The End of the World (12 page)

‘Gran, please. I’ll look after them. I promise!’ All I could think about were the screams of fear from the blind kittens as they were laid on the cold concrete.

‘Have you been listening to me at all?’ Gran swapped the bag from one hand to the other as if she was about to smack me.

I stepped back against the wall and hunched my shoulders. I was still sniffling. Gran sighed loudly.

‘Here,’ she said to me. She pulled the largest kitten from the bag, the only one with its blue eyes fully open, and held it by the scruff of its neck in front of me. The kitten, curled into a foetal ball, stared unseeing past my shoulder.

‘Keep this one for a week. See what it’s like to be responsible. It’s a lot harder than you think.’

After Gran gathered up the clothes that needed mending and bleaching, we all followed her and Pop out to the Humber to wave goodbye. Gran took Mum’s hand and held it for a second. She ordered us all to behave, threatened to bring the scissors the next week and cut off all of Pauline’s hair, pointed out a smeared handprint on the bedroom window facing the street, and finally got into the passenger seat and was driven away.

As soon as the sound of the engine had died away and Mum had climbed the steps and gone inside, Gary ran around from the side of the house, brandishing a hammer.

‘This is it!’ he said. ‘Come and look. This is the hammer she uses to kill the kittens. I stole it from Pop’s toolbox. Come on, look. See, it’s got dried blood on it.’

I looked at the hammer smeared with mercurochrome, and felt the purring kitten shift in the crook of my arm. I reached down and stroked its ears.

‘What’s that?’ Gary said, astonished, and dropped the hammer on his foot.

Having something none of my brothers or sisters was allowed should have made me gloat. All of my toys and books and clothes, even hair ribbons, had been used before I got them, but this was no hand-me-down cat. This was my own kitten, something no one else was allowed to have, and I should have been ecstatic.

‘Here, you can pat it,’ I told Pauline.

She looked down at the kitten and made a face. ‘No way–it’s filthy!’

The kitten drove me mad. It followed me everywhere, piddled on my bed, wanted to be fed and patted, mewed pitifully in the laundry at night. The way it depended on me was frightening. When Gran visited the next week she asked me how it was.

‘It’s all right,’ I said.

‘Show me,’ Gran demanded.

Even before I put the kitten down in front of her I knew she would be angry. Jimmy had daubed the tip of its tail with fluorescent green paint, and I hadn’t had time to clean it off. Jimmy’s left ear was fluorescent green too, but Gran didn’t notice. She stared down at the kitten.

Apart from giving it food and playing catch-the-string with it a few times I hadn’t taken much care of it. I suppose the kitten was too young to know how to clean itself–besides having paint on its tail, its fur was matted and dull. Yellow stuff was leaking from its left eye and it was a bit shaky. I wished that I’d never opened my mouth about the kittens.

Gran’s eyes were squeezed tight, and they were wrinkled and red and old. She picked up the kitten and held it to her breast. When she turned her head to me, her eyes were watery. I wondered why she would be crying.

‘You careless, careless child. I’m taking this kitten away,’ she said.

‘Yes, Gran,’ I answered, relieved.

Still clutching the kitten like a baby to her breast, she turned to Mum.

‘I have to take it, Libby.’

Mum’s face had flushed and she had two crimson spots high on her cheeks. She stood up, wiped her hands on her apron, untied the strings and pulled the apron off as she walked over to Gran and me.

‘Come here,’ Mum said to me.

‘Where’s that tea towel?’ she asked Gran, handing her the apron.

Gran’s lips parted as if she was about to speak, but instead she passed Mum the tea towel from its hook on the wall. Mum, holding the tea towel in both hands, tugged a couple of times at both ends like she was trying to stretch it. So quickly that I only realised what had happened when the sting brought tears to my eyes, she bent over and flicked the tail of the tea towel across the back of my knees. I looked up and, through the wobbly film of tears in my eyes, I saw that my mother and my grandmother, standing side by side, had the same kind of square face.

‘I’ll take that cat,’ Mum said to Gran. She reached over and grasped the kitten from Gran’s hands. ‘We shouldn’t have expected a child to know how to look after an animal.’ She wheeled around to face the corner I had slunk into. ‘But you should be ashamed, Anne. Look at the poor thing. Does it look like someone cares for it? Does it?’

‘No,’ I whispered.

‘Well get that bowl from under the sink and fill it with water, and bring some rags from the top cupboard,’ Mum said.

‘It’s all right, Libby, I’ll look after it,’ Gran said. She reached for the kitten, but Mum stared into Gran’s eyes. I couldn’t move. I felt sick, imagining the struggling kitten held down by Mum’s hand in the enamel bowl, and bubbles breaking on the surface of the water.

Mum looked down at the kitten in her hand. ‘Where’s that bowl, Anne? We have to wash this kitten and give it some food.’

‘Libby, as if you haven’t got enough on your plate. Don’t be silly. The animal’s sick.’

‘We’ll keep the kitten, thank you.’

‘Libby, I can’t stand it when you’re obstinate like this. This isn’t a fit place for a pet. You have too much to do, too many children to look after already.’

Mum picked up her apron from where Gran had draped it over a chair. She arranged the apron like a nest in the empty washing basket on the floor, placed the kitten in the nest and crouched beside it for a long time, stroking its tiny head with her finger. Gradually the kitten began to purr, until the throaty sound filled the quiet room like a heartbeat.

Mum murmured to herself, ‘The little thing just needs to know it’s wanted.’

Gran had already marched out of the kitchen, and was slamming the iron on some clothes in the laundry.

When Mum called, the rest of the kids came running to the kitchen.

‘Everyone out on the street,’ she said. Gran heard us thundering down the hall and followed as we spilled out on to the road. Pop stood up on the roof where he was patching the corrugated iron.

‘Be careful of cars,’ Gran cried after us. ‘Don’t run on the road! Jimmy, come back here.’

Jimmy hesitated, but Gary walked up behind him and put a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder.

‘It’s OK, Gran. I’ll look after him,’ Gary said. His hand slid off Jimmy’s shoulder. He was staring at the front door, where Mum had appeared. She wore a pair of Dad’s trousers, tied at the waist with a stocking, and her hair was pulled up in a ponytail. She looked almost young enough to be one of us kids. We all ran toward her, wanting to touch her, but she shooed us away and tossed the ball to Pauline and the bat to Gary.

We played street cricket until twilight started to fall. Mum ran after the ball and took silly girly swings with the bat. Jimmy and Moira, who were too little to have seen Mum do anything like this before, kept grabbing at her trousers and jumping up and down with excitement. Gran stood watching beside the gatepost for a while, then she climbed back up the stairs and inside.

As it was getting too dark to see the ball, Gran and Pop came out of the house. We stopped the cricket game and walked over to the Humber.

‘I’ve got all the torn clothes and the ones that need bleaching,’ Gran said to Mum. ‘And I baked some scones. I’ve left them to cool on top of the stove.’

‘Thanks, Ma,’ Mum said. ‘Thanks, Pop.’

Gran and Pop got into the car. Gran wound down her window and stuck out her head as the car pulled away from the kerb.

‘I’m only trying to—’ Gran said, but the engine roared and we couldn’t hear the rest.

Mum put one hand on the gatepost and lifted the other hand to wave goodbye. She let her arm drop across my shoulders.

‘You were very cruel to that kitten, Annie.’

I hung my head. I didn’t want her to see my face in case she realised how much I wished Gran had taken the kitten.

‘You wish the kitten was gone, don’t you?’

I sniffed. I wasn’t crying, but I hoped Mum would think I was.

‘Imagine if I decided I wasn’t going to look after you anymore. What if I let Gran take you away, Annie?’

My head wouldn’t go any lower so I lifted my eyes and told Mum I was sorry. I hated being told off, especially when Mum said stupid things like that. As if she would let anyone take us away.

Glass Heart

I first met Kirsti at the restaurant where she was waitressing. She spilled coffee on my leather jacket.

‘It’s all right,’ I said.

She brought the wrong order.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.

She plonked herself in a chair at the side of the table where Craig and I sat facing each other, and picked up one of the pieces of bread from our bread basket. She examined it, turning it from side to side, before stuffing it whole into her mouth and chewing slowly and loudly.

‘Do you mind?’ I asked.

When she started to cry in funny little snorts I realised that Craig knew her. All night he had been wiping his hand across his upper lip, that nervous gesture that showed he was expecting to sweat.

He reached over to touch her hand, and in reply she spat her piece of half-chewed dough on his plate, where it sat soaking up beef bourguignon gravy and slowly turning blood red. Kirsti, although I didn’t know her name at the time, scribbled something on a piece of paper and slammed it on the table between Craig and me before stalking off. For a moment I wondered if it could be a threat. It was the bill, with a fifty dollar surcharge labelled ‘porkage’.

‘What does she mean, porkage?’ I asked, but even before the words were out of my mouth I understood. And as though Craig had opened his chest to show me his true self, I saw that his heart, the heart I had once pictured glowing like polished rosewood, was a sponge, a grubby, grey kitchen sponge.

I was in the habit, in those days, of imagining a shape and colour and texture for the heart of everyone I knew. In the restaurant, I stared down at the chewed bread and an image came to me of Kirsti’s heart shimmering as brightly as her white hair. The heart was crystal: pure and innocent. I had always imagined my own heart as glass–anyone could see through me–and now I thought I had found someone just as transparent, just as gullible.

She stood by the register, watching us and wiping her eyes with a blue and white napkin. Another waitress, dark-haired, put her arm around Kirsti’s shoulders, leaned close to her ear, and spoke. Kirsti laughed. She looked straight at me and laughed loudly, offensively, so I stuck my finger in the air at her and walked out, leaving Craig to deal with his porkage levy.

I saw Kirsti again at a second-year Indian Studies lecture. The snow white hair, pale skin and eerily light blue eyes she had inherited from her Finnish grandfather made her stand out in a crowd. As soon as I caught sight of her sitting in the top row of the lecture theatre I turned to leave, but she called me back.

‘I’m sorry,’ she called out. ‘I shouldn’t have sneered at you. I should have been rude to Craig.’

‘Yes, me too,’ I answered.

She patted the seat beside her. When I flopped down, heaving my bag to my lap, she elbowed me. ‘He was quite fun in bed, but I did think he seemed a bit tired.’

‘Yes, you tart,’ I said, giggling. ‘You wore him out!’

We wagged the lecture and sat all day in the cafeteria, oblivious to the echoing clatter of plates and cups, talking about men and India. I showed her the picture I had cut out of a textbook in the library. In the foreground of the fuzzy black and white snapshot, three smiling yogis hovered a couple of feet above the wooden floor.

‘Can you believe this?’ I said, ‘Wow!’

‘There’s much more than we know out there,’ Kirsti said, and shook her head so that her hair flew out in a blinding halo.

‘I know what you mean,’ I said.

‘Actually, I think just quoted The X-Files. Please, shoot me.’

We were serious, though. We decided we should go to India to be enlightened. To meet sages, gurus, gods. To learn harmony.

‘Remember that lecturer who talked about India being the birthplace of inner life?’ I asked.

‘The nutty professor? The one who kept hitching up his pants and smacking his lips when anyone asked a question?’

‘I liked him!’ I protested. ‘He wrote on my essay that I needed to let go of my Western consciousness and embrace the spirituality of India. Well, I’m ready.’

Kirsti told me that Finnish people had a special affinity with the spiritual side of life, just like Indians. I did hesitate–Finns and Indians seemed an odd pair–but she kept on talking.

We’ll go to India together, we promised each other.

As I got to know Kirsti better, I learnt to be less startled by the way she kept proclaiming her Finnishness, or by the sayings she claimed she had learnt from her Finnish grandfather. I even started to believe them.

The evening I introduced her to my new boyfriend, she whispered to me, ‘Men with overhanging foreheads have no pity. It is a famous Finnish proverb. They are cruel, and have large penises.’

‘David doesn’t,’ I said.

‘Then he will be even more cruel.’

I had pictured the heart of David as a red velvet cushion, shaped like an egg with a small, round impression where my head would rest, but Kirsti’s proverb drove the image from my mind and left me thinking of rusted iron, the twisted and intertwined strips of an ornate balcony. Elegant. Hard.

The postcard, stuck to the fridge by a magnet shaped like a cat’s paw, lifts and flutters with the breeze each time I pass, as if it is waving a greeting.

This is my first card from Kirsti in India. I’ve never been to India, but I know what the country looks like and how it smells and sounds. India means the smell of rain. It means purifying rain, a downpour like a waterfall soaking the long black hair of Indian women, and washing the shit from the streets. People shouting through the hiss of water on clay. Crowds sheltering under the faded, coloured awnings of stalls in the market. Even as I look at the stamps I can smell a faint odour of fecundity.

I stand on my balcony, which is plain and sensible bars of steel and meshed wire covered in glass, and watch the dusky sky before rain. The air is warm and damp–almost tropical. Almost Indian. I can imagine the card starting to wilt in the humidity inside the kitchen.

Drops of rain spatter on the balcony rail. A car pulls into the car park eight storeys below and a man in a plain navy blue suit slams the car door and runs for the entrance to the apartment building. Whichever way I look I see squat grey buildings with their hard lines cutting through the mist, the indistinct red of house roofs, street lights shimmering in what is becoming a deluge.

Back inside I pause in the darkened bedroom, listening to a stutter of breath. The clock, mesmerised by my eyes, takes an hour to tick over each minute. Kirsti gave me this clock for my twenty-third birthday. The hands are chrome-plated and fat, and have become rusty in only a few years. Big luminescent globs mark each hour and the tips of the hands shine in the dark, telling me how many hours of waiting before the alarm bell rings. I hate being alarmed.

Jakarta alarmed me. David and I both had just enough money to go to Indonesia for a holiday. Although it was winter in Melbourne, Jakarta was steamy and fetid. Everything I ate made my gut churn like a washing machine.

I tried to enjoy myself. We strolled around the streets and I handed out coins to the smiling, cheeky children who asked. David told me to save my alms for the real beggars. That night, as we walked through the city, almost tripping over the skinny black arms stretched out in the darkness, I passed my purse to him. I told him I couldn’t decide between a man with no legs and a woman with a throbbing pustule on her breast.

‘Throbbing pustule?’ David said, his eyebrows lifting.

After he looked the cripples over carefully and distributed a few coins to the chosen, the losers let out soft moans. They reached out to brush my ankles with their fingers, leaving the same sticky sensation as a cobweb caught on the skin.

Back at the filthy guest house we were sharing with cockroaches like shiny black footballs and German tourists who sang songs every night after dinner, I screamed at David over the off-key notes of ‘Let it Be’.

‘I wanted to go to Bali,’ I shouted. ‘I wanted to see beaches. Why don’t I ever get what I want? Why would anyone want to see misery like this?’

I’ve been up for hours now, wandering through the rooms of the apartment, thinking about the grocery list of my old boyfriends. Nights like this, when I can’t sleep, I turn into a ghost and haunt the house.

The things I have dropped on the floor are forming a mountain. Letters that have only got as far as ‘Dear’, dirty plates, a half-eaten apple, TV guide, two books, diary, old address book where I tried to look up old lovers. Old lovers are attractive again on nights like this. I forget why I left them. And even why I liked them in the first place. I only remember talking about them with Kirsti. We didn’t seem to talk about much else.

Kirsti’s boyfriends, Al, Simon, Giorgio, Chris, one by one failed to please her. Then Mustaph stepped off a ship in Port Phillip Bay and straight into Kirsti’s arms. Despite the praise she had for him, I was suspicious. To me, sailors were like the men out of South Pacific. They wore flared pants, walked with a rolling gait, brawled in bars. Even before I met Mustaph I had marked his heart as a hammer.

‘I want you to like him, Lucy,’ Kirsti said. ‘I think he might be it.’

‘Might be what?’ I asked, trying to fool myself.

‘It. The one. You know.’

Later I told Kirsti and Mustaph how I had imagined Mustaph as one of the sailors out of South Pacific, just to make them laugh.

‘What’s a brawl?’ Mustaph asked.

They can’t even understand each other’s language, I said to myself. The revelation made me blush, as if I had uncovered their secret; they communicated in a language I didn’t know.

‘When do you leave port?’ I asked him several times, but his answers, coated in a thick Lebanese accent, were difficult to understand. Sometimes his answers were obscured because they were spoken from Kirsti’s neck, or her cleavage, where he was resting his lips.

‘I’m not a prude,’ I said to Kirsti, ‘but nuzzling your tits in a restaurant...’

I wanted some nuzzling myself. Lack of affection was making me pale compared to Kirsti, always flushed and laughing.

‘Cuddling,’ I told Jim, my lover. ‘Holding hands. Kissing in public. Why don’t we? I need affection.’

He would remember in a restaurant or a theatre. She needs affection. His head would jerk up and his limp hand would flop on to my lap and lie there. I remember looking at the shape of it after he had threaded it through my hand, watching the fingers twitch like the feet of dreaming dogs.

Mark, my latest lover, is in the bedroom now, muttering and snuffling through his dreams. On my rounds I pace past him and through to the lounge room as though he isn’t there. He always sleeps through my anxious nights.

I met Mark in a pub. On the first night he slept with me he said, ‘I don’t expect anything of you.’

I could see his heart at that moment. It was a sour sultana: tiny, shrivelled.

Mustaph, Kirsti said, was always asking her to marry him, to have his baby, to wear his grandmother’s ring, to love him.

‘I do love him, in a way,’ she told me. ‘I love his body, his arms, his mouth, his cock. I love that he loves me.’

‘I could love Mark,’ I said. I was imagining how a sultana, soaking in warm water, balloons out until it returns to the soft, round shape of a grape. ‘I think he could love me.’

‘Sure he could,’ Kirsti answered.

Kirsti’s message is squeezed into the small space of the card.

Dear Lucy,

Remember how we used to talk about India? The markets full of brightly coloured silks and food and the gurus and ashrams, all of that. And dope on tap! Well, the dope’s here all right, but the rest is different. It’s dusty and grey here, and it stinks. Mustaph and I are both sick in bed in a hotel where everyone is trying to rip us off. And he’s driving me crazy with his mother talk. I feel about a hundred years old. Miss you. xx

If what Kirsti says is true, and India is a mean and dirty country of thieves, I won’t have anything left to believe in. The things Kirsti and I talked about seemed so transparent before. Men, India, the future. I could look into them and see everything, right through to the heart.

Kirsti always told me I was naïve. When I described her crystal heart, she laughed and said I couldn’t be more wrong.

‘My hair might be white,’ she said, ‘but my heart is coal black.’

When I complained that she had found Mr Right while I only found Mr Wrongs, she corrected me again.

‘Mustaph is a great lover. We have wild sex and lie there with nothing to say to each other.’

Kirsti said I was a dreamer, that I’d spend my life wishing for impossible things. When she was about to leave on the trip to India without me, she said, ‘I don’t know why I’m going with Mustaph and not you. It’s not like I want to marry him or anything. Men aren’t that important.’

‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘So what is?’

Kirsti laughed like she always does.

‘Old Finnish proverb, just for you,’ she said. ‘Dreamers never wake up–they just keep on dreaming.’

Last month, when Kirsti left for India with Mustaph, I was running late. I arrived at the time the plane should have been taxiing away from the terminal. I stood on the observation deck with my eyes watering from the heat and smell of the aeroplane exhaust. There was a blur of white in one of the windows of the Garuda aeroplane. Had they decided to stop over in Bali? If I was with Kirsti on the way to India, I would have liked to stop in Bali for a day or two.