‘The doctor’s in there with him – he’ll be fine. A scar, probably. That’s all he’ll have, a bit of a scar.’ But Cat sounds bitter.
Martin leans against the wall. The three of them stand silently in awkward geometry, Martin and Cat on one side of the narrow corridor, and Emily on the other. A man in a white coat goes past and says quietly, ‘Excuse me, please,’ as though he’s interrupting something.
‘I got your note,’ says Martin, to Emily. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ Cat breaks in irritably. ‘I don’t want to have to listen to it again.’
‘Anyway, how did you get him here?’ Martin persists. Just woken from sleep, he seems to be still trying to grasp the situation.
‘I drove.’
‘Drove! You drove him yourself?’ Cat is incredulous.
‘I have my licence,’ says Emily. She is suddenly tired of all this. She looks across at Martin. ‘I think I may as well go.’
Cat glances at her, then looks at Martin. ‘We can take Pete home once they’re finished in there. I’m almost at the end of my shift anyway.’ She wipes her hand wearily across her face. ‘I’ve been staring at blood all day.’
‘Can we go and see him?’
As Cat directs Martin into the room, he turns distractedly and waves, ‘Thanks, Emily.’
She treads down the brilliantly lit corridor, and then out through the waiting room. At the entrance to the Casualty Department she pauses to remember where she parked the car. She feels in her pocket for the keys.
4
Emily walks to the lookout and watches the transformation of day into night. There is no suddenness to it, just an imperceptible change in the colour of the sky, and the slow appearance of stars, like something welling up from the depths of water. With the dark comes a welcome coolness. It is now the middle of summer.
She begins to walk back, and finds herself in Martin’s street (her feet perhaps remembering the way), and then she is in front of his house. She is leaving tomorrow and has left it too late to say goodbye.
The front door is shut. But as she watches, Martin happens to let himself out and walks down the path.
‘Emily?’
‘Hi,’ she says shyly, hands in the pockets of her new cotton jeans.
‘You were about to visit?’ He nods towards his house.
‘Well, thinking of it. But it’s Pete’s bedtime, isn’t it?’
They begin to walk. Emily has not seen Martin for days – not since she took Pete to the hospital.
‘How’s Pete’s head?’
‘Recovering. And I’m much better, too. Since you asked.’
He grins at her, and in reply she grins back, and begins to run.
She hears his footsteps pounding behind her, and quickens her flight. She has no idea why she is running, but keeps going, enjoying the rush of her blood, the feeling it gives her of being alive, a sense of danger and light and possibility that she’s not felt in a long time.
It’s an exhilarating headlong dash along the darkened paths, lit by occasional streetlamps. She feels sure and swift on her feet, completely in control of her movements. Her head is clear. She stops at intersections, panting, waiting for cars to pass, and then propels herself forward again.
Suddenly she stops and turns, pivoting. She sees him behind her, slowing to a slow-motion stride as he approaches.
She has the urge to dash away again and stands poised. Martin holds his arms out as though to embrace her, but as he comes up to her he swings them down to his sides.
Emily relaxes and stands squarely on her two feet.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ she says. ‘Going home.’
They start to walk.
‘Back to your baby? Mahalia.’ He says the name tenderly.
She glances up at him.
‘You’re different,’ he says.
She nods with satisfaction. ‘Better,’ she says. ‘You’ve no idea how good it is.’
The lights are on in most of the houses. Emily likes the warmth they promise, each light a little beacon of life. They come to a church, not the Catholic one, and pause to gaze at the reflection of a small tree next to a pool of water out the front. The leaves shiver, showing their silvery undersides. Emily dips her hand into the water, splintering the image. She places drops of water onto her forehead; when they run down to her mouth she licks them away.
A man and a woman run up the stone steps at the side of the building, arm in arm, laughing, breathless, clutching large sheafs of paper. One of them fumbles with a key, and they let themselves in. Moments later the sound of organ music comes out, faltering at first, then joyous.
In the park, they are the only ones there. They take a swing each and, while Martin drifts lazily to and fro, Emily pushes herself higher and higher until she feels she is almost flying. When she’s had enough she slows the swing down, and when it’s almost at a standstill, jumps off and says, ‘Tomorrow’s a big day for me – I need to get some sleep. Can you say goodbye to Pete for me?’
‘I’ll walk you home.’
Outside Charlotte’s place, Emily looks at him in sudden panic.
‘What if my baby doesn’t like me? What if we don’t bond?’ He simply looks at her, kindly.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘It’ll be okay in the end.’
She lets herself in the front door while he stands and watches. She doesn’t close the door straight away, but waits for him to move away down the street, out of the pool of light.
Five
1
When the boarding call is announced, Emily gets to her feet at once and kisses Charlotte; she doesn’t want to appear ungrateful, but it seems useless to linger. She is the first to be ushered down the steps and into the bus that is to take them to the plane. The other passengers stroll on, some of them greeting business colleagues. The bus starts up, and she is swayed this way and that as it pulls out and makes its way to the small plane, which sits on the runway, dwarfed by larger aircraft. She disembarks and goes up the narrow springy steps to a beaming steward. She finds her seat and stows her bag. Everything seems to take so long.
She watches the safety instructions anxiously. Take-off is a long breathless battle of wills as the plane fights gravity to become airborne, and she only exhales and settles back when it levels out.
Sydney lies beneath them, red brick suburbs and cliffs and blue, white-capped waves. And then they leave it behind. She peers from the window, sometimes onto a fantasy landscape of fluffy white cloud, and sometimes at forests and the geometry of farmland and rivers. Emily is intent on noticing everything. If she pays attention to things she won’t have to think of her, imagine her.
The sea below is the one constant, the mantra she keeps returning to. When she sees the town of Coffs Harbour, tears spring to her eyes. They are now very close to home.
They fly inland again, and soon, instead of looking at anonymous landscape, Emily begins to recognise places that she knows. They are asked to fasten their seat belts as they begin their descent.
Lismore tilts beneath them as the plane banks. She sees the golf club where her father plays, and the tip, and the council swimming pool. And now she permits herself to imagine.
Somewhere down there is her baby.
The plane wheels above the town in a kind of salute and then rushes onto the runway, drawing up with a shudder like a huge plunging horse suddenly come to its senses.
She barely hears the smooth voice of the pilot thanking them for flying and telling them cosily that the temperature in Lismore is a very warm thirty-one degrees. She is peering from the window at the glass-fronted terminal, and she sees her father standing there at the front, with his hand up to shade his eyes from the late afternoon sun.
She walks up to him shyly and kisses his cheek. He puts his arms around her awkwardly at first, and she allows herself to cling.
‘Your mum stayed home to watch the dinner,’ he says, and she’s pleased to have a few minutes’ respite. H
er father has brought out his old car for a run; as she slips into the seat she smells the familiar cracked varnish and old leather.
His hair looks thinner; he’s brushed it over the top to conceal the bare patch, and it looks oddly touching to Emily. She thinks, with a pang of dismay, But he’s old!
‘Do you reckon you can remember how to drive this one?’ he asks teasingly, and she replies, with a grin, ‘With a bit of practice. You’ll have to give me a few lessons.’
‘Good girl,’ he says, the way he always spoke to Grandad’s horses. She smiles at him again, and they hold each other’s eyes for a moment.
The house smells of roast meat. Her father carries her bag down the hall to her old room, and Emily walks through to the kitchen. Her mother straightens up from checking the oven and turns awkwardly to her. She folds a teatowel carefully and places it on the table. Is it possible that she’s feeling nervous too?
Emily goes forward. ‘Mum . . .’
‘Emily . . .’
They hold each other in the barest of embraces, and her mother’s hands flutter out beside her afterwards, not knowing what to do next. She turns to the saucepans on the stove. ‘Did you have a good flight?’
‘Yes . . . it seemed to take no time at all.’
‘Charlotte just rang to say she’d only just got back to the mountains – ridiculous, isn’t it?’
They prattle nervously as her mother busies herself with cooking. Emily stares at her mother’s back and it seems to her to be both apologetic and stubborn, which is basically how Emily herself is feeling. Will they ever be able to exist together happily?
Finally her mother says, ‘Dinner won’t be long. Would you like a shower first? – you must be feeling sticky from the trip,’ and Emily is released, to go to her room, to finger all her forgotten things – her childish collection of little ponies, the duck pencil-sharpeners, the porcelain statue of a brown horse – and to notice how dreadfully pink everything is (the bedspread, the walls, the furniture) – so pink that the late afternoon sun coming through the window fairly blazes with it.
On the way to the shower she spies something through the doorway of the spare room. It is a white wooden cot, all made up with white sheets and pillowcases with bears embroidered on them. She lifts up the pillow and smells it, and it has the clean scent of something washed and dried in the sunshine, with another scent underlying it. It is the scent of her baby.
2
She is here, in the same town, and Emily can’t wait to see her. But she can’t just yet – and it seems absurd to have to wait, but Matt doesn’t even know she’s coming, and anyway, it’s getting late. Only one more sleep . . . she tells herself, but her feeling is more urgent than that. She’s here, in the same town, but her baby still seems too far away.
‘Can I borrow your car in the morning?’ she asks her mother at dinner. The sound of their knives and forks scraping against the plates seems deafening.
‘Oh – I’ll drive you down,’ says her mother, laying down a fork full of roast potato.
‘It’s all right, I have my licence now,’ says Emily. ‘If you don’t mind,’ she adds firmly, ‘I’d rather go on my own.’
That night she lies with the window above her bed open and the curtains pulled back to catch the breeze. She doesn’t sleep much at all, just lies staring through the window at the sky. But she doesn’t cry, or even feel remotely like it.
It seems the longest drive she’s ever taken in her life, yet it’s only a few kilometres. Once she gets to the roundabout at the top of the hill it’s just one long swoop down the hill to the city centre.
The place is in a broad old street of timber houses – an old two-storeyed shop (her mother has described it to her and she remembers passing it on the way home from school sometimes) with the front windows painted over and a peeling front door.
She parks a little way down the street and sits quietly for a moment, with her eyes closed and her head against the steering wheel. No thought will stay focussed for more than a moment. And then she gets out of the car, locking the door and walking quickly away down the street.
It’s still quite early – just after nine – and there are numerous cars making their way into town, which lies just across a wooden bridge. She walks up to the bridge and over it, looking down at the water. She goes back, passing an old red-brick pub on the corner overlooking the river, then several shops, and a couple of decrepit timber cottages. She imagines Matt and Mahalia walking up and down this road every day. This is their place, this has been their life, and she’s not had any part in it for what feels like a very long time.
Emily goes past the building where they live three times before she gets up the courage to knock, her heart pounding. She hears footsteps, and then Matt is standing there looking exactly as she remembered him, and for a moment it seems all right – almost.
Later, she can’t even remember the first thing she said, but thinks it must have been something dumb and obvious. She remembers stepping forward and putting her arms around him briefly, the pang of the scent of him, the awkwardness of his body. She remembers him showing her down a dark hallway. Halfway down she turned back and smiled at him, and encountered such a look of sorrow that her heart flipped over with dismay. But she can’t begin to think how to deal with Matt; it is enough to be thinking about Mahalia. They come to a bright shabby kitchen, and a door leading out the back. She hears a child talking cheerfully to herself in baby talk.
3
And then there she is. Your baby. She is playing in a sandpit in the small back yard, and when you arrive she turns, waving a plastic spade and immediately plopping down onto her bottom. ‘Da?’ she says, her face lighting up, and it’s not you she’s smiling at, but Matt.
You crouch in front of her. And it’s not your baby, after all. This one is so big – and her face is all wrong; it’s not the same shape. And her hair is so long it’s already been cut – she has a proper fringe, and blunt bits at the back where it’s been trimmed. You turn to Matt – surely something has happened to the baby you had together, and he’s found another one to replace her. But no, he’s picking her up, and talking to her softly, saying something about your mum. And the baby – Mahalia – your baby – snuggles into his shoulder and then peeks out at you shyly. And now you can see that it is her – she hasn’t changed so much really. And you reach out and take her hand, or as much of her hand as she will allow, which is just the tip of a little finger.
4
The first time Emily takes her out on her own, Mahalia screams and screams. Emily has been visiting her every day for a week, and Mahalia has been happy enough to play on the swings and let Emily feed her lunch, opening her mouth obediently and then taking hold of the spoon to feed herself. Now she screams and wriggles on the bed while Emily tries to change her nappy. She hates me, Emily thinks in panic, and no wonder . . . But then a voice that might be Martin’s comes to her, and it says, reasonably, All babies get like that sometimes. Anyway, she’ll get used to you, just give it time.
So she picks her up and talks softly through the complaints, walking round the bedroom and giving her a bright pink toy horse to hold. ‘Hor,’ says Mahalia, the tears stopping as quickly as they started, staring at the toy with a look of stunned amazement.
‘Do you want a swim in the pool?’ says Emily, and the baby looks at her questioningly. She lies her down on the bed to undress her. The baby kicks her foot against her in a slow, testing movement, and Emily grasps it and holds it gently. Mahalia looks at Emily with interest. Emily smiles. Mahalia pushes her foot against Emily’s hand and, enjoying the resistance, does it again.
Emily puts her nose against the baby’s belly and breathes in the smell of her.
She undresses Mahalia and then takes off her own clothes, and carries her through the house and out to her parents’ pool, where she lifts the latch on the child-proof gate and goes in.
Going into the water, she can feel Mahalia clinging to her hips with her knees, and one s
mall hand holding on to her hair, the other to her breast. A strong, sweet feeling of love and possessiveness overtakes her, and she kisses her baby so hard that they both gasp.
She hadn’t counted on this – on her own greed. She loves Mahalia so much that she wants her all to herself.
One day, as she picks her up from Matt’s place she says, ‘Look, Matt, I should tell you something. I’d like Mahalia to come and live with me.’
In the face of his dismay, she hesitates and says, ‘Think about it, yeah?’
The next time she comes to pick up Mahalia, they have gone.
5
One of the girls who shares the house with Matt opens the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says (and she does look sorry), ‘but they’re not here.’
‘Do you know when they’ll be back?’
‘No. I meant, they’ve gone away for a while. I don’t know where. Matt left a note.’
‘Can I go up to their room?’
‘Sure.’
Emily takes herself up the dark stairway to their room at the front of the building. The yellow room, which is a grimy, dull yellow, not a happy colour at all, feels abandoned. Mahalia’s cot is folded up against the wall, and a few of her clothes are scattered over the floor. Emily kneels down and unconsciously puts her nose to a tiny shirt, and her throat closes up. It looks to her as though they’ve gone for good.
A fly buzzes against the glass of the verandah door. Emily opens it, releasing the insect, and steps out. There is a yellowing newspaper on the floor out there. A clothesline strung across the space holds several faded plastic pegs. She goes to the railing and looks down into the street. A girl on a bicycle rides past, glancing up and waving as though she knows the occupants. A black dog noses in the gutter. Emily finds some old wind chimes lying in a corner of the verandah; she picks them up and they clack with a soft, harsh sound. She throws them down again and they lie there like bones.
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