Lula Does the Hula

by Samantha Mackintosh

  At first it seemed I’d never get the little thing’s bill open to get the oats in, but with patience I think some finally went down. I covered the bowl and put it in the kitchen. I’d try again in the morning.

  Great-aunt Phoebe called across the courtyard at eleven to check that I was okay and ready for bed. ‘Your young man has gone, Tallulah?’

  ‘Yes, Aunt Phoebe,’ I replied, opening the living-room window so she could hear me. ‘He’s gone.’

  ‘Penelope says Boodle can stay over with you tonight.’ Aunt Phoebe stepped closer, shading her eyes from the glare of my outside light. ‘Lula? Are you all right? You sound tired.’

  ‘I am.’

  She came up to my window and bent down to look at my face. ‘He didn’t seem to stay after you got back from your walk. Did you two have a disagreement?’

  ‘Kind of,’ I answered, and felt suddenly teary.

  Aunt Phoebe kissed me first on one cheek then the other. ‘He’ll see the light,’ she assured me. ‘You’re one in a gazillion. Have a hot bath and get some sleep now, Tallulah.’

  Monday – frikking early. On the run again

  So the thing about pets is that they’re a huge responsibility. I know this now because at some inhumane hour a little bird in a box in my room began peep-peeping like there’s no tomorrow. To be honest, the peeping didn’t wake me, but Boodle thumping my head with her enormous paw did.

  I rolled out of bed, staggered to the kitchen and picked up the bowl of oats. Back in bed, I sat cross-legged, bird box on lap, feeding. The duckling spread its wings with delight and gaped, putting its head right back. In went the oats. When it had had enough, it settled down again and Boodle curled round the box. I tried to go back to sleep, but box, Boodle and my body did not all fit comfortably and I was not king of the heap, that’s for sure. When a faint glow finally seeped through the blinds, I threw on my running stuff and headed out.

  Usually I run up the mountain road, but last night’s experiences had me thinking I really didn’t want to be anywhere near there, especially as it was still pretty dark and misty, so I turned down Darling Street, which runs past the side of our house, down a steep incline, into a welter of little roads and tightly packed houses. Not many lights were on, but the streetlamps were bright, the roads quiet and I felt safe. After about half an hour of hard running I was starting to feel better in my head – less angry and confused about my beautiful boyfriend – though my back was still plaguing me. Then suddenly I remembered I’d left Boodle inside and that she hadn’t been out to do her business yet.

  Frik! I thought. That could be a biiig accident. Nothing about Boodle was small, especially not her poos. I was in the centre of town now, and began pelting up Hill Street, the chimneys of Cluny’s Crematorium dark against the skyline. Working hard up the incline, I heard the car before I saw its dark shadow, and I’m pretty sure whoever was driving wouldn’t have seen me, though they were rumbling along at a strangely slow and furtive speed.

  Something made me duck behind a tree, I don’t know what. The car drifted to a halt outside the crematorium, and a figure emerged from the mist, carrying a heavy load that seemed to slip and slide in his arms. He staggered up the steps to Cluny’s veranda, deposited the package and thumped the door loudly with his fist before dashing away.

  The car door slammed and the vehicle was off. I couldn’t see it, but I heard it take a hard right up Henderson Avenue a few houses up.

  ‘Couriers,’ I muttered in disgust. ‘Don’t even wait for a signature any more.’ I shook my head at what a scaredy cat I’d become, and stepped out from behind the tree.

  How it happened I don’t quite know, but suddenly I was down on my knees on the pavement, bent over in agony.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Monday 5 a.m. In serious pain

  ‘Nyeeep!’ I squealed, clutching my back. The spasm of pain wracked my whole body, and I didn’t think any human being had ever felt such suffering. ‘Frik! Frik! Frik!’ My spine had well and truly spasmed. Or pinched a nerve. Or slipped a disc. Or, actually, just broken, judging by the pain.

  ‘Bumly poxly bum bum!’ I whimpered.

  I somehow managed to ride the spasm out, taking deep breaths, trying to relax.

  There. That was better.

  I looked up. Cluny’s was just a few metres away, and my house two hundred from there. Maybe three.

  Okay. I just had to get to a standing position, and then I could shuffle home.

  Bit by bit, by gripping on to the trunk of the tree, I managed to haul myself up. I was hunched over like Quasimodo from Notre Dame, and didn’t even have the guts to brush the gravel from my knees. Only essential movements would do right now. I took a step.

  ‘Nyeeep!’

  And another.

  ‘Nyeeep!’

  The pain sent tears coursing down my cheeks.

  ‘You frikking useless girl!’ I scolded, and took two more steps.

  ‘Nyeeep frik! Nyeeep frik!’

  I stopped and heaved more teary breaths.

  ‘Bliddy Alex and her hula frikking hula class!’

  It must have taken me twenty minutes to get the twenty metres to Cluny’s. The mist was fading away. I looked down the road. I still couldn’t see my home. The pain from my back was making my legs shudder and shake. I stopped and held on to the crematorium railing.

  ‘Hello, dead people,’ I whispered. ‘So sorry to trespass.’

  I took another step and my left leg buckled.

  ‘Nyhee!’ I gripped the railing with all my might and my leg steadied.

  ‘Okay,’ I muttered. ‘Plan B.’

  Inch by agonising inch I got myself up the two steps and on to the veranda. Finally I was at the front door, legs shaking badly now. I wasn’t sure if it was from the exertion, the pain or the fright of a multitude of dead, past and present, within.

  I rang the bell.

  And waited.

  I had been ringing and waiting for about fifteen minutes. Every time I was just about to give up, I’d try to turn away and make for home, but I couldn’t move a muscle without my whole body spasming again.

  I held my breath and rang again, leaving my forefinger on the buzzer so that the faraway ringing went on and on and on. Then I lifted my fist, and, though it nearly killed me, I whacked on that door like Bludgeon gaining entry to a perp’s hideout.

  At last, the sound of footsteps. The door clicked and vibrated as bolts were shot back and latches unlocked, and then there I was face to face with Helen Cluny’s scary dad.

  Mr Cluny was everything you’d expect from the town’s undertaker: tall and thin and ghostly white. His hair was sparse to the point of baldness, just short drifts of white across a strong-shaped head. His eyes were the most lively part of him and right now the dark blue of them sparkled with anger. ‘You have been banging on my door since the crack of dawn!’ he bellowed at me. ‘Not even bothering with the etiquette of the doorbell!’

  ‘Uh, that wasn’t me,’ I said quickly, remembering the courier delivery.

  ‘Banging and blasting then ringing and ringing! We were up for all hours last night incinerating birds! This family is exhausted! What do you want?’ His thick silver eyebrows beetled together and I saw that the knucklebones of his hands gripping the door and frame were shining through his thin, papery skin.

  ‘Sorry to bother you, Mr Cluny,’ I said, white-faced and feeling sick and shaky, ‘but I’ve hurt myself and I can’t get home.’ It came out suitably pathetic, and Mr Cluny’s thunderous face looked a little less furious.

  A shape shifted in the darkness behind him. ‘Who is it, Arthur dear?’

  ‘Helen’s friend,’ he barked over his shoulder. ‘Sally Bird’s granddaughter. The witchy one. The one with the boy trouble.’

  I did not correct the man. I needed his help and, besides, he was right on a few points there. ‘Tallulah,’ I said, stooping a little further to ease the ache. ‘Tallulah Bird.’

  Helen’s mum bustled into the doo
rway. ‘Hello, Tatty! Helen’s still sleeping.’

  ‘She’s hurt herself,’ announced Arthur Cluny.

  ‘Well, let her in, dear! What are you doing keeping her out on the veranda! What’s wrong, Tatty?’ She shouldered her husband aside and grabbed my forearms. Just that little nudge had me falling to my knees with a ridiculous yelping scream.

  ‘My back!’ I managed.

  ‘Looks bad,’ observed Arthur without compassion. ‘No wonder you were beating the door down.’

  ‘Wasn’t me,’ I gasped. ‘Not the first time, anyway. You had a delivery.’

  I gestured with a look to the side of the door and that’s when I screamed for real and even Mrs Cluny’s muscly arms couldn’t keep me from dropping to my knees. Again.

  On the Cluny’s front veranda was a body wrapped up in clear plastic. A puddle of dark liquid oozed from its folds and I could make out tufts of grey hair, an open eye staring up at me and a slightly parted mouth, the lips very blue. The worst was the hand that had fallen out from the plastic wrapping. It was old and clawed and it looked like it was beckoning to me.

  It freaked me out.

  Totally.

  When I’d stopped screaming I realised dully that I could move again. That my body, while in pain, wasn’t in a total rictus any more. And that was lucky because the Clunys had forgotten all about me. They’d moved into overdrive and were calling to Helen, running for the telephone, phoning the police, phoning my parents.

  ‘This was the delivery?’ asked Arthur Cluny. ‘This?’

  I nodded, still in shock.

  ‘Did you see who made the delivery?’

  ‘I – I –’ I stopped and took a breath. ‘I thought it was a courier,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t really see. The mist . . .’

  Helen came running down the stairs in her pyjamas. ‘Tatty? What are you doing here? Mum? What’s going on?’

  ‘Someone dropped a body on the veranda,’ said her mum.

  ‘Oh,’ said Helen, yawning and rubbing her eyes. ‘Anyone want tea? Tatty, why are you here?’

  ‘She saw the guy who dropped the body,’ said Mr Cluny. ‘Police will want to talk to her.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Helen again. ‘Geez. Only with you around, T. Come get a hot drink.’ She shuffled away down the corridor in her slippers. I followed her cautiously, looking left to right as I went. The Cluny home did not look like I expected it to. It was totally normal.

  Helen glanced back over her shoulder and gave me a look. ‘Stuff for doing the bodies is down in the basement and out back,’ she explained.

  ‘I wasn’t –’

  ‘Sure you weren’t, Tatty,’ said Helen, smiling wryly. ‘Sure you weren’t.’

  ‘Doesn’t it creep you out?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘Just the fluids from the embalming,’ she said, putting the kettle on. ‘Not the stuff that goes in, you know, the stuff that comes out.’

  ‘Right,’ I whispered, but before I could slump into a chair and put ten sugars in my tea for the shock of everything I’d suffered so far, I heard my mum at the door. She was talking urgently to Mrs Cluny, but Mrs C was obviously calming her down, because by the time she got to the kitchen she was laughing at something Helen’s mum was saying.

  ‘Lu?’ said Mum. ‘Whatever next? Are you hurt?’

  I stood up and she came over and held me gently. ‘Martha said something about your back?’

  I nodded. ‘I was running this morning and I hurt it coming up this last hill. Just after the man dropped the . . . the –’

  ‘The body off,’ said Helen. ‘Hi, Dr Bird.’

  ‘Hello, Helen. Did my daughter wake you?’ Mum had a twinkle in her eye even though she still looked worried.

  Helen grinned. ‘Tatty is totally weird,’ she said.

  ‘Ohh no!’ I replied. ‘No no no! Don’t pin this on me! I was just running by. Nothing to do with me. At All. Nothing To Do With Me At All!’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Helen.

  I felt like I was going to burst into tears suddenly.

  ‘Let’s get you home,’ said Mum. ‘And I’ll call the surgery to see if Dr McCabe can take a look at your back –’

  ‘No!’ I said again, vehemently this time. I had seen the look on Helen’s face and I knew that if I stayed away from school today there’d be too much damage for even Alex to control. ‘I’m fine now!’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think –’ started Mum.

  ‘Let’s go!’ I said.

  ‘What about the police?’ asked Arthur Cluny, coming into the kitchen.

  ‘We’re only down the road,’ said Mum. ‘Can you point them in the right direction? I’d like to get Tallulah home now.’

  ‘No problem, Anne,’ said Mr Cluny. He opened the front door and blinked in surprise. Parked outside was a police vehicle, lights flashing. And Sergeant Trenchard was standing on the veranda, her hands on her hips, staring down at the plastic-wrapped body while a man in a white coat stepped around it taking pictures.

  ‘Hi, Hilda,’ I said.

  ‘Hello, Tallulah,’ she replied, and smiled. ‘I see you found Parcel Brewster.’

  ‘What?’ My eyes slid to the body. ‘That’s Parcel Brewster?’ Sweat slicked out across my body.

  Had he been drowned at Frey’s Dam?

  Frik!

  Who the hell had brought him here? Surely the old man and his partner would have made sure he stayed at the bottom of the dam?

  ‘Yes, there’s no doubt it’s Parcel Brewster,’ said Sergeant T, while Mum and the Clunys exclaimed in shock. ‘Matches a picture Esme Trooter brought in last week. And apparently the boys at the station had a call last night to say they needed to check for him up at the dam, but they thought the tipoff was a hoax. Laughed out loud, apparently.’ Sergeant T pursed her lips disapprovingly.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, my thoughts whirling and jumbling and settling on nothing helpful. ‘Did your policemen call you about it last night?’

  ‘Well . . .’ I could see Sergeant T was choosing her words carefully. ‘No. The officers felt that the anonymous tip-off was not worth investigating.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘And now the body turns up here.’ My thoughts skittered to a few places, and I reined them back in pronto. Don’t go there, Tallulah.

  Sergeant T ran a hand through her wild and curly redhead afro and looked over at the man in the white coat. He had stopped taking pictures now and was on his haunches, examining the body’s exposed hand. ‘Donald,’ she said, ‘can you hazard a guess as to when this man died?’

  He glanced up at her sympathetically. ‘Nothing you could have done for Parcel Brewster, Hilda. Been dead thirty-six hours at least.’

  Sergeant T nodded, and it was obvious that made her feel better. ‘Can you answer a few questions, Tatty?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but I’m not much help, I’m afraid.’ I explained to her exactly what I’d seen and heard that morning, feeling useless. Because what I really wanted to tell her was to do with last night’s visit to Frey’s Dam. Handcuffs on Sergeant T’s belt glinted in the early morning sunlight, and I swallowed. I couldn’t tell anyone I’d been up to Frey’s – not until we had evidence to prove there was no bird flu. Until it wasn’t a big deal that we’d been up there, treading through infected territory.

  Sergeant Trenchard made notes on what I said, and asked me things I hadn’t really thought about, like the direction the drop-off vehicle came from and went away to. I thought carefully about everything and gave her as much detail as I could. ‘Good work, Tallulah,’ she said.

  But it didn’t feel like good work to me. Guilt at the things I hadn’t said twisted in my gut. My back began to throb.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Home again – busy doing a spot of self-medicating

  I’d contemplated taking my little duckling to school, but Blue had blown my cover first thing in the morning by charging in unannounced as I was reading the side-effects of Nurofen, and how much a person could take in one go. (Not enoug
h when experiencing this kind of agony.)

  ‘Blue! You should knock!’

  ‘Aunt Phoebe is knocking,’ she replied, racing over to see what I was doing.

  ‘Hi, Aunt Phoebe. How’re you?’ I asked, trying to hide the duckling on the kitchen counter.

  ‘Excellent condition, dear. I came to see how you are after all the drama this morning.’

  Blue squealed loudly. ‘Aunt Phoebe! Lula has a pet chicken!’

  ‘It’s a duckling, Blue. And you’ll scare him if you shriek so loudly.’

  ‘He’s so likkle! Can we call him Big?’

  ‘Are you sure you should be looking after an orphan bird with avian flu on the loose?’ asked Aunt Phoebe, coming to my side to investigate.

  ‘Big is not a name, Blue,’ I replied. ‘Besides, he’s not.’ I turned to Great-aunt Phoebe. ‘I couldn’t leave him to fend for himself!’

  ‘Where did you find him?’ Aunt Phoebe had lowered her stylish spectacles and was looking at me intently over the top. ‘Frey’s Dam, no doubt. Really, Lula. Really and truly, I don’t –’

  ‘Biggins, then,’ announced Blue. ‘Just like Boodle not a poodle, so Biggins not big. Okay, Lula? Okay? Please? Please, please, please!’

  Biggins opened his bill and began bleating in unison with Blue.

  ‘Fine! Fine!’ I exclaimed, punctuating with the spoon I held for emphasis. Cold oats splatted on Blue’s forehead.

  She promptly licked it. ‘Yuk,’ she decided.

  ‘Yegads. You’ve just given your sister bird flu!’ said Aunt Phoebe in a rare, rare panic. ‘Bird flu! For the Birds! It’s not even funny! Blue, open your mouth! Spit! Spit!’

  ‘Aunt Phoebe,’ I said wearily, spooning oats into Biggins as fast as they would go. ‘Humans don’t get bird flu. Besides, there isn’t any bird flu. It’s something else.’ I stopped abruptly.

  Aunt Phoebe exhaled loudly. ‘Oh, God. What have you done. What do you know.’ She didn’t ask, she just said, like statements of insider knowledge: clearly I had been up to something terrible.