The Red Shoe

by Ursula Dubosarsky

  “More’s the pity,” replied Uncle Paul, unfazed. “But it must be somebody’s, somewhere in the world. Your mum still asleep?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. She watched him tiptoe to their mother’s bedroom and knock lightly on the door. Then he pushed it open, went in and shut it behind him.

  Matilda stared at the closed door. She could hear their mother’s voice, muffled from inside.

  “You don’t understand anything, do you?” said Floreal.

  “Shut up!” shouted Matilda, leaping to her feet.

  “Your father’s never coming home,” said Floreal.

  Matilda swung around in a fury.

  “Never!” repeated Floreal. “Never never.”

  Matilda felt so angry she thought her blood might burst out of her skin. She ran over to the radio in the living room and switched it on. She turned up the volume as loud as it would go. The deep, huge voice of the man inside filled up the room like a rush of water.

  “GO AWAY!” she bellowed at Floreal, to make herself heard over the top of the noise. She flung her arm and pointed at the soft round cloth at the front of the radio. “Go back in there and never come out again!!”

  The door to their mother’s room flew open and Uncle Paul came stamping out.

  “What on earth are you doing, Matilda? Turn it off at once!”

  “I won’t!” yelled Matilda. She stood herself in front of the radio dial. “I won’t!”

  She glared at him, and he glared back. The voice in the radio seemed to gather strength and become even louder. Uncle Paul raised his hand, she thought he was going to hit her. But before anything could happen, they heard a banging coming from outside the house on the street, CRACK!

  “What – for God’s sake!”

  Uncle Paul went at once to the window and moved the curtain aside.

  “Get down!” he ordered, waving at her.

  “What is it?” Matilda was frightened.

  Uncle Paul bent down and switched the radio off. Matilda, on the floor, crawled over to the low living-room window and rested her nose on the sill to see what was happening.

  BANG! BANG!

  Their mother came out of the bedroom.

  “What is it? What’s going on?”

  “It’s your neighbour,” said Uncle Paul, sounding bewildered. “Can you believe it? He’s got a gun!”

  The neighbour? Matilda peered out. There, on the street in the golden daylight, was the mad old man in his slippers and dressing gown, his gun in one hand and his bright, silver Japanese sword waving about in the other. He was at the front gate of the big yellow house, shooting up into the air.

  BANG! went the gun again, and SWISH went the sword.

  The mad old man had such a strange look of joy about him, spinning around on the pavement as though he were dancing. Matilda was transfixed.

  “He’s going to kill someone! Do something, Paul! Do something!”

  Matilda looked up at her mother. What did she say?

  BANG!

  “Do something, Paul!”

  Do something. Do something. But Uncle Paul did nothing. He stood at the window, staring, hands in his pockets.

  Do something! Matilda had shouted inside her head. Do something!

  But she was too far away, high in the tallest tree in the Basin. Nobody could hear her.

  Matilda saw everything, silver and grey like mirrors, like moths, everything. Up in the tree she saw her father with the rope around his neck, what was he doing? She didn’t understand, but she was afraid. What are you doing? She tried to call out to him, but he would never hear her from that far away, he was all alone in the bush with a rope.

  But he wasn’t alone. Further back in the bush, behind a sandstone rock as big as a man, Matilda suddenly saw Uncle Paul. Uncle Paul! Uncle Paul would help him! Uncle Paul would stop him. He would do something. Do something!

  But Uncle Paul did nothing. He stood, stiff as a stone behind the tree, staring, hands in his pockets. He stood there and he did nothing at all, while his brother hanged himself from the branches of a ghost gum.

  Matilda saw him. Matilda saw everything. Uncle Paul stood and watched, and he did nothing at all.

  “He won’t do anything!” Matilda shrieked and she sprang up from under the window into her mother’s arms. “He never does anything! He just stands there, just like he stood there at the Basin watching Daddy with the rope!”

  Her mother turned her head, as though it was on a stiff hinge and looked straight into Uncle Paul’s eyes. Then the colour of Uncle Paul’s face changed so suddenly, from pink to white, it was as though he had died on the spot.

  Outside, there was a screeching of brakes. One of the big black cars pulled up with Mr Driver and Mr Passenger and another man Matilda hadn’t seen before. In moments they had dived on top of the mad old man and pulled him down on the street. The old man’s head hit the ground and his gun clattered on the ground, and there was blood on his forehead and it shone in the sun.

  “Stop it!”

  Matilda pulled away from her mother and dashed out the front door. The old man lay on the ground, still holding his sword grim and tight in his gnarled old hand. Mr Passenger and the other man were on top of him, squeezing him, while Mr Driver stood beside them, his own gun drawn.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Matilda punched Mr Driver, with lots of little hard angry punches. “Don’t kill him!”

  “Jesus Christ,” said Mr Driver, snatching at her fists, slipping the gun back in its holster. He started to drag her away, up the driveway.

  “Don’t kill him!” Matilda was crying now, and her feet gave way. “You shouldn’t kill people, it’s bad to kill people, it’s not allowed!”

  “Shhh, calm down, nobody’s killing anybody,” said Mr Driver. “He’ll be all right, don’t worry about him, the silly old goat. He could have killed you.”

  Matilda kept punching, she couldn’t stop, but Mr Driver didn’t seem to mind.

  “He’s just scared,” she wept, punching and punching. “Anyway, it’s my fault. I told him you were spies. I told him about the man on the newsreel. He’s scared of spies. And Japs. And Red Indians. He’s just scared.”

  She burst into more tears, sniffing and sobbing. She could hear the mad old man’s voice mutter something in the background, so they mustn’t have killed him after all. But she didn’t want to look, she didn’t want to turn and see the blood on his old grey head.

  Soon an ambulance came and took the mad old man away on a stretcher. The men in the suits and the black hats arranged it all. There was so much noise, their street had never known so much noise. Mr Driver took Matilda into the yellow house, and gave her a big glass of water.

  “Drink it up,” he said. “I’ll have a word with your mother.”

  Matilda sipped it, sniffed a lot and then she felt a bit better. She looked around her at the house. It was ordinary, with chairs and tables and bookshelves and carpets. Rich, but ordinary.

  “Are you really spies?” she asked, when she felt she could speak again.

  Mr Driver didn’t answer. He fiddled with his cuff link.

  “I think I want to be a spy when I grow up,” said Matilda, hiccupping. “Do you think I would be a good spy?”

  “I think you will be a fine spy,” replied Mr Driver calmly. “Just be careful who you make friends with.”

  Twenty-three

  EASTER TUESDAY, 20 APRIL 1954

  WHEN FRANCES CAME HOME, she had no more tears left in her and all she felt was tired, very, very tired. She left her scooter lying on the front path and stumbled in. But as soon as she came inside the house, she felt it was different. Something had happened.

  Matilda and Elizabeth were together in the kitchen, next to the sink.

  “Where have you been?” said Matilda. “Guess what?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Frances. “What?”

  “Daddy came home!” said Matilda, almost shouting.

  “Really?” said Frances. She felt lit up
inside, like a candle. She glanced at Elizabeth. Was it true?

  “It’s true,” nodded Elizabeth. “He came home. He just walked in the door. We couldn’t believe it.”

  Elizabeth seemed somehow different to Frances, too, like the house. What was it? Her voice, her eyes. Perhaps she wasn’t having her nervous breakdown any more, thought Frances with relief, perhaps she was better.

  As though she could see what Frances was thinking, Elizabeth smiled at her. She did feel better, she did. It was funny how simple it was, in the end. She had stepped out of the icy water, back onto the land, her legs wrapped in seaweed. She had pressed her feet into the sand and felt relieved of something heavy and hard.

  “Come and see!” said Matilda, hopping up and down. “Come and see him! They’re asleep.”

  The three girls stole down the hallway to their parents’ bedroom. Elizabeth pushed the door open and they stepped into the half-light. Their father lay on the bed with his big back in the air, and their mother was curled up next to him.

  “They look dead,” said Matilda in a tiny voice.

  They were so still, the two of them, they did look dead. Matilda was frightened. What if they were dead? What if they had lain down on the bed and died?

  “But they’re not dead, Mattie,” said Elizabeth, leaning over the bed. “You can hear them. Listen.”

  Matilda stepped forward. Elizabeth was right. They weren’t dead. Up close she could hear them breathing, as gently as newborn kittens.

  That’s good, she thought, relieved.

  On the floor next to the bed was a box. Matilda knelt down next to it. She wanted to show Frances.

  “That’s what he brought Mummy. It’s a present. Look.”

  She lifted it up. Inside the box, nestled in tissue paper, was a pair of red slippers, embroidered with crimson swirls.

  “They’re from Japan,” whispered Matilda, touching them with her fingertips. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Now she’ll be happy, thought Matilda. Now she won’t cry any more.

  “Did he get anything for us?” asked Frances, more practically.

  “Chocolates,” said Elizabeth. “Come on.”

  They left the room, closing the door behind them with a click. The living room was scattered with paper and string from the presents. Elizabeth, Frances and Matilda lounged about and ate chocolates, listening to the evening bird calls and the sound of the tide.

  “I wonder what happened to Uncle Paul?” said Elizabeth, after a while.

  “He went away,” said Matilda.

  “But why?” asked Elizabeth. “Why did he go?”

  Matilda shrugged. Did Elizabeth know what had happened that afternoon with the old man and the gun? Perhaps their mother hadn’t told her. There had been no time. When Matilda returned from the big house next door, her mother had held her hand and stroked it. “Thank you for the lollipop, Mattie,” she’d said, so she must have found it, after all, and then their father came home at last, striding through the open door like a giant, his arms full of gifts.

  Frances opened her mouth to speak. She had seen Uncle Paul that afternoon, as she roamed about endlessly on her scooter, till she was too tired to keep going. He had run past on the other side of the street, without his hat, as though he was blind and couldn’t even see where he was going.

  It was strange to see a grown-up running. He had such an odd look on his face, too. He looked – he looked ashamed, thought Frances. He looked so ashamed. She had never seen Uncle Paul look like that. He ran past her, away, away up the hill. She decided to keep it to herself.

  “Do you want to listen to the radio?” asked Elizabeth.

  “No,” said Matilda, very quickly.

  Floreal had been so silent since she’d screamed at him to go back in the radio that she hoped, although she could not quite believe it, that he really had gone away. Maybe he’s gone to a radio in another person’s house, she decided. He can be friends with someone else now, with someone who actually likes him.

  “I’m going to be a spy when I grow up,” she said, clambering up on the sofa next to Frances.

  “You’d be a terrible spy.” Frances rolled her eyes. “You can’t keep a secret.”

  “You don’t know all the things I know,” said Matilda mysteriously.

  “Matilda, even you don’t know all the things you know,” said Elizabeth with a sigh.

  There were no more chocolates. Elizabeth, Frances and Matilda sat on the sofa, resting their arms and legs on top of each other. It was a long time since they had lain so close. It reminded Matilda of how they used to get into Elizabeth’s bed, and she would hide under the blankets and pretend she was a monster and make them scream.

  Matilda stretched herself out, feeling her bones getting longer and longer. In a little while she would be taller than Frances, maybe one day even taller than Elizabeth. Maybe one day she would be the tallest woman in the world and she could join a circus.

  “What if Mummy and Daddy were really dead?” she asked. “What would we do?”

  “They’re not dead, Mattie,” said Elizabeth.

  “But if they were,” persisted Matilda. “Where would we live?”

  “We’d live here, of course,” said Elizabeth. “Where else would we live?”

  We could just stay here? wondered Frances. In this house? How could there be a house of children without a mother or a father? Then she thought of Mark and his mother. How could there be a mother without a child?

  “But who would look after us?” frowned Matilda. “We need someone to look after us.”

  “I would look after you,” said Elizabeth.

  I love Elizabeth, thought Matilda with a rush. I love her.

  “Would you?” said Frances. She turned and looked at Elizabeth seriously. Would she?

  “Well, I’d have to, wouldn’t I?” said Elizabeth.

  But I do love her, thought Matilda, and it made her feel so strange she jumped off the sofa and ran out through the laundry into the back yard.

  The sun had set and it was night-time. Matilda skipped down alongside the grey splintering fence, near the wet patch where she had found her snails. She sank herself into the ground covered by long, thick, prickly fronds of ivy and peered through the cracks.

  The yellow house next door was utterly dark. It was as though it had been shut up, and everybody had gone. There were no cars in the driveway. Had they all left, all those people? Could so many people leave just like that, without anyone noticing, without even saying goodbye?

  Suddenly Matilda was aware of eyes looking at her through the green, two tiny, shining, slow, black eyes. She pulled herself up against the fence, her heart beating fast. There was a crackling in the leaves.

  It’s the goanna, she thought at once. The one that had crawled right up to their house that day, slowly moving its legs forward, one after the other, the one that Uncle Paul frightened away. Half of her was afraid, like her father, but the other half of her was excited. Perhaps this time she would catch it!

  “Pssst,” she hissed, moving slightly forward. But the eyes disappeared into the wet leafy darkness.

  The earth smelt strong to Matilda and full of things growing and dying all at the same time. She stood up against the fence between the two houses. She had so many thoughts in her head.

  She thought about the grey-green tangled bush at the end of her street, full of cowboys and Red Indians, waiting with their guns and their bows and arrows. She thought about the Japs and the Germans and the shining sword and chocolate biscuits, and the Argonauts sailing across the ocean, and the silver trail of snails on cardboard. She thought about the swirling lollipop with every colour in the world, and the old man’s head on the pavement with blood trickling out from it, and the princess in the film, “How do you do, so glad you could come, how do you do” and the wonderful butterfly bathroom and poor little Karen and her beautiful red shoes. She thought about the sad smiling man with his chess set and the newsreel and her tennis ball, up and up an
d up in the air, high as the tallest tree in the Basin, and Uncle Paul with his hands in his pockets, his lock of grey hair that flopped over his face, and her mother’s red shoe falling down down down into the deep green bush for ever.

  Then she remembered the shoebox that their father had brought home with her mother’s present inside.

  “That would be good for another snail hotel,” said Matilda to herself. “Just the right size.”

  Matilda! she heard someone calling, Matilda! Where are you, where are you, Matilda?

  When I grow up I’m going to go around the world! thought Matilda.

  She would, she would. Not on a boat, on a plane. She would fly around the world. She held her arms straight out on either side, like an aeroplane.

  “Around the world!” she shouted, running up and down the dark back yard.

  Matilda! Where are you, Matilda!

  All the radios inside all the houses in all the world were humming together, and the sky was filled with electricity. And Matilda was not afraid at all.

  Acknowledgements

  While the people and events in this novel are imaginary, the newspaper excerpts are taken directly from the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun and the Sun–Herald of the dates stated. I gratefully acknowledge the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Associated Press for granting permission to reproduce these extracts.

  The extracts from “The Red Shoes” by Hans Christian Andersen are from The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales, edited by Lily Owens, Gramercy Books, New York, 1996, pages 450–3.

  URSULA DUBOSARSKY is an award-winning author of numerous books for children and young adults, including The Golden Day, her first title with Walker Books. About The Red Shoe she says, “The children in this story live in both their own world and the adult world – a confusion of shifting shadows, mysteries and secret marvels. Only sometimes do the two worlds cross, and when they do, it’s the smallest child who proves to have the deepest knowledge of all.” Ursula lives in Australia.

  Visit her at www.ursuladubosarsky.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.