by Susan Tarr
“At the lockup. And I remember Mummy called Bella a slut.” He had a flashback of his gentle aproned mother in her fiercely ordered domain, before Bella came.
Jack seemed to give it good thought. Eventually he said, “Well, son, there’s many kinds of slut, as I know it, but I need a bit more to go on. Best sit yourself down and tell me the story.”
So he told Jack about his recollection of that day in his parents’ front bedroom across the passage from the sitting room. About the brown wedding photo of his mother wearing a long creamy dress, his father in a suit, tall and strong with his black hat on, standing next to her. On the mantelpiece above the sealed-off-fire was the framed photo of him as a baby, sitting on a blanket holding a ball.
Fixed in his mind was a particular memory of his father, who held a pipe in his hand, which he did not light until he had finished discussing some issue or other with his wife. He maintained a purposeful grip, forefinger curled around the bowl, stem poised a foot or so from his mouth. He wore a creased collarless shirt. His manner was careful, somewhat distant – this was a conversation he must have had often.
When he spoke this time his gaze sometimes moved from his wife’s face to his son’s as though to more precisely evoke his wife’s condition or to watch for the boy’s reaction. He put his hand gently on his son’s shoulder, an unusual gesture for him those days, and walked him outside and along the few yards to the end of their garden where the section continued with swathes of buttercups, like a bright yellow picnic cloth.
They stood side by side while his father lit his pipe, at last. Malcolm, with the adaptability of his years, accepted this strange little feast of affection as the new normal.
He told Jack he’d realised something was different with his mother; she was more often mounded with fluffy eiderdowns and she rarely got out of bed. He had never for one moment thought of her as having a ‘condition’ and at the same time accepted she was different. Like when his father wrapped her in a blanket and set her down in the armchair next to the fire to read stories to him. Once upon a time there was a little prince…
With his father, he’d once collected pinecones in coal sacks and stacked them in the back of the woodshed where the black woolly spiders spun their webs. On cold nights he’d toss cones into the fire, making them spark, or watch his father snap branches across his knee. His father was a strong man who rarely raised his voice or belted him as most fathers did with their children. Yet he was uneasy, and he couldn’t reason why things abruptly changed around his sixth birthday. A space began to open out between his father and him, and between his father and his mother. Their little family was now hard-edged; he experienced it as a lonely sensation that made him feel somehow guilty.
He was with his father, feeding the fire’s never-ending appetite.
“Don’t sit too close,” he was warned. “You’ll burn your knees. Move back, boy. I said, move back!”
Whack!
Less now his father nursed his mother before the fire while she cried quietly against his shoulder. The boy watching him stroke her hair and nuzzle her neck, heard the whisper of soft words meant only for her to hear. She had become a ghostly figure, a gaunt and gentle sprite with sparse tousled brown hair, who drifted about the house as she now drifted through his childhood, sometimes communicative, sometimes sad or crying; always affectionate.
She could be heard at any hour of the day or night fumbling through the house, bumping into furniture or doorjambs, pausing to stand and stare into her kitchen. Some days she would be found pottering about in her garden or perhaps standing dead still in the centre of the narrow lawn. Or painting water colours – smeared scenes of church spires and verdant countryside. But she never washed her brushes or finished a canvas and her nightie was dotted here and there with daubs of softly-hued or strident paints. Sometimes she spent days cutting pictures out of books, gluing them into a scrapbook with messages added beneath in her tight and tiny writing. She wandered slowly about the house, with discarded paper clippings and canvases everywhere underfoot. Paste or paintbrushes hardened where she left them on chairs or windowsills.
He often heard her murmur to herself as she cut a particularly sentimental picture from a book, say a family of four, or two little boys playing on a slide or see-saw, or merry-go-round, happy together. “There, there, there,” she might say.
It never occurred to him to question if she was happy. She certainly had her times of anxiety when her breath came in quick snatches and her thin arms rose and fell and all her attention was fixed on a specific need she must immediately take care of. His nails were too long. She must sew name labels into his new school clothes. His ears needed cleaning.
She would fuss ineffectually, hugging him to her, brushing his hair with her fine hairbrush, kissing his face or doing all together, storing up these affections ahead of time, before drifting into a deep sleep.
Sundays his father took him to the store to buy ha’penny ice creams and acid drops for his mother.
Bella arrived with her suitcases on a Sunday. She was his cousin from far away. She sat on the other side of the room popping bubblegum, scowling behind the adults’ backs as his father nursed his mother on his knee, the bigger family eating ice creams.
He watched Bella.
Bella shook her head slowly and rolled her eyes when no adult was looking to indicate she thought him weak in his head.
When his father gently sat his mother in her armchair by the fire, Malcolm went to her side, unspoken questions on the tip of his tongue.
“Are you happy, my darling boy?” she would ask instead. “Are you truly happy?”
“Of course I’m happy.”
And his mother held him too tight.
Less and less she came out to the fire. He’d visit her dimly-lit bedroom and snuggle up beside her.
“Night-night, son,” she’d say. “Be a good boy. Sweet dreams, then.”
In the sitting room, his father leaned over to light Bella’s cigarette. Bella tilted her frizzy head back and drew on it with her bright red lips, coating lipstick on the butt. Bella always chewed gum, sulked, sang pop songs, flooded the washhouse, slammed doors, hung out washing, smoked, made noise.
In the morning she was in the kitchen making lumpy porridge and burning toast.
He dressed, ate breakfast, cleaned his teeth and went back to his mother’s bedroom to draw stick men on the windowpanes. Sometimes he huffed on the glass to erase a mistake; three arms, or one big boot, like his. He learned to write his name, M… in big letters. It was his writing exercise. A, B, C in big letters and a, b, c in little letters.
Then he pulled his small square suitcase onto his mother’s bed and checked it ready for school.
“Slut,” Mummy hissed to no one else there. The tone in her voice snatched his attention. Yes, she was crying again, but until now she’d never sounded angry. And she wasn’t yelling. She was talking low.
“Mummy?” he whispered, so his father didn’t hear.
Whack!
“Go to your room, boy. Now!” He’d heard all right! Daddy with the big ears: Daddy who was always cross now, who wouldn’t help him do his reading or writing, or walk him down the long stairs to the garden shed to get pinecones when it was dark.
“You’re old enough. Go on your own,” he would say.
As Malcolm passed by with his suitcase pressed against his chest, his father lammed another whack into his shoulder. He winced. He knew enough not to cry. His father, who was a giant, who was an ogre…
His mother shrieked, “Leave him alone!”
Yes, he was old enough.
Things had changed…
He passed Bella’s bedroom, and since she was the one who’d upset his mother and since she was still in the kitchen noisily burning stuff, he kicked the door to her room. It creaked open and he held his breath tightly as he reached to shut the door before his father came along the passage.
He paused. Bella’s room smelled like his father on Frida
y nights, like ale and Swedish pipe tobacco. On her bed lay the package of Cadbury chocolate cream-filled eggs his father had brought home from the corner store, wrappers strewn on the floor. He’d been especially good lately, waiting for his father to share them. Bella didn’t share.
After school that day he sat crossly on his bed, rotating his shoulder to ease the ache from the morning’s wallop. His room was damp and chilly, so he pulled his knees up under his chin and huffed warm breath in them. His marble bag lay beside him with his favourite bull’s eye, his cat’s eye and the new shiner he’d won fair and square off Billy, though he said it was his best marble and Malcolm wasn’t getting it. They’d had a fight over it until a teacher came and grabbed them by the scruff of their jerseys and marched them off to the headmaster’s office. They sat there forever, waiting for punishment. When they got tired of waiting, they forgot why they were there. Billy and he snuck off and became best friends.
Behind the bus shed, Billy said, “Nah, you keep it. It’s not me best one. Me best one’s me spinner.”
His parents were fighting behind the wall. His father shouted. His mother spoke in a low voice as she said, “Get that slut out of my house. Do you think I’m deaf and blind as well?”
His father punched their bedroom wall with his fist so hard Malcolm expected it to come through into his room, right next to where the high-up picture hung on its nail.
“It’s my house!” his father yelled. “It would pay you to remember that! I choose who goes where!”
Malcolm eventually won the spinner and a lucky farthing off Billy. Marbles and farthings…
Words were stealing through the walls and under the door, but he didn’t hear the fighting any more because he was singing loudly, rolling his favourite marbles around in his hands with a glassy scritching. Singing at the top of his voice, “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly-”
His mother screamed real loud, “No! You can’t possibly mean that! Oh, no. Surely you wouldn’t.”
Malcolm stopped singing to listen hard. Big growly voice… Big growly voice…
His mother sobbed. “It’s out of the question, Colin. I simply won’t have it. He’ll stay right here. It’s his home, for pity’s sake.”
Then it was quiet, only gulps as she sucked air behind the paper wall.
Hot tears fell down his cheeks as he lined his lead soldiers in two rows, one row red and one row blue, hurling the marbles back and forth to kill the enemy…
“Mercy, Colin, I beg of you. He’s my only child. Surely he can stay until-”
His father cut his mother off with the deep voice he used often now, growly like a bear, like a tiger in the night. Marbles, spinners and tiger’s eyes. Bright and shiny colours, so smooth… Scritching…
“Get her out of here. Anywhere – get her out. We’re a family. Please. For the boy’s sake, please!”
Wham. Slam.
Inside the wardrobe the voices were closer, right behind the wall. He tugged the door shut and buried his head in his pillow, pulling it tight around his ears – can’t hear can’t hear can’t hear can’t hear…
Inside the wardrobe it was dark. Safe.
He hummed a little tune…
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider that wriggled and wiggled and tiggled inside her she swallowed the spider to catch the fly I don’t know why she swallowed a fly perhaps she’ll die
CHAPTER 25
Mr Brown the Rawleigh’s Man
Once upon a time…Mr Brown the Rawleigh’s man came up the front steps and through the front door to talk to his father. They walked into the front sitting room without speaking, and then closed the door behind them. They talked in quiet voices. The boy overheard that Mr Brown had come to take him away.
His mother came out from her bedroom and stood clutching the doorjamb. He went to her side and hid his face in her nightie, his arms wrapped tightly around her skinny legs. On and on she screamed when his father tried to pull them apart. He clung to his mother, his hair sodden with her tears.
Pulled this way and that, he bawled louder.
“I don’t want to go. I promise I’ll be better. I’m sorry, Daddy, I’ll be good. It was an accident!”
His father bundled him roughly down the stairs and thrust him into Mr Brown’s car, slamming the door. Then he walked back inside the house without a backward glance at his son who clawed at the car window, scrabbling on the glass, mouth stretched open and cries muffled by the noise of the motor.
Mr Brown lived in a tall white house way above the water in Portobello, with hundreds of steps to climb to the porch. His house was stuck high up the bushy hillside as if born there.
When he eventually stopped climbing, Mr Brown was puffing and blowing, his medicine suitcases banging against his legs.
“Never mind, lad. The steps will be good for you, make your leg strong. Take your time now. Easy, easy.”
He stumbled along behind the man’s bottom, wiping his eyes on the sleeve of his school jersey, letting out occasional wails of misery. Mr Brown carried his little square suitcase tucked under one arm.
“You can see Port Chalmers from up there. You wait until we get to the top. It’s a wonderful sight.”
Mrs Brown was happy, fat and round. Her kitchen smelled like Monday’s baking, like his home used to smell before Bella came and burnt stuff. Mrs Brown stopped what she was doing, wiped her hands on her pinny and came over to inspect their acquisition.
The boy’s head pounded. He was not hungry. He didn’t want to sit at the red table pushed right up to the glass and look at the wonderful sight.
Look at the water, lovie.
Look at Port Chalmers.
Look at the seagulls.
Look at the city.
Though he was upset he no longer made a sound. But he felt like he might throw up.
Off to bed in the attic room – more stairs – where he cried silently all night with his head beneath the feather pillow with the bits sticking out. He wasn’t sure when he stopped crying or even if he did, though it was still dark when he picked the last of the bits out of the pillow and hid them under the mattress. The pillow was no longer prickly, now it was flat. At daybreak he saw that it was a blue room, an old playroom, with a kind of alcove.
And still the tears flowed down his cheeks.
There was an old lady who swallowed a bird how absurd to swallow a bird she swallowed the bird to catch the spider she swallowed the spider to catch the fly I don’t know why she swallowed a fly perhaps she’ll die
One cold night he climbed down the stairs. He needed to pee. The dunny was out past the back porch through the hanging coats and lined-up gumboots. He crept through the kitchen where the grownups sat gazing out at the night view, with the rain dashing across the windowpanes. They drank tea and ate cake and talked quietly together.
It was never likely to be good when grownups talked quietly together.
“…quite mad…says she’s rambling…can’t have long…”
He stood there for a memorable few minutes before bursting out into the driving rain, along the narrow path to the dunny – the long-drop – the lavy – through bushes that grabbed at his pyjamas with dank branches. In the deserted garden tears dripped from the trees.
He climbed onto the wooden seat of the dunny to howl his eyes out. His mother wasn’t mad. He knew about mad from the boys in his street. They picked on him and said he was mad and made rude faces and stuff. He might well be mad but his mother was sick. Something was wrong in her tummy that made her bleed.
If one of the boys had said she was mad to him, he’d have been obliged to thrash him. His mother was very sick, and he could no longer fight this enormous truth. He began to accept that she had been sick for a long time, and that he’d always known.
Much later, still sitting there in the dunny, he listened to the sad call of the morepork. Did owls cry too? The storm was over but an angry wind continued to rage. While he waited in the dark, he counted how many sleeps
he’d had in the high-up attic room, where the branches of the tallest trees scratched at the windowpane all through the night.
Let me in, let me in, let me out, let me out…
It was more than a few weeks yet he’d not been sent to school. It was maybe a whole month. Maybe a year. He didn’t know. It was a long time. He had new pyjamas. It was safe in the dunny with the owl crying and the steady sound of rain pelting against the tin roof. Sitting in that dark place he watched until the sun came up.
There was an old lady who swallowed a cat fancy that to swallow a cat she swallowed the cat to catch the bird she swallowed the bird to catch the spider she swallowed the spider to catch the fly I don’t know why she swallowed a fly perhaps she’ll die
Mrs Brown made toast and porridge (without lumps) every morning. The grownups had more quiet grownup talk, when they thought he wasn’t listening. “…good job they have that lovely Bella. She’s his niece, I understand. I don’t know how the poor man would have coped without her, it being his second loss. And so close too. That poor mad woman. Poor, poor man…”
Mr Brown said something else but the boy couldn’t hear because he was crunching his toast so loudly. When he swallowed the last of it, Mrs Brown was saying, “…poor, dear wee soul.”
He scuttled off as fast as his gammy leg could scuttle, half-dragging, half-pulling himself along in his pyjamas as he clambered back up the narrow stairs, up to the attic. He hid beneath the cold covers on the bed. After a long time he started crying softly. His mother needed him. Not Bella. Not his father. Him.
Frantically, he looked around the attic. There was no wardrobe, no comforting small place so he crawled beneath his bed once again and lay cramped there in the cold dust. He pulled his flat pillow tight around his ears. He ignored the spiders that crept across his feet and up his pyjama legs.
He hummed a little tune.
Another day.
Another night.
He slept.
