her heart whirring.

The girl stopped in the open area between the bails and the house, where two rectangles of light from the kitchen lay yellow on the grass.

She cried out, ‘Where’s it gone? Where is it?’

Anna stopped an arm’s length away from her. ‘Where’s what gone?’

‘The car. My car! Where is it?’ Charlie sobbed, looking up to the sky.

Anna knelt beside the girl but didn’t dare touch her. ‘It’s okay. We don’t need the car. You’re safe.’

That was all she knew to say: Y
ou’re safe. You’re safe
. It was all she had to offer. Anna had made her safe from Harlan and Gabby – who
bit
her own daughter, for god’s sake – but what else could Anna give her? And how else might she have traumatised her?

Over Charlie’s shoulder Anna saw the verandah light come on and Pat emerged from the kitchen door.

Charlie slid to the ground, her voice breaking. ‘You’re not my mother. And I
hate
you.’

Anna fell back onto her heels and closed her eyes.

No
, she wanted to say.
I’m not your mother. But I’ve put a bomb under my own life to look after you
.

For a moment she let herself imagine walking away, just walking down the driveway and into town. What a relief that would be.

As Pat came towards them, Charlie sprinted away along the driveway. Anna scrambled up and after her. She heard Pat running close behind her. The gravel track was potholed and the rocks bruised Anna’s feet. Ahead, Charlie was a pale flickering shape in the darkness. If the girl veered off into the black bush on either side of the track, it would be hard to find her. Charlie was surprisingly fast on the uneven ground, but Pat was faster. He overtook them and gathered the girl into his arms. Anna expected Charlie to fight him but she collapsed into him, taking in gulps of air. Pat sank to the ground, his arms wrapped around her. Anna sat beside them. No one spoke, all of them breathing hard.

Charlie gave a few breathless sobs, which turned to sad weeping against Pat’s shoulder. Anna tentatively touched Charlie’s back. She had no idea how to comfort this child, although she knew well that kind of helpless weeping. She’d cried like that in bed at night and the only person who could have comforted her was her dead mother.

Charlie wept for a long time, sometimes saying a few indistinct words. Dark, silent bats flapped overhead, and the crickets and frogs chirruped loudly.

The girl shifted on Pat’s lap and whispered, ‘Anna, is Ralph asleep now?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Anna. ‘She’d be curled up, fast asleep.’

‘She’d be dreaming of bones,’ said Pat.

A small animal rustled in the bushes close by. He said, ‘All the daytime animals are asleep or getting ready for bed. That includes us. We’re animals, you know. Human animals.’

‘Mmm,’ said Charlie and sniffed.

‘Let’s go back. And go to bed.’ Pat lifted Charlie and carried her along the dark track. Anna walked behind them. She imagined him carrying his own child this way, one day soon. He’d be a good father. Attentive and careful but not mollycoddling.

How different would Anna be now if she had become a mother all those years ago? And who was that person she and Pat had created but jettisoned?

‘Sorry,’ she whispered to the baby.
Sorry I wasn’t strong enough to stick up for you
.

As she followed Pat along the track, she felt somehow formless in the darkness, as if she was coming unstitched, all her edges fraying.

In the bails, Pat laid Charlie on the bed and Anna picked up the tangled mosquito net from the floor. The girl closed her eyes and fell asleep straightaway. Anna brushed the dirt off her own feet and stood on the bed, the mattress soft and unsteady beneath her, and hooked the mosquito net back up.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘We made a tear in it.’

Pat shrugged. ‘It’s okay. Easy to stitch up.’

She pulled the covers out from under Charlie and lay the sheet over her, then followed Pat outside. ‘Thank you for coming out and helping . . .’

‘That’s okay. I’m just glad she didn’t take off into the bush.’ He was already heading towards the house.

‘Me too,’ she said.

‘Sleep well.’

Anna picked up the little t-shirt from the floor and folded it. A year after her mum died, Anna gave up hoping her dad would talk about her mum. She had absolutely no memory of the last time she saw her mother, which would have been at the hospital. Her father must have been there. He could have told her.

But when she asked him, he fobbed her off. ‘Just remember the good, Annie.’

Without that last memory, it seemed Anna was powerless to hold onto the few memories she did have of her mum. For a while, when she was nine, she wrote recollections in an exercise book, but after a couple of years she burnt the book because she didn’t trust those sweet little stories. They were written with such desperation that she felt sure she must have invented them. Even now, she was sometimes afraid that not a single memory of her mother was real.

W
hen Anna woke, the sun was high. The gap in the curtain showed a strip of the blue, bright day out there.

Charlie slept on, her face pale. What if the girl tried to run away again? If she got as far as the road, surely someone would stop for her and what would happen then? While they were driving north, Anna had the naive idea that once they got to Pat’s everything would be easier.

She swung out of bed and quietly opened the door. Pat’s ute was gone and Sabine’s little yellow car was parked under the mango tree. Pat had told her that he and Michael were felling a tree in the top plantation; she listened for a chainsaw but there was only the languid cooing of pigeons near the laundry.

Pat once told Anna that felling a tree was the best way he knew to clear his head, that the danger kept him focused like nothing else. He had photos of the original timber-getters in the area, men who used axes and took a whole day to chop down a massive red cedar. She knew he liked to think of himself as returning to a time when trees were paid due respect and harvested sustainably.

Anna started across the clearing, hoping Sabine was out so she could drink a quiet and solitary cup of tea on the verandah.

She heard a car engine grinding up the driveway. It was probably Pat, but what if it was someone else? She hurried towards the house, and just as she reached the steps, a white four-wheel drive nosed between the bamboo.

Anna stopped. She’d been seen.

A short woman climbed out of the vehicle. She wore jeans and a white shirt and her black hair was cut very short.

‘Hello!’ she called in a cheery voice.

‘Hello.’ Anna prayed that Charlie wouldn’t wake.

The woman had a purposeful walk, with turned-out feet.

‘I’m Jo.’ She held a small brown bottle in one hand. ‘Sabine’s midwife.’

‘Oh. Yes. Hi.’

‘How are you settling in?’ She gave Anna a brief smile.

‘Good.’

Sabine and Pat must have told her the story too. Why did they need to tell her anything? Had she spotted Anna and Charlie heading down to the waterhole the other day?

‘Is she about?’ The woman inclined her head to the house.

‘Sabine? I’m not sure. I just woke up.’

She glanced at her watch. ‘Good for you. I have some herbs for her.’ She started towards the house and called out, ‘Sabine, are you home, love? It’s Jo.’

The woman ducked into the kitchen and Anna wondered if she could just slip away, back to the bails. But Jo reappeared and walked briskly back to her car.