The Lost Child (25 page)

Denver is still bleating into the megaphone but now everyone is watching Bullfrog and Dad in the water, arms and legs and two black heads flying in a whirlpool of foam. Bullfrog is winning. He has Dad under his hand, and he dunks Dad as he dunked Chicken, again and again, holding him under, mushing him into the sea without mercy. Next to me, Lanky hops around, hands cupped to his mouth. ‘Get him by the nuts, Mick!' People cheer and Lanky yells louder. ‘Get him by the nuts, Mick. A nutcracker, Mick, give 'im a nutcracker.'

Bullfrog lurches back and his frog legs pump like pistons. Then he rolls onto his stomach and curls into a ball, legs barely kicking at all. Dad pulls himself along a mooring line until he reaches the jetty. Someone claps. And others join in. And the clapping gets louder and louder until soon everyone is clapping. There's a cheer in the clapping, a beat—beat—beat, as clear as the sea lapping the dinghies, as clear as Lanky's stick tapping the rhythm. Dad reaches the landing and Chicken and Roy lean over to help. I forget everything, and I'm clapping too, clapping and clapping until my hands hurt.

Parked near the lagoon on Sunday afternoon, engine running, he beckons me over. My stomach does its usual queasy thing. His lashes are the longest I've ever seen. I hope Faye sees him talking to me, wanting me. But what does wanting mean? Kissing? Going all the way? Would Faye? And what am I doing, standing here like a dummy?

‘How old are ya now, Sylvie?'

‘Sixteen,' I say, adding a year and a bit. ‘Almost.'

He grins, guns the ute into gear and drives off, taking me with him in the silver trim.

I make my own darkroom in the lean-to behind the dunny shed. Tea chests for a bench, two blankets hung over poles to enclose the space from roof to floor. Cele gives me an extension cord, developing trays and an infra-red lamp. With money from babysitting, I pay for my own film and chemicals, which I have to keep in a sealed tin. Rats will eat anything.

For Tania's second birthday in December, I give Mrs Marciano and Joe a photo I took of Tania on the foreshore with the sea glittering behind. I crop it close to her shoulders so you can't see her stunted arm: that's when I discover that photographs can lie. But Mrs Marciano likes it so much that she displays it in a frame on the mantelpiece. Joe says I should enter it into a competition, and maybe I could become a portrait photographer like that Beaton guy, have I thought of that?

Sometimes Joe is just plain silly. But I borrow a book from Cele and look at the way Cecil Beaton does his backgrounds and lighting.

At first I think Mum's going to the dance by herself and I almost ask if I can go too. Faye's allowed to go when her father plays saxophone with the band. But in the mirror propped on the table, I can see Mum looking all dreamy and, before I can even ask, she says: ‘Milan's taking me. He's a foreman on the rig.'

I choke on a mouth full of curlers. The New Australian? The Yugoslav who was here last week fixing the pump? They sat by the well smoking ciggies long after he'd finished. And last night he walked her home from Hannigan's: I was in bed and heard them talking. I thought he'd come to get his money for fixing the pump. How dumb am I?

I'm carving her scalp into squares and winding on paper and hair. I carve faster, harder. I don't know any mothers with boyfriends. What will people think? And doesn't she know about the Croats and Serbs, how they brought their problems here? Doesn't she read the papers? I slap perm papers and hair together and twang the elastic close to her ear. I get braver and push her head forward, jerk it back, roll a curler tight, tighter. I hate her white scalp, the scar from falling off the horse that hides on her crown like a white worm.

She hasn't been to a dance for as long as I can remember. She probably thinks the Twist is something you do with your wrist. I could teach her. But I don't. And when Milan arrives on Saturday night, she's in a total tizz because her perm hasn't dropped and she looks like a frizzed bear when she probably wants to look like Vivien Leigh, which Mrs Winkie once said she did.

When Milan gives her a bunch of flowers, so tiny you can hardly see them, Mum runs around calling it a corsage, as if she gets one every day. ‘It's gorgeous,' she says, pinning it to her dress.

Gorgeous? She's never said
gorgeous
before.

‘They're orchids,' he says with his dippy accent, making them sound like diamonds instead of bush orchids you can find anywhere. ‘I find them near the lake. Who would kill an orchid, I think. It is awkward killing an orchid, I think, but for you I do.'

He brings flowers for me too. Mum looks pleased as if I'm meant to like him on the spot, which I won't, even though he's good-looking, with sad broody eyes, like a taller kind of James Dean. Besides, they're only old fairy flowers, as common as cows, I tell myself as they head down the drive, arm in arm, as if he's leading her down the aisle.

What if she marries him?

I let Bert From The Bush come inside. We've just found out he's having kittens so he's now Bertha, Bertie for short. She sniffs around on her belly before jumping onto the bed as if she's found Heaven. Mum says I have to find homes for her kittens or they'll end up in a bag with a brick. She says Bertie's probably the reason Georgie Porgie turned up his toes: who wouldn't die of fright if that huge marmalade head looked into your cage?

I open her wardrobe. She's worn the ballerina with the diamante bow on the hip. I pick through the others, mostly pink: the lace one with tiny buttons and hooks down the back like a bride dress, the pale frothy silk with a net underskirt, and the halter-neck with the full skirt like Marilyn wore, but pink, not white. Five new dresses bought from the catalogue, all since she's been working at Hannigan's. How did she know she'd be going dancing?

I pull off my nightie, find one of Mum's push-up bras, and slip into the Marilyn dress. It almost fits. I crimp it in at the back and put on a pair of strappy heels, then pose in front of the mirror, big smile, legs apart, Marilyn on the vent. Bertie stares at me from the bed with unimpressed eyes. I agree and put Marilyn back in the wardrobe.

Then I remember I have
God's Little Acre
, which is being passed around school and is mine for the weekend, so I climb into bed and read the good bits. Reading them makes me wonder if Elvis might have gone to the dance. Would Faye be there? Dancing with Elvis while I'm in bed with Bertie? The thought is too embarrassing. I hide in the pillow and think how I'd like Elvis to be in bed with me like Will and Darling Jill in
God's Little Acre
. Next thing, Mum's at the door, waltzing in as if she's still at the dance. ‘You awake?' she half-whispers.

‘I am now.'

She's brought me a huge bunch of balloons that she ties to the dressing-table mirror where they float up like an A-bomb cloud. I can just see her after the last dance, jumping up and grabbing them, him laughing and helping. How old does she think I am? While she's undressing, I pretend to use the pot in the bathroom and sneak Bertie outside. Back in bed, I slide far over my side. She climbs in and I edge nearer to the wall. But tonight she doesn't cuddle me close: she lies on her back smelling of powder and perfume. And I lie on my side thinking: What if she kissed him?

Elvis is parked outside the cafe when the bus gets in. I bounce down the steps, forgetting to say goodbye to Mr Kerford, my eyes on the car in the puddle of shade beneath the pines. Faye's seen him too. She's talking loudly, laughing and calling out to Lizzie. Then she pulls her ponytail free and lets her hair flounce around her shoulders like a horse's mane. And somehow, without even thinking or planning, I walk straight up to Elvis. I'm shaking inside and can feel Lizzie and Roy gaping at me from somewhere behind. I can see Mr Kerford reversing onto the road and I imagine him watching in the rear-view mirror as he drives out of town. I don't have to imagine Faye; her fury is burning holes in my back.

‘Like a ride home?' says Elvis, smiling, surprised.

Before I've even replied, he leans across to open the passenger door and somehow I walk to the other side and climb in. When he reaches over to pull the door shut, his head is so close that I have to pull back to stop it rubbing my nose. Black hair on his arms. The door shuts with a thud. As we pull out from the kerb, I press my knees together to stop them shaking. I can see Lizzie through the side window, mouth wide open. Roy is examining the wheel of his bike, not looking at me. What am I doing? And somewhere, a tiny voice in my head: Mum's got Milan, why shouldn't I have someone too?

‘Took ya time,' says Elvis, reversing.

What does he mean? I stare at his hands on the wheel. Clean fingernails, cleaner than mine. He's wearing clean jeans and a red check shirt, brown desert boots. The car is clean. The dash and steering wheel gleam, the rubber mats beneath my feet are free of dirt and gravel. For a muckraker, every bit of Elvis is
incredibly
clean.

‘What's a muckraker do?' I ask, my voice a squeak. Then I feel my face heating up: did I really ask such a stupid thing?

‘Works ninety foot up the derrick—can see for miles, the bay, the lake, over your uncle's place—I watch the mud tanks, check what's coming up. It was me who spotted the bones last week. Next thing you know there's a bloody skeleton right there under the bit. Can't believe it. We get Bill Morgan to come and take a look. Then they get the cops down from the Mount. Still don't know who it is.'

But everyone's guessing: Chicken thinks they're roo bones. Roy says they wouldn't get the cops for a roo. Mum says Old Pat had a brother who disappeared from Bindilla years ago. He could easily have walked into the quaggy mud on the side of the lake and been sucked down. She says this with bright staring eyes and I know she's thinking of Dunc in Bunny's soak, the same awful way to go.

I wonder if Elvis knows about Dunc. If anyone in town has whispered to him about Dad torching our house. Then I hear him saying he'd rather be a muckraker for Esso than work for his old man on the farm where he's paid next to nothing. He says he won't be a muckraker all his life and if they don't find oil in Burley Point, he'll be moving on with the rig to the next well.

Leaving? ‘But they'll find it, won't they?'

‘Hard to tell.'

He stops at our gate and turns off the engine. With his back against the door, he grins at me. ‘Well, Sylvie Meehan, maybe we'll go for a ride sometime. Whaddya reckon?'

When?
I think.
Where?
Just trying to hold his gaze makes my hands sweaty. I shove them under my legs. What should I say?

He reaches forward and pulls the key from the ignition, shows me his key ring, a Maori tiki with an ugly twisted grin. But as I hand it back, it slips from my fingers and falls to the floor. I shift on the seat and lift up my knees, and he leans over and scoops up the ring. ‘Hey,' he says, head low over my lap, ‘what's this?'

‘Nothing,' I say, trying to pull my skirt lower. ‘I—I broke my leg. Once. Last year. It's nothing.'

‘I broke my arm once but it sure didn't end up looking like that.' Gently he touches the scar on my shin, fingers soft and circling. A hole opens up inside me like a howl. ‘I have to go,' I say, grabbing my bag and struggling out the door.

‘I'm on day shift next week,' he calls after me. ‘Finish at six.'

What's he telling me? I stare after him as he drives off. I want to tear at my leg but I don't.

20

Mum rushes in while I'm doing my homework at the kitchen table. She slides into the bedroom on her polishing cloths and slides out a few minutes later in her tatty house dress.

‘Where've you been?'

She grabs saucepans, a knife from the dresser drawer, beans from the sink that she must have picked before she went out. She says I can top and tail them, but before I can even reach for the knife, she's doing it herself, cut, flick, cut, flick. Then I see her face. It looks flattened, like someone has punched in her cheeks. And there's something gone from her eyes that makes me frightened.

‘What's wrong?' I say uneasily.

She sits at the table with a thump. ‘They've found Dunc.'

My whole body seems to empty of air, as if it's been punched out of me like Mum's cheeks, as if Dunc is someone I can't quite remember. Then it seeps back in, filling me up with believing, with disbelieving, with not daring to believe, all of it mixed up in the dream of him returning. And a voice in my ears.
I knew it! I knew
he'd be found! I knew he'd come back!

‘When?' I say but it's barely a whisper. ‘Where?' I say, louder. ‘Where is he?'

She jumps up and lights a ciggie, stands with her back to the stove, watching the door as if Dunc's waiting outside. I turn uncertainly. There's no one on the porch.
Talk to me! Tell me!
But then she puts her ciggie on the hob and starts scrubbing spuds, rough handling them, rubbing off dirt, fingers picking out eyes. With the sharp black-handled knife, she peels off skin in thick slices, dumps the peeled spuds into a saucepan and starts scrubbing more.
How many is she doing? Who will eat
them all?

Abruptly she stops. ‘The oil site,' she says.

Her voice reaches me from a long way off.
He's got a job there?
Working with Elvis? Milan? A squeeze in my chest.
When did he
arrive? Why didn't he come to see us?
Her fingers peeling spuds. Then I lift my head and see the horror in her eyes
.

The bones Elvis found? Is that what she means?

Everything squeezed out of me. I can't breathe for the squeezing.
Please don't let it be him.
Under the mud.
He has to come
home. I've been waiting so long.
A noise in my head that might be a sob, from Mum, me, I can't tell. Everything squeezed out of my bones, I can't breathe, the taste of mud, Mum's punched-in cheeks and hopeless crushed shoulders, the way she's back at the hob, cupping the long ash of her ciggie in her hand like a moth.
Please
don't let it be him. Not him, not the mud.
A saucepan lid rattles far off on the stove. She tosses the ciggie into the fire and lifts the lid. Steam clouds her face. Now she's at the fridge, looking inside for a long time.
Shut it
,
you're letting the cold air out, that's what you're
always telling me.
A lamb rack in her hand. Using the knife like a saw, slicing through bone.
Please. Not Dunc.