The Beloved (10 page)

On Christmas Eve Dad came home early. He just made it into the house before heavy drops of rain plonked on the tin roof. Moments later it was pelting down, turning the parched earth to mud. The Wet was back.

‘Look,' Mama said, holding up a bundle. ‘I actually made a Christmas pud.'

Dad put his arm around her and said all he wanted for Christmas was peace and quiet and a bit of breast. I reminded him we were having turkey tomorrow with the Breuers but Dad said not any old breast would do.

I wondered if ‘Santa' would bring seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils this year. Probably not, with the way my mother felt about my pictures.

‘Santa' brought me a beautiful marble bag made from burgundy velvet and threaded with gold silk. I upended Dad's bulging socks and the marbles cascaded out in a waterfall of colour. ‘Santa' also brought clothes for last year's doll, Margaret, which I never looked at, let alone played with. Mama must have thought I was still a baby.

After breakfast, we took presents to Josie and gave her money for a trip back to her family at Milne Bay. Her new ‘husband', Matthew, was visiting, her second in eighteen months, and it took a while for her to answer the door.

At five o'clock, we drove to the Breuers' for Christmas dinner. Stefi was in her room tugging on the thin straps of a new dress. It was too big and too old for her and had almost no back.

‘Christmas present?' I said.

‘From my father. He's making me wear it. I hate it.'

‘It's a bit big for you. What does your mother say?'

Stefi shrugged. ‘What did you get for Christmas?'

‘A marble bag and dolls' clothes.'

‘Dolls' clothes? You're nearly nine! My mother gave me a camera.'

‘Lucky you.'

The adults were guzzling whisky and someone put on a new Frank Sinatra record. Mr Breuer grabbed Mama and swung her around the room, pressing his stomach against her and pulling her close. She leaned away from him and when the record stopped she wiped her hands on her dress. Stefi watched them, gnawing her fingernails. Mr Breuer changed the record but before he could grab Mama again Dad pulled her into his arms, rested his cheek on hers and closed his eyes. Mama leaned into him and let Dad move her around. I felt relieved. It was lovely to see them together; I just wished she'd hold him the same way he was holding her. At six o'clock Mrs Breuer brought a turkey to the table, golden and glossy. Mr Breuer took a knife and stabbed it right through from top to bottom. He grabbed a leg, hacked it off and stabbed the turkey again, twisting the knife and making the bones crack.

‘Konrad!' Mrs Breuer shrieked. ‘You're ruining my bird.'

Stefi stared at her plate, her arms dangling by her sides like shoelaces.

Dad pushed back his chair. ‘For God's sake, Breuer, you're making a botch job of that. I could do better with my machete.'

Mr Breuer's pale fingers hovered over the gaping flesh. He handed the knife to Dad. ‘Go on, then.'

Dad carved whisper-thin slices of turkey that fell neatly onto the plate. ‘Always wanted to be a surgeon. Reckon I'd have made a good one.'

This was something I'd never heard before. What else hadn't he told me?

‘Why didn't you?' I said.

‘We don't always get what we want, CP. My parents didn't have enough money for me to go to university. But you can. You can be our family doctor, eh?'

Oh, no. Not Dad too.

Stefi nudged the turkey to the edge of her plate. She reached for the bowl of vegies, stacked up a mound of potato and peas and doused them in gravy. When she'd finished eating, the turkey was still there.

Seven weddings, three murders and four stabbings. Mama was busy. She liked the weddings but not the other stuff. Her favourite things to report on were nature and how people lived. Like the year before, I spent most of the school holidays with Josie or Stefi or at Dad's office but a couple of times Mama took me with her.

In the New Year we went into the hills so she could interview a patrol officer. While Mama sat with him on the verandah taking notes I lay on his springy lawn making pictures out of the shifting clouds. From the jungle came the sounds of screeching parrots, birds of paradise and hornbills and . . .
woof!
Two dogs appeared on the lawn. I sat up and watched. For a while they circled each other and I wondered if they were going to fight but they seemed more interested in each other's bums. The circles gradually got smaller and smaller until one dog jumped on the other's back. The dog underneath sagged and clawed the ground but the first one hung on and began to whine.

Mama came down the stairs. ‘Ready to go, Bertie?'

‘Look at the dogs, Ma.'

‘What? Oh . . .'

They were staggering about the lawn, well and truly stuck together.

‘Come on.' She grabbed my hand. ‘Let's go.'

I pulled away. ‘There's something wrong with them, Ma.'

‘Don't call me Ma.'

The dog underneath was howling. The patrol officer leaned over the verandah. ‘Pius,' he snapped at the haus-boi. ‘Get a hose on those animals.'

‘What's
wrong
with them, Mama?'

‘Nothing. Forget it.' She hauled me to the jeep and almost shoved me in.

But I didn't forget it, and later I asked Dad. As soon as I started telling him what the dogs had been doing he changed the subject. ‘Guess what I did today, CP? Renewed my pilot's licence. One of these days I'll take you up.'

‘The dogs, Dad, what were they doing?'

‘No idea.'

Obviously my parents weren't going tell me so I asked Stefi.

‘They were making puppies,' she said.

‘What?'

‘Yep.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Humans do it like that, too.'

‘Make puppies?'

‘Babies, you dill.'

‘They don't.'

‘They do.' She shut her eyes, looking suddenly slack and pulled apart, like her father's turkey. ‘Ask your mother,' she said.

‘I did; she won't tell me.'

But I did ask her again.

She was in her bedroom, sitting on the high double bed, fiddling with a ring of tiny diamond flowers. Beside her was the mother-of-pearl box she kept in her underwear drawer, the box that held the photo I'd been forbidden to touch when I was little.

‘Where did the ring come from, Mama?'

She dropped it in the box and snapped shut the lid. ‘Nothing to do with you. What did you want?'

‘Can I have a look?'

‘No.' But her
no
sounded sad, rather than forbidding.

‘Why not?'

‘Roberta, what do you want?'

‘How do babies get here?'

She sighed. ‘That's for later, when you're older.'

‘I want to know now.'

‘I'm not going to tell you now.'

‘Stefi says you stick your bums together and babies come out.'

‘Oh, for Pete's sake.'

‘Well?'

‘She's wrong.'

‘Well?'

‘I'll tell you when you need to know it. Right now this conversation has gone far enough.'

Far enough. Far enough!
Not
far enough. With auras telling me one thing and people telling me another I was sick of conversations that didn't go far enough. Even Stefi did it. There was something weird about her father's aura, it was different from any I'd seen before. Faint yellow-brown, almost colourless, not cloudy or clear or heavy or light but sticky, jelly-like and clingy. Yet whenever I asked Stefi about her father she clammed up.

I couldn't stop thinking about him stabbing the Christmas turkey. I kept seeing the carving knife and the turkey's gaping chest and hearing the crack of its bones. And Stefi, looking like she'd seen . . . too much.

I wanted to draw it.

I didn't want to draw it.

But I did draw it. I sat at Dad's desk and drew Mr Breuer holding a tiny human being in one hand, like King Kong held Fay Wray in the movie, while his other hand skewered her with a needle. It was a horrible picture, yet something told me I'd got Mr Breuer right.

‘Oh, my God.'

I leaped. I hadn't heard her come in. ‘You scared me, Mama.'

She was staring at my picture with huge eyes. ‘You scare me, Roberta. It's terrible. Get rid of it.'

‘I didn't mean to . . .'

‘Just do it.
Now
.'

She tossed a pile of mail on the table and began opening letters. I crumpled the picture. I didn't blame her for hating it.

‘Holy Mother of God!'

‘Mama . . . ?'

She ripped the letter she'd been reading into pieces, shredding it faster and faster into tiny bits that floated to the floor. Her chest burst with sharp red needles.

‘I'll kill him,' she said. ‘I'll kill the bastard. I'll bloody well kill him!'

She raced out to the jeep and roared off. It was nearly seven o'clock before she and Dad came home and she was still fuming. She slammed a carton of frozen vegetables on the sink. Tim and I swapped looks. Dinner would be late, and noisy. She put a trembling hand on her hip.

‘Timothy.'

Timothy! She'd never called him Timothy in his life.

‘I'm very sorry to say that – thanks to your father – you won't be going to Vic Grammar School this year. A letter came today from the bursar, cancelling your enrolment.'

She turned to Dad. ‘
August
, I filled out those forms and gave them to you. In
August
I asked you to pay the deposit. He was supposed to start school in two weeks' time!' Her lips thinned. ‘You had no intention of paying it, did you? You never wanted him to go to boarding school. You did it deliberately.'

‘No, Lily May. I swear. It was an accident. The forms got buried in the stuff on my desk.'

‘Rubbish! It was sabotage. But you won't stop him going. I'll find him another school; I'll do whatever it takes –
whatever
– to ensure my children have the best education.'

That night she made up her bed on the verandah. It would snow in Moresby, she said, before she slept with Dad again.

Three days later she and Tim had gone South.

Dad and I did what we wanted. Steak for breakfast, ice cream for dinner, cereal by the fistful any old time and painting all the time. Dad kept up a steady supply of paper from the office and I took over the kitchen table with my paints. Dad didn't care; we ate dinner at his desk.

One afternoon I was rinsing my brush in the kitchen sink when the tap handle fell off. I couldn't get it back on and water was gushing all over the place so I hurried down to the boi-haus to get Josie.

There was silence when I knocked on the door, but I knew she was in there so I called out.

Still nothing.

I opened the door a crack and saw Josie and Matthew on a mat on the floor. They were naked. Matthew put a leg over Josie's tummy. As he did, I saw a giant salami sticking up between his legs. I'd seen penises before, but only little ones – Tim's and a couple of show-offs at school. Josie pressed the huge thing between her legs and it disappeared, then Matthew began to rock, forward and back, forward and back, grunting and heaving and getting faster and faster until he reared up and jerked like he was having a fit. He stayed still for a moment, back arched, then like a leaky balloon slid in a heap on top of Josie. She sighed and pulled him close. I shut the door and leaned against the wall.

Humans do it like that, too.

Make puppies
?

Babies, you dill
.

Making babies.

I waited for a few moments then thumped on the wall. ‘Josie, you have to come. Tap's broken and water's leaking everywhere.'

She came to the door looking like nothing had happened.

‘The tap in the kitchen,' I said, ‘it's broken.'

Josie got Matthew to turn off the water at the mains and we went upstairs to deal with the mess.

‘Josie,' I sat on the floor, mopping up water with a rag and squeezing it into a bucket. ‘Are you going to have a baby?'

She wrung out her rag. ‘Why you asking, piccanin'?'

‘No reason.'

She sat back on her haunches. ‘You been peekin'?'

‘No . . .'

She waggled her finger. ‘You been peekin'.'

‘I didn't mean to. I knocked but you didn't hear.'

She glared for a moment, then giggled. ‘Yeah, makin' babies, but not makin' babies. This time just for fun.'

‘Fun?'

‘Bertie, you phone Daddy. Tell him bring plumber.'

‘But . . .'

‘Tasol, Bertie. Tok 'e stap.'

No more talk. Just when it was getting interesting.

Dad arrived home with a plumber and when the pipe was fixed, he put his arm around me. ‘Not much of a holiday for you, is it, old thing? Here it is, nearly time to start grade four and you've had nothing more exciting than a broken pipe. The day after tomorrow is your birthday – I haven't forgotten. I'll try to clear the decks and take you somewhere. Somewhere exciting.'