Red (3 page)

‘And all those houses are wrecked or gone,' said Red.

They scrambled over the rubble, the smashed furniture and the dead and broken trees. She could hear the sea, the low, even murmuring of the water washing itself against the land. Then she saw it. Far in the distance the clear blue of the sky rubbed up against the duller blue-green of the ocean. Closer in, its colour changed to the brown of floating tree branches, timber and mud. Each crashing wave dumped more rubbish on the narrow strip of land.

She couldn't take her eyes away. The sound, the rhythm, the feeling … she was being picked up, rolled over, dumped, water above her. Water below her, pushing her on and down.

She was shaking. Tears streamed down her face. Her chest tightened. She gulped and forced herself to turn around, to put the sea behind her.

‘Did you hear what I said?' Peri frowned. ‘There used to be an unreal beach down there.' He pointed. ‘In the olden days there was about a hundred metres of sand when the tide was out. Kids used to surf 'cos it had the best waves. Sand's all gone now. Once I met this old bloke who said that when he was a kid they used to have big carnivals at the beach. Hundreds of surf lifesavers and kids too, all competing for prizes. Swimming, boat racing and marching. He'd said he had photos to prove it and one day he'd bring them down and show me but he never did.'

‘Maybe I lived in a house around here.' Red was trying to talk normally. She turned to right and left, her eyes skimming over the mounds of mud and bricks, timber, lumps of concrete, wire, furniture and toys. A shimmering blue party dress, the skirt torn into dangling shreds, hung from the upturned roots of a Moreton Bay fig tree.

‘Or you could've been just visiting.'

They slowly picked their way back. Part of Red wanted to search under every scrap of debris but another part felt sure there was nothing to find. She kicked at a pile of bricks under sheets of iron. Black flies shot up like an exploding firework. She saw a swollen, rotting animal, its matted hair, distorted face. Someone's dog. A putrid smell. Red's stomach leapt to her throat. She stumbled forward and knelt in the mud as acrid-tasting vomit poured from her mouth. The smells of dead and rotting grass, stagnant pools and the foul water leaking from broken pipes hung all around her.

‘Let's get out of here,' she said.

• • • • •

Back at the ‘palace', Peri put the remaining food into the backpack. Red rinsed her mouth and sorted through the new clothes, choosing a pair of pale cotton shorts and a bright yellow T-shirt with a football logo.

‘Don't turn round,' she said as she pulled her red top over her head. Her mud-soaked jeans were harder to take off. She undid the top and rolled the stiffened fabric slowly down over her thighs. The gashes on her hands still stung. Blue-green bruises covered both her knees and were scattered over her shins. She pulled on the T-shirt and shorts and brushed at the dirt on her legs. The clothes were big on her but she felt freer, more able to move.

‘If you had really short hair, you'd look like a boy,' said Peri.

‘Thanks a lot.' She felt there was something clever she should say but it was too hard to come up with it. ‘Are you going to come with me?'

He shrugged. ‘I'll take you there. Got nothing else to do.'

• • • • •

At the rescue centre there were mountains of clothes and toys, and piles of books and kitchen things. Everywhere were people: family groups with little kids clutching at their parents' knees, couples with arms entwined, and bigger kids wandering as if they had nowhere to belong. Old people were sitting, hunched on the odd square of bare grass or in the shade of trees, fanning themselves with pages torn from a magazine.

And noise. Calling out, shouting and crying. Voices buzzed above the sound of the rumbling of generators, the grinding of the gears of slow-moving vehicles and the screech of sirens.

‘Come on.' Peri grabbed at her arm.

‘There're too many people.' Red's voice suddenly stuck in her throat.

‘That's good,' said Peri. ‘No one'll take much notice of us.'

Red shivered. She wanted someone to notice her, to know her.

‘Come on. You're the one who wanted to see this, not me.' Peri pulled her with him. She followed him like an obedient child.

Peri fought his way through to the biggest building.

Around one side, a door led into the main hall. Boards covered with photographs and scribbled messages lined the walls. People swarmed in front of them, some silent, their eyes scanning quickly, others gasping and putting their hands up to cover their faces, their bodies slumped, defeated.

‘So many,' whispered Red. ‘I'll never get to look at all of them. I don't even know what I'm looking for.'

‘I'll start from the far end and meet you in the middle,' said Peri. ‘Just see if anyone is looking for a girl of about eleven or twelve, reddish-brown hair, a few freckles, pretty ordinary-looking.'

‘Thanks a lot.'

She watched him walk quickly away from her. This was so weird. Why was he doing this? One minute he wanted to help, the next he didn't care. And who was he?

• • • • •

Red's first picture was a woman in a swimming costume holding a naked toddler. She was pointing at the camera, grinning, while he was squinting into the sun.
My
daughter and grandson
was scrawled underneath and then a phone number, names and an address. Red moved on. People of every colour and age were there: old men and women with faces leathered by years in the sun, grinning surfers, laughing children, men and women holding chuckling infants and babies. Each had beneath it a name, an age and a possible last place where the person was known to have lived or worked or been visiting. Some images showed whole families in front of their beachfront houses. Then there were no pictures, just lists of names. Red moved more and more slowly, weighed down by the disappeared. How could she know if any of these people belonged to her? She didn't have a name, a face to claim as her own. Her stomach, her throat, her whole body felt empty, lost. If she wasn't on this board, did that mean no one missed her, there was no one to claim her? Did she belong to no one?

Peri met her in the middle.

‘There's no photo of you,' he said, ‘and nothing that sounds like you.' He reached out and touched her shoulder.

She nodded. ‘Not so far here either but I still need to keep looking.'

‘What's the point?' he said.

‘I have to.' She pulled away from him and moved on along the boards that he had checked.

She stopped in front of a smiling couple sitting on a stone fence, with the sea in the background. Could they be her parents? What if they were? The sun was bouncing off the water and he had his arm across her shoulders, one finger playing with the dolphin-shaped earring that dangled below her hair. Then she read what was scribbled underneath
: My daughter and her
husband. Their baby was with me at my home when the
sea came in
. Red didn't bother to read the numbers and details that followed. She moved on. A man smiled down from a glossy photo. Under his signature was written:
Well-known star of television and film, believed
to be lost from his home in Coogee
. Could he be her father? A couple, sitting on the grass under a sign that read Bronte Beach. What about them?

A woman was standing staring at the photo as tears streamed down her face. A weeping toddler clung to her leg. The woman's hand touched the child's hair but everything about her was elsewhere. The child turned and looked up at Red. His little face was streaked with dirt and tears. He opened his mouth as wide as possible and began to scream, louder and louder. At first the mother looked as if she didn't care and then she scooped him up in her arms and holding him tightly to her chest pushed her way through the crowds to the door.

Red gazed at photo after photo and then came to another board with scrawled messages in large black writing.

Taryn, I'm safe and at Mum's out in Concord.

Call me.

Found – Black cat with name Tinkerbelle on
neck tag. Call me 0465423319
.

Emergency accommodation in Christian
home, call 9457666.

It began to blur. She was staring at the boards but the words no longer meant anything. She was alone, wading through a fog or a world made of mud thin enough to allow her to move but so thick as to hide the real world from her.

Peri grabbed her shoulder. ‘Are you all right? You look like you're about to fall over.'

‘I have to get out of here.'

He pushed through the crowd. They made it to the door, where they stood for a moment, Red gulping down huge mouthfuls of air.

Voices were coming from beyond the gardens. At first they could just be heard above the general sound of the crowd. Then they became louder and louder.

‘Get out. Get out!' a man was screaming. ‘You're just mongrels feeding off us.' Red saw his arms waving and pushing at the camera and at the reporter who held a microphone and other sound equipment. More people gathered, some throwing punches at the media staff, some trying to hold back the screaming man. Red and Peri stared. The man had slumped on the grass. Another man knelt beside him, and put an arm across his shoulders. The camera was still filming.

‘Poor guy,' whispered Red. ‘He probably lost everything too.'

They moved out into the grounds and squatted on the damp grass.

‘Are you OK?' Peri said.

She shrugged. ‘I don't know what OK is any more.' She rubbed the sore spot on the back of her head. ‘I'm here, I'm alive, but my head is a big black hole. There's nothing there. It's empty. Who am I, Peri? Who am I?'

He shrugged but said nothing.

They sat for a while, staring at a couple of young children playing with a ball. They were running and laughing, tossing the ball high in the air and pushing each other trying to be the one to catch it. A tired-looking older woman kept her eye on them, staring with fierce concentration as if to look away would be to lose them.

‘We could put a sign up in there,' said Red. ‘I could write a description and we could stick it on the board.'

‘Better if we had a photo.' Peri stood up. ‘There must be someone with a phone and a printer.'

‘I don't want to go back in there.'

‘Come on, you're the one who wanted to come here in the first place. You have to,' he said.

• • • • •

In a side room, a smiling young woman in a Salvation Army uniform handed them pen and paper.

‘Who are you looking for?'

‘Jay Martin,' said Red.

‘What does
J
stand for?'

‘James Martin,' said Peri.

‘And is he your father?'

Peri nodded.

‘And your mother?'

‘She's dead,' said Peri. ‘But not in all this. She died a long time ago.'

‘I am sorry.' She took out her camera and waved Red and Peri to stand close together.

‘I thought this was just for me,' whispered Red.

‘Shh, she thinks we're brother and sister. Let her. It means no more questions.'

‘We aren't, are we?'

‘Don't be stupid. You may have forgotten who you are but I haven't.'

The woman passed them the sheet of paper from the printer. Peri took it and wrote:
Looking for our
father James Martin, maybe lost in Bronte area. Leave
message here
.

‘You need to put your names,' said the woman.

Peri hesitated for a moment and then wrote
Ruby
Martin
and
Peri Martin
.

Red took the photo from him. They were not like brother and sister: her hair short, curly and red-brown, his long and straggling almost to his shoulders. His face was thin and sun-tanned, hers round and pale and scattered with a sprinkling of freckles.

‘Where are you staying?' asked the woman.

‘With friends,' said Peri. ‘But we might be moving, so we'll just come in here tomorrow and in a few days to see if he's been.'

‘Are you sure you two are all right?'

Peri nodded. ‘We're fine.'

Outside in the sun Red said, ‘Why did you say that? We aren't fine.' She dropped down onto the straggly grass. ‘I don't know who I am, and we don't know whether James Martin is my dad. We don't even know that that is his name and we've told them you're my brother and you aren't. You don't look anything like me. No one's going to recognise me from that photo and we don't have anywhere to stay.'

‘We do. The palace is fine. We've put up that sign and that's the best we can do so far.'

‘And I'm hungry.'

Peri pulled her to her feet. ‘Quit whingeing. Let's go over the road. Look.'

A R
ED
C
ROSS
D
ISASTER
R
ELIEF
banner was hanging from an upstairs window of the building across the road. It half covered a sign saying … ly H
IGH
S
CHOOL
.
There were more people than there had been at the centre. Huge green army marquees and smaller tents covered a football field. Groups gathered in the yard, the gardens and in the courtyard. Arrows directed them to the canteen where large pots were set out on benches. Peri and Red joined a queue that moved slowly forward towards a woman, her dress pulled tight across her chest, sitting at a table. She said, ‘Where are your coupons?'

‘Our mums have got them,' said Peri.

‘Where are they?'

‘Back there.' He nodded to where the queue stretched almost to the fence.

‘I can't serve you without a coupon.'

‘We're hungry,' said Peri. ‘We've been at the other place and then they sent us here and now our mums are talking back there and …'