by Susan Allott
She opened her mouth to reply but her mind was blank. He stood up straight and she took a step back.
“At least I know where my daughter is,” he said. “I know she’s safe, with people who love her.”
“William’s safe with us!”
“At least Isla wasn’t taken by a stranger.” He raised his voice, speaking over her. “At least she wasn’t taken from me, God knows where, by some bloke who thought he’d be a better parent than me. At least I have that to be thankful for, don’t I?”
She felt three inches tall.
“Don’t ask me to keep quiet.” He slammed his hand down on the counter and she yelped. “He’s not yours. You need to give him back.”
“It’s not that easy, Joe. He could be taken to one of the Homes if we don’t keep him.”
“Can Steve take his pick of these kids?” He gestured out at the yard. “Is that the way it works?”
“It wasn’t like that. He was—”
The telephone rang in the hall. They both turned to look at it.
“Hang on.” Joe crossed the room, glancing over his shoulder at her. “I need to get that,” he said.
Mandy stood in the kitchen, holding the door handle. She felt cold with shock. She was a fool for coming over here, expecting—what? She’d thought he might still want her, if she was honest. She’d thought she might have to let him down gently.
“Have you booked the flights?” she heard him say. His voice was loud and bright. “When are you coming?”
She stayed where she was and listened. His silence was ominous, it seemed to her. A long silence was always bad news.
“What?” She heard him swearing under his breath, and the flame of his lighter. “I thought you said you were going to book them.”
He picked the phone up and took it into the lounge room. Mandy trod across the linoleum and stood at the kitchen door.
“Louisa, listen. If this is about that night, about what happened, I swear to God it won’t happen again. I had more whisky than I should have. I want you to know, I’m cutting down on the drink. I’m going to make some changes.”
Mandy stood perfectly still. She thought of Louisa, the day she’d sat at her kitchen table, swatting at flies and talking about a down payment. And that Friday night she’d come over and cried into a glass of brandy. Maybe it wasn’t only homesickness she was running from. Maybe she’d been holding something back.
“It won’t happen again, Louisa.”
Mandy backed up through the kitchen.
“Louisa, don’t say that. Don’t go. Don’t hang up.”
She pulled his back door shut. She heard him shout, something angry and nonverbal. Then the metallic clamor of the telephone hitting the wall. Louisa wasn’t coming back, by the sound of it. She stood on Joe’s deck, looked across his yard, over the bright line of shrubs that separated the two houses, to where her husband stood with his arms folded, sending a dark shadow across the paving stones.
Mandy walked around to her own yard, conscious of Steve watching her. She could see how it looked to him. She felt guilty and ashamed, although she’d done nothing wrong.
“You look guilty as hell.” He stood on the back step, blocking her entrance to the kitchen.
“Let me in, will you?” She stepped up to the door, but he didn’t budge.
“I thought you might have had the decency to stay away from Joe Green.”
“I went to have a word with him, to ask him to keep quiet about William.”
He hit the doorframe with the palm of his hand. “You said you’d stay away from him! It’s what we agreed!”
“I’m sorry. I was scared he might dob us in.” William was waking from his nap; she could hear him, chatting and squealing to himself. “Let me get him,” she said, stepping up to the back door. “Let me go to him, before he gets cranky.”
He stood aside for her and she felt the anger in him as she passed. His chest revved with it like an engine.
“I’m not a fool, Mandy,” he called out. “I’m onto you!”
William smiled at the sight of her and lifted his head. She lay down on the bed next to him and messed his hair so his curls sprung up. Her breathing settled in time with his and she listened to his chatter, her hand on the small of his back.
“I ought to stick with blokes your age,” she said, her head next to his on the mattress. “The rest are too much trouble, d’you know that?” She lifted him under his arms and let him climb over her.
“We agreed you’d stay away from that bastard next door.” Steve was in the hallway, barely visible at the edge of the doorframe. “Why can’t you stick to what we agreed?”
She sat up, tried to see his face. “I’m sorry I went over there.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
She ran her fingers over the soles of William’s feet. Steve moved to the side of the room and stood with his back to the window.
“It’s been a week, Mandy,” he said. “One week it took for you to go running to him. Maybe you’d have gone sooner if I’d turned my back.”
“He saw the baby, Steve. I wanted to explain—”
“I want you to avoid him like the plague. Do you hear me?”
She nodded, keeping her eyes on the baby. She’d messed up again, going over to see Joe. Steve had seemed a bit more like his old self these past couple of days and she’d stopped treading so carefully. It was early days, but. She’d have to give it time, be patient.
“If you see him in the street I want you to cross the road,” he said. “If you see him out in the yard I want you to look away.”
“He lives next door, Steve. I see him every day.”
He shifted from foot to foot, breathing noisily through his nose. He was less familiar since he left the force. He smelled of the house and the products they used around the place: bleach and carbolic soap. She wondered when he’d last gone farther than the backyard.
“I’ve been thinking. Maybe we should move away,” he said. “Away from him next door. Somewhere nobody knows us.”
She went to protest and thought better of it. “I love it here,” she said, as calm as she could manage.
“We could tell people William’s adopted if we moved away. People would accept it.”
She caught something in his voice. “Did you speak to Ray about William?”
“Not yet.”
“I think you should call him. The longer you leave it, it’s more likely he’ll get a call from the Home.”
“I can’t get hold of him,” he said, deflated. “I think maybe he’s mad at me for quitting the job. I left five or six messages and he hasn’t called back.”
“He’ll come good, won’t he? After all you’ve done for him.”
“But what if he doesn’t? What if he wants us to give William up?”
“You said he’d arrange an adoption!” She forgot to be calm. “You said it could all be arranged, we just had to ask.”
“That was before, Mandy. When me and Ray were on good terms.”
She pulled the baby into her lap, closed her eyes, and let him grab at her hair, her face.
“We’d be better off making a new start.” He said it firmly. “Maybe move south, to Victoria.”
“We’ve lived here since we got married, Steve. I feel at home here.”
“I know that.”
She kept her eyes shut. “I need to think about it.”
“You want to stay near Joe Green?” His voice rose. “You want to keep running over there every time I shut my eyes for half an hour?”
“That’s not it, Steve.”
“What, then?”
“My dad won’t know where I am if we move away.” She looked up at him. She could just make him out. He had a strange look on his face, like he despised her, like he was hard at heart.
“You could call him, Mandy. Pick up the phone.”
“I did. The line was disconnected. I wrote letters too but he never replied.” She felt his irritation. “You know how he is.�
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“I know he’s never liked me. Can’t say I care too much if we don’t keep in contact.”
“He likes you fine.”
“I’m not good enough for his daughter, but.”
“That’s not true.”
“He as good as said so once or twice.”
This was true, although it wasn’t personal, it was just her dad’s way. He’d taken against Steve before she’d even brought him home. It had hurt him, watching her drift into Steve’s orbit, her loyalties tipping. It had been a dry summer like this one and she’d never been so happy or so sad. Steve had worn his police blues the day he’d proposed, nervous and uncomfortable but brave enough to stand on her veranda with all her brothers watching, to ask her dad for her hand. He’d taken a ring from his pocket and she’d loved him completely. She remembered the feeling. No one else had existed.
“He can’t help the way he is,” she said.
“You can write him with the new address, when we’re settled.”
She wouldn’t see her dad again. She had a feeling about it, that he was lost to her. When she thought of him, she thought of his hands, the way he’d cracked crayfish shells for her with his thumbs, lifting out the white pipes of meat.
“I don’t like to think of him on his own,” she said.
“It’s his choice, Mandy. Let the old bastard stew on it.”
She pedaled William’s legs and he looked up at her, uncertain, a whine in his throat. She lifted him up. It’s all right, she said to him, in her head. It’s only Steve, he’s not as bad as he sounds. The boy clung to her and stamped his feet in her lap.
“You’ll have to trust me again sometime,” she said.
“Don’t push me, Amanda. You’d be wise not to push me.” He moved past her into the hall. She thought he’d moved away when she heard his voice, softer than before. “Told you you’d make a good mum.”
She let that go. The TV came on in the lounge room and she heard Abigail Walker out front, shouting down the street for her kids to come inside for their tea. Mandy stood, shunted the baby up her hip, and walked with him through to the kitchen. It was getting dark in there, the yard was shady, and she couldn’t think how to fill the evening, what to do with herself. She made up a bottle and took William out to sit on the striped garden chair under the passion fruit vine. A light came on in Joe’s kitchen and his words returned from earlier: He’s not yours. You need to give him back. She knew it was true. And at the same time, it was unthinkable. It horrified her now, to think she might have to let him go.
For the first time in days she wanted a cigarette. She sat back in the chair and watched the boy drink his milk down, his fleshy limbs, the tightly packed life in him. When had she fallen for this child? It must have crept up on her, but she felt it in that moment like a shove from behind, unexpected and alarming.
She stood, held William tight against her, and took him back inside the house.
36
Sydney, 1967
Mandy walked up and down Bridge Street with her shopping bag on her shoulder. It was still early. She’d picked up eggs and milk and had enough of everything else at home to last a day or two. If she wasn’t careful, she’d have no reason to go out tomorrow. The house was an uneasy place to be right now. She’d gotten in the habit of walking to the shops and back to avoid Steve’s company while William slept. Every day she stretched it out by another ten minutes.
She stood in the line outside the bakery for a while, but the shop was too hot once she got inside and she realized she couldn’t stomach a pie, after all. In the end she joined the smaller line in the milk bar on the corner and got herself a malted shake. She wasn’t sure she wanted that either, but she sat down in a booth and watched a group of boys playing pinball, glad of the noise and movement. The laughter. It was good to hear laughter.
The table was sticky where someone had spilled a drink. She budged up to the far end of the seat where the table was cleaner and waved away the flies that circled overhead. She stirred her drink with the straw and took a sip. Someone shouted out an order from the bar and she jumped, nearly choking, and thumped herself on the chest until she got her breath back. Her heart raced.
It wasn’t working out how she’d hoped. Steve wasn’t moving on from it. If he hadn’t seen her with Joe, if he’d found out some other way, he might have been able to box it away. Instead, he was letting it eat at him. Brooding in the house like a caged bear. He could hardly look at her.
The baby was their only hope. He gave shape to the days, forced them out of bed, gave them something to talk about. She must be the last person on earth to catch on that babies were the glue for a marriage. Someone they could both love. And they did both love him. The kind of love you don’t recover from, that flips between joy and fear. She’d been wrong, thinking she didn’t have it in her to love a child. And she’d fallen harder because she hadn’t seen it coming.
She managed half of the malted shake and decided to leave the rest. It was hot in here, despite the ceiling fans, and she couldn’t relax. The flies were insistent, gathering at the far end of the table where the spilled drink had hardened. She swiped at one of them, hit it mid-flight, and her hand fizzed with the impact of its small, hard being, the brush of its wings.
A decision had formed in her head by the time she reached the bus stop. She would tell Steve they should move south, like he’d suggested. She’d send the new address to her dad once they’d found somewhere. It was never going to sit easy that he’d cut her off, that he was on his own in that old house on the edge of Toowoomba with only the chooks for company. But she had to pick herself up and concentrate on her marriage. She took the bus up to the end of Bay Street instead of walking the last stretch as she did most days. She’d be back in time to see William as he woke from his nap. He wanted her these days, when he woke. He held his arms up and reached for her. She curved her arm against her body, anticipating his weight.
David Walker was practicing his violin again, sending his plangent notes down Bay Street, along the parched hedges and lawns, over the shade cloths in Doug’s front yard. The weatherboard houses on the ocean side of the street were looking dirty in the morning sun. It was the water restrictions, she figured. Nobody wanted to fill a bucket and scrub the boards down, not in this heat. Even Doug’s house had a tide of grit under the window. His roses were doing well, but. She nodded hello at him, standing out front with his shears, like always. Across the street, the new house was nearly finished, three doors along from the Walkers’. It was twice the size of her place. Two stories and a space at the side for a private garage. Parking on the street wasn’t good enough for some people.
She dropped her eyes as she passed Joe’s house, in case he was home. She’d promised to avoid him like the plague, and she was doing her best. Eyes to the ground, all the way up to the gate, just to be on the safe side. Her key was in the lock before she noticed the windows. She’d opened them all wide before she went out. Today was the first day in weeks she’d felt a fresh southerly come in. But he’d shut them all.
“Steve?” She could hear movement in the kitchen, but no answer. “Steve? Why’d you close the windows?”
The movement in the kitchen stopped. She poked her head into the second bedroom and found the curtains drawn in there, the bed bare, a small, wrinkled imprint in the sheets where William had lain.
“Steve?”
She threw her bag down on the carpet in their bedroom. If he wasn’t speaking to her it was going to be a long day. She’d been hopeful not ten minutes ago, full of plans. All of it withered in the atmosphere of the house. The wardrobe doors were ajar, and she crossed the room to close them. It was too quiet in here. Something nagged at her. She stood in front of the wardrobe and threw the doors open wide, scanned the contents. Several hangers were bare. Steve’s shirts, the ones he wore most often, were missing. The jacket she’d given him for Christmas was gone too.
Mandy looked around, trying to think through the shock. There was
space on the dresser where there had been clutter. She pulled the drawers out and looked inside. Only her things remained. Steve’s shirts, socks, underwear, shorts were gone. All of it.
“Steve?” Her voice was thin. “Steve! What the hell is going on?”
The kitchen door opened and Steve’s footsteps approached, slow and heavy. She could hear William’s agitated breathing, the squeak of his pacifier.
“I was going to leave a note.” Steve stood in the bedroom doorway with a box under one arm, William balanced on his opposite hip. “Forgive me, Mandy, but I didn’t have the stomach to say goodbye.”
She couldn’t speak. She shook her head and stayed where she was by the dresser with the drawers standing open. Steve looked at her as if from a great distance.
“I’ll come with you,” she said. “We can move to Victoria, like you said.”
He hitched William farther up his body. “I’m leaving you, Mandy.”
“You don’t need to go.” His words registered as she spoke. It was impossible, what he’d said. She raised her voice. “I decided, while I was out. We can move. I came home to tell you I made my mind up.”
“I’m leaving you.” He stared back at her. “I’ve put up with enough. More than a man should have to put up with. I’m a mug for sticking around as long as I have.”
“But I’m keeping to what we agreed! I’m giving it my best shot, like I said I would.”
“It’s not working. You must know it’s not working.”
She pushed all the empty drawers shut, making the dresser shake. The framed photo of her dad fell forward, knocking bottles and jars to the floor. “You were going to leave while I was out! After all we’ve been through together. All these years!”
“I’ll write to you when we’re settled.” He turned and left the room.
“Where are you going?” She followed him into the hallway. This was moving too fast. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”
“My mind’s made up.”
He was facing away from her, trying to turn the latch on the front door. The box under his arm was too big to free his hand.
