Little Wing (7 page)

She wore the same old trackpants and fleecy top she always wore. The pants had slipped down over her hips and the top rode up as she lay with her arms above her head, leaving her middle exposed. He thought how transparent her skin, how mottled with cold, and threaded with fine blue veins. He saw the slenderness of her waist, and the steady rhythm of her breathing.

3

Martin didn't tell Cat that he'd spent the day with Emily in the forest. He wasn't sure why he kept it from her. Nothing had
happened
between them. But if nothing had happened, why did he have such a feeling of expectancy each day? He always half expected to find Emily standing at the open door. But she didn't come.

In the meantime there was his ordinary, everyday life: pegging the washing out to dry, enjoying the smell of fresh sheets; seeing Pete hurtling into the child-care centre in the mornings and hurtling out just as fast when he was picked up in the afternoons; making a snack with him when they got home; eating it together in the back yard. There was curling up behind Cat in the early morning, every morning, a special, blessed part of each day; reaching over to take her hand while she slept.

The air was balmy, and it made even more sense to keep all the doors and windows open. But a bird got caught in the house; a little brown honeyeater that couldn't find the way out. He finally released it by throwing a teatowel over it and cupping its small beating body inside his hands. Then there was the mouse that had crept into the kitchen and lived there somewhere, which he fed by putting a few crumbs on a saucer in the corner. But when he found it running around on the bench one day, about to get into the bread (it slunk away, low and lean, its belly flat to the ground), he caught it in a tunnel trap and released it into the forest. There was the spider that lived above the laundry tubs and stood guard over an egg sac. There was the yellow robin in the lemon tree, looking just like a lemon; it looked at him with its bright eye and flew away. He recorded all of this in the silk-covered book that Emily had given him.

And then one day she was there. It was an ordinary morning, a non-pre-school day. He and Pete were making a chocolate cake. Pete had licked out the bowl, and had somehow got chocolate mixture all over his fringe (‘I wanted to see what it would be like to actually lick it out, Dad, and not use the spoon'), and the cake was in the oven. And there was Emily at the front door, then in the kitchen, staring almost without comprehension at a wooden spoon full of raw cake-mix that Pete had thrust into her hands, and fending off Pete's questions as to where she'd been. ‘Nowhere, Pete,' she said. ‘I never go anywhere. I've just been . . .
about
.'

She seemed very cool and calm, and almost happy. They went out into the back yard, and Martin got his guitar, a steel-stringed acoustic that he seldom played any more; it felt as if he hadn't played it for years. And he sat on the grass and played her a tune he hadn't thought of in a long time, a tune he associated with the time years ago when he played in the band. Emily listened with a smiling, wistful, distracted expression on her face, and Martin said when he'd finished, ‘It's a pretty little tune, isn't it?'

She said, ‘Matt plays the guitar. Matt . . . Mahalia's father? But he plays bass.'

That was all she said. They sat there in the sun with Pete buzzing round them while Martin played another tune.

After that, Emily came round almost every day. She took to coming into the house again without knocking, and he could gauge how she was by the manner of her arrival. If she was having a good day she pinged the bell on the bicycle in the hallway to warn him she was on her way; on bad days she slunk into the kitchen without speaking and seemed crushed, scarcely able to move.

On a good day she might take Pete for a walk to the corner shop and come back with packets of mixed lollies; she ate lunch with fastidious pleasure, picking up her food in her fingers and afterwards licking them ostentatiously. Other times she would weep at apparently nothing, walk into a branch of the lemon tree and scratch her face, or accidentally drop a plate on the floor, leave the house, and not come back for days.

She could sit for ages not saying anything, staring straight ahead, and there was something fierce and desperate in her expression. She was like someone in a silent, continuous battle with herself.

They sometimes sat in the garden and talked about nothing in particular. Afterwards, he couldn't even remember what they'd said. A tree in the garden dropped pink blossoms over the path. Sometimes one tumbled while he watched, and it was like the soft, sad sound of her occasional laughter.

4

He accepted three days' casual teaching with a Year Three class. He liked to do things with his temporary classes that were easy and fun, so that day they looked for frogs in the drain behind the school (and found none), and then he gave them a photocopied diagram of a frog, and got them to label all the parts of a frog's anatomy from a similar picture he drew on the board. He got them to colour in the frog, and they got so keen on art that he found a whole lot of stuff in the storeroom and they made collages of the animals they'd like to be. He'd brought in his acoustic guitar and they sang songs. He read them a story called
Amos and Boris
about a whale and a mouse who were great friends, and they discussed the importance of loyalty and friendship and how you didn't need to be exactly like someone to have a great affinity with them. He got the children to lie down on mats on the floor and taught them how to close their eyes and relax. He watched how some settled down immediately and even fell asleep, and some wriggled and squirmed and opened one eye and giggled, or scratched their noses.

He loved all of them – the ones who came up to him in the playground and put their hands in his, tangling their hot, sweaty little fingers with his own, and those who came up to him earnestly to tell him something, their breath smelling of bananas and peanut butter, and the ones who concentrated so intently on what they were doing that they appeared lost to the rest of the world.

Martin preferred the classroom to the staffroom, where most of the teachers seemed jaded and weary with life. He found few kindred spirits in school staffrooms, though there was often at least one teacher (usually a woman) who chatted to him in a friendly way, or gave him a conspiratorial glance.

It was at the end of one day while the children were lying on the floor relaxing that Martin found the time to think about Emily. The other day, she'd said that even though her parents wanted her to give the baby away, she and Matt had always planned to keep it. ‘We thought that if we just loved her enough, everything would be all right. How dumb was that?

‘I hated myself. Because I was weak when she needed me to be strong.'

He remembered when Pete was born, the first time he'd held him. He wanted nothing bad to ever happen to him, he wanted to look after him forever. He remembered cupping that tiny head in his hands, where it fitted perfectly. But you couldn't protect your children from everything. Or perhaps from anything much at all.

That afternoon, after collecting Pete from pre-school, he arrived home to find Emily sitting on the front steps. Inside the house, she curled up on the chair in the living room, and when he brought her in a cup of hot chocolate she'd fallen asleep. He covered her with a blanket, noticing how meekly her feet rested one on top of the other. She had a secret mole at the back of her ankle. She didn't stir even when Pete turned the television on softly for
Play School
, and he and Pete sat there beside her while she slept.

She was still sleeping when Cat arrived home. Martin was in the kitchen preparing the dinner when he heard the front door bang shut. Then Cat was there with her workday eager face. She threw down her bag next to the table and kissed him. ‘We've got a visitor?' she said.

‘She's not staying . . .'

And then Emily stood at the doorway, drowsy and rumpled. She rubbed her forehead, and then took her hand away and stared at it, as though seeing it for the first time.

‘Emily – hey!'

She looked up, as though she hadn't known that anyone was there. ‘Hello? . . . I, um, think I fell asleep.' She gestured towards the living room. ‘Better be getting home.'

‘Okay,' said Martin. ‘I'll see you out. Actually . . . have you met Cat?'

The two of them stood on either side of the kitchen, staring at him. Cat smooth and golden and definite, Emily fuzzy and freckled and astonished-looking.

‘Kind of,' said Emily. ‘Well, not properly . . . I'd better be getting back. Charlotte . . . my godmother,' she explained to Cat, ‘will be wondering where I am.'

Martin went with her to the front door. ‘Does she mind?' whispered Emily, as he opened it for her.

‘You being here? No – course not.' He reached out and squeezed her arm.

And then she was down the front steps and gone without looking back.

When he got back to the kitchen, Cat said, ‘Why don't you invite her to lunch one Saturday?'

‘Lunch . . .' said Martin. ‘I don't think “lunch” as such, in the way you mean, is the kind of thing she does.'

‘What – she doesn't eat?'

‘Well, of course she does . . .'

‘It's a bit odd, her coming round here all the time when I don't even know her – don't you think it's reasonable that we should at least meet properly?'

‘Sure it is.'

But he knew that a formal invitation might throw Emily; simply dropping in when she needed or wanted to was more her style.

‘I'll ask her when I see her,' he said.

Later that night, after Pete was in bed, Martin sat in the kitchen playing his guitar while Cat wiped down the kitchen benches. She seemed stern and remote, far too preoccupied with the housework. He strummed softly, one ear on the music, and one on the music of his own heart, which suddenly, more than anything needed to take Cat out to the back yard and dance in the moonlight.

‘Dance with me, Cat?'

She didn't reply.

‘Out in the garden? There's practically a full moon,' he said.

‘Okay,' said Cat lightly. ‘Just wait till I finish cleaning the sink.'

‘Oh, c'mon,' he said.

‘Done.' She threw the sponge down.

Cat wasn't the most romantic girl he'd ever met, but she would dance with him anywhere and any time. She had perfect rhythm, even without music, and she knew how to dance close and slow. That night there was a lot of moonlight to dance in, and a wonderful coldness to the air.

‘Do you know what?' he said. ‘I've been thinking. I'd like to teach properly. Full-time. It'd be great to get to know a group of kids really well and see them progress.'

‘What about Pete?'

‘He'll be at school next year. And if you wanted to, you could have another baby and stay home . . . we could swap for a while. How about it?'

Cat didn't say anything, but he could sense her considering it. ‘I don't know that I'd want to give up my place at the hospital,' she said after a while, without sounding totally convinced.

There was very little sound to distract them while they danced – a car moving slowly down the street, a dog barking in someone's yard – and Martin felt a great sense of rightness and peace. Everything was cool air and moonlight and the scent and softness of Cat's skin. Then Martin saw a figure standing in the back doorway watching them, a small dark shape against the light from the house.

He broke off. ‘Pete,' he said. ‘What are you doing up?'

‘Getting a drink of water. What are
you
guys doing?'

‘Dancing,' replied Cat. ‘You know we like dancing.'

She took Pete inside and Martin heard her getting him some water and taking him back to bed. He thought with anxiety about Emily and what it might be like, all of them having lunch together (a weekday lunch with him was always a casual, scrappy affair, and often Emily didn't feel like eating much at all).

When Cat arrived back she took up her place in his arms, but the soundless music they'd been dancing to – the music that had made their movements fluid and effortless – had disappeared somehow. He began by treading on her toe (‘Sorry . . .') and then when they tried to start dancing they were hopelessly out of step.

Cat stopped. ‘Let's start again.'

But the mood was lost. Shrugging, Cat dropped his hand. ‘I think I can hear Pete again,' she murmured, and went inside, leaving him alone in the dark garden.

5

The door was open but Emily knocked, the day she came to lunch. Martin had been listening for her, and walked down the hallway to greet her with a feeling of apprehension. She stood in a short red dress with a mauve cardigan over the top even though the day was warm. Her legs were bare. She carried a huge bunch of roses and ferns which almost obscured her face, so he couldn't read how she was feeling.

‘From Charlotte's garden,' she said, thrusting them at him, but he ushered her through to the kitchen so she could give them to Cat herself. Once divested of them she seemed unsure what to do with her hands. He gave her a glass of apple juice, but when he passed it over she didn't grasp it properly and it tipped, sending juice splattering all over the floor.

‘Oh . . . I'm sorry. So sorry.'

Cat wiped up the juice. ‘It's good to meet you properly at last, Emily . . .' she said, but what she was about to say next was interrupted by Pete. He burst in from where he'd been playing in the backyard, lurched towards Emily and kissed her on her bare knee before catapulting away again, up the hallway to his room. Emily stood helplessly, looking as though she wanted to follow him.

‘You can go up to Pete's room if you like,' Martin told her, and she gave him a grateful glance. When he followed a bit later to call them for lunch, she was lying on her back on the floor with her arm shielding her eyes. Pete played with his Lego next to her and talked. He was saying, ‘Do you ever think that you might be dreaming or imagining you're alive?' This was Pete's latest thing.