‘Not tomorrow,’ I said to Mrs Broom. ‘It’s a bit difficult at the moment. My dad’s ill, you see.’
‘Nothing serious I hope?’
‘No … but he needs peace and quiet.’
‘Well, you must come here whenever you like. Tell your mother. It’s no trouble. We like a bit of company, don’t we, Bron?’
It was only a white lie, that Bob was ill, not a proper one. It was a lie of politeness. And anyway, when I thought about it, Bob had seemed a bit off colour lately.
7
On the day that was supposed to be my birthday, we did our daily dozen as usual. I had some vain hope that they’d forgotten about the birthday. Bob’s eyes flickered over me, a brief three-cornered glance, a check for progress. I felt like some sort of time-bomb. Thirteen now, about to go off. And indeed there was a tender itchy swelling behind my nipples, and every day my school blouse seemed tighter under the arms.
At breakfast, I did my best to ignore the present beside my plate.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Mama said at last, clearing the eggy plates from the table. I spread marmalade on my toast. It was Bob’s home-made stuff, with squares of peel the size of postage stamps, and pips.
‘Cheer up,’ Bob said. ‘Birthday girl.’
‘But I’m not,’ I muttered, forcing a lump of toast past the lump in my throat.
‘Open the card, at least,’ Mama pleaded. I opened it. It was easier than refusing. I could not bear the bright row of their eyes across the table, watching and waiting. It was a home-made card with a dried pansy stuck on the front. Mama and Bob exchanged glances and Bob vanished behind his paper. A smaller envelope fell out of the card, an envelope with my name written on it in tiny cramped writing, no address or stamp.
‘That is for you to read,’ Mama said, unnecessarily.
I looked at Mama. She smiled and then busied herself with her toast. Bob flapped the paper and cleared his throat. I stood up. ‘I’ll take it upstairs to read,’ I said. I could not bear to do so with Mama watching.
‘What about your present?’ she called after me, but I didn’t want it. I ran up the stairs into my room and closed the door behind me. I stood by the window with the letter in my hand. A bird was singing, a blackbird or a robin. I was scared to read the letter. I was being let in on a secret. It was the first important letter I’d ever received. I knew it must be important because of the anxiety in Mama’s eyes and because it was old. The writing was unfamiliar. I could not read it at home, not even in the privacy of my own room. I couldn’t read it with the attention of Mama and Bob fanning up from the dining room like radar waiting for some signal of my reaction.
I unplaited and brushed and replaited my hair; and cleaned my teeth and went downstairs.
‘I’m going,’ I called from the front door, buttoning up my coat. Mama darted out from the dining room. She looked at me questioningly. ‘All right?’ she asked.
‘Fine.’ I was breezy. ‘See you later.’
‘Happy bir –’ she began but I snapped off the word with a slam of the door.
It was a rusty day. Hydrangeas faded to old pink hung on the walls, cotoneaster berries glowed from hedges, the leaves of cherry trees blazed against the blue sky. I walked towards the school, and then turned. It wasn’t to school I was going today. I had to be alone to read the letter, absolutely alone with nobody listening.
I skirted the long drenched grass of the cemetery. The angel met my eyes with interest, a little quirk beside her mouth. I pushed through the hedge, in a scatter of raindrops and wrecked gossamer. Pools of milky sunlight glistened on the leafy ground. The lamp hadn’t gone out and glared weakly against the sun. A bird had streaked a white dropping on the seat of my swing. I wiped it off with my handkerchief, and then I sat down, holding the envelope in my hand, my heart skittering in my chest. I could hardly bear to open it. I considered not doing so. Screwing it up and shoving it deep into the spikiness of the hedge. I was at a hinge-point in my life, a fork.
And then I slid my finger under the flap and tore it open. Inside was a thin sheet of folded, lined paper. I smoothed it out, but did not at first read. I ran my fingers over it like a blind person, as if somehow I could soak the meaning up through my fingertips. The writing was extremely small. It was written untidily, as if by a person in a hurry, or in distress. I breathed in deeply, and then I read:
Dear Jenny,
You are only a baby in a pram. You are asleep. I’m sitting beside you in the kitchen. All I can see is a little patch of your fluffy hair and the curve of your cheek. When I have finished writing this I will go. I have my suitcase packed. I’ll put my coat on and go and that is the last I’ll see of you. Mum thinks it best that I disappear. I wanted you to grow up knowing the truth, but Mum thinks not. She thinks it would muddle you, that you should grow up innocent. You should be reading this on your thirteenth birthday. Mum thinks that by then you’ll be old enough to understand. I don’t know. I know nothing about children although I am your mother. I am eighteen. I’m going away. I’ve promised never to come back. I’m going, but replacing myself with you. That is the deal. I’ve promised Mum and Dad, and I don’t break promises. Mum and Dad will bring you up as their own. I wonder whether you have guessed the truth, or whether they’ve already told you. It is useless to try to guess the future. I am a bad girl, a disappointment. I’m not strong. If I was I would take you. It will be hard for me to walk out of the door without you. It will tear me in half. There are sharp strings pulling from my womb and my breasts that bind us together. It will take all my strength to break them. I must be doing the right thing. Mum and Dad will give you a better start than I ever could. I’ve no money. I’m not a good person, not good enough for you. I am doing the best thing. The sensible thing. Don’t hate me, Jenny. I will always think of you. Don’t hate me, although I hate myself.
Jacqueline
I folded the letter carefully and put it in my pocket. There was a stillness in the air, as if someone had stopped talking and was waiting for an answer. Of course I had known that Mama and Bob weren’t my parents. They were too old. Anyone could see that. The funny thing was I’d always wanted a granny, and I’d had one all along. Only it wasn’t funny. I sat on the swing for a long time, letting the knowledge percolate through me, like water through layers of sand. Jacqueline. My mother. Also, in a sense, my big sister. I felt nothing more than interest for a time. I waited for a feeling to arrive, dangling in time, there on the swing. All I felt, in the end, was cold. The cold seeped through my clothes and my skin, the complications of muscle and sinew and bone until my blood, my heart itself, was cold.
I squeezed back through the hedge eventually and wandered around the cemetery. The sun made the angel glitter like sugar. I glanced at her and she shuddered. There were toadstools in the grass, a fat brown cluster which flaked when I kicked them, turned to pulp under my grinding feet. There were blackberries rotting in the hedge. The dark yew tree was studded with poisonous berries.
Small mysteries were explained. Although my name was Jennifer there had always been time when Mama would hesitate over my name, especially when she was calling me. ‘Ja … Jennifer,’ she’d say. I’d grown used to it. Now I thought about it, I was sure I could remember the whole name coming out, hanging inexplicably in the air. Strange that I hadn’t thought it stranger. And Auntie May, who was really my great-great aunt, always called me Jacqueline, but I had put that down to age.
I’d never called Mama and Bob Mum and Dad, or only when referring to them to outsiders. I think I asked Mama why once, and she said something vague about a family tradition and I was satisfied.
‘Grow up innocent,’ the letter said. Ignorant, more like.
I looked up at the church, which was not used as a church. There was no glass in its windows. They were bricked clumsily up, except for the arched spaces at the top. The walls were tall and dark grey, damp looking, spattered with pigeon droppings. The knobbled spire rooted its way into the sky like som
e grubby vegetable. For the first time I walked right round it. I didn’t like the church, I’d hurried past it before, taking as little notice as possible. The ground was spongy as if it might give, and I walked lightly. Old gravestones leant against one wall on the side I’d never been. Moss grew on their tops in luminous green cushions, softening the uneven edges. Behind the stones, against the wall, was a wedge of rustling shadow, the home I guessed of rats and spiders. I traced my finger over the almost vanished inscription on one crumbling stone.
With restless days and sleepless nights
This weary frame was sore oppressed,
Till God the silver cord unloosed
And gave the heavy ladened rest.
I liked that: the image of a silver cord. It made me think of Jacqueline and the strings that she said bound us together and I thought that however far she’d stretched them they remained unbroken. The wet grass glinted in the pale sun; soaked strands of gossamer reflected light. It was as if the whole place was a web of silver cords holding everything in its place, delicate and precarious. The birds’ music stopped and there was silence. Everything still. Everything balanced, glittering, motionless. Even the clouds paused in the sky. I held my breath and experienced a warm tide of meaning beyond words, of understanding that had nothing to do with thought. I was at once both happier and sadder than I’d ever been in my life. My heart seemed to stumble. And then, as if with a creak, the earth wheeled on. Birds resumed their singing, the grass began to nod with the weight of its wetness.
The leather of my shoes was sodden and my toes were numb. A shadow passed across the sun. I walked back towards the playground thinking of the long day ahead. It was only mid-morning and already my stomach growled for food. I paused to read the inscription on another stone. And then I heard whistling. Tuneless, human whistling. I looked all around me. There was no one. The whistling sounded odd. Distant and yet loud as if echoing in a lofty space. The only place it could be coming from was the church. The great arched double doors were fastened with an outsize padlock and chains, but there was a gap between them and I pressed one eye against it and, squinting into the dimness, I saw I didn’t know what. A huge stretching complex structure, struts and joints and spaces which seemed almost to fill the interior of the church.
At first I couldn’t see the man, but I could hear his whistling, and the sound echoed in the great cavernous space above him. The tune was ‘He Who Would Valiant Be.’ As I watched, the man moved out of the darkness and stood for a moment where I could see him. He was a small man with a sharp face. He held a screwdriver. I noticed that the floor he was standing on was earth, that there was none of the paraphernalia you might expect to find in a church, no altar, no pews, not even a proper floor. The man moved around as if he was at home, stepping over the struts of the construction without a glance. He turned his back to me and bent to do something with his screwdriver. He continued whistling until he’d completed his task, then stood up. He remained motionless for a moment and then turned and looked directly at me, or directly at the gap between the doors. I stood hastily aside.
‘If you wish to come in, come round the side,’ he called. His voice was posh like a newsreader on the radio. I walked quickly towards the hedge, wishing to escape back into the privacy of the playground, but from behind me there was a sharp whistle, of the sort boys do through their fingers. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. He was outside now, watching me.
‘Where are you scuttling off to?’ he asked. ‘And what were you doing spying on me like that? You could give a fellow quite a turn. Are you curious? Curiosity killed the cat, they say, but I won’t do you any harm.’
I did not want him to watch my secret way into the playground, so I turned towards him. He didn’t sound the dangerous type, and anyway, I felt reckless. The letter in my pocket had opened a chink in my life, offered me a new glimpse of myself. I had the feeling that I had stepped into a new world with different rules. Only I didn’t know the rules. The man was foxy with the rusty shadow of bristles on his sharply angled cheeks. But his eyes were not fox eyes, not narrow and sly. They weren’t any colour I can name and they were blank. Not blindly and not stupidly blank, just open to what they saw, as if he did not see through a fence of judgements. He just saw. He gazed into my eyes, until I looked down, afraid of what he might see.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Jacqueline,’ I said without hesitation, surprising myself.
‘A charming name. Are you known as Jacqui?’
‘Always Jacqueline,’ I said.
‘From the French,’ he observed. ‘Were they hoping for a son, your parents?’
‘Oh no, they wanted a girl. She did anyway.’
‘Would you accept a cup of tea?’ he asked. I nodded and followed him into the church through a narrow side door which I had failed to notice before. After the brightness outside, the interior of the church was dark. Shafts of light penetrated the gaps at the tops of the windows and fell in spots on the floor and the walls. It smelled of earth and wood-shavings and the ground was littered with these, like curls of gold where the light caught them.
‘Why don’t you switch the lights on?’ I asked.
He chuckled. ‘I light a candle or two in the evenings. No electricity, you see.’
‘Are you here in the evenings then?’ I shuddered at the thought. It was so cold and unfriendly, so absolutely uncosy.
‘I live here,’ he said. ‘A temporary measure, of course.’ He struck a match and I saw that he had a small camping stove with a kettle balanced on the top. He picked it up and shook it. ‘Enough for a couple of cups,’ he announced. ‘Have a biscuit.’ He offered me a packet and I took one. I nibbled at the edge, and then I stopped, a horrible thought occurring to me. I had been under the impression that I was alone when I came to the playground, completely alone with no one even near. And alone when I picked my way out between the graves.
‘You’re a solitary soul,’ he said, just as if he could read my thoughts, ‘wandering here at all hours.’
‘Have you been watching me?’
‘Not watching, no. By no means watching. But I’ve seen you. I’ve heard the swing. Frightened me out of my wits when I first heard it. Ghosts, I thought. Phantasms. Quite understandable given the setting, don’t you think? Do you fear ghosts?’
‘No such thing.’
‘Ah … such simplicity,’ he said, and I began to feel offended. ‘But don’t you feel it a mite unwise all the same?’ he continued, ‘to wander alone in such a very secluded spot? A young girl alone. Haven’t your parents warned you?’ I shook my head, although, of course, they had. They were always warning me. ‘How old are you?’ he asked. ‘No!’ he held up his hand, ‘Allow me to hazard a guess. Thirteen, or fourteen?’
‘Thirteen,’ I said. ‘Actually it’s my thirteenth birthday.’
‘No … is it really? Well then, many happy returns. Perhaps we should celebrate. And fortunately I have at hand the means.’ He pulled a squat silver flask out of his pocket. ‘Will you take a spot in your tea?’
‘What is it?’
‘Irish malt, a peerless tipple.’
‘Whisky?’
‘That’s it. Will you have a drop? To celebrate?’
‘I’ve never … well all right then,’ I decided. Jennifer might not have drunk whisky in a church with a strange man, but Jacqueline did. The man sloshed a good drop into the two china teacups. He put another biscuit on the saucer for me. I sipped at it, wrinkling my nose at its manly smell. It was good and strong and tasted festive, Christmassy. It made me feel light-headed, and odd. The biscuit in the saucer had soaked up the slops and was soft on my tongue. ‘Sherry trifle,’ I said and my voice sounded loud and foolish.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It reminds me,’ I said.
‘Well, here’s to you. Thirteen today, eh?’ he looked at me as if I was the first girl ever to reach thirteen. As if I was unique.
There was quiet for a
few moments but for the sounds of our sipping. I struggled to swallow silently but made a gulping sound. And then I grinned. ‘What’s the joke?’ he asked, but I shook my head. I didn’t want to say, it would have sounded ridiculous, but I was thinking of Alice and the cake and the little bottle and her obedient eating and drinking and all the growing and shrinking she did. I felt tiny now, as if I had shrunk. The roof of the church was miles above, impossibly far, as was the distance to the door. I shivered.
‘What’s that?’ I asked, pointing to the wooden frame-work.
‘You would laugh if I told you that,’ he said. He unscrewed the top of the flask and tipped some whisky straight down his throat, then he put it in his pocket. ‘I see you’re dressed for school,’ he said.
‘I …’
‘It’s perfectly all right. You don’t have to make excuses to me. I wasn’t much of a one for school myself when I was your age. Has brains, lacks application, that sort of thing. However, pleasant as this is, I must get on.’ He pulled a long canvas bag out of the shadows and took from it a large saw. He ran his thumb along its jagged teeth. In the bag I could also see a hammer and a chisel. I had the sudden thought that I was in danger. Or I would have been in danger if this man had been dangerous. Mama would have gone berserk if she could have seen me. That thought gave me some satisfaction.
‘Can I help?’ I asked.
He looked at me for a moment, considering. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he decided. He gave me a pair of pliers and a claw-headed hammer. ‘Go round looking for crooked nails,’ he said. ‘Any nail that isn’t strictly functional. Old wood you see. And extract them.’
‘I’ll try,’ I said. ‘And if I help you, will you tell me what it’s going to be?’
He didn’t answer, but grinned and went off into the gloom, and presently I heard him sawing. A spot of light illuminated the top of his head. His hair was yellowish brown, a tobacco colour. He whistled as he worked, but breathlessly, as if all his energy was going into his arms.
Digging to Australia Page 4