by Susan Allott
“No.” He held her by her arms. “This is where we live. This place is home for us, for our family. We need to make the best of it.”
She pulled away from him, more forcefully than she needed to. “I’m going to bed.”
Joe waited for the bedroom door to shut behind her and then he reached again for the whisky, drank it down from the bottle in quick, painful gulps. The kitchen turned dark. His head was full of things he wanted to say to her, now that she was gone. He moved into the hallway and leaned against the wall next to the bedroom door. The bed shifted under her weight and he thought of her lying there, angry with him, thinking she was hard done by because he wouldn’t let her go home to bloody England. She didn’t know how lucky she was. She let him work himself into the ground and then threw everything he did for her back in his face.
He pushed the bedroom door open and stood over her. “I know you’re not asleep,” he said.
She didn’t respond. He reached down and pulled the covers away from her body. She opened her eyes then and stared back at him. “Leave me alone, Joe.”
He held the headboard and leaned over her, his face close to hers. “Do you know how lucky you are?” No reply. “Do you?”
She rolled onto her back and pushed him, hitting his shoulders with the flats of her hands. “Go and sleep on the couch.”
He grabbed her by the wrists. She shouted and struggled and he knew he would regret this, but it was too late and he had already gone too far. This rage between them, it was stronger than him. “I’ve tried to make you happy,” he said. “You’re never happy, are you?”
She must have positioned her feet against his chest. The last thing he saw, before he flew backward, was the look of fear in her face. She kicked him with all her strength and he landed flat on his back. He was out cold before his head hit the floor.
“Daddy?”
He didn’t see Isla at the door, scared by the noise. He didn’t hear her voice.
“Isla,” Louisa said. “Did you wake up, darling?”
Isla looked up at her mother on the bed. She had seen her dad fly backward. The force of the kick. Its energy was locked inside her, tightly.
“It’s all right,” Louisa said, joining Isla at his side.
“Is he dead?”
“No!”
“Is he going to wake up?” Isla’s voice was high-pitched, close to a scream.
Louisa looked guilty and afraid, an expression Isla hadn’t seen before and one that she would try to forget. Isla stifled a wail. Louisa knelt down and slapped at Joe’s face.
9
Sydney, 1967
Isla stood on the veranda to eat her toast. It was shady out there and the street was quiet. The cement mixer was turning in the empty lot near the Walkers’ place, next to a pile of bricks and sand, which was going to be a new house. Mr. Walker had already left in his car and Andrea was out on her bike, cycling up and down the street, ringing her bell each time she passed and lifting her arm to wave in that show-off way she had. She’d recently told Isla she was getting a kitten on her next birthday, when she turned ten. Isla had been trying ever since to be nicer to Andrea, who said she was too big to be Isla’s friend, and who had so far refused to let Isla have a ride on her bike. Isla figured if she didn’t get to hold the kitten, she would give up being nice to her. There were a few months to go till Andrea’s birthday and already she was wondering if she could keep it up.
She ate her toast and watched the windows opening in the houses across the street; curtains being pulled back. Behind her, through the open front door, she could hear Daddy getting ready for work. Finding his wallet, his cigarettes, the papers for his briefcase. He was cranky because Mummy was not talking to him. She’d been ignoring him over the weekend. They hadn’t made up since the bad thing that happened on Friday night, after Mummy went to Mandy’s. Isla did not like thinking about the bad thing: Daddy on the floor, not asleep and not dead but something else. She’d found him asleep on the couch the next morning, his body cramped like a toy in a box, his head at the wrong angle.
Isla looked down at the steps leading to the front yard and tried to remember if she’d trodden on the wrong tile yesterday. Maybe she’d brushed a crack with the tip of her sandal. Her new sandals were too big and they made her feet heavy. She wished she had been more careful.
“There you are,” Daddy said, standing at the door behind her. He looked like something was hurting in his head. He crouched down and pinched her cheek. “What’s up?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Good girl.”
She reached out and he tipped his head forward to let her move her hand across his short hair. She felt his soft skin and his hard bones.
“Got to run,” he said.
“Are you going to put the roof on today?”
He laughed. “Maybe.”
“Hope it fits on right.”
“Me too.”
Daddy turned to wave at the gate, like always. She waited on the veranda till he turned the corner. Bay Street was very quiet now. She finished her toast and wiped her fingers on her pajama shirt. Three doors down, Mr. Blunt was out on the footpath with his shears, snipping at his hedge. He would have no hedge left before long, Mandy always said, and then he’d need a new way to stickybeak at all the neighbors. But you had to go easy on him because his wife was dead.
“Has he gone?” Mummy shouted from inside the house.
“Yes,” Isla shouted back.
“Good. Come inside.”
Isla found her mum in her bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed. Her wet hair was loose down her back and her dress was only zipped up halfway. She was looking at an envelope full of money: different sizes and colors of bills.
“What’s that for?”
Mummy patted the space next to her on the bed. “We’re going to do something together today.”
“I don’t want to go shopping.”
“That’s not it.” She patted the bed again. “Why don’t you come and sit down beside me?”
Isla did not move. She had a bad feeling, looking at Mummy on the bed.
“How would you like to go on an airplane?” Mummy smiled in a pretend way. “What do you think?”
“Is Daddy coming?”
“No, darling. Just us.”
Isla tried to speak, but the bad feeling was big in her neck. Her mum stood and reached around to pull her zipper up at the back, turning in front of the mirror to look at herself sideways. She wore her yellow sundress, patterned with daisies, the one Isla had always liked. Today the daisies were stretched wide over her belly.
“I picked out a dress for you to wear,” Mummy said. She helped Isla climb out of her pajamas. “A special dress for a special day.”
Isla lifted her arms up and her mum put the dress over her head, buttoned it at the back, and stood her in front of the mirror. She knew this was one of the dresses that Andrea Walker had grown out of. It was red and white and made her feel like Andrea was here in the room, showing off about school and her two-wheeler bike. She didn’t like looking at herself in the dress. She wished her mum was going to work, so she could go to Mandy’s for an ordinary day, wearing her swimsuit and a hat.
Her mum was moving around in a busy, quick way, putting things into a bag that was open on the bed. “Brush your hair,” she said as she left the room. “Get all the knots out!”
Isla found the brush and followed her mum into the kitchen. She pulled the brush through her hair a couple of times, hoping she might get away with making just the hair you could see look tidy. There was a big, matted knot at the base of her neck that caught the bristles of the brush.
Mummy sat down at the table with a pen and paper. She picked the pen up and put it down again, picked it up and sucked the end, put it down. Isla kept brushing her hair as softly as she could. She could see her mum hadn’t written anything on the page yet.
“Come here,” Mummy said, and pulled Isla onto her knee. “Let me brush it.”
There was a knock at the door and Mummy put the brush down, turned Isla to face her, and kissed her cheek. “I need you to be good,” she said. “Please be good, darling, all right?”
Isla nodded and tried to be good, which meant not saying things out loud except for good manners. She tried not to think of the bad thing. Daddy on the floor, Mummy on the bed. It was clearer than before and she couldn’t not think about it. She sat very still on the chair in the kitchen, ankles together, and smiled at her mum. Mummy smiled back because she didn’t know Isla could see her in her head with her legs stretched out, kicking Daddy backward. Nobody knew except her. She was like the smooth, brushed hair with the very bad knot underneath.
Mummy ran to the bedroom, and when she came out she was holding the bag that had been on the bed. Around her shoulders she wore a long gray coat that Isla had never seen before. Isla got the bad feeling again, looking at the coat. Her mum rushed past her to open the front door. When she came back inside, the coat and bag were gone.
“Oh God, oh God.” Mummy leaned over the kitchen table, picked the pen up, wrote something, carefully, looked at it, and shook her head. She put the pen down and walked toward Isla, holding her hand out. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ve packed you a bag.”
10
Sydney, 1967
Mandy stood on the back of the couch to reach the curtain rail with the duster. Funny what you saw from this angle. A dead fly on one of the blades of the ceiling fan; a layer of dust on top of the display cabinet. And a taxi, outside Louisa’s house, waiting at the curb.
She stepped down onto the rug and gripped the duster. It was probably nothing. She pushed the fibers in the rug back and forth with her toe. Almost certainly nothing. She stood back up on the couch. The taxi was still there. Engine running, the boot standing open. She leaned against the window and kept her eye on the driver, who had his window down, elbow jutting out in the sun. He was looking expectantly up at Louisa’s front door.
Louisa came into view, opening her gate. She was holding a heavy-looking carpet bag, and she had a long gray coat around her shoulders. A winter coat. It reached her ankles and had a look of gloom to it, like a hearse. She lifted her bag into the boot and threw the coat in after it.
Mandy held on to the curtain rail. She’d told Lou not to do this. She’d spent hours talking her out of it, persuading her to hold her bloody horses. Surely she wasn’t really going through with it?
Louisa turned back up to her house, rushing, and reappeared moments later, leading Isla by the hand toward the car. Isla looked small and neat, in a red and white dress and bright white socks up to her knees. Her hair was loose down her back, white-blond at the tips from the sun. She was carrying a little red suitcase.
Mandy dropped her duster. By the time she got out onto her veranda, Isla was climbing into the taxi. “Wait! Hold on!”
“Mandy!” Isla leaned out of the rear window, her face grave. “I’m going on an airplane and Daddy isn’t coming.”
“Are you?” Mandy reached for Isla’s hand and breathed deeply, in and out. “An airplane?”
Louisa was writing something down on the back of an envelope, leaning awkwardly on her knee. She had on her short yellow sundress, patterned with daisies. She looked tired, the light gone from her. “My mum’s number,” she said, holding the envelope out. “Take it.” She took Mandy’s hand and closed her fingers around it. “Please, Mandy.”
Mandy looked at the envelope, at the string of numbers reaching lopsidedly along the page. She didn’t want it. She wanted to slow this down, to wind things back a bit.
“Lou. Are you—? You’re going through with it?”
Louisa nodded. “We’re going to the airport.”
“Did you tell Joe you were leaving?” Mandy tried not to look at Isla, who was still holding her hand. She couldn’t take the sight of her in that dress, her curls all brushed out and clean. “Does he know?”
“Of course I didn’t tell him.” Louisa lowered her voice. “He wouldn’t have let me take Isla. He’d have stopped me.”
“Did you try to talk to him?”
“Yes. It was pointless. I told you it would be pointless.”
The driver leaned across and opened the passenger door. “Thought you were in a hurry,” he said. “We should get a move on.”
Mandy gave Isla’s hand a squeeze and turned her back on her. “Lou,” she said. “You can’t do this to Joe. This is going to kill him.”
“God, Mandy. Don’t say that.”
“He loves that child every bit as much as you do. He’s her bloody father for Christ’s sake.”
Louisa sat in the passenger seat and folded her long legs in front of her. Mandy could see she was crying from the way her body shook. The daisies on her dress shuddered.
“Louisa.” She knelt down beside the car and spoke softly. “Please don’t do this.”
Isla was staring wide-eyed at Mandy from the back seat. Her chin had puckered, but she was managing not to cry.
“Are we going or not?” The driver wanted to know. “If we’re going, we need to move it.”
Louisa reached out and touched Mandy on the arm. “Let me go,” she said. Her face was wet. “Will you call me in a few days? Let me know if he’s all right?”
“You’ll be at your mum’s?”
She nodded, and Mandy nodded back. She couldn’t find any words. Isla was crying now, and the driver was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
“Bye, sweetheart.” Mandy fixed a smile on her face, touched her fingers to her lips, and reached past the hot vinyl seat to press them against Isla’s cheek. “You be a good girl for your mum.” She stood and pushed the passenger door shut.
The car pulled away sharply from the curb, and Isla twisted around in the back seat. Her voice carried through the open window. “I don’t want to go!”
Mandy ran after them, stumbling and losing a house shoe in the gutter. Isla was a small blond dot in the back of the taxi, her hands pressed pale against the rear window. Mandy stood in the road and waved until she was gone.
She hobbled back to the footpath. The sun was scorching the back of her neck, and the asphalt had burned the sole of her one bare foot. David Walker was practicing his violin, sending a sequence of flat, trembling notes across the street. The gate outside Louisa’s house stood open. Mandy couldn’t look at it. She found her missing house shoe and slammed her own gate shut behind her.
11
Sydney, 1997
Isla smooths a tablecloth over the trestle table she’s assembled in the yard. She’s been up since dawn, cooking and tidying, rinsing out tumblers and champagne flutes. The lamb has marinated overnight, the salads are prepared and ready to serve, and the drinks are perfectly chilled in the ice bucket. She has arranged the glasses on the trestle table so they slope in order of height across its surface. Her sober self is quite the perfectionist, it seems. Her bad self wants her to have a drink, just one, to get away from this edgy, over-prepared, damp-pitted person she has become.
Her dad walks toward her across the grass. She’s still shocked at the sight of him, three days in. He has circles under his eyes and deep, curved lines running from nose to mouth, more pronounced on one side. His hair is a wiry gray, swept back from his face. And there is something else; a change in his demeanor that troubles her. He looks like a man on the back foot, who has been caught out.
“Hope you’re thirsty,” he says.
She looks down at the trestle table. “Don’t want to run out.”
“I don’t know if anyone’s going to turn up, love. I’m not the flavor of the month ’round here.” He stands beside her and nods at the pastel-colored bunting she’s strung around the back of the house. “It’s enough just to have you home. I don’t
need all this fuss.”
She winces. “Is it too much?”
“Tell me you haven’t got a brass band tuning up in the lounge room.”
“No band,” she says.
He lights a cigarette. “Thanks,” he says, and his smile takes a decade off him. “This is great. Who cares if it’s just us?”
Isla moves the ice bucket into the shade, beneath the table. She squats there a while and fixes a length of bunting that is coming loose from the underside. Her dad paces nervously on the grass in front of her. He’ll enjoy the party once it’s upon him. She knows this because she is absolutely his daughter. This is also how she knows he’s had a drink already today; something to take the edge off, to get him in the mood. Maybe more than one.
“I met up with Scott yesterday,” she says, standing.
“Did you?”
“We had coffee across the road from his office. He didn’t have long.”
“That sounds like Scott.”
“He said he’ll come along later.”
Joe coughs into his fist, turning from her until the spasm passes. He’s perspiring when he faces her again. “I haven’t seen your brother in a while,” he says. “Must be six months at least. You wouldn’t know he lived in the same city.”
“He promised me he’d come.”
“Did he?” He coughs again, beating his chest.
“Are you all right, Dad?”
He finds an ashtray over by the barbecue and crushes his cigarette out. “Never better.”
A breeze blows in from the ocean, lifting the bunting. Isla catches the scent of eucalyptus from the tree next door and she sees Mandy in a rich slice of memory, folding laundry into a basket. A blond woman, on the plump side of curvy, with a conspiratorial smile. Fine, fair hair that she holds back from her face with a scarf. So different from her mother that to love her had felt like betrayal.