The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

by Kimberley Starr

  Grandma had taken me to visit the Colemans the first week I lived with her. “They have children,” she said. “You’ll feel more at home if you know kids your own age.”

  I’d seen Andrew already and liked the thought of seeing him again so I agreed and walked next door with her.

  When it was first constructed, the Coleman house must have been similar to my grandma’s; now it could have belonged to a different era. Both stood on stilts, with steep tin roofs, high ceilings and verandas designed to keep people cool. My grandma’s house had not aged well. Everything was chipped and warped into irregular shapes. Floorboards were scratched, paint peeling. The Colemans’ house was bright, airy, modern, expensive, as if copied straight from Home Beautiful or Vogue Living. Vertical-jointed walls were painted fruity colours of apricot, lime and peach and the carpet was thick and woolly between my bare toes.

  No one was home except Mrs Coleman. She led us into the living room, past two bedroom doors, one of which was half-open.

  I glimpsed a single bed carelessly draped with a red and black doona and a trail of socks that led to a corner littered with sneakers and bits of tracksuits. The far wall was a sea of banners and ribbons, its shelf an island of gleaming metal. A shrine to adolescent maleness.

  “Andrew is a champion swimmer,” Mrs Coleman said.

  “Um … yeah, I’ve heard, Mrs Coleman.” I was embarrassed to have been caught looking.

  “Oh, call me Rebecca,” she said.

  I’d never been invited to call someone’s mother by her first name before. She was tall and thin, with the sort of mole that I’ve heard called a beauty spot (I don’t know why) just above her top lip.

  Seeing Andrew’s room was pretty cool. I thought about it on the way home. “Do you really think he’ll make the Olympics?” I asked my grandma later.

  Either allergies or bitterness made her sniff. “It’s not likely, is it,” she said.

  “Mrs Coleman says he’s already represented Queensland.”

  “That’s different. Now, did you see where I put my keys?”

  While Grandma fumbled through the pockets of her over-sized cardigan, I gazed over my shoulder, hoping to catch a glimpse of Andrew returning home. I imagined his loose-shouldered gait, the way his dark blond hair would be gilded by sunlight seeping through overhead branches.

  “Someone has to make it,” I said.

  Grandma pushed her heavy front door open on its creaky hinges, and a rectangle of dappled light fell onto the floorboards beyond. “Being an athlete makes him popular with the girls,” she told me. “I don’t know about the Olympics. You know what they say. Many are called but few are chosen.”

  Grandma looked at me like she wanted a response, but I had nothing to say. She’d given away her nursing career to raise my dead mother, and her disappointment in life seemed even worse since taking me in while my father was overseas. We had nothing to talk about.

  She must have wanted me to need her, to be grateful. But I was half an orphan, I thought. I was just an ordinary kid, I’d never done anything (very) wrong, and my mother had been taken away from me. What reason could I have for feeling gratitude? Grandma simply annoyed me. Once, I’d heard her talking about my mother’s death over the phone. “It should have been me,” she’d said. I despised her for feeling sorry for herself — but I did not disagree.

  We were still trying to work out how to live with each other. She’d stopped hugging me — thank God — but we hadn’t found any better arrangement. Even her house annoyed me. Grandma seemed to be preserving it in its original state forever, a memorial to the days when my mother lived here. No one whose toilet was still outside could possibly be worth my time. Two months after I moved in we were still in a state of emotional limbo. My mother was a ghostly connection between us, but I didn’t believe in ghosts.

  My mother. She showed me how to hold a paintbrush before she taught me how to read. Sometimes, washing a sky of kingfisher-blue (her favourite colour) across a pristine white page, I could still feel the warmth of her presence behind my shoulder, as if I could turn and find her watching me. Perhaps she would touch my light brown hair, and say how like her own. Kingfisher-blue smelled of Arpège, the perfume she wore, the way gold smelled of summertime dried grasses, and green like seawater surging through the heads into Sydney Harbour. My mother taught me to understand colour, the way she taught me the uses of linseed oil and how to stretch canvas. (Recipe for Kingfisher-blue: to a large measure of blue add a smidgen of white, plus just a tiny dab of green.)

  I might not be as talented as she was, but art remained a link between us. So I agreed to go to school during my stay with Grandma, even though there were so many things there I hated. Like being a new girl. Like my uniform being too clean and too ironed and blue (at my old school, we wore green). I hated the way everything, from the low-lying concrete buildings to the school bus, was unfamiliar.

  Brisbane has warm winters and hot summers and you could see they’d tried to consider that in the layout of the school. Instead of the corridors I was used to, most classrooms opened directly to the outside world. Panels of windows, designed to open and catch the breeze, replaced many of the walls. Long-armed ceiling fans swept the hot air above our heads. Teachers whispered there was still no funding for air-conditioners — maybe next year. Their rolled eyes suggested they’d said this before. Meanwhile, all students were to make sure we kept ourselves cool and drank plenty of water.

  I explored the grounds and the oval at lunch break, watching the other kids through cautious eyes. It was easy to work out who was popular, who was tough, bright, or daggy. The groups — popular, tough, bright, daggy — were so much like those at my old school that these might have been the same kids I knew before, only with different faces.

  The main difference was me. I was new. I wondered if there was some way to turn that in my favour. Could I work out which group of kids to join? Did I want to be cool or tough or trendy? Was an arty goth more me, or should I get an undercut and pass for a skinhead? I didn’t want my friends chosen by the same careless fate that had chosen my family. Fate had let me down.

  But only one kid looked like she actually wanted to be friends with me. Sally Green had blonde hair in plaits pulled even tighter than mine (which I hadn’t thought possible). She looked as miserable as me, and that was frightening. Plus, she was an obvious dag. I kept out of her way.

  The art classroom was strange, too. Too neat, for one thing, compared to the studio I was used to in Sydney. There were no rows of misshapen pottery vases, no clothes lines hung with air-drying paintings, no blobs of clay or paint-speckles on the floor. Instead, the room was bright and airy. Big windows opened onto rows of bicycle racks and mini-skips full of grass cuttings beneath a heat-bleached sky. I stood in the doorway, uncertain whether I wanted to go in. Could I be inspired in a place as sterile as this? Weren’t art rooms meant to be messy? I couldn’t even see the paints.

  Then I spied a shiny aluminium cabinet at the front of the room, its two doors fastened together with a large padlock suggestive of valuable pigments and brushes inside. To be closer to it, I slipped my schoolbag (at least that wasn’t new) onto the floor near a vacant desk, reaching for my pencils and pens.

  Other kids filed in while I averted my face. After the days at the hospital, the funeral parlour, Grandma’s mausoleum of a house, it seemed ridiculous to be back at school. There were no friendly smiles to say, Hello, Maddy!, only curiosity and pity.

  They all felt sorry for me. I hated that. Class bullies are meant to pick on the fat kids, the skinny kids, the kids with glasses, the new girl. They should have picked on me.

  But they ignored the starchy new uniform and the stumpy plaits that Grandma insisted were neat. Instead, I could see in their eyes the reflection of some teacher at some green chalkboard, her glasses misty with sincerity and discretion, while she said, Be nice to Madeleine, please. She’s new in Brisbane and her mother just died.

  I was so angry about it tha
t I imagined bashing someone’s face in. But I couldn’t, of course. Art, at least, offered the prospect of something enjoyable.

  I was sharpening my pencils when the door at the front of the room slid open. A quiet whispering began.

  “Who’s she?”

  “I don’t know. Never saw her before.”

  I was about to speak after all — I mean, how rude, I was right there — when I realised they weren’t talking about me.

  “What happened to Miss Prior?” one girl asked.

  I looked up. A middle-aged woman in a grey dress had raised both hands to ask for silence. A couple of the girls snickered and spoke more loudly. One of the boys stopped chewing and blew a large green bubble.

  “Welcome to Year Nine art,” the teacher said. “I’m Mrs White.”

  And in large, looping cursive letters, as if White might be hard to remember or spell, she wrote it on the chalkboard: MRS WHITE.

  “Miss Prior is overseas for a while, and I’ll be teaching in her place until a permanent replacement is found”. Mrs White smiled at the class optimistically. “I was a student here myself. I’m sure we’ll all get on.”

  I sank back into my seat, disappointed. It had been nice to think there was someone here as new as me, even if she was only a teacher. But Mrs White had been here before. I was still the one person in the room who most belonged somewhere else.

  Home time was the only decent part of the day, even though Grandma’s house wasn’t home. As 3 p.m. came around, I felt my blood, drained by hours of tense boredom, return in a wave rosy enough to paint. I walked to the bus stop with less weariness than anywhere else. My first day at school was over, and I hadn’t embarrassed myself in any unforgivable way. And I’d see Andrew soon. He’d been wearing the school’s tie that morning, and we’d have to catch the same bus.

  So I stood there on the drought-burnt grass outside the school gymnasium while a succession of smoky council buses pulled in and out. Minutes ticked past. Was this to be another disappointment? Too many broad, athletic shoulders and scuffed shoes turned out to belong to other faces, other names. The River Pocket bus had half-filled before Andrew Coleman suddenly appeared, like sunshine, out of the Year Ten block.

  While I approached the bus, he did too, moving with a lanky confidence that made my tongue feel too big for my mouth. His hair was brushed straight back from his forehead, slightly wavy and the colour of fresh popcorn. Standing with the other boys, pimply in their faded shirts and too-tight shorts, he looked tall and mature. It must have been all the swimming that made his skin smooth and tanned, as if he was made of gold instead of flesh. He looked as good in his school uniform as he had in summer board shorts, skateboarding down our street.

  When he neared the gaping door at the same time as me, black bag hoisted onto one shoulder, one shoelace undone and dragging behind, I needed to swallow.

  Maybe I looked silly standing there, my hem touching my shins, bag half-slumped on the ground, shoes too black, too shiny … My tongue was hanging out, for all I knew. One of the older girls leant too close to my ear and whispered: “I think someone has a crush.”

  Her breath smelt of cigarette smoke and spearmint chewing gum. “Hey!” she yelled, standing tall and pointing at me. “Andrew! Do you know who your fan is?”

  Fortunately, he didn’t even look my way as he boarded, and the girl soon lost interest. While Andrew strolled through to the back of the bus, I paced from the concrete curb to the steps, burning the girl’s face into my consciousness. She was added to the list of people I’d get back at (already quite a long list). I was angry enough to swear, to yell, to fight …

  I couldn’t do anything like that, of course. I couldn’t even think it (well, not for long) in case the desire showed on my face. Boarding the bus, my hands felt sweaty, wrapped tightly around the handles of my schoolbag. I concentrated on finding a place on one of the cracked vinyl seats and raised my eyes, looking out the window. Ignore her, my mother would have said. But what did she know?

  The stained concrete of the school buildings was half-hidden by bush gardens, and the bus stop, its summer crop of grass already broken into a dustbowl of footprints, had almost cleared. Conversation on the bus was a party of noise I wasn’t invited to join. Everyone already had enough friends; they didn’t need anyone else. I could be a new girl forever.

  Front door finally squeaking closed, the bus grunted away from the curb. I leant my head against the vibrating window and imagined how I might distinguish Andrew’s voice from the others. He would sound deep, more manly than most teenagers. Each word would be accompanied by a warm undertone of promise and potential. Perhaps water would splash though his speech the way it shone in his eyes, as though he was always looking into a pool, always just about to stretch his lean body out to its full length and glide into the fourth lane at a swimming meet.

  Outside, the hot dryness of the school grounds gave way to the oases of suburban gardens. Scenery sped by, the bus rounding steep corners in the road, past houses and bushland down to the river. We had something in common, these other kids and me. Something that went deeper than being forced to wear this strange blue uniform. We were all headed towards my grandma’s house. Each and every one of us. Even the girls at the back, as they tried to force open windows and sneak cigarettes. Even the junior kids nearby, with their shiny new shoes and schoolbags, their faces a mixture of fear and excitement at finally reaching high school. Even some of those talking about mums and dads as if everyone had parents, and making me want to scream. They didn’t know it, but their future loomed, too. We were all going the same direction. It was as inevitable as death.

  I didn’t hear the voice I thought I’d know. I looked around at the people who wouldn’t talk to me, who couldn’t be bothered, who didn’t think one lonely new girl was worth an interruption to their comfortable social routine. Wouldn’t they be shocked if I told them the truth. About death, I meant. About lonely old rooms in disappointed houses, home to disappointed old people. Even the oldest, ugliest people had once been young, just like us.

  There were murmurs and whisperings behind me; some poor kid was being picked on.

  “Get out of my seat!” A few rows back, the voice was simultaneously sweet and bitchy. I imagined it smelling of cigarettes and spearmint. “You need to choose another deodorant. Like, one that works. Your smell’s making me feel sick.”

  So Sally Green came to sit beside me. Her pale, tight look of unhappiness could have mirrored mine. She didn’t like school; maybe she didn’t want to go home. Turning my face more fully towards the window, I hoped she wouldn’t talk to me. Not with those freckles, that narrow, unhappy mouth, those greasy blonde plaits. I was miserable enough already. What was worse, the bus was whining into yet another street, and this one was mine.

  Andrew lurched towards the door, followed down the aisle by a short girl whose improbably red hair was pulled into a great fat ponytail. His girlfriend? A tightness in my chest eased when Andrew turned and said,

  “Come on, Bridge! Mum’ll be waiting.”

  His sister. Over the last few hot summer weeks, I hadn’t noticed Brigid Coleman — I’d been too busy adoring her brother and resenting my grandma. I scrambled out of my seat and gave the red-haired girl a tentative stare as she passed. She blinked back.

  “Come on, Bridge!” Andrew insisted again, from the road.

  Brigid’s face melted into a shy smile before she walked downstairs to join him. I reached down for the handle of my bag and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. I pulled harder. Still nothing.

  “Hey!” yelled the bus driver. “You getting off here, or what?”

  I cast Sally Green a despairing look, and she raised her eyebrows and her thumb, pointing at a hefty boy in the row behind.

  “Nathan,” she mouthed.

  I looked back. The boy’s chubby face was shiny, his eyes bright with malice and secrecy. A skinny kid by his side grinned and glanced downwards. Somehow, they had hold of my bag. This was a test.
Let them get under your skin and kids like this never ease up.

  I thought about confused male hormones and smiled carefully. “I think your foot’s on my bag. Can you move it, please … Nathan?”

  The larger boy looked right at me, eyes widening. I knew his name. He was impressed. Well, impressed enough to move his foot. I grabbed my bag and hurried down the aisle.

  “Don’t worry about me,” the bus driver grumbled, as I passed. “Don’t worry about schedules, other kids who need to get home. Take your own sweet time.”

  There was no point trying to explain so I didn’t. I stepped out, casting my eyes around for the Colemans. With a tired puff of grey smoke the bus pulled out. Where had they gone? The street was empty, reduced to worn asphalt, flat and hot beneath my shoes. Mid-afternoon sun glared on the new concrete of the guttering. The disillusioned tangle of my grandma’s garden refused to welcome me home.

  Beside my grandma’s house, the Colemans’ Queenslander was graceful and well kept. Andrew’s father was a real estate agent and property was booming. People were beginning to pay small fortunes for restored Queenslanders, and the one the Colemans lived in could have been a showpiece. I gazed at their garden with its neat flowerbeds and the palms that stretched skywards, unencumbered by the thick tangle of vines that my grandma never bothered to remove. I noticed the fresh paint and the transparency of the shiny windows. What most captured my attention were the scrolls and waves of white-painted wrought iron that rippled over their roof and frothed along their porch and dripped down their steps. It seemed a strange compound, as fluid as it was hard. I envied the artistry that lent it movement. Its magic reminded me of my mother’s ability to create life from strokes and brushes of colour. I was struck by the way the wrought curves at the base of the design were like a long row of smiles, countered by a parallel row of grimaces above.

  People are like that, I thought, a mixture of emotions like the Coleman house. Only my grandmother seemed as completely old and miserable as the place she lived in. Nearer to me, her house was darkened by an awning of those vines. They scaled nearby trees and threatened her roof tiles, her drains. One day, I supposed they would consume her entire house. I didn’t want her house to claim me. Why couldn’t I be going next door? Andrew and Brigid must already be inside. It didn’t seem fair.