The Lost Child

by Suzanne McCourt

  ‘Because I was a fucking coward.’ He glances in the side mirror, still watching, listening. ‘I thought they’d blame me. Then I couldn’t think straight and I almost convinced myself that he went back to the soak where we’d been earlier, where he dropped his sock. I wanted to believe it the same as everyone else. I thought, is it a lie? If they think he’s in one place, not the other? But when they found him, when Mum told me…I knew I should’ve gone back…’ He listens for the sound of Kenny’s car. ‘But there were other reasons…’ And somehow I know Kenny is one of the reasons Pardie left town. But how could that be? ‘Look,’ says Pardie, ‘it doesn’t matter. I’m a bloody coward and that’s all there is to it.’

  The inquest? Shouldn’t he have come back for that? But then everyone would have known. Should everyone know, now that I know? There are so many questions spinning around my head that I can’t think which to ask first. Pardie’s head is bowed over the wheel. I stare at the back of his neck, his pale freckles, and I remember when Uncle Ticker tried to save the emu, the way he was almost sucked down himself. I remember the day when Dad was drunk in the road, telling Layle he looked away for a minute and when he looked back Dunc had disappeared.

  ‘My father. Was he at the lake?’

  Pardie’s head jerks up. ‘No. Just me. Why?’

  ‘What about his bike.’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably…with him.’

  Again I think: If Dunc could have shouted louder. If someone else was at the lake. If someone had come along. But suddenly Kenny’s car is on the road behind the school; we both hear it.

  ‘Sorry, Sylvie. I’ve gotta get out of here.’ He starts the engine. ‘Tell anybody you want. I don’t care anymore. But don’t blame yourself. Blame me.’

  I watch as he turns at the Patchetts’ corner, a puff of dust then gone. Soon Kenny cruises past and I step into the shadows near the fence. When he’s gone, I sink down on the grass and hunch into a ball. I think: Death by misadventure. That’s what the coroner said. That’s what misadventure means. An adventure that went wrong. And I hear Pardie’s words: Blame me. His fault, my fault, Dad’s fault, everyone’s fault, no one’s fault. I think: How can Pardie live with knowing? How can I? How does anyone? It still doesn’t make sense. It feels too easy. Or too hard. I can’t decide which. Then I remember Dunc with his cheeks full of birds’ eggs, the funny way he wrote with his thumb tucked behind his pencil. I remember a big brown eye looking at me through a magnifying glass. The way he could do a warbler whistle.

  A flock of silvereyes fly out of the pines. They drop over the lagoon like a lacy cloth. It’s sunny now with feathery clouds moving fast along the ridge behind the houses. On the lagoon path, Bev Carter’s little boys are racing each other on their three-wheelers, squealing and laughing.

  21

  Two weeks after Dunc’s funeral, Mum stops seeing Milan. Without him to chop our wood, she goes wood-chopping mad and in no time at all has half the pile cut and stacked next to Shorty’s fence. I offer to help but she says: ‘Don’t let me see you near that axe. I don’t need anything else.’

  One night I arrive home to find her at it again. I sit on the gate and wonder about her and Milan. And I wonder whether all men are water, as she says. Dad, of course, but even Elvis?

  Nobby Carter walks past and doffs his hat. ‘You shouldn’t be doing that, Nella, it’s no work for a woman.’

  Mum watches him dodder off then slams the axe into a log. ‘I don’t see you offering to do it.’ The axe gets stuck in the log and she has to slam it down again and again, until it splits open like someone’s head. Nobby’s head. Maybe Milan’s.

  Then I remember that last week she came home from a drive with Milan and lay in bed beside me like a log. Although I couldn’t see in the dark, I knew she was staring at the ceiling, maybe even crying. Good, I thought, they’ve had an argument. Then: ‘Milan’s asked me to marry him.’

  I held my breath and let it out slowly. ‘Are you going to?’

  She lay for a long time without answering, then turned on her side and said, ‘No…I’ll never marry again.’

  And that was the end of Milan.

  Now, with dusk creeping over the lagoon and her swinging and chopping in the half-light, she looks so small and alone—so like someone who might need a husband—that I wish I’d been nicer to Milan. I remember how he brought me fairy flowers that first time, and once an American book about film stars, even a magazine with photos of Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding. And the whole time, I only grunted a thank you and treated him like a New Australian with no feelings.

  As soon as Mum puts down the axe, I climb down from the gate and help stack the wood.

  On her day off, Mum meets me after school in Muswell for a dentist’s appointment, then we catch the train home. Hannigan is waiting on the platform when we get in. He’s waiting for Mrs Hannigan but as soon as he sees us, he comes running.

  ‘I’m sorry, Nella,’ he puffs, ‘but I’m going to have to let you go.’ Puff. ‘I don’t really need you.’ Puff. ‘Anymore.’ And he repeats himself without so much puffing. ‘There’s no work, Nella. Not anymore.’

  Shock makes Mum stupid, me too. ‘The oil?’ says Mum.

  He glances behind and sees Mrs Hannigan walking towards us, and now his voice is pleading, wheedling. ‘You’d be better off back in the city, wouldn’t you, Nella?’

  That’s what Grannie said. Mum’s shoulders slump and suddenly I know what it means to have the stuffing knocked out of you. But she straightens quickly and eyeballs Hannigan; she doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to.

  Hannigan starts to squirm. ‘I’ll give you a good reference,’ he says as Mum stalks off.

  At home, Bertie has had her kittens, four tiny blind bundles, mewing and crying and climbing all over her on a pile of bloodied newspapers under the wash troughs in the dunny shed. I replace the papers with an old towel and Bertie immediately cleans every kitten. They’re mostly ginger like Bertie but some are black, and one is a lovely tabby brindle. I’m glad there are only four because I’ve already found homes for two, and promised Mrs Marciano one for Tania for her third birthday at the end of December, so now I’ll only have to find one more.

  I sit on the floor, watching Bertie with her babies, fussy and busy one minute, sprawled out proudly the next while they suckle greedily. I tickle her behind her ears and she purrs happily. ‘Clever girl,’ I tell her, ‘very clever mother girl.’

  ‘Was it Grannie?’ I ask Mum later. ‘Did she say something to Mr Hannigan?’ And thinking out loud: ‘But why would she?’

  Mum listens to the six o’clock news right through as if I haven’t spoken—someone murdered on a farm, Margaret Smith winning the tennis somewhere, trouble in a mine somewhere. After the weather, she pours hot water into the sink. ‘Because,’ she says, as if I’ve only just asked, ‘the Old Girl doesn’t want someone with the same name as her cleaning houses and hotels. Because people might remember that’s how she met Black Pat. And because she’s never forgiven me for divorcing your father. She thinks I should have stuck it out…’

  She washes one plate over and over. I want to tell her to stop. I want to ask if there’s enough money to buy my marching-girl boots for the team that’s just started in Burley Point. But she keeps on washing and washing that plate, and I don’t know how to stop her.

  That night I’m reading in bed when there’s a bump on the window and a loud scratching on the sill, making me jerk up in fright. I pull back the curtain to find Bertie balancing there with a kitten in her mouth, the brindle one I’ve chosen for Tania. As soon as I ease open the louvres, she leaves her baby and leaps down from the ledge. In no time, she’s back with another baby in her mouth, and another, until all four are mewing and complaining on the bed. It’s only then that she squeezes through the bottom louvre herself, fussing and desperate to sort out the whole furry mess of them.

  Of course, Mum hears them crying and comes rushing in from the kitchen. ‘They’re not sta
ying here,’ she says, and straightaway bundles them in her apron and carries them outside, with Bert running beside her, crying pitifully. ‘Filthy thing,’ says Mum when she returns. ‘What’s she think she’s doing?’

  She thinks her babies should be inside, that’s what she thinks, because Mum’s hardly back in the kitchen before Bertie’s on the sill again. This time I try to get the kittens inside quietly, hiding them under the quilt to muffle their mewing. But when Bertie arrives with the last one, she’s so frantic that, before I can show her where they’re hidden, she yowls like a cat banshee and Mum rushes in again.

  When she sees them under the quilt, she practically screeches. ‘I’ve got to sleep in that bed!’

  ‘She’s licked them all clean. We could put them in the spare room. I can make up a bed. Just for tonight.’

  But before I can stop her, Mum bundles them back to the shed. This time she locks them in. I think I hate her then. I turn off the light and lie close to the window edge of the bed. My eyes are dry with tears of fury. Why can’t I fight her? Why do my bones feel so heavy? And the hard lump in my chest getting bigger.

  Next morning, when I go to the dunny, Mum is up before me, blocking the door, pulling it closed. ‘Don’t go in there,’ she says.

  ‘I need to pee!’

  She tells me to do it on the nasturtiums where she empties the dunny can. That’s when I see her pasty face, the way her eyes shuffle and shift. There’s a sick hammering in my chest and I push past, knocking her shoulder, not caring.

  Bertie’s not under the troughs. No kittens, no sound. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I see blood on the floor, a tiny foot, a kitten tail. Her voice behind me. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The kittens are dead. Eaten by rats in the shed.

  ‘Bertie…?’

  ‘She ran out…the lagoon.’

  From a long way off, I hear her saying Bertie was a stray and strays are better off in the wild. It couldn’t be helped, she is saying. I can get another cat.

  I have been here before. It is a dream, a flash of half-remembered things, blood on a floor, a wall? I walk past her on robot legs. I get dressed and eat my cardboard breakfast. I walk down the drive and into the tea-tree with a thought walking beside me like a friend: I will punish her forever with the silence of my hate.

  It is late August and the trees are still speckled with honey-white snow, the boobiallas and wattles blooming gold. All day, I hear myself calling, Bertie! Bertie! Birds chirrup and squawk. A stray flashes out of a bush, black with a patch of white, not her. All day I follow around the lagoon in a dream, searching in the stunted bushes near the tennis court, in the dense trees on my father’s side, near the dunes where the scrub is thick and tangled. Bertie! Bertie!

  By late afternoon, the dream is a fog rolling in from the sea, clinging and cold. I sneak into our yard and climb the kurra-jong tree. I wait until she’s screaming herself hoarse at the back door, not even bothering to look up the tree. I wait until it’s dark and the spoggies have squeaked and settled around me, as if I’m a big bird roosting amongst them. Then I slide down the tree.

  She turns from the stove. ‘I’ve been worried sick about you.’

  My stomach is heaving with hunger but I refuse to speak, or eat. In bed, I remember the warm smell of kittens and I think about killing myself. I wonder how I can do it without it hurting too much, and how she’ll feel when I do.

  Next day after school, she wants me to take a note to Grannie. I refuse and she looks like she’s going to slap me.

  Go on, I say with my eyes. Do it. Do it.

  Her shoulders fold onto her chest and she asks me how much money I’ve saved from my babysitting, and can she borrow it?

  I count it out on the kitchen table. I count it out slowly, making her suffer.

  When I arrive, Mrs Marciano asks what’s wrong. Nothing, I tell her in the fake happy voice I’ve been using for the past three days. After our walk, I leave Tania with Joe on the swing he’s made for her in the backyard and, although I try to make a quick getaway, Mrs Marciano follows me down the drive, calling out that she’s made coconut ice, would I like some before I go, reminding me that I’m leaving without my money.

  I don’t intend to say it—not then, not until I know exactly how I’ll tell her—but as I’m nearing the gate, it blurts out of me. ‘There won’t be a kitten for Tania’s birthday. They died. All of them.’ Then the lie. ‘They were stillborn.’

  ‘That’s awful, Sylvie. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Bertie’s gone too,’ I say stiffly. ‘Back to the bush.’

  ‘Poor little Bertie. Her first litter, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was my fault,’ I say quickly, not looking. ‘I should have’—Kept her in the bed. Got her out of the shed —‘looked after her. Better.’

  ‘That’s probably not true,’ she says, pressing coins into my hand. ‘Not everything is our fault.’

  Her words make me look up, but she is gazing back at Tania strapped onto her swing, at Joe pushing her higher and higher. ‘We’ll get Tarnie a kitten from somewhere,’ she says. ‘It’s the least of our worries.’

  I walk home, trying not to hear kittens crying. Trying not to think of rats and cats and mice and mousey me. Yes, mousey me. I should have made her leave Bertie inside with her kittens. Made her. Made her!

  Fake tan and short skirts. Kenny and his mates parked near the goal posts having a good gawk. Thumbs on wrists. Left, right, left, right. I’m not sure I even want to be a marching girl; I can’t think why I let Lizzie persuade me. And while everyone’s stepping out in new white boots, I’m strutting around in my school shoes with Faye out front, whistle stuck in her mouth, blasting out turns and atten-shuns like a sergeant-major.

  Afterwards, Denver asks if I’ll have my boots in time for the Muswell Pageant. I tell him they’re coming.

  When I get home, the power has been cut off because Mum hasn’t paid the bill. Again there’s toast and tomato sauce for tea. We’ve only just begun eating when there’s a loud knock at the door. ‘Ssshhh.’ Mum pinches out the candle flame and creeps to the blind. ‘Denver Boland,’ she whispers. ‘What’s he want?’

  Another loud knock. And another. He knows we’re inside. He can see the smoke from the chimney; he can hear our breathing. His knocking seems to shake the house on its hinges. ‘Damn,’ says Mum. She flounces to the door and Denver almost falls into the kitchen, fist raised for another good knock. ‘I’ve had the power cut off,’ she says. ‘That’s why Sylvie hasn’t got her boots.’

  Denver’s neck pokes about like a tortoise. ‘Why didn’t you say things were this bad, Nella?’ He looks at me and lowers his voice. ‘What about Mick…?’

  ‘Hasn’t paid a thing in three years.’

  ‘I’ll take care of the boots,’ says Denver.

  ‘It’s work I need,’ says Mum, sounding ungrateful, ‘not boots.’ Denver opens his mouth but Mum gets in first. ‘I’ve tried the butter factory at Rendelsham. The fish factory. There’s no work anywhere.’

  Denver says it’s the credit squeeze, businesses going bust everywhere. He says oil’s the answer; they’re pumping it from Moonie to Brisbane, why not here? If they hit the jackpot it’ll bring back the glory days when the train came every day, wool lined the wharf and ships called twice a week.

  I can see Mum doesn’t want a history lesson. She eases the door closed.

  Next day, the power is reconnected. Again we’re having toast and tomato sauce for tea. Again there’s a loud knock on the door. This time Denver is carrying a large cardboard box and he has Mousie Tibbet standing behind him with more boxes.

  ‘Got a bit of a surprise, Nella,’ says Denver, and before Mum can ask them to take off their shoes, they’re at the table emptying out Lions Club Christmas cakes, IXL jam, tins of Camp Pie, Lipton’s tea, Arnott’s assorted biscuits. And a big red bottle of White Crow tomato sauce.

  Denver looks pleased with himself, as if he’s the hungry one who’s just had a good feed. ‘That’ll keep
you going for a while.’

  Mum stares at the sauce for a long time, too long. Doesn’t she know she’s meant to say thank you? Eventually she does. ‘Thank you,’ she says. Once.

  Denver and Mousie look as if they’re expecting more. To make up for Mum, I smile at Mousie and try to look grateful. Denver says: ‘Anything you want, Nella, anything at all, don’t be too proud to ask.’

  When they’d gone, Mum puts the food away quickly, hides it out of sight in the cupboards. Then she takes out her tin of Wunderwax and rubs polish into the lino where Denver and Mousie have stood. From the fury of her polishing, I know she’s thinking the same as me: I’d rather eat toast and tomato sauce. I’d rather starve.

  *

  She’s making toast on top of the stove.

  ‘You said you’d go.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I’m getting two prizes. No one else is.’

  ‘I’m not feeling well.’ She spreads the toast with scrapes of butter that melt in straightaway.

  ‘You don’t look sick. Where are you sick?’ But even as I say it, her face turns an oily white. She slides my plate across the table. We’ve eaten all of Denver’s food and it’s toast and tomato sauce again. If she won’t go, I won’t eat. I slide the plate back. And I won’t beg. In the bedroom, I tie a perfect Windsor knot and I leave for Lizzie’s house without another word.

  Rattling along the Rendelsham road, I catch Mrs Winkie watching me in the rear-view mirror, pretending she isn’t. Soon darkness creeps inside the car and makes me numb: I’m the fish-factory freezer with the door closed tight. The pine plantations near Muswell are black walls against the night sky and soon we’re driving through the outskirts of town, porch lights, street lights, car lights.

  People are milling in the town hall foyer. Faye’s mother. Roy’s mother and father. Even Chicken’s grandma has come to see him win the footy prize. We sit with our class in the front rows, parents behind. The choir sings ‘Michael Row Your Boat Ashore’. The headmaster’s speech is boring and long. When the prizes are presented, I manage to get onto the stage without falling over my feet.