The Innocents

by Nette Hilton

  And what was wrong with that?

  She really, really liked him. The thought of his lovely hands warmed her and the feel of his cheek, all whiskery, had been a surprise. She’d not thought about him being a man before.

  He was just Oleks. But now, his whiskers and cigarette-sweet skin and long legs that crossed like strips of liquorice made her feel suddenly embarrassed and excited all at the same time because she’d hugged him.

  The overfull feeling swam back around her. If he’d been here now she’d have hugged him again.

  He’d solved her problem.

  Now she could get Buster gone from her cupboard. Max’d never have to know that she’d seen him with the boy with the white-gold hair.

  The dead one.

  The one who’d taken Buster not that long before.

  Like Judith Mae did.

  Dead Judith Mae.

  Missie picked up the pencil that lay in the groove of her table. Then the rubber. She ran pencil lines across the surface and then scrubbed them away with the rubber. She piled the rubbings together. And then made more pencil lines. And more rubbings.

  And she didn’t let herself think about Buster, or Judith or the boy who fell under a train.

  22

  EVENING

  ‘CHARMAINE’

  Oleksander Shevchenko didn’t go down for dinner.

  The night darkening outside he didn’t notice any more than he noticed the emptiness of his belly. When he did it was a reminder of all that he’d left behind. He wanted to cling to it. The discomfort. The ache for food. Something that reminded him that this new country is a good place. It is safe and the citizens are well fed and prosperous and they smile and have no need of fear. But his hunger was not sufficient and he found himself thinking back with longing for something he knew no longer existed.

  He let himself flash through his life, picking a gem here and a moment there and then switching quickly to another place or second or scent or sound where he could linger until it too became insufferable. Like tuning the radio. Staying and then leaving when the station selected was not what was expected.

  His parents.

  But not their house. Rubble and digging to find some food. A potato. Two. And hiding them because to be found with food was to be dead.

  His grandfather. Dead. And his grandmother. And his sister. And his mother crying.

  His father. Leaving his farm. Leaving.

  Switch.

  School. Uniforms and being a long way from home. Beatings.

  Switch.

  A new place. Different buildings. Soldiers. Fires. Guns. Switch.

  A new place. Different quarters. Farmhouse and not much room. His mother. Old. Old before her time.

  Anichka. Warm hay in a barn. Celebrations and singing. And night as soft as velvet. And her. The smell of her. The promise. Secrets.

  Aaah, but she was good. And young. She breathed youth and her breath warmed his cheek and her body engulfed him. He was so strong for her ... and tall and proud. Soldiers. Again.

  Switch. No, stay. Listen a while longer to that last night.

  One last time.

  They were to meet again. The next day. And the next. Such hopes they had and they did not know that night was to be the last time. Her parents, they knew. They were so quiet when they took the bread and sausage and a bag. And Anichka.

  And were gone.

  He had not moved from the bed. It was the child, Missie, who had done this. Her sudden kiss and the fling of her small body against his chest had taken his breath. He’d forgotten the touch of hair and the feel of softness against his face. Her arms were the first to embrace him with love in so long it was something he would have thought would be forgotten.

  This love.

  And the way a heart lifts when it is given with wide-flung arms.

  The way a heart opens and yearns for more and seeks back to those other times when it was there.

  It was there, without even asking. From his mother. And father. Anichka.

  He could hear, now, the sound of the radio in the sitting room and moved to go there. It would be best to be there and listen to voices that were English when his heart was aching for the softer sounds of his homeland.

  He straightened his vest and smoothed the creases in his trousers. His feet were in slippers and he wondered about this new home where he could not walk down the hall without feeling his feet had to be properly dressed. The walls of his room were bare again, too. The drawings that spoke to him of his intentions when he had finished this work time for the government were gone. It was best after the way the other little one, the friend of Missie, had seen them. This land so full of lushness and heat and dust and sweat was not given to nakedness. Its people preferred the mounds to be on hills than on the naked hips of women. And they looked to the twists of dead leaves gathered at the fork of their trees to suggest illusions, rather than openly adoring the abundance of hair on the crotch of a reclining nymph.

  They were gone. Kept in the trunk under his bed. It was best. Soon it would be time to leave. He knew it by the look from that woman, Belle, who owned this house.

  She did not want him here.

  He did not want to be here. He had no place to go. No place that would know him.

  No place to go back to.

  He sat down. The night silence now was so intense that the creak in the hall beyond his door disturbed him. He sat up, aware that someone was standing on the other side.

  His heart, so close to memories that weren’t switched off quickly enough, pounded, filling his ears with eternal ringing, deafening him so he wasn’t sure if he’d heard the quiet knock or not.

  He stood slowly and saw a shadow filling the gap beneath the door. It stayed a moment longer and then he saw it narrow as whoever it was turned. And the floor once again creaked.

  He moved suddenly. He had the door opened and was almost in the hall before he could stop himself.

  ‘You didn’t come down for dinner.’

  Margaret, Marcie, was standing with a tray in her hand. She held it out to him. ‘I wasn’t sure if you were asleep,’ she said. ‘I was going to leave it on the floor out here.’

  He took the tray.

  ‘You gave me a fright,’ she said. And lingered.

  ‘It is very good of you.’ Words only. He was looking at her hands and seeing how small they were. And with freckles. On her face as well. She smelt of soap. The soap that is used in the laundry. ‘You will come in?’

  She looked beyond him. This woman knew his room and cleaned it and tidied it but she stood back while he placed his tray on the bed.

  ‘I really don’t want to disturb you.’ She had not come merely to deliver his food. Her hands, now that the tray was removed, were pushed into the pockets of her apron to keep them still.

  ‘It is about Missie that you have come?’ he guessed.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘I am sorry if I have caused you any trouble with her.’

  It made her feel better. Her hand came out of her pocket and brushed across her cheek. ‘Oh, you’re not causing any trouble for me. Belle’s not happy, though, if the children are in this part of the house. I thought I should remind you.’

  So this was it. Belle has been giving trouble. This woman plays both sides of the coin. She looks at him with distrust, and complains about the child to her employee.

  ‘I do not mind. Missie is very welcome for me.’

  It would have been kinder simply to do as he was told. This was not the woman who was complaining.

  ‘Well,’ she was saying. ‘Well. The fact is that she is simply not allowed to come here. She’s very naughty to do so.’

  He was making her uncomfortable.

  ‘She is a very pleasant little girl. I will be sorry to lose her company.’

  ‘And I’m sure she’ll be sorry to lose yours.’ The woman smiled at him. And nodded. She was seeing that he was not to be spoken to as a high school boy. ‘She won’t be doing it again, Mr She
vchenko.’ This time she turned to leave. ‘I’d appreciate it if you could send her packing if she turns up in the wrong place again.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It is not a bother.’

  It was not exactly the truth.

  Missie was not a bother to him and so it would be awkward if he had to send her away. She did not make any noise, so it was of no bother to John. She did not ask him for anything. And, on long nights when loneliness pressed around him, she was a small welcome interruption.

  It was not an easy request and not one that he understood very well.

  The food was left on the tray and placed outside the door.

  23

  MAY

  It was as if knowing how to solve the problem was the problem solved.

  Buster continued to live at the back of the cupboard in the bottom of a box. He could be given back any old time really. It was easy now that she knew how to do it. There was no need to panic.

  At least, in the daytime there wasn’t a need.

  Daytime was about school and learning to knit with needles without big holes opening up in the middle of the rows. And running after school to get everything done before the end of the day caught up with them.

  Sometimes, as they raced along the tracks by the riverbank, or leapt around the railings on the racecourse and pretended not to notice how exciting it was when the big boys joined in, thoughts of Buster would arrive like an unwelcome visitor and Missie would find herself pausing in the middle of her step.

  Once it happened when she was scrambling up into the grandstand ready to try a Jiminy Cricket jump. It’d stopped her in her tracks.

  ‘What?’ Zill was on her, clutching at the railing to stop herself going over ahead of time. ‘Get moving!’ Deirdre, always bossier, shoved at them both.

  And Missie had. Easy to shut him away in a daytime box and not think about him when there were so many other things to do.

  Night was different.

  Night was shadows behind doors and in corners where they looked like they didn’t belong. It was the creaks and groans and whispers of voices that blurred into something else when you tried to hear what they were saying. It was Judith Mae, lost and alone and looking for her cardie. Once she’d woken and Judith’s ghost was there, right there, hanging over her, rising rising and then reaching down with her long white fingers. She was talking to someone, telling them things that Missie couldn’t hear properly. But she knew it was about her.

  She couldn’t move.

  She wanted to turn her head and see who else was there, joining in. But nothing, not a toe on her foot or a leg or a finger could be made to bend or lift.

  Her head swam with ghosts. Awful creatures and dead men swimming about the hallway with black holes for their eyes. Nasty sniggering things rushed past her face and when she woke they were there, on top of the Buster cupboard.

  She screamed and screamed. Footsteps pounded up the stairs and the door was swung open and lights went on and still she screamed. She couldn’t stop and her hand kept pointing to the place where there should have been other things beside old shoeboxes.

  ‘For God’s sake, Missie!’ Her mother had held her until she quietened. ‘You’ll bring the house down if you keep yelling like that.’

  That night she’d been allowed to keep the light on. But Aunt Belle said it was a waste and a nonsense and so the light went off and Judith and her friend would be able to hang around in the shadows working up more dreams and whispered visits.

  Missie had started to promise God – because if anyone knew about ghosts it would be God – that she’d do something about Buster. She wasn’t sure that God would be too happy with her plan to simply hand him on to Deirdre and make a lie to go with it ... but there you go. Best she could do. Deirdre would simply hand it on and Max would be no wiser about where it had come from.

  Unless Deirdre told...

  It was an uncomfortable thorn in her side. It’d arrived unexpectedly one night when she was promising God and refused to budge.

  It was partly the reason why, with the coming of every brand new day, Buster stayed snug and tight in the cupboard right where she’d left him all those weeks ago.

  24

  WINTER

  ‘CHARMAINE’

  Missie didn’t often play at Zilla and Deirdre’s. She didn’t mind that she wasn’t invited. The few times she had gone up were only to stop by and collect cossies or jackets, or different shoes or, once, a book that had been borrowed from Missie’s room and really belonged to the library.

  That, as far as Missie knew, was the only time her mother had ever met Zilla’s mum, who’d hurried along in front of them, closing doors and saying she was sorry about the state of the house and did they have time to stay and have a cup of tea.

  Her mother had stayed and had her tea while Zilla and Missie tried to find the book which wasn’t in the place it was supposed to be.

  It was a surprise then to wake up and find Zilla and Deirdre and their mother sitting in the kitchen having breakfast.

  Her kitchen.

  A bigger surprise was that Zilla and Deirdre were in their pyjamas and dressing-gowns.

  ‘We’re living at your house now.’ Deirdre announced as soon as Missie appeared.

  Missie looked across at Zilla, who didn’t look up.

  ‘Yeah, we sure are!’ Deirdre went on. ‘Mum’s bloke bashed her up and we had no place to go and so Mum made us come here. We walked all the way in our pyjamas and our dressing-gowns and slippers and it was so dark we couldn’t even see where we were going. And, jeez, it was cold!’

  The whole time it took for Deirdre to run out of steam and pause so she could refuel with another spoonful of porridge, Zilla hadn’t looked up. She hadn’t even lifted her spoon. She sat with her eyes down and her hands, palms down, on her knees. She looked like they’d been made to sit for the school photo. Only then they’d had to smile and there was no way Zilla was smiling. No way at all.

  Missie didn’t quite know where to look herself. Her mother didn’t usually let her sit in on grown-up talk and, even though this talk was delivered by Deirdre who wasn’t even as old as she was, it seemed to her that it was grownup stuff.

  She walked around and stood by Zilla’s chair before sliding into the empty chair beside her.

  ‘Do you want some porridge, too?’ her mother asked her.

  ‘How come we have to have porridge?’ Missie said. They usually had Weetharts and a slice of toast.

  ‘Because Mrs Trumble and the girls were cold when they arrived and porridge warms you up.’

  ‘It does!’ Deirdre chirped. ‘It just tastes pretty awful, doesn’t it, Missus Missinger?’

  Missie’s mum smiled and shushed Zill’s mum who looked like she was going to let Deirdre have it if she said another word. ‘Here,’ she said as she spooned on some brown sugar. ‘Try it with some more of this and then you girls can run along upstairs and get ready for school.’

  Missie crept a look across at Mrs Trumble. She didn’t look too good. Her face was all blotchy with red marks across it and one eye was so swollen it was completely closed.

  ‘Missie!’ Her mother hissed and shoved her spoon into her hand. ‘Eat up and off you go. Zilla can wear your brown skirt and blue jumper and be sure to put your long-sleeved singlets on. And clean pants.’

  ‘What about Deirdre?’

  ‘See what you can find. There’s bound to be some things up there that are too small. Do what you can. I’ll be up in a little while.’

  It was really exciting, almost like a holiday and Deirdre ate the rest of her breakfast quickly and then bolted as soon as she was done. Zilla didn’t. She strayed along to the end of the table where her mother was nursing her cup of tea.

  She stood there but her mum didn’t look up. Instead she slipped her arm around Zilla’s middle. ‘It’s not for long,’ she said. Her words lisped together through the swollen, broken lips. ‘Just a couple of days until we can get the house sorted and make s
ure Ralph’s gone. We don’t want him back again, do we?’

  Zilla gave a slight shake of her head.

  ‘Off you go. I’m all right. Truly I am.’

  She didn’t sound all right and her eyes had gone all watery. It was easy to see she was crying. Her mother had reached around and handed her the tea towel to mop her tears away. Missie was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to use tea towels like that.

  ‘Upstairs now, the pair of you.’ Missie’s mum scattered them. ‘I’ll get some lunches made and look after your mum for you, Zill. Don’t worry. It’ll all work out right.’

  More than anything Missie wanted to know what had happened. She put her arm around Zill’s shoulders the way she’d seen her mother do when one of the sewing ladies was unhappy.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said as she led her up the back stairs. It was easier to act like one of the sewing ladies when her mother was out of earshot.

  ‘What would you know!’ Zilla pulled herself away. ‘Living here in this big posh house.’

  ‘It’s not my house.’

  ‘You live here but! And I don’t see any blokes roaring around drunk and smashing up the place.’

  ‘Mr Fellows gets drunk sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah. I bet!’

  ‘He does.’

  ‘Bet he doesn’t go around belting your old lady up!’

  ‘He yelled at her once.’ But somehow it didn’t seem to count. Missie’s mum had asked him to stop singing so loudly and to watch his language. Missie had loved the song he was singing even if it did have some swear words in it. Mr Fellows had told her mother to go out and find a bloke of her own to nag. Missie’s mother hadn’t even answered. She’d just pushed Missie in through one door and him up the stairs.

  They’d reached the door of her bedroom. ‘He’s not going to be there when you go home anyway.’

  Deirdre had already selected her outfit. ‘Nah. Mum reckons she’s gonna get the cops onto him if he’s still there. Probably won’t but. She never did any of the other times.’