The Lost Child (9 page)

In the lounge, Santa is standing next to the tree but I can tell it's Blue Daley dressed in the costume that Mr Boland wore for the Christmas party at the Institute. It fitted Mr Boland better than Blue Daley; he is too skinny and the pillow for his stomach keeps dropping down. Besides, his eyebrows are reddish-brown and I can see the elastic holding up his beard.

We all crowd in. Blue Daley takes a present from beneath the tree, reads the name, then he tosses it to my father, who tosses it back, and Blue Daley tosses it back again. Mrs Daley says: ‘Come on, you two, stop mucking around and get on with it.' But they do the same with every present, back and forth, laughing from too much beer.

I am not sure how Dad can toss the presents and not see me. Then one comes flying at my head. ‘Here, catch this,' he says but Faye catches it instead and hands it on to me. It is a new pencil case from Faye. Then my father tosses me another. When I tear off the paper I find a new
Marigold
book inside.
To
Sylvie, love from Dad
, says the card but I can see it is Mrs Daley's writing and when I call out thank you like the Daley kids, the present throwing is finished and my father is at the window drinking beer.

I am wondering if I should go home and be with Mum, when Dad looks at me. His eyes are black and shining and as soon as they settle on me they slide right off again. But I know he has seen: I know because he sneaks another look when he thinks I can't see. And then I look away and he looks away and we both look back and pretend we haven't, and look away again. I want him to keep on looking but all through Christmas dinner he eats turkey and pudding and drinks beer; he tells funny stories that I can't understand, but he doesn't look at me again.

I am glad to leave. I thank Mrs Daley and don't look at Dad. I run home along the clay path that edges the lagoon, jumping on the samphire weed to make the blood juice squelch. There is no one anywhere, no one in the streets or in their yards, no cars, no sounds at all except the
glug-glug
of sleepy frogs in the lagoon and the sea breeze rustling through the reeds. No one anywhere, just me. And then I see an eagle, drifting in the sky above my father's new house, rising in a wind draft without a flap of wings, drifting higher and higher, then dropping, rising, hiding in the sun that shines behind the dunes.

I run through the gate and up the gravel drive. I want to tell Dunc about the eagle. I want Mum to be up off the floor. I want to take my bride doll outside and play with her on the lawn.

Where is she? I cannot feel her lying next to me, cannot hear her breathe. The kitchen clock
tick-ticks
; the house fidgets like a dog with fleas, so many sounds I never hear when I'm asleep: a crackle in the kitchen, a creaking in the roof, Georgie snuffling in his cage beneath his sleeping blanket. Then a
tink-clink-clanking
in the street.

Footsteps. Outside the bedroom window, running softly on the path. Could it be my mother? Could it be a robber? I crawl across the bed and look beneath the curtain. The moon is fat and yellow; it sparkles on the leaves of the shiny-leaf tree but I cannot see my mother, or a robber.

Where is Dunc? I slide out of bed and pat my way along the wall, through the kitchen and the lounge to the sunroom door. The moonlight through the louvres shows me Dunc is missing too. To be extra sure, I touch all around in his empty bed. ‘Dunc?' My voice squeaks like a baby bird. I say it again. ‘Dunc?'

He is not there. Now there's more
tink-clink-clanking
in the street, more running feet. My spit becomes a lump I cannot swallow. I feel my way along the hall to the back door. And Dunc is there! Standing very still. Like he stands in the bushes when he sets his rabbit traps, waiting to see if a rabbit runs right in.

‘What's happening?'

High above Shorty's pines, the moon is bright. The gravel shines white; the daisy bush has eyes. Then I see her coming from the shadow of the shed, on fast feather feet. She is wearing her pink satin nightie, the one she chose from the catalogue when she bought my Christmas dress. Her hands are full of paint pots, a garden spade, the old hessian water bag; a roll of rusted wire is under her arm. She hurries down the path next to the Scotts' fence. Then
tink-clink-clank
from the street.

‘What's she doing?'

‘Cleaning out the shed.'

‘It's night,' I say, ‘it's Christmas.'

‘I'm going back to bed.'

I grab his hand. ‘You can't.'

He shrugs me off. ‘I can.'

I look out of the window to the street. Our car is a shadow by the kerb with a black pile next to it. Now Mum brings Dad's broken dartboard, a gerry can, a mop bucket, the rubber boots she uses in the garden. She throws them on the pile and is gone again. Then she's back, pushing my old trike, the one she said Mrs Hammet's little girl could have. Perhaps she has forgotten. I hurry outside and follow her down the path; branches from the trees along the Scotts' fence reach out to touch me as I pass. At the gate, I watch her drag something from the garden, through the fence into the street, something long and sleek that glitters like a snake. The garden hose! She flings it over the car, pulls it down the other side, lies flat on the ground to poke it under, pulls it up again, runs around, pulls it down. Soon the hose is wrapped around our car like a rubber worm.

Now she disappears. Where is she? There. On the lagoon side of the road, a white shape running at the tea-tree. Branches crack and break. She is back, dragging huge limbs and lifting them onto the car, running back, and back again. Why won't she stop? Now the car is covered in a green tree disguise and she hurries past so close that she must see me standing there. But she doesn't. When I follow around the back, I find her dragging the mower. I call out to tell her that she mowed yesterday but she doesn't hear.

From the sunroom steps, I watch her mow the grass up and down, up and down. When will she stop? Mrs Scott's house is all lit up. Should I go in there? Should I go up to Mrs Winkie's? Before I can, a car stops outside our house and someone treads softly through the garden.

‘That you, Nella?'

It is Constable Bill Morgan. I cannot see his face behind the dazzle of his torch but I recognise his voice from his talk at school. He shines the light onto Mum but she just keeps on mowing, up and down, up and down. Her nightie is torn and dirty now; her hair looks like a bird's nest spiked with sticks from the tea-tree. I don't want to see: I don't want him to see.

‘Now, Nella,' says Bill Morgan, ‘I think you've done enough.'

Still she doesn't stop. Close up, he shines the light into her face. Her skin is white, her eyes surprised like the rabbits caught in Charlie Parsons's spotlight. But she just blinks and mows around and past him.

‘Stop it, Nella.' Now his voice is loud and bossy. ‘Or I'll have to stop you.'

Mum doesn't stop. And when she mows past again, he grabs her arms and pulls them hard behind her back. The mower handle drops to the ground and she tries to reach for it but Bill Morgan holds her tight. She kicks and tries to jab him with her elbows, and her legs run on the spot like the Roadrunner screeching to a halt at the canyon edge.

I want her to kick him hard. I want her to win. But he is too big. ‘That's enough,' he says. And quick as a lick, he gives her a slap. Her head bounces back. I cry out but it must be a silent cry because no one looks at me. Mum stops fighting and droops like her carnations do when she needs to water them.

‘I'm sorry, Nella,' says Bill Morgan.

I don't think he is. I tell him. ‘You shouldn't hit my mother.'

‘Sorry, Nella,' he says again. ‘Didn't know the kid was here.'

Neither does my mother. Her eyes stare straight ahead like my bride doll's eyes. Bill Morgan takes her hand and she walks beside him easily, as if he's asked her for the foxtrot at the Fancy Dress when all the parents dance. As I follow after them, the torchlight rakes the sunroom louvres and I see Dunc staring out.

At our gate, there are people gawking. Mrs Scott and Mrs Winkie. Merle McCready. Wanda the Witch. ‘Never was a strong one,' says Merle McCready. ‘Some are and some aren't, that's the way it is.'

When Bill Morgan has Mum in the car, he comes back and talks to Mrs Winkie. She says, ‘I should have seen it coming.' Then she holds my hand. ‘He's taking her to Muswell to see the doctor. We'll get Duncan and you can sleep with us tonight. Tomorrow I'll take you out to Grannie Meehan's.'

The car drives off. From the back seat, Mum waves to everyone as if she is the Queen. No one waves back, not even me.

8

‘When's Mum coming home?'

‘That's a good question.' Grannie puts her knobbly fingers on mine and loops the wool over the needle. ‘Like this. Down the bunny hole—round the bunny hole—out the bunny hole.' She knits the whole line and starts the next line too. ‘See,' she says, handing it back, ‘it's coming along nicely.'

It doesn't look nice to me. And I don't like the colour, a watery blue. Uncle Ticker puts his paper down and stokes the fire, which Grannie made him light because the summer night is cold. Sparks fly up like stars, falling onto the carpet. He stubs around with his slipper. ‘Coming along fine,' he says, bending over my knitting.

‘Keep your voice down, Ticker. You're not talking to the cows.'

Uncle Ticker gives me a wink. He's always doing this. He looks like Dad, but with smiley eyes and less hair. He rustles his paper to a new page. ‘Tongues have gone through the roof. Maybe we shouldn't have sold that hundred head.'

‘What about skirts?'

‘Thicks or thins?'

My eyes are droopy and my knitting is slow. I should move back from the fire but I like sitting at Grannie's feet with their voices drifting over my head. When I drop a stitch and make a hole, Grannie says,
Time for bed, clean your teeth, and school tomorrow
.

‘Yell out when you're in bed and I'll come and tuck you in.'

Uncle Ticker gives me another wink. I take my time closing the door and hear Grannie say: ‘I've tucked in more kids than I've had hot dinners, you'd think there'd be some end to it. As soon as you're down the aisle, I'm off. London first. Ireland. Switzerland. Norway. Italy. Home through America. You won't see me for dust.'

Uncle Ticker says: ‘Pork belly's skyrocketed. Maybe we should have a look at pigs.'

Grannie says: ‘Filthy things.'

Because Mum's still in hospital, I have to catch the bus to school with the other farm kids. Now Dunc has gone too. Grannie has sent him to school in the city and I won't see him until he comes home for the May holidays. Before he left, he told me he would run away. He said he would come back to Burley Point and live by himself in the Abo cave and go to Muswell High with Pardie. Every day I pray to Jesus on the cross that Dunc will come soon.

I wait by the side of the road. There is silence everywhere. In the boobiallas and brackens and yakkas, in the willowy weed with the bright yellow flower. The sky is silent too, with high white clouds like the sky inside Uncle Ticker's glass dome that you shake and a snowstorm falls on Big Ben. Except here everything is summer dry and the hills behind Bindilla are speckled with sheep as dirty brown as the ground.

On the school bus, I sit close to Mr Kelly but still the big boys up the back yell that I have done the smell. ‘Who did the stink?' says Peter Leckie. ‘Was it you?' he asks everyone, seat by seat. ‘Was it you?'

Colleen Mulligan and Shirley Fry whisper and point at me. Then Peter Leckie says: ‘Hey, you in Grade Two, you in the pink bum-fluff cardigan, can you smell anything?' The air is sour with boy fart smells but I don't say anything. ‘A dog always smells its own smell first. It was you, wasn't it?' My cheeks heat up and I shake my head but still the big boys laugh and jeer.

Mr Kelly says: ‘Tone it down in the back, or I'll stop the bus and put the lot of you off.' He never does.

Outside there are spoggies on telephone lines and an eagle hawk circling low. There are fences and farmhouses where I wish there was jungle, and tom-toms to send my message:
Phantom…I
need you…
And the Phantom would come on his white stallion. He'd freeze Peter Leckie's blood, Colleen's and Shirley's too. He'd bring Mum home from Parkside Hospital. Dunc would go to school in Muswell. And Layle Lewis would fall off the end of the jetty and drown.

‘What are you doing?' From under the table, Grannie's legs look like pink sausages stuffed in brown shoes. ‘A day like this you should be playing outside. And where are the chair cushions?'

‘In my Skull Cave.'

‘Be careful of that tablecloth. It's lace. Made by your great-grandmother, the French one. I should have packed it away long ago.'

She stands on tiptoe at the sideboard. Then, ‘Shite!', and a book thumps to the floor next to me, papers spilling all over the carpet.

It's the Bible. The old one with our names inside the red cover. Grannie kneels and grunts and reaches all around. ‘Anything under there?'

‘Rosie,' she says when I crawl out with a photo of a fat baby sitting in a clamshell. ‘Born twelve months before your father. Died twelve months after.' She sits with a sigh. ‘I had her photo taken, had all of them taken. Took her to Bert Ferguson in the Mount. He'd just taken on a new man from one of those countries, Latvia or Hungary or somewhere. Wary of him I was, with his bowing and hand-kissing. When he brought out the clamshell, I thought he was mad, never seen one that big before or since.' Grannie slants the photo for me to see. ‘I had her dressed in a pink dress and bonnet. He took it all off. Sat her stark naked in that shell. Looks like a mermaid, doesn't she?'

I'm not sure what a baby mermaid looks like but I nod and she shuffles through the photos and finds a baby with a bald head sitting on a bunny rug. ‘Brendan. Born twelve months after Rosie.' She stares at Brendan for a long time. The windmill behind the house creaks and squawks. ‘He died too.' She slips the photos into the Bible and slaps the cover down hard. ‘Well, you can't spend your life sitting in a clamshell. And you can't spend it grieving.' She springs to her feet. ‘Come on. This wind'll blow the dogs off their chains. Time to make yourself useful. Start with getting a blanket over your bird or he'll screech himself stupid.'