I unfold my arms and take a step forward. ‘If you do anything of the sort,’ I say, ‘you can go back on the next plane. I’ve got enough on my plate without you putting your oar in. I’m an adult, Mum, and I’ll deal with my own problems, OK?’
‘But you won’t,’ says Mum. ‘You never do!’
‘You never give me the chance!’
‘Well, what do you expect? We’re your parents! We’ve always looked after you! How can you expect this to be any different? I can’t just stand back and let this disaster fall in on your head, Melody! I’ve stepped in before and I will again!’
And I step back as she says this, look her in the eye and say: ‘Please. If I don’t get a chance to make my own way in the world I’ll never survive it. Please. This time. Let it be me, even if I do screw it up.’
She looks at me. ‘But these people … You can’t be serious. You can’t want to be like them.’
I take two steps up the stairs. Look her straight back in the eye.
‘No, I don’t. And I don’t want to be like us, either.’
Chapter Forty-Eight
Daddy’s Girl
I love them. Love them to pieces. They’re my people and they’re where I come from, but they’re not good people. They’re my people, and they started from the bottom of the heap and made it close to the top, and I’m the indulged, spoiled little Daddy’s girl who doesn’t know how to get away. Because my folks are rich, yes: far, far richer than the Wattestones give them credit for. Far, for that matter, richer than the Wattestones themselves, probably. And you know what they say: behind every great fortune there’s a great crime. Dad’s no honest son of the soil. He didn’t toil his way to riches by scrimping and saving till he got the deposit for his first car. He got there because that genial exterior is the packaging for one nasty bastard. He got there by being the sort of man who can watch someone beg and remain unmoved. You don’t get rich by owning a cab company and fast food service. Not rich rich. People like my dad own companies like that because a business that deals almost entirely in cash is the most effective way of laundering the spoils of their other businesses.
Yes, I’m a little rich girl, and yes, just like Mary thinks, I’ve got no class. But I’m rich because my people would beat you up and throw you in a ship canal as soon as look at you.
Some things I remember. I don’t remember all that much. And besides, they wanted me, at least, to have the chances they’d never had, to grow up with all the advantages of Daddy’s money and none of his criminality. Costa was a different story, of course. He’s the legitimiser, the investor in the straight and narrow, but he’s Daddy’s son and heir. When I was eight we moved out of Sydney into our neoclassical spread with the six-pillared, broken pedimented porch and the swimming pool with the retractable roof and the mega-gas-fired barbecue pit and the collection of shotguns under the beds because Dad’s firm was expanding up north and they needed someone to head it up. And at that point I largely got separated off from how Daddy made his money: I got the self-congratulatory suburban upbringing my mum had always yearned for, and apart from the wads of cash in the shoeboxes and the occasional cortege of Mercedes rolling up the drive and the odd door closing suddenly as I passed it, my life was pretty much normal. Only with more money.
Though they had their own sweet way of sorting out my problems. You’ll see.
I don’t know if I remember very little because I’m suppressing the memories, like a dodgy shrink would probably say, or if it’s that they just didn’t let us see much of what was going on in Dad’s working life, but I suspect it’s the latter. But here are the things I do remember.
King’s Cross, 1978. It’s my fifth birthday. My daddy takes me out with him, all dressed up in my party dress, while Mum organises a surprise shindig. My daddy’s got his business suit on, and he looks sharp: giant collars, one on top of the other, and a tie covered in pictures of ladies in bikinis with their hands linked behind their heads. My daddy’s got one of those haircuts where the front is bouffant and the back hangs down below the collar in lank locks. He has magnificent sideburns, bushy and black, that run all the way from his ears to the point of his jaw.
We go down one of those streets you find in most cities that’s full of a mixture of ethnic shops and bordellos – a street of a thousand yayas, where every third woman is an old one in black and a lot of the rest are wearing clothes constructed of nylon and spangles. Dad says he has to do some business, that he’s got to just drop in and see a few people, and in each shop, the people behind the counter stop what they’re doing the moment we come in, greet me with an enthusiasm that I now realise was probably not as wholehearted as it felt at the time.
I’m hoisted up on to counters, congratulated for being such a pretty girl, and in every shop I go into, an assistant is left to pick me out a birthday present while Dad disappears into the back with the owner. And people are going: ‘I didn’t know your dad had any children. How old are you? And look how pretty you are. Look at your hair! If I had hair like that, I’d be a model!’
I get some chocolate in the coffee shop. A gateau is wrapped to go in the baker’s. In the newsagents, the assistant, a lovely-looking girl with black eyes, a green mohican and six earrings dangling from a single ear, digs me out a colouring book and a multi-pack of felt-tip pens. I emerge from one Italian restaurant with a box of little tiny macaroons wrapped in tissue paper, and from the one next door with yet another cake, this time in a tin. The chemist showers brightly coloured hair bobbles on me, and the hippie shop gives me a small plaster cat.
It’s a great birthday. This street, barely touched by the backpacker’s paradise around it, is a seedy, glamorous, cosy mix of sex and family, and no-one can do too much for the pretty little daughter of their local loan shark and protectionist.
And then Daddy ducks down some steps into a basement, and I find myself in a witch’s cave. It’s dark down here, red and black on the walls, a series of black curtains, and it smells sort of damp, sort of salty, with a faint whiff of cheese.
‘O!’ shouts my dad.
A head appears from behind a curtain: a man who seems, in this light, to be red and sweating, a grimace that I don’t understand written across his face. ‘Uh,’ he says, and his head disappears.
At the end of a corridor, another curtain moves back and a man with a moustache appears. Looks us up and down and says: ‘You’re a day early. You’re not due till tomorrow.’
‘It’s my little girl’s birthday,’ says my daddy. ‘Getting her out of the house.’
The man stares at me. Says: ‘Happy Birthday, sweetheart. You shouldn’t have brought her here,’ he says to Dad. ‘It’s not a place for a kiddy.’
‘Well,’ says my dad, ‘hurry up, then, and we can get out of here.’
‘Like I said,’ he replies, ‘you’re early. You can’t just—’
My dad takes a step forward. I can’t see his face, but the man can. A muscle moves on his jaw. Raising his voice, he bellows: ‘Lindy! Get out here!’
‘Customer!’ a voice bellows back.
‘Now.’
‘Oh for fuck sake …’
‘Language!’ shouts my dad. ‘There’s kiddies here!’
A curtain moves and an irritated-looking woman pokes her head into the gloom. Sees us standing there and says: ‘Oh.’ Vanishes again for a moment and re-emerges, wrapping a slightly greasy satin robe around her.
‘Need you to look after the little girl,’ says the man.
She approaches. Doesn’t look at my dad. Crouches down in front of me. She’s wearing stockings, red garters. She smells salty, like the premises, and has smeared red lipstick on. Reaches out a hand that looks a lot younger than her tired, lined face and traces my cheek with a chipped nail. ‘Hello, darling,’ she says. ‘My name’s Lindy. What’s yours?’
‘Melody,’ I tell her.
My dad walks away.
‘That’s a pretty name,’ she says. ‘I’ve got a little girl about your age.’
‘I’m five.’
‘That’s nice. My little girl’s six. She lives with her nan.’
‘It’s my birthday,’ I tell her.
She raises eyebrows that have been drawn roughly with black crayon on to shaven skin. She looks about a million years old to me at my age, but looking back, I think she was probably not a lot more than thirty. The red mouth forms an ‘O’ of feigned astonishment. ‘Your birthday! Happy birthday, darling. Have you had your presents yet?’
‘At home,’ I say. ‘Though some people gave me some things.’
‘I’ll bet they did,’ says Lindy. ‘What did you get?’
I tell her, counting the list off on my fingers.
‘That’s lovely, darling!’ says Lindy.
The sound of raised voices drifting down the corridor. Lindy glances briefly over her shoulder, turns back to me and raises her voice. ‘So your daddy brought you out for the day?’
I nod.
To my surprise, Lindy shakes her head. ‘Well, that’s just wrong,’ she says, more to herself than to me.
From the cubicle emerges a man so fat he can barely squeeze through the entrance. Hairy hands, rolls of fat on the back of his neck, one, two, three, a waistband that has vanished beneath a rippling waterfall of a stomach. He totters on legs that look like strings of faggots. He’s tying his tie and carrying his jacket over his forearm so I can see the great patches of sweat under his arms, which leach down all the way to the first fold of his hips. He waddles down the corridor towards us, and I see that he is, of all things, pouting.
‘I’ll be with you in a minute, love,’ Lindy says.
‘Don’t bother,’ he replies.
‘Sorry,’ she says, not reacting. He gets level with us, and I reel at the smell of unwashed underpants that comes off him.
‘You’re too old for it, anyway,’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ says Lindy, ‘well, it’s been a pleasure for me too.’
We have to squeeze to one side to let him pass. Her face is a mask of non-reaction. Once he’s gone, she turns back to me.
‘If everyone else is giving you presents,’ she says, smiling, though even in this light I can see that there are tears in her eyes, ‘I’d better give you something too.’
Something in me, even though I’m only five, makes me say: ‘No. No, really.’
‘Oh, bless her,’ she says. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not.’
My dad’s still shouting. He never shouts at home. I shuffle, strain to look round Lindy and catch a glimpse of him. Behind another curtain, someone moans repeatedly. It sounds like they’re in pain, or dying.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ Lindy puts a hand on my face and guides me back to looking at her. ‘You’re so pretty. Daddy’ll be back in a second. He won’t be long.’
But I’m only five. I start to blub.
‘No, look …’ Lindy reaches behind her neck and unhooks the necklace she’s wearing: a cheap filigree crucifix, hanging from a slender chain. Later, on Gozo, I’ll realise that it’s a Maltese cross. ‘Look. See this? Isn’t it pretty? You want to wear it?’
I sniff. Look as the metal catches the light from the red bulb above our heads. It glitters wondrously, makes me open my mouth in awe.
Lindy stretches her hands round the back of my neck, clips it on. ‘There,’ she says. ‘There. You look ever so pretty, darling. Beautiful. Now, you wear that for ever, and it’ll keep you safe, I swear. And every time you touch it, you can think of your friend Lindy.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
Another touch to the face. ‘Take care of it, darling.’
Dad reappears, marches up the corridor. Sees the tears drying on my face and snaps: ‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing,’ says Lindy, looking up. ‘She got nervous, waiting. You shouldn’t have—’
‘You look a mess,’ he says. ‘Clean your face up. Shit.’
And he grabs me by the hand and pulls me towards the exit. As we get out into the sunlight, I look at the hand holding mine and notice that there’s a graze on his knuckles.
Jump forward seven years. I’m twelve and we’ve been up north a while and things have started to go bad at school. It’s not that – you know, I’m not such a pariah that I’ve got no friends, but I’m gawky and goofy-toothed, and what with the foreign dad and the gaudy mum, I’m not high on people’s invitation list. And then Reggie Harper steps in and things get a whole lot worse. Because Reggie doesn’t like me and, though I do my best to persuade myself that she’s only turned out like she has because Regina is no name to be carrying through the Australian state school system, it doesn’t make it any less painful when she hits me.
She does it daily. Just for the hell of it, really. Reggie and her friends Babs, Dinah and Linda Ho have a little click: lumpen, high-coloured girls with habitually challenging expressions, they swagger round the playground looking for people to pick on. And those people are mostly me.
It starts off small: a bit of pushing, some tripping up. But then I make the mistake of trying to fight back one day, and things escalate, because Daddy’s brought me up to be his princess, not a brawling Greek like he is, and I have no more idea what to do with my fists than I would what to do with a Black and Decker Workmate. The four of them, a year or so older and several inches taller, simply hold me by my hair as I flail at their faces, then throw me to the ground like a piece of flotsam. And now they’ve had their reaction off me, it just keeps on coming. Every day, every dinnertime, same thing: hello Millerdy. Doof. Oops. Sor-ree. Aww. Is she cry-ing? Aaah. There there.
It goes on for months. Every day, same thing: doof and down I go: great wedges of skin off my thighs and knees, school blouse hiding atlases of bruises on arms and shoulders, never the face because then the staff might have had to notice. Anyone who’s been bullied will tell you the same thing: the teachers never want to know, never want to shift themselves to champion the awkward ones, the fat ones, the ugly ones, the lispers, the odd-ones-out who always come in for the worst of it. And the teachers’ idleness depends on that great rule of schoolyards the world over: you don’t dob your mates in. You don’t dob anyone in, not even your enemies, because then your mates will cut you out, too.
And then one day Dinah’s foot slips, or I curl up too early into the foetal position I’ve got used to adopting and, instead of kicking me in the ribs like she’d intended, she catches me one full in the face. Draws blood from my nose, imprints a livid toecap mark on my cheekbone. And I go home and refuse, resolutely, to dob through the interrogation that ensues, do the old walked-into-a-lamppost routine, but none the less, three days later, when I come back to school, I find that it’s all over. My persecutors have left the school. Not sacked, or suspended. They’ve simply left, all four of them, and they aren’t coming back. Dinah’s father’s taken a job up in Darwin. Babs has gone to family over in Canberra. Linda’s been taken to another school, twenty Ks away in central Brissie, and Reggie – well, the Harper family are just gone. The neighbours saw them packing up a rental truck in the middle of the night and reckon they must’ve left some bad debts behind.
Whatever; they’re gone.
Except that somehow the other kids seem to be treating me with a little less familiarity. They’ve not turned rude or anything: just jump back like a woman in danger of touching a Buddhist monk when I go down the corridors, pull back their hands so as not to overhit when they tag me in playground games. I never have trouble of any sort at school after that. I don’t have many mates, either, mind.
Jump back four years. Our unit in Manly. We’ve already moved up in the world, got a sea view, hot tub on the deck. I’m seven, and I’ve woken up with a powerful thirst. There’s a murmur of voices from downstairs.
We live on the third and fourth floors of a sixties block that’s filled from floors to ceilings with the sort of luxury goods normal people still only really see on television. We are a white-leather-sofa, giant-screen-TV, cut-glass-cocktail-bar, marble-bathro
om sort of family. We’ve got fluffy rugs and chandeliers and a twelve-setting dinner service rimmed in fourteen-carat gold. My mother wears chunky chains and earrings to do the weekly food shop, my dad has a watch that would sink the Titanic. I’ve got toys, toys, toys, and a wardrobe of tiny replicas of my mother’s designer gear. Costa has a Chopper bike, a TV and video recorder of his very own. It doesn’t occur to me that it’s unusual, because everyone my parents know lives the same way.
I lie in bed for a minute or two, listening to the action downstairs. What sounded like conversation now sounds like it’s been replaced by the sounds of the television. The Sweeney, maybe, or The Professionals. They like their English TV. Certainly, it’s something that involves an amount of hardman discourse and the occasional pause for violence. My mouth is as dry as a pommy’s towel. I’m not going to be able to get back to sleep unless I have a drink. And needing a drink gives me all the excuse I need to get a look at Bodie and Doyle, like all small girls want to.
I get up. I’m in Barbie pyjamas. I pick up my monkey for company. I slip my feet into my rabbit slippers and make my way down the stairs, past the collection of resort goods my mum insists on collecting on our thrice-annual trips to the islands. It’s dark on the stairs and in the hall; all I can see by is the sliver of light that peeps out from under the lounge door. Whatever’s on the TV is dead realistic. I hear someone hit someone else, a sort of wet thud, and a soggy groan in response. I push the door open, walk inside.
I’m in the middle of one of those nineteenth-century drama paintings: When Did You Last See Your Father?, something like that, only bloodier. And the clothes are a lot less stylish. Someone’s spread plastic sheeting on the white carpet and the white suite, and in the middle of the floor sits a man on one of our kitchen chairs. Only, he’s not just sitting there: he’s handcuffed, and my dad is standing over him with a band of steel wrapped around his knuckles. Uncle Phil and Uncle Ern – my dad’s business associates – sit on the settee, wearing bomber jackets emblazoned with the logos of American sports teams from cities they probably wouldn’t be able to point out on a map. My mum’s in the kitchen, on the other side of the lounge; I can hear her, rattling pots. Uncle Ern’s wearing dark glasses. The man in the chair is covered in blood: his head has swollen up like a football.
Simply Heaven Page 31
