Refuge

by Jackie French

  Jadda looked at him seriously. ‘I think you should go to the beach.’

  Go to the beach. Go to the beach, said that small whisper in Faris’s mind.

  He ignored it. He wanted to use the computer! He loved computers. He could go to the beach tomorrow.

  He shut his bedroom door and sat at his desk. The computer stared at him. He reached to turn it on, then hesitated. It was almost as if his hand didn’t want to press the ‘on’ switch.

  This was silly. He reached over to the switch again.

  Someone knocked at the front door. Faris stood up in relief. (No, not relief, he told himself. Why shouldn’t he turn on his computer?)

  Jadda had opened the door. The koala had vanished. Susannah stood on the doorstep. She looked even more out of place in the neat doorway, with the flowers behind her, standing there in her long apron with her shabby shawl. He flushed, embarrassed that Jadda would think he had a friend like this, a little girl.

  But Jadda didn’t seem to notice any strangeness. ‘Are you looking for Faris?’

  Susannah nodded. She looked at him past Jadda. ‘Please come to the beach,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’ asked Faris roughly. He waited for Jadda to whisper to him, ‘Be polite.’ But she didn’t.

  Susannah met his gaze with her clear one. ‘Because the beach is where you need to be. We need you,’ she added.

  ‘To play the game?’ He supposed the game was more interesting with more players.

  ‘For that too.’

  Suddenly he longed to be there: the clean sand, the laughter. Even the rocks called to him.

  Jadda smiled. ‘Have fun, my dear one,’ she said.

  Faris walked side by side with Susannah, down the road to the beach. He hoped none of the neighbours would look out and see him walking with a little girl. But no one appeared.

  They climbed the sand hill together. And suddenly there was the beach, as bright as yesterday, almost glowing in the sun. Billy waved up at them. Jamila and David waved too, and little Nikko. Even Juhi smiled at him, as she sat on the sand, near Mudurra swimming in the soft blue sea, his body spearing back to shore on a neat white-laced wave till he landed on his stomach in the shallows.

  Faris tried not to look at him. It wasn’t the lack of clothes that made him uncomfortable today. It was the waves. Those waves that washed the golden sand could also be monsters that clutched you and pulled you down …

  A gate shut in his mind. What had Billy said yesterday? We don’t speak of the past on this beach. Billy’s right, he thought. Forget the pain of yesterdays. Think of the now, the bright day that was Australia.

  The sand was warm under his feet as he followed Susannah down the sand hill. ‘Catch, Far Eyes!’ yelled Billy. The ball soared towards him.

  It was good to be part of the laughter, to think of nothing but the warm sand and the game. He was even better at it today, able to throw the ball up and over to Susannah or David, out of Billy’s reach nearly every time.

  It was a good game. Good to be with friends. Good to be warm and well fed, to know that Jadda was at home, their clean bright home. Why had he tried to go for a walk today instead of coming here? Yet even as he thought it, he found himself wandering away from the game, along the beach towards the headland.

  ‘Oi! You! Far Eyes!’ Billy grabbed his shoulder. ‘Where you goin’?’

  Faris looked at him, puzzled by his anger. ‘Just down the beach.’

  ‘No one walks this far down the beach without my say-so.’ Billy’s grasp tightened on his shoulder. It hurt.

  Faris tried to pull his arm away. ‘Is that another rule? Mudurra comes down here!’

  ‘You ain’t Mudurra.’

  ‘Let him go.’

  Susannah stood with her hands on her hips, her green eyes firm. Faris waited for Billy to yell at her, even to hit her. He tensed, ready to hit the older boy back.

  Instead Billy met Susannah’s gaze. ‘He shouldn’t go wanderin’ off.’

  ‘It’s his choice, Billy.’

  Billy brushed Faris’s arm away. ‘Go on. Go for your walk along the beach then, Far Eyes. We’ll be waiting for you.’ He strode back to the game.

  Faris didn’t want to walk now. But it would be embarrassing to go back. He glanced at Susannah, shrugged and began to walk again along the beach.

  There wasn’t much to see. The waves lashed at the headland, making it impossible to climb around. The only remarkable thing was the doorframe, propped between the rocks. It wasn’t a proper door, as he had thought, but two ancient logs of driftwood, coming together in a rough arch at the top, their lower ends buried in the sand. A weathered skin hung between them so you couldn’t see behind.

  Faris touched the skin. It felt cold, despite the sunlight and the hot and crinkly sand under his feet. His fingers pushed …

  The world was dark and wet and cold. He shuddered, drew his hand back, blinked.

  He was warm and dry on the sunny beach again.

  ‘There now, it’s all right. You’re safe here.’ Susannah had followed him. She gave him a quick hug. It felt wrong, being touched by a girl he wasn’t related to, who talked to him like he was the child, instead of older than her. ‘Come back to the game again.’

  He stepped away from her. ‘I … I was cold.’

  ‘Were you? Don’t worry yourself. You can come back to the door tomorrow, or the next day maybe.’

  Why would he want to come back to an old doorway on a beach?

  He glanced at it.

  ‘Next week maybe,’ said Susannah. ‘No hurry. No hurry in the world.’

  He walked with her back along the beach.

  CHAPTER 6

  He didn’t go for a walk through the streets again. He didn’t walk along the beach to the door either.

  Days passed. Good days, with no strangeness. A world of sunlight and the beach.

  Every morning the game and his new friends waited for him, and the golden sand and neat waves, the black cliffs on either side, the rocks that grinned at him from between the headlands. Sometimes a seabird sat on them, but mostly they shone smooth and bare from the polishing of water.

  Billy had never threatened him again, though sometimes Faris felt the older boy watching him. Susannah watched too from the sand hill each afternoon. Her watching felt different.

  Every lunchtime Jamila washed their hands. Someone brought down food — so much food, and yet each time every last bite was eaten. David brought a big pot of beef, cooked with sweet prunes and carrots, and boxes of chocolates, with creamy centres. Susannah poked the centre out with her tongue before she nibbled the outside.

  Jamila brought great pans of spiced mutton stew, piled so high the meat juice spilled onto the sand, and fresh bread, still hot from the oven, and pomegranates, cold from the fridge. Billy lugged down legs of cold meat, beef and mutton, hot pies with gravy, apple pie and giant loaves of black-topped bread. He grinned as he handed round the food. Faris almost liked him then.

  Juhi brought grapes, salads of parsley and mint and grains, pastries with spicy fillings and flat strange spongy bread to dip into oily stews. Once even little Nikko lugged down a massive black pot filled with a thick stew of lamb and tomatoes and potatoes.

  Only Mudurra never brought food down the sand hill. Mudurra conjured food from the beach — the fish he cooked on his smouldering driftwood fire; skittering crabs that danced above the waterline till his quick fingers grabbed them, with shells that turned deep red as they cooked on the coals. Sometimes Mudurra found shellfish on the rocks by the cliffs, or dug strange tubers from the sand hill that he cooked near the coals of the fire; they were fibrous but sweet and so hot they burned your tongue. Each day Mudurra gave a fish to Juhi first, before he fed the others. She ate it with her long black fingers and perfect white teeth.

  There was buttermilk to drink, or almond milk, pomegranate or apple juice in big jugs, or water from the bladders that Mudurra filled from a spring that oozed fresh water near the base of the sand hill.r />
  No one brought Australian food. There were no big platters of cold chicken, no pineapples, no giant bowls of fruit salad or pavlova topped with passionfruit, no lamingtons or pumpkin scones or seared barramundi with chilli jam.

  Some days Faris thought he would bring everyone proper Australian food from his big breakfast buffet. But somehow, when it felt right that he be the one to go home to fetch their midday meal, he found himself offering Jadda’s bean soup, her coconut cake and the salad she made with red onions and pomegranates that crunched sweetness onto your tongue.

  Each day had a routine now. He would go to the beach, and the others would be there. Billy and Susannah were always there when he arrived, throwing the ball to each other, waving happily as he appeared. Mudurra and Juhi were always there too, Mudurra fishing with his long sharp spear, Juhi watching him, or sometimes searching along the beach for driftwood for the fire.

  Faris and Susannah, Billy, Jamila and David would spend the whole morning playing the game, while little Nikko built sandcastles or dug great holes to see them fill with water, though sometimes he joined the game too. Even Billy was careful to throw gently to the little boy.

  When the sun glared high above them, they ate their food, then Susannah left to watch them from the sand hill, and Mudurra and Juhi joined the game. The game was always faster and more furious when the dark-skinned couple played, with more laughter too.

  Then, as the sun dipped down towards the sand hill, one by one they left the beach.

  David always left first, in his short woollen suit and long socks and polished shoes. Sometimes Jamila followed him, her shawl neat about her head, singing her song with the wind, its words lost among the lap of waves. Nikko left early too, his tiny body weary, pausing on the sand hill for Susannah to give him a quick kiss before patting him on his way.

  Sometimes Faris left after lunch too. He curled up on the cushions in their house while Jadda read to him, not Australian books but the old stories from when he was small, which for some reason were all he wanted to listen to now. Other times he waited till the sun dropped low behind the sand hill, turning the sky pink and red and orange, till the shadows thickened on the beach, and Billy said, ‘Hey, matey. It’s time to go.’

  Faris was careful now to go up the sand hill alone, just like the others did, just as Susannah had said. He didn’t know why he obeyed her. Surely he’d just got lost that time he’d looked down on the farm-like gardens and dirt track? But everyone walked up the sand hill alone. It seemed as important as not asking questions on the beach.

  No matter how late Faris stayed, Mudurra and Juhi were always still on the shore. Perhaps, he thought, they lived there. But there was no sign of a shelter, or even furs or dry grass to make a bed.

  Every night his street was waiting for him, the smell of orange blossom and the grazing kangaroos, and Jadda opening the front door, a smiling Jadda with her book in her hand, and the smell of bean soup behind her.

  It was enough. All I want, he told himself. He had lived with fear so long (he shut his mind to what that fear had been, but the memory that he had been afraid lingered). This was a time for sunlight, for golden sand. This was a holiday.

  This was Australia. This was peace. This was home, with Jadda and his father.

  Though, of course, somehow his father was never there.

  ‘He is working late tonight again,’ said Jadda, when Faris asked where his father was, as he sat down at the table for his dinner.

  You told me that last night, he thought. And the night before that. How many nights had his father worked late? How many mornings had Faris slept so long that his father was gone when he got up?

  How long were school holidays in Australia?

  There has been no Friday, he thought. No days of the week at all. No calls to prayer, no Ramadan, no holy days for any of the religions in Australia.

  But this was Australia, where prayers and religion were private. They had prayed back home, but Faris had never known what Jadda thought of prayer, or even of religion. The only time he had asked her she had looked at him seriously and said, ‘Ask me in a few years.’ As though what she wanted to say was too big to voice yet.

  He looked at Jadda, smiling at him, and somehow he couldn’t ask about prayer, or even what day of the week it was. He could only drink his soup and eat his bread — the flat bread of home, not the puffy bread rolls from his buffet breakfast, nor the big black-topped bread or the round heavy loaves the others brought to the beach — sleep in his clean sheets, where no rats scuffled in the night, where no wave rose like a sea beast reaching up a hand from the endless black depths …

  He woke, sweating, then sat up in the darkness.

  He was in a bed. A bed! And down the hall was Jadda, sleeping too. His father was in the room next door. Faris had only to walk down there and Jadda would wake and comfort him. He had only to open his father’s door and he would see …

  What? What did his father look like?

  Of course I know what my father looks like, he told himself. My father has … He forced his memory back. Black hair, black beard, eyes that smiled as he watched his son read to him from a leather-covered book.

  The face was vague, too far away.

  He was being stupid. He had only to get up, go down the corridor, open his father’s bedroom door. His father wouldn’t be at the hospital now. Faris could wake him up, or look at him at least.

  Get up, he told himself. Turn on the light, go out the door.

  He stayed where he was, in the warm nest of bed. And, finally, he slept again.

  CHAPTER 7

  He left the game early the next afternoon, even before David. He had felt strange all day, as though he just floated in the world, as though there were shadows he couldn’t see.

  Too little sleep, Faris told himself. The nightmare had stolen sleep. He nodded to Susannah as he walked up the sand hill, hoping she’d let him pass without speaking.

  ‘Going home?’

  Again he was caught by the strange music of her voice. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wait,’ she said.

  ‘What for? I’m tired.’ Even as he said it, he knew he wasn’t tired. Scared, perhaps, though he didn’t know of what. Stop it, he told himself. What is there to be scared of? This is a happy place. There is nothing bad here.

  ‘Because I’m thinking it’s time you saw something. I’m thinking that you are ready for it now.’ Susannah looked up at him, hugging her knees under her long dress and apron.

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘Sit down,’ she ordered.

  He sat, the dry sand warm under his jeans, resenting the way this small girl gave him orders, angry at himself, a little, for obeying them.

  He knew nothing about her, he realised. Nothing about any of them, despite the days they’d played together. It wasn’t just Billy’s rule that had stopped him asking questions. It was as though his brain had been closed. Was it now slowly opening?

  ‘You talk like you’re almost singing.’ He hadn’t meant to say it. It sounded rude.

  But instead of minding, Susannah laughed. ‘Bridget always said my accent came from the Irish bogs.’

  He thought of the other names Susannah had written in her book. There had been so many of them, but no one else ever came down to their beach, no adult, no other child. ‘Who’s Bridget?’

  Susannah’s face lost a little of its smile. ‘She’s gone now.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘Now that,’ she said, ‘I can’t be telling you. Home, I hope. A good home. Now here comes David.’

  Faris watched the boy trudge up the sand hill. Susannah stood as he stopped to empty the sand out of his shiny black shoes. ‘Ah, David. Do you mind if we come with you?’

  Faris glanced at her, annoyed. He didn’t want to go with David. He wanted to go home, to the familiar comfort of Jadda. They could sort through the lentils for stones together, just as they’d always done …

  But it would be rude to contradict Susannah
, an insult to David too.

  David looked at his watch. It was a big one, old-fashioned, with hands instead of numbers. ‘If you like. I have to hurry. They’re waiting for me.’

  ‘You go on ahead,’ said Susannah gently. ‘We’ll see you there.’

  David nodded. He laced up his shoes again, then stepped carefully up to the top of the sand hill.

  ‘Are we going to his home?’ called Faris, as Susannah followed David.

  She shook her head. ‘You’ll see.’

  Faris hauled himself to his feet and climbed to the top of the sand hill, where Susannah waited for him. He looked down at the street below.

  A city street. But this was like no city he had ever seen, even on the internet.

  Faris stared. There had been … strange … things. He could blank his mind to strange. But this was impossible.

  These buildings were two and three storeys high. Most were shops, some with wide windows, others with funny windows made up of many small panes of glass. People in old-fashioned suits walked along the street. Strange cars moved slowly down the road, like those he had seen in a movie years ago, set in the middle of the last century.

  Another set of Movie World, he told himself.

  He didn’t believe it. Nor could he believe that Susannah’s cottage was a Movie World set.

  He dug his fingers into his hands so hard the nails hurt. Was he going mad? His father had told him of a mentally ill patient at the hospital, who thought the trees spoke to him. Could a mental illness make you imagine a whole world?

  ‘Where are we?’ He tried to keep his voice steady. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’ll explain it all later.’

  ‘Explain it now!’

  ‘I can’t. There’s something you have to see first. Don’t worry,’ she added. ‘It’s a good thing to see. A wonderful one.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll see.’ Susannah tugged at his hand. She sounded patient. She sounded kind, as if she really was trying to show him what all the strangeness meant. If she had been rude or impudent, Faris could have turned his back on her, walked down the sand hill again, then back up to find his way home, leaving her behind.