The Last Summer of Ada Bloom

by Martine Murray

  The lights changed, and Tilly crossed the road. She had a pencil-drawn map of where Raff lived. She planned to show him who she could be. When he had driven her home in the rain, he had said, ‘You’re so shy, aren’t you? It’s like you’re still a kid.’ And she had flushed. She should have risen up and shown her tiger teeth. She could have laughed, like he did, with that sort of submerged contempt. No wonder he hadn’t tried to kiss her again. She had bleached herself blank and dived down in shame. She would unfold herself right to the bone now. She would show him.

  Raff’s cousin’s house was in Carlton, a single-fronted terrace. A tall thin boy in a blue T-shirt answered the door. His arms hung down by his sides. He seemed lank. Or long. Or in limbo… hovering.

  ‘I’m looking for Raff?’ she said.

  ‘Cavallo?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘He’s not here. Is he expecting you?’ He shook his head, looped a thumb in his jean pocket.

  She hadn’t expected this.

  ‘Oh, no. I just wanted to say hello.’

  ‘Who are you, then?’

  ‘Tilly.’ She had nothing to add to it. She saw he expected more. And then she remembered. ‘We were at school together.’

  ‘Well, I guess you can come in and wait a bit? I’m Steve. We’re cousins.’ She didn’t want to go in. But she wasn’t sure what else to do.

  ‘Okay. Thanks. I don’t want to disturb you, though.’

  ‘No worries. I’m having a beer. Want one?’

  ‘Okay.’

  She followed him down a dark hall into a small ugly room. There was little furniture: a couch, a small side table, a record player, milk crates full of records, a mantelpiece above an empty fireplace and above that a poster of Bob Dylan, which said, ‘Don’t look back’. She stared at the one window, through which the evening light slanted in. She sat next to Steve on the couch.

  He passed her the bottle of beer. ‘Should I get a glass?’

  ‘I can drink it like this.’ She felt suddenly very unsure about everything. She drank the beer. Steve watched her. He was waiting for her to talk, perhaps. She smiled at him.

  He lunged forward, picking up her wrist, as if it was something of his that he had dropped. She took it back.

  ‘So, how old are you?’ He wasn’t embarrassed. Maybe he was already drunk.

  ‘Old enough.’ She laughed.

  ‘I can take you to the nightclub where Raff will be if you want?’ he said.

  ‘Did Raff mention me?’ She wished she hadn’t asked.

  ‘Nope. But Raff’s got a lot of girls on the go.’ Steve smirked. Perhaps he knew it went in like a knife. She was nothing to Raff. That was what he meant. If she were alone, she could let this go in and beat around inside her head till she was nothing but sorrow. She wanted to leave. She wanted Ada. She wanted this all to be over. But she couldn’t show this to Steve.

  ‘Shall we go then?’ she said.

  Inside the nightclub he bought her a drink. The music was loud and the air shadowy. Everything was half-hidden, half-revealed. She was heavy and sinking, and she kept looking out as if Raff might appear, as if Steve might disappear and instead it would be Raff dancing in front of her face. If he saw her, would he choose her? Nothing could be certain in there, nothing would hold. Even Tilly had disappeared from herself.

  She took Steve’s hand and led him towards the dance floor. If Raff could see her he would see she wasn’t such a child, she was taking the lead, unfolding to the bone. The mirror ball showered them with flickering light. Her hands wove through the spinning lights.

  Later they stumbled home as if the world was still a whirling mirror ball. In bed he put his hands on the bones of her hip. Go ahead, she thought. She wanted every bit of her to break open, every tightly held fear to be unwound, every buried hope or rising whim to be set free. She wanted oblivion. She would surface, blank as an unwritten page, even if it hurt.

  A sudden knocking on the door woke her early in the morning. Raff called out. He said his mother was on the phone. Tilly threw on her dress. The door opened, and Raff stared at her as if she was still a child, a dirty child.

  ‘Your parents are worried about you,’ he said, ignoring Steve.

  So she hadn’t been rubbed out after all. Nothing had changed. She was still susceptible. Regrets gripped her. Raff turned back and said there was bad news too.

  ‘What?’ She squeezed the word out.

  ‘They found Mr Layton’s body at the bottom of the well. Where we threw the fox.’

  39

  Ada clamped her hands to her ears. Her mind had taken an axe blow. She could see everyone in the room; she could see her father crumpled over the stool and Martha fixing her eyes on him, and Ben, motionless, with a purple towel over his shoulder, bending his head.

  Mr Layton was dead.

  Dead in the endless hole. In the hole that the old windmill stood over like the guard of all death. It had triumphed.

  But Ada could not adjust to the reality of death, or death would not let her mind take hold of it. She tried, but everything hovered meaninglessly, as if nothing could find its weight.

  Her father had not explained anything. Had they pulled Mr Layton’s body up from the hole? Was his body broken and wet? Was there blood? Were his eyes closed? Were there drops of rain on his eyelids?

  Her eyes flicked wide open and clamped on her father. His hands twisted in his lap. The terror of summer was squished down into the pressure between his thumbs. All her swirling thoughts came together and with one hard point, it pushed terribly at her heart.

  ‘Where is Tilly?’ she said.

  40

  It hadn’t helped that Tilly had disappeared that night. But in a way Mike was relieved she wasn’t there. How could he have faced her? It was bad enough the way Ada looked at him. And Martha wept against him in the bed. She had visited Susie and said Susie was ‘a wreck, of course’, and Toby had hardly spoken since they found out. Poor Toby, Martha said. And Alice. And where had Tilly been? Why had she said she was at Alice’s? If something had happened to Tilly he would feel responsible. What would they do now?

  Mike had gone over and over it in his mind. He had worked it out. Joe had sat down finally by the mineshaft, drinking the whisky, to numb his pain. Mike imagined it happening quickly: the fire had come, and Joe had climbed into the shaft to escape it and fallen. That must have been the way it happened. He couldn’t have gone to his death with this hatred of Mike foremost in his mind. But it meant Mike had to do it for him, and with his perfect aim, he pointed hatred at himself. He turned away from Martha and curled on his side, gut-punched and sober.

  Joe had always been liked. Never had Mike heard a word against him. Because he was soft-hearted, he never got too drunk; he was always emitting an affable sort of warmth, it came naturally to him. Mike knew what people would be saying: it was a tragedy for such a good bloke to die like that.

  Mike had always liked Joe, but they had never been friends. But then, did Mike have any real friends? Ever since Arnold Buch, he had been afraid of any man who had seemed to have any inclination for closeness. He kept his friends at a distance. Men he worked with, men he played tennis with—there was no one he would talk to, not properly, no one who would push him closer to himself. Even with his defences in place, Mike was susceptible. Joe Layton had caused the most unforeseeable violence to his soul. For the first time Mike felt he had a soul, and that night it lay down inside him and wept.

  41

  Tilly went straight to Alice’s house from the station. The footpath was still wet and glistening from the rain.

  Nothing looked the same. Alice’s house was silent. Its tidiness seemed forced, like gritted teeth. Mr Layton was never coming home. Tilly began to cry before the door opened as if she could feel the house’s sorrow pressed up against that door. She didn’t even know the woman who opened the door.

  Everything had swerved so sharply from one thing to another. Raff Cavallo would never love her now. She had meant
to impress him with her worldliness and instead she had turned him against her. She had done something terribly, irreversibly wrong. And her dad had done something terribly irreversibly wrong, too.

  The woman at the door guided Tilly inside. The woman knew nothing of her wrongs. There were already flowers. Alice sat at the kitchen table. She didn’t smile. Her lip trembled. Alice, who usually bounced past all calamity, had fallen beneath it.

  She and Tilly went into Alice’s bedroom, sat on the bedspread of roses and wept together.

  42

  Ada saw Toby at the funeral. Alice Layton wore her hair in a bun at the back and was dressed like a grown-up in a dark-blue skirt with a white shirt tucked in and a butterfly brooch pinned on the side. But Toby held his mother’s hand. The church was crowded; half the town was there, and they were all very hushed and solemn, and the men in suits clasped their hands behind their backs and were grave as the night. Tilly said Ada should go and say she was sorry for Toby that his father had died.

  The problem was that Ada didn’t believe Tilly about accidents, about life just being like that. Ada believed that everything that happened was purposeful and that there was mystery so deep and full of intent that it could only be sensed, not spoken. These were the signs that the world offered up. Silence was always full of meaning. In the church she’d looked up at Tilly and wanted to ask her again. Did one thing happen because of another thing, because of the living room? But Tilly had frowned and leaned the weight of that frown on Ada’s thoughts, pressing them till they were so limp and shapeless that Ada couldn’t speak them. Then Tilly bent down and whispered, ‘Just think how Toby feels. Let him know you care about him.’

  Ada wasn’t sure if she did care about Toby. She knew she should, especially now. She broke free of Tilly and walked over to the people that surrounded Toby and his mother. She pushed through the dark-clothed people. Toby stood with his legs crossed over, leaning in to his mother, and staring out, as if he was separated from everything. When Ada touched him, he jumped as if waking from a dream.

  ‘Hi, Ada,’ he said. His face was as soft as a cloud.

  ‘Hi,’ Ada said. She was so surprised to find Toby was still just a boy with a long face, apart from his hair, which was all brushed down and parted on the side, that she completely forgot the words she had prepared to say. Her cheek itched. The light was muted and the air stuffy with the smell of musty suits. She stared inquiringly into Toby’s face for a moment and then felt her own face growing hot.

  ‘There’s a whole lot of people here,’ she whispered.

  Toby nodded. He didn’t look too terrible at all; he just looked like Toby—the aura of death had only touched his hair. But why hadn’t Ada said the thing she was meant to say? She opened her mouth to say it, but Toby said something instead.

  ‘I might not go back to school next week.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Ada. She nodded sympathetically. She wanted to tell him she was going to plant new trees where the old ones had died, but the words got stuck inside.

  Toby wiped at his eye. Then Mrs Layton clasped his head and pulled him into her hip as if to submerge him in a fresh torrent of tears that erupted with Mrs Aldrich. Mrs Aldrich hugged Mrs Layton to her, and Toby was folded into a privacy that didn’t include him. Ada backed away. She hadn’t had the chance to say she was sorry.

  Afterwards, when she got home, Ada sat on her swing beneath the elm and drew long pendulum shapes in the dirt with her feet. How would life go on? What would happen to Alice and Toby now that their father had died in the hole with the fox? And where was the soul of Mr Layton now that it had climbed out of his dead body? Ada sensed that the death of Mr Layton had fallen like a shadow over the family and maybe over the town too. Soon summer would be over and the hush of autumn would only make everything even more solemn.

  Tilly came and sat on the bench under the tree. She had a toasted sandwich.

  ‘What are you eating?’ Ada knew what it was, she just wanted to hear it in case it made her want some too.

  ‘Cheese toastie. What are you doing?’

  ‘Being sad.’

  Tilly didn’t answer. She never wanted to talk about Mr Layton. It took ages for her to say anything. Then, she said, ‘You can’t count on life doing what you want it to do.’

  Ada didn’t appreciate these sorts of explanations. They seemed to mean too much and the truths inside them were locked up and impenetrable. She dangled her feet in the dirt and didn’t look at Tilly.

  ‘Guess what I did last night?’ Tilly said.

  ‘What?’ Ada had forgotten that Tilly had a secret that she hadn’t yet shared.

  ‘I had sex.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ada felt alarmed.

  ‘I went to Melbourne to see Raff, but he wasn’t there, so I went out with his cousin and we danced and then I stayed the night with him.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’ Ada said.

  ‘Did what hurt?’

  ‘Sex.’

  Tilly shifted and frowned. ‘No, not really. I only did it to get it out of the way. It has to happen sooner or later.’ Tilly was sad too, Ada could tell.

  ‘But I thought you loved Raff.’ Ada was hurt by this betrayal. She had given over her own secret admiration and let Tilly have it, but Tilly had ruined it, by taking it in the wrong direction and now it wasn’t even a love story.

  Tilly sighed.

  ‘I did love him. But he wasn’t there, and he didn’t love me. And I wanted to not care about that. I wanted to stop caring about everything. I just wanted to forget myself. And to show Raff.’

  ‘You can’t forget yourself though, because when you wake up, there you are again.’

  ‘That’s the problem,’ Tilly said.

  There they were—back to where they started, with Tilly emptied of love and Ada swollen with secrets. It was just like the tides and it wouldn’t stop. People were always filling themselves up and emptying themselves out again. It was the feeling she had been avoiding all summer. The feeling that life wouldn’t stop taking away from her everything that she wanted to hold near. And that then it would dump at her feet the life-worn remnants of another tide.

  The day before, she had tried to jump on the trampoline with Louis and May but had soon tired of it, and she hadn’t even wanted to play the elf game. Ada had never believed the elves were there in the garden anyway; she had only made it all up to entertain Louis and May. Make-believe games were too little for her. Now that William Blake had turned black. Now that the endless hole had triumphed. Now that Toby Layton had been drawn into his mother and then taken away. These were big important events, events that would mark a life properly. Elves wouldn’t do that.

  Ada watched the leaves twirl down, as if fluttering through time itself. Tilly went quiet and watchful too, because the sun-lit elm leaves were a splendour that overtook them.

  Tilly stood up and went back inside. She had finished her toastie. There were cockatoos on the apple tree already. Even though the apples weren’t ripe. They bit at them, tossed them to the ground and flew off squawking with the pips. They were the larrikins of the sky. Ada didn’t run at them to scare them off. It was too late already.

  43

  Ben was already thinking about footy season. On the footy field, ducking and weaving through the other bodies as if he was an atom, he felt untouchable. With the girls on the sidelines and the coach rocking back and forth on his feet, and the backslapping afterwards in the change room. Nice work, Bloomo, they’d say.

  After the game he always smoked a joint with Jimmy and walked home stoned. Plenty of girls would come to him just like the ball did. They’d let him undo the buttons on their shirts.

  But he’d never really wanted a girl for real. It annoyed him a bit. He wished he hadn’t even thought of it. He feared there was something he was missing out on. Jimmy thought about one girl only, and for her, for Laura Petty, he would do anything. He watched Laura Petty with a fretful sadness because she never showed any interest in him. Ben kissed her one night und
er the white cedar in the schoolground and she leaned back so willingly, he saw her eyes close. But she was no different to the others. He never told Jimmy; if Jimmy ever found out he would have gone mad with the agony of such a betrayal. He would have rushed at Ben, flailing, punching, yelling, even though he was scrawny. He had the passion of a wild cat. Ben envied him that. If life lacked grit, passion would give him a grip on something, the way he’d thought cheating death would.

  That was the problem with the death of Mr Layton. Everyone else had been so affected by it. Ada still moped. But that was because she took everything so personally. And Martha was full of sorrow too. It was hard to know if it was the fox or Mr Layton, but she was worse after it all. More needy, more wronged.

  But at least Martha bore the death with some dignity. Women could do this better. His father couldn’t. He seemed to have lost his mind, rousing from stupefied silences to shout suddenly at Ada for nothing, or to leave a room and hide on his own somewhere else. He had even taken to walking with PJ.

  And then there was Tilly, who now seemed focused on leaving. She was waiting for her exam results. The sudden effort she put in to get through those exams was the first time Ben had witnessed any aspiration in Tilly at all. If she had done well it could set up an expectation. If Tilly might now succeed at something, it might mean he should try.

  But then again, it probably wouldn’t.

  44

  Martha was bereft. There had been too many departures from her life. Susie had gone and Tilly had moved out, and she missed how it had been. She didn’t even realise she had liked how it was, until it wasn’t anymore. Tilly’s absence had unhinged them. The family was like a loose shutter, flapping about in the open air. Even worse was the sense that it would all keep going. Ben would leave next. Ada felt it too—Martha could see that something had seeped from her. She had lost her plump cheeks, her strident little moves, her Ada-shaped plans and intentions. She lay on her bed and read books. The house was quiet, motionless. It was Tilly’s fault.