The Silent Kookaburra

by Liza Perrat

  I gathered Bitta into my arms, held him against my chest like a shield. My mother came scurrying down the hallway, snatched the phone from Nanna Purvis and jammed the receiver back down.

  ‘Can’t you see Tanya’s lying, Ellie?’ Uncle Blackie spread his arms at her like he was shocked and insulted. ‘You know she’s always tried to turn you away from me ... not happy for her own mother to have found love, finally. You know she’s hated me from the start. She’d do anything to turn you against me. Don’t you think you deserve to be with someone who really loves you?’

  He looked at me with a fishy kind of gaze, and I sucked in my breath, staring at him in disbelief. Like a cyclone unleashing, a dark rage bloomed and I sprang at him.

  ‘You’re the liar!’

  I turned to my mother. ‘I told you before, just ask the Morettis if you don’t believe me.’

  My mother looked from me to Uncle Blackie, back to me again.

  ‘Tanya’s telling the truth,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘He’s the liar, the perv. You just don’t wanna believe it, him layin’ on that charm thick as cream. You’re his victim too, not only Tanya.’

  ‘Why would I lie to you, Mum?’ I said. ‘Why would I risk you getting sick again? I was so glad you’d got better, so pleased to have the happy mother back.’

  My mother clamped her hands on her hips. ‘Tell me the truth, Blackie. Is Tanya lying, or are you?’

  Uncle Blackie let out a huge sigh. ‘What can I say, Ellie? Her word against mine, but think about it ... think about how she’s been since I moved into Gumtree Cottage. Doesn’t that answer your question?’

  ‘Look at his finger,’ I blurted out, suddenly remembering. ‘When he pinned me against the wall, gagged me ... touched me everywhere, I bit his hand.’

  My mother took Uncle Blackie’s arm, her gaze settling on the purple-red swelling on his forefinger.

  ‘See?’ I said. ‘Do you believe me now, Mum?’

  A terrible silence followed, broken only by our hard and fast breaths. My mother dropped Uncle Blackie’s arm, stared down the hallway, beyond us. It was as if I could see into her mind; watching it trying to take in the truth of those terrible accusations about the man she’d grown to love.

  She rubbed at her cowlick. The horror of it must have hit her like a hammer blow to the head: how Uncle Blackie had tricked her, to get to me. How he’d touched and fondled me and –– the worst of it –– how he’d held a pillow over her beautiful baby’s face and snuffed the life from her.

  The skin on her throat broke out in pink splotches. ‘Turn around and go straight back out of this house, Blackie,’ Mum said, jabbing a finger at the door. ‘How dare you show your face back here, after all you’ve done? After what you did to sweet little ...’ She spoke low, evenly; an odd kind of calm.

  How strong and assertive she sounded, though I smelled the terror beneath her brave words. How proud I was of my mother who, just a few months ago, couldn’t have defended me against a fly.

  ‘How can you believe them, Ellie?’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘I thought we loved each other?’

  ‘So did I.’ Her voice remained calm. Determined. ‘But how mistaken I was, how foolish. Leave now, I don’t ever want to see you again. And we’re calling the police ... just to make sure you never come back.’

  Nanna Purvis picked up the phone again.

  ‘At least let me get the rest of my things, and my suitcase,’ he said, and started walking towards the bedroom.

  ‘Out now!’ She was shrieking, lunging at him.

  Nanna Purvis dialled triple 0. ‘I need the police,’ she said. ‘And quick smart.’

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m leaving,’ Uncle Blackie said. ‘Put the phone down, Pearl, I’m going, see?’

  ‘I will not,’ Nanna Purvis said. ‘Can’t let a monster just waltz off into the night.’

  In one long stride, Uncle Blackie reached the phone. He snatched it from Nanna Purvis. With a grunt and a tug, he tore the whole thing out from the wall, threw it onto the floor. The phone smashed into pieces.

  His gaze still on us, Uncle Blackie backed out of the door, empty-handed, and vanished into the gathering dusk light.

  My mother closed the door, swivelled around and leaned against it. She shut her eyes, her breaths still coming fast and hard.

  I didn’t know why but, for some reason, I had to let Angela know what was happening, and I raced out the back door, across the yard and into Old Lenny’s place. Without even asking permission from Old Lenny’s son and daughter-in-law, I picked up the phone and dialled Angela’s number.

  ‘Guess what, he’s going!’ I said. ‘Leaving Gumtree Cottage right now!’

  47

  I was back at number thirteen in less than a minute. My mother and Nanna Purvis were sitting on the sofa in the living-room, Nanna Purvis pouring nips of sherry into two glasses.

  I dashed into my bedroom, peered through the Venetian blind slats. I had to make sure Uncle Blackie was truly gone. For good. But he wasn’t, not yet.

  Twilight had turned the trees to long silhouettes, the street lights illuminating no more than their circles of trunk, light slapping across Uncle Blackie’s face, bruising it yellow and a deathly white. Coralie Anderson called her cricket-playing boys inside.

  Figtree Avenue was deserted, except for Uncle Blackie headed for the Kingswood parked, once again, beneath the fig tree. But, as if he sensed me watching him through the blinds, he swivelled around to Gumtree Cottage’s old-person’s face.

  He walked back a few paces; stood on the front verandah steps not six feet away from me.

  Was that fear in his eyes, reflected in the street light? Fear, yes, and anger. And sadness.

  ‘I know you’re there, Tanya. You’ll pay for this, little bitch. Little dobber ... won’t get away with it. How could you do this to me?’

  I didn’t answer, the terror stealing away my breath. Moths flapped against the window as if trying to bat their way in, and, from the backyard, Mr Kooka cackled.

  ‘Garooagarooagarooga, garooagarooagarooga.’

  ‘Tanya ... you all right in there?’ Nanna Purvis’s voice hollered down the hallway. ‘Come in here with us, you’ll be needing a nip of sherry too, I reckon.’

  ‘Yes, fine, coming soon, just getting changed,’ I said, looking at Uncle Blackie standing there, staring at my window. His eyes turned glittery. Was he crying? He swiped at them.

  ‘We should’ve left before, Tanya.’ Cobwebby voice. ‘When we had the chance.’

  I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. How could he still not have understood I didn’t want to go anywhere with him, that I hated and feared him more than anything else?

  ‘We’ve should’ve left before they started watching me, before the moving shadows, before the black-hand letters, the threats ... too late now.’

  He sounded like a crazy person; a mad man who had known what those black-hand letters meant.

  Tears leaked down Uncle Blackie’s face, his gaze odd, faraway. ‘I know you’re watching me, Tanya, but look, all the others are here too: Ellie, Dobson, Beryl ... Dad and Uncle Ralph.’ He took a sobbing breath. ‘But no, Uncle Ralph is dead ... dead, buried and rotted.’

  Mr Kooka laughed again. Uncle Blackie looked up and down Figtree Avenue, and in the light of the moon rising like a lamp, I saw the madness in his eyes.

  ‘And Mum, is that you, Mum? So that’s what you look like.’ He turned back to my window. ‘You see, I never knew her, Tanya. It was me who killed her.’

  His voice was friendly again, the look in his eyes, which had so chilled me before, vanished.

  ‘Nanna Randall died in childbirth,’ I hissed, before I could stop myself. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’ I had no idea why I was defending Uncle Blackie; trying to make him feel better.

  Uncle Blackie’s face tightened, his voice rising, panicky. ‘Bloody hell, my mother’s bleeding. Look, blood’s gushing from her nose, her mouth, her ears, her eyes, her insides. Quick, Tanya, we have to help her. You and I toge
ther ... must save her!’

  But there was no Beulah Fannie Randall, blood gushing from her insides. Nobody, apart from Uncle Blackie. I shook all over, afraid for him; terrified for me.

  He must have been this crazy when he raped the Carter girl; why the judge locked him up in a mental asylum for the criminally insane. Maybe the madness had never left him but I –– and my mother –– just couldn’t see it.

  ‘Hurry, Tanya, she’s fading away, drowning in her own blood.’ Uncle Blackie gripped his temples, tearing at the greying tufts of curls. ‘Too late, she’s gone. That last baby was too big for her. That’s what they all said, but Uncle Ralph said it was my fault. All my fault.’

  He hunched his back, bent over, cringing. A defenceless animal against Uncle Ralph’s evil words.

  ‘I’m a bad person. I killed my mother ... did a revolting thing to a young girl ... to you, Tanya. I deserve to die for that.’

  I knew I should keep my mouth shut, just stay quiet and hope he got into the Kingswood and drove away for good, but I sensed this was my last chance to find out the truth, and I burned to know it.

  ‘Did you suffocate my baby sister? Was it you who killed Shelley?’

  ‘Shelley?’ He frowned, shook his head as if he had no idea who Shelley was, or what I was talking about.

  ***

  Uncle Blackie smiled –– a strange, sad, lop-sided grin –– as he turned and walked away from me, back to the road. I wanted to run from my bedroom to the safety of Mum and Nanna Purvis drinking sherry in the living-room, but something kept me there, stayed my fingers plucking apart the Venetian blind slats.

  So stunned at this different –– mad –– Uncle Blackie, I paid no attention to the car slowly climbing the Figtree Avenue hill. As it drew closer to number thirteen I saw it was the same Mercedes I’d seen twice before. I was sure of it, with those tinted windows and the driver slumped low in the seat, a hat masking most of his face. But this time there were two more men, in the back seat.

  Uncle Blackie stood on the kerb, teetering at the edge of it, staring at the Mercedes as if waiting for it to reach him.

  He was about to step onto the road! My heart missed beats, thudded against my chest, my thoughts fluttering like trapped birds. Mr Kooka laughed, long and low.

  ‘No!’ I shrieked, as he walked straight into the Mercedes’ path.

  Then, in that briefest instant, when he could still choose between living and dying, he changed his mind. The Mercedes’ headlights inches away, Uncle Blackie leapt back onto the footpath.

  ‘How dare they blame me for her bleeding to death?’ he said. ‘How dare they lock me away in that hellhole, steal my youth –– my life! –– on nothing more than the wild accusations of one blubbering prick-teaser?’

  His head thrown back, he spoke not to me, but to the night sky, the moon and stars, and to the sudden breeze that rattled the window panes. ‘How dare you refuse me, Tanya? This is all your fault.’

  Uncle Blackie turned around once again and strode back to the front verandah.

  He was coming for me; he’d kill all of us.

  He reached the verandah steps. Climbing up. One step. Two, three.

  My whole body shook.

  The two men from the back of the Mercedes leapt out, dashed up onto the verandah. They each grabbed one of Uncle Blackie’s arms. He had no chance to shout or struggle, as they shoved him into the back seat and the Mercedes drove off down Figtree Avenue.

  My fingers found my cowlick, rubbing harder, faster, and that sound –– of the Mercedes’ car door closing –– seemed so sharp and clear. And final.

  48

  A week after those men took Uncle Blackie away in the Mercedes, his Kingswood disappeared from Figtree Avenue. No one saw who drove it away, or when, it just wasn’t there any longer. Like Uncle Blackie: just not there any longer.

  And, a little more each day, as the warm days of spring arrived, the winter chill carried off with it my terror of Uncle Blackie. Well, the worst of it.

  Shelley would’ve been celebrating her first birthday, taking wobbly steps, cooing and laughing. Instead, we all still sagged under the pain of her young life unlived. Though we did celebrate one thing –– my father’s return to Wollongong.

  No letter, no phone call. The Holden simply pulled into the driveway of Gumtree Cottage one afternoon as if he was back from work or the pub rather than from an absence of almost eight months.

  Mum allowed him back into the house but refused to let him into their bedroom; she threw a pillow onto the sofa for him each night after tea.

  At first I wouldn’t speak to my father, too angry with him for leaving us alone with Uncle Blackie’s evil madness. And for running off with Mrs Mornon. There was no sign of her, or of Stacey, and nobody asked him about them. Later, Coralie Anderson told Nanna Purvis that Mrs Mornon had returned to Figtree Avenue just long enough to sell the house and pack her and Stacey off somewhere. I didn’t want to know where, didn’t care. I just hoped I’d never see that vile girl again.

  Dad made a big effort to get me to forgive him. After carefully removing the David Cassidy, and Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Anni-Frid posters, he ripped off the ugly wallpaper patterned with violet posies from my bedroom walls and repapered them with the brightly-coloured flowery print I’d chosen.

  He changed the kitchen wallpaper too, for one with a modern blue geometrical design. He ripped down all the Venetian blinds and replaced them with those smaller and lighter aluminium “Mini-Blinds” that were all the rage. He knocked down Uncle Blackie’s barbecue and built a larger, fancier one.

  My father found another brick-laying job but restricted his trips to The Dead Dingo’s Donger with his work mates to Friday evenings only.

  After about a week, my mother stopped putting out the sofa sheet and pillow. I supposed she thought Dad wasn’t the only one who had to be forgiven; that she had her own mistakes that needed pardoning.

  I lay on my bed that first night Mum let him back into her bed, admiring my groovy new wallpaper, catching snippets of their whispers.

  ‘... missed you and Tanya so much ... made a big mistake. Couldn’t bear your misery ... Shelley dying like that.’

  ‘... not entirely your fault, Dobson, I’m as much to blame. How could ... let that monster ... our home? So ashamed.’

  ‘Don’t be ... you ... victim as much as Tanya.’

  ‘Yes but ... the guilt ... idiocy!’

  ‘... all in the past now, Eleanor.’

  ‘I hope Tanya ... forgive me too.’

  ‘Of course I forgive you,’ I wanted to call out to my mother. ‘That monster tricked us all.’ But I think she knew both Dad and I –– and Nanna Purvis –– were just thankful Uncle Blackie was gone for good.

  ‘... adopted ... search for the boy if you’re still keen, Eleanor?’

  ‘... don’t know.’

  ‘If I did find him ... constant reminder ... Blackie. Do you want that?’

  ‘No, Dobson ... really don’t know ... for the best.’

  ‘Best thing we can do is help Tanya get over ...’

  ***

  Danish architect, Jørn Utzon had won the competition held to design the new Sydney Opera House. Nothing so daringly inclined and top-heavy had ever been built and it took a decade and a half to finish. And this morning, October twentieth, my father was driving Mum and me up to Sydney for the official Opera House opening.

  Nanna Purvis said she preferred to stay home and watch it on telly with Billie-Jean, at Old Lenny’s. ‘How can I refuse the lonely old bugger,’ she’d said.

  The sun warming Sydney Harbour heralded another hot summer on its way. Boats crowded the water, the sun’s rays bounced off Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the crowd cheered as Elizabeth, Queen of England and Australia, officially opened the Sydney Opera House.

  After the ceremony, Dad bought us fish and chips. We unwrapped the butcher’s paper sleek with greased salt, and fended off the grey and white gulls that stalked around us, gla
ssy eyes watching our every mouthful.

  We walked along the quay back to the Holden, my parents’ hands entwined, my father’s other arm slung across my shoulder. We stopped at a booth and Dad got me some fairy floss, which the harbour breeze stuck to my cheeks.

  We drove home to Wollongong via the Royal National Park where we set up camp for the night in the same spot as before Shelley was born.

  Our teacher had told us that the park was once the country of the Dharawal people, Australian Aborigines who survived as skilled hunter-fisher-gatherers in clans scattered along the coast. But it had been named the Royal National Park after Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Australia in 1954.

  Dad pitched the tent while Mum and I kindled up a blaze and unpacked the food from the Esky.

  Sulphur-crested cockatoos shrieked from the eucalyptus trees. Brightly-coloured rosellas whistled their musical ‘ching-ching-ching’ and pink and grey parrots pecked the grassland for seeds and roots.

  ‘Why do gum trees look blue?’ I asked Dad, as Mum set the billy to boil.

  ‘Because the oil from their leaves makes the air look a bit hazy,’ he said. ‘And, from a distance, kind of blueish.’

  ‘Hey, it’s the same wallaby as last time.’ I pointed to the shy creature staring out at us from behind the large rock, ears pointed towards the paling sky.

  ‘Such a sweetie ... as if he’s been waiting for us to come back,’ my mother said as we sat cross-legged by the campfire munching on the Vegemite sandwiches she’d prepared.

  ‘Did you know, Tanya that Australia was home to megafauna twenty or thirty thousand years ago?’ my father said. A thread of gooey marshmallow dangled from his lips. Mum swiped it away and kissed the sticky spot.

  ‘What’s megafauna, Dad?’

  ‘Giant marsupials. Wombats the size of rhinos, kangaroos ten-foot long and seven-foot-long lizards.’

  ‘What happened to the megafauna ... where’d it go?’