Sometimes I can’t believe Lizzie. ‘I’ve got brown hair.’
‘Around the mouth.’
‘I hate my mouth.’
‘You’d think you’d be pleased.’
I’m pleased that Faye and Colleen have disappeared. The judges have their heads together at a table at the back of the rotunda; Mrs Denver is one of them. She knows about beauty queens because years ago she was one herself. When she walks to the microphone with an envelope in her hand, she keeps us guessing by telling us part of the Miss Regatta prize will be a wardrobe to the value of ten pounds from Min’s Store in Muswell and a week’s holiday in Sydney.
‘I’m going to Sydney,’ I tell Lizzie, ‘if it’s the last thing I do.’
‘It probably will be,’ says Colleen Mulligan right in my ear. When I turn around, she’s sashaying away with Faye, smirking into her fairy floss. Back on the catwalk, Nancy is parading with her Miss Regatta sash draped over her swimmers, a gold cardboard crown on her head. I look at Nancy’s mouth and think maybe Lizzie’s right; if I wore lipstick—if Mum would let me—maybe I could look a bit like her.
After the blessing of the fleet, we buy ice-creams at the cafe and race back to the jetty to get a good spot on the rail for the Greasy Pole. Near the first landing, Lanky Evans lets us squash in next to him.
‘Hottest Boxing Day on record,’ he says. ‘Too many bloody blow-ins for me. Might be good for business but I like me privacy.’ He pokes about with his walking stick and flaps his bony elbows to make more room for us. ‘Bloody blow-ins everywhere,’ he says and just in case the blow-ins haven’t heard, he says it again, louder. ‘Bloody blow-ins.’
The blow-ins amble along the jetty in a sunny daze. Lizzie and I hold our cones over the rail and lick them as they melt. Strawberry drops fall into the sea and grow into greasy rings. There is a huge blue sky with cotton-wool clouds that hardly move; for more than a week the wind has been from the north with no summer storms to relieve the heat. And Elvis has gone home for his Christmas holidays: I know this from Faye Daley who knows everything about Elvis.
I’m leaning over the rail when someone jolts my elbow and almost sends my ice-cream into the sea. ‘Sorry,’ I hear.
Dunc’s voice? Spinning around, I see a man shouldering his way into the crowd. A young man. Dunc’s height, the same shaped head. The same walk! ‘Hold this,’ I say, shoving my ice-cream at Lizzie. Then I duck around Lanky and push through the crowd, around old ladies and under arms, barging through with a strawberry sick taste in my mouth. Mustn’t lose him. Can’t, not this time. Not with him heading towards the end of the jetty. Not unless he jumps off the end.
He stops suddenly and looks back. It’s not him! Too old, ugly. Not Dunc. I turn away hopelessly. Everything feels drained out of me, the sky too bright and glittery, the jetty timbers suddenly rickety beneath my feet. ‘Sorry,’ I tell Lizzie. ‘Thought it was someone I knew.’
‘Who?’ She hands me my ice-cream. ‘Had to lick it to stop it dripping. Who?’ she asks again.
‘No one you know.’
‘I know everyone you know.’
I distract her by dropping my ice-cream into the sea and pointing to Chicken and Roy, now fourteen and old enough to enter the Greasy Pole, both small and skinny compared with the fishermen, farmers and blow-ins who are waiting on the arm of the jetty with the lifeboat and crane. Bullfrog is there too, strutting around on his frog legs. Shorty has a little round belly, normally hidden under his clothes. My father, looking smaller than he should, brown arms and head, white body and legs. And Kenny Sweet, clowning around as usual. Dunc. The same hard lump. He should be here.
Denver Boland’s voice echoes and fades through the megaphone, telling everyone that first prize is ten pounds and a grease and oil change at Grosser’s Garage, and the winner is the one who gets furthest along the pole without falling off. This is decided by Denver, who stands on a box next to the lifeboat. The blow-ins and two of the riggers are sent on first so they won’t have a chance to copy the locals. They step gingerly onto the pole and before they’re even aware of what’s happened, they’re in the water below.
When it’s Roy’s turn, I have my camera ready. Arms spread like a high-wire walker, he bends and wobbles, but manages to get ten feet along the pole before falling off. Chicken uses the pole like a slippery floor and slides as far as he can, ending up further along than Roy before falling into the sea with a crazy loud scream.
When it’s Bullfrog’s turn, he begins with a crab shuffle and is almost halfway along with no sound from the crowd, only the drone of a speedboat pulling a waterskier, the screams of kids on the beach—and shouts from Chicken and Roy, who should have come out of the water but instead are climbing the jetty ladder, bunching into balls and dropping with blood-curdling yells into the water below. As Bullfrog reaches halfway on the pole, Chicken drops with a deadly scream: Bullfrog wobbles and straightens, his arms swivel and spin, but there’s no saving himself from a dipping.
He comes up spluttering. Chicken surfaces at the same time and swims with a lazy overarm towards the jetty. Bullfrog charges after him and Chicken’s eyes widen with surprise as he is dunked by Bullfrog’s big hand. But somehow Chicken escapes, a white tadpole with desperate arms and legs, disappearing under the jetty not far from where we stand. Lizzie and I scramble to the other side where the dinghies are moored by long landing lines. With a few angry strokes, Bullfrog is under the jetty too, catching Chicken as he surfaces. Holding Chicken by the shirt his grandma makes him wear even when he’s swimming, Bullfrog dunks him again and again, letting him up for a spluttering breath, pushing him under again.
‘Let him go, you bloody idiot,’ yells Lanky in my ear.
‘What’s he doing?’ says Lizzie.
Can’t she see? Can’t someone stop him? Denver bellows into his megaphone. ‘Next entrant…a local lad…give Mick Meehan a big hand.’
I push back to the railing in time to see my father step onto the pole, but he drops straight into the sea, not even trying, and swims straight under the jetty. Back on the other side, Chicken is a limp biscuit, arms and legs hanging like worms beneath the water, hardly even a splutter when Bullfrog lets him up for air.
‘What’s Mick up to?’ mutters Lanky, and I follow his eyes to a mooring line where my father is pulling himself along. Closer to Bullfrog, he lunges and grabs him from behind, pushing him under. Suddenly Chicken is free, he bobs to the surface, kicks to a mooring line and hangs off it by one arm, gulping air.
‘On yer, Mick!’ yells Lanky, rat-tat-tat banging his stick on the jetty. ‘On yer!’
Denver is still bleating into the megaphone but now everyone is watching Bullfrog and Dad in the water, arms and legs and two black heads flying in a whirlpool of foam. Bullfrog is winning. He has Dad under his hand, and he dunks Dad as he dunked Chicken, again and again, holding him under, mushing him into the sea without mercy. Next to me, Lanky hops around, hands cupped to his mouth. ‘Get him by the nuts, Mick!’ People cheer and Lanky yells louder. ‘Get him by the nuts, Mick. A nutcracker, Mick, give ’im a nutcracker.’
Bullfrog lurches back and his frog legs pump like pistons. Then he rolls onto his stomach and curls into a ball, legs barely kicking at all. Dad pulls himself along a mooring line until he reaches the jetty. Someone claps. And others join in. And the clapping gets louder and louder until soon everyone is clapping. There’s a cheer in the clapping, a beat—beat—beat, as clear as the sea lapping the dinghies, as clear as Lanky’s stick tapping the rhythm. Dad reaches the landing and Chicken and Roy lean over to help. I forget everything, and I’m clapping too, clapping and clapping until my hands hurt.
Parked near the lagoon on Sunday afternoon, engine running, he beckons me over. My stomach does its usual queasy thing. His lashes are the longest I’ve ever seen. I hope Faye sees him talking to me, wanting me. But what does wanting mean? Kissing? Going all the way? Would Faye? And what am I doing, standing here like a dummy?
‘How old are ya n
ow, Sylvie?’
‘Sixteen,’ I say, adding a year and a bit. ‘Almost.’
He grins, guns the ute into gear and drives off, taking me with him in the silver trim.
I make my own darkroom in the lean-to behind the dunny shed. Tea chests for a bench, two blankets hung over poles to enclose the space from roof to floor. Cele gives me an extension cord, developing trays and an infra-red lamp. With money from babysitting, I pay for my own film and chemicals, which I have to keep in a sealed tin. Rats will eat anything.
For Tania’s second birthday in December, I give Mrs Marciano and Joe a photo I took of Tania on the foreshore with the sea glittering behind. I crop it close to her shoulders so you can’t see her stunted arm: that’s when I discover that photographs can lie. But Mrs Marciano likes it so much that she displays it in a frame on the mantelpiece. Joe says I should enter it into a competition, and maybe I could become a portrait photographer like that Beaton guy, have I thought of that?
Sometimes Joe is just plain silly. But I borrow a book from Cele and look at the way Cecil Beaton does his backgrounds and lighting.
At first I think Mum’s going to the dance by herself and I almost ask if I can go too. Faye’s allowed to go when her father plays saxophone with the band. But in the mirror propped on the table, I can see Mum looking all dreamy and, before I can even ask, she says: ‘Milan’s taking me. He’s a foreman on the rig.’
I choke on a mouth full of curlers. The New Australian? The Yugoslav who was here last week fixing the pump? They sat by the well smoking ciggies long after he’d finished. And last night he walked her home from Hannigan’s: I was in bed and heard them talking. I thought he’d come to get his money for fixing the pump. How dumb am I?
I’m carving her scalp into squares and winding on paper and hair. I carve faster, harder. I don’t know any mothers with boyfriends. What will people think? And doesn’t she know about the Croats and Serbs, how they brought their problems here? Doesn’t she read the papers? I slap perm papers and hair together and twang the elastic close to her ear. I get braver and push her head forward, jerk it back, roll a curler tight, tighter. I hate her white scalp, the scar from falling off the horse that hides on her crown like a white worm.
She hasn’t been to a dance for as long as I can remember. She probably thinks the Twist is something you do with your wrist. I could teach her. But I don’t. And when Milan arrives on Saturday night, she’s in a total tizz because her perm hasn’t dropped and she looks like a frizzed bear when she probably wants to look like Vivien Leigh, which Mrs Winkie once said she did.
When Milan gives her a bunch of flowers, so tiny you can hardly see them, Mum runs around calling it a corsage, as if she gets one every day. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ she says, pinning it to her dress.
Gorgeous? She’s never said gorgeous before.
‘They’re orchids,’ he says with his dippy accent, making them sound like diamonds instead of bush orchids you can find anywhere. ‘I find them near the lake. Who would kill an orchid, I think. It is awkward killing an orchid, I think, but for you I do.’
He brings flowers for me too. Mum looks pleased as if I’m meant to like him on the spot, which I won’t, even though he’s good-looking, with sad broody eyes, like a taller kind of James Dean. Besides, they’re only old fairy flowers, as common as cows, I tell myself as they head down the drive, arm in arm, as if he’s leading her down the aisle.
What if she marries him?
I let Bert From The Bush come inside. We’ve just found out he’s having kittens so he’s now Bertha, Bertie for short. She sniffs around on her belly before jumping onto the bed as if she’s found Heaven. Mum says I have to find homes for her kittens or they’ll end up in a bag with a brick. She says Bertie’s probably the reason Georgie Porgie turned up his toes: who wouldn’t die of fright if that huge marmalade head looked into your cage?
I open her wardrobe. She’s worn the ballerina with the diamante bow on the hip. I pick through the others, mostly pink: the lace one with tiny buttons and hooks down the back like a bride dress, the pale frothy silk with a net underskirt, and the halter-neck with the full skirt like Marilyn wore, but pink, not white. Five new dresses bought from the catalogue, all since she’s been working at Hannigan’s. How did she know she’d be going dancing?
I pull off my nightie, find one of Mum’s push-up bras, and slip into the Marilyn dress. It almost fits. I crimp it in at the back and put on a pair of strappy heels, then pose in front of the mirror, big smile, legs apart, Marilyn on the vent. Bertie stares at me from the bed with unimpressed eyes. I agree and put Marilyn back in the wardrobe.
Then I remember I have God’s Little Acre, which is being passed around school and is mine for the weekend, so I climb into bed and read the good bits. Reading them makes me wonder if Elvis might have gone to the dance. Would Faye be there? Dancing with Elvis while I’m in bed with Bertie? The thought is too embarrassing. I hide in the pillow and think how I’d like Elvis to be in bed with me like Will and Darling Jill in God’s Little Acre. Next thing, Mum’s at the door, waltzing in as if she’s still at the dance. ‘You awake?’ she half-whispers.
‘I am now.’
She’s brought me a huge bunch of balloons that she ties to the dressing-table mirror where they float up like an A-bomb cloud. I can just see her after the last dance, jumping up and grabbing them, him laughing and helping. How old does she think I am? While she’s undressing, I pretend to use the pot in the bathroom and sneak Bertie outside. Back in bed, I slide far over my side. She climbs in and I edge nearer to the wall. But tonight she doesn’t cuddle me close: she lies on her back smelling of powder and perfume. And I lie on my side thinking: What if she kissed him?
Elvis is parked outside the cafe when the bus gets in. I bounce down the steps, forgetting to say goodbye to Mr Kerford, my eyes on the car in the puddle of shade beneath the pines. Faye’s seen him too. She’s talking loudly, laughing and calling out to Lizzie. Then she pulls her ponytail free and lets her hair flounce around her shoulders like a horse’s mane. And somehow, without even thinking or planning, I walk straight up to Elvis. I’m shaking inside and can feel Lizzie and Roy gaping at me from somewhere behind. I can see Mr Kerford reversing onto the road and I imagine him watching in the rear-view mirror as he drives out of town. I don’t have to imagine Faye; her fury is burning holes in my back.
‘Like a ride home?’ says Elvis, smiling, surprised.
Before I’ve even replied, he leans across to open the passenger door and somehow I walk to the other side and climb in. When he reaches over to pull the door shut, his head is so close that I have to pull back to stop it rubbing my nose. Black hair on his arms. The door shuts with a thud. As we pull out from the kerb, I press my knees together to stop them shaking. I can see Lizzie through the side window, mouth wide open. Roy is examining the wheel of his bike, not looking at me. What am I doing? And somewhere, a tiny voice in my head: Mum’s got Milan, why shouldn’t I have someone too?
‘Took ya time,’ says Elvis, reversing.
What does he mean? I stare at his hands on the wheel. Clean fingernails, cleaner than mine. He’s wearing clean jeans and a red check shirt, brown desert boots. The car is clean. The dash and steering wheel gleam, the rubber mats beneath my feet are free of dirt and gravel. For a muckraker, every bit of Elvis is incredibly clean.
‘What’s a muckraker do?’ I ask, my voice a squeak. Then I feel my face heating up: did I really ask such a stupid thing?
‘Works ninety foot up the derrick—can see for miles, the bay, the lake, over your uncle’s place—I watch the mud tanks, check what’s coming up. It was me who spotted the bones last week. Next thing you know there’s a bloody skeleton right there under the bit. Can’t believe it. We get Bill Morgan to come and take a look. Then they get the cops down from the Mount. Still don’t know who it is.’
But everyone’s guessing: Chicken thinks they’re roo bones. Roy says they wouldn’t get the cops for a roo. Mum says Old Pat
had a brother who disappeared from Bindilla years ago. He could easily have walked into the quaggy mud on the side of the lake and been sucked down. She says this with bright staring eyes and I know she’s thinking of Dunc in Bunny’s soak, the same awful way to go.
I wonder if Elvis knows about Dunc. If anyone in town has whispered to him about Dad torching our house. Then I hear him saying he’d rather be a muckraker for Esso than work for his old man on the farm where he’s paid next to nothing. He says he won’t be a muckraker all his life and if they don’t find oil in Burley Point, he’ll be moving on with the rig to the next well.
Leaving? ‘But they’ll find it, won’t they?’
‘Hard to tell.’
He stops at our gate and turns off the engine. With his back against the door, he grins at me. ‘Well, Sylvie Meehan, maybe we’ll go for a ride sometime. Whaddya reckon?’
When? I think. Where? Just trying to hold his gaze makes my hands sweaty. I shove them under my legs. What should I say?
He reaches forward and pulls the key from the ignition, shows me his key ring, a Maori tiki with an ugly twisted grin. But as I hand it back, it slips from my fingers and falls to the floor. I shift on the seat and lift up my knees, and he leans over and scoops up the ring. ‘Hey,’ he says, head low over my lap, ‘what’s this?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, trying to pull my skirt lower. ‘I—I broke my leg. Once. Last year. It’s nothing.’
‘I broke my arm once but it sure didn’t end up looking like that.’ Gently he touches the scar on my shin, fingers soft and circling. A hole opens up inside me like a howl. ‘I have to go,’ I say, grabbing my bag and struggling out the door.
‘I’m on day shift next week,’ he calls after me. ‘Finish at six.’
What’s he telling me? I stare after him as he drives off. I want to tear at my leg but I don’t.
20
Mum rushes in while I’m doing my homework at the kitchen table. She slides into the bedroom on her polishing cloths and slides out a few minutes later in her tatty house dress.
The Lost Child Page 19