Millie and the Night Heron

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘How are you getting on, Millie, at school? Are you enjoying it?’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘You’ve come from a different town, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Why everyone thought if you didn’t live in this town you were an alien was beyond me.

  ‘That’s hard, isn’t it? I remember when I first came here. I knew everyone thought I was some kind of weird hippy chick from the big city. I didn’t think I’d ever fit in. I cried practically every night for about a month. My husband thought I’d gone mad. Then things changed. I got to know people. People got to know me. I made friends. I realised that some of the people I thought were cold-shouldering me felt a little threatened by my city background.’

  ‘I don’t come from the city,’ I said. ‘Mum and I lived in the country. A little country town.’

  ‘I realise that,’ Ms O’Grady said, ‘but you are a bit exotic, Millie.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I think if you go home and think about it, you might.’ Ms O’Grady smiled at me. I had to drop my eyes. Hers were too kind and I thought I’d burst into tears. I looked at her stomach instead, round as a shell under her stretchy skirt. Just as I looked, her whole tummy kind of rippled.

  ‘Oh!’ She laughed. ‘This baby’s going to be a dancer. Feel that, Millie!’ And she grabbed my hand and placed it on her stomach.

  It was amazing. You could actually feel life in there. It was bizarre, kind of scary and kind of wonderful at the same time. I couldn’t imagine what it felt like for her.

  ‘Are you scared?’ I blurted out, unable to stop myself.

  ‘Yes, I am a bit,’ Ms O’Grady said, ‘but then I look around at all you kids and I think, well, Theresa, they’ve all been born and their mums and dads coped. That makes me feel a little bit better. Your mum was fine, wasn’t she? And your dad?’

  ‘Patrick loves me,’ I said, ‘but he doesn’t live with us. He’s a scientist and has to be overseas. Mum did most of the coping by herself. But, yeah, I guess she was fine. I guess you have to be when you have a baby to look after, don’t you? I mean, it isn’t just you anymore, is it?’

  ‘Most people think like you do, Millie. But some people don’t handle it as well as others. Tayla’s mum, for example, didn’t handle anything well. She had a breakdown after Tayla was born and couldn’t look after her. That’s been hard for Tayla and her dad. Tayla’s done very well to get to where she is now, believe me. I know she can be ... a little domineering, but when she is like that, remember that she doesn’t have a mum around like you have. Okay?’

  I shrugged. I wanted to say, I don’t have a dad around and Sheri doesn’t live with us anymore so what are you going to do about that? But I didn’t, because my hand was still tingling from feeling Ms O’Grady’s baby and I didn’t want to upset her in case anything happened to it.

  ‘I know things haven’t necessarily been easy for you, either. But Millie, I look at you and I see a strong person with their own wonderful destiny to follow. You’re an individual. You’ll be fine. Tayla’s different. She’s dependent on that little group she’s got. She’s nothing without them. Do you understand?’

  ‘You have to have friends,’ I said.

  ‘Friends are good, but for some people hangers-on are essential. You’ll make friends, Millie. Just give yourself a bit of time. Now, hop out and get some fresh air.’

  I stood up to go.

  ‘By the way, Millie,’ she said, ‘be brave about the rumours, too. Tayla’s saying you don’t care about anyone and that you wanted to give her a migraine. No one will believe her. We all know better. But keep your chin up, okay?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I muttered. I couldn’t look at her.

  Minutes after I got back to my dormitory, Helen arrived, almost as though she had been watching for me.

  ‘Wasn’t too bad?’ she asked, plonking herself down on my bed uninvited.

  ‘No.’ I surreptitiously wiped my eyes.

  ‘See, told you.’

  ‘Ms O’Grady said Tayla’s been saying I wanted to give her a migraine.’

  ‘Who cares? She’s toe-jam. Sarah and Rachel and I wanted to know if you’d like to be in our Red Faces team. Of course, since we’ve been practising for weeks at school, you’ll only be a dancer and you’ll have to learn quickly, but it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes. We all do.’

  I’d forgotten about the Red Faces competition. Forgotten or managed to ignore it. This was the other camp torture. We all had to make up an act and perform it in front of everyone. I had nothing planned.

  ‘I’m not very good at dancing,’ I said.

  ‘Neither are we. So that’s a yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, I’ll go and get the others and then we can work out a costume for you.’

  ‘Okay.’

  She dashed out the door. Helen didn’t seem to do anything slowly. A costume! I wondered what they’d have thought up. I felt suddenly excited about everything, even the idea of dancing, although it was a panicky excitement. What happened if I did it wrong? But I was okay at dancing. Sheri, Mum and I had often danced around the lounge room and Sheri said I had natural rhythm. I did a few practise steps and watched in the mirror.

  I was not exactly tall for my age, but I wasn’t hopelessly short, either. My hair was dead straight but at least it was thick and Mum had let me grow it past my shoulders as soon as I’d stopped going to Newland Primary School. I’d had it shorter there because of the head lice. We bred superior nits at Newland. I think they’d mutated.

  My eyes were brown with gold speckles. My face was too long, my chin was too stubborn and my mouth was on the small size. It wasn’t the face of a movie star, although it might have done for a minor role in one of those movies nobody much sees. Or an extra in something. It would be cool to be a movie extra. They get to mutter rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb in crowd scenes and get really close to a lot of famous people.

  I was daydreaming about being an extra on a set with Orlando Bloom – how I’d pick up something he didn’t know he’d dropped. Alove letter, or something really precious. I’d run after him and say, ‘Excuse me, sir, you dropped this’, and hold it out to him with shaking fingers.

  ‘Don’t be nervous, my pretty one,’ he’d say (ignoring my stubborn chin and my little mouth), ‘and thank you a thousand times. This means more to me than my whole fee for this movie. I owe you. I owe you dinner at the restaurant of your choice, whatever you’d like to eat, wherever in the entire world and whenever. You name the date, the place, and I will be there.’

  Helen opened the door and walked in, followed by Sarah and Rachel.

  ‘Do you have anything we can turn into a belly-dancing costume?’ she asked. ‘We found a spare scarf for you.’

  I left Orlando gazing adoringly after me while I returned to reality.

  ‘Belly dancing!’ I squeaked. ‘Oh, I don’t think I can do that in front of people. Not belly dancing!’

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  We didn’t get First Prize, which was a packet of lollypops. But fortunately we didn’t get Funniest Act either, which was a possibility until Sarah’s scarf came undone and I tripped over it, bumped into Helen and sent us both crashing down to the floor.

  Tayla and her gang started slow clapping at that point, but Ms O’Grady quelled them with a glance. Tayla’s migraine seemed to have disappeared just in time for her to do a lip-synched number to some song about boys and love.

  Okay, our song was about boys and love as well. That’s just what songs are about. But we didn’t shake our bottoms the way she did and we didn’t strut around either. We shimmied a bit, or we tried to—that’s when Sarah’s scarf came undone. But we weren’t rude. Tayla didn’t get First Prize, either. But then, nor did anyone actually laugh at her.

  I didn’t care. I’d surviv
ed Red Faces and I had made friends, at least for the time being.

  ‘Oh well,’ Helen said, as we drank hot chocolate with marshmallows later, ‘there’s always next year.’

  ‘I think that scarf was too slippery,’ Sarah said, ‘but at least we were dressed. Not like Tayla, wearing her PJs.’

  ‘She had to wear them,’ Rachel said, ‘for the song. I can understand that. It wouldn’t have made sense of that line, “and I’m dreaming of you, dreaming of you, as I tuck myself into my little bed, I’m dreaming of you, dreaming of you in my head”.’

  ‘That line sucks,’ Helen said. ‘The whole song sucks.’

  ‘She didn’t win, anyway,’ Rachel said. ‘But fancy that stupid Aidan’s joke winning. It wasn’t even funny. I didn’t get it, did you?’

  ‘Not really. I got lost in the middle somewhere. But I think he did, too. I think they gave it to Aidan because he never wins anything.’

  ‘I think they gave it to him because he put on funny voices and did that little bow at the end,’ I said. I had enjoyed Aidan’s joke. I did get it—it was about an IT person and a talking frog he doesn’t kiss because he wants to have a talking frog in his pocket rather than a beautiful girl because IT people don’t have time for a social life. It was one of those goes-on-forever jokes. Patrick had sent it to me in an email—that’s how come I got it.

  ‘Yes, I think you’re right. That’s called performance,’ Sarah said, ‘and they’re keen on performance. They think if you can perform, you must have high self-esteem.’

  ‘I don’t get this self-esteem stuff,’ Rachel said. ‘Why do we all have to have it?’

  ‘It’s when you feel good about yourself,’ Helen said. ‘Come on, Rachel, you know that.’

  ‘But I don’t think you can feel good about yourself all the time,’ Rachel objected. ‘I mean, what about on days when your favourite jeans don’t do up, or you step in dog poo, or your mum shouts at you because she’s had a fight with her boyfriend? You don’t feel good about yourself then, do you?’

  ‘Well, you should. It’s more than what just goes on, it’s something else. Oh, Rachel, I can’t explain it. You’ll have to ask Ms O’Grady.’

  ‘It’s about feeling good about yourself deep down,’ I said, ‘so that those things don’t affect what’s in your heart. They stay surface things that you get over without falling apart, because you’re strong about who you really are.’

  ‘Wow, that’s right!’ Helen said. ‘Do you get it now, Rachel?’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t know that I’ve got it.’

  ‘We’re learning to get it this year,’ Sarah said. ‘They’ll teach you, Rache, and then you’ll be fine.’

  ‘So it’s like Maths? You reckon you learn it?’ I felt unsure. It didn’t seem entirely right to me.

  ‘You can learn everything,’ Helen said.

  ‘You can’t learn everything.’

  ‘Well, come on, Rachel, you tell me one thing you can’t learn.’

  There was silence while we all thought. Finally Rachel said, ‘You can’t learn how to do sex.’

  Sarah and I put our fingers in our mouths and made gagging noises, but Helen said, ‘Well, I reckon you probably can. It’s just like Maths, Rachel – you don’t want to learn it but they make you. Sex is just the same.’

  Mr Lawrence and Shirley, Caitlin’s mum, came over, and we stopped talking about sex and self-esteem and talked about reality TV instead. It was safer.

  The next day it poured rain. It wasn’t just spit spot drizzle that they can still send you out in—appropriately dressed, of course. This was bucketing down, just like it had when Mum had her interview. You could see the despair on the teachers’ faces. What were they going to do with us all?

  ‘I knew it would rain,’ Helen said, watching it from the recreation room window. She drew little love hearts on the window. ‘It always does when you go away anywhere. It’s one of those rules.’

  ‘Barbeque—rain,’ I said.

  ‘Wash the car—rain,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Plan a picnic—rain,’ Mr Lawrence said, coming up behind us. ‘So we thought we might have a games morning. Did anyone bring any games?’

  ‘I brought a chess set,’ I said very quietly. It was a nerdy thing to do and I couldn’t even play properly yet.

  ‘Ah, well done, Millie.’ Mr Lawrence beamed. ‘So we’ve got two chess sets, two scrabble boards, three games of monopoly, table tennis, UNO cards, playing cards and one game of Trivial Pursuit. That’s the ticket. We’ll all be nicely occupied.’

  Mr Lawrence was either stupid or very optimistic.

  ‘Boring,’ everyone chorused when he read out the list, and people wandered off wired up to music or game boys.

  I didn’t have a CD player or a game boy. I did have a book, though, and I read in one of the fluffy bean bags until the Lady’s unicorn was speared to death and then I couldn’t read anymore, just for a little while. I looked around the room. Most of the kids had gone off to lie on their beds in the dorms and complain about the weather.

  Mr Lawrence was reading at a table. He sighed as he read and I guessed what he was reading. I felt sorry for him and went over to him.

  ‘Ah, Millie.’ He looked up quickly and smiled at me as though I’d rescued him. ‘How is your book then?’

  ‘They’ve killed our Lady’s unicorn,’ I said, ‘so it’s got pretty sad. There was a prophecy about it, too. That when it died terror on the land would be unleashed and “violence and sadness unceasing would cause the tears to join like oceans”. The hunters were warned to take the prophecy seriously. Of course they didn’t. The unicorn was too fine a prize, silver horn and silver hoofs. It’s just greed, Mr Lawrence.’

  ‘Well, yes, you’re right about that, Millie. Greed rules the world.’ He closed the book and rubbed the children’s faces on the cover absently as though he was cleaning them. ‘You enjoy reading fantasy? Have you read Ursula le Guin yet?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘What a treat you have ahead of you! Start with Wizard of Earthsea, and the others in the series, of course. A marvellous mind, that woman, just marvellous. When you’ve done with those, read Left Hand of Darkness. Though you might wait a bit for that one.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll write them down in my journal. I’ve got a list of books I need to read. How’s your book going?’

  ‘Confidentially, Millie, it strikes me that I might fail Parenting, really. The book says “make time to talk to your kids”, but when I ask my kids what’s going on, they always say “nothing”. It doesn’t make for a deep conversation. And my boy doesn’t even say that. He just grunts.’

  ‘Maybe you aren’t asking the right questions,’ I said. Mr Lawrence’s face was all droop. His mouth drooped at the corners, his eyes drooped at their corners and even his forehead wrinkles seemed to be heading down towards his chin. It made him look sad – except for when he smiled, when all the lines headed right up in the other direction.

  ‘No, I’m probably not asking the right questions,’ he admitted, ‘but it’s hard to know what the right questions are. That’s what I find. “How are things going?” “Yep.” “Do you need anything?” “Yep.” That’s always money, of course. They do seem to need an awful lot of money. Their mother has better luck with them.’

  ‘You could try taking them to dinner,’ I said, suddenly inspired. ‘That’s what my mother and I do sometimes, when we feel a bit depressed. Then you have to talk to each other because you shouldn’t read in a café, right? And there’s no television. So there’s nothing to do but talk. To start off, you might just talk about the food. But pretty soon you’re talking, you know, really talking.’

  ‘That’s an excellent idea, Millie. I think I’ll try that.’

  ‘The other thing you could do, Mr Lawrence, if you don’t mind me suggesting it...’

  ‘Not at all.
Suggest away!’

  ‘Well, people lose things at camp all the time. So instead of the bath idea, you could do the camp thing and lose your book here. I bet she wouldn’t bother buying you a new one, not if the dinner thing works. She won’t need to, will she?’

  ‘That’s the ticket, Millie, that’s a great idea. Under the bed, I think, don’t you?’

  ‘Under the mattress might be safer,’ I said. ‘Under our beds are pretty clean. Rachel checked because of her asthma. The cleaners do a good job. But under the mattress was pretty grotty.’

  ‘Thanks. Now is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘Well, I was wondering if you play chess. See, I don’t really know how to play but Patrick, my dad, does and I want to be able to impress him when he’s next in Australia. It’s good to throw something new at him, Mum says. It keeps him on his toes.’

  Mr Lawrence and I played chess until it was time for dinner. I liked Mr Lawrence. There was something Patrick-y about him, even though he wasn’t a drama queen. He felt safe. I was sorry he was married. If Mum was man-hunting again I wouldn’t be so worried if she turned up with someone like Mr Lawrence. Even though he was years older than Mum, and obviously thought brown was a power colour, judging from his taste in jumpers.

  Camp wasn’t as bad as it could have been and the trip home was great. Helen-Sarah-and-Rachel and I sat together, not in the back row, because Tayla and her gang had baggsed that, but we sat behind each other and talked.

  ‘Mum will be pleased I’m home,’ Helen said. ‘She worries when I’m at camp. She gets lonely.’

  ‘Yeah, my mum will be pleased, too,’ I said. ‘ I worry about her when I’m at camp.’

  ‘Mum’ll be pleased to see me,’ Rachel said, ‘but Terry won’t.’

  ‘Who’s Terry?’

  ‘Mum’s boyfriend. They’ve been going out for nearly three months and when he heard about the camp he booked them into a motel for two nights, like they were on their honeymoon or something.’

  Sarah and Helen made throwing-up noises.