The Red Shoe (11 page)

“I’m hungry,” said Matilda.

“Just sit here,” said Elizabeth. “They won’t be long.”

There was a little wall, just big enough to sit on, in front of the shop window. Frances and Matilda squashed themselves onto it. Behind the glass were men’s suits, bodies without heads and wigged heads without bodies with ties around their necks.

“Did you like the film?” asked Matilda.

“It was all right,” said Frances.

“I loved it,” said Elizabeth. She closed her eyes, smiling to herself, as though she was thinking about it.

“I didn’t like it,” said Matilda.

They waited. None of them had a watch, but after all the people had gone inside the cinema, the city was almost silent. Sometimes a bus went past, or a car. Frances chewed on her fingernails. Matilda drew little figures in the dirt on the shop window with her finger. Every now and then she spat on the glass, rubbed her picture out and started again.

“Are you girls waiting for someone?” said a lady, stopping, but they looked away because they were not allowed to talk to strangers.

“Where’s Mummy?” said Matilda. “I’m thirsty.”

They heard the chimes from the Town Hall clock. Time was passing even though they couldn’t see it.

“The Easter Bunny’s coming tomorrow,” said Matilda.

“Only if you’re good,” said Elizabeth.

“I am good,” retorted Matilda. “I’m very good.” She wished her mother and Uncle Paul would come.

A man walked over to them. “Where are your parents?” he demanded. They looked away.

At last they came, their mother and Uncle Paul. He was drunk. Their mother’s face looked as though she had been crying.

“Three little maids in blue!” exclaimed Uncle Paul.

“Yellow,” said Matilda, pointing at her daisy dress. She wrinkled her nose. “You smell awful,” she said. “Like a man.”

“And you are a grub,” replied Uncle Paul, who liked smelling like a man. “Look at you, black all over your face. What have you been doing, making mud pies?”

“These children belong to you?” said a man in a wide white hat. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. They’ve been sitting here over an hour.”

“Piss off,” said Uncle Paul.

“You should be ashamed,” said the man.

“I am ashamed,” replied Uncle Paul grandly. “I was born ashamed.”

“Let’s go,” said their mother. “Let’s go home.”

“But I want to go to your hotel,” Matilda reminded Uncle Paul. “You promised. We’ve been waiting hours.”

“I’d like to get a drink,” said Elizabeth.

“Me too,” said Frances.

Uncle Paul shrugged at their mother.

“A drink it is,” he said. “Just a quick one.”

He swung Matilda up on his shoulders in one giant sweeping movement. Now she was the tallest person in the whole world. They walked away from the beautiful theatre, down towards the harbour, the flash of blue water and the grey, curling bridge.

All the shops were closed as they wandered past on the way to Uncle Paul’s hotel. Behind the glass were Easter eggs, wrapped in wide ribbons.

“How was
Roman Holiday
?” asked Uncle Paul. “Did it make you cry?”

“It was boring,” said Matilda. “It was so boring.”

“It was all right,” said Frances.

“I loved it,” said Elizabeth.

Uncle Paul’s hotel was on the corner of George Street, just up from Circular Quay. He slid Matilda down from his shoulders and put his arm around their mother’s waist.

“Mind your manners, chickens,” he murmured.

The girls followed Uncle Paul and their mother inside. It was wooden and dark. The carpet was green and it smelt stale. There was a man smoking and reading the paper. He looked up and nodded at Uncle Paul.

“Is this it?” said Matilda, unbelieving.

“This is it,” said Uncle Paul.

The walls of the room were brick and there were paintings of cliffs and boats. Over in one corner there was a piano, covered with a blue cloth. There were chairs and round tables.

“Why aren’t there any people?” asked Elizabeth, looking around.

“They only come alive at night,” Uncle Paul said. “Like vampires.”

“What’s vampires?” asked Matilda.

“There’s no such thing,” said Frances.

Their mother looked so tired. She sat down in one of the chairs and laid her head down on the table in front of her, her perfect hair spreading like spilled flowers.

“Can we see your room?” said Matilda to Uncle Paul. “Where you sleep?”

“Against the rules, I’m afraid, pal,” said Uncle Paul. “No visitors.”

He went away, and came back with a big jug of lemonade and five glasses. The liquid spat like fire as he poured it out, one for each of them. They sipped their lemonade in silence through straws.

Uncle Paul took out a cigarette and lit it.

“Can you do smoke rings?” asked Matilda.

“Could if I wanted to,” said Uncle Paul.

“Remember when we went to the Basin?” said Elizabeth abruptly. “And you showed us that game with the matches?”

Their mother’s shoulders stiffened.

“I peeled that day,” said Matilda, wanting to say something in a hurry. “It was so hot. I got sunburnt. I peeled all over. Peeled and peeled and peeled and peeled and peeled.”

She remembered the long sheets of translucent skin that came off her face, her arms and legs. She had eaten some of them.

“I ate my own skin,” said Matilda.

“That’s disgusting,” said Frances, finishing her lemonade. “You’re a cannibal.”

“Cannibals eat other people,” Matilda corrected her. Even she knew that. “I only ate myself.”

The man who had been reading the newspaper at the front desk came and sat down with them. Matilda didn’t like him, she hoped he would go away soon. But Uncle Paul offered him a cigarette.

“Been to the Show yet, kids?” said the man, lighting up.

“Shhh!” Uncle Paul tapped the table. “Sore point.”

“You poor little beggars,” said the man and his eyes disappeared in crinkles.

He pushed the paper over to Uncle Paul.

“What do you think of all that?”

All what? Matilda wondered, looking down at the newsprint, all those rows of black letters. There was only one word that she could make out, a big R, a big E, and a big D—

“Ah, it’s a cold, cold war,” said Uncle Paul. He took a long draught of his cigarette and leaned back in his chair.

“What’s a cold war?” asked Frances. Her straw was soggy now, and she pushed it about in her glass.

“It’s when the whole world turns to ice,” said Elizabeth in a dreamy voice.

“Isn’t that the ice age, darling?” Uncle Paul blew smoke out from under his moustache. “Frozen dinosaurs and all that?”

The hotel was dirty, it felt sad. The chairs made creaking sounds and smelt of old clothes. Matilda didn’t want to hear about wars. Weren’t all the wars over, now that she was born?

“My snail hotel was better than this,” she said grumpily, kicking her legs under her seat.

“Shhh, Matilda,” said their mother.

“I told you, you wouldn’t like it.” Uncle Paul waved a finger at her. “I told you it’s not for little girls.”

W
HEN
M
ATILDA OPENED HER EYES
on Easter Sunday morning, she saw at once there was a chocolate Easter egg at the end of her bed!

She reached down, snatched up the egg, and bit the top off it. It cracked and she lay back and let the chocolate melt inside her mouth. Then she ate a bit more and a bit more and a bit more and then it was all gone. Matilda licked the chocolate off her teeth and skipped out into the kitchen. Uncle Paul was there, making tea.

“So, did the Easter Bunny come?” he inquired.

“Yes,” said Matilda. “I got a chocolate egg!”

“What do you know?” Uncle Paul was shocked. “And I got nuffin’.”

Matilda sat down at the kitchen table, watching Uncle Paul pour two cups of tea, out the spout of the blue and white teapot through the silver strainer. He left the room, a teacup in each hand.

“He shouldn’t be here when your father is away,” said Floreal. “I told you before.”

“What would you know?” Matilda poked out her tongue. “Anyway, Daddy’s coming home soon.”

Leave me alone, she thought. Go back into the radio and leave me alone.

Outside, the sky was grey, and the air felt damp as though it might rain. Matilda was thirsty after all that chocolate. She knelt down next to the garden tap under the tree growing under her bedroom window with the bright red berries, to get a drink from the hose. Matilda liked the water from the hose, it was cool and tasted of earth and metal. You weren’t allowed to water the garden because of the drought, but at least you were still allowed to drink.

As she gulped down mouthfuls of dripping water, she noticed the mad old man from the house next door standing on his pathway, gesturing at her.

Does he want me to come in? Matilda didn’t want to at all, not after last time. She pretended not to see. But then she heard his slow footsteps coming towards her, shuffling along, and the stick clicking.

“Ha!” said the mad old man, when he was near enough.

“Hallo,” replied Matilda reluctantly.

“Where’d you all go, yesterday?”

He said “yesterday” a funny way, it sounded like “yesterdee”.

“To town, to the pictures,” answered Matilda, turning off the hose.

“Ha!”

The mad old man came a little closer. He smelt of wet wool. He looked as though he was about to say something else, when the noise of a car skidding too fast down their steep street stopped him. They both turned and saw the sleek black car, braking noisily outside the yellow house. Two men in suits and hats got out and went straight inside.

The old man turned back to Matilda. “You know them, eh?”

“No,” said Matilda. They were different men, they weren’t the ones she knew.

“I’ve seen you,” said the old man unpleasantly. “I’ve seen you watching them.”

Matilda was annoyed. He must have been watching her watching them, if that was the case.

“I’m just being a spy,” she said. “They’re spies, so I’m just spying back.”

“Spies?” repeated the mad old man. “What do you mean, spies?”

He was very close to her now and his eyes were black and sharp, like a lizard’s.

“What do you mean, spies?” and his peeling fingers clutched the top of his walking stick. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“I saw that man on the newsreel,” said Matilda crossly, but she stepped back, not wanting to be so near. “So they are so spies!”

The mad old man said nothing then. Matilda wondered if he had even heard her. But he stood staring hard at the big pale house, as she shook her wet hands up and down in the air, scattering tiny drops all over the dry land.

O
N
S
UNDAY AFTERNOON IT RAINED
, at last it rained. Elizabeth went out for a walk, and got soaking wet. Frances lay in bed, reading and eating her chocolate egg, sliver by sliver, so that it lasted all afternoon.

Their mother went to sleep.

“Is she sick?” asked Matilda, but Uncle Paul put a finger to his mouth.

“She’ll be all right,” he said. “She’s just worried about your dad.”

On the table in the kitchen was some of her mother’s knitting. Matilda felt the wool between her fingers. It was a grey, bumpy jumper and it was for her, their mother said. It was taking such a long time to do, though, she was afraid that it would be too small by the time it was finished. You grow too fast, Mattie, their mother said. Nothing fits you any more.

Like Alice in Wonderland, thought Matilda. Only I will never be able to be small again. She could feel something sad underneath her somewhere, shifting like a little crab buried in sand.

“You grow too fast,” her mother had said to Matilda in her swimsuit, the day they went to the Basin. “Nothing fits you any more.”

“Bigger things fit me,” Matilda had said.

They were at the barbecue ground of the Basin. Her mother was sitting on their picnic blanket in the sun. They had got off the ferry and wandered up with their things to the flat grassed area away from the beach. Their father was making a fire to cook the sausages. Matilda and Frances scuttled about in the bush, bringing him back twigs. He piled them up with dry leaves in the shape of a wigwam.

“Stand back, girls,” he told them as he bent to light it.

The flames caught in moments and smoke rose up into the sky in a stream.

“A fine blaze,” said Uncle Paul approvingly.

“Why don’t you run off, all of you,” said their father, “and have a swim before lunch. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

Their mother was opening the picnic basket, to find the meat. She looked up, and said in a sharp, anxious sort of voice, “Are you sure?”

“Please,” said their father, and he bent down and took her hand and kissed it, like a prince in a story.

Then he did a strange thing. He put his arms around Uncle Paul and hugged him. He didn’t look at anyone else.

So they left him. They took off their shoes and put them in a pile, even her mother’s beautiful red shoes with the golden buckles. They picked up their towels and scrambled down the slippery rocks, Uncle Paul and their mother and the three girls, to the little curved beach to swim.