Those Faraday Girls

by Monica McInerney

  CHAPTER NINE

  Sadie stepped on the scales, gave a whoop and stepped off again. Beside her, Maggie stood in her stockinged feet watching, her large dark eyes the image of Clementine’s. She was wearing a red corduroy dress and a red knitted cardigan with a blue flower on the pocket. Sadie thought she looked like a particularly sweet pixie. The new haircut added to it, the dark strands a spiky halo around her head. Her sticky-out ears also added to the effect. Sadie loved Maggie’s ears. Miranda had remarked earlier that week – out of Clementine’s hearing, of course – that if Maggie’s ears got any bigger she’d be able to fly across Bass Strait on her own. ‘It’s evolution at work, isn’t it?’ she’d said, looking down at Maggie sitting on her lap, taking her ears between her fingers and making them stick out even more. They had all laughed as the light from behind shone through them, making it look as though Maggie did indeed have magical glowing ears. Maggie had laughed too.

  ‘Clap your hands, Maggie,’ Sadie said. ‘I’ve lost another two pounds.’

  Maggie clapped her hands, lost her balance and fell onto the scales. ‘Ow,’ she said.

  Sadie picked her up and looked down at the scales again. ‘Look, that’s what you and I weigh.’

  ‘We weigh.’

  ‘Good girl! We weigh! Are you the cleverest girl in the world? Yes, you are.’ She hopped off and put Maggie on the scales on her own. ‘See, that’s how much you weigh. The perfect weight, because you are the perfect girl, aren’t you?’

  There was a noise at the front door. ‘The postie’s been. Come on, Maggie. The postie.’

  Maggie ran to the door and picked up the mail. ‘Five letters,’ she said.

  ‘So there are. Good girl. Thank you.’ She leafed through and handed a circular back to Maggie. ‘This one’s for you, Maggie. It’s from the Queen. She says she wants you to be the Princess of Tasmania and she’s going to build you a castle to live in.’

  Maggie took it and appeared to be studying the letter – a catalogue for seedlings – very carefully. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Sadie left mail for Leo, Miranda and Clementine in the basket on the hall table. In the living room, she took out some blocks for Maggie to play with – she ignored them and kept reading her seedling catalogue – and opened her own letter. A formal white envelope with the University of Tasmania letterhead. An equally formal letter inside. Sadie scanned it first, then read it again more slowly.

  It was a personal letter from her tutor, expressing concern at her non-attendance at lectures that semester. ‘Please telephone me at your convenience to discuss this further,’ the tutor finished.

  A form letter, Sadie decided. There had been none of that formal language when she had called the tutor several months earlier and explained she was going to take time off to mind Maggie each day.

  The tutor hadn’t been happy.

  No one seemed to understand. It wasn’t a hardship. She loved it, in fact. The secret truth was Sadie felt far more at ease being at home with Maggie than she ever had sitting in a lecture theatre, trying to find hidden meaning in novels that had already been pored over by hundreds of thousands of students through the years.

  Perhaps it would be different if she’d had a thirst for specific knowledge. But she didn’t. She’d signed up to an arts course because it looked like a good excuse to do a lot of reading for three years. Her fellow students were fired up with ideas for careers afterwards. When Sadie looked beyond her graduation day, all she saw was fog.

  Offering to look after Maggie had been a spur of the moment decision. Part of her had offered simply because she was dreading writing a 6000 word essay the following month on the First World War poets. The surprise had been discovering how much she loved staying at home looking after Maggie.

  ‘So much for women’s lib,’ Miranda had retorted when Sadie made the mistake of trying to explain it. ‘Women all over the world burning their bras, and you, Sadie Faraday, at the forefront of modern womanhood, with a lifetime of learning stretching out in front of you, throw up your arms, throw in the towel and say, “No thanks, I don’t want a brain, I want to graduate in Pram Pushing, modules one, two and three.”’

  ‘You’re letting other women down by saying those things,’ Sadie replied hotly. ‘Women’s liberation is about giving us the choice to work or be educated, opening up new paths.’

  ‘Exactly. New paths. Not old ways.’ Miranda leaned down to where Maggie was playing on the coloured mat in the middle of the floor. ‘Nothing against you, Maggie. You know that I truly believe you are the most enchanting child ever to have been born, but you really should start lifting your game in regard to life skills. Can you change a tyre yet, for instance? Mix a martini?’

  Sadie leaned down and picked Maggie up. ‘Don’t listen to her, Maggie. She’s a bad influence.’

  ‘I’m a bad influence? You’re the one who waits on her hand and foot. Clementine doesn’t even do that and she’s her real mother, not some pretend stand-in like you.’

  ‘How dare you.’

  ‘How dare I what?’

  ‘Talk to me like that, especially in front of Maggie.’

  Miranda rolled her eyes. ‘Two facts, Sadie. Number one, Maggie wouldn’t understand if I called you a whore of Babylon. Number two, you’re not Maggie’s mother. It’s Clementine who is the important person in her life.’

  ‘She spends just as much time with me as she does with Clementine.’

  ‘You’re not getting this, are you? Clementine is her mother, Sadie. You are her babysitter. Keep it in perspective.’ Miranda glanced down at the elegant gold watch on her wrist. ‘I’m late. I’d better get going.’

  ‘Where are you going this time?’

  ‘Out to talk to people taller than two feet about subjects more fascinating than kittens, building blocks, colours and numbers. Like you should occasionally.’

  Sadie scanned the letter again, then put it back into the envelope, folded it in two and pushed it deep into the pocket of her jeans. The tutor didn’t care if Sadie came back to lectures or finished her degree. It was all about making his attendance records look good. And besides, she could go back and study any time. For now, it was better for everyone if she continued as she was.

  Sadie knew she was doing a good job. Clementine had said as much the previous night. She’d come in late, after a field trip to the east coast, rushing through the door, calling to Sadie as she threw down her coat and bag. ‘I’m so sorry, Sadie, we got held up. I’ll get her dinner ready now.’

  She’d walked into the kitchen and found a freshly bathed Maggie on Sadie’s lap. Maggie held out her arms. ‘Mummy. Mummy.’

  Clementine had scooped her up, given her a kiss and held her tight. ‘Poor Maggie. I’m so sorry. What kind of a mother am I?’ She stopped, taking in the sight of the dinner dishes already washed and draining on the sink. ‘Have you done it already?’

  ‘Dinner done, bath done, nappy changed, story read.’

  To her amazement, Clementine’s eyes filled with tears. ‘What would I do without you?’

  ‘Take Maggie everywhere with you?’

  ‘I’m serious, Sadie. You don’t know how much this means to me. It’s like the best of both worlds, and I couldn’t do it without you. Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Maggie echoed.

  Clementine sat down opposite Sadie, holding Maggie on her lap. ‘Is it still working out for you as well? Are you managing to get to all the lectures you need to? And your essays? I haven’t seen you writing anything for weeks.’

  ‘I’m writing them when I’m in at the university,’ Sadie lied, ‘while I’m still in study mode.’

  ‘So you’re happy to continue looking after her? Really?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sadie said. ‘We have fun together, Maggie, don’t we?’

  She put out her arms towards her niece. Maggie turned around and nuzzled into Clementine’s neck. Clementine kissed her.

  ‘Want me to hold her while you get your dinner?’ Sadie had
asked. She’d been surprised by the sudden spike of hurt. Of course Maggie would want to stay with Clementine. She hadn’t seen her all day.

  Clementine had shaken her head, standing up and lifting Maggie up into the air, then down, up and down, to Maggie’s giggling delight. ‘No, I’m not hungry yet. We’ll go and have a play in the garden together. Come on, Maggie. Come and tell me everything you did today.’

  Sadie decided to put that moment from yesterday out of her head. She had her niece to herself today, after all. She sat down next to Maggie and her blocks, and handed her a red one. ‘We’re perfectly happy as we are, aren’t we, Maggie? We get on great together. And who needs silly old university when I’ve got you to play with?’

  Maggie reached up and pulled at Sadie’s nose. ‘Sadie.’ The word was crystal clear.

  Sadie beamed at her. ‘That’s right, I’m Sadie. Good girl, Maggie. You’re my gorgeous, clever little girl.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  By the time Maggie was four, Sadie was looking after her five days a week. The hours had increased three months after Maggie’s third birthday. Clementine had been offered a position in a research team cataloguing the bird life on Maria Island, off the east coast of Tasmania. It wasn’t a small project, either, but a long-term ecological study.

  Clementine was very excited about it. Sadie had tuned out after a while, getting lost in the details of wind-stream effects and nesting habits. It was Clementine’s final remark that seized her attention.

  ‘I’m going to have to put Maggie into a kindergarten full-time. I can’t ask you to increase your hours, Sadie. I don’t know how you’re managing to get any study done as it is.’

  ‘Put Maggie into a kindergarten? Don’t be mad. I’ll talk to my lecturer again. I’d love to look after Maggie some more.’

  ‘Oh, Sadie, are you sure? I feel like I’m asking too much of you as it is, but this project —’ her face lit up, ‘it’s like a dream come true.’

  ‘I’m one hundred per cent sure,’ Sadie said. ‘You can’t turn down an opportunity like this.’

  ‘You’re positive, Sadie?’ Leo asked her when they were alone in the kitchen washing up after dinner.

  ‘It just makes sense, Dad. And I enjoy it.’

  ‘Good girl. Your mother would be very proud of you too.’

  What Clementine didn’t know – what none of them knew – was Sadie hadn’t been anywhere near the university in months. She’d telephoned her tutor and invented a long story about Maggie not being well, an unusual strain of childhood measles, she thought. A quarantine situation, just for a few months. If the tutor had sounded sceptical, Sadie did her best to ignore it.

  She’d also changed the hours of her part-time house-cleaning job. She’d answered an ad in the paper two months earlier, after tiring of always being short of cash. Leo now gave her an allowance in exchange for looking after Maggie, as well as waiving her board, but what with buying little treats for Maggie as often as she could, she needed to earn some more. The house owners didn’t mind when she did the work, as long as it got done. When Clementine was home looking after Maggie, Sadie did the cleaning. And if Clementine assumed Sadie was at her lectures those times, there wasn’t much Sadie could do about it.

  Lately, Sadie had been reading up on the importance of social interaction between preschool children. Contact with other children a few mornings a week was ideal, according to one article. Flicking through the piles of newspapers in the library one afternoon, she found a copy of the weekly newspaper for Sorell, a small town twenty-five kilometres east of Hobart. An ad in the back pages caught her eye: Calling at-home mothers – is your child five and under? Are you looking for a break in your routine? Like to chat with other mothers?

  Sadie had rung the number from a phone box later that day. A friendly woman answered and bombarded her with information. It was a casual set-up, for company and advice, and especially to give their children the opportunity to play with others the same age.

  ‘Our first meeting is on Friday. Why not come along? Here’s the address.’ The woman on the phone kept chatting. ‘So we’ll see you and your daughter soon! Sally, is it? And Maddie, aged four. I’ll write that down now. Great, looking forward to meeting you!’

  She’d hung up before Sadie had the opportunity to explain that it was Sadie, not Sally, and that Maggie, not Maddie, was her niece, not her daughter. There wasn’t the chance to explain when she arrived at the woman’s house in Sorell two days later either. She pulled up in Leo’s car right on ten o’clock, just as three other cars arrived. The mothers of Sorell were punctual. Maggie was shy at first, clinging to Sadie, until another little girl around the same age held out a small battered doll and Maggie just as silently took it. Five minutes later the two of them were engrossed in a game of make-believe while Sadie fell into easy conversation with the other mothers. It was such a relief to hear that their children were also fussy eaters, that they didn’t always go to sleep at the right time. No one asked Sadie where she lived, what she did for a living or even if she was married. All the focus was on the children, with a side order of talk about TV shows and fashion.

  She told Clementine most of what had happened. That she’d started taking Maggie to a weekly playgroup. That she seemed to enjoy it.

  ‘Are the other children good fun, Maggie?’ Clementine asked, smoothing Maggie’s hair over her ears. Sadie’s fingers itched to un-smooth it. She loved the way Maggie’s ears stuck out through her hair.

  Maggie took a deep breath and told Clementine everything that had happened that day. ‘We went in the car and then another lady got there too and she had a little girl with her and there was a blue doll so I had that and then the boy hit it so we put it in the tree then we had apples and came home.’

  Clementine and Sadie shared a laugh. Sadie intended to tell her that the group was in Sorell, and that the other mothers had made the embarrassing mistake that Maggie was her daughter, not her niece, and not only that but they insisted on calling them Sally and Maddie, not Sadie and Maggie, but the opportunity passed. In the same way that the moment passed to correct everyone in the group as well. She’d decided it was easier to leave things as they were.

  She’d only just managed to get away with Maggie calling her Sadie. She told them it was Maggie’s best attempt at saying Sally. She also told them Maddie sometimes called herself Maggie. It was so funny the way children mixed up letters, wasn’t it? she said, before telling them that Maddie also called her grandfather Tadpole. It was the closest she’d been able to get to saying Grandpa.

  ‘Tadpole? How gorgeous,’ one of the women replied. ‘But you don’t mind Maddie calling you by your name, instead of Mummy?’

  ‘No, I think it’s sweet,’ Sadie said.

  ‘Oh, I’d hate it,’ another woman joined in. ‘I love hearing my daughter say Mummy. Tell you what, here’s my number. Why don’t you and Maddie drop down to us one weekend? Or what about you give me your address. We’re up and down to Hobart quite often, we could drop in on you.’

  The woman wouldn’t take no for an answer. Sadie had no choice. She wrote down a false address and phone number. She changed the subject. She also decided not to go back to that group again.

  She took Maggie out on other day trips during the week instead, to the outer reaches of the city, sometimes even to towns an hour or two’s drive from Hobart. She checked with Clementine first, of course. Sadie loved those trips. She and Maggie would make up songs as they drove. All of Maggie’s songs were about cats. She’d just learnt to rhyme and specialised in a song about the cat and the rat and the mat, sung to a tune a little too much like ‘Jingle Bells’. Sadie often found herself humming it throughout the day.

  They drove to many of the beaches around Hobart, collecting shells some days, writing numbers on the sand on other days, or lying sunbaking, having picnics and reading books if the weather was warm. On cooler days, Sadie took Maggie to the library or to shopping centres. She saw other mothers dragging squawking chil
dren down supermarket aisles and marvelled once more at Maggie’s wonderful temperament. She started bringing the family camera with her. Clementine was grateful when Sadie gave her a packet of photos, souvenirs of all the places she and Maggie had been to that month.

  That gave Sadie the idea. She decided to put together a special gift for Clementine. A Maggie scrapbook, just like the scrapbooks their mother used to keep.

  It was a fun project. She started working on it while Maggie was watching TV or having a daytime nap. It would be a whole collection of different things, she decided. Snapshots of Maggie’s life.

  She started with a photograph of Maggie’s favourite toy, Red Monkey, perched up on the back verandah, with the garden behind. It looked like he had climbed there. Maggie had firm ideas about her toys’ names. As well as Red Monkey, she had Brown Bear, Orange Lion and Green Turtle. Her choice of names had an effect on the whole family for a while. ‘Has anyone seen the red tablecloth?’ ‘Who moved my blue leather bag?’

  ‘We’ve all got adjectivitis,’ Leo had said.

  She devoted two pages to Maggie’s love of dressing up. It had reached an obsession in the past year. She’d gone through a Goldilocks stage (six weeks), a Little Miss Muffet stage (eight weeks) and a superhero stage (five weeks), each one characterised by constant reading of stories about each character, night after night, combined with the wearing of clothes as close to those in the books. Fortunately she lost interest in each one not too long after Sadie or Clementine tired of the same story each night.

  Sadie sprinkled notable dates and events from Maggie’s life throughout the pages of the scrapbook. She already knew her birth date, of course. She casually asked Clementine and her sisters questions until she was certain of the dates of Maggie’s first tooth, first step and first words. She wrote down the dates Maggie had the chickenpox. She wrote about the day Maggie broke her left wrist, when she fell off the ladder Leo had left leaning against the plum tree. She wore a plaster cast for six weeks and didn’t cry when it was cut off. It was still in the cupboard in her and Clementine’s bedroom. Sadie slipped in one afternoon, cut off a tiny sliver and stuck that in the scrapbook too.