Leather Wings (12 page)

T
HE RAIN CAME
down. It was beautiful, like a piss after a pub crawl, like God wetting himself. Couldn’t go to the beach now, could we? Because it wasn’t just rain it was thunder and lightning like fireworks night, the perfect excuse to stay tucked up with Jania and we needed an excuse. She didn’t want to go anywhere, not now she had her doll city all over the back room floor and Joey out of his cage, walking his claws on her head, making her laugh in that ticklish way, hunching her shoulders. She was happy, pure happy, wasn’t she? But still the questions came at me and I had to have the answers to keep her still smiling. So here was the rain. Thank you, rain.

The thunder made her open her eyes wider but she didn’t fuss. She’s a cool one. She didn’t go, “I want my mummy”, well, she doesn’t have a mummy to want, does she? I wouldn’t have minded if she’d got a bit scared and needed a cuddle, but she just opens up her eyes and goes very still, while it’s Joey goes flying round the room like a fit.

“It’s only thunder!” she says to the bird and she giggles at me as if we’re sharing a joke, so I shake myself into a laugh. The truth is I’m not too fond of thunder in the ordinary way of things.

The city on the floor is looking pretty good. We’ve pulled some of the dead clocks apart and now there’s a cathedral and a post office clocktower and some of the inside bits making a roundabout and slide for a children’s play area. All that rattling stuff in her duffle bag has come out in her little hands and she’s arranged it, pinching her mouth up like a little madam. The old grandmother clock, which is the cathedral, has all these bits of cardboard propped on matchbox pews. Cardboard with faces. Where am I? The Rawleigh’s man? You’ll laugh — I’m in the children’s play area, riding the slide. I’m a peg, remember, with two legs to straddle. It might have been my idea, I can’t be sure. We’ve had quite a time setting it all up, and we’re still going at it, there’s more floor to cover and a cupboard of junk to go fishing in.

Jania bends over the city and the back of her neck hits me between the eyes like a whip. Her little neck is so delicate and pale and bendy like Mother’s china swan on the whatnot, but china’s cold and Jania’s neck if I put my hand out would be warm. Warm. I don’t put my hand out, I scare myself wanting to so much, just to stroke that little hollow and know how it feels on my fingers. Something like wanting to feel my little cousin’s pinkness on the tongue of my father’s belt? No! Not like that. Go away! Nothing like that at all! Just the same I get a prickle at the back of my own neck. If it frightens me — I don’t want to frighten her. But I do touch her, I have to, just to finish the feeling off. I pat her shoulder and take up her hand to place a piece of metal in it, just an excuse really. I had to touch.

“What’s this?”

It was a coiled spring, a pretty gold thing. I had to cough the sob out of my voice before I could speak. I don’t know why I feel so sorry for myself sometimes. It might have been the thunder makes it worse. I explained.

“Neat, isn’t it? It came out of that glass clock. What can we do with it? Any ideas?”

After a minute she lets the thing drop out of her hand. “I’m hungry. Have we had lunch?”

I thought I’d bought masses at the service station, the bags had weighed a ton but some of that was the Gaz bottle and the cartons of milk, and when I look in the cupboard we’ve nearly finished the crackerbread and the rest of the biscuits are chocolate. Why didn’t I buy rice, rice swells up? There’s soup, plenty of packets, we’ll be all right for a bit, but then what? Don’t think about it. Nothing really good lasts, that’s the point isn’t it, that’s why it’s good.

Hearty Beef Cup-o-Soup and Chocolate Sultana Pasties. She’s happy enough with this. I remind her to clean her teeth at least. I have to look after her, we’re on our own now, it’s up to me.

“Shall I tell you my favourite pudding?” she asks me. “Sago. Lemon sago.”

“I’m not sure I can get it for you,” I say. What’s sago when it’s at home? My clever father never mentioned sago.

“That’s all right,” she goes. “I was just telling you.” And she smiles at me as if we’re schoolfriends or something. I feel the floor under me move, like when I was a kid and twirled myself round and round in the playground, something I liked doing because when you dropped flat the whole world tipped and yet you were still on it. It was funny the way the world didn’t slide you off into nothing. Looking into her little face now I feel the floor tipping but holding on to me as well. She likes me. Why shouldn’t she like me? I’m dizzy with it.

She explains, very serious, “It’s a test, see. If you go away and come back and you’re not who you say you are, I’ll know.”

“Why should I be someone else?”

She shrugs. “It’s what I dream. People change their minds. They change their minds over.”

“There can’t be another one like me.”

She giggles. I’m not sure how to take her giggle, does she think I’m weird or something? My tongue? Well, she trusts me, she must. Sometimes she trusts me like I’m her daddy, sometimes it’s like I’m just another kid to play dolls with; that’s okay with me. I think for a moment then I tell her my favourite chocolate thing is Bounty Bars.

“Don’t forget,” I say. “I might test you on it.”

“There can’t be another little girl like me,” she comes back, sharp as knife. She’s not wrong there. Outside the rain is chucking itself down, you can hear it on the bit of window that looks out on to the well shaft in the middle of the building. It drums, sometimes louder than other times and we have to raise our voices. Jania puts up the hood of her red jacket and pulls the cord tight under her chin.

“You’re not cold are you?”

“No.” She’s busy rearranging the church pews. She says she isn’t cold but her little face tucked inside the hood looks very white in this light. “I need something for a table.”

“You mean an altar. Here. You sure you’re not cold? You could wear one of my jerseys.”

“Did Esther say about my syrup?”

“Syrup?”

“My medicine.” It must have been something in my voice
that reminded her, I shouldn’t have let my worries get out and touch her.

“Why do you take it? Are you sick?”

“Not now. I had a cold. I’m better now. It’s all right, I didn’t like it. It didn’t do anything anyway.”

She seems confident enough, but now I’m really worried. You hear about diabetics and people who need drugs, leaving their pills behind and going into a coma or something. I wouldn’t hurt Jania. The medicine could make a big difference, but she’s not coughing or anything. I’ll watch her.

“What are you looking at? Staring’s rude.”

“I’m sorry, I was just listening to that rain,” I tell her, raising my voice above the drumming.

“Nice, isn’t it?” She wriggles on her shiny cushion we’ve brought from upstairs. “I just love the sound of it.”

Love. I’ve never felt happy about the word, it’s a wet word, weak, there’s no dignity in it, it’s loose, floppy, we didn’t say love in our family. Am I allowed to feel this floppy thing? Of course I’m not, besides it’s for grown-ups and I’m not really a grown-up, just pretending, And I’m ugly. Well not exactly ugly but not nice looking. I know it. I overheard them talking about my tongue once, the wizard was on about a speech therapist and Mother says, “Yes, but it won’t make him any prettier, it won’t make his ears smaller.” My teeth are bandy too and I’m clumsy. Oh, I know it well enough, I don’t deserve love, for all sorts of reasons, I’ve always known so I hate the word. Hate, now there’s a good strong word, a good strong thing to feel. But what is the good strong thing I feel for Jania? I’m sure it’s better than love anyway, kinder than love, tougher. It needs to be all this to keep Claude out of it. There’s a place for wickedness, I don’t want him here. So far so good. I deserve a medal.

I remember the St Christopher medal under my shirt and tug it out, laughing at it.

“What is it?” Jania cranes in.

“It’s my medal for good behaviour.”

“Oh.” She looks a bit wary, I’m laughing too much. “Can I see?”

I take it off and place it, still warm from my skin, into her little palm. My skin touching hers, it makes me shiver.

“Do you want it?”

“No. It’s yours!” she says as if I’ve shocked her. “For being good. Did you get it at school?”

“I can’t remember.”

When I put it back round my neck I feel sad, I don’t know why. It feels chilly when I slip it under my singlet when it should feel warmer from her hand. That’s when we notice Joey has done his business on the clocktower.

“L
ITTLE
J
ANIA
B
ARTON
, missing from her home since early Saturday morning …”, “… appeal to members of the public who might…”, “Serious doubts are now held for the safety of …”: Radio New Zealand’s habit of repetition has never bothered Esther so much as it does now, chiming round the clock like a leper’s bell, but she can’t bring herself to switch it out of her kitchen. There has been a horrific shooting in Gore (no one has been crass enough to voice the appropriateness of this, not yet but they will), a desperate father has wiped out his ex-boss, his children, his German Shepherd, and himself. Jania isn’t top news any more, although it doesn’t feel like this to her grandparents. Experts have entered the scene, a psychologist constructing an identikit of Wallace’s personality and even a psychic, whose smug helpfulness nauseated Esther so much she had to pass her back quickly to the police, who are taking her seriously apparently. The woman had told Esther that Jania was unconscious but peaceful behind a corrugated tin fence in a city park, near a church. The psychologist has advised caution about publishing too many details about the Rawleigh’s man; what they know of him suggests a wrong approach could lead him to panic and “do something stupid”.

In fact, the main search has transferred now to the South Island. A man and a child resembling Wallace and Jania have been identified as travelling South on the Picton ferry and a further sighting confirmed in Picton Railway Station. A local woman is very definite that this man called the child Jane. The public response has been encouraging, but Jania is still missing. Wholly missing. You can’t be a little bit missing. Missing and Found are words separated by an impassable ravine.

Esther will have to tell all this to Martin, her father the joker, when he puts in an appearance. Rex is padding about the house in the leather slippers she took in to him at the hospital. He hardly ever wears them normally, although they were a birthday present from her — no, they were from Jania, she and Jania had chosen them together, how could she have
forgotten that? He can’t be wearing them for so soft a reason. No, she believes he wears them to cushion his heart muscle from the impact of the floor; he walks so gingerly as if he fears the ordinary jolt of walking will shake his heart out of his body.

“So why isn’t he here? You said twelve!” He barks at her.

“
He
said twelve.” She can’t get used to the way Rex speaks to her now, like a Gatling gun, louder, graunching. He should wear slippers on this new voice, which she feels responsible for, she has released it. “Why do you shout?”

“I don’t shout!”

Perhaps his ears have been affected? Martin is at the door. Her legs go soft,
spaghetti al dente.
She braces her spine and tries to remember what she decided about greeting her son-in-law. They don’t embrace as a rule (Daddy doesn’t wave), but should they? Under the circumstances? Will she cry? She is still making up her mind when she catches sight of another figure beyond Martin’s shoulder. Beyond and slightly above: a very tall woman, glamorous, looming. He leans forward and pecks Esther on the cheek, a performance for his blonde companion, she guesses.

“Esther, Rex — this is my friend, Kelly.”

“Hello, Kelly.” She remembers the American habit of repeating the name of the introduced person, but Kelly is Canadian. She looks American, Californian. That slick tan like soft suede.

“This is so awful,” Kelly says. “So awful.” She makes it sound like liver. Esther begins to smile but her mouth slips and wobbles disobediently at even this plastic sympathy. She sniffs hard, smiles fiercely.

“Where’s your luggage?”

“Oh, don’t worry, Esther — we’re not going to put you out. We’re booked in at Quality Inn, you’ll have enough to cope with we decided. Since there’s two of us.”

“Yes.” Why? How serious is Kelly? Will she be Jania’s stepmother? That’s assuming …

“There’s no news.”

Esther thinks this is a question and begins to recite the story of the psychic. She finds her voice bucks and chortles rather hysterically.

“We know,” Kelly says. “Yes, we rang the police.”

“But the inspector’s coming here. Should be here now.”

“I don’t know who the officer was we spoke to.”

“For God’s sake!” Rex shouts. “Can’t we sit down?” He is, in fact, sitting down. They turn and look at him guiltily. He has been sick, near death.

“How are you, Rex?”

“I’m perfectly all right! Well, I’m okay. It hasn’t exactly been a picnic. I should be well dead when you add up the stress points on my life chart — I read about it in a magazine in the hospital — but I’m still here. How about you?”

“Still here too. Just about.” He pulls a face and waggles his ears, a trick they remember he used to do for Jania. Then he becomes serious. “I don’t know, this can’t be happening, can it?”

“Which?” HIV? Abduction?

“Exactly. All of it. It’s all too much!”

Does Kelly know anything about the HIV thing? An awkward silence floats down like a mosquito net trapping the conversation. Outside the window another net, soft rain, is buzzing down like tinnitus.

“This awful weather” Kelly says. “Isn’t this your summer?”

“Wait till the wind blows,” Rex says with relish. The wind might be his personal weapon, temporarily sheathed inside him ready for the challenge. So much anger; and why shouldn’t he be angry? They are all angry.

“But you will eat with us? Dinner?” Esther speaks as if they have already announced their departure.

“Thank you.”