The Silent Kookaburra

by Liza Perrat

  ‘He knows you couldn’t help it,’ I said. ‘Anyway he’ll be back soon. You can make it up to him. Cook him one of Mrs Moretti’s yummy Italian recipes?’

  ‘You and Nanna Purvis, and I, have to try and forget what happened to Shelley,’ she said, wiping away the tear sliding down her cheek. She shook her head, as if she, too, wished things had not happened as they had. ‘And –– for the moment –– don’t think too much about your father.’

  ‘Dad’ll be back,’ I said, which made Nanna Purvis roll her eyes. ‘Then Uncle Blackie can stop coming around.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve got against your uncle,’ Mum said, popping her lipstick into her glow mesh handbag. ‘You’re so unfriendly to him, always scowling or pouting. So ungrateful after all the nice things he’s bought you.’ She slung the handbag over one shoulder. ‘I told you before, that Carter girl affair was all lies.’

  ‘I just don’t like him,’ I said. The air between us grew hot and heavy, the guilt and frustration flaying me, the truth about Uncle Blackie’s intentions for me –– if I told her –– threatening to rip apart those shreds we’d so lovingly woven back together.

  No, she could never know about the photos, the touching. I could never tell her I believed it was Uncle Blackie who’d killed Shelley. I could not risk losing her again.

  ‘Well, could you just try, please,’ Mum said, glancing at her watch. ‘Goodness, look at the time. Sofia and Angela will be here any minute.’

  ***

  We left Nanna Purvis arguing with Old Lenny who’d heard about our broken-down lawnmower. Apparently he had one left in his garage.

  ‘Only the one, mind,’ he’d said.

  Nanna Purvis was Old Lenny’s haggling match and negotiations, underway for some time, were still in deadlock.

  ‘Hey, Tanya, wanna play cricket with me ’n Wayne?’ Terry Anderson called out.

  ‘No thanks, I hate cricket, it’s just for kids.’

  At the shopping centre, Mrs Moretti, Angela and I waved Mum off, wishing her good luck, and began trundling from one clothes shop to the next.

  Mrs Moretti bought Angela and me velour hot pants, flared denims and a T-shirt with our names printed on the front. She seemed to have a lot of money in her housekeeping purse, so it was obvious that laying carpets earned far more money than laying bricks. Or mining in Mount Isa.

  ‘I got the job ... start next Monday!’ Mum’s face was bright and cheery as she joined us at our table at The Cozie Café. ‘And the boss is letting me work special hours so I can fit in my typing and shorthand classes.’

  ‘Good on you, Mum.’ I was happy for her, sensed this job was one of the final bends she had to negotiate in her long and winding recovery road.

  ‘You be the best saleswoman,’ Mrs Moretti said, kissing my mother on both cheeks.

  Mum drank tea, Mrs Moretti had a coffee and Angela and I ordered a milkshake and a chocolate éclair.

  I pulled the latest issue of Dolly magazine from my Indian bag and Angela and I flipped through the pages, poring over the clothes, makeup and jewellery. The good-looking boys.

  When we arrived back at Bottlebrush Crescent, Mrs Moretti and my mother went outside to relax on the deck chairs by the pool, with ginger beer and cannoli, whilst Angela and I thumped upstairs to her bedroom.

  We pulled the new clothes from the bags, held them up against our bodies, admired ourselves in the mirror.

  ‘Any more letters from your dad?’ Angela asked as we tried everything on, flinging clothes about her bedroom. ‘Is he coming home soon?’

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t heard from him in ages. And I can tell my mother’s given up on him coming back ... and flirting with that perv, Uncle Blackie, who still always tries to touch me when Mum and Nanna Purvis aren’t looking.’

  ‘Yeah, what an old perv. But remember what I told you Marco said –– that my papa can make bad people go away from Wollongong.’

  ‘Uncle Blackie would just come back from wherever they sent him. But I can’t stand him being at Gumtree Cottage all the time ... can’t bear to see him with my mother when I know he doesn’t really like her; that he just wants to get to me.’ I took a deep breath. ‘And if he did suffocate Shelley, what if he does the same to me?’

  ‘That’s just too awful! Are you sure you don’t want me to tell my papa?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ I said as we left that sea of tangled garments and made our way down to our mothers sitting beside the pool. ‘If all that got back to Mum it would destroy her. I’ll have to find my own way to stop him coming around to Gumtree Cottage.’

  37

  A few weeks after Mum started her job at Jim’s Jeans ’n Johns, I went to change out of my school uniform and found a framed certificate hanging on my bedroom wall beside the David Cassidy posters.

  Certificate of Birth.

  Where Born and When: Ballina, New South Wales, August Twenty-Second, 1961.

  Sex: female. Name (if any): Tanya Pearl.

  Mother: Eleanor Daisy Randall.

  Father: Robson Randall. Profession: Bricklayer.

  Still grinning like a happy fool, I sat at the kitchen table and got out my homework.

  ‘Give you a hand with that?’ As usual, Uncle Blackie had crept up on me, and he settled his bulk into the chair beside me, his raspy breaths hot on my cheek.

  ‘No thanks.’ I kept my gaze fixed on my pen, moving it across the page and trying to concentrate on the words.

  His hand was on my thigh, a pat, stroking. I jumped from the chair and moved to the other end of the table.

  ‘Stop being silly, Tanya, please. I know you enjoyed it before.’ His voice was soft as always, but wheedling now. ‘You know you want us to be together as much as I do, so stop acting like this.’

  I was trying to think what to say to him when Nanna Purvis and Mum burst through the door. Mum was jabbering on to my grandmother about how many pairs of jeans she’d sold that day at work, Nanna Purvis butting in with what her hairdresser had said about someone going travelling around Australia in a Kombi van.

  Mum smiled at Uncle Blackie, took off her jacket, kissed my forehead and put the kettle on to boil. Nanna Purvis scowled at him.

  ‘Just weeded all the flower beds, Eleanor,’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘New lawnmower from Old Lenny’s working like a dream too. And I’ve been thinking, it’s about time we got rid of Gumtree Cottage’s old corrugated iron roof. What do you say to a spanking new tiled roof?’

  ‘No,’ I snapped. ‘I like the roof the way it is ... the sound of the rain on it. Why do you want to change everything at Gumtree Cottage?’

  It might have been a bit rundown and shabby-looking, and even though I envied Angela Moretti her Bottlebrush Crescent palace, I wanted Gumtree Cottage to stay the way it was; the way I’d always known it. How it was when Shelley was alive and before Dad left, when we were all happy together.

  ‘Don’t let him change the roof, please Mum.’

  ‘If you’re so against it, Tanya,’ Uncle Blackie said, ‘of course I won’t.’

  ‘Blackie’s only trying to make Gumtree Cottage a nicer home for us,’ Mum said.

  ‘Anyway, you have a think about it, Tanya,’ Uncle Blackie said. He laid a hand on my mother’s shoulder. ‘I thought I’d hang around, Eleanor, give you and Tanya a lift to the cemetery?’

  Mum looked at me, eyebrows raised. ‘Sure you still want to go, Tanya?’

  ‘I do, but do you still want to go?’

  Mum had said it would be good for us to visit Shelley’s grave. Her psychiatrist believed it would help us “move on”, but I was afraid it would simply recall to her all those terrible seabed memories. I still imagined her as a frail flower petal which the slightest gust could swoop up and blow any which way. But she gave me a firm nod.

  ‘Okay, almost finished my homework. We’ll catch the bus. We prefer to go on our own to see Shelley, don’t we, Mum?’

  ‘Righto, if that’s what you both want,’ Uncle Blackie said.
‘And just so you know, Eleanor, I got rid of Shelley’s pram for you ... thought it best.’

  ‘Got rid of her pram?’ Mum’s face creased into a frown. The boiling water she was pouring into the teapot splattered over the benchtop and I could see she was shocked too, that he’d removed it without asking her. But she never argued with anything Uncle Blackie did or said. As if he’d stolen away not only Shelley’s pram, but my mother’s mind too.

  ‘But ... but why would you do that?’ she said.

  I flew to the flyscreen, looked out into the backyard, at the sad and empty space beneath the gum tree.

  ‘Why did you take her pram away?’ I snarled at Uncle Blackie. It had been comforting seeing it there every time I went outside. A silent reminder of Shelley. A memorial to our little gumnut girl.

  But now the pram was gone, along with her clothes, toys, cot and the rocking chair, another piece of her was erased. Soon there would not be a single snippet of her left. It would be like she’d never existed.

  ***

  ‘I’d best get off to work then,’ Uncle Blackie said, giving my mother’s shoulder a squeeze. ‘All those punters’ll be waiting at the TAB to throw their money away.’

  Mum stared, wordlessly, into space, her eyes slightly crossed and misty.

  ‘Thanks for the birth certificate,’ I said, mainly to try and stop her thinking about Shelley’s pram. ‘But Pearl? I didn’t even know I had a middle name.’

  ‘Be thankful we gave you “Pearl” and not “Beulah Fannie”,’ Mum said, pouring herself a cup of tea, and one for Nanna Purvis.

  ‘Beulah Fannie?’

  ‘Nanna Randall’s name ... poor woman.’ Mum held her cup with both hands and blew on the hot tea. ‘Poor, because she bled to death.’

  ‘It must be so awful to bleed to death,’ I said, wondering if that was worse than suffocating.

  ‘It happened when she was giving birth to Blackie. “Poor Beulah Fannie, that last baby was far too big”, everyone said. Blackie told me his father –– Pop Randall –– was never the same after she died. Something snapped inside him that couldn’t be fixed. He blamed her death on poor little Blackie.’ She sipped her tea, blew on it again. ‘Pop Randall ignored Blackie his whole life. Never wanted anything to do with him ... his own child.’ Another sip of tea. ‘Then, and Blackie didn’t tell me this, it was your father who told me about Uncle Ralph years later, after Blackie was sent to Macquarie Pastures.’

  ‘Who’s Uncle Ralph?’

  Even as I asked the question, I recalled the name from Uncle Blackie’s conversation with Dad, the night of Shelley’s funeral.

  ... like you tried to stand up for me against sleazy old Uncle Ralph ... may the bastard be rotting in Hell.

  ‘He wasn’t a real uncle,’ Mum said. ‘Just some friend of Pop Randall’s who took Blackie under his wing after his own father had rejected him. Sadly, this Ralph did terrible things to Blackie ... awful things adults aren’t meant to do to children. Pop Randall must’ve known what was going on ... your dad as good as told me he did, but he turned a blind eye.’ She paused for breath, placed the teacup on the saucer. ‘Anyway, what I’m trying to say, Tanya, is that’s maybe why Blackie’s the way he is ... a bit unusual. He’s never got over that terrible childhood; never got the chance to grow up properly. But he’s good at heart. Give him a chance, you’ll see.’

  I pressed my lips together, my hand tightening around the pen poised above my homework composition.

  Uncle Blackie had brainwashed my mother. That was clear. I’d never be able to count on her to help me stop him coming to Gumtree Cottage.

  ‘So,’ Mum said, with a small smile, ‘how’s that homework going? We should catch the next bus if we don’t want to get home too late.’

  ‘Almost finished, it’s a composition about yellow peril.’

  ‘Yellow peril?’

  ‘Our teacher told us that in January of this year, England, Denmark and Ireland joined the European Economic Community. She said Australia had counted on Britain as a market for our meat products, but that now we were forced to find other export markets, such as Japan. So we must all be on the alert for yellow peril.’

  ‘Yellow peril all right,’ Nanna Purvis said, shuffling in from the living-room. ‘Before we know it, there’ll be no more good old Aussie Iced VoVos, meat pies or sausage rolls. We’ll all be munchin’ on rice and noodles. Now, outside for a widdly-woo for you,’ she said to Billie-Jean and carried her dog out the back as if he had no legs of his own.

  ‘What do you reckon’s worse,’ Mum said with a smile. ‘Yellow peril or Nanna Purvis peril?’

  ‘What about Pearl peril?’ I said. ‘Or the peril of Pearl Purvis?’

  We both exploded into giggles.

  ‘What’s so funny, youse two?’ Nanna Purvis said, coming back inside.

  ‘Oh nothing,’ Mum and I said together, neither of us able to stifle our laughs.

  ‘What if I make poo burgers for tea?’ I said. ‘When we get back from the cemetery.’

  ‘Poo burgers?’ Mum said.

  Nanna Purvis clapped her hands. ‘You’ll see, Eleanor. Best burgers this side of Kalgoorlie. I could even get Old Lenny over to taste them.’

  ‘Don’t you hate Old Lenny?’ I said, with what my grandmother would call a “cheeky grin”. I’d guessed by now that Nanna Purvis had a warm spot for him in her cool heart, but that she just wanted us to believe she despised him, fearing we’d tease her for associating with a ratty-haired gaol bird. ‘And you suspected him of suffocating Shelley. That’s what you told the police, at the time. “Murder is murder” you said. “Once done you can never take it back. Once a gaol bird always a gaol bird, once a killer, always a killer.”’

  ‘Ah well, sometimes people say things in the heat of the moment, things they don’t mean. Anyway, maybe it was an accident; that other bloke just pushed Old Lenny too far. You gotta learn forgiveness in this world. Besides, you know the police questioned him, same as the rest of us, but the son and wife gave him a solid alibi –– he never left number eleven that whole morning Shelley was killed.’

  ‘Who did suffocate Shelley then ... who?’

  ‘Dunno, Tanya, and the sad fact is we might never know.’

  ‘But we have to find out. I couldn’t bear it if ...’

  Since Mum had started her job and the typing and shorthand course, I’d been cooking lots of teas: omelettes, lamb chops, green beans, mashed potatoes. I helped her with the housework too. Not that she cleaned anything like before. Now we did what she called “a lick and a promise”, and I never again saw that ugly orange-flowered cleaning shift.

  Of course I only helped with the inside jobs. I hardly ever went outside, with Uncle Blackie always loitering around the yard, ready to corner me. A squeeze of my shoulder. A pat on the head. A stroke of my hair.

  And the rising panicky fear that I was at the mercy of a ruthless child-killer.

  I itched to blurt out my suspicions about Uncle Blackie suffocating Shelley, but I had not the scantest proof. Nothing. There just wasn’t a thing to pin it on anyone.

  38

  As the bus rumbled along to the cemetery, our shoulders bumping, Mum pulled a book from her bag –– The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer. ‘A woman at the jeans shop gave this to me,’ she said when she saw me peering at the cover. ‘Told me I needed to learn about feminism.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that book ... some girls at school were talking about it.’

  ‘Apparently it’s caused loads of domestic fights,’ Mum said. ‘Some wives are even throwing the book at their husbands. And one woman had to keep it wrapped in brown paper because her husband wouldn’t let her read it.’

  ‘I don’t want to be like that,’ I said, nodding at the cover of The Female Eunuch –– a woman’s body without face or limbs. A woman incomplete. ‘I want more than a husband and kids. I want to be a somebody.’

  Mum smiled, patted my knee. ‘But a husband and children are still important. You don’t want
to grow old alone, Tanya. Nothing worse than ending up a twisted old maid.’

  Better a twisted old maid than growing old with Uncle Blackie.

  ‘What was it like, Mum, at Macquarie Pastures Asylum for the Criminally Insane?’

  ‘A hell on earth. A terrible place full of sad, lost people wandering up and down spooky corridors. Most of them wore these flimsy gowns, all open at the back, so everyone could see their stained underwear, or bare bums, and the staff yelled at them till they covered their ears and cringed. They all resembled skeletons. Rumour had it that the staff pilfered their food, chickens especially, which turned up in the local pub chook raffle.’ She let out a sigh. ‘Your dad and I went up there a few times, before Blackie got so ... so ... Anyway, we thought it best to stop going.’

  ‘Sure sounds awful.’

  ‘A good thing they closed the place down in the end,’ she said.

  My mother felt sorry for Uncle Blackie. She couldn’t stop making excuses for him; couldn’t see that the summer of ’57-’58 was a thing of the past and I was his target.

  But still I remained mute for fear of spoiling our new, happy time. Nothing could ruin it. Especially not Uncle Blackie.

  The late afternoon sunlight slicing through the window onto our shoulders, she went back to reading her book, then stuffed it back in her bag as the bus reached that wasteland cemetery down by the Sewage Treatment Plant.

  As I glimpsed the sombre rows of tombstones, my courage faltered. I thought of sweet little Shelley, dead in her white coffin, and the blood thudded through my skull so fast I was afraid it might burst open.

  ‘No, I don’t want to go ... I can’t.’ I sat there, glued to my seat, and my mother had to almost drag me off the bus.

  As I crouched down and laid the bouquet of white roses on my sister’s small stone rectangle, the agony drowned me again.

  I wondered what Shelley would look like now. Still a perfect little girl with raspberry lips, the dark hair and eyes that made her skin look even whiter? Would the frilly pink dress and matching matinee jacket still be whole, or would insects and rodents have gnawed it to shreds? Or was she all rotted away to a thin scatter of separated bones?