The Lost Child (31 page)

‘That drop-kick rigger from Coomandook I've seen sniffin' around you. Reckon you can do better than him.'

His eyes are still closed. I'm not really sure he said it. Then an awful thought: was he in the clearing yesterday, hidden, watching me? But I realise that's just plain crazy: some busybody must have seen me in the car with Will and told him. So why do I feel so bad? At the same time, I think: Who does he think he is, telling me what to do? Why should he care? I should laugh in his face. I can do what I like.

A rush of wind shivers the grass and ripples a path across the lake, then dies. Further along the shore, smoke from the rig drifts towards town. It's where Dunc was found, just there. I don't want to be here. The sound of his breathing is suddenly shallow, and scarily uneven. I shake his shoulder hard, urgently. ‘Breathe,' I tell him. And he does, drawing in air like a drink.

Then I hear the sound of a car, not Uncle Ticker returning but Bill Morgan bumping to a stop beside my bike. I'm so glad to see him that relief makes me stupid and I clutch at Dad's hand. It feels warm and dry, and strangely light, and I hold it; I hold his hand in mine. But he doesn't look up or open his eyes—he's probably forgotten I'm here—and then Bill Morgan is helping me down, finding a white hankie in his pocket, freshly ironed, and I don't even know I'm crying.

Out on the lake, a flock of black duck float like a feathered raft. The sky is a huge dizzy blue streaked with smoke from the rig. Everything seems too big, too confused. I think: I won't tell Mum I was here. She doesn't need to know.

24

He died three days later. He was still in Muswell Hospital but they couldn't save him. He was forty-six.

‘You don't want to go to his funeral, do you?' Mum drops a fork and bends to retrieve it. ‘What's he ever done for you?'

I don't think I'm meant to answer that. I can't anyway; it's the sort of question that grows octopus arms and squeezes me so tight that I can hardly breathe.

She splashes plates around in the sink. ‘A heart attack. Drink more likely. Why else would it get him so young? Rushing in to sort out the world instead of sorting out his own life. Who cares if Ticker fenced a lane?'

My father, obviously. And why shouldn't he?
The words stick in my throat. Her hands are hidden in the tea-towel, wiping the plates back and front, back and forth. I wonder what else my father rushed in to sort out that I don't know about. ‘I've sold up,' she says.

‘Sold what?'

‘The house. We're moving to the city.'

I stare at her. ‘But there's oil, now. There'll be work.' Her hands in the tea-towel. ‘Won't there?'

‘We'll starve if we have to wait for that to filter through.'

‘But I'll be a prefect next year.'

‘You can be a prefect in the city.'

‘No one'll know me there. I don't
want
to go to another school. I like it here.'

She turns on me, eyes fired up. ‘You want to be a teacher, don't you? Well, I can promise you it won't happen here. You'll end up picking fish and pregnant at sixteen. Is that what you want?' And when I don't answer, she leans over the table. A pulse in her neck ticks like a time bomb. ‘Is it?'

Within days, she's on the bedroom floor packing tea-chests with newspaper parcels—three piles—things to be kept—to be given away—another for the incinerator that's been smouldering in the backyard all day.

‘What about this?' She holds up one of my
Famous Fives
.

I snatch it from her. ‘I want all my books kept.'

‘You can't want this.' She tosses
Four Bad Hens
onto the bed.

I grab that back too. ‘I won that in Grade Two. I want them all.' I hover behind, watching, not helping. I want her to stop, to look up and say she's changed her mind, to say we should go to his funeral. I want her to tell me what to do.

‘And this?'

It's my jewellery box, which once held Easter eggs. I tip everything onto the bed. My old gold bangle that no longer fits. A string of green plastic Poppit beads. The Edelweiss brooch Grannie brought back from Switzerland. Dunc's heart locket with the coronation crown. Dunc's skull ring. The green beads go into the give-away pile. So does the gold bangle.

‘If you have a daughter, you might want that one day.'

‘Me?' I try to make my voice scornful and rude but my period came a few days ago and I'm so relieved that I reclaim the bangle and return it to the box. I also keep the locket and brooch. But the skull ring is really an ugly thing and I'm tempted to toss it; instead I turn from her and press it onto my finger. Now the metal bits barely meet at the back.

‘Well, we're not taking these.' She dumps my comics onto the bed. There must be thirty of them. My mouth opens to argue, and then I change my mind. I'll give them to Lizzie. But even as I carry them outside and sit on the back step to sort them, I know I won't. There are Dunc's old
Phantom
s, Pardie's too—the ones left on our doorstep the night before he left—and more recent
Archie
s and
Mad
s. On the cover of the latest
Archie
, the gang is singing folk songs in a big city high school, a school that looks as frighteningly foreign as I imagine my new school will be.

For some time, I nurse the comics on my lap, thinking of a blur of things. Mrs Winkie saying she hopes I'll come back to stay with Lizzie.
There'll always be a bed for you. You too, Nella.
My old autograph book saved from the fire. Dunc's curly writing:
If all
the boys lived over the sea, What a good swimmer Sylvie would be.
Tadpoles in jars, watching them grow legs and turn into frogs on a window ledge at school. My father's hair at the lake, thick and wavy. I think: Is this who I am? All of these things? Do they add up to me?

My eyes find a wisp of smoke drifting skywards from our incinerator, a forty-four-gallon drum on bricks close to Shorty's fence. I walk past the old shed, step under the clothesline, around the climber beans, between the cabbages. At the incinerator, I peel the comics from my chest and drop them into the drum, one by one. At first pages tremble and flutter as if they're alive and crying out to be saved. I don't save them. As flames leap and roar, I return to the kitchen, take my camera from the table and cross the road into the tea-tree.

The lagoon has begun its summer retreat and the path near the water's edge is covered with a carpet of dry white weed. Further around, it's still damp and spongy and I'm forced to leap onto tree trunks that lie about like drunks. Alert for Bertie, always hoping, I hurry. Although there is no hurry. It's cool and dark beneath the trees and I'm glad they're still clouded in their winter green. I don't want to be seen. The path leaves the scrub on the other side of the lagoon, not far from my father's house. Cars are nosed into the fence, along the drive.
What's he ever done for you?

I have stopped being careful of snakes. I climb the track through the dunes, stepping on pig face and muntries, pushing through snotty gobbles and old man's beard. High on a dune, I look down. Black specks are moving about the rig on the other side of the lake. For a second, the horizon tilts and blurs, then steadies. There's no smoke. No oil. The well ran dry after only two days. The specks are trucks and men dismantling the rig, getting ready for the move north to Lake Claire.

See.
Mum's voice. Pleased. Redeemed.
All that effort. What a
waste.

I take a wide shot—too wide—I know it won't work. Then I turn to the back beach, the long sweep of it. The tide is low with reef and rocks exposed the whole way to Seal Island, sea and sky the same colour, almost merging. A gull wheels and screams above me as if I'm bothering its nest. Beyond the lighthouse, three boats are coming through the reef, returning early for my father's funeral.

I will never cry for him.

At the base of the dune there's a dip of sand, a beckoning beach. I stretch out my arms like angel wings and then I leap and slip and slide down the slope to the bottom. A wave licks up the sand then falls back, leaving a froth of foam in its wake. All around is blue sea and breaking surf. Clear light and birds shrieking. The wind holding me. I think: I could walk to the edge of the reef and wait for a wave; that's how I could do it. And for no reason, I think of Tania holding her teddy bear with half an arm.

Further up the beach, I sink down on soft sand. Way to the north, sea and rocky outcrops vanish in a salty mist. I want to disappear into that mist. Or burrow into the sand like a sand crab. Instead, I photograph the sun lowering in the west, frame after frame, until I run out of film. Until the service is over. Until he's buried and gone. And when the waves soften on the reef and the wind dies, I know Mum is right.

What's he ever done for me?

Nothing.

Returning over the hill, I see Cele leaving his house. There's no avoiding her; she sees me coming and waits at the side gate. She's wearing a black dress. Closer, I see she's pinned a glittery brooch to the collar, a sunburst of glass that might be real diamonds, the sort of brooch you save for special occasions. Like funerals. All of a sudden tears try to sneak up my nose but I keep them away by staying focused on the brooch. I think: I won't look at her. I won't let her see.

‘Hey,' she says in her warm, funny voice. And somehow, her arms are around me and I'm squashed against the glittery brooch, her voice soft in my hair. ‘It's okay,' she says. ‘You didn't need to be there. It's okay.'

I can smell her green perfume, her sweet sweaty skin. She is soft and hard, fragile and strong, all at the same time. ‘Did,' I say into her neck.

‘Didn't. Funerals are for the living, not the dead. From what I hear, you did your bit on the grader.'

That's when I feel something shifting inside, a sob. And somehow I know Mum is wrong, I just know. ‘Didn't,' I say, pushing hard to get out of her arms.

‘Hey,' she says, surprised. We're hardly any distance apart and she's smiling, but her eyes look tired, as if she's been crying, her lids swollen and smoky. And I just stand there with the sob like a rock inside me. I think: She knew him when he was a boy. When he sang at the Institute dance. When he was someone else. Is that why she cries for him?

Reaching for my hand, she examines the skull ring, angling it against the sun. Then she says it. ‘He was very proud of you.'

It's so ridiculous that I don't even reply.

She lifts her eyes. ‘It's true. When I saw him at the hospital, he said you bossed him around at the lake, made him sit up and breathe, really looked after him. He was tickled pink.'

I know she's lying. Tickled pink is not his thing. But I so want to believe her that I almost do. At the same time, I think: How dare he be proud of me. He has no right to be proud of me for anything, ever. Then I look at her puffy eyes and remember he's gone. That's all there is.

*

As the train pulls slowly out, Cele shoots onto the platform. ‘Nella-a-a-a!' Dropping her bike, she runs to our window and pushes an envelope into Mum's hands. ‘Photos. You gave them to me years ago. You should have them.'

I watch and wave until Roy and Chicken, Tania and Mrs Marciano, Cele and Lizzie and Mrs Winkie disappear in the curve of the line. As we rattle past the fish factory, and as the bay comes into view, I try to suck it all in behind my eyes—the jetty, a flash of Seal Island before it slides behind the point, the spires of the foreshore pines pointing into a high white sky.

When I turn from the window, Mum is staring ahead, the envelope on the seat between us. As I reach for it, she does the same. Her hand hovers and falters then flinches away; she sinks back into her seat and crosses her legs. Yet I know she's watching as I remove three photographs.

They are faded sepia, all three of my parents and Dunc, taken at the bottom gate with the lagoon behind. In the first, Mum looks like a girl, hardly older than me. She has a ribbon in her hair and holds Dunc on her hip. Dad is standing a little apart, hands behind his back. On the ground, their shadows touch.

In the next, Dad has Dunc half-hoisted on his shoulder and all three are frowning at the camera as if they'd been caught before they're ready. Dunc has a cowlick curl on top of his head, those huge brown eyes; Mum's arms hang uncertainly without her son to hold.

I pass the photos to her. ‘How old is he?'

She barely looks before handing them back. ‘About twelve months. Just before your father went to war.'

He looks too young to go to war, a skinny boy with striped braces holding up his pants, pleats at the waist, cuffed bottoms sitting on black polished shoes. In the final photo, he has Dunc settled safely on his shoulders. Dad's elbows are angled awkwardly behind his head. Without Mum in the frame, Dunc and Dad are grinning fit to burst, Dunc's cheeks fat with dimples, a crease in my father's cheek, the same dimpled chins.

This is not the father I knew. He is not the one who died. I shuffle the photos together and turn to the window. I have missed Stickynet and the last glimpse of the bay. Somewhere beyond the lake are Bindilla's bottom paddocks. Somewhere between the dunes and the train lies the cemetery, but I can find no landmarks to anchor me. Somewhere behind the green wall of boobialla, Dunc and my father are buried close to the sea. As the train gathers speed, I think of the flowers on my father's grave that were still there yesterday and the lump in my throat dissolves into slow trickling tears.

I'll come back, I tell the blurred trees. I will come back.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sincere thanks to Barbara Turner-Vesselago and Shelley Kenigsberg, whose support from the beginning showed me the way.

Special thanks to Writers Victoria for a mentorship with Andrea Goldsmith, who gave me invaluable help.