The Changeover

by Margaret Mahy

  "No chance!" said Sorry beside her, reading her thought by some uncanny skill of his own. "We've just got to grin and bear it. Look at the mud. It's very calm, isn't it? Let's calm ourselves by looking at mud for a while." However he was staring after the heron as he spoke as if part of his attention were flying with it.

  "It's easy for you to bear it," Laura said sharply.

  "Thank goodness!" Sorry agreed. "I don't mind if you think I'm insensitive. It's my triumph that I am. It's a victory. Holy cow! Why suffer?"

  "I didn't choose to suffer," Laura answered resentfully.

  "You can choose not to though," he assured her.

  They sat down among the cocksfoot and clover and stared out over the mud, pocked by crab holes and woven across with tracks left by the crabs in their steady, sideways commerce, scavenging and threatening assiduously. Sorry put his arm around her shoulders, but it was not comforting and not even very distracting for he had grown remote. It was rather like being embraced by a tree.

  "I know what I'm talking about," he said. "Look— I only met my mother three years ago. She sent me off when I was a month old — did she tell you? She feels obliged to confess from time to time."

  "She did mention about that," Laura admitted. "She seemed guilty about it."

  "Don't think I blame her," Sorry added. "I think she did the right thing. It wasn't her fault that it didn't work out."

  "What went wrong?" Laura asked, willing to be distracted a little.

  "I went wrong," said Sorry. "I could go through the looking-glass and the others couldn't. It was as if everything around me had an extra piece tacked on to it that I could see and work with and no one else knew about. I could make trees blossom, cabbages grow... I could make the rainclouds roll away ... I couldn't make it rain then (that's a lot harder) but still, I could find anything lost and I could read any book. Actually, that wasn't witchcraft but it might just as well have been. At first I made them uneasy and then they seemed to get used to it. The oldest brothers left home and I went cheerfully on. But then my father lost his job — redundancy they said, but I think he'd upset somebody there in some way. He got another job, but not such a good one, and besides he was beginning to get a bit older and that worried him ... he had to blame someone and he chose to blame me."

  "How could he?" Laura said, bewildered.

  "There was no difficulty at all," Sorry assured her. "It's not a skill, blaming other people. It's an instinct. He got very frightening over it."

  "But you weren't adopted," Laura said. "They could have given you back, if you made them feel uncomfortable."

  "Oh, no," said Sorry, and laughed. It was a light laugh, amused and not in the least angry, but for some reason it chilled Laura to the bone. "There was one really important reason why they couldn't give me back, or get rid of me in any other way, and if I tell you what it was it makes them sound ... it makes them sound mean and trivial, but they weren't. It wasn't a trivial reason, though we're brought up to think it ought to be. She paid for me. Miryam paid them quite a lot to look after me— more than it cost to keep me — something over for their trouble — and by the time things got really bad they had absolutely come to depend on getting paid. Their standard of living— the house and car for example, partly depended on getting that money every six months."

  "Like maintenance!" Laura said, understanding at once.

  "I got sinister in every way to Tim — my foster father. Well I'd always been illegitimate (Miryam tells me she really doesn't know who my father is and tried to arrange it so she'd never know). Then I'd always been left-handed. And there was the— I suppose I have to say the supernatural element, though it seems to me that I'm more a part of nature than most people, not outside it or above it. I always feel I work with it, not against it. Well, whatever it is I learned to hide it pretty quickly once I could see how it was upsetting him, and then, blow me down, he moved on to my left-handed- ness. Poor Tim! He started to drink a lot about that time. He'd get terribly drunk about — oh, say once a month— then he'd spend the next three weeks repenting, and we all had to repent along with him. Part of my repentance was learning to become right-handed. He said it was for my own good. I've always stammered,"

  Sorry said. "I think nature intended to balance out a tendency to talk too much by making it harder to talk at all. Well, my stammer just got worse and worse and at home I lived like a one-handed babbling idiot. Even when Tim wasn't there I was always practicing for when he was. Then he lost his job again and was home a lot more. In the end I got so peculiar at school they sent a welfare officer around to see what was going on ... and that just... it was the end." Sorry laughed despairingly. "Tim went absolutely bananas. He thought I'd complained, or so he said, but really I think he just wanted an excuse to have a real crack at someone. He said the country was run by sinners — hard to argue with that, one way and another — that the wrong people had the money. He mentioned Miryam by name and then quoted the Book of Revelations and f-finally," Sorry said, "he gave m-me the m-most terrific hiding he'd ever g-given me. I mean he was a really b-big man and he b-beat me up. When I was little he used to play a fighting game called 'Bears' with me. This was a game of 'Bears' for grown-ups, I suppose."

  Laura stared at him in alarm, for though his voice was perfectly cheerful, the emergence of his stammer was somehow unnerving. He smiled at her lightheartedly but as he did so the stigmata of an old punishment discoloured his face, even displacing his summer tan so that his cheeks swelled and his eyes blackened, and she could not be sure if he knew what was happening to him, there before her, or if he was quite unaware how memory was betraying his apparent unconcern.

  "I c-c-c-could h-have k-k-k-" Sorry was abruptly unable to speak. He frowned, closed his eyes and then said in a strained but calm voice, "I could have killed him, but I was too sc-scared, and besides that, in my head he still felt like my f-father. Look!" he cried with relief, "there's the kingfisher."

  It was perched on a projection on the bank behind him, which rose at that point in great steps of clay and rotten rock, partly overgrown with bushes of white daisies, bracken and periwinkle, as well as late foxgloves. The kingfisher flew down to Sorry's outstretched hand, so that Laura could see, once more, its creamy breast the colour of primroses, and its blue- green back.

  "Would it come to me if I were a witch?" she asked, and Sorry nodded absently. Perhaps he was brooding on the story he had told to demonstrate his light-heartedness and which had, instead, illustrated to Laura the harsh interaction of event and memory. "What happened then?" she asked.

  "Then?" said Sorry derisively. "Oh, then the f-f-f-fat was in the f-f-fire." But he was over his anxiety and merely making fun of his impediment. "No way could I have gone to school the following day and told people, 'Oh, yes, I do have a few bruises. I walked into a door.' I would have done it. In a way I wanted to protect him, but he didn't want to take the risk. He pushed me down stairs into the basement, and locked me in a little cupboard down there. I could sit up in it but I couldn't do any thing really energetic like standing, and he said I had to stay there until I'd got rid of the devil in me. I wasn't even allowed to go to the lavatory, can you imagine, not that that was urgent. What with one thing and another I'd just been." He laughed and fell silent.

  "Your father doesn't sound to me as if he could have been really very kind in the first place," said Laura.

  "I think life got to be like war for him." Sorry looked for a moment as if he were overwhelmed by any explanations he might try to give. "I've thought a lot about it and I've talked about it, and I've read books written by people who've watched other people very closely, and what I've worked out is this — that Tim managed really well in a certain setting, but being out of work put one part of his mind into a state of constant despair— even panic, and who can live with that? I think being violent with me was one way he tried to make sense of it. I mean by having someone or something to blame."

  "It was an awful way — stupid too," said Laura.<
br />
  "Lord knows how much choice he had," Sorry replied. "Once he started it was hard to stop. He couldn't admit weakness."

  "Well, you must have got out," Laura said at last.

  "I must have, mustn't I?" Sorry said. "I don't remember. I don't remember anything for ages after that. The next thing I remember is Miryam crying, but I was in hospital then. I was brought back to Janua Caeli later. Apparently, after about a day, Tim began to come to his senses a bit, opened the cupboard... and no Sorensen! I'd gone. I don't know how. I turned up in the courtyard among the clipped trees, quite out of my skull and then Miryam realized something she hadn't realized before— that I was all that she'd intended me to be in the first place, give or take the little matter of my sex."

  "Not so little!" Laura said.

  "Well, thanks for your confidence," Sorry replied. "About average, I suppose!"

  "I didn't mean that," Laura cried furiously. "You know I didn't mean that."

  "OK, OK," he said. "It was just a smart answer. I'm sorry. See? Events have conspired to make me name myself everytime I apologize."

  "Do you mind? Being called Sorry? It's just a nickname," Laura said.

  "I'm used to it," Sorry replied. "Miryam took me to a witch doctor over in Sydney— a real witch doctor— but a psychotherapist, too. I mean she was a witch like

  Winter, Miryam and me, as well as having university degrees and all that. She was terrific— she really used her capacity for something other than special effects. If I ever live to grow up, which sometimes seems doubtful, I'd like to be like her."

  "A psychotherapist?" Laura asked doubtfully.

  "Heaven forbid," Sorry replied. "I'd like to work for — I don't know — the wild-life division, or be a ranger or something. I could use what I've got in some tactful, useful way, helping damaged bush regenerate, helping threatened bird populations. Anyhow Chant, there's a moral to all this and it's that you can get over anything ... People have got over much worse things than this sort of rubbish."

  "But you haven't got over it," Laura pointed out bluntly.

  "Don't let's tell anyone that!" Sorry said quickly. "Look at my school record. Helping in the library, photographing all sorts of unsuspecting birds, and climbing the heady ladder of success to be a prefect. I'm in the top-half of the class for most things and Katherine Price and I fight it out for top place in English. If that's not getting over things, what is it? I don't want to die, really. I'm interested in what happens next, so I've got to keep on. My advice is ... just say good luck to your mother. Being miserable won't change a thing... not a thing." He flung his arm into the air and the kingfisher took off like a brilliant dart. "Away with it all!" said Sorry softly. "So— all right— it's not fair. Another thing that isn't fair is that I'm sitting here in the sun with you, while poor old Tim is currently doing cane work or whatever, in occupational therapy in some nuthouse. I'm a tribute to the power of money and education. Miryam knew what to do and had the money to do it. She just dropped everything and carried me away. If ninety-percent of the world thinks

  I'm normal then I am normal ... talking of which, there was something I was going to ask you."

  The flat greyness of the estuary made Laura's heart (furious a moment ago) begin to feel flat and grey, too. She tried to think beyond Sorry's tale back to Kate and Chris Holly.

  "Just because things have been worse for you," she said slowly, "doesn't make any difference to me ..." But, for all that, the place, the time and the story had had an effect. Her indignation had been altered, had almost gone, but it's place was taken by a bleak depression and she began to cry, not for any one reason, just for the breakdown of her life into pieces that no longer held to a safe pattern. What she had been warned of in the beginning had come to pass. A week ago she had been complete and continuous with a true face turned to the world, but now she had come entirely to bits.

  "Don't cry!" said Sorry, without much sympathy. "Don't cry! I'm starting to feel I've got all the disadvantages of being married to you and none of the advantages."

  Laura found it was possible to sniff furiously.

  "What advantages?" she yelled at him. "Come on! What advantages? You want to make out? All right then. It doesn't take long does it? And then you can just shut up about it. It'll be over and done with."

  Sorry stared at her in consternation.

  "That's really terrible," he said at last. "Is it my fault?"

  Laura looked down at her hands, locked together so tightly that for a moment she could not be sure herself just which fingers belonged to which hand. "See, I admit I do have the odd thought about you, Chant, stalking around in the school playground — a sort of grey heron girl, angular and a bit knobbly, but graceful too, and you recognized me, so I've watched you— and you've grown up over the last year and just look as if you might... The really awful part is that you've only offered because you're miserable and even then ..." He laughed to himself. "Well, I'm not a hero," he said. "That's for sure— but I can pretend to be one. Let's go back and see how your brother's getting on."

  Perversely enough, Laura now found she was really longing for Kate once more, as if by offering herself so insultingly to Sorry she had in some way caught up with her mother or got her own back on her. She felt suddenly easier, smiled shakily and let Sorry pull her to her feet. She began to feel free of the gnawing anger that had been eating her.

  "I'm a bit jealous of Chris Holly, I think," Laura said, and became even lighter as she named her demon.

  "I don't get jealous," Sorry answered, "but I can't congratulate myself on it really."

  "If I had a boyfriend wouldn't you be a bit jealous of him?" Laura asked.

  "No!" said Sorry and then asked "Who? Anyone in particular?"

  "No — well — say Barry Hamilton," Laura suggested.

  "Barry Hamilton!" exclaimed Sorry. "Barry? Surely not!"

  "He's very good-looking — and he's got a car," Laura pointed out.

  "But he can barely spell his name," Sorry exclaimed.

  "He can. He's not stupid!" Laura cried. "You're so busy praising yourself you probably wouldn't notice. And he's got a car," she repeated.

  "Holy cow!" said Sorry, startled. "I've got a rival— and a bloody fifth former at that."

  He looked at her, and for a moment the enhanced— the magnified — quality he had shown in the study the night before shone out in his more commonplace face. Laura, with astonishment, alarm and unexpected pleasure, felt the glance like a little electric shock affecting not so much her heart as the pit of her stomach. She looked away from him.

  "Hey," said Sorry as they came up to the Vespa and looked in the long grass for their hidden helmets, "I dare you to make me another offer, Chant."

  "You turned me down," said Laura. "You missed your chance."

  "Hang on tight, then," Sorry commanded. "I can't really roar away on a Vespa, but I'll do my best."

  Chris's car was still outside the house, and Laura went in, while Sorry, like an obedient dog, waited outside with the Vespa.

  Kate sat at the table in the very place where, in happier days, she had done her bookseller's course, and Chris Holly sat beside her talking to her in a soft, urgent voice which broke off as the door opened and they both turned to look at Laura. Kate had been crying, though she looked calm now, and she was messy, even for Kate, for she had not brushed her hair, which hung around her in disordered curls, duller than it should have been, while yesterday's mascara was smudged under her eyes, recalling the bruises which Sorry's violent memories had projected into his present skin.

  "I'm glad to see you back," Kate said in a careful voice. "I wasn't expecting you to turn up quite so early in the morning."

  "Anyone could have told that," Laura said, pleased to hear herself sound easy rather than angry. "It's all right! It gave me a surprise, but I've got over it. How's Jacko?"

  "Dreadful!" Kate answered bleakly.

  "I'll make you both a cup of coffee," Chris said. "It's one useful thing I can d
o. And then I'm going to go home, have a bath, tidy myself, meditate a little and come back to collect you."

  Kate turned her apparently battered face to Laura as soon as he was out in the kitchen.

  "It wasn't that I didn't care about Jacko," she said. "It was because I care so much. I felt so dreadful I needed some sort of consolation and escape."

  "I wanted to comfort you," Laura cried. "I'd have kept you company — me, not a stranger."

  Kate looked around the room as if she might see some advice written up on the walls.

  "It's the wrong time..." She sighed. "It's the wrong time to say these things. But it's the only time, as it turns out. Everything happens all at once. First I met Chris, and then Jacko grew ill, and the two things have run into one another so that they've become part of the same thing. I've got to say things, even though I know it's the wrong time to say them. Laura, you are a consolation to me, but you can never be an escape, because I feel responsible for you. I have to try and protect you and look after you, and anyway one of the things about sex ..." She stopped and began again. "You make me more myself than I want to be, at times, you and Jacko between you. And there are times when people make love that they get a rest from being themselves. Just for a few moments they can become nothing and it's a great relief. That's what I mean by escape. I've been myself, unrelieved, for a long time now and I've loved it, loved being with you and Jacko, even loved work, although I grumbled so much. But I wanted escape. Chris didn't ask me last night— I asked him."

  "Suppose someone like Chris isn't around?" Laura asked. "What do people do then?" She thought of herself watching the heron fly and longing to dissolve into nothing. Her voice sounded severe in her own ears, but Kate said mildly, "They get by, and I would have got by." Then she gave a grin which, weak as it was, was still her own grin. "It was just my good luck that this time I didn't have to. Lolly, I've said enough. I'm not going to apologize because I don't feel ashamed enough for that. I'm sorry if you were upset, but not enough to wish I'd done anything different."