The Lost Child (16 page)

‘Just a little bit more,' says Mum.

I button my lips against the spoon. I am the only girl in Grade Three not invited to Colleen Mulligan's birthday party. When she gave out the invitations, I pretended I was deaf and blind and couldn't hear everyone talking in excited voices.

Why don't I have birthday parties like Colleen and Faye, and sometimes Lizzie? Why does Mum feed me dessert when I can do it myself? Why did Dad burn our house down? Why do we pretend he didn't? Nothing makes sense. And then a terrible thought: What if there are no answers to anything?

Miss Taylor is wrong: I am not brave in any way. I open my mouth and swallow the custard and cream.

On the train, Nobby Carter wipes his seat with his handkerchief and mutters about never knowing who's been sitting where. He says he's going to the Mount to have his eyes checked out. Mum says we're going to Muswell for me to have my tonsils out. On the bay, the waves are cutting up a chop, the dinghies buck-jumping on their moorings. At Stickynet, the train lets out a warning shriek; I press my nose to the window and watch waters from Lake Grey being tricked into the sea, sticks and leaves battered like dead birds against the pylons of the bridge. Then I see Pardie fishing in the inlet. And Kenny and Peter Leckie creeping along the bank towards him when they should be at school in Muswell.

I tell Mum I've seen Pardie. ‘Girly-boy,' says Nobby Carter from across the aisle.

‘What's a girly-boy?' I whisper to Mum.

She shakes her head at me. The train gathers speed and my eyes grab trees, a sign, a beer-bottle flash by the side of the track. I wonder about Pardie—sometimes he fluffs his hair with his fingers, the way Mum fluffs at her perm—is that what Nobby means? When I look again there's a tractor in a paddock ploughed black for chicory. Cloud shadows chasing sheep down a green slope. A dam slushy with reeds. Soon we're passing backyards and dunnies and clotheslines heavy with whites, and the train slides into the station at Muswell.

Mum and I walk up the hill. At the town hall, she coughs and holds her chest and we read the poster for
The African Queen
. Mum says Humphrey Bogart's all right but Katharine Hepburn's not much. In the hospital foyer, she has another coughing fit. ‘That's a graveyard cough if I ever heard one,' says the nurse at the desk. ‘You all right, Mrs Meehan?'

Mum says she is. Liar, liar, your pants are on fire. But it is not a proper lie: people don't really want to know if you're sick. Or that fathers burn houses.

The nurse leads us down a corridor and pushes through swing doors into a room with three empty beds and a high window with cloudy bubble glass. Although it's still morning, Mum opens my school case and hands me my pyjamas. As I pull on the bottoms, she says: ‘Hurry up. I don't want to miss the train.'

The train? ‘Aren't you staying?'

‘I'll be back in a week, it's not long.'

‘You'll be fine,' says the nurse, tucking me into bed. ‘You'll go to sleep and wake up and be eating jelly and ice-cream in no time. It's your mother who needs to rest.' She smiles a big-toothed smile, rattles the curtains and leaves. The doors clunk closed.

I don't know how to understand this. If I'm in hospital, shouldn't Mum stay with me? But if she's sick, who will look after her?

‘Besides, I've got to move into the new house. There's a lot to do.' She puts my case in the bedside drawer and coughs again.

How can she move into the house if she's sick? And if she's not sick, why can't she move into the house, and still come to see me? Everything is a muddle. The scratchy sheets, the rubber floor, the cold walls.

‘I'll see you Friday then.'

Her shoes squeak in the corridor. Then a cough outside the window glass.

‘She's got dollar signs for eyes,' says Grannie to someone on the phone, ‘but he's left it so late, the pickings are thin on the vine.'

Uncle Ticker is engaged to a shopgirl from Muswell called Josie.
Shopgirl
, Grannie says so often that at first I think that's her name. Josie Shopgirl. Like Don Coffin the Undertaker. Grannie says the families are getting together on the weekend. She hoots into the phone, says that'll be an eye-opener, no prisoners taken, hoots again and hangs up.

‘When's Mum coming home?'

Grannie says pneumonia can be tricky, she'll phone the hospital tomorrow. If she gets time.

She doesn't. Next day, Uncle Ticker drives into Muswell and brings Josie back to Bindilla. She is very pretty—Grannie didn't mention that—with white-blonde hair and blue eyes that squint up at Uncle Ticker when she smiles. She was a beauty queen—Miss Muswell and then Miss Something Else—Grannie didn't mention that either.

Josie helps Grannie with afternoon tea. She tells me to have a rest because I'm recuperating. I recuperate on a cane chair on the veranda while Josie sets out the cups and Grannie pours. Afterwards, Uncle Ticker says he's taking Josie for a drive to show her the cutting.

‘Take Sylvie too,' says Grannie.

Uncle Ticker's mouth opens. Josie touches his knee. ‘Lovely,' she says, squinting up at him.

Through a sea of yellow turnip weed, we drive towards the lake, Josie in front, me in the back, the Blitz bumping over ruts and rocks, bouncing so high that Uncle Ticker laughs and tells me to hold on to my head or I might lose it. At the lake, he stops to show us a flock of black duck fluttering to rest in the shallows. He tells Josie that when Old Pat first came to Bindilla the duck rose off the lake in their millions, clouding the sun and darkening the day. He says he knows that from Old Pat's diary, which is mostly pretty boring.

We're about to drive off when he peers along the shore. ‘Emus,' he points, and when Josie and I follow his finger, we see two big birds loping around the lake, long rubber necks poking out in front, tail feathers flopping behind like pillows tied to their backs.

‘Silly buggers,' says Uncle Ticker, driving off fast. ‘That's the bad patch. If they're not careful, they'll get themselves bogged.'

When we reach the shore, the emus are struggling in the mud, trying to lift stuck legs, crying out for help, flapping useless wings. ‘Stay here,' he says, grabbing a rope from under the seat and running towards them.

Josie follows like she knows what she's doing. As Uncle Ticker treads carefully along the water's edge, one emu breaks free from the mud and runs for the tea-tree, then Josie scrambles under the fence with Uncle Ticker yelling at her to stay where she is, all of it happening too fast.

Then I see Uncle Ticker is stuck too! I jump down and run to the lake with a cry of mud in my mouth. There are bees buzzing in the turnip weed, too many, too loud, and I think: What if he goes too? Now the emu is a feathered boat, sitting on the mud, making mournful squeaks. Josie grabs my arm and we watch Uncle Ticker pull at his ankle with both hands. His boot slops out with a glug too far away to hear, but that sound is a shout, a cheer. As Uncle Ticker edges to the shore, Josie's fingers dig into my arm. On solid ground, Uncle Ticker coils the rope and tries to lasso the sinking bird, every throw too long, or too short, or in between. He gives up and runs for the Blitz.

‘Don't watch!' he yells as he passes.

Now the bird is tired, accepting. Suddenly a shot and the emu's neck crumples. Swans and pelicans and a cloud of black duck fly up, honking and squawking at the fright of us. Josie's arm is on my shoulder; we watch the birds flutter to rest on the lake, far from us.

‘You're a couple of disobedient dames,' says Uncle Ticker as we head back, his voice like a Yank in a movie. ‘Didn't I tell you to stay in the truck? You coulda gotcha selves shot.'

In the Blitz, Josie leans against Uncle Ticker and says: ‘I was so scared—' and, ‘I didn't know what to do—'

Uncle Ticker winks at me in the back. ‘She won't get rid of me that easily. Will she, Sylvie?'

I don't really know what to say to that. I look at the waves in Josie's hair and think of sunlight on sand. How Mum puts vinegar in the rinse water to make my hair shiny.

‘But I smell like a turnip,' I tell her.

‘It'll wear off,' Mum says.

Uncle Ticker says. ‘Never go near the lake, Sylvie. Understand?'

The Blitz bounces me up to the roof, but there is no more laughing.

Now the cutting has stone walls sloping down to a V at the bottom. ‘It's a wonderful achievement, Tim,' says Josie.

I think: Who's Tim? Then I remember Timothy is Uncle Ticker's real name. At the same time, I notice he's lowering his face towards Josie as if he's going to kiss her, but I'm breathing down their necks so Josie tilts her head back and says why don't I climb over the seat and join them in the front where I'll have a better view of the cutting? When I'm between them, we look at the scar on the hill and the swamp stretching away to the treeline, and after a while, Josie says: ‘How about I kiss Uncle Ticker, then you can too?'

I'm not that interested in kissing Uncle Ticker but I lean forward and let them kiss over my head. Then Uncle Ticker gives me a quick peck on the cheek and Josie says: ‘Now I'll kiss you.'

Me? She pecks me on the cheek. ‘Now you.' So I give her a peck too. ‘Now,' she says, ‘I'll kiss Uncle Ticker.'

This takes a lot longer.

Soon I'm sick of all this pecking and kissing. I tell them I need to go behind a bush and Josie moves over to let me out. I take a long time sitting behind a patch of boobiallas and when I come back, Josie has a red face and Uncle Ticker's wiping lipstick off his mouth.

‘Better get going,' says Uncle Ticker, ‘if we're to pick up the Old Girl and get to your place on time.'

Josie's place is behind a high cypress hedge on the outskirts of Muswell. It has a tiled veranda and rosebushes around a circular lawn that would be good for playing cricket, that's how big it is. As we walk inside, Grannie tells me to close my mouth and breathe through my nose because that's why I've had my tonsils out.

Josie has two brothers. The older one has thin hair, a wispy moustache, and works in a bank. Colin is about sixteen, with white-blond hair, a big nose and pimples. Josie's father pours sherry into little glasses and lemonade for me. The bubbles get up my nose and make me cough and Grannie snatches my glass off the table and wipes where it's been. Josie's mother tells Colin to show me his eggs.

‘Eggs?' he says, wrinkling up that nose.

‘Yes,' she says with a warning stare.

I follow him down the hall to a room with red velvet curtains and shelves of books to the ceiling. ‘Don't touch anything,' he grumps before leaving me there.

I've never seen so many eggs. They're in cabinets with glass lids, on a shelf below the books, three whole walls of them. Emu eggs in different sizes, glossy black, others bottle green. I would like to steal some for Dunc but I can't think how I could hide them in the car because Grannie sees everything. And I'm too scared. Later I hear voices down the corridor, Uncle Ticker's laugh. I notice he laughs a lot more when Josie's around. I wait for Colin to return, for dinner to be over, for Mum to come home from the hospital.

Driving back to Bindilla, Grannie says: ‘Why did you mention Mick?'

‘They know I've got a brother,' says Uncle Ticker.

‘They don't know there's bad blood.'

‘Of course they do. They wanted to invite him. I had to tell them.'

‘Be interesting to know your version.'

Outside the night is black and cold. Shadow trees and farmhouse lights loom out of the dark and disappear again. After miles of silence, Grannie says: ‘That woman has more front than John Martins. I'll get through the wedding but you won't find me palling up with her. The way she carries on, anyone would think she was getting married, not the daughter.'

At Bindilla, she bustles me into bed. ‘Come on, it's cold enough to freeze udders on cows.' She pulls the curtains, stirring up a gust of icy air. ‘Weddings,' she says. ‘All that frippery. And a lifetime to regret it. Well, let's hope he doesn't.' She tucks me in and pulls the quilt up to my chin. ‘Say what they like about your father, at least he's honest. And if someone's honest, you can forgive a lot.'

Doesn't she know about our house, the fire? I curl in a ball beneath the quilt and think of emus stuck in mud. I don't have a father. He is the space on the form that I leave blank when Mrs Tucker asks us to fill in
Father's Name
. He is the spider's web I break through every morning at the gate. He is dead flowers from the kurrajong that I kick off the path when they are squashed and brown.

14

It's hardly big enough to swing a cat in—that's what Mum says when we move in. There are two bedrooms, a kitchen and bathroom, with a porch in between. There's no water connected so we carry buckets from the rainwater tank and still use the dunny in the old laundry shed that backs onto Shorty's fence.

There wasn't enough money to build the front veranda so Mum has blocked off the door with the dressing table from her new maple bedroom suite. She sold the car to buy furniture. She said beds come before cars; from now on we can walk.

The dressing table across the door stops us stepping into a three foot drop and killing ourselves in the process. So much for charity. She says this while she's lugging buckets from the tank, while she's painting undercoat on the bathroom walls. Also when she's on her knees, polishing the lino in the bedroom that should be a lounge, but what good's a lounge if we don't have visitors? That's what she says, so we have two bedrooms instead. The smaller one is for Dunc when he comes home for the holidays.

‘Why can't I sleep in Dunc's room when he's not here? I'm eight. Lizzie has her own bed. Everyone does.'

‘It saves time,' says Mum, puffing and polishing. ‘I only have to make one bed.'