The Beloved

by Annah Faulkner

I looked at them, three on the plate, with two strips of crispy bacon and drizzled over with maple syrup. Something about it all – this perfect breakfast, this sunny morning – was terribly wrong and I was overcome with tiredness.

  ‘I don’t want your pancakes.’ I left the Milo drink on the bench and went to my room. My foot ached. I slumped on the bed and wrenched off my boot, exposing the warped, wasted ugliness. Roberta. Dumb ass. All my life I’d cherished a name that wasn’t mine. It belonged to a stranger. A dead man. I heard the jeep back out of the driveway and rattle along the road below. How could she?

  I went back to the dining room, spread butcher’s paper over the table and drew the outline of my mother’s face with a thick black pencil. Leaving gaps for her eyes and mouth, I filled in the face with black watercolour. But Uncle Bill’s cheap paints left only a dark veil and I wanted black; thick, impenetrable black. I got Vegemite from the kitchen and smeared it on her face, snapped Dad’s razor blades in half for her mouth and eyes.

  Roberta.

  Names defined you. Cripple, Cockroach. Lindsay for my mother’s family, Lightfoot for my father’s, Bertie, CP. Who was I now? I went into my parents’ bedroom. The box was still in my mother’s underwear drawer, along with his ring and deckle-edged photo, upside-down. There was writing on the back:

  Dr Henry Robert Blake.

  I turned the photo over. A man beamed up at me. My heart flip-flopped. He looked like Mama, with the same toffee-coloured skin and ink-black hair. Handsome. Smiling. So nice I wanted to tear his face to pieces. I put him back in the box. As I closed the drawer, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror: Dad’s blue eyes, Mama’s skin and wide mouth. I stifled an urge to spit at myself. I didn’t want to see my mother in me any more, not the cheating mother who’d named me after her lover. I noticed her locket around my neck, its tiny blue forget-me-not and golden centre . . . her dreams. I tugged on the clasp.

  No.

  My locket. My dreams.

  Whoever I was.

  Tim came home at midday and headed for the kitchen. As he passed the dining table he saw my painting and stopped.

  ‘Jesus, Bertie. What the hell’s that?’

  ‘Don’t call me Bertie. Don’t call me Roberta ever again.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Mama named me after her dead . . . lover.’

  Tim blinked.

  ‘His name was Robert.’

  Tim looked as if I’d slapped him. ‘What’ll I call you, then?’

  I dropped my head on my arms. ‘I don’t know.’

  He called me Lindsay.

  ‘Her name is Roberta,’ my mother snapped. ‘That’s what you’ll call her.’

  ‘Her name’s Lindsay too,’ said Tim, ‘and that’s what I’ll call her.’

  Lindsay was okay, better than what my parents were calling each other.

  Dad’s faithful old clock from Melbourne donged eleven long strokes into the night air. I sat in my bedroom chair squeezing Moose’s poor sagging belly, listening to them fight. I had thought I was over toys but I was finding Moose comforting. My parents raged on; they weren’t even trying to be quiet.

  ‘Don’t give me that fidelity crap, Lily May. The only person you were faithful to was Blake. I couldn’t get near you. You couldn’t be touched, you wouldn’t be touched.’

  ‘Well, you’ve certainly made up for it with that Helen-bitch.’

  ‘Don’t you ever call her that.’

  ‘If the cap fits . . .’

  I plugged my fingers into my ears. Dad was right. Mama’s words, however true, sounded so violent and ugly I felt ashamed. I couldn’t imagine Dad with a bitch but I guessed you had to be to steal someone else’s husband. What did bitches look like? Tall, shapely, blonde. Stuck-up. All bitches were stuck-up. She’d be beautiful in a cold way and have hard green eyes you couldn’t trust. And she’d never give a thought to what she was doing to our family. Not that my mother cared what she’d done by naming me after her dead man.

  Moose looked sad. Poor old bear, stuck with his bent ear and that silly name, given to him by my mother. She’d named all my toys: Moose, yellow-haired Margaret and Raggedy Ann, whose name I’d changed to Molly. No doubt I’d only got away with it because I was sick. Not so easy this time.

  ‘Either she goes,’ Mama said, ‘or we do. I’ll take the children back to Canada.’

  I felt the air leave my body.

  ‘The hell you will. You’re not taking my kids anywhere.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Outside, crickets whirred.

  Canada.

  The icy fingers of a prairie wind closed around my heart.

  The next morning as I went to the kitchen for breakfast, the phone rang and I picked it up.

  It was Mrs Breuer. She sounded surprised. ‘Bertie, is that you? Where have you been?’

  ‘You’re back?’

  ‘A week now. Stefi’s keen to see you. Didn’t your mother say?’

  ‘No, Mrs Breuer, she didn’t say anything. But Lily May’s not been quite herself lately, in fact—’

  My mother snatched the receiver from me. ‘Magda? I’m sorry. Yes of course we want to see you. I’ve been so busy with work, but this afternoon’s fine. I will, yes. Bye, for now.’ She hung up and glared at me.

  ‘Don’t call me Lily May, Roberta.’

  ‘Don’t call me Roberta, Lily May.’

  ‘Shut your smart mouth. I’m your mother.’

  ‘And your name is Lily May, Mother, or would you rather I called you Helen?’

  Her hand caught the side of my head, hooking my ear so hard I thought she’d ripped it off.

  ‘Don’t you dare call me that woman’s name!’

  I put my hand up, testing my ear for blood. There wasn’t any, but my hand shook so hard I didn’t know what to do with it. My mother had hit me. It was unbelievable.

  She examined her palm. Maybe it hurt. I couldn’t bear to look at her. ‘If it weren’t for upsetting Stefi,’ she said, her voice wobbling, ‘I wouldn’t take you this afternoon. Your behaviour is appalling.’

  Tim appeared in the doorway, his curls sticking up like a cockatoo’s crest from his bike ride. He looked at us both in turn.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, Tim,’ Mama said. ‘I need to talk to you both. Look, I’m sorry, but it’s likely your father and I will separate. If we do, we three will be going to live in Canada.’

  Tim blinked slowly. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Did you say . . . Canada?’

  For a moment, I felt his confusion. Canada had been just a name to him, as innocent as icing sugar, but now it was real, and as far away from Moresby as you could get. Dad’s clock ticked away the minutes, cars swished around the corner below. Out at sea, the water was glassy, the first pontoon baking under the sun. I’d wanted for so long to come home. Now I wanted to go to sleep and wake up back on the Bulolo, to sail into Fairfax Harbour and find everything the way it used to be. The way it should be.

  ‘We can’t go to Canada,’ said Tim. ‘Stay here and find another house.’

  ‘No,’ said Mama. ‘Moresby’s too small.’

  ‘Melbourne, then.’

  ‘No. Never again.’

  ‘Sydney. Brisbane. Adelaide. I don’t care. Anywhere but Canada.’

  ‘It’s my home.’

  ‘It’s not mine,’ said Tim, and he turned, as stiff as a broom handle, and left the room.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Mama called after him.

  ‘Colin’s,’ he said. ‘Or hell. I don’t care which. They’re both better than Canada.’

  On the drive to the Breuers’, I felt strange. There was something I wanted to say but I couldn’t think what it was. The world seemed a long way off, as if I was looking at it through the wrong end of Dad’s binoculars. My head felt light and disconnected from my body. I leaned forward and connected it with the windscreen, hard. It felt better. I did it again.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  The jeep skidded to a halt. ‘Jesus, Bertie! W
hat is it?’

  Thump.

  ‘Stop!’ She grabbed my shoulders. I wrenched away and lunged again. She locked her arms around my chest. ‘Stop it, Bertie. Stop it . . . Sshhhh, it’ll be okay.’

  Not Bertie. Not okay. I pulled away from her.

  She put the jeep in gear and moved off.

  Mrs Breuer presented her cheek for a kiss. ‘Bertie! So tall; not the little girl any more.’ The familiar smell of Craven A filled my nose. ‘But drágám, such a face. What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m not Roberta any more, Mrs Breuer. Since we found out Mama named me after her dead . . . friend, Dad and Tim have been calling me Lindsay. It’s my second name and Mama says it’s all right as long as I promise not to tell everyone why. I’ll just say I like Lindsay better. That’s right, isn’t it, Mama?’

  Mrs Breuer looked winded.

  Mama tried to smile. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. She can call herself Boofhead for all I care. She’ll always be Roberta. It’s a phase. She’ll grow out of it.’

  Mrs Breuer sucked on her cigarette. ‘So, you’re Lindsay now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember. Now, go and find Stefi. Your mother and I need to catch up.’

  Stefi sat on the side of the bed, her eyes huge. ‘Your mother named you after her lover?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yuck.’ She looked around the room, as if trying to remember something. ‘So you’re Lindsay now?’

  I shrugged. ‘I can’t think of anything else.’

  ‘It’s a bit dull. We could invent something. Go through the Sydney phone book. Plenty of weird names in there.’

  I tried to smile. I was so glad to see Stefi again. She didn’t appear to have changed much, except for sounding tired.

  ‘Is everything all right with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  A wad of photos lay on her desk. I picked them up and began to flick through. She reached for them. ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ I held them out of her reach and went on looking. Photo of a chook, photo of a mangy dog scratching behind its ear, photo of her mother laughing, photo of people at a party in someone’s backyard, photo of my father and a lady with long wavy hair. Smiling at each other. Smiling like they were the only people in the world. My stomach slowly tipped upside down. ‘Who . . . ?’

  Something about it; something about her, was familiar. ‘Who is she?’

  Stefi shrugged.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You do know.’

  She plucked miserably at the chenille bedspread, her fingers like small pecking birds.

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Helen something or other.’

  Not blonde. Hard to tell from a black-and-white photo but not blonde.

  ‘Bertie, let’s—’

  ‘I’m not Bertie.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Stefi, I know my father’s . . . well, I know about her, but you have to tell me—’

  Mrs Breuer’s raised voice interrupted us. ‘You can’t, Lily May!’

  I opened the door an inch so I could hear what they were saying.

  ‘He wants a divorce,’ Mama said, ‘so he can shack up with that tart. After all this time when we’ve finally got a decent life together, he wants to toss me aside. I won’t let him. I’ll fight every inch of the way to keep my family.’

  A match struck, a tink as it hit the ashtray. ‘Men,’ said Mrs Breuer. ‘None of them are faithful.’

  ‘Magda,’ said my mother, ‘are you saying Konrad . . . ?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Good grief. Who?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes! Don’t you care?’

  ‘Yes. No. I used to care very much. Now . . .’

  ‘Why do you put up with it?’

  ‘Stefi needs a father and he’s a good provider. After what we suffered in Hungary, infidelity is not so important. Give it time, Lily May. Ed’s fling will blow over. These things do.’

  A chair creaked. ‘If it’s just a fling,’ said Mama. ‘Whoever she is, she’s got a grip.’

  ‘You don’t know who she is?’

  ‘Only that her name’s Helen. Ed won’t tell me anything. I suppose she’s half my age.’

  ‘No, early thirties, I would think. But he should tell you, you need to know. Moresby’s small and you’re bound to run across her.’

  ‘I’ll bloody well run over her.’

  ‘Her name is Helen Valier. She’s looking after Boroko Books while her brother’s in England on sabbatical. I believe she’s some sort of artist.’

  Tempe’s friend! The book illustrator. I edged closer to the door and opened it further. I hated hearing about Dad and that woman but I had to know. Stefi shook her head, as if it hurt her too.

  ‘Oh, an arty-farty bitch,’ said Mama.

  ‘I wouldn’t say a bitch.’

  For a moment there was silence, then Mama’s voice, smooth as an ice cube. ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘I met her at a birthday party for one of the engineers.’

  ‘My husband and that . . . floozy went together?’

  ‘Not together, no. I think they met there.’

  ‘And left together.’

  ‘I don’t know, Lily May.’

  ‘Turned a blind eye?’

  ‘You know how it is. Nine months on his own, Ed was lonely. It’s different now that you’re back. Moresby’s too small for a wife and a mistress. Even for a man as well-liked as Ed. You’re the wife. If you want to keep him, hang on.’

  I shut the door. ‘A divorce,’ I said. ‘So he can marry a floozy.’

  ‘My mother threatens to divorce my father but nothing’s ever . . .’ Stefi stopped suddenly, as if someone had pulled out her electrical cord.

  ‘Stefi?’ I put my hand on her arm. When she didn’t move I shook it. ‘Stefi, what’s the matter?’

  ‘What?’ she looked up, startled. ‘Nothing. What were we talking about?’

  ‘Divorce. The floozy.’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t marry a floozy.’

  ‘What is a floozy exactly – isn’t it a prostitute?’

  ‘I think so.’ She pulled a dictionary from her bookshelf and flipped through the pages. ‘Here, Floozy. You can spell it with a “y” or an “ie”. A floozy is a disreputable woman. Tart, trollop, strumpet, harlot, hussy, woman of the night.’ Stefi sighed. ‘Crikey.’

  The room seemed suddenly hot. Too hot. I felt dizzy. The thought of my father and that . . . woman doing whatever they did together made me feel sick. ‘I have to go to the toilet,’ I said.

  I went to their dunny in the backyard and sat on the lid in the smelly gloom. Apart from a buzzing fly, it was quiet. I hurt. Everything hurt, even breathing. Dad’s floozy was Tempe’s friend. All I remembered were her beautiful kookaburra sketches and flaming red hair. Now, because of her, my mother wanted to drag Tim and me back to Canada. How could Dad risk losing us? Didn’t he love us more than her? I breathed in the fetid air, lifted the lid, and threw up in the dunny bucket.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The tide was out.

  Ela Beach, mustard and grey and strewn with sea snakes, baked beneath a blood-red sun that dribbled down the shiny butcher’s paper onto the dining table.

  When I’d asked Mama for art paper the day after our visit to the Breuers’, she’d replied in her uppity voice: ‘Art paper? What do you want art paper for? Art paper is for artists.’

  I grabbed another sheet of butcher’s paper and began to draw my mother with her head on upside down. It made her skull pointy, her chin round and covered in a thick black beard. I was wondering what to paint on it next when she stormed through the door.

  ‘Goddamn jeep broke down in the middle of town. John Marsh dropped me back.’ She scowled at my painting. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The baddie.’

  ‘You’re telling me. Why don’t you find something constructive to do in
stead of that self-indulgent crap?’

  ‘What’s the difference between me painting and you taking photos?’

  ‘The difference – are you kidding? There’s no comparison. Photos are real. The camera doesn’t lie.’

  Neither did my painting. But my mother didn’t realise how ugly she’d become. A photo would show her as beautiful as ever but it wouldn’t give you the sound of her voice – not curling, any more, around the long Canadian vowels and rolling r’s – but sharp as a carving knife. A photo wouldn’t show her lips pulled against her teeth ready to hurl insults at Dad the moment he came through the door and a photo wouldn’t show her eyes turning from warm earth to cold stone. My mother was so busy being angry with Dad she wasn’t even trying to stop the floozy from tearing our family to pieces. Someone had to do something. I put aside the picture and rinsed my brushes.

  When the jeep was ‘fixed’ – it had run out of petrol – and Mama had gone out again, I changed my smock, plaited my hair into a single braid and headed for the bus-stop. On the trip to Boroko I composed my message, short and to the point, and by the time I got to the bookshop I had it perfect. My heart hip-hopped in my chest as I opened the door. It was dark inside and for a moment all I could see was a panel of pictures on the wall in front of me, beautiful drawings of African animals – zebras, elephants and gazelles.

  Then her.

  She was serving a man and smiling, but when she saw me her smile faded. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ she said, her voice thick, as if she’d swallowed a dumpling. I watched her tie a parcel of books with string and make a carry-loop. The man slid a pound note across the counter and tipped his hat. ‘Thanks, Helen.’ He left and the shop fell silent.

  She placed her hands on the counter. A small heart dangled from a chain on her wrist. Our eyes locked. Hers were clear amber.

  ‘Hello . . . Lindsay,’ she said.

  Lindsay! So she knew. Dad must have told her. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut about our family? I waited for her to say something else, grovel perhaps. But she simply stood there, holding my eyes with hers. Her eyelashes were as long as bird feathers. Floozy. Tart, trollop, strumpet, woman of the night. After all she’d done, all she could say was, ‘Hello, Lindsay’?