Dust

by Christine Bongers

  Mr Blinco cut short the conversation with a sharp crank of the door. My stomach lurched as he clunked the bus into gear.

  Mum looked as though she wasn’t sure which bit to say no to first.

  ‘A sleepover? At the pub? That’s no place for a young girl –’

  ‘Hayley Harris is a young girl! And the pub’ll be shut by the time we get home from the dance –’

  ‘What! You’re not staying out that late –’

  ‘– and Sean will look after us. He’s sixteen –’

  ‘You’re not going out with a sixteen-year-old!’

  ‘No, He doesn’t want to go out with me, he’s in a band. I’m going out with his sister –’

  ‘– in a band!’ Mum had heard enough. ‘No, no, NO!’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No buts. You are not going anywhere near that pub, let alone having a sleepover there; you are not going out with any sixteen-year-old boy, no matter who his sister is. And if you want to go to the Jambin dance, your father and I will take you. And that’s final!’

  From where I was standing that looked like a win.

  ‘Thanks, Mum. I’ll just let Hayley know I can go.’

  Mum looked as though her end of the conversation had taken a wrong turn somewhere, but she wasn’t sure if it was possible to back out now.

  I twirled the telephone handle and was about to ask for the Jambin Pub when I heard voices on the line.

  ‘Ooops, sorry Mrs Rademaker.’ Must have missed the ding on the party line that let us know when one of the neighbours was on the phone.

  ‘That’s all right, dear. We’ll be finished soon. By the way, how’s your mum?’

  ‘Good thanks. She and Dad are taking me to the Jambin dance next Saturday night.’

  Best to get the news out to as many people as possible. Make it that much harder for Mum and Dad to get out of it.

  ‘Really, dear? Well, I’m glad to hear she’s feeling up to it.’

  I said goodbye and hung up, wondering at the sudden interest in my mother’s health. Then a short ding dismissed the thought from my mind.

  Hayley Harris, here I come.

  chapter 15

  A smooth-faced stranger stared back at me from the car window.

  Mum had plaited my hair so tightly, my eyebrows had migrated to higher ground.

  I wore mustard paisley, an old dress of Mum’s, rejigged for the night with white puffed sleeves and a snowy bodice crisscrossed with paisley shoestring ties.

  Big Hairs and Punk sported razor-sharp square cuts in the back seat. I sat in the front with Dad, mesmerised by the smoke rings that punctuated his warnings against gallivanting around outside in the dark.

  Mum had stayed home with the little boys, exhausted after a week of arguments over Hayley Harris. But she had drawn her line in the sand and was prepared to defend it unto death.

  The pub was out of bounds and would be until the day I turned twenty-one.

  If I stopped badgering them about it, Dad might take me to a dance on the last Saturday of each month, but that was as close as I was ever going to get to Hayley Harris outside of school hours.

  Begging, pleading and sulking had achieved nothing, except a threat that my first dance would be my last if I kept it up. But tonight none of that mattered.

  The old hall bristled with sound and light.

  We pulled into its shadow at the end of a long line of cars. The panel van next to us spilled out a lanky body crowned by a fall of shiny blond hair. A long-necked beer tipped up and around and I caught the bob of an Adam’s apple in a stubbly neck. Its owner straightened and tipped the bottle in our direction.

  ‘Ev-en-ing, folks.’

  Dad nodded, and marched us up the front stairs and into the entry room. Bodies buffeted us as he paid for tickets. I recognised the odd face, but there was hardly anyone from church at all.

  An old bloke pranced about up on stage, slicing into a violin. Next to him, the piano accordionist could hardly reach his keys past the paunch that ballooned out across his lap. An ashtray like Dad’s spun like a toy on a stand, rattling at his elbow and leaking tendrils of smoke into the air.

  I recognised the lady playing piano at the same time as Punk.

  ‘Omygod. It’s Mrs Beavis.’

  Our church organist had traded her tweed suit for a floaty kaftan in peacock blue. She finished the song with a flourish and launched straight into a tune that I instantly recognised.

  ‘That’s the Pride of Erin.’ I grabbed Dad’s hand. ‘Come on. We did it at school.’

  Mothers and daughters, mothers and sons and a few spritely nanas crowded our stately turn around the dance floor.

  ‘Where are all the dads?’

  Mine looked a little lonely out here on his own, nodding at neighbours’ wives and at Mrs Beavis, beaming down from the stage.

  ‘Probably down the pub. Won’t be able to move down here once the session shuts at ten.’

  Dad didn’t really drink. Apart from the odd stubby of beer at Christmas time. He’d put it in the fridge with a spoon wedged in its neck, so it didn’t go too flat before he finished it the next day.

  The music segued into an up-tempo beat. The Progressive Barn Dance. ‘Off you go.’ He twirled me onto a smiling nana with a crop of white hairs sprouting from her chin.

  Mrs Rademaker and Punk cut in front.

  ‘Excuse me, Mrs Rademaker, I really don’t think he wants to dance with me next.’

  ‘You’d be surprised, dear. Better the devil you know.’ She winked and twirled away, leaving me in Punk’s hands.

  ‘You all right?’

  He surprised me by moving deftly through the steps. ‘Yeah, must’ve learned more in dancing lessons last term than I thought.’

  He passed me onto Mr Sykes, who was bright-eyed and happy, telling me he’d had a fine old time, blowing the froth off a few coldies and tellin’ a few lies. He laughed at the dusty print I left on his shiny shoe and I was sorry when the song ended and he escorted me back to Dad.

  ‘Have you seen Hayley Harris?’

  I craned on tippy-toes over his shoulder. He shook his head, trying to listen to what Mrs Rademaker was telling him about the last P&C meeting.

  ‘I’m going to go find her.’

  ‘OK, but stay inside.’

  ‘Looking for someone?’

  The hot breath in my ear spun me round, flicking my plait at the embroidered front of Morrie Kapernicky’s shirt.

  He fake staggered on the back stairs, a hand clapped to his chest.

  ‘Ouch. Got me in the heart.’

  The press-studs of his cowboy shirt hung open down his chest, pulling against the lean hardness of his rib cage and belly. His sleeves were rolled above strong tanned forearms; blond hair glistened in the light of a single bulb set high above the back door. He smiled, up-ending a tall bottle of beer into his mouth, his eyes pale and shiny.

  I’d drawn a blank with the toilet block and there weren’t too many more places to look for Hayley. Now Morrie Kapernicky blocked my way back up the stairs.

  ‘Excuse me please.’

  He moved with me as I tried to step round him, one way then the other.

  ‘Oh, so you want to dance?’

  I didn’t. I just wanted to get back inside.

  The steps shuddered and Morrie Kapernicky’s eyes slid off me.

  The woman coming down was built like a leather lounge, with smooth, tanned flesh puckered by black button eyes and a tiny pursed mouth. A bundle of looped black hair curled like a sleeping cat on the crocheted throw-over that ponchoed across the plump cushions of her front.

  ‘What are you doing here, Lila?’

  The button eyes looked uncertain. ‘I thought you might like some company. We haven’t been out for so long.’

  Her voice was tiny, breathy like a little girl’s, lending her a vulnerability at odds with her size.

  He smiled. ‘It’s a dance, Lila. There’s plenty of company inside. You should be home with your
girls.’

  His eyes were as empty and clueless as a summer sky.

  Her soft face squished as if crushed by an unseen blow. ‘Your dad said he’d look after them. He said to go –’

  The sight of her face crumpling was too much for me. I knew who she was and had to escape. ‘Excuse me, please.’

  I tried to push past her soft bulk, warm yet surprisingly unyielding against my bony frame.

  A sudden fright flickered in my chest at being swamped by Kapernickys.

  ‘I have to go. Let me past. Please –’

  ‘Get out of her way, Morrie. She needs to come back inside.’

  Morrie Kapernicky turned, creating a space I could squeeze through.

  The planes of my father’s face looked harsh in the fluorescent glare of the doorway.

  ‘I thought I told you to stay inside.’

  ‘I was looking for Hayley Harris –’

  ‘Your brother found your friend – she’s in the supper room.’

  He motioned with his head, his eyes on Morrie Kapernicky.

  Morrie smiled and tilted a long-necked beer in my direction.

  ‘Your girl’s the spit out of her mother’s mouth, Billy. Best keep her close, while you still can.’

  Dad’s hand tightened against the small of my back as he pushed me back into the crush in the hall.

  The supper room sat off to one side, lined with trestle tables that were littered with sandwich trays and cups of tea.

  Hayley Harris laughed in a corner at the furthest end, surrounded by older boys that I recognised as past pupils of Jambin State School.

  Her legs crossed above white lace-up knee-boots, and a tiny purple miniskirt hugged her hips below a matching jerkin and a fine white shirt that glistened under the fluoros.

  Her eyebrows hadn’t been yanked onto the crown of her head; her auburn hair flowed against purple and white, adding colour and movement to the dull, flat walls. Her laughing voice pulsed at me in the breaks in the music.

  ‘…my brother’s rock band … Aztec Bronze … couldn’t believe a violin … plays electric guitar and –’

  Without drawing breath, she waved me over.

  I perched on an end of the bench, lost in the dazzle, the noise and the laughter.

  No-one took much notice of me in my mustard paisley, my puffed sleeves and long socks. Not with Hayley Harris looking like she’d stepped straight from the pages of an Archie comic after raiding the wardrobe of the spoilt and fabulous Veronica Lodge.

  Morrie Kapernicky spun past the doorway, a flash of blonde hair cradled against his chest.

  I glimpsed spiky lashes and white fingernails from an Alpine cigarette ad before they disappeared, sucked into the hungry belly of the crowd.

  The thought of Mrs Kapernicky’s crumpling face, back there on the stairs, sucked the air right out of the night. It lost its appeal, like a fizzy drink that had gone flat and tepid in the heat.

  Then the chattering and laughter at our table died around me.

  Dad stood in the doorway looking lost, hands in the pockets of his good church trousers.

  I remembered that he hated to dance, so I stood, waved at Hayley and led him out the door.

  The darkness rushed past the car window, reflecting back my sharp cheekbones, snaking braid and stubborn jaw. All angles and edges, like Punk’s new box of set squares.

  The boys argued in the back about who’d bat first at tomorrow’s match against Thangool. The window glass cooled my heated cheek.

  ‘Hayley Harris had white knee-boots.’

  ‘I saw that.’ He surprised me; Dad wasn’t normally one to notice anything that didn’t relate directly to weather, soil, crops or machinery. ‘She looked like a marching girl.’

  I gave him a withering look, but he just grinned and blew air out between his lips, like a horse.

  ‘Redhead. Urky.’

  I’d forgotten about his thing with red hair. Must be a Dutch thing. Like never ever getting cricket, no matter how many times we tried to explain it.

  ‘Mob of flaming idiots,’ he reckoned, ‘standing around in the hot sun, doing nothing.’

  I secretly agreed. We made a good pair, the only ones in the family that couldn’t bat, couldn’t bowl, couldn’t catch.

  The dark glass reflected my thoughts. Of Morrie Kapernicky. His wife’s crumpling face. Janeen, with her head down, trying to disappear. Aileen striding through life, full of aggro, firing up and striking out.

  I couldn’t picture them as a family; imagined Aileen and Morrie ricocheting off each other in that tiny house, while the other two lay low, dodging the shrapnel.

  Dad glanced over. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Why’d you have to leave Holland?’

  The words slipped out without warning. Followed by a fierce relief. I didn’t want it eating at me any longer. I needed to know.

  He eased off the accelerator as the HR hit the last bend before home. Punk’s crowing over Hairs’ golden duck the week before was met with a smacking thump and even louder bickering from the back.

  ‘I didn’t have to leave. I wanted –’ He hesitated as he knocked the car down a gear and swung it off the bitumen and into our drive. The word ‘more’ rumbled through the crunch of the gravel.

  The boys opened the door as we pulled up, diving out without missing a beat of their argument. I waited. I wanted more too.

  He turned off the car and stared hard at a sky bristling with stars.

  ‘When I was your age, my father was dead and war was coming.’

  The whirring of cicadas swelled and died.

  ‘I watched my older brother hide in our roof for four years, so the German army wouldn’t take him to fight.’

  That didn’t make sense. ‘You were Dutch. Why would the German army take him?’

  He was silent for a moment. ‘Read your history books. The Netherlands capitulated; our war was over in five days. Hitler bombed Rotterdam and killed forty thousand people. So the government let him march across our land so he wouldn’t destroy it all.’

  A gust of air came out of him from somewhere deep and old.

  ‘He destroyed it anyway. Left the place in famine. When it was over, people started leaving the old country. Leaving the past behind. Looking for a fresh start. I was young. Thought I could make a new life. Make my fortune.’

  He caught his breath and turned it into a laugh; ran a hand over his slick head.

  ‘Still hope I can.’ He turned to face me. ‘So what do you think of that for a story?’

  I opened the door, let in the light. We’d been in the dark for too long. I decided to tell him what I really thought. About him. And his stories.

  ‘I think you have made a new life. Here with Mum. With us. That’s why you can’t go back.’

  I got out and slammed the door.

  Aileen Kapernicky didn’t know what she was talking about.

  My dad wasn’t the one with anything to hide.

  chapter 16

  ‘How was the dance?’

  Mum shook the beaters free of drips and plonked the jug of freshly rehydrated powdered milk on the table. I snatched at the new McDonnell and East catalogue open on the bench beside her and slid onto a cracked vinyl chair.

  ‘It was OK.’ Something leapt out from the colourful pages. ‘Hey, they’ve sent you the wrong one. This is all maternity wear.’

  The tick of the kitchen clock grew louder. Mum had gone still. The moment stretched taut as she reached out and started rubbing at a clean spot on the bench.

  Heat spread up my neck. Mum and Dad were both in their forties – they were just about the oldest parents at school. And they already had six kids.

  ‘Oh God, you’re not going to tell anyone, are you?’

  Mum tossed the rag back in the sink and folded her arms.

  ‘It’s not something we’ll be able to keep secret for much longer. I’m nearly five months gone. Doctor kept telling me not to worry, said it was the change of life. Then I waited to see i
f everything would be OK …’

  My forehead smacked onto this season’s hot smocks for the expectant mum. ‘Omygod. Six brothers. I’ll go crazy.’

  ‘It might be a girl.’ There was a hint of wistfulness in her voice. ‘We’re due for another girl, don’t you think?’

  ‘Overdue. Way overdue.’ I lifted my head, a sudden hope thumping in my chest.

  No more being the only hot pants on a line full of KingGees. The only one crying in Born Free when Elsa is returned to the wild. The only one voting for Sleeping Beauty on Disney’s Wonderful World when the footy’s on the other channel.

  No more standing on the outside looking in, wondering at the strange alien world of sisters. Wondering what it would be like to have one, to be one to another girl; to have back-up against the boys; a refuge from the endless boydom of our lives.

  Mum leaned over, putting the Weet-Bix on the table. Her breath was soft in my hair. The thought came so clearly, I wondered if it was spoken aloud.

  I hope it’s a girl. For your sake.

  Spiders scuttled back in between the weatherboards as I stowed the Mac&East catalogue safely in a corner of the dunny with the fly-spotted copies of The Queensland Grain Grower and Queensland Country Life.

  I heard the boys, even before I hit the back steps.

  ‘Can I have two? With bacon? And a sausage?’

  I stepped round Mum divvying up eggs and reached for the Weet-Bix. ‘Anna Simone.’

  Mum had Lick’s egg hovering on a flipper, a tantalising inch above his plate. ‘Who?’

  ‘Anna Simone. That’s what we should call the new baby.’

  ‘What new baby?’ Punk’s fork froze in mid-air.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’ It was a bit early for Lick. He was still waiting for his egg to drop.

  ‘Are you having a baby?’ Punk rammed eggs into his mouth. ‘Another one?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mum slapped the metal eggflip onto Lick’s plate, waking him up big-time.

  ‘I am. Another one. Is that all right with everyone?’

  We snuck looks around the table then buried our faces in our food.