The Innocents (5 page)

Quickly, quietly, on tip-tiptoe she took off along the corridor. She wasn't supposed to be here either but it was only a little way around the corner. It wasn't even close to the guests' rooms. Not that they were ever about anyway.

She heard her mother call once more and then the exasperated sigh that said there was going to be trouble later on.

She settled down on the floor beside the day bed in the corridor, a little beyond the jardinière that held long-stemmed flowers that weren't real. There was light coming in through the French doors. It was enough, if she bent forward and held the cards at an angle, to see which ones were the jokers.

And to see the farm scenes on the front.

And the old draught horses. And one that looked like a fat man laughing.

Perfect.

Oleksander sat quietly. Since the death of the child he had taken to staying away from the women in this house. As ‘Charmaine' was owned by a widow and the house run by another widow, it wasn't easy to avoid them. His neighbour, the only other resident in the house at the moment, was a difficult man who worked with the fishing fleet from the Lakes. His work took him away for many days at a time and when he came home it was sleep he craved and did so with great energy. His snores rippled through the thin dividing walls and Oleksander had moved his bed across the room and shifted the dresser into its place in the hope it would act as a buffer. To a degree it was successful but John Fellows's occasional snort was still heard, reminding Oleksander of his father.

‘What is that noise?' Chaim had risen onto his elbow and turned his head slightly.

‘It is my father.'

We had covered our mouths so our laughing would not be heard. It was afternoon. Daytime and we should not be here, huddled against the wall, outside my parents' room. My father had come home from his work and his mood was good. My mother had sent us out to play.

‘For a little while,' she'd said. ‘Do not go far.'

She had given us bread. It was good to have bread when we did not have to ask. Food was given if we were seated at the table. It was precious, it was what we knew. We did not waste a crumb. Not one. Nor did we go far.

We sat under the window and heard first my mother's soft laugh. And then my father.

‘He snores like a big pig!' Chaim was laughing too loud now and ran away before he would be caught.

But it was not snoring I listened to. I did not know what it was but there was contentment in my home that day.

They should still be together. His mother and his father. Even Chaim and his family were gone. His mother would keep him, she'd said, until he found the right girl to give her the grandchildren. ‘Then you build your own house. It is enough,' she'd teased him, ‘that your father keeps me awake with his snores as loud as a saw cutting down a forest without all these new grandchildren filling my rooms with more noise.'

All those new grandchildren waiting to be born...

The wind stirred beyond the house and a tree scattered shadows across the wall. There was one light on the street corner, a sentinel guarding nothing worth keeping in this new country.

New Australian, that's what he was called. He was the only one with a name that was strange. His days were spent surrounded by flat sounding names that didn't suggest history or family. His own name, Oleksander, the name chosen for him by his father because it was his father's name and his father before him and now, in this place where they knew nothing about him, they had changed it.

‘Too bloody hard, digger,' one of the farm packers had said. ‘How about we call you Al, eh? Big Al. Suits ya better.'

It was like they had done him a favour. Taking away his name as if it was of no consequence.

There was so much to understand. So much not to be angry about and it was so easy to be angry about all of it.

Soon the sounds of the kitchen would cease and there would be dinner served. And it would be lamb. Or stew and potatoes. It was all they knew, these Australians. Lamb and stew and ignorant kindness. The women downstairs. They were kind. Marcie with the little girl offered him too much food as if this was the only thing that he understood. Her pies, though, had a crust that was so tough he had taken to slipping it in his pocket to feed to the birds on the way to the sheds each morning.

‘You must eat more,' she said when he'd first arrived from Bogabilla where the food was grey and swam in lumpy fluid. ‘There'll be no stopping you then.'

She was not much older than he. Perhaps twenty-nine. Perhaps not. Whichever way it went, she was too young to be talking to him like he was a baby.

‘Sank you,' he'd said, and saw the little girl, Missie, look away to hide her grin at his accent. ‘I am now twenty years, old enough to stop.'

It had surprised her.

‘You look younger,' she said, keeping her eyes on the bowl in front of her. ‘And you get the silly grin off your face, Miss, and help Mr Shev ... Mr Shev...'

‘Shevchenko,' he'd said. He thought about breaking it into small, bite-size Australian lumps but didn't bother. So little she knew of him. He was a boy to her, a child. He would like to have told her that he was old enough to be a man and to do things men do. Sometimes boys had to become men too quickly.

‘You are safe now,' he'd said. And put his arms around her as he'd seen his father do in an ancient time when his mother needed comfort.

‘I don't know where I'm going,' she'd said. ‘I don't know how to leave.'

There was no question that she would not leave, but he knew the pain of tearing up roots from their home soil.

‘There is no home any more,' he'd said and continued to hold her, as weightless as an empty shell. Fragile now that her spirit had finally been broken. He didn't even know her but her story was written in the way she looked at him. A lost boy. A husband. A home.

‘You will find a new place.' Brave words filled him with fear. What new place could be found? He was homesick for the place that could no longer be his. If he went back, the square would still be there and the place where his father fell would not be stained. Other stains had flooded across it now.

His father who'd crossed the square that he'd crossed a thousand times before and handed a neighbour some bread.

They'd shot him and left him there.

‘Come away,' he'd said to the unknown woman in his arms and turned his eyes from that distant past. ‘We are free to go now.'

He held her as she sank against him and he wondered at the cost of freedom.

She'd clung to him in the darkness of the hallway of that camp where they'd been posted. Her face buried in his neck and she held him, half-child, half-man, holding the ones she'd traded.

For a short time she was with them. And he was a man and with her doing what good men do...

Or what he thought a good man should do. It was, after all, what he imagined his father would have done.

So many tears. So many dead children.

So here he sat, in the dark, watching the glow of his cigarette and feeling the warmth from its tip as he cupped it in his hands.

The women in this house had soothed their grief and made thanks that their children were still at their sides. He'd avoided them, not sure if it was because their grief still sat too closely beneath the surface. Or the fact that they were thankful for having been spared and their smugness was at odds with their sorrow.

The shadows on the wall danced again as winter pressed closer. He thought of the patterns of branches moving and the patterns in the hair of the girl in the laundry door.

She had not been back since that day.

He turned slightly, his attention pulled from the patterns and his thoughts of a girl who had moments that reminded him of Anichka.

He saw her then. The child from downstairs.

She'd crept around the corner behind him and was seated on the floor. It would be very cold and very hard on the wooden floor and he leaned out a little to see what held her attention so completely.

Cards. It was some cards that she held and he remembered children's games in the camps along the way.

‘What is sssat you are doing?' he said quietly.

The child jumped. He hadn't meant to frighten her but the cards spewed across the floor and she was looking up at him, her fear undisguised even in this shadow.

‘Nothing.'

She was trying to hide the cards and was not, he was sure now, supposed to have them. He bent down trying to think of a way to remove the panic of being caught. Here was something he knew too well and something he would not consciously ignore.

‘These are very beautiful, these cards.' He held one up so the Laughing Cavalier was visible. ‘It is a very famous painting, this one. Tell me again you name, please?'

‘Missie.'

‘Ah, Missie. I remember now. This famous one. You know this?'

Missie shook her head.

‘You must take care, Missie, not to crease this ones. To play with they will be, how you say...' He shrugged. So many words were still a mystery. ‘Not good.'

‘Ruined,' Missie said softly.

‘Ruined. I learn a new word. Ruined. So what game is it you play wiss them?'

‘I'm not playing a game.' Her voice was a whisper.

‘What is it that you are doing then? You are busy looking, looking...'

‘I wanted the jokers.'

‘The jok-ees?'

She held up the cards she'd taken and he nodded.

‘I see. And what is it that you play wis only the joking?'

Missie giggled. ‘Jok-ers!' she said. ‘Jok-ing is making someone laugh.'

‘It is good I make you laugh. You look very...' He mimicked her wide eyes and flung his hands open in mock surprise. ‘Like this!'

Carefully Missie placed the cards in a stack. He was asking her, she knew, why she had tried to hide them. And why she was looking so guilty.

‘They don't belong to me.' She didn't know why the truth had popped out. It was probably to do with the fact that he'd given her such a fright she'd nearly wet her knickers. And that'd be nothing to what Aunt Belle was going to do if she was caught.

‘So?' He had his hand down to take the cards. ‘Who is them?'

‘Who
owns
them.' It was rude to correct people and she hadn't meant to do it. ‘Aunt Belle.' And then it had been easy to go on and explain where they'd come from and why she had them.

‘Ah,' he said when she finally had to take a breath. ‘So this is it.' He found, in that moment, that he was enjoying this child. True, he did not understand all the words but it didn't make a difference. Perhaps it was more important that it made no difference to her. She didn't slow her speech, or yell at him as if he were deaf. She didn't lean across into his face. She just went right on.

‘It is wrong that you do this, Missie.'

‘I only wanted the jokers.'

‘But it is not good to take without the...'

‘...asking. It's not good to take without asking,' she repeated for him. ‘I know that.'

‘And will you do this one again?'

Not in a million years. Her stomach had plunged forty feet, for god's sake, and her hands were still clammy. No thank you very much, this wasn't something she'd be doing again in a hurry. At least it was Mr ... Mr ... who'd caught her.

‘How do you say your name?'

‘I say Shevchenko.' He said it with flourish, rolling it out so it could never be captured by the flatness of this Australian speech. ‘You call me Oleksander. Is not so hard.'

‘Is that your first name?'

‘It is.'

‘I'm not allowed to call adults by their first name. Mum said it's rude.' It was especially out of bounds with guests in the house. God, her mother would have her guts for garters if she heard her. ‘I'll learn the other one.'

‘You call me Mr Mykola. This is my mother's name. It would be good to be called this. And it is easy, I think.'

Mykola. It was a good name. It rolled out easily, like music almost. And thank god it was him that had caught her.

‘I tell you what.' He was holding the cards out. ‘I put sem back for you and we say no more of this one. You sink so?' He indicated for her to stand in front of him. ‘You sink so?'

‘I think so.'

‘You must make the promise not to do this one again.'

‘I won't.' Her shoulders relaxed back into place. ‘I promise I won't do it again.' Then to make sure he understood, she pointed to the cards. ‘...This one.'

He smiled then. It was something she'd never seen him do before.

He flicked through the deck. ‘Tell me again about this card you trade.'

‘Swap cards,' Missie told him. She told him how she had lots of horse cards because they were her favourite and her friend, Zill, was collecting cats.