Swimming on Dry Land

by Helen Blackhurst

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  MONICA

  EDDIE

  CAROLINE

  MICHAEL

  MONICA

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About Seren

  Swimming on Dry Land

  Helen Blackhurst

  For Slavek

  MONICA

  The whole town is out looking for Georgie. She’s been missing two days now. She is two rulers smaller than me, with curly mouse-brown hair and a crooked thumb on her left hand. Last seen, she was wearing my orange cardigan. When I say the whole town, I mean the women. It’s a mining town. Most of the men are five miles away at the central site. Except Dad and Uncle Eddie. They’re helping the detectives work out what to do next. Mum is in charge. She and her best friend, Maddie, are leading a group of women out the Wattle Creek road. She told me to stay in bed. The reason I am not in bed is because I don’t feel ill. We should have stayed in England. Things like this only happen in Australia.

  We moved here a year ago because Uncle Eddie said he’d help us out. Uncle Eddie is pretty good that way. I clean his house and he gives me pocket money, although there isn’t much to spend it on. If we were at home, I’d be able to get books from Wogan’s Bookshop – three for a pound. Mrs Wogan used to give me the really dirty ripped-around-the-edges ones for free. I miss Wogan’s. There are nine books in my suitcase, but I’ve read them all at least ten times. I’ve read Dad’s books too. When we go home, the first thing I’m going to do is bike down to Wogan’s. Mrs Wogan probably won’t recognise me. My skin is freckly brown now, and my hair is twice as long. Did you know that Georgie can’t read? She only looks at the pictures.

  The way it works in Akarula is that Dad helps Uncle Eddie, when he’s feeling up to it, and Mum does just about everything else. I’m in charge of Georgie. That’s why, whichever way you look at it, this is all my fault.

  We are playing hide and seek the day Georgie disappears. It’s the kind of game she likes. She is only four. I’m nearly twelve. She goes off to hide and I sit on the caravan steps and watch Dad feed the birds. He’s like a statue, standing there behind Uncle Eddie’s house, his stretched-out hand full of birdseed. Those Galahs must love him. They’re beautiful: pink and grey, like old ladies’ coats. I do a sketch of him and the birds in my notebook. Mum thinks Dad shouldn’t feed the birds. She doesn’t realise they would die without him. Dad is mad about wildlife. He likes birds and insects the most.

  When I’m done, I shove my notebook in the back pocket of my pedal-pushers and head off to look for Georgie. The sun is scorching. I use my cap to shade my eyes. I’m getting used to the heat. In the first few weeks I could hardly move, but once you slow down and keep your head covered, it’s not so bad. I look between the cars, the trucks and road trains parked up behind the pumps; most of them have Lansdowne Mining Corporation stamped on the side in green lettering. You’d want to see these road trains, great huge things. I wouldn’t mind driving one some day.

  Georgie usually hides in between the wheels. But I can’t see her. She’s not behind the oil barrels either, or the pile of old tyres thrown in the scrub on the edge of the tarmac. I search around the outside of Uncle Eddie’s shed, which is padlocked, so she can’t be inside. I’ll kill her if she ruins my cardigan. It doesn’t even fit her properly; the sleeves are way too long.

  I climb Red Rock Mountain. It’s not really a mountain, more like a big rock that sticks up behind the caravan. Dad calls it a mountain. Compared with the flat bush around, I suppose it is. It’s quite steep; halfway up you have to crawl and grab hold of the jutting ledges. Uncle Eddie has warned us to watch out for snakes. I keep my eyes peeled. Not been lucky yet though. I love snakes. I’ve got a book of snakes with all the Latin names and what they do and whether they are poisonous or not. There are seven families of snakes in Australia, about 140 species. The most deadly ones are brown snakes, copperheads, death adders, red-bellied black snakes, taipans, and tiger snakes. Those clumps of scrub grass dotted over the rock are good places for them to hide.

  The last stretch is the hardest. It’s really steep. You have to watch where you’re putting your hands. Once I’m at the top, I make my way over to the highest rock. From up here you can see the whole town. The mine is pretty far off but the machines stick out in the cleared scrub. Then there’s the water tank, and nearer still, Akarula town. It’s not much of a town: a long red dirt road with one-storey houses on either side, a general store that sells everything – except books – and the bar. The road bends just after the tree at the end and loops round to our service station. You can’t go farther than us. The road just stops. If you drive the other way, you’ll eventually get to Adelaide, I think. Or somewhere. You have to pass through Wattle Creek, which is why everyone calls it the Wattle Creek road. Behind the street are the mobile homes and trailers; beyond them, hundreds of termite mounds sticking up like gravestones, spreading out into the bush. No sign of Georgie. Nothing moves, except the road trains and mining trucks, and the odd beaten-up car. There is no wind either. Sometimes when I’m walking, I feel as if I’m standing still.

  I can see Mr M sitting underneath the white-barked tree. He can’t see me though, which is a good thing. He doesn’t like people climbing Red Rock Mountain in case they wake the Rainbow Snake. I’ve never seen that snake and I’ve stamped and shouted really loud on this rock. Imagine a snake the size of this rock! Mr M always sits under that tree, must be his favourite place. I don’t really have a favourite place here. At home I had the den behind the rhododendron bushes. Me and my best friend Janice used to stack our worm jars along the entrance so no one would come in. Georgie sometimes moved them though, just to annoy us. That’s another thing about Akarula: there aren’t any children. Maddie told me they all left before we came. Me and Georgie play with Mr M instead – not all the time, but sometimes. He knows lots of magic tricks, and stories, really good ones. Georgie thinks he’s BLAST. There aren’t many people Georgie thinks are BLAST. BLAST means brilliant, in case you didn’t know. I’ll bet he knows where she’s hiding. Mr M knows things that no one else knows, secret things, things you won’t find written in a book. I know a few things too. For example, his real name isn’t Mr M, it is Mr Markarrwala.

  The street is empty. All the women must be indoors. It’s too hot to walk around. The roar of engines pulling in and out of the service station sounds like music from up here, underwater music, mixed in with the chatter of cicadas; after a while it’s hard to tell which is which. I’ve only ever seen dead cicadas – empty dry wing shells. I think something sucks out their insides for food. Uncle Eddie says their bodies float up to heaven. Dad says they change their skins. No one really knows. I’ve often wondered what it must be like to know the answer to everything. Dad knows most things, but not everything. Maybe you’d just be bored because you wouldn’t bother reading books, and there’d be no point talking to anyone because you’d already know whatever it was they were going to say. God must be bored, or else he makes himself forget what he knows and then goes about trying to remember things. I don’t really believe in God. But I don’t not believe in him either. For all I know, God is sitting up there in the sky counting all those sucked-out cicadas.

  I scan the whole place looking for Georgie, trying to get the dead cicadas out of my head. Sometimes I start to think about things, and then I can’t stop. I see all these fleshy insides floating around, leaking. Hundreds of them. Thousands. I try not to breathe too much in case I suck one in by mistake. I turn around to look out the other side, the side with the service station and the last stretch of road. While I’m half-breathing, I spot my orange cardigan, way out in the bush. The cicadas
disappear as I squint, trying to pick out Georgie in amongst the scrub grass. I loop a thumb and fingers around each eye, making my hands into binoculars to cut out the glare. Those cicadas still ring in my ears – they haven’t gone away – I just don’t see them any more. I can’t see Georgie either, only my cardigan. I told her it was too hot to wear a cardigan. She doesn’t listen; that’s why Mum calls her Cloth Ears. I take my time climbing down. Mum told us not to cross the road because it’s dangerous. Half the time I think Georgie just doesn’t understand plain English.

  When I get to the bottom of Red Rock Mountain I need a drink. You have to drink regularly in this heat, otherwise you’ll dry out and your body will shrivel up like the cicadas. That’s why we carry these water bottles. Dad’s idea. We wear them over our shoulders. My strap has mice on it and my bottle is dark green. Georgie’s is purple with a rabbit strap – they don’t look much like rabbits if you ask me. I wanted the purple one, but Georgie made a big fuss so I said I’d have the green one instead.

  The caravan door is open, and there’s Dad sitting at the table reading an old National Geographic magazine, wearing his pyjamas and the cowboy hat Uncle Eddie gave him.

  ‘Alright, love?’ he says, putting the magazine down to scoop an ant off the table. He throws it out of the window. ‘Where’s Georgie?’

  ‘Hiding.’ I take a swig of water before putting my bottle under the tap. Dad nods and half-opens and closes his mouth and makes a clicking sound. ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘In the shop.’

  Dad doesn’t talk much since he started taking the pink pills.

  ‘See you later,’ I tell him, screwing the top onto my bottle.

  He raises his hand to the side of his head and salutes me like a sergeant major. That’s Dad for you.

  Once I’ve crossed the tarmac, I walk round behind the shop where Uncle Eddie lives. The shop is connected to Uncle Eddie’s bungalow. It’s got sweets and drinks, stuff for the car, that sort of thing. The bungalow behind has three rooms, not counting the bathroom: a sitting-room and two other rooms, one he uses as an office. He’s not in his office; the blinds are down. I haul one of the beer crates underneath the sitting-room window and stand on it; see if I can give him a fright. He is humped on the settee in his collared t-shirt and socks. Mum is underneath him, naked, except for her neck scarf. They’re doing it. One of them has knocked the water tank off Uncle Eddie’s miniature model of Akarula town. They should have moved the model farther away before they started. The sight of them makes me feel sick. Mum made me promise. She said Uncle Eddie has been very good to us. She said if I go telling Dad, he’ll get ill again. And then she said: you wouldn’t want to be the one to make him ill, would you? I said I wouldn’t, but she doesn’t have to go doing it in the daytime when everyone can see. I don’t bother banging on the window. All I know is that I’d never let a man do that to me.

  I climb down off the crate and chuck it in a pile with the rest of them. Then I cross the road and pick my way through the scrub, swallowing to try and get rid of the nasty taste in my mouth. Spitting doesn’t help. Each time I breathe, the heat burns the inside of my nose.

  You’ve got to pay attention. Some of these rocks and dry grasses can slice right through you. If Georgie has gone and cut herself, I’ll be in trouble. I can hear Mum already. I told you not to take your eyes off her. What were you doing? You know she can’t be left alone. Then she’ll make such a swanny about Georgie, with the plasters and the bandages, me and Dad will have to run around doing whatever Georgie wants. That’s how it works. Some days I wish Georgie had never been born.

  I keep walking and walking and walking. At first it’s hard to remember exactly where I spotted my cardigan. It doesn’t take me long though. That cardigan is like a radar. She has flung it on a rock, which means she can’t be far away. If I was Georgie, I wouldn’t go flinging someone else’s good cardigan on a rock just because I got too hot and couldn’t be bothered carrying it. Dad always says you’ve got to do the right thing, no matter what. I once asked him, what if you don’t know which thing is the right thing? He didn’t answer. He’s right though. Georgie is like Mum; she doesn’t care.

  Two minutes later I spot Georgie’s footprints in the layer of red dust that covers the sharp rocks and ground and everything else – more like smudges than footprints because of the way she twists her feet when she walks. I get this prickling feeling, sort of excited and nervous at the same time; the ground is flat; you can see as far as the horizon, and Georgie isn’t visible. I start imagining things, crazy things like her being picked up by one of the huge wedge-tailed eagles and flown away. You’ve probably heard stories about babies getting eaten by dingoes. Georgie’s not exactly a baby though, and there aren’t any dingoes that I’ve seen, so that’s unlikely. But it is weird, the fact that I can’t see her. Her footsteps carry on into the scrub.

  After a while of following footsteps, I check behind me to see how far I’ve come. The service station looks toy-sized from here; I can hardly make out the caravan. I didn’t think Georgie could walk this far. Her feet must be bleeding with all these rocks. She won’t wear her special clogs, goes crazy every time Mum tries to put them on. Doesn’t mind socks though. I bend down and inspect the rocks for blood or bits of clothes or fingers. What if someone has cut her up and scattered her around like bird food? You never know. I’ve read all sorts of stories – some of them were true. I keep on following the footprints. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and then the footprints stop.

  There is a hole, partly covered over with old nailed-together wooden planks. The wood must have been rotten because some of it has fallen in on top of Georgie. I can only just make her out at the bottom of the hole. It’s a long way down. Her body is all scrunched up, and one of her legs is cocked out at a funny angle; she’s got her arm twisted up in her water bottle strap. There is not much room down there: the size of an airing cupboard, maybe smaller. I picture those posters, the ones that say WANTED – DEAD OR ALIVE, with Georgie’s head on. As I skirt around the edge for something to pull her out with, I notice more wooden plank covers, all with x marks on the top in flaking yellow paint. This must be why Mum told us not to cross the road. When I asked her what was dangerous about it, she said it just is, which is what she always says when she doesn’t know the answer. I call down to Georgie to wait on. ‘Don’t move,’ I tell her, and she waves up at me, flapping her arms and one of her legs, opening and closing her mouth, doing her fish impression. I can’t tell, with the glare of sun and all the shadow, whether she is smiling or not. This thin shiver slides right down my back. I have to hold my breath to get rid of it. When I let go and breathe again, I tell Georgie, ‘Mum’s going to kill you when she finds out you crossed the road on your own.’ Georgie lets out a grunt that turns into a moan and then drops to a kind of whisper, ending up in a stutter like this: aaadropddwwwwwwwrrlllL.

  I find a smooth rock to sit on while I work out what to do next. Georgie carries on making queer sounds. I wave at her, throwing my cap and cardigan down the hole so that she can use them. That was a mistake.

  There are things you ought to know. When Georgie was born, Mum nearly died because the doctor couldn’t get Georgie out. I don’t know if her head was too big or what it was. Mum was fifteen days in hospital. Dad and me had to clean Georgie’s smelly bum and try to stop her screaming until Mum came home. That was more or less the start of it. We stopped going to Granny and Grandpa’s house in Whitley Bay. Dad said there was no time and Mum said there was no money. No one could work out why Georgie stared into space, wouldn’t feed properly, and spasmed all the time. If something wound her up, she just stopped breathing.

  Take bathtimes. Any normal baby enjoys a bath, blows bubbles, scoots the plastic duck around. I know; I’ve seen them. Not Georgie. She dives underneath the water and flaps her arms and legs about, making out she’s some kind of fish. I have to watch her all the time to make sure she doesn’t drown. One time I left her too long and we had to call an a
mbulance. Was I in trouble for that! I used to get in trouble even when it wasn’t my fault, except when Uncle Eddie was around. When he was visiting, you could do almost anything, and all you’d get from Mum was a raised eyebrow and maybe a quick don’t-do-that-again smack.

  Uncle Eddie came to visit us in England last summer. It was July or August, the summer holidays anyway. I was in the front garden pushing Georgie around the lawn in a go-cart Dad had made out of fruit crates.

  ‘Arreeeeeeeeba arreeeeeeeeeeeba arrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeee­baaaaaaaaaaaa!’ Georgie was shouting and hitting me with a stick to make me go faster. When it got to be my turn, she said she didn’t want to play. She wasn’t strong enough to push me around anyway. Dad was in bed – he spent a lot of time in bed after he stopped working full-time for the newspaper – and Mum was doing something in the kitchen. Our neighbourhood wasn’t rough, but we didn’t get limousines driving down West Street every day, so when this white one pulled up outside the gate, I was pretty flabbergasted. (Flabbergasted is one of my favourite words.) First of all I thought it was Madonna. I’d seen her on the television getting out of the exact same car. Georgie was squealing and snorting, nearly wetting herself to get out of the go-cart and scab a look. The back door of the limousine opened and a man stepped onto the pavement in these spit-clean shoes. I didn’t recognise him at first. He asked me where he might find Monica Harvey, and winked at me. That’s when I knew it was Uncle Eddie. Then he shook my hand and asked if I remembered him. I did, except that he looked different all dressed up. You should have heard him: this strange twangy accent that made him sound like he’d swallowed a loose guitar string. He introduced himself to Georgie, but she just stared at him. She probably couldn’t get over the fact that he’d shaken my hand and not so much as whistled at her first. I led him into the hall because Georgie didn’t have the manners.