The Red Shoe

by Ursula Dubosarsky

  Matilda reached out and picked one up. She looked around to see where her mother was, but she was flat on her back with a towel over her face, under the shade of a tree. Matilda kicked off her sandals. One at a time, she put her feet inside the red shoes. They were so small, she had to push her toes right down into them. Would she have feet as big as her mother’s one day? It was hard to believe.

  Matilda stood up in her mother’s shoes. How tall she was! She took a tottering step forward. She had to be very careful to keep her balance so she held out her arms, like a tightrope walker.

  “I’m the Queen,” she said to herself, “the Queen on a picnic.”

  She forgot all about the giant sandcastle she had planned on making. This was much better. She could pretend she was the Queen on a boring picnic, who decided she would climb a tall tree to get away from all the bother of being a queen and having to shake people’s hands and wave at the crowds. Sometimes the Queen must feel like climbing a tree, thought Matilda, everybody did.

  She staggered off in the red shoes in the direction of the bush, away from the picnic area. She nearly fell over, but the ground was soft and sandy and she managed to keep upright by bending her knees. She was heading for the very tallest tree. That’s what the Queen would do, Matilda reasoned, queens like the biggest of everything.

  It wasn’t easy getting up into the first branch, and her feet were slippery with sweat inside the shoes. But then she pulled as hard as she could and the branches stretched up like a ladder into the sky and it seemed she could go on climbing for ever.

  When she leaned back to catch her breath, she looked down at the world underneath her and was amazed by how high she had climbed. She could see the whole picnic ground. The children and the grown-ups, the old people on stools playing cards, and the cliffs and the grey and white water and a ferry leaving and further out yachts with white sails. She could even see as far as the half-hidden houses where rich people lived who only came to the mainland on their little motorboats with big dogs to buy fruit and meat.

  If I lived there I would not come out for anything, thought Matilda. I would eat snakes like the Aborigines. Matilda had never in her life seen an Aborigine, but in the school library there was a book of photographs of children with the whitest teeth, laughing, leaping into water. Her father told her that Aborigines used to live in the bush around where their house was. That must have been before the cowboys and Red Indians came, decided Matilda.

  But now she was safe from guns and bows and arrows, up high in the tallest tree in the Basin, with its white peeling trunk and leaves smelling of cough drops. I can see everything, Matilda thought, I can see the whole Basin. She could see everything, silver and grey like mirrors, like moths, she saw everything, high in the tallest tree.

  But as she was looking, she saw something down in the bush and she didn’t understand. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She kept looking, and she was afraid.

  She was so afraid she jerked and started to slide down the warm trunk and she nearly fell off, right off the tree down onto the ground way below. But then she remembered Yvonne’s little brother and his lost brains, and just in time she grabbed a branch above her and saved herself.

  She saved herself, but her foot slipped underneath her. And down from the tree, down from her right foot into the depths of the grey-green bush, fell her mother’s red shoe.

  Eighteen

  EASTER MONDAY, 19 APRIL 1954

  ON MONDAY THERE WAS STILL no school because it was a public holiday. Their mother sat by the phone, dialling number after number again, to see if she could find their father. Matilda lay on her stomach in the living room, listening to her, cutting paper into little pieces. It took her a long time because she was left-handed and the scissors would not go the way she wanted.

  It was hard being left-handed. At school when they did writing, she always made a mess of the letters on the page. The teacher hit her on the hand with a feather duster.

  “You don’t even try,” the teacher said.

  Perhaps her teacher was right, Matilda thought sadly, perhaps she didn’t try. She thought she did, but perhaps she didn’t really. Just as she thought she believed in God but didn’t really, not like Catholics.

  “Can we go to the Show today?” asked Matilda.

  “No,” said their mother.

  “Why not?”

  “We can’t, Elizabeth’s sick in bed,” said her mother, because Elizabeth had caught a cold from her walk in the rain the day before.

  “We can leave her behind,” said Matilda.

  She tossed up all the little bits of white paper she’d been cutting into the air, so they floated about her like tiny little snowflakes.

  “Will Daddy come home soon?” asked Matilda.

  No answer.

  “When’s Daddy coming home, anyway?” said Matilda.

  “I don’t know.” Her mother stood in the middle of the room, her hands in her hair. “I just don’t know.”

  “Come here.” Uncle Paul beckoned to Matilda from the piano. “I want to show you something.”

  Matilda went over. Uncle Paul lifted her in the air in his big hands and stood her on the stool. Then he opened the top lid of the piano.

  “It’s like seeing inside a person,” he murmured, “like cutting them open and seeing what’s there.”

  Matilda gazed inside. How full it was! There was a long, curved row of hammers, one for every key, Uncle Paul was saying, and then a line of hard strings like a harp. When you pressed a key, a hammer shot forward and hit one of the strings. That’s what made the sound of the note.

  Ping! Ping! Pang!

  “Hey presto!” cried Uncle Paul. “All mysteries revealed.”

  Keys were made from elephant tusks, Uncle Paul said. Funny, wasn’t it? So many dead elephants just for piano keys.

  “You know what he did, don’t you?” said Floreal, right in Matilda’s ear.

  The lid of the piano slid from Uncle Paul’s fingers and closed with a sharp bang like a gunshot. Matilda jolted, she nearly tumbled from the stool. Uncle Paul grabbed her just in time.

  In the bathroom, Matilda crushed up some toilet paper and put it in her ears, so she wouldn’t hear Floreal any more. Then she went out to the laundry to watch their mother wash the clothes. The laundry was hot and the clothes were so heavy, but how strong their mother was! She didn’t look strong but she was underneath. She was like a rainbow ball that you couldn’t crack with your teeth, the only way to eat it up was to suck it until all at once it was gone, you couldn’t even say when.

  When the washing was over, Matilda followed her out the back to help her hang the clothes to dry. She held the pieces of clothing up one by one while her mother pegged. The wind blew the clothesline around and around like a merry-go-round.

  There was a lot of talking noise from the garden next door. Matilda felt nervous. What if one of the men came over to the fence and spoke to her? Then their mother might find out about the lift in the black car, and how angry she would be.

  “That’s done, then,” said their mother.

  Her voice sounded strange because she had a wooden peg in her mouth. Matilda looked at her anxiously. They went back inside the house.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  Her mother didn’t answer. She picked up a knife next to the sink, and began peeling potatoes and letting them drop into a bowl of water. Then she started to cry and Uncle Paul came over. He took the knife from her hand and laid it down on the bench.

  “Where is he?” she said, wiping her face. “Where can he be?”

  “Don’t get in a state,” said Uncle Paul, putting his arm around her.

  Matilda put her finger in the bowl and pushed the peeled potatoes around. They looked like giant pale pebbles. Then she ran out of the kitchen, down to her room. Frances was lying on the bed, reading. Matilda sat cross-legged on the carpet.

  “I hate Uncle Paul,” she said out loud.

  Frances looked over bri
efly, but she kept on reading. The carpet was dusty, it made Matilda’s nose itch and she sneezed. Then she remembered the giant lollipop, her wonderful prize, rotting in the darkness under the bed where she had left it. She lifted up the hanging bedclothes and reached out until her fingers found the wooden handle.

  She sat up and inspected her prize. Some of the cellophane had rolled away and sugar had seeped through. Little bits of green wool from the carpet were stuck to it, like a green beard on a round face.

  “Maybe if I gave it to Mummy,” thought Matilda suddenly, “that might make her feel better.”

  She glanced over at Frances, but she was still reading. Matilda quickly left the room with her prize and went down the hall to her parents’ bedroom.

  The door was half open. Matilda pushed on it gently, and peeped around.

  Her mother was sitting on the bed, alone, with her head bent, and she was holding one red shoe in her lap, sobbing softly to herself. The lollipop slipped out of Matilda’s hands silently and fell on the floor.

  Nineteen

  UP IN THE HIGHEST TREE IN THE BASIN, the red shoe had tumbled down down from Matilda’s foot, down into the tangled bush.

  Matilda clung to the warm trunk and heard the cicadas and bird calls in the wind and the lapping of the water on the world. She smelt the gum leaves and just next to her nose was a streak of sticky sap, glinting like the trail left behind by a snail. Her heart was beating hard.

  Someone shouted and then someone else, but not about the shoe. Matilda looked down and saw her mother running through the bush and crying out, screaming, “Help me, help me! Someone help me!”

  Matilda must have climbed down then, though she didn’t remember doing it, but she must have because there she was and she could feel the vibrations of people running past her up through the ground and eyes were staring at her and there were flies everywhere. She didn’t know where anyone was, not Frances or Elizabeth, but she could hear her mother crying somewhere far away.

  Then a man she didn’t know grasped hold of her and wouldn’t let her go. He told her to sit still, sit down, sit still, stay here love, they’ll be all right. Matilda hid herself at the back of the trees and waited for someone to come.

  She waited and waited and no one came. She took off the red shoe, and hugged it to her chest. She watched as people were packing up their picnic things, ready for the last ferry back to Palm Beach. Would nobody come? It was twilight and the ocean was silver in the sunset.

  “Matilda, there you are!” said Uncle Paul, coming forward in the half-dark.

  “Where’s Mummy?” asked Matilda, frightened.

  “Down at the wharf,” replied Uncle Paul.

  She couldn’t see his face properly, just a blur and the smell of him. He was smoking.

  “I’m sorry,” Matilda whispered, “I lost one of Mummy’s shoes,” and she held the remaining shoe up to him.

  Uncle Paul took it. He didn’t seem to understand.

  “Your dad had a bit of an accident,” he said, stubbing out his cigarette. “Come on, let’s get on the boat.”

  Over at the wharf, people were huddled together as the ferry came in, like refugees escaping from the war that Matilda had seen in newsreels. There was Elizabeth and Frances, and their father and their mother. There they all were, safe and sound.

  No one spoke. Uncle Paul gave their mother the red shoe, but she put it on absent-mindedly, leaving her other foot bare. She was gripping their father’s arm, but he stared out at the moon on the water, as though he was alone.

  Matilda held Elizabeth’s hand as the ferry approached, gliding towards them like a floating palace, its windows glowing. It creaked and banged against the pillars of the jetty, and the wood made cracking sounds. Up flew the thick brown rope, catching the hook of the wharf like a lasso. The deckhand thrust the gangplank across the black water between the boat and the land. All the picnickers picked up their bags and baskets and moved murmuring forward across the little bridge into the warmth of the boat.

  Elizabeth, Frances and Matilda sat with their father and mother and Uncle Paul, inside the cabin, next to the engine where the metal wall was hot. Their father slumped forward, his eyes closed. Their mother had her head in her hands. Matilda could hear her moaning faintly, Help me, help me.

  Uncle Paul tapped Matilda on the shoulder. She was bright red on every part of her skin that you could see.

  “You’re going to peel like a potato tomorrow,” he said.

  It was too hot in there and it smelt of machines. Matilda slid off the seat and went out to the cool open deck. The benches were full of people and hats and towels and baskets and sand, sweat and seawater. The only place for her was the wooden life raft. She climbed up onto it and lay down on her back.

  Then a voice somewhere underneath her, floating upwards like a balloon, said, “That poor woman.”

  “It’s the war that does it to them,” said a second voice.

  “He’ll try it again, you know,” said a third voice.

  The boat rocked as it pushed forward through the waves, and the moon was a perfect half and yellow as teeth.

  “Three little kids.”

  “Remember that fellow at the club.”

  “Lucky they got there in time.”

  “Too sad.”

  “He looked all right.”

  “You can’t tell.”

  “Lucky they saw him.”

  “Lucky for who?”

  “You never know what’s waiting for you round the corner, do you?”

  “What a place to do it.”

  “In the middle of the bush.”

  “At Christmas time.”

  “He brought the rope with him, you know, in the picnic basket.”

  “He planned it all.”

  “Those poor little children.”

  “What a world.”

  “What next?”

  “Poor woman, poor woman.”

  “How will she cope?”

  Poor woman, poor woman. All those poor people, thought Matilda, remembering the news that morning, and how her mother had been so upset, those poor people who fell out of the train, down to the bottom of the river in New Zealand, those poor little dead children. All those poor sailors dead in the war lying at the bottom of the ocean, ping, ping, ping, all those poor people far away where bombs fell, with no homes left and all their children dead like a ladybird.

  Poor woman. Poor woman, poor little children. All disappeared from the face of the earth. The engine of the ferry changed gear, and the boat was slowing down. They were coming into Palm Beach. Matilda felt the motor chugging underneath her through her bones, like blood through her heart.

  Twenty

  EASTER TUESDAY, 20 APRIL 1954

  TUESDAY WAS STILL A HOLIDAY from school and their father still hadn’t come home. Frances was in her room, thinking. She had decided that she wanted to grow up very soon. She didn’t like being a child any more and she didn’t like living in their house. She used to, but not now. It was all different, she didn’t know why.

  She laid her warm cheek against the cool pane of glass of the window. When had it happened, that she had stopped liking it? She thought it might have been round the time Elizabeth had her nervous breakdown, but perhaps it was before that.

  Whenever it was, she knew she wanted to be grown-up and live in her own house. She wanted to be twenty-one. That’s what a grown-up was. When I am twenty-one, Mark and I will have been married for five years, thought Frances, remembering what Mark had said. We will have our own babies then, and I will wear an apron and every Friday Mark will bring me a box of Old Gold chocolates.

  But Mark had disappeared. They said he had polio.

  “No,” said Frances, shaking her head.

  She didn’t believe it. Perhaps she could go and find him, find where he lived, discover what really happened. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Mark’s house was not far from their school. His mother used to come to the playground every afternoon to pick
him up. Everyone knew Mark’s mother. Mark’s mother was enormous, she wore great big dresses without sleeves and her back was broad and covered all over with flies, hundreds of them. The children laughed at Mark and pointed because his mother was fat, but Mark didn’t mind. He walked to where she waited for him, every afternoon, and took her hand.

  One day Frances had followed them, without really meaning to. She’d been watching as they left the playground, and seen Mark pick some purple flowers that grew wild on the side of the street and give them to his mother. Then they’d gone on down the road, round a corner and up another street to their house, inside a gate, down a path, inside a door. Frances had stood with her scooter at a distance, watching. She remembered that the front fence was decorated with little coloured tiles. It was not like the fences of the other houses. It was beautiful, like a mosaic in a church.

  I’ll know it when I see it, thought Frances. A kind of excitement was creeping over her. She could find him! She could go today! She could ride on her scooter to his house and go in the gate and up the path and knock on his door and say, Mark, Mark, where have you been? Where did you go? I’m here, it’s me, Frances. Remember? I’ve been waiting for you, we are going to be married.

  In a moment she had got herself out of bed and dressed in her shorts and sandals.

  “I’m going out on my scooter for a while,” she announced as she walked into the kitchen. “I don’t want any breakfast.” She didn’t want to wait, not for a second.

  Uncle Paul smacked himself on the forehead in shock.

  “She speaks!” he cried.

  “By yourself?” asked Matilda.

  “Yes,” replied Frances determinedly.

  “What a good idea,” said their mother, trying to smile, but her eyes were somewhere else. “Let me pack you something to eat.”

  She cut Frances a vegemite sandwich and wrapped it up in greaseproof paper, and gave her a little bottle of water.