The Lost Child (24 page)

Mum says she won't move back to the city in a pink fit. She says Grannie's as hard as nails and everyone knows it. For the next week, she goes crazy scraping polish off the lino and starting again. She scrubs the bath and skirting boards, she picks dirt out of the cracks in the cement steps with the sharp end of a knife. She says I'm a dreamer, that I need to grow up and face a few things, that life's not for sissies. I say: A sissie's a girl, so what am I, a boy? She says I'm getting too big for my boots and I need taking down a peg or two. I hate the way she nibbles on her toast. I hate her blood on the sheets; we still sleep together and always seem to bleed together. I hate myself for not fighting to sleep in the other room. I hate myself for hating her.

Then she hears Hannigan is looking for a housemaid-waitress; she swallows her pride and heads up the hill. When she returns, her face is flushed, alive. ‘It's the riggers. He needs me to do the beds, be there for lunch, have a few hours off then go back for tea. You'll have to eat straight after school, and do the washing-up. It won't hurt you.'

Elvis has a room at Hannigan's.

One night I set out my homework books on the table: it's soon after she starts working there and I'm not really planning it, not even thinking it, but the minute I can't find my pen, I'm out the door and heading up the hill to the pub. Bev Carter's mother waves me through the fatty stink kitchen into the cool dark dining room.

Mum is a white-apron dot in the far corner. ‘What are you doing here?' she hisses across the tables. When I tell her, she says, ‘We've got plenty of pens. Did you look?' She seems lost and little in the big room. ‘Wait out there. I'll find one when I'm finished.'

In the foyer, noise from the bar is an animal roar. I'm tracing the gold swirls on the red carpet with the toe of my shoe when Layle sails out of the Ladies Lounge, lines up the front door and steers herself through. Before she can see me, I push open a door next to the stairs and find myself in some kind of storeroom with crates and glasses, a broken bar stool. It takes me a second to realise there's a half-open hatch and I can see into the bar.

My father is sitting right there, barely an arm's length away! I flatten against the wall. Augie's there too. And the rigger they call Wombat after Steppy Jones's father, who has the same bushy beard in the Council Chairman photo on the Institute wall.

‘My old man used to reckon we were sitting on swamps of it,' says Augie, wiping off a froth moustache with his hand. ‘Ticker'll be worth a bloody fortune.' He turns to my father. ‘You thought of that?'

Dad frowns into his beer. ‘Problem is finding it,' says Wombat. ‘It's a bloody lottery. Twenty feet too far one way, a bad break in the strat, and you can drill forever and never see a drop.'

Without warning, Dad lifts his head and brays at the ceiling. ‘I've said it before and I'll say it again. You've come here halfcocked. There's no oil here. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a bloody idiot.'

‘Same as the parrots, Mick?' yells Bullfrog, further down the bar. ‘Same as they're all gunna disappear?'

Everyone laughs and jeers and cheers and I can feel myself heating up in the cupboard, heating up for him being so stupid.

‘You're the one who's half-cocked,' yells Bullfrog. ‘Why'd they be spending this sort of dough if they hadn't checked everything out?'

‘Because they're bloody greedy mongrels, Taylor, same as you. And mongrels'll do anything for money.'

Bullfrog looks like he's going to push down the bar to get to my father but someone stands in front of him. It's Dessie Martin's father. He owns the soldier-settler farm that borders Bindilla and he hates all Meehans since Uncle Ticker drained the swamp and destroyed his best lucerne block. ‘Ya wouldn't know if your arse was on fire, Meehan.'

Everyone cheers. My father elbows Wombat out of the way and I'm afraid he'll punch Dessie's dad but instead he sweeps glasses and ashtrays to one side and leaps onto the bar.

‘Get down,' orders Hannigan in his ex-cop's voice. ‘Don't put your boots on my bar, Mick. I'm warning you.'

Hands on hips, Dad points a toe, threatening, teasing, enjoying himself, anyone can see. Then he yanks off his boots, drops them to the floor and laughs down at Hannigan. ‘They're not on your bar.' And lifting and pointing, jumping and twirling, he spins round and round in a mad Irish jig.

My cupboard is suddenly hot with no air, the stink of beer. Why won't he stop? And then he does, abruptly, as if he was just doing it to get their attention. He yells down the bar: ‘You know they've been finding oily blobs around here for years and thinking it's oil. My old man used to find it in the swamps at Bindilla, his old man before him. They still find it on the Coorong. It's why it's called coorongite. They've done tests, it's nothing but algae, not bloody oil. You know that, Augie. When we were kids we used to scrape it off our boots. It's a bloody weed.'

Someone roars: ‘Doesn't mean the real stuff isn't here.'

‘Doesn't mean it is, either. That's why you'd be fools to get your hopes up. You'll end up lookin' stupid.'

‘You'll be the one lookin' stupid,' yells Bullfrog, ‘cause Ticker'll be raking in the moolah, not you.'

Dad's off the bar in one leap. At the same time, Mrs Hannigan's voice shrieks over the noise: ‘Kennedy's been shot!' Her words sink like a rock into a deep ravine. ‘In Texas. In a car.'

President Kennedy? A mumble grows into a shriek of disbelief. I want to shriek too.
He's too young! He can't be shot!
Then above the shock and muttering, Hannigan yells: ‘Time, gentlemen! Six o'clock! Time, please!'

Suddenly everyone's pushing and shoving, and Dad's back at the bar with two, three, then four pots lined up before him. Hannigan's wife is pouring and passing, froth running off glasses. ‘Awlright! I'm not deaf! Wait ya turn.'

I can see Dad's throat pumping and guzzling, he's that close. Watching, I think: Doesn't he care? Then: He should pay for what he's done. There's a sudden noise in the foyer that might be Mum so I slide quickly out of the cupboard.

Elvis! On the bottom step. Pulling off his boots. That same lazy smile. Teeth divine. My legs turn to jelly and I can't think what to do, I can't move. Then I see Mum at the dining-room door. ‘President Kennedy's been shot,' I blurt. She ignores me and glares at Elvis as if he's the devil, instead of someone whose bed she makes every morning.

‘Here's a pen,' she says. ‘Now get yourself home.'

Elvis gives her a goody-boy smile. ‘See ya, Sylvie,' he whispers as he heads up the stairs.

He knows my name!

19

I wish I looked like Nancy Peters. She has perfect skin and honey-blonde hair and walks with a Marilyn wiggle. On the other side of the catwalk, Faye Daley whispers something to Colleen Mulligan and stares into my camera lens. I get suddenly interested in photographing Nancy because I can't bear Faye's cat's-got-the-cream face that she's been wearing ever since I saw her talking to Elvis near the bathing sheds. Snap. Snap. As Nancy turns at the end of the catwalk and walks back to the rotunda, Lizzie says, ‘You look a bit like her.'

Sometimes I can't believe Lizzie. ‘I've got brown hair.'

‘Around the mouth.'

‘I hate my mouth.'

‘You'd think you'd be pleased.'

I'm pleased that Faye and Colleen have disappeared. The judges have their heads together at a table at the back of the rotunda; Mrs Denver is one of them. She knows about beauty queens because years ago she was one herself. When she walks to the microphone with an envelope in her hand, she keeps us guessing by telling us part of the Miss Regatta prize will be a wardrobe to the value of ten pounds from Min's Store in Muswell and a week's holiday in Sydney.

‘I'm going to Sydney,' I tell Lizzie, ‘if it's the last thing I do.'

‘It probably will be,' says Colleen Mulligan right in my ear. When I turn around, she's sashaying away with Faye, smirking into her fairy floss. Back on the catwalk, Nancy is parading with her Miss Regatta sash draped over her swimmers, a gold cardboard crown on her head. I look at Nancy's mouth and think maybe Lizzie's right; if I wore lipstick—if Mum would let me—maybe I could look a bit like her.

After the blessing of the fleet, we buy ice-creams at the cafe and race back to the jetty to get a good spot on the rail for the Greasy Pole. Near the first landing, Lanky Evans lets us squash in next to him.

‘Hottest Boxing Day on record,' he says. ‘Too many bloody blow-ins for me. Might be good for business but I like me privacy.' He pokes about with his walking stick and flaps his bony elbows to make more room for us. ‘Bloody blow-ins everywhere,' he says and just in case the blow-ins haven't heard, he says it again, louder. ‘Bloody blow-ins.'

The blow-ins amble along the jetty in a sunny daze. Lizzie and I hold our cones over the rail and lick them as they melt. Strawberry drops fall into the sea and grow into greasy rings. There is a huge blue sky with cotton-wool clouds that hardly move; for more than a week the wind has been from the north with no summer storms to relieve the heat. And Elvis has gone home for his Christmas holidays: I know this from Faye Daley who knows everything about Elvis.

I'm leaning over the rail when someone jolts my elbow and almost sends my ice-cream into the sea. ‘Sorry,' I hear.

Dunc's voice? Spinning around, I see a man shouldering his way into the crowd. A young man. Dunc's height, the same shaped head. The same walk! ‘Hold this,' I say, shoving my ice-cream at Lizzie. Then I duck around Lanky and push through the crowd, around old ladies and under arms, barging through with a strawberry sick taste in my mouth. Mustn't lose him. Can't, not this time. Not with him heading towards the end of the jetty. Not unless he jumps off the end.

He stops suddenly and looks back. It's not him! Too old, ugly. Not Dunc. I turn away hopelessly. Everything feels drained out of me, the sky too bright and glittery, the jetty timbers suddenly rickety beneath my feet. ‘Sorry,' I tell Lizzie. ‘Thought it was someone I knew.'

‘Who?' She hands me my ice-cream. ‘Had to lick it to stop it dripping. Who?' she asks again.

‘No one you know.'

‘I know everyone you know.'

I distract her by dropping my ice-cream into the sea and pointing to Chicken and Roy, now fourteen and old enough to enter the Greasy Pole, both small and skinny compared with the fishermen, farmers and blow-ins who are waiting on the arm of the jetty with the lifeboat and crane. Bullfrog is there too, strutting around on his frog legs. Shorty has a little round belly, normally hidden under his clothes. My father, looking smaller than he should, brown arms and head, white body and legs. And Kenny Sweet, clowning around as usual.
Dunc.
The same hard lump.
He should be here.

Denver Boland's voice echoes and fades through the megaphone, telling everyone that first prize is ten pounds and a grease and oil change at Grosser's Garage, and the winner is the one who gets furthest along the pole without falling off. This is decided by Denver, who stands on a box next to the lifeboat. The blow-ins and two of the riggers are sent on first so they won't have a chance to copy the locals. They step gingerly onto the pole and before they're even aware of what's happened, they're in the water below.

When it's Roy's turn, I have my camera ready. Arms spread like a high-wire walker, he bends and wobbles, but manages to get ten feet along the pole before falling off. Chicken uses the pole like a slippery floor and slides as far as he can, ending up further along than Roy before falling into the sea with a crazy loud scream.

When it's Bullfrog's turn, he begins with a crab shuffle and is almost halfway along with no sound from the crowd, only the drone of a speedboat pulling a waterskier, the screams of kids on the beach—and shouts from Chicken and Roy, who should have come out of the water but instead are climbing the jetty ladder, bunching into balls and dropping with blood-curdling yells into the water below. As Bullfrog reaches halfway on the pole, Chicken drops with a deadly scream: Bullfrog wobbles and straightens, his arms swivel and spin, but there's no saving himself from a dipping.

He comes up spluttering. Chicken surfaces at the same time and swims with a lazy overarm towards the jetty. Bullfrog charges after him and Chicken's eyes widen with surprise as he is dunked by Bullfrog's big hand. But somehow Chicken escapes, a white tadpole with desperate arms and legs, disappearing under the jetty not far from where we stand. Lizzie and I scramble to the other side where the dinghies are moored by long landing lines. With a few angry strokes, Bullfrog is under the jetty too, catching Chicken as he surfaces. Holding Chicken by the shirt his grandma makes him wear even when he's swimming, Bullfrog dunks him again and again, letting him up for a spluttering breath, pushing him under again.

‘Let him go, you bloody idiot,' yells Lanky in my ear.

‘What's he doing?' says Lizzie.

Can't she see? Can't someone stop him? Denver bellows into his megaphone. ‘Next entrant…a local lad…give Mick Meehan a big hand.'

I push back to the railing in time to see my father step onto the pole, but he drops straight into the sea, not even trying, and swims straight under the jetty. Back on the other side, Chicken is a limp biscuit, arms and legs hanging like worms beneath the water, hardly even a splutter when Bullfrog lets him up for air.

‘What's Mick up to?' mutters Lanky, and I follow his eyes to a mooring line where my father is pulling himself along. Closer to Bullfrog, he lunges and grabs him from behind, pushing him under. Suddenly Chicken is free, he bobs to the surface, kicks to a mooring line and hangs off it by one arm, gulping air.

‘On yer, Mick!' yells Lanky, rat-tat-tat banging his stick on the jetty. ‘On yer!'