Two divers got married underwater in 1988. The French crown jewels were sold for six million francs in 1887. Right at the bottom of the page was a box highlighting famous births that day. The boy saw 1951 – Anatoly Karpov – Russian chess champion. That was cool.
Forty-five minutes later, the bell signalled the end of another school day. Students spilled from classrooms, shouting to each other, talking, teasing, grabbing bags and cramming snacks in their mouths. The wooden floor reverberated with the thrumming of feet. Several teachers passed by, car keys in hand. A group of Year 6s in identical red jerseys headed for the oval.
Mr Brady seemed just as busy after school as during. He made several phone calls and spoke to two or three teachers about plans for the following day. He dealt with a snivelling Year 1 girl who couldn’t remember whether she was supposed to wait or walk home. He gave instructions to the groundsman and sorted out some money with Mrs Wainright, the admin lady, who always gave the boy a sympathetic smile. Every so often he would pop his head around his office door and check that the boy was still waiting.
Shouldn’t be long now, mate. I’ll just give her another ring.
Then – Can’t seem to get a hold of her, but I’ve left a message.
And after that – She did say she’d be right over to collect you. We’ll wait a bit longer.
And then finally, at four-thirty, he came out of his office, locked the door behind him and sat down next to the boy.
Well, champ, I guess it looks like she might not be coming. Must have been delayed. How do you normally get home, you walk, don’t you? Or ride your bike? I noticed you had a new bike.
Yes, sir. Ride my bike. The boy stood.
I’m not entirely comfortable just letting you go like this, but I’ve got a family dinner on tonight and I really should be getting on.
It’s fine, sir, really. She probably just … you know …
Got held up, you think?
Yeah … maybe. Or maybe she just forgot or … he whispered, just didn’t want to come. He held Mr Brady’s gaze until the deputy principal looked away.
Right. Well. I see. OK, well you get on home then and I’ll …
The boy, released at last, hoisted his bag onto his shoulder.
Mr Brady stared after the small figure. He rubbed his eyes, hard, with both hands.
29
I couldn’t decide which was worse – the fact that maybe Edith had told her I was dead, or that Sarah knew I wasn’t dead but had decided to treat me as if I was.
I hit the bottle. Whenever the alcohol wore off and my brain switched on again, I’d sit there, dumbfounded at my own stupidity. How could I have walked off and left that little girl? How could I have walked out on Edith? How could I have given up the first notion I had of a family? Girl Seated at Mirror – I had created that sad masterpiece. I had something good and worthwhile and precious, and then I had walked away and left it all behind.
I remembered that visceral feeling I had towards the baby. I had been frightened to love Sarah Emily. Hadn’t I? Or had I resented her intrusion into my life with Edith? I felt a flush of shame. I cast my mind back to that other vulnerable small child in my life.
My sister.
The one who would never leave me.
Emily. My Emily. Her sweet, milk-fogged breath. The fine, downy hairs on her chubby arms. Her flawless skin, pale as parchment. Those knowing eyes. I remembered how I had loved her, but also how her arrival had changed my mother. How she removed her attentions from me onto the new baby. No longer fussed over me, didn’t seem to notice if I ate my dinner or cleaned my teeth. I was no longer the focus of her days.
Emily had arrived as a small intruder; she commanded my mother’s devotion, sapped her energy, absorbed her affection like a sponge, and left not a drop for me.
Thoughts of my dead sister and my lost daughter crowded my mind until I couldn’t tell who was who. My motivations were murky; I didn’t know why I’d done what I did. I couldn’t believe I had been so selfish and crazy and weak. The only way it seemed any clearer was looking back through the bottom of a glass bottle. Alcohol wiped my brain of all thought except the next drink. Wiped it clean. Swept it clear. Got all that clutter out of my head.
And so I drank. A lot. For a while there I barely knew which way was up. I drank, but after a while not even the drink could hold the bad dreams at bay. I dreamt nightmarish dreams of disfigured babies and funhouse mirrors, of garish girls with long chestnut hair, of making love to Edith and then looking down and realising it wasn’t Edith at all but some other woman that I didn’t recognise.
I dreamt of all that I’d lost.
But mostly I dreamt about children. Perfectly formed babies and innocent toddlers. Children maimed and vulnerable and needy and alone. Sweet little girls with warm breath. Screaming infants, their mouths open wide in furious frustration. Creatures as weak and defenceless as kittens. Children susceptible and exposed and frail, or strong and invincible and impervious to the dangers and pitfalls of life.
My sister. My daughter. The children I once knew.
In my sober moments, I tried to make sense of my actions. I considered my unrealistic desire to reconnect with my daughter. I thought back to her birth, and the shame and fear and self-loathing it had ignited in me all those years earlier. And then further back still, to my sister. To what I had felt towards her.
There was no startling revelation. No moment of truth. Didn’t matter how I circled it around in my mind, I found no answers but only more questions. And all I could do was wait.
As time passed, gradually I was able to stop thinking about those children missing from my life. Gradually I came out from under that smothering grey cloud. For the most part.
I drank less. Took up tennis with Pete, when he could drag me along.
That’s about when I got my first chooks, too. I took that as a good sign, being able to care for something other than myself.
My dreams of children came less often, and were less intense. I stopped thinking about Sarah Flower. I stopped remembering Edith.
Simple kindnesses pulled me through. I could’ve ended up much worse. There’re people out there merely existing. Scraping by, one day at a time, with such worry and sadness and fury within them that it would kill you to know about it. People with so many of those little compartments in their heads that they spend all their time scrabbling about trying to tunnel through to freedom.
I never did tell Pete why I was so interested in meeting Sarah Flower. Of my connection with her. Never told him, and he never asked. Even later, years later, when Pete and I figured out we were related, I still never told him about Sarah Flower. Figured it was enough of a bombshell already, what with all he knew of my past, my childhood. Didn’t want to drag any more skeletons out of the closet to see the light of day.
There’s only so much contempt a fellow wants to open himself up to. There simply wasn’t any way I could frame my treatment of Edith and Sarah – that whole period of my life – and make it seem halfway reasonable. So that’s how it went. From time to time I would clam up, grieve too late and all over again. And drink. But eventually I would put the bottle away and keep on going. After all, what choice did I have?
Don’t suppose it will matter in the end. All our secrets go with us to the grave.
30
The sounds of early summer filled the air. Black crows cawed and swooped. A lawnmower buzzed in the distance. There was the shrill call of insects, and a hushing as the wind lifted the leaves on the branches and set them down again. The skin on the back of the boy’s neck tingled and burned; his eyes crinkled against the dry breeze. He leapt the fence in a practised jump and heard the chickens’ squawking intensify to welcome him.
The old man had tried to give him another chick, a yellow one, had even offered to get another baby black one, but the boy had refused. Midnight was gone. The boy had not spoken to him aga
in about how the chick had died, and from then on the old man had kept quiet about it.
He unlatched the gate and the birds ran for the exit, hopping about in the sunshine, making for the leaf mulch under the avocado tree. The boy considered life as a chicken, with your only worry being where the next worm came from or whether or not you would produce an egg that day. He thought he wouldn’t mind coming back as a chicken.
He glanced up at the verandah but the old man did not appear. They had lately taken to spending Saturday afternoons together in the garden. The old man was teaching him how to weed and water, how to prune and harvest. The boy was helping him prepare a vegetable garden in the back corner, wired off to protect it from the chickens. Today they were meant to be digging in some fertiliser. Stinky stuff, stored in the woodshed.
The boy lay on the grass, reading and dozing. The shadows grew longer, and dusk crept across the yard. He closed his book, shooed the hens back into their house and latched the gate. The old man had not come. Perhaps tomorrow.
…
Sunday dawned grey and overcast. The boy dressed and headed for the yard. He paused to listen outside his mother’s room, then pushed on the door. Soft snores came from the mound of bedclothes. He couldn’t tell if the blankets hid one body or two.
He sat on the back steps and laced up his trainers. The old man had made it clear – no shoes, no gardening. We don’t want a shovel slicing off those toes. The steel-grey sky was studded with ominous thunderheads. It would rain before dinner.
In the old man’s yard, he stopped to watch a row of ants as they made their way up the scribbly gum. He opened the henhouse and let the girls out onto the grass. The woodshed door screeched open and he began to pull the heavy sack of blood and bone out into the open. He closed his eyes and grunted as he heaved the bag across the grass, leaving behind a flattened trail. He got as far as the jacaranda and then flopped down on the lawn, his legs sprawled across the sack. The tree was immature, less than two metres high. A dozen purple blossoms crowned the leafy green. Across the old man’s back fence, there was another jacaranda, a giant silhouette against the silvery clouds, thick limbs perfect for climbing, and a thousand periwinkle-blue flowers nodding in the breeze.
A bush turkey landed on the fence in a flap and flurry of wings. It balanced precariously for a moment before dropping to the ground. Keeping one nervous eye on the boy, the bird strutted towards the henhouse, each scraggy claw lifted and placed in a precise pattern. With a rush it dashed for the grain bucket inside the door. The boy had forgotten to replace the brick on top; the bird lunged at the lid with its beak, sending it clattering to the ground, and then had its whole head in the bucket, gobbling grain as fast as its gullet could swallow.
The boy flew up and across to the henhouse, waving his hands wildly in the air.
Har! Har! Get out of it, you dumb bird! Go on, scat! Shoo!
The squawking turkey thrashed around the confines of the hutch, too stupid to find the door opening, its beady eyes glinting in fear. After a strange dance in which both boy and bird writhed and jumped and flapped, the disorientated turkey spotted the space through which light flooded, and made its bid for freedom. The boy followed him to the fence with shouts and claps, and then did a victory dance in the weeds.
Surely all that noise would rouse the old man.
But the house stayed silent, the back door firmly shut.
The boy went back to the woodshed and found a shovel. He pulled aside the chicken wire and began to turn over the rich, loamy soil. Every shovelful of earth revealed a tangle of worms – a good sign, the old man had said. The boy shovelled and loosened clods of soil; he picked out rocks and small stones, and pulled out the remaining weeds by the roots. It had been only a few days since they had cleared the patch, and already more weeds had sprouted four or five centimetres high.
He worked at a steady pace throughout the morning, stopping only to gulp mouthfuls of water from the outside tap, hot at first from the sun, becoming icy as the flow pumped from deep beneath the ground. The storm threatened and the air remained muggy, clinging to his skin and gathering the dirt in his nostrils. Trickles of sweat coursed down his arms and back, and stung his eyes.
Every so often he would pause and stare at the house, willing the old man to make an appearance, if only to say he was unwell and didn’t want to work in the garden that day. But he didn’t show. The boy kept digging, unwilling to stop. If he did, he would have to make a choice. He could go home. He could put away the shovel, chase the hens back into their house, and go home.
But he hadn’t seen the old man for two days now.
He couldn’t go home, not without knowing.
The second choice was to find out what was happening. What was wrong.
He thought of entering the silent house. Usually a glimpse of the old man was enough of an invitation. The boy felt his presence was expected, anticipated. But not today. Today the house squatted mute amongst the profusion of green. No movement at the curtained windows. No footsteps from within. It even smelt empty. Something about the atmosphere of the house gave the boy pause. Today it did not feel welcoming. Today he did not feel invited or expected. Climbing the stairs and entering seemed wrong somehow. Like last time, when he had discovered the old man feverish and shivering in his bed. When he had thought he might be dead.
He couldn’t stop, not yet.
He worked for another hour, his stomach growling, his limbs growing slack with fatigue. Finally he threw the shovel onto the dirt and plodded towards the house. He was hot, filthy, tired and hungry. He stamped up the steps, announcing his presence with noise and bluster. He hesitated, then knocked on the door. To his surprise, it yielded to his fist, swinging open to the old man’s kitchen. The familiar smell of vomit and alcohol filled the boy’s nostrils.
It smelt like home.
Although he had noticed a dusty bottle of whisky in the old man’s cabinet, and the occasional beer bottle in the recycling bin, he had never before seen much evidence of him drinking. And this smelt like serious drinking. His mother on a bad day.
The boy peered through the gloom. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink. Flies crawled over a half-eaten sausage on a plate on the table. More and more like home. He counted two empty whisky bottles on the floor beside the bin, three wine bottles containing only the dregs, and a few stubbies lying on the stove or sideways on the floor.
He levered his muddy trainers off his feet and stepped inside. Immediately the smell was stronger, and the source became obvious – a stinking pile of spew, right there on the floor on the other side of the kitchen. The boy looked away.
He tiptoed towards the lounge room, darker even than the kitchen, the curtains drawn tight against the day. The old man was sprawled at a funny angle on the sofa, one leg resting on the floor, one arm thrown over his face. His head was tilted back and – to the boy’s relief – guttural noises came from his open mouth. The boy crept nearer, holding his breath against the stink. The old man was a sorry sight. Dried vomit splattered his shirt and his fly was undone. The boy stared at the old man’s bare feet – white and hairy, with tough, curling yellow toenails.
So this was it. The old man was a drunk. Like his mum. Like all her boyfriends. Like just about every adult he had the misfortune to come into contact with. Pathetic.
The boy turned away. In the kitchen he kicked an empty bottle against the wall in disgust. Pain soared through his big toe. He grabbed his shoes and slammed the back door.
…
After school on Monday, the boy cycled to the creek. Detritus from the previous night’s storm littered the ground. The sky was still grey, and water dripped from disturbed branches. He rode fast and wild through the bush, skidding on loose dirt and patches of mud, and trying risky jumps. He threw flat stones across the water. He ran into some Year 8 boys and sold them the last of his smokes for two bucks each. He waded into the shallow
s and tried to catch tadpoles with his bare hands. He pulled up great clods of earth and threw them into the water.
He found a fallen nest and smashed the lone egg against a boulder.
He fought a eucalypt, bashing his fists over and over on the bark, until his knuckles bled and strings of snot mingled with the dirt on his face.
Then he sat on the damp earth, hugged his arms around his knees, and cried.
…
Tuesday he skipped school and spent the day re-creating their last chess game in his head. All afternoon, and he still couldn’t find a way to beat the old man’s last move.
Wednesday he remembered the chickens. As he opened the gate, they rushed to him, scolding him in their shrill voices. When he scattered the grain, they fell over themselves to get at it, the older ones delivering ferocious stabs to the weaker hens. Their water container was almost empty and stank of chook poo.
There were seven eggs in the nesting boxes. In a series of deliberate, calculated throws, he smashed each one against the verandah posts, and watched as the bright yellow yolks ran down to stain the earth.
After half an hour spent watching the ants delight in the unexpected feast, the boy’s breathing had slowed and his heart had returned to its regular beat. The broken shells and their glistening contents made a forlorn scene of carnage. He got the hose and tried to wash off the sticky mess that was fast solidifying in the sun, but it was no good; the albumen had dried onto the paintwork.
The boy then spent an hour cleaning out the henhouse. He filled the boxes with fresh straw, raked the dirt and even ran a stick around the corners to catch at the dusty webs. When he was finished, he sat and watched the hens stride around the yard. He pulled aside the wire netting around the patch of earth intended for the vegetable garden. One by one, the chickens strutted over cautiously, attracted by the aroma of fresh-turned soil and the promise of bugs.
Another storm hit on Thursday afternoon. The boy stayed in his room, reading and devouring a king-size block of chocolate he had swiped from the corner store. His mum came to the door about seven-thirty and asked if he wanted pasta, but the boy felt sick in the stomach. He ignored her and eventually she went away.
The Promise Seed Page 14