‘Jack.’ Her mother’s voice firm in betrayal of her daughter. ‘Jack Fordham.’
‘Him?’ Her father looked incredulous, ‘That…? I’ll kill him. Make him marry her… God help me,’ her father roared as the fury returned to his face and he seized one of the breakfast dishes from the table and sent it spinning across the room.
‘No, no.’ Miriam looked from parent to parent in desperation. ‘Not Jack, Arth…’
Her father wheeled around, grabbed a glass from the table, and threw it at her. Miriam ducked. ‘Get out of here, you slut, get out of my sight. Get out!’ He swept his arm across the table, knocking everything to the floor. Miriam fled down the hallway and came face to face with Arthur. By the look on his face, Miriam knew he’d heard everything. For the first time in weeks, she looked directly into his hateful eyes.
‘They’re blaming Jack.’
‘Jack.’ Arthur snorted and Miriam felt light-headed. He was going to let Jack take the blame.
‘You can’t do that. Tell the truth.’
Arthur stepped closer and Miriam flinched at his breath on her face. ‘Make me,’ he said, then licked her cheek.
‘Arthur!’ At the sound of his father’s voice, Arthur stepped back, smiled at Miriam, schooling his features into a parody of concern as he prepared to meet his parents. Miriam shook as she watched him walk away. She retreated to her room, shut the door, and sank to the floor. She was lost. They would believe him. They always did. Their firstborn, innocent son.
The rustle of leaves alerted her to its presence. Ellie stopped digging, her posture stiff, as she squinted down into the bed of discarded bark, sticks, and eucalypt leaves that covered the ground near the side of the enclosure. Another flutter and she saw it. Striped scales, brown and grey with a hint of silvery blue: bush camouflage. A blue tongue poked out, tasting the air, and the flat broad head swung around.
‘Hullo, Mr Lizard.’ She leaned forward, and it froze. Ellie was sorry she had spoken. She reached out a hand in a graceless, conciliatory gesture. The lizard scurried away, heading towards the undergrowth.
‘Sorry,’ she whispered. She liked blue-tongue lizards. Maisie’s dad used to catch them sometimes and he’d let her and Maisie pat them, ever so carefully, before he’d release them. Ellie’s mouth pulled down at the corners. She’d spent years wishing for a friend after Maisie had disappeared, even for another animal, a cat, a lizard, to keep her company. She remembered wishing she’d been allowed to go back to school. The teacher would have known about lizards and how to make friends with them. There would have been other boys and girls at school too. She’d propped her dolls around the kitchen table trying to create her own school, but it was never the same.
She had sat at that table, her pencils and paper before her, trying to draw all the things she could remember about outside. Something real beyond the fibro walls that kept her in. Ellie’s tongue would snake out between her lips as she’d frown in concentration, softly sketching in the lines. Trying to capture the outside world on paper as she couldn’t in her hands. Not that she’d really wanted to capture animals. She hadn’t wanted to trap them. They deserved to be free. She just wanted something real. To touch something living and wild.
Her drawings never did justice to the world. The proportions were wrong. There was always something off kilter whenever she tried to draw from memory, especially something living. But it made a change from her moribund sketches of the objects she saw everyday within the house. She’d tried drawing the birds she heard, the screaming cockatoos with their shock of yellow atop their white heads. She’d tried blue-tongue lizards with their big heads and stubby legs. There was one picture in particular…
She’d used a piece of paper on which she’d previously drawn a picture of the lamp from the lounge room. She had pressed down lightly, then more heavily with her lead pencil, darkening the lines as she’d outlined the lizard. Clawed feet took over the dusty globe. She had pressed harder, shading underneath its belly, her strokes covering the image of the lamp. A gigantic blue-tongued dinosaur dominating the globe. Goodbye to this world, with its still life and frozen, empty existence. She had brought life inside, on paper at least.
She had kept drawing even though there was no more Maisie to show her pictures to. Drawing was something that Grandmother and Daddy had surprisingly and grudgingly allowed. It kept her quiet and occupied. When Grandmother Clements had gone, Daddy had been the one to deliver infrequent paper and pencils, even though he’d scowl ferociously when she had tried to thank him. It was to be a silent, unspoken gift.
Ellie had drawn the inanimate objects around the house. The shabby cupboards and the sideboard Daddy had taken from Grandmother’s house. The clock on the mantle, the kettle, the kitchen window with the curtains hanging closed, the door handles, copies of images from the pages of books. Her favourite pages were the ones in the picture encyclopaedia that featured the mysterious underwater creatures of the deep, those bizarrely grotesque beasts that never saw the sun, and the page of molluscs and delicate spiralling shells. With her pencils she’d woven underwater scenes with hideous oceanic organisms next to oversized coral. Ellie tried to remember what she’d seen in the Before, in the outside, and bring it in. She’d added images of flowers, of trees, but if Daddy saw her pictures outside her room, he’d throw them away. There were futile attempts to draw pictures of herself and her mother, but these always ended in harsh, dark scribbles. She had tried to find the colour of her mother’s eyes. To blend the greens to create the exact shade, but she couldn’t get it right. There was no capturing the intense hue she remembered; her attempts always looked wrong. She couldn’t be sure. Ellie wasn’t sure what she remembered and what she imagined anymore.
Every piece of paper had been scrawled and sketched upon, front and back. Daddy hadn’t brought any new paper for such a long time and she didn’t want to anger him by asking for more. She wanted space. White space to bring the images in her mind to life. One day she had been so desperate for something to draw on that, finding nothing, she began to draw directly onto the wall of her room, over the faded, ugly wallpaper with its crude patterning. Lying under her bed, she had started small, with delicate faint lines that Daddy would only notice if he came in and moved her bed frame. But once she’d started, she couldn’t stop, moving onto the papered windows, and then on the wallpaper in plain view. She had taken a beating for that and Daddy hadn’t let her have any dinner that night, but he had left her artwork intact.
‘Not paying good money to fix that,’ he’d muttered.
Surfaces always beckoned her. The temptation to scratch the paint, the paper, the skin, and uncover what lay beneath never died.
Ellie knocked on her father’s bedroom door and entered, sketchbook and pencils in hand. She should have done this earlier, she thought, before the flies and the maggots came, before his blanched skin had settled so differently on his bones. She sat on the edge of his bed and looked down, her hand already marking the page before she was conscious of performing the act.
‘Don’t move, Daddy,’ she said, though he hadn’t stirred at all. For years, his had been the only face she had seen, and yet she had never dared record it. He would never have sat for a portrait and his image was not one she had ever thought she would want to keep. Now she would have a record of him in death. This would be the first and final portrait of Daddy.
Word had spread around town. Jack’s mother had been adamant it wasn’t her son. He wouldn’t have done that. Couldn’t have, though she’d refused to elaborate on why she’d thought it impossible, only repeating that her Jack would ‘never sully himself with that sort.’ Jack shook his head, and with a wry smile, told Arthur how after his mum had gone to bed claiming a migraine, his dad had taken him out to the back shed for a beer, a smoke, and a man-to-man talk. Now that his son was so obviously a man. A real man.
‘It
was weird. I kept telling him I hadn’t done it, not your little sister I mean, but he didn’t believe me, didn’t want to hear it.’ He shrugged as he looked at Arthur. Arthur nodded. Jack had been hesitant to speak to him at first, but now he wouldn’t shut up. ‘It was like he was proud of me or something. Even though he said he wouldn’t make me marry her. I mean, fuck, I’m not… I mean, I’m sorry for your sister and all.’ He looked awkwardly at Arthur before he shrugged again. ‘My whole life, my dad’s been ashamed of me and everything I do. Now he’s proud of me for something I didn’t do.’
Arthur looked away quickly so Jack wouldn’t see the expression on his face. What a load of bullshit. If only Mr Fordham knew… Arthur’d gone to Jack’s house asking if he wanted to hang out, and Jack had fallen for it.
‘He thinks you’re a stud.’
‘Yeah.’ Jack grinned, but the smile dropped quickly, ‘He wants a son that’s tough. A son to work on the wharves like him, but that ain’t me.’
‘Nah.’ No shit.
‘Though it is easier now, at home. I mean, I’m really sorry about Miriam and all, but it’s kind of nice having me dad happy with me.’
Arthur scowled. He’d thought Jack would have copped something more for this. His oh-so-holy mum kicking her lustful, sinning son out of home for a start. His dad furious, perhaps finally putting those massive hands to use, but Jack hadn’t borne anything like a beating. It sounded though all was sweet for him. Maybe Arthur should have denounced Jack as a fag. Still, that was something he wanted to hold onto. Jack owed him. Jack would do anything to keep his secret safe. The boys walked along in silence for a bit, the only sound the waves belting their familiar rhythm onto the shore. The salty spray that flew into the air had stung their faces.
‘Do you know who did it?’
‘Who did what?’
‘You know,’ Jack hesitated and couldn’t say the words, ‘… to your sister?’
‘Nup.’
‘Won’t she tell your mum and dad?’
‘Nah. She’s a slut. She asked for it.’
Jack opened his mouth to object, but stopped. Arthur probably knew things about Miriam that others didn’t. She was his sister after all. Jack hadn’t thought she was that sort. She’d always seemed like a nice girl. Just Artie’s little sister. He picked up a broken piece of cuttlefish and threw it into the waves. What did it matter, really? He and Arthur knew he was in the clear. Arthur was here talking to him again, his dad was happy with him, his mum would calm down eventually. As they continued to walk along the sand, their footprints were washed away by the incoming waves, one stride longer than the other, a parallel tide.
When she started to show, well before the baby was due, they sent Miriam away. There was a home for unmarried girls, for troublesome girls, run by the nuns. There she was banished, kept busy, taught how to clean and work, and perhaps even repent, so that when the time came and her shameful secret delivered, she could be sent back home or out to a position, trained, with no illusions of respectability.
Her parents had told her not to talk, not to tell anyone at the Girls’ Home. Not if you know what’s good for you. Not if you ever want to show your face here again. The shame would be unbearable, they’d said. It was later, when she was stuck inside with the nuns and the other ‘wayward’ girls, that Miriam realised they weren’t talking about her shame, but their own. She hadn’t told. Not the nuns or the other girls. Her parents hadn’t cared; why would these strangers? Some of the other girls had spoken of boyfriends, of men who’d wanted to marry them or who didn’t. They told tales of love, of accidents, of rape, tales that ended with ‘I didn’t think it would happen to me.’ No one spoke of brothers. Miriam didn’t speak. Just let them all think it was another boy who had let her down. Knocked her up, then taken off. No responsibility. The nuns told them repeatedly they were bad girls who should have known better, acted better. Boys were carefree; girls were careless. Miriam had tried not to care, but it was impossible.
Near the end of her confinement, she’d received a letter in her mother’s blunt hand informing her of her father’s death in a mining accident. They had had the funeral, Arthur and her mother. There were no more letters.
Miriam never returned home. There had been no point, and no home to return to. The baby was taken away at birth. She’d thought she’d feel better when it—she couldn’t bear to think of it as a baby, as her baby—was gone. But she’d been hollow. Empty.
It was going to a good Christian family, the Sister had said. Miriam hoped that was true. She never saw it, never held it. Didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. Just heard a cry, then a flinty voice telling her it was for the best. She’d cried then. Cried that night. For herself, for the baby she didn’t know, didn’t want to love, for her father. For everything that was lost. The girls on her ward tried to comfort her.
‘Are you going home now?’ someone asked.
‘No.’ I have no home, Miriam wanted to add. They’d cast her off once; she wouldn’t go back for more. Miriam allowed herself this one night of grief. Then she’d move on, get a job, any job, and make a new life for herself. Away from Arthur and her mother. She never wanted to lay eyes on them again.
Ellie returned to the enclosure in the afternoon, grateful for the cool wind that stirred the leaves and brought the scent of the ocean to the yard. She hoisted the shovel and groaned involuntarily, her body bowed towards the earth in supplication. At lunchtime she’d rummaged through the cabinet in the bathroom where Daddy had kept their meagre collection of toiletries. The handle of a razor with a couple of dull, loose blades, the plastic comb, the almost empty tube of toothpaste they’d shared, some antibiotics long ignored by Daddy—‘These won’t get the mine out of me chest’—and a bottle of aspirin, a few pills rattling around inside. The label had faded, but she guessed she would be okay. She had swallowed two with a glass of water. The aches had mellowed for a while, but later came back with a vengeance. She would dig through the pain. Ellie found herself a rhythm, slow and awkward as it was, and started to hum along to one of Daddy’s favourite tunes. She could hear him singing, his voice deep with a sound all his own. She couldn’t keep pace with him, but she tried. Shovel, scoop, throw. Shovel, scoop, throw.
The air had cooled significantly when she decided to quit. She had her grave and she would make him fit. She had uncovered a dog’s skull—sharp teeth intact—and quickly buried it again. After that there were no more bones, and she was glad. The soil was even harder now; there were too many roots. Nothing else had been buried here. No one else. Mummy wasn’t here. She stopped, trying to straighten her spine and wincing with the effort. Mummy wasn’t here. That was the most important thing, not the pain. She stamped her feet on the ground, trying to regain full feeling in her legs. The base of the hole was uneven, but it didn’t have to be perfect; it just had to hold him. To cover the rotting that had begun from within, cover the flies and their spawn. Cover the stench. She loved him, but she wanted him gone. For good. She needed him to finally leave her alone.
She rummaged in her pocket for the key and headed over to the shed. As she went to unlock the padlock, something occurred to her. That smell. Daddy’s smell. She had smelt it before. Here. She dropped the shovel on the ground and forced her way through the overgrowth at the side of the shed. That board, that loose board where she had once found the kittens, all those years ago. There had been that smell, those bags… One of the kittens had had hair and plastic in its claws…
‘No, oh no. No.’ She pulled on the boards. They were aged. One had weathered badly and protruded, bent by the moisture of years, its nails long since rusted and useless. She pulled harder until she’d loosened it completely. Lying on her stomach, she peered under the shed. Remnants of rotted plastic, just out of arm’s reach. She tried to wriggle in further, wedging her arm and head under the gap, banging her head on the base of the floorboards. She reached o
ut to touch the plastic and it tore as she tried to pull it towards her. As it ripped, she saw bone and fabric. She knew that fabric. The rug. A dress.
‘Mummy.’
Ellie tried to scramble further into the dank, narrow space beneath the shed, but became stuck. She wriggled out and pulled at the boards, her hands clawing, gripping, and slipping on the wood. Splinters pierced her skin, but she barely felt them. Mummy was here, had been here the whole time. Mummy hadn’t left her; Daddy had treated her like garbage. He’d put her in these bags.
‘Bastard, bastard, fucking bastard.’ She felt another one of the panels give. It was enough space for her to squeeze through. Ellie crawled under the shed, the dirt clinging to her sweaty skin and clothes, but she was oblivious, insensible to anything but the shrunken mass before her.
‘My Mummy.’ She slumped alongside the bags and placed her arm over the top, pulling it closer. ‘Mummy.’ Mummy hadn’t left her. Her Mummy hadn’t left her. She’d been here, so close, the whole time.
‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.’ Words and images assaulted her: Mummy with her, Mummy and Daddy, Daddy and Ellie, all the things he’d made her do, all the lies he’d told… She could hear a strange, strangled cry and feel a burning in her throat, but couldn’t connect the noise with the pain. She had been here. Her mother had been here. All these years. Ellie moved her arm and pieces of wasted, aged plastic attached themselves to her sleeve. There was a pile of bones that once had made a hand. Fingers. And on one, a simple gold band. Her mother’s wedding ring.
Ellie didn’t know how long she’d lain there embracing her mother, clinging to refuse and bone, aching for soft, warm hands and tenderness. One hand cupped her mother’s skull and despite fingers that had long felt numb, Ellie tried to imagine the smoothness of her mother’s hair, the curve of her cheek. It was getting darker outside and only when she heard the noise of the neighbours’ car heading up their driveway did she realise where she was. She was outside. Lying in the dirt. With her mother. What was left of her.
Path to the Night Sea Page 28
