Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The (7 page)

I took a deep breath, sorted out the sound system and got the music pumping. That was better. I unpacked everything except for Cara’s proper
effective
clothing. I put my photos on the one shelf and was so glad I wasn’t filming myself. Bloody Cara would just love to catch me weeping all over Seb’s photo and then clasping it and the photo of the girls to my heart. I sniffed and wiped a hand over my face. ‘No way, Cara dear — no way am I going to cry on camera for you.’

I finished unpacking, arranging and crying.

I got hungry.

‘Mum! What’s for lunch?’

No answer. Rats — was she still sick? I took myself off to investigate.

She hadn’t moved off the sofa, and she was sort of whimpering. ‘Mum?’ I squatted down beside her.

‘Music hurts.’

Crap. I ran and turned it off. ‘Sorry.’ I looked at her. She looked spectacularly awful. ‘I’ll get Dad.’

‘No. Ice.’

Ice?
Did we have ice? Did we have a fridge? I almost asked her, but didn’t. She looked like death. I scanned the walls of the big room. ‘Aha! Fridge!’ I opened it. No freezer.

‘Outside,’ Mum whispered.

I took myself outside on a freezer hunt and this time I took the camera. With Cara’s voice in my head saying
it’ll make excellent television
I set out to make damn sure what she got was idiot television, which nobody in their right mind would watch for even a nanosecond.

The way to do it, I decided, was to pretend I was talking to my friends.

‘A freezer outside. Who would have thought it? Still, this is an island and anything can happen on an island. Apparently.’ I put the camera on the verandah seat and crouched down in front of it. ‘Which path will it be? Left, or right?’ The girls would kill themselves laughing when I told them why Cara hadn’t shown much of the stuff I filmed.

I chose the path to the bundle of sheds because it would be more logical to have the freezer closer to the house than in the shed round the back, but who knew what logic prevailed in this place? All of which I carefully explained to the camera.

The first shed was the big one with the solar-panel
decoration on the roof; it contained chickens, unfrozen and wandering around doing chicken stuff out in their yard. I aimed the camera at them. ‘Meet the chickens: Izzie, Fizzie, Bizzie, Tizzie and — the rest. Looks like there’s ten of them.’ They came over to meet me. They had reddish feathers about the colour of Cara’s hair and they didn’t know a lot about personal hygiene. I didn’t linger.

There was another mini-shed opposite the Chicken House of Glory. ‘What have we here, boys and girls?’

What we had was the toilet. I was not impressed. ‘A long drop?’ I filmed it from the top of its spidery ceiling, down the walls to the seat and for good measure I aimed the camera down the drop. ‘Disgusting and gross. Is this the best the twenty-first century can manage?’

Damn. Cara would like me being grossed out by the toilet.

I continued my explorations on along the path past the chicken house and discovered that their shed was chopped in half down the middle. ‘Yes! Here we have it, one magnificent freezer.’ I swept the camera around. ‘And the washing machine, plus tub with one lonely tap.’ I bent down and talked to it. ‘Hello, lonely tap. I know just how you feel.’ I hoped Cara would be overcome by guilt. Like that was going to happen.

I was glad the freezer was out here; it didn’t have the quietest motor in the world. I found a tray of ice and took it back to Mum. She stuck out a hand so I put a bit of ice in it. I thought she wanted to rub it on her forehead, but she put it in her mouth — didn’t open her eyes, didn’t say thanks. She just lay there looking sick.

Well, one thing was for sure — if I wanted to eat anything I’d have to get it myself. There was bread in the huge pantry and butter in the fridge, along with cheese. I found pickle and relish.

Dad came in. ‘Oh, good girl — you’re making lunch.’

I grinned at him. ‘I’m making me lunch. There’s the stuff. Make your own.’ I ducked the cuff he aimed at me.

He went over to Mum. ‘Liv? You okay?’ He looked at the ice tray. ‘You’re eating
ice?’

She didn’t say anything. Just fished around for another bit. He found her one and popped it into her mouth. Quite sweet, really.

He sat back on his heels and stared at her as if he had something he wanted to say but didn’t know how to say it.

I made another sandwich in the time it took him to make up his mind. Noah ambled in just as Dad said, ‘The last time you were sick like this — the last time you were so sick that all you could eat was ice …’

Mum just lay with her eyes shut.

Noah said, ‘What’s for lunch?’

Nobody answered him. Dad finished his sentence. ‘You were pregnant.’

‘S’right,’ Mum whispered.

I put my sandwich down. Wow! ‘Mum! Are you pregnant?’ That would be so amazing. A baby! A sister. It had to be a girl.

‘Well,’ said Dad, ‘are you?’ I stared at him. He only ever used that tone of voice for Noah and me when we were in deep, deep, not-get-out-of-able shit.

‘Yes,’ Mum said. The effort of making her voice louder than a whisper made her throw up. It went on to the sofa.

I expected Dad to run off and get a towel. I expected him to fuss over her. I dunno. I thought he’d do something different to stomping out in a tearing rage by the look on his face, which would be captured on telly for the entertainment of the entire country.

I got the towel instead. And I wet a flannel and gave it to Mum to wipe her face. And gave her more ice.

‘What’s up with him?’ I asked. ‘It takes two to get pregnant according to what they teach us these days, or doesn’t he know that?’

But Mum had used up all her energy.

Noah drifted off again, accompanied by half a loaf of dry bread.

I wanted to talk to Mum, but she was too sick. She looked awful. I took out the rest of the ice, put it in a cup where she could reach it, re-filled the tray and took it back to the freezer. A baby. How amazing was that? I wanted to call the girls, I wanted us all to run to BeauTox and drink half a latte and a whole hot chocolate to celebrate, and then we’d go and look at cute baby stuff.

It was so goddamned
lonely
here. And this shed was a dump. I left the camera and ice tray on a shelf and went outside, past the chickens who followed me the length of their cage, squawking all the way. I walked to the edge of the island, to where the land dropped into the sea. Over there, in that misty blue, was my life. Here there was such aloneness that I could feel it pressing down and squeezing me to death. For the longest time
I sat there, on the edge of the island with the waves shattering to foam on the rocks way below me. I just sat, holding my arms around my knees, and the tears ran out of my eyes. I let them dribble down to make wet patches on my jeans.

Cara would laugh till she cracked her ribs if she could see me now.

Cow. Bloody bitch of a cow.

I sniffed, wiped my face then chucked the tissue over the cliff where the wind caught it and made it drift and fly like a beautiful feather instead of a grubby tissue full of fluids that I will not elaborate upon.

No way, bloody Cara — no way in hell will I get on camera weeping, wailing and bemoaning my fate so suck that up and see how you like it.

I wriggled back from the edge, stood up and took myself back to the shed, stopping at the chickens to practise my chirpy camera voice. It was a bit damn rusty to begin with and the chickens didn’t like it. ‘It’s not my fault you crazy birds,’ I yelled, which made me feel better, especially as it shut them up for five whole seconds. I took a deep breath but gave up before I got too far. Let me recommend to never do deep, calming breaths near chicken residences.

I went into the shed and got on with my job of filmmaker of the century. Cara was going to curse the day she’d had the brilliant idea of me plus camera.

I set the camera up on a shelf facing the freezer, turned it on and began my performance.

‘Enough meat to last a year,’ I said brightly. Bloody Cara was going to get fed up to her eyeballs with me
saying stuff brightly. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got. All the usual from steak to mince to sausages. And roasts.’ I leaned close to the camera. ‘Don’t these television people know that roasts are so last century?’

I shut the freezer doors. Then I opened them again. ‘I am about to choose what to have for dinner on this auspicious first night of our year-long incarceration.’

I chose sausages, partly because I could recognise them. I did a pan shot of the contents of the freezer. ‘You know,’ I told the camera in my bright, chatty manner, ‘all that stuff in there will have passed through our alimentary canals before the end of the year.’

I picked up the sausages and went back to the house.

The afternoon doesn’t rate as one of the most exciting of my life, but it’s all there, caught on camera. Me making sure Mum had enough ice. Me deciding I would have to cook dinner if we wanted to eat. There was no way Mum would keep anything down, but Dad would be hungry and Noah might even decide he wanted more than dry bread.

I found spuds and peeled them. Then there were the carrots and broccoli. My first attempt at a meal that didn’t need thawing and microwaving would have earned me a
failed miserably
in any test or exam devised by humankind. The spuds burnt, the sausages shrivelled up into turds, the broccoli cooked to mush and I don’t know what happened to the carrots but I do not aim to cook
carrots again for the rest of my life.

I reached for my phone to text Jax, who did know about cooking. No phone. How long would it take me to get used to it?

I went outside to yell for Dad, but he was already striding along the track towards the house. Nature, of which there was rather a lot, hadn’t soothed him any by the look of it.

He stomped inside, sat down at the table and started eating. He said nothing — not even thank you — which I felt was a bit harsh because I had tried, I had used my initiative, which he is always going on about. But I didn’t say anything either because, man, he was steaming.

Noah appeared, sat down, shoved the broccoli and carrot disaster out of the way and chomped on the charred turds.

The room was silent apart from the noise of us chomping.

When this interminable, everlasting, god-awful year was over I would live at Lizzie’s until I had the money to go flatting and leave my family far behind.

The food didn’t seem to do anything for Dad’s temper. He stabbed the sausages, jabbed at the
vegetables
and chewed everything like he was killing it.

At last, I got mad too. All my feminist genes jumped up and fired my tongue. ‘Listen up, Father dear,’ I said. ‘How come you are being so bloody-minded about this pregnancy? Your baby, I might point out.’ And I pointed with my knife.

He crashed both hands down on the table. He scared the tripe out of me. Noah actually lifted his head and it’s
a wonder Mum didn’t miscarry on the spot. ‘
My
baby! You hear that, Liv?
My
baby?’ He stalked over to the sofa. ‘Well? Is it
my
baby?’

She shut her eyes. Noah and I stared at Dad, at her. ‘No,’ she whispered.

Dad stormed out into the darkening day.

Oh joy and bliss. All that captured on camera. Dumb Dad. Why didn’t he just pretend, and then we could have had the family drama on top of a hill away from all recording equipment?

Noah slouched off out of the room away from all parental emotion. If I hadn’t been so stunned I’d have gone after him and got high too but I couldn’t move, other than to shake my head. It couldn’t be true. I looked over at Mum. How could she do that — to Dad, to us?

She’d gone off with some bloke and done it with him. I stared at her pale, sick face and said, ‘How could you? How could you
do
that?’

She didn’t try to answer, didn’t even open her eyes. ‘You are the world’s hugest hypocrite,’ I said, speaking slowly and clearly so that the words would slide into her brain whether she wanted them to or not. ‘You wouldn’t even let me go out with Seb.’ I stood up and marched over to her. ‘What makes you think I’d be a slut like you?’ I bent down and prodded her shoulder. She didn’t say anything but a tear slid down her cheek.

Oh crap.

I turned away from her and wrapped my arms around my body. It was so cold here. My friends. I needed my friends but I would not cry, I would bloody not. I stalked
to the table and crashed the dishes around. Mum winced. I dropped a pile of cutlery on the kitchen floor. I couldn’t begin to imagine what Seb would say when I told him. I thumped a fist against my head. When would I get used to this? I wouldn’t need to tell him — he’d see it all on telly.

I glanced at hypocrite mother. She was all huddled up on the sofa, more tears running down her face and she was shivering. Let her suffer. This whole circus was one hundred per cent her own fault.

I ran water into the sink but over the noise I heard an electronic beep. For one glorious moment I thought it was a phone. It went again. I traced it to the radio. ‘What?’ I snarled.

‘Listening watch,’ Mum whispered.

Oh, fantastic. Where was Dad when I needed him? Where he always was when I needed him — absent. But the chance of talking to somebody was too bewitching to ignore. I switched the radio on.

It crackled with a burst of words. ‘Motutoka Island, this is Maritime Radio. Motutoka Island, this is Maritime Radio. I have one weather observation to pass to you.’

I stared at the radio, then at Mum. No help from either of them. ‘Uh, hello. This is Minna on Motutoka Island and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.’

Maritime Radio laughed. ‘You’re doing fine, Minna. What you’d normally say is: Maritime Radio, this is Motutoka Island, Zulu, Lima, Mike, Tango. Go ahead, please.’

Zulu Mike … My eye fell on the letters ZLMT stuck
on the wall. We had a call sign? ‘Hi there, Maritime Radio,’ I said and I was grinning — a diversion from the churning thoughts lurking in my brain. ‘This is Minna on Motutoka Island, Zulu, Lima, Mike, Tango. Hit me with your weather observation and tell me what the — er — what I’m meant to do with it.’

Maritime R was with me all the way and laughing his head off. ‘Maritime Radio to Minna on Motutoka Island. You write it down and pass it on to anyone else who calls you. It might be a boat, or somebody in a remote shore station. Over.’

‘Minna to Maritime R: you mean there’s poor suckers more remote than I am? Okay, ready to write. Um. Over.’ I could get to like this — talking to a person who talked back to me.

He read out the weather observation. I wrote it down. What it amounted to was northeasterly winds and heavy seas.

‘Minna on Motutoka Island to Maritime Radio. I’ve got your weather. Glad I’m on Motutoka and not out in a boat. Is that it?’

‘Maritime Radio to Minna on Motutoka Island ZLMT: that’s all we have for you. And Minna — when you finish you say Roger.’

‘For real? I thought that was only for movies! Roger, Maritime R! Roger!’

‘Roger, Minna.’ I heard him laughing as he switched off.

What now? I sat by the radio, waiting. Somebody from a boat called up wanting the weather observation. I passed it on. And that was it. At 7pm I switched the radio off.

Reality crashed in on me again. I was Minna on Isolation Island with parents about to split, a stoner brother and all the people who mattered to me an ocean away.

I got up quickly before the tears started. Cara would have telly to die for after Dad’s little performance, Mum’s big confession and then her tears. She would not get any from me.

The room was cold. I looked at the woodburner but couldn’t see any cheerful, cheering flames in the fire. I opened the door and chucked a lump of wood on the embers.

Mum lay unmoving, with her eyes shut.

Babies took nine months to gestate and we were going to be here for a year, unless Dad pulled the plug on the whole enterprise.

All the happy bubbles that I’d got from talking to Maritime R burst and settled in a sludge in the bottom of my stomach. I wanted Seb’s arms around me. I wanted — no, make that
needed
— to talk to somebody.

I took off to my bedroom to do my video diary but I couldn’t summon up the energy.

I went to the window but didn’t draw the curtains because who cared if a penguin looked in? I hoped one would. Pre the big announcement from Mum, i.e. when Dad was still talking, he’d said yes, there were penguins on the island — little blue ones. Were penguins faithful? Were they monogamous? I bet they were.

It was dark outside and cold in my room. I looked for a heater but there wasn’t one. I opened the boxes of effective clothes and put on a bush shirt which made
me cry, remembering how we’d laughed. I sniffed and hiccupped and was glad I’d turned the camera off. This place gave me the creeps. Outside it was howling and yowling — louder than I was. What
was
that noise?

Thwack! Something belted against my window and scared my heart into stopping for a dangerously long time. I stared at the window and saw my terrified face staring back at me, then there was another thwack and this time I saw the thwacker as it fell down the glass. Birds! I ran across the room and stuck my face against the glass. Hundreds and hundreds of birds sweeping overhead in a great flood — and more hitting the window with skull-shattering thwacks.

I ran to the light switch handily placed near the door, not the bed, and snapped it off. I waited a moment or two, but there were no more crashes.

I ran out to the family room. There might be carnage there too — of the bird rather than human variety this time. I was right. A bird crashed and slid before I could get to the light switch. Another crashed and slid in the very moment I snapped off the light.

‘Poor birds.’ That was a whisper from Mum, which I ignored.

I eased the ranch-slider open and picked up the nearest bird. It was warm in my hands and pretty, with feathers the colour of a washed-out blue sky. It was a pigeon maybe — it was around the right size. Mum might know except that I didn’t want to ask her. I sat there holding the blue bird, hoping it would shake itself and fly away out of my hands.

But it was dead. As dead as my parents’ marriage.

I laid it gently on the verandah seat, then sat beside it watching thousands and thousands of its mates sweep and fly overhead.

Would Dad divorce Mum? Would she want to go off with the baby’s father? And who was the father anyway? I’d never seen her near another man.

I went back to the family room and my faithless mother.

Dad came stomping in from somewhere a long way off. ‘Why are you sitting in the dark?’ He snapped on the lights. ‘And why haven’t you done the dishes?’

‘It makes the birds hit the windows and kill themselves.’ I snapped the lights off again. ‘And exactly why should I do the dishes? I cooked dinner
and
I did the listening watch.’

He stumbled around in the dark. I heard, ‘Oh, crap!’ which might have been because of whatever he’d bashed into or it might have been about the listening watch. I didn’t ask. He turned the lights back on but drew the curtains. ‘We can’t sit in the dark all night. Let’s hope this’ll do the trick.’

It seemed to, because the birds kept zooming over us but left off attacking the windows.

‘Do the dishes, will you Min,’ said Dad, busy not looking in Mum’s direction.

‘No,’ I said. I was proud of the restraint I showed, but I couldn’t help feeling that a bit of restraint around here right now could be a good thing.

Various bits of Dad’s face flexed and bulged. ‘I have asked you to do something, Min — and I expect you to do it.’

Showdown time. Restraint might have to fly out the window along with the birds, and to hell with the cameras. ‘I cooked the dinner. I know it wasn’t great, but I cooked it. I did the listening watch. I didn’t want to. I wanted to go away and bawl my eyes out, but I did it. No dishes. Not me. Not tonight.’

He caved without another word and, of course, I felt like the meanest slug on the island. And anyway, why me? Where was Noah? Why not him?