The River House

by Janita Cunnington

  At first all Laurie could hear was an oceanic sound, as if the point of this instrument was simply to register distance, the discontinuity, in the mind, between here, with its November warmth and brown river and jacaranda trees, and the great unknown of Sydney. And then, faintly, through crackles and blips, came her mother’s voice. ‘Hello, Lorelei!’ she heard. The tone was tinny and faraway. ‘You’re being …’ And then it vanished into cracklings again.

  ‘What? What, Mummy?’

  ‘I say you’re being good to Nan?’

  Laurie nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. A pause. ‘Mummy, we had devilled kidneys. For breakfast.’

  A laugh. ‘Devilled kidneys?’

  Laurie nodded. ‘Did you like them?’

  Laurie’s answer was reflex. ‘Yes,’ she said, unsure.

  ‘We’ll be …’ Her mother’s voice faded out.

  ‘What, Mummy?’ Laurie squinted and covered her other ear with her hand.

  ‘I say we’ll … end of the week.’

  Laurie nodded silently.

  ‘Can’t wait to see you!’

  ‘Mummy,’ Laurie called across the vast distance. She felt tearful.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you see the Harbour Bridge?’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Tony grumbled later. ‘You got to talk much longer than I did.’

  Laurie was woken by the sound of footfalls in the ear pressed against her pillow. She knew them to be really the beating of her heart, but they seemed, as they had always seemed, to be coming down the hall, coming closer, never quite reaching her.

  The apple of his eye. Laurie lay in her bed and remembered the long, skewed shadow of the River House.

  ii

  Summer 1955

  Laurie was nine before she realised that her mother was ten years older than her father. Well, she’d known for as long as she could remember, but it wasn’t until she was nine that she realised. It was a reversal of the accepted order. It made their family odd.

  Maybe that’s why her father seemed a bit unsure, beside Rosie. A little bit uncertain.

  Long ago, Rosie had laid down the egg flip and undone Doug’s arms from around her waist. It was a scene that was just there in Laurie’s mind sometimes.

  With that undoing, everything came loose.

  Tony felt it too, of that she was sure.

  ‘Light off,’ Doug said sternly as Tony skidded into the kitchen, bouncing a football at his feet and retrieving it smartly as it shot out wide.

  Tony compressed his lips, turned on his heel and switched off the light in the hall. ‘Wasn’t me turned it on,’ he muttered. He slumped into his seat.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Tony tossed the football from hand to hand in his lap.

  Doug shot a look at Rosie, who had paused as she doled out mashed potato. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter who turned it on, it would be a big help if you turned it off. We’re facing expenses enough without you kids leaving every light in the house blazing. It’s downright lazy. If we’re going to make sure Miranda –’

  ‘It was her left the light on,’ interrupted Laurie. She was annoyed. Miranda was always bagging their attention. Every conversation ended up swinging round to her. Allowances always being made. Laurie frowned as she knitted up the fringe on her serviette. ‘She’s always leaving the lights on!’

  ‘It was she …’ Rosie murmured automatically. But it was not substandard grammar that made her face fall.

  Doug regarded Laurie, and then Rosie, who now stood without moving, gazing down. She raised her eyes and nodded her head.

  ‘I’ve noticed it,’ she said to Doug.

  ‘What, she’s –?’

  ‘Not just that, she seems to lack all –’

  Their voices were despairing. Rosie sank down onto a chair at the table, still gripping the saucepan of mashed potato in one hand and a big potatoey spoon in the other. It was as if Laurie and Tony did not exist. For a long moment no one spoke. Rosie set the saucepan down and pressed a fist against her diaphragm.

  ‘We’ve just got to scrape together the money for –’

  Suddenly, Tony jerked back his chair. ‘You’re acting like Miranda’s going to die, or something!’ he yelled. His face was darkly flushed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with her! Look at her! Look at her!’ For at that moment Miranda breezed into the kitchen and slipped onto her chair, glancing around the table with bright-eyed interest. ‘For chrissake! She only left the light on!’

  Tony was on his feet, tears starting in his eyes.

  ‘Sit down, Tony,’ said Rosie, rising herself.

  ‘No! Fuck! I don’t care!’ A sob choked him. He flung his football hard at the door jamb and, as it rebounded at an angle clear across the table, making Laurie duck, and hit the cupboard on the other side with a loud whack, he fled the room.

  The football fell and bobbed quietly on the floor. Miranda bent down, scooped it up with one hand and twirled it on her fingertips. Without turning her head, she eyed the remaining faces quizzically.

  ‘That’s the absolutely worst swear word, isn’t it,’ she said, ‘“fuck”.’

  ‘I’m not playing,’ declared Paula Simpson, her nose high enough in the air to show her little round nostrils. ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘Oh don’t,’ pleaded Miranda, hands clasped prayerfully under her chin, her face a study of dismay. ‘Please don’t!’

  She found the tennis ball at her feet and held it out enticingly. ‘Here. You have a go.’

  Paula looked stern. ‘You’re not playing proper,’ she scolded. ‘You’re supposed to take turns and keep going right through till you finish! You can’t just make it up however you feel!’

  ‘I won’t! I promise!’

  ‘You do. Over and over.’

  There was silence.

  Miranda gave the ball a bounce. ‘Comin’,’ she said. Bounce. ‘Through.’ Bounce. ‘The rye.’ Bounce.

  ‘What?’

  Miranda began to sing softly, bouncing her ball in time with her song.

  ‘When. A body.

  Meet. A body.

  Comin’. Through. The rye.’

  ‘You’re loony,’ said Paula. And, swivelling her head so that her frown remained directed towards Miranda while her body took a different course, she opened the gate and left.

  ‘And you’re mean, Paula Simpson,’ called Laurie from the verandah, where she was reading.

  ‘You’re mean!’ Paula retorted from the footpath. When her final words wafted back to them, she was all but out of sight, just the indignant top of her head bobbing above the ragged line of the plumbago hedge. ‘Think yourself smart!’ she sang.

  In the silence she left behind, Miranda gazed elsewhere. She began to bounce the ball again, using alternate hands.

  ‘Sta-tus ep-i-lep-ti-cus,’ she chanted, keeping time.

  Suddenly, she dropped the ball and aimed a kick at it that sent her spinning. Her eye fell on the row of sweet-pea seedlings reaching with their first tendrils for the trellis. She was there in a trice. Elbows cocked, she trampled them with her bare feet into the turned earth.

  Laurie left the cane couch and slipped into the hall. Then she broke into a run.

  ‘Mum!’ she shouted.

  ‘Apple-apple-apple,’ Laurie carolled as she hung over the table to select the choicest one from the bowl.

  Miranda, who was twisting the loose knob on the cutlery drawer, turned to her briefly. ‘Go away, Lol,’ she said. ‘I’m talking to Mummy.’

  Their mother glanced at Laurie and motioned her away with her paring knife.

  Taking a bite from the reddest part, Laurie strolled out of the kitchen, then circled back in and stationed herself in a chair. She applied herself to her apple. Private chats with Mummy were hard to come by, and Miranda had more than her fair share.

  ‘Take no notice of her,’ Rosie said to Miranda, and went on stringing beans.

  There was silence from the small figure at the drawer. Her brown hair had b
een cropped at the back, showing the tender nape of her neck. A bow drooped at one side.

  Laurie saw the little back heave as Miranda took a breath. ‘No one will play with me, Mummy,’ she said to the kitchen cabinet.

  Rosie stopped paring. ‘Ah, darling,’ she said. She stood for a moment, looking out the window over the sink. Then she resumed her work. ‘I’m sure that’s not true. All friends have little fallings-out.’

  Miranda shook her head without looking around. Hearing nothing more, Rosie glanced at her.

  ‘Come here, Carmen Miranda,’ she said, running her hands under the tap, wiping them on her shorts and toeing out a chair. She sat down.

  ‘Come come!’ she said, beckoning, indicating her lap.

  Miranda left the knob of the cutlery drawer to come around the table to her mother and took her place on her knee. She sat there stiffly, her face set.

  ‘Now then, sweetie-pie,’ said Rosie, ‘tell me all about it.’

  ‘Well, I used to be the best skipper, and now sometimes I’m doing it and I realise that all the others are yelling at me and telling me to get out and I don’t know why, and it’s the same when we’re playing sevens or tiggy, and sometimes in class I look around and everyone’s just looking at me, and I can’t get anyone to swap lunches with me any more and no one wants to be my partner in folk-dancing and …’

  It was so quiet in the kitchen then that they could hear the clock ticking. Laurie bit into her apple again, and the crunch sounded loud in her ears.

  Rosie wrapped her arms around her daughter and rocked her gently. Miranda yielded a little. Her voice came from the depths of her mother’s arms.

  ‘I’m just a pariah,’ she said.

  Surprised, Laurie took the apple from her mouth.

  A faint smile crossed Rosie’s face. She bent and kissed the silken top of her daughter’s head.

  If it hadn’t been raining, they would not have made toffee. If they hadn’t made toffee, their tongues would not have been sore. If their tongues hadn’t been sore …

  Rosie was talking on the phone.

  ‘Not really, Mum. The side effects seem to be worse than the condition. She was getting quite clumsy, and it affected her eyes … No, no, it’s called nystagmus … Nystagmus … Yes … Yes, we did, but everything has its drawbacks … I don’t know about that, Mum. There haven’t been any trials, as far as I know … Oh, we’ve tried three specialists now … No, it’s cost. It’s cost … Oh, thanks, Mum, I know you would … I know … Don’t be too worried, she’s not … Today was a bit of an aberration. Don’t worry …’

  ‘She loses the thread,’ her teacher said. ‘She can’t seem to follow for long.’

  iii

  Autumn

  The spoonful of porridge stopped on its way to Tony’s mouth. His lips moved, and it was some moments before he remembered what he was doing. He ate the spoonful thoughtfully.

  The sun was coming sidelong through the window and the kitchen was warm enough for them to feel cosy in their pyjamas and bare feet.

  ‘Dad,’ Tony said.

  Doug grunted from behind the morning paper.

  Tony leant to one side to give Miranda room to reach across him for the brown sugar.

  ‘Mammy’s little baby loves – Short’nin’, short’nin’ …’ she sang as she lavished sugar on her porridge.

  ‘Dad?’ said Tony again. ‘Have you seen what they’ve got here? On this page?’

  ‘Miranda,’ said Laurie, ‘you’re making a mess.’

  ‘Dad?’ There was a pause.

  ‘Hmmm?’ said Doug at last.

  ‘It’s an ad. For stuff called – Um, let’s see.’ He twisted his head to read the paper, which Doug had shifted to a new angle. ‘Cane-ite.’ There was no response. ‘Isn’t that like your Coolacane?’

  Doug gave a short sigh. ‘You could say that, I suppose. But it’s not a patch on Coolacane.’ He turned the page of his newspaper, holding it high to shake it out and then laying it down beside his toast and running both hands along the fold. He picked it up again, took a piece of toast between his fingers, bit, and resumed reading.

  ‘Why not?’

  Doug bit into his toast again, crunched away for a moment or two and then, noticing that Rosie was looking at him intently, dusted the crumbs from his fingers and spoke. ‘Because it’s not light enough. It hasn’t got enough volume.’

  ‘Well why are they selling it while yours –’

  ‘It’s a cheap substitute for plaster. It’s not designed for thermal insulation. Okay, they can configure it so it’ll act as a sound absorber, and it might even absorb a bit of radiant heat if you’re lucky, but it’s not going to make a helluva lot of difference to the temperature inside your house.’ He wiped his mouth with a serviette and then shook it and his forefinger at the ceiling. ‘Where’s the sun? Up there. Beating down on the iron and turning the roof cavity into a furnace. What you need …’ And then he was off, explaining.

  Tony waited for a chance to ask, ‘How come Cane-ite’s being made and yours isn’t?’

  Doug looked keenly at him. ‘Because it’s funded by CSR. Colonial Sugar Refineries. Very, very powerful. I haven’t got that kind of backing.’ He pushed back his chair and stood up. He fingered his collar. ‘Where’s my –’

  ‘Here it is,’ said Rosie, handing him his tie.

  He hung it around his neck, turned his collar up and tied the knot, sticking out his chin and squinting at his reflection in the glass of the cabinet door.

  Rosie stood quietly before him to neaten the knot. Then she gently brushed his shirt front with both hands.

  ‘Pipe down, kids,’ roared Doug, bending his ear to the wireless and waving his hand behind him. ‘I’m trying to listen to this!’

  The children took their rumpus out of the kitchen and into the living room. It was an argument about angels that had raised the volume, whether they were boys or girls and where they stood in relation to fairies.

  ‘What about cherubs? What about cherubs?’ Miranda was shouting, trying to make herself heard over Tony, who was holding piercingly to the view that, despite the dresses, all angels were boys, and Laurie, whose voice was of necessity raised as well, was trying to make him see reason.

  ‘Oh f’chrissake, you lot – dry up!’ Doug bawled as he strode past.

  The children looked at each other in shocked silence.

  Laurie found her mother in the kitchen.

  ‘Why’s Dad so angry, Mummy?’ Laurie addressed the question to a button on her mother’s jacket, which she twiddled uneasily.

  Rosie freed her button from her daughter’s fingers and gave her the tablecloth to put away in the drawer. She sighed. ‘There was something on the news about Eastman’s being taken over. That’s the company that was interested in Coolacane.’ She began to wipe the table down vigorously. ‘And he hasn’t got the papers signed yet.’

  ‘Why not? Why hasn’t he got them signed?’

  ‘Oh, there are a few hiccups he’s got to get sorted out first.’

  In Laurie’s cupboard was an old fruit box that contained an assortment of her specimens. She pulled it out. These were the remainder of her collection – husks, bones, carapaces and shells, the leavings of sea and bush when life had done with them. She sat on the rug, her bottom between her heels, and fished about in the box.

  Here was the cast of a sea urchin. It was beautiful, white as alabaster and with a delicate geometry. Laurie knew it to be a cousin of the starfish, and she could see that the design was very much the same. The little holes and bumps that ornamented it so prettily were all connected to its need to feed and move and fend off foes. Just like the star.

  She fetched Australian Seashores from her desk and leafed through the pages. Here it was: Heliocid– too hard to say. Not white, like hers, but quilled and richly coloured. What prettiness could come, she thought, from trying to stay alive.

  She looked at her fingers and moved them wigglingly. They were like the tentacles of sea anemones
.

  A thought came dimly to Laurie then, one that she could not put into words, even in her mind. Years later, the words came too: we are all variations on a theme – all answers, elegant or makeshift, to the urgent problems posed by living in the world.

  When they’d had their baths and gone to bed and all the house was quiet, the lamp that shed its light in a cone over Doug’s drawing board was still on. Laurie could see its glow through the French doors that led from her bedroom to the closed-in verandah where Doug worked. It stayed on far into the night.

  Into Laurie’s sleep came the clatter of things falling. She shrank under the covers.

  For some moments there was no sound. Then, ‘Curse it!’ came her father’s voice. Paper crumpled. ‘Curse it, curse it, curse it!’

  CHAPTER 5

  Gypsies in the wood

  i

  1956

  At school all the skipping ropes were out, churning in the winter sunshine and raising the playground dust, and Laurie was in a fever of impatience to get there. She ducked into the bathroom to check her face in the mirror – for she had a horror of appearing before her friends with toothpaste on her nose or porridge on her chin – and found her mother there, talking to the plastic curtain over the racket of the shower. Laurie rubbed the fog from the mirror and peered in.

  Rosie kept raising her voice so that it would carry above the noise. Then it would drift down again, because speaking softly was her habit.

  ‘Craniosacral,’ she was saying.

  ‘What?’ came Doug’s voice from behind the curtain.

  It was warm in the steamy confines of the bathroom, and Laurie was tempted to linger, but her father was showering and she was delicate about his privacy. She stopped at the door to listen.