The White Guinea Pig
Page 12
‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ she muttered to her pillow, sitting up on the edge of the bed. ‘She should have told me.’
Because her mother had known, she was sure of it. It made sense of all those late nights and cryptic murmurs, that horrible Howard and his clean shoes. Violetta now knew she would never trust a man with clean shoes ever again in her whole life, and she took a quick look down at Simon’s to reassure herself—yes, grubby runners with frayed laces. Very satisfactory.
‘I suppose she didn’t want to upset you,’ said Simon. Or knew you’d dob him in, he thought, because Violetta turned out to have an unexpectedly vicious sense of justice.
Violetta went over to the door and tried the handle, apparently forgetting she had locked it herself.
‘Where’s the key?’ she snapped.
‘Well,’ began Simon.
That’s when they realised the key was missing. Violetta had tossed it, or rather hurled it aside with such venom, that it seemed to have disappeared altogether. It was hard to understand how this was possible, as there was scarcely a plank of furniture left in the room, and no nooks or cracks where it could have fallen. But neither of them could see it anywhere. Simon thought back to when she had flung it away, and he was pretty certain it was in the right direction, but then he thought again and said maybe the left direction.
All the while Violetta became more infuriated, with him, chiefly, which he felt was unfair. He had been brought up never to lock your bedroom door. What if your pyjamas caught fire while you were asleep, or you knocked yourself unconscious against the wall as you turned a page reading in bed?
Violetta banged on the door a few times, and called out to Geraldine and her mother, but there was no answer. What could they do, anyway, ventured Simon, short of ringing a locksmith or breaking down the door with an axe.
‘We’ll just have to climb out the window,’ said Violetta, with a withering glance. ‘We can’t stay here all night.’
‘I suppose not,’ agreed Simon reluctantly. ‘And it’s not such a far drop, is it?’
He pushed open the glass into the branches of the camellia trees that grew under Violetta’s window. The blooms had reached their least attractive stage where they turn brown at the edges and fall to pieces at the slightest touch. The drop to the dark earth below was only a metre or so. Simon lifted a leg over the window-sill like striding a horse, then let himself off, plop, into the softness beneath his feet.
As he did so, there was the sound of a car slowing down, a door opening and slamming shut, someone getting out.
The front gate clicked behind him. Simon turned and reached up his arms to help Violetta.
‘Daddy!’ Violetta shouted and leapt from the window straight past him, falling on her knees into the earth. She picked herself up and ran straight towards her father, who had just walked in the front gate. In the twilight, he had lost all colour. He looked grey—grey hair, grey clothes, grey skin.
‘Violetta,’ her father said softly, reaching out to her, and his voice was grey too. He hugged her to his shoulder.
Well, someone found the bail, thought Simon, lowering his arms and putting his hands into his pockets.
And he watched them, Violetta and her father, through the dying camellias in the dying light, walk together arm in arm into the house. The door banged shut in the wind behind them.
True love, thought Simon. He sighed, but he was not unhopeful.
18 · Eyes Open
Geraldine lay on her back in bed. Her eyes had been shut from the moment she found her room after her father had gone away in the grey car. She had lain down, fully clothed, and closed her eyes.
She had heard Violetta, talking, crying, shouting, she had heard doors banging, voices of people she did not know, or had forgotten. Through everything she had kept her eyes shut, and finally there had been no noise at all, just the sounds of the garden, the wind, the leaves, the moving distance.
She lay in the darkness, very still. This is how a dead body must feel, she thought. She didn’t think about her parents, or Alberta, or the two men. She felt the inside of her mouth with her tongue; her teeth, her palate, her gums. She lay listening to her blood flow, like a hibernating bear.
Her mother came in and took off her shoes, then pulled a blanket over her. She shook her shoulder a little.
‘Darling,’ she said.
Geraldine kept her eyes closed.
‘Geraldine,’ said her mother. ‘Darling. Your father and 1 are going out. We have to go and talk to someone. We won’t be long. I’m telling you so you won’t be frightened. Everything will be okay.’
I won’t be frightened, thought Geraldine. I’m not moving. I’m staying here.
‘Violetta’s gone out too,’ said her mother. ‘With her friend Simon.’
Yes, thought Geraldine. That’s good.
‘She said she wanted to go,’ her mother said, sounding forlorn. She kissed Geraldine on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
In the end, of course, Geraldine did get up. Perhaps an hour later. No one was home. Even the caterers had gone, taking every scrap of the party with them, every surface left clean and crumbless.
She went into the living-room, although you could hardly call it a living-room without any furniture, except for the small black-and-white television they were going to take to her aunt Deirdre’s place. She lay on the floor on her stomach, smelling the dirt deep in the carpet beneath her.
There was a knock on the glass doors behind her. Her head jerked up, shot through with fear. But it was only Ezra. He stood there, in the dark part of the day, a package of some kind under his arms. Geraldine did not get up to let him in, so he twisted the door open himself.
‘Geraldine?’ he said, or rather, asked.
‘What?’
Ezra paused. He looked sad. He did not often look sad. Small, thoughtful, disappointed, but not sad. ‘I’m going to bury Alberta,’ he said. ‘Will you come with me?’
Geraldine sat up. ‘Where?’
‘Well,’ said Ezra tentatively, ‘I thought in our garden. I mean, we could bury her in yours, but you’re leaving. I mean, if she’s in mine, at least you know someone knows she’s there …’
He stopped. Geraldine said nothing.
‘Do you want to?’ he asked. ‘Geraldine?’
She got up from the floor and walked over to him. She pointed at the blue plastic parcel under his arm. ‘Is that her?’
Ezra nodded.
She looked at him, suspicious. ‘All right,’ she said.
She stalked ahead of him, out the front door. The evening air was mild, the light dark-blue. She walked in her socks, straight past Ezra’s house, down the side path into the back garden, Ezra and his package trailing behind her.
‘Where abouts?’ said Geraldine, when they reached the yard. She looked about, feeling the wet from the earth soak up to her toes. The cactuses in the dim light looked almost like alien creatures, animals themselves, huddled together in conspiracy. The greens were grey and they cast weak shadows over the stony earth.
Ezra pointed. Near the fence was a shallow ditch, recently dug, and a red trowel standing up in the earth beside it. Geraldine walked over and knelt down next to it. The ditch was not very deep as Ezra had never seen anyone buried, so he had no idea how deep a grave should be. For him, burying a body was like planting a seed.
He sat down next to her, holding the blue plastic parcel gently in both hands. Geraldine stared at it.
‘What about a coffin?’ she said.
‘In Israel they don’t have coffins,’ said Ezra. ‘They wrap you up in a flag.’
‘Oh.’
‘My cousin was buried there,’ said Ezra. ‘I saw pictures they sent us. He was a soldier.’
‘Oh.’
There were a number of answers to this. Alberta wasn’t a soldier, she wasn�
��t even a person, this wasn’t Israel. But instead Geraldine found herself saying, ‘What about Tory? Did she have a coffin?’
Ezra was silent, except for a very deep lonely breath. Then he said, ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see.’
‘Didn’t you go to her funeral?’
Ezra shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even see her when she was dead. I didn’t want to see her.’
‘Why not?’
Ezra frowned, almost as if he had not asked himself this before now. He looked into Geraldine’s face—was the answer there?
‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘I think I was afraid. I think.’ He paused, then picked up the trowel. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s do it.’
‘I want to see her,’ said Geraldine. ‘I want to see her before we put her in.’
Ezra fingered the plastic gently. ‘Open it up,’ said Geraldine, and she repeated, ‘I want to see her.’ But she would not pull apart the plastic cover herself. Ezra’s hands were trembling.
‘All right,’ he said. He folded the blue flaps to one side and the other, and uncovered Alberta. Poor, white, huge, dead Alberta. Still, very cold, stiffening, eyes open, whiskers flat. Dead Alberta. Shining Alberta. Remote, unknowable. Unmournable.
Geraldine stared. And stared. So this was Alberta. Last time she had been so close, she had been alive, scuffling inside a shoe box, eating a sandwich. And now … In her dreams, Alberta was monstrous. Violent and cruel. Out to get her. Now she was dead and so near, she was different. Vulnerable, small, short-sighted, tenacious, admirable. Geraldine stared. Warm-blooded, like herself. An animal, not a ghost.
‘Oh!’ Geraldine tightened her toes in her socks. She heard in her head the tyre sinking into Alberta’s back.
Ezra stretched out his hand and laid it on Alberta’s cold neck. He lowered his head, and rested his cheek against her fur. A surreptitious kiss crept out of his mouth. Geraldine didn’t see. He sat up straight again, and wrapped her up.
‘You put the earth,’ he told Geraldine.
Geraldine took the trowel and pushed the dirt on top of the package, flattening it out and making it straight and neat, like a low sand-castle. She picked up some pebbles from around the cactuses and decorated the little mound with them. Ezra stood watching. When she had finished he helped her up from the ground, putting his clean hand into her muddy one.
‘Are you still leaving on Wednesday?’ he asked.
Geraldine shrugged. ‘I suppose so. The house is sold. We have to leave. I mean, it doesn’t make any difference about Dad being arrested.’ You’re under arrest. How ridiculous it was, thought Geraldine. A phrase from a cartoon, like ‘Take me to Cuba!’ or ‘Hands up in the name of the law!’
There was a pause.
‘What are you going to tell your friend about … Alberta?’ Ezra spoke the name with difficulty.
‘I just don’t know. I really don’t,’ moaned Geraldine. She added, ‘I mean, it was my fault.’
‘Well, it was, really,’ agreed Ezra, unhelpfully.
Geraldine scowled at him. ‘Perhaps I’ll send her round to see you,’ she said. ‘To visit the grave. You two’ll probably get on like a house on fire.’
A glow suddenly grew over the garden, from out of Ezra’s house, his father settling in for the evening’s session of Paint Your Wagon. They could hear the faint music of the opening credits. Geraldine looked at Ezra; Ezra looked at the ground.
‘Um.’ Ezra chewed on his lips, thickly chapped from windy ferry trips. ‘Would you …’ He stopped. ‘Have you …’
‘What?’
‘I mean,’ said Ezra in a rush, ‘if you haven’t found a home for them, I could look after your guinea-pigs.’
Geraldine was shocked, and surprised to find she was still capable of it.
‘But you’re against pets!’ she said. ‘You hate caged animals.’
‘I know, I am,’ replied Ezra. ‘I am. I do. But …’ Geraldine waited.
‘Well, I mean … if you can’t find anyone else …’ he broke off lamely. ‘I’ll look after them, till you get a house where you can have them back.’
Would I ever want them back, wondered Geraldine. Such a marvellous escape Ezra was offering her. And he would look after them so well, she knew. He would be so responsible, much better than her. He would feed them and keep them clean, and keep an eye out for all sorts of rodent diseases and give them the very latest treatment. He might not offer them much spiritual comfort, of course, but they didn’t want that. He would give them what they really wanted, without trying to get anything from them. Not like her. They would never disappoint him, because he would expect nothing.
Quite suddenly, she smiled at him, and he smiled back, perhaps the first genuine smile they had ever shared. ‘Thank you, Ezra,’ she said. ‘It’d be wonderful.’
Wonderful. She repeated the word inside her head, for she felt she needed a word like that to help her through the future hours, days, weeks—would it be years? Would her father go to prison? Where were they going to live? A few months at her aunt Deirdre’s and then what? Another house, perhaps another city, another school, another life … But at least now she understood more of what was happening, even if not when, or why, or how. And just knowing the little she did know made everything seem different, less formless, less frightening. She could open her eyes, and be less afraid of what she might see.
‘I don’t think I want to have any more pets,’ she said at last.
‘Oh yeah.’ Ezra raised his eyebrows.
‘You don’t have to believe me,’ snapped Geraldine. ‘I don’t care if you do or not.’
Her head ached with unshed tears. Her feet were cold, and her hands and elbows covered with mud. Wonderful? Not quite. But she resolved to shut away thoughts of the future for the moment. Just now, she needed to take her life slowly, understanding perhaps only one grain at a time. And she too, despite everything, was not unhopeful.
ORIGINAL AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Ursula Dubosarsky was born in Sydney and works as a book and magazine researcher. One of her most memorable years was spent on a kibbutz in Israel, where she loved living as part of a cosmopolitan society in a rural environment.
Ursula has written a number of books for children, including a picture book, Maisie and the Pinny Gig. Her first novel was High Hopes (also published in Puffin)—a quirky, unique and delightful book with a very special flavour to it. This was followed by Zizzy Zing, The Last Week in December, The White Guinea-Pig, The First Book of Samuel, Bruno and the Crumhorn, and Black Sails, White Sails. Both High Hopes and Zizzy Zing have been named Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Books, and The Last Week in December was shortlisted for the 1994 Australian Children’s Book of the Year Award (Younger Readers). The First Book of Samuel won the 1995 New South Wales Premier’s Ethnic Affairs Commission Award and was an Honour book in the 1996 Children’s Book of the Year Awards (Older Readers).
Ursula Dubosarsky now lives in Sydney with her husband Avi, her daughter Maisie, and sons Dover and Bruno.
Copyright
Copyright © Ursula Dubosarsky 1994
First published in 1994 by Penguin Books Australia
This edition published in 2021
by Ligature Pty Limited
34 Campbell St · Balmain NSW 2041 · Australia
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e-book ISBN 978-1-922749-45-1
All rights reserved. Except as provided by fair dealing or any other exception to copyright, no part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
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