He shut the door, came over to the bed, sat down and started speaking very quickly.
‘Don’t get shitty with me, okay, don’t explode, okay, but I checked out your postcards, I know I shouldn’t have, but I did, call me nosy, you know I’m snoopy, but I know you haven’t had anything from Sonny since Christmas.’
I gave him a loathing look.
‘I just wondered if you were okay?’ he said nervously.’ ‘I figured he must be okay or we would’ve heard, so I thought something must’ve gone wrong between you guys? Okay?’
And, suddenly, I didn’t care. I didn’t care that he knew. I didn’t care that he’d snooped. I was almost glad he had. I felt so comprehensively unburdened, in fact, by his knowing and his sympathising that my vision blurred and my lip started to wobble in the boring way it always did before I cried. Things do change, I thought, as a tear rolled down my face. I don’t even care if my little brother sees me cry over my ruined private life.
‘Do you want me to tell the folks?’ he said. I shook my head vigorously, unable to speak. ‘Could ring Johnny and Girlie, see if—’
‘No,’ I blurted. ‘No.’ I sniffed and wiped my nose and took big breaths. ‘I don’t want to say anything to any of them. I don’t want to make a big thing of it. They can just think it sort of … petered out.’
‘Did you have a fight or something?’
I shook my head.
‘So what happened?’ He looked concerned and confused — as if this was outside the limits of his normally rapid, overactive brain. The oddest mix of feelings assailed me: gratefulness for his interest, irritation at his innocence, a nagging sense that the world was askew when my little brother offered comfort and I accepted. And I had a silly rush of hope, too, that he might, somehow, provide an explanation. But finally what I wanted most of all was to pour it out, tell him every last detail of me and Sonny, so I could have the pleasure and consolation of it all over again. Even if I was dumped.
So I did.
In my dream Sonny was ploughing through a swampy paddock, his gumboots sinking to his calves, his progress slow. But I was slower, never catching him up, never shouting loud enough, never able to make him hear me. His head was down against the heavy rain, his hands deep in the pockets of his oilskin, his intent plain. As he receded in front of me, my feet became more and more weighted, impossible to lift.
I rolled over and out of the dream, opened my eyes and heard the familiar sounds of Gran, scrabbling with the locked front door, speaking to it crossly.
I pushed back the duvet and checked the bedside clock. 3.30 a.m. Later than usual. I picked up the clock.
She’d dispensed with the niceties tonight and wore her nightdress and galoshes, her coat, no hat. Suitcases, present and correct.
‘Your alarm go off early again, Gran?’
‘Oh, good, do this door for me, will you, dear, it’s stuck.’
‘It’s 3.30 a.m., Gran.’ I showed her the clock face, a new practice we’d developed.
‘Don’t muck around, dear. I don’t want to keep him waiting.’
I opened the door and pointed down the path. ‘No taxi, Gran. It’s too early.’
‘Are you sure that clock’s right?’
‘Yip. C’mon, I’ll wake you at seven.’
I took one of the suitcases, led her down the hall. I could have done it in my sleep — hung up her coat, helped her off with the shoes, waited while she got into bed, patted the duvet round her, left her door slightly ajar so she could see the light from the kitchen, plodded back to bed.
Sleep was impossible. The Sonny dream was banished, but I was haunted instead by Gran, the bleakness and determinism of her task. That old repeated series of actions were so compelling she’d turned night into day to follow their imperatives.
Why was she stuck in that particular groove of her memory record? Where was she going? Where was the mythical, ridiculed taxi taking her? And why, why had none of us ever thought to ask her?
I suddenly couldn’t believe it. The defining activity of her day and night, her signal routine, and none of us had ever stopped for a minute, considered the actions and said, Where are you going, Gran? For more than a year all of us, by one means or another, had been quizzing her about the past, and none of us had thought to ask what was probably the most obvious question.
I lay awake until I heard the birds, speculating about the possible answers.
Dear Sonny, I wrote next afternoon. Five weeks until you get back. What’ll we do then? Recover from this blip? Pretend it never happened? Chalk it up to experience? Or will you just turn up, in your characteristic way, with a jonquil in your hand, and say, Sorry, Charlie Mike.
You’re cool, Sonny, but wouldn’t that be just a bit too cool?
I don’t know any more. It’s seventy days since your last card and I think about you constantly, hoping for something, but increasingly pessimistic. I still miss you like hell, love, Charlie Mike XXX
PS. But it’s more than that, too. I don’t just miss you, I miss thinking about what we’ll do when you get back, I miss fantasising about the future, good things that could happen. I miss the feeling of fortune and blessedness that used to cover me like a cloak whenever I thought of you.
I closed the diary and opened my French vocab. But a minute later I chucked it aside and picked up the pile of Bosnian postcards. I counted them, though I knew perfectly well there were fourteen. I read them all through for the trillionth time, then I shoved them into the top drawer of my desk, stood, and banged my chair into the desk, and banged out of my room and out of the house.
I was tired after my broodings in the small hours, and I walked slowly, scuffing at the grass. The garden was starting to look depressingly autumnal, which in my desolation seemed only appropriate. The turning leaves and bright, blowsy roses were beautiful in the afternoon sun, but I couldn’t enjoy them. In three months there would be no colour and no sun, just stripped, skeletal branches and a carpet of dank leaves. I walked round to the back garden where the wisteria and grape vines and apple trees were also making the subtle seasonal transition. I stood beside Mum’s vegetable patch, staring at the neat rows, thinking how long and yet how short had been the six months since we’d planted it. I wondered if anyone in history had ever found a line of ripe carrot tops a thing of unbearable poignancy.
I could hear Jess’s cat over the fence, whining for tea. I could hear the kids two houses away giggling as they bounced higher and higher on their trampoline. I could hear the faint ring of the phone in our house and moments later Finn shouting for me from inside. I didn’t answer, knowing it would be Brenna, maybe Gretchen; I really couldn’t be bothered talking to anyone. I didn’t answer until he’d yelled round the front then come out to the back steps. I really was a shit of a sister sometimes.
‘CHRISTY! PHONE!’
‘Don’t hurry or anything radical,’ he said, as I slouched past him into the kitchen and picked up the receiver.
‘Yo, Christy here,’ I said, falling into a chair.
‘Christy, it’s your cousin here,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘Atamira.’
I went sweaty and rigid.
‘I hope this doesn’t give you a fright,’ said my cousin, her voice soft and low. She paused and my stomach contracted. ‘I just thought you should know. We’re all a bit out of it here. And Sonny doesn’t know I’m calling you, but I know you haven’t heard from him, and I knew you’d be wondering, and it isn’t … he wouldn’t nor—’
‘Is he okay?’ I could feel Finn looking at me though I stared at my knees, jammed together, the jeans fabric tight.
She seemed to take forever to answer. ‘He’ll be okay,’ said Atamira, ‘I mean, he’s not hurt or anything. Look, Christy, it’s complicated … it’s a long story. You should hear it from him, probably. I just didn’t want you wondering. Or worrying. I knew you would be, and Mum and Dad are so tied up with Sonny, and June’s down in Fox, so I wanted to let you know he’s basically okay …
‘I feel really bad for you, Christy,’ said my sweet-natured cousin, when I didn’t respond. I could picture her, frowning in her sympathy, twisting a lock of her long hair. ‘I know how it was between you—’
‘When did you last hear from him?’ I said, dull now, not scared or relieved. Just dull.
‘How do you mean?’ said Atamira.
‘Sonny,’ I said. ‘Have you been talking to him, I mean, on the phone? I haven’t heard anything since Christmas — I just …’ A rush of tears prickled and I couldn’t finish. I wanted to bawl into the phone: Doesn’t he still love me?
‘Oh, hell, oh shit, sorry, Christy. I didn’t make it clear, did I? Sonny’s here. He’s in Greymouth. He’s here at home. He’s been here for three weeks.’
It seemed as if I sat beside the phone for hours after I’d hung up. To his everlasting credit Finn didn’t bombard me with questions. He just sat too, and waited, and after a long time I said, ‘He’s in Greymouth. Something’s happened, but I don’t know what. He’s not hurt.’
‘In Greymouth?’ said Finn. ‘Like, on leave?’
I gave a listless shrug. ‘She said he won’t get in touch with anyone. Not even me.’ I tried to picture Sonny at home, in his parents’ house, with his sister, for the last three weeks: a Greymouth summer, not Bosnian winter; family, not soldiers, wooden houses, not stone ruins. I tried to picture it. I tried to imagine what could have happened, and a crowd of gaudy possibilities ran through my head.
‘Maybe,’ Finn started, but at that moment Gran came clicking through the kitchen on high heels. She was dressed for the taxi, lugging the suitcases.
‘Time waits for no man,’ she said, looking at us but not registering. Then she stopped, remembering something. ‘Dash it,’ she said. ‘Gloves.’
‘Gran.’ I stood up. I pushed down on the panic, the nauseous feeling in my throat. Mentally, I shrouded Sonny, the unanswered questions, knowing I couldn’t dwell on it one second longer. I needed something else, something to divert my thoughts, and with a groping instinct I fastened on Gran, deciding now, abruptly, to ask her the question that had so preoccupied me last night; the question I’d intended to ask her at the first opportunity today. I went over to her, took her arm.
‘Gran, could you just tell me where you’re actually going?’
‘I’ve got the taxi coming,’ she said.
‘Yes I know, but where’s the taxi taking you?’
‘Oh, don’t be silly, dear, you know perfectly well where it’s taking me.’
‘No,’ I said, my voice reasonable, infinitely patient. ‘No, truly, Gran, I don’t. You probably did tell me but I’ve forgotten. Could you just remind me again? Where’s the taxi taking you?’
She gave a little exasperated pout, bent, picked up the suitcases. ‘To the station, of course, to the railcar.’
Railcar? ‘Where’re you going on the railcar?’ But I knew there was only one place the railcar travelled in our family history.
A sly look settled on her little powdered face. ‘Who’s that boy?’ she said, eyes darting to Finn.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ I said, ruthless now, mowing down obstacles. Finn melted obligingly away.
‘Don’t tell him,’ said Gran in a low voice, ‘don’t you tell anyone, you hear me?’
I nodded, holding her eyes with mine, sincere, reassuring. ‘Where’re you going?’ I said again, worried she’d lose the thread.
‘Greymouth.’ She whispered it, smiled.
‘Greymouth?’
‘Greymouth. I’m going to Greymouth,’ she said in that reciting way she had. ‘In the railcar. And don’t you tell anybody. I get the taxi and the railcar. I go for the weekends. And no one even notices.’
It was very simple after that. Everything fell instantly into place. That sounds like a romantic fiction, but it’s true. It did. I blew my nose and dried my eyes and I became newly galvanised, deadly efficient. I was unshakeably certain about what I had to do.
‘You’re mad, girl,’ Brenna said and kept on saying as we walked first to the cash machine and then to the Addington station on Monday after school to buy four TranzAlpine tickets to Greymouth. For Saturday. Return.
I didn’t tell Brenna anything about Sonny. She wouldn’t have understood. I only told her about Gran, her answer to my question. How the train was the key.
Finn understood. He sat on my bed and listened to me. He twirled his earring and looked vaguely troubled and titillated and impressed all at the same time. He understood that as well as cracking open Gran’s secret history, I was going to Johnny and Girlie’s house to see Sonny, to crack his wall of silence, hear the story. Get the real oil, as Dad would say.
‘I’ll be a midwife to the truth,’ I told Finn.
Chapter Seven
The TranzAlpine curls through the Grey Valley, a dismal, grey-green, water-logged landscape. I stare at the soggy paddocks, the shabby, hunched houses, the thin ribbons of chimney smoke. I’m tired and resigned and I know perfectly well now that the denouement to this story will be no cathartic revelation, no comfortable and comforting explanations. Brenna was right, I was mad. So much for midwives. This is a sad little stillbirth.
‘Stillwater,’ says Gran, reading a sign. I don’t look at her. I can’t be bothered. I can’t be bothered much with anything now. I just want to get there, hide in the station for ninety minutes, reboard, do the return journey. Get home. Forget everything.
‘There’s the sawmill,’ says Gran. I see the mill, the stacked lengths of treated timber, pale orange in the wet.
I’m not going to Sonny’s. Of course I’m not. I must’ve been as addled as Gran to think I could do that. The sad, sour truth is that Sonny doesn’t want to see me. He would’ve made contact if he had. And he didn’t. So. No noble, wounded confrontations. Just swallow the bitter pill. It’s over. Even if he is — was — your cousin.
‘My husband worked in a sawmill,’ says Gran. Now she admits to a husband. ‘And his brother. Slabbies, both of them. What sort of work was that for men with brains?’ No sort of work, Gran. ‘Joe went to the railways after that, after the war. Shovelling. More manual work.’
Down with manual work. Horrible, dirty manual work. I’ve heard all this before. No manual work for her son; her son got an education, got a desk job, worked for the council. Pity he didn’t like it much.
We dive into another tunnel and I turn from the suddenly black window to Gran, still talking about Joe and Jim and their working lives.
What am I going to do with you, Gran, I think, watching her mouth work, her face animated as it always is when she’s launched on her particular version of the past. Ninety minutes skulking with Gran in a railway station? If it wasn’t so awful it’d be funny. Should we risk a walk in downtown Greymouth, have a nice cup of tea somewhere? What if we met Sonny? Or Girlie?
Why didn’t I think all this through? Why did I think I could be Sigmund Freud and Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale and Juliet Capulet all rolled into one? And why didn’t I think — but no, I’m not even going to start speculating about Mum and Dad, appalled, no doubt, at what I’ve done. I think about Finn, though, facing the music. Good old Finn.
‘Thanks for helping,’ I’d said, meaning it. ‘And for listening.’
‘Think nothing of it.’ He flourished a hand like some courtly knight of the realm.
‘Why do you care, anyway?’ I asked, belatedly curious, finding him as baffling as ever.
‘Let me see,’ he said. ‘Well, she’s my grandmother, and he’s my cousin, kinda, and you’re my sister.’
Fair enough.
‘—all hours of the day and night,’ Gran was saying, ‘attending to slips, half a hillside over the line. He said it was essential work, communications would’ve stopped without him.’
Don’t talk to me about communication, Gran. It’s a royal failure on all fronts in my life, not to mention—
‘—more than can be said for his brother, reading meters, for heav—’
It’s Dobson, now, grimy, hung with coal smoke.
‘—memorial to Arthur Dudley Dobson,’ says Duncan. I look at the memorial, a massive rock and carved tablet in the middle of the Grey River. The river is dirty and rising steadily.
‘—always looking down her nose,’ says Gran, ‘marrying into a labouring family while her husband had the great foresight to be in a burgeoning business. He could wear a suit—’
We’re back to the bêtes noires, fat old Lenora and her flashy husband. She’s full tilt, racing down her own narrative track, pity about my plans. No derailments today, thank you very much, no accidental spillage of well-guarded contents.
‘—she had it easy and my father saw that, left me—’
‘—only ten minutes until we pull into Greymouth,’ says Duncan, and with that my stomach pivots sharply, I sit up and I look at Gran maniacally, I suddenly can’t stand her burbling and the nearness of Sonny’s town, Sonny himself, close but unreachable; I can’t stand the comprehensive dashing of all my plans.
‘Gran!’ I lean over the table, grab her hands, hold them tight.
‘Gran, look at me,’ I say urgently. ‘Look at me, Gran.’ Those restless, straying blue eyes blink and narrow and try to concentrate. ‘Gran, I know you came … you’re coming over here,’ — I don’t know whether to talk in the present or the past, to enter a fantasy or dig for facts. I’ve lost it with subtlety, I’m just charging, heedless — ‘Gran, I know you’re coming to Greymouth to see someone, a man, I know you are, you’re going to meet him somewhere, I know, you told me that.’ Two can play at confabulation. ‘And I know your husband’s in the hospital, so you just snatch the time, it’s okay, I’m not disapproving, I totally understand, I really do. It’s your consolation, like you said, for all the awful times, what happened in the war and everything, that’s fair enough, Gran, good on you, and I’ll never breathe a word, you can trust me, I won’t tell anyone, I promise—’
She’s mesmerised. My eyes and hands are holding hers, she’s listening to this tidal wave of words, she’s not moving—
Love, Charlie Mike Page 15
