The Innocents

by Nette Hilton

  She wasn’t sure what he meant and looked up.

  ‘God only has the perfect ones and this takes many years ... many years. It is why we get old. So many of us are not ready but Deirdre, well ... she was ready, you see. She was ready.’ He let his hand drift down to touch against her cheek. ‘Just like my little one...’

  His voice trailed off and, in that dim light, Missie saw his eyes film with new tears.

  ‘It is hard for us, eh? They have left us behind to get old by ourselves.’

  Slowly Missie stood and stepped forward far enough to wrap her arms quickly around his neck. She felt his hand pat against her back.

  ‘It is very, very sad little miss Missie.’

  She was ready to move away. Ready to release her arms as quickly as she’d placed them so it was a shock when she heard another voice behind her.

  ‘Step back, Missie.’

  Missie sprung back as if she’d been jabbed. She caught sight of her mother on the other side of Constable Campbell. Another policeman was there as well, an older one and it was he who was doing the talking.

  ‘You are Oleksander Mykola Shevchenko?’

  ‘I am that. I am called Alex in this country.’ He was standing now and had scrubbed his face dry. His hand was in his pocket and the other hand he extended for a handshake.

  The policeman took it but not to return the handshake. He stepped in front of Missie and, when she’d finally moved enough to see what was happening, Constable Campbell was holding him by his elbow and his hand and seemed to be pushing him.

  ‘You need to come with us, please, Mr Shev ... Shev...’

  ‘Shevchenko. Oleksander. Please, it is easier.’ Oleksander almost tripped as the policemen moved him forward. ‘I think this is a mistake.’

  ‘We’ll soon see about that, Mr Shevichenk. Now, you’ll be accompanying us down to the station. We’ve got some questions we need to ask you.’

  Missie felt as if she was rooted to the spot. She stood there even when they’d gone and her mother had to turn and come back for her.

  She knelt in front of her before they’d turned the corner into the stronger light of the other hallway.

  ‘Missie?’

  Still Missie tried to look beyond her mother to where Constable Campbell and Oleksander were disappearing down the stairs.

  ‘Missie, what was Mr Oleksander doing to you?’

  Her mother’s voice was stretched tight, as if something in it might break at any minute and her eyes looked deep and black as if she’d seen something she knew but didn’t really understand. She kept looking as if she’d made an awful mistake, like the time she’d put salt in the cake mix instead of sugar. She was looking at the stairs and the retreating voice of Oleksander in the same way that she’d looked at the salt. Confused. It was as if she kept looking long enough she’d see her mistake in time and fix it before it happened. But what was done, was done.

  ‘He didn’t do anything,’ Missie answered quietly. ‘He really didn’t.’

  As her mother stood and hurried her along to her room, Missie knew that Oleksander, like the cake mix, had been thrown out. She heard in her mother’s footsteps the anger that goes with making a mistake when all the things are there to stop you doing that. The sugar, the eggs, the milk, the vanilla ... all there and clearly labelled.

  The only thing that Missie didn’t get was the labels. What labels on Oleks did her mother read wrong? It was easy to get salt mixed up with sugar...

  Oleksander was Oleksander. He was kind and talked funny and was quiet and liked to sit in the shadows and smoke his cigarettes.

  And say ‘Bob’s your uncle’.

  And make her smile.

  And share secrets with her.

  Missie opened her mouth to try to explain and suddenly she saw how secrets and dark places might be labels that could be confused with something else.

  35

  LANSDALE POLICE STATION

  The young policeman had not spoken. He had walked alongside when they reached the courthouse with its police station huddled beside like a poor relative. He had opened the door in what might have been a welcoming gesture but Oleksander saw it for what it was. A movement that did not allow him to step backwards, or turn to flee. To do so would have those welcoming open arms close around him like a vice.

  They didn’t pause at the desk; instead Oleksander found himself being steered straight through to the back of the station.

  There seemed to be many rooms. All small.

  All cramped.

  All private.

  It was tempting to look into those rooms and their shadows but it was what would be expected of him. Rooms with half-open doors in a place like this were intended for discomfort. You are an intruder in this place of law, they mocked, where things are known but not fully revealed.

  He was shown into a room so small it was more fit for brooms than people, and he was left to sit facing a sad-looking desk that was shoved up hard against the wall.

  ‘Wait here,’ the constable said. And was gone.

  Oleksander waited.

  Many things passed through his mind and none of them presented any reason why he might be asked to sit here, in this hard chair, in this impossibly small room. Questions that he might have to answer could have been asked at ‘Charmaine’. The answers that he had to give he could give as freely there, and it might be that he was thought to have seen more and know more about Deirdre since she had spent so many afternoons at the house.

  It did not make sense at all.

  Perhaps, and his heart shuddered slightly, perhaps it is to do with his papers. His immigration.

  ‘There will be no problem,’ the man had said. He had come to the hostel.

  It was not for Oleksander that he’d come. He was visiting

  another. An artist. An old artist. Oleksander was nobody important. Ukrainian only, with no money. One of the line of refugees creeping, hiding, staggering and begging their way to get free of this newest threat. For others the war was finished, for them a new regime, a new communism, meant more war and more training to kill more people who resisted. It was only more pain and loss.

  There were many like this man who had come to talk with the artist. Many who saw ways to help.

  And some who saw ways to get rich.

  Oleksander had listened. ‘We can do this with the papers. You need only to bring the–’ And here the man had rubbed his fingers together. ‘You have it?’

  The old artist didn’t raise his head. He simply raised his hand. A salute. An acceptance.

  It was another hour before Oleksander had been able to satisfy his curiosity.

  ‘What will they do?’

  ‘They will get me to America,’ the old man had said. ‘I will not die in this country that has taken all from me.’

  Oleksander had stayed close. He wanted to see the way to America and how such a thing would happen.

  The man had come back and left the papers. He had traded a small icon for them. Tiny. Perfect. Stolen, the artist had said, from pigs who could not see the pearl cast before them.

  But he did not die in America.

  Others had come, men made treacherous by having to share their country with these staggering refugees. He was such an old man and frail, weakened by wars that he was unable, any longer, to fight. It is possible he was not meant to die but they had hit out and left him to bleed when he had refused to offer them other rewards. Perhaps they too did not recognise a pearl when it was thrown before them.

  But Oleksander had found him.

  And knew where he had hidden his papers.

  ‘You are Oleksander Mykola Shevchenko?’

  ‘Yes.’ Oleksander had stood as the two men walked in. He would have moved his chair to make more room but the chair was as hard against the wall as it would go. ‘That is my name.’

  It is my name.

  It was not my name when I left the train in Paris. Here I walked to the gates and held the papers and walked with my sight
set in the distance as if I had no reason to expect that I would be delayed.

  They did not care. Those people at the station. They nodded and I walked on.

  And on.

  And when it was safe I left the papers with the name of an old Jewish artist in a bin by the side of the road. My only regret. He deserved better.

  ‘You got something there with your name on?’

  Oleksander took the letters from his wallet that said who he was. Another paper. Another stamp. Another country.

  The man who had spoken handed the documents to the other who had not. Who did not.

  ‘You want to tell us your address, Mr, uh, Shevchenko?’

  They know the address. It is part of the game. I will not play.

  ‘It is as it is written. Perhaps you cannot read?’

  ‘I need your address, Mr Shevchenko.’

  Not Gestapo. Or soldiers who could not read or write. Just men twisted to fit the same mould.

  ‘What is it that you need to know from me?’

  The first man, the one who spoke, looked at his friend. He took the documents and folded them but kept them in his hand.

  ‘We’ll get to that,’ he said and propped himself on the edge of the table. ‘You got good English? You speaka da language okay?’

  The not-speaking one smiled. Almost.

  Clever.

  They will not alarm me. This a free country and there is no laws here to hold me for things that I have not done.

  ‘I will leave now. I do not know why I have to come here. You have not told me. I have done nothing wrong. So ... excuse me.’

  ‘Sit down please, Mr Shevchenko.’

  The chair was pulled out a little and his way to the doorway blocked. The other man who had not spoken placed his arm on Oleksander’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Mr Shevchenko. We need your help.’ He moved back to sit on the edge of the table. ‘I’m Senior Detective Constable Reid and this is Detective Constable Simpson. We work for the CIB and we’re up from Saleby to try and work out what happened to the little Trumble girl.’

  ‘You comprendez?’

  He was a pig, this one. The other, not much better. A clever one, perhaps, but a liar at best. He did not care any more than his subordinate and would, if he thought it would gain more, be as ignorant.

  ‘What can you tell us about Melissa Missinger?’

  Melissa?

  ‘Missie.’ Simpson flapped his hands in front of Oleksander. ‘You with us in there? What d’you know about the little girl? She lives in the same house. You know, small, about so big...’ His hand was raised.

  ‘Of course I know Missie.’ Perhaps they are thinking Missie is involved? Perhaps they are thinking the little one is pushed into the river? By Missie? ‘She is a fine little girl. She would do nothing wrong.’

  ‘How’d you know that?’ Simpson leaned back. ‘You spend a bit of time there asking for her to do something wrong?’

  Reid was still perched on the desk. ‘Do you spend much time with Missie, Mr Shevchenko?’

  A few nights while I smoke. How much is much time? ‘No.’

  Simpson opened a file of papers that he had. A handful of letters were opened onto the desk. And a drawing of Missie when she was playing in the yard. And another when she had been sitting reading, her head bent forward, her finger in her mouth as she concentrated and her feet neatly crossed. He remembered the day; it was raining and soft light came through the window behind her. He had observed her as she sat in the front room and he in the dining room, unobserved. Alone. Later, in his imagination he let her see him, let her look up and, in that instant before she recognised that she was being watched, drew the mystery place that still veiled her gaze.

  He had done the same with the laundry girl. She was his exorcism of Anichka and so he’d drawn her as Anichka had left him on those times before she never, ever returned. A backward glance, her arm modestly covering the swell of her breast but revealing the beauty of its ripeness, her eyes somewhere between apology and pleasure. And her hair, each brushstroke trying to hold the musk scent of it, a dark curtain against her back.

  ‘You want to tell us again about how much time you spent with Missie? And Kitty Hancock? Her old man’s gonna be none too pleased when we show him what you’ve been getting up to with his little girl.’

  ‘She is not a little girl.’

  Simpson pounced. ‘’Spect you’d know a lot about little girls, Shevchenko, by looking at this lot!’

  ‘She does the laundry. She is a young woman.’

  ‘Kitty Hancock might do the laundry but she is not old enough to be screwing around with the likes of you! She’s a schoolgirl...’

  ‘I did not know this. It is not important to me...’ It might have been important if there was ever time to meet her and to ask her about her life and her smile and the laughter that he heard drifting up from the backyard on the days she worked there. And in these times girls were at school until they were young women. The war in this country did that – the war in every country did that – if they were lucky and did not die they could go back to their study. And their lives. ‘I do not know Kitty Hancock.’

  ‘Tell us about Missie.’ Reid angled himself a little closer. ‘See, I reckon you know a bit more about little Missie Missinger than you’re letting on.’ He held up one of Missie’s letters. ‘What’s this down here, this bit on the end: “secrets”?’

  These men were suggesting something wrong. Something so wrong it tasted of bad meat in his mouth. He tried to find a way to say this but words were powerless against the conviction that he could feel was carried in their hearts.

  ‘This is not to be discussed.’ His mind was filling faster than he could track with thoughts so hideous it needed a conscious place to keep them away. Anger, red flooding anger swam in front of him as he considered this: needing to defend himself from such immoral accusations. He stood unarmed against this attack, making so many others pale by comparison.

  He moved to the door, breathing hard through his nose, sounding like a bull he’d seen once that had been taunted until it was in a blind fury. Simpson was quick and moved his leg across to bar the way. It was the red rag.

  Reid had stood also and they might not have been so prime a target for his anger except for their touch. Simpson’s arm, a casual touch, intended to stop him.

  Or goad him further.

  It did not stop him and Simpson was on the floor, his face surprised and already bleeding from the savagery that had landed him there. Rage swam in waves, each rising and breaking and deafening all sound.

  Oleksander wanted to stop but he wept from his soul against this final injustice. He may have found his hidden tears, that place he’d abandoned as empty and barren, if it hadn’t been for a blow that blackened his world.

  As he sank into unconsciousness, fighting to stay alert, he almost grieved for that empty place. At least, in a final sigh as he let blackness fill him, he’d felt something other than emptiness.

  Anger was real.

  36

  AUGUST

  ‘CHARMAINE’

  The aloneness that Missie felt was total. And complete.

  The days before Zilla were another life away, and now, even though everyone at school seemed interested in her because of Deirdre, she was distanced from the others like never before.

  Deirdre was everywhere. The netball court and invitations to join in carried no joy or excitement. It was hard to imagine that they ever had. And days inside when lessons ground on and on and on were flat and meaningless. Singing times, recorder times, mini-concert times blended into the same grey place as tables and maths and long division.

  Zilla didn’t come back to school.

  Dot Evans said she’d heard they were all going to leave town.

  ‘It’s a sad old cloud to have any sort of silver lining, this one is, but it looks like Bev Trumble is going back up to Melbourne with her old man.’

  Missie’s mum went on ironing. The thud of the iron was
the only sound to be heard for a few minutes.

  ‘Not much here for them any more, I expect,’ she finally said. ‘And you know what else, Dot? I don’t think there’s too much here for me any more either.’

  In the dark on the stairs, Missie felt her eyes widen and her hands clenched little bits of skirt together. Leave here?

  ‘You’re just upset about that bloke upstairs. You weren’t to know, lovey, although I did try to tell you that they’re different ... these foreign blokes.’

  Her mother had warned her about listening in but she crept down a step anyway. She knew Oleksander was not coming back and she knew policemen had come to take everything out of his room, which didn’t seem fair because nobody should be allowed to touch things that didn’t belong to them. Not even if they were going to keep them until it was all sorted out.

  ‘Well, you won’t have to tell me again.’

  ‘You weren’t to know, Marcie. God in heaven, it was a shock to all of us when they found those pictures he’d done. Must have been bloody terrible for you having to look at them. Especially with your own Missie in them and all.’

  Pictures?

  Missie tried hard to remember the day they’d rattled on his door. She couldn’t recall any pictures and Zilla hadn’t said anything except that there’d been rudey-nudey ones. And Missie was pretty sure that if she’d been in them Zilla would have busted herself to tell.

  ‘It wasn’t the pictures, Dot. They were just drawings of her when she was playing around out in the yard. I don’t know, dancing or some such thing. He was watching her, that’s what got me. Standing up there, sneaking around behind a curtain watching her.’

  The iron slammed onto the table. Whatever it was ironing was going to be good and flat, that was for sure.

  And Missie remembered. She knew the day he’d drawn her. ‘Heart of My Heart’, that’s what she’d been singing. And tap dancing on the crates. She’d felt him up there and could even remember turning around to check.