Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 13, Issue 2

by Graeme Simsion

My mother looks pale every time she says this. She adored her father, who treated Grandma, my mother and Aunty Ruth ‘like royalty’.

  ‘Everything was wonderful while Dad was alive,’ my mother says.

  If he had been alive when my mother met my own father, I probably wouldn’t be. So much would not have been allowed.

  ‘He would never have let me marry your Dad,’ my mother likes to tell me. ‘He just wouldn’t have stood for it.’

  Grandma, on the other hand, was ‘quite charmed’ by my father.

  ‘Even when things went bad, your Gran felt I should stay and keep working at it.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked, sensing my mother wasn’t giving me the whole picture. ‘Why?’

  My mother would sigh.

  ‘She was probably thinking of you.’

  In the years before the fire I watched each week as my mother wrote and received single-page aerograms: blue envelopes exchanged between her in Australia and Grandma in England. My mother would make a tea then sit and light a cigarette before reading each letter. She did the same thing before reading to me after dinner, so it seemed that Grandma’s letters and my books blended together and I used to imagine Grandma inhabiting my favourite stories, baking cakes for the children of The Faraway Tree or knitting soft cardigans for Heidi and her friend Klara—things I wished my mother would do for me.

  ‘What does Grandma say?’ I would often ask.

  ‘This and that,’ was the usual reply.

  Sometimes Grandma would include photos of herself in her house and in her cottage garden and my mother would give these to me to look at and I would study them intently, imagining my mother as a happy child in those rooms, amongst those bushes. In the photos Grandma always wore simple dresses with brooches and looked comfortably round from all angles.

  Sometimes I snuck the letters away and read them myself, taking the key from my mother’s bedside table while she hung washing or vacuumed, unlocking her roll-top desk where all the letters were kept.

  One of the last letters I read urged my mother to ‘come home’, return to Grandma’s house.

  ‘Start over,’ she wrote.

  My mother, however, chose to stay.

  ‘Why?’ I confronted her, unable to keep my discovery to myself.

  ‘Well, it’s not that straightforward. For one thing, you may not like it there.’

  ‘I would,’ I replied.

  ‘And another thing: how could I take you away from your father?’

  It was just before my tenth birthday, a week before the fire, that we did leave. My father drove us to the airport. That morning I stood before our mantelpiece, in my new outfit—a pink-flowered strappy dress I had pleaded for my mother to buy me—and I stared at the framed and faded photo of Grandma wearing a pink woollen suit, smiling in a staged way at the camera. The colours had been painted on, so Grandma’s eyes were a swimming-pool blue.

  I bobbed in a slight curtsey.

  ‘Ma’am,’ I mumbled in a silly voice, hoping to make myself smile, but my stomach was full of butterflies as I walked out the door.

  My father heaved our suitcases into the boot of our old blue Holden, complaining about the weight, asking my mother how she expected me to lug my case there and back.

  ‘She’s only nine,’ he said.

  ‘I know she’s only nine, and I will look after her,’ my mother snapped back.

  I stood frozen as my father glared at my mother then yanked my suitcase back out. He said nothing but his breath was loud as he unzipped the suitcase on our driveway, grabbed a handful of my clothes and threw them to the side on the concrete. Two of my favourite books lay exposed; he tossed those out too.

  ‘Daddy, no!’ I pleaded.

  But no one said anything to me. My father tossed my suitcase back into the boot and climbed into the driver’s seat. No more was said until we reached the airport and my father kissed me goodbye.

  On the aeroplane I let my mother draw me close and leaned against her, watching the clouds, amazed at how high we were flying. We stopped for five hours in Bahrain for the plane to refuel. My mother kept us close to the departure gate, an area filled with hard, grey chairs and toilet smells.

  ‘I don’t want us getting lost,’ she told me.

  I imagined us marooned forever on this foreign island, ‘stuck in the middle of nowhere’, as my mother described it, and I felt as unsafe as I ever had. While we waited a man in black robes and turban took me on his lap and my mother let him, saying later ‘what else could I do?’

  ‘Not let him,’ I said, but I didn’t feel she was listening.

  We went straight from the airport to see Grandma. She was in a small public hospital in a stonewalled town. My mother gripped my hand and pulled me quickly through dim, greenish corridors, the air heavy with heating. I dragged, feeling hot and bound in the thick tights, skivvy and button-up coat my mother had changed me into on the train ride north.

  Grandma was in a shared ward full of old women. My mother and I stood at the entrance, looking in, trying to pick which one was the right woman. My mother hadn’t seen her since before I was born. I pointed to someone large and grey-haired, three beds in.

  ‘That could be her,’ I offer.

  ‘Shush,’ snaps my mother. ‘You don’t know.’

  A passing nurse asks who we are visiting and my mother says in a throaty way ‘Enid Light’ and the nurse brightens.

  ‘Oh! You must be her daughter, from Australia. I’ve been hearing a lot about this visit. You’re all she’s talked about, you know.’

  She takes us to the middle of the ward where a thin woman lies propped against a mound of pillows, a worn quilted shrug around her shoulders. There are hydrangeas in a small vase next to her and her hair looks styled but there is a bony sickness in place of the roundness I knew from photos. She is asleep.

  The nurse offers to wake her but my mother says no and we are left alone. My mother lets go of my hand and bends over the bed, giving Grandma a kiss on her forehead.

  ‘Hi Mum,’ I hear her whisper with a catch in her voice. ‘We’re here.’

  She stays bent over, taking Grandma’s hand and kissing her again. I stay where I am, just behind my mother, awkward and unsure. Then Grandma stirs.

  ‘Oooh, Rachael,’ I hear Grandma say. ‘Hello darling.’

  The nurse from earlier gives me a passing wink and Grandma catches sight of me. When my mother moves to the side I look into Grandma’s eyes for the first real time and I see they are not blue. They are brown, like my mother’s.

  I stare, confused, at my mother.

  ‘Give your Gran a kiss, darling,’ she says, hoisting me onto the bed.

  I perch uncomfortably near Grandma’s chest, wanting to protest, feeling that a big secret has been kept from me but not knowing what to do about it. It makes me angry. With an effort, Grandma leans forward. Her breath is surprisingly hot, though the skin on her cheek feels cold when she kisses me, spit on her lips.

  ‘Hello, sweetheart. It’s so lovely to meet you, finally.’

  Her accent is so strong I struggle to accept it as real.

  ‘Your mum has told me so much about you.’

  I nod.

  Then no one speaks.

  ‘How are you feeling, Grandma?’ I ask politely.

  ‘Oh, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.’

  My mother places her hand on top of mine and gives it a squeeze. She is holding back tears. My eyes drift to Grandma’s bedside table where there are photos—Aunty Ruth, my cousins, Grandpa and one of my mother with me when I was young and wore my hair in bunches. There’s also a mug of tea with a bendy straw in it. Grandma reaches shakily for the mug.

  ‘Could you pass it to me please, love?’

  I try not to notice the film of milk sliding about the top of the cold liquid as Grandma guides the straw shakily to her lips and sips.

  ‘Good girl,’ Grandma says, closing her eyes and placing her hand on top of my mother’s and mine like a three-way Brownie pa
ct.

  High on the bed between Grandma and my mother I sense something passing between us all, something adult and important, though I don’t know what it is. I hold still for what feels like a long time and wait. My mother is crying now, quietly, and I feel Grandma clasp my mother’s hand more tightly and steady her own breath. It’s the first time I’ve seen anyone other than me comfort my mother and I watch, captivated, noticing how my mother softens, how different she looks.

  ‘It’s all right Rachael, love,’ Grandma says. ‘It’ll be all right.’

  Grandma pats my mother’s hand then sits herself a little higher and looks to me.

  ‘Now sweetheart, do you like dolls?’ my Grandma asks me.

  I look to my mother, not sure how to answer without offending.

  ‘I think your Gran might have something special to give you,’ my mother says, pretending not to see the panic in my face. I don’t want a doll. I have dolls; I have enough. I want pretty clothes, a new bike, a kitten. Grandma tells me to open her bottom drawer and in it I find a baby-sized porcelain doll dressed in old-fashioned clothes and wrapped in a musty cloth. When I lift the doll upright her eyes blink open into a blue stare. I squat on the grey linoleum and stare back. The eyes are the same fake blue as Grandma’s in that photo on our mantelpiece.

  ‘This was your Mummy’s doll, when she was a girl,’ Grandma says. ‘Do you think you might like to look after her now?’

  There are smudges on the doll’s face and a chip out of her left ear. Her shoes are painted on and her long hair is tangled at the back. The eyes work well but the colour of them, the way they are so obviously painted rather than realistic-looking, appears empty and silly to me—out-of-date—and I can’t imagine myself playing with her. She feels like she should still belong to my mother.

  I look at my mother, hesitating.

  ‘Do I have to keep her?’

  My mother goes pale.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asks.

  Grandma speaks up, forcing a smile.

  ‘It doesn’t matter Rachael, she doesn’t have to take it. It’s an old thing.’

  I know I’ve said the wrong thing, but it’s too late: I can’t take it back. I pass the doll gingerly to my mother who takes it, her lips tight, and places it gently on the bed beside Grandma, to be put away later. Then Grandma and my mother talk about more general things while I curl in the chair next to the bed and look around me at all the detail of the hospital ward, tasting the aeroplane eggs that are lingering in my mouth.

  It was the day before my birthday when my mother and Aunty Ruth were called to the hospital and stayed, leaving my cousins and me in each other’s care, alone at night in Grandma’s house. Some of us were awake so we got out of bed and ran about the place, waking the others and turning the air into screams and laughs and silly yells. We ran about like this for quite a while until a neighbour came to the door and ordered us back to bed. She stayed until my mother and Aunty Ruth returned much later.

  I woke to hear sounds in the kitchen and my mother and Aunty Ruth whispering. I could smell them smoking and I wondered with annoyance why they didn’t go to bed and why my mother didn’t come to tell me she was back. I called out but she didn’t answer, so I called again more forcefully. One of my older cousins came into my room and flicked on the light and told me to be quiet and that ‘Grandma’s probably died’. Then she asked me what I needed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you need?’ she said.

  ‘No, about Grandma,’ I said. ‘What about Grandma?’

  My cousin sucked her lip and said more quietly: ‘I think this means she’s gone.’

  Then, because she was older than me, she tucked my quilt around me and kissed me on the forehead the way an adult would and told me to go back to sleep. Then she flicked the light off and left. I lay awake listening intently now for my mother’s voice but she seemed to have stopped talking. I worried again that I had said the wrong thing over the doll and I told the darkness in Grandma’s spare room that I was very sorry and that I wished with all my heart that I could have the doll back.

  My mother recalled that she and Aunty Ruth shopped for Grandma’s funeral tea and my birthday lunch at the same time. I recall them smoking their way through both events.

  That was also the week of the fire.

  It burnt first through Grandma’s kitchen, leaving only the taps and sink intact, like teeth that survive a cremation. By the time I was bundled outside by Mr Chamberlain, the kitchen was already lost. It’s hard to tell how long it took for the rest of the house to go—minutes, an hour or longer. Once, I asked my mother why she didn’t save me herself from the burning house.

  ‘I must have thought you were OK,’ she said.

  Over the next few days it snowed hard, burying the foundations of Grandma’s house. My cousins and I made half-hearted attempts to build snowmen on the site while Aunty Ruth searched for temporary accommodation. With the help of family friends we all set ourselves up in a two-bedroom flat on the other side of town, but after a few days it became clear that we were too crowded. We could not stay. Reluctantly, my mother arranged our flight back to Australia. She seemed exhausted. I felt relieved.

  My father met us at Sydney airport and we drove home in silence.

  Soon after our return I ordered my mother to quit smoking and threw away all the packets of cigarettes I could find. She tried, but it didn’t work. She returned to smoking and kept it up for a lot longer, telling me it was an almost impossible habit to break. My father smoked too, although this didn’t seem to bother me as much.

  I don’t remember much more about that year I turned ten except that I was given a bike soon after we came home and my father and I got into our own habit of going for weekend rides, to the shops or to the park or sometimes to visit his friends. I felt freedom on that bike and loved that my father thereafter called me his ‘Little Speedster’ and that I called him ‘Big Speedo’, that we had this private custom between us.

  ‘So,’ I ask my mother, ‘how does it feel to be a grandmother?’

  We are seated together at the dining table in the home I share with my husband and newborn daughter, whom my mother has travelled interstate to meet. My mother sips her tea and looks at the bottom of her cup, still lost in memory.

  ‘Mum?’

  She looks up at me, cautiously.

  ‘Do you know what your father said to me as soon as we were alone?’ she asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said: Forget your mother. She’s dead and gone and your home is here now.’

  I see tears in her eyes at the thought, even now, decades on and with my father himself now gone.

  ‘This is what he said to me.’

  She doesn’t actually cry. Instead, she takes a breath and says: ‘Anyway, that’s all ancient history now.’

  My mother looks ancient herself in this moment. I suddenly notice everything about her now seems old and I wonder when this happened. I surprise her when I take her hand tenderly.

  ‘I’m sorry Mum,’ I say. ‘That’s an awful thing.’

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