by Wendy James
‘Carly. No. You could never be presumptuous.’
‘Well ... I’ve been thinking that maybe Susan’s the tiniest bit ... bored. That maybe she could do with an extra day or so of work. I’ve noticed that she’s always far more cheerful, far more – alert – when she’s had some time ... away.’
‘But...’
‘Wait,’ she squeezes his hand. ‘I know you don’t want the kids in childcare, you want them to be able to come home and all that – and they can. Remember I’m here now. I can pick them up from school. Help them with their homework. Get dinner ready. Whatever. And I’d be really pleased to be able to do something useful. To make it up to you both. To pay you back.’
Ed is moved, has to clear his throat before he speaks. ‘Oh, Carly. You don’t have to pay us back. You’re part of our family, now. It’s our pleasure. Our privilege.’
Carly
At first she is unnerved by their trust. They have no doubts, none whatsoever, none that she can discern anyway. Whatever she says, whatever she tells them, is taken at face value, is believed. Whatever she says is valued. They never question what she does, either. They trust her; they value her.
This is a new experience. New and intoxicating.
Susan
She is pleased but puzzled by Ed’s suggestion.
Susan has made this same suggestion several times over the past few years. The temping service that Anna runs generally has trouble filling afternoon shifts – which is the shift Susan already works, prefers to work – and Anna has been begging her to take on the extra work for years now, but Ed has always insisted that her one day a week was sufficient, that they didn’t really need the money. That the children needed her, their mother, available to them – the way his mother had been available to him. That the hours after school were probably the most important part of the day. That kids needed to unwind in a secure, loving environment. That they shouldn’t have to spend long hours in institutional care. She mentions all this to him now, reminds him of his previous stance, surprised by his inexplicable about-face.
‘But the children are older,’ he explains (this has never provided a justification before, age he had proclaimed, didn’t matter – a sixteen-year-old was just as likely – more likely – to need to talk over the stresses of the day with a concerned and loving parent). ‘It’s not so important that you’re always around now. And it’s different, I won’t have to leave work early – Carly has offered to pick up the kids after school, to get dinner ready, whatever we need.
‘Anyway, I think it would do you good to get out of the house more,’ he doesn’t quite look at Susan when he says this, looks slightly off to one side. ‘You need to – to re-establish yourself in the world. Make sure you keep up your skills, learn new ones. And you’d meet new people – it’d cheer you up.’
‘What do you mean – cheer me up?’
She’s perfectly cheered.
She phones Anna. Tells her she’s available to work an additional evening a week.
‘What’s going on, Sue?’ Anna sounds suspicious. ‘I thought Ed was adamant about you only working that one day. Last I heard he was convinced that the children would become alienated, anorexic, self-mutilating delinquents if they were denied access to their mother for periods of more than an hour at a time?’
‘Oh, you know, we just...’
‘And who’s looking after the infants, Sue? Don’t tell me they’re being allowed to mix with the socially-stunted, emotionally-deprived after-school care kids?’
‘Oh, shut up, Anna. He’s not that bad. And I don’t think that he really thinks they are deprived. The after-school care kids, I mean...’
‘Well, who’s looking after them? Not Mamma Middleton? Or has Ed made the business more family-friendly – has he arranged to leave work early?’
‘No.’
‘Then who?’
‘Carly.’
‘Oh. Carly.’
There is a long silence.
Then: ‘Well, I can offer you a three-to-eleven at Delwood Private.’ She’s brisk and cheerful as always, but Susan can sense a wariness in Anna’s voice, a withdrawal. ‘Every Wednesday. How’s that?’
They are walking the children to school. It’s an easy walk – only a few flat blocks – and for once they are well ahead of time, the pace is leisurely, unpanicked. Stella skips between Susan and Carly, swings her aunt’s hand back and forth, chatting away to the two women about this and that, her conversation like a spurt from a little bubbler. Mitchell walks a fair distance behind, stops frequently to examine bits of bark, insects, rocks. Already his pockets are filling up.
Susan takes advantage of a brief lull in Stella’s chatter. ‘Have you ever wanted kids, Carly?’ It’s another question she’s been longing to ask.
Carly says nothing for a moment, then leans down and whispers something to Stella, who giggles and runs back to Mitchell.
‘Sorry,’ Susan is embarrassed suddenly. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t ask.’ Although Carly hasn’t said anything, and her expression gives nothing away, Susan knows she has somehow transgressed, that she has asked the wrong thing again. She resigns herself to a skilful deflection, an artless non-answer, but Carly surprises her.
‘No, that’s okay. You just startled me – asking out of the blue like that.’ She considers for a moment, then: ‘I guess I’ve never had the opportunity, Susy. No bloke whose gene pool I’d want to share.’
‘Oh, I guess it’s not...’
She interrupts Susan’s fumbling rejoinder: ‘And to be quite honest, Sue, they’re a bit of a bore aren’t they? Oh, I don’t mean yours in particular, but kids in general. A bit of a drag. They get in the way of – of real life, I guess.’
She looks over at her sister and smiles widely, as if to take some of the sting out of her words. But Susan’s stung. She gropes for a reply, finds none. She turns back to hurry the kids, who’ve stopped, are squatting in the middle of the footpath, examining a particularly interesting mound.
Just for a moment Susan can’t see them, feels her eyes fill, her vision blur. She shouts: ‘Come on you two,’ feels her voice reedy, slightly tremulous. ‘Hurry up, or we’ll be late.’ They keep their heads down, ignore her, poking at the mound with sticks now. She takes a deep breath, calls again, more forcefully. ‘Come on. ’
Mitchell gets up reluctantly, but hovers, while Stella skips towards them, her stick waving about dangerously, breaks into a run.
‘Aunty Carly, Mummy. It’s a dead mad-pie. Come and look. It’s gross – there’s blood and stuff and it’s all hard like cement. And Mitch poked out its eyes. Come and see.’ She pulls at Carly’s hand. ‘Come and look, Aunty Carly.’
Carly gives Susan a wry smile: ‘Never a dull moment, is there?’ and lets herself be led back down the street. Susan follows more slowly; wonders about real life, dull moments, early morning diplomacy.
She tells her out of the blue. Over lunch.
‘I left because I was bored.’ She says it casually, conversationally. Susan is not prepared; she chokes on her sandwich.
‘You were bored?’
‘Shitless.’
‘That was it?’
‘Yep. Sorry, Suse. There are no gory details, no skeletons in the family closet. Your father wasn’t hitting me, Mum wasn’t treating me cruelly – well, no more cruelly than most mothers of teenage daughters did back then – I didn’t have a secret lover, I wasn’t a drug addict. I didn’t even mean to leave home. I set out for the dance, walked to the corner, kept walking. Didn’t come back.’ Carly butters a slice of bread, layers on ham and cheese, bites down hungrily.
‘You were bored? ’ Susan shakes her head, can’t quite fathom it. All the pain, all the waiting.
‘Uh-huh.’ Carly’s voice is muffled, her mouth full. ‘It’s as good a reason as any for leaving home, isn’t it? And better than some I can thi
nk of. I was just a pretty ordinary teenager, Susan. I just wanted to be left alone, y’know? Nothing complicated.’ Swallows. Adds clearly, almost jauntily: ‘So there you go, Susy. Now you know. Satisfied?’
***
Karen is going to see Picnic at Hanging Rock with her best friend Julie. Susan begs her and begs her and finally Karen agrees to take her along. The child is overjoyed, but her mother is not so happy. ‘It’s not a children’s movie is it, Karen? It looks a bit too frightening for Susy. I don’t know.’
‘Please, Mum. Please.’ Susan is desperate. She’s not that interested in the movie – though the pretty girls in long white dresses she’s seen in the ads are appealing. But there’s the ferry across the harbour and then the bus to the cinema; there’s chips and Fantales and Coke and maybe a hamburger after. ‘Please. I promise I won’t get scared. I’ll close my eyes if it gets really scary.’
‘She’ll be fine, Mum. We can always take her out if she gets scared.’
‘Well, you take good care of her, then. Take good care of my baby.’ Mum reaches down to give her a hug but Susan wriggles away, impatient to get going.
‘I’m nearly nine, mum. I’m a big girl, not a baby.’
Her mother smiles, chucks her under the chin.
‘Ah, but you’ll always be my baby.’
It’s a windy day and the usually calm harbour waters are choppy, and get gradually rougher as they chug between the heads. The ferry dives and plunges from side to side and Susan clings, terrified, to her older sister, convinced that they are going to capsize, to drown, to die. Karen prises the child’s fingers from hers and tells her that she is to go with Julie, that Julie will take her upstairs. ‘It’s not as rough up there,’ she says.
Susan grabs hold of Karen’s shirt. ‘But what’re you going to do? Can’t you come too? Please come.’
‘No. Now, go on, off you go,’ she says firmly. ‘Julie’ll look after you.’
Susan lurches up the stairs with the older girl, holding on hard to the rails. Even Julie looks a little worried, her face pale and slightly green. When they reach the top Susan forces herself to turn and wave to Karen, but her sister is standing in the gangway facing the sea and doesn’t notice. She isn’t holding on to anything, but braces herself, legs apart, head back, at one with the surge.
‘Just sit back and close your eyes,’ Julie croaks when they finally make it to a vacant seat, ‘and then you won’t see the boat move. You’ll feel better, believe me,’ she says, squeezing her own eyes shut, ‘if you can’t see what’s happening.’
Susan has to keep her eyes closed tight, or peer between spread fingers through much of the movie, too, which is not about a picnic at all but about something terrible and terrifying and unknowable that takes the schoolgirls away or sends them mad. She tries to grab Karen’s hand occasionally, when she’s really scared, but Karen’s like the girls on the screen, entranced, lost, transported. Mouth open, eyes shining, she pushes Susan’s fingers away, irritably.
‘Leave me alone,’ she hisses, when Susan’s desperate hands can no longer be ignored. ‘Will you just leave me alone.’
***
Susan leaves the decision until the last minute, makes a sudden detour, doesn’t tell her sister where they’re going. Pulls up outside the empty house. Sits for a moment, breathing.
‘What are you doing here? I thought we were going straight home?’ Carly sounds vaguely peevish, put-upon.
‘I just thought I’d like one last look before it’s sold. The real estate guy said I could meet him here at two, he’s showing someone through. We’re fifteen minutes early, but I found a spare set of keys anyway.’
‘Look at what?’ Susan has worried that Carly might be angry, or unwilling. She seems merely bewildered.
‘At the house, Carly. Mum’s place. Our place. What else would I mean?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ she says quickly, ‘the house ... I thought you meant something else as well.’
Susan walks down the hallway, pushes open the first door on the right. ‘Your room, Carly.’
The room is empty, just a small square space with a sheet-covered window and worn shag pile carpet. Like the rest of the house this room smells sour – a combination of cat piss, unwashed clothes and stale food. Their mother or the tenants?
‘Don’t you remember, Carly, your beautiful dressing table? Right here. God, I was so jealous. Mum wouldn’t let me near it after you left. Had it taken away. Carly? D’you remember?’
Her sister is silent, makes no reply, but Susan can’t help it, she is desperate for a response, for some confirmation of shared memory.
‘And that bedspread you had. Covered in pink roses. It was quilted – you know, I can almost feel the pattern. Remember how you used to fold it back so carefully? You showed me once. Three folds down then two across. I thought you were so clever. God. I’d forgotten all about that. Funny isn’t it?’
‘Hilarious.’ Carly smiles vaguely, stands fingering the dusty sheet, then thrusts it aside, unlatches the window. ‘God, this place is stuffy,’ she says, pushing at the bottom sash. We should open everything up.’ The window is reluctant, shrieks. ‘Let in some bloody air.’
The agent, a sleek young man in a too-shiny double-breasted suit, arrives before his clients and is immediately overcome by a fit of sneezing, is unable to greet Susan in a dignified manner. Carly’s open windows have stirred up months, maybe years, of dust. He walks quickly through the house, handkerchief at the ready, peering and tapping, scribbling now and then in a notebook he produces from his inside pocket.
‘We haven’t actually shown this place yet,’ he explains. ‘These’ll be the first lookers. Glad you’re here. You might be able to tell me a few things.’ He trails along in Susan’s wake as she walks through the house, asking occasional choked questions. (‘When was the wiring last done? The plumbing? The gutters?’) In the back bedroom, Susan’s old room, he interrupts his scribbles, frowns out the window.
‘Who’s that out there?’ he asks. Carly is wandering about in the garden, absent-mindedly breaking off twigs, rubbing leaves between her fingers.
‘That’s my sister,’ she tells him.
‘Your sister? Truly?’ He shakes his head, disbelieving.
‘Truly. Why?’
He moves closer to the window. ‘God,’ he mutters, ‘I could have sworn...’ He turns back to face her. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘but it’s just that she looks like someone...’ His cheeks are slightly pink, his voice creaks slightly. ‘I ... er ... met once. But it couldn’t be her.’
‘Well,’ Susan says, ‘maybe it is ... but she’s been away for years. We’ve actually only been reunited recently. It’s been amazing...’
He interrupts. ‘What did you say her name was?’
‘Carly.’
‘Carly?’ He breathes out heavily. ‘Carly. Christ.’ He starts up his coughing again.
When Susan introduces them in the front garden, he shakes Carly’s hand quickly but is unable to look her in the eye. Carly doesn’t seem to notice, gets straight down to business. ‘So? What’s the verdict? How much?’ she asks. ‘And how quickly?’
‘Houses here are selling fast, it’s a desirable suburb. The surf. The laid-back atmosphere. It’s still seen as being family-friendly, the local shopping centre’s big enough, but intimate too, if you know what I mean. There’s a sense of community.’ He directs his reply to Susan, still avoiding Carly’s gaze.
The house itself isn’t great, he tells them, but it isn’t too bad, and if they wanted to give the interior a coat of paint and a good clean it’d be beneficial. But even in its current state he’d expect a sale somewhere around the early eights, purely because of the enormous block. The home could be knocked down – it’s perfect for flats, dual occupancy ... They could get more if they changed their minds and were willing to go to auction.
�
�What do you mean by early eights? Eight one? Eight five? Eight thirty? And how long?’ Carly’s voice is brusque, impatient.
‘Eight forty-five, I’d say. Six weeks. But, really, you should consider an auction.’
‘Oh,’ she says slowly. ‘Oh. But we don’t want to go to any that fuss, do we Suse?’ Carly’s voice has lightened consider ably, is casual, cordial. ‘We just want to get rid of the place as quickly as possible. It’s not the money. The money’s not important.’ She turns to her sister for confirmation. ‘Is it Susy?’
‘No, not important at all,’ Susan’s echo goes unheard, she may as well not have spoken.
The man’s attention is all with Carly. ‘Money’s not important?’ He’s looking at her directly now. Is looking hard. ‘I haven’t heard that line for a while,’ he says. ‘Not for quite some time.’ He runs his fingers through his too-shiny hair, smirks unpleasantly.
‘I don’t suppose you would,’ Carly smirks back, ‘doing what you do. You can’t run a car like that,’ she gestures towards the flash y black BMW that he’s parked in the driveway, ‘on hot air, can you? And it isn’t a line, anyway, mate; it’s the truth. There are some people out there,’ she adds helpfully, ‘who don’t do lines. You should try to remember that.’
Carly
It is a shock, a big shock, to meet someone she’s known from her previous life. It wasn’t something she’d counted on, not something she’d expected, but in the end not something to get too anxious about. There are plenty of ways to persuade people to keep quiet. And all sorts of payments, not all of them involving money.
Not all of them unpleasant.
Ed
‘What will you do with the money?’
‘What will I do?’ Ed is surprised by Carly’s question. He never asks questions about other people’s money – considers this one of the most personal of personal questions – and a vulgar one at that. Ed knows that talking about one’s own financial situation is equally taboo: that this can only be construed in one of two ways: either bragging or, what’s worse, complaining.