The Saulie Bird

by Eliza Quancy

  ‘Aunty Shantelle,’ Jenn manages to say, or something that sounds very much like it.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘We’re going to see Aunty Shantelle.’

  ‘Aunty Shantelle,’ the toothless old crone next to me repeats and laughs. At any other time, I’d laugh with her and think how nice she was but at this moment I wish her dead.

  ‘Aunty Shantelle,’ Jenn says again. This is a great game. At least it’s slightly better than ‘Mama hair.’

  The trip out to the village took a lifetime but it seems that the trip back is taking no time at all. We are arriving at the market in the blink of an eyelid. I keep looking and see that the police car is still close behind. The bus stops and what I ought to do is to leave Jenn on the seat and go and get off the bus, but I don’t. I pick Jenn up and walk with her to get off the bus. She’s still saying ‘Aunty Shantelle. Aunty Shantelle.’ As I get off the bus, Jenn suddenly shouts even louder.

  ‘Papa!,’ she shouts at the top of her voice. ‘Papa!’

  Someone tries to trip me up and out of the corner of my eye, I see Scarface looking thrilled to see me. Joel grabs Jenn from my arms and as I get up, I see him trip Scarface as he lunges after me. I don’t wait to see more. I’m gone into the crowd and away. I don’t look around and am surprised that I arrive at Shantelle’s, breathless, bruised and dusty but in one piece. She takes one look at me and she knows.

  ‘Go and have a shower,’ she says. ‘Take this.’

  ‘What is it?’ I ask. ‘It’s black hair dye,’ she tells me. ‘I use it for my grey hair. You have to spray it on. Get rid of your blonde hair and be quick.’ She passes me a clean laplap and meri blouse and has somehow managed to get a ute waiting for me when I come out of the shower. ‘He’ll take you to the airport,’ she tells me. ‘Go.’

  31

  ‘Well, Auli,’ Layla says to me as I walk in the door, ’you look like a witch!’

  She already knows what has happened. I told her on the phone but I must have forgotten to tell her about the second dose of hair dye. In spite of everything, we hug each other and collapse in a giggling heap. Hysteria rises as I don’t have to hold on anymore.

  ‘Go and have a look in the mirror,’ she says and I go. She follows me into the bedroom and I gaze at the wild creature that stares back at me. Smallish face with huge black hair matted and tangled with myriad pale yellow streaks in all the wrong places. I stand and laugh until I sink to the floor and my laughter turns to tears.

  ‘You’re still alive,’ she says as she hugs me and it’s true, but I haven’t got Jenn. I haven’t got Jenn. I haven’t got Jenn.

  ‘No hairdresser could ever match that,’ Layla says and gets her phone out to take a photo. And I weep again. I didn’t take a photo. I had Jenn in my arms and I didn’t take a photo.

  ‘Will you cut it for me?’ I ask. ‘I can’t go to work like this.’

  ‘How short?’ she asks.

  ‘All off,’ I reply. So before I eat or drink or talk about what has happened, I sit down and Layla cuts my hair short-short. Almost shaves my head so I’m left with blonde frizz. My brown skin looks darker contrasted with the light bright hair. I like it. I look like Saul, except blonde instead of black. In my mind, I see his head from the back and then from the side, clear and sharp as a photo. Head not broken. Handsome like he used to be.

  Layla cooks for me and brings me drinks. Listens while I talk. I give her back the money she lent me. I watch as she walks to and fro in the kitchen. Her hair is almost completely grey now but she moves as gracefully as ever. She’s a little fatter than she used to be. Looks thicker, more ‘comfortable’ but still beautiful. It’s her face. I should be thinking about Joel. About Jenn. But I can’t face those thoughts. Not yet. Instead, I look at Layla and think about beauty.

  ‘Is it skin-deep?’ I asked in life lessons long long ago.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Layla, always ready with an answer even if these turned out later to be wrong. ‘Beauty comes from within.’

  I used to think that it wasn’t true, but now I’m not sure. I think of Carolyn who has a beautiful spirit which shines out of her eyes but her body isn’t beautiful or her face. And then there’s Kandin. His body is beautiful and he knows it and uses it, but I’m not at all sure about his soul. Beauty is external, I think. It is three dimensional with hills and hollows. It flows with movement and the beauty doesn’t break. Like a vase when you turn it might change but will preserve its essence. Ah, the essence. Now isn’t that an inside thing?

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Layla asks me.

  ‘I’m thinking I’ve got to get ready for work,’ I reply. I’ve already texted to say that I’m back and coming in.

  In less than ten minutes, I’m out of the house.

  ***

  Kandin doesn’t cook so he takes me out to eat. Not for long expensive dinners because I can only go with him at lunchtimes. Every evening I have to work.

  ‘Can’t you have a night off?’ he asks me every few days.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I would lose my job.’

  Kandin sighs in frustration. ‘I can pay you not to work,’ he says, but I shake my head. I already owe him for the house. I don’t know how I’m going to pay him back, but I’ll find a way. I won’t stay indebted to him forever. But I’ll be always indebted to Layla, I think. And Joel. I don’t want to think about Joel at the moment. And there’s Saul. I don’t want to think about him either. My head is full of doors that have to be kept locked.

  ‘Tell me more about your work,’ I say. ‘What kind of research does your father do?’

  Kandin looks irritated. Unlike last time, he seems unwilling to talk either about his work or about his father. ‘What work does your father do?’ I repeat.

  ‘He’s a neuroscientist,’ Kandin replies reluctantly, ‘I told you last time.’.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ I say. ‘What area?’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ Kandin snaps. ‘And how I earn my money is private, Aulani. It’s no concern of yours.’

  ‘Yes, it is if it involves drugs,’ I snap at him.

  ‘Most of what I do is illegal,’ Kandin replies ‘and you’ve benefited from it more than once. You got passports and you got a house.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. He’s right to remind me about this.

  ‘If you want me to get Jenn here for you, I can arrange it,’ he says. ‘But there will be a price to pay.’

  ‘What price is that?’ I ask.

  Kandin smiles at me. ‘What do you think?’ he asks.

  If we didn’t already sleep together, I’d think that he meant sex.

  ‘No idea,’ I reply.

  ‘Oh yes, you do,’ he says and then I look at his face and I do know what he means. Know who he means. The prize he wants is Joel.

  ‘You mean Joel,’ I say and his smile gets a little wider. ‘I could never agree to that,’ I tell him and he shrugs.

  I’ve killed one man to secure my freedom. I can’t kill another to free my daughter. But my thinking is twisted, Joel’s death would not be to secure Jenn’s freedom. It would be to satisfy my needs. My need to have my daughter by my side. Jenn’s needs are already fulfilled. She is cared for and happy. She doesn’t need me.

  ‘You could get Jenn without killing Joel.’

  ‘I could,’ Kandin replies, ’but then you would not be involved. I need your total commitment to me. I’m getting less sure of you, Auli. You’ve started criticising, but you still want the spoils. Joel is the price you will have to pay. If you want your daughter, you’ll have to give me Joel.’

  ‘And why would you want him?’ I ask. ‘Are you jealous?’

  Kandin laughs at this and doesn’t reply. It was a silly question.

  ‘Joel’s bothering me,’ is all he will say. ‘He’s irritating. We can do without him, Auli.’

  We? How have we suddenly become ‘we’? I look at him with new eyes. His face is as beautiful as ever
and he has the same soft sexy drawl. He’s still the golden boy. In looks. I watch the way he gets up and goes to refresh his drink. And mine. Like a cat, slow and easy but always ready. Ready to pounce. Ready for the kill. To get money. Power. Or just for fun. This man is dangerous so why have I not seen it until now?

  ‘What kind of a man are you?’ I ask but without heat. It’s a genuine question expecting an answer, but Kandin merely smiles. I need to be more careful. I change the subject, hopefully without him noticing. I change it to something that Layla told me never failed with men (or women either, I expect) but which has already failed sometimes with Kandin.

  ‘Tell me about yourself,’ I say. ‘What were you like as a baby? As a little boy?’

  This time he relaxes and I press my advantage. ‘Have you got any photos?’

  I settle myself back into the large leather couch he bought recently. It doesn’t look that big in this spacious room. He can afford to buy leather because he’s got a good aircon system. Otherwise, the leather would be awful in the summer heat or at least that’s what he says. I know nothing about such things. As it is, it feels luxurious. My aim is to pass the time with him for half an hour and make him think that everything is good between us. Then I’m going away to think about what to do.

  He brings three large green photo albums and plonks them down on the glass table in front of the sofa.

  ‘Only three?’ (I’m being sarcastic.)

  ‘It will do for a start.’

  I pick up the first one and start leafing through page after page of angelic-looking baby Kandins. First steps. In the park. On the swings. At the beach. Sometimes with Chrissie, but mainly just pictures of him alone.

  ‘Where’s Chrissie?’ I ask.

  ‘Mostly, she’s taking the pictures,’ he replies, but there’s a hesitation. I read between the lines and realise that Chrissie wasn’t there much when he was small. Kandin defends her but he didn’t like it. He felt neglected. Suddenly, I stop. There’s a picture of Saul sitting on the beach in Melbourne. Impossible.

  ‘Who’s this?’ I ask trying to keep my voice under control.

  ‘It’s my father,’ he says, ‘it’s Lucas.’ And he turns the page.

  ***

  ‘Where exactly did Saul come from?’ I ask Layla when I get back. She’s got a pile of ironing in front of her.

  ‘Buka,’ she replies. ‘I told you.’

  ‘And how did you meet him?’ I ask. Layla looks up from the blouse with the iron raised in her hand.

  ‘What’s up, Auli? Why all these questions about Saul?’

  ‘I saw a picture of someone who looked exactly like him in Kandin’s photo album, but he told me it was somebody else.’

  ‘Who did he say it was?’

  ‘His father. Lucas.’

  ‘That’s not so strange,’ Layla tells me. ‘Lucas might be one of Saul’s cousins. If you see people from a certain angle then they sometimes look like someone else.’

  I’m listening and she might be right but the shock is still bouncing around in my head.

  ‘I don’t think I could be mistaken, Layla.’ I see her look at me as though she’s making a decision about whether to say something or not. She decides to speak.

  ‘When someone you love goes away,’ Layla starts, ‘you long for them so much that they start to appear everywhere. You see them in other people.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s in the turn of the head, the lift of an eyebrow, the swing of a leg. But it’s someone else. I mean that you can see someone in the distance with the same walk and before you can think, you run to catch up with them. They turn and it’s someone else. You hear the loved one’s voice and your heart leaps. You look up but it’s another voice, not even a voice, just a sound that your brain has magicked into existence because it yearns. But the person you want is not there.’

  ‘Does that happen to you?

  Layla sighs and doesn’t answer. ‘Another thing,’ she says, ‘is that your memory of the person becomes blurred with the strain of looking for them. They start to look different.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘It’s happened before, Auli. Saul is not the first man I’ve lost.’

  I see Layla looking into the distance. Seeing and not seeing. She’s not here. Hope she doesn’t burn the blouse. She’s got that faraway look she sometimes has. The look that Saul never liked. I used to think she was just remembering her past, but perhaps she was thinking of a lost someone. Eventually, she speaks again.

  ‘When it happens like that and you keep seeing the one you think about, it is not always because they are dead. It might be the result of an argument. A falling out. They leave. Or you go. Or you are taken away. It means that the relationship is broken before its time. You were not ready for it, so you try to get it back. You don’t mean to, it just happens. It means that you are not ready to lose that person.’

  ‘Oh yes, I am,’ I say under my breath. ‘Totally ready.’

  ‘And it’s a long time since you saw Saul.’ She pauses. ‘In any case…’

  ‘What?’

  I see that Layla is filling up with anger, but trying to control it, trying not to say what is on her mind. She manages it and gives her attention once more to the next blouse she is methodically ironing. Mother Layla is back. She gives me a quick look and almost smiles.

  ‘You might not remember him clearly,’ she finishes matter-of-factly.

  We haven’t talked much about Saul. About what he did and about how I killed him, but I know that Layla thinks about him as much as I do. When I allow myself to think about it, I can’t believe that she has forgiven me.

  ‘Have you forgiven me, Layla?’

  ‘Not yet,’ she replies, and she puts the iron down but stays standing where she is.

  I don’t know what to say. I stay silent.

  ‘But I’m trying, Auli. I keep on trying.’

  We don’t talk about him anymore. I knew that I shouldn’t have raised the subject. I knew that, but the picture was such a shock. I look at Layla’s face as she gets back to the ironing and I change the subject.

  ‘What do you think of Kandin these days?’ I ask and she shrugs.

  ‘He’s not bad.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind about him,’ I tell her. ‘I don’t like him anymore. I think he might be dangerous.’

  Layla looks surprised and asks me why, so I try to explain. I don’t mention what he is planning for Joel or the fact that Kandin has been dealing drugs but I tell her about the hacking. About how he said he was making his money.

  ‘It does sound bad,’ she says.

  ‘How bad?’ I ask.

  ‘Could be very bad,’ Layla replies. ‘Haven’t you read about how elections are being rigged in various countries? About how various political groups are paying firms to manipulate people’s voting preferences?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I haven’t.’ To be honest, I haven’t bothered with the news for ages. My mind has been full of worries about Jenn and Joel.

  ‘You should,’ Layla says. ‘The world is changing, The powerful are getting more tools to manipulate people and make them do what they want. It’s already happening through targeted ads on social media. They are usually aimed at the poorest people, the vulnerable and they’re targeted for all sorts of things.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘One thing was slimming tablets.’

  ‘Slimming tablets?’

  ‘Yes, persuading people to buy slimming tablets that didn’t work and all sorts of things like that.’ I feel doubtful about this.

  ‘Google claims that targeted ads are helpful,’ I say and I see Layla smile.

  ‘You’re always defending Google,’ she says. ‘You’re wrong, Auli. It’s dangerous for any single person or corporation to have so much power.’

  ‘Targeted ads are supposed to help connect people with local businesses and stuff like that,’ I persist. It’s true that I defend Google. I think they�
�ve done an amazing job with Google maps, Google street-view and all sorts of other stuff. All free. ‘And, in any case, you can just ignore them,’ I say. ‘I get loads of targeted ads, but I just ignore them.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Layla says, ‘But lots of people don’t. Or can’t. The data that Google gathers (and Amazon and Facebook and all the others) helps to pinpoint the vulnerable. They know what kind of toothpaste you use and whether someone you love has just died. They know that information is power. And they use it.’

  I nod. I’m sure she’s right but at the moment, I can’t concentrate on global problems because all I can think about is Jenn and the danger Joel is in.

  ‘I’m sure that Kandin wouldn’t get paid for nothing,’ Layla goes on. ‘What exactly is the research that he’s passing on?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ I admit but I know where he’s getting it.’ At this, Layla looks up amazed and starts to laugh.

  ‘It can’t be very secret then,’ she says waving the iron in the air. ‘If he told you where he was doing the hacking.’

  ‘I think it is,’ I say. ‘He didn’t mean to tell me. I caught him off guard and he wanted to boast.’

  ‘What was he boasting about?’

  ‘That he was getting the information from Lucas,’ I say. ‘From his father, who told Kandin that he’d never amount to anything.’

  And at last, Layla packs up the ironing, puts away the board and comes to sit with me.

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’ she asks me.

  I shrug my shoulders. ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘We could go to Oxford,’ Layla says. ‘We should go and find Lucas and tell him what’s happening. We ought to stop Kandin passing on information like that.’

  32

  Going to Oxford is a stupid idea. Layla is losing her sense of reality. The person I have to worry about is Jenn. She’s much more important than people’s voting patterns being manipulated. I suppose she shouldn’t be, but she is. In any case, I point out, we’ve got no visa for the UK. And we can’t get one because our tourist visas for Australia are about to run out, so once again we need Kandin’s help. Even if we had valid passports, any mission to stop his evil activities and help save the world is aborted before we can get off the ground. Literally. It costs a fortune for a return ticket to Oxford. We discuss once more what we’re going to do about Kandin’s hacking activities, but there’s not much we can do. Not if we want to survive. I go out to take the rubbish and Saulie Bird hops out.