by Beale, Fleur
‘Just a cup of tea. Thanks, Min.’
This was weird and horrible, her being all sick and polite. I bet if the guy she’d done it with could see her now he wouldn’t be so quick to … A whole dictionary of nasty words for copulation zinged through my brain, but I couldn’t bring myself to apply them to my own mother. Who was he? Why had she done it? The same old questions.
It would be good to be outside for a while, away from her, and I wasn’t going to try to find Dad and Noah either.
I got my tramping boots out of their box and grabbed the camera. At the door of my room I stopped. I had time to show Seb (and the world) that I hadn’t gone feral, isolated as I was. I turned back into my room, applied make-up and styled my hair. Then, not to waste the effort, I did a video diary explaining that I was about to take my viewers on an Island Tour with a commentary.
As it happened, the first examples of island wildlife I saw were not exotic or even unusual.
‘Behold! Wildlife!’ I told Lizzie, Jax and Addy via the camera. ‘Are sheep wildlife?’ They didn’t hang about to chat so I decided they were. ‘I reckon there must be about thirty of them.’ I zoomed the camera in on a woolly back. ‘D’you reckon Dad knows about them?’ I watched them scuttle away. ‘Run, sheep! Dad might turn you into roasts if you’re not careful.’
I did a circuit of the island, giving an intelligent, quirky running commentary as I went. The camera and I saw steep cliffs and I hoped my shots would make the viewers so dizzy they’d spew because I went to some trouble to snake my way to the very edge in three different places. I held the camera over space so it caught the waves crashing on to the vicious rocks at the bottom. ‘I sure hope helicopters don’t go out of fashion. I don’t fancy our chances of shimmying down there and swimming for it.’
I did a chatty walk down the old access path. ‘This is steep. A gradient of one in two. Ms Wiley — she’s my Maths teacher,’ I told the camera in a confidential tone, ‘doesn’t believe in multitasking — Minna, you cannot learn if you never stop talking is what she says. But I’ve just proved that you can. Gradient — one in two. Which equals a driveway you wouldn’t believe. Personally, I’m pretty rapt with the invention of the helicopter.’ I lay face down on the path at the edge of the slip and filmed the view down to the sea. ‘It’s a shame we can’t get down to the sea though. Looks like a reasonable bit of beach down there.’ It was small — about as long as a netball court — but big enough to lounge on in the summer.
Summer felt like a long time away. Then I cheered up — Mum would be better long before summer. I climbed back up the path.
Next, I did a cross-section. I parked the camera on a fence post and crouched in front of it. ‘Did you hear that, Mr Sykes?’ He was my Social Studies teacher and quite into sarcasm. ‘Something did soak into my brain. You stick with me now and I’ll take you on a transverse cross-section of Isolation Island.’
That particular cross-section took me through a patch of scrubby trees all bent and twisted by the wind. ‘Not the only things bent and twisted on this island right at this moment,’ I said, wondering if Dad’s frame of mind was smoothing out any.
My foot hit a hole. ‘Ouch! My goodness, how lucky is it that I’m sensibly wearing my strong and durable tramping boots? Dad would not be thrilled if I joined Mum in the lying down flat and doing nothing game.’
There were holes all over the place under the trees. The ground was bare and stank of bird shit. Not an attractive place. I wondered who lived here but a couple of trees and a pack of holes further along I solved the mystery. One of the blue birds lay dead and cold in the dirt at the base of a tree. I crouched down and touched its feathers. ‘Poor little blue bird. You haven’t got the most brilliant radar, have you? You flew smack-bang into this tree, you poor little thing.’
I came across a couple of others as I crossed the pitted ground. One of them was on its back. The blue birds had white tummies.
I left them where they’d fallen and continued my cross-section by climbing over a fence into what turned out to be a sheep paddock, but the sheep didn’t seem to like me and took off. There was a murky pond. There was a big shed. I went inside. ‘Rusty stuff. Bits of wood. Something old with a dead engine.’
I don’t know what made me go right to the back wall, but I did, clambering and scrabbling my way over all the junk and what do you know — there was Noah’s second stash. This one was the actual plants. Six of them about fifteen centimetres high and carefully planted in those black plastic bags you see at the supermarket with basil and parsley growing in them.
I wondered if he’d brought potting mix with him as well. I stirred with a finger. ‘Yes,’ I told the camera. ‘Potting mix, I reckon, because it sure isn’t that scabby dirt from under the trees out there. And it’s been watered today.’ I sat back on my heels and thought about what to do. To be honest, I didn’t think for very long. Bloody bastard Noah. He was my brother. I needed him and I needed his brain. I stood up and kicked the plants to bits. I trampled on them till I was sure and certain there wasn’t a shred of a chance they’d ever grow again.
I picked up the camera, climbed back over the junk and went back to the house, the camera swinging from my hand and filming the ground. I didn’t care. ‘Bloody Noah!’ I yelled. ‘My entire sucky family are traitors. Mum’s the worst and Dad ought to talk about it, but when did Dad ever talk about anything except stupid ecology and the dumb environment? And I bloody hope Noah rots in hell. Stoner! Useless stoner brother.’
I switched the camera off because yet again I was bawling.
Sandwiches for lunch. The afternoon stretched out like the longest road in the world ahead of me. I wished I had some DVDs to watch, or a book, or my friends. Dangerous ground, to think of Lizzie, Jax and Addy. I couldn’t even let myself think about Seb. What could I do? Boredom. Loneliness.
I looked at Mum. I’d even be quite pleased to talk to her right now. I tried it. ‘Mum. I’m bored.’
‘Yes.’ That’s all she said. A great help.
Food. Didn’t people eat from boredom? I ratted around in the pantry. There were enough supplies in there to feed an army — or a family of four-point-something for a month. Which brought me to the question of dinner. Part of me fought like hell against the idea of cooking. Like, why should I, and why me? But the bored and hungry parts won. I picked up packets of stuff — rice, lentils. ‘Hello lentils. Nice to meet you. I don’t believe we know each other.’ I put them back. Macaroni, spaghetti, some sort of dry stuff called soup mix, sugar, flour, sauces, tins, tomato paste and a whole lot more.
I settled for the macaroni. It had a recipe on the packet for macaroni cheese which was good because I didn’t trust that old Edmonds book with its falling-out pages.
I cooked, I did the listening watch, and by the time Dad and Noah rolled in, the macaroni cheese was looking pretty damned good in the oven. I knew it had lumps in it, and that the macaroni had kind of fallen to bits when I mixed it with the sauce, but they could discover that for themselves.
Dinner went like this. ‘You’ve done well, Min,’ from Dad. He left the lumps lined up around his plate.
‘Only because I wanted to eat. Don’t get big ideas about me being the cook.’
Silence from Noah.
‘That was good, Min. Thank you,’ from Mum. She ate a teaspoon-sized bit.
Five minutes of silent chewing.
I deemed it time to liven up the party. ‘Noah, I found your plants.’
Kapow, boom!
‘What plants?’ Dad demanded. ‘Noah? Did you hear me? What plants?’
Me (all friendly and chatty): You might as well tell him because I kicked them to bits.
Noah howled and lunged across the table at me. Dad roared at him. ‘Sit down!’ He grabbed Noah in a headlock and wrestled him back on to the chair.
Wow! I hadn’t counted on violence from my beloved sibling.
He snarled at me and spluttered like a drunk turkey, but he was slightly handicapped b
y not having the moral high ground. What he was standing on was as full of holes as the ground under the trees and his brain had cleared enough in his three days of enforced abstinence for him to know it.
‘Bitch!’ he hollered.
I got up from the table, leaving my plate right where it was. ‘You better believe it, brother. And you can do the dishes.’
And so ended another day of riveting television from the Hargreaves family.
fifteen
In the morning Dad was making breakfast when I hit the kitchen. The room was warm, it smelled of bacon, eggs sizzled in the pan — what a picture of domestic harmony. I hope the cameras caught it all because the camera never lies.
Mum was still in bed and there was no sign of Noah, surprise surprise. Dad disappeared and I could hear the murmurings of calm and patient from him and exactly nothing from Noah. Dad reappeared. Noah snarled his way into the room not too many minutes later.
‘You stink,’ I said.
Dad sniffed. ‘Go and have a shower, son.’
Noah sat down — didn’t grunt, didn’t answer, didn’t shower.
‘Breakfast after your shower,’ Dad said, doing calm and patient again.
Noah got up but headed for the pantry not the bathroom. ‘Where’s the bread?’
Well, well — here was another delightful surprise. We’d eaten all the bread and when that happened, we had to make our own.
‘Why didn’t you say something last night?’ I asked Dad. ‘We could’ve put the breadmaker on.’
He tried for a hearty grin but to my expert eye, it was just a touch frazzled round the edges. ‘There’s no breadmaker, Min. We do it by hand.’
He was learning something, I guess. He hadn’t said you — meaning me — do it by hand.
Noah must’ve been hungry. He tried to score some bacon. Dad fended him off. ‘Shower then food.’
Noah caved, but it’s my bet that not a molecule of soap touched his skin. He came out with wet hair and the stink intact. Dad gave him food.
‘Dad,’ I said, ‘do not even think about leaving me here by myself to make bread.’ I glared at him.
He glanced out the window, then at the sofa where Mum hadn’t yet appeared. ‘All right. Just this once. Till you get the hang of it.’
I smiled and felt as dangerous as a shark. ‘I’ll make it every third time.’
‘Grow up, Min.’ No calm and patient for me.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘From where I’m sitting, grown-up doesn’t have a lot going for it.’ I could have said a lot more — like if I had to grow up then I wanted my boyfriend with me and seeing as how he and Mum weren’t using the double bed, then could Seb and I have it? But in the interests of self-preservation I opted for, ‘I’ll feel like growing up when you sit down and talk to me about what’s going to happen with this family.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ he said and shut his mouth with a snap that Lizzie, Jax and Addy probably heard at home in their nice, warm houses that had telephones and computers and life.
Dad made Noah help him make bread. I did the listening watch. Dad found a jar of yeast in the pantry, which apparently you need for bread, and lucky for us it had a recipe on its label just like the macaroni had. It takes even longer to make bread than it does to cook a roast, and when it’s cooked, it’s awful — solid and sticky in the middle.
‘If we had a computer we could look up how to make bread,’ I said.
‘Well, we haven’t,’ Dad said. ‘Come on, Noah, we’ve got work to do.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Noah said.
Dad chucked the loaf of ugly bread into the backpack. ‘We’ll eat on the job.’ This could possibly have been a result of Mum turning up and collapsing on to the sofa twenty minutes before the bread was cooked.
‘How’s the meat?’ I yelled to his disappearing back. Must have been fine because he didn’t come back and say it was or it wasn’t. I didn’t go and check.
Another day to fill. I did the Mum chores and the chicken chores — had a nice little chat with the chooks, collected six eggs. ‘Good chooks,’ I told them. They chatted back and I gave them another weed to supple ment their otherwise boring diet which, so Dad assured me, was wheat and more wheat.
Which took me back to considering our diet. What I craved right now was bread and meat. ‘It’s just because I know I can’t have them,’ I told the camera, ‘but man — do I want them.’
I wandered back into the house and had a moan to Mum before I remembered I wasn’t talking to her. Oh, what the hell, there was going to be plenty of time not to talk to her when we got off this bird-shit place.
‘Make some bread,’ she said in that faint voice.
‘No point,’ I said. ‘That stuff Dad made was a disaster. We should’ve brought a breadmaker.’
‘Try,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll help.’
By which she had to mean tell me things rather than get up and dance around the kitchen. Oh well, why not? The idea of producing a fantastic loaf of bread and waving it in Dad’s face appealed. I set to work.
Turns out that Dad had been a tad on the impatient side. He hadn’t given the yeast enough time to rise. He hadn’t kneaded the dough enough — I quite liked the kneading — very tactile and my hands came out soft and clean although I decided not to think about what was now in the bread that used to be on my hands. And last of all, Dad hadn’t cooked it long enough.
‘Give it a sharp tap,’ Mum whispered, ‘It should sound hollow if it’s cooked.’
I did and it did. Minna Hargreaves, baker extraordinaire! I pulled it out of the oven and put it to cool on the table. Damn but it smelled good.
Mum smiled at me. ‘Well done, Min.’
I grinned at her, I was so pleased with myself. ‘You want a bit while it’s hot?’
She closed her eyes. ‘No. Thanks.’
She looked ghastly, worse than yesterday. Was morning sickness hereditary? Never have babies, Minna, just in case. I crouched down beside her. ‘Mum? You look real bad. Can I get something?’
Her eyes were still shut. ‘It’s just the smell. Turns my stomach. Don’t worry. Be okay soon.’
Yeah right. I carried the bread into my bedroom and shut the door on it. The only thing to do was open the doors and windows in the kitchen and blow the smell away and since there was a bit of a wind it didn’t take long.
I had bread for lunch. I swear it was the best bread ever, what with the butter melting through it. I thought of Dad and Noah and the ugly bread. ‘Enjoy,’ I shouted.
They came back at 4.25 by the kitchen clock, one minute after I’d decided that I was as musically talented as I was artistically.
‘I’m hungry,’ Noah grunted.
‘What’s for dinner?’ Dad asked, back turned to Mum.
I put the guitar down. ‘Whatever you want to cook.’
That didn’t go down any better than I bet the ugly bread had. Noah snarled, attacked the pantry and vanished along with a packet of gingernuts.
Dad sat down at the table, gave a sigh that was pure theatrics, hauled out some calm and patient and said, ‘Minna, this is not the most ideal of situations. I’m asking you to please make the best of it. I need your cooperation here.’
I sat down across from him. ‘Dad — I’ll start cooperating as you call it, although I reckon I’ve done a heap more cooperating than some people around here. Anyway, I’ll do it when you start talking to me about what’s going to happen to us.’ Challenge issued. Cards on the table. Gloves off. Eyeball to eyeball.
Did he take it up? No. ‘Minna, how many times do I have to tell you — there’s nothing to discuss. We’ll sort it out when we get home. Finish. End of story.’ He held up a hand. ‘No. Don’t say anything — you know what I expect of you. It’s not for long, just bite the bullet and do it.’
Well, we were into clichés and no mistake. I got up. No way was I going to tell him there was three-quarters of a loaf of the best bread in the world sitting in my bedroom, and if he thought h
e could get away with steamrollering me, he was in for a disappointment.
He stood up. ‘I’m going to check the meat. You sort something out for dinner.’
All right, Daddy darling — lesson coming up in how to cooperate while not cooperating. I grabbed the big bag of rice from the pantry and dumped it on the table. I chose the rice because it didn’t have any helpful recipes printed on it, and it didn’t give any hint of how to cook it.
He came back.
‘We’re having rice,’ I said.
‘Good. But I want you and Noah outside for a bit. The meat’s coming along well, but we need to turn it to get air to the bits that have been under the pegs.’ At least he didn’t ask me to get Noah. I got the camera instead and obediently trotted outside, like the good little girl I wasn’t.
Noah came, snarling and crunching. We went outside, a merry threesome, a picture of family harmony and togetherness. I sat on the verandah and pointed the camera down the line.
‘Leave it, Min, and come and help.’ Dad.
‘You do your job and leave me to do mine.’ Me delivering a masterly thrust because it was good for him to be reminded that this whole farce was his grand idea.
He turned his back and gave Noah a hurry up.
They worked, I filmed. I was about to shut the camera off when we heard a noise — a deep throbbing carried on a hell wind.
‘What’s that?’ Noah spoke! I aimed the camera at him. Was I getting my brother back?
‘Don’t know,’ Dad said. They stopped working and we all stared upwards to the hills. We didn’t have to wait long for the answer to the mystery.
A cloud of the blue birds with the white tummies zoomed over the tops of the hills, down the valley, all of them carried on a blast of wind. They cruised towards us, hundreds and hundreds of them. I filmed them hurtling onwards, blown on the wind or flying — or maybe a mixture of both. They darkened the sky and then they were over our heads and the wind that carried them hit us and tore at our hair and clothes. It swiped the camera sideways in my hands.