The Red Shoe

by Ursula Dubosarsky

  Contents

  Once upon a time…

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  For Susie Bridge, dear old friend xxx

  and with special thanks to Professor John Stephens and Macquarie University, in appreciation of all the highly valued support during the writing of this book

  ONCE UPON A TIME…

  Matilda stood at the bedroom doorway in the early morning, watching her older sister Frances, who was just waking up. Her face looked like someone else’s when she was asleep. It was only when she opened her eyes that Matilda knew it was really her.

  Frances rolled over on her shoulder and then she blinked. That was enough. Matilda bounded into the room like a runaway sheep and jumped in the bed with her sister, pulling the bedclothes over her head.

  “What are you doing?” Frances yawned.

  Under the eiderdown Matilda squirmed closer. Her voice was muffled in feathers.

  “Will you read me a story?”

  Frances was good at reading stories, much better than their mother or father or their big sister, Elizabeth.

  “Oh, Matilda,” sighed Frances.

  “Please, Frances?” said Matilda. “Please?”

  Matilda couldn’t read by herself yet, or at least, only little words. Looking at all those black strokes and circles at school gave her a headache.

  “Oh all right.” Frances gave up. “Get me a book then.”

  Matilda leaned down to the bookshelf that was between their beds, and tugged out a book of fairytales that she had been given at Christmas.

  “Which one?” Frances took the book and began flipping over the pages.

  “I don’t care,” said Matilda under the eiderdown. “Any one.”

  “I know.” Frances half sat up. “Let’s get the book to choose.”

  She lifted the book of fairytales up in the air and waved it about. The pages swished back and forth above them, making a little wind. At last she let the book fall open in one place, brought it back down and read out the title.

  “‘The Red Shoes,’” she announced. “All right?”

  “All right,” agreed Matilda.

  Frances started to read. She had a low humming sort of voice, like a quiet lawnmower. The story was about a little girl called Karen. There were three Karens in Matilda’s class at school, and now she saw them all at once but somehow mixed up together, one with long blonde plaits, one with huge dark brown eyes and one with millions and millions of freckles.

  The little Karen in the story was so poor she had to wear wooden shoes that were hard and tight and made her feet red with blisters.

  “Poor little Karen.” Matilda wiggled her own pink soft toes.

  Then poor little Karen’s mother died, and the shoemaker’s wife made Karen some shoes out of dirty red leather to wear to the funeral. A rich old lady going by saw her at the funeral and said, “If you will give me the little girl, I will take care of her.”

  “Lucky little Karen,” said Matilda happily.

  “Shhh.”

  Little Karen thought the rich lady liked her because of her red shoes, but really the old lady thought they were hideous and burnt them when Karen wasn’t looking.

  That’s mean, thought Matilda, but she didn’t say it out loud, because Frances was looking cross.

  The rich old lady dressed little Karen in clean clothes and taught her to read and sew, and everyone said she was pretty. But when little Karen looked in the mirror, the mirror said, “You are more than pretty – you are beautiful.”

  “But mirrors can’t talk,” said Matilda quickly. “Can they?”

  “They can in stories,” said Frances.

  Matilda shook her head. Mirrors couldn’t talk. They’re just glass, she told herself firmly. They’re not real.

  One day a princess was travelling through the land where little Karen lived, and little Karen saw her. The princess had the most beautiful red shoes, the best the best the best in the world.

  “Does little Karen get them?” asked Matilda excitedly.

  “Just listen, will you?” said Frances.

  It was time for Karen’s confirmation—

  “What’s that?” asked Matilda.

  “Something you do in church.” Frances gritted her teeth.

  “But what is it?” persisted Matilda.

  “You wear a white dress and you go to church and they say prayers and things,” explained Frances.

  It was time for Karen’s confirmation—

  Matilda thought about the white dress. It sounded like a wedding. There was a photo of their parents’ wedding on top of the piano, their mother in a long white dress and her father in a black suit. And there was their mother’s friend, Yvonne, standing just behind them in a floppy hat, surrounded by flowers. But how could a little girl like Karen be getting married? Matilda looked at Frances. She decided not to ask.

  It was time for Karen’s confirmation, and the old lady took her to the shoemaker to get some shoes. The shoemaker showed her a pair of beautiful shiny red shoes. Karen wanted them very much and luckily for her the old lady was so old she couldn’t see colours any more and she bought them. Of course, if she had known they were red she wouldn’t have, because you’re not allowed to wear red shoes to church.

  “Why can’t you wear red shoes to church?” Matilda was puzzled. She didn’t mean to interrupt, but she couldn’t help it.

  “That’s the rule,” replied Frances in a monotone.

  “This is a long story,” said Matilda.

  So little Karen wore the shiny red shoes to her confirmation and everyone thought she was very wicked to wear red shoes to church. When the rich old lady found out, she said to Karen that she wasn’t allowed to wear them any more to church, only black ones.

  Only black. Matilda had black shoes for school, but she still couldn’t tie her laces.

  “On the following Sunday,” Frances continued, “there was Communion. Karen looked first at the black shoes, then at the red ones – looked at the red ones again, and put them on.”

  “What’s Communion?” asked Matilda in a very tiny voice. “Sorry,” she added.

  “It’s just something else in church,” said Frances, shrugging. “I don’t know. I think it’s something Catholics do.”

  Matilda nodded. There was a Catholic school not far from their own. Matilda sometimes peeked through the fence on the way home to look at the beautiful white statues of Jesus and Mary in the asphalt playground, like shining swans on a hard grey lake. There was a church next to the school, and on Saturdays and Sundays it was always full of people because Catholics loved going to church all the time, but the priest spoke a different language that only God could understand. A girl at school called Isabel told her all about it. Isabel knew because her auntie was a Catholic. Catholics really believe, Isabel said. Doesn’t everyone believe? wondered Matilda, because she believed, at least she thought she did. Not like Catholics, said Isabel.

  The room was dark and shadowy and the blinds waved in the morning breeze. Outside there was a tree with tiny red berries that brushed against the glass. They looked like lollies, but their father said they were poisonous, they could kill you if you ate them. They were worse than redback spiders. In the wind at night those branches made scraping sounds, and
sometimes Matilda thought it was someone in the garden digging her grave.

  “At the church door,” Frances went on, “stood an old crippled soldier leaning on a crutch; he had a wonderfully long beard, more red than white, and he bowed down to the ground.”

  Matilda pulled herself up to look at the book. She wanted to see if there was a picture of the soldier. She had never seen a soldier with a long red-and-white beard. All the soldiers she had seen had no beards and hardly any hair, although some of them had only one leg or one arm. But there was no picture, just black letters on the page, like hundreds of tiny footprints.

  Karen put out her little foot too. “Dear me, what pretty dancing shoes!” said the soldier. “Sit fast, when you dance,” said he, addressing the shoes, and slapping the soles with his hands.

  “Why is he talking to the shoes?” Matilda frowned.

  They were magic shoes, said Frances. When little Karen wore them, she couldn’t stop dancing. Even when she wanted to stop, she couldn’t, the shoes wouldn’t let her.

  Matilda put her face into the pillow. It smelt of skin and hair. She stopped listening to the words for a while, and just listened to the sound of Frances’s voice instead. Frances read: “One morning Karen danced past a door that she knew well; they were singing a psalm inside and a coffin was being carried out covered with flowers. Then she knew that she was forsaken by everyone and damned by the angel of God.”

  “Don’t cut off my head,” said Karen, “for then I could not repent of my sin. But cut off my feet with the red shoes.”

  “But she didn’t do anything wrong!” said Matilda. She sat upright, stiff with shock. “She didn’t do anything!”

  The executioner chopped off Karen’s feet with an axe and gave her some wooden feet instead and a pair of crutches.

  “He chopped off her feet?”

  Matilda felt sick. What would it be like to have wooden feet? She remembered that day in town with their mother, when they had seen a little girl in a tartan coat with metal where her socks should be. It’s polio, said their mother, don’t look, girls, don’t look. But Matilda had looked, even as her mother pulled her away, at the little girl with metal legs and crutches and heard the terrible thumping as she walked. Don’t look, don’t look, said their mother, that child will never run again.

  “This story is too sad,” Matilda scowled. “I don’t like it.”

  “Hang on.” Frances turned the page. “There’s a picture now.”

  Matilda peered over Frances’s shoulder. Opposite the print there was a coloured drawing on shiny paper, of a moon with a face and a long, long beard. It was pale and strange, as though someone had painted it in with a paintbrush.

  “That’s the old soldier,” said Frances. “The one who said the shoes were pretty.”

  “But it looks like the moon.” Matilda touched it with her fingers. “He looks like the moon.”

  Frances didn’t answer.

  “I don’t like this story,” said Matilda definitely. “I don’t want to learn to read if stories are like that.”

  “It’s got a happy ending.” Frances glanced down at the last few lines.

  “Like what?”

  Frances read: “Her soul flew on the sunbeams to Heaven and no one was there who asked after the Red Shoes.”

  There was a short silence.

  “That’s it?” said Matilda, in disbelief.

  “That’s the end,” admitted Frances.

  “That means she’s dead!” said Matilda, outraged. “If she goes to heaven, she’s dead. What’s so happy about that?”

  “Well, that’s the end.”

  Frances closed the book. She climbed out of bed, found her slippers and headed down the hall to the kitchen for breakfast.

  She’s not happy if she’s dead, thought Matilda, flopping on her back and staring up at the ceiling where a big crack was growing like a giant spiderweb. That’s a silly thing to say. I don’t like that story at all. Why shouldn’t little Karen have her beautiful red shoes?

  Their mother had some red shoes, with golden buckles and shiny black heels. They made a clicking sound on the pavement, like a tap-dancer. Matilda loved those shoes.

  “Red shoes,” whispered Matilda under the blanket.

  And she lay there quite still, listening to the sounds of the morning, but somewhere inside her she thought she might be afraid.

  One

  SUNDAY, 11 APRIL 1954

  IN A HOUSE FAR AWAY, right at the end of a long dusty road deep in the bush at the back of Palm Beach, lived three sisters with their mother, their father, and sometimes their Uncle Paul. The three sisters were called Elizabeth, Frances and Matilda.

  Elizabeth was fifteen. She had long hair in plaits and she didn’t go to school. She used to go to school but one day she’d come home with her plaits tied up on top of her head with a white ribbon and said she wasn’t going back. Their mother had called the doctor and the doctor agreed with Elizabeth.

  “She needs a rest,” the doctor said, stroking Elizabeth’s tight hand. “She’s having a nervous breakdown.”

  Their mother sat down on a chair in the kitchen and cried.

  After a while Elizabeth said, “I am the one having the nervous breakdown, not you.”

  So their mother got up from the chair, but she was not pleased with Elizabeth. She thought Elizabeth was making it up.

  “You can’t have a nervous breakdown when you are only fifteen,” said their mother.

  That’s what she told their father on the telephone. He was in the merchant navy, far away on a ship in the middle of the ocean, looking for the enemy with his binoculars.

  “YOU CAN’T HAVE A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN WHEN YOU ARE ONLY FIFTEEN!” their mother shouted down the telephone.

  Frances, the middle daughter, was eleven. She had grey eyes and even her hair looked grey, a sort of koala colour. She didn’t talk much, not when adults were there, anyway, but that made everybody listen to her more. When she finally did say something, it was almost exciting.

  “She speaks!” Uncle Paul would cry.

  Then everyone would stare at her, and of course she would forget what she was going to say, and she’d wish she’d never opened her mouth in the first place.

  Matilda was the youngest. Matilda was six. Some six-year-olds are not sneaky, but Matilda was. Her hair was black and so were her eyes. Even her blood was nearly black and seeped out very, very slowly when she cut herself. She was like a spy.

  “You’re not brave enough to be a spy,” her friend Floreal told her. “You’re cowards, all of you.”

  “My father is brave,” Matilda retorted. “He was in the war.”

  “The war is over now,” said Floreal. “And he’s not so brave, anyway. I have seen him go white in the face when a big lizard crawled up the back step.”

  This was true, and it was hard to see how a man who was frightened of a lizard would be much good in a battle. Floreal was blunt and truthful, and remembered all sorts of things that other people forgot. He was an unusual friend, because he was invisible. He was also very small, only about as tall as a book. If he had been flat, he could have been a bookmark.

  “I still think my father is brave,” Matilda said to herself. “Anyone can be frightened of a lizard.”

  The lizard had crawled up the back step one Sunday afternoon when Uncle Paul was visiting and they were eating roast lamb and potatoes and peas and onions for Sunday lunch. Uncle Paul was their father’s little brother. He used to come and stay with them when he didn’t have to work. Uncle Paul played the piano in restaurants lit by candles while people danced round and round on a shiny floor. He lived in a hotel in the city with clean sheets every day.

  They looked alike, the two brothers, but Uncle Paul was more handsome because his hair was longer and he led a wild life. He was hairy altogether, with curling eyelashes like a doll and thick eyebrows, and he even had a moustache with little streaks of silver in it. He had one lock of grey hair on the right side of his head. It
had been there since he was a child. It shows I’m a genius, he told them. No matter what I do, it keeps growing back.

  Usually Uncle Paul came to visit when their father was away, because it was hard to have two large men in one house. They ate too much, and also when they were both there at once the laundry overflowed with pairs of shoes and no one could ever find anything. They used to fight as well, not punching each other, but bellowing even when they were standing face to face. They argued about cigarettes and aeroplanes and how to cut the lawn. Brothers will always fight, sighed their mother, it’s in the Bible.

  It was because of Elizabeth that their father was at home that Sunday when the lizard crawled up the back step. He should have been on the deck of his ship but he had come especially because he was worried about Elizabeth. He wanted her to go back to school and do her exams. Elizabeth had a big brain, everyone said so. There was no one else in the family with a brain like hers.

  “You are all of you so stupid,” said Floreal, “except for Elizabeth.”

  That Sunday it was two months already since Elizabeth’s nervous breakdown. Two months is a long time to stay at home when you are only fifteen. Elizabeth didn’t go out to see any of her friends from school. She just sat around the house, reading the newspaper and watching her mother. Some days she took a plastic bucket and went down through the thick twisted bush to the beach and filled it with pale sand. Then she brought it back and dumped the sand in the front yard on the flower bed. Now there was a big pile of sand and the flowers underneath were dying.

  Lamb and potatoes and peas and onions – how rich it smelt, how warm! Like spring and summer and winter and autumn all mixed up at once. Matilda sprinkled salt onto her potatoes so they looked like the Snowy Mountains. She forked each mountain whole into her mouth and swallowed them one by one, until she finished the entire range. She felt very good and strong.

  “You’re greedy,” said Floreal. “You’re going to be sick.”

  Matilda poked out her tongue to where she thought he was. She didn’t like it when Floreal talked to her when other people were there. It made things difficult. But Floreal did as he pleased.

  “I saw some men go in the big house next door this morning,” said Matilda.