They would say no because of the lawn. And the lawn mattered a lot now, because they were going to sell their house. And they were going to sell their house because Geraldine’s father had gone bankrupt.
3 · The Smuggling
Geraldine’s father was a businessman—he sold toys. At one stage in their family’s life, he’d made a lot of money from doing this. He had a gift for toys, an eye. His own parents had started the business before World War II, which seemed to Geraldine a very long time ago. When her father grew up, and his parents died, he took over.
Their house was always full of toys, samples brought back from factories all over the world. Wooden toys, metal toys, soft toys, toy cars, musical boxes, strange little mechanical toys that you wound up or pressed buttons or pushed levers to get them to flash or jump or spin. Whenever her father brought home a new toy to show them, her first question always was, ‘What does it do?’ Because the kinds of toys her father liked always ‘did’ something, had some unguessable function to perform.
Geraldine’s father was a roundish sort of man with romantically long brown hair. His name was Wolfgang. ‘Wolf’ for short, but there was nothing at all crafty or voracious about him. In the evenings in summer he would fetch his guitar from the laundry cupboard and sit on the back porch, singing ‘Georgy Girl’ and ‘Yellow Submarine’ to what was left of his lawn, as he believed singing was good for plants. Geraldine liked to hear him sing, but he had stopped since he became bankrupt.
Geraldine had no idea why her father’s toys were no longer making a lot of money, but were instead losing money in a drastic way. Had the world changed so much from what it was before World War II? Apparently yes. Children now wanted things with silicon chips, or toys that gave you an education. Well, their parents did, anyway. Geraldine’s father had never been very strong in those lines. They didn’t seem to suit him.
Her parents had not told her that their toy business was no longer making any money—she had found this out from Violetta. Violetta always knew things. Geraldine had never been sure whether this was because their parents actually told her more because she was older, or just because Violetta was a more expert eavesdropper. Anyway, she’d come home from school one day and gone into Violetta’s room to tell her about an excursion her class was going on to the Warrumbungles, and Violetta had said, ‘You can’t ask for money for it, you know. Not with things as they are.’
‘What things?’ Geraldine had asked, puzzled.
‘Dad’s going broke.’ Violetta dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘We’re going to have to sell everything.’
‘Going broke,’ repeated Geraldine.
‘They’re even going to sell the house, you know,’ divulged Violetta. ‘And all the furniture. To pay the creditors.’
Geraldine was horrified. Where were they going to live, then? And what would they sleep on, or eat their breakfast from? Would they have to keep their milk in a bucket of water outside, like people did in the olden days, before fridges? Would her father stand on the outside ledge of a tall building in town and threaten to jump off, like she’d seen in old movies about the Wall Street Crash?
After that conversation with Violetta, Geraldine had expected to come home any day and find a removalist truck outside with all their furniture in it, and a man counting up the money with little dollar-signs where his eyes should be. But she discovered that bankruptcy was not like that—it didn’t happen that quickly. It was slow and destructive, like a chronic illness.
Geraldine had always loved living in a house surrounded by toys, but now they took on a sinister aspect. The levers and shiny buttons and happy clown faces each seemed to play their little part in her father’s mysterious downfall. Her mother grew thin and her father grew fat; her father slept badly and her mother, who had never slept well, even worse. They closed the glass doors of the dining-room in the evenings and talked softly together. They said nothing about it at all to Geraldine. They wouldn’t, of course, they wouldn’t want to worry her. Life is sad enough, her mother told her once, without worrying about things you can do nothing about.
How could she bring another guinea-pig into such a home? Just imagine the lawn—with two it was bad enough, but a third, equally, possibly more, ravenous? Her mother had asked her only that weekend whether there was some way the pigs could be encouraged to eat less. ‘We have to sell the house, you know, darling, so everything’s got to look its best.’ Well, I didn’t know, actually, Geraldine felt like saying. How am I supposed to know if you don’t tell me? But she said nothing.
When she got home that afternoon with Alberta in the shoe box under her arm, she found her mother in the dining-room, staring down at long sheets of paper spread across the table, with numbers typed on them. Carefully camouflaging the shoe box behind her school bag, Geraldine went over and kissed her.
‘Dad asleep?’ she asked, hopefully.
Her mother grunted. ‘He had a bad night,’ she said. ‘Best not to disturb him.’
Well, that’s two of them out of the way, thought Geraldine with satisfaction. And Violetta was not likely to be a problem—she was sure to be busy studying. Violetta was always studying—she was terribly brainy and in her last year of school. Geraldine crept down the corridor and peeped into her sister’s room. There she was, frowning in her glasses.
She heard Geraldine, but didn’t turn around. ‘Physics test,’ she muttered in explanation.
So the family was well buried—Violetta in physics, her father in blankets and her mother in sheets of long white paper. Geraldine slipped out to the laundry and creaked open the back door. Alberta, obviously restless, scuffled her feet on the bottom of the box.
On one side of the devastated brown and yellow field of grass sloping down to the fence of Ezra’s place was a lemon tree with an old tyre strung up in one of its branches for a swing. It was a tree generous with its fruit—perhaps rather too generous, as lemon trees often are. Violetta had read in a cookery column that lemon juice brings out the natural flavour of food, so they’d had quite a lot of unusual meals—or, rather, usual meals with an unexpected citrus aftertaste. Not to mention all the jars of lemon-butter, bowls of lemon-delicious pudding and jugs and jugs of home-made lemonade, like you get in Lebanese restaurants, that Violetta also went in for.
Anyway, Geraldine had dragged the cage under the lemon tree that morning, thinking that there was so little grass growing beneath its heavy branches that the pigs could scarcely do any more harm. As she walked over to it, shoe box in arm, smelling an odour of lemon mixed with guinea-pig droppings, Milly and Martha dived under the blue tartan blanket in their normal fashion, quivering in anticipation.
‘They must think I’ve got something to eat,’ said Geraldine to herself. This was not particularly insightful of her, as that was all they ever did think. Fear and greed were the only not-very-endearing emotions she inspired in them. She hoped it would not be too much of a shock, this sudden white visitor, to their uneventful lives. She lifted up the cupboard door, which acted as the lid of the cage, and peered in.
‘What are you doing?’
Geraldine swung around. It was Ezra, leaning over the back fence, looking disapproving, like in a movie she’d seen of John Knox gazing balefully over a stone wall at Mary Queen of Scots.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘You’ve got another one, haven’t you?’ he asked outright. Ezra never dropped hints, or allowed opportunity for escape.
‘I didn’t want it!’ said Geraldine. ‘This girl at school forced it on me!’
‘You can’t possibly keep three in there. There’s not enough space,’ replied Ezra, adding mercilessly, ‘Do you know what happens to rodents when they’re overcrowded?’
Geraldine did not know, but she knew she did not want to know. Ezra was the sort of person who always managed to include all the nasty details that are impossible to forget; that keep floating back into your mind like h
unger.
‘It’s only for six weeks,’ she said, crossly. ‘While this girl’s on holidays.’
Ezra stared at her. ‘It’ll end in cannibalism,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell you how it’ll begin.’
‘Look,’ retorted Geraldine, ‘her father was going to kill it if she didn’t find somewhere.’ She took the lid off the shoe box and went over to the fence to show him. It was dusk, but Alberta’s fur shone even brighter than in daylight. Ezra looked darkly into the two pink eyes. He didn’t ask its name. He didn’t believe in giving animals names. He frowned and hesitated, then looked up at Geraldine. ‘If you ask me,’ he pronounced, ‘there’s something odd about it.’
Geraldine snatched the box back. ‘What do you mean?’
Ezra shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. It looks strange to me, that’s all.’
‘Oh, come off it!’ Geraldine snapped. Now that Ezra had criticised Alberta, Geraldine found herself wanting to defend her new foster-child, to protect her from an unappreciative and uncaring world. She reached in with her hand and drew out the white mass of blood, fur and bone, and held her up in the disappearing sunlight.
‘Poor little thing,’ she muttered, uncertainly, as when you had a good look at her, there was nothing in the least vulnerable about Alberta. Her pink eyes were alarmingly acute, her claws over-sharp, and her long white hair unnaturally bright, almost fluorescent. Quickly, Geraldine placed her gently on the chicken-wire on the bottom of the cage, next to the trembling, squeaking blanket of Milly and Martha.
She straightened up, and looked over at Ezra, feeling belligerent. He raised his eyebrows, infuriatingly.
‘There,’ said Geraldine, turning and addressing Alberta. ‘Makes a nice change from a shoe box, doesn’t it?’
Milly and Martha showed no signs of emerging from the refuge of their blanket. Alberta ignored Geraldine, sniffed a little, moved forward, found a half-chewed piece of carrot end and started to nibble on it with a certain disdain.
Geraldine pulled her blazer more tightly around her shoulders as the night winds rose.
‘Well, good night,’ she said casually to Ezra, determined not to pursue the subject of Alberta any further with him.
‘Good night,’ Ezra replied, always polite. He did have good manners, despite everything. Everyone always said so.
Geraldine walked quickly back to the house, not looking around. She wanted to watch television, or listen to a tape. Soon it would be time for ‘I Love Lucy’.
It occurred to her with irritation as she wedged her way in through the baskets of unironed clothes in the laundry, that she’d forgotten to ask Ezra not to mention anything about Alberta to her family, or his, for that matter. She was pretty sure she could keep it a secret as long as he didn’t say anything. Her parents wouldn’t notice what colour the guinea-pigs were, and they were usually under the blankets anyway. And Violetta wouldn’t have a clue—she never even looked out the window. Just as long as Ezra kept his mouth shut.
She’d tell him tomorrow—she’d had more than enough of his disapproval for one day. He would have gone inside now, anyway. She’d tell him at the bus-stop in the morning.
And she flopped herself down on the sofa in the living-room in front of the television, never realising that she’d left the lid of the guinea-pig cage wide open to the sky, like a trapdoor from an underground cell.
4 · Tory
Ezra stood in the darkening yard for a moment after Geraldine had gone indoors, watching the guinea-pigs graze, bobbing their heads up and down and squealing softly in pleasure. He noticed the open door of the cage. Typical. She was always leaving it open. He chewed on his thumbnail thoughtfully for a moment. Then he put his hands in his pockets and turned to go inside his own house.
In the living-room, his parents were, as usual, watching Paint Your Wagon on the video. At least, his father was watching while his mother kept him company.
To look at, Ezra’s parents were like larger versions of Ezra. They were both brown-haired, medium-sized and they both wore glasses. They also both worked in travel agencies, so the house was decorated with wooden-backed posters of solid, dependable locations, like London, Washington, and Rome, which their respective offices had discarded in favour of Jamaica, Mozambique and Vanuatu.
Ezra’s father sat in an armchair, his mother on the sofa, calmly making shapes with a macramé needle and cream-coloured thread. Ezra slouched down next to her, resting his head on her shoulder, thinking about Geraldine. That girl was impossible. Another cavie! (Ezra preferred to call them ‘cavies’, as they did in natural history books.) And such an odd-looking one too—so large—what if it was in the later stages of pregnancy? That’d give her a shock all right. Another half-a-dozen little hairless rodents to deal with.
The deep, deep voice on the film was now singing the song ‘I Was Born Under a Wand’ring Star’. Ezra wondered idly, as he often did, what it really would have been like to live on a wild Californian goldfield—not with any personal yearning, just curiosity. His father watched this same film sometimes several times a week, and now after seeing it so often, the characters had almost become real to Ezra, like Bible stories.
The noise of a plane passing overhead momentarily blocked out the music. Ezra’s mother raised her eyes to the ceiling, perhaps well-wishing one of her many clients who could be on board, floating high above the city, looking down on the huge stretch of tiny lights flashing like an earthbound galaxy. Ezra disliked planes; their noise, their shape, their colour and the rows of square windows. A plane overhead for him was like a black cat crossing his path. It made him shiver.
He stood up and went over to the window, drawing the curtains slightly, looking out over Geraldine’s garden. He felt unsettled, his brain racing in no particular direction. Perhaps if he did some cooking—some ginger-crunch biscuits, or some melting moments. Ezra had quite a sweet tooth and found a certain solace in cooking: following the printed directions, measuring substances of different consistencies into bowls of various sizes, heating things to prescribed temperatures, mixing, spooning, baking and finally, of course, eating.
Ezra let the curtain drop and wandered down to his room. They would be having dinner soon, so it was hardly the time to start making biscuits. He sat down at his desk with the shelf of books above it and picked up an Animal Liberation pamphlet about pain-free cosmetics that he’d received in the mail that afternoon. But he couldn’t concentrate. For reasons he was unsure of, but which seemed somehow connected with that strange white guinea-pig next door, he was thinking too much about Tory.
Tory was his baby sister. Really his baby sister. Some people say baby sister just to mean younger sister, even when the sister is quite grown-up, with children of her own. But Tory was a real baby sister. She had always been a baby and always would be. She never grew up, because she was run over by a utility truck when she was only two-and-a-half years old.
That was three years ago, before they moved to this house. Three terrible years. It often puzzled Ezra—you would think the first day, month, year would be the worst, easing off gradually, like the effect of alcohol, but it didn’t seem to work that way. For him, at any rate, the first day was the least terrible. The day Tory was killed. Afterwards was far worse.
Tory was brown-haired and small, like the rest of them. If she had grown up, she would have needed glasses, like the rest of them. Tory was very sweet and pink and soft and Ezra loved her terribly. He was more than six years older than her, so he could carry her, and put her to bed, and read to her. He dressed her up in funny clothes, painted her face with crayons, tickled her, shouted at her, told her to stop crying at once or he would smack her. He turned the hose on her, gave her sweet things to eat, scolded her, hid her socks, kissed her, hated her, was jealous of her, adored her. Ezra did not have many friends, but here he found he had a home-grown friend, who would never leave him, who would always be glad to see him and want to have him aro
und.
The morning Tory left him for good it was raining. Tory liked the rain. She always wanted to go out and play in it; find the muddiest spot in the garden, and make nice brown foot- and handprints right through the house. Ezra remembered waking up to the dark grey light and hearing the gutters dripping like a chorus of metronomes. He rolled over and whispered, ‘Tory! It’s raining!’
Tory slept in the same room as Ezra, in a red wooden cot. She loved her cot and so did Ezra—he could pretend she was a dangerous wild animal at the zoo that was always trying to escape and tear people to shreds.
‘Tory!’
Tory was a late sleeper. Often Ezra would lie in bed in the early mornings watching her through the red bars, stretched out across her mattress, pillow and blankets tossed aside impatiently at some stage during the night. She made such faces as she slept: frowning, twisting her mouth, pushing her hands across her face. He loved just to lie still and watch her.
‘Tory! Wake up! It’s raining!’
It was a Sunday morning. Ezra could hear his father making coffee in the kitchen. His mother would be in bed reading or writing letters to her sisters. Tory wrinkled her nose in distaste at the intrusion of her brother’s voice, and rolled over, banging her forehead on the edge of the cot. At once she opened her mouth in complaint.
Ezra jumped out of bed and went over, taking her up in his arms. Her nappy was wet through, of course, so he began to pull off the sticky plastic tabs to let her run unburdened through the house. She wriggled crankily, but let him do it. She licked the tears from her cheeks and smiled.
How, Ezra wondered, could he be so sure of every detail of what happened that morning, when it must have been exactly the same as so many others? How could he know he was remembering the right one, and not mixing it up? But he could scarcely bring to mind all those other precious days, and he was left with the hard small stone of that final Sunday.
The White Guinea Pig Page 2