Three Summers (20 page)

Fee and Mattie's faces took on identical expressions. They knew all right. Lou Harker's family had stolen a march on them.

‘And that'll do us fine,' said Josh, and he kissed the skimpy girl again, on the top of her small dark head. The kiss made a neat little sound. It was like a full stop to something; it was like telling Mattie and Fee they weren't allowed to argue.

Only they couldn't keep it in. ‘And just how are you going to support a – a wife' – Mattie stumbled on the word, he couldn't seem to get the sense of it, not with Josh in mind – ‘on a scholarship?'

‘Nothing's cheap down there, you know,' said Fee.

They sneered at her.

‘Free bungalow or not,' growled Mattie.

Josh threw back his head defiantly. ‘I'll get a part-time job, work nights.'

‘And what about your studies?'

‘I'll manage,' said Josh. ‘Like I always have.'

As if
they'd
been stopping him, thought Fee furiously. As if they'd made him chop wood and clean the fowl house so he didn't have time to study. As if she and Mattie had been making such a racket that their son couldn't hear his own thoughts.

‘You'll be too tired, son,' said Mattie. ‘The only kind of job you'd get down there is going to make you dead on your feet. All you'll want to do is sleep.'

The girl stepped forward. She came right up to the table and put her hand on it, as if to hold her steady. ‘
I'll
work,' she said. ‘
I'll
support us, there's jobs going for girls like me, Aunty Brenda says. Waitressing, shopwork. I've got experience.'

Fee stared at the hand there on the table. It was a very small hand, but it looked quite strong and fierce right there beside their floral crockery.

Lou saw her looking and snatched her hand away. ‘We won't starve, don't
you
worry about
us.
And don't worry about Josh, he won't get
tired
,
I'll
look after him. We'll do fine, just you wait and see!' She put both hands on her hips and glared at them defiantly.

Mattie struggled to hide a sudden grin. Fee scowled at him; he was supposed to be on
her
side. She wanted to slap him, and slap the skimpy girl as well. As for her favourite son, the
genius
, the boy who wanted to
see –
‘We'll see all right,' she told him grimly. ‘We'll see you mess up your life, throw away your chances, just for—'

Josh didn't let her finish. ‘C'mon Lou!' he said, grabbing at the girl's thin arm. ‘I'm not staying here tonight! Or – or ever! I'd rather sleep in Perry's orchard, where the air is
clean
!' He swung away from them and rushed from the room, hurrying Lou beside him. Fee jumped up and ran after them, across the living room, down the hall where the doors of the big blanket cupboard were already wide open, and Josh was grabbing up a sleeping-bag.

Their
sleeping-bag, Fee saw, the big double one that she and Mattie used for camping trips.

‘Put that back at once!'

‘No!'

‘Give it to
me
!' They struggled briefly. The girl looked away. A corner of the bag flicked across Fee's cheek.

Josh didn't even stay to see if it had hurt. ‘C'mon, Lou!' They rushed right past her.

At the front door she howled after them, ‘But where are you
going
?' Night had come. It was dark out there. A cold wind was blowing.

‘I
told
you!' bawled Josh from the footpath. ‘I'm going to sleep in Perry's orchard.'

‘And me!' cried the skimpy girl. ‘I'm going to sleep in Perry's orchard too! With him!'

‘But – but it's dark,' Fee cried helplessly.

Josh swung back towards her. ‘That's all right, Mum,' he yelled. ‘I'm a big boy now; I'm not afraid of the dark!'

‘HE'LL
ruin his chances!' wept Fee to Mattie in the darkness of their bedroom. ‘They'll be crammed up together in that tiny shack—'

‘We don't know it's tiny, love.'

‘Bungalows are always tiny. They'll be crammed up, Mattie, and Josh'll be exhausted, working in some factory, he won't be able to study—'

‘It won't come to that, love. We'll help them out.'

Neither of them mentioned the possibility that Lou Harker might fade away from Josh's life; it was so obvious that the skimpy girl wasn't the type to fade. Colourfast, thought Fee bitterly. ‘They'll start having children,' she panicked, voice rising, ‘he'll give it all up, those things he's good at – the physics, the maths, it'll all go; he'll be just
ordinary.
He'll never go anywhere! He'll be
stuck
!'

The word had weight and resonance. It was like something unholy, a small bomb dropped inside the room. It was Fee home forever with the children and never going anywhere, never finding the person she might have been, if she hadn't got married so young. And through the darkness Fee could sense Mattie thinking all this as well – she sensed the quiver of his hurt and sorrow and shame. ‘Oh!' she whispered. ‘Oh.'

He turned on his side, away. ‘Oh, Mattie!' she said. ‘I didn't mean me.' She pressed herself close to him, hiding her face against his broad, warm back. ‘I didn't mean
I
felt stuck.' Then she had to be honest. ‘Or at least, only a little part of me. A really, really little bit.'

He turned and held her close, wordlessly.

‘I've been so happy, Mattie.' And suddenly she knew it. Of course she'd been happy; she'd had the real true thing. She grasped his face in her hands and covered it with kisses. ‘
You're
the real true thing,' she whispered.

‘
YOU
know, love,' Mattie said a little while later, ‘I think—'

‘What do you think?' she smiled into his shoulder.

‘Well, once Josh and, ah—'

‘Lou.'

‘Yeah. Lou.' He grinned. Fee stopped smiling.

‘Once Josh and Lou are settled, perhaps we could take that trip to London—'

Fee propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at him. ‘Settled,' she murmured. ‘As if anyone ever was.' She sighed and lay back, watching the leaf shadows from the big gum dancing on the ceiling. Out there in Perry's orchard the wind would be tossing in the trees. Cold.

‘I'm not sure I want to go to London anymore,' she said to Mattie.

‘But what about visiting Ruth?'

‘I had a letter today. Ruth's thinking of coming back here, if she can get a job at Sydney University. She wants to see more of her dad.'

‘Ah.'

‘It's Josh I want to go places.'

‘And he's going to,' promised Mattie. ‘You can bet on that.'

‘Good.'

They lay there silently for a moment, then Mattie spoke again. ‘Fee?'

‘Yes?'

‘The thing is, Fee, about them, about Josh and, um, Lou—'

‘What? What about them?'

‘Josh isn't going to ruin his chances; he's not that kind of boy. And that Lou—'

‘Yes?' Fee's voice was cool.

‘That Lou looks like she wouldn't let him ruin his chances either. Not for anything.'

Fee turned her head a little so he wouldn't see the gleam of jealousy in her eyes.

‘You've got to—'

‘Got to what?' she snapped. ‘What have I got to do?'

He took her hand and kissed it. ‘You've got to have some trust.'

LONG
after Mattie had fallen asleep Fee lay awake beside him, thinking of Josh and the girl out there in Perry's orchard, the wind roaring in the trees above them, damp rising through the layers of the sleeping-bag. The trees in the orchard were old and dry – a branch could fall. Had they checked for spiders in the leaf litter? Snakes? Had they—

They. She was saying
they
, as if Josh and Lou Harker were a real couple; as if the skimpy girl was part of the family, as if she was a fact. But Lou Harker was a fact, you could
sense
it: she was there for good.

Tears sprang into Fee's eyes. She slipped from the covers, crept into the bathroom and scrambled into her clothes. Then she too rushed out into the windy night.

There was no moon yet, but the stars were huge, flooding the streets of Barinjii with a gentle silvery light. As she rushed down Hopeton Street, across the windswept park and on through the schoolyard towards the old orchard, Fee couldn't help – whatever Mattie said – the sense of loss for Josh's marvellous future creeping over her again, his brilliant chances winking out like streetlights in an ordinary dawn. So that the orchard appeared through a veil of tears, suddenly, before she was quite ready for it, like some surprising image from a dream. The wind was wilder here, the old trees thrashed and struggled; she walked into them with her arms held protectively above her head.

The big moon had risen now and she found the sleeping-bag easily, in the centre of a clearing, well away from the threat of falling branches, spread neatly like a big picnic tablecloth on the grass. There was no sign of Josh and Lou.

She knelt down and pulled the bag sideways; they'd cleared the leaf litter where spiders might hide, and the ground was firm and dry. The wind dropped suddenly, the air went smooth as silk; somewhere further off she heard a whisper, a giggle, a long broken sigh, and she sprang up guiltily, peering into the shadowy trees. She saw them almost at once, in another small clearing, standing close, their arms around each other, oblivious and unaware. She noticed how the top of Lou's head reached Josh's collarbone, how his chin grazed the top of that blue-black crow's wing hair. She saw the girl raise her face to his, and Josh's lips come gently down on hers.

Fee had stood with Mattie like that, beneath these same old trees. She'd been sixteen. The joy of it! The sheer and perfect happiness! ‘Happiness!' she whispered, and though it was only one word and her voice was very soft, Josh and Lou heard her and sprang apart.

‘Mum?'

‘Oh! I'm sorry,' said Fee. ‘Sorry, I – you must think I'm spying, but it isn't that, honestly.'

They gazed at her silently.

‘I came because, um – because I wanted to say sorry for what happened back home.'

Still they said nothing, and Fee crept towards them over the uneven ground, stumbling slightly, so that Lou unexpectedly leaped forwards and took her arm. Fee straightened, startled, and their eyes were on a level. ‘We,' Fee began, ‘I mean, Mattie and I – your dad,' she said, nodding across at Josh, ‘we used to come here too. When we first met, when—' She turned back to Lou. ‘I was only sixteen,' she gasped. ‘And I was so happy, just like you two, and – look, I'm sorry for all that stuff I said back there in the house, I didn't have the right. There are all kinds of happiness, there's all different kinds—' She heard her voice ringing out into the night and thought it sounded like a toddler's voice, a tiny little kid pointing to a window full of Easter eggs, chocolate ones and sugar ones, huge eggs and tiny ones, eggs wrapped in shining foil or nestled in a china cart pulled by a china bunny and crying out, ‘There's all different kinds!'