The Innocents

by Nette Hilton

  One slightly stained felt ear appeared. She didn’t need to make herself pull it further but she did. Later, when she was alone in her room, she’d want to be sure that this wasn’t something she’d got wrong. She knew she’d have to be sure.

  Totally, positively certain.

  One glass button eye appeared. And a whisker.

  Buster.

  Poor old Buster who’d never done anything.

  Missie’s heart pounded so hard she thought she might vomit. Her head swam with dizzy little firelights and her hands were so clammy the cord of the bag clung to her as she tried to right it.

  She pressed it back to where it had been hidden.

  She closed the cupboard door and went straight downstairs to her mother.

  ‘Don’t tell Max I was in his room,’ she said and turned to go back up to her room to sleep. And sleep. And keep away the thoughts that she was going to have to think.

  Her mother looked surprised. ‘Why not? You didn’t break something, did you?’

  ‘He wouldn’t like me in there, that’s all.

  ‘You’re a funny old thing.’ Her mother wiped her hands on her apron and gave her a quick kiss on the top of her head. ‘And Max’s a pretty lucky boy, if you ask me. Not many boys his age have someone cleaning up after them.’

  Missie was already on her way up the stairs. She didn’t care if Max was lucky or not.

  She wanted to sleep and, if she was lucky, when she woke up she might have forgotten all about Buster.

  And all the other things that Buster-back-home-in-the- bottom-of-the-cupboard might mean.

  42

  JAIL

  MELBOURNE

  Oleksander knew the man who sat opposite him. He had come to the hospital and he had come to see him in this same room before. He had brought a package with a yellow jumper ... it belonged to a child.

  ‘What can you tell me about this cardigan?’

  They were never warm enough. There was no money to buy clothes so they wore what they could find. People on the footpaths, his father told him. Dead. And they took their boots. And their jackets. No food either. Hungry bellies. He did not need his father’s memory to remind him of this.

  ‘Mr Shevchenko? Oleksander, it was found in your room. Can you tell me please how it might have got there?’

  He mumbled in Ukrainian.

  ‘In English please. I do not understand your language.’

  Or I yours. ‘I have nothing to say.’

  ‘I’m on your side, Oleksander. I think there’s something not right here.’

  The other man, the one who stood in the corner so the shadows concealed his face, moved forward.

  ‘Give it up, Spence. This bloke’s as mad as a hatter. I reckon he’s got some sort of brain damage.’

  Barney Spence stood. ‘Hardly surprising given the beatings he’s copped. One more time, Mr Shevchenko. What can you tell me about this child’s cardigan?’

  The man from the shadows, the hard one, stood too close. ‘Speak up, Shevchenko.’

  Chaim’s grandfather. ‘Tell us, old man, what you are teaching here?’

  ‘I am not teaching.’

  ‘You have many students here.’

  ‘They are not students.’

  A raised gun. A shot.

  Reidl Schmidt dead.

  ‘Tell us, old man, what are you teaching?’

  ‘It is I who is leading. You cannot blame these young men. They study only to pass the time.’

  Oleksander and Chaim, hidden beneath the raised platform at the back of the hall, holding their breath. Oleksander heard the old man’s mistake.

  ‘You are teaching.’

  A raised gun.

  ‘Run!’ cried the grandfather.

  But they could not run fast enough. And the grandfather, for his honesty, was beaten and then, because it was easy, shot while he lay on the ground.

  ‘I have nothing to say.’

  The man in the shadows lifted his hand. He brought it down hard.

  It was like the grandfather.

  He was punished for speaking.

  It did not matter what he said.

  ‘I’ll be back next week,’ Barney Spence said. ‘You must eat and try to find some strength. I need to ask you some questions.’

  The man from the shadows hung back. ‘He doesn’t mean it. About the food. The others’ll finish you off before you’ve got time to starve to death.’

  Meni nema choho skazaty.

  I have nothing to say.

  43

  OCTOBER

  ‘CHARMAINE’

  As she was well enough to receive visitors, Aunt Belle said she would have to read with Jimmy in the kitchen. It was a good place to read, especially since her mother could help them with words that they didn’t know. Jimmy didn’t know many, but he was keen to chime in on those that he did.

  ‘Struth,’ he said when young Jim Hawkins hid behind the barrels and overheard the pirate’s bloodthirsty plans. ‘He’s for it if he gets caught.’

  Jimmy’s excitement was contagious and kept thoughts of Buster at a distance. He was lurking around though; his button eye shining out at her from the bottom of the cupboard was too easily remembered.

  They read at the table until her mother sent them off into the dining room to finish up.

  ‘Take these with you.’ She thrust a couple of Anzac bickies at them. ‘I’ll bring you both a cup of tea when I get a moment and Jim, how about I wrap up a couple of these rissoles for you to take home? I’ll put a couple in for your dad as well, eh?’

  ‘Ripper,’ Jimmy beamed. ‘You reckon you could put in a bit of bread as well? That lot yesterday was grouse. You don’t have to worry about the old man, but. He gets his own tucker when he comes in.’

  In the dining room, Missie wriggled herself onto the chair. She couldn’t imagine going home to a house that was empty. Her mother was always here. Always.

  ‘Where’s your mum?’ Missie suddenly said. Her mother would have given her a good clip under the ear for being such a stickybeak but she didn’t think Jimmy would mind.

  ‘Cripes, she left when I got born.’ Jimmy munched at his biscuit and kept himself busy looking at the china cabinet. ‘Didn’t like us, I reckon.’

  ‘Mothers like you,’ Missie said. She’d never heard anything so silly. ‘They love you. They’re your mum.’

  Jimmy looked across at her. He was still munching and he didn’t say anything but Missie could almost hear him thinking about what she’d said.

  ‘Well, they do!’ she exclaimed and leaned up on the table. ‘She probably didn’t like your old man.’

  Jimmy snorted. ‘That’d be easy.’

  Missie clasped her hands in front of her and eased up a little higher. ‘I don’t think he’s very nice to you, Jimmy. He should be there when you go home and he should get somebody to make your dinner as well.’

  Jimmy shrugged. ‘Yeah, well. Your mum’s always giving me dinner. And Dotty Evans shoves grub my way too. I’m not starvin’, you know.’

  ‘Yeah, I know that.’ She looked at her fingertips. ‘Just don’t think its fair, that’s all.’

  Jimmy flicked through Treasure Island. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said without looking up. ‘As soon as I’m old enough I’m off. I’m gonna be like this one here and get myself a job and then I’ll have money and I can do what I like...’

  Neither of them said that he could do as he liked now. Instead they sat and let the sounds of the house fill the space between them.

  ‘I don’t want you to leave,’ Missie said quietly.

  Jimmy grinned at her then. ‘I’m not taking off tomorrow, you know.’ He grinned wider. ‘So you don’t have to worry.’

  Again it was left to the sounds of the house to fill this new gap. It was not unpleasant, except Missie felt a little warmer than she had a moment ago, and the pulse in her neck was pumping away like she’d run a mile.

  Good old Jimmy Johnson. She leaned forward a little and then, because s
he had to do something with all the energy that was crammed inside, she punched a small jab at his arm.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Missie,’ he said. ‘I reckon you’re the best mate I ever had.’

  It was easy just sitting there and finishing their biscuits. Her mother brought in a couple of cups of tea with another biscuit for Jimmy, which he dunked and slurped at while Missie complained that she didn’t get one.

  ‘Too close to your dinner, miss,’ her mother reminded her. ‘And Jim’s got that long walk home.’

  They heard the front door slam and the thud of footsteps on the stairs. Aunt Belle called that she was home and then stuck her head around the door and said she’d take dinner in the dinette with Max. They had a lot of catching up to do, she said.

  Missie felt her shoulders stiffen. Max would know as soon as he opened the door that someone had been in and, what with Jimmy arriving, there’d been no time to think about Buster. And she wasn’t sure, not one bit, that she wanted to try to sort those thoughts out with Max standing in front of her.

  Jimmy waited until they were alone again. ‘You don’t like Max, do you?’

  Missie shook her head.

  ‘Reckon it’d be real hard to stay here with a kid like that. He’s as cunning as a shithouse rat.’

  Missie heard her breath suck in and her cheeks colour up.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jimmy said, ‘but he is. Always sneaking around and he bloody knows what’s what as well. Look at the way he’s diddled you with that cardigan thing. He’s a loony, if you ask me, a clever bloody loony.’

  Buster swam in front of her, his lovely old eyes shining out of the darkness of his dank hiding place. He’d never done anything and here he was hidden away like an evil thing.

  ‘I know...’ Missie took a deep breath and leaned closer to Jimmy. If she’d been brave enough she would have held his shoulders so he could feel the words she was going to say. Instead she gripped her hands tighter together and hunched her shoulders. ‘I know what Deirdre had in her basket.’

  She told him.

  ‘Is that all?’ Jimmy said. ‘I reckoned it musta been something real good from the way she was going on.’

  His voice was too loud. Missie hushed him and dropped her own voice down to a whisper.

  ‘It’s Max’s,’ she said.

  ‘Right? I don’t get it...’

  Again, Missie hushed him. ‘You have to listen really carefully to what I’m telling you. And you have to promise never, ever to tell anyone else.’

  Jimmy was up on his knees now and leaning across the table. When she began with the trip to Saleby he raised himself so he was closer and she could smell the golden syrup and crumbs on his breath. But when she told him how she’d brought Buster home and hidden him, Jimmy Johnson moved around the table so he was right beside her.

  ‘Struth,’ he said when she’d finished. ‘It means something, don’t it?’

  Missie couldn’t think. It was a jumble in her mind, jigsaw pieces all there but needing to be considered carefully before they were pushed together.

  ‘Did you tell your mum?’

  Missie shook her head. ‘She’d just say I was being a busybody and to mind my own business and the next time I found something that didn’t belong to me I should give it straight back.’

  ‘But that kid,’ Jimmy said. ‘The one at the train...’

  Missie thought about it. ‘She’d say he fell and I was wicked for thinking such a terrible thing.’

  Jimmy didn’t say a word. Not for the whole time it took for the hall clock to strike five times.

  ‘What terrible thing did you think?’ he finally said.

  Missie didn’t have to explain. She saw him place each bit of the jigsaw together and then she saw that he’d stopped. She knew he could see the whole picture.

  He raised his face as if he could see through the ceiling to the bedroom upstairs.

  ‘Do you really think he’d do that?’

  Missie nodded. She easily remembered Max’s face and the white-hot rage she saw there when the boy with the blond hair walked away.

  ‘He’d just do it,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t think about it much. He’d just walk up and push.’

  Jimmy was thinking too. ‘But someone’d see him.’

  ‘There were hundreds of kids and everyone was pushing and the teachers were just hanging around...’

  ‘But they’re teachers. Jeez, you’d reckon they’d notice if one of the kids upped and shoved another one under...’ He looked at Missie but didn’t say the word.

  ‘They lost me,’ Missie said. ‘They didn’t even know I’d been gone and they didn’t notice when I turned up again.’

  Together they leaned on the table, shoulders touching and hands gently straightening bent corners of Treasure Island.

  ‘What d’you reckon he’ll do if he finds out you were in his room?’

  Missie could think about it now, with Jimmy beside her. ‘He won’t have to do anything,’ she said finally. ‘He knows I can’t do anything about it.’

  Jimmy sank slowly onto the chair. ‘I think you have to tell someone. Your mum or someone.’

  ‘He doesn’t even know that I saw Buster. He’ll probably just find another place to hide him and that’ll be that.’

  Jimmy wandered over to the door. And then back again. Like he had to move to make sure he had it right. ‘I’m gonna think about this. Struth, I reckon this is really bad. What about Deirdre?’

  The warm room faded around her and cold shadows swelled from corners to take its place. The air was hard to breath and even Jimmy seemed to be fading into the distance.

  ‘You tell me,’ Missie said quietly. She thought she knew but she needed to hear someone else say it. ‘What about Deirdre?’

  Jimmy went and flicked the light on, although the room was only as bright with it on as it had been a moment ago. He came back and stood close to her, blocking her view of the hallway beyond.

  ‘I reckon he’s seen Deirdre with his Buster and then you-know-what...’

  Missie did but she shook her head anyway.

  ‘I reckon Deirdre’s hung onto it, just ’cause she fancied it. When he’s taken it away she’s done that thing she was always doing...’

  Missie put her head down. She could hear Deirdre’s voice now: I know everything about you! She was always saying it and always knew nothing, except perhaps this time there was something to know.

  ‘She’d ’a said it,’ Jimmy said. ‘And then you know what?’

  ‘He pushed her,’ Missie said quietly. ‘And grabbed Buster as she fell.’

  Their heads were almost touching. Their hands no longer played with Treasure Island. They were still. Missie didn’t think she could move until the spell was broken from a faraway, safe place.

  ‘You know what else I reckon?’

  She didn’t want to know. It was too much having to see poor, silly Deirdre accusing Max, probably pointing her finger, probably swaying her hips, probably jeering at him and not seeing the way he could circle and lunge like a cat with a mouse in its sight.

  ‘I reckon he done it to this Judith as well.’

  Missie let out a long sigh. Her hands covered her cheeks and she squeezed a little, hurting herself. There, it was out there and now she had no need to deny it.

  ‘You two look serious.’ Her mother hurried into the room, bringing kitchen scents and cooked meat smells and hands that were damp and washing-up clean. ‘Here’s your dinner, Jim. I put it in a bag so you can balance it on your handlebars.’ She looked more closely at them. ‘Are you two up to something?’

  They sprang apart. The spell was broken and their whispered secrets quickly tucked away.

  ‘Jeez, no, Mrs Missinger. I’m just telling Missie about that book. It’s a good ’un, eh Missie? It’s real scary...’

  ‘It is a good story. Do you want to take it with you?’ Her mother held out the copy of Treasure Island.

  ‘Sure do.’ He grinned at Missie and used it to salute he
r as he ambled to the door. ‘Reckon I’ll see you tomorrow, if that’s all right with you, Missus. I can bring your bag back and all.’

  Her mother steered him to the door. ‘Come on, Missie. You can walk to the steps to say goodbye but don’t mess around out there. The night air is still too cool for someone who’s been off school for so long.’

  Jimmy’s old rattletrap was leaning against the shed. He reckoned it only pedalled down hills. They had to walk the long way around the hydrangeas but didn’t say a word, not until Jimmy was safely aboard and ready to push off.

  ‘We’ll sort something, Missie,’ he said. ‘We gotta. It’s not right what’s going on...’

  He pushed hard on the peddle and the bike jerked and rattled across the grass and onto the gravelled driveway. He didn’t keep going though. Instead he swerved and came back. Missie wandered to the edge of the grass. Aunt Belle’d have a fit if she could see him riding his bike on her lawn.

  ‘You watch yourself,’ Jimmy said. ‘He’s mental that bloke. Bats in his belfry, loony. If he finds out you were messing with that Buster...’

  He didn’t finish.

  ‘You just watch yourself, that’s all.’

  And he was gone.

  44

  JAIL

  MELBOURNE

  Oleksander sat on the bunk. A tray of food had been placed on the bed beside him.

  ‘Eat it,’ the guard said. ‘DS Spence is keepin’ you in here–’ the guard jabbed him hard enough that he had to quickly grab the rail to stop himself falling into the wall– ‘so’s you’re not dead when he comes back to see yer.’

  Oleksander did not look up.

  ‘See, the way it goes is this ... you can starve yourself to death and I don’t give a shit or you can eat this and spill the beans about that little kiddie that you done and then they’re gonna get you anyway. Seems to me you’re dead whichever way you go.’