Other Side of the Season

by Jenn J. McLeod

  ‘Hi-ya, Tilly,’ he said.

  ‘Hi-ya, yourself, Matthew.’

  ‘Watchya doin’?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘You looking for David?’

  ‘Nup.’ Tilly stared past him to the white-crested water beyond. ‘Is David looking for me?’

  Matthew breathed deep, like Ulf did right before Albie got a talking-to for messing up. ‘Tilly, you know Davo is heading off to uni next year, but Dad has told him that in the holidays he’ll have to come home and pay him back by working for the business. Dad is pretty adamant. So, if Davo really wants this fancy arts degree, he’ll do what he’s told. Always has.’

  ‘And you haven’t?’

  Matthew flinched at the nasty retort, like a child preparing to be slapped. ‘I’m old enough to do what I want.’

  ‘You’re so stuck in your ways. You’ll grow old and die in this place.’

  ‘If I wanted to go, I’d go–anytime.’

  ‘Just like that?’ Tilly snapped her fingers. ‘You’d leave here?’

  ‘If I had a good reason.’

  ‘Well, I hope you find one. I’ll wait for David.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’ Matthew went to walk away before faltering and turning back. ‘Tilly, I really shouldn’t say anything, but . . .’

  She waited. ‘Well? What is it, Matthew?’

  ‘Mum and Dad–especially Mum–expect him to make something of himself and his art. I heard her telling Davo one day that he needed to be the artist she never had the chance to become.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘Davo gets his talent from our mum. Marrying Dad meant she gave up the chance to travel and study under some famous American painter.’

  ‘But your mum and dad are so lovey-dovey. Always smooching and holding hands. Kind of embarrassing at their age, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s not like Mum’s ever regretted her decision to marry Dad. Times were different when they met. She was expected to marry and raise a family, not go traipsing around the world.’ Tilly rolled her eyes–it sounded like the dark ages–but Matthew went on. ‘She settled for making sure one of her kids would get the experiences she missed out on. Davo got the artistic genes. He wins. We lose.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? We lose what?’

  ‘There are winners and losers in life, Tilly. You and me are losers. We’re not handed the same chances. We have to find our own opportunities. Winners, like Davo, have responsibilities as well, only they’re different. He has things to do before Mum and Dad will let him settle down. They sure won’t allow him to do anything rash while he’s so young. I’m real sorry, Tilly, but . . .’

  ‘Out with it, Matthew.’

  ‘What I mean is . . . They don’t want him to be with you. Dad says you come from the wrong side of the tracks. And, Tilly, whatever has been going on between you two lately that has Davo at home helping Dad has put him back in the good books. They’re talking about a university in Melbourne that’s offering him a place to stay. I know coz Davo likes to rub that kind of news in my face. Anyway, I thought you should know that for the next four years at least, that’s where he’ll be. See ya.’

  Melbourne! Tilly hadn’t wanted to believe a word of it. She couldn’t let herself believe Matthew’s version, not for a second, but if David was not going to tell her, or come to her and apologise–and no way would she go crawling to him–Tilly would have to do something else and do it fast. The thought of living in this place for four years or, worse still, dying here having never lived her own dream, turned her stomach in a way that made her want to be sick on the spot.

  Tilly lurched towards the public toilets in the grassy reserve at the end of the breakwall, her urge to throw up stronger than her need to avoid the putrid smell of stale septic waste, and the old wooden workbench and wash bay outside that always smelled of fish guts. She rushed inside and slammed the cubicle door behind her, sending a flurry of pigeons from their perch under the eaves of the raised tin roof. After gagging and producing nothing more than a long string of spittle, she felt a sharp, jabbing pain spear her stomach. Tugging her underpants down, Tilly straddled the seatless toilet bowl, kangaroo-style, but when pain made the awkward position unbearable she dropped her butt to the cold, hard rim of metal. She didn’t care that the toilet felt like ice. She didn’t care about catching a disease. She didn’t care about anything other than her pink, patterned knickers stretched between both knees, now spotted red.

  She didn’t cry, not even when she looked back down at her underpants, madly trying to calculate when she’d had her last period as a terrifying series of spasms shook her body.

  7

  The Greenhill Banana Plantation, 1979

  ‘Wow, Tilly, what’s up?’ Albie’s eyes–big and dark and kind–stared from the bathroom door.

  ‘Not now, Albie.’

  ‘Hey, you might’ve got away with telling me to bugger off when we were younger, but not now. I’m not going away until you tell me what’s wrong. You’ve been sulking for ages.’

  Tilly needed kind eyes right now. She needed understanding, someone to tell her she was right. Someone to want her and care for her. Hilda had explained Tilly’s very first period not long after she’d arrived at the Marhkts’ property. ‘Every month the body gets very sad and cries red tears because there’s no baby,’ Hilda had said while stroking Tilly’s hair. ‘And that’s the way it should be each month until you’re married and have your own house. Okay?’

  Tilly had been feeling miserable for days and was so confused about what her body was doing. Talking to Matthew at the breakwall that morning had only added to the desperate nature of her situation–likely pregnant with David’s baby. She’d raced home, locked her bedroom door and cursed her mother out loud, because that’s who she’s always blamed for everything. It was her mother’s fault Tilly was forced to live here. Now she was in real trouble.

  For a long time Tilly stared up from her bed at the ceiling with its strange patterns of peeling paint and mould spots, but lying there wasn’t solving anything, not like Hilda’s medicine supply would. A few too many pills would surely fix everything. Within seconds of swallowing six blue tablets from the yellow pill container–the one with the white screw-top lid and impossible to pronounce name on the label–she’d stuck her fingers down her throat and vomited the lot up. Now Albie dangled a warm washcloth in front of her face as she crouched next to the toilet bowl.

  ‘Gosh, Tilly, what did you eat? I could hear you from my room. You chuck up like that again and we might need the priest from The Exorcist. I thought your head was about to do a three-sixty-degree spin.’

  ‘Shut up, Albie,’ she snapped, fear putting an unusual wobble in her voice.

  ‘Hey, don’t cry. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m not crying. I don’t cry. Only babies cry. Babies and you.’ She swiped his hand away and stood up too fast, judging by the spinning sensation in her head.

  ‘You don’t have to be mean. I was joking. Give me that.’ He tugged the face cloth from Tilly’s hand and held it under the running tap. ‘Come to bed and lie down.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ The taste in her mouth was so disgusting she almost threw up again. ‘My mouth feels like crap.’

  She felt like crap–full stop–her mind constantly wandering back to that day in the cave with David. She’d said some things Tilly now wished she could take back. But David would say words are like toothpaste. Once they’re out there’s no putting them back again.

  ‘Here.’ Albie put a toothbrush in Tilly’s hand and curled her fingers tight. ‘Brush. I’ll be back.’

  ‘Wait.’ She stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror with Albie hovering behind and tried to imagine seeing his face instead of David’s every morning for the rest of her life. ‘Do you want to stay in this place forever?’

  Albie shrugged. ‘I guess, but only coz the place will be mine one day.’

  She stared again at his reflection in t
he mirror and then at the two of them side by side. Matthew had said there were winners and losers and that her and him were both losers. What did that make Albie? Were they the same now? Losers?

  Whatever he was, Albie remained her confidant–didn’t he? She could tell him how David had confessed his love, how he’d tricked her into believing him and taken her virginity, then stolen her hopes and dreams and the chance of a future off this mountain. She was so desperate right now she’d tell Albie anything.

  ‘Come on. Bed for you, Tilly, before Mum and Dad get back from Bingo.’

  After a final mouth rinse and spit she let him lead her to the bedroom, pull back the bed covers, ease her down on the mattress and place the folded face cloth over her throbbing forehead.

  ‘So you really don’t care if you die here, Albie?’ she asked. ‘You’d let them dig a hole and bury you under a banana tree, never having experienced life anywhere else?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘You know, Albie, you and me . . . We never asked to live in this place. Who’s to say if the Marhkts hadn’t picked us when they did that the next couple to come along might have been city people. We could be living in a mansion with servants and stuff. Imagine that!’

  ‘But the Marhkts . . . They saved me. They saved us. They’re good to us. They’re family.’

  ‘Not mine,’ Tilly said. ‘My mother’s dead and my father . . . Well, I have no idea who he is and no desire to know. But you . . . What you told me about . . . you know? That stuff that happened, before the Marhkts took you in.’

  ‘What about it?’ Albie was doing that shifty eye thing.

  ‘You said people knew what was happening to you, but they did nothing. You said the Marhkts knew all about it too. What those people did to you at the boys’ home is what makes you cry in your sleep, isn’t it?’

  Albie’s chin dropped to his chest like his big head was suddenly too heavy to hold up, his eyes again looking everywhere but at her. ‘I don’t want to think about that.’

  ‘They should’ve got you help.’

  ‘I didn’t need anyone’s help then and I don’t need help now. I’ve got what I need–a family–and like you say, family is forever. None of that other stuff matters.’

  That other stuff Albie refused to speak of included an unmarried mother who had loved him so much that when life got too hard she’d simply surrendered her six-year-old son and let the authorities in Malta put him on a plane to the other side of the world. The first orphanage had been horrible. When he was nine, with only broken English, fast-talking strangers had made Albie sign forms he couldn’t read. Within days, the tall-for-his-age boy found himself in another home–a Catholic boys’ home in the West Australian desert, on the other side of the country, where he and other boys did manual labour in forty-degree temperatures.

  ‘You know I don’t think about that place anymore, Tilly. Don’t make me.’

  ‘But if only you–’

  ‘Stop, stop, Tilly.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ she relented, covering herself with a blanket.

  Albie never said much about his past, but Tilly had lived on the streets herself and had no trouble imagining what had happened to him. Truth is, she and Albie were nothing alike and everything alike. Maybe that did make them perfect for each other.

  Tilly raised herself up on the bed, both elbows digging into the mattress. ‘Albie, can I ask you something?’ Soon he’d be twenty-one. He could drive a car–so could she, only not legally–and he wasn’t afraid of hard work. He’d protect her. ‘Would you go with me if I had to leave here?’

  ‘I guess. But why would you have to leave? And where would we go?’

  ‘How about Sydney, or Melbourne, or anywhere?’

  ‘How would we survive? Where would we live?’

  ‘You and me, Albie, we’re the same. We’ve lived rough–on the streets, in fleapits, with strangers. We don’t need the Marhkts. We’d have each other. We’re not losers. We’re survivors.’

  ‘You and me as in the two of us together? That’d be like family.’

  ‘That’s right. A family forever. We can make our own, only it can’t be here. Ulf and Hilda would never allow anything like that. You and me could never be together that way.’ Tilly pressed Albie’s hand on her belly. ‘Imagine your baby in here one day.’ Then, hooking her hand at the back of his neck, she coaxed him down beside her as she shifted in the bed, her fingers toying with the buttons on her blouse. ‘Maybe one day . . .’ She spoke in a hushed voice, undoing the buttons on her shirt one at a time. ‘One day there’ll be three of us and . . .’ Another button freed. ‘Guess what?’ She drew his mouth towards her breast. With her face turned to the window so she didn’t have to look, not sure she could trust herself not to puke up again should she see his sweaty, pockmarked face up close, all Tilly said was, ‘I do believe there’s a blue moon tonight, Albie.’

  • • •

  Tilly woke to what sounded like footsteps outside her bedroom window. She was alone, having banished Albie to his own bed. The last thing she wanted was to have the Marhkts arrive home early from their Friday night bingo at the church hall and find him in her room. He’d come sneaking back once already.

  ‘Can’t we do it again, Tilly?’ he’d whined from the other side of her closed door. ‘I can do it better.’

  ‘No! Now bugger off, Albie,’ she’d yelled back, burying her head under the pillow.

  What was sleeping with Albie meant to achieve? Did she want to make certain she was pregnant, tell David it was his and force him to leave with her? What if she was still pregnant with David’s baby and the bloody spotting was nothing unusual? The article she’d read in Dolly magazine suggested that bleeding happened sometimes and not to panic.

  Not panic! How could you be so stupid?

  Fear of being single and with a child brought back terrible memories of her mother’s constant battle: to find work, to find housing, to find a husband–to stay sober. Some struggles she won. Mostly her mother failed, eventually losing her battle with booze and drugs. But Tilly wasn’t like her mother. She wasn’t. To prove it she made a commitment on the spot.

  No more pills and no more panicking.

  Tilly was strong, determined, a fighter. She could survive the streets on her own–no problem. But with a baby . . . ? No, she couldn’t do that alone. Nor should she have to, except that David’s absence told her his studies were more important to him. He’d made it known in the cave that day he didn’t want the same things, whereas she could wrap Albie around her finger.

  Albie would do.

  Albie loved her.

  Albie would protect her–he always had. He’d protect her baby, too.

  But Albie would need a reason to leave the Marhkts and Tilly crossed her fingers that what they’d done tonight would give him one he couldn’t refuse.

  She heard the gravel crunch outside her window again. ‘Go away and stop peeping, Albie.’

  ‘It’s not Albie,’ came the whispered reply. ‘It’s me, and I’m not peeping.’

  ‘David?’ She sprung out of bed, buttoning her shirt.

  ‘Of course it’s me. Why would Albie be sneaking around your bedroom window? Is he bothering you again? You should’ve told me. I’ll–’

  ‘Shh, no, of course not. Nothing like that.’ Tilly wedged the old sash window open and cold air smacked her in the face. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I checked. Your folks aren’t home yet. I just couldn’t stay away any longer. I don’t care what Matthew says.’

  ‘Matthew said something?’

  David looked small standing below her window looking up, his hands tucked in the pockets of his pants pulled tight over stocky thighs, while his feet did a little jig to keep him warm.

  ‘I had to see you, Til.’

  ‘Now?’ she asked.

  ‘I hoped to change your mind and make up.’ He put his hands to his mouth and blew into them. ‘It’s kinda freezing out here. Can I come in?’

/>   ‘No,’ she called back, sharply. ‘Wait there. I’ll come out.’ She scrambled into her jeans in the dark, stopping in front of her dressing table to tug a brush through the matted hair at the back of her head. Had Tilly turned on a light there might be evidence of what she had done with Albie. She shuddered at the memory. He’d been so eager–too eager, too intense. With her limited experience–all her knowledge gleaned from Dolly magazines, romance novels, and some girl-talk at school–Tilly guessed he’d tried too hard. There had been a lot of grunting and groaning and declarations of forever love, and not much else. Tilly had feigned rapture like she’d seen women do in the movies, but rather than lying in Albie’s arms when he finished she’d dashed to the toilet to scrub her thighs clean.

  Now she struggled into a windcheater, then drew her blue chenille dressing gown over the top and tiptoed down the hallway. Out on the veranda she slipped into her boots before turning around and slamming smack-bang into David, who wrapped her in his arms so tight the breath squeezed out of her lungs.

  ‘I missed you, Tilly. I was stupid and I’m sorry.’

  ‘You? Stupid?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was peppering her face and neck with kisses, hands clawing clumsily at her back. ‘I’m too used to us, Tilly. Nothing’s the same without you. Can we start over?’ He pulled back and grinned. ‘Maybe we can make up, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, why, David?’

  ‘Why?’ he said, his amusement clear. ‘Because I kinda liked the last time we were together.’

  ‘No, I mean why did you wait so long to come to me and tell me how you felt?’