The China Garden

by Kristina Olsson

  But Laura was still by the window, watching the girl on the bed. While Cress was speaking the face of the girl had gradually changed, Laura realised, so that now, instead of her mother’s face as she’d known it, she was seeing another person, a young girl, frightened and confused. A girl in an oversized checked smock, pathetic really, a child, who didn’t understand what had happened, a child who might change her mind.

  Why wouldn’t it do? Laura asked now, swivelling round to look directly at Cress. It was her baby, not the hospital’s. She had every right to change her mind.

  Cress sighed, Laura thought, in a schoolmarmish way. Used a balled-up handkerchief to dab at her forehead. She was unmarried, Laura, and she was young, she said. She couldn’t keep him. This was the fifties, it wasn’t like now. She shrugged. No one blinks an eye now.

  Laura heard a brittleness in Cress’s voice, the schoolmarm impatient with her charge. Was reminded of the self-righteous teachers of her adolescence and her argumentative schoolgirl self. Something kicked over in her. But it was her baby, she said.

  Beside her Cress sighed again, deeply. She signed, Laura. Her voice weary, but edged with ice. It was her decision and she signed. There was no voodoo, no black magic. The words hung in the clear, washed air.

  Kieran felt his heart thump as they came nearer to the clearing. He stopped and looked at her. You’ve got to close your eyes, he said. Abby eyed the tree roots across the path, thick as ropes, the occasional branch or frond and the hanging blades of lawyer vine that could bite into her arms or face, even if her eyes were wide open. No way. She shook her head slowly. Nope. But Kieran was already beside her. He put one hand on her back and the other over her eyes. I’ll look after you, he said. Nothing will hurt you. Come on. She hesitated for several seconds. Then squared her body to the path and pursed her lips. They inched their way forward together.

  At each impediment, no matter how small, Kieran would mutter lift! and Abby would pick up her feet in an exaggerated arc. In this way they came to a break in the trees, barely visible from the track, and a narrow trail. He whispered encouragingly to her for another minute, and then they were there.

  A barely defined clearing, and at its edge a big strangler fig, its limbs ropey and generous, its trunk a dark, empty shell, scooped out and eaten. Small creatures scurried there. On weekend picnics, for as long as anyone could remember, local children had tucked their pliant bodies away in its hollows, disappearing, their skin and eyes darkening to bark. Kieran had always been drawn there, not to hide like a child but to watch the tree claiming humanness.

  They stopped in a puddle of soft leaves and Kieran removed his hand. Abby blinked in the half-light. See, it’s hollow. He bent down and leaned his arms on his knees. The strangler ate it. But Abby was looking up towards the canopy where the trunk soared, roots dripping down as if they were liquid. As if they were soft candy, melting. That’s not the real tree, Abb. He said it quietly, as if it was a secret. That’s the fig. It grows on the tree and chokes it.

  He watched as she stepped over and ran her fingers along one of the viney roots, thick as her wrist. Her face was saying nothing, but her eyes were bright with wonder.

  Good, he thought. It was a surprise. Abby began to move slowly around its base, touching the strangler woven into a thick hard web where the trunk had once been. He wanted to ask why, how it was she hadn’t played here like other kids in the town, why her parents hadn’t brought her. Where her mother was. But he just crouched there and said, When the tree dies it fertilises the earth. It feeds the thing that killed it. But Abby had stopped and was staring up again at the other, smaller holes higher up in the trunk. It’s like a house, she said, with windows.

  Cress sat and listened to the background bass notes of the Pacific Ocean rolling towards the coast. Slumping, retreating. She realised in that moment that the sound had become for her like a heartbeat; unnoticed in its constancy, but vital to her, day and night. Was the realisation tied to a memory? As she spoke of the birth, she had a clear image of Angela’s baby boy, of his tiny body unwrapped in the nursery, his hands jerking at the cold steel of the stethoscope on his chest, on his brand new skin. He’s a strong one, the doctor had said and she knew that was a good thing, just what the agency and the waiting couple would want to hear. Healthy, normal, no obvious birthmarks.

  That was where memory ended. There was nothing else; no other picture in her head, no trace of the story she’d known, one day, someone would ask for. The baby was a boy and he was strong. Whatever happened after that – there must have been phone calls, paperwork – was gone. She said, She did the right thing, Laura. For the baby, for herself. She took a breath, waved a hand towards the plot of shabby hibiscus bordering the park. Babies are like gardens, Laura, they need time, and attention. Looking after. Angela knew that.

  She glanced at Laura beside her. She was staring straight ahead, refusing to see what Cress saw. Perhaps babies just need their mothers, Laura said.

  Abby came and crouched beside him and together they stared at the small cave of bark. He looked at her and watched a childlike grin spread across her face. She seemed to Kieran then to move in slow motion, tipping onto all fours and making herself very small, as small as a girl could get. Bending her head, pulling her shoulders towards her chest, she wriggled into the tree. Only her feet and ankles were visible now. He heard her muffled laughter. Can’t see me! she called.

  After a while she scrambled and twisted her way back onto all fours to get out. But as her body slowly emerged she stopped. Her head and shoulders were still in the hollow. She seemed not to move for minutes, and then he heard her voice. Oh, she said, not so much in surprise as in acknowledgement. Oh.

  Is there a snake? Kieran’s body had shot forward even ahead of his words. Sometimes there are snakes. Abb? Don’t touch it. He grabbed at her ankle. Come out. Come on. It seemed to take forever but she finally inched her way backwards. They stood together while she brushed leaves and dirt from her jeans. He searched her face. It didn’t seem frightened. Go and look, she said. She was pulling things from her hair, a twig fine as a wishbone. It’s not a snake. In the eerie air of the forest, in the thin light, her eyes shone, the brightest things around. They looked more like the eyes of a creature than a girl.

  He moved around her and knelt in front of the hollow. He hadn’t crawled inside it for years. He felt like a giant, impossibly bulky. He bent his head, trying to look in and up into the darkness. Immediately the smells took him back to childhood, pushing aside the curtain of years. A rich blend like something cooking. He breathed. A kind of personal smell. He thought of the satisfying odour of his own feet, his body after a hot walk.

  He managed to edge his shoulders in. Gradually the dark began to make sense, there were edges, shapes. He could see the dull surface of the tree’s skin. Leaves and stones and old berries, cracked and dried. And something else. His stomach went suddenly to water. A face. His body jumped as if it had been hit but even as his head knocked against wood his eyes adjusted properly. He went still and stared. A tiny, plastic face. With crazy eyes. A doll. Wrapped in cotton and tucked into a ropy groove. Tucked in carefully, patted down with leaves. Kieran’s breath was noisy in his throat. Shit, he said.

  He didn’t touch it. It shouldn’t be touched, he thought. Whoever had left it would not want that. Still, he couldn’t decide whether it had been left as a mistake or as part of a story some child was telling herself. He slid slowly back. Abby was standing in the same spot, rubbing her arms. Lightly, up and down. It was what she did, he saw suddenly, when she was thinking, or unsure. He smiled at her and shrugged, dusting himself off. A doll, he said, playing hide and seek.

  She looked straight ahead. She nodded, chewing her bottom lip. It’s a good tree, she said, an amazing tree. They stood quietly, side by side, in front of it. Kieran glowed and felt himself expand, as if he had assembled it, all of it, the cool air, the forest, the tree
. The doll made it even more special: they were part-owners now in something, a discovery, a mystery even. It bound them. He felt proud, rich.

  Do you think there really are snakes? she asked suddenly, or wasps? I was bitten by a wasp once. Her hands were moving again over her arms as if she was cold. Kieran wanted badly to hold her then, to hug her like his mother always had when he was hurt or worried. To stroke the back of her head. His hands fidgeted at his sides. More than anything in the world, right then, he wanted her to feel safe, that no harm would come to her or to him or to the tree or the doll, to the very air around them.

  He looked away quickly, back up the way they had come. Not around here, he told her confidently, burying his hands in his pockets. Not for miles and miles. She nodded, chewing her lip again. We’d better go then, she said.

  As they walked towards the park gate Cress adjusted the handbag on her arm and spoke again.

  If you want information, why don’t you go to the official places? she said, looking up and around her. Births Deaths & Marriages. They might have a birth certificate for him. There must be some government department with records. Some organisation that deals with missing people.

  The words, the flat tone, took Laura by surprise. Because finding him isn’t so important right now, she said, the realisation coming as she spoke. It’s my mother I want to find. She’s the missing person.

  Perhaps it was the thought of safety. Perhaps it was because Kieran could think only, that day, of giving her something, something special like a secret, one single thing that might keep her close. He’d thought the dress might be it, and then the tree. Now, as they left the forest path, he found himself leading her back the other way, through the entrance to Angela’s, and all those thoughts came together in his head. Here’s a shortcut, he said, not stopping, but it’s steep. Hold my hand. He barely registered her fishbone fingers clasped in his. Could think nothing, really, as they crept carefully down through shrubs and grasses, only that this was what he’d meant from the beginning, this was the best thing he could share.

  At the bottom of the hill, behind tall scribbly gums, he looked at her and put his finger to his lips. Then, in whispers, he told her about Angela and all the nights in the shed. She was my friend, he said finally. They stood together, listening to the ticking of hot tin and insects. Their hands still locked, though neither of them noticed. She made me feel happy.

  Veronica and Iris looked sideways at Cress as she walked back into the shop. Iris had finished off the wool sorting for her, Cress noticed, but she ignored that and the women and took herself off to the back of the shop to tidy up the children’s area. At this hour, before the after-school rush, the shelves of toys and shoes and baby needs were orderly enough, but no matter. She could pull the whole lot out and wipe down the shelves and give everything a good dust. Those shelves hadn’t been dusted in months.

  The flipping and flapping of bird wings in her head settled as soon as she began. There was a lot of dust. When she’d emptied the shelves she brushed them off and then, with a bucket of soapy water, scrubbed right into the corners of each one, humming as the water darkened and the smell of cleaning rose in the air around her. She flicked the cloth over the toys – wooden puzzles, plastic cars and trucks, an abacus, some wild-haired dolls – and began to replace them, moving them this way and that to achieve some symmetry in the display. Occasionally a customer would wander down, but by now she had perfected the unwelcoming glance, eyebrows raised and mouth down-turned. So there was no one to see her slip the pair of almost-new woollen baby booties – white, with lemon ribbon – into the top of her petticoat, and wrap her fingers firmly around the miniature set of Russian dolls, all blue and red and bright pink, disguising it with her bunched handkerchief.

  When the job was done, when the bucket was emptied and the cloths rinsed, she felt she’d done enough for the day. From behind the counter – where Iris was still fiddling with wool, with needles – she retrieved her handbag and dropped her handkerchief in, then clipped the bag closed. You off then, Veronica said from the kitchenware aisle. Cress didn’t bother looking up. We really need, she said, pushing the straps of the bag over her forearm and up to her elbow, to get rid of some of the stuff in the children’s section. We need some fresh stock. Then: See you tomorrow, the first drops of another shower of rain slap onto the footpath.

  Down near the sea edge a boy was digging. Already the hole was big enough for him to stand in; he worked steadily at its edges, clawing, scraping. Watching him, Laura thought the hole might have been in her. She put her hand on her stomach. Babies need their mothers, she had told Cress, but what she’d meant was children need their mothers. I needed my mother. Her stomach clawed and scraped in time with the boy’s spade. But Angela, the Angela who should have been her mother, had been left in that hospital ward – Laura had realised this somewhere towards the end of Cress’s story. That version of Angela had gone with the lost baby, disappeared along with him. She, Laura, had been left with the shell.

  She looked back towards the boy; his cap of brown hair was parted in wet slicks across his forehead and he was digging as if he was working, not playing. Sudden tears welled in Laura’s eyes. Damn you, Cress, she said out loud, damn you and your pious fucking defences. And damn you, Angela, to hell and back. She stood and kicked hard at the sand, called up all the curses Alvaro had taught her. Faccio le corna! she yelled, pointing small and index fingers to the sky and startling the boy, who finally stopped digging to look up. But Laura was already marching back up the beach, crying and berating herself, along with the others, for letting it come to this. I needed you! she called to the darkening sky. Then stomped off towards town.

  Cress drove the long way home. The clouds had thickened again during the afternoon and, as she drove past the entrance to the national park, it began to rain again. It wasn’t a storm – the sky, puffed up and grey, simply emptied itself – and soon the world shrank to roadside trees, the strip of bitumen Cress could see, the steering wheel, the windscreen. The car and her body in it. She wound down her window, just an inch or two, to breathe it in. Up here, high in the hills, rain smelled different, it smelled to Cress of accumulated things, earth, leaves, skins shed and withered. It was rain that might have fallen from some other galaxy, somewhere older than here.

  Her flush of pleasure at the downpour – at any inclement weather – reminded her of her mother at the age Cress herself was now. I’m depressed, she’d say when Cress arrived to visit carrying the inevitable marble cake and beef stew. It’s the weather. Cress would cluck cheerfully around her, straightening doilies, pulling out teacups. It’s only rain, she’d reply, and it’s good for the lawn. The old woman’s arthritic fingers folded themselves at terrible angles in her lap. I can’t bear a grey sky, she’d murmur. And then, without fail: It brings back all the dead ones.

  But it had always been the opposite for Cress. Rain reassured her, calmed her. As a child she’d imagined rain turned magically to snow, each drop a soft flake against windows and branches, transforming the ordinary wooden house into a refuge warmed by fires and soft conversation. She’d loved the feeling of enclosure, the interiority, after the vast, endless openness of Australian summer. She felt that now, safe and dry in her car as the wipers nudged away other distracting thoughts, as the beat of raindrops on the bonnet and roof soothed the tightness in her. As the day became just a pale wash of colour across her vision, all particulars fading.

  But the rain began to slow just as she turned into her driveway, leaving streaks of light across the sky like something deliberately spilt. She opened the car door and the spiced air of a wet garden rushed up at her. It was irresistible. Without bothering to change, she tugged on her gardening gloves and crouched down among the vegetables: there were small clumps of weeds and nut grass she’d been meaning to pull. Then she spotted a caterpillar on a tomato, one of the plump ones nearly ready to pick. She pursed her lips and pin
ched the soft green body between thumb and forefinger and squeezed. She wrinkled her nose and threw the caterpillar over her shoulder. It was a disagreeable job but a necessary one, and she moved on to check the climbers, the beans and cucumbers, the boisterous passionfruit.

  Cress hummed a tuneless song as she worked. She was barely conscious of it; it was like the conversations she found on her tongue sometimes, in the kitchen or at St Barnabas, arguments, points of view, observations, all of them audible only to her. As if in the space around her an echo might be created, one voice duelling with another. So she wasn’t surprised when the song she was humming turned into a question, quite unrelated: why had she taken so long to realise Kieran had been visiting Angela?

  It took you ages. Cress nearly said it out loud. She stopped, grimaced. Pulled at dead leaves. The music should have been a clue. There had never been a lot of music in her own house. Well no, that was wrong too. She dropped the leaves, leaned back on her haunches. There was music on the radio, singing while the dishes were done: Danny Boy, The White Cliffs of Dover. She had an image of Ed, his hands lost in suds, his voice reaching for I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen. And they’d always sung Ten Green Bottles in the car when they drove to Kingscliff to visit his sister, or to Grafton for the Show.

  There was an LP player with a couple of records played for birthdays or celebrations: Ella Fitzgerald or Marlena Dietrich and later, Elvis, Johnny Cash. But that had all been before Kieran. Cress surveyed the lettuce, pulled one and shook off the clinging soil. The only music Kieran heard regularly was his parents’ – and their tastes ran to jazz and rock’n’roll and country. But nothing classical. Not opera. We weren’t brought up with that kind of music, she mused, it wasn’t a part of our lives. I suppose, she thought, it was unapproachable, for us there was no way in. The voices, the language, the unknowable sounds were like dark strangers, dangerous. And too showy, too melodramatic.