The Innocents

by Nette Hilton

  ‘Shut up!’ Missie was pushed aside as Zill marched across the room to stand over her sister.

  ‘Don’t have to!’ Deirdre held up a tartan skirt that she’d found. Zill snatched it away.

  ‘You bloody do! What do you know anyway?’

  ‘I know he’s always doing stuff that Mum yells about. And he’s always makin’ us sit on his knee. And I’m not doing it any more. I’m gonna tell the cops when they come. And then he’ll bloody have to go.’

  Missie was trying to keep up.

  She didn’t really get all the stuff about Deirdre. And knees. She’d tried to work it out once before and given up. She had an awful suspicion though, that it was something to do with down there.

  The bit between her legs that Zilla had talked about.

  ‘He will have to go, won’t he, Missie?’

  ‘What would she know?’ Zilla answered for her. ‘She’s never even had an old man. Her mum probably got pregnant by accident.’

  It was all too much. Missie wasn’t sure why it was an insult but she sure as hell heard it as one. She launched herself across the room and landed one right on Zilla’s arm. Zill grabbed her hair and used it to drag her head back. They pushed at each other, struggling to hurt and twist and pinch. The little table was pushed and the chair upended and the eiderdown pulled to the floor but still they rolled and struggled with each other.

  ‘Good morning, Missie. And to your friends as well.’

  Missie looked up in time to see Oleks standing in the doorway nodding good morning to Deirdre.

  He was wearing his work trousers and his brown zip-up jacket. He had his scarf around his neck but it wasn’t looped together yet.

  ‘You are doing the wrestling, huh?’ he asked.

  Zilla looked at Missie. She wasn’t used to Oleks and the way he spoke. She raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I think you need more room. Here–’ He stepped into the room and righted the chair. ‘This little table is sticking out too much. We move it. You want to help me?’

  He’d moved back into the corridor.

  Missie shook her head and tried to stand without looking too stupid. It was hard, especially since she had to climb out from under one of Zill’s legs.

  ‘The bed is very big. We’ll move it too. I get Mr Fellows to give us some extra oomph! And that cupboard. And you, little miss. You can sit up on top, out of the way. What do you think?’

  Deirdre giggled.

  He was making them laugh. The thought of Deirdre sitting on top of a mountain of chairs and tables and beds was truly funny.

  Finally Zill joined in. She looked at Missie and twirled her fingers around her ears indicating that she thought he was a loony. Missie wished she hadn’t done that but he laughed along with them so it must have been all right.

  ‘I am off to my work, ladies,’ he said and touched a quick double-tap against his nose before pointing the finger at Missie. ‘No more with this wrestle and fight, eh?’

  Missie grinned. And tapped her nose.

  Oleks tipped his peak hat.

  And he was gone.

  25

  JUNE

  Missie had always imagined that having a sister would be fun. She’d often felt left behind when Zill and Deirdre had disappeared off down the drive when it was time to go home. Even the times they were fighting with each other were quickly forgotten if she joined in to defend one of them.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ the other would accuse her. ‘What d’you know anyway?’

  It was a constant surprise when this happened but it served to convince her that having a sister would certainly be a fine way to live. No more would you need to always be the one to back off and say sorry, even if you weren’t. You wouldn’t have to be the one to go fetch the ball when it wasn’t you that sent it out because another bonus of sisterhood was being able to boss the younger one about.

  ‘Don’t have to!’ Deirdre would bellow when she was ordered to retrieve the ball that had managed to go out of bounds.

  ‘You do!’ Zill would reply. ‘You bloody do if you want to play next time!’

  And off Deirdre would go, not happily but it didn’t matter.

  ‘She won’t let you play, you know,’ she’d said once when Deirdre had rushed down the hill to fetch the ball from the creek at the bottom and then raced back up while Zill had stood, bent in the middle, like she was extremely breathless. She had made Missie sit out as well, which was mostly why she’d spoken up. ‘She just says she will so you’ll go and get the ball.’

  Deirdre simply looked at her as if she had lost her mind. ‘Yes, she will,’ she said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘One day.’

  ‘She won’t!’

  Deirdre leaned over in front of her, hands on hips. ‘What d’you know, anyway?’

  The game had slapped by, the netball tossed quickly from one to the other and all of them shouting and prancing about for the whole world to see.

  Jimmy Johnson had been watching as well and there was Missie, sitting on the sidelines like one of the little kids. Like one of the hangers-on who didn’t even know how to play.

  ‘I know,’ Missie said as she stood up, ‘that she’s not going to give up her spot for you! That’s what I know!’

  She brushed grass from her skirt.

  ‘You don’t know anything, you stupid fat cow!’

  ‘Neither do you!’

  Deirdre was shorter than Missie but there was a bulldog mass to her that was frightening when she rounded her shoulders and stood, feet apart, ready to lash out.

  ‘I know everything about you!’ she hissed. And then, to add purpose to her threat, she added, ‘And I’m going to dob. I’m gonna tell.’

  It was always a hollow threat, and always made when Deirdre was beginning to lose ground.

  ‘Nothing to tell!’ Missie had muttered. And there wasn’t.

  It didn’t stop Deirdre though. Off she’d gone, head in the air, bum stuck out and her skirt swinging as she set off to seek whichever teacher was closest to hand.

  She did it all the time.

  Constantly.

  Now that they were forced to be together twenty-four hours a day it was amazing how easily Deirdre always managed to have a final word.

  ‘I know everything about you, you big dill, and I’m tellin’!’

  It was always the same. As soon as push came to shove, off she’d go. Same old chant.

  ‘What’s she do that for?’ Missie had asked one day when Deirdre had flounced off because they’d made her go and fetch the bike pump.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Say that stuff about knowing about you and then going to dob!’

  Zilla had shrugged. ‘She just does.’

  ‘Yeah, but what does she reckon she knows?’

  Jimmy had been helping them. He was showing them how to fill up a saucer with soapy water to find the leaks in the inner tube.

  ‘Secret stuff,’ he said.

  ‘Like what?’ Missie didn’t get it. She hadn’t done any secret stuff that stupid Deirdre would know about anyway.

  Zilla had paused in her struggle to free the other tube from the wheel to listen.

  ‘Stuff that you don’t want anyone else to know about you.’

  Jimmy wasn’t looking at her but all sorts of things seemed to rush and fill Missie’s head. Her face heated as the thoughts refused to sink back to wherever it was they’d come from.

  Maybe Deirdre had seen the skid marks on her pants and she was going to tell about that. She doesn’t wipe her bum, she’d say, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  Or maybe it was the rude joke she’d told Zilla about Evie Donaldson’s giant bosoms. Zill had said worse things but it didn’t make her joke any better.

  ‘She does it to everyone,’ Zill said as she resumed her struggle with the tube. ‘She never dobs anyway.’

  Just the same, Missie found herself glancing around behind her to make sure that Deirdre had only gone as far as the end of the path and
not all the way into the house to find her mother.

  ‘My cousin does it all the time,’ Jimmy said. ‘Only he biffs yer before he takes off. And if yer biff him back, then he dobs for sure. There’s always someone’ll come out and give you what-for if you don’t stop him. And you know what?’

  Both girls looked up.

  ‘He’s never got anythink on you anyway. He’s like her. Deirdre. Just makes you think he knows somethink but when he biffs you, well you just let him have it ... and there you go. Next thing someone’s out the door yellin’ to keep your hands to yourself.’

  They worked in silence for a while.

  ‘Backfired once but. His old man came out and thumped me but me dad saw the whole thing so he thumped me cousin. Boy, it was on for young and old then...’

  The tube lay on the ground and the bubbles they’d spent ages working up slowly sagged into yellow mush as they settled back.

  It was great when Jimmy Johnson came down, and having Zilla and Deirdre there meant he could just follow them home from school. It was almost like being one of the Famous Five.

  Easier having a whole lot of them.

  You didn’t have to worry about empty spaces when nobody was saying anything.

  Once or twice Max had strolled through when they were working on whatever project was important to them then but he never stayed. Since the girls had come to stay he’d insisted on having his meals with this mother and not in the kitchen with them. He didn’t like them. Zill and Deidre. Even when Marcie insisted that he say hello his mouth gave him away. It refused to relax and his words were uttered through clamped lips.

  Mostly he simply looked at them as if they smelt bad and then continued on his way.

  ‘Where’s Lawrence then?’ Zill had asked one day. ‘How come we don’t get to see him?’

  Missie didn’t know.

  She was pleased he wasn’t around. If he’d been there Zill would have been keen to get them to mess around outside.

  She liked Lawrence.

  She liked any of the boys from the Catholic school. She reckoned it didn’t matter any more that they were up themselves. It was enough that they were gorgeous in their special school uniforms. All except Max, of course.

  Jimmy didn’t like Max.

  You could feel it whenever Max wandered past. Missie half expected to see the hairs on his neck bristle when he wandered by like those on old Ferrity Fergus’s blue heeler whenever you ventured too close.

  ‘I’m gonna find out where Lawrence is,’ Zill had declared one night. ‘I reckon we could have good fun if there was more of us. You know, down the river and all that.’

  Missie wasn’t sure.

  She didn’t know what fun could be had down by the river that required more equal numbers of boys and girls. She thought, back there in the dark places in her head, that she had a bit of an inkling but she shut it down tight. The stuff they said about that at school couldn’t possibly be true. It embarrassed her even to think about it.

  ‘Max wouldn’t come,’ Missie had said from her end of the bed. Zill’s feet were tucked into the middle of her back and she’d had to lift her face up into the cold night air.

  Zill had lifted her head. ‘I’ll bet I could make him,’ she’d said.

  There was something about the way she’d said it that dismissed any doubts Missie had about Max joining them. Her heart sank and she went to sleep working up counter schemes so they’d not have to do things she didn’t want to think about down at the river.

  If this is what having a sister was like, Missie was beginning to think she’d be happy to do without.

  26

  JUNE

  ‘CHARMAINE’

  ‘Hey Max. Where’s that Lawrence kid then?’ Zill demanded when she’d finally found him in the dinette, which was out of bounds, with his mother.

  Oleksander Shevchenko and John Fellows, when he was awake, had their meals in the small dining room. They read their papers while they ate their dinner and didn’t talk. Sometimes, if John Fellows was away or asleep upstairs, Oleksander took his dinner to the upstairs lounge and listened to the radio while he ate. He wasn’t to do this when there were other guests as Belle said it would lead to a mouse invasion with all the food scraps that would get littered around the place.

  Belle didn’t eat with the guests. Not even when there were extras at race time. She liked her meal in the little dinette that was snugged in near her work room. It used to be a sitting room but now it was more like an office with a great big hooded desk and a swivel chair instead of a sofa against the wall. But one end of it still had the fireplace and the front bay window was large enough to have a small table and chairs set up and it was here that she could be found at mealtimes.

  Children weren’t allowed in this part of the house. This really meant just Missie as she was the only child on the premises, except on the rare occasions when another child was accompanying their parents and trundle beds had to be found and aired.

  While she couldn’t swear to it, she was pretty sure it especially meant Zilla and Deirdre. In the same way as Jimmy bristled when Max turned up, so too did Aunt Belle when the two sisters were about. It was like her neck grew longer and her back straighter as soon as they appeared.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Aunt Belle placed her knife and fork on the table and gently touched her mouth with her napkin. ‘I didn’t hear you knock?’

  Missie hovered on the other side of the door.

  ‘I told them they weren’t to come in,’ she called.

  ‘Thank you, Missie. Now, Priscilla this is...’

  ‘Zilla,’ said Deirdre. ‘We call her Zilla. Not Priscilla like you said. It’s just Zill.’

  ‘...this is a private area of the house. It’s not a children place.’ Aunt Belle stood and moved towards the door with her hand on Zilla’s back all the way.

  ‘He’s here but!’ Deirdre stayed put.

  ‘Max is my son. He’s allowed.’

  ‘He’s a kid but, isn’t he? And we only wanted to find out about Lawrence anyway. It’s not like we were going to make a mess or anythink.’

  Zilla was propelled past Missie as Belle turned to retrieve Deirdre. Missie was surprised to see what looked like a bit of a smile across Belle’s face. She tried to look harder to check but then decided she was probably mistaken. Sometimes lips went like that when you were getting good and cranky. All straight and twisted.

  ‘Lawrence, young lady, is Max’s friend and where he is doesn’t really concern you, does it?’

  ‘Yeah, it does. If we want to play with him we gotta know where he is.’

  Max leaned over his meal. ‘He doesn’t want to play with you! He’s my friend.’

  ‘He likes us, but. And Zill fancies him for her boyfriend...’

  ‘Out.’ Belle scurried her through the door. ‘Boyfriends for goodness sake! Where do you get your ideas from?’

  Deirdre looked amazed. ‘Everyone’s gotta have a boyfriend. Otherwise, where’d you get babies from?’

  Missie stood back a bit. Aunt Belle appeared to swell and she didn’t want to be too close to the explosion.

  ‘You, little madam, need your mouth washed out with soap. There’ll be no more talk of boyfriends and girlfriends in this house. Do you understand?’

  Deirdre opened her mouth to protest.

  ‘Do you understand?’ Belle got in first.

  ‘Yes,’ Deirdre said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Belle.’

  Belle turned to leave. ‘Off you go. Run upstairs and find a book to read.’

  She’d almost closed the door when Deirdre spoke. ‘He does like Zilla though, that Lawrence. You just bet he does!’

  Then she bolted, leaping up the stairs two at a time. She needn’t have bothered. The door to the study had closed up tight without Belle saying a word.

  Zilla took off after her and Missie let them go ahead. She turned, instead, to go back through the kitchen. This was her house, after all, and if s
he didn’t want to go upstairs she didn’t have to. If she felt like going to the kitchen and having a drink, well, she could do so without asking. She wasn’t a guest.

  And she had told them they weren’t allowed into Aunt Belle’s study.

  She wasn’t sure if she was angry because they’d ignored her or because they’d just gone ahead and done it when she’d lived there for all these years and had never been game enough. And, hell’s bells, all that happened was Aunt Belle went off a bit and closed the door.

  She sauntered along the hall to the kitchen, staying close to the wall in case Zill looked over from upstairs. She wasn’t ready yet to join them.

  She could hear her mother and Zill’s mother out there. And Dot Evans had come in too, to collect her mending.

  ‘Course they’re not like us, really, are they?’ Mrs Evans was saying.

  Missie slowed and leaned further into the shadows along the hall and under the stairs.

  ‘You wouldn’t expect ’em to be. Not really. There’s all that communism going on over there all the time.’ Dot paused. ‘Can’t understand it. All that fighting, all the time. You’d reckon they’d just try and get along, wouldn’t you.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that easy,’ Missie’s mum said.

  ‘Well, you’d at least reckon they’d find someplace over there to go and sort it out. Least that way they’re not filling up our country with all their strange ways.’

  ‘For goodness sake, Dot. There’s nothing strange about that young man upstairs, you just don’t know him very well. His name’s Oleksander Shevchenko, by the way.’

  ‘Oleks! What sort of a name is that? It should be changed to Alex, leastways we’d be able to say it without feeling silly. And I know him all right. Seen him hanging around all hours of the day and night down near the bridge and along the river. God knows what he’s doing down there for so long but I’ll just bet he’s up to no good. I seen him scribbling notes in a book a couple of times. Probably writing letters telling them over there all our secrets and such. Now, what d’you reckon about that?’