The beach. She remembered Mummy, she remembered the sand, the waves speckled with the dancing glare of sunlight, and a blue sky that stretched forever. A happy day, or days more likely, but they had all blended and morphed into the one event over the years. Mummy’s smiling face, Mummy calling out to her. Ellie’s skin that felt so hot, so alive in the sunshine, her nose pink and beginning to peel, despite the endless pilings of sunscreen. Mummy’s nose never went pink and peeled. Mummy had worn a hat. Ellie searched for it in the suitcase, but it wasn’t there. She sat, her legs beneath her going numb, lost in memories. Her hands clutched the swimming costume, fingers compulsively running over the thin fabric. There was a woman with sparkling green eyes and she was called Mummy and we went to the beach and she loved me… Ellie felt the familiar hitch in her chest. She said she loved me, and then she left me.
The call of kookaburras broke her reverie. The familiar chorus brought her painfully back to the present. She clutched the bench for support as she tried to stand on legs riddled with pins and needles. Sparks flared through her limbs and she grimaced as she tried to repack the case. Through a gap in the floorboards, she thought she could glimpse more fabric. She peered more closely. Had something fallen? She tried to poke a finger through, but the gap was too small. It didn’t matter right now. She had her mother’s suitcase. She could take it, along with the box and satchel, into the house and look at their treasures inside. It took a couple of trips before she had brought all of her new discoveries in. She had to see more, more of Mummy, but first, she had to see Daddy. Ellie stomped down the hallway, still trying to regain full feeling in her feet and legs, and thrust open the closed door to his bedroom. She glared at his unmoving body on the bed.
‘Look at me,’ she said, and then louder, ‘Look at me!’ His eyes remained shut. ‘I found them. I found her…in the dirt.’ She stepped closer, wanting now to see his face, to see his eyes when she told him what she knew, what she’d found.
‘You killed Maisie, didn’t you?’ Her voice was flat.
He didn’t answer.
‘Daddy!’ She placed her hands on his cold shoulders and shook him. ‘My best friend…in the dirt.’ She leaned in, no longer afraid of seeing him speak, of seeing a dead man respond. ‘You killed her.’
‘My babies, our babies, in the dirt.’ She lowered her face to his. ‘You killed Maisie.’
He didn’t respond. Ellie shook him once more. Nothing.
‘Where are you?’ she whispered, pulling away. ‘Answer me! You gave me babies and you took them away. You took away my best friend. My friend.’ Her voice broke and she turned her back on him.
‘Our babies.’ The words came softly from behind her.
Ellie wheeled around, but it was as if he’d never spoken, never moved.
‘I hate you.’ She backed out of the room and shut the door.
Ellie settled on the floor of the lounge room and set out her hoard, lining her discoveries alongside the sheepskin rug. First, the dirty suitcase containing Mummy’s belongings; next, the still unopened leather satchel; then the box of photographs, papers, and other odds and ends. A vision of Maisie’s skull flashed before her.
‘No.’ Her hands were shaking as she reached for suitcase. No Maisie, no Daddy, no thoughts but Now, she told herself. ‘Now.’ She undid the clasps holding the suitcase shut and whimpered softly as she touched the jumbled pile of clothes before her. ‘Mummy.’
The early evening passed in dusty exploration of her new-found objects. She draped her mother’s clothes over the lounge room furniture and found a pair of shoes with a low heel. Ellie squeezed her feet into them, her toes curling tightly in the front of the shoes. Unbalanced and wobbling, she tried to walk around the lounge room, but gave up after a few steps. Why hadn’t Mummy taken these things with her? It seemed that Daddy had just bundled everything up and locked it in the shed. All of those years Ellie had had only the broken hair comb and the perfume bottle with which to fashion memories while this treasure trove had been only metres away.
Percival came to investigate and attempted to poke his head into the box by her side. A daddy-longlegs spider crawled out from underneath one of the cardboard flaps and Perce cocked his head sideways before trying to eat it. He stuck his head back into the box, then withdrew, sneezing. Ellie laughed as the indignant cat sat with his back to her and the new additions to the lounge room.
She opened an envelope of photographs and stared intently at one of the small black-and-white images. Were they family? The stern-faced man bore a vague resemblance to Daddy and the woman looked like a much younger, though still-unsmiling Grandmother Clements. There were two children, a boy and a girl. The boy had dark hair, dark eyes, and a sullen expression.
‘Daddy.’ Ellie looked at the girl’s face. It was vaguely familiar. A tickle, a whisper in the corner of her brain, taunting her. She tried to think of all the girls’ names she knew, of all the girls she had once known. Maisie. No. Dolores. No. Grandmother had called her something once…Miriam.
‘Miriam.’ She said the name aloud. It sounded right.
Dusk had come and gone and the shadowy night outside beckoned to her again. She was exhausted from digging, but the sound of the blustery autumn wind whipping through the trees outside was intoxicating. It would be cold, but out there she would be free of this house, free of the stench, free of the memories of pain and shame. She wanted to venture into the world of other people, the world other daughters of other families inherited. Maybe Miriam was out there. Maybe Mummy. But not Maisie. Ellie bit down on her lip, tasting blood, as the image of the buttons in the dirt swam before her.
‘I have to get out.’ She spoke to the empty room. She had to escape, to get away from Daddy. ‘Out.’
‘You want to be a big man? I’ll teach you how to be a man.’ His father, hands toughened and eternally stained from working in the mine, wrenched Arthur by the ear and dragged him along to the galvanized iron shed in the backyard. Here amongst the many tins filled with odd nails and screws and the motley collection of tools was the long, wooden workbench where his father had nailed a hidden compartment. Here he kept his ammunition. The gun he kept inside the house under the marital bed, despite his wife’s pleas for it to be locked outside, away from the children.
‘So you want to hang out with that boy and his birds, huh?’ Arthur couldn’t make out the rest of the muttered comments, but he realised showing his father the photograph Mr Fordham had given him of him and Jack in the aviary was a mistake.
‘Playing with birds, that’s what you get up to?’ His father loaded the rifle and pocketed more bullets into the worn leather casing belted at his waist. Arthur looked up at his father, noticing the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as his father swallowed.
‘C’mon boy, I’m going to show you what a real man can do.’ Mutely Arthur followed. Disobeying was not an option. Whatever punishment his father had in mind would only be heightened if he refused, or worse, cried. His father whistled once for the dog, and it came to heel at his feet.
‘Where are you going? Where are you taking him?’ Miriam stumbled her way down the uneven steps at the back of the house, her stupid porcelain doll with the golden ringlets cradled in her arms, trying to catch up to their father’s long strides.
‘Shooting.’
‘Can I come?’
Arthur pulled a face as their father spoke.
‘Get back in the house and help your mother.’
‘But I…’
‘Get!’ Both Miriam and the dog flinched. Arthur smiled, despite his father’s angry tone. He poked his tongue out at his sister’s retreating figure. Miriam slunk back into the house, her stupid doll now dangling by one arm at her side.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ His father’s eyes were hard. Arthur ran and caught up. For a second he almost envied his sister. She was safe inside. She’d got off easy;
girls always did.
They walked for about ten minutes in silence before Arthur dared ask a question.
‘What are you going to shoot?’
‘What are we going to shoot.’
‘Me?’
‘Rabbits.’
Arthur hadn’t spoken again, his unease turning into excitement. As they headed further away from the houses, his father started to talk. Arthur listened reverently, relieved that his father’s anger lessened as he held the rifle in his hand.
‘Rabbits kept food on the table when I was your age.’ His father glanced at him briefly, then resumed his dogged forward stare.
‘You ate rabbit?’
‘Yep.’ The word came out in a grunt. ‘Work was hard to come by. Everyone ate rabbit. Not everybody said though.’
‘Why not?’
‘Ashamed.’ His father stepped over a fallen log and Arthur stumbled and braced himself, hoping his father hadn’t noticed his awkwardness. He wanted to hold that rifle. He wanted to shoot, to learn how to shoot straight and not be clumsy and ham-fisted. They walked on a little further. There was a clearing before the bush thickened up. His father stopped and looked around.
‘Both of my parents could shoot.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. End of the century, there was a plague of rabbits. More rabbits in the country than people, I reckon. We’d trap ‘em and skin ‘em.’ His father paused and scanned the ground before him.
‘What are you looking for?’
The question was met by a scornful glance. Arthur wished he had kept his mouth shut.
‘Rabbit holes. Burrows. Can cover ‘em up, block the exits, and trap ‘em that way.’ With a low whistle and quick gesture with his head, his father sent the dog bounding off. ‘She’ll stir ‘em up.’ Arthur nodded and vowed not to say another word unless his father spoke first. He wouldn’t risk anything that could shatter this fledgling moment with his father and the opportunity to handle the gun.
‘Look.’ His father squinted into the distance. ‘There, you see it?’ Arthur followed his father’s line of sight, saw the dog pointing, tail erect, one front paw bent back, and he took a few seconds to make out the small creature on the ground further ahead. It looked cute. He cursed himself. Cute. That was the sort of thing Miriam would say, ‘Oh, look at its bunny ears and fluffy white tail…’ Not cute. It was game. Prey. He barely registered his father swinging the rifle round and lining the rabbit up in his sights. The shot and the sight of the creature leaping crookedly off the ground and falling back to earth seemed to happen simultaneously. His father whistled again and the dog ran forward, picking up the carcass in its mouth before trotting back to them, tail wagging from side to side. She dropped the rabbit at his father’s feet, and his father gave the dog a couple of solid pats on its flank.
‘Go.’ The dog sprang up and away once more. Arthur thought he saw movement further along. There were more rabbits and they must have sensed the danger.
‘Your turn, lad.’ His father handed him the gun and showed him how to brace it against his shoulder to lessen the impact. Arthur relished the weight of it in his hands, the smell of the discharged shot, the power growing inside him.
‘There.’ His father, who must have had the eyes of an owl or an eagle, spotted another. Arthur lined it up, but his hand shook as he squeezed the trigger and the shot went wild. The sound reverberated in his ears and his collarbone was sore where it had borne the brunt of the misfired shot. Arthur flushed and cringed as the rabbit took off. The dog sprang after it and his father swore.
‘Bloody useless! You’ve been molly-coddled too much, my boy. ‘Bout time you learnt a few things. Shooting’s just one of ‘em.’ Arthur was mortified, but determined to make a kill. He had fired a rifle before, unbeknownst to his dad. He and Jack had taken Mr Fordham’s gun out one day to shoot at cans. Jack’s dad never used it; the gun just gathered dust in the shed, Jack said. They had lined up cans and tried to knock them off. Over and over. Each shot getting a little closer each time. Arthur had thought that Jack was a good shot, but his father was better. He would be better too. Arthur lined up his next shot and fired.
‘I got it!’ His palms were sweaty and he almost dropped the rifle in his excitement. His father had whipped the gun out of his hands and squinted across the paddock where they could make out the small creature writhing on the ground, attempting to drag itself along, its red-stained back legs limp and useless. The dog was practically dancing beside it and his father whistled her back to his side.
‘Still alive. You’ll have to kill it, put it out of its misery.’ As they walked towards the rabbit, Arthur could hear a high-pitched squealing. He reached for the rifle once more. His father stopped, shook his head and something merciless glinted across his face.
‘With your hands.’
‘What d’ya mean?’
His father snorted. ‘Told ya, you’ve been molly-coddled like a damn girl, hanging out with that limp-wristed church boy. It’s time you learnt to be a man.’ His dad jerked his head towards the rabbit once more. ‘Go on then.’
Arthur knew his father was serious. All right then. He would show his father he wasn’t some soft girl; he’d show him he could be a killer. That he was a man.
His stomach twisted and clenched as he stepped closer to the rabbit. It was making shrill, desperate screams of pain. Horrible cries that made him want to flinch, to stick his fingers in his ears and look away. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. Not in front of his father. Blood smeared the rabbit’s hindquarters and its fur was matted. Panic mingled with fear in the large eyes as he approached. The fur on its neck was soft to the touch. He tried to grab it and it squirmed and struggled. As sharp teeth pierced his hand, he squealed and dropped it. Arthur turned back to see if his father had witnessed his slip. Of course he had. His look of disgust and disappointment was unmistakable, even at a distance. The shame of squealing like a little girl, like Miriam, bit harder than the rabbit.
‘Stupid bastard.’ Arthur grabbed it again, by the hind legs this time, and swung it in a short arc, smacking its head on the ground. It still wasn’t dead, and blood and shit had flung out, splattering his hand and clothes. ‘Fuck.’ He held it aloft again for another strike as a bullet shot past him, the blast whipping his ear, lodging in the rabbit’s warm flesh before Arthur even registered the bullet crack. He flung the creature to the ground and spun to face his father. His father hadn’t lowered the rifle and stood stock still, pointing the gun at his son’s chest for a few seconds that lasted an eternity.
‘Bloody girl.’ Arthur heard his father’s words and sniffed back the angry tears he felt welling up from within. He would not cry. He was not a girl. Not some limp-wristed boy. He was a killer. He would be a man, a real man. And his father would be proud of him.
‘Give me the gun.’ He stalked back to his father, anger coursing through him, and thrust out his hand. His father hesitated for a moment, perhaps in recognition of that flash behind the eyes, the flare of rage. His father handed him the weapon. The dog stood at his father’s side, eager to be off, her nose twitching and quivering. When his father gestured, she was gone, vaulting across tussocks of grass.
‘I’ll do it this time, I swear.’ Arthur kept his eye fixed on the paddock before him. He was determined to spot the next target before his father. In the distance, the dog froze, pointed. Arthur took a step, aimed, and fired. Still alive. Not a direct kill, but a hit. As the bullet entered the rabbit, the kick this time had come not from the rifle, but from the spreading warmth of pleasure in his chest as the rabbit flopped to the ground. The smell, the sound of the shot—he wanted to savour this moment. He was made for this—for guns, for the kill. He looked to his father, who had said nothing but merely held out his hand for the rifle. Arthur passed it over, not breaking eye contact. His father took the gun and a pitiless smile twisted his lips.
‘Wring
its bloody neck or I’ll wring yours.’
They had four by the end of the afternoon. Not as many as during the plague years according to his father, but not a bad effort. Arthur carried them by their hind legs, letting the limp bodies swing from his hand. As they neared the house, one of the cats came running. He hated the stupid things, always scratching and biting, but his mother never tired of trying to domesticate her ‘mousers’. The cat skirted around Arthur’s feet before he kicked out at it, sending it darting away.
‘What do we do with the rabbits now?’
‘Now we skin ‘em and let ‘em bleed out.’
‘And then?’
‘And then we cook ‘em.’
Arthur felt his gut contract. ‘Cook ‘em?’
‘You want to eat it raw?’
His father went to work quickly, showing Arthur how to skin the rabbits and clean them. His hands were sure with the knife and Arthur envied his deft movements. The sad carcass he tried to skin looked massacred in comparison. His father raised an eyebrow before knotting cord around their hind legs.
‘They’ve gotta hang up for a couple of days.’
‘Okay.’
‘Clean up this mess.’ His father gestured to the skins and heads. He paused for a second, then spoke again. ‘Keep a paw if you want. Left hind one is good luck.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Arthur pocketed one of the bloodied paws and held one of the skinned heads behind his back. He found Miriam sitting outside under a tree, reading a book.
‘Hey,’ he called out.
Path to the Night Sea Page 23