Sheerwater

by Leah Swann

  Teddy pushed everything off the bed, the box, the counters, the dice, and stamped his foot. He was tired. He hadn’t gone to sleep till ever so late last night. Mum would say he needed a nap.

  ‘Please be quiet,’ said Max, thinking of that great mouth of Kirsty’s. ‘Lie down. Close your eyes until I come back. I’ll get you a drink.’

  He hurried quietly to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. Kirsty was not on the couch anymore. He guessed she was in the bathroom.

  When he took the glass back to the room he found Teddy asleep. Max drank the water, which tasted like a rusty nail, and lay down beside Teddy and closed his eyes. He tried to imagine something nice. That’s what his mother told him to do when he went to the dentist and they put those dark glasses on him. He pretended he was in another world. Those times at the dentist’s he’d imagined a green hillside, a castle, a dungeon, and a bottle filled with the most amazing potion that could change him into any shape he wished: a warrior, a wizard, a flying horse.

  Today, his mind would not come up with those things. Today, the best thing he could think of was a blanket under the gum tree, the tinkling sound of the chimes, a summer ‘pickynicky’ dinner, with bread rolls and olives and slices of avocado, and their mother wearing his favourite dress, pink with tiny white roses on it, with spots of sunshine all over the roses and her brown arms.

  Little spots of sunshine circling and dancing; he could follow them into a mist of light and shadow and happy memories. Under the memories was a high-pitched sound, a thin, far-off squeal. Everything was wrong and Max didn’t know how to fix it. There was a pain in his head. He listened for Kirsty. He put his hand on his brother’s tummy and felt it go up and down with his breathing. He closed his eyes.

  He was walking somewhere with Teddy. The ground was shaking. The ground was made of sandy rock like the London Bridge that Mummy had told them about. He and Teddy were holding hands. Whenever they took a step, that bit of the bridge fell away behind them and fell into the sea far below. But he wasn’t afraid, because he knew it was a magic bridge. It would hold till he reached the tiny golden island that lay ahead.

  2

  When Max opened his eyes again his father was standing over the bed. Had he been asleep? Had he been imagining the golden bridge or dreaming it? Max rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and hoped his father wouldn’t disappear.

  No, there he was, standing and looking at him quietly, one arm folded over his chest, his other hand over his chin.

  ‘Daddy!’ Max bounced up and flung his arms around his father and smelled his familiar scent: the cologne that came out of a bottle with a black label and the special oatmeal shampoo he used for flaky skin.

  Max clung hard, sweet relief filling him up. He thought of Kirsty’s keys. He hadn’t dared to take the keys, and now he was glad he hadn’t. If he and Teddy had left during the night, he wouldn’t be seeing his father right now.

  He was so glad that he couldn’t help letting a few tears fall, even though he knew his father didn’t like tears, he called it ‘carrying on’. Max hastily brushed them away.

  ‘Never mind, Max,’ said his father, patting his head. ‘I’m here now. Pew! You boys stink. Why haven’t you had a bath?’

  ‘She didn’t let us. She didn’t have any clothes.’

  ‘What a pain. I forgot your clothes too. We’ll have to get some more.’

  ‘Mum sometimes buys them from the op shop if we haven’t—’

  ‘Don’t talk about Mum to me,’ said Dad. ‘I’m cross with her.’

  He walked out abruptly and turned left down the hallway, and Max heard him talking with Kirsty. Then he heard taps running and the gurgle of water filling a bathtub.

  After their bath, Max and Teddy were allowed to curl up together on Kirsty’s couch to watch Toy Story on television. They were wrapped in beach towels. Through a pair of slatted doors Max could hear the drone of their clothes drying in Kirsty’s tumble dryer.

  In the bath he’d soaped his brother’s back by running the cake over his little shoulder blades and arms till the skin grew shiny, before splashing it off with water. He was gentle. He tried to wash his brother the same way his mother washed him, even getting the soap into the filthy triangles between Teddy’s fingers. Why did dirt always stick to Teddy?

  Max longed to feel his mother’s hands massaging his scalp. He wouldn’t ever complain again about soap running into his eyes when she poured the cup over to rinse. He was getting too big now; she was teaching him how to wash his own hair.

  Kirsty didn’t have shampoo, so he’d used soap in his hair and in Teddy’s. His little brother had screeched at Max’s thorough and determined rinsing.

  ‘You have to get all the soap out, Teds. Otherwise your hair goes yucky.’

  Their father wrote Kirsty a list of groceries and gave her money and she came back with cheese and fruit and lettuce and carrots. Their father was good at making snacks. He made a delicious salad with the pieces cut up small the way Max preferred and grilled sandwiches with slabs of melting cheddar to eat with the salad. Afterwards he peeled and cut up an apple. He gave them the long curly red apple peels and poured them tall glasses of milk and sang a cheerful song. He looked up jokes on his phone. Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill? To get to the bottom.

  Dad was trying to please them. He switched on a tiny radio. He told Max it was called a transistor. All holiday shacks had transistors, he said, from the olden days. He tuned it to a channel called Gold FM that had songs from The Beatles and Max sang along to the story of Desmond and Molly and the marketplace.

  Another song came on called ‘Beautiful World’, which Dad said was by a band called Devo from a long time ago but not as long ago as The Beatles. Their voices clanged on Max’s ears. Dad moved about jerkily to the music and Max laughed at how strange he looked, his arms stopping and starting as they slid through the air.

  ‘When I was little we all knew this dance move,’ Dad said. He shifted so that it looked like something was rippling through his body. ‘I was the best at the robot.’

  The dance was meant to make them laugh. It reassured Max that his father was in a good mood. When they begged him, he sat on the couch with them and they pressed their bodies to his like mice scurrying to the safety of a hole in the wall.

  When Dad got up, Teddy clung to his arm and his father had to prise off his chubby fingers. He spoke gently enough: ‘I have to go and talk to Kirsty now.’

  ‘When’s Mummy coming?’

  ‘Soon, probably.’

  Max knew that tone. He was old enough to know that the soothing voice meant very little, as his father always did whatever he wanted. Max knew very well that ‘soon’ was anything from ten minutes to never.

  Dad belonged to a grown-ups’ world where things came about according to invisible rules that changed with his moods. This didn’t stop Max loving him. He looked up to him. He loved Dad’s strength, the strong arms that could hold Max effortlessly above his head; the amazing distance that he could kick a football; his quickness to catch a flying green tennis ball, or any flying object; his cleverness at games like Monopoly, which he always won, the board in front of him filled with tiny green and red properties, cards and banknotes stacked up like riches beyond compare.

  Dad was so smart at Monopoly that Max didn’t mind losing. He felt proud. Would his father ever look at him and see that Max too was smart and strong and quick?

  Max knew it wasn’t right that his dad had hit Mum. But he was also sure it was a mistake. If you loved someone as much as Max loved Dad, that person must be a good person.

  ‘I’ll look after him, Dad,’ he said now, putting his arm around Teddy.

  ‘That’s my boy,’ said Dad, patting his hair.

  He left them on the couch and walked up that little hallway. Max heard a door close. He guessed they were in Kirsty’s room. After a while he heard raised voices. What was happening? Why were they fighting? Max got up and crept along the hallway till he was outside Kir
sty’s room.

  The voices dropped again. He pressed his ear to the door. He heard his father say something about useless passports and wrecked plans, and Kirsty shouted: ‘Don’t blame me! You told me to get them NO MATTER WHAT!’

  ‘When I said that, I assumed you wouldn’t take leave of your intelligence.’

  ‘Shut up. When are we leaving?’

  ‘We can’t leave.’

  ‘You said we’d be together.’

  ‘We will. But things have changed.’

  ‘You take me with you or I’ll go to the police.’

  ‘You go to the police and I’ll burn this little shithole to the ground.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘I fucking would, Kirsty.’

  Hearing the swear word, Max’s heart beat faster. Tiny ponies bolted through his chest. Pip-pop pip-pop pip-pop. His ears hummed. His dad’s mood had changed. He got ready to run back to the living room, only just daring to stay, and heard Kirsty say, ‘Don’t you threaten me, Lawrence Bain! I have done everything you asked me to. You thought she might be going to Sheerwater – I told you about this place. You said we’d never be apart again. You said that. You promised. You said to wait outside her house. I wait for two mornings. I’ve changed where I parked so she wouldn’t notice me. You said, Keep out of sight when you follow her. I keep out of sight. And then she pulled over for the crash and the kids were left in the car and there was my chance! I could go to prison for this! Prison!’

  Max heard a muffled comment, the crunch of an object falling to the ground, the jangle of keys.

  ‘I’m going out,’ said Kirsty.

  ‘No, I’m afraid you can’t go out again. I don’t trust you.’

  Dad spoke in the low and dangerous voice that signalled something unexpected and unpleasant: a slap on the arm, a crack to the head, something pushed or thrown. Max remembered a dinner bowl shattering and flakes of yellow curried fish falling everywhere. That tone in Dad’s voice turned his tummy to jelly and set the skin tingling, almost burning, between his shoulder blades. The Awful Voice. When had he first heard it? He didn’t know. It seemed like he’d known the Awful Voice from before he had memories.

  Max found he was breathing in short huffs and his legs were frozen. He couldn’t move. He must. Move! He heard another scuffling sound from behind the door, followed by a footstep, and he jolted into action and belted back down the hallway to Teddy.

  The towel he was wearing around his waist slipped and he tripped on the end of it. He had only just managed to wrap himself again and throw himself on the couch when a door slammed and the milk in the glasses on the coffee table seemed to ripple. When his father appeared in the living room his brow was wrinkled and his skin had a funny grey shine. All trace of the happy robot dancer was gone.

  Nervous, Max pressed his nose into Teddy’s freshly washed hair, pretending to watch the strange head of Buzz Lightyear on the television – deformed, Grandma Bainsie had called it. His father sat down beside him.

  ‘At least there’s one other person here who has a brain,’ Dad said. ‘Tell me, Max, if you had to hide somewhere, where would you go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Max. ‘I’d climb a tree, maybe. That way you can see everything, from up high.’

  ‘Clever boy. Yes, it’s good to see everything from up high. That’s the best way to see things.’

  They put on another movie, Frozen. Teddy climbed onto Dad’s lap and put his arms around Dad’s head. Dad handed him a Matchbox car and Teddy drove it through Dad’s blond tufty hair making little engine sounds. Nnh, nnnnnh, nnnh.

  ‘Daddy,’ he said, making the car jump, ‘when’s Mummy coming?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Please, Daddy,’ said Ted. ‘Please can we see Mummy? Where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is she in Sheerwater?’ asked Max.

  ‘How would I know? She didn’t tell me her plans, which I’m really extremely cross about. Where were you going to live in Sheerwater?’

  ‘In a – house.’

  ‘Did she tell you she was running away from me? That she hadn’t told me where you were going?’

  Max shook his head.

  ‘I found out. It’s not very nice to find out your children are being stolen. I always find out everything, remember that. I’m smarter than she is. Much smarter.’

  Max decided not to argue with this.

  ‘And – she’s a liar,’ his father added.

  Max’s tummy flopped. He looked at the television screen.

  ‘You know, she tells lies about me. She deliberately tries to make people not like me. Even you. Do you know how bad that is?’

  ‘I love you, Daddy,’ said Max. Don’t cry, don’t cry.

  ‘Yes, but she told you I hit her, didn’t she? Well, I didn’t hit her. As if I would ever do anything like that. Hit a woman! The very idea! I don’t even smack you kids when you truly deserve it.’

  Dad had smacked them both many times. Max looked at Teddy, who was blinking. Neither boy spoke. Max’s skin went cold.

  How could his father say he hadn’t hit his mother? Max had seen him hit her with his own two eyes. Didn’t Dad know this? It was possible his father hadn’t noticed him. Max had been peering around the corner when he saw his father strike his mother across the jaw. Blood dripped from the back of her head. You couldn’t see it in her dark hair. Max knew it was there because of the red spots left on the wall.

  He’d stepped out to help his mother and she waved him back towards his room, one finger pressed to her lips, and he understood. He ran back to bed. He turned on the lamp so he wouldn’t be in darkness. Across from him Teddy sucked his thumb, his face soft in the lamplight, and above Teddy’s bed was a picture of a boy praying in a field that his mother had put up, and Max decided that he would pray.

  He’d prayed to the big God, the biggest God he could think of, a giant, blazing God with a warm heart in him as fiery as the planet Mars, and a skin of gold that glowed with lightning and rainbows. Keep her safe, big God. Keep her safe. Help Daddy calm down. Please, please. Help.

  He’d grabbed Winks, who was snoring at the foot of his bed, and hugged her hard, sitting up with his back against the wall.

  ‘I do lose my temper sometimes,’ Dad was saying now. ‘Everyone does. Even you, Max. And I hit things. The benchtop. The wall. But never your mother. And never you boys. You boys are too important for that. Too important to me. You do understand that, don’t you, Max?’

  Max nodded.

  ‘I take out my frustration on the inanimate. I don’t hurt small children. I don’t hit my wife. That’s what I told the policewoman yesterday. She believed me. But my own son doesn’t believe me!’

  Max chewed his lip. Was he mistaken? Maybe Dad hadn’t hit them. And then he remembered Teddy being pushed into the dirt. That had really happened. He saw it. And he did see blood on the wall. Mum’s blood. He did see it.

  His throat ached with words he must not say. But you pushed Teddy. You hurt Mummy. I saw you.

  ‘What else does your mother say about me?’ said Dad. ‘Did you ask why she was taking you so far away from me?’

  Max nodded again. Here, at least, was something he could say that was true. ‘I asked if you would visit.’

  ‘And how could I visit if I didn’t know where you lived?’

  ‘She would tell – tell you.’

  ‘But she didn’t tell me. You see how very bad that is, Max? You mustn’t take a child from his father. It’s wrong.’

  ‘She said you would visit, one day. When you were feeling better.’

  ‘Better?’

  ‘She said you weren’t well right now—’

  This was a mistake.

  The muscles in Dad’s jaw were clamping. Max tried to back away from what he’d said. ‘Not in a bad way.’

  ‘What did she mean by not well? Who’s she been telling that to? The police, I suppose!’

  ‘I don’t know, Dad. I don’t think
so.’

  ‘Let me tell you something. And don’t you ever forget it. It’s your mother who’s not well. She’s sick in the head. And she tells lies. What else?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  Max was trembling. ‘That was all.’

  ‘No, there’s something more. Don’t hide it from me. I can tell.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Max tried to think of something. All he could remember was the conversation in the car as they drove to Sheerwater.

  ‘I asked why – you get angry.’

  ‘I see. And what did your wise and all-knowing mother have to say about that?’

  ‘She said we all have a temper, and some people have an extra big temper.’

  ‘That’s me, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s okay, because you get helped, you take medicine . . .’

  Dad’s fist came down so hard on the coffee table that a crack appeared in the wood. One of the glasses of milk fell over and milk dribbled to the floor. Teddy slid into a sitting position and on his nose appeared tiny beads of sweat.

  ‘I do take medicine, Max,’ said his father, in the Awful Voice. ‘I take medicine to help me feel better because your mother has made me feel so bad by telling so many lies about me that my heart is breaking. I am so sad that the doctors had to give me a special sadness medicine, so that I wouldn’t die.’

  Could this be true? It must be true. Sadness medicine? It wasn’t sadness coming out of his father now. It was something else.

  Max felt all quivery like something horrible had been thrown over him and was slipping down him, sticky and foul. He wanted so much to cry. He couldn’t. He was afraid of the effect tears might have on his father. He swallowed and blinked and hoped they wouldn’t start coming out of the corners of his eyes.