by Gavin Bishop
So we started to walk towards the gate. But Elvis didn’t like that. He didn’t want to be on his own. He started howling and barking and crying so loudly that the girl turned back and untied his leash and led him to the back porch. The three of us sat down on the step. The dog was happy but we wanted to leave.
After a few minutes, the girl stood up. But Elvis set up such a terrible woofing we had to sit down again. He stopped yelping immediately and smiled a big doggy smile.
By now the girl’s mother would be waiting at the school gate, but there was no way of telling her where we were. The dog was quiet and settled. ‘Let’s leave him,’ I suggested quietly. He was behaving like a spoilt child. But the girl could not do it. She felt sorry for Elvis. She had known him a long time and had often taken him for walks. He was her friend. She would keep him company until Mrs Partridge got home. There was nothing else she could do.
The afternoon shadows stretched across the back lawn. And it got colder. We should have been home by now. The girl put her jacket on, and the three of us huddled together to keep warm in the back porch.
The sun had slipped down behind the garage when we heard a car coming up the drive. Elvis ran to the gate. Mrs Partridge opened it and came into the back yard.
‘Elvis, have you been a good boy?’ Then she noticed us. ‘Hello, dear. Did you pick him up from the dog groomer’s? I went to pick him up but he wasn’t there.’
‘No,’ said the girl. ‘I found him at the bus stop.’
‘Oh, you naughty boy. Were you trying to catch the bus and run away?’
‘He was crying so I brought him home.’
‘Did I leave him there?’ asked Mrs Partridge.
The girl said nothing.
‘Perhaps I did,’ said the woman. ‘I thought I took him to have a haircut. But I must have left him by the bus stop this morning when I took him for a walk. I am getting forgetful.’
That’s nothing new, I thought to myself.
‘But you should be getting home, dear. You’ll miss your dinner. Come on, I’ll give you a ride.’
When we arrived at the girl’s house, her mum and dad were coming down the street from different directions. They had been searching the neighbourhood and asking people if they had seen their daughter. A police car was parked outside the house. I could hear the crackle of a radio through its open window.
The three of us scrambled out of Mrs Partridge’s car — Elvis first, followed by the girl and me. Boy ran and picked his daughter up and held her tightly. Her mum gave them both a big hug. Then the girl burst into tears. ‘I’m busting,’ she said. ‘I want to do wees, badly!’
While the two eldest girls were at school the next day, their mother took their little sister and me to town. At the top of her shopping list was a new watch.
22
FAMILY SECRETS
1982
SUMMER HOLIDAYS THIS YEAR were to be down south. A week after the longest day had been and gone, and the Christmas tree had been stripped of decorations and taken to the tip, the family packed the car. With airbeds and sleeping bags tied to the roof, and the boot crammed with summer clothes and food, we set off down the main south road.
I sat on a beach ball in the back seat between the two youngest girls. My glass eye followed the smooth flat plains of Canterbury as they flowed along both sides of the car and out towards the mountains. My button eye tried to count the number of bridges we had to cross to get over the wide braided rivers. And my ears listened to the songs and stories that the tape deck played to keep the girls from squabbling. It was a quiet journey, though. And it blew away the cobwebs more gently than the trip I took with Boy and his family that Sunday in Kingston many years before.
Riverton, on the coast near Invercargill, was the destination. Like Kingston, Riverton had taken on legendary proportions in the stories of Boy’s family. During the wardrobe years, Boys’ grandmother had died, and so had his mum and dad. His parents had been buried up north, but his grandmother had been taken back to Riverton to lie beside her husband.
So Riverton it was this year. A two-day trip from Christchurch, with a stop for a night at a motel in Dunedin. The girls’ dad said that this holiday would be a chance for them to get to know the salty little town where many of their ancestors had lived. It would be a chance, too, to visit the grave of Boy’s grandmother, their great-grandmother. I wanted to visit it too. I missed her. She was the only person who saw my true worth. She took care of me, stood up for me and mended my wounds when playtime got rough.
The little holiday house on the outskirts of town, not far from the cemetery, was surrounded by paddocks of long grass edged with macrocarpa shelterbelts that hadn’t been trimmed in years. As soon as their father pulled up outside the low blue weatherboard cottage, the girls climbed out of the back seat and raced off across the paddocks to explore. The ants in their pants wouldn’t let them sit still any longer. It had been a long time, crammed into the back seat with pillows, books, toys and crumbs. I didn’t mind either, when I was picked up and stuffed into my backpack. I didn’t want to be left behind to watch the unpacking of the car.
I swung from side to side in the backpack, my glass eye snatching glimpses of the long black arms of the trees scratching the afternoon sky. My button eye looked down into the lush green grass splashed with cowpats.
At the far side of the biggest paddock, at the end of a row of macrocarpa, stood a hawthorn tree. Its branches swooped down to touch the ground, polishing the earth smooth as marble, clearing it of any vegetation. Buried within its tangled limbs were the fragments of a picket fence and a gate that had been pushed forward by a large branch. Two thick gateposts stood on either side, still upright, with a crushed letterbox.
The girls stopped in front of the hawthorn tree. I strained to see what they were looking at. Gradually, through the branches, I made it out — an unpainted wooden house with a rusted tin roof. Brick chimneys sat alert, like rabbit’s ears, and the long arms of two wild flower beds reached out to us as they stretched towards the gate. Directly in front of the house stood giant rose bushes bent under the weight of their blooms, and willowy foxgloves and granny’s bonnets ran all over the paths like wayward children. The front door was flanked by two windows that looked like eyes.
The house had a sad face, and it was one I knew. I had seen it before. Why was this place so familiar? A tattered memory fluttered forward in my mind like a moth at a misty window.
‘Okay, I’m going to have a look,’ said the middle girl. She moved towards the tree. I went with her because I was on her back. I had no choice. Excitement and fear. I could smell an adventure.
Reluctantly, not wanting to miss out, the oldest and the youngest girls followed.
It became quiet as we crept under the low branches of the hawthorn tree and scrambled into the garden. No birds sang. No crickets screeked. The granny’s bonnets flowing around the girls’ feet were turned to gold by afternoon sunlight coming through the gaps under the wall of macrocarpa that blocked the view of the house from the holiday crib.
The house stood still. Not that I expected it to move, but it looked as if it was holding its breath. It was guarded and wary. Playing possum.
‘Come on,’ said the middle girl. ‘Let’s explore.’
The oldest girl didn’t move. ‘I reckon that house is looking at us,’ she said. She had always been told that her imagination got the better of her. Just like her dad when he was little. I thought of the beast at the dairy near his grandmother’s house in Invercargill.
But this time she was right. She could feel it, and so could I: this old place was definitely watching us with its high black window-eyes, following our every move. And I was sure it could smell us, was straining to catch our scent with its gaping door-nose like a ferret after a rabbit. Above all else, though, I knew it was taking particular notice of me.
‘Why is it so quiet?’ whispered the little girl.
The middle girl shrugged. ‘Dunno.’ She made off toward
s the house. On her back, I sailed like a galleon over the lemon and violet sea of wildflowers towards the broken wooden steps that led up to the veranda.
Something moved across the window in front of us. The reflection of a cloud? A bird? An eyeball? Did the house just sigh? I listened hard. Nothing.
The girl (and I) stepped onto the parched boards of the veranda. They groaned slightly under our weight. Nails, torn loose by years of rain and sun, hung down like ragged teeth from the planks that had sprung free.
The girl hesitated, but her sisters were right behind her. They tumbled up the steps and banged into her back. I could have fallen out of my backpack. Luckily, the girl had my pack fastened tightly around her waist, so I stayed firmly in place. I didn’t want to be left there if the girls suddenly decided to flee and run home.
Clutching each other, the sisters found the nerve to edge towards the yawning entrance. The door had slumped against the wall of the hall. Its handle had gouged a hole in the striped wallpaper, exposing layers of previous papers glued over the scrim. Halfway down the hall was a small table covered with plaster dust from where the ceiling mouldings had become damp and fallen down. A carpet runner ran from the doorway off into the belly of the house and disappeared into the gloom. Where the rain had blown in, tiny toadstools and elderberry seedlings grew in the carpet pile, creating a 3-D version of the woven floral pattern beneath.
Moving as one, we stepped over the doorstep. Toadstools were crushed underfoot and prints appeared in the thick dust and dirt on the floorboards.
To the right was a bedroom. The door was ajar. We looked in. A double bed with a mouldy eiderdown stood with its head against the far wall. A rag mat partly covered the wooden floor, and torn lace curtains hung in shreds over the dark green blind that had been pulled down to cover the window. Dust fairies danced in the sabres of afternoon sunlight that slipped through slits in the blind and created brilliant patches of light on the dark, floral wallpaper covering the walls and ceiling.
Dogs, cats, birds, rats, mice and beetles had all made this room their home from time to time. Bones, skeletons, sticks, straw, mud and droppings covered every surface. And lying over the top of this debris I could sense a thick, invisible quilt of sadness stitched by the hand of a broken heart.
‘Ooh, what a dump!’ said the middle girl.
I agreed.
‘Whoever left this place did so in a big hurry. They didn’t even bother to take their furniture,’ said the big girl.
‘Or their clothes,’ said the little girl who had boldly gone into the room and opened the door of the wardrobe.
This made the rest of us feel quite brave. We crossed the dirty floor and stood behind the little girl. The wardrobe door squeaked as it swung shut. We stared at our shattered images in its broken mirror. Three little girls and a bear dressed as a girl, standing in a jigsaw bedroom waiting to be put together to complete a puzzle.
In a corner of the jagged picture I noticed a framed photograph hanging on the wall by the bed. A little boy sat on his mother’s knee. Propped up beside him was a teddy bear.
I wanted to look closer, but the girls moved from the wardrobe to explore the rest of the room. On the far side of the bed was a cane cot. Convolvulus had climbed up through a broken floorboard and filled the space in the tiny bed where a baby had once slept. Behind the cot was a chest of drawers, the top and sides streaked by birds.
The middle girl leaned forward and yanked the top drawer open. I looked over her shoulder at the newspaper cuttings, letters and cards inside. As she rummaged through the papers, I saw cards and letters with the word ‘sympathy’ in large letters. She unfolded a sheet of aged newspaper. I managed to read most of it before she pushed the drawer closed.
It became clear. The baby whose bed was now filled with vines had died. He was the boy in the picture on the wall. The boy with the teddy bear. The teddy with the …
‘Sparkly eyes! This bear’s got sparkly eyes!’ shouted the littlest girl, who was now standing in front of the picture I had seen in the mirror. The other girls ran to have a look.
‘Look!’ she shouted. ‘This teddy’s got sparkly eyes just like Mrs Teddy!’
‘But Mrs Teddy’s only got one eye,’ said the oldest girl.
‘Yeah, but it’s sparkly like this teddy’s,’ said the middle girl.
‘He’s much newer than our teddy,’ said the oldest girl.
‘Yeah, I know, ’cause our teddy bear is old! She used to be Dad’s,’ shouted the little girl, trying to get her point across. ‘But look at the eyes! They are exactly like our teddy’s eye!’
Even though the photograph was black and white, the eyes of the teddy bear on the wall in this sad house looked the same as my single glass eye made of warm brown glass with flecks of yellow-gold. Was this a photograph of my brother? Was it my father? Or was it a picture of me? Of me in another life?
In my head, the moth once more fluttered against the misty window.
Something started to shape itself. Chips became fragments, fragments became chunks.
Chunks became …
I didn’t have time to ponder more. From under the pile of rotting bedclothes came a snuffling, grunting sound. The girls’ chatter stopped. They looked at one another.
‘Wasn’t me,’ said the middle girl.
‘And it wasn’t me,’ I said silently.
The sounds came again. Then, from under the bed, a bleary-eyed possum, woken from its afternoon slumber, with claws scratching and sliding on the wooden floorboards, ran towards the girls. At first they thought it was the teddy bear in the photograph. But its plump, furry body looked as if it had been put together by a mad toy maker. And its eyes were not brown with flecks of yellow-gold. They were big and black like two lumps of shiny coal.
The girls screamed and ran. I fell backwards as the middle girl raced through the front door and leapt off the veranda. My backpack, which had been firmly fastened at her waist, became loose. I was about to fall out, but one of my legs got caught in the frame. I was left hanging upside down, swinging violently from one side to the other. The blousy roses and the spiky foxgloves hung out of the sky. As the girls scrambled under the hawthorn tree, my back and arms were caught and torn. My bonnet came loose, and one of my ears was ripped until it was held by only a thread.
‘You’re just in time to help your mother make the beds,’ said their father as the three girls tumbled through the back door of the holiday cottage.
‘But Dad,’ panted the little girl, ‘we saw a ghost!’
‘A teddy bear ghost!’ shouted the middle girl.
‘It was hiding under the bed,’ said the oldest girl. ‘Waiting for us …’
‘You and your imagination,’ their father said, giving his oldest daughter a hug. ‘You’ve got your sisters seeing things now too.’
‘But Dad,’ said the little girl again. ‘We did see a teddy bear ghost and he—’
‘Now,’ he said, ‘settle down. What have you been doing to old Teddy One-eye? He’s only holding on by one leg.’
I was lifted gently out of the backpack. Later that night, my new wounds were stitched and mended. My ear was sewn back on. ‘Sorry, I had to use white cotton,’ said their mum. ‘It’s all I could find.’
23
THE MIST CLEARS
THE GIRLS AND I HELPED their mum and dad gather some early mushrooms from the paddock in front of the cottage. In the tiny kitchen, the parents stewed them for breakfast and spooned them onto their plates, turning their toast black like slabs of diseased liquorice. The girls had honey and toast.
‘I think we’ll go into Riverton this morning. Have a look around,’ said the girls’ dad. ‘We used to come here for a Sunday drive from Invercargill when BB and I were kids.’
The girls’ mum came from Christchurch. She didn’t know this place at all. Boy was in his element.
‘This is where Mamma, your great-grandmother, used to live,’ he said as we drove along the coast road into Riverton. ‘We�
�ll go and see her grave later if you like.’
‘Do we have to?’ asked the middle girl.
They parked the car by the museum. I was stuffed into my backpack.
‘Mrs Scandret used to live in this street,’ said the girls’ dad.
Little diamonds of sunlight glinted in the surf on the beach that ran up to the road.
‘Can’t we go and collect some shells?’ asked the little girl.
‘Yeah, let’s!’ said the middle girl.
‘We’ll go for a short walk first,’ said Boy.
I could tell he had something planned.
We made our way up a steep street that offered views of the bay and the Takitimu mountains in the distance. It was new for the girls and their mum, but that moth at the window kept telling me I had been there before.
The houses were small and wooden, painted in bright, clear colours that might have been chosen by children. Yellow walls and pale-pink window frames. Bright blue roofs and red doors. Weekend colours. It was as if the owners believed they would be happier if they were permanently on holiday.
‘Mrs Scandret’s place! This is it!’
‘Who’s Mrs Scandret?’ asked the girls’ mother.
‘I wonder if she’s home?’ said the girls’ dad without answering the question.
He opened the small mauve corrugated-iron gate, and walked down the path lined with giant scallop shells. We followed behind. In front of us sat a small house, painted mauve to match the gate. Paua shells plastered to the frame above the front door caught the light and threw it around the shallow porch. Two old boots filled with plastic daisies sat either side of the front steps.