The Slightly Bruised Glory of Cedar B. Hartley

by Martine Murray

  ‘Hey, Caramella, can you help me? I need some spotting. I’m trying to do a handstand on a skateboard but I can’t seem to hit it.’

  ‘Why are you trying that?’ she says.

  ‘What are you drawing?’ I go over and have a peek. It’s a pencil drawing of a sad, young face. I don’t know how she makes it look sad and young, because the mouth isn’t turned down. The sadness is in the eyes. Caramella screws up her face at the drawing, and holds it away from her.

  ‘The drawing’s wrong,’ she says.

  ‘It’s very sad,’ I say. ‘I think it’s a great drawing.’

  ‘It’s meant to be Mohammed,’ she says. ‘Not exactly him, but you know, something of him.’

  Mohammed is the Afghan boy who never joins in; the one who just appears in the doorway like a small, dark ghost. I realise that it isn’t exactly sadness that’s in the face, but an absence, a sense that something isn’t there.

  ‘It looks as if he’s haunted,’ I say, and I wonder if he remembers what he has lost.

  ‘Yeah. He is. I wish he could join in but I think he’s shy. I think he’s proud too. He’s afraid he might make a fool of himself.’

  I look at Caramella with her soft, round face studying her drawing, and I can see she has really been thinking about Mohammed, and she’s concerned. I think even in some way she might feel she understands him. I remember how shy she was when I first dragged her along to training, how she glued herself to the wall pulling her T-shirt down and how, bit by bit, she became more willing to have a try.

  ‘After all,’ she says, looking up at me as she stretches her legs and puts the drawing down, ‘that’s the point, isn’t it? I mean, the whole reason we’re teaching circus there is to teach them something that makes them enjoy themselves.’

  ‘Yeah. For sure. That’s the point. But also it’s good for anyone to feel they’re learning something. You keep trying and you get better at it. That’s why I just tried to hit a balance on a skateboard.’

  ‘And still you haven’t given up?’

  ‘No way.’

  Caramella laughs.

  ‘Ah, Cedar, that’s when you’re great. That’s when you’re at your best. When you don’t give up.’

  We both look at each other. I’m sitting on the back of the couch. There’s a tiny serious moment when I have a feeling that she’s just said something meaningful, something that reaches further than skateboard hand balances. I know it has something to do with me giving up on the circus, and then not giving up on the circus. Sometimes your own importance wells up way beyond your self and submerges the real things, the things that count. I guess meeting Inisiya had reminded me that the circus didn’t have to be about me, it could be about something else, about the things Caramella was talking about. I feel very warm right then, in that serious moment, and without really knowing exactly why I reach down and give Caramella a big hug. And then I drag her outside to spot me while I keep trying to hit that balance. I’m like a dog with a bone when I really want to learn a new trick.

  Chapter 27

  So, it’s the night before my great adventure and I’m secretly packing my things. I’m trying to take as little as possible, since I need to be slim and streamlined enough to slither into the back of a Holden without looking like a small, quivering human bump.

  Let me tell you, it’s very hard for me to take only a few things as I tend to imagine situations in which I might need a tennis racquet or a candle or a pineapple, or Barnaby’s lava lamp, or even a very glamorous dress…Just imagine I’m living with Kite and Ruben and one night a visitor from Argentina arrives and decides to teach us all how to tango. Well, a long dress would be essential and a lava lamp would very much add to the atmosphere.

  But since I don’t have that kind of a dress or a tennis racquet, and Barnaby would kill me if I took his lava lamp, which is lilac, I managed to cut it all down to two green apples, trackie pants and singlet, torch, bathers, nightie, a book called The Road Less Travelled, which Aunt Squeezy lent me, my diary, the skateboard and of course Harold Barton’s letter (still burning, burning, burning).

  When I go to bed the night before Albury, it feels a lot like the way the night before Christmas used to feel when I was little. I’m so excited it takes me a long, long bout of thinking and dreaming before I fall off to sleep. And by the time I get up the next morning, I’m beginning to have fears instead.

  What if Barnaby and Ada discover me early and kick me out of the car?

  How will I cope with the disappointment, the humiliation?

  What if I make an absolute fool of myself at the audition?

  What if I really do get into the circus and I have to move to Albury without Mum?

  And what if Stinky can’t come and live with me?

  I start to feel very lonely. I wish someone was going with me. I wish even Caramella could pop over and say, ‘goodbye, good luck.’ If only I could take Stinky, the little hairy guy, with me. I try to distract myself from these thoughts by rolling out of bed just as if it was a normal day. But as soon as Stinky hears I’m up he noses his way into my room for a pat, and I pull him onto my lap.

  Sometimes I think I love Stinky too much. I mean it makes me scared how much I love that dog. Once you love someone, even a dog someone, even a cockatoo, you start thinking that life would be unbearable without them. Maybe not everyone thinks that, but I do, because I can’t stop my imagination running away, running like an untamed horse, windswept and blustery, through the forests, sometimes going to wildly sad places and sometimes to wildly great places, but there’s no doubt it’s got the taste for roaming and if it comes across an idea that maybe one day Stinky might not be here it can be so utterly convincing that I start feeling unbearably sad. And I mean unbearably. But then there’s not much you can do because you can’t subtract your love to make it less. You can’t close it up or tie it down. Once it’s out, it’s out, and you can’t get it back in. Imagine if everyone could measure out the exact amount of love they were willing to gamble. But even if I could do that I reckon I’d still be a gambling man, I mean a high roller, like my Aunt Squeezy. She’s always giving too much love, especially to Italian cads. Can you do love too much? I know there’s a lot of things that you shouldn’t do too much, like telling lies, watching telly (especially up close – it makes your eyes square), showing off, eating green apples off Caramella’s tree (gives you the runs), but I never heard anyone say, ‘Now now, don’t you go and love that person or that dog or you’ll get the runs.’

  Oh, life is very, very big.

  I go eat breakfast and I act as normal as possible. Mum, as usual, is racing out the door with a piece of toast in one hand, keys in the other. She kisses me goodbye, says, ‘Hey, vegie lasagne for dinner tonight,’ because she knows it’s my favourite.

  I say,‘Mmmm-mmm, great,’ just as if I’m really excited about that.

  A minute after she has left, she comes back, bursting in with a frown and unwinding a car key from her keys and whacking it on the kitchen table.

  ‘Cedie, tell Barn when he gets up that this is the only car key I’ve got so he can’t lose it. And also could you remind him to check the oil and water and pump up the tyres and, oh God, he’s so vague – he’s likely to blow the head gasket.’

  ‘Mum, you’ll blow your own head gasket if you don’t stop worrying,’ I say.

  She grins again and rushes out with a wave, leaving me alone with the smell of toast and a small, sweet, fond feeling for her. She’s a good mum, I think to myself, just as all soldiers think when they lean out the train window and wave goodbye to their weeping mothers on the platform. I don’t dwell on this for too long; instead, I begin to make myself scrambled eggs on toast, not my usual breakfast but one that most brave journeymen must eat before a big day. As I scramble the eggs I go over the plan:

  1. Make like I’m going off to school, just as always (have already sussed out estimated time of departure is midday).

  2. Instead, go down to creek and
practise pole positions and audition routines.

  3. At about eleven-thirty, sneak back and wedge myself and my pack on car floor behind front car seats, cover with picnic rug.

  4. Lie very still and begin to pray.

  5. After car has left, wait at least one and a half hours so that it’s too far out of town to be sent back, then reveal myself directly. Make a very good joke so that Barnaby will not be too mad.

  But it is somewhere between step three and four that the story doesn’t quite go according to plan. This is what happens: I’ve managed to wriggle down and cover myself up. Luckily, the back seat has already been pushed down and this almost covers me. Barnaby and Ada are packing the car, shoving guitars and amps in the back. Aunt Squeezy is helping them. I’m hardly breathing. The car door near my head opens and someone is pushing things around. Aunt Squeezy is saying, ‘Have you got water? What about taking some fruit?’ And then suddenly the blanket is ripped off my head and I’m staring at Ada and she’s staring at me. She’s frozen, half bent down with a pillow under her arm, and so am I, eyes cranked up towards her imploringly.

  Barnaby is calling from the boot, ‘Hey, Ada, did you put the doona in?’

  She doesn’t answer him. She opens her eyes wider as if to make sure she really is seeing what she thinks she’s seeing, and I put my finger to my mouth.

  ‘Adie?’ says Barnaby.

  I feel my face contort in alarm, which she must register as well, because suddenly she snaps out of our frozen exchange and she stands up.

  ‘Yeah, I put it in,’ she says. ‘I’m just stuffing the pillows behind the seat.’ She bends down again, looks at me in a slightly confused way, as if maybe I’m something she can’t quite recognise. Then she quickly stuffs the pillow under my head and covers me up. A few minutes later, we’re on the road.

  I can hardly believe it. I can’t believe Ada didn’t blow my cover. I lie there picturing myself in years to come, telling the story while wearing something cavalier like a slanted felt hat. I’d be saying, ‘I can’t believe the dame didn’t blow my cover. Man oh man, was I one lucky son of a bitch.’ But, to tell you the truth, I don’t actually dig that expression ‘son of a bitch’. It’s like making out that dogs and mothers are the ones to blame. So I wouldn’t say it exactly that way.

  I’m very uncomfortable, and doubting that I can keep still for the planned one and half hours. It’s bumpier and smellier and stuffier than I ever imagined. Luckily, it’s not long before Ada strikes up an intriguing conversation with Barnaby.

  ‘Hasn’t Cedar got a boyfriend at Albury?’

  Barnaby laughs. ‘Yeah, kind of. I don’t know if it’s got to that yet, but there’s something going on. He’s in some circus up there.’

  Ada says, ‘I guess she would have liked to have come with us then.’

  Barnaby doesn’t answer for a minute and I feel a squirm coming on. Then he sighs.

  ‘Yeah, probably. Well, before Kite left he told me there’d be auditions towards the end of the year, because I told him that we might be passing through Albury on tour. He said not to tell Cedar straight away because he’d have to find out first whether she could audition. But if she could, we planned that I could bring her up.’

  Ada says, ‘So? What happened?’ I’m really beginning to like Ada. Thank God for Ada.

  Barnaby says,‘Well, turns out you have to live in Albury if you want to join that circus, and Mum can’t possibly move there. Mum said she’d spoken to Cedar about it. There’d be no point in her doing the audition if she can’t join.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Ada, and then there’s quiet, just the sound of wind through the windows. I imagine that outside there are fields of yellowed grass with black cows lying down.

  Then Ada says, ‘Can’t she live with some other family there, like a boarder?’

  And I think, what a great idea. How come I didn’t think of that?

  Barnaby says, ‘I don’t know. I just think it would kill Mum, you know, if Cedar left home now. Mum’s lost enough already. Anyway, Mum reckons Cedar wants to go more for the boy than the circus, and those kind of teenage crushes, they pass. She’ll meet someone else and forget all about Kite and the circus.’

  Forget all about Kite and the circus? Like hell I will. I can hardly stop myself from sitting bolt upright and putting him straight.

  Luckily, Ada says, ‘Do you think? I mean do you think so? She seems pretty determined to me. I reckon she seems to feel quite strongly.’

  Barnaby says, ‘Yeah, but that’s Cedar. She just feels strongly about anything. She feels strongly about sultanas in the muesli. She’s like me.’

  I get a feeling there’s a bit of a romantic moment going on now. I can tell by the tone in Barnaby’s voice, which has gone tender-hearted. And there’s almost the quiet, soundless sounds of blushing and touching and eyelashes, and I start feeling squeamish and like I’m about to suffocate in the stench of sentiment, until Ada sighs and starts fiddling around in the tape box for music. She puts on some mournful lady with a piano, and the conversation turns to music. After a while, they pull in for petrol.

  I’m actually busting for a wee myself, and I’m really straining my otherwise feeble ability to be still and quiet. So, while they are both out of the car, I push off the blanket, have a stretch, let out a few cheery sounds and peek out the window. The Billabong One Stop. A middle-of-nowhere truck stop. A weird skinny guy with dark glasses and a footy vest walks by, twisting an ice-cream wrapper. He doesn’t see me but I see him. I also see that we’re in the country now, so I happily hunker down again because I’m pleased I’ll be able to reveal myself soon.

  After we take off again, Barnaby changes the music and puts on ‘G Love and Special Sauce’. One of my favourites. Then he says, ‘Hey, Ada, I want to send Cedar a postcard. It’s a list. Can you write something down for me? The title is: A List of Creek Names Between Melbourne and Albury. So far, Two Mile Creek, Faithful Creek,Turnip Creek, Black Dog Creek and Pelican Floodway.’

  ‘Pelican Floodway? Is that a creek?’

  ‘I don’t know, but she’ll like it.’

  A little while later, he says, ‘You know, the thing about Cedar is that some of the time she fixes her heart so strongly on something she doesn’t really see it for what it is. You know what I mean? She’s going to think this circus in Albury is the be-all and end-all. And I just don’t want her getting too disappointed if it doesn’t turn out to be what she thinks it will be.’

  Ada doesn’t reply. But Barnaby seems to be in the mood for speech-making, anyway. What would he know? He’s never even done a proper cartwheel in his life.

  ‘I mean, I think the glamour of it is exciting for her. She’s got this idea that it’s a “real” circus, whereas the one she’s in now with her friends isn’t.’

  The glamour of it? As if I give a stuff about that. Only I do like the idea of touring the world – who wouldn’t?

  Ada says, ‘Still, she has to make her own decisions about what’s best for her.’ (Well said, Ada, you’re a champ.)

  Barnaby says, ‘Exactly. In fact if I was her I would’ve just stowed away in the car and come along to see.’

  Ada says, giggling, ‘So you wouldn’t have been mad with her if she had stowed away?’

  Barnaby says, ‘Nope. In fact, I just accidentally bought a double choc Magnum ice-cream, in case she had, but since she hasn’t I may as well eat it myself.’

  At this point I throw off the blanket and sit up with a big snort.

  ‘Okay, okay, hand it over then, ’cause I’m starving.’

  Without even looking, Barnaby passes it over his shoulder and says to Ada, ‘So, looks like we’ve got ourselves a real live stowaway.’

  Ada turns around and winks, and I mouth the word ‘thanks’.

  ‘Looks like it,’ I say, and I’m so relieved that Barnaby’s not chucking me out that I settle back and start singing along to ‘G Love’ as loudly as I can. I watch the fields and the sky with the glorious, glowing feeling of
my adventure really being under way.

  Chapter 28

  Before we get there, Barnaby says, ‘So, little champ, where were you planning on staying?’

  I hadn’t actually planned beyond Step 5, of course. In some ways I hadn’t dared believe I’d actually get beyond it. So I sit there with my mouth open like a big dumbo.

  ‘Because at the Termo, where we’re playing, they’ve got a room for us. We could probably smuggle you in there.’

  I know where I want to stay and where I’d imagined I would stay, and it wasn’t crammed in between Barnaby and Ada in some grungy hotel room.

  ‘No, I’ll stay at Kite’s,’ I say, ‘only he isn’t exactly expecting me. Well, he is, but he isn’t expecting me exactly now. Actually, he doesn’t know when to expect me because, see, I wasn’t sure I’d, you know, make it or not.’

  Truth was, Kite and I had never discussed accommodation, but I wasn’t going to let on quite how disarrayed my plan actually was. At least I had the address and I was sure that if I just showed up they’d let me stay. That’s what folk do in the country.

  The problem is that when we do show up, there’s no one home. The house is a nice big yellow wood house with a huge oak tree, just like ours.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘Just leave me here and I’ll wait. They can’t be long.’

  ‘We can’t just leave you. Imagine. I’m going to have to call Mum and let her know you’re with us. I’m not saying we just left you on a doorstep.’

  After a lot of arguing, I persuade Barnaby to leave me on the doorstep. The plan is: if I don’t call him in an hour to let him know I’m safe, he’ll come back and get me.

  ‘Give me two hours. It’s light. I’ve got a good book. Look.’ I flash The Road Less Travelled at them.

  Barnaby says, ‘You’ve got ’till 5.30.’

  I want to be alone when I see Kite. I don’t want big brother hanging around. I want to look like a brave traveller, a fearless risk-taker But also I want to look like I’m completely alone in the world so that he feels obliged to offer me lodgings. Let’s say, brave – slightly ravaged from effect of long journey – orphan, in need of loving care, waiting on the doorstep, is the feel I’m going for. So it simply won’t suit the story if Barnaby and Ada are with me. Not at all.