by Kim Kane
‘I have been trying to get through on the phone for hours, Mathilda.’ Mrs Graham’s voice was as tight as her pink-frosted lips.
‘Oh, sorry, Mrs Graham,’ said Olive. ‘We’ve been on the internet and we don’t have broadband yet.’
Mathilda didn’t say anything. She just rubbed her mouth along Mog’s bathrobe sleeve.
Olive invited Mrs Graham inside. Mrs Graham gave her a clipped nod and strode straight down the hall. ‘Collect your belongings, Mathilda. Pronto.’
Olive knew Mrs Graham always used the word pronto when she was cross. Because it was Spanish, she rolled the ‘r’: prrrrrrronto. Olive watched as Mrs Graham walked into Mog’s study, ahead of the girls. She looked up at the walls, which had yellowed with smoke and age, and pushed her tight lips tighter. You could press flowers between those lips, thought Olive. They’d be as effective as phone books.
Before either Olive or Mathilda could protest, Mrs Graham walked over to the computer and read the exchange between Salami and Sinus. Later, according to Mathilda, Mrs Graham would tell Mr Graham that the girls had been engaging perverts who could have lured them with promises of meetings with That Paris Hilton. For the time being, however, she asked one question: ‘Where is your mother, Olive?’ And when Olive couldn’t deliver the right response, Mrs Graham and her pressed lips drove Mathilda home. Without another word.
4
Metal-detecting
Ten days later, the sky sagged and the rain set in. Olive was stuck watching water trickle down the windows and the insides of the walls. Mog had forgotten to call the man to fix the roof tiles again.
Olive was in a mood, and she was bored – bored in the sort of way a kid can only be if she’s made to sit through four hours of Wagnerian opera or to hang about watching the rain after school without her best friend. Mathilda wasn’t at Olive’s because she wasn’t allowed to come over any more. While Olive was more than welcome to stay at Mathilda’s, where the Grahams could keep an eye on them, Olive didn’t want to.
Olive had gone to Mathilda’s once or twice since The Incident, but she’d felt the Grahams’ simultaneous sympathy and disapproval with each visit. As Olive had sat in their kitchen tearing date scones from buttery trays and watching Mathilda swat her brothers with a tea towel, she had felt like a traitor; a traitor deserting Mog, their weekends in junk stores, her jaw-dropping frocks and every single one of their dust-covered crap-knacks.
While Olive waited for Mog to get home, she tried to find things to do. She waded through junk to the computer in Mog’s study, where she logged on to the chatroom she and Mathilda had mucked about on. Olive read all the entries, but Sinus wasn’t there – there were just two kids called Spanakopita and Ironic talking about character development in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Olive abandoned them and found a search engine instead.
Olive loved search engines and often ran Google searches, spelling ‘Mustard Seed and William Peters’ carefully, although she never found anything. Tonight was no different. Olive did a search for ‘Mog Garnaut’ and scrolled through the files. She studied the photos of her mother, who looked sterner and older under her grey Bo Peep work wig. Olive noted which web pages were new and printed them out for her diary. She liked to keep track of Mog like that; it made Mog feel closer.
When Olive had finished, she switched off the computer. The house fell poison-still.
Maybe I should just catch a taxi to Mathilda’s after all, she thought. Maybe the Grahams didn’t really disapprove of her. It could be lovely. She could watch Mr Graham while he did suitable dad-like things, such as putting up picture hooks, carving the roast lamb and helping himself to chutney. Then she and Mathilda could sit in the drawing room while Mr Graham read to them from ‘His Dark Materials’. The curtains in the drawing room had aqua checks in chintz to match the aqua-checked poof and the shiny aqua door on the cover of the book on the coffee table.
Before Olive could indulge in too many more Graham-family domestic fantasies, a fat drop of water hit her on the nose. ‘No!’ she cried. Water had migrated from the walls to the middle of the ceiling. Leaks had also spouted in the hall, and everything was getting wet.
Olive spent the next hour darting through towers of junk, strategically placing pots, pans and towels on the carpet. While she was plonking a particularly large saucepan under a particularly virile leak in the billiard room, a big brown box tumbled down from a stack of junk. She ducked. A blue-green metallic contraption rolled out onto the floorboards, where it lay gleaming like a new bike. It had a long handle and a flat disc at the base that was connected to a number of levers and wires. Olive was still trying to work out what it was when Mog walked in.
‘What a day, what a day.’ Mog kissed Olive on her forehead just where it met the tip of her part. It was 9.45 p.m. and neither of them had eaten. ‘I thought you said Mathilda was coming over?’
‘She just left,’ Olive lied. Mog hated it when Olive was alone. She always seemed much happier knowing that Olive was hanging out with other girls – as if it was a way to gauge if Olive was normal or something. Besides, Mog would be furious if she knew the real reason Mathilda hadn’t been there. Olive fetched two bowls and the muesli.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mog. ‘It’s hardly meat and three veg. Try not to pick out the raisins.’
Olive sat with a placemat at the table, methodically picking out the raisins. Mog ate standing at the fridge, whizzing through the post and listening to phone messages.
‘That council,’ said Mog. ‘Now they’re putting electronic chips in dogs to track them – injecting them square into their rumps. Barbaric carcinogens. What’s this country coming to?’ She sighed in a hmph through her nose and went back to the post.
‘And that school of yours,’ she continued, shredding a glossy update. ‘I’d just like to know when students became “clients” and parents “stakeholders”? If I’d wanted to have you schooled in a corporation, I’d at least have picked a listed company.’ As Mog spoke, she threw up her hands to Prove! The! Point! like an exclamation mark of elbows and wrists before dumping the post in the recycling pile. If she noticed the saucepans filling with water, the soggy towels or the leaky roof, she didn’t say anything, and Olive didn’t draw her attention to them.
After dinner, Olive put the muesli bowls in the dishwasher and continued to fiddle with the contraption.
‘What have you got that old thing for?’ Mog was standing over Olive with the home phone clutched to her ear. Olive shrugged.
‘It’s an old metal detector I picked up somewhere yonks ago,’ said Mog. ‘Oh, I think we might have needed it for a play. But you know what they say: something lost is something found.’ She laughed. ‘That saying certainly made me feel better whenever I lost things – my bag, my mascara, you at the drycleaner . . . bugger.’ Mog’s mobile was ringing. With the home phone clamped between her head and a shoulder, she picked up her mobile and went to fend off another crisis.
Olive found the owner’s manual for the metal detector in the bottom of the box. It showed a man in a soft hat drawing a grid on the sand. His face had a studied, inquisitive look that made him look like George Bush or the village idiot, but Olive would draw a grid too. It was good to be thorough. With a grid, she would be sure to avoid covering the same patch of beach twice.
In her mind, Olive could see herself walking patiently backwards and forwards. She could hear the bleep of the metal detector as it thrust its nose into the sand, and she could see the headlines plastered across every newsstand already:
Twelve-year-old Girl Unearths Long-lost
Titanic Bullion on Local Beach
Bullion was a fancy word for treasure. This metal detector was going to be the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Olive Garnaut.
She just knew it.
5
Ditched
The next afternoon, Olive walked home with lucky-coin ice-cream on her breath and the metal detector in her hand. She hadn’t found lost Titanic b
ullion, or even Roman coins, but she had found two dollars, which she’d put straight towards an ice-cream. She’d watched the coin as it dropped into Okey Doke’s tubby hand. It was lovely to think that a lucky coin like that would now be in circulation. Man, wait until Mathilda hears about this, thought Olive. The potential was endless.
‘Watch it!’
‘Whoops, sorry.’ Olive was so distracted, she’d walked into a man with a fisherman’s cap. The metal detector had hit him square in the stomach. The man with the fisherman’s cap looked at the contraption and his face softened. ‘A metal detector. Golly, I haven’t seen one of those for a while. You find anything?’
‘A tin of boot polish, some rusty fishhooks and two dollars.’
‘Not bad. Stick at it – you could find more.’
‘Like what?’
‘Oh, keys to a mansion, pirate treasure, the Honourable Harold Holt. That sort of thing.’
Olive looked blank.
‘The former Prime Minister who disappeared in Mysterious Circumstances further along the coast.’ The man smiled, and the white stubble on his chin rippled.
‘Do you really think so?’ Olive looked down at the man’s dog. Mog said she didn’t trust men with small dogs, but this one was a little West Highland terrier. ‘A Westie!’ she said. ‘My best friend, Mathilda, has one of those. Mathilda Graham – she’s my best friend. What’s your dog’s name?’
‘Jones,’ said the man in the fisherman’s cap.
‘Mathilda’s is called Cassie. I actually can’t wait to tell Mathilda about this metal detector, even if I haven’t got much yet. I kept it a secret today, because I wanted to see whether it actually works. Now I know it does, we’ll have a go together after school tomorrow. If she’s allowed. Mathilda might have a bit more luck than me – she tends to.’ The words tumbled out before Olive could catch them.
‘You always such a chatterbox?’ The man in the fisherman’s cap laughed.
‘No,’ said Olive, and the truth was that she wasn’t. Olive Garnaut was quiet, really; she always had been.
By the time Olive got home, the moon sat low and lumpy in the sky. Olive held her key out in front of her as she made her way to the back door. She tried not to look at the tree shadows that plucked worms from the garden and moths from the sky with their long twiggy fingers. She plunged towards the lock and stumbled, then scuttled inside and bolted the door.
Even indoors, however, Olive couldn’t relax. She stomped into each room, turning on lights; colonising the unknown with each flick of the switch. Only after this was done could Olive breathe.
When the house was blazing and her heart had steadied, Olive checked the answering machine. The light was flashing. Olive loved the old answering machine; she particularly loved it when it flashed. Hello, it seemed to say. Thinking of you. Remember that you are somebody.
There was only one message and it was from Mog.
‘Hi, Ol. Hope you had a lovely day. Bad news. Just realised that I’ve gone and accepted dinner with the Attorney-General on the night of your concert. It is a slippery year – Christmas already. I hope you don’t mind, darling. I know it’s not ideal, but it’s the only day he’s in town before he heads off for his summer break. I thought you could come along after the concert. We can ask Mathilda, too. I’ll call later to discuss. Love Mog.’
Mog always signed off her answering-machine messages like they were emails or letters she was dictating. Olive hated it. She kicked at a pile of papers. How could Mog go and do that? Slippery year my foot. The Christmas concert was sacred. It was the one evening when Mog was there with the other girls’ parents, guaranteed. Afterwards they’d have burnt urn coffee in the foyer with the teachers, and Olive would lean against Mog and feel like them. This year was even more important, because Olive’s art might be chosen for display. Olive kicked out at the papers again.
It actually wasn’t unusual for Mog and Olive to dine with politicians like the Attorney-General. In fact, they often had dinner with politicians and their families on Sunday nights, for what Mog called ‘relaxed quality family time’ – but they never ate in. Instead, they went to suitably casual-for-the-kids bistros, where Olive could order spaghetti with meat sauce and lick the bolognaise off each strand.
Sometimes Olive fell asleep at the table, and when she woke she’d have bits of meat sauce in her hair. ‘I’d better be getting this one to bed,’ Mog would say. But she would always have another glass of red wine – ‘for the road’ – and Olive rarely remembered the taxi ride home.
And that was to be Olive’s first senior-school concert? Her art – maybe the only Year 7 art – could be on display, and while all of the other parents studied it, her mother would be studying a politician who blow-dried his hair?
Olive picked up the phone. Mathilda would understand. Even though Mrs Graham had never missed a single concert, and in fact served the biscuits, Mathilda would get it.
It took some time for Mathilda to answer. ‘Hi Ol, I’ve got to be quick. The boys have their school Christmas barbeque picnic tonight and Mum’s making us all go.’
Olive had heard other girls talking about the Christmas barbeque picnic earlier in the day. As much as Mathilda moaned, it sounded quite fun. Apparently everyone sat on blankets and held candles, in cups to stop the drips running down their hands, while they ate crackers and cold chicken.
‘That’s okay,’ said Olive, wishing she had a brother, too. Olive paused, hoping Mathilda might include her.
Mathilda didn’t. ‘Guess what? I’m getting a lift with Amelia – in her dad’s convertible!’
Amelia Forster’s father wore cufflinks and drove a car with the numberplate ‘GST’ (no numbers). He had made his fortune in tax. ‘Crass,’ both Mog and Mrs Graham had agreed in a rare moment, although the girls had thought that it would be rather delicious to drive with windy hair.
‘Oh,’ said Olive. ‘Say hi to Amelia.’ She said goodbye and hung up.
Olive walked to the bathroom, mouth and limbs saggy. Shadows skulked behind the boxes in the hall. Baths were a good cure-all, Mog said – baths and hot-water bottles. And they both were.
Olive waited until the tub had filled before she undressed, breathing in the steam. As she climbed in, the water rose reassuringly up the bath’s sides. Olive had matter. She did matter. The water folded around her limbs and held her.
Once Olive was warm in her pyjamas, she made some Vegemite toast. She buttered it quickly and evenly so that the butter and the Vegemite would melt in together before the toast got cold. Olive took the plate and a glass of water and fell back into the couch with Mog’s old photo album.
Mog had been a hippy when she was a student. Now having a hippy past just meant that Mog felt guilty when she accepted plastic bags, and that they’d get takeaway Thai rather than McDonald’s. But the album featured shots of Mog when she was young – all hairy armpitted and nut brown. Looking at the photos, Olive could imagine WilliamPetersMustardSeed holding Olive while bongo drums beat; both brown as berries and swinging free.
Olive liked to examine the photos for signs of Him. I bet he wouldn’t miss a Centennial Christmas Concert with an art show for the Attorney-General. She studied the photos. Did the thigh towering behind her mother (in the yoga lotus pose) belong to him? Were they his dark glasses on the coffee table? Was that his Joni Mitchell T-shirt, taut over Mog’s swollen tummy? Olive shook her toast over the page. If WilliamPetersMustardSeed was there, a crumb would land on him to prove it.
The toast crumbs were picked up in a draught that shot through the house. Olive sighed. The answer was blowing in the wind.
Olive’s dreamings were interrupted by the phone. It was Mog’s new secretary, Trudy, who spoke in squawks like a cockatoo. ‘Hi, Olive. Your mum’s been trying to get through to you. I’ll pop her on.’
Mog gushed onto the phone. ‘Hi darling! How are you? How was your day? How’s Mathilda? Did you hand in your Ming dynasty assignment?’
Mog always did this. Sh
e shot off a series of questions, leaving no room for the answers. But Mog always remembered one thing that Olive had on each day, and she always asked about it. Although Olive was cross, she liked the fact Mog tried.
‘Fine thanks,’ said Olive neatly. ‘I didn’t get much down at the beach with the metal detector, but I’m going to try again tomorrow. When will you be home?’
Olive tried to hide the whinge in her voice. Mog hated whingers, but Olive could feel it creeping up her throat. She took a big gulp of water to push the whinge back down.
‘I’m sorry, Ol. You know I’m stuck on a Big Case.’
‘But it’s been two years.’
There was a silence. ‘Ol, it hasn’t been quite that long. Anyway, I should be home shortly. Tuck yourself into bed with a hottie and I’ll turn out the lights when I get in.’
‘Okay.’
‘And about the concert, darling. I’m sorry about it – really sorry about it. I owe you one. Big time. Oh, and stick to the back of the beach. I always lose stuff in the soft sand at the back. We’ll have a shot on the weekend if you like. Client’s waiting. Better go. Love you!’
The line clicked and went blank. The thing was, thought Olive, Mog really would feel sorry about it, desperately sorry. She always did. But Mog was frightfully ambitious. ‘She nurtures that media profile more than her daughter,’ Olive had overheard a tennis-and-tuckshop mum whisper once. The other mums had all murmured their agreement. Most of the time, Olive didn’t care what they thought. In fact, most of the time she was actually proud.
Mog, like Olive, was very skinny, with the same hair, only Mog’s was cut in a professional bob and had darkened to honey with age. Mog wore lipstick and high-heeled shoes and the press always mentioned her lovely long pins. Mog said that this was ‘ridiculous’ and ‘offensive’, and that it had absolutely nothing to do with her performance on behalf of her clients – which was, she noted, always ‘sterling’. Olive noticed, however, that Mog continued to wear sliced skirts (which did show off her rather nice legs).