Hare's Fur

by Trevor Shearston

  ‘Well that’s what they’re called in Japan, cave kilns, ana-gama — and here. We’ve borrowed their word. But the Chinese invented them. Mine’s on a much smaller scale, yes, I have to crawl in to pack it. But the principle’s the same, a sloping tunnel with a fire at the lower end and a chimney at the other and the pots in the middle.’ There was no need to tell her that his would never again know a fire. ‘I have another book in there just about the kilns. If you want.’

  ‘Nah, this’s heaps.’

  ‘It certainly is. One I still look at often.’

  ‘You went there, ay — you said. Down when we was gettin rock.’

  ‘Adele and I, yes.’ He nodded towards the page she had open. ‘To look at those. Especially the ones where some very famous black tea bowls were fired. There’s photos of the bowls further on.’

  ‘That where you got the idea?’

  ‘The inspiration, let’s say. But I use Shipley clay and Megalong rock, so I finish up with Blue Mountains pots.’

  ‘But … so what? That’s cool.’

  ‘I agree. It’s not a complaint.’ He thought to say, in fact, it’s a philosophy. That would divert them from what he wanted to say next. ‘Not now, but tomorrow, I’ll show you a bowl I have in my bedroom. It’s better to see it in daylight.’

  ‘From China?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you bring it?’

  The girl had been sitting with folded hands and half-listening. Now she groaned softly and reached fingers and thumb to a pawn and began spinning it on its square.

  ‘Tomorrow. Someone’s getting bored.’

  After breakfast he took her into the lounge room and told her to sit. He brought the bowl, asked her to open her hands in her lap and placed the bowl in the bowl of her palms. He sat beside her.

  ‘This came from one of those kilns. Don’t get nervous when I tell you how old it is. Nine hundred years.’ She raised her eyes to his, in them something like horror. ‘It’s all right, you can’t drop it, just hold it like you are.’ He directed her eyes back down. ‘This streaking is called hare’s fur. You know what a hare is.’

  ‘Like a rabbit.’

  ‘The black and the brown are both iron. The iron in mine comes from that basalt we collected, but this probably came from using an iron clay for both glaze and body.’

  She glanced at him, looked back down at the bowl. ‘Was it … expensive?’

  ‘For the man who bought it. I was given it.’

  He was not quite finished explaining when she interrupted softly, ‘Can you take it.’

  He lifted it from her, gripped the foot in the fingertips of one hand and raised it to the level of their eyes. ‘See the curve — how relaxed yet how strong it is? The man who threw this probably threw a hundred a day.’ He lowered the bowl into both hands and stood. ‘It lives in the bedroom. By all means go in and look at it, but I’d ask that you don’t pick it up.’

  The young ones were finishing a noisy breakfast. They didn’t want to come to the workshop, the boy wanting to watch cartoons, the girl to learn moves.

  Before bed he’d fetched from his study the primer that had been Michael’s and his own travellers’ set in its scratched and stained leather case and had shown the girl how to ‘read’ and transfer a move from the page to the board. She’d been slow to grasp the concept, but more, he thought, from a difficulty with reading itself. She had, though, fallen instantly in love with the miniature pieces, exhaling thrilled disbelief when shown that the feet were magnetised. The leather case lay now on the table beside a splash of milk. He said nothing. It had lain on many and dirtier tables.

  He demonstrated to Jade how to knead, then left her and lit a fire in the workshop. When he returned to the annexe she was leaning on the table, chest heaving, face red. ‘Yes, it’s hard work.’ He slapped the clay back into a loaf. ‘Watch again. It doesn’t come from your arms, you use your weight.’

  They made up ten balls. He oversaw her centring of the first on the wheel-head and returned to the annexe. He didn’t want her trying to wheedle an opinion after every throw.

  She wasn’t afraid to cull. When he went back in she’d used nine of the balls but had only two cylinders and a crude bottle sitting on the ware board. One of the cylinders was almost passable. He asked her what she really thought of the bottle after seeing those in the books. She silently lifted it and dropped it onto the other failures in the recycling bucket. She slid from the saddle, asked would he throw a bottle with the remaining ball. He motioned her back on, telling her that her guess was right, a bottle started with a cylinder. She threw the new cylinder, but pushed too hard when she began to open the belly and split the wall. She peeled the half-thing from the wheel-head and dropped it in the bucket. When she slid again from the saddle he nodded at the two on the ware board and told her to take the board over to the racks. She gave him a level stare. The side of her nose and its ring were streaked with dried slurry where she must have sneezed or brushed at a fly. ‘For now, all right.’

  She smeared her hands down the apron and picked up the board. He watched her carry it to the racks, stand for a moment deciding where. What a swift odd turn his life had taken. A teenage girl with a ring in her nose was sliding ware into his drying racks.

  That night Kayla rang. They were on dessert, warmed packet apple pie and ice cream. He handed the phone to Jade. She didn’t, as he expected, carry it into the hallway. The conversation was short, at her end mainly yes and no. She stood the phone in the charger, returned to her seat. She spoke as if he wasn’t there.

  ‘Greg got picked up. They didn’t have nothin so they had to let him go. But she’s still freakin, ay.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Y. She reckons they’re watchin the place. She and him are crashin at Flynnies.’

  The language shut him out, he was an eavesdropper in his own kitchen.

  Emma pulled a sour face.

  ‘Yeah, I fuckin know. But where, ay?’

  The girl lowered her eyes, spoke at the bowl. ‘She found her?’

  Jade acknowledged his presence for the first time, a flick of the eyes and away.

  ‘Reb’s on it, he’s ringin her back tomorrow.’

  ‘Reb. Sure.’

  ‘Well who else, smart-arse!’

  Without warning, the boy began to cry. Russell looked at Jade. She nodded. He turned his chair, tugged on the boy’s sleeve, ‘Come here.’ The boy stood and walked into his arms, buried his face in his shoulder.

  Next morning the upper at the toe of Emma’s left jogger finally parted company with the sole. All she had were the yellow rubber boots. He offered to take her into town and buy her new joggers.

  It was the first time he’d seen Jade indecisive. She acknowledged that Emma couldn’t go everywhere in rubber boots. At the same time she didn’t want her in Big W. He should take her old joggers and buy something the same. He’d already seen the girl’s face at the prospect of new shoes. He wanted her to have a pair she chose, not he. They didn’t have to use Big W, he said. He would take her to the shoe store. The couple there knew him, there’d probably be no other customers, he could say she was his niece’s daughter and there’d be no fuss.

  It proved to be as simple as he’d said. The wife measured her foot, laid out a range on the carpet. She walked up and down in two pairs, red then purple, chose the purple. He blinked when told the price, forty-nine dollars. For two small shoes. ‘They’ll last,’ the woman said. ‘She’ll grow out of them first.’ When the woman reached to unlace them he said no, she’d wear them home. He didn’t register what he’d said until the girl looked at him.

  With them on she would no longer come into the dust and clay of the workshop, would not even cross the threshold. On the afternoon of her second day of ownership she was seated in the slat chair outside the door with the travelling set and primer open on a clean
ware board laid across the arms. Every few minutes she would call him out to pronounce a word. He had brought buckets and sieve into the workshop to be near both the boy hand-building on the table and Jade on the wheel, and was making up a fresh batch of guan to use on the teapots. Each time the girl called him out her eyes went first to his coated hands, fearful that the creamy liquid might drip onto her joggers. Whenever the boy wanted her to look at what he’d made he had to carry it to where she sat. So when she burst through the doorway all three of them jumped, he nearly tipping the bucket.

  ‘A woman and kid are comin!’

  He grabbed a towel for his hands and hurried outside. The visitor could only be Helen with one of her two. She didn’t need to come to the workshop, he would head her off. But they were already at the back of the kiln shed. He dropped the towel on the arm of the chair the girl had vacated. Helen waved.

  ‘We won’t disturb you, we just thought we’d pop over for a sec with an invitation.’ She was looking past him at the workshop doorway. ‘I think we gave your visitor a fright.’

  ‘Ah … yes — she was engrossed in one of my chess books.’

  ‘Oh! Bit more than the level of game we’re offering.’ She placed an arm around Lucy’s shoulders and drew her in front of her. ‘Lucy was wondering if they might like to come over. Rather short notice today, but maybe after school tomorrow.’

  He forced a smile. ‘Well … I suppose only one way to find out.’ He stepped aside, ushered them past.

  Jade had completed her throw, was letting the wheel slow. She smiled at Helen, ‘Hi — Jade,’ displayed her slurried hand, sorry. ‘That’s all right, I can see you’re all busy,’ Helen said. ‘I’m Helen, from across the road, and this’s Lucy.’ Emma was seated at the far end of the bench. When Lucy stepped clear of her mother she stared, then dipped her head, had to be tapped on the shoulder before she mumbled ‘hi’. Emma had cowled her face with her hands and was staring down at the primer. He wondered was this some weird ritual shyness between girls of this age. The boy, though, was looking at them openly, nodding when Jade introduced him.

  Helen moved to the table and Lucy grabbed at her jumper, came in her wake. Helen brushed her hand irritably loose. ‘You’re getting good,’ she said to the boy. She pointed. ‘I especially like that one.’ Russell had helped the boy sculpt a face on the side of a bowl. She turned to Jade. ‘It’s obvious where you’d prefer to be, so I wonder if perhaps your brother and sister might like to come over and play? Maybe tomorrow afternoon?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Russell didn’t hear more than polite acknowledgement and neither did Helen. She waited, then was forced to shrug. ‘Okay, we’ll just leave it with you. But the invitation’s there.’ She turned to find Russell. ‘We’ll get out of your hair, let everyone get back to what they’re doing.’

  Lucy, head down, walked fast to the door. Russell, baffled, followed the girl and her mother outside to apologise. Jade and Emma had reverted to a coldness he had, over the last few days, almost forgotten.

  ‘I’m sorry, Helen, I don’t know why they weren’t a bit more forthcoming. It’s just they’ve got quite involved in the clay. Emma does like computer games, though, like your two.’

  At the name, Lucy detached herself from her mother’s side and sprinted across the cropped grass towards the corner of the house, and the road. Caught by the suddenness, he and Helen halted and stared after her. The girl was flying, vanished. Helen shook her head. ‘I have no idea what that’s about.’ She turned to him. ‘Anyway, they’ll come or they won’t. Don’t pressure them. I just thought you might like a break.’

  ‘Oh I’m still managing to work. But thank you.’

  Jade was on her own. She spoke without taking her eyes from the cylinder rising on the wheel-head. ‘They went over to watch telly.’

  The boy had left a bowl with a coil half-attached and two more coils on the slab. Russell picked up the sheet of plastic that had kept the clay from drying out over lunch and covered bowl and coils. She cut the cylinder from the wheel-head and lifted it onto the ware board beside her other three keepers, then wiped her hands on the smeared half-towel that lay across her thigh.

  ‘Em was feelin a bit weird. She gets these headaches. I’ll go over and see.’

  ‘I thought she seemed … not herself. Perhaps television isn’t a good idea. I’ll come and find her a Panadol.’

  ‘Nah, she don’t take nothin, it goes away.’

  ‘Are you sure? We can give her half a one?’

  ‘Nah. And he wants a bread.’

  It took three sievings to get the unctuousness he wanted. When finally the glaze was a slow drip he swiped his hands over the bucket and lidded it and took the sieve and brush out to the tank tap, having to step around the board that had been the girl’s table and which was still lying where it had tumbled. He leaned it against the wall where she’d spot it.

  He entered the kitchen in his socks. He couldn’t hear the television. He walked to the lounge room. The screen was blank. He stood and turned his head, listening for their voices. The house felt empty. Panic rising in his gorge, he half-ran into the other hallway. The door to their room was open. The beds were made, the extra blankets folded and placed on the chair. The sports bags were gone, the yellow rubber boots, the rolled and tied sleeping bags they’d kept piled in the corner. Lying on the foot of the double bed was a page pulled from the phone pad.

  Dear Russell

  Sorry. Thanks.

  All three had signed it, the boy with t.

  He ran out to the street. The roadway, as much as he could see of it, was empty. He started back towards the house for his wallet and keys, and stopped. She wouldn’t have walked them laden with bags and sleeping bags past Helen’s. He spun and strode to the lookout.

  Their prints were in the fine sand of the corridor that wound through the dwarf casuarinas to the top of the ‘well’, the tread of the girl’s new joggers as sharp as if stamped by the die that made the soles. Jade must have checked escape routes on the first day at the house.

  He looked at the sky. He could get down to the creek in daylight, but not back. The morning, then, early. But would he even be able to persuade her to return? Not if she now deemed the house and street unsafe. But she knew Helen had been told about them. Something else, then, had happened. In the workshop, he thought. The two hadn’t left to watch television, they’d been instructed to pack. Had that included food? The kitchen would tell him.

  The bagged loaf he’d left on the sink to thaw was gone. The fruit bowl looked undisturbed, but they wouldn’t have bothered with fruit. He walked to the fridge and was curling his fingers around the handle when the phone rang.

  ‘Hello Russell, it’s Helen. Russell, I’ve got a rather hysterical girl here. It’s taken me close to an hour of talking to her through her bedroom door to get her to open it. She says she knows your niece’s daughter — Emma. I’ve tried to tell her she couldn’t possibly, she’s mistaken her for someone, but right at the moment she’s so upset and frightened she’s not open to logic.’

  ‘“Frightened”?’

  ‘Yes — for you. She says they’re tricking you. She’s played her, she says, at soccer. She goes to North Katoomba Public.’

  ‘I see. I think I’d better come over.’

  ‘If you would.’

  Her tone was not request. She believed her daughter.

  Jerome answered the door. He, too, looked frightened, but probably at this sister he’d never seen before. He pointed down the hallway, but Russell could hear the sobbing and Helen quietly speaking.

  They were seated at the kitchen table. The girl was facing the doorway but couldn’t see him, her eyes pressed shut, her wet hands clasped on her chin to stop its quivering. On the table was an untouched glass of orange juice. Helen glanced round and jumped up, motioning him to the seat she’d been sitting in facing the girl
and pulling out the one beside it. He sat, coughed lightly in case the girl wasn’t in a state to have heard the door.

  ‘Lucy? It’s Russell.’ He shifted in the chair to remove Helen from the corner of his eye. The girl was the one owed the explanation. ‘You’re right, Lucy, you do know her. She lives in Katoomba.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he heard Helen breathe. He kept his eyes on the girl’s face.

  ‘Thank you for being worried about me, but they weren’t tricking me, they’re in trouble, and I was hiding them from the people they’re in trouble with. I say “was” because they’ve gone, a little while ago. Without telling me. I didn’t understand why, but I do now, since Mum rang and told me you were upset. She recognised you, too, didn’t she — Emma.’

  The girl nodded. She took a deep shuddering breath and opened her eyes.

  He asked the boy, hovering in the doorway, to come into the kitchen and spoke then to them all, giving the true story and apologising for the invented one, but not for its necessity.

  ‘You’d have thought I’d gone silly.’

  He declined coffee, but stayed for a further twenty minutes. Helen was quiet, but it was, he thought, an accepting quietness. It helped that on the day the police had come to the lookout she’d seen them too. By the time he stood to go Lucy was calm, murmuring, ‘That’s all right,’ and giving him a flicker of a smile when again he thanked her for having been worried about him.

  The house was cold. The last three nights the boy had helped him set and light the heater. He went to the bedroom and put on his heavy jumper. He wasn’t hungry, but needed to eat. He took from the fridge the thigh fillets he’d intended to grill. He could do a quick curry. The phone rang. He half-ran, then his hand hovered. It couldn’t be her, from down there she had no reception. It was likely Helen with a question.