Gift of the Gab

by Morris Gleitzman

  I handed him the phrase book.

  The phrase book didn’t have towns.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Dad to the ticket bloke. ‘Show me a list of all your towns and I’ll see if I can spot it.’

  The ticket bloke looked at him blankly.

  Dad started thumbing through the phrase book.

  I started feeling pretty anxious in case the ticket bloke decided to run a check on us. Train ticket-office computers are almost as powerful as customs ones.

  Then I had an idea.

  I rummaged in my rucksack until I found the old French press cuttings about Mum. Without letting anyone see them, which wasn’t easy because there were about fifty angry people behind us in the queue, I copied down all the words in them that started with capital letters.

  I showed my notebook to the ticket bloke, praying that one of the words was the name of the town.

  The ticket bloke rolled his eyes and put two tickets on the counter. He said something in a loud voice. It was in French but I got the gist from his hand-movements. He was saying I was smarter than Dad, which I thought was pretty unkind in front of all those other people.

  Then he said something else.

  I watched his hands closely.

  ‘We’ve got to change trains in the city,’ I said to Dad.

  ‘I knew that,’ said Dad grumpily. ‘I’m not an idiot. I only did this trip twelve years ago.’

  The station we changed at in Paris was the biggest station I’ve ever seen.

  I gaped, even though I’ve promised myself I won’t get distracted from my mission of revenge by tourist sights. There was a roof over the whole station, and the noise of pigeons and trains and French people echoed like something in a dream. And the air smelled fantastic, like apple fritters made with garlic.

  Dad brought me down to earth quicker than a sprayed codling moth.

  ‘After we’ve had a squiz at Mum’s grave,’ he said, ‘we’ll go to Euro Disney.’

  He pointed to a huge poster of Mickey and Goofy riding on a roller coaster with French writing coming out of their mouths.

  I stared at him in panic.

  Why would a bloke who’s just travelled round the world to his dead wife’s grave want to go to Disneyland?

  Must be jet-lag.

  ‘Um . . .’ I said, trying desperately to make my hands look natural, ‘I’m feeling pretty jet-lagged too so I wouldn’t mind resting-up in Mum’s town for a bit first. Just for a couple of weeks.’

  Dad gave me a strange look. I don’t know why, I was telling the truth. I hardly slept at all on the plane. Every time I nodded off, I clunked my head on the woman next to me’s crossword book. It’s OK for Dad, he can sleep anywhere, even on a tractor.

  We’re on the train now, and I’m staring out the window at the French paddocks. They’re even flatter than ours at home. And really dark green, except for the ploughed ones, which are dark brown.

  A few minutes ago a thought suddenly hit me.

  I’m only a few miles away from Mum.

  Maybe the colours just seem darker because of that.

  They can do, when you’ve got tears in your eyes.

  Then I had another thought. As far as I can see, the French paddocks are bare of trees. There are a few trees around the houses and villages, but they don’t look very friendly.

  ‘Is Mum buried near apple trees?’ I asked Dad anxiously a moment ago. I really hoped she was. At least they’d remind her of home.

  ‘No,’ said Dad. ‘Too wet round here for apple trees. All they can grow round here is turnips.’

  That’s really crook.

  My own dear mum, buried near turnips.

  That mongrel driver’s gunna pay for that.

  It’s not fair.

  All I needed was a few days.

  Once I was on the hit-and-run driver’s tail I could have tracked him down really quickly. Specially if he’d panicked and left clues lying around.

  I could have had a written confession by Thursday, probably.

  Instead all I got was twenty minutes.

  Twenty minutes in Mum’s town before the police swooped.

  Twenty minutes and here I am in the back of a police car.

  They probably spotted me and Dad when we came out of the station. We must have looked pretty suspicious, the way we were staring at everything.

  Dad was staring at street signs, trying to remember the way to the hotel. He was also glancing anxiously at every passer-by.

  At first I couldn’t work out why he was doing that. Then I twigged. He must have been worried the locals would recognise him as Mum’s husband. And think he’d come back to stir up trouble about her death.

  If things turned ugly he couldn’t run very fast because a wheel had fallen off his suitcase. That must be why he was trying to hide his face with his jacket collar, which is about as suspicious as a person can look in public, specially when they’re wearing cowboy boots in a district that doesn’t have any cows.

  I can’t blame it all on Dad, but. I was probably looking pretty suspicious myself with all the staring I was doing.

  I was staring at how narrow the streets are. No wonder people get knocked down here. And you can’t even widen these streets because all the houses and shops are made of brick. At home if you want to widen a street you just bung the wood and fibro buildings on the back of a truck and shift them back a bit.

  I was staring at the streets for another reason too.

  I was wondering which one Mum was killed on.

  I kept getting a pang in my chest and it wasn’t just the rucksack strap cutting into me.

  For a bit I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to know.

  Then I remembered it was a clue and I had to know.

  I was about to ask Dad when he suddenly pointed to a damp-looking grey building.

  ‘Our hotel,’ he said.

  I don’t understand why the police didn’t just pick us up on the street. Why did they wait till we were in the hotel? Perhaps they needed to go to the toilet before they arrested us.

  I certainly did.

  I left Dad at the check-in desk thumbing through the phrase book and went for a pee.

  When I sat down I realised how tired I am. I haven’t slept for about twenty-six hours. I almost nodded off on the dunny.

  I stopped myself, but, and when I got back to the check-in desk Dad wasn’t there.

  I looked around.

  I saw the police car parked outside.

  I saw an anxious face peering at me through the car window.

  It was Dad.

  For a sec I thought I’d nodded off and was having a nightmare.

  I hadn’t.

  This isn’t a dream.

  We’re in a police car and the policeman behind the wheel is driving much too fast down these narrow streets.

  He must be taking us to police headquarters.

  Well, I won’t be blabbing.

  They can shine a lamp in my eyes and question me for hours, but it won’t do them any good.

  All I’ll tell them is my name, my address and what class I’m in at school.

  Talk about weird.

  I mean, I know France is a foreign country, but I wasn’t prepared for anything like this.

  The police car suddenly stopped outside a brick house with blue shutters on the windows and a hedge that had been carved into shapes of birds and windmills and things.

  Jeez, I thought, pretty strange police head­quarters.

  It got stranger.

  The policeman beeped the horn and two people came running out of the house. One was another policeman. He had a moustache and a tummy that wobbled as he ran and a feather duster. The other was a tall woman in normal clothes. I figured she must be a detective. She was wearing an apron, but I’ve heard how much French people like to cook.

  As they got closer to the car, I noticed a really strange thing.

  They were both grinning and waving at me and Dad.

  They both looked reall
y excited to see us.

  All I could think of was that it had been ages since they’d had anyone to interrogate and they’d been getting really bored.

  Then Dad got out of the police car and the policeman with the tummy threw his arms round Dad.

  The woman detective did the same.

  Dad looked a bit taken aback and I got out of the car in case this was a form of police brutality I hadn’t come across in Australia.

  It wasn’t – they were hugging him.

  The woman hugged me too, and even though I didn’t have a clue what was going on, it felt pretty nice.

  ‘Rowena,’ she murmured. ‘Little Rowena.’

  She let go of me and I stared at her.

  Her voice didn’t sound like a detective at all. It was so beautiful it made my neck prickle. It was the warmest, softest, gentlest voice I’d ever heard. I wondered if all French people sound like that when they speak English.

  ‘Rowena,’ said Dad, ‘this is Mr and Mrs Bernard. They’re mates of mine.’

  Normally I can cope with just about anything Dad comes out with, but today I just stood there staring at Mr and Mrs Bernard like a stunned aphid.

  Mates of his?

  Mrs Bernard was gazing back at me.

  She had tears in her eyes.

  ‘Poor girl,’ she murmured. ‘Poor, lovely girl.’

  I wondered if she meant me.

  Mr Bernard was talking excitedly at Dad in French, waving his feather duster. I tried to work out from his feather-duster movements what he was saying. Something about a telephone.

  ‘My husband does not speak English,’ Mrs Bernard said to me.

  I nodded. My brain was still too scrambled to say anything intelligent.

  The policeman who’d driven us was carrying our bags into the house. Mrs Bernard put her arm round my shoulders and gently steered me along the gravel path to the front door.

  Mr Bernard was still talking excitedly.

  ‘Alan is saying we are sorry we didn’t meet you,’ Mrs Bernard said to Dad, ‘but when the hotel rang us we were unprepared. Why did you not let us know you are coming? Why the secret hotel?’

  I could see Dad didn’t know what to say, even in English.

  Perhaps Mrs Bernard’s voice had got to him too.

  ‘Er . . .’ he said, ‘um . . . we were gunna surprise you.’

  I had a feeling he was making that up, but I didn’t dwell on it because suddenly I had something else on my mind.

  Something so big and so confusing that I tripped over Mrs Bernard’s feet and almost fell into a bush shaped like a car.

  I would have done if Mrs Bernard hadn’t caught me.

  The thing is this.

  If Dad is such big mates with the local police, why didn’t he get them to track down Mum’s killer?

  I’m sitting on the bed in the little attic bedroom Mrs Bernard has brought me to and I’m trying to figure it out.

  I can’t.

  When Dad came in to check my bed was comfy and to see if his toothbrush was in my rucksack, I asked him.

  He looked away with a pained expression.

  At first I thought he hadn’t heard me because he’d just remembered he’d used his toothbrush on the plane to polish his boots.

  But he had heard me.

  All he did, though, was give me a big hug and say, ‘Sometimes, Tonto, it’s best to let things rest.’

  Well, he might think so, but I don’t.

  I thought about the mystery for ages, which wasn’t easy with jet-lag.

  If Dad had wanted to, he could have got Mr Bernard and the other local police to check every car in the district for hit-and-run dents.

  They could have done it standing on their heads.

  Why didn’t they?

  I didn’t know, so I went downstairs to look for clues.

  Dad and Mr and Mrs Bernard were in the kitchen. As I came along the passage I heard Dad saying, ‘I want to tell her myself.’ Then Mrs Bernard said something in French, which was probably her translating for Mr Bernard.

  I went into the kitchen and they all stopped talking.

  Dad went down on one knee and sang me a quick verse of that haunting Carla Tamworth classic ‘I Love You More Than Pickled Onions’.

  When he’d finished I was about to ask him what it was he wanted to tell me himself, but Mrs Bernard spoke first and what she said took my breath away, and not just because of her voice.

  ‘We go now to your mother’s grave,’ she said. ‘Yes?’

  My guts gave their biggest lurch since our plane hit an air pocket over Afghanistan.

  I nodded.

  We piled into another police car with Mr Bernard driving this time and soon we were speeding through the narrow streets.

  My chest was thumping so hard from fear and excitement that I didn’t think about flowers till we were almost out of town.

  I prodded Dad and told him.

  ‘Bit late for flowers now,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Tonto.’

  I was stunned. Normally Dad would crawl through wet cement to get flowers for Mum’s grave.

  Mrs Bernard turned and gave me one of her sad smiles. ‘It’s not too late,’ she said. ‘Ro must have flowers.’

  She said something to Mr Bernard in French and he slammed on the brakes and did a squealing U-turn through a petrol station. He zoomed back into town and parked on the footpath outside a flower shop.

  Inside, Mrs Bernard said lots of things in French to the two young women shop assistants. While she spoke they stared at me, their eyes getting bigger and bigger.

  It didn’t worry me, I get stared at quite a lot.

  I just wanted to buy some flowers and get to my mum’s grave.

  The assistants must have understood my hand-movements because suddenly they jumped into action and gave me a beautiful bunch.

  Then something weird happened.

  They wouldn’t take any money. Even when Dad took the senior assistant’s hand and put some French money into it she just gave it back.

  He tried again with Australian money, but she didn’t want that either.

  I realised what was going on.

  They probably hadn’t seen a kid before with bits missing from her throat.

  ‘They’re being charitable,’ I said to Dad.

  Dad frowned and turned to Mrs Bernard, who was smiling and nodding. He opened his mouth to explain how Australians don’t usually accept charity unless it’s absolutely essential because we’re used to battling a harsh land with droughts and bushfires and floods and unreliable tractors and pushy TV presenters.

  Then I saw him decide it was too complicated to try and explain all this through a translator, even a top one like Mrs Bernard.

  Instead he gave me an apologetic shrug.

  It was OK, I understood.

  Well, I thought I did.

  ‘Ta muchly,’ Dad said to the assistants. ‘Very nice of you.’

  That’s what I thought too, at the time.

  Mr Bernard got us to the cemetery in about three minutes.

  Mum’s French cemetery is very different from her Australian one. It’s got a wall round it with a gate, probably to keep out local boons and their dog poo.

  I was shaking so much as I followed Mrs Bernard through the gate that I could hardly hold the flowers.

  She took me to Mum’s grave.

  Most of the graveyard is gravel, and most of the graves are grey stone.

  Mum’s isn’t, but.

  Mum’s is the most beautiful grave I’ve ever seen.

  Her headstone is marble and her grave is covered with really soft dark-green grass, perfectly clipped and edged with more marble.

  But it wasn’t just the neatness of the grass that made my mouth fall open.

  It was the four other bunches of flowers lying on it.

  All fresh.

  I stared, gobsmacked.

  I’d imagined Mum’s French grave would be wild and unkempt and I’d be the first person tidying it up and puttin
g flowers on it for twelve years.

  Instead it’s the best-cared-for grave in the whole cemetery.

  I was about to ask Dad what was going on when something else happened. An elderly couple standing at another grave with a poodle looked over and saw us and gave a shout. They hurried over and started shaking Dad’s hand and beaming. Dad looked a bit alarmed, probably because the poodle was trying to have sex with his leg. Even though I couldn’t understand a word the French people were saying, I could see they were delighted.

  Why?

  Was Dad being mistaken for a local footy star? Surely not with his crook knees.

  Then it hit me.

  The reason everyone here is so friendly to Dad.

  The reason nobody’s bothered to catch the hit-and-run driver.

  The thing Dad wanted to tell me himself.

  The full story Claire reckoned I should know.

  It’s this.

  Dad must have been offered a deal when Mum was killed.

  The local council must have offered Dad a top grave for Mum, serviced regularly, if he agreed not to make them hunt down the hit-and-run driver.

  And he accepted.

  That’s why all the locals are so grateful to him. He’s saved them the shame and embarrassment of admitting they’ve got a ruthless killer in their municipality.

  Of course. That’s why Dad wanted to sneak into town without anyone knowing we were here.

  He was scared a local would blab to me.

  He was scared I’d lose all respect for him.

  Which is exactly what I’m doing.

  Dad, how could you?

  How could you let a killer get away with it for a bit of lawn and a few flowers?

  That’s what I asked myself at the cemetery as I laid my flowers on Mum’s grave and it’s what I’m still asking back here in Mrs Bernard’s attic bedroom.

  I haven’t asked Dad in person.

  I don’t want him to know I’ve twigged.

  He might guess what I’m planning to do and try to stop me.

  Not that I’d let him.

  I’m going to avenge Mum even if it means the local council won’t look after her grave any more and I’ll have to live here for the rest of my life and mow it myself.

  It was morning and Mum was stroking my forehead and talking to me softly in her warm gentle voice with its warm gentle French accent.