The Last Summer of Ada Bloom

by Martine Murray

  He went outside and buried Bolshie. Then he went back into Tilly’s room. He was vaguely curious about Tilly’s piano lessons with Raff’s mum. He would wangle the full story out of her without letting on that he’d eavesdropped.

  ‘So, where did you get to this morning?’ he said.

  Tilly scowled. ‘Why do you care?’

  Ben was affronted. ‘Why are you so shitty? I didn’t do anything.’

  This was true. He hadn’t done anything to Tilly, but she always treated him as if he had. She looked at him in the same way Ada had, with confused suspicion, as if she was sure he had done something.

  ‘I just don’t feel like talking,’ she said. She was scribbling frenetically with her pen in a notebook. She was probably writing something secret in her diary. Ben wanted to find it out. He was bored.

  ‘Mum said you’re having piano lessons from Mrs Cavallo,’ he said.

  Tilly frowned. She stopped drawing and let out a long sigh. ‘Mum thinks I’m wasting my money.’

  ‘Mum’s just jealous.’ Ben hadn’t formed this idea before. It just arrived exactly when he needed it. He silently congratulated himself. It was an insight after all. Not only would Tilly appreciate him encouraging her, he was confident he had stumbled onto a real truth; women were like this.

  Tilly looked at him properly for the first time, astonished.

  ‘Me? Why would she be jealous of me?’

  ‘Maybe she wishes she’d learned piano.’ Ben shrugged. He wasn’t interested in examining the matter, but now that he had Tilly’s attention he could go where he had wanted to in the first place. ‘Anyway, who was there at the Cavallos’? There’s usually someone interesting hanging about. Did you see Raff? He missed the game on Saturday.’

  Tilly rolled her eyes. ‘Probably because he’s got better things to do. He’s got a girlfriend. She stayed the night.’

  This was what he was looking for. He had suspected something. Now it was his turn to feel envious. ‘Imagine Mum letting that happen,’ he said.

  So Raff Cavallo had an older girlfriend. Anyone else who had an older girlfriend would be boasting about it. Raff neither hid things nor showed them. He talked a lot, but always about something else, an opinion he had about a song, a news item he’d heard on the radio. He didn’t really talk about himself. Now, not only did he have an older girlfriend, but she had stayed the night. Ben knew what this meant. It meant Raff was going the whole way with a girl. And he wasn’t even bragging about it. Ben hadn’t yet had such luck, though he had gone further than Jimmy had, with Candy Newton, who had squeezed her legs tightly together but let him touch her everywhere else.

  ‘His mum’s pretty relaxed about all that stuff,’ he said, as if he was too.

  ‘I like his mum,’ Tilly said. Her voice was clipped, and she’d returned her gaze to her diary, shutting Ben out again. He couldn’t be bothered pressing any further. But as he turned to leave, he noticed that she was frowning and that there was a strange effort in the frown, as if a great wave of feeling would rush forward and break right through it. Was he meant to ask her if she was all right? He didn’t want anything to break now. Better to just leave her alone. Girls were not meant to be understood, just as nature couldn’t be beaten and Rubik’s cubes were not meant to be got out, unless you were a nerd.

  19

  Tilly was overwrought and not even sure why. Alice would know. Alice loved laying her finger on such agonies. There was Raff, there was the death of the chickens, and then there was Martha being mean and Ben being smug.

  It made Tilly feel wilfully disobedient. She went to Alice’s house without a word to Martha. Mr Layton had not returned home. It was a relief to have missed him. She liked him, and it was exhausting to try to be liked back. If he was there, she would have to transform into the sort of girl he would approve of, and who knew what that was? Well turned out? Full of manners, standing up straight? Or the exact opposite: poetic and bewildered, a revolutionary. She could so easily disappoint him. But so far he seemed to like her without her even having tried. And now she couldn’t be natural. She couldn’t tell Alice. What would Alice think if she knew Tilly wanted Mr Layton to love her like he loved Alice? Everyone knows this wouldn’t ever happen and that fathers didn’t love other people’s daughters, but that record had let a little hope spring that he would secretly barrack for her in life.

  What worried her even more was the affair. She hadn’t told Alice. It was too frightening to think of what could happen. If Alice knew, would she resent Tilly by association? Everything about Tilly—her home, her family, her lack of ambition—it all buckled into crumbling disorder when seen next to the good Layton family, and the sordidness of this affair would just heap more weight onto the rubble. If Mr Layton found out, would he see the infidelity committed by Tilly’s father as a contagion that infected her too?

  Tilly suggested Alice and she go for a walk. They didn’t go far, just down the side of the hill towards the valley where a dry creek bed twisted through a huddle of poplars. They sat in the shade, slapping at the mosquitoes on their ankles.

  Tilly lit a cigarette. ‘A fox got all our chickens. It killed them all. Poor Ada discovered them.’

  ‘Poor chickens,’ said Alice.

  ‘Yes, poor little ladies,’ said Tilly. ‘And I nearly cried when your dad gave me that record.’

  ‘Yeah. I saw that.’ Alice picked at a scab on her knuckle. ‘You’re such a baby.’

  That awful, telling rush of emotion had overtaken her before she could syphon it out some other way. It had showed her love not for Mr Layton but for Mr Layton’s kindness, or his attention to her, which fell into the depths and landed on a tender spot.

  ‘I was just embarrassed. I’m not used to presents.’

  ‘What about on your birthday? Christmas?’ Alice was incredulous.

  ‘Mum’s in charge of presents. I told you she always forgets my birthday. Remember when I was nine? I was so upset that no one remembered, I ran away and built a cubby and ate a whole box of shortbread creams that I pinched from the cupboard. When I finally went home she had gone to the chemist and bought me a hairbrush.’ Tilly whistled with false enthusiasm.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘And some lip balm,’ Tilly conceded

  ‘Lip balm?’ Alice snorted, ‘What’s wrong with your lips?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Alice put her hand though her hair and stretched. ‘That reminds me. My mum took me bra shopping,’ she said, popping her chest out. ‘We got one you’ll love. It’s got lace on it.’

  Tilly bit back her envy, which was not about the bra but that Alice’s mum took her shopping. ‘Anyway, the record your dad gave me, it was pretty cool actually,’ she said. ‘And it did make me want to learn piano. I’ve just been to Raff’s house and asked his mum about piano lessons.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s why the dress.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Why did Alice only just mention the dress now? Had she been too uncomfortable about it to bring it up earlier?

  ‘I mean that’s why you wore something special.’

  ‘Special? I got it at the op shop.’

  ‘Well, that was a good score. It’s nice. You look good in it.’ Alice smiled to show her sincerity.

  ‘Anyway’—now that it had come, Tilly swiped the compliment away—‘I met Daisy. She’s really interesting and she’s going to teach me piano. I’m excited. I mean, I’m sure I won’t be any good, but I’m excited anyway. Can you tell your dad, and say thank you to him for me?’

  ‘You will be good,’ Alice said, irritated. ‘You always say you’re bad at things, but you’re not.’

  But Tilly wasn’t being falsely modest. She hung her head on her knees. This wasn’t how she’d intended the conversation to go. ‘I don’t mean to do that,’ she said.

  ‘Well you do. You act like no one would like you too, but all the boys like you—it’s you who doesn’t like them. They all think you think you’re too good for them.’ Alice w
as on a roll now.

  ‘Who thinks that?’ said Tilly, aghast.

  ‘Well, Blake Armstead, for one. He’s nice. He’s good looking… Any other girl would be rapt if he asked her out. But he asks you out and you say no. Remember? And also Ted O’Brien. And Harvey what’s-his-name, the brainy one who lives near the station. And Harry—remember, he wrote you love letters and you didn’t even write back.’

  ‘I did write back, that’s not true. I just didn’t encourage him. You wouldn’t have either.’

  ‘But I have a boyfriend. You don’t. You say you want one, but you never say yes.’

  Tilly tugged at the grass. She stared out at the creek bed, where the copse of thin, speckled trunks was like pale, straining necks, strangled by the dark shade they cast. It wasn’t that she thought herself too good; Alice knew that. It was more that she just didn’t seem to like anyone who liked her.

  ‘I get an icky feeling. I told you that.’ It was a feeling that hovered somewhere between discomfort and repulsion and it came on when, for instance, Blake Armstead had tried to kiss her at the bus stop. Alice giggled and then shook her head. ‘You’ll grow out of that one day. I did.’ She blushed.

  Tilly took the cue. ‘So, how are things with Simon?’

  ‘Oh, my god. Amazing. Really, I’m like a lovebird.’ Alice launched into a description of her evenings with Simon: what music he played, how he had bought her a ticket to see the Pretenders, what things he said about her, how much further he wanted her to go. Should she? What did Tilly think?

  ‘I guess if you feel like it and you trust him.’

  ‘I do feel like it.’ Alice’s voice was hushed, her face alight with mystery. She twirled a lock of hair.

  This was terrifying. The time for sex had been approaching and now it was here, and Tilly was still stuck way back in the icky feelings. She had to catch up.

  ‘There is someone I like,’ she said.

  Alice looked doubtful. ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ Tilly said. ‘Raff Cavallo.’ She squeezed his name out as if it hurt to say it. Before Alice could respond, she added, ‘But he’s got a girlfriend. She’s older than him. And she stays the night. So it will never happen.’

  Alice didn’t laugh. Her eyes opened wide as if to accommodate the startling angle this came in on. ‘Raff Cavallo! Because he danced with you?’

  ‘No. Well, maybe that started it. Why is it weird?’ Tilly hugged her arms around her knees. Now that she’d said it, it seemed silly and childish. Alice might any minute burst out laughing, and they would both admit it was a terrible joke.

  But Alice didn’t laugh. She arched her eyebrows as if perplexed.

  ‘It’s not weird, Till. Well, it is weird, but good weird. I mean I can actually see why you might like him. Because he is hard to work out and he’s got those romantic eyes. He’s just…well, it’s just I can’t imagine him having a girlfriend, actually. I can’t imagine him making that much effort.’

  Before Tilly could even begin on her description of Sigrid, Alice flashed on the sudden insight. She lifted a finger and wiggled it. ‘No, I know why you like him. It’s because he’s got a girlfriend which means he’s not running after you. That’s what you like.’

  Tilly stubbed out her cigarette on the grass and lay down on her back. She was just as confused now as she had been before. She’d said it out loud because she wanted to put it out in the air and see it. She’d wanted Alice to heave a sigh laden with the tones of at last, now you understand us, now you feel something like we do, we, the-young-in-love-girls. This was what love was, feelings curling up and out of you, beautiful as flowers, blooming in joyous, secret skies.

  But Alice had poked a hole through the whole notion. Tilly only liked him because he didn’t like her. It wasn’t a real feeling. It was a trick of Tilly’s mind, a habitual, strangling twist.

  But real feelings had erupted in her body while they had danced and when she had seen him again. And she hadn’t stopped thinking about him. She could see his face clearly with her mind’s eye, and she felt some magic had enabled it, and this had to be love’s magic. Life, in that moment, was palpable, brilliant and deep enough to cause rapture. There was a potential there that she hadn’t noticed before.

  And she couldn’t even tell if it was she who chose Raff, or if the feeling had just chosen her. Maybe it wasn’t a boyfriend she wanted, maybe it was just that everything conspired to make her think it was.

  Alice felt her dismay; her eyes were bright with sympathy and in an appeasing gust of generosity she leaned over, put her hand on Tilly’s. ‘Till, if you want him, I’m sure he will want you too. Boys always do.’

  Tilly pedalled home towards the trouble that she would cop from Martha for leaving again. She didn’t care about that trouble; she was more interested in thinking about Raff and her feeling, about whether it was a true feeling or one she had summoned from the long afternoons of summer, because school was finished, because it was time—the time for sex was approaching.

  20

  When Mike arrived home he was met by Ada, who burst out of the kitchen door pointing at the garden and immediately detailing the day’s horrors including PJ digging up the grave and the grim task now ascribed to him of reburying the bodies. Mike was already weighed down. And now this—another unpleasant task. He blew out a sigh. Ada dutifully led him to where the lifeless chickens lay. He edged them one by one onto the shovel while Ada watched to make sure he was doing it with the right sense of gravitas.

  ‘Aren’t you sad, Daddy?’ she said finally, squatting down to help heap dirt. She frowned up at him. She could tell he wasn’t.

  ‘Well, I didn’t know the chickens like you did.’

  Ada’s eyes were fixed on him, as if this wasn’t quite acceptable.

  ‘If PJ died, then would you be sad?’ The question burst out indignantly. He knew what it meant. Her question pleaded as much as it accused. He stopped shovelling and wiped the dirt off his sock. He didn’t want to meet Ada’s questioning face. Those round, startled eyes unpeeled everything.

  ‘Ada, of course I’d be sad if PJ died,’ he said.

  She still looked at him as if this had passed right through her—he had played a shot and she wasn’t playing it back. She folded her arms across her chest as if protecting herself from his ambivalence. Mike shrugged. He felt prickly and defensive and wanted to turn away. A mosquito landed on his forearm. He slapped it dead and wiped the small smear of blood with his thumb. Ada watched him and then, letting her arms loose, she turned back to the grave and began patting the earth down.

  Ada was like his grandmother, Ma Betty. In his memory she was a dark old woman, who made him sit on her knee while she pretended to talk to the seagulls. Ma Betty had the same instinct for the arcane as Ada did. She made wafty pronouncements about people that embarrassed the family. Apparently she read the cards too. She died before Mike went to school, so it was hearsay really, but he blamed Ada’s penetrating gaze on Ma Betty and perhaps feared it for the same reason. Would he be sad if PJ died? He’d claimed he would without even thinking about it. But he would. He was fond of PJ. He always gave PJ a passing pat. Ada shouldn’t doubt him.

  ‘I would cry for weeks and weeks if PJ died.’ Ada’s small voice sailed up from the grave that she assiduously attended. He knew it was true. She was crouched over, rearranging the flowers. She probably would cry for weeks when PJ died. But he could do nothing to match it. He had never understood this sort of emotion. It came out of women and seemed always dangerously imminent within them. He was suffocated by it all. Two daughters and a wife was a forest of women. All mist and moss. And even if Ada was still more child than woman, she had this capacity, the same as Martha and Tilly, to feel things intensely and immediately, and to be easily overwhelmed with sadness.

  ‘Make sure you put some bricks on it so PJ doesn’t dig them up again,’ he said, readying himself to leave. But the sight of her grubby little hands patting at the dirt, as if she were sending t
he chickens to sleep, caught at his heart. He swooped down next to her.

  ‘Ada, PJ will die one day. He’s old now,’ he said. It wasn’t exactly comforting, but it was all he could think to say. Ada ignored him. She busied herself with the arrangement of flowers. She made a circle of flower heads and arranged the sticks so that they spelled out peace.

  ‘Does this look magnificent?’ she asked.

  Mike nodded. It was no good counselling children about the future. The future didn’t exist for them. He was useless at this sort of thing: talking, understanding, guiding children through the thorny moments. He didn’t know how to do it. It was Martha’s job. He stood up again and watched as Ada pressed patterns into the dirt. Then he walked away.

  ‘Daddy,’ she called out to him. She had stood up. From her hand dangled a limp, creamy rose. The hot falling sky was luminous behind her. She looked like a gypsy child—a pale lemon frock smudged with dirt, swaying over her shins while she stared at him with a dreadful aim.

  ‘Have you finished?’ he asked, coming back. He was flustered, tired of this burial now.

  ‘If Mummy died would you be sad?’ She said it with an unnerving directness. She didn’t accuse him, but she watched him intently, as if he were a prisoner about to attempt an escape. He wiped the sweat on his face. A magpie warbled above them. The weight of the world’s truth heaved over him.

  ‘You know I’d be sad if Mummy died.’ He was defeated as he said it. He stumbled over the words as they rose, hurrying to cover the image of Susie Layton astride him in the living room. Nothing he could say would change the act of his betrayal or the fact of love’s fragility. He couldn’t show her that love was a complicated work, that it wasn’t always as simple, direct, shining and pure as a star. That was how Ada wanted it to be—as simple as her own raw little love.