Little Gods

by Jenny Ackland

  Cleg had demonstrated what he meant about omnia. He’d walked the children down to the dam, away from Rue’s tight look and his pregnant wife’s languid form on the couch. He stripped off his clothes, called out the phrase in an operatic thrill and belly-whacked into the water in a flat racing dive. Sebastian’s expression was quid agis, translated as: ‘What’s going on? What’s happening? What’s up?’ This was to be delivered, their uncle insisted, drops rolling off the end of his beard as he got dressed beside the dam, in a cool, finger-snapping way. As if you were from New York.

  Mandy had been given her special saying the first time they’d seen him after the car crash. He’d squatted in front of her and given her an easy word, perfect for a small girl like her, he said. Lux. Her tongue lisped on the final consonant and Cleg had cried. Then he’d horsed around and they’d all climbed on him, children hanging off various limbs. Archie and Olive slid onto his feet, their legs wrapped around his ankles.

  ‘Goodness, I seem to have put on kid shoes,’ Cleg marvelled, lifting his feet. ‘What is this? Are my shoes made out of children?’

  He’d driven them into town to get Wizz Fizzes, white-knuckled the whole way. That night, Olive hovered in the doorway and overheard Cleg tell Audra and Rue that the liberi were wonderful but that he had to leave early the next day, before anyone was awake. Audra had put her hand on his arm and Rue had wept and Olive had stepped back to stand for a moment, wondering at the emotions that had been on display.

  They had a break for lunch. She and Cleg went inside and made sandwiches. Olive told Rue about the work, how it was interesting and sad. They took the sandwiches back to the little table inside the caravan and, while she ate, Cleg showed her a game that she could play on the computer. It was called ‘The Castle’ and she had to start outside in a garden, follow the prompts and find a way into the castle grounds. For half an hour she tried and tried to get through the walls. First she tried to dig underneath them, then she tried to walk around. She looked for doors that would open for her and kept failing, but she wasn’t going to give up. The goal, she had worked out, was to collect everything of value, kill everything that was a threat, and then leave. You didn’t even need to really understand anything, just try everything, she realised. Push it all, pull it all. Step on top of, climb under or over. Tap, hit, strike, roll.

  There were twenty-one levels to the game and during that lunch she made it to level four. She liked the game. It was helpful. She was determined to get to the end.

  •

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re interested in all of that,’ Rue said to Olive in the kitchen, arms wrapped around herself, Wettex in one hand and tea towel in the other. But Olive was very interested in what Cleg had to tell her about the mothers. He’d had meetings with the women in the city and they’d told him awful things, about the poisons and the drugs and the hiding places for the babies. The tricks and lies and upset that had happened when the women were younger. One mother had been blind for a whole year after her little boy was taken away, Cleg told Olive. Another had dreams that she had a secret baby that she kept in a shoebox at the back of her wardrobe.

  ‘They’re really sad,’ Olive reported to the family at dinner. ‘I feel more sorry for the babies, though. I think that the mothers could have tried a bit harder.’

  Thistle asked what she was implying.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She told the family how some of the mothers were drugged and some of the babies taken away while the mother was waiting for the after-burn to come out. That was when Rue said to Cleg it was really too much.

  ‘But it’s wrecked their lives, some of them,’ Olive said, and Cleg nodded.

  ‘Compassion is important in situations like these,’ he said to his sister-in-law. Rue looked at Thistle whose head had dropped, her chin almost to her chest.

  ‘I really don’t think she should be hearing all this,’ Rue said. ‘Olive, that is.’

  ‘In the report it says one has got a really bad scar,’ said Olive. ‘One of the mothers. From her belly button to her…thing, and it’s crisscrossed like a railway line but with white dots at the edge like Archie’s heel, where Shaggy—’

  Archie pushed back his chair and started to take his shoe off.

  ‘Not at the table.’ Rue started to fold her serviette. ‘You showed her pictures, Cleg? Please, it’s Christmastime. Can’t we just have a nice time?’

  ‘The doctor said he was making sure she wouldn’t be naughty again so that’s why he sewed her up like that, but I didn’t see anything, it was just words, in the report.’ Olive hurried the last few words out and shut her mouth in triumph. The whole thing was surprising to her, but what was most interesting was learning that the world could be hard for adults. They could have bad things happen to them too.

  ‘It’s just not appropriate, Cleg, I mean really,’ Rue said.

  ‘But I’m helping,’ Olive said. ‘And I’m getting pocket money for typing on his computer. All the names and numbers, making a databank.’

  ‘Base,’ said Cleg.

  ‘It seems unnecessary for a young girl to be exposed to all that misery. Sad for anyone really. I mean it’s happened, and I wish them well, but what do they expect can possibly be done now, all this time later? It can’t be undone.’

  ‘They want to retribute,’ said Olive.

  ‘Retribution,’ said Cleg. ‘Not the same as—’

  ‘Revenge?’ said Olive.

  ‘See?’ Cleg said to Rue. ‘She’s learning other things as well. It’s good for her general knowledge, her vocabulary.’

  ‘I just don’t think a young girl should be hearing these sorts of stories. Especially not the physical things—it might put her off.’

  ‘Off to what?’ Olive said.

  ‘Having a family yourself one day.’

  ‘But I’m not ever having one.’

  Rue reached for her napkin ring.

  ‘You’re just saying that now. You’ll change your mind.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Olive said under her breath. ‘Not ever.’ She slumped in her seat.

  •

  Coming out of the bathroom, Olive found Mandy.

  ‘Christmas is coming. The reindeer are going on the roof when I’m asleep. Is there any real magic in the world? Thistle said there isn’t.’ Her cousin looked as if she was about to cry.

  ‘What presents do you want?’ Olive said.

  ‘I want my tummy ache to go away.’

  ‘What?’

  Mandy smiled and Olive saw the crenellations of her teeth. The centre bottom two had already gone and a top one had fallen out a couple of weeks ago.

  ‘My dad did shout at me before.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For nothing at all.’

  ‘Go and tell your mother.’ She gave Mandy a push and sent her walking down the hall, then went back out to the verandah to get her binoculars. She was about to open the door but heard voices and stopped. Thistle and Cleg sat together on the rattan couch. Cleg was holding her arm. He talked to her in a very low voice. Their heads were close together. He was saying she needed to give him some more details and a bit of time.

  Olive crept back to the bathroom. It was a startling thing. To know that Cleg could be tender with Thistle, the sister he seemed to like the least. Standing in front of the mirror it was as if there was an opening inside her mind. A plant, a tall one, with a green stem that was thick all the way around. At the top of it, a tightly bunched bloom, an enormous head of closed, wrapped petals. She didn’t know the colour of the flower yet but it was bright as if illuminated by special lights, and inside the head of the flower was a quavering, shimmering sensation of coming movement and understanding.

  AT THE CARAVAN she did the work for Cleg and played the game. She tried to lift the third stepping stone outside the castle’s massive wooden door with the stick she’d picked up. The message blinked on the screen: YOU HAVE ENTERED THE CASTLE. CONGRATULATIONS.

  She sat back in her cha
ir. Finally, she was in. She explored the grounds, found gold and other valuables inside a metal chest. She discovered an armoury, and a kitchen with delectable food. In the castle itself there was a mouse that became a sidekick, and there was an evil cat, as well as ghosts and a floating head that had a black beard and an eye patch.

  But she had become stuck. There was a rigged doorway, and no matter what she tried she always ended up decapitated. Her mouse friend Bobo was too little to get hurt by the swinging scimitar that rolled out of a hidden crevice as soon as you opened the door with the chicken bone left over from feasting. Bobo could run in and out but it was no help to her. She lay in bed that night, trying to think of ways to get past that swinging curved blade. How to keep her head and make progress. Tomorrow was the last time she’d be able to try because it was Christmas Eve. Soon Cleg would be going back to the city.

  After lunch the next day she had completed entering all the information and she’d almost finished level twenty-one of ‘The Castle’, the final stage. She had her quiver, complete with arrows. She had her canteen, filled with water. The wolf was beside her with Bobo on its head, and her cloak of invisibility was in her backpack. Everything was perfect. She knew it would work, and once she had everything in place she made her final move.

  It didn’t work. She tried a second move. Still nothing happened. By the time she tried the third combination, her hope had disappeared. She kept trying different things but couldn’t work it out. She’d been positive she had it. Why hadn’t that first move been the one? She kept getting sent back to the last place she’d saved the game. She tried again and again. Through the locked door and rickety staircase that collapsed behind her as she went up it. She was about to give up when she tried one more time and it worked. A shudder of satisfaction and power went through her. She smiled.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ve finished,’ she said.

  ‘Well, that deserves a cup of tea?’

  She nodded and went to the little cupboard to get a mug. She made herself tea and sat down at the table. There was a small stack of books near the window and she looked through the pile. Robert Ludlum, Dick Francis. But then an interesting-looking one: The Book of Lists.

  ‘What’s this?’ She held up the book.

  ‘Oh, that, just a bit of fun. I don’t remember where I got it but it makes for good reading. Lots of interesting and obscure facts.’

  She opened a page. It was about Ivan the Terrible and it described how terrible he really was. She turned the page. Jack the Ripper. A list of still-alive Nazis.

  ‘Can I borrow this?’

  ‘You can have it if you like.’

  She put the book to the side and went back to the computer. All the lists of women and their disappeared babies. Maybe Cleg was the person to ask about her sister.

  ‘I know about the baby,’ Olive said. ‘My one.’

  She wasn’t sure if Cleg had heard her, he was still in the kitchenette making his coffee. She waited until he came back and sat down.

  ‘Your mother couldn’t get out of bed,’ Cleg said. ‘Thistle took her lunch on trays.’ Olive guessed it would have been bowls of soup, butter-and-sugar sandwiches and glasses of flat lemonade. That was what she had when she was sick.

  ‘But Mum and Thistle hate each other. I don’t even know why we always come here.’

  ‘Thist is good in a crisis and your mother had no choice. She needed the help. You wouldn’t know this but in the early days your aunt looked like a model in her little angora sweaters. It annoyed Rue but, boy, we all took one look at her and were goners. Rue was lucky there was a brother for her, Thistle would have taken whichever one she wanted, but of the three of us, she always thought William a little too…I can’t remember—well, something. Their mother was tough on those three but hardest of all on her, on Thistle. It might seem difficult for you to believe it now but your mum was Thistle’s supporter in those early years. They didn’t hate each other. And later, Billy—just children we all were, really. All of it is pretty complicated.’

  ‘But what about the baby?’

  Cleg sat down and wouldn’t look at her. He opened his mouth three times but no words came out. He looked at the window. He looked at the door. He looked everywhere but at her. It was further proof that no one knew the truth about Aster.

  ‘Mum doesn’t even know what happened,’ she said.

  Cleg breathed in and held all his air in his body for as long as possible. It made her want to hold her own breath, as if they had fallen into water together. There in the caravan she waited for her uncle to say something. Finally, he let the air out in a rush. He took a sip of his coffee.

  ‘Why doesn’t anyone know? Didn’t the police investigate?’

  ‘There were no questions.’

  ‘I just don’t get it,’ Olive said and put her lips to her mug. She put it down. ‘Too hot.’

  ‘Do you want to play the game again? You can start from the beginning if you like.’

  ‘Nope. Is there anything else?’

  He showed her a horse-racing one and blackjack. She was disappointed that the horse-racing one was just numbers moving across the screen, not real horses. She played blackjack for a while and Cleg shook out his newspaper.

  Olive stopped the computer games and opened The Book of Lists again to a random page. Tutankhamun was a very small king. The JRR bit was for John Ronald Reuel. Next in the book was a list of unnamed women in the Bible, beginning with Noah’s wife. You’d think a woman who set up house in a boat for a whole year with all those animals would at least have her name written down. There was also a woman who was a nun and then left the church to become a bullfighter.

  ‘What’s a sobricket?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She pointed to the word.

  ‘Oh. A sobriquet. Nickname.’

  She read quickly: Charles the Simple, Ethelred the Unready. Louis the Fat. Charles the Bad. She turned the page again and saw something about CIA mind-control experiments. She closed the book.

  ‘I think I’ll go now.’

  She was going to go and lie down to read about the mind-control experiments. It would be useful to be able to control someone’s mind. As she walked to the back of the house she looked up at the sky for movement, then caught herself. It was a habit she would have to break but she knew it would be hard, maybe impossible. Every time she remembered it was like someone was stepping on her heart.

  CHRISTMAS MORNING, AND Rue had already started the fans going. William had been out to the fuse board twice and Thistle was walking around in a petticoat batting a large red fan against herself. There’d been another passing cloud of grasshoppers, the brown insects swaying on leaves and clinging to sheets on clotheslines. Phones around town had rung with people wondering if a larger mass was on the way, but nothing more had arrived other than a spike in temperature around 11 am.

  In the kitchen, Rue started the mince pies and the younger children were pulling at their stockings when Shaggy started barking outside. The more oleaginous of the two local butchers drove his truck up the driveway of the house and around the back. Rue went to the door, hands floured and hair unbrushed. Pushing open the door she saw Leonard Sands getting out of his van. He walked towards her, carrying a side of lamb over one shoulder that was spattered with epaulettes of blood. He said g’day and carried the lamb into the kitchen. Rue followed, suspicious at the intrusion, the lamb, that it was him there that Christmas morning. Len Sands slammed the carcass down on the bench too close to her pastry. He leaned on a meaty elbow.

  ‘So, love, yer sister about?’

  Rue drew herself up.

  ‘Merry Christmas to you too, Len. If you don’t mind.’ She pointed at the meat. ‘Do you have an invitation?’

  He fiddled with his fly, casting glaucous eyes around the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve got a message for her about New Year’s. We were going to talk about the party at the club. About the costumes. She said she’d give me a cuppa.
’ He winked.

  ‘Thistle did? And she bought that?’ She considered the contraband. William would be murderous.

  ‘She didn’t buy it, as such. I’m not here in an official capacity, it’s more a social visit, you could say. She rang me and the lamb’s for the tea.’

  The butcher looked through the window.

  ‘You got someone staying out there in the van?’ he said, smiling. His mouth looked slippery. ‘One of the kids?’

  ‘It’s Clegworth,’ Rue said, shaking the tin of Ajax.

  ‘Cleg’s here? Well.’ Len pushed himself up from the bench and said he’d better be off but could she pass on a message to her sister. Before Rue could say that might be best there was a noise at the back door. It was Thistle in her floral housecoat.

  ‘Le-yen.’ She leaned an arm in a vertical flourish up the doorjamb and held the position before efflorescing across the kitchen towards him. Thistle’s latest folly, as Rue called it, was a new speech affectation, her approximation of a southern belle. Rue tried to carry on as normal but William’s face had become redder than usual around Thistle, and Audra was incandescent with fury, a sight that made Thistle’s voice crisp as she chittered at dinner, complaining about the mighty oppressive heat. She sashayed about everywhere in a slip, rolling a cut crystal tumbler of ice across her forehead, a charm-bracelet noisy on her wrist. Everyone was doing their best to ignore it.

  By the pantry door Thistle grabbed Len’s arm, twittered about tea and spun to the kettle.

  ‘Sorry, Thisser, but I have to go. You look pretty today, though.’

  Audra came in.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘The butcher.’ She crossed her arms and stood in the doorway.

  Len took Thistle’s hand from his arm and let it go and it flopped and hung at her side. ‘I’ll have to raincheck the tea, sorry, love.’ He tipped his finger at her and went to the door. ‘But the message is that Mavis wants fancy dress for New Year’s and she’s pushing for nuns and vicars. Spooner wants togas but Spooner always wants togas.’ No one spoke and Audra cleared her throat. Len said Merry Christmas and left.