Thursday's Child

by Sonya Hartnett

  Suddenly Da and Devon were there, Da laming along on his gammy shot foot and letting out a yell on seeing things close for the first time, and smacking a fist to his forehead. He stepped forward until his boots touched the roof and then he knelt and stared through a hole left by a loosened kerosene tin. Mam told us to be careful and we went to look too. With the sun risen over my head and pouring down its rays, I had a bright-lit view. The walls of the room weren’t folded up between the roof and the ground, as I had expected. Rather, opened up beneath the roof was a cavernous space, and the walls were scrambled about within it. The room had fallen in, not fallen down. It had fallen into Tin’s domain.

  ‘Where is he?’ Mam whispered. ‘Lord, Court, where is he?’

  ‘Tin!’ Da shouted. ‘Tin!’

  There wasn’t any answer: we heard a piece of iron tapping and waterfalls of dirt drizzling into the hole. The heifers had bolted at the noise and were still trotting nervously around their paddock, the screeching birds had spiralled away. The dogs stood quivering on the slope of a mullock heap, shamefaced as though they were to blame. I looked down into the broken room, at the earth spuming up like lava. The floor was snapped in a thousand places, made choppy as the sea. The table and chairs had been knocked higgledy-piggledy and the cupboard and beds were kindling. Everywhere was a scramble of plates and pots and blankets and clothes, filthy and buried in shards and dirt. Most of the walling had collapsed, the slabs sliding over one another and buckling into the room or smashing, the jagged breaks like devil’s hands. If Tin was under there, he was dead for sure.

  ‘Tin!’ I piped. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Tin,’ Mam said – but not loud, and nothing else. It was the forlornest word I ever heard.

  And then he appeared, framed in what was left of the window. I didn’t understand how he could crouch there, in a space where no space should be, but later I found out why. When Tin had dug his first tunnel, he hadn’t been making for the Earth’s core. He’d only gone down a certain distance before changing direction, and changing it many times: he’d excavated an ant’s nest, with passages veering everywhere. It was the earliest passages, the ones woven beneath the shanty, which caved in that morning, and because they were many and some of them were vast they’d left plenty of space, once flattened, to accommodate the room. And it was the passages that had saved him: he’d been down one of them at the moment the collapse happened, and perhaps quite far away. He could appear at the window and have space enough to crouch because, behind him, a tunnel slithered away.

  Da must have guessed this straight off. I expected him to shout with joy at the sight of his pet alive, but he did not. Instead he squawked, ‘Tin! Damn it, look at what you’ve done!’

  ‘Court, you’ll frighten him. Come out, Tin, it’s treacherous –’

  ‘Get here! You plurry well get up here, Tin, and see what you’ve done!’

  ‘Da,’ Audrey breathed, ‘don’t, don’t say that, be pleased, Da …’

  Tin hadn’t moved, nor shifted his gaze from Da. He didn’t look at the rubble and I knew he had seen it already, that he’d been watching everything. ‘Tin,’ I said gently, but he didn’t glance to me. His eyes, on Da’s furious face, were furious in return. Cats when cornered look the same. He wore nothing but a pair of cut-down tatty trousers and he crouched, taut and coiled: had he a tail, it would have lashed. While Da yelled he was motionless but the moment Da slouched and dropped his head in his hands Tin did what a cat does, given the chance to escape. Rather than run he retreated with caution, stiffly haughty, disdain wafting like smoke after him. Mam called to him hopefully, craning between the roof’s sharp torn edges. ‘Tin, it’s dangerous – please come out, just for today?’

  ‘My God,’ Da was groaning, his fingers in his eyes.

  ‘If you won’t come out, then go far away. Go away from the shanty, to where you will be safe …’

  ‘Oh my God, what next? What next?’

  ‘Tin … Tin, listen … go far away …’

  Mam swept her hair from her eyes, searching for him a final time. He was gone though, and she sighed. Da’s moaning made her look at him. ‘There’s no point taking on,’ she said. ‘What’s done is done.’

  But Da didn’t drop his hands. ‘Merciful Mary,’ he was mumbling. ‘Mother of God.’

  He was hurting himself – I could see his nails were biting into his skin. I hurried to him and tried to prise his hands away. ‘It doesn’t matter, Da,’ I chirruped. ‘It’s all right now. We’ll build a new house, a better house, you’ll see –’

  ‘This is what it is,’ he said, talking over me. ‘I’m an educated man and my house is in the ground.’

  Mam stood up, shaking the dust from her apron. ‘Devon,’ she said, ‘run for Mr Murphy. We will need his help.’

  ‘No!’ Da barked hoarsely. ‘It’s my house. I’ll fix it myself.’

  ‘It’s our house, Court. It belongs to me and the children. Devon, go.’

  Da grappled at his scalp, rocking drunkenly. ‘All my life it’s been one thing after another. I have an education, I used to go to dances, all I want is to be left alone –’

  ‘Da!’ I squealed, pawing at his arm. He was cutting into himself and it was making me want to cry. He tried to shake himself free but I clung all the tighter. Devon was standing riveted, uncertain whether to go or stay, and Mam and Audrey were speaking angrily, not to each other but at me. Caffy, forgotten, let out a heartbroken sob, and the tears spilled from my eyes. ‘Da,’ I begged, ‘stand up!’

  ‘Damn it,’ Da was chanting. ‘Damn, damn, damn.’

  ‘Harper,’ Mam warned, ‘come away!’

  ‘Don’t say that, Da, please don’t worry –’

  ‘Harper! Devon, I told you to go!’

  ‘We can fix the shanty, we can fix it today – see Da, the chimney is good, the chimney didn’t fall, it –’

  That’s when he slapped my face. His hand came up and slashed across my cheek and nose. Devon said later it must have been an accident – Da’s arm, when he moved it, must have flown through the air mistakenly, or maybe I moved it myself, and made it go askew – but I knew he only said it to console. Da slapped me, and it hurt: it made me hit the ground like a sack. It made Mam rush forward and roar. ‘Don’t you do that!’ she screamed. ‘Don’t you hit that child!’

  I thought this was strange, even then when I was plonked in the dirt and my brain was reeling, because Da smacked me often, whenever I was rebellious, and Mam never took offence before. This time, however, she hauled me to my feet and, with her free hand, slammed Da over the head. ‘Don’t you take your miseries out on a child,’ she snarled. ‘You’re a coward, you are, taking on like an infant. Do you think you’re the only one living this life? You aren’t. The children and I didn’t ask for this. Get to your feet, you disgust me. That house needs rebuilding, and you’re going to start doing it today.’

  Da was on his knees, tottering. ‘With what?’ he cried, over Caffy’s petrified wailing. ‘How do you intend I fix it, Thora? There’s nothing left of it! It’s firewood!’

  ‘Go to the mill and buy timber!’

  ‘Buy it with what? They don’t give the stuff away!’

  ‘You’ve spent it all, have you? Every penny of your father’s money.’

  ‘Don’t fight, please, Mammy –’

  ‘And what should I have done with it? Money’s meant for spending. The fence, the well, none of those things were cheap.’

  ‘– Dadda –’

  ‘You are such a fool.’

  ‘Oh, it’s foolish to look to the future, is it?’

  ‘The future!’ Mam tossed her head scornfully. ‘Three mangy cows, is that our future? Three mangy cows, which Cable says are worthless anyway? God help us, Court, that’s all I can say!’

  ‘I pray He hears you, because those cows are all we’ve got now!’

  I was sobbing helplessly, clutching the folds of Mam’s skirts. ‘Stop it!’ I bawled. ‘Stop fighting!’

&nb
sp; ‘I was trying to do my best, Thora,’ said Da. He staggered unstably to his feet and stared around blindly. ‘I was only trying my best. That was wrong of me, and I’m sorry for doing it.’

  ‘As am I. You can’t imagine how sorry.’ Mam hoisted Caffy and sponged his snotty nose. ‘I’m taking the children to Rose Murphy’s, and they won’t be coming home until there’s a decent home for them to come to. I don’t care how you do it, but you’ll find the means to right this mess. Sell the cows and pull down the fence and do whatever else you have to do. Taking on like a baby, ah, you revolt me. Audrey, Devon, Harper, come, we’re going.’

  Audrey tried to lead me away but the sight of Da standing by himself agonised my heart: I didn’t care if he slapped me a thousand times, I wanted us to stay with him. I struggled against Audrey and bellowed for my Da but Mam gripped my wrist and between her and Audrey they carried me along, the tears cascading down my cheeks, my face still smarting and craning to see over my shoulder for one last glimpse of him, and it wasn’t until we were a mile or two along the road and trudging in miserable silence that the image of Da standing abject and abandoned was dimmed in my eyes, for a moment, by the memory of Tin in the window, run completely wild.

  Mam made me mop my face as we got nearer the Murphys’, and told me to put a smile onto it. Mrs Murphy warmed cocoa and Mr Murphy joggled Caffy on his knees while Mam told them about the shanty. ‘Of course you can stay here,’ said Mrs Murphy. ‘You know you don’t need to ask. Where’s Court, now?’

  ‘I told him to come along but he wouldn’t, he wanted to stay. He wants to make a start on things as soon as he can. You know how he is, he knows his own mind. I’ll take a plate over of an evening and he’ll be dandy.’

  Audrey, Devon and I stared dismally into our mugs. Mr Murphy said, ‘Must have been a bit of excitement, eh? Not every day your house falls down. It’ll be the rain we had over winter that did it. Ground got sodden and then – splat! Tin was lucky.’

  ‘I told you there’d be trouble, having that villain under your feet.’ Mrs Murphy was nodding, satisfied. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Thora? Imagine it, tunnels going everywhere – what did you expect would happen? Thank the stars no one was inside at the time, or we’d be digging for the lot of you.’

  ‘Tin didn’t mean it,’ Audrey said softly. ‘He’s only a little boy.’

  But I just felt sick at the thought of Tin. I remembered Da hitting me and Mam hitting Da and them roaring at each other and how terrified I had been. I was limp and exhausted and in my throat was a hard knot of fear lest my Da think we didn’t love him any more. And it seemed to me that Mrs Murphy was right, and that Tin was to blame. I looked inside myself and knew I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again.

  Mam took a meal over for Da and Tin at dusk, making us stay behind. That night we slept together in the Murphys’ spare room, Mam and Caffy in the bed and me and Devon and Audrey on the floor. In the moonlight edging past the curtain I could see the glint of Mam’s eyes, travelling the patterned ceiling.

  ‘Mam?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘… I’ll sell Champion. We’ll have some money, then.’

  Mam didn’t look away from the ceiling. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You keep the horse, Devon.’

  I looked at the ceiling too, and my thoughts flew like witches around Tin. I remembered how like a cat he’d looked, how his eyes had filled with a wild cat’s rage. Let him be wild, I thought: let him be wild like a snake, which disappears at the tremor of footsteps. Let me never see him again because of what he’s done; let his diggings take him to the end of the dirt.

  Life was tedious at the Murphys’. Mrs Murphy had a stockpile of chores that she was too timid or swollen to do, and after school Devon and I would always be up some ladder with a cloth and bucket, or bent over double attending the skirting-boards. She would box Audrey and me in the kitchen and break open her recipe books: she said we’d never regret learning to cook but the kitchen was sweltery and the only thing I took into my head was that butter creamed with sugar is a delight to tongue and eye. The Murphys were slightly well-to-do – Da said that Mrs must have come from money because Mr surely didn’t, what with the boilermaking history – and while she stirred and measured Mrs Murphy talked constantly about some fandangled ice-chest she’d seen in a magazine and was persuading her Jock to buy. In the late afternoon we would be freed from slavery and Devon would run to find Mr Murphy in the fields, but there was nothing diverting for me. Murphy land was planted land and dreary for it, with no stock to tend or creek to splash or impressive trees to climb. I would sit and stare mournfully homeward but never dared set out in that direction – Mam said she’d skin me if I tried. She went home every evening, ferrying vitals for Tin and Da, but she never let me go with her. Sometimes she would bring back flowers that she said Da had picked for me. I missed Da, and used to press the flowers for mooning over in private. Da was camping in the animal shelter, Mam said, because the bedroom was unstable. The nights were warm and the animals kept him company, so he wasn’t minding it. She said she never saw Tin, that he wouldn’t answer to her calling, and that sometimes his dinner tray was licked so clean it must be that the dogs had got it in the night. ‘Aren’t you worried about that child?’ asked Mrs Murphy, and Mam replied, ‘No, Rose. He has what he wants.’

  One of the few things that broke the monotony of those slow drifting days was spying on the Murphys and the piddling chair. The piddling chair stood in a corner of the Murphys’ bedroom looking ordinary and modest but it had a padded seat that lifted to reveal a porcelain bowl underneath, secreted from view by a fringe around the well-built legs. Mr and Mrs Murphy used the chair when they needed to go at night, saving them from picking their way to the outhouse with a candle. As soon as we heard a rustling, Devon and I would glide from our bed. We’d cross the hall like lizards and peep around the frame of the Murphys’ bedroom door. There’d be Rose or Jock, nightdress up and perched or nightshirt up and wobbling. It would be all Devon and I could do not to writhe about, wracked with revolted hilarity.

  It was Mrs Murphy on the chair when we’d been there a fortnight but Mr Murphy was awake too, and they were chatting quietly. Mr Murphy went to see Da most days and when he returned he’d say, ‘We put the spire on the palace this morning,’ or ‘Tomorrow we’ll be fitting the stained-glass windows.’ We knew he was teasing but he would never say anything that wasn’t that way.

  Now Mrs Murphy, on the piddling seat, was saying, ‘The man doesn’t deserve your help, if he’s saying such things to you. The rudeness. Who does he think he is?’

  ‘It was the grog he had in him, Rosie. You can’t take offence when it’s the drink speaking, not the man.’

  ‘You’re too good to him. Most people are too good to him, I say.’ Mrs Murphy creaked on the seat, and concentrated a moment. ‘Bless my heart,’ she murmured and then asked louder, ‘So nothing has been done?’

  ‘Like I say, most of the rubble is still in the hole. Manpower isn’t the difficulty – there’s plenty who are willing to chip in. It’s Flute who’s the problem. He sits on his rump mouldering and won’t give any answer regarding what he wants done. If I suggest a thing, I get a tongue-lashing like today. No, I’ve never seen a man take a setback so hard. He’s never without his flask of scoot – he was well into it when I got there this morning. Gets tetchy with it, too.’

  The musty smell of piss was rising in the air. ‘That’s good of him, washing the few deeners he has down his throat, with no regard for his responsibilities. Drink’s brought many a family to ruin. Thora hasn’t said a word, though you’d reckon she’d know what’s going on. Ashamed, no doubt, as you would be. Something has to be done.’

  Jock turned his weight heavily. ‘Aye. But you can’t build a house from thin air, and what’s left of the place you wouldn’t get a kennel from. He’s got no choice but to trade the cattle for bits and pieces, but he’s refusing to do it. I’ll have his mind changed eventually, but I want to get them housed befo
re the bottle gets the best of him, that’s my only concern.’

  ‘Maybe they should all go underground, like the youngster.’

  ‘Haw.’

  Mrs Murphy closed the seat and hedged her way to the bed. Once she was in beside her husband she said, ‘I don’t mind having them here, it’s companionship. But they can’t stay forever. Those children have appetites.’

  ‘What you do for your brothers, you do for the Lord.’

  ‘Maybe, but it’s here on Earth that we have to eat.’

  Devon and I waited until we were certain they were asleep before creeping to our bed. I wanted to talk to Devon but he turned his back on me. When I touched his arm he jerked like he’d been bitten, and curled into a motionless ball. So I lay silent, feeling the floor beneath me, cold and heartsick with worry. I fretted about my Da, that Da would make Mr Murphy so angry he would decide not to help us, that we would have nowhere to live if that happened, that nothing would be good any more.

  Next morning I clung to Mam, lurking in her shadow and irritating her with a glum face and damp eyes, but when I wouldn’t eat the jammy bread we got for breakfast she surmised I must be ill. ‘Are you ailing, Harper?’ she asked, and I nodded frailly, because I felt that I was. She said I could stay home from school and even that gave me no joy.