But he would not meet my eye now. Had I gone too far? Was it regret that I heard in his voice? Did he regret everything, even our kiss? Questions jostled through my mind but I could not stop to ask even one. The lump in my throat made me mute.
‘Lily? And if I find him, what then?’ I didn’t know how to answer him. Couldn’t we just continue as we were? His voice was reduced to a rasp. ‘My aunt spoke with me last night, she wants me to take over and fulfil my uncle’s wishes for me to study overseas, to give up magic and follow in his footsteps. It has always been my uncle’s wish.’
His aunt had looked past me, willing me not to be there, the obstacle to her husband’s wish, the girl not like them. The uncle who wasn’t even here still held sway, winding Ari back with a wish and wiping me away in one swipe. A kiss was not a promise, I realised.
‘Or what if I find him dead?’ The word hovered leaden and immovable between us. I could see him trying to rein in his emotions, but how could I console him, reassure him? All I wanted to do was reach out and touch his cheek, but I feared he would step away. There was nothing I could say, all the decisions had been made without me – whatever happened, he would be leaving and whatever was between us would disappear. My heart twisted like landed fish.
A raven tiptoed through the nearby gutter as if on a tightrope, before he plunged his beak down and pulled out something purple – fruit, a worm, a chick? The first sprig of lightning bloomed in the sky, sending the raven and his prize into a black swoop high up into the wind-tossed trees.
‘Lily?’
There were more currawongs calling out to each other, each soaring and dipping, heralding the fat raindrops to come. I looked up the street; the trees were full of them. That is when I saw him, the whistle wet upon his lips. The Birdman had come. Perhaps he wanted his raven back? I felt the footpath sway beneath me.
‘You are just the chap I’m after,’ the Birdman said to Ari, his dark eyes glinting in his dusty face like baked currants. ‘I saw your uncle boarding the train to the Blue Mountains, my country. A man can catch a train to wherever he likes, of course. But there was something not quite right, it was if a willy-willy had spun through his mind. When I whistled out to him he stopped suddenly, frightened. Of course I only wanted to introduce myself and hear how you two and Beauty were getting on, but he was completely bewildered and grabbed at my arm as if the world had gone topsy-turvy.’
‘When was this?’ Ari said urgently.
Raindrops fell but were blown away by a gust. The Birdman looked up into the sky to where the sun would have sat were it not obscured by the gathering momentum of clouds.
‘Oh, I’d say the better part of the day and the best of the night. It would have been the first train of the day.’
Ari looked at me, his eyes dark. He knew as well as I did that those mountains were a wilderness. I had seen a poster hanging up in our school; they were blue, we were told, because of all the eucalyptus clouding the air, and they were a living sandstone wall, impenetrable.
‘I know that country, friends. It is a place to get lost in. I’ll be heading back that way soon, once I have had my sup at the Red Rose. Ah, a man would walk on water to have one of Jandy’s milkshakes,’ the Birdman said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand as if he could already taste the sweetness. I could feel Ari’s impatience, but the Birdman was not a man to be rushed.
‘And I have come to collect Beauty, my crow, my raven, my corvid australialis, my little scrap of starless night. I’ve missed her, the smartest bird that ever was.’ His words rang through the street and seemed to pierce the sky, sending fat raindrops splashing down my face. All we had worked for seemed to be slipping out of my grasp and I had no way to grab it back.
‘Give me half an hour to get my things together and I’ll meet you back here,’ Ari said to the Birdman.
My mouth was not at my command, it would not open. When will you be back? It was the question I dreaded to ask because there would be no answer I wanted to hear.
The clouds broke then and rain fell in curtains, drenching us to our skin, and still neither of us moved. I wished he would pull me into his arms again, I wouldn’t have cared if we never spoke – his fingers better than words, his touch softer than speech, his body the pages of everything I wanted him to say.
We walked to the theatre one more time together, a cleaner letting us in the back door. The spangling light from last night that had held us together was now dispersed and I longed for it. We collected the birds, joyous and blinking to be out in the rain, bathing in their cages in personal rivulets. Beauty, though, swooped out into the nearest signpost and gargled ominously, only for the lyrebird to mimic her cry like a lament all the way down the street.
PART THREE
The Metamorphosis
TWENTY-NINE
Billy
I knew the fates were on my side when the Jew’s aunt showed up all a-sniffle at our front door. The old woman should have been thankful, praised her God: cut free of that old piece of dead wood, she could do and say whatever she liked now. Hip hip hurrah! Of course I popped the kettle on as quickly as I could and was wound tight with anticipation, frustrated that Miss du Maurier was taking her sweet time as she rummaged for a clean handkerchief in some chaotic drawer. The Jew’s aunt’s weeping grew louder as the kettle rose, until sobs and whistle formed a duet. My dear landlady came back waving the handkerchief like a white flag and it mopped up the tears all right, but all she could say was that her husband was missing. Then she was silent for a bit, mouthing words but nothing coming out. She blew her nose like a trumpet, three notes forming the devil’s chord.
I can only remember one time that I cried. It wasn’t as a child; it was on that slow trip back to Sydney, when I was like bloody deceived Hansel following a trail of crumbs. When all the time the crows were circling, ready to make their plunge. Those shameful tears evaporated with every dusty step that I took toward home. Crisp was carrion, I knew that. But Merle and I had been lovers; she carried my fruit in her womb. Or did she? And my father’s fortune, how did Crisp find it? My mind swayed like a priest’s censer, swinging between self-pity and desire for retribution.
With each step, I realised how far Crisp had taken me, blindly, into the bush, with the ruse of taking the Elixir du Jour on the road. It was only walking back for miles in the pounding heat that I could see how far he had led me from the city for his ambush. Occasionally I could cadge a ride, but mostly I preferred my own company, suspicious of everyone and wanting to be alone in my thoughts. It took me three weeks to get back to the Big Smoke, penniless and dusty. The sight of the Great Western Highway from the back of a chicken transport truck was like a drink to a thirsty man, though the birds heading for slaughter may have taken a different view. Their incessant shuffling and clucking were living reminder of all the two-bit hellholes I had traipsed through in this life – as a soldier, shearer, knife thrower and then Crisp’s bleeding-hearted, easily duped apprentice. The stink of the chickens overwhelmed my senses, but I sat firm. The smell was my constant companion; it coated my nostrils, penetrated the fabric of my clothes and clung to my hair for days, but it was my covenant, never to leave the confines of the city and find myself up Shit Creek again.
The streets unspooled as we drove further into the city. The clock tower of Central Station was like a false moon in the darkening sky; the town hall steps were spilling with council workers, their fob watch chains swinging from their waistcoats. I wanted to take a chicken and hurl it – white feathers, red combs, green shit and all – at their self-important faces. And now I could smell the salty sea kiss come to me on the air: I knew I was back. The salt was astringent and it invigorated me, the sting of my vengeance sharpening my senses. The faces carved in the sandstone post office watched as I passed – an Indian, an African, a Chinaman, all bloody dagos each and every one of them, all spoils of Empire now made ornaments to peer down at us. Queen Victoria’s bloated face loomed like a menacing fish, bulbous eyes just lik
e Crisp’s watching me as I passed.
It was time to throw off the shackles – what was the Empire except a machine that churned on soldiers’ blood? What was Crisp but a balloon that needed to be popped? As we neared the Quay, I hopped off the cart. My city welcomed me with a bouquet of sea bilge and dog turd. The two ends of the newly constructed Harbour Bridge stretched towards each other like a metal spine. It looked a broken thing, a dragon’s back that had not the power to span the distance. I knew that when I got to Argyle Street Police Station there would be no bells and whistles for me, no fanfare, for the race had already been run and I was not its victor. I was unsure of what wreckage awaited.
When I told the desk constable who I was, he stuck a finger in his ear and gave it a little jiggle as if to dislodge the deafening plug of wax that had formed there. He asked me to repeat my name and when I did the poor sod pulled a rosary from his pocket as if it was defence against the risen dead.
‘I am alive and well, Constable,’ I said.
‘But, sir, your wife came a week or so back with her father. They were both dressed in mourning, she was crying, saying you had been killed in a freak accident. She had all the correct papers. She even showed me letters of condolence and a receipt from the funeral director for your funeral.’
What chance did the likes of me have against Crisp? The only accident here was my own stupidity. I had let myself be plucked up like a fiddle and my strings played to whatever jig Crisp commanded. Oh, he had been masterful, pimping his ‘daughter’, winding me up with the hook of a phantom pregnancy. I had been dangling from his reel far longer than I realised. I was lucky that I had not been gutted. They could have killed me for the money my father had secreted away. But they hadn’t brought me so low that I couldn’t reward them, with my own lack of mercy.
‘I assure you I am William Little, and I believe you have my late father’s effects and money. My father was William Hezekiah Little of Argyle Street, the Rocks.’ She and he would have come, plucky as muck, but they would not have known his middle name.
‘They took everything, sir, I’m sorry. They had the wedding and death certificates, what else could I do?’
‘But there was a box – surely they left me a box?’ Why had they need of my box of treasures? Wasn’t the money enough?
‘I am afraid Mrs Little expressed a request that she have the box to remember you by.’
‘There has never been a Mrs Little, not even my mother,’ I sneered.
The constable pulled out a receipt book and showed me her signature and an address. A splatter of bird shit would have been more legible. But the amount she had signed for seemed very high indeed, much higher than the newspaper had suggested. We had been richer than I could have ever imagined. The little petty policeman trembled as he tapped the ledger over and over again, but it would not bring that money back.
‘We did a thorough search of the flat before returning it to the landlord, and found thousands of pounds stashed away, sewn into pillows, packed into books with their pages removed, in envelopes stuffed in the lining of your father’s coat, slipped behind drawers. Wherever we looked, we seemed to find money.’
I felt the vomit rise. I had been a king in my own castle and had not known it. What had he been doing hoarding it, how long had he had it? We could have lived like men instead of swine rolling in the muck of derelict boarding houses, tormented by the attention of the fleas and the company of the rats who would steal the hair from our sleeping heads to line their nests. How long had he sat upon it, the wealth that could have transformed us both? It was impossible to know – it couldn’t have just been the month it had taken for Crisp to fleece me, could it? He had got to my father earlier somehow and my father had become Crisp’s cat’s paw just as I had. Father and son duped by a crooked bloody spirit.
The constable was glassy-eyed, still caught in Crisp’s hypnotic gaze. What secrets had my father squealed, trapped in thrall to that look? I could have kicked up a stink, I could have cried theft, demanded accountability, submitted a written complaint, but I knew nothing would come of it. I knew then Crisp was smoke. No man would ever come between me and what I wanted again.
From the kitchen window I watched the Jew hurrying from the shed, his overfull schoolboy’s satchel bumping against his hip. He was mounting his search, and he could not move fast enough. Look at him go! The symmetry of my plan flooded me with sweetness. Let him look for the old man, let him search high and low, let him cooee over the treetops and down in the valleys, it would still be futile. He would be lucky if his own voice returned to him as an echo. To put so much faith in one’s family was a mug’s game.
A tidy wind stirred through the yard and with the vigour of a broom brushed the Jew out the gate. I stepped forward into the sunshine and let it wash over me, my spine straightening. I was a giver of help, a friend of the family, and soon to be more, much more, to my Lily of the Valley, lover to that pure bloom, with her lips like a thread of scarlet and her mouth comely. My love, my Lily of the Valley.
THIRTY
Lily
I went back inside, my feet swimming in my soaked shoes, my hair trickling water down my neck. I left my footprints all the way down the hall and up the stairs, but I could not bring myself to care. I felt the shadow of the mountain descend upon me, that deep sad coldness once the sun has disappeared. What was I going to do? I could ask Mr Clay if I could go back to ushering, or I could find another job. Ari had made it clear he would follow his uncle’s wishes, whatever the outcome of his search. But I couldn’t go home, could I? What was there for me now, except my mother’s grief? In my pocket I still carried around the letter I had written to her, explaining and putting things to rights, but I hadn’t yet found the forgiveness in me to post it to her.
I dried myself with a towel, wrapped myself in a blanket and just sat there. Ari’s leaving was so unexpected.
I looked at the package Ari had given me last night, still wrapped in yesterday’s news, a day that felt further away with each minute. What did it matter what I felt? He was gone and would go again. I tore off the paper and found a red bound book in my hands: it was a copy of the biography of Houdini that I had eyed on the roadside. I flipped open the front cover and saw an inscription to Ari from his aunt for an earlier birthday and then, below, yesterday’s date and the words in a hurried hand.
My Shekinah.
What did it mean? I had no one to ask. Was it another magic word? It reminded me of the word emblazoned on the brooch my father had given me before he left for the war. I only could take comfort in the word my – two little letters that were a bridge between Ari and me. I closed the book and slid it back under my bed; I didn’t have the heart to flick through any more pages. I listened to the sounds of the house: the water ticking through the drain, a branch squeaking against the cast-iron balcony, the creaks of the floorboards. Even though no one was home, the house was filled with its own life, so I was not alone.
A knock came, a hesitant rap upon the wood. I leaped up, thinking it might be Ari, but as I opened the door I saw it was Billy, a blond lock of hair falling across his eyes, which he brushed away with a smile.
‘Care to go for a walk? Can’t stay inside all day.’
‘It’s raining.’
‘C’mon, Miss del Mar, bit of rain never hurt anyone. It’s clearing up.’ He pulled open the curtain and the sunlight slanted through the grey. He had come to try and make me feel better, and though I was still angry with him for his foolish costume, I grabbed my coat and followed him down the stairs.
A light rain fell soft as eyelashes over my skin, yet the sun still shone, making the sky a golden contradiction. Billy opened his umbrella and it arched over the both of us. Sap-sticky fig leaves clung tenaciously to the footpath as water coursed through the gutters. We walked in silence, and there seemed to be no need to break it, as Billy led me through the noisy rushing traffic of King Street, until we turned off into a small side street. There before us loomed a church spire,
and Billy paused, his hand on the gate, before he swung it open. It surprised me, for I hadn’t thought of Billy as a religious man. Then I saw the saint for whom the church was named. Saint Stephen. Stephen. My father’s name.
When my father died, my mother retreated to her saints as if they were living, breathing people, more consolation to her than I could ever be. While she was lost one day in her prayers for him, I heard a muffled thump. Investigating, I found a superb fairy-wren stunned from the collision with the window, his brilliant blue body limp, a small flutter tickling my palm. I laid him in a shoebox lined with newspaper and old holey socks. My father had taught me once how to line a box for an injured lorikeet and put it in a warm, dark spot in the laundry.
‘They are fragile things, Til the Lil, so many tiny bones, some fine as hairs. They’ve just knocked themselves senseless against the window, can’t tell their head from their tail. When they are hurt they long to be back in the egg again, so best keep them warm and dark to mend.’ The lorikeet opened his beak and let out an ear-splitting screech.
‘All right now, feathered thing, you’ll be right as rain in no time,’ my father said as he carefully placed the poor green creature in the box and covered him lightly with an old tea towel. While we waited my father told me stories about the old country, where the rain was soft as a kiss, where music could be heard beneath the ground, and where birds could be women in disguise. When we went back, my father and I, and listened at the door, I marvelled, looking up at him quietly. The bird had recovered and was shuffling about, stretching his wings by the sound of it. My father let me do the honours and I held my breath as I slowly swung the laundry door open. The lorikeet paused before swooping out of the door, a bright green screeching exit. ‘You have the knack, my darling. They can trust your gentle hands.’
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