Lizzie's Tale

by Graham Wilson

  Chapter 1 - The Dream

  Lizzie found herself lying awake in her bed. At first she found it hard to tell whether she was awake or asleep. She knew she had been dreaming and the dream still felt so incredibly real. But now she looked through the window and saw the familiar outline of the tree in the faded street light. So she knew it was definitely her bedroom window not some imaginary place in her mind.

  This was the most vivid dream she could ever remember having and it was a scary dream in which Sophie had tried to tell her something. It was a dream of warning, though the warning was hard to understand. The first part she could remember was that she was in a car with some boys. The boys were a few years older than her. She was with Julie and they were going to a party.

  They were all dressed up and excited. One of the men seemed to be her friend, Julie’s, boyfriend, they were holding hands together. The others were people she did not know, but they must have been rich because one of them owned the car they were riding in, and they were all well dressed with expensive clothes. Later in the dream, three of these boys wanted her to leave the party and come for a drive with them.

  Julie and her boyfriend were still at the party talking to some other people and she could not really see them. Lizzie sort of liked the boy who owned the car and he seemed to like her. Now he wanted her to come back to the car with him.

  As Lizzie stood outside the front door of the party house, deciding whether to go, suddenly, there was Sophie standing in front of her. Sophie was pulling at her arm and trying to get her to go back inside. Sophie was just the same as she had looked all those years ago, when she had lived in her bedroom chimney. Now she seemed so little; quite babyish really. She stood right in front of Lizzie, trying to block her from going to the car with her boys, saying it was dangerous. She begged Lizzie not to go.

  But Lizzie had walked straight through where Sophie was standing. It felt like she was knocking Sophie aside, even though she disappeared before Lizzie got there. Of course Sophie was not really there. Now Lizzie was awake she realised that it was only a dream, even though it felt real. Sophie was only ever a ghost and she vanished from Lizzie’s life a long time ago when Lizzie was just eight. She could not remember talking to Sophie since when her Dad was living here. So she decided it would be childish to listen to her now.

  Soon Lizzie would be fifteen. It was silly to let something from all those years ago interfere with her life now. Sure she had promised Sophie they would stay best friends for ever, but that was just a kid promise; one did not pay attention to those when grown up, as she was now.

  But, as she tried to brush this dream aside, she had a bad feeling. A voice inside her head kept telling her that she must listen to Sophie, that Sophie was her real friend and would not come all this way to tell her this thing unless it really mattered.

  The trouble was that neither she nor Julie had a boyfriend. Certainly they knew no one like the boys in the dream. And, even if they did and went for a ride in a car with these boys, what harm could it do. Deciding that she had thought about it enough she fell back to sleep. When she woke in the morning the dream was pushed out of her mind, soon to be almost forgotten.

  It did come back, just for a second when she saw Julie, but it seemed too silly to tell her grown up and fashionable friend, the one everyone in school had voted the cleverest, most beautiful and most likely to succeed person. If the truth was told Lizzie was in awe of Julie who seemed much cleverer and prettier than she was. Julie had much nicer clothes and good things because her parents had a lot more money. She lived in a nice big house over near Birchgrove Oval, and her Dad worked in an office in the city and drove a fancy car called a Jaguar. Perhaps Julie did know real boys like the ones in her dream, but she had never introduced people like them to Lizzie.

  Still Julie had become her friend at school and most morning teas and lunchtimes they sat together and talked to each other. She did not know why Julie payed attention to her. Even though boys at school seemed to like Lizzie too she realised she was much plainer than her beautiful friend and her clothes and hair were not nearly as nice. She made her own clothes with her mother’s sewing machine using whatever material was available. Julie bought hers in expensive department stores, places like David Jones in Elizabeth Street.

  Lizzie was fourteen and would be fifteen soon. She had lived in the same house and slept in the same bed for all the life she could remember. But much had changed from the life of her childhood.

  Lizzie now had one brother, David. He was six years old. Her Mum had three miscarriages, after she was born before David came along. After each of these her mother seemed to go off to a place inside herself where she barely talked to other people and forgot to do all those things that ordinary people did, things like housework, going shopping, or putting on nice clothes. Sometimes, for days at a time, her mother would barely come out of her room, and she would forget to wash herself, do her hair or almost anything. Then it was just Lizzie and her Dad who had to manage. Lizzie started to do housework and cooking, even though she could not do it as well as her Mum.

  At first her Dad had been good and had tried to get her Mum out. He had also helped to do a lot of the housework. But as it went on, year after year, gradually it begun to get her Dad down too. He always worked long days on the docks and it was hard heavy work, lifting and carting things. So he would come home tired and dirty. However when Lizzie was little he always came straight home and would pick her up and swing her around in his arms and hug her. And he would hug his wife, Patsy, and dance her around the room to make her laugh.

  The first miscarriage came when Lizzie was about five or six and she could only kind of remember it. She knew that the baby had been born way too soon; it was only about four months old. Her Dad had said it was as tiny as a little finger. This first time her Dad had tried really hard to get her Mum to come out and keep doing things. He had helped heaps, and their family life had still been good. He told her Mum they needed to keep trying and he was sure they would have another baby soon.

  Sure enough, soon, maybe a few months later, another baby came, but this one was also lost around four or five months. Her Mum had sparked up while the baby was coming but, all too soon, it was over and she was back to being miserable again.

  Her Dad kept trying to help and Lizzie tried really hard to help too, and their Mum seemed to appreciate they were both trying. She stayed upbeat about her chance to have another baby and said that this time it would come out alright. It was like she made this promise to them and herself that it would work out right this time, a sort of bargain.

  After another year or two, when Lizzie was seven, her Mum got pregnant again. She had become her old self again, talking, laughing and playing with Lizzie, going out with her friends, going to the shops to buy baby clothes for the boy she was sure it was. And her Dad seemed really excited and happy too. All the pregnancy it seemed to go just fine and, gradually, her Mum’s tummy got bigger and bigger.

  But then, when it came time for the baby to be born, it all went horribly wrong. The baby was turned the wrong way, and the cord got twisted around its neck. Her Mum was rushed up to the hospital where they did an operation. They cut her tummy open and took the baby out. But the baby was dead; this little blue thing, which should have been her new brother Ronnie.

  For a while her Mum had tried to be brave. That was the year she turned eight, the last happy year. Her mother kept saying that soon another baby would come. But it seemed like the operation had messed up something in her insides, she would often hold her stomach in pain. Gradually she started not getting up in the morning and doing less and less. Now Lizzie found herself doing more and more around the house to help her Mum again.

  It would not have been too bad if her Mum had been pleased with Lizzie’s help; but instead she found fault with whatever was done, the meals were not nice, the clothes were not washed properly, the floors were dirty; that’s what she said while she lay around, doing nothing. />
  She acted the same way towards her Dad too. He could not do a single thing right. On the one hand she said he did not work hard enough and earn enough money. On the other hand she said it was his fault that he worked such long hours and came home late. Lizzie knew it was unfair to both her Dad and her; they were both trying their best. But she could not make her Mum understand. Gradually they both stopped trying to please her and started to ignore her and leave her to herself.

  Her Dad started stopping at the pub on the way home and often spent most of his wages there. Lizzie would take any chance to go to a friend’s place and not come home till late and when she did come home now she would often sit in her room and read books, just to escape this poor and dreary life. She kept trying her best to look after her Dad, but it was hard now when he was often drunk. It also seemed that every time her Mum and Dad were together they either fought or had nothing to do with each other and this made her Dad miserable and grumpy.

  Lizzie had really wanted to have her old happy life back, just her with her Mum and Dad, all being happy together. She could not really see why having another baby was so important to them. Sure it would be nice for her to have a brother, but they were still a family and could enjoy things.

  Then, just when it had seemed hopeless, her Mum had come out of the bedroom one day with her hair washed and wearing clean clothes. She told them she was expecting another baby. After this it was like she had become a new person, she cleaned the house until it was spotless, she made them keep everything really clean; she said she was not going to let anything happen this time which might put at risk this precious child. Everything was about the baby that was coming, nothing about anyone else. It felt as if her Mum had forgotten about her Dad and her, even though they were still living here too.

  Soon her Dad was going back to the pub again, coming home late, drunk, having spent far too much money. Her Mum could not stand this either. Before long she would not let him stop in the same room as her, she said he was too dirty. Her Dad would still hug her, his Lizzie, when he saw her and she hugged him back tightly. Even though he had often not shaved and smelt a bit bad, she still loved him lots. She just wished she could make it all better.

  Then one day he did not come home. He was not there that night and not the next night either. Lizzie was beside herself with worry, even if her Mum barely seemed to notice. Her tummy was getting really big now, and all she seemed to talk about was what would be good for the baby. It was as if her husband’s absence barely registered in her mind.

  So Lizzie went to the place where her Dad worked, early the next morning, and asked if he was there. The people said that no-one had seen him since the night before last when he finished work. He had told them he was finished for the day, obviously heading for the pub.

  So she had gone to the pub, just herself, an almost nine year old girl in a school dress, even though she should have gone to school. She asked if anyone had seen her Dad or knew where he was. Finally someone told her he had been there the night before last and had left about ten o’clock, so drunk he could barely walk, saying there was no point going home as his wife did not talk to him anymore, as he wobbled out the door.

  That was the last anyone had seen him. The publican said that, if he had gone missing, Lizzie should go and see the police. So she had walked all the way up to the police station, up in the middle of town, and talked to a kindly police sergeant. She had asked him to help her look for her Dad and had also told him about her Mum and how her Mum did not seem to realise her that Dad was missing.

  So the policeman organised a search with a few men from the pub and from the nearby streets. They found him soon enough, lying at the bottom of some rickety stairs which went down from behind the pub; going down the side of the cliffs to the docks below. Underneath the stairs grew some scrubby bushes.

  There was the body of her Dad, lying hidden under these bushes. They said he must have tripped and fallen over the rails, coming from high up on the stairs, falling headfirst onto the rocky ground below. Now he lay there with his head smashed and his neck at a funny angle. It was awful.

  They tried to keep her away; they said he smelt bad and she should not see him until the undertaker had fixed him up. But she had ducked under peoples arms and ran to where he was; just wanting to go and hug him one more time. A policeman caught her and held her back, but not before she saw him with his broken neck and smashed head.

  Since then she could not quite forgive her Mum for letting this happen, through sending her father away. She knew it was not just her Mum’s fault; but if her Mum had been nicer her Dad would not have got so drunk and it would not have happened.

  Now six more years had gone by. Her Mum had baby David soon after this. While Lizzie quite liked her brother, she could not get the thing she most wanted, to have her Dad back. So now, while her Mum tried to talk to Lizzie again and pretend as if it had not happened, Lizzie was angry deep inside. Even though they still lived together and she played a bit with her brother, she mostly kept to herself.

  And now they were so, so poor. Her mother got some sort of pension, but it did not go far towards feeding them and buying clothes. The house needed a new coat of paint, the kitchen cupboards were falling apart and there were holes in the bottom of her shoes that she tried to stuff with newspaper.

  She looked for any odd jobs she could find; baby-sitting, mending clothes, washing and ironing, running errands; but it was always hard to earn enough money and what she got she gave straight to her Mum without keeping any for herself, because she knew that her family was more important and her Dad would have wanted her to do this.

  She knew her Mum was trying to make it up to her for that awful time she had caused, but yet in Lizzie’s heart a hard lump towards her Mum remained, like a piece of ice or stone.

  But at last things were looking up, Julie had become her good friend and Julie was rich and had other rich friends. Julie talked to Lizzie like she was not some little poor girl and, sometimes, she gave her spare clothes, bits of jewellery and other nice things. Plus she found she really liked talking to Julie, with both of them telling stories and imagining what they would do with their lives once grown up. Soon she would leave school; it would happen at the end of this year as she had been promised work in a factory in Pyrmont. Now she was determined to forget about any silly dreams like the one last night.