by Kim Kane
‘What if there were roadworks, or an accident?’
‘Not then – but if we went the same way, on a normal day, we really would get every green light except the one just before Chambers. That would always be red, and then we’d get out.’
‘That is weird.’
‘I’d forgotten about it.’
‘Did Sarah Afar say anything?’
‘Yep, she’d say, “There’s order in everything,” and then she’d dump me with Mog’s secretary, put the money-envelope in her handbag, and pat it twice just to make sure it was there.’
Pip and Olive continued along the track, walking and talking in time. As they walked, Olive thought the Sarah Afar story through. While the streets had heaps of people and cars, there was a pattern to the mess. It seemed there was a map for living that just hadn’t been drawn up yet. Mog would like that.
After miles of track and many water stops, the path finally spread out.
There, at the end, was a lighthouse.
It was bigger than it had looked in Mog’s picture. Bigger and grittier: a vast, greying tower gripping the edge of its cliff. The lighthouse was girt by grass, tough and barbed, growing in patches like a dog’s mange. Despite the sun, the wind was cold.
‘The sea mist didn’t look this clammy in the picture,’ said Olive, pulling on her cardigan.
‘You couldn’t see the sand mites, either.’
The wind bellowed up over the rock face. Olive clamped her teeth. She tried to imagine Mog there, but she couldn’t. The place was uncontained, and it somehow felt nasty. The ground trembled as waves punched the cliff. It couldn’t really be the lighthouse.
‘Look.’ Pip pointed to a van set in the tea-tree scrub. The van was orange but bleached – the colour of dusty vitamin C pills in a bottle (rather than the tablets, which bled scarlet under Olive’s tongue). It was rusted right through in patches, and light fell across its remaining seats in bands, like crochet.
The twins approached the van.
‘It’s full of dirt.’ Pip picked up a splinter of eggshell and held it out to Olive. ‘It smells like the sea.’
‘It smells like chicken poo,’ said Olive. Somebody had strung wire across the gap where the door should have been – a few feathers quivered in it.
Pip slid her hand down the gap and fished around with her fingers. She pulled out a badge with a pop and a shower of chicken pellets. Pip rubbed the button and pinned it on her sister’s top: Hawke Cried Because He Lied. ‘Who was Hawke again? Was he the Prime Minister who drowned – the one they named the swimming pool after?’
Olive giggled, nervy. ‘They should’ve gone for a lifesaving club, but that wasn’t him. Hawke’s the Prime Minister who was in the Guinness Book of Records for drinking the most beer.’
Olive tried to take the badge off, but her hand was trembling and the catch was stuck.
Pip pointed at the handle of a teaspoon jammed in the ignition and then circled the van. ‘EIO 222 – it’s definitely the same as the one in the photo.’
Olive kicked an old bottle lying on the ground. It rolled slowly. ‘Come on,’ she said, motioning at the lighthouse. ‘Let’s go inside.’
The girls reached the door and stopped. The tower loomed above them, immense and unforgiving.
‘This place is like freaksville.’ Pip was whispering even though there was nobody in sight. ‘If we died out here, it would take them forty years to find our bones.’
Olive took a shaky breath. She tapped on the door. The wood was crumbly in places, and it smelled sour. There was no answer. She knocked a bit harder, in the middle. Nothing. She gave the door one last beat. The wind snarled and the door scraped open.
Olive and Pip stepped inside. The air was thick and damp and smelt like pumpernickel. Olive stood still, trying to suppress her heartbeats while she waited for her eyes to adjust. Once the light had bent and warped and then settled, she saw that she was in the pit of the tower. Some speck windows high above illuminated things slightly, but the grainy gloom left Olive feeling like she was floating.
In all her imagining, Olive hadn’t considered that the belly of the lighthouse would be as dank as compost.
‘Hello?’ Olive pitched into the silence. ‘Hello?’
Olive breathed through her teeth to block the pumpernickel smell. A feral wind blustered in and rattled stale air and papers. The roof moaned. Olive crossed her arms into her cardigan and stared at an old beanbag dribbling grey beans onto the floor.
A staircase rose in a spindly tower from the centre of the room, like a great pile of pick-up-sticks, balancing, despite the odds, all the way to the speck windows above. Somebody had lined rings of empty whisky bottles around the base.
‘I’m going to go up. Do you want to come?’ Olive turned to see Pip edging back to the door.
‘Let’s not worry about it, Ol. I’ve seen enough.’
Olive’s stomach fluttered. While she wanted to leave, desperately wanted to leave, she’d feel empty if she did.
Pip was standing in the doorway looking at Olive. ‘I won’t think worse of you if we go.’
Olive turned and readjusted the backpack. ‘Yes you will. But that’s not it. I need to. Let’s just get this over.’
Pip raised her hand and stepped back out into the light. ‘I’ll keep guard, but call if you need me, and I’ll . . . I’ll think of something.’
Olive moved some of the bottles to the side and started to climb. The steps were smothered in a mesh of rubbish as layered as decoupage; they shifted in step with her feet. The metal had rusted in parts, leaving toothed edges, and Olive had to haul herself up along the banister to avoid the steps’ bite. She imagined centuries of lighthouse keepers climbing those very stairs, to keep watch over whatever lighthouse keepers watched – rocks and ships and mermaids with breasts to lure sailors to their death – tackling the very same obstacle course with no company other than a ham sandwich.
As Olive climbed, the tower pressed in until the walls were so close she could see chiselled gouges in the stone. She climbed until her legs were wobbly and everything was lit with hoary light. She climbed until she reached a room.
The room was rimmed by a bench broken only by the stairwell. Windows filled with grey-day sea ran in a loop. Pieces of card had been taped over spots where the glass was broken. A clump of mauve fabric vibrated against a window pane, rigid with salt and wind.
The lighthouse was empty. Quite empty. He had gone after all.
Olive watched through the windows as waves mauled hidden rock platforms below. She could feel herself beginning to extract from the situation. She could no longer smell dust or pumpernickel. She could barely feel the floor beneath her feet.
Neither of the girls had stopped to consider that Mustard Seed might not be there. It was dumb, really, but after the fake Mustard Seed incident, getting the right person and the right place had seemed like the entire battle. They had spent so long trying to figure out which lighthouse he lived in, and how and when to go there, and what he’d be like, that they’d managed to forget that he might have moved on.
Now they would get expelled from school for nothing - they hadn’t even seen their father.
‘Are you all right?’ Pip called up the tower. Olive pulled the clump of fabric from the window and slowly descended the stairs. She listened to her steps bristle down the tower’s spine.
‘Was there anything there?’ Pip had climbed up a few steps to meet her. She was standing on a heap of fraying hessian.
‘Nope. The lighthouse has been adverse possessed by empty bottles. Empty bottles and this.’ Olive held up the clump of mauve fabric. ‘An old sari.’
Pip poked the crusty material with a finger. ‘Oh,’ she said quietly.
The girls stood on the steps and took in the scraps of a lost life.
‘Come on, Ol. Let’s get out of here.’
They wandered back to the mouth of the sandy path, in silence.
27
The Hon. and the SAG
Pip and Olive drooped over the milk bar counter. Olive ordered salad sandwiches, not because they particularly wanted salad sandwiches, but because it was too hot for pies and the only other option was curried egg.
When they came, the sandwiches had splotches that were beetroot-pink and soggy. The woman lumbered behind the counter squirting blue-heaven syrup, the colour of gel toothpaste, into a silver cup.
‘So, how was the lighthouse then? You find it?’
‘Yep.’ Olive took a bite of sandwich. There was something comforting about the texture of margarine, white bread and lettuce.
‘And how was it?’
‘Empty.’
‘I told you there wasn’t much down there.’
No you didn’t, thought Olive. You didn’t mention it. Her feet were tired and she blamed the woman, even if the woman was thwacking generous blue-white balls of ice-cream into their milkshake.
The woman didn’t notice Olive’s irritation. ‘The government got rid of the squatters. They’d been there for years – used to be a bit of a hippy commune. Mainly student wags, but they did add a bit of light and colour to the district. Now they’re turning it into a B&B or something.’
‘Oh.’ Olive wished this were a discussion they’d had before she walked through the skin on her heels. ‘Do you know a man called Mustard Seed? Did he live there?’
‘Mustard Seed?’ The woman jiggled the cup onto the blender. Skin flapped about her buttery elbows. ‘Well, that’s a daft name if I ever heard one. No man called that in Noglarrat. Lots of Gregs and Daves and Lleytons. Three babies in the last fortnight, all boys and all Lleytons. You wouldn’t read about it.’
Olive looked away, her closed mouth distorted by a yawn. Fatigue was starting to smother her interest in locating their father.
‘What about William Peters. Is there a William Peters . . .’ Pip’s voice didn’t have the strength to lift for the question.
‘You mean Bill Peters? We certainly do have a Bill Peters. He’s our greatest SAG.’
The girls sat up.
‘SNAG,’ grunted a man Olive hadn’t noticed, from behind a racing guide. ‘Sensitive New-Age Guy, not a ruddy sausage.’ Something a bit crusty, probably egg, was dribbled down his T-shirt.
‘SNAG, SAG, Bill Peters is Noglarrat’s First Man, our Jackie O.’
Olive looked blank.
‘He’s married to Pat Peters, the Mayor. Got her sights set on Tidy Town for next year, she does. He’s more of the arty sort.’
‘Do they live here? In town?’ Pip was leaning forwards over the counter.
‘Of course they do. Fancy house in Christowell Avenue – oldest street in these parts. Here you go.’ The woman wiped her hands across the front of her grease-stained apron. ‘That’ll be eight-fifty, love.’
Olive took the drink and walked outside. She had to suck hard to work the ice-cream up through the straw. ‘Bill Peters. Well, I guess that’s him.’ It was such a mousy, unadventurous name. ‘I can’t believe he’s here after all.’
‘I can’t believe he lives in a house.’ Pip’s voice curled with contempt. ‘Not even somewhere interesting like an old scout hall or a converted chocolate factory. How the mighty fall.’
Olive couldn’t respond. She just felt hot and dusty and punctured.
The girls found Christowell Avenue on the photocopied map and set off. It wasn’t far. Nothing was far in Noglarrat, it seemed, except the lighthouse.
‘Look.’ Pip gestured up at a poster.
Pat Peters
Taking the ‘rat’ out of Noglar-rat.
Your local government – working for a safer, tidier town.
A woman with lacquered hair and a rubbish bag smiled out from the sign. Pat Peters. Mayor of Noglarrat. Mustard Seed’s wife.
‘Can my spam. That’s her?’
Olive looked at the blunt edge of Pat Peters’ shirt pleat. ‘I don’t think she knows she’s married to a man formerly known as Mustard Seed.’ Everything about Pat Peters seemed terrifyingly no-nonsense. She didn’t look like the sort of woman to tolerate bongo drums, people sleeping in abandoned lighthouses or anything frivolous like gluten-free food.
‘She can’t have any idea.’ Pip tilted her head to the side. ‘I bet she’s the type of person who would only let kids have one spread on their sandwiches – jam or peanut butter, never jam and peanut butter.’
Olive had to agree.
Behind the poster stretched Christowell Avenue. It was a shady street lined with trees. Each tree had a copper plaque, marking the name of a dead soldier who had fought a war in another time and hemisphere. The houses had gardens filled with bony geraniums, hoses that curled like green tapeworms, and lawns that had yellowed off to purple in the heat.
‘How are we going to know which one it is?’ Olive asked.
‘Easy.’ Pip pulled at a bundle of post peeping from a letterbox and held up an envelope. ‘Mr and Mrs J. Phillips. We know Mustard Seed is not at number four.’
‘And that Mr and Mrs J. Phillips have an overdue gas bill,’ added Olive.
They laughed and walked on. ‘Mr J. Anderson Esq. Not at number six, either.’
‘Or number eight . . . or ten.’
The girls stopped in front of a house with a scrubbed fence too tall to peek over.
‘The Hon. P. and Mr W. Peters. Number twelve.’ Olive’s voice stuck.
‘What’s with the “Hon.”?’ Pip giggled as Olive slid the envelope back into the silver slit of the letterbox.
‘Honourable – for being the Mayor,’ snapped Olive. ‘This is it.’
Olive pressed her face to the gate and looked through its metal slats towards the house. The house was the same shape as the other bungalows in the street, only it had been iced in white paint until it had the patina of wedding cake. Ash-coloured pebbles were raked into sharp lines where there should have been grass. A waxed station wagon was parked in the open garage, a pine-tree air-freshener dangling under its mirror.
Olive started. Next to the car were six bikes, linked by a chain. The bikes were all different sizes but all blue, leaning in a row from tallest to smallest: an unravelled Russian doll.
‘They’ve got . . . they’ve got children?’ she whispered.
‘They certainly do.’
Olive turned. A woman with a handful of cuttings was collecting a bin. She smiled.
‘Two girls, two boys, as regular as knitting. You never saw such pretty babies.’
‘No,’ said Olive. ‘I don’t suppose I have.’
‘Bill minds them – he’s one of those stay-at-home dads. Give the gate a good hard shove; it can stick a bit in the heat.’
‘Thank you,’ said Olive as the bin rattled over the concrete.
Olive leant her cheek against the cool of the gate.
Pip whistled air through her teeth. ‘Four children. What’s with that?’
Four children. Olive had been so caught up in all the extraordinary things Mustard Seed could be and the fact that he was her father, their father, that she hadn’t imagined him as anybody else’s.
She pictured his children now – the You Never Saw Such Pretty Children children – in a line like the von Trapp family from The Sound of Music, children in sailor suits with knickerbockers, rosy cheeks, and eyelashes as thick and dark as Amelia’s. A family of curls and dimples. Imagining Bill Peters and his von Trapp family made Olive feel smaller, skinnier, sallower and totally unlovable.
‘I guess we should get this over with, Ol.’
Olive shoved the gate open. ‘It’s all right, Pip,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ll do this.’
Pip looked up at the house. ‘Are you sure?’
Olive nodded.
Pip thumped Olive twice on her back – chop chop. ‘Okay, well, I’ll meet you back at the poster.’
Olive watched Pip scuttle back towards the gate like a freed crab. At the end of the path, Pip paused and turned. ‘I can’t believe a father of ours has air-freshener.’ She wrinkled her nose and sli
pped out onto the dead-soldier street.
28
Edges That Would Never
Be Straight
Olive walked up the path with the reluctance of a first-day student. She wished that Mustard Seed lived in the lighthouse after all – not in a house like this, a house with all the warmth of shop-bought cake. The lighthouse might have been scary and tumbledown, but at least it was connected to Mog. This place was not.
Olive smoothed her hair behind her ears with both hands. She rang the doorbell. There was a pause and then a scramble of feet.
‘Dad, Dad, there’s someone here,’ something cheeped.
The door was opened by two children, hazy through the security screen.
Olive swallowed. ‘Um, hi. Is William Peters there, please?’ His name tripped on her tongue, and she wondered whether it would ever be creamy.
‘That’s our dad.’
‘Oh.’ Olive didn’t know where to look. Speaking to the flywire was like speaking to someone blind, someone with boiled-egg eyes. One of the children pressed a nose to the screen, and skin mulched through the holes in the mesh.
Another two children emerged; they were blooming like bacteria.
‘Dad, Dad.’
The lock was unsnibbed and the door pushed open.
Olive stared. The children were a knot of plump limbs, bathers, dark eyes and macaroni necklaces threaded on blue string. They looked thick and wholesome – as if they might just taste of caramel junket. They looked too soft for a shop-bought house.
Olive peered down the hall behind them, trying to take in as much of everything as she could, to sift through later. The house was catalogue-bare, with a spiky rug. An enormous picture of white-slash flowers in scratchy paint hung on the wall near the door.
One of the pretty-as-knitting kids puffed out her chest. ‘Dad’s making us currant muffins. You can have one if you like, when they come out of the oven.’ She twirled a piece of macaroni at her throat.
‘Excuse me, excuse me.’ A man elbowed through the children to the door, wiping white-flour-hands on a block-print sarong. His shirt was open and his skin was deep brown, but it wasn’t smooth like Mr Forster’s – it was thick and spotted. Dark hair swayed about his face and shoulders. Olive found herself staring straight into the black hooded eyes of her father.