by Nette Hilton
His life was there. The full waste of it.
And this final outrage.
He did not deserve any of this. In his own country he had fought against enemies, so a death then might have been justified. Now, it was for a crime uncommitted that he had chosen to die. This ultimate injustice was his chosen weapon.
He saw his mother. His father. His grandmother and a glimpse of Chaim.
And then he saw a little girl who had cards in her hand and who sat at the end of a day bed.
He might have called her name. He might have thought it but there, in the instant of deliverance, he saw her as clearly as if she were standing before him.
He reached out to her and he wanted, more than anything, to catch her before he was engulfed. He may even have tried to lift himself but there was no time left.
Darkness.
51
LANSDALE
RIVER
It was like blood.
When she looked up it was rusty and thick and all she could think of was blood.
And silence.
There was absolutely no sound. Even the splash that she knew she’d made was gone and all that was left was swallowed up.
Suddenly she needed to breathe and she dragged at the water to lift herself. It slipped through her fingers and let her sink further down.
She battled to get up. In one hand she still clung to Buster and she tried to use him to push her up and up and up.
She opened her mouth to cry out and water rushed in and her eyes were swelling out of her head. Something brushed her leg and she kicked and kicked and kicked and fought to get her face and mouth higher.
She burst through the surface and saw only sky and again something brushed against her leg. The terror of eels rising up with open mouths made her kick out again and again. She wanted to cry out but the river was ready and filled her mouth and she disappeared again to be tagged by whatever it was that lived beneath.
It brushed and coiled onto her knee and she shoved herself higher, kicking down hard trying to free herself.
Again she burst through the surface and saw, in the instant before she sank again, choking and gagging and filling with water, the quick outline of land so far away. She reached for it and kicked again.
The water was so empty. Empty under her feet, nothing to push against and when she tried, it was only her mouth that got clear. Just long enough to grab a breath before the river hauled her back down. Again the brush of something long and silky touched against her foot. It would have had her. No amount of kicking was helping. And it didn’t matter too much any more anyway.
Somewhere above her the deep river silence was broken by a muffled explosion and something fierce and strong grabbed her. She was shoved up through the rusty blood water and pushed so hard she was slapped onto the reeds. Mud filled her fingers and sucked at her shirt but still she was being pushed and now someone was pulling and rolling her and pushing and pushing and pushing her.
It made her vomit. Buster copped it but she still held him when she saw a hand try to pull him free.
She opened her mouth but still she vomited and it filled her nose and she coughed and heard her mother crying somewhere out there.
She’d be mad when she saw what she’d done to Max’s Buster, that was for sure.
Men’s voices were rattling around her and a man’s hand against her back was tipping her forward like she was a jug and he was going to empty her.
She sagged under him, suddenly all too aware that she had no knickers on. With the hand that wasn’t gripping tight to Buster she wanted to hold her skirt down. Her fingers, though, didn’t seem to be strong enough to move by themselves.
In the background, beyond the men’s voices, she could hear Max bawling. He was howling and yelling that it wasn’t his fault.
She heard a crack and he was told to shut up or he’d get another one for good measure.
‘Seen him, I did,’ the bloke who was emptying her was saying. ‘Seen the little bugger. He was chucking bloody stones and then he herded her out on the board. Couldn’t believe me bloody eyes.’
‘Lucky we was up there so high and all.’ Another voice. ‘You can see for miles. Wouldn’t ’a got here in time except for the young bloke over there. Runs like bloody Phar Lap, he does.’
‘Old Johnno’s kid.’
‘What, Ned Johnson? Always boozed to the eyeballs?’
She could have said yep, same one, and the hand on her back stopped pressing for a moment. ‘Bloody shame. He’s a good kid.’
Good old Jimmy Johnson.
Missie felt another bubble of vomit hack up her nose and she opened her mouth but nothing wanted to come out this time.
‘Yeah. He barrelled that other little ponce on the way through. He was bloody airborne by the time I’d cleared the top of the hill. Almost gave me a heart attack.’
She was being bent double again. It was like being one of those pecking birds and it would be nice to stop.
‘Can’t get over that other kid doing that...’
‘He did it all right,’ another bloke was saying. ‘You better get in there now, missus, or old Pennyfeather’ll have her permanently creased. Struth mate, ease up on her a bit. Poor little blighter. She’d ’a been done for if he hadn’t gone in.’
Missie felt her mother’s arms slip around her and try to lift her. She tried to help but it was hard because nothing much seemed to be working. And her hand had to hold onto her skirt. If she was lifted up they’d see her bum.
Her mother’d need to know. She wasn’t going to be too pleased when she found out. Bare bums weren’t a polite thing to do. She tried to tell her but all she could do was lean a little. ‘I wet my pants.’ It was silly really, saying it, because all of her was wet and muddy and covered in vomit. She couldn’t even lift her head up: suddenly it was much, much too heavy.
A heavy blanket was wrapped over them both and she let herself enjoy the lovely, lovely rocking movement that kept time with her mother’s voice.
‘We sent for the coppers and I reckon you won’t need the ambulance,’ one of the men was saying. ‘Wouldn’t have believed it ’cept I seen it with me own eyes.’
Missie let herself sink deeper into her mother’s body. Buster was dribbling heaps but she clung to him.
Poor old Buster. Nearly finished up a real dog’s dinner.
‘Needs a bloody good whippin’ if you ask me.’
Voices around her were taking on the hollow jarring echo as she drifted deeper into sleep.
‘I reckon he meant it.’
‘He bloody meant it, all right. No two ways about that. I’d like to give him one for good measure.’
Another voice drifted closer and she rolled her head a little. ‘Whoa there, Missie.’ Strong arms lifted her and the blanket. Her mother’s arms stayed with her until the very last minute when Barney Spence tilted her so she’d not fall. ‘You hang onto that Buster there because I think,’ he was saying as he started the long walk over the grass, ‘...I think you know a whole lot more about that little bloke.’
Her mother’s hand steadied her as they went. A policeman stopped in front of them and Barney Spence said they’d need a doctor at home but not an ambulance.
‘And,’ he added as Missie heard the gravel of the laneway under his feet, ‘this young man needs some dry clothes and a heap of fish and chips. You can fetch his dad and tell him to get himself down here now.’
They marched on and Missie was pretty sure that Jimmy Johnson was hanging onto her toes as they went.
She just hoped that he didn’t look up and see her bare bum.
52
NOVEMBER
LAKES DISTRICT
Jimmy Johnson said they could live at his house. He reckoned it’d be grouse and his dad wasn’t there too much so they wouldn’t be real crowded.
‘We’ll be right, Jimmy.’ Her mother’s voice was a murmur. The faintest interruption to the still day. ‘Thanks for the offer, just the same.’
They were sitting on the foreshore of the lakes. It was so peaceful that the boat anchored offshore was sitting on a mirror. Like the swan that sat in the middle of the table. It seemed such a long time ago. She wondered what had happened to it and its puddle-mirror pond. It was her birthday outing although her birthday was long gone and the school holidays were almost here and soon it was going to be Christmas.
‘We’re staying.’ Her voice was quiet. The afternoon was so still there was no need to make much of an effort. ‘Just because Max’s not there...’
‘How about his mum, then? What’s she gonna say about that?’
Barney Spence leaned forward and with one finger, tipped Jimmy’s hat down over his face. ‘Let it go, eh mate.’
It was nice that Barney Spence was there. Jimmy Johnson reckoned he was a good bloke. It didn’t explain why he was around a lot of the time. Once, Zill probably would have said a few words about it but now she simply wandered down to the water’s edge and threw some of her leftover chips across the surface and paused to watch the fish jumping and gobbling
‘Can we go for a walk?’ She wasn’t the old Zill, who would have just taken off, calling and expecting the others to follow.
‘Don’t paddle any deeper than your ankles, then,’ Barney Spence called. ‘There’s sharks.’
‘No there isn’t.’ Jimmy was looking at the still water.
Missie stood slowly and brushed the itchy prickles left by the grass. She wasn’t keen on walking or doing anything. It was nice just sitting. Just lately it seemed that all she wanted to do was doze or read or draw. Her mother had been worried that she was getting glandular fever again but Dr Beatty said no. It was just the end of a hard row, he’d said.
Missie wasn’t sure what a hard row was but there was something in the way he nodded at her that said it was quite all right to feel so empty. Nothing worried her. Nothing at all. Not school. Not home. Not Mary or Joannie or Leonie. It was so easy to just let it all slip on by.
‘Been a long haul, old girl,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll bet you’ve been worrying about all this for a long time.’
It was easiest to talk to Dr Beatty. Much easier than to the policeman who came to listen to her, as she answered questions and told them again and again how she’d found Judith Mae’s jacket, and how she’d talked to Oleksander upstairs and that meant she had to tell them about the stolen swap cards and nobody said anything about that at all, which was a surprise. And, her mother said, a blessing.
They wrote lots of notes about the boy at the train station when the Queen had come to visit and asked her over and over again to describe him and his uniform and where Max was and so many things that she didn’t think it was ever going to end.
Barney Spence seemed to be there for it all. Listening. Nodding. And making it all a bit easier.
And then it was over. It was as if all the questions and all their answers had fallen like seeds from a packet so she was left crumpled and gloriously empty.
Dr Beatty called and said she’d soon be feeling like her old self again. In the meantime, he said, she was stuck in this place. The only good news was that Zilla seemed to be stuck in the same place. Once, as they walked back from the shop, she caught sight of them in the jeweller’s window. It was a sloped window and sometimes, if you forgot, you could creep up on yourself. It was a bit scary, really, when you looked up and saw someone walking right at you and then, just when you realised who it was it had joined onto your shoulder and disappeared into you.
Missie had caught sight of both of them. Two little ghost girls. Skinny and white and flat. They appeared to be simply floating. Not walking, or talking or thinking or seeing. Just shimmering along.
‘You all right, Missie?’ Jimmy had waited until she reached the water’s edge. Zilla was walking on ahead. ‘You wanna try and catch some of these little fish? They’d be real neat in a jar.’
‘They’d die,’ Missie said. ‘They need salt water.’
They trailed their feet in the water and watched as ripples kissed the sides of the few boats that were lazing on the sand.
‘What’s gonna happen to Max?’
Missie thought about the day the house had filled with police and doctors and Jimmy’s dad and builders. And Aunt Belle. She’d just sat there in the middle of the couch and didn’t say anything. She kept her arm around Max and patted him and, every now and then, lifted her other hand to touch her face as if she’d forgotten who she was and if she was still really there.
She’d hung onto Max even when Barney Spence said that he’d have to go. It was Barney Spence who’d held onto her when Max was marched down the path with his school bag in his hand and his suitcase carried by the man who walked behind him. A woman held his hand and bent down to speak to him.
Max ignored her.
Aunt Belle was crying so hard they’d had to help her into the car.
She didn’t come out of her room too much. And sometimes first thing in the morning, before the noise of the day got going, you could hear her. Crying. Just softly.
To herself.
And then, as soon as she could, she went away to Melbourne.
Dotty Evans said he’d always been an odd child and Missie, when she’d heard it on the fourth step of the back stairs, wondered why it had never been said before. It would have helped if she’d known Max was odd. It might have meant she could have said, hey, old Max’s doing some really bad things, and they might have listened.
They listened when you dobbed on Faith. They didn’t act surprised and they didn’t do anything much about it, unless Faith had somebody by the throat or was washing them in the school dunnies. And even then you sometimes got the blame for messing with Faith when you should have known better.
The thing was, you didn’t know better with Max.
Max was just Max. He did boy things and made train tracks and liked everything to be exactly right. You’d never have guessed that he’d plan to get you.
Really get you.
‘Max won’t be allowed home for a while. Mum said,’ Missie said to Jimmy now, as they walked along the sand– not too close to the water.
‘Won’t make a difference to Deirdre, will it, whether he comes home or not?’ Zilla said sharply.
They stood quietly, three sides of a triangle and Missie wondered if anyone watching from the other side would see them reflected in the water’s mirror.
‘She was orright, Deirdre,’ Jimmy said and turned to retrieve another shell. ‘She knew a thing or two.’
‘She knew everything,’ Zill said. ‘She was always going on about stuff.’
Missie bent to collect a shell that was still in one piece. ‘Remember the day she took off on the bike...’
‘...and then fell over while we were trying to take off...’
Jimmy caught up. He threw another small stone across the heads as he sidestepped along with them.
‘And that time she marched into Belle’s office...’
Missie felt breathless by the time they reached her mother and Barney Spence, although they’d only been walking and talking and just a little bit splashing. It was good to be panting again and she glanced at Zill whose face was pink from trying to outdistance Jimmy’s last throw.
It was a long way back to Lansdale and the drive up the hill gave them a last view of the lakes and the inlets and waterways and boats. In her hand Missie held the shell to remind her how nice it had been and she was going to be sorry, she knew, when they got to the top and it was all lost from sight.
‘You couldn’t keep those sort of fish in a jar, could you?’ she said, just in case she was wrong. It’d be great if they could and then they’d be able to come down another time and get some.
‘They’re saltwater, Missie,’ her mother said. ‘They can’t live in anything else.’
‘Be good if they did,’ Jimmy said. ‘You could feed ’em breadcrumbs and stuff.’
Zill gave him a shove and said he was a ratbag and fish didn’t eat breadcrumbs. They at
e other fish. And then Jimmy said she was disgusting and what would she know anyway.
Barney Spence said he knew where there were some freshwater fish that would live in jars. ‘They look like goldfish,’ he said.
‘Can we get some?’ It was a squash leaning over the front seat but she managed. Jimmy was already there and was filling up the space with talk about jars and Dotty Evans who had them and how she wasn’t going to need them until next year when she was doing peaches again.
Zilla said her mother would love some goldfish and she had a jar ready anyway.
‘We might have to do it next weekend then,’ Barney Spence said. ‘What do you think?’
It was odd having a policeman sitting in the front seat of the car and talking about getting them fish. Her mother was already saying what a good idea it was and how much they’d enjoy it. So it probably wasn’t odd at all.
Still felt like it, though.
They let Zill off. It was starting to be all right again. Zill was going to wait at the school gate tomorrow. And they were going to round up lots of containers and catch lots of fish together next weekend.
It was beginning to be over.
They let Jimmy off at Dotty Evans’s, who was already telling him he wasn’t having her preserving jars and he’d better find something else before they’d pulled away.
The car swerved into their drive and stopped by the steps leading up to the front door. They used the front door now as Aunt Belle was away so she could be near Max, not that it did her much good, Dotty Evans said.
It was like it was their house.
No.
It was their home.
53
EVENING
‘CHARMAINE’
He was here in the house that he would never have visited again. He sat as he had sat before.
Upstairs.
On the day bed with the jardinière beside him and the flowers still a little dusty. The shadows were softly etched on the wall as they had been in the last springtime before it had all begun.
