Digging to Australia (4 page)

The cemetery was so dark that I almost turned back, but I didn't want to go home yet. I wanted to be sure that Mama and Bob would worry. I wanted to pay them back. I fumbled to find my way through the hedge and pushed blindly into the spiky darkness and through into the playground. The street lamp above the hedge bled its light into the darkening mist so that it wasn't completely black. I sat on the swing, my coat belted tightly around me, my arms linked round the chains that were too cold to grasp. Through the black twigs I could see the lights on in the houses. The woman with the two little boys came to the window. I climbed up the frame to see better. She stood gazing out for a moment before drawing the curtains. As she turned to the side I noticed that she looked bulky, as if she was pregnant. She drew the curtains, leaving no more than a hair's breadth of light. I shivered.

I climbed down and sat back on the swing. Water dripped from the swing-rail above me. A cold drop found its way down the collar of my coat. I swung backwards and forwards just a little, thinking about Bronwyn. I wasn't fooled. She was like me. She was an outsider too. Her eyes had been desperate when they looked into mine. She had no fondness for me, we were both oddities, that was all we had in common. We could, at best, be allies. The difference was that I was used to being alone, hardened to it. I'd given up looking for a best friend – while she was needy. I could see it all. The idea of being alone in the playground was terrifying to her. I resented the way she had homed in on me, seen in me a fellow victim of exclusion. When I wasn't. Because I didn't care. I shook my head sitting there in the darkness as if I could shake her from me.

But even Bronwyn wasn't as odd as me. I thought of my approaching birthday and of the secrets I didn't know. I swung a little higher and the drops pattered from the frame and then I put my feet to the ground and stopped. Suddenly. I listened. I had a terrible crawling sensation that someone was near, watching me. In
my
place. I held my breath still in my lungs but there was no sound except for the dripping. I was sure I'd heard a movement, from the graveyard, a rustling and perhaps a footfall. But now all was still. I had the feeling that someone was on the other side of the hedge, motionless and waiting, holding their breath just as I held mine.

I grew colder as the drips ticked off the seconds. The noise became the memory of a noise, and then I began to wonder if it had been anything at all. I wanted to go home and warm up and have tea. It may have been my imagination, but had probably been a bird. It may even have been the little white cat. I stood up and went to the hedge. It was impossible to push through it without making a noise and I waited a bit longer, craning my ears for the slightest sound until I began to shiver. The darkness thickened around me. I pushed my way suddenly through the hedge, panicking, and scratching my face on the wet thorns. Once through I stood still, my heart jumping, and I looked around but there was nothing, just the looming angel shape and the dark stumps and the great black wall of the church. I picked my way out, not daring to look over my shoulder. And once I was out of the cemetery, I ran.

In the house there was the smell of baking. Not a welcome smell because I guessed it meant that Mama had started preparing for my birthday.

‘She's home,' Bob said and I heard Mama rustling something away into the sideboard. I burst into the sitting room, without removing my shoes, hardly giving Mama time to close the sideboard door.

‘What will I do in June?' I demanded. ‘On my proper birthday?'

‘You're all wet,' complained Bob. ‘And what on earth have you done to your face? You're bleeding.'

I put my hand to my cheek, the place the thorn had scratched. ‘What will I do?'

‘Do take your shoes off,' Bob said, and to Mama, ‘What
does
she get up to?'

‘A cat scratched me,' I said.

‘I thought you were going to be late for tea,' Mama remarked comfortably. ‘It's quite dark. We drew the curtains half an hour ago. And don't fret about the birthday, dear.' She smiled blandly as if it was some trivial thing that was bothering me, a silly little worry. Something that would go away. ‘And you'd better dab some TCP on that scratch,' she added.

I looked at their two grey heads, Mama's dark grey and Bob's almost white, and I began to sigh, but cut it off in my throat, recognising in it the timbre of Mama's sigh. ‘I'm going out to tea tomorrow,' I said.

‘Really? Oh how lovely. With a little friend?'

‘Yes,' I said, thinking that Bronwyn was hardly little, and hardly even a friend.

Bob, as was his custom, had the
Manchester Guardian
crossword on his knee, and a blot of ink on his belly. ‘Focal urban springs of gossip, Lilian? Ten letters. Put the kettle on would you?' he said, glancing at me. I went out and slammed the door and stomped as noisily as possible up the stairs, leaving the kettle cold in the cake-smelling kitchen.

From my room I heard Bob's voice niggling, and Mama going out into the kitchen and the tap running. I heard the bang of the oven door as she took something out and then the sound of the cutlery drawer opening as she set the table. They thought they could carry on the same. They thought they could throw a bombshell at me and just carry on exactly the same. A weak sickness rose in me that was partly hunger and partly helplessness. I couldn't even go to the playground so much now. Every day, after school, it would be a little bit darker. It wasn't the same in winter, anyway. It was nothing but a wet playground.

6

Bronwyn's house was one of a row of tall dim terraces. It was painted brown inside and out. The front door was at the side of the house, down a gloomy, cabbage-smelling passage. Inside, the floor was covered in brown and red patterned lino, worn thin and ridged over the floorboards. The light bulbs seemed miles above, dull yellow pears dangling shadeless, casting a wan flat light. Bronwyn's mother looked about half the size of Bronwyn, pale and hollow chested. She held her hand out to me formally, as if I was important. ‘So nice to meet you,' she said. ‘Bronwyn's told me
so
much.' I wondered
what
since she knew nothing about me at all.

I was disappointed to discover that the Brooms had no television set. Bronwyn ushered me upstairs to play until tea-time. It was bitterly cold in her room. There were no radiators, and although the window was closed, we could still see our breath. There were shelves running right around the room, crammed with baby dolls. ‘My coll-ec-tion,' she said proudly. The dolls were dressed in a dusty froth of lemon and pink and blue. ‘I've been coll-ec-ting since I was born,' she said. ‘Do you have a coll-ec-tion?'

‘No,' I admitted.

‘Sit down,' she said, and I sat on the stool in front of her dressing table. She flopped onto the rumpled candlewick of her bed. ‘It must have been your mother who collected them for you when you were a baby,' I pointed out, but she ignored me.

‘Shall I show you something?' she asked.

‘If you want.'

‘Promise you won't tell? Cross your heart and hope to die?'

‘All right.' The lumpish look had gone from Bronwyn's face, her light eyes danced, she looked almost impish. She felt under the crumpled aertex vests in her open dressing table drawer and pulled out a pack of cards.

‘Is that all?' I said. We had cards at home.

‘These are special,' she said. ‘I nicked them.'

‘What, stole?'

She nodded. ‘From a club.'

‘What sort of club?'

‘A club where my Mum works. Well she doesn't work there, it belongs to my uncle. We go there sometimes. Children aren't really allowed.'

‘What kind of club?' I asked.

‘A place where mostly men go. They smoke and drink and play cards.' She slipped the cards from the pack. ‘Look at this!'

The picture on the back of the card was of a blurry blonde woman with bare breasts. I took it and looked. The breasts didn't look as big as Bronwyn's own and seemed to lack nipples. ‘And look at this!' A dark triangle could be seen in this one, and in another the bottom of a woman kneeling and looking over her shoulder as if ready to give someone a piggy-back. I looked at them without comment, Bronwyn's eyes fixed eagerly on my face. ‘There's more,' she said. ‘Look at the jacks!' She held them behind her back, a teasing look on her face. ‘
Promise
you won't tell?' I nodded. She handed me the jacks. They were trouserless men wearing jesters' caps, standing in silly poses, their giblets no more than mysterious smudges. ‘Aren't they foul?' Bronwyn squealed. Her face had gone very pink. She giggled, bringing her hands up to her mouth like the paws of an outsize squirrel.

I squeezed out a smile. ‘Foul,' I agreed.

‘Of course, I've never seen a real one. Have you?'

‘No,' I lied. I got up and looked at the dolls. They were all sizes, some as tiny as my thumb, the biggest the size of a real baby. Their eyes were all open, wide and staring, except for the biggest doll's. One of its eyes was half closed as if frozen part-way through a wink.

‘You've got no brothers then?' Bronwyn said, disappointed.

‘No.' I started to pick one of the dolls up.

‘Leave them be,' she said sharply. ‘It took me ages to arrange them like that.' She put the cards back into the box, and the box into her drawer. ‘Look at this,' she said, pulling out a grey and shapeless lump.

‘What is it?'

‘It's Puddy the Pig. I've had him years. He's made of sugar, very hard sugar. He used to be pink with a bit of string for a tail. I just chew a bit off now and then. Want some?'

I shook my head. Browyn's teeth grated against the sugar.

‘Can I come to your house tomorrow?' she asked. ‘So that you can show me your things. Can I stay for tea? Mum would like that. She gets upset if I don't have friends.'

‘I don't know. I'll see. What shall we do? I'm freezing.'

‘Dunno. Shall I tell you something …' She leant forward again, assuming a confidential expression.

‘All right.'

‘My dad's dead.' She sat back, making room for my reaction.

‘Really?'

‘Yes, that's why we've moved to this dump. That's why I've started at your school. I used to go to Moncrieff.'

‘The posh school!' I looked at her with a new respect. I had never met a Moncrieff girl before. They wore brown felt hats with gold badges and I'd never thought they'd be so ordinary.

‘When Daddy died we couldn't afford it anymore. But I don't mind,' she added bravely.

‘What did he die of?' I asked.

‘Murder,' she said, opening her eyes so wide that the blue swam in the white. I shuddered and felt a cold finger sliding down my spine.

‘Murder,' I repeated.

‘Yes.'

I sat with my mouth open as Bronwyn got up and stretched. She looked at herself in her dressing table mirror. She picked up her brush and began to brush her hair. It crackled as the brush coursed through it and I almost expected sparks. Her hair was dark and massy but with reddish threads that held the light. She turned and smiled and with her hair glistening around her face, I saw that she was womanly. Probably enticing. ‘I'm sex mad,' she said. ‘A nym-pho-man-iac.'

‘What's that?'

‘Sex mad.'

‘How do you know if you've never even
seen
a you know what?'

‘I just know.'

‘Oh.' I looked away. ‘I'm not,' I said.

‘Tea's ready!' called Bronwyn's mother.

Bronwyn pushed her hair behind her ears. I followed her downstairs.

‘Who murdered him?' I asked.

She turned. ‘Shut up,' she hissed. ‘If you mention it you'll upset Mum. You must never mention it, ever.'

Before tea we folded our hands while Mrs Broom prayed. She thanked God not only for the food but for his goodness and mercy, and I watched her tired fervent face through the slits of my eyes and wondered how she could bring herself to thank Him considering what had happened.

We had fish fingers and mashed potatoes once she'd finished, followed by treacle tart. Bronwyn ate heartily and her mother watched, her face clouded with love, as she picked at her own small plate of food – one fish finger and the merest dab of mash. And all the time she fiddled nervously with the strap of her apron, which she wore to the table, unlike Mama who always tidied herself up before a meal. She asked me lots of questions about school, and although I disliked the place, I described it as favourably as possible, since I supposed she was comparing it with Moncrieff. There was a little fluttering at her temple as she listened to me, and her hands darted and fidgeted. The end of her nose was very pink and damp and she kept sniffling as if she was getting, or recovering from, a cold. Several times she pulled off her wedding ring and slid it onto another finger and then put it back, and it made me sad to watch, because of her poor dead husband.

‘What happened to your face?' she asked. I ran my finger down the crusty scab.

‘Cat,' I said.

‘Oh, have you got one?' Bronwyn said. ‘I'd love a pussy, or a dog, but Mum's allergic.'

‘Really?' I said politely. Bob's opinion was that allergies were all in the mind. ‘It was a stray cat,' I explained. ‘I'm not allowed one either.'

Straight after tea I put on my coat ready to leave. Bronwyn urged me to stay, but I refused, uneasy in the house, in the shadow of their grief, in the proprietorial watchfulness of Bronwyn's pale eyes. ‘Can I come to tea tomorrow?' she asked.

‘Bronwyn! You must wait to be invited,' scolded her mother.

‘Not tomorrow,' I said to Mrs Broom. ‘It's a bit difficult at the moment. My dad's ill, you see.'

‘Nothing serious I hope?'

‘No … but he needs peace and quiet.'