there were fewer silences than there might have been during that first shared meal. hope prised open the tiny doors of my caged heart. twice now manny had seen me fitting. twice he had not turned his back. he had listened to fragments of my stumbling speech and begged me to speak again. his wanting to listen made no difference to my speech. it was no clearer, quicker or more fluent. my words did not sound like birdsong or poetry. but manny watched me and waited while i spoke. asked me when he didn’t understand. laughed with us when we laughed at my mumblings and his misunderstandings. that night we had everything we needed – food for our hunger and conversation for our souls.
when our meal was ended and when manny was swallowed up by the night, joey helped gram upstairs to her bed. i lay myself across my grandfather’s table, held up by the lion’s paws. put my cheek to the timber. smelt the beeswax. my tears became rivers and streams shaped by the names of my family. i cried because manny had come, had given me hope. because of him i tried to forgive those absent for leaving. those present for having so little faith in me.
37 MANNY
Shame
Louisa James wanted to know where I had been. I did not tell her that I saw Alice on the couch or how worried I had been about what might happen if the others saw her. There are some words that you do not say in front of a lady like Louisa James. I could not repeat what I heard those boys call Alice. Most of all I was ashamed that I had not tried to stop them. I could not tell her that.
‘I have to catch up with the coach,’ that is what I told those other boys before I sped off down the river track. I guessed that Alice would have to go through the railway waiting room, and that if I ran fast enough I would meet her before she got home. I wanted to know if she was all right.
I cannot forget how Alice looked when I found her. Her bright hair was ragged, her dress was torn and her face was white as rice. But I did not speak of these things to Louisa James.
‘Her arms and legs jerked and I could only see the white part of her eyes. It was an awful thing to see, Louisa James. There were many people in that waiting room. Some of them stared, but most of them pretended they did not see. Not one of them offered to help. That is a fact.’
‘Perhaps they were afraid, Manny. Some people are, you know. You could have phoned me. I mightn’t work now, but once a nurse, always a nurse. You can count on me, Manny. Any time.’
‘I know that, but there was no time.’
‘How did you know what to do?’
‘I am not sure if I did. I remembered what I saw her brother do and copied him. Then I waited with her until it was over.’
‘You’ve seen it happen before, then? You know these people?’
‘I did not know them that first time. It happened at football training. The girl used to go to ballet lessons. I was waiting to go in to the hall when she . . . when it happened.’
‘Well, I’m pleased you stopped to help, Manny. Proud of you. Her parents must have been very grateful when you took her home.’
‘I . . . they were not there. Only her brother and the old lady.’
‘Her grandmother?’
‘Yes, her grandmother.’
‘So they live near the station?’
Louisa James wanted to know more than I was ready to tell her.
‘Does it matter where they live?’ I said, and straight away I knew I sounded rude.
‘Of course not. I thought you knew me better than that, Manny.’
I loaded the dishwasher. Then I opened my homework but it was very hard to concentrate. I had disappointed myself, twice over. I was a weak person. I had promised myself I would protect Alice, but I had not tried to stop those boys calling her names. And now I had spoken rudely to Louisa James. Kind Louisa James who would not hurt anyone. That is one thing I knew for sure. But I wanted to keep Alice to myself for a while longer.
Cocoa repairs many problems. This is one of the beliefs of Louisa James. Sharing cocoa with another person repairs even more problems. That is another one of her beliefs. While I was trying to do my homework, Louisa James made two mugs of cocoa. Then she switched on the television and patted the red leather couch beside her. There are many things to learn in a new land. Some of those things have no words at all. I do not think a word exists that describes the meaning of two mugs of cocoa, the television speaking softly in the background and the hand of Louisa James patting the red couch beside her. This was a new language. I learnt it with my eyes and with my heart. All of these things together meant, Come, sit beside me, I have forgiven you. Now, forgive yourself.
Forgiving myself always was the hardest thing. I watched the news with Louisa James. I saw the pictures but I did not hear the words. I was thinking about that old couch at Charlotte’s Pass and I was wishing I had been sitting on it with Alice, so I could have protected her. I did not know how. Perhaps we would have been invisible to everyone else. When I was with her I felt as though we were the only two people in Bridgewater. Then a thought came to me. Why had Alice been sitting on the sofa? This was something I had not thought about before. The news finished before I could reach a conclusion. Louisa James pointed the remote control at the television and commanded it to be quiet.
‘Your friends are always welcome here, Manny,’ she said.
‘Yes, I know,’ I answered.
‘Your new friends too, the girl . . . what did you say her name was?’
If Louisa James had not been a nurse, she would have made an excellent detective. That is because she was good at asking questions. A good memory is also an important thing for a detective to have. Louisa James could remember almost all the names of the Bridgewater babies she had helped to deliver. But that is something I did not know when we were sitting on the red couch repairing ourselves with cocoa and Louisa was asking me the names of my friends.
‘Alice,’ I answered, and it felt good to say her name aloud. ‘Her name is Alice and her brother is called Joey. But they are not really my friends, just people I have met.’
‘Well if ever . . . ’
‘I know, Louisa James,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
Louisa James is a very smart person. Instead of always asking questions she sometimes told me things instead. She made them into stories, like my father did, so that I would remember them.
‘We didn’t always live in this house, you know,’ she told me when our cocoa was almost gone. ‘Michael’s parents divorced when he was thirteen years old. He was the oldest of seven, the youngest was still in nappies. His mother worked two jobs and Michael took care of everything else. I think that’s where he got the name Bull. He just went at everything head-on. He was only eighteen when he started his earthmoving business. All he had was a crowbar, a pick and shovel, and a hired trailer. His motto, “Bull James Moves Mountains”, was like a prediction of the man he’d become. There’s no shame in being poor, Manny,’ said Louisa James, ‘none at all.’
She always left the most important thing until the end of her story. That was the thing she wanted me to remember. Sometimes it took a long time for me to understand what her stories were really about. I understood that this story was not just about Bull. Louisa James was telling me that I did not have to feel bad because my family was poor. That is what I thought, and I wondered if I should tell her that I did not know my family was poor until I came to the house of windows.
But if I had known, then, about Louisa James’s very good memory of the names of the babies, I might have guessed that she was also talking about Alice and Joey.
38 ALICE
troubled
‘that boy is troubled,’ gram said on the morning after manny had sat at old charlie’s table.
‘i thought you liked him,’ i said.
‘it’s got nothing to do with whether i like him or not. we just don’t need no more trouble in this house.’
her breath rasped and she huddled close to the stove. i was angry but i bit my tongue. if i wanted manny to come again, i’d have to be careful not to upset my gran
dmother. besides, she had ways of knowing that other people didn’t have.
i remembered the look i’d seen in manny’s eyes that first time. the day i lay on the small grassy hill near the bicycle rack outside the scout hall, when he gave joey his handkerchief to wipe my face. i thought he was afraid. frightened of me the way other people were when i had seizures. last night proved he wasn’t.
i hoped gram wasn’t right. i should have warned manny not to let glorious nightingale hold his hand. should have told him to do his looking anywhere but at her. but i was not properly back from where i’d been. my thoughts were foggy. unwisely i left the room, and manny with his hand held in my grandmother’s, while i went to tear off my rags and tatters and clean my knees.
while i was worrying about what gram said, joey came into the kitchen wrapped in a towel. he spread honey on his toast and licked the knife and said, ‘he was probably just nervous’, and i loved him all over again. not for daring to disagree with gram but for defending manny. i stepped outside and into my boots and ran, full of glee and anger, down to the woodheap where i could not hear what my grandmother said.
troubled. what is troubled? i asked myself as i picked up the axe. i swung it above my shoulder and drove its blade down. down into the grey box and into the yellow box. and down again into the stringy bark.
troubled is the faulty functioning of a mechanism of the mind or body. i’d memorised this explanation from the dictionary. alliteration can work like a remembering tool for people with damaged electrics. and even for people whose electrics work perfectly fine most of the time. faulty functioning, mechanism of the mind – simple.
in my own words: when the equipment that makes your body or mind work is damaged, people often describe you as being troubled. it was plain to see that manny’s body worked just fine, so what kind of ‘troubled’ had gram seen in his eyes? what other sort was there, except mine? if i had read further in the dictionary, i would have found troubled described this way: to be disturbed or worried.
perhaps then i would have turned to page 231, where i would have discovered that to be disturbed is to be: emotionally or mentally unstable or abnormal.
a dictionary is like a map made of words. who knows where these might have led me? maybe to gram, who trusted no one and tried to even out life’s ups and downs with cheap wine.
some of my body machinery worked perfectly. i smelt sap and felt rhythm in my shoulders. the axe head buried itself in the sweet, dry timber. the thud of metal and the splintering of wood sailed up my arms in rivers of quick-running blood. anger oozed with sweat from my pores. i pushed a barrow-load uphill and stored it under the house. wheeled another onto the verandah. stacked it outside the wash-house door. i was good and tired and emptied out when i carried the last armful inside.
gram had dozed off by the fire. she slept less and less often in her bed. preferred to sit by the fire, sipping endless mugs of scalding water poured from the swan’s-neck spout of the kettle. i reminded myself to talk to joey about moving her bed into the kitchen before autumn was ended. i shoved the wood deep into the belly of the stove. kissed the top of my grandmother’s head and wondered if love and hate were twins.
while gram slept, i took the dictionary down. turned to the page where troubled was also described as: to be disturbed, worried or upset by something unpleasant. i wondered if it was normal for a fifteen-year-old girl to ask a boy if some unpleasant thing was disturbing, worrying or upsetting him.
when joey left for school, i walked with him. his small gesture of siding with manny had made a difference. together we strolled through the orchard. our feet shuffled the scarlet leaves and the orange. the early air iced the backs of our throats. we were almost to the fence when joey said, ‘when are you going to bring manny home again?’
my heart slammed against the cage of my bones.
joey looked at my bright cheeks and laughed and said, ‘i might ask tilda, too!’
his smile was gorgeous, generous and rare. he was gone through the hole in the fence before i could speak.
i walked proud that may morning. proud i’d brought manny home, maybe not with words, but he had come – and it was for me he came. i didn’t let myself think he might have done the same for any fallen-down person. joey, with all his words and charm and learning, had brought no one home. he spent more and more time away from our place. sometimes, when i looked at his lettering on the bridge, i felt forsaken. joey was with tilda, i was almost sure. but the way he looked at me that morning, and the things he said, made me feel as though i truly was fifteen. truly his older sister. and our separateness did not hurt quite so much.
all the way home, i planned what we would do, me and manny. all the things i would show him, the places i would take him, the secrets we would share. i imagined gram falling under manny’s spell the way i had. she’d say, ‘tell that boy of yours to get himself down here. i’ll make beef stew with suet dumplings tonight.’
i never considered my grandmother shutting manny out. out of our conversations. out of her heart. i never thought we might have to wait until she was asleep by the fire. that we would creep upstairs like thieves in the night and sit on the roof under the stars. or lie in the boat under the house with the other hidden things: the book of kells, the cadbury’s roses tin and the double-barrelled shotgun. i never wanted to hide. hiding is what people do when they are afraid or ashamed. i was neither.
39 ALICE
forgotten thing
the air cooled. leaves crisped and curled. i chopped barrow-loads of firewood. frustration greased my joints. made the axe swing smoother. blistered my palms. but i could not decide how to invite manny to our home again. i blamed the bridgewater bombers. after what happened at charlotte’s pass, i never wanted to be near them again. would not go to the scout hall or sit on the lost couch in the field of significant weeds. this was caution, i told myself. i was no coward. letting manny hear me speak was proof of that.
even joey made me mad. twice in the past few weeks he’d brought tilda home. they’d sat at papa’s table. made manny’s empty place stand out. gram talked to tilda while she was there and kept her mouth shut when she was gone. said nothing to joey about tilda bringing trouble.
‘what about family business?’ i said to joey after tilda left the second time. ‘i thought we were supposed to keep quiet about family.’
‘you brought manny,’ he pointed out.
‘i didn’t ask. he just came. brought me home because you weren’t there!’ anger hissed out of me.
‘i can’t be with you all the time, alice. anyway, i know you wanted him here.’
his voice turned to caramel. ‘why don’t you ask him?’ he urged me again.
‘too many people at dancing,’ i answered. my voice had lost its fire and i couldn’t mention charlotte’s pass.
‘write to him. you’re always writing. go on, write and i’ll give it to him.’
‘what about family business?’
‘manny’s only interested in you, and tilda won’t say anything.’ my cheeks grew warm again and my tongue felt too big for my mouth. i wished manny and me could be like joey and tilda – nothing seemed to worry them, stopped them doing what they wanted to.
‘how do you know she won’t talk?’ i said.
joey upped his shoulders and turned away.
‘i just know.’
‘but what if she does tell.’
‘tells what? tells who?’
‘maybe her father . . . you said he’s a policeman. what if she tells him i don’t go to school? what about gram? how old she is. her breathing.’
i didn’t want to think about what would happen next. or speak of it. but winter was on its way. we’d made up the bed beside the fire for gram to sleep on. her breathing seemed worse every day. and joey and me were nowhere near eighteen. my brother’s face looked grey and hard as teddy’s angel.
‘tilda won’t say anything. she doesn’t tell her family she’s with me. she says she’s with a gi
rlfriend.’
‘why?’
‘because we’re not like the cassidys and their friends! shit, alice, haven’t you noticed?’
joey’s words flung into the air then fell into place, rearranged like scrabble tiles. i saw a list in my head:
daddy’s dead
mother’s missing
sister’s crazy
grandma’s sick
grandpa’s jailed.
so what? i wanted to scream at the top of my broken voice, that’s who we are and if other people are like the bombers and mrs cassidy and swindling jack faulkner, i’m glad we’re not like them!
instead i looked at joey’s face before he turned his back on me. and i sorrowed for us all. but mostly for my brother who was not twelve until forever, who was older, much older, than fourteen. who’d gone to get a good education and learnt it would be easier if we were like everyone else. at seven-thirty that evening joey still wasn’t home. i thought he might never come back. mist blanketed our bend of the river. gram’s breathing was bad. i tried not to let her catch me looking at the clock. pretended i was going out for more firewood when i was straining my eyes, looking for a pinprick of light moving towards me along the river track. a beam from my brother’s bike.
‘he’ll be home soon,’ i said, praying i was right, when gram asked me where joey was. ‘and when he comes, i’ll ask him to ride to the post office and get hattie fox to phone the doctor.’
‘no you won’t,’ she wheezed. ‘they’ll cart me off me to hospital and that’ll be the end of me.’
and the end of us? i wondered.
‘here, put some of this on me,’ gram said.
The Stars at Oktober Bend Page 9