Fall Girl (28 page)

He holds my hand and tells me a story about a little boy whose classmates called him Dunny, who was the last picked in every team. A boy who wheezed if he walked too quickly and carried his grey inhaler in the top pocket of his shirt always, sucking on it when he was anxious or shy like a prescription thumb-replacement.

By day he was quiet, evasive at school or tucked in a corner of his room alone, reading or playing with his Action Man toys. After dark he couldn't step on the floor of his room. He moved to the bed by a complicated process of leaps from the hallway to a chair, then to a pile of cushions positioned carefully on the floor so the monsters underneath couldn't grab his ankles. He dreamed of falling, drowning, being eaten by crocodiles, devoured by monsters. He woke with hair sweat-damp, heart hot and racing.

Then one day his father looked up from his desk and saw his son before him—wan, craven, pudgy—and knew action was required. Camping, Daniel told me, was like a secret tonic for manhood brewed by generations of Metcalfs. Confronting the dark built courage; erecting a tent, dexterity with mallet and peg; walking through the bush, muscles that would eventually replace the baby fat that clung so stubbornly.

The weekend Arnold Metcalf chose was cold; winter had come early to Wilsons Promontory. When they reached the campsite, scarcely fifty metres from the car, they found a few patches of tired earth separated by struggling grass and a prison-grey toilet block.

Arnold paused.
No
, he said.
Trimmed grass? Bloody toilet block?
He slipped his thumbs under the straps of his pack and kept walking. On to the far track, deeper into the forest, past the signs that said
No camping beyond this sign
and
Camp only in designated bays
.

Eventually Arnold chose to camp in a small damp clearing barely large enough for a tent, a few metres off a rough track. The ground was thick with dead leaves and shrubs, overhung with shadows. Danny watched his father put up the tent and imagined a carpet of black spiders waiting to jump on his defenceless ankles.

It was very late. Danny should still have been snuggled up asleep in his Tom and Jerry pyjamas, exhausted from the long walk and intense sulking. It was freezing outside. Dark.
Put it out of your mind
, he thought.
Go back to sleep
. If only he hadn't drunk that can of warm lemonade with the cold baked beans they had had for dinner.

The pressure from Danny's bladder was becoming extreme. Arnold was deep asleep. A long, low whistle came from one nostril, and a small slurp. Danny was frightened to wake his father now. There was no option. He would have to go outside under a tree. In the dark.

Danny edged out of his sleeping bag, slipped on his sandshoes and crawled to the door of the tent. Lifted the flap and peered outside. Nothing. The moon was deep beneath the clouds and the trees he had seen all afternoon had lost their shape in the inky black—a spreading dark that could conceal anything. An escaped criminal, perhaps. Or a dingo. If he were a dingo, under a tree is exactly the spot he'd wait for a small unsuspecting boy to take out his penis at dingo-jaw height. He crawled back and sat on the sleeping bag again. He lay down, shut his eyes. Then in a blind surge, he bolted for the tent flap and lurched into the blackness on hands and knees. The dark was complete and threatening. The night pressed in on him, hiding things.

He was uncertain of his direction; he inched forward with sounds around him on all sides. A dank smell from the trees, a rustling of leaves. Eventually he sensed space around him, enough to stand, and there he stopped, pulled down his pyjama pants a little and aimed into the blackness. The relief he felt almost weakened his knees. As if in reward for his courage, the clouds parted the instant he finished, sending a shaft of light down on the track just as Danny straightened his pants and turned to go.

Then he heard a noise almost directly behind him in the bush. A snuffling sound, something disturbing the fallen leaves and scrub. Not a little noise, like a snake or a spider or a mouse. A big noise.

Danny froze. It was a dragon, the last one in existence, breathing fire, waiting to eat him alive. It was a wild pig, tusks dripping blood. An axe murderer, hockey-masked and chuckling, coming to separate his body from his head.

Danny's heart beat faster and his brain seemed to function a long way above his body and screamed to him to run, shrieking, as quickly as he could back to the tent. But he didn't. Against all his better judgment, all his character, all his experience, Danny slowly turned his head and looked.

In the dark, through the bush, he could see a pair of luminous eyes glowing. Satanic eyes, staring straight at him. He sank to his knees and as he cowered there, frozen, out of the bush walked a monster. It might have been a wild dog, but it wasn't. It might have been a giant wolf but it wasn't that either. It was like no animal Danny had ever seen or ever imagined. Longer nose-to-tail than Danny was tall. Heavy, with a head disproportionally huge; a sense of bulk looming much, much too close. Strong crouching limbs that seemed tensed to spring. The stripes on its hindquarters warning, like a hornet or a venomous snake. It hissed, a kind of low growling menace. Its eyes, pale and malevolent, bored straight into Danny's.

They stood and stared at each other, Danny and the monster. Neither so much as blinking. For a minimum of two minutes and a maximum of a lifetime, Danny was rooted to the spot. Eyes bugged, perspiration dribbling down his back. Two minutes. All the nights he'd been frightened, all the times he'd begged
please,
Daddy, let me sleep with the light on
. And now, he was standing, body paralysed, mind utterly vacant, in front of a monster.

They might have stood there all night, staring at each other, but at a sound—a branch falling, a possum scrabbling up a tree—the monster turned its head. It opened its mouth impossibly wide as if its jaws were unhinged, as if it was about to pounce and tear out Danny's throat. Then it yawned and stretched its stiff tail. A dirty musk smell hit Danny like a fist to the bridge of the nose, and he vomited on the path. When Daniel looked up, the monster was gone.

‘You don't seem much like a whiney brat now,' I say. The candles have burned low. I have pulled a throw rug from the couch and wrapped it around us. ‘A bit, but not a lot.'

‘Somehow my walnut-sized brain figured that seeing a monster was the worst thing that could ever happen to me,' he says. ‘Somehow from that moment I knew I could get through anything.'

I had thought the whole idea of Tasmanian tigers was too impossible to believe. And yet he did believe it. It was me he didn't believe. ‘Ruby was right,' I say.

‘Ruby was right about what?'

‘Why didn't you ask, “Who's Ruby?”'

‘Ruby and I are old friends. I should phone her, actually. I promised I'd let her know how things went,' he says. ‘Don't look so surprised Della. Once I had this address it was easy to track the owner of the house, find your dad in prison, find Ruby. How else did I know you'd be here today?'

He's had the best lawyers that money can buy, paid by a friend who has
stuck by us
. Of course.

‘You've seen him,' I say. ‘Dad.'

‘My chess has improved out of sight but I keep getting Plato and Socrates confused,' Daniel says. ‘He's tearing his hair out.'

‘Is he still angry with me?'

‘He's not even angry with himself. He's planning a whole new career when he gets out. He's going to become a fraud prevention consultant. He's got lectures with banks and police forces all lined up. They're recommending him for early parole on account of his willingness to reform.'

‘Reform,' I say. ‘That'll be the day.'

‘And you, Della? What are you going to do now?'

And right then I know. Now, for the first time in my life, there is no sting I have to practise for, no obligation to fulfil, no work to organise. I am free. There is something I want to do. Something I have wanted to do my whole life, but I've only just realised it now.

This is what I know. Her name, of course, and her age. When I was small, I remember Ava once wore a dress I had never seen before to a cocktail party in the city: sapphire blue, kimono-style, with embroidered gold dragonflies and flowing sleeves. When I told her how beautiful it was, she said, ‘It was your mother's.' I know my hair must come from her. I know my father met her when she was just seventeen, the daughter of an antique-dealer friend of his, my grandfather MacRobertson, who knew more about ageing timber and gluing Edwardian legs on to modern tables than he ought. I've seen her name on the flyleaf of books and once, when I was about twelve and playing hide and seek with Sam and my cousins, I found a small glass jar at the back of the pantry. The contents, brown and evil-looking, were not fit for pigs but a faded piece of cardboard attached to the neck with string said
Apple, sultana and cinnamon
chutney Marla September 1977
. Once I heard someone say she had played lacrosse as a girl. She has a brother who is a printer in Manchester. When she left us, she was younger than I am now.

On the way to the airport we stop and pick up Ruby. She is staying in a motel deep in the suburbs, on the way to the prison. For a moment I wonder where she has found the money for that, but I look at Daniel and decide not to ask. She seems the same, in a dusty pink woollen suit. Chanel. I jump out to open the door for her and she smiles and hugs me a little gingerly. Either I am thinner than I thought or it pains her to touch these revolting clothes. She slides into the back seat of Daniel's BMW with an easy, familiar motion.

‘I've been so concerned for you. So has your father. Lord, you look a mess.' Then she says, ‘Hello Daniel dear,' and she leans forward and kisses his cheek.

‘Ruby,' he says. ‘I hope Larry's well.'

‘Della. You can't go in those clothes,' says Ruby, as she cranes her neck from the back seat. ‘You can't arrive in London looking like a scarecrow. Let me buy you a dress, something with a defined waist. Something that suits you. And for God's sake, no pastels. Something dressy you can wear if you find her. I mean when. When you find her.'

We are in the terminal, Daniel, Ruby and me. It's chaos here. We have had coffee and reheated lasagne and have walked around the shops while waiting. Around us are excited people: pale-faced teenagers with backpacks and crying parents; a group of Asian tourists and their guide who holds a flag over his head and blows a whistle from time to time; a bored-looking businessman carrying a shiny briefcase and reading
Fortune
magazine. All these people are flying overseas, but there's one minor difference between me and them. Somewhere, deep in the belly of our plane, they all have luggage.

In the food court near the sign that says
International Departures
there sits a woman with three small children. The children are slurping noodles, squabbling, crying and kicking each other in the shins. They'll be on my flight, definitely. The way they kick, probably in the row behind me.

Ruby pulls me aside, takes a fist-full of notes from a cash machine, presses them upon me.

‘I'm sorry about the cheque,' I say. ‘I'm sorry about everything.'

She is fussing now, straightening my collar, tsk-ing over a broken button on the front of my shirt. ‘Wait until you get to the other side, past immigration,' she says. ‘Then you don't need to pay the tax. And no horizontal stripes.'

‘Tell Dad and Sam and the cousins I'm sorry.'

‘They'll get over it. It's time we got rid of that house anyway. Nasty, draughty old thing.'

‘Ruby. What will you do?'

‘Perhaps you should get some trousers. You've got the hips for it and they're better for travelling. More relaxed. Something with a flat front.'

‘Thank you, Ruby,' I say. ‘But you can't afford this,' and I try to give her back the cash. ‘You need it for you and Dad.'

‘It doesn't matter,' she says. ‘We've had our whole lives to get it right. Now it's your turn.' I think for a moment she's going to hug me again, but instead she peers into my face. ‘And for heaven's sake get some mascara.'

I cannot thank her for all the years of cooking and cleaning and teaching me to read and work and dress, so I don't. I look at her face and see I don't need to. I nod and take the money and fold it inside my bra. The boarding pass is tight in my hand, along with the spare passport I retrieved from the false bottom of my wardrobe before we left the house. Whoever buys that house is going to love the secret passages. I hope they don't tear it down. I hope a herd of children live there and discover all our secrets.

I hear an announcement then: they're talking about my flight. It's almost time to go through. Daniel has stayed this whole time, as involved as if it was his trip.

‘I'll pay you back for this,' I say to Daniel. ‘For the ticket, I mean.'

He grins. ‘Will you? Why?'

I hold my arms out and twirl, as though I'm wearing an emerald cocktail dress instead of the Jervises' old work clothes. ‘Can't you see I'm a new woman?' I say.

‘I kind of liked the old one,' he says. ‘Life's been dull without her.'

People are milling around the door to immigration now. They are hugging each other, tearful goodbyes. The mother has lost something and is pulling everything out of her handbag on to the floor. The kids have darted off to buy last-minute rubbish from the newsagent and one has fallen on the floor and is crying like a car alarm. The businessman is making a final phone call, ordering somebody about and raising his voice. He looks at the crying child like it might explode. For a moment my chest feels so tight that I can't breathe.

‘Anyway,' I say, and even as the words come out I know I have been meaning to say this all the way here in the car. ‘You're looking quite tired. Are they bags around your eyes?'