Swimming on Dry Land

by Helen Blackhurst

  ‘I don’t want to live in a house we can’t afford.’ (She’d seen this house for sale in Johnstown, a yellow one with huge windows and a balcony, about twice the size of our house.) She was getting all huffy and her hands had bunched up into fists. ‘We’re the ones who have to live with it; it’s not just you. If we stay here, nothing will change.’

  She yanked the cotton bud out of Georgie’s mouth as Dad took his hands off the table and let them fall into his lap. He hadn’t touched his pills. I wanted to say that it was alright, that it wasn’t his fault. I felt sorry for Dad. He got blamed for everything, unless it was my fault, and even then he always stepped in and rescued me. Dad was staring at the butter dish. By the time I’d worked out exactly what I wanted to say, he was talking again.

  ‘I might be doing a story for The Times.’

  ‘When was the last time we had a holiday?’ Mum asked.

  I knew the answer to that. ‘Before Georgie was born,’ I said. I was going to add that Mum had been to Whitley Bay with Uncle Eddie for the night, but I didn’t get a chance.

  ‘Exactly.’ Mum was still looking at Dad as if he had answered her. ‘Think about the girls. It’s a great opportunity for them.’

  ‘Can we leave it, please?’

  Mum got up and started clearing plates off the table and stacking them beside the sink. Over the clattering she said, ‘This isn’t just your decision.’

  ‘What’s wrong with this house?’

  Mum looked like she was on the verge of tears when she turned around. Her hands were clutching at the edge of the sink behind her. ‘I’m so tired,’ she said. I thought she was going to go on, but she just stood there with her mouth open.

  I decided not to say anything, but I was thinking I would like to see a koala bear and a kangaroo. I’d been reading about Australian animals in that book Uncle Eddie had bought me: tree frogs with gold marks on their foreheads, poisonous red-back spiders, flying fruit bats, giant worms. And then there was the fact that I’d promised Uncle Eddie. We’d spat and shaken on it.

  ‘What about school?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Moni’s already a year ahead.’

  ‘Maybe next year. We could save up.’

  ‘Can’t you see what’s happening?’ Mum was really upset now. She had turned back round to the sink and kept banging the plates into the drying rack so that they slammed against each other. Georgie didn’t like the way Mum was going on, so she bum-shuffled over to the fish tank and pressed her face right up against the glass. Usually that calmed her down. Dad stood up, balancing himself against the table. For a while he didn’t say anything, and then he whispered, ‘We can’t accept this kind of money.’

  I knew it wouldn’t be long before he gave in.

  I think about all this as I’m sitting by the mineshaft. A small light flickers at the corner of my eye and won’t go away. My head is pounding. Georgie isn’t grateful for my cap or my cardigan. She’s making a racket down there, giving me a right headache. As I stand up, my legs collapse. It takes three attempts before I can stay upright. Sitting for so long in this heat without my hat has made me dizzy. The ripples of sun dancing in front of me make everything look skew-whiff. Before I leave, I tell Georgie I am going to fetch a rope. I don’t say goodbye; I just head off, picking my way back through the bush, trying not to fall. It’s not easy. The rocks keep jumping up, tripping me over, and the tight air clings to my skin. I can hardly breathe. Hot and cold and white shivery. My head burns and swims and feels as if at any minute it might turn into a jumbo jet and just fly off.

  Finally I reach the tarmac of the service station. I start looking for a piece of rope. I get so mad and knotted up inside, I can’t see straight. Then I throw up on the heap of tyres at the edge of the scrub. Flies swarm in on my sick and I throw up again. After that my legs melt away and all the lights go out.

  It is already dark when I hear Dad’s voice and realise I’m in the caravan. He lifts up my head, giving me sips of water, and asks me where Georgie is. I’m covered with cold wet towels. ‘Is she with Mum?’ He tells me not to worry, says I’ll be alright. He doesn’t know. Every time I try to speak, the words slip off my tongue. Dad presses a damp sponge against my face. The water runs into my eyes, wets my hair and dribbles down my chin. ‘Keep drinking,’ he says.

  His voice gets farther away and the strip light flashes on and off. I can’t seem to keep my eyes open. Maybe I’m sleeping, although my head is still awake. Orange rain. My glass body full of tiny blue birds. Rainbow fish with fingers and toes. And Georgie shrinking and shrinking until she disappears. Like magic.

  More voices. ‘I thought she was with you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you check?’

  Someone shakes me. There is a sharp pain in my shoulders. When I open my eyes, Mum’s face is red and twisted. She pulls me up. Then she throws me back down onto the cushions and shouts: ‘Where’s Georgie?’ My mouth has crusted over. ‘Moni!’ she screams. When I manage to sit up, I force myself to talk and all the bits and pieces of the day spill out in the wrong order until finally I get to say, ‘We were playing hide and seek.’ Mum traps the air in her mouth with both hands. Dad puts on his boots and rummages through the drawer for a torch. I carry on. ‘She’s got my cap.’ I tell the bit about the mineshaft and how I was trying to find a rope. I don’t get to the part where I was sick because Mum tilts her head back and lets out a wailing sound which leaves the air shuddering. When the air finally stills, she says to Dad, ‘Let’s go. Georgie hates being in the dark.’ She says the last bit to herself. It’s true, Georgie does hate the dark; she has to sleep with the glow-light on. Mum doesn’t need to yank my arm like that though. Dad never hurts me, even when he’s cross.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Dad says, stepping in between me and Mum. ‘She can’t go out like that.’ As he looks at me, draped in the towels, his face cracks.

  Mum persists. ‘How do you expect to find her? There are hundreds of shafts. We can’t afford to waste time. She’s been out there for hours.’

  I sling on my water bottle. Dad doesn’t stop me. His hands are shaking as he helps me off the cushions.

  ‘Can you stand?’ he asks softly. ‘Take it steady. I can always carry you.’ He turns to Mum and says, ‘You’d better call the doctor. I’ll take Eddie with me. One of us should stay here, just in case.’

  As Dad closes the caravan door behind us, the kettle starts whistling.

  Outside, the night air prickles my skin. Dad holds my hand as we walk towards the pumps. With a few deep breaths, the fog in my head clears. I can see a whole range of stars. At the carwash buckets, Dad says, ‘Wait here. I won’t be long.’ He presses his hand against my forehead before he runs over to Uncle Eddie’s house for a rope. I feel strange; it’s like my arms and legs aren’t in the right place and my head has slipped off to one side. For a while I think I’m going to be sick again. I bend over and keep breathing until eventually the sickness sinks back down. Then I straighten up and count stars for a while, which makes me feel better.

  There are hundreds of stars. This sky is bigger than the sky in England. In my space book it says that stars are suns; each one is different. They are not all white, even though they look white. Vega in Lyra, for example, is steely blue. And the Australian sky has different star constellations from the English sky. Australia hasn’t got the Plough or the Hunting Dogs. They’ve got the Kite and the Jewel Box instead. I find the Kite, but I can’t find the Jewel Box.

  Dad returns with a rope slung over his shoulder. Uncle Eddie is right behind him, adjusting the beam on his torch. ‘Alright, Monica?’ He points his torch right in my face, blinding me. I ask him if he can show me the Jewel Box. He switches off the torch and looks up at the sky, but Dad says ‘Let’s go’ and marches on, flashing his own torch ahead of us. Uncle Eddie and I have to run to keep up with him as he speeds across the road and starts tramping through the bush.

  ‘What were you doing? You know this area is out of bounds.’ Uncle Eddie catch
es his leg against some scrub grass as he speaks to me, interrupting himself to curse out loud.

  ‘Hide and seek. I told Georgie not to leave the service station.’

  ‘I’d say she’s won the game at this point.’

  Dad stops for a second, bending down to study my face. He tells Uncle Eddie to give me a piggy-back while he goes on ahead. It’s not so easy to find the mineshaft, but I keep pointing forwards. Somehow I remember. Somehow I just know which way to go. And then I don’t.

  ‘We’re going round in circles. Are you sure this is right?’ Uncle Eddie twists his head round to look at me. His face loses its shape in the dark and his teeth shine like fish eyes.

  I tell him I want to get down. It feels as if there is something punching behind my forehead. Uncle Eddie sets me on the ground and Dad clutches my face in his hands and says ‘Don’t worry, love. You’re doing fine. We just need to find that shaft. Can you remember what you were looking at when you came back? Were the petrol pumps on this side or that side?’

  I tell him how it was: the cars looking matchbox size, the distant outline of the pumps, the way I could hardly see the caravan. Even in the dark, the service station stands out, like the edge of a shadow, darker than the starlit sky. That helps. We head across the scrub, to the right, and I find the spot where the picture of the service station fits into place. Uncle Eddie walks back, just in case we’ve already missed the hole, and me and Dad go on together, holding hands. We nearly fall into the mineshaft.

  ‘That’s it!’ I yell, pointing at the dark hole in the ground.

  Dad calls back to Uncle Eddie before he drops onto his hands and knees. He slings the rope on the ground beside him and pulls away what is left of the rotten wood, shining his torch inside the hole.

  I found it! My heart races, beating in my mouth, in my ears, underneath my t-shirt. I want to let out a huge cry that would curve in the sky like a giant rainbow. But then my heart stops. The hole is empty.

  ‘Maybe she climbed out,’ I suggest, half-expecting to see Georgie standing beside me when I look round. Uncle Eddie is coming towards us.

  Dad says, ‘Are you sure this is the one? They’re all the same.’ But as he spins the beam of the torch around the bottom of the hole again, I catch sight of a piece of orange cardigan. I point down to the sleeve of wool that somehow disappears into the side of the hole.

  Uncle Eddie is breathing fast as he crouches beside me. His body touches mine. The skin on his arm is warm and hairy; it tickles. I move closer to Dad.

  ‘She must have gone down a tunnel,’ Uncle Eddie announces, when he finally catches his breath. ‘It’s a rabbit warren round here.’

  ‘You didn’t say anything about tunnels,’ Dad’s voice breaks up, crackling like the ones on the radio.

  ‘It’s a mine. What do you expect?’ Uncle Eddie wipes his nose on the back of his hand as he takes another look down the shaft, swirling the torch beam around the hole with his other hand. ‘She can’t be far away.’

  ‘Geoooooooorgie!’ I shout. Uncle Eddie stops talking and looks at me. I call again and again; Dad and Uncle Eddie join in. Then we listen, holding our breath; we wait for a reply. We walk from shaft to shaft. Uncle Eddie hauls the lids off, Dad shines his torch down, we all shout. The shafts are everywhere and each one looks the same as the one before.

  The sky is pale pink when Dad carries me back to the caravan. Through half-closed eyes, I can see three galahs balanced on the telegraph wires, waiting for their morning feed. My body is so heavy with tiredness, it has sunk right into Dad’s chest; I can’t tell whether the heartbeat thumping between us is his or mine.

  Dad lays me down on the cushions in the caravan and covers me with the crochet blanket. He watches as I drink a glass of water, then he sinks down on the edge of the double bed next to Mum at the other end of the caravan. Mum is sitting straight-backed, staring out of the window; Georgie’s red clogs are nestled in her lap. The cigarette lodged between her fingers has burnt to ash. Dad removes it carefully, throwing it into the sink. He hates smoking. He once said to Mum that she gave herself away by smoking, whatever that meant. All of a sudden she springs to life.

  ‘Where is she? Has the doctor arrived?’

  ‘It’ll be easier to find her with some light.’

  Mum opens and closes her mouth just like Georgie does, and then she stops blinking.

  ‘She’s in one of the tunnels,’ Dad says.

  Mum is about to say something but then stops mid-breath. She starts trembling and gasps for air as if she is trying to breathe under water. ‘It was over ninety degrees yesterday.’ She watches Dad change the batteries in the torch. ‘What if…?’ She doesn’t manage to finish.

  ‘She’s smarter than we think. You’ve always said that.’ Dad attempts to give me a smile before he leaves.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I say, sitting up too quickly, catching my shoulder on the flip-down table.

  Mum looks up from fastening her sandals and stares at me for a second. I swing my legs down underneath the table and press my feet against the floor. My shoulder aches and tingles, but the rest of me feels numb. I can’t tell whether my feet have stopped at the floor or are still sinking down. Although Mum is only a few steps away, she might as well be on the other side of the world.

  ‘Get some sleep,’ she growls. ‘You’ve done enough already.’ She slams the door shut and runs to catch up with Dad.

  I listen to the drone of the fan and let my eyes rest on the crisscross pattern of the curtains. Everyone else must be sleeping. They have no idea all this is going on. In my mind I am packing up so that when Mum and Dad get back with Georgie, we can go straight home. I carry on staring at the crisscross pattern until the lines start touching each other. My water bottle feels heavy; the strap presses into my shoulder, but I can’t seem to move.

  It’s hard to say how long it is before the engines start up, drivers’ voices and radio songs spilling out of the open truck windows. The air floods with petrol fumes. I try to picture our house in England: the postcards of animals on my bedroom wall, the wooden banisters, my books, Georgie’s green rocking chair. I try to wish everything back to normal. All I can see is part of the curtain that hides the bulk of Red Rock Mountain.

  I get out my notebook and write a page and a half for yesterday and half a page for today, making a pencil sketch of my orange cardigan in the margin of the last page: just the cardigan, hanging there on its own. And then I see clearly all the mineshafts filling up with water and Georgie flapping like a fish. She is calling me. For a moment I feel as if I’m floating. Her open mouth sucks me in and I am diving down a long dark hole. I didn’t mean to, I tell her. It wasn’t my fault. I keep falling, can’t stop; I try to catch the water as I go but the drops slip through my fingers, and I see faces, hundreds of lost faces behind a glass door, begging me to let them out. I have the key. I can feel it in my pocket. If I open the door, we’ll all drown. Don’t open it. The key has a life of its own. One two three four five pink pills, not pink but grey and pink, flying down my throat. Will someone feed those birds?

  Uncle Eddie lifts me off the caravan floor and talks to me as he carries me across the sunny tarmac, past the petrol pumps, through the service station shop and into his sitting room. In my head I see Mr M doing his magic trick where he stands so still he turns into a tree, and no matter where you look, you can’t find him. The tree and Mr M are the same: tall, crooked, and lonely. I have never noticed that before.

  When I open my eyes, Uncle Eddie is taking off my boots and socks. ‘What were you doing on the floor? I’ve got enough to worry about without you playing dead. That’s a charmer of a bruise on your cheek.’ He lays me on the settee and tucks a jumper underneath my head for a pillow.

  Georgie! I point to the model of Akarula on the coffee table. Uncle Eddie can’t see her. She is walking in between the buildings, so small she fits through the tiny doors of the cinema Uncle Eddie will build for Dad in a year or two.

  The do
ctor examines me. Her hair is cut close and she is dressed in the dry browns of the bush. Not pretty, though her eyes sparkle behind her gold-rimmed glasses and she smiles all the time.

  She tells Uncle Eddie that I’m out of the worst. ‘A bad dose of sunstroke. Keep her hydrated. Plenty of rest, plenty of fluids. If her temperature goes up again, give her a cold bath, and if you’re still worried, have her flown out to the hospital.’ When she’s put everything back in her bag, she pulls a boiled sweet from her trouser pocket and presses it into my hand. ‘A bit of sugar to perk you up.’ She winks at me. I like this doctor better than our English doctor. Doctor Sutton’s breath used to smell of cheese mould and his hands were always cold.

  I tell the doctor about Georgie being stuck in the cinema until Uncle Eddie butts in. ‘I don’t think Susan’s got time to hear about that now.’

  The doctor is about to speak when Uncle Eddie steers her out of the room, stepping into the hall after her.

  As he closes the door, she says ‘I didn’t know you had a niece.’

  Uncle Eddie’s voice isn’t so clear. He says something about being full of surprises and if only. I get up and accidentally lean on the door handle and it clicks open a little. Although they are whispering, I hear every word. Uncle Eddie tells the doctor about Georgie. She says she already knows. She says, ‘What did they say about the others?’

  ‘I haven’t told them yet.’

  ‘You haven’t told them? What are you waiting for?’

  ‘It’s bad enough already.’

  The doctor coughs before she says, ‘We both know it’s going to get a lot worse. They have to understand what they’re up against. You have to tell them before someone else does.’

  ‘What are they up against?’

  ‘Eddie…’