by Joy Dettman
That was a very funny thing to say, so Annie just shook her head. But Aunty May did lots of talking about the man who came from England while she made sandwiches in the kitchen. And the crows knew about the sandwiches; they waited on the lawn for Annie to give them the crusts.
‘One for sorrow, two for joy,’ Aunty May said to Daddy, then she smiled her funny smile at Annie. ‘Ted Crow. That was his name, wasn’t it? Now I remember. It was Ted Crow, and he was older than Daddy.’
And later, sitting behind the old couch in the cellar with the kittens and Aunty May putting some kerosene in the lantern and making a little circle of light for the cellar, and kissing Annie and saying, ‘I’ll be gone for one dark time, and one more light time, and then I’ll come back, sweetheart. I promise you. You mustn’t touch the light, because it’s dangerous, and you must be very quiet when Mr Murray comes, because they’d think I was a very bad lady leaving you all alone.’
‘But I have to look after the kittens, don’t I, Aunty May, ’cause I’m a big girl?’
‘You’re my very best girl in the whole world. Promise me you won’t touch the light?’ And the kissing, and the sharp, hard sound of the door closing, and the key going in and scratching, and the cars going away. Aunty May’s car first, like purring, then Daddy’s car with its big vroooom vroom-vroom, which was nearly like Red Hairy’s motorbike on the television.
And quiet then. Eating a sandwich because Aunty May had made lots of sandwiches and they are all wrapped up separate, two for lunch, and two for dinner and two for breakfast and two more for lunch and then Aunty May would be back and that wasn’t a very long time. Banana sandwiches are the best sandwiches in the world.
And wandering the funny old room with its window up very high inside but nearly on the ground outside. And finding Uncle Sam’s bag of lollies and eating one and smiling because she could eat the whole bag full and didn’t even have to kiss him to get one.
Sam, Sam the dirty man,
washed his face in a frying pan,
combed his hair with the leg of a chair
and told his mother he didn’t care.
Saying that poem lots of times and saying Mary, Mary, quite contrary. And saying Wee Willy Winkie runs through the town. And counting to one hundred then eating another lolly, and counting to one hundred again, then eating another one.
It was very thirsty eating lollies and all the counting was very thirsty too. Lucky that Daddy had made the lemonade bottle-top loose.
And afterwards, after a long, long time, finding a really giant apple, the biggest one in the whole box, and biting it and the juice running down her chin. They are the best apples, the best in the whole world, and she got the biggest one and Liza didn’t get it.
Liza is . . .
Liza is . . .
Aunty May left some books, and coloured pencils. Annie drawing pictures of five kittens and making the names, and writing the words in her best writing. Smoky and Spotty and Sleepy and Silly and Sucky. She liked making Ss. Johnny said she made very good Ss.
Sleeping then because she’s all full up and heavy with apples and lemonade and lollies. And the dreaming on the old couch and waking up and it isn’t even proper dark time yet outside the window and it is taking a very long time for the dark to come. Aunty May said one dark and one light and she promised.
Then dreaming again of kittens and they don’t turn into snakes but they’ve got dirt in their eyes and Liza has got a big stick and she’s digging.
Waking up fast and frightened because now it is proper dark time and the kerosene light is flickering and dying and flashing and dying because Aunty May didn’t put in lots of kerosene. And then the light dying and no more flashing. And black dark. Silly Aunty May, she should have put in lots and lots and lots of kerosene.
Waiting in the dark, very quiet, like a mouse, only inside her she’s not quiet any more. Inside she’s like loud thump, thump, thump. Sitting on the couch like a big girl, but inside she’s very, very little and waiting for the light to come back to the window.
And she has to do wee, very bad.
How come Aunty May didn’t think about that? How come?
Waiting then for a very long time, then doing wee in the corner under the stairs and maybe it would all soak into the dirt and no one would know.
Everything got soaked into dirt, even blood.
Liza is . . .
Counting then. Very fast counting. Counting tiny star lights outside the window and counting apples in the box and eating more apples in the dark. Apples smell like they taste. Just the same.
Liza couldn’t have any more apples, ever, because she’s in the ground.
And shaking her head very, very hard. No she is not, Annie. Liza went for a ride with Red Hairy. On his motorbike.
But he didn’t put her in a bag, like the dog. She just went to get some lollies. He will bring her back after, like the little girl on television will get her dog back after. In the end of television stories there is always happy ever after.
Liza shouldn’t have bit Aunty May and run into the lounge room with her dirty shoes on. She should always put her slippers on inside.
And she shouldn’t bite! Only puppy dogs bite, that’s what Johnny said.
Liza is a naughty girl.
Her shoes were dusty brown.
She ran into the lounge room
when Sam came back from town.
Making up poems then. Making up lots of them and saying them, twenty times, until they remembered themselves. And trying to make a poem about Red Hairy, but Hairy just rhymed with berry and fairy and merry and good things, and Red Hairy wasn’t good, so making his name Ted Crow, because Aunty May said his name might be Ted Crow.
Old Mr Crow, where did he go?
Into the trees with the birds and the bees.
And it is a very, very long time and the dark won’t go, so sleeping again on the couch so her hand can touch the cat and it is warm and furry and purry.
Then it’s a little light, but cold. Wrapping the blanket right around her, and lifting mummy cat up to cuddle her and get warm, but mummy cat wanting to go back to the kittens to keep them warm, so Annie curling up with the cat and the kittens and not dreaming at all.
And waking up and all the light has come back bright at the little window and soon Aunty May will come. One dark time and one light. That’s what she said. And now it was light.
Eating two more sandwiches for breakfast and watching the window bars making stripes of light on the other wall, and soon Aunty May will come back and she’ll open the door and the sandwiches aren’t even nearly all gone yet.
Kittens sucking milk from mummy cat, and Annie putting some milk from the bottle into a saucer and watching mummy cat’s pink prickly tongue clean it all up. And drinking lemonade that hasn’t got any fizz in it and eating more sandwiches again, but the banana is all brown. And pretending it is her own picnic, but picnics are only good when other people are there, and banana isn’t good when it goes brown.
Then wanting to do wee again, and doing it under the stairs, but needing to do the other one too, very, very bad, but she couldn’t do that under the stairs.
The scared starting up again, big, because she really has to do it and it makes her tummy hurt very bad, like ’pendicitis that you have to go to hospital to get fixed from the doctor, like Benjie had to get his fixed. And you get stitches and you can’t walk for a week.
And light for a long, long, longer time and Aunty May won’t come, but a car comes and a dog comes too, and it might be Red Hairy come back with Liza, or the little girl’s dog. And the dog, scratching at the door and barking, and Mr Murray yelling, ‘Sit down, Cobber.’
Mr Murray is a good man. He’s not a Red Hairy. He’s just Ted and he is a working man for Aunty May and Uncle Sam, and his big girl and his Mrs Murray do all the work for Aunty May in the mornings, and they wash her floors and clean the bath and they are very good, so Annie doesn’t have to hide from them.
Excep
t Aunty May said.
But Annie wanting to yell out and make them open the door so she could go to the toilet, but she promised that she’d be quiet as a mouse. She promised. And you can’t break a promise, because Johnny said.
Window, way up high. But she can climb up there. If she makes some steps up, she can climb up and watch for Aunty May’s car. Getting an old chair and putting some wooden boxes on top of the chair and like building a cubbyhouse, like she does with Benjie, but Liza always pulls them down, though.
Miss Smarty Pants, more like it. That’s what Johnny says and Liza gets mad. She breaks everything and she stamps her feet and she screams, and she bites everyone. And Mummy kisses her all better, not the everyone else who got bit. And she curls Liza’s hair in rows and rows of fat yellow curls and she puts bows in her hair.
Not Annie’s hair, though. Mummy says Annie’s hair is too curly to curl, but Aunty May can curl it. She can make a hundred curls, more even than for Liza, and she ties some curls up top with a big blue ribbon and makes Annie look like . . . like a special girl . . . like an Ann Elizabeth girl.
Aunty May is a good lady and she’ll come back soon, and she’ll say, what a good girl you were, Ann Elizabeth, and she’ll say sweetheart.
Sweetheart is nice.
Old Mr Crow, where did he go?
Into the trees with the birds and the bees.
And she’s up on the wardrobe, because Johnny said she was the best climbing girl in the whole world, and she is too. And if she reaches right over, she can see Mr Murray’s dog. It is a big shaggy red dog, big as a lion with curly ears. His name is Cobber, and Johnny said cobber means friend, so Mr Murray’s dog will be her friend and talk to her through the window till Aunty May comes back.
What if she doesn’t? Maybe she won’t come back and open the door. Maybe she won’t never, ever come back, but Uncle Sam will come back from Brisbane and he’ll open the door and . . .
Annie doesn’t like that big door and the big key that makes that hard sound, like a monster door. Like it is too heavy to open and it will never open. Maybe another dark time will come soon.
Liza is in the dark. Daddy put her in the dark because she was bad and Aunty May stomped all the dirt in her eyes. That’s a very bad thing to do.
Annie gets too frightened with thinking, and her heart goes thumpity-thump. And she reaches over very far, so her feet are just on the wardrobe, but it is very, very rickety. And she’s hitting the window with her hand. And the dog is coming over and he is looking at her like dogs always look when they don’t understand something. Like with his head to one side, and his mouth hanging open, and his good dog eyes looking right at her eyes, like he’s saying, ‘What are you doing in there, Annie?’
She takes her shoe off so she can hit the window with its heel, and maybe break the window, and she doesn’t care if she breaks it, because Aunty May is too long, and all the air is used up, and the thumpity-thump is in her ears so she can’t hear the dog barking, because that’s what happened in the submarine when everyone went to the pictures at the shire hall one time when Daddy was away. All the men’s air got gone and they had to just sit down and get dead and she doesn’t want all the air to be gone so she has to get dead and get put in the dirt.
And that man’s name who cleaned the fish pond wasn’t Ted Crow, it was Mack someone. And Aunty May is playing a trick on her. And maybe sweetheart is a trick too, and promises are tricks too, and Annie wants Johnny very bad, and her tummy hurts very bad and she cries.
Then she’s not careful, because of crying too much.
And the falling and dropping her shoe and grabbing at the stupid rickety old wardrobe and . . . and . . .
Black.
And black air and the dog barking.
And, ‘Lay down. What’s got into you today, Cobber?’
Liza is in the dark too.
Aunty May won’t never come back.
She said, one more dark, and one more light. Aunty May will come. She promised.
She tricked you, she tricked you. Aunty May tricked you.
and melbourne
Away with the old nightmares, only a small segment of Ann’s consciousness had been on the road ahead. A red traffic light drew mind and car to a rapid halt somewhere in Sydney Road, Brunswick. Wet road, street lights glazing the bitumen with colour. A strange, still land, all of the houses sleeping, no cars crossing over, only the sad old ghosts flitting by.
She shivered, suddenly aware of the cold, aware of the rain, aware of how close she was to the city. The lights changed from red to amber to green, and still she sat, glancing to the right and left, attempting to work out which way to go.
Ten years of her life had been spent in the city. She’d rented a room in Brunswick when she was sixteen. This road looked much as it had on the day she’d stepped from the bus, her possessions stuffed into her small school case. Twenty years ago she’d walked here, walked for hours with nowhere to go until she’d found that little house in a side street, a sign taped to its front window: ROOM TO LET APPLY WITHIN.
Old Mrs Hadley, eighty if she was a day.
Come in. Come in. You look all hot and bothered, my dear. Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve only just made a pot.
Brunswick had given her immediate employment too. Twenty years ago she’d caught trams each morning to a clothing factory where she’d stitched sleeve hems on shirts for two weeks before moving on to the office of an estate agent.
One house had led to another, one office to the next. She’d had few office skills at sixteen, but her typing speed had got her the jobs, and she’d been young enough to train. Then Michael had stopped by her desk one morning and asked her how she’d prove one loaf of bread superior to another.
Two courting pigeons had been outside the office window that day, billing and coo-cooing.
‘Toss them some breadcrumbs and ask for their comments,’ she’d said.
And that’s what he’d done. The pigeon ad had run for years on television.
Two years later she’d moved upstairs, and when Michael had decided to go out on his own, start his own advertising agency, he’d hijacked her.
‘Our minds are on the same planet,’ he’d said.
Friends. Good friends, but only ever friends. It had been a good life. A free life – until Roger Wilkenson the Third had walked into their office one day.
A smattering of cars still on the roads but the trams had been put to bed. Ann followed the tramlines to town and past the hotel where Roger had stayed when he came to Melbourne.
Where did you come from? Did someone give birth to you or did you evolve from the ocean waves and the night wind, my lovely?
Memories. They were swamping her tonight. Where was Roger Wilkenson now? Had he found a wife to bear his children? Where was Michael, Mrs Hadley? All too long ago. Half a lifetime ago.
‘God, how did I get to be so old, Annie?’
So long since she had been alone with time to think. Always a little hand tugging at her jeans, a little voice calling. What if she had remained here, had never gone home, hadn’t married?
‘What if?’
She was at the hospital before three a.m. She locked the car and hurried into the building. Hospitals. She could live without them. They raised goosebumps and memories, but tonight she shook off the goosebumps and found a guide.
A night sister pointed her to May’s ward. One bed and many machines. Ann peered through the open door, then stepped away, again seeking her guide; she’d made a mistake. Elderly woman in that bed, gaping mouth, tubes feeding into her and from her – that wasn’t Aunty May. Ann glanced with pity at the small shape of some damaged old woman, her identity lost with her hair and dentures, then she turned from the bed to a figure slumped in a chair.
Him?
So grey. Long hair. But surely him. His arm was held high in a sling, a white bandage covering his brow and one eye; pyjama-clad in green with grey stripes, a worn white hospital-issue dressing gown gaping open, his h
ead back, jaw sagging.
So old. A snoring old man.
Daddy.
Ann drew a deep breath, lifted her chin then walked to his side. He didn’t move. She stood for minutes looking down at the closed eye, the open mouth, at the years of lines at his throat, and her vision blurred. Then she breathed deeply again, once, twice, and she reached out, touched his shoulder.
Jack Burton sprang into wakefulness, his unbandaged eye terror-filled. Not since that day in the cellar had she seen such fear.
‘Ann.’ Just one word.
Had he spoken that word before? Black-headed little bitch, maybe. Shamming little bitch. Wild, black-eyed Burton bitch. But never Ann. Never.
‘Dad.’
Silly little words. Where had they come from tonight? From the depths of a long night of memories and from the dark outside and the cold white room and the machines and the laboured breathing. Oxygen tube to May’s nose. Blood dripping into her arm. Electronics charting her heartbeat.
Both faces were now turned to the bed and to the small shell of May, so filled with life, so overflowing with vitality only yesterday. May, the organiser. May, the diplomat. May, who had learned early how to love and how to lie for those she loved, had learned early how to fix things the best way that she could.
Wordless, they stared at May. Nothing more to say. Their words had been spoken.
Dad.
Ann.
Nothing more.
May’s hair had been clipped. Thin gauze covered the ridged raw flesh of her scalp. A head wound? What was hiding beneath the gauze, beneath the stitches, and beneath the white sheet?
She looked at one of May’s hands and automatically sought the other. Only one hand. Where was the other, the other arm? Her left arm?
‘She’s all fight, that one. She’ll make it.’
‘How?’ Ann reached for May’s right hand. All that was left of her to hold. One single hand. The other was gone.
His reply was slow in coming. Perhaps he’d misunderstood the ‘how?’.