‘We haven’t had a holiday for years,’ said Martin, feeling put-upon. ‘We’re really looking forward to it, Emily – it’s not often we get to go away.’
‘Put it on,’ urged Pete. He took the hat from her hands and jammed it on her head.
‘Pete, just calm down a bit.’ Martin leaned forward to look into her face. ‘Emily,’ he said, ‘you’ll be all right.’
Three
1
Emily walked, and mostly she noticed nothing. But one day a woman went past with a baby strapped to her front in a sling. The baby, whose head was still wobbly, used its arms to push back against its mother’s chest; it looked up into her face and smiled. Her baby used to do just that. She was just about that age when Emily went away.
Mahalia.
She slept and woke with the cat on her chest. Had she dreamt of her baby? It was the first thing she thought of each morning – nothing as definite as baby or Mahalia, or a particular image; it was more that there was a continuing presence that didn’t even need to be named.
One morning Charlotte came and sat beside her on the bed. In her hand she had something Emily had almost forgotten about: her logbook for learning to drive. ‘Your father sent it,’ said Charlotte. ‘He says you were almost ready to get your licence; that you probably only need a few more lessons before taking the test.’
Emily took the booklet and flipped through the pages that recorded all the places and conditions she’d driven in. It seemed such a long time ago.
‘Would you like to keep learning?’
‘Okay,’ said Emily, lying back against the pillow.
‘Would you rather go to a driving school, or would you like me to take you out?’
‘Would you?’ said Emily.
‘Of course. Do you have your permit with you?’
‘I think so.’ Emily took her wallet from the night table and looked inside. ‘It’s still here.’
‘Great. When do you want to start? Today?’
‘Would tomorrow be okay?’ Emily lay back and closed her eyes. She wanted time to get used to the idea.
The next morning, Charlotte stood beside her bed with a cup of tea in her hand, and Emily reluctantly hauled herself out, though it wasn’t early. It was painfully difficult to get dressed. Her grey tracksuit was cold and without comfort. More than anything, she would have liked to stay in bed and not think of a thing.
Emily tried to remember the routine. She checked that the mirrors were in position. She adjusted the seat, and put the key into the ignition.
Then she took off with the handbrake still on.
‘Should have reminded you,’ said Charlotte lightly.
‘No. I know all this.’
Emily was used to her father’s little old car, which smelt of leather and cracked varnish rather than brand-new plastic. She had begun driving when she was twelve. That was in the days when she was still happy to do things with her father. She remembered how he used to take her, illegally, on the dirt roads around her grandfather’s farm, not so many years ago. She loved being behind the wheel. She felt that the whole world belonged to her. Once, there was nothing Emily couldn’t do.
The thing about driving was, you needed to notice everything. The red car in front, the silver one behind. The woman with the stroller. The child in the flannelette shirt riding a bike and without a helmet. The old man with a stick. A border collie with a limp.
Who is here with us: Lots of people and animals I should try not to kill. Emily’s father used to push-start his old car sometimes. Run it down the hill and turn on the engine, hoping that it would catch.
Emily thought that if she could just push herself forward and pretend that she was operating okay, one day her engine would start up again.
2
Emily wanted to see Martin and Pete again before they went away. She knew that Martin had been losing patience with her. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he’d said to her, and she wanted to show him that she would be.
She tried on the mauve hat with the yellow flower, turning this way and that in front of the mirror. She decided that she liked it, but what she liked most of all was that Martin and Pete had given it to her. She bought them something she hoped they’d like, chocolates that were shaped like sea shells, all different shapes.
As she wrapped the box she remembered the real shells she had collected once, which now probably lay scattered on the ground near the van in the country where she and Matt had lived for a while, just before and after the baby had been born.
Emily finished wrapping the chocolates and stood up, restlessly. Putting the present into her bag, she walked, first of all to the lookout because walking helped settle her feeling of agitation. Then she went quickly to Martin’s place. The front door was shut, and she knocked, but there was no reply. Hearing a sound from the back yard, she went down the side of the house, calling out hello as she went.
Sleeping bags and towels festooned the clothesline, and a tent had been erected on the grass. Cat and Pete were crouched on the ground, rubbing away at something.
‘Hello,’ said Emily, and they looked up, so engrossed in what they were doing that they’d not noticed her.
‘We’re cleaning this!’ said Pete, indicating some sort of tarpaulin that was covered with soapy water.
‘Is Martin around?’ said Emily.
‘No, he’s gone to do something,’ said Cat. She looked up, and pushed hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. She hadn’t stood up to greet Emily, but squatted there barefoot, in shorts. There was sweat on her upper lip, making a beaded moustache.
Emily fingered the package that she’d stowed in her bag. She didn’t know what to do, whether to wait, or leave the present, or go without leaving it.
‘Can I help?’ she said.
‘Not really,’ said Cat distractedly, making it clear that she found Emily’s presence a bit of a trial. ‘We’re just trying to pack up to go away tomorrow.’
‘You could get us a drink!’ said Pete.
‘Okay.’ Emily dropped her bag onto the ground and went inside. Pete followed her, and they poured three glasses of juice and put them onto a tray, which Emily carried out. But in the yard, she stumbled, sending the glasses crashing onto the path.
‘Oh . . .’
She heard Cat say, urgently, ‘Pete, get away, you’ve got bare feet!’
‘I’m sorry . . . Look, I’ll . . .’
‘No. I will, you’ve done enough. Pete, keep away!’
Emily blindly scrabbled at the broken glass, cramming it into her fist.
‘Ow!’ Blood welled from the palm of her hand. She dropped the glass she’d collected and staunched the blood with the bottom of her shirt.
‘Mum! Emmy’s hurt herself.’
‘Oh! Now look what you’ve done.’
Emily closed her eyes and felt the thrill of the pain. She felt herself sway a little. For a moment there was only the blackness, and the pain in her hand. She opened her eyes and Cat and Pete were staring at her.
‘Show me!’ Cat reached out angrily to take hold of Emily’s hand.
‘No!’
She pulled away and held her hand defensively against her chest.
‘Oh, don’t be so stupid. Let me look.’
Emily backed away from her.
‘Emmy, here’s a teatowel.’ Pete had run into the house and emerged brandishing a cloth. Emily took it and wrapped it round her hand. She noticed her bag lying on the ground. Not looking at either Pete or Cat, she picked it up and said, ‘It’ll be all right. Look, I’ll just go now.’
She made her escape, walking the streets with her hand pressed into the teatowel. Passing a charity bin, she pulled the wrapped box of chocolates from her bag and pushed it into the slot.
‘How did you do that, Emily?’ asked Charlotte.
‘I broke a glass.
‘Round at Martin’s place,’ she added, though it hurt her to say his name.
Charlotte fetched iodine and sticking plaster, and
Emily held out her hand obediently for it to be dressed.
‘Are you too wounded for a driving lesson?’ When Emily didn’t reply, she said, ‘Oh, go on! It’s not that bad.’
The cut on Emily’s hand throbbed as she drove up and down meaningless streets.
‘Mind that dog!’
‘I didn’t see it.’ Emily screeched the car to a halt, but the dog had already skipped sideways, narrowly avoiding her.
‘Keep going,’ said Charlotte quietly.
‘It could have been a child,’ said Emily. She found that her legs were shaking; she barely had the strength to press the accelerator.
In the mountains, the weather was ever changeable. It blew hot and cold, was brilliant sunshine in the morning, grew misty in the middle of the day, and squalled with rain in the evening. Clouds drifted across the sky in shifting patterns.
When she was awake she had to keep moving, her feet pounding down the footpaths. One foot in front of the other. No thinking. Streets led into streets. She walked into shops, and out again. People spoke to her and she fled.
‘Girls are sharks.’
The man in the maroon jacket now wore a green T-shirt. He looked around, as though daring someone to challenge him. ‘Girls are sharks.’
She saw him one day while she was out driving, had to stop at a pedestrian crossing for him. She saw that he was silent that time, walking doggedly, staring at his feet, hands in pockets. She eased the car into movement, and she felt the power of it as it took off, sweeping down the street, leaving him behind. She watched the road, kept her eye on the mirrors, determined that nothing would surprise her again.
She walked to the edge of the town to her lookout, the one where she’d first seen Martin standing outside the safety fence. She thought how the town perched above the valley precipitously, too close to the sky and too far from the sea. She saw the yellow flowers gripping onto the rocks. She went past Martin’s place, but the front door was closed and the place looked abandoned. They had gone away. A child’s sneaker lay on the veranda upside down. She walked on. Flocks of black cockatoos screeched through the sky and landed heavily in the pine trees, making the branches shudder.
3
Emily found herself one day at the shops. They were full of Christmas things – wrapping paper and packaged mince pies and fruitcakes. Images of Santa were everywhere. She thought of her baby. She thought of Mahalia.
At the ATM she withdrew a small amount of money. To her astonishment, when she checked the slip, she had over three hundred dollars left in the account. She remembered Charlotte saying that her parents were giving her a small allowance. She hadn’t wanted their money, and hadn’t looked in her account for ages.
In a chainstore she flicked through racks of babies’ clothes: impossibly small jumpsuits covered with teddy bears or plain ones in pink, yellow, blue or white. Then there were slightly larger clothes in brighter colours – dark blue and red, or bright green. And bigger clothes still – little sundresses with ruffled hems, or baby-sized cargo pants. A feeling of panic gripped her, and she wiped a tear from her eye as she pushed her way out of the shop. She had absolutely no idea what size her baby would be now, or what would be suitable to get her. She didn’t even know of a way to even begin imagining it.
In a toyshop, she looked at blocks and musical trains and various dolls and toy animals and remote-control cars, and everything seemed increasingly unreal to her. What should she buy? Anything was suitable. Nothing was. Again, she walked out.
She was in an enclosed shopping centre and the walkways were crowded and confused. Voices and music assaulted her on all sides. Above it all she heard the high, piping sound of a bird. She thought at first that it was a part of the recorded music, but when she looked up she saw a sparrow perched on one of the lights. She watched as it took off, streaking swiftly under the ceiling, looking for a way out. Unsuccessful, it returned the way it had come, and sat on top of the light again.
Emily made her way to the toilets, where she sat hunched in a cubicle, staring at her feet. She tore a piece of toilet paper from the roll and used it to mop her eyes and blow her nose. The rough paper scratched her skin, and she searched in her pockets for a tissue, but found none.
She flushed the toilet and emerged to wash her hands. Wadded-up tissue paper clogged the basin, and swirled dismally as she ran the tap. ‘I hate you!’ yelled a child from one of the cubicles. ‘I hate you and I want my mum! I’ll tell her how you smacked me.’ Emily leaned against the basin and took a deep breath. She wiped her hands quickly on her pants and pushed her way through the door.
Out on the walkway again, she heard the plaintive sound of the bird, high above the voices and music. Emily felt dizzy. She looked for a way out.
She felt lost and helpless. Apart from not being able to picture her baby, she realised that she didn’t even know what day of the week it was – or what month. She tried to think of what town she was in, and again drew a blank. It was as though she had lost a part of her mind. She existed in a world where time and place meant nothing. And she was nothing.
She stumbled through the shopping centre until finally she came to a huge plate-glass door that opened wide as she approached. She made her escape, and her feet took her back to Charlotte’s place.
There she crawled into bed. It was a warm day, but Emily pulled the cover up over her head, and kept her hands up sheltering the front of her face, and cried.
She heard the back door slam, and Charlotte moving around in the kitchen. Then she sensed someone at the door of the room.
‘Emily?’
The side of the mattress dipped.
‘Emily . . . are you in there?’
Emily sniffed the tears into the back of her throat.
A hand reached out and pulled the cover gently away from her face. Emily turned.
‘Hey, what’s the matter?’
‘I’m having a really bad day . . .’
And then it all came out – about not knowing what to buy the baby for Christmas because of not knowing how big she’d be, down to the way her mind had even lost the basic knowledge of what day it was.
‘And do you think you know what day it is now?’
Emily swallowed some mucus. ‘Tuesday?’ she asked apprehensively. Charlotte smiled. ‘Correct. Come out to the kitchen and I’ll get you a drink.’
When Emily sat huddled at the table with a glass of apple juice in front of her, Charlotte said, gently, ‘Emily, you need help.’
‘Do you think I need to see a doctor?’
‘Probably. To tell you the truth, I feel so helpless with you sometimes. But you know what? A present for Mahalia, that I could help with.’
Together they sat there at the table and figured out what Mahalia would like for Christmas. ‘My children always loved toy animals,’ said Charlotte. ‘She’s about eleven months now, so she’ll be picking up things and holding them. She’ll be noticing animals, finding them quite exciting – real ones, that is – to touch, and pat. So a toy animal would go down really well.’
Emily looked past Charlotte’s shoulder, and thought about it. The exact perfect present came to her. ‘A horse,’ she said, nodding decisively. ‘I’ll get her a toy horse.’
A moment later she said, ‘Can we take the car down to the shops now to get it? I can drive.’
4
Emily lay under a lemon tree in Charlotte’s back yard. Charlotte was out, visiting one of her friends. Earlier on, she’d made a cake to take with her, and had left the bowl in the kitchen for Emily to lick. She seemed to think that Emily might enjoy this; Charlotte sometimes treated her like a child, Emily thought, and so she’d stubbornly left the bowl untouched. Instead, she’d gone out to lie in the back yard under the tree, where her vision was full of leaves and flowers and yellow fruit, and her hearing full of the sound of bees.
She’d bought a plush horse for Mahalia, silky smooth to pat like a real horse, and wrapped it in Christmas paper and sent it in a padded envelope. S
he’d not known what to write on the card; she knew that a horse was inadequate, that what the baby needed was her, and in the end she’d scrawled a hasty note, Thinking of you both heaps, which was intended for Matt as well, because she still didn’t know what to write to him. The problem of Matt was something else altogether.
Emily closed her eyes and felt something like contentment. For now, there was the scent of lemon and the bees. When her head was almost bursting with it all, she got to her feet and went to the kitchen where dreamily she licked out the bowl of chocolate mixture with her finger. She was so full of the scent of lemon blossom she imagined it must seep out from her skin. Alone in the house, she wandered about, feeling insubstantial, merely a scent, a shadow of the lemony essence of the tree.
The house was so full of Charlotte’s stuff, and so quiet, the cat sleeping weightily on the sofa, and the angel in a green dress with a posy of flowers, and the lovers forever levitating in the ecstasy of love.
The phone rang. Wanting to stop the sound that jangled through the house, she picked it up.
‘Hello? Hello? Is that you, Emily?’
And again. ‘Hello. Emily? This is Mum . . .’
Emily opened her mouth like a fish, and a bubble of lemon-scented air emerged, but nothing else. She walked backwards a few steps, as if to get away, but holding out the cordless receiver in front of her at arm’s length. She could hear a small voice coming from it. It sounded like one of the small buzzing insects that sometimes became trapped in bottles, or built nests behind the paintings. Cautiously, Emily put the receiver to her ear.
The voice on the other end had ceased, but the line was still open. ‘Hello,’ she whispered.
‘Hello?’ came her mother’s voice, softly. ‘Emily?’
‘Yes.’
‘How are you?’
‘I’m – I’m okay.’
Both of them were speaking so softly, it was almost as if the conversation was not taking place.
Little Wing Page 7
