The Valley of Lost Stories

by Vanessa McCausland

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, hands wide. ‘No children. It’s a miracle.’

  He kissed her on the lips; his smell was of the clinical kind, of sweat made in air-conditioned offices. She felt herself subconsciously checking for the faint high note of perfume and chastised herself. What had the counsellor said? She had to stop looking for signs of infidelity. She had to forgive him and move forward if she was ever going to be happy again. She squashed the doubt down inside her, like the piece of Sim’s play dough crusted onto the bench.

  It was almost like the night at the hotel had never happened. She had composed herself the next morning, her hangover horrendous, and driven home at dawn. Mike begged for her forgiveness, promising he’d never see that woman again.

  There was talk of how far they’d drifted from each other, the chasm expanding with each new child. She’d riled at that – as though his betrayal was a symptom of their joint failing. But now, with the perspective of the past eight months, she could see there was probably some truth in this. Now that night almost seemed like a scene she’d seen in a film once, not her real life.

  After a few weeks of wrenching silence, of withering stares, of punishing remarks, she’d told him she didn’t want to separate. She’d held him as he cried in a ball on the bed. Promised to change. Promised to be better. Promised they’d get counselling. What was she going to do? Become a single mother with three children? She’d forgotten how to even use her brain. She was surviving day to day as it was. The thought of trying to factor in working and providing for her children felt impossible. She was trapped. She knew it, he knew it. She didn’t need for everyone else to know it. If she was going to stay with him, she may as well keep up appearances.

  She wished she was a stronger woman and one who could tackle life as a single mother, for whom the moral transgression and the need for freedom was paramount, but the sad truth was she was simply too scared of being alone with three kids.

  His hand lingered on her waist. ‘What’s our homework? Take any time we can to connect. Isn’t that what Mrs Levy-Brown instructed?’

  Mike had taken to acting like their counsellor was some kind of dominatrix. It was meant to be funny. An in-joke between them.

  ‘Richie’s about to wake.’ Her voice sounded more clipped than she meant it to.

  ‘Right. Well, no homework tonight then.’ His voice lost its playfulness.

  ‘I didn’t mean–’

  He turned away from her, the nape of his neck tanned. ‘You’re always exhausted after the kids are in bed.’

  ‘The girls are right there on the trampoline.’ A little huff escaped her mouth. He was probably thinking that his mistress would have had sex with him right there on the kitchen bench.

  ‘As if they’d understand,’ he said, loosening the watch she’d given him for his fortieth.

  ‘I haven’t slept more than a few hours in a row in nearly a year. Of course I’m tired at night.’

  He raised his hands in exasperation. ‘How did this turn into a fight?’

  ‘We’re not fighting,’ she said, feeling tears of frustration building behind her eyes. ‘We’re talking.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got the men’s support group coming tonight.’

  ‘What, here?’

  ‘Yeah, I told you last week it was here.’ He scratched behind his left ear. She wondered if that body language meant he was lying. No, being in therapy now, he apparently didn’t lie because he was facing his ‘deep truths’.

  Nathalie scanned through the scattered pieces of her mind for this particular nub of information but found nothing. He may well have told her, and she didn’t take it in. It seemed to happen often these days.

  ‘The house is a total bomb,’ she said, scanning the dirty dishes in the sink, the dishwasher needing to be unloaded, dining table covered with papers and craft, the toy-strewn lounge room floor. Every surface was covered.

  ‘These aren’t judgemental guys, Nat. They’re not going to judge you on that.’

  She waited a beat before replying. There were so many things wrong with his response. ‘Yeah but they literally might not have anywhere to sit.’

  ‘I’ll help you clean up now.’

  A sarcastic reply poised on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it down.

  ‘Well, I hope they like screaming babies with their confessionals,’ she said, picking up a pile of textas on the kitchen bench.

  ‘I thought you could take Richie out in the car if he gets unsettled, see if he might sleep that way. You’ve been doing it a bit lately anyway.’

  She felt her head shaking before she could stop it. ‘So, we’re getting chucked out of our own home?’

  ‘No, I just–’

  Nathalie scooped an armful of toys off the lounge room floor. ‘Fine. But did you think that maybe not offering to have this meeting at your house might have been an option, seeing as we have a baby and two other children who don’t sleep?’

  He sighed and wiped a hand down his face. ‘Everyone takes turns. That’s the beauty of it. It’s just a group of guys who have gone through shit and are trying to sort their shit out for their wives.’

  She bit the inside of her lip. For their wives. What about you just sort your own shit out? She straightened and looked him in the eye. ‘Sorry, but these are your friends and I feel like I’m being kicked out of my own house. I’m not whipping up dinner for them or something.’

  Richie’s cries came ricocheting down the hall and Nathalie jumped, as though a bolt of lightning had lit up her insides, so primed was her body to respond to her baby’s distress. ‘Shall Richie and I just leave you now?’

  The way she said it, the certain timbre of her voice implied something bigger, more serious. She saw the hurt, bright and sudden flare in his eyes, and she knew she was being cruel. He was hopeless. He wouldn’t be able to get the girls’ dinner ready, to bath them and give them their puffers and various creams before his men’s group arrived. And it was true, she resented him for it. His duty extended to reading them one short story. He then left her to scramble between settling them and Richie. Sometimes he helped clean up the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled and left the kitchen, wondering why, once again, she was the one apologising.

  She heard him pick up the keys and follow her down the hall, his presence behind her like a shadow. For a moment she wondered if he would tell her to just get in the car and go. But then she realised. Of course. It was him who was going.

  ‘We’re going to need milk. And I’ll pick up some cheese and biscuits or something, maybe something to have with coffee.’

  She scooped Richie out of his cot and was calmed by the musky smell of him. ‘What time are they coming?’

  He looked at his phone. ‘7 pm.’

  She felt her whole body float, as though she’d slipped off the side of the ship. ‘In an hour and a half.’

  So, she had to clean up the house to a presentable level, feed Richie, feed and bath the girls and put them in bed in an hour and a half. Part of her wanted to rally, refuse, but she was so used to it, so used to feeling alone with the emotional responsibility of the household while he appeared haphazardly to impose more work on her. A tiny voice inside of her said it would be easier without you, but he was swinging open the door and walking through it, leaving her alone, a great fear swelling in her belly and the sounds of the girls coming in from outside calling for food.

  CHAPTER 9

  Pen

  The TV flashed with the trashy reality show Cate loved and Pen secretly did too, though she’d cultivated eye-rolling exasperation to make her daughter laugh. Cate propped her feet onto Pen’s lap. Remnants of another frozen pizza dinner, with a hastily chopped salad to appease her mother guilt, lay on the coffee table. The small living room was cluttered with washing baskets of clean clothes that needed folding, toys that Will had been playing with and paperwork that Pen had yet to deal with. The guilt of the mess niggled at the back of Pen’s mind, but she didn’t ha
ve the energy to do anything about it. She had another 7 am shift at the paper and Will would need to be dropped off just as before-school care opened. A whole ‘to do’ list for tomorrow opened up in her head.

  Cate wriggled her toes and Pen shot her daughter a sidelong glance. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Paint my toes blue?’

  Pen sighed. ‘All right but you owe me about three pedicures. I’m counting.’

  ‘Why can’t I get mine done at the salon like all my friends? I mean, you’re pretty good but it’s just not the same. Not as shiny.’

  ‘If you’ve got some spare money, knock yourself out,’ she said.

  ‘Sal’s parents pay for a mani-pedi every two weeks. She gets nail art.’

  Pen felt frustration buzz through her. Teenagers were obsessed with money and the status it gave them.

  ‘You’re going to have to go for the arty down-and-out vibe. Vintage shop clothes. Old books. Spend some time in Newtown. It’s cool. It was when I was your age.’

  Cate rolled her eyes. ‘You just don’t get it, Mum.’

  Cate was 16 going on 23. Sometimes, Pen forgot that her daughter was still a child, save for moments like this.

  ‘I might stay with Lucien for the rest of the week.’

  ‘Can you stop calling your father by his first name please?’

  ‘He doesn’t care. He likes it.’

  ‘Fine. But tidy your room before you go. I can’t keep up with who’s who on this show.’

  ‘God, Mum, get with the program.’

  Will came out of his room. ‘Mum, can I use the iPad to Google something?’

  ‘It’s pretty late for screen time, mate. Bed in half an hour. What’s so important?’

  ‘On BTN they were talking about this man called Nostradamus and he could predict the future and I want to research it for a story I’m writing.’

  ‘For school or for fun?’

  ‘Fun.’

  The familiar discomfort wormed in her gut and Pen shifted on the couch. ‘Okay, that sort of stuff isn’t really for kids, Will. I’m pretty sure that guy couldn’t tell the future anyway. What am I saying? Of course, he couldn’t.’

  ‘Then why did they mention him on a kids’ news show. At school?’ Will’s brow was crinkled in confusion.

  ‘Weirdo,’ said Cate. ‘God, why do you have to be so strange? Just Google . . . I don’t know . . . What are normal eight-year-olds into? Transformers? Soccer?’

  Will’s face darkened. He thrust his jaw out and his body stiffened.

  Pen elbowed Cate and shot her a warning look. ‘Don’t be mean to your brother.’ Her tone was heavy with the threat she hoped her daughter would heed.

  ‘Half-brother.’

  ‘Cate.’ Pen’s voice was a bark.

  Will ripped the nail polish from Cate’s fingers and threw it against the wall. They all watched in silence as the glass broke and blue varnish bled down the wall.

  Pen grabbed Will by the arm, and he cried out as she dug her fingers into his flesh. ‘Will! Why the hell would you do that?’

  ‘She was being mean.’

  Pen closed her eyes for a beat and released Will. ‘She was.’ She glared at Cate. ‘She was being awful. Cate apologise to Will, please. That was really mean.’

  Cate’s face was stony, and her arms were crossed tight against her chest. ‘You always take his side.’

  Pen sighed and counselled herself to stay calm. ‘I’m just trying to keep the peace. Cate, you’re meant to be the mature one here.’

  ‘I’m not his mother. If you were around more and I didn’t have to always look after him maybe I wouldn’t find him so annoying.’

  ‘You’re the annoying one,’ said Will, his body rigid.

  ‘You’re both being annoying,’ said Pen, her voice loud, full of exasperation.

  ‘I wish you were never born,’ hissed Cate. ‘Our life was so much better before you came along.’

  The words floated in the air, sharp and sickening like the smell of nail varnish.

  I wish you were never born. The words cut close to Pen. She recognised the shard of truth in them that had been edging up against her own heart. She had thought them. She had. Cate had just articulated the awful truth of what she had thought inside her head. The guilt came next, crashing through her, making her reach for him.

  ‘Will,’ she cried as he flew from the room silently.

  ‘Cate. Clean that up right now. How dare you say that to your brother.’

  ‘Why do I have to clean it up? He’s the one who did it.’

  ‘Do it!’ She screeched the words and saw the impact on Cate’s face and again, the guilt. She headed down the hall towards Will’s room.

  ‘It’s true,’ Cate cried behind her. ‘We were so much happier when it was just you and me. You were so much happier.’

  Pen felt her whole world narrowing with the pain of those words. As she knocked on Will’s door, imploring him to let her in, she thought back to that decision. She had been so close to having an abortion. So close. She was a single mum-of-one already. Struggling to make ends meet. Will’s father was no one. A butcher with a sexy accent and a sense of humour who she’d had one night with after a friend’s party. But she’d made her choice. She’d chosen to keep her baby.

  She had wondered at times if there was something else at play. Did he have ADHD or autism or anxiety that was just masked by his intelligence? She’d asked one of his teachers if he had oppositional defiance disorder and she’d laughed. He was intelligent and diligent, the teacher said. He was a sweet boy, Emmie said. And so, she couldn’t help thinking that what Will had was a mother who didn’t love him. As she walked away from the door he would not open, she realised she was crying.

  Jean

  1948

  The day was hot, like all the other days here, the heat twisting itself into her limbs, bedsheets discarded in the night. Liv’s body spooned into hers and Jean wiped the damp hair from her daughter’s face. She was home. Last night seemed like a wild dream. Another life. The dancing. That man. She had snuck into the house before dawn began to glow behind the valley walls, the birdsong rising softly in the air. Robert left at first light for the mines. He slept like the dead. Twelve hours of physical work did that to a man, she knew. He would never know she had gone. Had he found her side of the bed empty he would have assumed she was curled up with their daughter in the other bedroom. Liv had stirred as Jean had tiptoed down the hall, and there was a moment when her daughter might have seen her red lipstick, her satin gloves. But Liv was sleep-addled as she shifted in her bed. Jean stripped off in Liv’s room and pushed her clothes under the bed, got between the sheets and wrapped her arms around her daughter. It took a long time to get to sleep.

  When Liv woke, Jean spent the morning making her meagre school lunch and drinking all of their coffee ration. She watched Liv trace out dance steps with her toes on their dusty kitchen floor. She took her daughter’s hands and twirled her until she giggled, and they did the jitterbug to the whistle of the boiling kettle. They walked to the school gate and she hugged her daughter at the door of the classroom, saying hello to her teacher, Mrs Appleby.

  The day passed like all the others. Jean prepped the evening meal from what little she had. She wished they had the money to go to the Silver Bell cafe to treat Liv, but she managed to use the last scraps of meat to fashion a steak and kidney pie. She washed Robert’s filthy work clothes until the water was black and smelling of shale oil. But in her belly was a curl of excitement the like of which she had not felt for a very long time. There was guilt, too, and the two feelings slipped around inside her like the soap on her fingers.

  At the school gate she saw Pam, the mother of Liv’s best friend, Bertie.

  ‘Jean, have you heard? There’s a woman gone missing. In the valley. Clara Black is her name. She was last seen at the ball at the hotel last night. Did you hear it? You couldn’t have not. The music was terribly loud, and it went all night. Can you imagine? Her husba
nd’s my husband’s boss. Apparently, the poor man is beside himself.’

  Jean’s mouth went dry and she felt sweat prick her brow. The nerves already inside her belly tightened and she pressed her hands to her hot cheeks. ‘Oh no, that’s terrible,’ she said.

  ‘Of course, everyone’s saying something like this was inevitable. All the poverty, the terrible working conditions, the disparity between them and us. Imagine, even I was jealous hearing that party going all night. And here we are with barely enough to feed our children and having to buy water from the water cart. There’s talk of one of the miners losing their mind and deciding to take revenge.’ Pam lowered her voice. ‘Sometimes, something doesn’t feel right here. All those rumours of the massacres of the Blacks and the valley ghosts.’

  Jean’s skin crawled and she shivered despite the hot sun above them. ‘Maybe they’ll find her. She hasn’t been gone for long. You know how these missing person things turn out. Most of the time they’re found, aren’t they?’

  ‘They’re bringing in police from Sydney to search the bushland but, gosh, there’s a lot of bush out here. It’s like something out of a crime novel. Imagine.’

  Jean’s mind reeled as their conversation turned to domestic things and the girls. She searched frantically for her final words to Clara Black. She’d asked her if she was sure she should go into the night alone. What had Clara said? That she’d wanted to. That she felt like walking barefoot, being free. Getting away from the party. Jean remembered how dark the night was. How dreamy Clara had seemed. What if she had gone with Clara? Been more insistent. Could she have saved her? Or would she too be missing? A name on the lips of the valley’s gossip? She felt a wave of nausea roll through her.

  Clara Black wasn’t tough like Jean knew she herself was. She hadn’t grown up in poverty, in hardship. She hadn’t learned the ways to keep herself safe as a matter of course. This was a woman to whom harm could come. If only she’d gone with Clara on her silly walk. She would never have met Magnus. Would that have been better? Yes, of course it would. She wouldn’t be responsible for a poor woman going missing and she wouldn’t be having all these silly feelings for a man she’d only met once.