I crossed the main road, which was oddly quiet, no cars tonight, no buses. It was a night to be tucked in behind curtains and evergreen boughs, to be in company. The moon was almost full. It appeared from behind a shred of cloud and cast its icy light on the church spire. A car, racing far too fast on the deserted road, burst out of the distance and snarled past, leaving a silence more impenetrable than the previous quiet. I went through the stone arch into the cemetery. I felt not frightened but experimental. Every step I took was careful and measured. I walked beyond the reach of the street lights. I knew the path well by now, but still I stumbled. The moonlight was thin and grainy. It brushed the tops of the gravestones and eerily lit the bowed heads of dead flowers and branches. The tips of the angel’s wings gleamed frostily though its face was in shadow. I trod on something that crunched under my foot, I could not tell what, but it was something that reflected back a glimmer of the sparse light. The church wall beside me reared blackly into the sky. My heart bundled itself up and a bolt of fear brought me close to panic, to flight. The church seemed suddenly a live crouching thing. I put my hand out and touched the lifeless stone of the wall, and I remembered the boy in The Prelude with the cliff rising between him and the stars. Imagination was all it was.
I looked up to the moon but it turned and hid its face, bestowing the cloud with a ragged glittering edge. I walked forward with tiny steps as if a hole might open up in the ground before me. I kept my hand against the church wall and made my slow way to the side door. I could hear nothing and see no light under the door. I turned the handle and it opened with a gradual stuttering creak. It was more densely dark than ever inside, and I hesitated before stepping in. I called out Johnny’s name—although I could sense that he was not there—and the darkness swallowed my voice. I worked my way along the wall to the place where Johnny kept his things. My back prickled as if there were eyes on it, although no eyes could have penetrated the darkness even if eyes were there. I said Johnny’s name again and there was nothing in response. I needed to see. My need for light became urgent, like an ache, a physical need. It was as if I was breathing in darkness, as if I would suffocate.
Eventually I found Johnny’s corner and fell to my knees. I gasped with relief when I felt the square edge of the suitcase. I had been afraid that Johnny had really gone, bags and all. I opened the suitcase and fumbled until I found his matches. My hand shook as I opened the box and scraped one against the wall. It made a ridiculously loud ripping sound as if slitting the darkness to let in a little waver of light that got me nowhere, illuminating only my fingers, illuminating only me if anyone was there to see. I held the match until it threatened to burn my finger and thumb and then dropped it on the floor. I felt in the suitcase for a candle and I drew the ball of my thumb over something that felt silver and fine. It was not until I felt the thick warmth running down my hand that I knew it had been a blade. I squeezed my thumb tight inside my fist. I knew there were candles in the case, a thick white bundle of them. Gingerly now I continued to search with one hand, and at last found them. With difficulty, with my thumb throbbing and aching now that it knew it had been cut, I lit one and then another and another, melting their bases and sticking them onto the box that Johnny used as a table and a seat.
There was a frail ball of light around me now and I huddled inside it, the old damp blanket round my shoulders. My fingers searched for the end of my plait to twiddle with, but of course, it had gone. I kept my cut thumb cramped inside my hand, not liking to look. There were dark splashes on the box and a drop of my blood crawled down the side of one of the candles. When I dared to open my hand and look, I saw a curved cut, gaping like a little mouth to show the darkness inside me. It was the sort of cut that could do with a stitch. If I’d been at home Bob would have gone to telephone for a taxi, and then Mama would have taken me to the hospital, and made a fuss of me. But then it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been at home. I wrapped my handkerchief tightly around it and held my hand high above my head for several minutes in order to drain the blood from my arm. I felt foolish sitting there with my arm up as if I was in class, daring, for once, to answer a question.
The Christmas branch I’d given Johnny had gone, and I realized what it must have been that I’d crushed underfoot – one of the glass baubles – and I frowned to squeeze away the guilt that I’d taken away part of Mama and Bob’s precious innocent Christmas to be crushed underfoot in the darkness of this secret place.
No one in the world knew where I was. That thought gave me a thrill of freedom like a flash of light that was immediately chased away by fear. It was stupid of me to be here all alone. Foolhardy. Any madman might burst in. Anyone could, or anything. There are no such things as ghosts, I reminded myself, though nothing seemed quite as certain as it had before, but there are bad and mad people. There had been murders in our town, murders and vanishings, and of course, I’d been warned, everybody was warned all the time, but the warnings had never crept inside my skin before, never led me to imagine what there was to fear. But now, in the dark of the unholy church, I shuddered. I wished Johnny would come back so that we could fry sausages and brew tea. I wanted to go home, but now that I was in the church in the little bubble of light I was afraid to leave. Johnny’s grandfather looked coldly at me and his weak and peevish lips trembled with a spiteful impulse and he seemed more likely to spit than cry. I turned so that I could not see him, so that my back was against the wall. I pulled a book from Johnny’s bookcase and in desperation, in an attempt to force my mind away from the present and into some fiction, I began to read. I don’t know what I read. It got no further than my eyes, although I turned the pages, for my mind was too crowded with fear to take it in. I got a fit of ragged hiccups and the acidic taste of pickle kept returning to my throat. I found a packet of cream crackers in the suitcase and nibbled one. It was as cold as if the winter had got inside it and it tasted of stone.
I longed for my own bed, my hot-water bottle, my bedside lamp, even the murmur of Mama and Bob downstairs. I had no idea of the time. It wasn’t late. Probably not later than ten o’clock. I longed even for the mattress on the floor beside Bronwyn’s bed. The longing tired me out. I foraged in the shadows, averting my eyes from Johnny’s grandfather, and found some of Johnny’s clothes, a woollen jumper and some socks. I took off my coat and put the jumper on underneath and then put my coat over the top. I pulled the socks on over my shoes, wrapped the blanket around me and lay down, my head on another folded cloth.
Surprisingly, I slept, although I kept jerking awake at every real or imagined sound, and every time I did it was like waking from reality to find myself in a ghastly dream. The night dragged on, the unmeasured hours stretching out so that it could have been days that I lay there, sleeping and waking and watching for first light. Once I had to get up and creep outside to crouch by the gravestones and relieve myself. The street lights were out on the road and the moon had slipped out again. The ivy on an overgrown stone shivered and it appeared to writhe.
I slept more soundly towards dawn, and woke sluggishly, not remembering where I was until I opened my eyes and saw, not so much light, but a thinning of the darkness showing through the curved stone gaps at the tops of the windows. I was thoroughly cold and so stiff I could scarcely move, but I was alive and well and triumphant that I had done it, spent a night as, almost, an outlaw, and survived. I thought then that I understood Johnny’s life with its constant escapes. But I didn’t understand the wings that loomed above me.
There was water in the bottle and I lit the primus stove and made myself a cup of tea. I drank it black with a couple more of the cream crackers. There was a waxy mottled maroon sausage that I didn’t fancy, but that was all right. Soon I could go home and eat a turkey sandwich or a mince pie, eat whatever I liked in the electric light. I went to the door and stood looking out, the blanket round my shoulders, finishing my tea and gazing at the lightening world. The frost had stiffened the grass blades and furred the branches and stones
. Here and there a bird twittered, the beginning of the day’s awakening. Traffic had started on the road and the street lamps were lit again. The horrible night lay behind me now like a cast-off skin and I stepped out of it with relief and breathed in the fresh frosty air. I threw the slops from my cup out of the door, as Johnny did, and then I had a look at my thumb. The handkerchief was stuck fast with dried blood, and I left it alone, fearing that to pull it off would start it bleeding again. It hurt, but the rest of me felt strong and fine, and somehow purged.
I remembered my haircut and ran my fingers through my hair. I could feel that it was sticking up all over the place. Bob would be angry but it couldn’t be helped. Not now. I thought about Bronwyn and her clever scissors and her needless lies. I should have guessed, when she asked me to choose the kind of father I’d have liked if I could choose, that that was just what she’d done. She’d chosen the story she preferred, not a father in prison for some shoddy offence but a father murdered in a feature film plot. She had chosen the glamorous over the mundane. I wondered how on earth she would have explained his reappearance if I had not discovered her lie. It seemed a wicked thing to do, pretending that he was dead – almost as if she was wishing him dead. It was also a stupid lie, since it was doomed, eventually, to failure.
I went back inside and took off Johnny’s clothes and tidied his things before I left. He would know I, or someone, had been there. I took the Christmas card and poem – crumpled now – out of my coat pocket and propped them up on the box so that he’d know the visitor had been me. There was the waxy mess where the candles had been and the brown stains of my blood here and there on the things in the case and on the box. I took out his mirror and peered at myself. I looked completely different with the fringe down over my eyes and tufts of hair sticking out behind my ears. I looked tired and grubby. ‘Burning the candle at both ends,’ Bob was bound to say. I wrapped my scarf around my head to hide my hair.
Although I was ready to leave I felt reluctant to do so at once. Now that it was light and safe, I hesitated, examining the wings, walking round them. It made me grin, the idea of Johnny soaring through the air like a cartoon bat or bird. As if he ever could! As if he could ever believe he could! He was as bad as Bronwyn. Worse. At least she was only lying to me – he was deluding himself.
Not looking where I was putting my feet I almost tripped over a clod of hard earth. I looked down to see that a hollow had been made in the floor and there was something in it. It was too gloomy in the shadow of the wings to see properly so I knelt down, and I saw that it was bones. I knew at once that the bones were human. It was a long grave-shaped hollow, though not deep enough for a grave. A grave had to be six feet deep, I knew that because Bob always said ‘six feet under’ instead of the word dead. I used to think about that when I was digging to Australia, when I dipped my head beneath the surface and sniffed the breath of the earth. This grave was scarcely a foot deep. It was an adult-sized skeleton but it was nothing like I thought a skeleton would be. I’d imagined that bones were white, bleached neutral. These bones were brown and viscous. I bent closer, fascination and revulsion quarrelling within me. There was a dull matt of something near the skull, probably hair. There were teeth scattered. I imagined how they must have plopped out over the years, the small sounds muffled by the earth. The bones were mostly separate, lying splayed as if they’d relaxed apart, not like the skeletons in books that stand upright, complete, as if ready to dance a jig. Although I could see that this was a human skeleton, I could not link it to myself, not this collection of dark remains: the stubby bulb-ended bones, the rib-fans, the knobbles and the tapering shards of finger and toe.
I stood up and left the church as quickly as I could. The sky was pale and lemony. I saw that the path was scattered, as I’d guessed, with the Christmas decorations I’d given Johnny, some smashed, some rolled into the grass. I picked up a silver bauble and put it in my pocket. I breathed in the air, sharp enough to sting my lungs, but wonderfully thin and clean.
Once I was clear of the church I walked slowly home. It was too early to arrive back from Bronwyn’s but I wanted to be at home. I badly wanted to wash. My appetite had gone. I wanted to be somewhere where I felt safe, where I understood what was going on. An image of Johnny came sharply into my mind, his angry face, his bristles glittering sharply, his eyes pale and blank. I thought of the bones. I kept hearing Mama’s voice in my head, in time with my footsteps, saying: skeletons, skeletons, skeletons. But it wasn’t Bronwyn at all who had the skeleton, that seemed a kind of unfunny joke now. It wasn’t Bronwyn but Johnny.
When I reached the corner of my road I stopped. Outside the house was a police car. I walked nearer to be sure, and I could see through the net curtains dark silhouettes, taller than Mama and Bob. I turned away and walked back round the corner, shivering, dithering, my mind in turmoil. I was tempted to run – but where? I couldn’t go back to the church, not now I’d seen the bones, not now I’d felt the danger. I had no money, my thumb hurt, my bladder was full to bursting. Eventually I took a deep breath, turned on my heel and walked back, straight through the gate and into the house.
20
‘Jennifer!’ Mania’s voice was a high-pitched wail, and she grasped me to her in a way she hadn’t done for years, or perhaps had never done. ‘Where on earth … oh thank God … we’ve been so … and the police …’
A policeman with a grim face emerged from the sitting room. ‘So, the wanderer returns,’ he said. Bob’s face glowered from behind the policeman’s shoulder. A policewoman shook her head at me. ‘If you youngsters knew the grief you caused … If she was mine she’d be straight across my knee,’ the policeman said to Bob.
‘We don’t know what …’ began Mama in my defence, loosening me from her clutch.
‘I need the toilet,’ I blurted, my face burning, on the edge of tears. I dashed up the stairs and locked the bathroom door behind me. I used the toilet and washed my face and hands and unwrapped the scarf from my hair, which looked terrible. I looked despairingly at my reflection. And then I brushed my teeth over and over, spitting pools of froth into the sink to try and rid myself of the horror and the shock of the bones and the lies and the police and the frightening haggard look on Mama’s face.
‘Jennifer!’ Mama called eventually. ‘Come back down here, please.’ I had no choice now. I had delivered myself back into their hands. There had been a moment when I could have run, but I hadn’t the nerve.
I said that I’d been walking all night. They didn’t believe me, but once they’d ascertained that I’d been in no danger, the policeman gave me a lecture about responsibility and danger and all at the taxpayer’s expense, and then left. All the time they were talking Mama stared aghast at my hair and Bob stared fixedly at the carpet. When they had gone we all stood motionless in the hall, like a photograph of a scene from a play, Bob with his hand still on the door handle, and listened to the police car driving away. And then we continued to stand in the silence as if no one knew what the next move was, and the time stretched like a rubber band and I was seized by a terrible urge to laugh just to snap the tension – but that reminded me of Bronwyn’s mother and the label of her blouse sticking up against her frail neck and I began to sob instead. And that was probably the best thing I could have done. Bob pulled his warm and crumpled horsey handkerchief out of his pocket and mumbled something and shuffled off, closing the sitting-room door behind him.
Mama took me into the kitchen and made me a cup of cocoa while she explained that Mrs Broom had been worried about letting me walk home alone and that she and Bronwyn had come round before bedtime to make sure I’d arrived safely. And of course, I hadn’t, so they had been up all night, worried half out of their minds, and if anything had happened to me … and Mrs Broom was worried sick and blamed herself entirely. And all the time Mama was balanced between anger and relief, her voice shaking and coming to the point of breaking over and over again so that she had to keep breathing in deep brave breaths just to
keep going.
‘And where on earth were you?’ she finished, banging my cup of cocoa down in front of me so that it slopped over into the saucer.
‘Nowhere,’ I said.
She reached out her hand as if to slap me and withdrew it again. ‘Nowhere indeed! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Nowhere indeed!’
‘Just walking about.’
‘All night!’
‘I argued with Bronwyn.’
‘Then why didn’t you come home?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Can you imagine what was going through our heads? Can you? Look at this.’ She held out the local paper, folded open at a page which showed the blurry face of a girl, her hair whipped about by the wind, smiling and squinting at the camera. The girl held a candy floss. Mama’s hand shook so much that the paper rattled. She put it on the table in front of me. ‘Another local girl missing,’ she read, ‘police no further with their enquiries … appeals to the public … Jennifer, can’t you see how serious? What danger?’ She sat down heavily as if her legs had buckled beneath her, and hid her face in her hands. I thought she would cry, but she spoke slowly through her fingers in an even muffled voice. ‘I want you to tell me where you were.’
‘I told you. Nowhere.’
The sticky bones came into my mind and mad Johnny with his wings. But safe in the kitchen, even with the grainy mysterious face of the disappeared girl in front of me, I couldn’t believe that Johnny was a killer. He’d never harmed me, after all, and he’d had the chance. ‘I was just walking about. I even walked past the house.’
Digging to Australia Page 15
