“I don’t know what it was, why I didn’t have a good feeling for it,” Ivy said in a musing way. Then, as if she’d caught something out of the thin air and snapped it into shape, she clapped her brittle old hands together and cocked her head. “You know what I think, to tell you the truth, I think she wanted a chance to leave something behind her in France and start again here. We had money then, Benjamin was doing well and she saw that Ned, well…Love, look, I’m not saying she was a gold digger, she wasn’t that; it was something else she wanted from Ned. Perhaps it was just that he loved her so and she was taken with his devotion. That kind of love can seem so safe.”
I’d never thought of Dad as being a good man, because he didn’t shine; he didn’t do anything that you’d notice. Nothing you could boast about at school. Not like being an actress. That was something.
“But it didn’t suit your mother’s nature,” said Ivy, nodding her head as if agreeing with herself. “Your mother was a real drama queen. She loved to create drama around her. She also liked the finer things in life. She had ambitions; she wanted some kind of glory. Oh, you should have seen the clothes she used to buy. And he never even complained. She’d walk around town dressed to the nines. It wasn’t appropriate, not in a country town. She drew attention, people talked about her…Manon, there’s something you should know.”
Ivy leaned forward and I could see the skin sagging on her neck. What she said after that made me feel very bad, and I remember I was looking at the floor as she said it and I was thinking it was the ugliest floor I’d ever seen and why should old dying people have to put up with ugly floors. Shouldn’t you have a lovely thing to look at when you’ve lived a whole lifetime and put up with all the lumps that life heaps on top of you and still got to the end of it? It made me angry, that floor.
“So she is schizo, isn’t she?” I said, kicking the foot of Ivy’s chair.
“Oh no. You mustn’t worry about it now. Of course, she’d never planned to live in the country. When she married Ned she thought they’d be living here in Melbourne, but then Ned accepted a position in Castlemaine. He’d always imagined a quiet life and he assumed she would like it too. But she hated it. She always used to say she was living the wrong life. Do you remember? Ned should have brought her back to Melbourne, but he didn’t. Perhaps he knew by then that she’d never be happy, wherever she was.”
“Ivy, do you think she’ll ever come back?” I fixed my eyes on the ugly floor and my voice came out in crumbs.
“Oh, my dear, is this upsetting you? You mustn’t let it. She may well come back. Don’t think of her as bad. She was a very charming woman, when she wanted to be. She was right in a way. She was just living the wrong life. I think when people get stuck in situations that go against their soul, they can’t be happy. That’s all.”
I turned and stared out the window. I couldn’t see anything out there, only slits of light coming through the venetian blinds. I closed my eyes for a second and let the light slide across my face, like it did under the apple trees.
There’s a photo of my mother, an old black-and-white photo that was stuck in the front of the photo album, and every time anyone looked in the album, that was the biggest, most memorable photo. It was a proper one, taken by a photographer in France, where she used to live. In it, she is sitting on a surfboat, right at the peak: white bikini, ankles crossed, toes dainty and balancing her on the boat’s edge, one hand carelessly thrown up to hold her sunhat on. There’s a line of men with their hands on the boat, all smiling like idiots, their eyes in a join-the-dots line straight toward her, looking like they’re about to push the boat out over the waves with just my mother sitting on the bow like a figurehead. My mother is laughing, of course. All those men. She always laughed around men. The photo was set up, you could tell. But she really was like that. She liked a lot of attention.
I turned back to Ivy. I told her that there was no way in the world I was getting stuck in any situation that went against my soul, and Ivy said she knew it was so, and I heaved a big sigh. Ivy leaned her head back in her chair and closed her eyes and opened her mouth just a little so the breaths could come out. And in the quietness that fell between us, I knew that something had been done, not done and finished, but done and started, like when you cast on the first line of knitting and see how big the jumper will be. I couldn’t get a picture of what kind of thing was being knitted, but I felt sure that until it was knitted there’d be a large part of me that would stay cold.
chapter sixteen
After the tunnel, I stopped going to the orchards because I didn’t want Harry to think I was going there to see him. I didn’t trust myself to be normal and natural since I’d started having feelings about Harry Jacob. Even Eddie might notice and he’d stir me to death if he knew. I couldn’t ever control my feelings, couldn’t tell how they’d make me behave. It was as if the feelings I had for Harry were once just plain-colored feelings, but now they’d darkened and reddened and brightened too, and whatever I did or said would have to come out in this bright red way. I tested it out on Lucy at school.
“Hey, what d’you think of Harry Jacob?” I blurted this out in a very red manner; there was no easy way in.
“Harry Jacob?” Lucy didn’t seem to notice anything. She can be really dense about some things.
“You know, Eddie’s friend.”
“The one with curly hair?”
“Yeah, him.”
She nodded and took her time to think about it. “I’ve never spoken to him. He’s shy, isn’t he?” she declared. “Why? Do you fancy him?”
“No. It’s just, he’s different, you know, he isn’t a tough guy. He’s nice.”
She nodded. “What does he do, though? Isn’t he just picking apples?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey, is Eddie still going ’round with Alison?”
“I s’pose so. You never know with Eddie.”
“Are you coming to see Star Wars on Friday? Is Eddie coming?”
“Probably. Yeah.”
Star Wars was a big event in Castlemaine, and that was when I saw Harry again. It ended up almost like a date, in a back-door kind of a way. Harry was driving his brother’s truck. He was taking Eddie. Eddie said I could squeeze in the front with them. But then Alison Porrit wanted to come too. So Eddie decided he’d get the bus with Alison, and that left me to go with Harry.
“Do you mind, Mannie?” said Eddie. “Harry said he’d still pick you up and take you.”
“I don’t mind,” I said with a sigh, as if I was just being obliging. “I’ll go with Harry.”
So there it was. Almost a proper date. I let myself believe it was, and I made a special effort to look nice. I washed my hair and even dried it with a hair dryer. I put on some of Mum’s lipstick and kissed a tissue and tossed it in the bathroom bin. There were always bits of kissed Kleenex, which Mum left around in the bathroom. I didn’t know the reason for this practice, but I did it anyway since Mum knew a lot more than I did about the craft of dressing up. If there was one thing my mum gave a lot of attention to, it was making herself look nice. She didn’t sweep the floor much, but she always looked nice.
When Harry arrived I was still in the bathroom. So I had to make an entrance into the kitchen, where Mum and Harry stood warming their backs at the stove. I’m not one for entrances.
“Oh, Manon, look what you’re wearing,” cried Mum, rolling her eyes in despair. “You look like an orphan. Isn’t that some underwear?” I frowned and looked at Harry, who was wearing a jacket, and then back at my mother. I steadied my voice.
“No, it’s a jumper,” I said. I knew it was a jumper. It was a thin cream-colored jumper with little holes in it.
“Manon, it’s an undershirt. Where did you get it? At the underwear shop or at the thrift store?” My mother giggled as if it was a joke meant to amuse Harry. But Harry looked at the floor. I put the back of my hand to my mouth and tried to smudge off the lipstick. I suddenly felt stupid for trying to look nice. I
wanted to hide the evidence of it.
“Shall we go, Harry?” I said. My cheeks were red and hot and awful, and I wanted to get away from the kitchen.
“Harry will be embarrassed to take you out,” said my mother, flicking her hair. She turned toward Harry and laughed. “Lucky she’s not wearing the tea cozy, Harry.” Even though she didn’t like Harry, she could still act like a girl with him because he was almost a man.
“I reckon Mannie looks nice whatever she wears,” said Harry. He was so soft and unprotected and true that it made me want to take his hand and hold it. But I would never do that, especially not with my mother watching. I didn’t feel like saying another word. I didn’t want to put out another thing because I knew she’d stomp it to the ground, as if it were a new tree sucker trying to grow where it wasn’t allowed. I looked at Harry half urgently.
“Let’s go,” I said, and after the front door was shut and we stepped off the front porch, Harry put his hand on my back for a moment as we walked to the car. I didn’t look at him and he didn’t look either.
Around us the birds wheeled and screeched in the fading light. The thin trees leaned and shivered over the creek and the sky glowed a dark lilac color. Just before we made it to the car we were walking close enough for me to smell the dark warm smell at his neck, and I wondered then if I might even marry Harry Jacob and never have to worry about trying to look nice again.
chapter seventeen
He didn’t ring me up after that date at the movies. He just came and got me. He whistled at my window. I heard him. I knew it was him. Straightaway I knew. I felt all whizzed up. I opened the window and leaned out. He was standing by that old messy melaleuca and it was getting dark.
“Harry?” I whispered.
“Yep.” He didn’t move away from the tree. He was whittling something with a pocket knife.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting.”
“What for?” There was a pause and then he stepped out and handed me the thing he was whittling. It was a funny looking bird, carved out of wood, the wings tucked into the body, little holes for eyes. I had it on the palm of my hand. I didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t sure I liked it.
“You made a bird?” I said.
He nodded. “Wanna go for a drive, Mannie?” His hands were in his pockets and he was looking straight at me.
“Where to?” I put the bird on the windowsill since I wasn’t sure if he was giving it to me or not.
“I dunno. Maybe the Springs.”
“Okay. Wait. I’ll come out the back door.”
As if I cared where we’d go. But you have to ask. You can’t sound too unconditional. So I just went. I had this urge to go and tell Eddie what I was doing, but I didn’t. I just went.
Vaughan Springs is really a river fed by springs. There’s old pumps with taps where you used to be able to get the spring water, but now you can’t. So it’s not just any old river. It’s a special place, where people in the gold rush used to picnic. Once there was a small train for kids, but now there’s just the tracks. There’s a slide, though, and a path alongside the river.
We were walking by the river. I knew there was no particular reason to be walking; we weren’t going anywhere, we were just walking. The walking was like an excuse. If we weren’t walking then there’d be nothing except me and him. Just me and him and no action or reason or filling. So we were just going along beside each other so that the space between us could draw close, surreptitiously, if you know what I mean. On the other side of the river was a steep bank covered in toothy dark trees that seemed to rise toward a gaping sky. On our side there was a wide plain and rows of old elm trees planted long ago. The trees swayed a little and there was a whispering sound coming from the leaves and a rushing sound from the river. I was cold. Harry gave me his coat. I said he didn’t have to but he gave it to me anyway. I could smell him in the coat.
Walking alone with Harry Jacob was the best thing in the world, and I couldn’t imagine how one single fish in the sea could at that moment be as happy as me. Nothing would ever matter again. Even if I never ever got to do something special, like be in a theater company, I wouldn’t care.
Harry was explaining how they were replanting the original river red gums along the banks. You could see them, protected by old milk cartons. I looked over but I wasn’t really noticing what he was saying since I was busy thinking how strange it was that nothing else mattered, nothing except walking along by the dark river with him. Even now I can still picture the trees reaching up into the night and spreading their fragrance in soft invisible clouds. As if love had enlarged the shape of things, made the whispering of the leaves more insistent, amplified the quiet emptiness of the path, unleashed the darkness and offered it to us alone.
“It’s strange,” I said, but I didn’t really mean to say it.
“What’s strange?” said Harry and he bent down and picked up a leaf and folded it in half.
I didn’t answer. I hadn’t meant to test the thought out loud, since I didn’t have my mind around the strangeness. And I didn’t want to. I just wanted to stay in the strangeness, since it made everything seem large and loud and quiet too. I couldn’t find a way to say it that might not sound corny or just wrong. Harry took my hand. He was looking straight ahead and he started to hum. After a while he lifted my hand toward his face and he looked at it.
“Mannie, you have little monkey paws,” he said. He held my hand as if it was a curious thing. Like it was an old bit of china washed up from a sunken ship. My hands have always had lots of wrinkles on them. Proves I’m an old soul, according to Eddie.
What I remember most is how the sky arched over us as if we were the only ones underneath it. We lay on our backs and watched the stars coming. You can’t ever catch the moment when one pushes its tiny light through the black. It’s just there. I had the feeling everything belonged to me. Not that I owned it, but that I was with it, an equal part, another element: me and the shaking trees, the puff of wind, the million tiny stars, the call of a bird passing over my skin, his hand around mine, Harry Jacob. I would have stayed just like that for a very long time, being a simple element in the world, but he turned on his side to face me.
I knew he was facing me.
He said my name. He said it as if it were a question. But he wasn’t asking. He just looked right at me and he was close. I could feel his breath, or my name, in the tiny dark space between us. I could feel something else, like warmth coming from his body, but it wasn’t exactly warmth, because it was getting inside me and buzzing, like a million bees passing through my pores.
Right at that moment I knew how Harry never had to worry about what life might want him to understand. Not like I did. Harry didn’t look outward, he just let what he saw fall into his eyes. And now I was close enough to Harry that I could do it too. I turned toward him and I wanted to be closer still. The world around me was quiet; for once it didn’t expect me to reply. I could almost feel the weight of his eyelids as they sank over his eyes. I said, “Harry, don’t you want to kiss me now?” Because if he didn’t kiss me I think I would have gone mad. I heard him laugh and then, just like that, his mouth came to mine and we were kissing, we definitely were.
And afterward I thought that was it: That was love. Love was life’s secret purpose. I had been overcome in the most beautiful way possible. I could smell the air and I could feel Harry’s arms around me. I could taste him.
I thought nothing bad could ever happen.
The next day Mum was gone.
chapter eighteen
Manon, my love, do you think of Eddie?” So there it was. Ivy said it. I knew she would.
Sometimes, only sometimes at home, someone might mention Eddie, but not like that, not directly, more just in passing, like, when Eddie did that, or that was Eddie’s favorite, or there’s that old friend of Eddie’s. No one spoke directly of what had happened. But Ivy was different. Mum always said Ivy was overemotional.
I s
tared at the floor. I remembered Eddie and me sitting in Dad’s Holden when we were just little. Eddie was in the driver’s seat. He took the hand brake off and we rolled down the hill and crashed into the garage. He was making a broom broom noise the whole way. He was in heaven. He wasn’t worried a bit.
The last time I saw him, he came into my room. He flopped on my bed and hassled me.
“So what’s going on with you and Harry?” he said. I was reading. I kept the book close to my face and peered over it.
“Nothin’. Why?”
“’Cause it just looked like there was, at Star Wars.” Eddie slipped out a suspicious-looking smile.
“Did Harry say there was?”
“Haven’t spoken to him. Thought I’d ask you first.”
“Nothing’s happened,” I lied. After all I hadn’t had time to let it sink in myself, so I wasn’t ready to spill any beans. The funny thing was that when I did tell someone about it, it wasn’t Eddie and it wasn’t Lucy either. “What made you think something was?”
Eddie looked up at the ceiling and considered. He didn’t answer me.
“I reckon he fancies you.” Eddie seemed pleased, almost triumphant, as if he knew more than I did. Or more than Harry even. He picked up the carved wooden bird that Harry had left and turned it over in his hand.
“Do you?” I pushed the book closer to my face in case I was blushing. But there wasn’t any fooling Eddie. He pulled the book away and laughed.
“You’re funny, Mannie. You’re really funny,” he said, and then he was chuckling and saying, “Imagine you and my mate Harry.”
“Shut up, will you,” I said, but he didn’t; he got a lot of mileage out of it. He had to go and list all the great things about Harry Jacob, as if he was coaching me. He even told me what Harry liked and what Harry didn’t like.
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