Tree Palace (8 page)

‘You know how to spell “proprietor”, Moira?’ He knew very well she couldn’t spell it but he thought asking would get her attention focused on him. It didn’t work. Her lullabying didn’t break breath. He wrote the word on the form, spelling it out to himself:
Looked for bar work. Spoke to P-r-o-p-r-i-a-t-e-r.
At which point Moira came out of the house, saying, ‘Little fella’s off like a light,’ and Shane saw his moment, put down his pen and rubbed his hands together.

‘This pool business. I worked it out. Sit down and I’ll tell you.’

‘The pool business? Oh, the pool business.’

‘What we do is this: I take my bolt-cutters and we wait until the night session, nice and dark outside of the floodlights. And I cut a hole in the boundary fence wire and Zara slips through and has a swim and does any socialising she wants.’

‘That’d be great, Shane.’

‘Problem solved.’

‘You’re very clever.’

She leant forward and put her hand on his hand, on the sticky knuckles she was careful not to hurt.

Shane’s glow got warmer. He said, ‘Rory could probably slip through too and they wouldn’t notice him if he kept his head down. And you could slip through for a swim and then you can all slip back out the hole when you’re finished and we head off home.’

‘Oh, I won’t be going swimming. I’ll mind Mathew.’

‘Mathew.’ He sighed. ‘Mathew. How come you’re getting landed with all the work with him?’

‘I don’t mind. I’m enjoying it.’

‘He wakes me up at night I’ll kill him.’

‘Don’t you say that! Don’t you ever say that!’

Moira pulled her hand from his with a deliberate chafe over his wounds.

He flicked his sore hand and sucked on the knuckle. ‘It’s only a saying. Jesus.’

‘I don’t like it.’ She composed herself. ‘Let him sleep with us for a while, Shane. Please, honey.’

‘Why? What’s wrong with him sleeping with his mother? She shirking her duties?’

‘No.’

‘The kid got something wrong with him?’

‘No. The doctor said for me to help. He said it’ll take the pressure off Zara. She’s young and her body and her mind need time to cope. You know nothing about women.’

Moira’s particular habit if she was lying was that her neck stiffened and got longer and her chin pushed against her throat. The strain of it stopped any uncertain fidgetiness in her face. She had to be careful of doing it with Shane because he knew all her secrets and would be looking for her traits. She lifted her chin up to make sure he saw her throat and saw no stiffening. She concentrated on making her face remain steady. She fought against her chin dipping down.

Shane shrugged and sighed again and said, ‘If a doctor says so, I suppose you better do it.’

He folded his form neatly in half, then thought of something and flattened it back out on his knee. ‘Am I supposed to include Zara on our form or does she get her own? Might complicate
our
form having her included with a baby. Might get asked in for questioning.’

Questioning was always a concern. A few years ago Midge got questioned about his form and they checked up whether he’d been looking for work as stated. They kicked him off welfare and he had to wait to apply again. Ever since, Shane had rotated it with Midge. Midge went on for a few months and then went off and Shane applied. Then Shane went off and Midge went back on. When Shane went back on Moira was included as his dependant. Zara and Rory too, which meant more money, but still they stuck to the rotation system. Better to be safe rotating than risk being banned from applying at all. Shane called it ‘flying under the radar’.

Yet, in Zara’s case the rotation system might be worth revising. With a dependant of her own she’d get good money if she applied. If she went on their rotation system it could be profitable.

‘I’ll look into it,’ said Shane. ‘I’ll get the forms. Weigh the ins and outs.’

He folded his form into his pocket. ‘You go tell Zara about the pool.’

Moira went to the tent door and peeped under the closed flap and gave a soft call. ‘Zara, sweetie? Sweetie, I got good news. Shane’s got a plan for the pool.’

She ducked through the flap into the tent, sunlight coming in with her like a fog with dust and insects in it. ‘I said, Shane’s got a plan for the pool. He’ll get his bolt cutters and we’ll go in through the fence.’

For all the smell of canvas and plastic she could smell Zara’s hair needed washing, the mustiness of it, and the damp odour of her sleeping body. All of which would be solved by a good swim. ‘Sweetie, come on, wake up.’

She knelt by the bed. Zara moved her legs under the sheet.

‘You said you wanted to go to the pool, so let’s go tonight.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘But you said you wanted to.’

‘Don’t want to see nobody.’

‘But you wanted to.’

‘No.’

Shane put his head under the flap. ‘All good in here?’

Moira ordered him gone. She strode over and put her hands on his chest and said, ‘Out.’

She stood in front of him and walked him backwards outside. She said Zara wanted to thank him very much for the pool plan and was looking forward to a swim as soon as she felt up to it. Her neck stiffened, her chin closed over her throat and she smiled and touched Shane’s bruised cheek lightly and he accepted her word.

She waited until Shane and Midge had driven off—‘I got a bone to pick with Alfie in town,’ Shane said—and then went back into the tent, hooking up the flap to let the day in. She crouched on the plastic beside Zara and stroked her hair and shoulder. ‘This is no good. We can’t just go on like this,’ she said. ‘You can’t just lie there.’

She might as well have been talking to herself. Zara was awake and listening, her eyelids were moving, but she was silent.

‘If you’re not going to speak, if I’m going to talk to myself, I might as well say what I’m thinking.’

Moira knelt, straight-backed, her hands clasped against her chin like prayer. ‘What I’m thinking is, I get someone to help you if you’re like this. There’ll be someone at the hospital, maybe. Come to the hospital with me.’

‘No.’

‘You don’t want help?’

‘No.’

‘What, then? What do you want?’

‘To go. I want to go somewhere out of here.’

‘Where would you go?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere better.’

‘You got no money. Where can you go with no money?’

‘I don’t know.’

Moira’s hands cracked in the knuckle joints because she was clenching so tightly. Angry and pitying at once.

Hospital. There was a worry with hospital, she realised. It would not be as simple as giving Zara medicine. There would be questioning. And if they found out what Zara did they’d be on the phone, you could bet on that. Next thing the police would be doing the questioning and Zara would be a murderous mother in their eyes and Mathew taken away.

She didn’t say this to Zara. She said, ‘We don’t want to bother with hospitals. We take care of ourselves. No one else sticking their nose in. No one saying: If the girl doesn’t want the baby we should take him away.’

‘I want him taken away.’

Moira gripped the girl’s shoulder and squeezed but didn’t shake those words out of her like she wanted to. Instead she said, ‘You do not want him taken away,’ and let her head drop and her voice drop. Her breathing was shuddery.

Zara’s breathing was shuddery too and there was a faint whistle in her nose.

‘You don’t want him taken away. Sounds good now but what about ten, twenty years. You’d be the woman who wanted her baby taken. Let me help you. I can take care of Mathew and you can get better in the meantime.’

7

Alfie wasn’t at his shop, it was a wasted trip, so they drove straight home. Normally they’d have gone off and had a drink at the pub but not today—Tubbsy might be there. Shane made it clear to Moira that his loyalty was with her. He’d had a good think about it and decided some things shouldn’t blow over. Not straight away. Maybe sometime in the future, but not at the moment. She kissed him for that. Just on the cheek, which was more meaningful than the lips because the lips can be mistaken for sexual, not heartfelt thanks.

Wind had lowered itself along the ground instead of staying up higher and blowing clouds into thinner clouds. It had come down fast like a dry storm with dust for rain. Hotter than you’d think air could be without coming from heaters. If a magpie tried to fly against it it was ripped away and forced to land. The short trees whipped forward. The bigger trees twisted and hissed. Dead branches snapped. A gale that had hours to go before it tired. The flat earth gave it a clear run.

Best thing to do was stay inside and suffer the heat with the slats closed across the tearing glad-wrap window. If you went outside you needed the house or the caravan for a windbreak. There was a spray bottle that Moira half filled with water. You sprayed it on your skin and the wind cooled you, but only for seconds. She put Mathew on the kitchen table and sprayed him over but he didn’t like it and cried. Shane was on the bed having a sleep. She heard him turn over—squeaks of the bedsprings. He didn’t rouse from the baby’s noises, but even so she took Mathew outside, a shield of tea towel for his face. She didn’t last two strides before the wind made her go back.

Rory was outside. Moira didn’t notice. He saw her and didn’t want her seeing him so he crouched behind Zara’s tent, the canvas cheeks puffing from gusts. When Moira had gone back inside he pushed through the flap. ‘Hey, Zara. Wake up, Zara,’ he said. Even when she swore at him to fuck off and leave her alone he persisted and asked for a lend of her make-up. ‘Where’s your make-up bag?’ And sunglasses. He wanted a lend of sunglasses. She had the airline pilot sort that she’d thieved or traded or something. He said he wasn’t leaving her alone until she lent them.

Typical Rory, thought Moira when he leant against the doorframe for dinner, sunglasses on, baseball cap pulled down like a snub to her. Typical Rory, said Shane. Sunglasses and cap, trying to be a tough guy.

The boy ate outside, saying that inside smelled of babies. The gas was lit for Mathew’s feeding and it doubled the heat.

Midge joined him, though Rory moved off to be alone as if brooding over his bowl.

Moira took a serve of instant noodles to Zara and left it by her bed with advice to blow on it and sip or it would burn her tongue. She didn’t know what else to do but feed her. Keep up a ration of connection.

When night came it was starless dark and so windy the trees sounded like rapids. There was no point sleeping outside as you normally did when the nights sweltered. Who could sleep in that wind? Yet there being no stars meant the wind would soon change. The north-travelling clouds were thickening way up there out of sight. South-west clouds were doing the same and were ready to clash. Limpy slunk off under the house for cover.

It happened after midnight. A southerly snap of coolness that caused the house’s timbers to flinch. The tree rapids became wilder and thunder rolled above them. Lightning twitched among storm clouds. A few fat raindrops spattered on the roof but that was all. No rainy smell for the nostrils, let alone anything to fill the tank. The stars came out and bats flew white beneath them. You could see all the way to the moon again. Rory slept through the change and Zara must have too. Moira and Shane didn’t. They went outside so the air could tingle their skin. Midge came out and did the same, holding up his arms to let the jolting cold in.

The air was still cool at morning and it worked through the flesh, bringing good spirits to everyone. Not Zara—her spirits were too closed over to receive fresh weather. Rory was persisting with his tough-guy look but took off after a feed of Weet-Bix to lift stones onto the shed’s tarp fringe. He wasn’t told to, he just offered. Shane put it down to the weather or a spurt of good-boy hormones.

The day’s priority was to get into town and catch Alfie. Get in early when he was sure to be in his office. Moira said she’d come too. There were groceries to buy, and washing to do, and they might as well all go in together. That was true but she was also mindful of police. Better to have Shane driving and not draw attention to herself just a day after getting stopped. She sat in the back seat with Mathew and two plastic bag loads of washing. The window down an inch for the breeze. No need for a towel to keep the sun out. The sun lacked bite today. It was up there in plain view but uncompetitive against the coolness.

Front of Alfie’s shop was for the ancient implements: hoes and scythes of the Grim Reaper kind. Ploughshares and pitchforks with red-rusty prongs. Bridles and a horse harness with straw bursting from the stitching. Like a dusty museum of the plains. But in this museum everything was for sale, though not much ever sold to Barleyvillers. Not the meat scales and pump organ. Old tonic bottles dug up from cottage gardens. Sewing machines and top hats, polo sticks, fur stoles, lace doilies and mounted ram horns. Lace bed linen and table cloths, sun-yellowed but heavy with grace. All of them popular in city junk stores.

Locals preferred the middle section of the store where more practical goods could be picked through for bargains. Egg beaters and egg poachers. Pottery bowls and jars with
Sugar
painted on them. Cutlery, carving knives and steels laid out on metal shelves. There was fancy crockery—not a full set but odd cups and plates.

Moira couldn’t bring herself to like just one cup and saucer, however pretty and floral and only five dollars instead of a fortune. She’d had her heart fixed on a full, gleaming complement. She didn’t know why exactly. Some ladylike fantasy of being a better person in better times. Settling for one cup would ruin the fantasy and make her resent needing fantasies. Fantasies were just another way of saying your own life won’t do.

Yet she would have slipped a cup and saucer into the folds of Mathew’s pram if Alfie wasn’t important to Shane. She was tempted anyway but saw Alfie looking over Shane’s shoulder, suspicious, which offended her. She picked up a cup and held it to the light, shook her head dismissively and put the cup down in its saucer with a forceful clink.

The good stuff, the hefty period-feature items, was out the rear through the sliding door into the backyard and converted hayloft. The loft took up most of the yard and had crumbly timber walls patched with fibro and lengths of tin. Its padlocked door was a big modern kind tall enough to take vehicles. This was where Shane and Midge were used to doing business. They would lift their load from their trailer in through the door and Alfie would give each item a wipe with his chamois as they set it down. He would give them an estimate of what it might fetch in Melbourne and he would make some calls and arrange buyers. Men who had first names that sounded like last names—Sinclair and Godfrey.