Storyland

by Catherine McKinnon

  Kristie’s bangles keep tinkling because she uses her hands to talk. When she holds her hands up her sleeves fall back and I see bruises on her arms.

  Kristie turns to Tarak. ‘Ned hasn’t actually paid me yet, and believe me his bill is clocking up, but when I do get paid I’ll take you all to the waterslides.’

  We finish our drinks and go back out to the garden. Ned is awake and sitting on the back verandah steps. He looks quite friendly when he is awake. He has a lot of scars on his hands and when I say they look interesting he shows me the scars on his chest. He got them fighting in the jungle. It wasn’t a war, he was just doing some defensive work, but then he got a bad back. How he got to be an art dealer is, he met a bloke who knew a bloke.

  ‘Ned can spin a yarn,’ Kristie says to us. ‘So don’t ask him to prove anything.’

  Ned takes out his rolly packet and begins to roll some tobacco. When you roll your own it is called a rolly, not a cigarette. Ned says Zeus is quite well trained for a wolf-breed.

  ‘Wolves don’t know how to lie. Not like us apes,’ he says.

  ‘Apes!’ Tarak laughs.

  ‘Yes, apes, the lot of us,’ Ned says. ‘Cunning apes. It’s being able to lie and plot that got us ahead of other animals. You want to know why we lie so well?’

  ‘Ned,’ Kristie warns. ‘They’re kids.’

  Ned laughs and lights his rolly. ‘Never too young to learn how the real world works. First reason we got ahead is sex. We apes love sex.’

  Tarak laughs, but he laughs too much so I know he’s embarrassed.

  ‘But your leader wolf, see, he only has sex once a year,’ Ned says. ‘The rest of the pack don’t have it at all, and they don’t miss it.’

  Isha listens to every word that Ned says.

  ‘We apes are sex addicts,’ Ned says. ‘And guess what other kind of addict we are?’

  Isha puts his hand up like he is in school. ‘Drug addict?’

  ‘Nup,’ says Ned.

  ‘Sleep addict,’ Tarak guesses.

  ‘We’re war addicts,’ Ned says. ‘We love to fight.’

  Ned talks to us about fighting and war strategies and we stand there listening to him because he is he is he is this really interesting person and he talks about things other people don’t talk about. He says a lot of Aboriginal painting is about the war that was here in Australia in the early days, only no one in government calls it war.

  ‘But we had massacres in this country,’ Ned says, ‘and where there’s a massacre, there’s a war.’

  Later, when we raft home, we decide to keep both Ned and Kristie our secret, because it’s good to have secrets.

  Now I have two secrets. Swamp Park is one, Ned and Kristie is two.

  For the last weeks of the school holidays we swim and scoot about on our raft and play in Swamp Park, or go to Ned and Kristie’s place. Ned has muscles as big as a muscle man but when he puts on his suit he can look suave which is what he has to look like to sell paintings. Sometimes we help Ned and Kristie do renovation jobs. Like we help Ned paint the kitchen. And we help Kristie scrape paint and plaster from the bricks that are piled out the back. Once the bricks are all clean, Ned will make a paved area. Most days when we finish helping them do work, Ned makes us pancakes and Kristie makes us cups of sweet tea. Ned is an extremely good pancake cook. He’s good at other things too. One time I tell Ned about dragonflies and he draws me a beautiful dragonfly that could be like a painting in an art gallery but he says it’s for me to keep. I take it home and put it at the back of my wardrobe. But every now and then I take it out to look at it.

  On the last Thursday of the holidays we arrive at Ned’s and Kristie’s place just as Kristie is locking the back door.

  She has her big black sunglasses on and a roll of canvases under her arm. She’s smoking a rolly.

  ‘I’ve got to go up the street,’ she says.

  Kristie looks funny, her lips look bigger or something.

  ‘How come you’ve got paintings with you?’ I ask.

  ‘These aren’t paintings,’ she says.

  ‘I can see the striped bits,’ I say.

  ‘Listen, you didn’t see me carrying these canvases, did you?’ She says it as though she is mad with us.

  We stare at her.

  ‘Tell me you didn’t see these canvases.’

  ‘But we did see them,’ I say.

  She takes a puff on her rolly and blows smoke into the air.

  ‘I know you did, Bel, but I want you to imagine I’m Ned, and you’re telling him you didn’t see them.’

  ‘We didn’t see any canvases,’ Isha says.

  ‘No, tell me so I believe it,’ Kristie says.

  Isha puts on an innocent expression.

  ‘We didn’t—’

  ‘No, try again, I still don’t believe you. And look me right in the eye. Tell it to me straight. Say, I’ve never seen Kristie with a canvas. No, she didn’t have a canvas.’

  Isha has another go.

  ‘Good, I believed that!’ Kristie says.

  She makes Tarak and me do it too. It takes Tarak five goes and he has it, but for me, even after six goes I still don’t get it right.

  ‘Okay Bel,’ Kristie says. ‘In your mind, imagine me with a canvas, and then rub the canvas out with an imaginary rubber.’

  I do what she says.

  ‘Now imagine I’m Ned. And I say to you, Did you see Kristie with a canvas?’

  ‘No, Ned. I didn’t see Kristie with a canvas,’ I say.

  ‘Good. That time I believed you,’ Kristie says. ‘Best lie is the lie that doesn’t get found out. And if Ned ever asks you a question and I cough like this,’ and Kristie does a little cough, ‘that means, leave the talking to me.’

  She runs down the steps, flicks her rolly onto the ground, and stamps it out with her boot.

  ‘Go home now,’ she says, and walks around to the front of the house.

  The next Saturday, after we’ve been at Ned and Kristie’s playing frisbee with Zeus, we sit on the verandah steps. Ned is smoking and the rest of us are eating ice-cream. Kristie has her dark sunglasses on which she wears a lot because she likes them.

  ‘Where do you kids live?’ Ned asks.

  ‘Over on Wyndarra Way,’ Kristie says, and then she coughs.

  ‘Koonawarra?’ Ned asks, looking at me.

  ‘Yeah,’ Kristie says, before I have time to answer.

  ‘Right,’ Ned says. ‘Posh street, that one.’

  He looks out at the lake and continues to smoke.

  Isha and Tarak start trying to mimic the whipbirds calling, where the male whipbird whistles its long high whistle with a crack, and the female overlaps and finishes with choo choo, so so so it’s like one call almost. Isha is really good at whistling but Tarak can’t get his lips right.

  When it’s time to go home, Kristie walks us down to the raft. ‘Okay, you kids all live on Wyndarra Way, that is your story and you never change it.’

  ‘Why?’ asks Isha.

  ‘Never tell Ned where you live, okay?’

  ‘But why?’ Isha asks again.

  ‘Some people you can love, but never trust. Ned is one of those people.’

  ‘Ned wouldn’t do anything bad to us,’ I say.

  ‘Just listen to what I say, Bel.’

  ‘She’ll listen,’ says Isha, even though I didn’t even ask him to open his big mouth and speak for me.

  February comes and Tarak, Isha and me have to go back to school. We can only visit Ned and Kristie on weekends. The weather is mercurial, which means it’s like the old god from Roman times called Mercury who was really fast going here and there on messages and that’s like the weather changing fast from sunny to stormy. When I walk to school it’s hot like a furnace but at recess the clouds go dark and squash into bunches, and raindrops the size of grapes plop on my head and Miss Schubert is like, Go inside, go inside, Bel, and don’t you try and get wet again. When there is thunder I stand at the windows and wait for the quick sh
arp cracks of lightning that x-ray the clouds and sometimes Miss Schubert stands there too. One time she tells me not to worry about what Julie Flint and the others call me.

  ‘You play the long game, Bel,’ she says. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Schubert.’

  ‘Your time will come,’ she says. ‘Get it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘I’ll see a nymph turn into a dragonfly,’ I say.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s what you mean, right?’

  Miss Schubert stares at me. ‘Are you saying that as a metaphor?’

  ‘It could be a metaphor,’ I say. ‘Or it could be something that happens.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, and gives my shoulder a squeeze.

  March comes, puff, then it’s gone. April too. Kristie and Ned go to the desert to buy more paintings. Then May, June and July. But but but in all that time I don’t see any nymphs become dragonflies. Jonathan says I’ll just have to be patient because spring is a better time to see them maybe. School is just boring days to get through until the weekend. Every Saturday and Sunday I meet Isha and Tarak and we go rowing on the lake, or we go to Swamp Park and climb the fig, or we visit Ned and Kristie who are now our best best secret friends.

  One Saturday, when we are at Ned and Kristie’s, Ned and me are making pancakes. I’m stirring up the cream with sugar to put on top after the pancakes are cooked. Ned is at the stove, pouring the pancake mix into a frying pan. Kristie, Isha, and Tarak are outside, scraping paint off the last of the bricks. The patio is the only part of the renovation left to do.

  ‘Hey,’ Ned says, ‘I drove along Wyndarra Way the other day, and I was thinking, now which house does Bel live in?’

  I feel all my insides go cold. Kristie is not here and I don’t know what to do. I don’t say anything and there is this really long pause. I keep stirring the cream.

  ‘Which one is it?’ he asks.

  I still don’t say anything.

  ‘Is it the two-storey white one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it the blue weatherboard one with the big verandah?’ Ned asks.

  ‘Ned, are you going to paint the outside of this house?’

  ‘I might. What colour would you suggest?’

  ‘I think blue would be good.’

  ‘Really? Blue.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like your house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Funny thing is though, I didn’t see a blue weatherboard house in Wyndarra Way. No, that was in another street.’

  I keep my head down. I’m trying to think fast because the best lie is the one that doesn’t get found out.

  ‘Ned, I’ll take you to my house one day.’

  ‘I’d like that. So what colour is it?’

  ‘You know how I’m not good with numbers,’ I say.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’m not so good with colour either.’

  I think he believes me because there is a long silence but not an uncomfortable one.

  I put my finger into the cream and taste it. ‘I think it’s sweet enough now,’ I say.

  ‘You know Kristie is a little bit nuts, don’t you, Bel?’ Ned says.

  I stare at him.

  ‘I virtually took her in off the streets. Gave her a place to live. I’m teaching her the art business.’

  He turns a pancake over in the frying pan, then looks at me.

  ‘But she tells a lot of lies,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, before I even know I’ve said it.

  ‘But you tell the truth, don’t you?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Ned tips the pancake onto a plate and pours some more mixture into the frying pan.

  ‘I’m missing a few paintings. You ever seen Kristie hide anything?’ he asks.

  I shake my head.

  ‘Because those paintings belong to me, not Kristie. I’m giving her free accommodation, free food. I take her on free holidays, buy her Armani sunglasses for fuck’s sake. You know Armani, Italian. I buy her clothes, her makeup. And all she has to do for all the free stuff is come with me to an art party now and then. Tell some of those rainbow serpent stories she loves so much. That’s it. Good deal, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, because it does sound like a good deal.

  ‘But Kristie has had a rough time. She mixed with the wrong sort when she was not much older than you. Now, she doesn’t trust people. But that’s no excuse for lying.’

  I start to stir the cream in the bowl again, even though I’m sure it is ready.

  ‘But Ned, we apes all lie, don’t we?’ I say.

  ‘Here’s the thing, when I was telling you that, it was explaining general patterns of behaviour. But there’s a code among friends, stronger than that, and it’s about loyalty. It’s about not lying. Sticking up for each other. You get that, don’t you?’

  ‘Like when you spit on your hands and have a pact?’

  ‘Exactly like that. So you’d tell me if you’d ever seen Kristie hiding a canvas somewhere?’

  Ned turns to me again. I force myself to look him in the eyes, the way Kristie showed me. I picture her with a canvas and then rub the canvas out with an imaginary rubber.

  ‘I don’t think I saw her with a canvas,’ I say.

  ‘You sure about that?’ Ned asks. ‘Because I know you’re not a liar. You’re like a wolf. You don’t know how to lie.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I didn’t see her with one.’

  ‘You know I’d never tell her you told. You know that don’t you? The good and true thing about best friends is, they never reveal confidences. So this would be between you and me.’

  ‘Our secret,’ I say.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe I saw her with one once,’ I say.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ he says. ‘Only once?’

  ‘Only once.’

  ‘You’re sure only once?’

  ‘Maybe it was two canvases only once.’

  ‘That makes sense. Because there is more than one missing. I think there are a few, quite expensive canvases actually, missing. And you know if I don’t find them it means the artists won’t get paid.’

  Right then, Kristie, Isha and Tarak come running up the stairs and into the kitchen. I look at Kristie immediately because I know I’ve done exactly what she didn’t want me to do. I think Ned will get mad at her, yell at her maybe, but he doesn’t do that at all.

  ‘Here they are,’ Ned says, and he lays the plates on the table and starts to serve the pancakes and he winks at me and smiles.

  When it’s time to leave both Kristie and Ned walk us to the raft. Ned’s never really had a good look at our raft, but now he does. He says Isha and Tarak did a really good job of making it.

  They wave to us as we row away. I look up to the escarpment and watch the sun disappear. The green-leaved trees darken so they look like make-believe trees that someone has put in front of a silvery curtain. The kookaburras start laughing.

  The next day, we row to Swamp Park and find Kristie waiting for us at the fig tree. She tells us she has Ned’s ute parked on the street at the back of the park.

  ‘I want you to come with me,’ she says. ‘But we have to hurry.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  ‘Somewhere secret.’

  She has her dark glasses on again. She doesn’t wait for us to say yes, she just starts walking. We follow her along the path, through the trees, to the road.

  ‘How come you’re limping?’ I ask her.

  ‘Fucking boots are too tight,’ she calls over her shoulder.

  When we get to the road we all pile into Ned’s ute. It’s a four-wheel drive and has front and back seats and really good air-conditioning for when he goes to the desert to get paintings. We have to put a towel on the back seat for Zeus to sit on because Ned’s ute is exceptionally clean because Ned is an exceptionally clean person. Kristie says h
e even cleans under the bed, which most people hardly ever do, and the weird thing is to look at him you wouldn’t know how clean he is.

  ‘He’s a paradox,’ she says.

  ‘What’s a paradox?’ I ask.

  ‘Like when someone is a nice person and also a shitty person,’ she says, and she stares at me in the rear-vision mirror for a long time and I wonder if she means I’m a nice person and a shitty person, because maybe Ned told her I said something about the canvases. And then I remember how Ned said he wouldn’t tell, because we are best friends, so anything I told him would be our secret. I believe him so I decide not to worry.

  We drive along the highway and go up the winding mountain road and Kristie parks at the top of a fire trail. She takes a red bag from the back of the ute. It has a water bottle in it, and a plastic bag, a torch and the pillowcase with the old stone axe.

  ‘What’s the axe for?’ I ask.

  ‘We’re going to hide it,’ Kristie says.

  We walk really fast along the track to be healthy, and also because Kristie needs to get the ute back before Ned knows she has taken it. Ned’s doing a marathon run with his one friend, The Creep, who Kristie never wants us to meet, because he is not the kind of man children should get to know, like he is a bad man. As we pass by a big old tree I see an echidna. When I go near the echidna, it tucks its body in under its spiky coat so it is like a spiky bush.

  ‘That’s its protection mechanism,’ Kristie says.

  It’s only me that stops to look at the echidna, so I have to run to catch the others up. We turn off the fire trail and walk along a path and come to this open area where there is a ruin of a house, and this gigantic massive fig tree. It’s like our one at Swamp Park, only much much much bigger and even more knotted.

  ‘This is the great-great-great-great-great-grandmother of all trees,’ Kristie says.

  The roots of the tree go all the way across to the edge of the cleared bit of land. I look up to the sky but can’t see the top of the tree.

  Tarak shouts and runs around the fig tree.

  ‘Sssh, Tarak,’ Kristie says. ‘This is the Hill of Peace.’

  Tarak laughs. ‘Not the Hill of Peace any more.’

  But Kristie makes him be quiet.