by Liza Perrat
I also told my grandmother why she couldn’t tell any of this to my mother.
Nanna Purvis’s saggy bosom heaved against her chest. ‘I just knew it was a bad idea having him here, around you –– a young girl. Been saying as much to your mother, haven’t I?’
She didn’t holler or curse but spoke evenly, rationally. ‘But you’re right, we can’t tell Eleanor, don’t want to risk kicking off the miseries again.’ She nodded at the television. ‘Turn that thing down, will ya, Tanya? I need to think.’
Against the background television hum, Nanna Purvis fell silent, stroking Billie-Jean, the blue slipper of her top-crossed foot bobbing up and down.
‘Angela’s parents know everything too,’ I said. ‘She told me her father will make Uncle Blackie go away from Wollongong, but he’s still here. You can’t say anything about that to anyone, though. The Morettis’ business is secret.’
Nanna Purvis’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Well, if that mob’ve offered to help, be rude not to accept, wouldn’t it? And I guess they’d take care of Blackburn a darn sight better than our hillbilly fuzz. But we still have to tell the cops.’
‘Tell the police? No!’
‘Why not, Tanya? Blackburn Randall’s a convicted child molester. They’ll believe us about that, at least. But not much point telling them you suspect him of murdering little Shelley ... bless her soul. They already interviewed, and cleared, him along with everyone else.’
‘If the police know what he does to me then everyone will find out,’ I said. ‘They’d all be laughing at me –– Stacey Mornon and the rest of them. I just know they would. Please, you can’t tell the police.’
After a pause Nanna Purvis said: ‘Righto, we won’t tell the cops just yet. But in case your Italian friends can’t help, I’ve an idea who will help us with that perv.’
‘Who? And what’ll they do?’
‘Best you know nothing about it.’
While my mother was in her bedroom slipping on her nightie and plastering cream into her face, I crept down the hallway behind my grandmother, to the bathroom. Peering around the doorway, I spied on her as she opened the cupboard and slid Mum’s old bottle of tranquillisers into her apron pocket. As she was about to turn around, I hurried back to the kitchen.
‘Just taking Billie-Jean out for a widdly-woo,’ she said, and I watched her trundle off outside and go next door to number eleven.
I looked up to the cloudless, star-blown sky and the Southern Cross winked at me as if it approved of whatever mad plan my grandmother was devising.
***
The next afternoon, while I was doing my homework at the kitchen table, Old Lenny was in the backyard yarning on to Uncle Blackie as if they were best mates.
Lenny Longbottom was at our place so often these days he no longer bothered knocking or even coming to the door. He let himself into the yard through the side gate and if nobody was outside he’d holler to Nanna Purvis from the back verandah.
‘How’d you like to get first grabs on this latest homebrew?’ Old Lenny said to Uncle Blackie, holding up two bottles filled with amber-coloured liquid. ‘Best stuff in Wollongong, so me mates reckon ... real cheap too.’
Uncle Blackie stood upright from where he was pruning the bushes, smeared earth across his brow as he ran a hand through his curls.
‘Saw you running up a sweat out here,’ Old Lenny said, flipping the rat-plait over his shoulder. ‘Thought you might wanna try the stuff before you buy? I’ll go snag a few glasses off Pearl.’
Before Uncle Blackie had time to answer, Old Lenny was climbing the verandah steps and barging into the kitchen, where my grandmother was sitting beside me, studying the Specials page of the Illawarra Mercury.
As if she’d been listening to the conversation in the yard, Nanna Purvis had three glasses ready on a tray.
I kept my gaze on my homework, shaky hands making my writing wriggly. Old Lenny opened both bottles and filled the three glasses: two from one bottle, and the glass on the left from the other bottle.
I pretended not to notice the glances he and Nanna Purvis exchanged. I took long, slow breaths, trying to soften the lump of wood wedged in my chest. Something was going on between those two and I was shocked, nervous and proud all at once.
Nanna Purvis followed him outside with the tray, placed it on the verandah and sat on her banana lounge –– the other new banana chair Old Lenny had got her for a bargain. ‘That way you won’t have to lug the living-room one outside, Pearl,’ he’d said.
I stood to one side of the flyscreen, watching.
‘Ready when you are,’ Old Lenny called. He sat on the verandah edge, hairy legs and bare feet dangling over the side.
Uncle Blackie swiped the sweat from his brow and loped across to them, smiling, as if pleased that Lenny had befriended him; as if any mate –– even an old gaol bird mate of Nanna Purvis’s –– was better than no mates at all.
‘Only got half a dozen bottles of the stuff,’ Old Lenny said with his gap-toothed grin, as Nanna Purvis took her drink from the tray, and Lenny handed the glass on the left to Uncle Blackie. ‘So, as I said, happy to give you a good price if the stuff’s to your taste.’ Old Lenny took the remaining glass and swallowed a mouthful.
Nanna Purvis sipped her homebrew. Uncle Blackie hadn’t touched his yet.
‘It’ll go all warm, Blackie,’ Old Lenny said, nodding at the glass.
I was certain Uncle Blackie was about to raise his glass to his lips when my mother bounced in from Jim’s Jeans ’n Johns. Her steps were always bouncy now, and she bounded right past me, out onto the verandah and sat on Uncle Blackie’s knee.
‘Is that your tasty homebrew, Old Lenny?’ she said, as Uncle Blackie kissed her on the cheek, one hand patting her back. ‘I’m gasping after such a long day.’
‘Have mine, Ellie.’ Uncle Blackie pushed his glass over to Mum and got up. ‘I’ll get another one.’
Things happened quickly then, in a jumbled confusion of wrinkly old limbs. Nanna Purvis was leaning towards Uncle Blackie’s glass. Old Lenny was on his feet, lurching at the tray, and suddenly Uncle Blackie’s glass was knocked over, the homebrew leaking onto the wooden boards.
‘Ah, ya clumsy old bugger,’ Nanna Purvis said.
‘Blimey, sorry about that,’ Old Lenny said. ‘You all stay put, I’ll get more drinks.’
As Old Lenny came back to the kitchen, Uncle Blackie’s gaze settled on Nanna Purvis, the caterpillar eyebrow a thick, steady line above dark and evil eyes.
And, as if he’d known all along that I was watching from the kitchen, Uncle Blackie looked up through the flyscreen. He winked at me, a grin spreading across his mocking face. As if he’d slapped me, I leapt backwards.
The fear bubbled inside me again, for now I understood how wicked Uncle Blackie really was. He would’ve let my mother drink that doped homebrew, knowing that it might kill her.
I knew for certain he was capable of murder.
The cold hand of terror gripped me, the horror that Uncle Blackie might easily kill my mother, Nanna Purvis or me as easily as he’d killed our little gumnut girl.
43
‘How about I make you a special birthday cake like when you were little?’ Mum said. It was my twelfth birthday, August twenty-second, 1973. But the winter chill outside was nothing compared with the ongoing iciness within me, the solid block of Uncle Blackie’s menacing presence.
There was nothing I could do to get rid of him. Even Nanna Purvis and Old Lenny had failed, but still I could not allow him to keep sleeping on my father’s side of the bed. That was all wrong.
‘Or is twelve too old for funny cakes, and candles? Tanya ... are you listening to me?’
Her voice snapped me from my thoughts. ‘No, not too old,’ I said to the working mother who I was sure no longer had time to cook birthday cakes. I didn’t hold that against her though, rather admiring her for the long hours at Jim’s Jeans ’n Johns, as well as the time spent on her typing and shorthand course.
I would have been totally proud of this modern mother if only she hadn’t let Uncle Blackie trick her with his romantic ways and his dreamy voice.
‘But you don’t have to worry about a cake, Mum. The Morettis invited us to Zio Ricci’s restaurant tonight for my birthday, remember? Angela said they’re organising the cake too.’
As she left for work, and me for school, I smiled to myself thinking of the cakes, party pies and sausage rolls, buttered bread sprinkled with colourful “hundreds and thousands” –– the parties I’d had as a kid long before Shelley came, before the misery of my mother’s endless messy miscarriages, and her baby’s death, tortured her body and her mind.
I recalled her laughing and kissing my brow as she laboured over the most complex dolphin or cat-shaped cake or whatever I’d chosen. And my father insisting she buy me a new party dress even if the housekeeping money was low.
‘We’ll scrimp on something else,’ he’d say and make me put on the dress long before the party guests arrived, and parade up and down the verandah before him and twirl about on my toes.
‘Prettiest girl in Wollongong,’ Dad would say, which I soon learned was the biggest lie. But that had only been a small fib in the growing mound of my father’s lies. His entire fatherhood had become one big lie since he’d given it up so easily for Mrs Mornon. And bloody Stacey.
***
Uncle Blackie would still be at his TAB job, my mother working down at Eastbridge, so I sprinted home from school, and down to the back-yard shed. For days, every chance I got, I’d been searching through Uncle Blackie’s belongings for the photos. And now, finally, there were only three boxes left to sift through.
I climbed the ladder, and from high on the shelf at the back of the shed, I brought the boxes down, one by one. Breathing hard, I rubbed my cowlick, pushed at my brow. I opened the flaps of the first one. Inside it, beneath a moth-eaten pullover, sat a red box.
My quivering fingers lifted the lid from the red box, fussed with the tissue paper inside, folding it out. And there they were –– a stack of photographs. Mostly of girls around my age, but as I flipped through them all, I saw that some of the girls looked only about seven or eight years old.
Who are they? Is one of them “that Carter girl”?
There were shots of the girls in their school uniform –– different colours, different schools, but all in the same poses. The poses Uncle Blackie had taught me.
Then, beneath them, were more photos –– all of the girls naked.
And, at the very bottom of the pile, I found Tanya: first in my uniform, then my underwear, and, lastly, fat and gawky-nude, trying to look like a model.
Swallowing back a hunk of vomit, I almost cried out with embarrassment, with the dirty guilt. I clamped a palm across my mouth, tried to slow my breaths, to stop my head spinning.
I took each photograph, one by one, and ripped it into a hundred tiny pieces. Then I shovelled all those tiny bits of paper into a plastic bag, and stomped down to the end of the yard.
Emptying the bag into the bin in which Dad used to burn leaves, bush and grass clippings, I took from my pocket one of the lighters my father had left behind, and stoked up a blaze.
I stayed and watched until the last paper morsel curled up and blackened. And when it was all a smoky mound of ashes, I went back inside and got ready to go out to The Greasy Fork.
Uncle Blackie’s horrid photos would not spoil my birthday tea.
44
That evening, sitting in the back seat of Uncle Blackie’s Kingswood beside Nanna Purvis, in the long floral-print frock with its halter-neck top that Mum had got me for my birthday, I felt almost beautiful. The one ugly thing was Uncle Blackie, driving, and Mum sitting so close to him their shoulders touched. I hoped he’d be furious when he discovered I’d shredded his disgusting photos.
Nanna Purvis’s arms were clamped across her chest. ‘Old Lenny just got me a new telly and youse already drag me away from it. Besides you know that foreign grub messes with me intestines. Gives me the farts for the whole next day.’
‘But it’s my birthday tea,’ I said with a giggle.
‘And you might even enjoy the food,’ Mum said.
‘I doubt that,’ Nanna Purvis grumbled as Uncle Blackie parked the Kingswood in The Greasy Fork carpark. He opened the door for my mother who slid out like a queen, glow mesh purse shimmering in the lamplight.
Angela and her parents, and Marco –– whoopee, he’d come! –– were waiting for us. Mr and Mrs Moretti kissed me on each cheek.
‘Buon compleanno ... happy birthday,’ they said, and Nanna Purvis took two steps back like she was afraid they’d kiss her too, or say something else in Italian.
Angela’s parents glanced at Uncle Blackie, at each other, but so quickly it was over before anyone noticed, besides Angela and me.
The Greasy Fork was crowded, with not a single spare seat. Ours was the largest table which Zio Ricci and Zia Valentina had set with an ivory-coloured tablecloth, silver crockery and white candles in swan candleholders, the candles rising from the swans’ backs. The other tables had red and white checked tablecloths –– simple picnic ones –– and no swan candleholders. All the tables, though, had lemonade bottles filled with red and white wine.
‘I got you a present,’ Angela said as I sat beside her. She pushed the gift at me, wrapped in red smiley-faces paper, tied with a gold ribbon.
I opened it slowly, trying to make the good feeling last –– that delicious sensation of a friend giving you a present.
I gasped as I pulled out Ring-Ring, the new single from the popular Swedish group: Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid, along with a giant poster of the four singers.
‘Wow, groovy,’ Marco said, the muscles in his arms and shoulders straining beneath his white satin shirt, the top buttons open to show off his suntanned chest and the sparkly gold cross he wore.
‘Thanks, Angela,’ I said, ‘I’ll put up the poster in my room as soon as I get home.’
The adults were drinking wine and chatting to each other, except Uncle Blackie, who remained wordless, beside my mother, obviously not wanting to be here.
‘He got another one of those weird black-hand prints in the mail,’ I whispered to Angela. ‘Remember that first one I told you about?’
Angela nodded.
‘Well, this was the same ... same words telling him to leave Wollongong. I wish he’d take notice of them, but he doesn’t, he just stays, and keeps trying to talk me into going to Perth with him.’
‘I told you not to worry, didn’t I?’ Angela’s cheeks turned pink. She glanced away sharply and I suspected that, like me, my friend had a good idea who’d sent those black-hand prints. But she wasn’t going to tell me. Or couldn’t, for some reason.
Zia Valentina brought out soft drinks and a plate of antipasto. ‘Olives, mozzarella balls, salami and pepperoni,’ she said. She was so tall in her corked high heels, slim and elegant in the tight black dress with gold sequins. She made me think of a film star, her hair teased up high like that, and I wished that one day I’d look so pretty. Angela’s mother always looked nice too, with perfectly-curled hair, smart clothes and lipstick, but she was more homely than Zia Valentina, more motherly.
‘You are trying salami, Mrs Purvis?’ Mrs Moretti said. ‘You are liking it, I am sure.’
‘Okay, just a small piece, if you insist,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘Only hope it don’t mess with me intestines.’
Nanna Purvis swallowed a morsel of salami. ‘Crikey, not bad at all. I might even have to give up Spam for this salami grub.’
Everyone smiled. Mr Moretti poured more wine, and Nanna Purvis leaned over to me and said: ‘Don’t slouch, Tanya. You’re almost a grown woman, and you don’t want to end up an old maid.’
You’re almost a grown woman now.
I stole a glance at Uncle Blackie, who was staring straight at me. That dark gaze sent a chill through me –– a cold wave flooding a warm rock pool. I sat up straight, looked away from
him. ‘Old maid?’
‘I always said to me own mother,’ Nanna Purvis went on, ‘if I’m not married by the time I’m twenty-five, I’ll cut off me own bosoms rather than be an old maid.’ Angela and I tried not to giggle too much and Mum and Angela’s parents hid their smirks.
‘I should’ve made you read The Female Eunuch,’ Mum said.
Nanna Purvis scowled. ‘What would I want to read that for?’
‘Get the Spaghetti Carbonara, Tanya,’ Marco said, leaning towards me from the other side of his sister, as Zia Valentina took our order. ‘It’s Zio Ricci’s speciality ... so yummy.’
And when the meals arrived, I wound my spaghetti around the fork like Zia Valentina showed me, and held it on my tongue, savouring the creamy bacon taste before it slid down my throat. I swore I’d never again eat canned spaghetti.
I had a taste of Mum’s Involtini –– melty veal rolls with a cheese, parsley, garlic and breadcrumb topping.
After the meal, Zia Valentina brought out an enormous cake with chocolate swirls, frilly cream and twelve candles. Zio Ricci switched off the restaurant lights, and not only the people at our table, but everyone in The Greasy Fork sang “Happy Birthday”, then “Buon Compleanno”.
The warm feeling rushed right up to the tips of my ears. I couldn’t stop grinning. Mum took my other hand and squeezed.
‘Happy birthday, Tanya.’
And in that instant, my eyes closed, the lilting Italian music making me feel like swaying, joyful voices ringing in my ears, a strange feeling settled over me. Happiness, it was. Something I’d almost forgotten existed, except for the brief moments I was at Angela’s house.
Shelley was still alive. The colic gone, she’d grown up, and was tottering around Gumtree Cottage babbling in broken sentences and giggling and shrieking with a toddler’s innocence.
How sad that I would never see her do that. And so unfair! I willed myself to stop dwelling on that sorrow, and imagined Uncle Blackie was still locked up in Macquarie Pastures Asylum for the Criminally Insane. He’d never been released. I’d never met him. I didn’t even know he existed. My mother had never fallen ill and my father would walk in, on his own, through the door of The Greasy Fork the instant I opened my eyes.