Digging to Australia

by Lesley Glaister

  When I had been younger, the way we used to open presents used to drive me to distraction. It was my job to distribute them and then we opened them slowly, in turn, everyone watching and admiring each present and passing it round for general inspection. It was a lengthy process, and ridiculous, at least from Mama’s point of view, since she had chosen and wrapped almost everything. The procedure took even longer this year because Auntie May kept drifting off, not to sleep, but to some place beyond us, and it was with great difficulty that we kept her engaged with the task.

  ‘Auntie May!’ bellowed Bob. ‘A torch from Lilian to me – look – a good un.’ He clicked it on and off. ‘Bright beam – normal beam – and off. Thank you, Lilian. Just the thing. Most useful.’

  Mama smiled and unwrapped the present she had chosen for herself from Bob, a book about macramé and a ball of string. Auntie May was passed the string to admire and she held it in her hand and looked, puzzled, at me. ‘Anyone for tennis,’ she said, or something like, and Bob laughed as if it was a joke.

  I unwrapped my black jersey and ran upstairs to put it on and model it. ‘You’re filling out,’ Bob remarked, and Mama called it ‘chic.’ I had some peach blossom bath cubes from Auntie May that I distinctly remembered giving her the year before. ‘Thank you,’ I said. She looked at me through the little slits of her eyes and nodded.

  Mama and Bob opened and exclaimed over their presents from me, and Bob blew his nose on the handkerchief there and then to express his approval.

  ‘Another little present for Jenny,’ Mama said. She was on her knees before the tree. I held my breath thinking, just for a moment, that Jacqueline had remembered me. Mama burrowed beneath the tree and came out with a miniature parcel. ‘Almost got lost, it’s so tiny.’ The paper was the same, and I knew at once what this was: another charm for my bracelet, a little golden book. ‘Open it,’ Mama said eagerly. I pressed the tiny clasp with my finger and a little concertina strip of miniature photographs fell out. Views of Paris.

  ‘Lovely,’ I said. Disappointment lodged in my gullet, as big and fragile as an egg. There was the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe and Versailles – all pictures I recognised from the posters on the walls of the geography room at school.

  ‘You’ll be able to jingle now,’ Mama said, ‘if you fasten it on beside the wishbone.’

  Auntie May chuckled for no apparent reason. We all paused to look at her. Mama helped her open her present from herself and Bob – a pair of slippers. She eased Auntie May’s narrow black shoes off and replaced them with the blue fluffy slippers. They were far too big and slipped off her dangling feet at once. ‘I can change them,’ Mama said sadly, looking at the bent and wizened twigs that were Auntie May’s feet.

  I thought I wouldn’t be able to eat the lunch that Mama had worked so hard to prepare, but I found my appetite growing as I ate, and I loaded my plate with tender white breast meat and thick gravy and more and more potatoes. It was Bob who didn’t eat much, which was unlike him, and Mama kept urging him to eat until he grew annoyed. Mama fed Auntie May little chopped up titbits. She opened her mouth wide to receive the forkfuls and made me think of a bright-eyed baby bird in a nest. We pulled the crackers and read the silly mottoes and wore paper crowns to eat the pudding. Auntie May’s was far too big and kept falling down to sit round her neck like a collar until Mama fixed it on with sticky tape.

  After lunch we sat, sated, round the fire. Bob twiddled the knobs of the radio and we listened to the crackly voice of the Queen and then Bob and Auntie May nodded off and Mama knelt on the floor and tied some lengths of string to the back of a kitchen chair and began experimenting with her macramé. ‘I think I’m going to get on famously with this,’ she said. ‘Would you like a belt? Or I could make a bell pull.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ I asked. I watched her fingers busying away until I dropped off to sleep myself. I was awoken a short time later by a paper angel falling from the ceiling onto my lap. Mama had completed several inches of her work.

  ‘Criss-cross diagonal cording,’ she said eagerly, as soon as I opened my eyes. ‘And look at this – a flat-knot-button – I need some beads. I could make a wall-hanging. Curtains even …’

  ‘I’ll make some tea,’ I said. In the kitchen, gazing into the cavity of the half-devoured turkey, I thought about Johnny and the sort of Christmas he’d be having with Mary and her family or, perhaps, all on his own in the church with only the little branch to remind him that it was Christmas at all. It had been a surprise – a shock – to find that he had a girlfriend. I’d thought of him as a man alone. The kind of woman Mary was surprised me too, an ordinary woman who made fun of him and bossed him about. I couldn’t imagine what he saw in her, but supposed it must be sex appeal. I picked a shred of meat from the carcass. I was restless. Bob had started to snore, I could hear him from the kitchen. It was too hot and stuffy in the house.

  ‘I think I’ll go out for a walk,’ I whispered to Mama, round the sitting-room door. She looked up at me over her glasses, surprised, keeping her finger on an instruction in her book. ‘All right?’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Would you like me to come?’ It was a sacrifice for her to offer now that she had begun her macramé.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t be long. Just a bit of fresh air. I’ll make the tea when I get back.’ She nodded, relieved, and went back to her knots.

  I liked to walk around the streets in the afternoons when it was dark enough for lights to be on, but not quite time to draw the curtains. I liked the houses without net curtains best, where as I dawdled past I could most clearly glimpse the family tableaux. Many were centred round the television and, by pausing and straining my eyes and ears, I caught a snatch of circus, a spangled leap and a roar of applause. Tree lights winked. It was the very day. Pudding-heavy families slumped all along the streets, behind the lighted glass. I saw a slumbering man with his paper crown over his eyes. I saw a boy batting a shuttlecock, I saw a woman with a tray of tea. A car drew up beside me and a family spilled out with squawks of excitement and armfuls of parcels, and I bent to tie my shoelace while the door of a house opened and they were welcomed and swallowed into a hallway full of light and balloons. I didn’t need to go to the playground and climb the frame to know that the family in the blue house would be having a picture-book Christmas. I forced my feet to walk away from the church and back home.

  Bob had woken up and was in the kitchen pouring out the tea. ‘Got rid of the cobwebs?’ he asked. I thought he looked pale and noticed that his hand shook.

  ‘I was going to do that,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Don’t you start fussing,’ he said.

  After a cup of tea it was time for a game. Bob was the enthusiast. Mama played along loyally and I joined in because I had little choice if I wasn’t to wreck Christmas altogether. I never longed for a television set more than on Christmas afternoons. I thought enviously of the families all along the road slumped in companionable quiet in front of their screens. We started harmlessly with Twenty Questions. Bob was a stickler for the rules, and invented more and more as the game progressed, ‘To keep us on our toes,’ he said. He employed the bird-shaped whistle he had found inside his cracker, and gave a sharp peep on it whenever there was an infringement. There was never any suggestion that anyone else should take this umpire’s role. He invented the rule that there should be no umming or erring and that each question must be answered within five seconds – four beats of his fist on the arm of the sofa and then, on the count of five, a fierce pointing of his finger at the victim to demand the answer.

  Auntie May was at a complete loss, and had to be left out. She sent me a mischievous look, and I grinned back at her. You never knew with Auntie May how much she was taking in. She had been always laughing and teasing as a young woman, Mama said, and even now her old eyes glinted with fun whenever Bob raised his whistle to his lips. The first game passed successfully enough. It was always like this. We started with harmless rule-bo
und games where you won or lost – there was no prize for winning other than relief, for, as the level of the brandy bottle crept down, Bob became increasingly scornful of the loser. Dumb Crambo and Consequences followed, and I actually found myself enjoying the latter. Then Mama and I made the tea: turkey and stuffing sandwiches, piccalilli, and Christmas cake. After tea there was a pause for washing-up and digestion, and then, as I had feared, Bob announced ‘Village Life.’

  This was a game he’d invented himself. It had so many rules that nobody except Bob could possibly remember them, or tell whether he was changing them as he went along. I was the postman this year and my sack of Christmas mail had been stolen and the point of the game was to discover who had stolen it and where it was. This was all done with dice and a laboriously drawn and much folded and smudged map, matchsticks stuck into plasticine, and scraps of paper – secret notes which had to be written in code – and each turn could take twenty minutes. Every now and then Bob would order Mama or me out of the room so that a confidential discussion could take place. Bob was, as always, the detective. He picked up one of Mama’s knitting needles, a thin whippy one, and waved it as he ordered us about and waited in the panic-stricken pauses for us to take our turns. Mama and I looked at each other askance. Auntie May made an enigmatic sound in the throat. Bob drew the needle through the air and a shadow passed my eyes and I seemed to see him loom and just for a moment I cringed and screwed shut my eyes, certain that he was going to whip me. But when I looked up he was sitting in his chair with the needle in his lap, not even looking in my direction.

  Mama looked at me curiously. ‘Let’s stop this and play Scrabble,’ she pleaded to Bob. I saw her eyes wander towards her macramé.

  ‘But we’re on the track now!’ Bob objected. ‘Don’t you care who did it?’

  Mama raised her eyebrows at me, and I looked at Auntie May, who nodded. ‘Home,’ she said, looking across at the clock.

  ‘Yes, Bob, it’s time you got Auntie May back,’ said Mama and her face showed a mixture of relief that the game was over and sadness that it was time to say goodbye to Auntie May. Bob reluctantly agreed, and we never did discover who had stolen the mail, and Bob said this was because someone had gone wrong somewhere, looking darkly at Mama, whose face was quite blank as she helped Auntie May on with her coat.

  I was glad when the day was over. I helped Mama clear up and then went up to my room, where the Christmas-stocking presents still lay on my unmade bed. I put on my pyjamas and sat in the midst of the tangle eating my tangerine. Christmas Day was gone and the dread had proved unfounded. It had been no worse than usual. I picked up Johnny’s book and read about Steven breaking his glasses and then getting unfairly pandied for it. I thought ‘pandied’ a funny word for something painful, it was too much like panda, or candied, a sweet and cuddly word. Mama came hesitantly into my room.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asked. I showed her. ‘I haven’t seen that before,’ she said.

  ‘I borrowed it from a friend,’ I said.

  ‘Ah …’ She sat down on the edge of my bed. ‘Enjoyed yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I know Bob’s a bit … but that’s families for you. And he’s good at heart. You must know that. Not bad as fathers go.’

  ‘Except that he’s not my father.’ I tried to shift away from her weight on the edge of my bed. Irritation welled up. The day had been all right, I had kept it under control but now it was over and she had to follow me into my room, she had to push a bit further. ‘There’s no need to pretend, Mama, I’m not a baby.’

  ‘No,’ she sighed. ‘Of course you’re not. That’s very true.’

  ‘You can’t say very true,’ I quibbled. ‘It’s either true or not true.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ She sat there for some moments, clearing her throat and sighing.

  ‘Well?’ I said at last. I was cramped by her presence, unable to move or think, unable to rest.

  ‘There’s another present,’ she said. She looked down and fiddled with the fringed edge of my bedspread. ‘I didn’t want to give it you earlier with Auntie May there – and Bob – and everything. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to upset you – upset everyone – upset Christmas.’

  She waited for me to speak, and when I found my voice it was very cold and clear. ‘From her? From Jacqueline?’

  ‘Yes dear. You were so upset about the letter I didn’t want to risk …’

  ‘Where is it then?’

  ‘I’ll fetch it.’ She hurried out of the room and came back with a parcel wrapped in different paper, not Mama’s paper. It was dark green with tiny silver holly leaves, expensive, tasteful paper – exactly the kind of paper I’d have expected Jacqueline to choose. On a matching label were the words, written in green ink, in an elegant hand, a grown-up sophisticated version of the writing in her letter: To Jennifer, With Love at Christmas, Jacqueline. That was all. I read it and read it, but there was no more to it than that. Still, there was love, and she had remembered. I stared so long at the label that Mama began to fidget.

  ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  ‘I’d rather be alone,’ I said, not looking up, not trusting myself to look away from the parcel.

  ‘All right, Jenny. You can show us in the morning.’ Her voice was flat. ‘Night, night,’ she said, and I muttered some reply, and she hovered for a moment as if about to kiss me, or say something else, and then went out, closing the door with a disappointed click behind her.

  I got out of bed and took the nail scissors from my manicure set, and carefully, very carefully, so as not to tear the paper even slightly, I snipped the parcel open. Inside was a box, and even without the comforting weight of it, I would have known that this box could not, would not, be empty. I smoothed and folded the paper and I put it, and the label, in the secret compartment of my trinket box. I made myself wait for a moment, watching the ballerina pirouette to the ice-cream jingle of the tune. My heart was beating so that it hurt. It mattered what was in the box. It mattered more than anything had mattered since I could remember. Eventually I opened the flap on top of the box. Inside, well packed with screwed up tissue paper, was a squat black camera. It wasn’t new, there were scratches on it and other signs of wear. It was all the more precious for this. I cherished the hope that it had been Jacqueline’s own. She had given me not something shop-bought and meaningless, but something of her own, something that was, perhaps, precious to her. I searched through the box and unscrewed every piece of tissue paper, but there was nothing else, no message, no photograph, which was what I craved. But the camera was a sign that I was important, that I lived in her mind just as she lived in mine.

  I lay down on my back with the camera on my chest and pulled the blankets over me. I had never had a camera, never taken a photograph in my life. Mama and Bob didn’t go in for photography. I realised, for the first time, that there wasn’t a photograph in the house: no albums, no framed portraits, no pictures of me as a baby, no pictures of Jacqueline. It was good to have something of hers weighing down on my chest, pressing over my heart, pinning me down. I drifted off to sleep contentedly, but woke up later in the grip of a nightmare, sweating. Johnny was kneeling on my chest, pressing his knees against me until I thought my ribs would cave in and I would die. But it was only the camera. My pyjama top was soaked with sweat where it had pressed. I moved the camera to the floor beside my bed, turned over and lay with my hand upon it, waiting for sleep to return.

  18

  ‘Well?’ asked Mama, at breakfast, when it became clear I wasn’t going to offer any information.

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘What was it? The present.’

  Bob slurped the dregs of his tea and tapped his cup to indicate to Mama that he wanted some more.

  ‘Well?’ he repeated.

  ‘A camera,’ I said.

  Mama poured the tea. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘of course.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

 
; ‘She had a camera from us for her birthday one year. Was it her thirteenth, Bob? She took it up as a hobby. Photography. She was very keen.’ This was the most Mama had ever said about Jacqueline. I was possessed by a desire to know more.

  ‘Expensive business,’ grumbled Bob.

  ‘Perhaps she still is keen,’ I said.

  ‘Well yes,’ Mama agreed.

  ‘What did you call her?’ I asked. ‘Jacqueline, or Jacqui? What did she look like? Do I look like her? Haven’t you got any photographs? What happened to all hers?’

  ‘Twenty Questions all over again,’ Bob said.

  I looked at Mama, waiting for a reply, and saw that her eyes were very bright and her lips were trembling. She got up and left the room.

  ‘Lilian …’ Bob called after her, but we could hear her fleeing up the stairs and the bathroom door banging shut. Bob raised his eyebrows at me.

  ‘Sleeping dogs,’ he said, ‘best let lie.’

  ‘Lie,’ I said, ‘yes, that’s what you’ve done to me. I only want to know the truth.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Bob said and he looked right at me, hard into my eyes, in a way he hadn’t done for months. ‘What’s truth got to do with it? Look at you, sitting there radiating self-pity. You’ve been fed and clothed and loved. Indulged. It could have been a lot worse considering. We don’t expect gratitude, but do you realize what your behaviour is doing to Mama? And now that girl is sending presents to the house, deliberately provoking, stirring up … We should never have let the cat out of the bag. I told Lilian … And never a word to us. Presents for you, yes … but never a word to Lilian, her own mother. It’ll break her heart.’

  I was cold. Bob never said so much. His face was pale and his fingers shook as he lifted his cup to his lips. There were drops of sweat on his upper lip, and a red weal on his neck where the collar of his shirt had dug in yesterday. It was true I hadn’t thought about Mama’s feelings. She and Bob together seemed nothing but a barrier that kept me from the truth, from my mother, and from my real self.