The Precipice

by Virginia Duigan

  Eventually she was charged with neglect and the child, then a few years old – around five or six, Frank was vague – was taken into care. They were interstate at that stage, in Tasmania. Two years later, back in Sydney, the mother took up with an Iranian who wanted no truck with previous offspring. Pregnant again, she went to Queensland with him, where the trail petered out. Kim ended up in several more foster placements before Frank and Ellice took her in.

  ‘But before that happened, Thea,’ he said, ‘we had come up here, met you, and bought this amazing house.’

  I was finding the view from the windows quite startling after the dimness of the hovel. Almost hypnotic. Frank turned and looked at me. Possibly he had just registered something untoward about my demeanour, even if he didn’t know what it was. He seems to be a perceptive young man, or more than most, which is not saying much.

  ‘We thought, you know, she could come and live with us. There’s plenty of room. We could do it. We should do it. Ellie was really keen, probably more keen than me. So, yeah, we went ahead and bit the bullet.’

  He leant back contemplatively with both hands clasped behind his head. ‘Know something, Thea? D’you know what really made us do it?’

  He wanted a response, so I shook my head and said no, I had no idea what really made them do it. Men often tend to talk at you, I have found, but he clearly prefers a two-way conversation. By then I was hardly listening, however. I had no idea what was coming, not one speck of intuition.

  Frank said, ‘If we hadn’t found this house of yours, Kim wouldn’t be here now.’ His eyes rested on me. ‘This house was the catalyst.’

  I did not show any reaction. Or none that I was aware of. There was a pause. I put my mug down. He sighed, and looked faintly disappointed. ‘I hope you think we did the right thing.’

  There was no doubt it was the right thing to do, I said. It sounded abrupt. After a short silence in which I tried to gather my thoughts, I added, on impulse, ‘She seems a trifle solitary, though. Which is not in the least surprising, given her history.’

  The Wombat was not used to being looked after, Frank said. And not very interested in other kids her age. Had never related terribly well with them, or at least that was his feeling. The social worker they dealt with said being the new kid at school had become her default position. She never expected to stay anywhere very long.

  ‘I can see she loves animals. Perhaps you might think about getting her a dog. It would give her something of her own to look after.’ I hadn’t thought about this or planned to say it. It just came into my mind of its own accord.

  Frank put a hand on my arm. ‘Perhaps that’s an inspired idea, Thea.’

  He reached down and tickled Teddy on the head. His fingers were spatulate and flexible, I noticed, covered with wiry, ginger hair. I don’t normally go for ginger hair, but on him it’s not unappealing. ‘You’re double-jointed,’ I said, surprised.

  He laughed and put the tips of his fingers together. The end joints of fingers and thumbs bent backwards by more than ninety degrees. I was entranced. ‘My party trick,’ he said. ‘Never fails.’

  When Teddy and I got up to leave not long after that, he took my arm again and walked me back jauntily. At the door he planted a little kiss on my cheek. ‘That was cool. Any chance of a return date?’

  ‘Perhaps we might risk it,’ I said.

  ‘Hey. Same time next week?’

  The way Frank related it, the decision was made by him and Ellice alone. I wonder if the girl’s feelings on the matter were ever sought. It seems more likely that she was simply informed that her life was about to change again. Just told that this was to be her new home.

  My house was the catalyst.

  This sentence lingered in my mind for the rest of the day and into the evening. It was like getting an annoying tune on the brain. Or perhaps it was a haunting refrain, I’m not sure which. One or the other.

  I forgot to park in the new position, fatally, and she spotted me. She’d changed into after-school gear: rubber thongs and a singlet with skimpy shorts. It made her look even thinner but less childlike.

  I assumed the main attraction was Teddy. He had scrambled down the steps from his lookout post on the verandah, as he always does when he hears the car. She hung back while we greeted each other, then knelt down and squeezed him in a bear hug.

  I was nearly inside when I heard her say, ‘Um, excuse me? Ms Farmer. I’ve got some interesting information. To tell you. Do you want to hear it?’

  Somewhat jerky, and offhandedly posed, but I assumed the question was rhetorical. I wondered if I’d been right, initially, about her aunt’s pregnancy. With my newfound sensitivity I had decided against raising the subject with Frank. She was still on her knees, and had adopted the eager look Teddy used to have when he waited for his stick to be thrown. Endearing on him, irritating on her, although it turned out to be rather apt.

  I suppressed a sigh. ‘I think you’re going to tell me whether I like it or not. All right, out with it.’

  Then I had a twinge of conscience when she confided, with more animation than I’d imagined she possessed, that they were getting a puppy. Well, they might be going to. Wasn’t this amazing? They were really, probably getting one! Frank had said that I was responsible. It was my idea, right, and if it did happen she would always be incredibly grateful for ever.

  She is still on the diffident side, but now that she is a little more at ease with me she tends to lapse into speaking as she writes, in exclamation marks. I find myself mentally inserting them. On balance, I think I probably preferred the mumbling.

  A response was required. I returned to the verandah and dumped my bag with an ungracious thump. Really, probably getting one?

  She looked earnest and shifted, with an enviable suppleness, to a cross-legged position on the ground next to Teddy. Yeah, well, it might not actually happen, but that’s what they’d said. This morning at breakfast, you see, they’d said she could choose a puppy as a pre-birthday present. Her birthday wasn’t for six months actually, in fact it wasn’t until August. She was a Leo. August the tenth. A light stress on this piece of news.

  ‘I’ve no memory for dates,’ I said. ‘Never have had. Can’t remember my own birthday.’

  She looked sceptical. ‘But how do you know how old –’

  I cut this off. ‘So you’ll be having a second birthday halfway through the year. The real one. The Queen does the same thing. Her official birthday is a public holiday.’

  ‘The Queen? She has an official birthday? Like, a virtual one, as well as a real one?’ The notion grew on her, visibly. ‘Hey, what a brilliant idea. She gets two lots of presents, right?’

  I’ve always thought this was rather a dreadful idea, and I’m fairly sure the Queen agrees with me. It had to be exactly six months before your real one, or after it, I said, so that made hers this week, didn’t it? What kind of dog were they planning to get, I asked briskly, to move things along. Not a corgi like the Queen’s lot, I hoped. I’d never entirely seen the point of corgis.

  She shook her head. ‘Me neither. Not entirely.’ She said she had once lived with a golden Labrador for nearly a year, and since then she had always wanted a dog of her own. The Labrador was named Pippi, after Pippi Longstocking in the Astrid Lindgren books. Pippi had been five years old. She was brilliant, an awesomely perfect dog in every respect.

  I found this information rather mystifying. I said, without thinking, ‘You only had her for nearly a year?’ Had the dog died? Been run over? Then I recalled, with a jolt, what Frank had said about the various foster homes. She blinked and looked away, mouth compressed, forehead crumpled. I waited for a decent interval before asking again, more cautiously, what breed she had in mind.

  Not another golden Labrador, she said. It was better to make a fresh start, right? It might be hard on a young puppy, to have this memory of an ideal predecessor sort of hanging over its head. The new one might suffer in comparison, might always sense that it was
less than perfect.

  I agreed that this might well be a burden for a puppy. So if not a Labrador, then what?

  She brightened up. Teddy was a one-off. She could see he was like Pippi. Fab, totally. But perhaps to have another red cattle dog so close by might not be a good idea either, in another kind of way?

  She came to an abrupt halt and seemed to be debating something in her mind. I found myself suddenly disconcerted for no apparent reason. Almost apprehensive.

  Her face contorted in a grimace. She said in a rush, ‘Um, I was just sort of concerned, you know, that Teddy might be offended. I wondered if he – Teddy, I mean – if he might wonder if he was being – like, usurped, somehow. Or even worse than that. Replaced. Kind of, you know, in advance.’

  A look of alarm came and went swiftly, replaced by acute embarrassment. Her face flooded with colour. She buried her head in the fur ruff around Teddy’s collar.

  I couldn’t tell whether it was the idea itself, or the reference to the inevitable. I think she may have been shocked at her own temerity, the fact that she had alluded in my presence to the prospect of Teddy’s inevitable demise. The unthinkable prospect. And perhaps, by association, alluded to my own equally inevitable, if less inconceivable, demise.

  It certainly had the effect of knocking me for six. Before I could think of a suitable response she had jumped to her feet and was banging herself on the head with a balled fist.

  ‘Shit. Shit! That was a fucking, like a totally dumb thing to say. I’m really sorry, Ms Farmer, to be blathering on and everything and taking up your time.’

  And she was gone, slim olive-brown legs haring across to the other house.

  I felt deeply unsettled for the remainder of the afternoon, and annoyed for having been made to feel like this. Teddy sensed it and stayed around my feet. Every time I looked at him I felt a surge of unease. I saw her rush out of the house and ride off down the road on her bike, without looking in this direction. An hour or so later I heard the sound of their car and saw Ellice get out. Frank must have been in the house. Working, one assumes. What about keeping an eye on his niece and making sure she does her homework?

  It was acute of Sandy to say she was an interesting child. Also of interest, some of the words she uses. Usurped. Blathering on. They’re old-fashioned words, bookish, I suppose, as Sandy said. Typical of a bright child who is largely self-educated. No doubt her first language would have been Vietnamese. Books were a way of catching up.

  Her manner is rather awkward too. Tries to sound grown up, then lapses back into immature jargon. She seems more naive and less pseudo-sophisticated than most girls her age. That’s a relief. But it also means there is something unguarded about her, a vulnerability. Which is only to be expected with that messy, unstable background.

  What she said may have been tactless and clumsy, but it was well-intentioned. And sensitive in its way, I suppose. I cannot deny that. I suspect she was really talking about me and not about Teddy at all. Teddy might like to have another young cattle dog over there, but I’m not at all sure that I would like it.

  And why not? Sometimes my own reactions give me pause. They can be hard to explain away, even to myself. Verging on bloody-minded to a confused child, I suspect. I don’t recall ever having bothered myself with such questions during my teaching career. Should I have bothered?

  In retrospect, I think some people may have tried to tell me I was too aloof and unapproachable. Not my chummy young colleague, Mr Rhode. We were very simpatico, he said. I wasn’t too aloof and unapproachable with him. Not that he would have confided anything he didn’t wish me to know, I can see that now. Our growing friendship became a bulwark against the rest of the staff. I can also see that it was in his interests that I should be chums with him and no one else.

  If I had been more ‘approachable’ would it have made any difference to the outcome?

  I have always tended to feel that others, not this particular child necessarily but most people, are more of a piece than me. In the American self-help, psychobabble sense, they are more ‘together’. In my rarer rational moments I am perfectly aware that this belief has to be a snare and a delusion. One can see inside one’s own mind, perhaps regrettably, and people on the outside cannot, which is decidedly fortunate.

  And I should never forget that certain individuals are very adept at appearing together when they are nothing of the sort. Mr Matthew Rhode was particularly adept, and I was accused of being a bad judge of character because of that. But that was one lapse. Admittedly it was a terrible lapse, but should one be damned for a single, catastrophic mistake?

  ‘Now hear ye the drama,

  of poor old Ms Farmer.

  They gave her the heave ho,

  a ticket of leave ho!

  And filled the void,

  with schadenfreude.’

  Matthew Rhode was a special case. It was my misfortune that he happened to be at my school. Doubly unfortunate that I was responsible for appointing him, but I could not be blamed for that, surely? There was nothing untoward in his interview or his cv. Nothing to ring any alarm bells. No omens or portents of any kind.

  On the contrary, as I began to see his influence on the students and the results he was achieving, I was proud to have him on my staff. The insights he brought to teaching literature and the originality of his approach struck me as exemplary. To the extent that I think I came to see in him the dedicated teacher I might like to have been.

  What an admission that is. I have never made it before and I would make it nowhere else.

  This is an uncomfortable train of thought, I don’t know what brought it on. I am not given to bouts of introspection as a rule, and for good reason. But if I were losing the plot I would not have been capable of writing my last essay in that lucid way, would I? Although, according to Oscar, creative people are always mad. They are all basket cases to a greater or lesser degree.

  Ha. Embrace your inner loony, is what he says. Is that what I’m doing? One successful exercise and I’m putting myself in the creative basket?

  She does seem more comfortable with me since the trespassing conversation. I am unsure if this is anything to be pleased about. Or whether I have any attitude to it, for that matter.

  No doubt she is worried now that I have taken offence.

  There was a soft knock on the door. I knew who it was going to be. Teddy gave only one half-hearted growl. Even the knock sounded hesitant.

  I’d put the Sunday paper, dire as it is, on the table on the verandah and was in the kitchen about to deal with the shopping. I considered not answering, then reconsidered, taking into account some of my recent behaviour and the fact that she knew I was there. And her chequered history. Better not compound the deplorable.

  Ellice and Frank had gone down to Sydney for the day, to have lunch. (Yes, I’d observed them going off in the car.) She appeared to be about to say something, then bent down and stroked Teddy. She seemed a bit jumpy. I wonder if she is less self-sufficient than I thought. In which case they are very remiss in leaving her alone like this.

  She looked up, taking a deep breath. Would I, possibly, like to come and have a cup of tea? I could see it took an effort to ask the question. I could also see there was a lot hanging on the answer. I would be her guest in their house or she would be mine, here in the dump. The second option was preferable. I wasn’t ready for the alternative venue again, not quite this soon.

  ‘Tea sounds good,’ I said, ‘but I’ll make it because I have strong views on tea and it needs to be made in a teapot.’

  ‘We’ve got a teapot.’ She shifted from one leg to the other, blinking. Teddy was licking each foot in turn.

  ‘Come inside. And keep still, for goodness’ sake. You’ll drive Teddy mad, not to mention me.’

  ‘Sorry. Sure you don’t mind?’

  ‘I would have said if I minded.’

  She nodded sagely. ‘Yeah, I suppose you would.’ This was more conversational than offensive.

  I w
ent in and started unloading the bag while she hovered at my elbow. I rejected her tentative offer of help. There’s hardly room to swing a cat in this kitchen, if you had a cat to swing.

  She picked up on this, but misinterpreted it. ‘Other people always put things away in the wrong places. And they always make the tea wrong.’

  I thought these were acute remarks, for twelve years of age. ‘Or they don’t know where the tea is to begin with,’ I said. Not that there are a wealth of possibilities in this decidedly unstate-of-the-art kitchen. I saw her look intently around and spot the tea caddy, balanced on a pile of journals and paperbacks on top of the fridge. She handed it to me with a muted air of achievement.

  ‘You can go and inspect my bathroom library if you like,’ I said, ‘It will give me more room to move.’ I’d seen her eyeing the books. They’re visible from the kitchen though the open door.

  She went in with alacrity. The shelves between bath, loo and basin are packed and spilling over. A bathroom is not good for books, they’re falling apart with the damp, but where else can I put them? I can’t bring myself to throw them out. Sandy wouldn’t want them and neither would the Salvos, they’re too mildewy. I would have had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in my new study. I was planning to clean the books up a bit, put them in some kind of order. That will never happen now.

  When she heard the kettle whistling she trotted back. ‘It’s really cool how you don’t only have books in the lounge room. You have them in the kitchen and bathroom. And, like, everywhere else.’

  Like everywhere else meant piles of books on the floors. I remembered she hadn’t set foot inside the hovel before.

  ‘Well, books do furnish a room. That’s the title of rather a good novel you can read when you’re older, by Anthony Powell.’