The Lost Child

by Suzanne McCourt

  I nod, but I’m already saying it in my head: half-cocked halfcocked. I wonder if you can be meek and half-cocked at the same time.

  We make a run for the back door. ‘There’re worse things than meekness,’ says Grannie kicking her shoes off on the mat.

  Chicken’s Uncle Corker is lying half under the tractor. He pushes himself up, dusts off his hands and takes out his ciggies. ‘The cable’s off again. No prize for guessing who.’

  Uncle Ticker says, Fucking bastard, looks over his shoulder at me climbing on a rubble pile and lowers his voice, but still I hear fucking parrots and fucking bee in his bonnet and fucking bastard again. I take a running leap off the pile. ‘Maybe a guard dog’s the way to go?’ says Uncle Ticker as I climb on the tractor treads. He tells me to be careful around the machinery and that he’s got to give Corker a hand winding the cable back onto the winch. He says he’ll be a while and can I find something to do that doesn’t involve breaking a leg?

  I run up the channel. Now it has walls on both sides and a wide river bed where one day water will flow to the lake. The walls are pockmarked with holes from gelignite blasting through the stone: Uncle Ticker told me this last time. He said sandstone was hard to rip but good for steep walls. He showed me where tree roots were fossils in the stone and he stroked those roots because they were thousands, millions, billions of years old. When I find the spot, the roots are now high above my head. At the top of the cutting, there are a few straggly trees like hair on a hill and those trees make me think of that day with Pardie and Dunc and the emu. I press against the channel wall, feeling the warm stone, and wonder if Dunc has run away from school already. Could he be living in the Abo cave in the bush above the cutting? How could I find out?

  When Uncle Ticker yells, I run back down the channel. The cable is fixed to the tractor and the ripper is tearing into the earth.

  Uncle Ticker beckons me to the Blitz. ‘While we’re here,’ he says, ‘we’ll check the cattle in the top paddock.’ He bumps the truck up the slope. ‘I need you to spot any calves wandering around by themselves. Think you can do that?’ Closer to the herd, he bangs on the door of the truck with one hand and beeps the horn with the other. ‘Come aahn, get a move on.’ He drives slowly to avoid tussock bumps, and counts as we go. ‘Twenty-three. Twenty-four. Did we count that one? Come aahn, you silly old cow, out of the way or you’ll have the Blitz up your bum.’

  Mostly the calves are close to their mothers, the black and whites with their Angus mothers, the red and whites with the Herefords. Here the gum trees have thick trunks with peeling bark splashed pink and grey. Under one of the trees, I see a black bundle curled in the shadows.

  ‘There! There’s one by itself.’

  Uncle Ticker lifts the calf onto its legs. It has a white flash on its head and wild, frightened eyes; it wobbles about and sits down again. Uncle Ticker takes off his hat and studies the cows all about. Because we’ve stopped, they’ve stopped too and they wait and watch as we watch them.

  I can see right down the slope to Bindilla’s red roof. I can see the shearing shed, the shearers’ quarters and the machinery shed, the lake beyond, the sandhills on the other side, the lighthouse on Seal Island—although I can’t see the jetty, or Lizzie. Or Mum or Dad. Because she’s still in Parkside. And he is worse than useless.

  At school, Lizzie said Mum didn’t have all her cups in the cupboard. When I asked Grannie about the cups, she said: ‘I wouldn’t listen to anything Lizzie Campbell says. She’s got spuds in her ears and her hair could do with a good wash.’

  It is true about Lizzie’s hair.

  I didn’t tell Grannie about Colleen and Shirley, how when they see me at school, they hop like kangaroos, calling out about roos loose in the top paddock. I know roos and cups are the same.

  Uncle Ticker says: ‘All right, Sylv, I reckon it’s a twin. Now we’ve got to find a mother with a calf the same size, same length of cord. See this’—he lifts the calf and shows me a bit of shrivelled skin hanging off its belly—‘if we can match this up, it’ll tell us when it was born. Reckon you can spot one like that?’

  For a long time we drive through the cows, beeping the horn and banging the door. ‘If we don’t find its mother, it’ll die,’ says Uncle Ticker. ‘And there goes five quid. No point trying to handfeed them this early, they need the colostrum in their mother’s milk.’

  ‘What’s colostrum?’

  ‘The good stuff in the mother’s milk just after the young’un’s born.’ He slows near a mother with a black calf. ‘Whaddya reckon? Same white flash on the head? Same size cord. Could be the one?’

  He swings the Blitz at the cow. She bellows at us with mad eyes and trundles off, calf following. ‘Go aahn!’ Uncle Ticker yells after her. ‘Get back to your other calf, you apology for a mother, you’ve got two and you darn well know it. Go aahn, get back there and feed it.’

  The cow bellows some more and Uncle Ticker bellows back. When we reach the calf under the tree, it stands on wobbly legs and stumbles forward.

  ‘That’s its mother, all right,’ says Uncle Ticker. ‘Now feed it, you stupid thing.’ But as soon as the calf gets close, the cow backs off. ‘Feed it!’ yells Uncle Ticker.

  The cow stares at us with surly eyes. Again the wobbly calf sidles up. But as it noses under its mother, she kicks out hard and knocks it right off its feet.

  ‘You effing…cow!’ yells Uncle Ticker.

  I want to kick that cow hard in her big balloon belly. I want to break her legs and leave her there with nobody to look after her, and I don’t want the calf to keep pushing in where it’s not wanted. But the calf is so hungry that every time it gets kicked, it picks itself up and tries again.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ says Uncle Ticker, driving the Blitz forward, forcing the cow and her calves to run down the slope, the wobbly calf stumbling and crying behind. Soon they are separated from the herd and heading for the stockyards near the bottom fence. ‘I’ll box them in the corner,’ says Uncle Ticker. ‘Think you can open the gate and hold it, while I drive ’em through?’

  When the cow and her calves are squashed near the fence, I run for the gate. I have to climb onto the bottom rung to reach the wire loop and, as I drag the gate open, Uncle Ticker skirts behind the cow.

  ‘Stay there. Don’t let them pass.’

  The cow comes at the gate with a crazy look in her eyes and I’m afraid she’s going to trample right over the gate, over me holding it open, but I yell and scream like Uncle Ticker and at the last moment she turns and lumbers into the yards with the calves following.

  ‘Good work,’ says Uncle Ticker, closing the gate. ‘Now you sit up there on the fence while I show her who’s boss around here.’

  From the top rung, I watch him being the boss. He lets himself into the yard with the cow, a small yard, gated off from the others. Over his arm, he carries a collar and chain. First he grabs the wobbly calf and drags it into another yard, closes the gate and leaves it there. Now he makes clucking noises at the cow. He gets up close and rubs her rump. She snorts and fidgets and blinks her long lashes at him and, when she’s rubbing her head against the fence and really enjoying herself, he grabs her calf and drags it into the yard with the other calf. The mother bundles over to the gate and bellows at Uncle Ticker. She swings her head in angry arcs, her cries are terrible; they are the cries of maggies protecting their nests, the cries of foxes in the night. They make me want to hide in the lily patch behind the fishpond, where I go when I miss Mum too much.

  Uncle Ticker opens the gate and the calves run out. And now I see he’s collared them together with a short chain so that wherever one goes the other must follow. The strong calf pulls the wobbly one under the mother and straightaway it’s sucking for all its worth. The mother gives it a kick but she hits the wrong one and somehow seems to know, so doesn’t kick again. She gives Uncle Ticker a maggoty look. He just laughs. ‘You’ll learn,’ he says as he climbs up next to me. ‘You’ve got plenty of milk to feed both.’r />
  The wobbly calf sucks noisily. There are cauliflower clouds in the sky and the day shines like clean window glass. Uncle Ticker’s hand on the rail is as red-brown as a Hereford cow. ‘You know what? I reckon we’ll give that calf a name. Whaddya say?’

  I try to think of cow names. After a while, Uncle Ticker jumps off the fence, holds out his arms and lifts me down with a wide swing before settling me on the ground. As we drive back, he says: ‘How about Sylvie? It’s a good name. And it means I won’t forget you found her. Whaddya say?’

  I don’t say anything because the window-glass day has thickened with tears and I have to blink them away.

  PART TWO

  9

  Mum has come home with short hair and no words. There is silence everywhere like static on the wireless. She keeps the blinds pulled down and the curtains closed. ‘Who’s that?’ she says when we hear footsteps on the path. She creeps to the window and peers out. ‘What’s she want?’

  Mrs Winkie wants to stomp through our house, as she did the day before, and the day before that. ‘Come on, duck,’ she calls as she pulls up the blinds, ‘you’ll turn into a mole.’ She fills the kettle and stirs the stew she’s bought for our tea as if she’s in her own kitchen. Mum watches with fidgety eyes. Mrs Winkie tells Lizzie and me to lift a hand to help.

  ‘What’s wrong with your mother?’ asks Lizzie at the wood pile. I tell her Mum’s eyes hurt and she has to stay out of the sun. Lizzie says that’s not what her mother says. ‘She’s cracked. Just cracked.’

  Lizzie’s hair is tied with blue ribbons in bunches above her ears. I think of heifers in the Muswell Show, the way their prize ribbons dangle over their foreheads and they gaze at you with fat happy faces, the same way Lizzie looks at me because Mum has cracked.

  ‘You’re a stupid cow,’ I tell her.

  In the kitchen, Mum lights a ciggie. ‘I ache all over,’ she says.

  ‘We’re stronger than we think,’ says Mrs Winkie between licks of her stirring spoon. ‘You’d better believe it, Nella.’

  Lizzie and I play on my bed where I keep my dolls: she doesn’t know I sleep with Mum and I don’t tell her. In the kitchen Mrs Winkie says: ‘You’ve got to get out more, Nella. It’s not healthy hiding away, working yourself into the ground.’ Mum says she knows what they’re saying about her. Mrs Winkie says, ‘Half of them would leave their husbands tomorrow if they had your guts.’

  ‘He’s told everyone I’m crazy,’ says Mum, ‘I know he has.’ A chair scrapes. It must be Mrs Winkie because Mum takes care never to scratch the lino. ‘You know what he did the other night? And the night before? Waits till it gets dark and comes sneaking around, tossing gravel on the roof, trying to scare me, trying to send me crazy. That’s what he wants: he wants me to go mad.’

  Mum’s voice is high and crazy-sounding and I look at Lizzie to see if she’s listening but she’s undressing Marilyn and doesn’t seem to have the same ears as me. Mrs Winkie is quiet for a long time then she says: ‘Are you sure, Nella?’ I hear the doubt in her voice as if Mum really is mad and I think: Why didn’t I hear the gravel on the roof? Wouldn’t I wake up? Mrs Winkie says: ‘Be careful saying things like that, Nella, you never know what others might make of it.’

  ‘I have to get a photographer,’ says Mum. She lowers her voice but I walk to the dressing table where I can hear. ‘I have to set the two of them up in bed to get proof. That’s what the law says. He’s agreed, through his solicitor, to do it in a hotel in the Mount but if he could prove I was out of my mind, he’d be able to do the suing and say it was my fault, not his playing around. That’s what he wants.’

  It doesn’t make sense to take photographs of Dad in bed with that Trollop. Who would want to do that? Would Aunt Cele? Suddenly I think of passing Dad in the street and how he never looks at me. How when I try to find his eyes, he turns his head away: he looks at the footpath and his feet; he lifts his head and looks at clouds racing overhead, at fat white summer clouds, at rain clouds from the south. To him, I am not even a mosquito or a scarab beetle.

  In the kitchen, cups rattle and clink, a chair scrapes again. ‘It’s a dirty business,’ says Mrs Winkie. Later, when she leaves, Mum pulls down the blinds and turns into a mole.

  In books, everything makes sense. From Lizzie’s Arthur Mee Encyclopaedia, I know about The Crumpling of the Earth and The Story of Rubber and Columbus in His Hour of Despair. It is a cold night outside but Mum and I sit close to the stove in our nighties, ready for bed. In Mum’s Women’s Weekly, a film star called Grace Kelly has married a prince. I wonder if there are any princes in Australia that I could marry.

  Mum is reading her True Confessions. On the cover, a man and woman are looking into each other’s eyes. She has yellow hair, blue eyes and red lips. He has black hair, brown eyes and pink lips. Why My Husband Will Never Trust Me Again. The Other Woman. Threesome Tragedy. Hollywood Hounds. Are the Hollywood Hounds dogs or men? I’ve read enough covers of Mum’s True Confessions to know they are probably men. At least in the Secret Seven they have adventures called scrapes.

  In the May holidays, Dunc comes home from the city with a surly face. When Pardie arrives to swap comics, Dunc locks me out of the sunroom. I kick at his door until my foot hurts then I spy from Dad’s old room.

  They’re on Dunc’s bed with their backs to the wall and I can read over their heads—Archies and Batman, Roy Rogers—no new Phantoms. Soon I get bored and sit on the back step and talk to Georgie Porgie. Pardie comes out and asks how it was on the farm. Georgie slides along his perch and makes kissy sounds at Pardie, who puts his lips to the cage and kisses him back. It sends Georgie berserk; he kisses his mirror, attacks his cuttlefish and gives his bell a good rattling. When Dunc appears, Pardie and I are laughing our heads off.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  Dunc’s mouth drops open. ‘Are you cheekin’ me?’

  Pardie grabs him by the arm. ‘Come on, we’ve got better things to do than hang around here.’

  As soon as they’ve gone, I think of Faye Daley saying my father has a new dog. A scared sort of feeling shivers right through me and I dare myself to walk past his house, maybe even sneak up the driveway and spy on his new dog. I’ve never been before. What if I’m seen? I swallow my fright and leave without telling Mum.

  His house is still not finished. There are bricks and timber lengths in the drive, a cement mixer, a big pile of rubbish. It is easy to get to the shed without being seen: it is full of crayfish pots, glass buoys, marker flags, his jeep parked in front. The house has a flat roof and three big windows with a view over the lagoon to our house on the other side. Already there is a veggie garden on the slope below the palm tree. I creep around the side of the house and hide behind a creeper trellis.

  Dad and the Trollop are right there! Sitting on the back veranda, legs hanging over the edge, no shoes. She has red polished toenails; her feet are huge. They look like dead puffer fish. Mossie is as cute as Faye said. He has golden fur, fluffy ears and wriggles himself inside out trying to catch a reel on a string that Dad jiggles in front of him. ‘Good boy, Mossie, good boy. Clever boy!’

  What a dumb name for a Cocker. If I was allowed a dog instead of a bird I’d call him Sunny or Scamp, maybe Sammy. And I’d have a smart dog like Blue at Bindilla, or a real dog like the Phantom’s Devil.

  Then Dad starts singing to Mossie, or the Trollop, maybe to both of them, maybe to himself. It’s more of a hum than a song, with soft words, but straightaway I recognise my favourite tune from the Top 40 about the doggie in the window with the waggely tail. There is a sound in that song that sticks in my chest and I decide to find another song for my favourite, one that has nothing to do with dogs. Then Dad jiggles the reel too close to the edge and suddenly Mossie’s upside down on the ground. Dad and Layle laugh as if it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. As if it’s a laugh no one else can share. Layle’s hand is on Dad’s knee. As if it belongs there. Dad leans ov
er, scoops Mossie up and settles him back on the veranda. Layle says something about dogs and men with big feet. She giggles and rubs against Dad’s ear. Now Dad’s hand is on her knee and she is all peaches and cream.

  Next door, without warning, Mrs Jones turns on her sprinkler and it spits over the fence. I shift to escape the drips and Mossie’s ears prick up, so I stand rock-still, hardly breathing, because dogs have ESP. And right then Dunc—Dunc!—walks out the back door. Eating an apple. Her apple! He sits on the veranda edge, almost touching her. What a traitor! But at least Mossie forgets me and leaps all over Dunc. I decide I’ll tell Mum that he was here. But then she’ll know I was here too. Faye told me, I’ll say. Or Pardie. There are plenty of ways.

  I slide quietly along the trellis into the veggie patch. I rip off a whole row of runner beans and scatter them in the street where they will be squashed by cars. They are nothing to me.

  Nobby Carter’s bed is pushed against the window and his head shines like a baby’s skull without a tuft of hair. He is Betty Carter’s father and older than Grandpa Ted in the city. I had another grandfather called Black Pat, who was Dad’s father. There are photos of Dad’s grandfather, Old Pat, and Black Pat on the dining room wall at Bindilla. Old Pat has a fat moustache and smiley eyes. Black Pat is all black hair and beard and black eyes. When Dad was a boy he pulled up the ladder and left him down the well. He says he didn’t sit down for a week. I like Old Pat best because Black Pat has whipping eyes that follow wherever I move in the room, as if he’d like to whip me too.

  Nobby Carter is reading a magazine in bed, a magazine full of girly pictures with boobies hanging out of bather tops, some with bottoms poked in the air. He lets the magazine drop and Lizzie and I spring back. Across the road, Lizzie’s mother opens a window and looks out. We crouch down until she’s gone then take another look and see that Nobby’s hand is wide-awake beneath the blanket, jumping up and down like Chicken when he throws a fit at school and twitches on the ground. Suddenly Nobby’s hand stops moving and he lies so still that Lizzie widens her eyes at me: Is he dead?