‘Okay,’ Susie tried out a smile, ‘I’ll do my best!’
Mitch looked her over, studying her cropped trousers and vest. ‘There’s plenty of clothes and whatnot in the linen press on the landing. My wife’s old stuff. She’s dead.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’
She waited until he left before going up to the landing to see what clothes she could use. This was the first and last time Mitch Gunnerslake would show her an act of kindness or generosity. Susie felt a flutter of excitement as she lifted the lid on the large wooden chest to reveal the dust covered florals and cottons. At home they would have invited ridicule; here, it was different and she rummaged through, extracting anything that might prove useful.
As she made her way back to the kitchen to sort through the jumble of dresses, shirts and trousers that filled her arms, she stopped in the doorway. Loulou was there, facing towards the open hatch, with her back to the door. Susie approached quietly. The woman was humming and singing, but not in a language that she recognised. As she turned, Susie felt her pulse quicken. Nicholas was lying placidly in the strange woman’s arms.
‘Get off him! Get away from him now! Don’t you ever touch him!’ she raced forward, shouting, dropping the clothes on the floor, intent only on getting her son away from this woman who looked and smelt like a vagrant. Snatching at her son, she pulled him into her, and he yelled instantly and powerfully. ‘It’s okay, Nicky, it’s okay. Mummy’s got you. I’ve got you now.’
Elouera stared at the floor, and quietly walked out of the kitchen.
Susie calmed her son, feeding him before he fell into a deep sleep. It was only as she watched him dozing that she replayed what had happened. Elouera had been singing to him, comforting him and he had been quiet, happy in her arms. Susie ran her fingers over her scalp.
Making her way back to the cabin with her booty under one arm, and Nicholas in the other, Susie stopped before entering. Someone had placed an empty jam jar, half filled with water, by the front door. In the water sat a single, rose-like bloom. It had long mauve petals and a clashing red base that formed a hub of colour in the centre of the flower. It was so delicate against the ugly backdrop of her cabin it took her breath away.
‘Oh Nicky, look! Someone has brought us a flower.’
Susie marched around to the terrace, hoping to find Elouera in her usual corner, but there was no one around. She ventured to the left of the house and beyond the gardens, where there was a collection of huts and stores, stables and an open-sided barn of sorts. Stepping gingerly among the ramshackle collection of buildings, she felt her courage fading as she ventured further in, treading over piles of litter and trying not to inhale the stench of human waste. About to give up, she trod a path back towards the main driveway, when a flicker of motion drew her eye. Following the flash of maroon, she discovered a basic hut, approximately eight foot in diameter, made out of a corrugated iron sheet, which had been propped on two wooden posts at the back, and two oil drums stacked on top of each other at the front. The floor was covered with newspaper, and a folded bedspread made an inadequate bed. Elouera was sitting on the floral cover, her legs hunched up in their usual position. She didn’t raise her eyes, so Susie crouched down until the woman was forced to look at her.
‘Elouera, I’ve come to say sorry for shouting at you earlier. I was frightened, that’s the truth and I’ve come to say thank you for my beautiful flower. It’s the first time anyone has done anything kind for me since I arrived.’
The woman ignored her.
Susie continued. ‘I wish you understood me. I could do with a friend out here and I hope that I haven’t blown it. Thank you for comforting Nicky, I’m really sorry I shouted at you. I was scared, that’s all.’
She held out her sleeping son, whose little arms and legs dangled like a rag doll over her hands. Elouera reached out and received the bundle. Her mouth opened in a smile, revealing crooked, brilliant white teeth. It transformed her face into something quite beautiful.
‘He can sleep anywhere!’ Susie laughed.
‘They’ll sleep when they need to, they all do.’ Her voice was a deep baritone.
‘Oh! You speak English!’
Elouera smiled, ‘Yes. Call me Loulou.’
‘Okay Loulou, I’m Susie. Elouera is a beautiful name.’
‘It means from a lovely place.’
‘Gosh, I wish I had a name like that, I think Susan means a flower or a Lily, I’m sure that’s what I was told.’
‘Well that’s good too.’
Susie smiled. ‘Although I must admit, I don’t feel like this a particularly lovely place; in fact I think I’d like to be anywhere else!’
‘I’d like to go to New York.’ Loulou smiled.
‘Oh me too! I think I’d like to traipse around the shops and listen to some jazz.’
Loulou shook her head, ‘I’ve seen pictures and a movie, once. I’d like to go to the top of the highest building and see how far I could see, up among the clouds.’
Susie nodded; she guessed when your world was as flat as Willeroo that would be incredible. She tried not to show her shock at the woman’s surroundings, but it was hard. She had never seen such privation. It made her feel grateful for her own cabin, which in comparison was relatively sturdy.
Nicholas raised his joined hands in a cherubic stance under his chin, ‘Ah, look you’re a natural.’
‘Should be, I’ve had six of my own.’
‘Six? You don’t look old enough!’
‘I’ve grown-up grandchildren as well.’
‘Where are they?’ Susie felt her cheeks flare, unsure if it was okay to ask.
‘Gone.’
Susie nodded, unsure if she wanted to enquire further. ‘I bought you a present too.’ Susie unfurled the magenta floral dress that she had earmarked for Loulou, it had a white lace collar and delicate pearly shell buttons. Loulou gathered it into her free hand and placed it on the floor without studying it, seemingly uninterested, far too occupied with the tiny infant that filled her arm and slept soundly in her grasp.
‘White babies look like grubs. Is that what you are, a little grub?’ Loulou spoke to the sleeping infant.
Susie smiled, she knew love at first sight when she saw it, grub or not.
The next day, as Susie toiled with a mound of spuds that she was peeling for supper, Loulou appeared in the kitchen, resplendent in her new dress, which hung beautifully on her frame and reached down to the floor. She was beaming.
4
Seven months passed and Susie fell into a routine of sorts. She had jazzed up her cabin with the addition of drapes made from old candy-striped sheeting that she had hemmed and tacked over the window. A row of glass jars suspended on wires from the ceiling held stubs of flickering candles that bathed their room in a golden glow, making it feel almost cosy. The floor was covered with makeshift rugs: multi-coloured rags that she had found abandoned in an old wardrobe, and in the corner of the room, opposite the cot, rested a white painted shelving unit which she had appropriated from the laundry room. On this, she stored all of her and Nicholas’s folded clothing, the small amount of toiletries that Slade fetched for her when in town and her precious copy of Pride and Prejudice, which had recovered surprisingly well from being dropped in a swamp.
Her heavy workload and the constant need to boil and cool water for Nicholas meant she was exhausted and if it hadn’t been for Loulou, always on hand to hold the baby or serve the food, she didn’t know how she would have coped. In some ways she was grateful that her mind was constantly preoccupied with the work. The constant grind left little room for thinking about home, the life she had left behind, and, most importantly, Abigail. Only at night, when her mind emptied, would Susie lie in the darkness and wonder if Abigail, like her brother, could now sit unaided, grab for objects and gurgle as though speaking. Did she too have a tooth and was she too able to shuffle from her tummy onto her back and then flounder like a stuck turtle? S
usie swallowed these thoughts and tried to feel relief instead, that her little girl was not being forced to live in the same conditions that she and Nicky were. It pained her to admit it, but maybe her child was better off with parents who would tuck her up every night in a pretty nursery in the suburbs, rather than here with her twin who lay covered in bugs and grime. It wasn’t always easy to convince herself, though. Susie did not know anything about Abigail, and a black cloak of realisation engulfed her when she considered that she never might.
One day Nicholas fell ill. Six hours earlier he had started refusing food and then he’d vomited until he was spent. Now he lay in her arms, wailing as his little bunched fists beat the air over his head and his legs bent up towards his tummy as if in pain. ‘It’s all right darling, it’s okay Nicky, it will all be okay.’ Susie rocked him on her hip and spoke into his scalp, where his hair was stuck to his head with sugary sweat. She tried not to panic. Loulou had gone into town with Mitch and was not due back for a couple of hours. Mosquitoes and flies that a couple of months ago would have sent her spiralling around, squealing as she tried to swipe them from her child, no longer registered; it was simply part of life at Mulga Plains. At this time of day, the heat was so intense that it was dangerous to enter the oven-like cabin. Instead, she had erected a shelter of sorts; an old green, jacquard floral cover that she had found in the storage cupboard on the landing, and had skewered it onto four old lengths of wood at each corner before placing it in front of the cabin. There were three sofa cushions on the ground, on which she could lay Nicholas for his nap or sit and read to him when she had the chance.
Neither of these things was possible today, he had a fever, he was screaming and Susie was scared. She hadn’t been up to the house to start supper and quite frankly today they would have to whistle, her little boy was her priority. The sound of hooves alerted her. Mitch cantered up and stopped short of the door, his horse kicking up a red plume that engulfed both her and her baby,
‘Mitch, where’s Loulou? I need some help, I need to get him to a doctor, he’s not well.’ she tried to keep the hysteria from her voice, struggled not to give in to tears. She longed for home, where she would have been able to bundle him up and take him to a cottage hospital to be treated by a bossy nurse in a starched white pinny.
‘He got a fever?’ he asked as he calmed his horse with the flat of his hand upon her flank.
She nodded.
‘Diarrhoea, vomiting?’
‘Yes, yes all of that, since he woke up this morning. I’m so worried about him. I don’t know what to do.’
Mitch Gunnerslake spat on the floor, ‘He don’t need a doctor, he’s got what Slade has got, been puking his arsehole up since last night. He’ll be right, plenty of boiled, cooled water that’s the key.’ With that he turned the horse and prepared to trot off.
‘Where’s Loulou? Is she not with you?’ Susie called after him, realising how much she had come to rely on her friend, the only one she had in this place.
‘She’s walking the last few miles back, needs to learn a bit of respect that one.’
Susie opened her mouth to ask questions and give vent to the anger that boiled in her veins, but he was already cantering off, leaving a plume of dust in his wake.
The knowledge that Slade was also sick calmed her, ‘Okay, okay.’ Susie tried to gather her thoughts, ‘Did you hear that, Nicky darling? It’s just a little bug. It’ll pass, you’re not the only one, it’ll pass and Mummy will be right here to make you feel better.’
She kissed his pink face, and it seemed to do the trick. Nicholas cried himself to the point of exhaustion and fell into a deep slumber in her arms. She pictured her own various childhood ailments, everything from mumps to sickness, all of which had been treated with a clean, freshly laundered bed and a mug of hot lemon barley. The memory of laying her head on a sweet-scented pillow slip made her tears pool. She cried into the still heat that shimmered on the horizon for a mother whose kindly nature existed only in her mind.
The next day, Nicholas had cooled, and Susie went in search of Loulou. It was unusual not to see her for twenty-four hours. As she approached her quarter, she noticed that the floral heap that lay on the new makeshift bed was dangerously still. The mattress was one of the many items that Susie had secretly taken out of the house, placing it quietly under the lurid bedspread on which Loulou had slept for most of her life.
‘Loulou? Hello? Elouera?’ she called her by this name sometimes, the formality made her friend laugh. Loulou groaned and rolled slightly to one side. Susie bent down and looked into the face of her friend. Susie gasped and cried out. Loulou’s eyes were swollen shut, her bottom lip, cut and bloodied and one of her very white teeth was missing. She had been beaten. Her feet that look like shredded meat; goodness knows how far and over what she had had to walk to get home.
‘Oh my God! Loulou, who did this to you? What happened?’
Loulou didn’t say anything for a moment. Her dress looked dirty and was spattered with blood. ‘This was Mitch wasn’t it? The fucking bastard.’
Loulou rolled back over into a little ball, and Susie, touching her friend on the shoulder, quietly left the room.
As Susie approached the veranda with Nicholas on her hip, she could hear Mitch and his buddies’ raucously singing ‘If You Knew Susie.’
Although it was late morning; Mitch sat on one side of the table, swigging from the neck of a bottle of brandy. She correctly guessed that this was not a very early start, but a very late finish, the residual celebration from the night before. His three whiskered-comrades slumped over their deck of cards and propped weak necks up on scrawny elbows. Susie fought her gag reflex as she got close enough to take in their collective stench. It was a peculiarly masculine smell of sweat, sex and alcohol that had the power to make her feel nauseas and petrified at the same time. He may have been in his seventies, but she had seen Mitch land a punch on a cattle hand and the boy had toppled like a wafer. He was fast and mean: two traits that worried her deeply.
‘Here she is!’ Mitch grabbed at his crotch and ran his tongue over his lips. It was always this way when he had been drinking. Susie had done her very best for the last seven months to keep out of his way. She cooked, cleaned, fetched and carried like a silent mouse trying to evade capture. She slipped in and out of his stinky bedroom with the greasy sheets in her arms in a giant bundle to be washed, dried and returned to the mattress before his grey, curly head hit the pillow. She swabbed the wooden and lino-covered floors with a mop dipped into a tin bucket, opening the windows and doors to allow the heat of the day to dry them. She toiled over potatoes and hunks of meat, often skinning and preparing it herself so that Mitch and the hands had something to eat after a long day. She was a skivvy, but not just any skivvy; she owed the meagre bread she put in her mouth and the roof over her head, indeed the very price of her passage, to this miserable, old, boozing bastard who had sponsored her arrival. She was trapped.
‘I need to have a word with you, Mitch.’ She gathered her son into her chest, partly to hide her form, which her boss insisted on staring at, but also to try and stop her body from shaking.
‘Well, what a coincidence, I need to have a word with you, in fact two words: get upstairs!’ he laughed loudly until he wheezed and banged the table top with a flattened palm.
Susie stood firm, trying not to lose her nerve, ‘I need to talk to you about Elouera, she’s been badly beaten. How could you do that to another human? She’s in a mess!’ Susie swiped at her tears, unable to get her friend’s damaged face and shredded feet out of her mind.
‘Is that right?’ he stuck out his bottom lip and scratched his chin.
She nodded.
He was silent, seemingly considering her words, ‘I have a dog, you seen her?’
Susie nodded again. She had seen the muscle-bound retriever that flew around the yard and leapt at her master’s whistle. He pointed a wavering finger at her, ‘If that dog disobeys me, I beat her. I beat her har
d and guess what? She stops disobeying me! Sometimes it’s the only way.’
Susie felt her jaw drop open, ‘But Elouera isn’t a dog, she’s a person! And you are a despicable bully!’ she drew breath to continue, but it was pointless. Mitch was face-down on the table and out cold.
Usually when he passed out, Susie would slip back to her little hut where Loulou and Nicholas waited for her. She would hold her son tight and tell them both stories of a green and pleasant land that was far away. Her son had no idea what she was talking about, but was soothed by her tone and her presence. But right now, she didn’t feel like telling stories, didn’t feel like doing much at all. Her heart and head were heavy at the thought of Loulou’s suffering. Just when she thought she had been in this strange place long enough to bear it, some fresh hell emerged and she was proved wrong. Suddenly, an image of the Dorset beach at dusk swept through her mind. It was a stone’s throw from her parents’ house, and she would often wander down barefoot, enjoying the cool breeze that blew across the dunes as the weak, pale sun sank into the frothy ocean. Oh, how she missed it.
Every day, Susie planned for escape. But it wasn’t easy. Without money, she couldn’t bribe any of the hands to drive her and Nicholas to safety and without a vehicle she would die within twenty-four hours of leaving this godforsaken place, which was a good day’s drive from anywhere. That was assuming she could have got to a port or town without encountering the hundreds of men whose very livelihood was dependent on Mitch Gunnerslake and to whom they were all fiercely loyal. Without money to board a boat or pay for her passage, it was hopeless.
As night approached, she gathered Nicholas and, wrapping herself and her boy in one of their throws, she sat by her friend’s side on a pile of newspaper, feeding her sips of water throughout the night. Loulou spoke only once, in reply to Susie’s incessant questions. What she said was truly shocking.
‘I am nothing and it’s not the worst thing that’s happened to me here, not even close. You can’t think about it, or it will drive you mad. Trust me.’
Stories From The Heart Page 22