The Lost Child

by Suzanne McCourt

  She struggles up the ladder with the tarpaulin flapping behind. At the top, she tries to spread it out but the wind picks up an end and slaps it about. As I climb up, I drop the first brick and she screams, ‘Brick!’ and ‘Brick!’ and ‘Brick!’ again. When she has the tarpaulin half-anchored, she moves the ladder and climbs up again to reach across the roof and bully it into place. ‘Brick!’ she screams, and ‘Brick!’ and ‘Brick!’ again, until soon the van is wearing a canvas hat held down with brick hatpins.

  Inside, we strip off our clothes. Mum puts on the kettle and dries my hair, refills our hot-water bottles and belches out the steam. Back in bed, we listen to the wind as it bickers and brawls, to the silence of thunder far over the sea. I wonder if the blocks beneath our wheels will hold and what will happen if they loosen while we sleep and the caravan rolls down the drive and hurtles through the tea-tree into the lagoon? Will it float like a ship or sink beneath the choppy waves? And if it bobs to the other side, will Dad rescue us or leave us there to drown? And what if he comes in the night and burns down our van? It is raining again, heavy like hail. Maybe everything is too wet to burn.

  In my dream a log truck is driving at me and I try to run but my feet won’t move and I’ll be squashed flat. I thrash awake and my nightie is a sweaty tangle, Mum’s arm wrapped too tight around me. When I get free, my heart is a jungle drum—boom—boom—boom. Go into the jungle and call: the Phantom will hear. Soon the dream fades into a smudge of half-remembered things.

  The wind has stopped battering. In the listening silence, Mum begins to cough.

  ‘They know he did it,’ says Mum. ‘Or they wouldn’t be so keen to reach into their pockets to build us something new. You can’t tell me they don’t know.’

  I tell her I don’t want to live in Wanda the Witch’s house and why do we have to? She clutches a hot-water bottle to her chest and asks how do I think it makes her feel, living off handouts and knowing every Tom, Dick and Harry will want her undying gratitude as soon as the new house is finished? And she’s not Wanda the Witch, she’s Mrs Major to you. And we’re lucky Mrs Major’s in Melbourne for a few months helping her daughter who’s had a baby, because otherwise where would we live? And have I ever thought about anyone except myself for one single minute?

  Mrs Tucker is back at school with one kidney: everyone has two but one is enough to keep you living. Lizzie puts her ruler exactly down the centre of our desk and says not to touch her half. When Mrs Tucker looks up, Lizzie blinks at her with innocent eyes but as soon as she looks away, Lizzie inches her ruler further over. I push it back. She inches it over.

  Colleen has made a Gang of Four against me with Faye, Lizzie and Shirley Fry. When I come near, they run off screaming: ‘Wi-ii-i-tch!’ At playtime, I go to the seat under the pine tree with my book, or sometimes I play with Chicken and Roy Kearney, but then the gang yells, ‘Boy lover!’ Roy says to ignore them because they are jealous.

  Roy has nice even teeth and freckles on his nose like tiny spots of gold. He’s almost as smart as me in class, and his father has a racehorse like Dad once had. He lives in a big house out past the oval with white painted rails and a special galloping track. Sometimes he has a horsy boy smell, but there is also a nice shampoo scent in his hair, clean and fresh as open windows. I am not a boy lover but if I was, Roy would be the one.

  One playtime when Miss Taylor is on yard duty, and I am playing Brandy with Chicken and Roy, she comes over and asks how I like Grade Three. She says she’s heard I’m still top of my class and sometimes doing Grade Four work. Colleen and the gang run past but when they see Miss Taylor their running slows to a guilty slink. Miss Taylor follows them with her eyes and says softly: ‘You know, Sylvie, there are some people in Burley Point who think your mother is a very brave woman.’ She pauses, then adds: ‘I think you’re pretty brave too.’

  I don’t know how to understand this and my face pinks up. The Phantom is brave and so is Julie Walker; Superman and Wonder Woman are brave, and also the boy in the city who rescued his baby sister from their house when it was on fire. Miss Taylor smiles at me and walks away. But her smile stays with me for a long time, even when I go home to have lunch with Mum because Wanda’s house is next to the school and it is easier. Lizzie goes home for lunch too and runs past Wanda’s house without stopping, probably because Colleen Mulligan said she should. I snap off a dead rose stick in the front garden and whap it around my head. If it was a witch’s wand, I’d turn Lizzie into a lizard that gets squashed on the road and dries out like an old shoe, and I’d do the same to Colleen too.

  Inside, Mum is on her knees, washing the kitchen floor. ‘I should be in bed,’ she says with a cough.

  ‘Why aren’t you?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ She pulls herself up by the table leg. ‘It doesn’t wash itself, you know. Clothes don’t wash themselves. Food doesn’t appear on the table like magic.’

  My sandwich has. I eat it while she’s emptying the bucket. On the table there’s an envelope with photos of Dunc and me inside. Cele’s photos. ‘Why’d she give you those?’ I ask when she returns.

  ‘They’re copies; the others were burnt in the fire.’ She puts her face in her hands and starts crying slow tears. ‘I’m going to bed. Don’t be late home.’

  Before returning to school, I creep into the bedroom. Mum is a tiny mound beneath the eiderdown, hardly there at all.

  Dad came in the night and burned our house down. I want to spit the words out so that Dunc will know what really happened. How long will I have to be the keeper of the secret? We stand where the fence used to be, watching Shirley Fry’s father and Mousie Tibbet, the carpenter from West End, hammer an asbestos sheet onto the frame of our new house.

  When Dunc came home for the holidays, Mum told him the fire was an electrical fault. She said she didn’t tell him in a letter because she didn’t want to worry him. She said I was not to say anything about Sid because with his screw loose, how did we know it was true? So did Dad light the fire, or didn’t he? I was too frightened to ask.

  Dunc doesn’t seem as upset as I thought he’d be. He says the house would’ve gone up like a bomb because everything in it was combustible. He says fires need oxygen, fuel and energy to get started; it was a theory invented by a French man but anyone with half a brain could’ve worked it out. He says he’ll start a new egg collection straightaway because he’ll be fourteen in a few months and when he’s working he won’t have time for collecting eggs. I look at him closely to see if he’s telling the truth. He is taller than before and has grown soft fur on his face like a day-old chicken. I wish I could see right under his skin, under his blood and veins and bones, right inside his brain, so that I would know what he’s really thinking, his secret thoughts about everything.

  That night he says Wanda’s house is an accident waiting to happen. He says the saggy ceiling above our beds in the sunroom will probably fall in and I’ll cop the worst because the saggiest bit is above my bed. He says the rainwater tank is half under the house: can’t I hear the water lapping? He says the floor’s probably rotten and our beds might fall through while we sleep. He tells me he’ll soon have a farm of his own and he’ll run five hundred head. It is hard to sleep with worrying about the water under the floor.

  When Mum’s at work, Pardie comes around and Dunc belts out ‘Bye Bye Blackbird’ and ‘The Sheik of Araby’ on Wanda’s pianola. Pardie gives Dunc a box with ten eggs for his new collection. There’s a hopping dolly bird, a singing honeyeater, even a western whipbird. Before he returns to school, he finds a blue wing’s egg out near Bunny Brennan’s soak. It is his rarest and best egg.

  I have kept the secret of our house.

  The Phantom Julie Walker would not let her mother spoonfeed her dessert, not when she’s just turned eight. With one flick of her head, she’d twist the spoon from the offender’s grip. She’d spit custard into the baddie’s face. She’d use the spoon as a deadly weapon and stab the baddie between the eyes until she begged fo
r mercy.

  ‘Just a little bit more,’ says Mum.

  I button my lips against the spoon. I am the only girl in Grade Three not invited to Colleen Mulligan’s birthday party. When she gave out the invitations, I pretended I was deaf and blind and couldn’t hear everyone talking in excited voices.

  Why don’t I have birthday parties like Colleen and Faye, and sometimes Lizzie? Why does Mum feed me dessert when I can do it myself? Why did Dad burn our house down? Why do we pretend he didn’t? Nothing makes sense. And then a terrible thought: What if there are no answers to anything?

  Miss Taylor is wrong: I am not brave in any way. I open my mouth and swallow the custard and cream.

  On the train, Nobby Carter wipes his seat with his handkerchief and mutters about never knowing who’s been sitting where. He says he’s going to the Mount to have his eyes checked out. Mum says we’re going to Muswell for me to have my tonsils out. On the bay, the waves are cutting up a chop, the dinghies buck-jumping on their moorings. At Stickynet, the train lets out a warning shriek; I press my nose to the window and watch waters from Lake Grey being tricked into the sea, sticks and leaves battered like dead birds against the pylons of the bridge. Then I see Pardie fishing in the inlet. And Kenny and Peter Leckie creeping along the bank towards him when they should be at school in Muswell.

  I tell Mum I’ve seen Pardie. ‘Girly-boy,’ says Nobby Carter from across the aisle.

  ‘What’s a girly-boy?’ I whisper to Mum.

  She shakes her head at me. The train gathers speed and my eyes grab trees, a sign, a beer-bottle flash by the side of the track. I wonder about Pardie—sometimes he fluffs his hair with his fingers, the way Mum fluffs at her perm—is that what Nobby means? When I look again there’s a tractor in a paddock ploughed black for chicory. Cloud shadows chasing sheep down a green slope. A dam slushy with reeds. Soon we’re passing backyards and dunnies and clotheslines heavy with whites, and the train slides into the station at Muswell.

  Mum and I walk up the hill. At the town hall, she coughs and holds her chest and we read the poster for The African Queen. Mum says Humphrey Bogart’s all right but Katharine Hepburn’s not much. In the hospital foyer, she has another coughing fit. ‘That’s a graveyard cough if I ever heard one,’ says the nurse at the desk. ‘You all right, Mrs Meehan?’

  Mum says she is. Liar, liar, your pants are on fire. But it is not a proper lie: people don’t really want to know if you’re sick. Or that fathers burn houses.

  The nurse leads us down a corridor and pushes through swing doors into a room with three empty beds and a high window with cloudy bubble glass. Although it’s still morning, Mum opens my school case and hands me my pyjamas. As I pull on the bottoms, she says: ‘Hurry up. I don’t want to miss the train.’

  The train? ‘Aren’t you staying?’

  ‘I’ll be back in a week, it’s not long.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ says the nurse, tucking me into bed. ‘You’ll go to sleep and wake up and be eating jelly and ice-cream in no time. It’s your mother who needs to rest.’ She smiles a big-toothed smile, rattles the curtains and leaves. The doors clunk closed.

  I don’t know how to understand this. If I’m in hospital, shouldn’t Mum stay with me? But if she’s sick, who will look after her?

  ‘Besides, I’ve got to move into the new house. There’s a lot to do.’ She puts my case in the bedside drawer and coughs again.

  How can she move into the house if she’s sick? And if she’s not sick, why can’t she move into the house, and still come to see me? Everything is a muddle. The scratchy sheets, the rubber floor, the cold walls.

  ‘I’ll see you Friday then.’

  Her shoes squeak in the corridor. Then a cough outside the window glass.

  ‘She’s got dollar signs for eyes,’ says Grannie to someone on the phone, ‘but he’s left it so late, the pickings are thin on the vine.’

  Uncle Ticker is engaged to a shopgirl from Muswell called Josie. Shopgirl, Grannie says so often that at first I think that’s her name. Josie Shopgirl. Like Don Coffin the Undertaker. Grannie says the families are getting together on the weekend. She hoots into the phone, says that’ll be an eye-opener, no prisoners taken, hoots again and hangs up.

  ‘When’s Mum coming home?’

  Grannie says pneumonia can be tricky, she’ll phone the hospital tomorrow. If she gets time.

  She doesn’t. Next day, Uncle Ticker drives into Muswell and brings Josie back to Bindilla. She is very pretty—Grannie didn’t mention that—with white-blonde hair and blue eyes that squint up at Uncle Ticker when she smiles. She was a beauty queen—Miss Muswell and then Miss Something Else—Grannie didn’t mention that either.

  Josie helps Grannie with afternoon tea. She tells me to have a rest because I’m recuperating. I recuperate on a cane chair on the veranda while Josie sets out the cups and Grannie pours. Afterwards, Uncle Ticker says he’s taking Josie for a drive to show her the cutting.

  ‘Take Sylvie too,’ says Grannie.

  Uncle Ticker’s mouth opens. Josie touches his knee. ‘Lovely,’ she says, squinting up at him.

  Through a sea of yellow turnip weed, we drive towards the lake, Josie in front, me in the back, the Blitz bumping over ruts and rocks, bouncing so high that Uncle Ticker laughs and tells me to hold on to my head or I might lose it. At the lake, he stops to show us a flock of black duck fluttering to rest in the shallows. He tells Josie that when Old Pat first came to Bindilla the duck rose off the lake in their millions, clouding the sun and darkening the day. He says he knows that from Old Pat’s diary, which is mostly pretty boring.

  We’re about to drive off when he peers along the shore. ‘Emus,’ he points, and when Josie and I follow his finger, we see two big birds loping around the lake, long rubber necks poking out in front, tail feathers flopping behind like pillows tied to their backs.

  ‘Silly buggers,’ says Uncle Ticker, driving off fast. ‘That’s the bad patch. If they’re not careful, they’ll get themselves bogged.’

  When we reach the shore, the emus are struggling in the mud, trying to lift stuck legs, crying out for help, flapping useless wings. ‘Stay here,’ he says, grabbing a rope from under the seat and running towards them.

  Josie follows like she knows what she’s doing. As Uncle Ticker treads carefully along the water’s edge, one emu breaks free from the mud and runs for the tea-tree, then Josie scrambles under the fence with Uncle Ticker yelling at her to stay where she is, all of it happening too fast.

  Then I see Uncle Ticker is stuck too! I jump down and run to the lake with a cry of mud in my mouth. There are bees buzzing in the turnip weed, too many, too loud, and I think: What if he goes too? Now the emu is a feathered boat, sitting on the mud, making mournful squeaks. Josie grabs my arm and we watch Uncle Ticker pull at his ankle with both hands. His boot slops out with a glug too far away to hear, but that sound is a shout, a cheer. As Uncle Ticker edges to the shore, Josie’s fingers dig into my arm. On solid ground, Uncle Ticker coils the rope and tries to lasso the sinking bird, every throw too long, or too short, or in between. He gives up and runs for the Blitz.

  ‘Don’t watch!’ he yells as he passes.

  Now the bird is tired, accepting. Suddenly a shot and the emu’s neck crumples. Swans and pelicans and a cloud of black duck fly up, honking and squawking at the fright of us. Josie’s arm is on my shoulder; we watch the birds flutter to rest on the lake, far from us.

  ‘You’re a couple of disobedient dames,’ says Uncle Ticker as we head back, his voice like a Yank in a movie. ‘Didn’t I tell you to stay in the truck? You coulda gotcha selves shot.’

  In the Blitz, Josie leans against Uncle Ticker and says: ‘I was so scared—’ and, ‘I didn’t know what to do—’

  Uncle Ticker winks at me in the back. ‘She won’t get rid of me that easily. Will she, Sylvie?’

  I don’t really know what to say to that. I look at the waves in Josie’s hair and think of sunlight on sand. How Mum puts vinegar
in the rinse water to make my hair shiny.

  ‘But I smell like a turnip,’ I tell her.

  ‘It’ll wear off,’ Mum says.

  Uncle Ticker says. ‘Never go near the lake, Sylvie. Understand?’

  The Blitz bounces me up to the roof, but there is no more laughing.

  Now the cutting has stone walls sloping down to a V at the bottom. ‘It’s a wonderful achievement, Tim,’ says Josie.

  I think: Who’s Tim? Then I remember Timothy is Uncle Ticker’s real name. At the same time, I notice he’s lowering his face towards Josie as if he’s going to kiss her, but I’m breathing down their necks so Josie tilts her head back and says why don’t I climb over the seat and join them in the front where I’ll have a better view of the cutting? When I’m between them, we look at the scar on the hill and the swamp stretching away to the treeline, and after a while, Josie says: ‘How about I kiss Uncle Ticker, then you can too?’

  I’m not that interested in kissing Uncle Ticker but I lean forward and let them kiss over my head. Then Uncle Ticker gives me a quick peck on the cheek and Josie says: ‘Now I’ll kiss you.’

  Me? She pecks me on the cheek. ‘Now you.’ So I give her a peck too. ‘Now,’ she says, ‘I’ll kiss Uncle Ticker.’

  This takes a lot longer.

  Soon I’m sick of all this pecking and kissing. I tell them I need to go behind a bush and Josie moves over to let me out. I take a long time sitting behind a patch of boobiallas and when I come back, Josie has a red face and Uncle Ticker’s wiping lipstick off his mouth.

  ‘Better get going,’ says Uncle Ticker, ‘if we’re to pick up the Old Girl and get to your place on time.’

  Josie’s place is behind a high cypress hedge on the outskirts of Muswell. It has a tiled veranda and rosebushes around a circular lawn that would be good for playing cricket, that’s how big it is. As we walk inside, Grannie tells me to close my mouth and breathe through my nose because that’s why I’ve had my tonsils out.