Tree Palace (5 page)

Zara came from the tent wearing her black T-shirt. It never looked comfortable given its tightness, but she wore it anyway for going out. She had black knickers on. They rode up at the back and she picked at them. And pantyhose with the seat cut out. Only the legs remaining, sagging thigh-high, black and too big for her.

‘Take those stupid things off, girl.’

‘I can hold them up with some elastic. Or a rubber band.’

‘They’re your Christmas stockings. They weren’t meant for wearing.’

‘Haven’t been laddered. Except there.’

She pointed to a place above her left knee.

‘Take them off.’

‘A bit of nail polish’ll fix it.’

‘Since when did you become an expert on pantyhose?’

‘Where is it?’

‘Where’s what?’

‘Nail polish.’

‘We don’t have nail polish.’

‘Do I look good in them?’

She took a few steps and showed her legs off with a slow turn.

‘You look stupid. But it’s good to see you cheery. That’ll relax you for milk coming down. I’ve started him off with this stuff but now you take over.’

Zara wasn’t listening. ‘What date is it?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’

‘When’s New Year’s Eve?’

‘I don’t know. A day or two.’

‘There’ll be parties in town.’

‘Come and sit down.’

‘No bastard’s given me an invite.’

‘It’s not important. Sit down and do some feeding.’

‘I want to pull a skirt over these pantyhose and see how I look.’

‘Afterwards.’

‘No. Now.’

‘Deal with Mathew and then we can go for a walk. Beautiful night like this. Let’s take the pram and look at the stars. All the shapes they make.’

‘We got no nail polish?’

‘I told you, no.’

‘I’ll walk to town and get some.’

‘You will not. Stop this nonsense, please. Get it into that head of yours that Mathew is your son. You take him and you feed him like you was shown, and stop this walking-into-town nonsense.’

Zara rammed her fists down on her knees. She screamed no and rammed her fists again. It made Moira flinch and take a tighter hold of the baby, a sudden, snatching action that caused the bottle to fall loose from his mouth. She took a long breath to control her voice. ‘Take him and feed him.’

‘I don’t want to look at him.’ Then Zara said it again with slow, gritted gaps between the words. ‘I. Don’t. Want. To. Look.’

The baby started crying and Moira told him, ‘Shh, baby. It’s all right. It’s all right.’

Zara went to the tent, swearing at the stones hurting her feet but stamping harder as if wanting to be hurt. The stockings bunched around her ankles. She stamped into the tent and flicked the door flap down.

Moira flicked the flap up. She had Mathew tucked along her right arm in a football grip. The bottle fell from her left hand as she swung at the flap angrily to let herself through. Inside was stuffy dark with only the outlines of the few furnishings to gain her bearings. Zara was by the bed, in silhouette. Her shape disappeared into the darkness of the corner. She was on the other side of the bed now. She slumped between it and the tent wall.

The bottle was on the ground somewhere but Moira wasn’t going to feel around on her hands and knees. She put the baby in his pram and told him everything was fine, though that wouldn’t quieten him. Zara was talking in a babbling, sobbing way. The words were lost in Mathew’s crying. Moira knelt on the bed to hear better.

‘I weren’t strong enough,’ Zara said. ‘Weren’t strong enough in my arm to do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘I couldn’t look at him and do it.’

‘What are going on about?’

‘In the hospital. When nobody was around I tried to do it but I couldn’t look at him. It made me not strong enough if I looked.’

‘Do what?’

‘I closed my eyes and I put the blankets over his face and I pushed down and down so he wouldn’t breathe and he would just die and go away. But I opened my eyes and I couldn’t keep pushing. And he opened his eyes and he saw me trying to do it.’

Moira wanted to lift Zara from where she was wedged. The girl would not be touched.

‘You’re frightening me now. This is one of your lies. Say it’s one of your lies. You made it up and you’re frightening me.’

‘Didn’t make it up.’

She grabbed Zara by the back of her T-shirt and shook her.

‘Say you made it up.’

Zara let herself be shaken, her head going side to side as if a doll neck.

‘Zara?’

‘I’m off to town.’ She stood up.

‘Answer me, girl.’

‘I’ll borrow Rory’s bike.’

‘Get out, then. Go. Get out.’

Zara ran past her, out of the tent.

‘Come back, Zara. Please.’

In among the saplings Zara ran. She was holding the cut pantyhose up over her knees. She kept going further, where the trees were shadows of themselves and huddled together and breezy. They closed behind her and spoke in their leaf-whisper.

Where’s the bottle? I’ll have to wash it, Moira thought. Mathew will just have to bawl while I wash it and make a new mixture. Rory was arriving on his bike and Limpy with him. The dog would be sniffing around the bottle in a second if she didn’t get it off the ground.

‘Rory, come over here—I need your eyes. Help find Mathew’s bottle, there’s a good boy.’

‘I saw Zara running through the trees.’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘Did she eat dinner? Cause if she didn’t eat it, can I have it for her? I’m still starved.’

4

Lying in bed listening to the dark plays tricks with sounds. Moira was sure she heard Zara treading over leaf litter three times before she finally looked through the house’s good eye and saw her for certain. The girl was going into the tent. She hadn’t walked into town. That would have taken hours in bare feet, or stocking feet which were as good as bare feet, and it hadn’t been hours since that horrible business. Not even Zara would go into town without more clothes.

Moira didn’t want to speak to her. What would she say? Better to let it blow over till tomorrow. Though her stomach felt cold and churning thinking about what Zara had told her. When you have to take your own daughter’s baby and keep it by your side, keep it by your bed. When you fear harm might come to it—its own mother doing the harming—your stomach is cold and churning and you want Shane to come home soon and be with you for safety.

When he finally did she’d got Mathew back to sleep after a feed from the bottle and a change. She’d tried sleeping herself but could not do more than shut her eyes for a minute like a long blink. Mathew was in his little bed on the floor an arm reach away but still she had closed the house door, something she wouldn’t usually do on a hot night. There was a bolt on the frame, rusted and sticking. By giving the door a shove you could shift it across.

She did this and felt better. But she still preferred Shane to be there. She pushed the door wide open for him in case he was tipsy and waited on the step while the car was parked under the low-limbed sugar gum they called the garage. She saw that Midge was driving, so Shane must have tied one on. He got out of the car and bent over, hands on knees, as if vomiting. Yet he wasn’t drunk in that way. He wasn’t even drunk. You could tell by the clear-tongued voice he was greeting Limpy with. Midge tried to help him along by holding his elbow. Shane pulled his arm away and stood upright and walked. He was rubbing his side. He told Midge to leave him and turn the lamps off and go to bed. Moira asked if anything was wrong and Midge was about to answer but Shane waved for him to go to bed rather than speak on his behalf. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. Which Moira knew meant he wasn’t. It was useless to badger him. If something was wrong Shane didn’t tell you until he was ready. You could badger all you like, he’d say nothing.

When he got in the house he went straight to the bedroom ready to drop and sleep. He didn’t need to feel his way in the dark. He lurched towards the bed with habit for his eyesight. Moira tried to warn him about the little bed being there but he was deaf from tiredness and clipped its edge and fell over. Not to the floor but onto the big bed, shunting the casters against the wall. He let out some swearing into the bedding and lay face down holding his side. Moira slid the little bed back from where Shane’s toe had budged it.

‘You in pain?’

‘No.’

‘You want a Panadol?’

‘Yeah.’

Shane raised himself on one elbow. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s Mathew.’

‘Why’s he in here with us?’

‘I’m looking after him.’

‘Why?’

‘Letting Zara have a night off.’

Moira rifled in the kitchen for the biscuit tin they used for chemist things. She pressed two pills from the blister pack and gave them to Shane, and water. He gulped them and flopped down again. Even in the dimness there was blood easy to see, a snot of it dried where it had dribbled beneath his nose. His nostrils were black. There was a cut under his eye, about an inch long. The space between the bottom lid and the cut was swelling.

It was a while since this kind of trouble. Shane wasn’t a fighter. He wasn’t tall enough to have reach. He had strong arms for lifting homestead booty but he had no wish to lift people. People trouble got you injured. And the jail time was longer. It was better if you lost the fight: you looked the victim. Moira hoped Shane had lost. She was angry at him for fighting but hoped he lost for their sake and wasn’t too wounded.

He fell asleep. She took off his boots and his pants. She left his shirt on in case she touched his sore side. Then lifted his head onto the pillow. She wanted to clean his face but that would wake him. Mathew would be hungry soon and that would also wake him. She decided to stay up all night and have the bottle washed and filled with formula. When Mathew woke he’d have the teat right there at his mouth. There’d be no hunger-crying. Just normal silence.

The swelling hadn’t closed his eye but thankfully his eye white was bloodshot and the top of his cheek was shiny as if it might go purple. Under the morning sun Shane looked enough like he was the loser, which Moira was grateful for, though she’d never tell him. He’d lost some skin off his knuckles and his ribcage was red and risen near his armpit but his face looked the worst, as if he’d lost easily. Shane wouldn’t let her fuss with soapy water. He was acting brave, which Moira knew meant embarrassed. She was giving him sour looks, her lips pursed, disapproving of him, but he didn’t give her any. He usually would—he had no time for sour looks punishing him. She relaxed her lips to let him know she was nearing the end of punishing him.

‘So you’re not going tell me what happened?’ she said.

He shook his head and said, ‘Why’s the baby sleeping with us?’

‘He didn’t make a sound. And you slept good. Tell me what happened to you. Did it involve police?’

‘Nah.’ He shook his head again.

The sun was the colour of glass. Hot glass spilled from it, or so the light seemed. It poured through or over any obstacle in its path—scrub and tree tops. The trees pointed the way along the ground. The porch held no shade against it, not at this early hour. It would take till midday to form a line of shelter. Until then the house might as well be in the sky given the heat. The tent and the caravan might as well be in the sky in the afternoon when the sun faced their direction. For now, it was the house.

Shane sipped coffee on the theory that the warmer you were on the inside the cooler you felt outside. It took a full cupful to work and in the meantime you sweated but it was worth the discomfort till then. He strolled off around the side of the house to visit the toilet and sit there with his coffee air-conditioning.

Moira took a cup to the caravan for Midge and called for him to come out and have a word, please. ‘What happened?’ she said.

‘Fan belt broke on the way home last night.’

‘I’m not talking about fan belts. I mean Shane. He’s beaten up.’

Midge straightened his shoulders. ‘Not beaten up. He stood his ground good, Moira. He don’t go too bad when he’s had a few. Mind you, someone makes you mad enough.’

‘The other person. Did they get hurt?’

‘No.’

‘Property?’

‘They kept away from big breakables.’

‘Police?’

‘Nope.’

‘What was the fight about?’

‘Nothing much really.’

He was shuffling about, uncomfortable with the topic.

‘Didn’t you try and stop it?’

‘Me? I keep out of scraps. Too small. Get done. I’ll watch the trots, thank you very much. You know they got four TV screens at the pub now?’

‘I’m not interested in TV screens. Who was this fight with?’

‘Jim Tubbs.’

‘What?’

Tubbsy was a friend of Shane’s. Moira had a soft spot for him because she met Shane through Tubbsy, at the Horsham Tractor Pull festival where Shane was drinking with mates. Moira was there with a boyfriend who peddled stolen diesel. Tubbsy said that was a sleazy business. Come meet a friend of mine who’s in antiques. Tubbsy could get over-friendly with the drink under his belt, put his hand on your backside and give a rub and squeeze. But he came from trant stock and lived in Barleyville these days. There was a trant bond between them.

Tubbsy did farrier work and had arms thick as anvils. Nobody took on Tubbsy who didn’t have anvil arms of their own.

‘What made them have a falling out?’

‘Best if Shane tells you himself. Zara still asleep? You reckon I could peep in on the little fellow?’

‘No. Tell me what happened. Now.’

Midge got his asthma spray out and took a puff and shifted his weight from leg to leg.

‘I missed the lead-up. That Jim Tubbs, he’s a real mongrel sometimes. Filthy minded. No wonder his missus shot through.’

‘Keep going.’

‘Jim went too far. He’s got a mouth. It was just a joke but he said, “Come on, Shane. Be honest. Zara probably dropped your son, eh? You been having her on the side.” Shane did his block.’

‘I hope he did. I hope Shane did a job on him. The pig.’

‘Shane and Tubbsy are mates, Moira. It’ll blow over. Shane says we’re not going to that pub again. But it’ll blow over. Hope so. Four TV screens. A whole wall.’