The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie (37 page)

My brother had warned me I might lose myself. The opposite was true.

I had been lost
within
myself. When you're lost within yourself you make mistakes.

How fortunate that I had begun to change! That I was using my talents of observation, now, to help my FAD group see the
good
within themselves!

A Portrait of Astrid Bexonville
Ah, Astrid.

It has come to you at last.

The most important portrait.

The portrait I have feared.

The portrait that makes my heart flutter, nay that—

Enough!

Here I sit, on the terrace at Castle Hill Public Library. It is late afternoon, and chilly. My eyelashes keep fluttering. Auntie Veronica took me to the optometrist yesterday afternoon. Nothing wrong with my vision so he gave me trial contact lenses. They seem to make me blink. Strange though, to see the world without frames! As if I were a regular person with vision of my own!

I believe it is Tuesday. Three days until my birthday.

Tuesday?

I am missing piano!!

Ah well.

Obediently, I think of Astrid Bexonville.

I will not think of our conversation, near the end of Year 7, when I called her a lamb chop.

I will not think of the trip to Hill End—nor feel that tightening, those frantic gasps for air . . .

I will clear my mind of evil Astrid and see what makes her shine.

Astrid is like the speck of light at the tip of a sparkler. She is lively, agile, seems always to be climbing, hiding in gardens, running from police.

She is unafraid of spiders. In the FAD session at my place, an enormous huntsman appeared on the wall above the curtain rod. While Emily screamed, and the boys took large steps backwards, Astrid moved in, fascinated. She asked for a dustpan and broom, stood on the couch, captured the spider, and carefully carried it outside.

I remember in Year 9 when a teacher left the room for a moment, Astrid suggested that we all move into the empty room next door and sit down at the same desks. Everybody obeyed. The teacher was nonplussed. It was, in fact, amusing.

Oh, but there are so many ways I could help Astrid!

I could send her a checklist for alcoholics—how much
does
she drink? Does she understand the risks? I could recommend restraint and legal conduct. Why is she always running from the police? Perhaps if she stopped breaking the law? She has referred, obscurely, to shoplifting, drug use and minor acts of vandalism.

She talks about fashion and make-up a lot. Encourage her to be less superficial?

Perhaps I will send her this quote that I found only this morning in my etiquette book: ‘But a love of dress has its perils for weak minds.' (
Our Deportment,
p 313.)

But see how I stray into her flaws! Just because I don't break the law!

(Well, but I do! I stole a key from Maureen's shop, and I'd better find a way to put it back soon, or else . . .)

I must focus on Astrid's qualities.

She is very pretty, that stud in her eyebrow glinting in the sun.

There, in the distance now, walking down the hill from Castle Towers, I see a girl and her boyfriend. Like Astrid, the girl has long black hair, and has tied it with a lime green ribbon.

That green-and-black that Astrid favours—now, that is picturesque. Like pine needles scattered on inky mud. Like traffic lights in the rain. A black cow standing in a meadow.

The girl and her boyfriend have stopped at lights now, waiting to cross the street. The girl turns towards her boyfriend. They embrace. They hold each other tight.

They glance back towards the terrace where I sit.

There is something—

That is not a girl and her boyfriend!

That is Astrid.

And that is Sergio.

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday morning. My Birthday!
Since Tuesday, I have been lost and distressed, but the time has come to emerge from the gloom—it's my birthday!

Spin like a revolving door; pivot on your heel like a goal shooter! Face the sunshine again, Bindy—it's your birthday!

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday morning. My Birthday!
It is time to see the bright side of life, and the bright side of life is this:
I might have been wrong!

Maybe that was
not
Astrid and Sergio standing together at the lights? Maybe I
imagined
their embrace? (Look at the dismal state of my witnessing skills! That lawyer was amazed by my stupidity.
And
I was trying out new contact lenses!)

Another bright side: I have not seen any tenderness between the two these last few days. (I stopped school work altogether to spy—but found nothing.)

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday morning. My Birthday!
So! I will embrace my birthday and enjoy it. I will see nothing but the bright side. And tomorrow my FAD group goes to the Blue Mountains! (I wish I had something to wear.) Maybe I will finish my portrait of Astrid—I stopped it abruptly when I thought she was a traitor and so have not sent her a memo. I suppose I will give her some personalised memo stationery tomorrow.

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday morning. My Birthday!
Tonight, Auntie Veronica and Uncle Jake will make a birthday dinner, with Mum, Anthony, Sam and Ernst von Schmerz. Dad would be here too, of course, but he's still working in Tasmania.

There's my phone ringing now. Probably Dad. He likes to be the first with birthday greetings.

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday morning. My Birthday!
Huh. It was not my dad. It was my piano teacher. She just got a cancellation and suggested I come by later today, to make up for the lesson I missed on Tuesday.

Generous woman!

I see the postman through the window! I might just run downstairs . . .

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday morning. My Birthday!
THERE WAS A POSTCARD FROM DAD IN TASMANIA!!!! HOW DID HE TIME IT SO PERFECTLY!!! TO ARRIVE ON THISVERYDAY!!

I will not read it now.

I will save it for later today.

For now, school! Let's see who remembers it's my birthday.

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday afternoon. My Birthday.
Just home from piano and must do some visualisation exercises to restore my birthday mood. Piano was disconcerting. I was somewhat shaken when I arrived anyway, as no-one had remembered my birthday. (Except Ernst.) And teachers pleaded for overdue assignments, as if it were an ordinary day. I am weary of their pleading. ‘Can't you just write it yourself?' I snapped at Ms Walcynski today. The look that she gave me!

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday afternoon. My Birthday.
But, piano. I arrived to find Mrs Woolley on her front porch, chatting with another student's mother. We stood together for a moment, and watched a woman push a baby carriage by.

Guess who the woman was?

Eleanora.
My pasta lady.

She didn't look up as she passed: she was pushing the carriage quite briskly. And inside the carriage? A plump, happy baby, gurgling away at the world.

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday afternoon
And that's not all. Just after Eleanora passed, Mrs Woolley murmured, ‘Oh, there goes that poor woman, Eleanora. Her husband left her just a month before that baby was born. She's a nervous wreck about the baby, I hear, and terribly timid to boot—doesn't know a
soul
in this city. A woman in the corner store told me.'

The Philosophical Musings of Bindy Mackenzie
Friday afternoon
There I sat at Mrs Woolley's piano, scales and arpeggios trilling, while realisation weighed heavy, heavy! in my stomach. There was no
mystery
about Eleanora! She was just lonely! She needed somebody to
talk
to. All those nights while she made pasta and threw questions at me—she had seemed so stilted and peculiar. I could see nothing but secrets and intrigue. But she was simply
timid
! I never really knew that a grown-up could be ‘timid'.