Rain May and Captain Daniel

by Catherine Bateson

  I lost another game of chess and then Maggie came and we walked home together.

  ‘Well, that’s a plus,’ Mum said. ‘What a lovely woman. Stressed to the max, obviously. Did you see the house, Rain, not a thing out of place. You know, that kind of obsessive housekeeping can be more stressful than anything else. It’s so meaningless. And when you think she made all those cupboards herself. She could be a carpenter. She could be out there renovating houses — she’s coming in tomorrow and we’re going to do the kitchen with that Tuscan look I showed you. She thinks it will look beautiful. Then we might drive to Bendigo. She thinks we could redo all the bench tops with jarrah floor boards.’

  Maggie and I loaded the possum trap that night with an apple smeared with honey. That was the easy part. Getting it up in the roof was more difficult. I had to wait until Maggie squeezed through the little access hole and then, standing on the ladder, I lifted the cage up to her. It was heavy and my arms ached. When Maggie finally came down, covered in cobwebs, she was grinning triumphantly.

  ‘We did it, Rain, all by ourselves. Don’t you feel proud?’

  We had a cup of hot chocolate to celebrate and went to bed. I lay awake for ages listening, but I didn’t hear as much as a possum sneeze.

  Maggie woke me when I’d just got to sleep, or that’s what it felt like. It was still dark and I didn’t know what she was doing pulling my shoulder like that when it wasn’t even a school day. I’d been dreaming about my old school and hanging out with Emma and Lisa and I’d forgotten that Emma had gone to Sydney and that we’d moved, too.

  ‘Wake up,’ Maggie said urgently. ‘Rain, you have to wake up.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, trying to open my eyes, which felt heavy as rocks, ‘what’s the time?’

  ‘Four in the morning, but listen, Rain, listen — we got the possum!’

  I shut my eyes again and listened. There was a thumping and banging high above me somewhere.

  ‘Good,’ I said, ‘that’s great. Night night.’

  ‘No, Rain, come on — you have to help me. We have to get it down now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, come on, darling, wake up.’ And she pulled the blankets off me, letting in a rush of icy air.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘I think,’ Maggie said, standing at the bottom of the ladder, ‘that you’re going to have to get up in the roof, kind of nudge the cage along to the hole and then I’m going to have to get it from here. A full-grown possum in that cage will be too heavy for you. Here’s the torch.’ I was scared of spiders and not too keen on going up in the roof, but I was desperate to see the possum.

  ‘Okay, you hold the ladder.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Inside the roof was pitch black and then shadowy when I shone the torch around.

  ‘Don’t shine the torch in its eyes,’ Mum said anxiously from her post on the ladder. ‘It’ll scare it.’

  Once you got used to the dark, it wasn’t quite as bad. I covered the torch with my hand and in the faintest light that escaped I could see the possum cowering at the furtherest end of the cage.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said quietly, ‘you’re just moving, like we had to. That’s all.’

  It was hard moving the cage gently but finally I got it to the edge of the hole. Mum threw up a couple of towels and told me to cover the cage so we didn’t blind the possum, as we moved it into the sudden light of the lounge room. While I did this there was a soft scuffle alongside the cage and without thinking I reached down.

  The claws were frantic and very sharp.

  ‘Ouch,’ I cried and nearly dropped the cage.

  ‘What is it?’ Maggie said. ‘Not a spider, Rain?’

  ‘No, it’s — good heavens, Mum, it’s another possum. A baby.’

  ‘Careful darling, they’ll fight like crazy, you know. They can kill cats.’

  ‘Not a baby, Mum.’

  ‘Put it in the towel, if you can. Hold on, I’ll grab a pillow case.’

  I wrapped the terrified baby possum in the towel, all the time talking in a low soothing voice.

  Mum’s head appeared through the hole.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘I’ll hold it open, you put her in.’

  Uncermoniously we dumped baby in the pillow case and Mum disappeared, clutching the top of the pillow case tightly. In the cage, the mother possum made a growling sound that rumbled from deep inside her chest. I rubbed at my scratches. It had been worth it, I thought, remembering how soft the baby’s fur was.

  ‘Now what?’ I asked, clambering down the ladder. ‘Where will we put her?’

  ‘I don’t know?’ Maggie held the pillow case at arm’s length, even though the little bundle had stopped thrashing around. ‘I just don’t think I can get her safely in the cage with her mum. And we can’t let either of them out until Bob finishes the roof.’

  ‘A box?’ I said. We had a lot of boxes left over from the move. They were stacked everywhere.

  ‘A box? I don’t know. I suppose that would be okay as an interim measure. I’m worried that when she calms down she’ll try to scratch her way out and the last thing we want is an escaped baby possum. I’m sure there’s an old cat cage in the shed. Unless it got turfed. Do you remember Grumpy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mum’s old Persian. Ugh, it was the ugliest cat.’

  ‘I can’t remember anything,’ I said. ‘It isn’t fair. Can we get a cat?’

  ‘No,’ Maggie said firmly, ‘I’m having enough problems with wildlife as it is. A cat is not on the agenda. Let’s get a box and then I’ll look for something more suitable in the shed.’

  We found a sturdy box and Mum dumped the whole pillowcase in it, loosening the top first, of course. We then wrapped masking tape round and round the box, but making sure there were enough air holes for the possum. There was a faint scrabbling sound from within the box and then silence.

  ‘I think they’d be better off in a dark room,’ Maggie said. ‘Let’s put them in your bedroom for the time being, and then you can come in with me for what’s left of the night.’

  ‘You think they’re okay?’ I said. ‘You don’t think we should give the little one some food or water?’

  ‘No,’ Maggie said. ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s only going to be a couple of hours. They’ll be fine. Then we’ll look for the cage. Bob’ll come and finish the roof and we’ll let them out at the bottom of the tree with their new ritzy house in it.’

  I looked up at Mum. She had dark baggy circles under her eyes, her mouth was pale and her hair looked limp. Even the curly bits at the ends looked as though they were making an effort to stay jaunty. When she bent over and grasped the big possum cage, I could see where her grey hairs were growing out of the dark burgundy dye she used. She was wearing an old t-shirt and her arms were all goosepimpled from the cold.

  ‘I’ll take the box,’ I offered. ‘And I could make you cup of tea?’

  ‘Thanks, but let’s just get back to bed, eh?’

  It was still totally dark. I pulled aside a little of the curtain in Maggie’s room and looked out into the night.

  ‘There’s a mist,’ I said. ‘It looks really pretty.’

  Maggie came and stood beside me. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said softly. ‘You know, Granny really liked living here. I remember when she first moved and how I’d bring you up as a little baby. They were such peaceful times, Rain. She loved you so much. Watching her with you made me realise how much she loved me.’

  The dark made it easier to talk, somehow, and back in the warm snug of Maggie’s bed I felt able to ask, casually, as though it had just occurred to me, when Dad was picking me up on Friday.

  ‘He won’t come all the way here,’ Maggie said, sounding surprised. ‘I’ll take you down to Sunbury, that’s roughly halfway. He’ll pick you up there.’

  ‘So he’s not coming up here at all?’

  ‘Not at this stage, no. There’s no need. Anyway, there’s a few things I can get at Sunbury.’
>
  ‘I thought he’d want to see the house, what we’ve done.’ I couldn’t help saying that, even though I knew it was the wrong thing to say.

  There was a long silence and then Maggie said, slowly, ‘Rain, this house has nothing to do with Dad. My life, now, except for where you are concerned, has nothing to do with Dad.’

  ‘I just thought he’d like to see what we’ve done,’ I said, even though I knew I shouldn’t.

  ‘I don’t particularly want him to see what we’ve done,’ Maggie said. ‘I want a clear space where he hasn’t been. You can take photos of your room, if you like, but this house is mine.’

  ‘I thought — it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Rain, do you remember the fights? Do you remember your dad driving off in the night? Do you remember us forever yelling at each other? The crying, the endless, endless shouting and bitching and accusations?’

  ‘It wasn’t always like that,’ I said. ‘Remember going to St Kilda, eating fish and chips on the beach? Dad teaching me to roller blade?’

  ‘I remember going to St Kilda and you and I sitting on the beach waiting for him to come back from Julia’s place. I remember him deciding to take up roller blading because he wanted to lose some weight because Julia said he was developing a paunch. I remember …’

  ‘I don’t want to hear anymore,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hear anymore.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Rain, I’m really sorry.’ Maggie found my hand in the dark and held it. ‘It’s not that he’s a bad man, sweetheart, it’s just that this kind of stuff happens. And of course, you are absolutely right, there are lots of good things to remember. And you still have him, he’s still your dad. He’ll never not be that, Rain.

  He loves you enormously and you’re never to forget that. It’s just that he’s your dad-with-Julia now and I’m Maggie, your mother, living in the country. You’ll get the best of both, chickadee — the Melbourne latte society promenading where it’s good to be seen on a Sunday morning and then possum-catching and walking in the Wombat State Forest quietly so as not to disturb the blue tongue lizards or the roos.’

  ‘I know, Mum, I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know what I was really saying sorry for, whether for raising the whole subject or not being totally happy with the idea of living in two different places with parents who didn’t live together the way I knew they should, the way they’d promised to in the photos Maggie had put away.

  ‘Go back to sleep now,’ Maggie whispered and she stroked my hair back from my forehead, the way she did when I had flu. ‘Sleepy Rain, sleepy possums, sleepy stars, back to sleep before the sun wakes up.’

  It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the house now I knew that Dad wouldn’t be seeing it, it was just that I was tired and there was nothing I could really do. Mum was busy banging down nail heads in the floor in the lounge room, Bob was hammering away outside the roof, and I was forbidden to go next door to even ask Daniel over to look at the possums until there was visible stirring.

  At ten o’clock, Daniel’s mum went outside with a load of washing and hung it on the line and I scooted over to the fence.

  ‘We caught the possums,’ I told her. ‘A mother and a baby. We put the baby in a box but then Mum found the old cat cage in the shed and we transferred it to that. It nearly got out but we were quicker and Mum grabbed it. The mother possum has already eaten some apple. Mum reckons we could probably feed them a little fruit, just at first, while they settle in to their new home. Can Daniel come and see them, please?’

  ‘Of course, darling, he’ll love that. And tell your mum I’ll be over in a tick, when I’ve done the vacuuming.’

  ‘Does your mother vacuum every day,’ I asked Daniel after we’d quietly been in to see the possums and put more apple in their cages.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I suppose so. There are things called dust mites, you know. They live on your skin. We shed skin all the time and they eat it. And there can be lead in carpets, too. And pesticides. Counsellor Diana read an article on it in the New Scientist. So, yeah, I reckon she probably vacuums to get rid of it all. She wanted to rip up the carpets like your mum’s doing but the Doctor said it was too much work for her and he hasn’t got round to it yet. Do you want to go down to the river?’

  ‘Are you allowed?’

  ‘Strictly speaking?’ Daniel asked quietly. ‘Well, only to certain bits, the more boring bits, if you ask me. The bits where the platypuses are Diana says are too deep and anything can happen if you’re there by yourself. But you see, I wouldn’t be by myself, would I? You’d be there. So logically, we’d be able to go there because we’d be with each other. Anyway, I can swim. Can you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Well, you tell your mum,’ Daniel said. ‘I think she’s less nervous than the Counsellor. You tell her we’re going exploring and we’ll be back for lunch. They like it when you tell them when you’ll be back.’

  ‘Have you got a watch?’

  ‘Yep.’ Daniel drew up his jumper sleeve and showed me a large, impressive black watch. ‘Good to thirty metres underwater,’ he said tapping it, ‘and there’s a stopwatch and an alarm, too.’

  Maggie and Diana were down on their knees in the lounge room, both of them filling holes and talking. I was pleased Maggie had wrapped a purple scarf, turban-like, around her head and that she was wearing lipstick, even though she was in the house. It made her look happier, I thought, and Daniel’s mum, too, was wearing lipstick, a pale brownish pink colour that seemed to match her hair and her jumper perfectly. Next to Diana’s soft colours, Mum’s purple scarf and brightly-striped jumper looked almost too bold and it made me wonder if they’d ever really be friends. They looked happy, though, working together, and their voices buzzed along in that calm, friendly way, like when there’s art at school and everyone’s really into it, making masks, say, or clay figures.

  I outlined Daniel’s plan quickly to Maggie, explaining about the watch and how we’d back, that we were just exploring, and Maggie said, ‘Sure, sure’, and if Diana started to say something about the river, I was out of the room too quickly to know whether she’d been about to say it to me or to my mother.

  The Captain’s Log, Stardate 150901

  I took the new coloniser down to Waterway C. in order to acquaint her with the river fauna. Unfortunately the more elusive of these wasn’t present, but we did see River Rodents, known commonly as water rats. I held my breath, actually, in case she thought these were disgusting — other colonisers have — but Rain thought they were pretty cute.

  They are, too. They are quite cheeky, have a white tip on the end of their tail and they are frequently mistaken for platypuses, because they share the same environment. I must say, the number of water rats I have seen makes me doubt my original platypus sighting (see Captain’s Log, Stardate 220400). It could be that it was rats all the time. It’s not that I don’t like the rats, and they are, as the Counsellor says, quite special in their own way, but they are not platypuses. This isn’t what I told Rain, of course — I said we only had to wait long enough and we’d see a platypus.

  I don’t think this was wrong of me. I haven’t much bargaining power, as the Ferengi would put it, and I need every bit I have. Otherwise she’ll get to school and she’ll never speak to me again.

  I am the most unpopular kid in Clarkson P S and that’s that. There is no one worse at sports and better at all other subjects, except for art. There is no one more likely to get tripped up, spat at, head butted, accidentally kicked, pushed and punched, or have their lunch end up in the dust. I spend my lunch time trailing around after the teacher on duty and playing two papers with the loneliest preppies.

  I don’t imagine Rain will be my friend at school. Or, really, that I even want her to. If she’s my friend, they won’t let her be anyone else’s. And what have I got that they don’t have?.

  What I have versus What they have

  we live next door cool

  her mum and mine are friends pony club />
  internet access scouts

  chess games ballet

  platypus (if we see any — boyfriends

  otherwise water rats)

  It doesn’t look good on my side. She’ll spend one day at Clarkson P S and be swept up by the tutu and jodphur girls and then Tom will be her boyfriend and she won’t even want to learn chess.

  Now I am descending into depression, as the Counsellor says.

  Rain’s First Weekend Away Fridge Poem

  this girl

  will miss you

  my most

  & only

  my always

  a fat kiss

  & no sad

  from me

  your daughter

  (Why do they have the word ‘father’ in this poetry set but not the word ‘mother’. I should write to them and complain.)

  The Captain’s Log, Stardate 211001

  The next-door colonisers set out early after lunch and the first female came back alone in her transport pod around dusk.

  On Planet 9 we ate heartily and then the screen went on and I went to the bridge. All quiet. Read for a while — The Hobbit — but the television noise got me down so I opened the blinds and looked out into the night. Well, I should have, but the first female had her blinds open, too, so I saw straight into Planet 7’s eating pod.

  Honest, I was hoping for stars. And there was Maggie walking up and down the kitchen in her pyjamas already (and not even my bedtime), her face all funny.

  I thought she may have had a stroke and nearly called the doctor, but I decided further investigation was necessary so got the star binoculars out and focussed on her.

  Her face was all pulled in and she was crying, but her hands were moving as though she was dancing slowly to some music. She didn’t bother to sweep the tears away, just kept on swaying and crying.