Digging to Australia

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘So she didn’t send you anything?’

  We could hear Mama’s footsteps on the stairs. Bob returned his cup to his saucer and his eyes slid away. I was relieved to see him return to his old vague self. ‘Not a sausage,’ he said. Mama came in then, and caught the end of the conversation.

  ‘Well we wouldn’t expect …’ she said, in her normal bright voice. ‘Now, more toast anyone?’

  ‘No thanks, Lilian,’ Bob said. ‘Sit down and have another cup of tea, there’s a girl.’

  ‘I will have more tea,’ Mama said. ‘It’s still Christmas after all.’ She poured herself a cup and sat down. ‘Auntie May looked well, didn’t you think?’

  ‘Yes she did,’ I agreed.

  ‘For her age,’ Bob said. ‘This’ll be her last Christmas though, you mark my words. She’s had a good innings.’

  ‘You always say that. And anyway it won’t be. She’ll go on for years and years,’ I said, to try and cheer Mama up, but also because I hoped it was true. I liked Auntie May and the dinosaur gleam in her ancient eyes. I liked to see her perched on Bob’s chair, her feet dangling, her little head nodding, beside the Christmas tree.

  ‘You’re off to Bronwyn’s tonight,’ Mama reminded me. ‘You’d better have a bath before you go, and take your new toothbrush and flannel.’

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind me going on Boxing Day?’ I asked. ‘I don’t mind not going.’

  ‘It’ll put paid to Village Life,’ grumbled Bob.

  ‘We can always play Scrabble,’ Mama said. ‘You like that.’

  ‘It’ll be a case of having to,’ Bob said.

  In my room I hugged the camera, and studied the tiny numbers round the dial. I had no idea how to use it. I had no money for film, and I could hardly ask for it now. I stood at my window looking through the aperture in the top of the camera. The garden was reflected and condensed into a tiny sharp image more perfect and satisfactory than the sprawling reality. It looked tidied up and far away, like a picture already. The icy surface of the pond at the end of the garden glinted, a tiny pewter speck through the frosty branches of the trees. Jacqueline had probably taken pictures of the garden and of Mama and of Bob and of all the things she’d seen. She might have been to the churchyard. She might even have played in the playground before it was overgrown. She had a life here before me and a life leaves traces. Surely it cannot be possible for a person to simply disappear?

  I wandered around the house, with the camera strap round my neck, examining the other traces, the silky threads, the sequins.

  ‘If you’ve nothing to do,’ Mama said, ‘would you go up into the loft for me? There’s a box of bits and bobs I could make use of.’

  I went upstairs to the landing and looked at the trap-door in the ceiling. ‘All right then,’ I called. My interest was caught by the possibility that there would be more of Jacqueline up there, something more tangible.

  ‘Bob’s fetching the ladder,’ Mama said, coming upstairs to watch.

  Bob climbed the ladder and pushed the trap-door up. ‘You’ll need a torch,’ he said, and handed me his new Christmas torch which he’d had tucked in the waistband of his trousers. ‘For goodness sake don’t stand between the rafters though, or you’ll come through the ceiling.’

  I climbed into the dark place where dust lay thick as fur in the spaces between the rafters.

  ‘Look in the big box,’ Mama called, ‘near the top there’s a chocolate box with kittens on it.’ I leant out and looked down at Mama and Bob standing underneath me, their faces turned up like anxious flowers.

  ‘Be careful,’ Bob warned, and I crawled away from them into the surprising warmth. The dust sifted and stirred. There were cobwebs clotted with fluff, and a spider ran up its invisible thread in the light of the torch.

  ‘All right?’ Mama called, and her voice was muffled. There were chinks of light in places where one roof tile was lapped imperfectly over the next. There was very little up there, as if there had been a deliberate erasing, a jettisoning of a past. I heard, very loudly, the scratching of a bird’s feet on the roof, and then its song. The water tank gurgled. ‘Can you see the boxes?’ Mama called.

  ‘Why don’t you go up, Lilian?’ Bob suggested.

  There were some boxes crowded together. The first one I opened and shone the torch beam into glistened with Mama’s beads tangled together with some little combs and hair ornaments, miniature scissors, bits of ribbon and the scraps of embroidery silk.

  ‘Found it,’ I called. ‘What’s in the other boxes?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Bob said.

  ‘Crockery,’ Mama said.

  ‘Fishing stuff,’ Bob added.

  ‘Can I look?’

  ‘If you like.’ I opened the lid of a large box. The dust made my fingers feel dry so that I couldn’t bear the roughness of the cardboard. The smell of the dust got into my nose and coated my teeth. I shone the torch into the box and saw plates and a bundle of forks and a tea pot with a broken spout. Underneath were some old knitting pattern books of Mama’s and an outdated encyclopedia. I was overcome by a great surge of boredom. There was nothing here for me, no great discovery. It was ordinary junk, household flotsam. There was nothing that was particularly to do with Jacqueline. She might have eaten with one of the forks off one of the plates. She might have consulted the encyclopedia while doing her homework. And she might not have done. And even if she had, what then? They were only things. They weren’t Jacqueline. The traces weren’t, after all, important. I crawled along the rafter to the trap-door and handed Mama’s box down to Bob.

  ‘Finished up there?’ he asked. I nodded and climbed down. Mama took the box into her room. I washed the dryness off my hands. The end of my plait was grey with dust and cobwebs which I’d dragged away with me. I went into Mama’s room. She had tipped the contents of the box onto the bed and was sorting through. She smiled up at me. ‘You ought to have a bath,’ she said and then held me in her gaze and narrowed her eyes as if she fancied herself perceptive. ‘I do understand,’ she said and there was a husky intimacy in her voice that made me bristle.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You wanting to talk about …’

  ‘Jacqueline.’ I finished for her. I didn’t want her to understand. The moment had passed.

  ‘Yes, Jacqueline.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘No … it isn’t. There’s too much unsaid. We were wrong.’

  ‘No you weren’t. It’s all right. I’m all right. You’ve done your job.’

  ‘But surely we can – surely we must – talk.’

  I shrugged. ‘Don’t see why.’

  She sighed and ran a string of bright beads through her withered fingers. The backs of her hands were blotched and veined. I picked through the jumble. There was a ring with a dark red stone. ‘Is it a ruby?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘No, more’s the pity. It’s a garnet. Try it on.’ I slid it onto my finger. ‘Have it,’ she said. ‘My fingers are too thick now.’

  I held my hand out and waved it from side to side so that the garnet caught the light with a rubeous gleam. ‘All right,’ I said. She frowned at my ingratitude, and I got up impatiently.

  ‘Don’t you want to know anything about it?’ she said.

  ‘It’s just a ring,’ I said, and of course I wanted to know whether it had ever been on Jacqueline’s finger. I wanted to know everything, but I didn’t want her to tell me. I didn’t want her understanding.

  ‘I’m going outside,’ I said. And in the garden I stared at the pond, and remembered the digging of the hole. Remembered a different self in a different time. The surface of the pond was partly iced over and twigs and leaves were set into the ice. Deep underneath in the thick green water there was a small orange movement, a glimpse of a lurking fish.

  In Bronwyn’s house there was a silver artificial tree. ‘Since Dad died we haven’t bothered with the real thing,’ she said. ‘He used to go out and get a huge one, right up to the ceiling.
But it doesn’t seem worth it just for Mum and me.’

  ‘Still, it looks pretty,’ I said. And it did. Pretty but slight.

  We were standing in the dim hall looking into the sitting room. I noticed a few cards on the mantelpiece. It all looked very orderly, no jostling of angels here.

  ‘What did you get for Christmas?’ she asked. ‘I got a chainbelt and a nightie and a jigsaw – over a thousand pieces – and some scent, Devon Violets, have a sniff.’ She stuck her wrist under my nose and I breathed in a sweatshop smell. ‘Like it? It’s from my Aunt in Torquay. Mum was livid.’ I tried to imagine Mrs Broom as livid, and failed. She was too small and papery thin.

  ‘I got a camera,’ I said.

  ‘Really? A real one?’ Bronwyn was impressed and deflated. ‘Just go in the kitchen and say hello to Mum,’ she said, ‘then we’ll go upstairs.’

  Mrs Broom was slicing bread. ‘Happy Christmas, dear,’ she said, and looked at me anxiously. ‘And has it been?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ I replied and glanced questioningly at Bronwyn, who looked away.

  ‘Chicken sandwiches,’ she said, ‘and quite an array of pickles. That all right for you?’ She wiped her hands on what looked like a brand-new apron.

  ‘And gâteau,’ added Bronwyn proudly in a growly accent I took to be French.

  ‘I’ve never had gâteau before,’ I admitted.

  ‘It’s divine,’ Bronwyn said, rolling her eyes. ‘Come upstairs now.’

  ‘Why don’t you stay down here in the warm?’ Mrs Broom said. ‘And keep me company.’

  ‘I want to show Jenny where she’s sleeping,’ Bronwyn said, pulling me out of the room, although I would have preferred to stay in the warmth of the kitchen.

  There was a mattress on the floor in Bronwyn’s room, neatly made up as a bed. I noticed that the sheets were nylon. ‘Mum wanted to put you in the spare room,’ she said, ‘but I wanted you in here. So we can talk. It’s more fun like that.’ She made her eyes go dreamy and stared beyond me into her past. ‘I was always having people to stay when I was at Moncrieff. For the whole weekend sometimes.’ She flopped down onto her bed and looked up at the ceiling. ‘There were always people in and out. Dad’s friends. They were always having dinner parties with candles and stuff.’

  ‘What happened to all the people?’ I asked.

  ‘Well after Dad – you know – they all dis-app-eared.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh you know … fair-weather friends.’ She sniffed.

  ‘You poor thing,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t care,’ she said bravely, lifting her head. It was icy cold in the room. There were frosty ferns on the window and my toes were already growing numb.

  ‘Shall I draw the curtains?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘If you want.’ The curtain material was thin and damp, and the curtain rings stuck.

  ‘They won’t draw,’ I said.

  She pulled a face. ‘Oh leave them. I never bother.’

  ‘Shall we go downstairs,’ I suggested. ‘I’m freezing.’ Even the dolls looked cold in their light frocks, their limbs bluish in the dim light.

  ‘No. Mum’ll keep sticking her nose in. I want you all to myself. It’ll be tea time soon anyway.’

  ‘Do you have a hot-water bottle at bedtime?’ I asked, imagining the cold shock of the sheets on my skin, and the draught blowing across the mattress from under the door.

  ‘We might have one somewhere,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask Mum. Oh. I like that!’ She caught hold of my charm bracelet. I took it off and showed her how to unclasp the little book to see the pictures of Paris spill out.

  ‘I’m getting another charm every birthday and every Christmas until I’m twenty-one,’ I said.

  ‘I’m asking Mum if I can,’ she said. ‘Only with all the charms at once. It doesn’t look much with only two, does it?’ She slipped it on her wrist and looked at it critically, before handing it back.

  ‘And I’ve got a ring,’ I said. ‘A garnet.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A sort of a ruby.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At home in my trinket box.’

  ‘Don’t believe you,’ she said and sat down at her dressing table and began to fiddle with her hair.

  ‘I have. I’ll show you,’ I said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Next time.’

  Bronwyn snorted. She had a saucer full of hairgrips and slides. She lifted her hair over to one side and clipped it there. ‘Spanish,’ she announced.

  ‘Why did your mum ask me if I’d had a happy Christmas in that way, as if she thought I hadn’t?’ I asked.

  ‘Because of that fib you told.’

  ‘What fib?’

  ‘When you said your dad was ill. She met your grandparents remember?’

  ‘Oh.’ I’d forgotten that. ‘Well it wasn’t really a fib. Bob isn’t all that well.’

  Bronwyn shrugged and narrowed her eyes at herself in the mirror. ‘I’m freezing,’ I complained. ‘And bored. What shall we do?’

  ‘I’ve been looking forward to you coming round.’ Bronwyn turned to me looking hurt. ‘And now you say you’re bored. None of my Moncrieff friends were ever bored.’

  I sat on her bed and we remained in silence for a while. I could hear the clattering sounds of crockery and cutlery as Bronwyn’s mother laid the table.

  ‘This is the first time I’ve stayed away for the night,’ I said, feeling, to my surprise, a longing for my own things and my own room, where at least it was warm.

  ‘Really?’ Bronwyn arched her eyebrows at me disbelievingly. ‘Haven’t you ever been on holiday?’

  ‘I mean the first time without Mama and Bob,’ I explained.

  ‘Why do you call them that? Why not Nan and Grandad? That’s what I call mine. That’s what most people call them.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s what I’ve always called them.’

  Bronwyn licked her lips and shivered. ‘I know what we can do,’ she said, becoming suddenly animated. ‘We can have a beauty salon.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘I’ll do your hair for you, shall I? Make you look glamorous. Would you like some scent? Go on, you’ll smell lovely.’ She tipped the little purple bottle and dabbed the perfume behind my ears. ‘There. Now, sit down.’ I sat on the stool before the dressing table and winced as she ripped the rubber band off the end of my plait. She unravelled my hair until it lay in pale wispy snakes down my back. ‘It reaches past your bum,’ she said.

  ‘I can sit on it,’ I said, and demonstrated.

  ‘It’s pretty. My hair just gets bushier and bushier if I try to grow it.’

  I got off my hair and began to brush it. The fine strands jumped up to meet the brush.

  ‘Electric,’ she observed.

  ‘I hate it,’ I said. ‘I really want to have it cut. Mama said I can have it cut.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she offered, lifting a long strand out sideways and making scissoring motions with her fingers.

  ‘You’d better not.’

  ‘Oh go on … let me.’ Bronwyn leant over my shoulder so that our faces were reflected together in the mirror. ‘I’m good at it,’ she urged. ‘I always do Mum’s. I’m going to be a hairdresser when I leave school. An app-ren-tice. I’ve got the knack, Mum says.’

  I thought suddenly of Susan’s short hair which lay in such pretty wisps around her ears. ‘Oh go on then,’ I said. It was only hair anyway, only dead stuff seeping endlessly from my follicles. It would grow again. And anyway, Susan might like it short. All the popular girls wore their hair short.

  She was surprised. ‘Oh … I don’t know …’

  ‘Go on! You said you would. I want it all chopped off. Now!’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure …’ Bronwyn went to find the scissors. I ran my fingers through the cold baby-fine stuff. It was my childhood, dead silk between my fingers, nothing to do with me anymore.

  Bronwyn came back with a pair of pointed
scissors with a special curl extending from one of their loops. ‘They’re special hairdresser’s scissors,’ she explained, demonstrating how she rested her little finger on the loop. ‘Mum bought them for me. That shows how good I am. I do her hair, a perm and a trim every three months. They all like it at work. They ask her which salon she uses.’

  ‘Where does she work?’

  ‘Not work really,’ she said hurriedly. ‘She just helps out at my uncle’s club. Cleaning. But she’s not a cleaner. She just helps out as a favour. Anyway, I could do you a perm.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No curls. I just want it short and straight. Dead short, with a fringe. And it wouldn’t matter if she was a cleaner.’

  ‘Well she isn’t. Sure you want it done?’

  ‘Go on.’ I closed my eyes and held my breath as she took the first few snips. She began to hum tunelessly as she warmed to the task. I breathed in her smell, a mixture of violets and sweat, as she moved around me, her fingers against my scalp as cold as the scissors. I felt a lightness as the hair fell away. She cut it so that it fell straight all round to just below my ears.

  ‘Now I can start styling,’ she said and we both took comfort from the professional-sounding word. She cut a fringe straight across my eyebrows. I blinked at my reflection through the falling hair. It made me look younger, which had not been my intention. I knew Mama would be hurt that I hadn’t led her take me to the hairdresser and that Bob would mumble and moan at her behind closed doors.

  ‘Very short?’ Bronwyn asked. ‘Sure you don’t want to go shorter in stages?’

  ‘Dead short,’ I confirmed.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure.’ She began to lift sections of the hair on the crown of my head up and snip them off an inch or so from the roots. ‘Do you know where your real mum and dad are?’ she asked. ‘Go on, you can tell me. I can keep a secret. I’m your best friend, aren’t I?’ I nodded half-heartedly. ‘And I told you my secret. About my dad. Hardly anybody knows about that.’

  ‘Wasn’t it in the papers then?’

  ‘No, it was all hushed up.’

  ‘Why?’

  Bronwyn shrugged and began to snip busily at the nape of my neck. ‘Here goes,’ she said. ‘Dead short. Tell me.’