The Promise Seed

by Cass Moriarty

  The boy stayed entirely still, his whole body tense, transfixed by the fact of the man, his nearness, his pulsing power.

  Come on, big boy, we’re wai-ting … called his mother in a lilting voice. We’re lonely in here, come and liven up the party …

  Without haste, the man withdrew his hand and tilted his head closer to the boy as if he was about to whisper something, but only a ghost of a smile tightened his lips. He drew back, and then was gone.

  15

  Edith lived with her parents in a tidy stucco workers’ cottage in Footscray. Her two brothers had already moved away. Her father was on a disability pension and mostly sat around in his singlet, watching the football. I had a lot of time for her mother, Edna, a busy, rotund woman with a ready smile and a bucketload of patience for her indolent hubby. Call me Mrs E, she told me, the first time we met.

  I began walking out with Edith. Before too long her infectious talking wore down my defences. She’d chat about the weather or the football or the people she worked with, and I’d try to keep up my end of the conversation. Never mentioned my days at the Home, though, and certainly never mentioned my sister. That was too raw and too hard for me to even think about explaining. Sometimes there are rooms in your mind that are places of long-ago sadness or despair, and you lock them up tight and throw away the key, or at least hide it pretty good. I had a few such rooms and I wasn’t planning on entering them for anyone, not even Edith.

  Sometimes I see the lad next door and I recognise that he might have a few of those rooms himself. I picture him wandering around there, inside his head, peering through keyholes and then backing away real quick before the door swings open. It’s not pleasant, that recognition, but I figure what with all the disasters and wars and family squabbles that go on in the world, there’s probably quite a few people with sorrow locked away in the gloomy recesses of their minds.

  The kid’s a closed book. Barely says boo. I knew kids like him at the Home. Carrying around secrets and lies enough that he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders. I suppose I was a bit like that myself. Perhaps that’s the connection that binds us together. Or the fear that keeps us still apart.

  Makes you think, though. What I know about kids you could fit on the end of a pin. Space left over. I wonder about Emily, and how she might have turned out. How the two of us would’ve coped there with Mum. I reckon the pair of us would’ve had a weight on our shoulders. I catch the boy’s eye sometimes and I see a shadow across his face. A hard edge to his features. At least Emily was spared that.

  No, I didn’t tell Edith about my sister. Or the Home. I couldn’t. Those were things I was unable to put into words. But even without sharing my past, Edith and I gradually got to know each other. We danced in other people’s kitchens and made new friends. I started to believe that I had found someone I could confide in. I found work with a printing company again. The familiar smells of kerosene, linseed oil and fresh ink on paper. The rhythmic thumps of heavy machinery.

  And then she got pregnant.

  …

  They say it only takes once. With Edith and me, it was five times, not that I was counting.

  Edith was much more confident than me in the area of intimacy. She had no problem holding my hand in public or throwing her arms around me for a cuddle when the mood took her. So I suppose it was natural that she’d take the lead. Truth be told, I reckon she was more experienced than me in that department, though given my history, I suppose that wouldn’t have been difficult.

  The first time it happened was in March. I recall it was the first chilly evening we’d had after a scorcher of a summer, the temperature plummeting and raindrops whipping against my face as I waited on her parents’ front porch. Through the window I could see her mum hurrying out from the bathroom, wiping her hands on a towel. She threw a scowl at Edith’s dad, who gave the impression of being nailed down to that sofa, like he wasn’t getting up for nobody. She opened the door and beckoned me in with her usual kindly words, asking about my work and tut-tutting about the weather.

  Are you sure you want to be out in this? Why don’t you young people stay home here with us tonight, I’ve got a jam roly-poly in the oven and we were thinking about a game of Scrabble, weren’t we, dear? Dear? DEAR?

  Mrs E always claimed her husband’s hearing got damaged in the war, but I wasn’t so sure. There were times she was nigh on yelling right in his direction, and he wouldn’t even twitch a muscle to indicate he’d heard her, but I swear I’d see a glint in his eye when he finally turned his head. More than once I thought that maybe Old Joe had heard enough of Mrs E over the years and figured she didn’t have anything new to say, so he simply tuned out.

  Anyway, the idea of a night in with Mrs E’s cooking sounded all right to me, and I was just saying so when Edith appeared from out the back where she had a little bedroom made out of what used to be a pantry.

  What’s all this talk? You promised to take me to that new place for a meal and some bingo!

  Well, the weather’s so bad, I thought … I drifted off when I saw her adorable face all puckered into a frown, and I knew I’d lost. ’Course I did! Come on, get your coat, we’ll make a dash for the train while the rain’s slowed.

  But once we were outside and out of view of the house, Edith led me in the opposite direction to the train, back towards the bus.

  Let’s go back to your place.

  But … I’ve only now come from there. I thought you wanted to play bingo?

  Stuff bingo, I want to play with you.

  She said that last bit in a voice she used sometimes when we were alone, a voice so sultry that I felt myself stiffen right there in the middle of the footpath.

  But what about Mrs E? You know she doesn’t approve of us being alone over at my place, even during the day.

  What Mum don’t know can’t hurt her. Come, on baby, pleeease? I think it’s time we got to know each other a little better … don’t you?

  She reached up then and put both her arms around my neck and began nuzzling my ear, right there in front of whoever chanced to be passing by. Her warm tongue was flicking in and out of my ear and I thought I would collapse with pleasure. I grabbed her hands and made for the bus stop.

  By the time we reached my place I was worked up pretty good. Edith had chosen the back seat of the bus, me trailing behind, and she had her hands all over me during the ride home. I kept glancing towards the front to see if the driver had noticed. I could feel my face, warm and flushed. At one point another young woman shot us a disapproving glare. I think that might’ve been after I groaned a little.

  I’m sure the driver took the long way round ’cause that bus ride seemed to last forever. A cold drizzle left tracks on the other side of the steamy glass. Edith wrote our initials inside a clouded heart.

  At the flat, I couldn’t seem to fit the key into the lock and eventually Edith took it from me and did it herself. I wondered if she was feeling as het up as me, and if so, how she could act so calm and capable. Once we were inside I thought I should at least offer her a drink, but she would have none of it. She was a woman with one thing on her mind.

  Don’t get me wrong, we’d fooled around before, but I’d always made sure we didn’t get carried away. I’d never let things get as far as they did that day. We were always careful.

  We ended up on top of the faded chenille bedspread, wrestling and scratching and pulling at each other. Before I knew it my trousers were off and Edith was pretty much naked and we were under the covers, skin to skin. She was soft and silky, but her breasts were firm under my hands, and she kissed my throat and my chest and ran her fingers down my abdomen until I thought I might pass out. Then she took my hand and placed it between her legs. I could feel the soft mound of hair and under that a moist tender spot that yielded under the pressure of my fingers. Right when I thought I was surely having a heart attack, she manoeuvred me around
somehow and slipped me inside her and I got this surge of energy and passion and heat. I recall thrusting and bucking so hard that afterwards I thought I might have hurt her.

  So that’s pretty much how it went after that. Edith went at it hell for leather whenever she got the opportunity, and I went along for the ride. And each of those four more times I couldn’t believe my luck. A fella surely wasn’t gonna complain.

  I know what you’re thinking – what about protection? Surely he wasn’t that stupid. Well, I’m ashamed to say that yes, I was that stupid, or maybe naïve if you were being kind about it. Truth is, each time it happened I was that caught up in the moment – that unbelieving and grateful that we were even doing it at all – that the notion of protection never even crossed my mind. In the light of day, of course, like sitting on the bus the next morning, a thought would niggle in the back of my mind. I’d wonder about the workings of a woman’s body, and I’d consider what Edith might be doing to prevent those workings, but I knew so little about it myself that I wasn’t exactly sure what I should be concerned about. And despite our nocturnal fumblings and exchanges of bodily fluids, I was much too embarrassed to ask her directly.

  We were in the cinema when she told me, the old Esquire in Bourke Street – gone now. Some years later they incorporated it into yet another shopping centre. Apparently under that ghastly grey cladding, the original Edwardian façade lies hidden, crying out to be uncovered. It was a true old lady – stately, cavernous, with as many decorative bits and pieces as a grand dame’s overskirt. We were watching some film about a homely girl who couldn’t get a boyfriend but she had this sweet, sweet voice, and then she finally found a man and he got himself killed and she was all alone again. Right depressing it was. And Edith whispered something in my ear and I only caught the word pregnant and I sat there confused for a moment, thinking that I must have missed that bit in the movie, when I noticed Edith’s eyes shining out at me and I realised she was talking about herself. And me. About us.

  My education about all things sexual got brought up to speed right quick, I can tell you.

  Her parents were pretty decent about it, I have to say. Mrs E spent the first few weeks crying every time Edith so much as glanced at her, and she avoided my eye altogether, but then once she’d come around to the idea, she started crying every time she saw me, in between taking me in her arms and squeezing the life out of me and telling me how I was one of the family. I hadn’t been one of the family, any family, for so long – not since that one week with my friend Tom. So that was rather nice.

  Old Joe took me aside after he heard the news and gave me the token speech about carelessness and a woman’s honour and a man’s responsibility, but it lost its sting when he gave a chuckle and mumbled something about sowing wild oats and best days of your life.

  Mind you, didn’t stop him insisting that we had to get married.

  16

  The boy woke to the sounds of a howling wind tearing viciously through the house; the walls creaked and groaned in protest. Outside his window the fig tree swayed sideways under the assault. Gusts of leaves eddied in great clouds. The sky was the overcast hue of an elephant’s hide.

  Sunday. The last day of the holidays. School tomorrow, should he choose to go. She wouldn’t notice or much care if he didn’t. He thought he might. He liked the routine of it, the rules. Unlike the blurred lines surrounding schoolyard banter and games, he knew where he stood with the rules. Raise your hand before speaking, treat your possessions with respect, no running on the concrete, no leaving the school grounds without permission – he liked that these rules were there, that they existed, and that he was expected to follow them. He liked that there were consequences if you broke the rules. Discipline meted out. Justice dispensed. Sometimes the boy deliberately did the wrong thing purely so he would be reprimanded. So another kid would notice and tell on him. So a teacher would speak to him sternly and remind him of his responsibilities. He often wished the rest of his life operated under the same rules, the same structure.

  He peeked into his mum’s room on his way to the bathroom, but the bed was cold. She hadn’t come home.

  In the toilet, he tried to aim without looking down. It was a disgusting way to start the day, having to stare at that dirty bowl with its rust-coloured watermark. One morning, when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he had taken the brush and scrubbed hard, willing the bowl to sparkle like the one on the TV ad. But the brush had come away with bits of crap stuck all over it and he couldn’t see any way of removing it from the bristles without picking it off with his hands. He had eventually thrown the whole thing in the bin. This morning, the empty brush container still stood alone, a rank pool of gritty water sitting in the bottom. He peered closer. Tiny mosquito wrigglers rippled the surface.

  The boy tensed as a cramp gripped his stomach. His tummy had been unsettled all night, growling and roiling. He searched under the sink. A large brown cockroach scurried away from the light, through a trail of black specks. He found a tube of hair-removal cream, the contents crusted around the top. Several rusty razors, empty cans of hairspray and deodorant, dozens of old lipsticks and mascara tubes leaking onto the grimy shelving. He pushed aside stray tampons and bobby pins, a jar of face cream and one of Vaseline. He pulled out a damp packet of home-brand paracetamol but the silver sleeve was empty. Eventually he stood and contemplated his choices – in his left hand a small white bottle that could have been aspirin, the label faded beyond reading, containing three tiny white pills; in his right a box of capsules for muscle pain, prescribed for B. Silk. The boy didn’t recognise the name. He replaced the box, tipped two of the white pills into his hand and swallowed them down with a handful of tap water.

  He returned to his bedroom and collected an armful of clothes from the floor and the end of his bed and went out the back to the laundry. It was the coldest room in the house. The wind tunnelled through the large gap under the outside door. He lifted the lid of the washing machine, an ancient Westinghouse. A sour smell assailed his nostrils. He reached in to remove the slimy mass of sodden clothes, dumping them into a washing basket. The spinner had been broken for months. He loaded his own clothes into the drum and poured in a generous shower of detergent. The machine came to life reluctantly, water trickling.

  His stomach churned violently as he entered the kitchen, the greasy smells from last night’s chicken pervading his nostrils. A blackened fry pan sat on the stovetop, half-filled with murky oil. As he emptied the pan into the sink, the oil spattered onto his jumper and left a dripping trail across the bench. The chicken had been a disaster anyway. The oil had got so hot so quickly that he had been afraid the whole pan would catch alight. He had taken the pieces out as soon as they began to crisp; too soon, he realised when he bit into them – each piece was pink and gelatinous near the bone, slimy in his mouth. The skin had tasted like paper towel absorbed with grease.

  He tried to find something more to settle his stomach and settled on some crackers from the pantry. The packet had been left open and they were stale. He washed them down with lemonade.

  He wondered briefly whether she would be home in time – or in any condition – to go to the shops and get something he could take to school for lunch the next day.

  When he opened the back door, the wind crept down inside his collar and curled around the space between his shirt and the top of his jeans. He pulled his beanie down low over his ears and strode across his yard towards the chicken coop.

  The birds could hear or maybe sense his presence. Their cackles intensified into squawks of anticipation as he scrambled over the fence and wormed his way inside the hut. Spider webs feathered the wire, grey with feed dust, adorned here and there with fluffy down. The older hens strutted towards him expectantly. He rattled the lid off the beaten tin drum, extracted a handful of seed and scattered it. The hens darted about, pecking at the ground, their eyes bright.

  He slipped the wire loop ov
er the catch and cupped his hands under his black chick. Midnight, he had named it, even though the old man had said that was a stupid name for a chook. It seemed bigger than yesterday. He snuggled Midnight close to his cheek and smelt its warm chicken smell. He held one small foot in his fingers, the claws pricking his skin, the scaly leg fragile as a dry twig. A correlation between Midnight and the chicken from last night began to coalesce in his mind, but he sidestepped the thought.

  The old man never ate his chickens. He had told him that. He kept them only for the eggs, and when they were too old to lay, he let them live out their retirement in peace. The boy was glad.

  A noise at the door and he was there, his hunched shadow.

  Thought I saw you come in. How’s that bird with the damn fool name?

  She’s OK. Aren’t they cold, but? Out here with the wind?

  Nah, they got all those feathers. Not like us hairless critters, exposed to all the elements God sends.

  But the chicks, their feathers aren’t so thick yet.

  Don’t you worry about the chicks. They fluff themselves up, get a real warm buffer of air all around them. Warmer than you in your bed, I’ll bet.

  The old man peered at the boy’s face.

  You look a bit peaky. What’s up? You crook?

  Ah, my tummy’s upset. Feel like crap. Reckon I ate something.

  Yeah well, watch your language. You got anything to take?

  The boy hesitated. I took some tablets but I’m not sure if they were the right ones.

  Well, for the love of God. Don’t you have more sense than to go taking medicines you’re not sure of? Didn’t you check with your mother?

  No, she wasn’t … she … she was asleep. I didn’t want to bother her.

  He returned to the chick, chastened by the lie that had fallen from his lips, and slowly stroked its soft head.