The Lost Child (7 page)

The horses are boxed in the stockyards behind the goods shed. I can smell their horse terror; it is the smell of salty plains and blue skies and men with lassos. The smell shivers through the air in loud snorts and terrified whinnies and mixes with the noise of everyone cheering.

Dunc and Pardie are working the gate with Bullfrog Fraser. First out is a horse with Chicken's brother, Sid, on its back. Sid is older than Chicken but he is soft in the head and hardly has time to look surprised before he's sitting in the dirt looking silly. Next is Pardie's dad. He rides halfway round the yard before he's off too. Then out gallops a black horse with Dad hanging on by a rope, no saddle, no stirrups, no reins. He is the best rider, everyone says. His horse tears around the yard as if it's trying to find a way out. It has a mad frightened look in its eyes and froth falls from its mouth. Then it stops. Dad hangs on. The horse whinnies, lowers its head and kicks up its hind legs. Dad leans back and waves his arm in a circle to balance; the horse rears and paws at the air and then lowers his head and snorts at the dirt, and still Dad stays on.

Everyone goes crazy, whistling and cheering. My heart is giddy with hope for Dad to win. I shout into the rodeo ring, which is really a square but I don't care because my Dad can win, I know he can. Again he gallops past and dust full of sheep poo and cow dung flies up in my face. Right in front, the horse twists and thuds into the fence, making the railings shake, making us jump to the ground just in case. And as I climb back, I see Dad on the ground.

‘That's the winning ride or I'm a monkey's uncle,' says Denver Boland into the loudspeaker. ‘Good on ya, Mick. Bring on the next rider.'

Dad finds his hat in the dirt and walks to the gate, waving and doing little bows. Then I see he's bowing to the fence where Aunt Cele and Pardie's mum are sitting. Although Aunt Cele has her camera, she's not taking photos. She is laughing with that Lewis woman as if they are best friends, and that Lewis woman is making loud whistles with her fingers stuck in her mouth. The sun shines on her shorts and long legs; it shines on her waving hand and turns her hair into a ginger frizz as if she is a rowdy angel without wings. As if she is the rodeo queen. And Dad is waving to her.

Her. It is her.

Straightaway I jump down from the railing and follow Lizzie through the goods shed where the trains stop to unload. Aunt Cele comes up behind.

‘Long time no see. How are you, Sylvie?' She reaches out with long arms and lifts me right off my feet, pulls me around and cuddles me close. ‘See your Dad win?'

I snap open her hands and break free of her tricks. ‘No,' I say, as I scramble onto the platform. ‘I didn't.'

‘We did,' says Lizzie, climbing after me.

I push her. It feels good and I push her some more. ‘We didn't.'

‘Not the best place to play in here,' says Aunt Cele.

On the platform, I am taller than her. ‘We always play here.'

She shrugs and smiles but I don't smile back. We watch her lope through the cutting and out the other end of the shed.

‘Don't push me,' says Lizzie, pushing me back. ‘You were rude to her. Isn't she your auntie?'

‘She's not even a cousin. She's nothing to me.'

*

Once there was a girl Phantom. She was the twin sister of the seventeenth Phantom and her name was Julie Walker. When the Phantom was injured, she took his place. She had her own costume and mask and gun. She could do everything the Phantom could do.
The female of the species is more deadly than
the male,
she told bandits before she shot them dead.

‘Don't tell her that!' says Dunc.

‘I've already told her,' says Pardie.

6

The invitation is hot and important in my hand. I run on the road. Left. Right. Jump on the grass. Jump off again. I pass Mrs Scott's house next door and wave the invitation but she doesn't see. She is talking to Mrs Winkie. ‘You give them your blood and they want more.' Mrs Scott has no blood in her face. She looks like Faye Daley's albino rabbit with blue eyes instead of pink.

Mum is polishing the floor again. ‘I've been invited to Colleen Mulligan's party,' I tell her but she's waltzing around the bedroom on her polishing cloths. ‘Colleen's having a party,' I tell her again. ‘I have to take a present.' But she's off in a cleaning dream and tells me to wait outside till she's finished.

I sit on the back step and show the invitation to Georgie. It has balloons and laughing clown faces that make him whistle and bop all around his cage.

‘I have to take a present,' I tell Mum when she shakes out her dusters at the back door.

‘But you don't even like her, do you?'

‘That doesn't matter.' I follow her inside. ‘Everyone's invited.'

‘Who's everyone?'

Doesn't she know anything? ‘The whole class. Everyone.'

She smells of Wunderwax and Turf cigarettes. ‘I'm starting work at Trotter's Cafe next week. Wednesdays and Fridays. It'll be a bit of a change. After school, Mrs Daley will look after you. Understand?'

‘What about the present?'

‘I'll think of something.'

Something is a pair of nylon knickers, beige, with a bit of lace. ‘They're too big,' I tell her on the day of the party. ‘They're yours. I saw them in the drawer.'

Mum wraps them in tissue paper and knots them with a blue ribbon. ‘She's a big girl. They've never been worn.'

Lizzie's present is smaller. She won't tell me what's inside. ‘Wait and see,' she says as her mother drives us to the party.

Colleen lives at the end of Bog Lane, past the soldier-settler farms and the marshy bit that drains into Lake Grey. For miles the wattles are blooming sugary gold. Over the cattle ramp, the driveway to Colleen's house is lined with Christmas-tree pines. As soon as the car stops, Colleen comes running, followed by half the kids in our class. ‘Welcome to my party,' she says like a parrot before grabbing my present, then Lizzie's. ‘Come and see what I've got.'

Colleen has her own room. She has a bed with iron ends, frilly curtains at the window, even curtains covering the dressing-table legs. Her presents are spread on the bed. A yellow petal bathing cap and a pink plastic manicure set. The new
Secret Seven
book. The new
Archie, Superman
and
Phantom
comics, tied together with a red ribbon. I hope she wants to swap them with Lizzie or me because I now buy my own comics with money from collecting bottles. There's also a velvet headband and gold Jiffy slippers, a new hairbrush with a ballerina on the back, a set of hairgrips with coloured ends, a Violet Crumble that's probably from Chicken.

Colleen holds up Mum's kickers. ‘They're…nice.'

Chicken snorts and pokes Roy Kearney. I catch Colleen giving her best friend, Shirley Fry, a raised eyebrow look. While Colleen opens Lizzie's present—Mickey Mouse swap cards—I slide the knickers under her pillow.

We play Pin the Tail, Brandy, Tag and Apple Dip, and then stuff ourselves with fairy bread and lamingtons. We sing ‘Happy Birthday' to Colleen who turns pink and can't blow out the candles in one breath. When she cuts the cake, Chicken says the knife has to come out clean or she has to kiss a pig. Mrs Mulligan says it's not pigs, it's a boy, so it will have to be Chicken. Everyone laughs and Chicken's freckles turn red. The knife comes out clean and Colleen looks pleased but Chicken says
Phew
so many times that everyone knows he really wants to kiss Colleen.

Mrs Mulligan hands out slices of cake wrapped in paper serviettes and the cars arrive to take us home. As Lizzie and I are leaving, Colleen comes running, waving Mum's gussies above her head.

‘These are too big. I'll have to change them for another size. Can you ask your mother where she got them?'

‘I told you,' I say as soon as I walk in. ‘I told you they were too big. Now what are we going to do?'

‘She might forget,' says Mum.

She doesn't.

‘My mother wants to know,' says Colleen next day at school. I take a Phantom leap from the bench under the cypress pine but miss and feel my shin crunch against the timber edge. Looking down, I'm pleased to see a lot of blood.

‘She's bleeding!' yells Shirley Fry. ‘Someone get Miss Taylor.'

I wince and jump around a lot. ‘I think it's broken.'

‘Of course it isn't,' says Colleen. ‘You can't break a shin.' She goes on and on about shins and splints and how her mother used to be a nurse, but it keeps her mind off gussies.

I tell Mum that I have to stay home the next day because my leg hurts too much to walk to school. She takes off the bandage, sticks on a Band-Aid and says it doesn't look too bad. I am sitting with my leg stuck out in front and she is kneeling in front of me. I think of all the presents she could have got for Colleen except her old gussies, and why didn't she? I think of never having a birthday party like Colleen, not once, not even a cake. She looks up and I feel a frightened kind of power that makes me want to kick her hard in the heart. But her eyes drop back to my leg and she smooths the Band-Aid flat. ‘All right,' she says.

The day after, I'm playing near the gate when Colleen steps off the school bus. ‘You still haven't told me,' she says, pushing up close with her breakfast breath.

‘At Min's in Muswell,' I say, backing away. ‘My mother says you should have returned them straightaway. It's too late now.'

At lunchtime, I'm skipping when she says it. ‘Anyway, you weren't really wanted. My mother says they only had you because they were trying to save a breaking marriage. She says your father's been playing around for years.'

My feet don't miss a beat.
Swish, skip.
Cicadas scream from the lemon gum tree. Spurts of dust rising like smoke off the melting asphalt. I skip towards Lizzie, who is skipping too. My arms ache and my legs are jelly. I think of Mum at the cafe making ham and cheese, ham and tomato sandwiches, wiping the laminex, counting out clinkers and jelly beans. I think of my dad playing around for years and what does it mean and how can I stop everything from breaking?

After school, I leave my case under the counter and tell Mum I'm going to play in the park with the Daley kids. She says:
Do you
want a milkshake don't get dirty be home by five
.

On the swing facing the sea, I swing as high as the cypress pines. I can see the smile of Eastern Beach, the jetty rising and dipping, boats bouncing on their moorings, my father's boat the biggest of them all. The sky falls into the sea and clouds spin out of the trees. I think of days when I play in the park and Dad comes into the bay, cutting too close to the reef and heading too fast for his mooring. And later, when he pushes his crays down the jetty, his laughter sparkles on the sea like daytime stars, but he never sees me.

The Coorong slides by with pelicans and black swans floating upside down, with wattles drowning in the glassy water. On the other side of the bus, there are scrubby brown plains where Dad caught the brumbies for bait; there are dirty brown sheep and a man waving from a red tractor. Soon there is Lake Albert and Alexandrina named after a dead king and queen from England, Great Britain, United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, all the pink countries.

When I wake, there are grey streets and brick walls with no windows. There is a station and a man with no legs sitting on a cart selling newspapers, and Mum says,
Don't stare
; there is a van selling pies in pea soup called a floater, and no, I can't have one. After freshening up in the ladies we catch a train that rattles past houses with white walls and red roofs, row after row with low fences, rosebushes and square lawns, all the same.

Outside the gate, Mum straightens the bow in my hair. ‘What'll it be this time? Always living beyond their means. Always something new, bought on the never-never. Why'd I come?'

I don't know.

We walk up the path and Mum knocks on the door. The veranda floor is polished red, the doorstep glistens black. There is a plant with glossy leaves in a pot next to the step. Grandpa Ted opens the door. His face is a shiny plate with piggy eyes and a Santa Claus nose.

‘You've left him, haven't you? Well, you can't stay here.'

‘I haven't. That's not why I've come.'

Grandpa Ted steps back. My nose is next to his leg. He smells of soap and mothballs and something filthy dirty underneath.

In the lounge room, there's a never-never lounge suite with every chair a different colour. On the wall, three ducks are flying towards the window. I want to be out that window. I want to be a duck on the Coorong or on Uncle Ticker's swamp. But not in the shooting season.

‘Well, sit yourself down,' says Grandpa Ted in the kitchen. ‘Bess'll be back soon. She'll make us a cuppa.' And as we wait, Grandpa Ted pulls out a chair and sits himself out. ‘Divorce is a dirty word. If a man's having a fling there's something missing, that's what I think.'

Mum is looking at the laminex. There are swirly patterns, red and white clouds and a snake creeping out of the corner near me. I trace its scaly path with my finger; I wonder about the King and that Wallis woman and when I reach the doily in the centre near the vase of pink plastic flowers, Mum grabs my hand and puts it on her knee. ‘Don't,' she says with a warning squeeze and I know she doesn't like Grandpa's smell either.

‘Here's Bess,' says Grandpa Ted.

Grandma Bess has eyes without smiles. She takes biscuits from a tin and puts them on a plate. ‘You haven't left him, have you?'

Mum shakes her head and nods at me.

Grandpa Ted takes a biscuit. ‘Times are tough. It's no life for a woman trying to manage by herself.'

‘Your father was promoted last month,' says Grandma Bess. ‘Best thing Ted ever did, getting out of the railways. And Joyce and Bill have just moved into their new house. Lovely, isn't it, Ted?'