The Lost Child (19 page)

‘What kind of choice is that?' Dad's chair scrapes back with a clatter. ‘And who chooses?' He grabs his hat from the dresser. ‘Who decides?' His face has crumpled into long folds and he looks at Grannie and me as if we are worse than worms, as if I am to blame. ‘Layle says thanks for the invite.'

‘I'm not having that woman here.'

‘We got married. Get used to it.'

The door slams. The calendar with the picture of a Massey Ferguson tractor falls to the floor. ‘Stay off the sauce!' yells Grannie. ‘It won't help anything. Never has and never will.'

Grannie returns the calendar to its hook behind the door. Blue barks from his kennel under the pines. The kelpies, in their cage behind the old stables, bark at Blue. Dad roars into the echo of the night. He roars over the cattle ramp and onto the main road. In my listening eyes, his headlights sweep past boobiallas and she-oaks speckled with sleeping birds. He roars past Bunny Brennan's soak without once turning to look, past the Tantanoola turn-off and Big Tree turn-off and the waiting sea behind the dunes. He slows at Stickynet and weaves through quiet streets to his house, where Layle and Mossie wait for him. And there is nothing for me.

‘He was the most beautiful baby,' says Grannie, watching me eat my apple pie, not eating hers. She takes off her glasses and rubs at her eyes. ‘And good. Always so good. Never stepped a foot out of line.'

*

Grannie tells Uncle Ticker it's a bit rich inviting all and sundry to watch water dribbling through a drain when her grandson's been missing, presumed drowned, for no decent time. Couldn't he wait a few months? Uncle Ticker says the swamp's full to the brim with the best autumn rains they've had for years and he's had it planned long before anyone disappeared, so no, he couldn't.

Josie arrives early in her red coat. At the cutting, the Muswell Mayor and a whole bunch of others—even a photographer from the
Muswell Times
—are all rugged up against the cold. Chicken's uncle has the grader ready next to a mound of earth, the swamp water banked up behind. The Mayor makes a speech, a history lesson about the land in the early days being drained by men from the city, and this is a day for progress and prosperity for everyone.

I stop listening and look down the long channel. Now it slices right through the range with high walls and a fringe of green on top of the ridge. For a second I think there's someone leaning over the lookout fence and for no reason I think it might be my father but it's probably not because when I squint up my eyes like binoculars, it's too far away to see. Then I feel a shock right through me like being hit by lightning, if you were still alive to know it. What if I really did see someone? What if it was Dunc and he really is living in the Abo cave in the scrub behind the lookout? I need to go there. But how would I find it? Grannie and Uncle Ticker wouldn't take me; they'd think I was crazy.

Pardie! And then another thought: What if Pardie knows Dunc is hiding there? What if he's always wagging school so he can sneak out to the cave with food for Dunc? An icy wind shivers across the swamp and I think of winter coming, how cold it will be living in a cave, and suddenly I'm muddled about whether I want Dunc to be living there or not. But where else could he be?

The Mayor has finished his speech and everyone is clapping, clapping. Uncle Ticker helps Grannie onto the grader and climbs on himself. The tractor smokes and roars and reverses. The last mound of earth is pushed free and water dribbles through the opening, a trickle then a rush. As people crowd forward, someone says it'll be a hoot if Ticker's got his levels wrong and the lake drains backwards into the swamp. It doesn't. The Mayor helps Grannie down from the tractor and water rushes towards the lake in a long dirty stream. Everyone is clapping and cheering. Suddenly I ache with the cold of everything. There is no one on the ridge: I must have imagined it.

Mum comes home soon after my birthday. She doesn't bring a present. Her hair is short again and scrappy around the ears. Every morning I wake up with a jolt like I've heard someone closing a door. Like it could be Dunc? Mum is always awake, listening. Every morning, I remember Dunc has gone. Is she remembering too?

Lizzie and I find the best bed base at the tip and drag it home, springs jingling like sleigh bells must jingle in the snow. Mum is at the wood pile. Her head jerks up. ‘What's that?'

‘A bed,' I say, resting my end on the ground. ‘For our cubby.'

‘I thought it was traps.'

Behind me, Lizzie sniggers.
Rabbit traps
, I want to tell her.
She thought it was Dunc's traps rattling. What's so funny about that?
But my mouth is full up with rabbit fur and I don't say anything. Yanking my end of the bed, I force Lizzie to follow me. As we cross the road towards the lagoon, Aunt Cele shoots around the corner.

‘Nella!' she calls, braking to a stop, panting for breath. ‘I could smell your marmalade. As far back as Nobby Carter's. I'll do you a swap. Some of my muntrie jam. For a jar of your marmalade.' She laughs as if it's not much of a swap. ‘Good bed!' she calls to Lizzie and me and, from her bike basket, she holds up a timber lamp. ‘Only needs a shade,' she tells Mum. ‘Jude'll fix it. She can fix anything.'

‘How's Pardie?' asks Mum.

I have not seen Pardie since I've been home from Bindilla. One day after school, I went to his house but no one was there, not Augie or Jude, not Pardie or his dog, Rastas. He is a mystery.

‘All over the place. Won't get a job. Worries Jude to death. Understandable, I guess…' Her voice trails off and Mum brings the axe down hard on a log. ‘I think of you all the time, Nella.' She lowers her voice, but I can still hear. ‘And Sylvie. How is she?'

Mum doesn't drop her voice at all. ‘Nine going on ninety. Always got her head in a book.'

I pull Lizzie into the tea-tree. The lagoon is full to the brim and soggy beneath the weed. In our cubby, we lie on the bed and sing ‘A Pub With No Beer', every verse. I like the way singing fills you up inside and you can't feel anything except your bursting heart. Before going home, we tie cotton thread across the branches so we'll know if Chicken's been nosing around.

Back on the road, Lizzie says, in a hurry, as if she's been saving it up: ‘Your brother's dead. He's not floating around. He's drowned. Everyone says.'

‘I know.'

She stares at me with surprise and no pity. And I stare at her with my emptiness growing into an ache and I can't wait for her to take her face away from me. When she leaves, my ache is without mercy. I will not believe what she says, what anyone says.

In the kitchen, Mum is bottling her marmalade. My face in the glass jars is pop-eyed, fish-mouthed. I breathe in the smell of oranges and sugar and spice and everything nice. When Mum has finished, the jars are filled to the brim, shining and golden like a piece of the sun dropped onto the table. She says the biggest jar is for Cele. She says Dunc liked her marmalade better than anyone.

It is the first time she has spoken his name since she's come home with her short hair and slow way of talking. I don't really know what to say. Except I like her marmalade too.

When she's watering the garden, I go to the spare room and look for Dunc's things. The room is cold and empty of him. Then my eyes settle on the tea chest in the corner. Inside I find his school clothes folded neatly, further down his boots and shoes, then two small cardboard boxes full of cotton wool and eggs. And more. Two
Phantom
comics I've never seen. His pencil case. An old tobacco tin with
Imperial Ruby
and a picture of a Union Jack stamped on the lid. Inside: his pocket knife and three cat's-eye marbles.

His skull ring! I slide it onto my middle finger and press the metal bits behind until it fits. I'll have to keep it well hidden. It's not really stealing. He gave it to me, I'll say if I'm asked.

I burrow through the comics. I'm on the floor with an old
Phantom
when she looks in. ‘What do you think you're doing?'

‘Reading.'

‘No'—she snatches the comic out of my hand—‘you're not! Who said you could just come in here and do what you like?'

Kneeling on the floor, she bundles it all up, comics, shoes, clothes, all of him. She folds his shirts, neatly, grey short pants, the blue sweater Grannie knitted with the big white ‘D' on the front. As she stands, the comics slide out of her grasp. Her mouth trembles. ‘Now look what you've done!'

She smells of marmalade and garden dirt. My chest hurts. It is too heavy to hold. Can't she see the weight of it? When everything's packed away, her red eyes stare into mine. ‘I don't want you in here. I want everything left as it was. Understand?'

Behind my back, I rub Dunc's ring: it is silvery cold and full of Phantom power.

16

Mum stands with her back to the stove, shivering, her pale pink dressing-gown hanging open like a loose skin. She asks me if I know what day it is. September the fifteenth?

My toast has no taste. I haven't remembered. Mum is frantic and fidgety like she's got ants in her pants. Like her eyes want to bore right through me and blame me for it being a year since Dunc disappeared, for making him run away. She says how can we remember properly if there's no grave, no resting place? It's the not knowing, she says, not knowing where he is that makes it so hard.

My heart flutters with hope. ‘You mean…he might be hiding somewhere?'

‘Hiding?' She frowns for so long that I think her brain might be working too slowly, like it has since she's been home from the hospital. Then her face clears and she snaps at me as if I'm crazy and she's only just realised. ‘Why would he be hiding? If he was alive, he'd come home. How could he be hiding?'

Because he's run away and might not want to come home. Because
he's still upset with me. Because he might like living wild like an Abo.
And because he might have gone far away and will only come back
when he's ready, and he's not ready yet.
I want to shout all of this at her, loud-mouthed and strong, so that she will stop believing Dunc has drowned. Can't she see? I want to hurl the words at her head like she used to hurl saucepans at Dad. But I am scared of shouting and throwing, and her face is all furrows again, so I hide in my toast and she shuffles off to the dunny. Then I get dressed and hang around reading in the kurrajong tree while Mum hides inside, cleaning, cleaning.

Pardie must know something. After weeks and months of him avoiding me, I was riding my bike along back beach road when I turned a corner and he was there, Rastas running beside him, no escape. I told him I needed him to take me to the Abo cave in case Dunc was hiding there—it all came out in a babble. Pardie kept walking, not even looking at me, but I pedalled beside him, faster, faster, asking if he was taking food to Dunc, if he was keeping the secret? Without warning, Pardie leapt off the road and ran into the tea-tree, whistling Rastas after him. Why would he do that if he didn't know where Dunc was hiding? If he didn't know something? For days I thought about telling Mum; now I'm glad I didn't. She has given up hoping. But I haven't.

In the afternoon of Dunc's anniversary, Mum sends me to the cafe for cigarettes. On the way home, I'm passing the pub when Dad stumbles out. ‘Lilies,' he says, steadying himself against the door before easing onto the veranda. ‘Always bloody lilies on the gate. How many times do you reckon?'

He stinks. Of beer and smoke and rain. Of mutton-birds thudding into their burrows full up with fish from far out at sea.

‘Lilies on the gate,' he says again.

I remember Grannie telling me they tie lilies on the gate at Bindilla whenever anyone dies. Did they do it when Dunc disappeared? Is that what Dad means?

He peers into my face with his mutton-bird breath and dark sunken eyes, puzzled, trying to focus. My chest thumps at his closeness, but I can tell he hasn't the foggiest idea who I am. In my hurry to get away, the front wheel of my bike knocks the seat on the veranda, lifting it out from the wall. He looks at that seat, confused, as if it moved by itself, as if there's no sense to things moving. Close up, his eyes are pirate patches; they are Mum's eyes and my eyes too, all of them filled with the awfulness of remembering.

He is nothing to me.
I tell myself this as I push my bike up the hill.
It is his fault, all of it.
I tell myself this again and again. I come down the other side at a run, trying to hold back, wrestling my bike to a stop at the bottom. My eyes have started to leak. Dunc always fixed punctures for me, the tube in the bucket, bubbles marking the hole, glueing the patch. Should I ask Chicken or Roy to help? Can I do it myself?

I'm ready to cross the road when Dad's jeep crawls past, stopping up ahead where anyone coming around the corner could crash right into him. Then he just sits there. As if he's waiting for someone. Could that someone be me?

I cross the road quickly. At the same time, he lurches out of the jeep and stumbles around in circles as if he's lost something right there in the gravel and dirt. The sun is setting, the light as bright as a searchlight; his hat is tipped back, his face, pants, shirt, boots, all of him lit up like a beacon. Then he drops down as if he's kneeling to pray—but he wouldn't, would he?—not with his feeling for apes?

As he leans forward, his hat topples off; his forehead sinks onto the dirt. I want to run off and pretend I don't know him. I want to leave him there to grovel in his own shadow. But tiny groans come from the road. Squeaks. Moans. Like a kicked dog might make as he crawls away from a boot.

I look down at the mound of him. I don't know what to do. Faye Daley could come out of her house any minute and see him. A car could come, he could be run over, anyone could come. And right then, Layle does come. Striding around the corner, swinging her shopping basket. The first time I've ever been glad to see her. ‘Mick!' she yells. ‘What the hell are ya doing?' Then she's running. ‘Come on, get up, I'll drive you home. Get up.'