Millie and the Night Heron

by Catherine Bateson

  > To: milliethegreatest@hotmail.com

  > From: pmcd@londonuni.edu.uk

  >

  > Millie my sweet,

  > Change is needed. Sheri is right.

  > Your mother needs CHANGE in her life.

  > She should get out in the world more.

  > I hope you’re not feeling DEPRESSED

  > about all this, Millie. Don’t become

  > one of those american girls on ANTI-

  > DEPRESSANTS, for heaven’s sake. Life

  > is GOOD.

  >

  > I think you both should MOVE, meet

  > NEW people, start a NEW life. Give

  > your mother a HUG from me. She is one

  > of my FAVOURITE people in the world

  > and I MISS her. You are my MOST

  > FAVOURITE. That goes without saying.

  >

  > LOTS OF LOVE

  > patrick.

  >

  It was a typical Patrick email. He wrote emails the way he talked.

  ‘So,’ Mum said later, eating pizza, ‘what’s on the house meeting agenda?’ She was wearing her rosebud dress and she’d clipped a flower in her hair. I was wearing my denim skirt with the new top, which was very groovy. It had a picture of an Indian goddess on it and the front of it was my favourite colour—a greeny blue, a little like the ocean.

  ‘I miss you,’ I said. ‘You’re not like you used to be when Sheri lived with us.’

  ‘I’ve been working,’ Mum said. ‘I thought if I really got stuck into work, I’d feel better, you know?’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Well, sort of,’ Mum said, ‘but not entirely. I miss Sheri, but I think it’s more than that. I feel there’s a hole in my life. I haven’t just been working. I’ve been re-assessing and I’ve applied for a job.’

  ‘You’ve got a job,’ I said. ‘You make art.’

  ‘I’ll always make art, but making art isn’t enough for me. I need a job. I need to get out more. I think we need to move. A bigger place. Somewhere with a proper gallery. I don’t want to move back to the city, it’s too expensive. But I want a change of scenery.’

  ‘But I like this scenery,’ I said. ‘I like where we live. I like this town.’

  ‘It’s all going to be different for you next year, anyway,’ Mum said calmly.

  I couldn’t see how she could go on just eating her pizza like that as though everything was okay. My mouth felt all dry and my stomach was wobbling. I could hardly eat another piece. I ate it anyway. It was Kate-and-Millie’s Special with extra cheese and extra olives.

  ‘So what’s the job?’

  ‘Head of the Art Department at Wetlands TAFE.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘About 150 kilometres down the coastline,’ Mum said, ‘I thought we’d go and have a look next weekend. My interview is Monday week. I gather they are pretty desperate for someone to take over.’

  ‘Take over?’

  ‘The Art Department, darling. Just think, if I get the job I’ll be head of the Art Department.’

  ‘What about me?’ I wailed. ‘What about this house? What about school next year? What about Frannie and Carina? They’re my best friends in the world and I won’t ever see them again. Have you even thought of me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said, glaring at me, ‘of course I have. Millie, it’s going to be hard for you, I know that. But you will make new friends. You have a huge capacity for friendship. And think, Sweetie, Frannie is going to Our Lady’s next year and Carina is moving back to the city. You know that.’

  ‘I could still see them,’ I whined.

  ‘You can still see them when, if we move. Think of having real money. Think of exploring a new place. Anyway, Millie, I haven’t even got the job yet. I think I’m a good artist, and I am a good art teacher, but I have never been head of any department, so I probably won’t get a look in.’

  I hardly slept all that night. Mum said it was a mixture of indigestion and watching Buffy too late at night, but it was really the idea of moving. I hated it.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast, with views, the brochure read, of spectacular mountain ranges on one side and the sea on the other. The mountain ranges had been cleared by loggers and the sea wasn’t visible at all. The B & B also promised a ‘delicious five-star breakfast’ which turned out to be a loaf of Tip Top raisin bread—toaster provided—a tin of fruit salad in light syrup, four rashers of bacon and two eggs.

  ‘Free range eggs,’ Mum said.

  ‘I can see that,’ I told her, washing chicken poop off mine. ‘I like them better when they come out of a carton.’

  ‘Oh, you do not, Millie. If you did, you’d never have written that letter to the local paper about how bad it was to keep battery hens. You told me you were an animal rights activist.’

  ‘I am,’ I said, ‘but I prefer my eggs without farm life evidence. Does that look clean to you?’

  ‘Good enough to eat,’ Mum said, and swooped down on me, hugging me tight and nearly breaking my egg. ‘I love you, Millie girl, even if you are a cantankerous kid.’

  Mum got high on new places. I’d forgotten that. It had been a long time between real holidays, because we often didn’t have quite enough money around holiday time when everything, even petrol, went up.

  Gradually I caught Mum’s enthusiasm. It took a mixture of food, shopping and walking. In that order, of course. The best food was provided by the hospitality students of Wetlands TAFE at their restaurant, The Pelicano. They had children’s rates, but the waiting staff treated me just as seriously as they treated Mum. They read the Specials board and didn’t mind when I asked whether the duck was free range.

  Rebecca—we knew that was her name because she introduced herself to us—agreed with me that they should be using free range ducks but they didn’t because of the expense. She also said that in her opinion they should widen the vegetarian choices, but it didn’t worry us because Sheri wasn’t there.

  ‘If I get this job,’ Mum said, as we drove back to the B & B, bellies full of Rack of Lamb encrusted with Honey Mustard and served on a Bed of Mash, ‘and I do say if, Sweetie, because I really don’t have the qualifications, but if I get this job, we could make that our treat restaurant.’

  The Red Cross Op-Shop was the best. It didn’t have that op shop smell, even, and for once there were young people working there. Not that I’m against old ladies in op shops, but I think it’s pretty cool to walk into an op shop where the radio is tuned to FM and there’s an essential-oil burner on the counter. The clothes were fantastic. It was like shopping at a boutique. We only spent twenty dollars and I walked out with a new summer outfit.

  The walk was over the wetlands themselves. There were hides where you could sit and watch the birds without them seeing you: pelicans, ducks, little blue-feathered moor hens. It was very peaceful. You had to be very quiet and I leant against Mum’s shoulder while we both watched the groups of pelicans sailing grandly past. She put her arm around me and we stayed like that for the longest time, just sitting close, not saying anything, the bird noises like music someone had forgotten to turn off.

  Eventually Mum kind of shook herself, the way you do when you’ve been daydreaming and suddenly realise that the toast has burnt.

  ‘Oh, Millie,’ she said, ‘I wish I could paint us the way we are now. I wish I could do that.’

  ‘You could, Mum. You can paint anything.’

  ‘No.’ She sighed. ‘Figures in landscape aren’t my vocabulary.’

  ‘Can’t you add to it? You’re always telling me to broaden my vocabulary.’

  ‘That’s words, darling. You should always use more and different words.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t you do the same with painting?’ I hated it when
adults told you one thing and then told themselves something completely opposite. Why did they do that? There was a long silence. Not quite silence, of course, because all the birds were calling out to each other and squabbling over little fish.

  ‘You might be right, Millie,’ Mum said slowly. ‘Maybe I should. It’s just scary stepping out from what you know you can do and trying something different, something that mightn’t work.’

  ‘But you’re doing that now,’ I argued. Sometimes Mum was peculiarly stupid for an intelligent woman. ‘I mean, going for this job. How do you know that’s going to work, but you’ve sailed into that, haven’t you? And you’re always telling me not to be scared of life.’

  Mum laughed. I liked it when she laughed. It was such a glad sound, as though the sun had brightened all of a sudden.

  ‘Oh, Millie, you’re a wise child,’ she said, hugging me hard to her side, awkwardly, because she was doing it with only the arm that was still around me.

  ‘And a wild one,’ I said, pleased. ‘Don’t forget that I’m a wild girl.’

  I sat in the car while she went for her job interview. She got dressed up, in an artist-goes-for-a-job kind of way. We both wished Sheri had been there. Mum had brought every last respectable thing with her, of course, which was fine, but none of them went with each other.

  ‘These trousers,’ I said, holding up a pair. They were my favourite. They looked liked old men’s trousers—you know, brown checks—but groovy, too.

  ‘Brown’s not a power colour, darling,’ Mum said. ‘Damn. I wish I was like your father. He’d just throw on one of his eternal white shirts, a pair of dark trousers and an unusual, look-at-me-I’m-a-genius tie and get the damn job before he’d opened his mouth.’

  ‘Well, you’re not Patrick.’

  There is always someone practical in a family, isn’t there? Someone who has to state the plain truth in an in-your-face way so that everyone stops dreaming about what might be and gets on with the life in front of them. I was that person.

  Eventually Mum wore a different pair of trousers, my second favourite pair, the colour of dark chocolate, and with that a pale pink shirt and a dark scarf draped in an arty way and secured with a kilt pin. She let her hair go wild. There wasn’t much else she could do—it was going to rain.

  I waited in the car and it did rain. Lashings of water streamed down the front window and the trees bent so far over I thought some of the smaller ones would snap. Mum was gone forever, leaving me lots of time to think. Have you noticed how thoughts come in little gasps and how each one leads to another? But if you said to someone, I started out thinking about pelicans and ended up thinking about pizza, you’d be the only person probably in the world who would know how pelicans could lead you to thinking of pizza napolitana as made by D’Angelos. Not that I was thinking of pelicans. That’s just an example.

  I actually thought:

  Do trees ever snap in the rain?

  Does our boot still leak and is there anything of mine in it?

  If Mum gets this job, will she get a new car?

  It’d be cool to have a car with a CD.

  I wouldn’t mind being a famous singer.

  But I can’t sing in tune.

  I don’t want to be a scientist, I can never spell what Patrick is doing.

  An artist would be okay, except that’s what Mum is, so it’s been taken.

  Can you be struck by lightning if you’ re in a car?

  That’s a Patrick question.

  Maybe being a scientist isn’t a bad idea.

  But I might have to go overseas.

  I would be a lawyer.

  Was that more lightning?

  I should join a debating society if I’m going to be a lawyer.

  I wonder whether there will be one at my new school.

  I don’t want to move.

  But I don’t want to stay living the way we are either.

  I wish Sheri had never met Brendan Trotter.

  What kind of name is that anyway?

  If I was called Brendan Trotter, I’d change my name, first thing.

  That was lightning.

  If I wasn’t a Millie I wouldn’t mind being a Phoebe.

  I met a dog once called Phoebe. It’s a name wasted on a dog.

  Cute dog, though – a West Highland Terrier.

  See what I mean—from trees and rain to West Highland Terriers in twenty-five thoughts.

  I’d just added them up when Mum came out, running to the car, holding the portfolio of photographs close to her to protect it from the rain. I lent over and opened the door for her.

  ‘How did it go?’

  She slammed the door shut and chucked the folder on to the back seat. Her hair was all wet and the curls lay flat, but as soon as the car heater went on, it would begin to frizz in all directions.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She sounded kind of sad and flat.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ That was what she always said to me. ‘You must have some idea.’

  Mum shrugged and turned the ignition key. The car started first time. It didn’t always do that. It must have sensed her mood.

  ‘I just don’t know. They said they needed someone pretty soon, and asked whether I could move in that time, and I said, yes, of course, but they also said I hadn’t had any experience in that role and was I sure the administration side of things wouldn’t be too much. I just don’t know, Millie. You know how it is when you finish a test. You hope you’ve done well, but you don’t know.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t get it, they don’t know what they’ve missed. I know you could do the job perfectly, Mum.’

  She smiled at me but it wasn’t her big smile. It was her little, weak-around-the-edges one, like when Patrick forgets her birthday—which he does sometimes, although he always tries to make up for it later.

  It isn’t that she and Patrick love each other in that ‘lurve’ way—you know, smooching and Valentine Day cards and how Sheri and Brendan carried on. It’s that’s they are each other’s best friend. They had been forever and then they decided to try to be more than that, and that’s when they had me. But it didn’t work, Mum said, because they were too used to each other.

  ‘I don’t know, Millie. Maybe it would be too much for me. I haven’t that kind of experience. I don’t even know that I can still teach art. I haven’t done it for years and I don’t think I did a good job then.’

  ‘Mum!’ I hated it when she got in these moods. ‘Stop being a pestimist.’

  That’s a family joke. Mitchell used to say ‘pestimist’ instead of ‘pessimist’, when he was little.

  ‘Oh, Millie, I’m sorry. It’s just that when I walked in ... It wasn’t like a proper interview. It was kind of all cosy. They were just sitting around their staff room, chatting. There was real coffee brewing. I could smell it before the door opened. I thought, I could like these people. I could like working here.’

  We drove back to town in silence except for the odd sniffle from Mum. I was worried about her crying and driving at the same time, but there was so much rain outside I supposed a bit inside couldn’t hurt.

  We found a café and Mum went to the Ladies to check that her mascara hadn’t run. When she came out, she looked a little better.

  ‘Can’t do anything about it,’ she said, over the menu. ‘Either I get it or I don’t. We’ll have to leave it up to Fate and Destiny, Millie. I’ll tell you what, let’s call in on Sheri and Mitchell on the way home?’

  ‘We had dinner at this restaurant called The Pelicano,’ I told Mitchell. We were in the rumpus room while Sheri an
d Mum had a good talk in the kitchen. ‘There was a statue of pelicans, a really good one, and a girl called Rebecca served us. The food was awesome.’

  ‘I want to live with you again, Millmill,’ Mitchell said, sitting closer, ‘I don’t like it here much.’

  ‘What’s wrong, Mitchell? I thought you were happy.’

  ‘I was, sort of. We never do anything but. Not together, the way we all used to. He shouts, too, when you don’t think you’ve done anything really bad. He shouts.’

  ‘Oh, Mitchell, you know how people get stressed. Maybe he’s just stressed. He listens to people’s problems all day, after all.’

  ‘It’s okay when he’s not here,’ Mitch said. ‘I like it then. The TV is really big. Did you see it? But I can’t watch it that much.’

  We didn’t stay long because Sheri had to cook dinner and we were not invited to stay.

  ‘He’s under pressure,’ I heard her say. ‘Sometimes he doesn’t come home until nearly midnight, but he rang today and said he’d be home for dinner. I hope you understand, Kate.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mum said and we both gave Sheri a big hug.

  Our house looked too big when we got home. Mum looked at me and we both put our shoes back on and went out for dinner. Mum had a glass of wine and I had a coke spider.

  Most of the streetlights in our street were out when we walked home later and the sky was full of stars.

  Mum said, ‘What can you see?’

  ‘The Southern Cross,’ I said. ‘Look, there are the two pointers. But I don’t know the other names. I keep forgetting.’

  ‘I think I can see the Pleiades,’ Mum said, pointing to a hazy bit of sky, ‘but I always just think I can see them. I’m never sure. Imagine, Millie, whether we are here looking at them or not, those stars keep on shining. That’s something, isn’t it?’

  I wasn’t sure if that was such a cheerful thought, but I kept that to myself.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Mum didn’t get the Head of the Art Department job. Instead she was asked to be a tutor with the Art Department, teaching Life Drawing, Colour and Composition, and Art and Industry. She took the job without even asking me.