Callie

by Ruth Park

  Callie couldn’t help believing her, just a little, and she drifted around quite a distance above the ground. She must have read Marius’s letter fifty times; the edges of the paper were beginning to curl up.

  And there was no doubt about it, Callie talked too much to the girls about Marius. Belinda McKay took it upon herself to put her down.

  ‘Anyone would think you were engaged,’ she said in her snooty way. ‘You’re only twelve, just a child. My mama says that if your mother doesn’t stop you talking such rubbish, Mr Anger will have to.’

  Belinda called her mother Mama because TV people often did. Callie tried to think of something to slay Belinda with but she couldn’t. Frances just bawled: ‘Jealous, aren’t you, stuck-up cow!’ which was no good at all.

  Belinda tinkled out a laugh and walked away, and Callie felt as small as a peanut. For in her heart she knew she was being silly, chattering on exactly the way she had done about going to Denmark with Dad.

  ‘I’m going to shut up about Marius,’ she resolved. ‘Because look what happened with Denmark! I think talking about something that means a lot to you brings bad luck.’

  But Frances didn’t stop raving. Naturally Dan heard all about it, and lost no time in reporting it to his mother.

  ‘It was bad enough having a rotten snarly sister, now I’ve got an idiotic one as well. Callie never used to be soppy, what’s the matter with her?’

  ‘She’s turned twelve,’ said his mother.

  Dan was shocked. ‘You mean to say I’ll go all goofy when I’m as old as Callie and that nerd Frances?’

  Mrs Beck looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I can’t wait to find out,’ she said. Then she laughed. ‘I can’t see you getting goofy, Dan. Tell you what though, you’re looking a bit peaky. All this extra study, maybe?’

  At once Dan became panicky. ‘But I have to do it, Mum! Some of the boys sitting for the bursary might be really smart! I have to beat them!’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Heather gently, ‘let’s reorganise the house jobs. Make life easier for you. What do you say?’

  But Dan made his nostrils almost invisible and jerked up his chin.

  ‘Dad said I was to be the man of the house!’

  ‘Yes, but Dan, you don’t have to feel responsible for everything. After all, I’m here, too.’

  Dan looked at her grandly.

  ‘I don’t think you understood what my father meant, Mum!’ he said. ‘And after all, I’m a real relative of Dad’s. You’re only married to him.’

  For a moment or two Mrs Beck could not think of anything to say, and by then it was too late.

  5

  Dan longed to be able to confess to Mum that being man of the house was too much for him. But how could he? He had pretended too well. He was too clever at making people believe what he wanted them to believe. The letters he had written to Dad, bragging how well he was coping!

  But he wasn’t coping, and he couldn’t tell.

  It wasn’t the work. It wasn’t even Gret’s being difficult. In a kind of a way Gret’s turning into a monster had been a help. For now Dan and Callie were closer than they had ever been. They did not exactly unite against Gret, but her grumpiness made them draw together. They felt their mother didn’t have to know their younger sister was such a pain. So without saying anything they covered up for Gret.

  ‘Don’t bucket her for not cleaning up the shower,’ said Callie offhandedly. ‘She’d never wash again, and then I’d have to sleep in the cupola. I’ll tidy the bathroom and put the wet towels in the washing machine.’

  It wasn’t things like that which were making Dan so nervous he could hardly bear it. It was other things. Things he could never admit. Burglars, for instance. Dan saw burglars every time he looked out of the window in the evening.

  He put Tad on the windowsill so he could see as well. Surely a proper dog would growl if he spotted a stranger in the garden? But Tad wasn’t a proper dog. He only whined to be let down. He indicated pretty clearly to Dan that his idol Rolf would never dream of putting him on a windowsill where he might fall off.

  ‘Useless mammal!’ gritted Dan, peering out, seeing shadows slip through the wind-tossed trees, crazy murderers crouching against the stone wall. It took great courage for Dan to take Tad out on the grass for a last walk before he went to bed. Not that Tad wanted to go. He had to be dragged. He preferred lying before the slow-combustion stove.

  ‘You’d burst first, wouldn’t you?’ Dan bitterly asked, night after night.

  Then there was fire. Dan lay awake at night thinking of it. What if the house did catch fire? What would he do first? If he tried to save Gret she’d bash him in the eye. Anyway, she was as big as he was. A better thing would be for Gret to save him. Except that she wouldn’t. She’d save the garbage tin before she saved him.

  But the worst thing of all was the downstairs flat.

  Every night, or almost, his mother asked: ‘Have you checked the downstairs windows and doors, Dan?’

  And he would lie: ‘Sure, Mum,’ or sometimes get away with grunting or just nodding. He knew his mother was a bit fussy about those windows and doors because, although Neutral Bay was generally a well-behaved suburb, a few wandering weirdies were always around.

  From the day Dad left for Denmark, Dan hated having to check the downstairs flat. It gave him the creeps somehow. It looked older than the rest of the house; spookier, too.

  He always averted his eyes from the drawn curtains at the windows. He had this awful dread that a hand might come through the folds. Dan always imagined that hand as skinny and hairy and grey, like the leg of a monstrous tarantula. Or maybe the curtains would quiver, and part a little, and a face would peer out at him. White, that face would be, without shape or real features. A potato kind of face.

  He heard things, too. The wind in the trees became mumblings; the faint water-hammer in distant pipes sounded like ghostly arguments.

  As winter came on, and the garden became darker earlier, things grew too much for Dan. He was ashamed to tell his mother of his terrors (and by then they were real sweaty, take-to-his-heels-and-run terrors) and of course he couldn’t admit such things to Callie or Gret. So he just stopped checking the windows and doors of the downstairs flat and hoped no one would ever find out.

  It was ages since he had carried out this duty, and sometimes he felt very bad about it.

  Still, good things also happened for Dan. He was cheered one day when he heard a commotion coming from the landing cupboard. He sneaked in to find that Frances was jammed in the cupola stair. Callie looked dismayed, and Frances was carrying on as if someone had set fire to her hair.

  When they saw Dan both girls turned to glare at him.

  ‘Wow,’ said Dan, ‘I see I’ll be getting the cupola sooner than I thought!’

  ‘You clear out!’ said Callie angrily.

  ‘Maybe it will be my castle by the time Dad comes back,’ said Dan, pleasurably. ‘Oh, won’t you be sick!’

  He laughed and flickered away in his own peculiar manner, leaving Callie feeling that she could easily join in Frances’s panicky wails. It was true that her friend was bigger in all ways than herself, but just the same—a feeling of doom came over her.

  ‘I’ll never see the inside of your castle again, Callie!’ said Frances tragically. ‘Oh, why does a person have to grow?’

  Why indeed? thought Callie sadly.

  Frances was panicky. She thought she was wedged there forever. She wriggled and struggled, and began to cry. At last, with Callie dragging at one of her legs, and Frances herself breathing in until she nearly exploded, she came unstuck.

  Frances reversed carefully down the stairs, still sobbing. Callie reminded her she had been very hard-hearted when describing what was in store for her.

  ‘Hips and pimples, you said.’

  But Frances was not comforted, and went away saying she hated the idea of growing up and having to be separated like her mother and work hard and never go out, and she wished she
could grow backwards and be seven years old once more.

  Callie was worried. She went up and down the stairs a few times to make sure she, too, hadn’t grown hips in the night. But half an hour later she was glad Frances had gone because when her mother arrived home from work, she had in her bag a big envelope from Denmark.

  ‘The postman came just as I was leaving,’ she explained, ‘so I had to take the mail with me. I’ll bet these are the photographs Marius said he was sending. I’m longing to see what they’re like!’

  Callie would have loved to open the big envelope in privacy, but of course she couldn’t. While her mother unwound her scarf, dropped various bags of vegetables and groceries around the kitchen, and put on the kettle for coffee, Callie carefully slit the envelope. She was thrilled, but she tried to be calm.

  ‘Quick, quick,’ cried Mum, ‘I can’t wait to see Rolf and Dad. Oh, look, there he is!’

  She grabbed up the big clear picture of seven or eight people grouped smilingly in front of an arched gateway covered with flowering vines.

  ‘He looks wonderful. Oh, my dear little Rolf! And, Dad looks so happy! And there’s Aunt Bor, isn’t she pretty? That must be your fat Uncle Alf Karlsen…and the boys. Show me the big picture of Marius, darling. Is he more handsome than ever?’

  But Callie was staring bewildered at the glossy colour photograph.

  ‘There’s some mistake. Marius has sent me a picture of The Goose.’

  Heather took the photo of the tall boy. He had giraffe-like thin legs sticking out of funnylooking short pants. His snowy hair blew in all directions and he had pale blue eyes and a toothy smile. She turned over the picture and saw on the back, in Marius’s well-known handwriting: ‘With sweet love to Australian Callie from Marius.’

  Mum stared in amazement at Callie.

  ‘I can’t believe it! But it’s Marius’s writing.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Callie through trembling lips. She uttered a small shriek that vied with the whistle of the kettle. ‘Marius isn’t Marius at all, he’s that awful old Goose!’

  ‘My stars!’ said Heather, gazing thunderstruck at Callie. ‘Remember that bit in Dad’s letter, the wonderful joke about Marius? Of course, we’ve

  all thought the same thing, we’ve had the boys mixed up, and Dad found out at the airport! But does it matter all that much, darling?’

  One glance at her daughter’s tragic face showed that it mattered.

  ‘Oh, Callie, what have you been doing?’

  ‘Talking,’ Callie said in a stifled voice.

  It was terrible for Callie to think she had had romantic dreams about a boy who was not the one she thought he was. She uttered another shriek. The awful things she had said to the girls about August Bok, the way she and Frances had made jokes about him! And all the time August was the knockout in the jaunty cap with the tassel whom they had thought was Marius.

  ‘Frances!’ faltered Callie. ‘Imagine if she found out!’

  She stared horror-stricken at her mother. Heather understood at once. Frances was a loyal friend but she just couldn’t stop gabbing. She sat down and poured out her coffee.

  ‘Frances doesn’t need to know, pet.’

  ‘Dan will tell her! Or Gret will let it out. Oh, Mum, they’ll tease me and tease me…I’ll be so humiliated!’

  Callie covered her face with her hands. Heather turned over the group photograph. No names were on the back.

  ‘I don’t see why Gret and Dan should know either,’ she said quietly. ‘Of course, one day they must, but not just now. Put that photograph away, Callie, and don’t mention the Copenhagen boys at school any more.’

  Callie looked up hopefully. ‘But Dad might say something…in a letter…’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said her mother. ‘I’ll explain to him he mustn’t mention it yet. That there’s been a mix-up, I mean. As for August Bok, he’s still a real person, you know. Still the handsome Danish boy you admired so much.’

  ‘But he’s not the one who writes to me,’ moaned Callie. ‘I thought I knew Marius and I don’t!’

  Mum picked up the photograph and studied it. ‘So this is Cousin Marius! He has a good, humorous face, a kind face. When he fills out he’ll be a fine-looking young man. Rather like Laurens, I should think.’

  They heard Tad barking at the gate. Gret or Dan was home.

  ‘Off you go! Quickly!’ said Heather. Callie grabbed up the photo of Marius and scuttled up the stairs to her castle. She hid the picture at the back of a drawer. She felt quite wobbly. It had been a bad day, what with Frances getting stuck and then finding out that if gorgeous Marius climbed over her roof and sat down and talked to her about books and poetry and stuff he’d really just be a boy with funny legs and sticky-up hair and white eyes. He had sent her his sweet love, and she didn’t want it.

  It was all her fault and the family’s fault, and yet no one’s fault at all. Laurens had never seen Marius grown up, and Marius had not written on the back of the first photo he had sent Callie ‘this is me on the right and my friend August Bok on the left’. Callie looked at that fateful photograph now. On the back was written only: ‘On the Malmo ferry. Greetings from Marius and Gus.’

  We just took things for granted, thought Callie dismally.

  Downstairs she had felt really terrible—shocked and humbled. And Mum didn’t even know the half of it—all the boasting she had done about handsome Marius, all the dreams she had dreamed and, what’s more, shared with Frances.

  Mum had shown her a way out of it. She needn’t be made to look foolish in front of the family or before all of her classmates. But she had been foolish, and she did feel ashamed.

  Callie suddenly felt a lot older than she was, fifteen at least.

  ‘I’ll never, never again get goony about a boy I don’t know,’ she vowed. ‘That may be all right for Frances, but it isn’t for me.’

  The winter sunset flooded through the grey skeleton trees and filled the cupola with golden light. After a long while Callie took Marius’s picture out of the drawer and looked at it doubtfully.

  It was nice that he’d grown tall, if that was what he wanted. He did look kind, and sort of jokey. And he’d actually remembered how delighted she’d been with her new green dress.

  After that Callie became much quieter. She didn’t chatter any more about Copenhagen, except to relay little bits of news her father sent. Frances nearly went off her head.

  ‘Have you had a fight with Marius?’ she demanded.

  ‘Something like that. Anyway, Mum told me not to talk about private things at school. So I’m not.’

  Frances became huffy. She said she’d told Callie every single thing she’d done and thought since she was six years old and it wasn’t fair.

  It flashed into Callie’s mind that really she hadn’t wanted to know every single thing. But Frances was her friend, and Frances couldn’t help being the way she was.

  ‘I’m sorry, Frances,’ she said. ‘I’ve been a bit upset lately, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s that Dan!’ cried Frances, on fire with sympathy for her friend. ‘Nagging!’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Callie. It was true that Dan was still a real pain, even though Callie felt she understood him better these days. Sometimes, though, if Dan had melted into a smoking heap of awfulness, as happened to aliens in the movies, she would have been grateful, rather than not.

  ‘He scraps a lot with Gret,’ she told Frances, who at once went off on a long tale about her brothers, and quite forgot to ask questions about Marius. Gret’s chief grievance against Dan was not Dan’s fault at all. Tad insisted on sleeping in Dan’s bedroom.

  ‘It’s only because Rolf’s bed’s in there, you little drip,’ explained Callie.

  ‘But I do everything for him,’ said Gret. ‘I promised Rolf, and I do.’

  ‘You’ve been wonderful,’ said Mum sincerely.

  That was true. Gret had looked after the little dog as if he were her right leg. It was her way of showing her love
for Rolf.

  Tad put up with her washing and flea-powdering him, and even brushing his frizzy hair. She didn’t mind that he wouldn’t go for walks with her. She understood that he wanted to wait at the gate for Rolf to come home. That was the main thing in his life now.

  Gret put his basket beside her bed and explained that he could even sleep under the blankets if he wished. But Tad would not.

  ‘It’s not as if I want him,’ protested Dan peevishly. ‘He’s your job. Buzz off, fleabag!’

  ‘Don’t call him a fleabag!’ cried Gret fiercely.

  But Tad went on sharing Dan’s bedroom. In fact one morning Dan awakened to find Tad crouched on his pillow looking into his face as if he were watching TV. Dan thought maybe Tad was. He stared into the mirror to see what he might observe. But aside from sharp light eyes and a stye beginning on one of them, he could see nothing to interest a dog.

  ‘Rolf’s coming back, you woolly idiot,’ he said. ‘Go and bother Callie or Gret.’

  Dan was quite pleased to have Tad’s company at night, but he was not a dog person. So when Tad began tramping up and down his stomach in the darkness, groaning to himself, Dan pushed him off. Tad shot off the bed and hurt his paw. He made a huge noisy fuss and woke up everyone in the house.

  ‘You cruel beast!’ yelled Gret. ‘You’ve broken his leg!’ She fell on Dan and pummelled him. Mrs Beck, still half asleep, hauled her off and shook her.

  ‘Dan didn’t mean it, Gret. Stop that at once!’

  One of Gret’s flying blows had hit Dan in the nose. Now to his thrilled horror, blood began to drip on the sheet.

  ‘She’s broken my nose, I’ll have to go to the hospital!’ he yelped.

  ‘Be quiet!’ shouted his mother. It was the first time she understood why some parents yell at their children.

  ‘Callie, fetch some towels! Gret, take Tad out of here, and for heaven’s sake go back to bed, it’s only five in the morning.’

  Gret tenderly lifted Tad and bore him out, glaring at Dan in a manner which told him plainly that if his nose were not broken, she’d break it for him some time in the future.