Red Queen (25 page)

‘Because I’m pregnant.’

I took on this information easily, as if expecting it, but I could see it was a curve ball Rohan had not anticipated. The anger leached out of his face. After a few long moments he took a breath.

‘Of course you are,’ he said.

THE
R
EASON

THE FULL MOON
was back, silvery under the doors and behind the heavy curtains, drawing me out to stare up at it. The koalas too, had resumed their feral anthem.

In the moonlight I could see the back of my hands, now as scarred and tanned as my father’s had ever been, and if I wanted I could induce his kind of wistful arrogance by narrowing my eyes at the horizon and letting satisfaction curl my lips.

I had the odd scar on my face that time might take away and a jagged line of knitted skin near my collarbone that time wouldn’t touch.

Routine had changed, relationships had changed, and there was no reason for me to be out here on the veranda on this night in particular. But it was something I now chose to do a couple of times a night, every night – come out with one of the guns to look at the dark beyond the tree line, reconfirm our solitude, with the rough railing under my hands and soft sounds of life within the cabin’s walls.

And each time all I saw was the dark quiet out there. Nothing else. Even on a stormy night or with the wind whipping up the bush into a wild sea, it was still the dark quiet out there. I’d become accustomed to the peace. I had adapted.

But the noise was coming, in creeping degrees. I couldn’t feel it properly yet, so was unlikely to hear it, but it was kept at bay by the barest fraction; a dam ready to release the first trickle, an ant nest ready to send out its foraging troops. And that’s what I stood waiting for, the first signs of the flood – the first signs of humanity coming back.

But I thought none of this tonight; this night I stood, unable to think clearly at all, holding the railing because I had to, taking each breath deliberately. I didn’t stay long, and felt guilty for the time I had taken, and resented something unclear as I went back inside – perhaps I resented the assault on my senses, especially my hearing? For there was not one sense left unaffected on entering the cabin.

The card table had been moved aside, and a blanket was on the floor between the two chairs. Rohan was knelt amongst the scattered cushions; he was resting on his heels, boots still on, with his hands spread over his thighs. His shirt sleeves were rolled up. The top buttons of his faded shirt had been hastily undone and the collar reefed to one side.

His face was lifted to me.

The swaying flame of the fire took his fear and stretched it, sunk it deeper into his eye sockets and darkened the worry in every line. His fringe was thick over his forehead, and the stubble on his jaw long enough to highlight the grey. I remembered this face, on a similar night, half-lit in these same mellow colours, made hard by them. Almost a year ago I had looked into his face and imagined the self-sufficiency behind such a stare. But tonight he looked to me, laid down his winning hand and simply showed it to me; not so much giving in as saying, look, no red queen, no conflict – so shouldn’t that mean there is no loser?

Asked me, as if I knew.

I moved back to my spot beside Nicky. She was perched on the edge of the couch, and positioned herself behind where I stood, her fingers looping in my pockets, my belt – anything she could to keep me close, so she could press her face against me and use me as a shield from her sister’s pain.

‘Get down again,’ I said to Rohan. ‘See if you can see the head.’

Denny was on her knees and bent over the chair, her forehead pressed into the cushion and her neck arched. In a rare show of modesty, she had an oversized shirt on, probably for the benefit of Nicky. There’d been times though, when it seemed the light fabric had been too heavy, and she’d bunched it high up her back, away from anywhere below her waist. But that had been when she’d still been able to move, when there had been a break between contractions, before the pain had grown big enough to take her from us.

Rohan manoeuvred and wriggled under her.

There was a statistic I would’ve liked to have remembered – the one about deaths during childbirth in the time before medical intervention. I had a feeling it was shockingly high. In the months leading up to this, I’d ticked Denny’s body off in repeated reassuring checks – age: fine; hips: wide; fitness: excellent; flexibility: good. She seemed well-equipped. Rohan and I had grilled her and Nicky on family birthing stories, and the bigger she’d become the more we’d spoken of the labour. It had been reassuring to learn that Denny’s mother had given birth to all her five children naturally, and it was this I clung to now – feeling an affinity with the snowy-haired, dark-skinned woman I knew only through stories, and through the bright reminiscing eyes of her daughters.

Nicky pressed her long body against mine and watched over my shoulder. She had filled out as much as her slight frame allowed. She had legs that went on forever and a smile that touched your heart. Her hair had been braided into tight cornrows by Denny.

She tucked the bumps of her tightly bound hair into my neck. She whispered more to herself than me that it had been too long, and that Denny was tired.

Then, mixed in with Denny’s animal groaning, Rohan said, ‘I can see the head.’

I pulled up straighter. Rohan repeated this, a couple of times, probably because it sounded so bloody good, and although his voice was sapped of emotion, I sensed the hope in him. Nicky began to bounce on the balls of her feet. I tried to disentangle from her.

Because it had taken so long, and each faze of intensified pain had run a set course of hours, I expected the last bit to be as protracted. In truth, I’d thought pushing was labour; hours of pushing. When Rohan said he saw the head I was pleased because that meant the baby was the right way up, but I thought we were at the most critical point, the most painful, and possibly the longest. Surely the hardest part was to push the baby out?

There was no change in Denny’s groans or her posture – she strained as inconceivably as she had done the time before. She didn’t scream, or swear, or thrash and, above all, she was still only Denny – one person. That was by far the biggest shock: there was suddenly another person in the room. In my brother’s shaking hands there was a tiny human being. I’d been prepared for a baby, not a little person.

I’d watched it happen, watched Rohan reach under Denny and hold the head, watched him go down on one elbow and struggle to hold the quick rush of glistening body, and now I watched him tenderly put the moving little figure, with the umbilical cord still attached, to his chest and curl himself around the slippery bundle, but I was so overwhelmed by the sudden presence of this miniature human I couldn’t move. Nicky rushed to Denny, and helped her turn around, putting a pillow behind her and having her lean back against the chair. Nicky held the baby while Rohan cut the cord and tied it off. Denny was talking again, resting her head back and sighing and saying she couldn’t believe it. Her legs were bent and quivering, the quaver was also in her voice. There was some dark blood on the blanket around her, blood-tainted mucus on the inside of her leg. She was as pale as I’d ever seen her, but nothing really told of what she’d just done – the way she’d just infinitely expanded my world. She held out her arms for the baby and sobbed at the sight of Rohan’s beaming face; they all talked and moved and were earthbound. I don’t know where I was, but I was in no rush to end it – I only knew that my life had new purpose, I had a reason.

They misunderstood why I stood out of the circle and the unresponsive look on my face. They weren’t to know I was with them. Rohan’s face fell, and even though Denny was in the process of bonding with her baby, he held out his hands to take the baby from her. Once in his arms the child softened him, and he came to me with a smile and awe-affected eyes.

‘It’s a girl,’ he said.

I nodded without looking at her. He came right to me, but I stayed fixed on my brother’s face. He was struggling with the moment, and on the verge of tears. I started to say congratulations, but he shook his head.

‘Look at her.’

I already knew – I can’t say how, there was no way of knowing. Denny had admitted to not being sure if she was pregnant when she had told us, and the pregnancy had gone on so long it was verging on an immaculate conception. If she’d fallen pregnant earlier things might have been clearer, but it would seem conception occurred right in the midst of the time we were now compelled to never forget. It could have been either one of us.

So how do you know when you’re a father, when there are no tests to confirm it? And how is it possible to know before you even look down and see the child?

I took a deep breath and readied for pain like a dagger to the heart. I prepared to be strong for my brother, and for my daughter.

She was small, so very small, and it hurt. She was the unwashed, blonde and ruddy-skinned, female image of a baby we passed every day; a baby in photo, a photo of me – an uncanny likeness. But the resemblance hardly mattered, because more than that, she was absolutely unique.

I suddenly had no reservations in holding her and took her carefully from Rohan; he stepped back when I had her.

I whispered hello, and she clawed the air with her tiny fingers and made a sound like a newborn cat. She peeked at the world through puffy eyes. Her face was screwed up into deep creases, and she gripped the blanket in tight fists.

I looked over her; weakened at the knees by this angry little girl.

‘She’s beautiful,’ I said, looking at Denny.

Denny was smiling; I don’t think just because she was a mother, but because she was able to stop striving. She’d achieved what she’d set out to do – we were a strong unit, and it showed as a deep contentment in her eyes. We were a family.

I walked my little girl in a circle in front of the fire. I would have liked to lift her up and hold her before me. I touched her still-wet skin and let her grip my fingers, and uttered low baby babble I didn’t know was in me. There was a heavy silence all around me, but just for now, a sweet moment, I bent my head to my daughter and ignored it.

It was a glimpse of the upturned face of Nicky that set me back on course, and looking over at Rohan’s dark restless shape I hoped I’d not done any damage. I stepped over the cushions towards him. He bent his head apologetically.

‘She’s gorgeous,’ I said.

His face crumpled. ‘No.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘No.’

‘Take your daughter.’

‘Don’t say it.’

‘Rohan? She’s yours.’

He sank down to sit on the edge of the couch. I sat beside him and slid his daughter across onto his knee. I slapped him on the back.

‘You bloody old bastard. A dad. God, I pity the lessons she’ll get from her old man. But then again, you have a look in those eyes – I’ve a horrible suspicion we’re all in for trouble, because she might just have the mind of her mum.’

He shook his head numbly.

‘Rohan was blond,’ I said, looking up at Denny and Nicky, ‘when he was a boy.’

‘Not blond,’ Rohan murmured, ‘just lighter.’

‘And anyway, it’s a throwback gene. I hope she gets her mother’s skin. She looks a little dark?’

‘She looks like you, Shannon,’ Rohan said.

‘But we look alike. Denny says it all the time. It’s no good, I tell you – looking at your ugly mug every day and knowing that’s what I’m headed for. And anyway, everyone looks like someone else in the family.’

‘We can’t pretend this.’

‘Rohan, she’s your daughter —’

‘Stop it,’ Denny cut in, ‘both of you. Rohan, for God’s sake, pull yourself together.’

We looked up.

‘You know, you do ask a lot,’ Rohan muttered at her.

‘She doesn’t belong to anyone,’ Denny said. ‘We’re a family, all of us.’ Her voice softened. ‘We can all love her. There’re no first dibs on that. No title that matters. And I get the feeling she’s going to need all of us. We owe it to her to all be there. We brought her into this world, and I don’t think growing up in it is going to be anything like what we had.’

‘I agree with Denny,’ I said. ‘We should do it together. We’ll all have important roles in her life.’

Rohan nodded.

‘Nevertheless,’ I continued, ‘someone has to be called Dad. And it has to be Rohan. He delivered her. He is the dad. Look at him!’ I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. ‘He’s a big bloody softie, crying at the drop of a hat, going grey with the worry already; bugger that. Anyway, she’ll be sleeping with her mum and it’s only right that her dad’s in beside her. And no-one can dispute that he fills the grumpy old man criteria to a tee.’

Denny was holding my gaze. I smiled at her.

‘It’s too hard,’ Rohan said.

‘I know,’ Denny conceded. ‘But only because we make it that way. It shouldn’t be about ownership. We don’t have to know; it’s enough what we feel.’

I leant in to Rohan. ‘Dad all the same,’ I said out of the corner of my mouth. ‘I’ll be a much better uncle.’

Rohan looked at me intently, and I gave him the serious confirmation he needed. For a while his eyes blazed back in gratitude, and then he broke into a grin that sprung up as if long suppressed.

‘You have no idea how much I wanted this,’ he said, looking down at his daughter, ‘wanted so bad to be a father. None of the women I met wanted children. I don’t know – mention three kids and they’d run a mile.’

I fought the urge to kiss him on the cheek.

‘I thought this would never happen.’

‘Have you and Denny decided on a name?’ I asked.

He looked up at Denny and she nodded.

‘We thought after Mum,’ Rohan said. ‘If you think it’s all right? Tessa Cassidy Scott.’

‘Tessa,’ I murmured.

‘Hey, little Tessa,’ Rohan breathed softly, turning his full attention to her. ‘Now I’m afraid you’ve got a dad who wanted this too much and waited a little too long. I can’t say that’ll do you much good. There will be so many lessons and way too much advice. My father did it to me, it drove me nuts, and I’ll remember him always because of it. So to start the ball rolling I think it’s only right that my first bit of advice is about your mother.’ He looked over at Denny. ‘Now, she might be beautiful – and by God she is – but you mustn’t get blindsided like your dad, because she’s also very clever. So, Tessa Scott, let this be your first lesson.’ Tessa squirmed. ‘Listen to your mother,’ Rohan said, dropping his voice to a low murmur just for his daughter. ‘The New World appreciates a cunning girl.’