Rex lunges at once and tugs it from her by one corner of braid. “Don’t put your face in it! That thing’s filthy.” He throws it into the corner of the room by the rubbish basket.
“That’s my pillow!”
“Leave it,” Esther says. “I’ll get it dry-cleaned tomorrow.”
“But I need …”
“You don’t need it. I’ll give you one of the front-room cushions.”
“They don’t …”
“Just don’t argue, Jania! Your dinner’s going cold. Sit down.”
The meal is nearly silent, apart from Jania’s sniffles into her chop and the deafening tension twanging between the two grownups. The child can see they are at war and looks from one to the other as if she suspects herself of being the cause. She glances at the cushion rebelliously from time to time, pointedly so that they will notice.
They notice. They are no longer angry at each other but at themselves. They are sad.
WALLACE
I DIDN’T THINK for one moment she’d accept my invitation. Why ask her then? Beats me. Don’t tell me you’ve never done something illogical without thinking about it; someone out there’s moving us all around the chessboard like my father gloating over his clever game. I do things all the time without thinking and other times I think and think and plan and don’t do what I’ve been thinking and planning at all. Just as well sometimes, I think a lot about Claude for instance, about wickedness, I’d be in jail many times over. That’s not what it’s about with Jania, she’s different, I swear — how did I get on to Jania? Esther, it was Esther who accepted my invitation, not that I wasn’t drinking with her to find out about her grandchild, I was doing exactly that, but of course I had to go through the motions, like sales talk, I’m good at going through the motions. You have to lie a little, it’s expected.
We didn’t sit at the bar, she had one of those silly long skirts with a slit but too tight over her bum. We sat at one of those cold shiny tables and I put the bird cage down beside me — he was carrying on a bit — but she said no, no, put it on the table so he can see, so I did and people looked at the bird and some of them smiled.
She asked me how old my daughter was going to be on her birthday and that threw me for a bit, but I came up with a figure. Nine, I told her, but she didn’t leave it there, she wanted a name. You can’t hesitate over a name, you might forget your kid’s age but not her name, so I said the first thing that came into my head.
“Sharon.”
“Sharon? Oh, that’s the name of our babysitter.”
This was dicey because I didn’t know if Jania had told her about meeting me at the play area. I used my lisp to confuse what I said next and then, “I’ve met that Sharon, her mother’s on my books, she always offers me a cup of tea. I have one with her, to keep her company, I think she’s a lonely lady.”
Esther looked embarrassed, would you believe. “I hope you don’t think I’m a lonely lady?”
I didn’t know what to say to that, it was a funny question, so I shook my head and peered in at the budgerigar as if he’d distracted me.
“I expect there’s people, house-bound people, who rely on someone like you for a chat. I think it’s a shame the way old people can die and no one finds them for days and days. Weeks sometimes.”
“That’s right.” How did she know? It did happen to me once — the smell, the filthy clingy pong. I called the police, I don’t like to think about it. “Are you feeling better now?” I ask her.
“How do you mean?”
“You were upset.”
“Oh, yes. Thank you.”
“And Jania? How’s the wee girl?” There. She had to answer that one, didn’t she, but she copied my trick, tapped on the bird cage and made kissing noises at the budgie before she finally came out with —
“She’s fine. She’d love a pet, she’d love something like this but Rex has an aversion. To birds. And cats. Children, too, maybe.” Then she looked right at me and said, “I didn’t want her to come to us in the first place, you know. I haven’t been much of a grandmother. When her father said he was sending her over, just like that, I was angry — was that terrible of me? — using us, I thought. Well, he was. He wanted his freedom for a bit. Rex wasn’t keen either and she’s certainly been a handful, it hasn’t been easy. What about our freedom? I’m a busy person, with work and — you’ll laugh — I’ve been trying to write a novel. And Rex, he’s not well. The last thing we needed was a spoilt child dumped on us. But …”
She went on to say a whole lot more, but I lost it, most of it. Spoilt child! I was shocked that she could talk that way. It wasn’t any more than I’d guessed, but it shocked me having it spelt out. They didn’t want her. Her father didn’t want her. And her mother?
“What happened to her mother?”
She looked irritated then, as if she had already told me, and perhaps she had, I’d stopped listening. “The accident. I just said.”
“Oh, yes. I’m sorry.” Jania’s mother must have been this woman’s daughter. I tried to look sympathetic, I forced that smile on me, that one that doesn’t fit, but it seemed to convince her.
“Her father promised her he was coming over next week, but he isn’t now, he’s let her down again — too busy. I don’t know how she’ll behave when she finds out, and we’ll have to cope with that, won’t we?”
I can’t stand to hear any more of this. I put my hand over her wrist and hold it there, to shut her up. I shouldn’t have done that. She stares at me and stops talking. Then she pulls her hand out and I let it go.
“Wallace, I think you’ve got the wrong idea.” She stands up. “I have to go. I must go home to my family. Thank you for the drink.”
She is gone. And I’m sitting there on my own, blushing like a girl with anger and shock. The bitch! She thought I was making a pass at her, at her! I want to throw up, it’s disgusting.
I go and buy a big block of Caramello at the newsagent and I’m back into sleepwalking, driving in my sleep, I don’t want to think, but you can’t switch off, can you? There’s this Caramello chocolate wrapper lying on the passenger seat but I’m sure I didn’t eat it, I don’t remember eating it. I lick my teeth and there’s a taste of toffee there. I hate it when that happens, I’m losing control.
When you can’t sleep they say the best thing is to get up and do something, perform some boring necessary task, it’s a good idea. Is it a boring necessary task to read the entertainment columns in the newspaper? Fantasy World, Sunday Special, Petite Pandora. This wild child is for you. Naughty Nymph, totally bare where it counts. Auckland phone numbers, no use to me, it makes no odds. Boring, necessary, I am boring myself sick, nothing works, it’s like drinking salt water. I’m dying of thirst. Let me ask you, what do you do when you’re thirsty? Have a drink, right? Good clean water — easy for some.
I check over my list of products, making a list of the gaps, not in my head, in my order book. A useful, necessary task, although I’ve sold nothing this week, not so much as a toothpick. Later when I look I find I’ve written her name.
It’s always worse at night, when the streets are empty, when you know the houses are guarding sleeping bodies, innocent sleeping bodies. Is sleep catching? If I lay down beside innocent sleep, touching, I could sleep, I’m sure I could sleep, I’m so tired. I walk in the street, groaning as if I’m sick, as if I’m the victim of some hit and run. Better if I was. People like me don’t deserve to live in the world, I know that, but I’m here, what should I do? There’s a restaurant I saw advertised on the box — Death By Chocolate. That’s a good one. If it were that easy I’d be six feet under, worm food.
ESTHER IS HAVING trouble with Jania’s medication, as they call it these days. The child doesn’t like it, won’t take it, can see no reason to swallow a vile syrup.
“I’m not sick.”
“No, but you might be if you don’t swallow it.”
This sounds to Jania like a threat, her face wrinkles as if she is about to cry,
but there are no tears. Esther remembers the little girl at three and a half years old sitting up in the hospital bed recovering from the wounds inflicted by a buckled, clapped-out van. There were other wounds, less obvious, the scarring knowledge of her mother’s death, but Jania hadn’t cried then; the nurses had called her brave and crowded her with cuddly toys, only Esther had thought it peculiar. She wondered if Jania understood what had happened, and later she wondered if her grandchild was self-centred or even autistic. There was something off-putting about her self-possession.
The scars of grief might be hard to treat, but at least doctors don’t attempt to fill your veins with a phial of someone else’s poisonous happiness to replace your own. They can’t transfuse a donor’s tranquillity laced with a fatal virus.
“You don’t want me to hold your nose, do you?”
“It tastes funny!”
“Of course it tastes funny. It’s medicine.”
“Can I have … will you give me …?” Jania bargains, thinking hard about what sort of blackmail she might be able to extort. Her mouth has fallen open in thought.
Esther takes this opportunity and lunges with the plastic spoon. When Jania has swallowed and choked her breath back, she screws up her mouth and glares, ugly with hate.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Yes! You tricked me. I thought you were my grandma!”
“I am your grandma. That’s why I want you to take your syrup. And I won’t be held to ransom every time, do you understand? It’s for your own good.” The phrase sounds so meaningless, when it is full of meaning. “Don’t worry, I daresay you’ll get your red bus.” She guesses this is what the child had been about to demand. “For Christmas.”
“Christmas is too late!” This trips a switch in her memory. “I want Daddy to come. I want him to come now — he was going to. Why won’t you let him come?”
“He will. When he’s finished all his work.”
“You don’t like Daddy.”
“That’s silly. Of course, I like your daddy.”
Jania frowns. She watches Esther with suspicion. “Doesn’t Daddy like me any more?”
“Jania! What a silly thing to say, I’m sure he loves you.” Appalled, Esther reaches for the little girl, but she ducks sideways out of her way, butts into Rex who is coming through the door, and slides free of him as well.
“Anyone would think we were trying to poison her,” Esther complains to Rex.
“No need really,” Rex says heavily. “Is there?”
“I hate the way she won’t be comforted. Prue was never like that, she let you give her a hug.”
“She isn’t Prue, she never will be Prue.”
“Don’t be clever, I know what she’ll never be.” She sighs. “I could wring that man’s neck. No.” She glances over her shoulder guiltily. “We mustn’t talk about him, I think she listens.”
In bed, as she is almost dropping off to sleep, she hears her own voice saying again to Jania, “I won’t be held to ransom, do you understand?” Except it is her mother’s voice as well, a shriller voice than her own, which makes her feel uncomfortable, nearly sick. She doesn’t need to dream about her mother on top of everything else. When she was twelve she had had a lot of these dreams, one particularly hateful dream in which her mother was cruelly jabbing something sharp into her side. When she woke it turned out she had started her first period, her stomach hurt; but later when she thought about the dream she remembered her mother’s claw hands sticking into her shoulders. That was real, those claws. Her mother was losing her grip on reality, transferring her grip on to Esther, shaking her till her teeth hurt. Her father explained it to her. She wasn’t to talk about it at school. Like she wasn’t to talk about the ringworm on her arm, which she’d caught from her cat. She wore that like a secret black mark against her character, under a decent flesh-coloured sticky plaster.
Now they have to wear Jania’s black secret, discreetly covered up, for her own sake, for all their sakes.
She hadn’t really sounded like that to the child, had she? Shrill? A voice that clutches at you?
WALLACE
I DIDN’T PLAN it, well, not like I plan my Rawleigh’s day: so much by car, so much on foot, where to cross the road to save covering the same ground twice. I know all the shortcuts, the right-of-ways, there’s only so much time, so much shoe leather, you can’t muck about. Except this time it didn’t matter. I’d given myself permission. I needed a break. In the early morning the rubbish trucks are on the streets; the men in black T-shirts running in and out of the houses with stinking loads to feed the monster — I used to be scared that’s where they’d put me when I was too young to understand — in the monster’s mouth. They call out to each other and to me, so I wave and put my head down and walk faster until I’m nearly at Jania’s house. I’ve left the car right round the corner, that wasn’t planned either but it’s a good thing I did, I do get some things right. If I don’t try. It’s like my tongue, I think he was wrong about that, it’s when I don’t try that I talk best, and he was always at me for not trying, wasn’t he?
When I see her front door ajar it jolts me. I go light in the head. I don’t know what I think exactly, yes I do, I think it’s like a trap. Why leave your front door open at sparrow fart unless you want to catch a robber, catch a Rawleigh’s man without his briefcase? It’s a queer thing to do — unless there’s someone outside in the garden, hiding doggo under the gum tree, watching me? I don’t panic, I just freeze there by the hedge, dead still, waiting for something to move, and nothing moves. I can’t go past the open door now, it’s too dangerous. I do a sort of crab walk to get myself out of the way and take the roundabout route to where I’ve left the car parked. It’s unlocked, that’s not like me either, I haven’t left a car unlocked since I became the Rawleigh’s man and had valuables to think of. Those jars and potions add up, you wouldn’t believe it.
The sky was the colour of my purple jersey only half an hour ago, now it’s so faded you can almost see through it, it’s going to be a blue sky day. It makes me feel hopeful for a minute or two as if something good might happen, as if I’d got it all wrong before, and as it turns out that minute or two is spot on. I’ve got my front teeth in a Mars Bar, driving myself slowly past the bus shelter and bang! There she is! She’s sitting there in her little red riding coat waiting for me as if I’m a bus!
“Hello there!” I say, falling over myself to get the car door open. “You’re up early, are you going somewhere?”
“Yes.” She has this zip sportsbag on the wooden seat beside her, quite a big bag. “I’m going to see my daddy.”
“Are you sure? The buses aren’t running yet, it’s a bit early.”
Her face goes unfriendly for a second, then it wrinkles up as if she’s got a pain. I can’t bear it if she’s going to cry.
“Jump in. I’ll take you somewhere, shall I?”
“Yes please. Auckland Airport,” she says, as if I’m a taxi driver. “Or is that too far?”
I want to say, nowhere’s too far for you, little one, but instead I tell her that it is rather. Why don’t we go to my place and she can tell me why she wants to run away. At first I think she won’t do it, the way she looks at the dashboard and doesn’t answer me, but then she pipes in that clear high voice she has — “I want to go to Daddy!”
“You’re not running away?”
“Yes.” She gives a big sigh and sort of collapses in her seat and then she perks up — “Will your little girl be there — and the budgie?”
“I expect so.” I start to lie and then I think, no, I can’t start off lying to her, and I correct this, “Well, no, she’s away just now on holiday, but the budgie’s there. He’s called Joey.”
“Okay.”
“How long had you been sitting in that bus shelter?”
She shivers, I’ve reminded her how cold it is at this time of the morning. “Dunno.”
“You left your front door open.”
; It doesn’t surprise her that I know this, I feel like God. She giggles at me.
“’Cos it makes a click.” She giggles again, she’s starting to relax because this is an adventure. I feel like Father Christmas.
While I’m driving I’m trying to remember what sort of a state I’ve left the flat in. I’d had a go at tidying the kitchen and it wasn’t too bad anyway after my big clean up. I must have known she was coming. The bedroom’s a tip, newspapers everywhere and dirty clothes, but we won’t go in there. There’s the other room if she wants to lie down, I guess I’d have enough blankets to make up the bed. I’m thinking about it as if she’s moving in and I start to hum as I drive, “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.”
You can’t have the least idea how I feel, rolling along with this precious bundle on the front seat and she starts to sing with me, she knows the song. She moves her little knees, so delicate and naked, jigging in her seat to the tune. I hold on tight to the wheel, I won’t let go, I need to be in control. I’m rescuing her, I’m going to look after her, poor wee girl, keep out the cruel world as much as I can. I understand, I remember what it is to be little, it’s true, sometimes I feel no older than nine years old, eleven at most. But today I’m her Daddy! I’m the Wizard of Oz!
THEY ARE STILL looking for her at three in the afternoon. Because the little girl has run away several times before — Esther was bound to confess this to the police — a feeling of optimism has infected the official inquiry, slowing it down like a heavy cold — or so Esther feels. She can’t accept the police optimism. Before making the call to them she had visited all the usual, possible places, not forgetting the public toilets, while Rex drove further afield, taking it seriously like herself. Why is it so much graver on this occasion? Jania’s sinister syrup and its measuring cup sit on the kitchen shelf, testifying to the gravity of her absence. This is a piece of information Esther has withheld so far. The fact that the green zip bag is missing along with items of clothing, these are good signs, they tell her. Signs of a stubborn little girl, well organised, with a plan in mind. Where would she go? A relative? A friend? Sharon’s mother is no help. The school is no help, although Mrs Flett reports seeing a man with a bicycle hanging about on more than one occasion, but she can’t describe him usefully beyond noting that he wasn’t Polynesian.
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