The Innocents (23 page)

39

Oleksander Shevchenko didn't move. He couldn't have moved far even if he had wanted to. Parts of him were broken and other parts bruised and so swollen it was unimaginable that he would not be this shape forever.

The bed beneath him was cool and clean and the floor squeaked as soft shoes passed in the corridor outside. A uniformed guard sat by the door, a blue blur in a white, moving sea.

He would die in this place. If not this time, it would be the next time. They would beat him again, of this there was no doubt. And, if he had done this thing that they were thinking he had done, the beatings he would surely deserve.

It was unforgiveable.

But it was not his crime. He had hit a policeman, yes. He had done some damage, yes. And his punishment had been to have no bail and to be treated as a violent man is treated. You will stay in this jail for three months until your case is heard.

And then they let everyone know about Deirdre.

And the beatings started.

He was innocent.

And he would die here. He would not move, or speak, or eat. He would let his life drift away.

It was worthless anyway. There was no feeling left in it. No anger, no fear, no joy ... nothing to give his day a meaning.

Barney Spence had come in, had stood by the end of the bed and looked at him. It was possible to feel the contempt with eyes closed. It crept up the body like a serpent, soiling its way with slime.

‘I would like you to talk with me,' Barney Spence had said.

It was pointless to talk.

It would not change the path he was on.

40

For how long she stayed in her room, in her bed, Missie wasn't sure. Sometimes her mother was beside her in a nightgown and sometimes she had her apron on as if she'd just rushed up from downstairs.

Once Aunt Belle was there when she woke, seated on a chair beside the bed with her pen in her hand and a book spread out in her lap. It didn't seem right for Aunt Belle to be upstairs in her room, and Missie tried to sit up and straighten the bedclothes but Aunt Belle's cool hand stopped her and had held the glass of water to her lips before she had time to think too much more about it.

Gradually she found she was staying awake more. Mornings became morning again and the smell of bacon and eggs rose up the stairs as it always had done. The hours stretched out between the times when her mother could sit by her mending the clothes that had been delivered downstairs.

Dot Evans popped in one morning and stayed until her mother could come up. They played cards and Dot said she was already starting to look like a pretty good rummy player. The afternoons filtered into sleeping times and then night which brought with it cold, sweaty feet and the strangeness of going to bed when you'd been in bed all day.

Dr Beatty was there sometimes when she woke. He called once when Dot was playing cards with her and even checked out her hand before saying that she seemed to be getting better. Glandular fever, he called it. He said that it was called a kissing disease and who had she been kissing lately. He tried to make a joke about Max and said thank goodness it wasn't Max as he was sure Max wouldn't be such a good patient.

And then he called less often.

He said that she could start doing some schoolwork and arrangements should be made for some to come home. It was time for her friends to call by, for short visits, and for her to venture downstairs for lunch. She wasn't to get too tired and she wasn't to go outside into bright sunlight or get chilled.

Max had been sent to stay at his uncle Allen Mae's house until the crisis had passed although, Missie heard Aunt Belle saying on the phone, too much time was being spent at Lawrence's house sprawled out around the new Master's Voice. One radio was the same as another, she said, and they'd have been better off outside playing cricket or working on their Cub badges. It was time, she'd said, to think about sorting out some very strict rules about homework. Missie was pretty sure Max wouldn't be doing any more homework even if the rules were put in place. Sprawled out beside
Hop Harrigan
or
Biggles
or
Jason and the Argonauts
was where he would always be found after school. In her wildest dreams she couldn't even think of Max playing cricket.

And so she began the long, hard task of simply getting better. Days stretched out and loneliness and boredom made them seem even longer.

She learned to knit cables in her jumpers and she beat Dot at rummy three times in a row. She'd sorted the button jar and drawn pictures of all sorts of fairies. She'd drawn princesses and dragons and fat dogs with their tails in the air. She'd stopped drawing the Queen though. She left her there, in her jeep, on the other side of being ill. It was too hard to think about her without thinking of all the other things that she wanted left behind as well.

She was sitting on the window seat in the front room, a special treat that Aunt Belle had made possible. It was a sunny spot and from here all sorts of passersby and cars and deliveries and birds could be seen. Aunt Belle had made it clear that she was to stay in the front room and not venture out and, if she was able to do this, the front room would be hers every afternoon.

She was sitting here, knitting the pale pink wool her mother had found into a new scarf, when the door opened and Jimmy Johnson walked in.

‘And make sure,' her mother said as she shoved him further into the room and placed a tray with wafers and milk on a little low table next to Missie, ‘that you don't drop any crumbs or spill milk. And keep your voices down.'

Jimmy almost stood to attention.

‘Oh...' Her mother paused. ‘Thank you for coming, Jimmy Johnson. You're a real sight for sore eyes.'

‘Thanks, Mrs Missinger. You're looking pretty good yourself.' He ducked his hand down in his bag. ‘I got some books, and you know what that bloody ol–'

‘And there'll be no swearing.' Her mother spun back again. She raised one finger. ‘None! And no more cheek from you. Looking pretty good yourself, indeed.'

This time Jimmy waited until the door was firmly closed. ‘That bloody ol' Dulcie Martin said if any of these books get lost she's gonna have my guts for garters.'

He slapped her exercise books down on the bed. And then her reader with some pages marked, and her maths book with more pages marked.

‘You gotta read
The Hobyahs,
she said. It's a mongrel of a story if you ask me. I couldn't make sense of it whichever way I tried.'

It was so lovely that it was Jimmy.

If it had been Mary or Joannie Melon or Leonie she'd have worried about the way her hair was sticking out and the funny old dressing-gown that she'd wrapped around her as the afternoon cooled. She wouldn't have known what to say to them, not if they were sitting in Aunt Belle's front room.

But Jimmy was just perfect. He didn't even need her to have any answers. He just babbled away and, before she knew it, she was babbling back. She was laughing and telling him about being sick and beating Dot at cards and Jimmy said that'd be something to see. Dot Evans tried to teach him to play but the only game he knew was poker and she told him it wasn't a game for little kids and his father should be ashamed for letting him play. Oh, suddenly there was lots to talk about and then, in a gap while they drank milk and Jimmy ate both the biscuits, Missie offered to read
The Hobyahs
to him.

‘It looks a bit scary,' she said.

‘Brilliant,' said Jimmy and eased himself back in his chair. He stretched his legs long and folded his hands over his belly. ‘Read on, McDuff.'

So Missie read.

She read until she couldn't read any more for the shocked look on Jimmy's face when the little old man and the little old woman cut off good dog Turpie's head.

‘Bloody hell.' Jimmy wiped his hand across his forehead. ‘I reckon ol' Dulc's got a shock or two coming her way when she gets to this bit. Bloody hell. Cut off his head? Does it really say that?'

Missie stopped laughing long enough to show him. ‘There. See? That says they cut off his head.'

Jimmy took the reader. ‘And where does it say they cut off his legs?' He flashed back through the book and found the page he thought was right. ‘Is this it?'

Missie leaned out of her makeshift bed. ‘Yup! And that's the bit that says...'

Jimmy lowered his voice. ‘The hobyahs are coming ... the hobyahs...'

They howled laughing and were told to quieten it down or Jimmy would be sent off home and he'd not be welcome again.

Quietly then they read the rest of the book. There was another story that Jimmy didn't get so Missie read that one too and then they talked about books from the library and Jimmy said he'd like to read that
Treasure Island
one but it was too flamin' hard.

‘I could show you how,' Missie said.

Jimmy gave her a sideways look. ‘Oh yeah.'

‘I would. You were already getting
The Hobyahs
right.'

He thought about this for a moment and even went so far as to open the book to the last few pages of the story.

‘And you wouldn't tell anyone ... that you were showing me how to read and all? I mean, all them others can do it and they'd have a right ol' carnival if they knew a girl was teaching me.'

Missie held his gaze. She lifted her finger to the side of her nose and said, ‘Bob's your uncle.'

‘What?'

‘It's just a saying.' Quickly now she settled herself back into bed. She straightened her bedclothes. But it didn't stop the quick vision of Oleksander Mykola swimming in front of her with his lovely long fingers and his cigarettes and the secret way he had of lowering his eyebrows and touching the side of his nose.

She kept her face to the window. It was late enough for the trees to have formed dark shadows and she could see his face reflected back at her. ‘It means,' she said, slowly turning back, ‘that it will be our secret.'

He didn't look up until he'd placed his hands back over his belly. ‘Right,' he said. ‘I never heard it before, that “Bob's your uncle”, that's all.'

Missie took a chance.

‘He told me.'

‘Who?'

Now they were leaning towards each other, voices lowered for secrets to share. Secrets that Missie knew would be safe and which suddenly seemed to want to be let loose. They'd been hers alone for too long.

‘I used to see him...' she began and went on to tell him all about their chance meetings and the times she'd sought him out. She explained how he'd given them swap cards. She left out the bit about pinching Aunt Belle's special ones. It wasn't that Jimmy would have been shocked, he probably wouldn't even have noticed, but she couldn't bring herself to confess that sin.

Jimmy stopped her every now and then and asked her questions about what he'd said and where she'd been when she saw him. She told him about the drawings and how she'd looked up and seen the curtain move.

‘But he was always looking at stuff and drawing it,' she said. ‘I saw him down the river...' And off she went again.

And Jimmy listened. He really, really listened.

‘You won't tell anyone, will you,' she said when there was a pause in his response. ‘He never did anything. He never did. He's in more trouble now because of me...'

Something in the way she said it made him move his chair closer. ‘What'd you mean?' he said. ‘It's not your fault. You never did nothing.'

Little by little she told him about the yellow cardigan. He didn't interrupt her, not even when she had to take a deep breath to block out the sounds and sights of that day. Not even when she had to stop and start again when she was describing the magic painting and even when she realised it made no difference to what she was sharing, Jimmy didn't stop her.

Finally she ran out of steam. ‘He didn't do anything at all. It's because of...' She looked out into the darkening day and then down at her fingers. ‘It's all because of Deirdre.'

Jimmy looked at her, his face creased as if he was trying hard to put it all together. He looked like that when he was doing jigsaws as well.

He had leaned close to her as if he had suddenly thought of something when the door opened.

Jimmy was on his feet with his satchel in his hand before her mother was all the way into the room.

‘Lord. It's getting dark outside, Jim. I thought you'd be long gone.'

‘I'm going,' he said. ‘I'm on my way. We was just talking about them library books and the one that we're getting called
Treasure Island,
weren't we Missie?'

‘He's going to get it tomorrow and bring it around,' Missie said. ‘You are bringing it tomorrow, aren't you?'

‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Yeah, sure.'

Her mother was simply standing, smiling from one face to the other. Her arms were folded across her middle and she waited until they stopped. ‘Right. Well. Library book tomorrow, eh?
Treasure Island,
you reckon?'

They both nodded.

‘Good,' she said and wandered back to the doorway. ‘I'm just going to parcel you up some dinner, Jimmy. It's late and your dad might have had his already–'

‘Get out,' Jimmy interrupted. ‘He's not home from the pub for another couple of hours.'

‘Pubs shut at six.'

‘Not when you can hang around out the back,' Jimmy pointed out. ‘Thanks, Mrs Missinger. Can I have some bread and butter too?'

‘It's a roast,' said Missie. ‘You don't have bread and butter with roast.'

‘Course you do,' her mother said. ‘What else would you use to mop up all that gravy? I'll put it in a bowl for you, Jim. Can you be sure to bring it back tomorrow?'

‘You bet.'

He stood with his old carry-all ready until she wandered back to the kitchen.

‘You know what I reckon?'

‘What?'

He stood still like he was listening to the traces of his thoughts.

‘I'm not sure yet,' he finally said. ‘But something's wrong. I dunno what but it's just not right, is it?'

It was as if a huge enormous weight had lifted from her shoulders. Her chest filled and she realised she was hungry. It was a lovely feeling after being sick for so long. To be empty and needing to be fed.

‘I'll see you tomorrow,' she said as he walked to the door.

He turned back though and paused.

‘I was nearly down there with her the day it happened. Maybe it'd be different if I'd gone.'

‘You were mad at us.' Missie remembered. ‘Zill wanted to be down there with Lawrence. I didn't...'

‘Nah. I woulda come down.' Jimmy moved closer. ‘See, when she came to tell me you were going down the river and I should come too and all that, I said I'd come if she put my stuff in the basket 'cause I didn't want to go home. But she said there wasn't enough room.' He shrugged. ‘So I didn't go.'

Missie thought back. She remembered Deirdre riding off to get Jimmy. She remembered, too, the way she held her hand on the loose old bag in her basket so whatever it was wouldn't bump out.

‘I remember now. I wonder what it was. In her basket?'

‘Dunno. Was bloody big, I can tell you that. Took up all the room.'

They both tried to think of things that Deirdre fancied that she might have loaded up to take home.

‘It doesn't matter, does it?'