The Serpent's Skin

by Erina Reddan

  An extraordinary novel about overcoming male power, the strength of sibling bonds and the secrets that can haunt a family. Most of all, The Serpent’s Skin is about the many ways we prove our love.

  It’s a cold and wintery night in 1968 and ten-year-old JJ’s mother isn’t home. The cows are milked, the pigs fed, and her dad won’t answer any questions.

  Sarah is the lifeblood of their family, and her absence throws everyone off course: Tessa takes charge, Tim makes mistakes, Philly retreats, and JJ blames herself. Their father works hard to keep up appearances, but something’s not right. It’s always been JJ’s job to cause trouble, and when she can’t leave the clues alone, her sleuthing wreaks havoc in their tight-knit community, and she swears off troublemaking for good.

  Fourteen years on, JJ has a new life, a loving partner and a good job. But she puts it all in jeopardy when she stumbles across a chance to solve the dark mystery of her childhood. While pretending to have made peace with it, she organises a final farewell for her mother so they can all put the past behind them. Will the explosive truth finally set them free?

  Compulsive, gripping and full of heart, The Serpent’s Skin ushers in Erina Reddan as a brilliant new voice in Australian fiction.

  Praise for The Serpent’s Skin

  ‘The Serpent’s Skin is a deeply satisfying book of quiet power and dignity. I loved the sparse poetry of the writing, and the punchiness and strength of this novel’s voice.’

  Christos Tsiolkas, Damascus

  ‘The Serpent’s Skin is a powerful, gripping read, with a cast of complex, satisfyingly original characters. Erina Reddan has written a rich, memorable Australian novel.’

  Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project

  ‘With The Serpent’s Skin, Erina Reddan has lovingly crafted a fast-paced and timely novel tracing the consequences of a family suffocated by mystery, unquestioned power and grief. Erina pays tribute to women who refuse to bow to the secrets of the past by gifting us JJ, a tenacious spirit who not only seeks the truth no matter the cost, but uncompromisingly searches for the depth and bravery of her mother’s love, of women and their truth, over any ties to patriarchal expectation. This is powerful storytelling.’

  Sarah Schmidt, See What I Have Done

  ‘Wonderful. Achingly poignant and real, with a page-turning story and characters to break your heart.’

  Toni Jordan, Fragments

  ‘A powerful and insightful novel that illuminates how secrets stay buried within families, and the bombs, sheer strength and bravery required to stand up to male power.’

  Sarah Macdonald, Holy Cow

  ‘A perfect jewel of a book, captivating, rare and precious. The dark beauty of The Serpent’s Skin twists its way into your heart, refusing to let go until its devastating but triumphant conclusion.’

  Elise McCredie, Nowhere Boys

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR LETTER

  PART 1

  THE BEGINNING

  THE THING SHE LEFT BEHIND

  THE STORY JACK TELLS

  WHAT MRS NOLAN KNOWS

  THE THING THAT SHOULDN’T BE THERE

  THE WORLD WITHOUT HER

  ALMOST PROOF

  A DEFINITE LIE

  WHAT JJ OWES JACK

  A CLUE AT LAST

  THE MORE THAT DOESN’T ADD UP

  MRS TYLER’S SUSPICION

  IT’S GOT TO END

  PART 2

  ANOTHER BEGINNING?

  MARKING TIME

  PROOF

  JACK SKIDS AWAY

  WHAT TESSA KNOWS

  WHAT’S JACK SCARED OF?

  THAT MISSING THING

  ORDER INTO CHAOS

  THE MISSING PAGES

  TIM’S LEAD

  WHAT NANCY REALLY KNEW

  PHILLY’S PUZZLE PIECE

  WHAT JACK ADMITS

  THE SIZE OF TRUTH

  THE MOP UP

  AN UNEXPECTED CLUE

  SETTING THE TRAP

  CAUGHT

  APPRECIATION

  BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  TORCHED SAMPLE CHAPTER

  ‘… the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.’

  Audre Lorde

  To my daughters Maya Verena and Alena Bella, for their courage, their fire, their joy.

  To all of us who fight with whatever we have to bring down the master’s house.

  Dear Reader,

  The world is a strange, wild and complex place, and 2020 took first prize in all those categories. I’m guessing that if you are holding this book, it’s because you know the power of a book to get you through the hard times.

  Books take us deep into the richness of life and we need that. Books take us away from what pulls us into the dark and we need that. Books give us hope and we need that. I wrote The Serpent’s Skin out of just this kind of need.

  My life is so rich and full of beauty and fun and adventure and I’m bloody lucky. But lurking below the surface, like a serpent, is the challenge of the dark I grew up in. The darkness of excruciating poverty. Of the fear and the bitterness it engenders. Of the utter loneliness, the deep isolation.

  We grew up on a dirt patch of a farm that we kids loved. The house had been built by my grandfather back at the turn of the last century and it was weathered and worn and the wind whistled through the cracks in the boards in winter and the sun burnt through the tin roof in the heat of the summer. In fact, the Victorian health board made the long trek out from the city just to let us know that our house was UNFIT FOR HUMAN HABITATION. But inhabit it we did—all eight of us.

  We grew up and grew away and my father sold that farm, and the house was promptly demolished to make way for a modern, no-cracks one.

  None of us blinked. It was what had to happen. But twenty years on, my brother, a livestock auctioneer, noticed that somebody was waiting for him the whole morning. When he finished, the old guy stepped forward. He’d been to our place back in the day, and at the time he’d had a new Brownie box camera. He’d recently discovered a photo of our house, and had tracked Pat down to offer him the single slide in its plastic sleeve. There were no photos of our place, so Pat developed the slide, blew it up, framed it, put it on his wall and invited the rest of us around.

  We gathered in great excitement. But the chattering and banter slid into silence. It was my brother who finally said it: ‘How could the old man let us live in that?’

  That was the moment the serpent stirred.

  I needed to write about that world.

  The tribal pulling together in the epic struggle to survive; the unquestioned power of men and the Church and the destruction they made possible; the sheer joy of the things that shone light, like the mucking around and the kidding, as well as the incredible sisterhood.

  A neighbour from across the creek, a woman with two toddlers of her own, took my newborn baby sister for six weeks when my mother nearly died giving birth. Another neighbour, with six kids of her own, took me in at eleven months. I didn’t get home for six months more.

  I wanted to write about this complex world in which these unseen, unsung and profound acts of love and heroism made so much difference. I wanted to write about the everyday accommodations women had to make against the strictures of patriarchy and what it took to bring it down so that my life could be different. Notwithstanding, we all must fight on.

  Books saved me. I never dreamed in that dark time that I would be writing them myself one day: stories that get deep into the bones of the reader and give them hope and strength, which is what I hope The Serpent’s Skin does for you.

  I’m so grateful to you for going on this journey with me.

  Much love and take care.

  Erina Reddan
/>   PART 1

  BURIED

  1968

  The past is never where you think you left it.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  THE BEGINNING

  Dad said she’d gone.

  I didn’t reckon. I reckon she’d had enough, all right, but she couldn’t be gone gone. Mothers didn’t take off. Not any of the mothers I knew. And not my mum. She was too set on yanking my hair into twisty plaits, no matter what I might or might not have done to make her go.

  Philly said Dad wouldn’t lie. ‘Dad hates sin more than he hates the devil.’

  ‘Shut your gob and go to sleep.’ I jammed my arms behind my head and got my eyes busy counting cobwebs on the ceiling. You couldn’t keep ahead of those spiders.

  Philly jumped up in her flannel jarmies. Even in the moonlight I could tell Mum’d ironed em. Those jarmies made me bloody mad. I flung back the blankets and bolted to our chest of drawers, the chill of the floorboards nipping at my feet. I ripped open Philly’s drawer. She had her clothes in piles like soldiers, all squared up.

  ‘Get your filthy hands off my stuff,’ she said.

  ‘Your PJs are dirty. I’m getting you another pair.’

  ‘You’re a lying snake in the grass, JJ.’ She pushed back the covers and was on all fours.

  ‘It’s on ya collar—bleedin great stain.’

  She twisted her head, plucking at her jarmies, like a maggie, over and over at the ground for a worm. She gave up and launched herself at me, roaring. At nine, she was only a year younger, but so little, I caught her scratching hands easy. She pushed her face into mine and hissed like a cat.

  We both stopped, listened. Normally, Mum would be belting down the passageway, floor vibrating, yelling at me to stop riling up Philly again. But this time there were just the rats scratching about like nothing had changed on their side of the wall.

  There was no Mum the next morning, either, rushing into our room with a big wind: ‘That Jack Frost—had the bug in him last night. Jump up and see if you can catch him at it!’

  I was awake already without Mum, though. I poked my head over the window ledge. Out past the three pine trees in front of our place there was nothing but paddock after paddock, all silver and emptied over with frost. Inside it was all shivery bitey. Philly had a whimper up about how icy itchy her chilblains were. So I picked up the big warm wind Mum would have made and blew it all over her, dashing her and our school uniforms to the fireplace in the lounge. At twelve and thirteen, Tim and Tessa considered themselves too big to complain about a no-changing thing like the weather. I stabbed at the ashes in the grate for a spark of leftover orange hot from last night’s fire.

  ‘Bloody damn!’ I said.

  ‘You’ll go to hell.’

  ‘Least it’ll be hot.’

  Philly clapped her hand to her mouth and made full moons with her eyes. I dropped the poker with a big racket to cover over her shriek, in case Dad thought about thundering in here. The freeze shivered us up as we ripped out of our pyjamas and into our polo tops and tartan skirts. Philly folded her jarmies so the buttons were in a dead straight line down the front. I balled mine up to shove under the pillow.

  It was all tight around the breakfast table. Tessa had Mum’s apron over her school uniform. Mum always said it didn’t matter that the big yellow sunflower with all its joy on the front had worn gone—we knew it was there and that’s what counted. The apron was too big on Tessa because she was skinnier than most, but she’d wrapped the straps around and around so they were strangling into her like flat snakes across her belly. She’d got our bread turning brown in the toaster, put out Vegemite and poured milk into plastic cups. Mine was purple like irises. Mum said when I was a kid I wouldn’t have any other colour, so the others had to stop fighting me for it. I guess that was after she showed me irises in her book and said they were named after the Greek goddess who carried messages across the rainbow between heaven and earth. A bit like me, she said, cause I sometimes knew more than I should, and where I got that knowing she didn’t know but it had to be heaven. I’d made little teeth marks on the side of my cup where I gnawed when I wasn’t eating my vegies but pretending I was getting ready to. I settled my teeth into those marks now. They were a bit of warmth in the shiver cold.

  Tessa seemed taller today. Her hair already ribboned up. Just as shiny careful as when Mum did it. Had that brave girl look on her face. I wanted to smack it right off. Dad patted her hand when she put his toast on his plate.

  Wished I’d got Dad’s toast for him.

  Dad didn’t say anything about Mum. Hunched right over, eyes all high beam on his plate. Tim beside him, carbon copy.

  ‘You right to go to school?’ Philly asked me, with a chirp like a bird. Her pixie face above her pink cup. No teeth grooves. Tessa looked up sharp from the sink, like she’d forgotten something and it was a stab in the guts to her.

  I pointed at my school uniform to show I was going whether I was right or not.

  ‘So all better?’ said Tessa, pretending she hadn’t missed a beat, smoothing her apron over the front of her just like Mum did.

  ‘Who wouldn’t be after spending a day in bed reading?’ said Tim, his spiky crew cut slicked over neat with water. He dropped his eyes straight back to his plate, though. He didn’t have it in him to go full pelt on me this morning. He had the toast to his mouth but could only get a nibble in. Still, he was getting through it. It was almost like he expected Mum to come racing through the door with the chook eggs in the collecting tin, rousing at him for leaving food on his plate.

  ‘What would you know?’ I said. ‘Never read a book in your life.’

  ‘You don’t either—just baby stories.’

  ‘Do so. Read Alice in Wonderland—the whole book yesterday.’

  ‘Not sick at all, then?’

  ‘Was so.’ I jumped to my feet, kicked backwards at my chair. It skidded across the floor and smashed into the cupboard. There was a ghost of a grin on Tim’s face. Dad slammed his fist against the table. ‘Pick that up,’ he roared without looking up.

  I had my fists tight, tight, and the blood inside me was spurting like hot milk through the pipes in the dairy. But Tim stopped grinning. Looked away out the window, and just like that the red whooshed out—leaving me just as empty as a wrinkled old balloon skin.

  Tessa kept checking out the window for the bus on the far hill. She smacked Mum’s hairbrush against the bench like Mum did. She should just try to use it on me and then she’d see. Philly jumped good and proper, though, every time, like when Mum was at it.

  Tessa got Philly out the door and started her off down the track to where the bus stopped for us on the road. I sprinted out after them, but before I got too far I peeled away to the back verandah to check on the joey. Tessa shouted after me but I didn’t bother yelling back.

  Tim was already there, hunched over the joey, dipping the tip of the rag into an old tin of milk and sooking it at her mouth. But she kept her black button eyes looking straight, like her head was too heavy to move. I bent to cosy the towel around her and push the clock more against her tummy. We were trying to fool her into living by pretending the ticking was her mum’s heartbeat.

  ‘You should talk to Dad about where Mum’s gone,’ Tim said.

  ‘No, you should.’

  A crow flapped to rest on the nearest strainer post. Ducked its head to the side and gave the joey a good looking at.

  I pushed the cardboard box with the joey in it snug to the wall. Pulled the scratch of the torn towel over it.

  ‘Anyway, won’t do no good, he says he doesn’t know,’ I said.

  ‘She’d never just up and leave. You gotta ask him again; reckon he knows something more than he’s saying.’

  I thought about telling Tim it was all my fault, but I reckoned she’d call or maybe even come back today so then I wouldn’t have to.

  ‘You’re older,’ I said.

  ‘You’re his little shadow.’

  ‘You j
ust want me to be the one who gets the backhander.’

  He squatted forwards, pulled back the towel a bit and reached under to tease the milk rag around the joey’s mouth again. ‘I’m just saying,’ he said.

  Tessa’s voice yelled for us to hurry up or we’d miss the bus. I got to my feet.

  Tim stroked the joey’s nose with the back of his finger, not going anywhere.

  ‘Bus, Tim,’ I said.

  Not a muscle.

  ‘If we miss the school bus, you’ll get what for from Dad. He won’t be driving you all the way to Chilton.’

  Still nothing.

  I grabbed him by the back of his jumper and hauled. He fell backwards, but jumped up straight away, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. He scooped up his bag and took off, leaving me for dead.

  Just before lunch, Mother Gabriel’s cracked voice came over the loudspeaker calling: ‘Tim McBride, to the office.’

  I screwed the lid on my ink bottle real quick and opened my desk to shove in my maths book and ruler. I sat there, fists opening and closing, just waiting for that bell. You never heard Tim’s name over the loudspeaker. Mick Watson, Shane Smith, the two Farrell brothers, sure. Tim liked setting everyone else up to get boiled hard in hot water, but he made sure to keep his own toes dry as dry. So him being called up like this must’ve had something to do with Mum.

  Reckon Philly thought the same cause she was waiting for me as soon as I got out of the classroom door. Clicking her fingers over and over. ‘Why’d they call Tim and not Tessa? She’s the oldest.’

  I grabbed her hand to stop that clicking. ‘Cause he’s the boy.’

  We raced to where only kids in trouble went, pulling up short under the head nun’s window, making sure we were plenty out of sight. Philly danced from one foot to the other.

  ‘You’ll wet your pants again. You should have gone to the toilet.’

  She shook her little squeezed-up monkey face.

  ‘Look. If Mum is really in there, you know I’ll make her wait for you while you go,’ I said.