A Charm of Powerful Trouble (6 page)

S
O THERE
were Stella and Paris, intruding on our summer holidays, filling up the house and taking our mother's attention and wandering endlessly in the garden. I was amazed how two people could fill so much space and be everywhere at once.

Late in the afternoon, with the light seeping through the trees and into the darkened living room, Paris caught me looking at her. She turned her head slowly on her slender neck and then looked away again.

I escaped to Lizzie's room. ‘When are they going to go home?' I asked her, even though they'd only just arrived.

Lizzie shrugged. She took very little notice of the visitors, and avoided them by going off to the shed where she could practise the guitar in peace, putting the amp up until there was a satisfying amount of feedback.

Paris found plenty to interest her on that long summer holiday she spent with us. She took Chloe into the hills where they wandered on narrow paths made by cattle. They found a dead steer, black with flies. Chloe told me about it. ‘Paris poked it with a stick - poked it in the bum where all the maggots were.'

They found a rotten wallaby carcass that had been gnawed by wild dogs. Paris managed to detach the head, and took it back to the kitchen where, unobserved by anyone but Chloe (hands over her mouth to suppress the giggles), she boiled it up to clean the meat from the bone. The stench brought everyone to the kitchen, exclaiming loudly. Paris told Emma she wanted to have a clean wallaby skull to take home with her, but Emma took the pot a long way from the house and tipped it out. ‘I think we'll let the ants do the rest,' she told Paris.

Paris, with her cool, appraising eyes, noted a pleasing side effect of what she'd done: Emma was annoyed with her.

Later, when she and Chloe were helping Lizzie with the dishes, Paris deliberately dropped a dinner plate on the floor while Lizzie was bent over the sink. Lizzie turned immediately at the crash, her plait swingng behind her. ‘Stand back!' she ordered, her arms held out to the sides to ward people away. Everything Lizzie did was done with solemn intent, and every shard of crockery and sliver of glaze was swept dutifully into the dustpan.

With Lizzie back at the sink again, Paris took another plate and held it in the air. She motioned to Chloe to do the same, and the plates crashed to the floor at the same time.

‘Sorry,' said Paris. ‘It was an accident.'

Lizzie began scornfully to sweep up the pieces of broken plate. ‘It has to be done properly,' she said, when Paris insincerely offered to help. ‘I don't care,' said Paris under her breath, but Chloe felt Lizzie's silent wrath acutely.

‘We'd better behave ourselves,' whispered Chloe.

‘Not me!' said Paris.

Chloe giggled, and they ran to their room, where Chloe collapsed onto the bed hugging herself with delight. She'd found that it was much more interesting to be bad than to be good.

One day Claudio and Stella talked in the dining room for hours after lunch was over. Claudio had stayed behind to sort out some papers. My mother had disappeared to her studio and I thought Stella had gone into the garden for a cigarette. But she had come back and sat down next to him, not right beside him, but with a dining chair between them like a barricade.

Claudio leaned forward across the chair. He talked, holding Stella to him with his eyes. I didn't even try to make out what he was saymg. But I watched him.

He bunched his fingers together as he made a point, then opened them again and waved his hand around in a loose arc; he said something that made her laugh; he laughed too, and closed his eyes with a look of bliss.They simultaneously grasped the back of the chair, their hands only centimetres apart.

I walked past and saw my father cast his eyes to the ceiling, a look of intoxication on his face, before he launched into another story.

I crept to Lizzie's room, hoping for an ally, and solace.

‘I don't like the way she looks at Claudio.' I whispered it, not because anyone could overhear, but because it was something I'd not even thought properly before, let alone said out loud.

‘Who?'

‘Stella.'

‘They're
flirting
with each other,' she said, her mouth turned downwards with disgust.

Flirting
.

I knew instinctively the meaning of this new word.

‘Mum hates it.' Lizzie's face was impassive. She had taken to calling our mother ‘Mum' instead of ‘Emma'. Lizzie picked up her guitar and started to strum it, listening to its resonances with one ear inclined towards it.

I prowled through the dining area one more time. Claudio and Stella were sitting upright now, their elbows on the table. The dining chair stood between them.

It pleases Paris to see the snake. It is thin, black with a red belly, and pours itself down a crevice in a rock wall when she surprises it sunning itself on a path.

Paris watches it disappear. ‘Like quicksilver', she whispers. Paris has never seen quicksilver, and isn't even sure what it is, but she is a reading child and the phrase comes immediately to her mind. Seconds later the snake reappears, making its way lightly across the top of the ferns that sprout from the gaps in the rocks. Its tongue flicks in and out. Paris and the snake watch each other with bright eyes.

Chloe and Paris painted each other's faces with tiger stripes. They took off their clothes and painted stripes on their bodies as well. Chloe put a fluffy length of fabric from the dress-up box round her waist, and Paris found an old pink tutu that used to be Lizzie's. It was far too small. The pants climbed up over her bottom and the top didn't cover her nipples.

Chloe led Paris through the undergrowth to a special place she knew, a bowerbird's nest with a treasure trove of blue objects. There was the usual assortment of bits of blue plastic, blue pegs, a faded blue flower. They also found two blue playmg cards lying on the ground, face down.

Each had a picture of a queen on a throne. One of the queens was fair-haired and carried a cup like a wine goblet. The other queen was dark, and had a sword. They carried the cards back to where Emma and Stella sat on the verandah.

‘Savages!' cried Emma when she saw them emerging from the bushes. She hugged savage Chloe to her, putting her face in Chloe's hair. ‘They're tarot cards,' she said. ‘I bet they belong to Amrita, down the road. I'll ask her if she's lost them. It'd be typical of her to leave them lying about where a bowerbird could take them.'

Paris looked annoyed.

‘But you can keep them for a while,' said Emma. ‘They're little treasures, aren't they?'

‘What are tarot cards?' said Paris.

‘Well, I don't know all that much, but I know it's a special pack of cards that have different things on them to help you think about your life. For instance, this card,' said Emma, holding out the fair queen, ‘is the Queen of Cups. It could represent a dearly loved female friend. She's good, fair, and creative. She stands for harmony in your life. But if you got this card,' Emma held up the dark queen, ‘the Queen of Swords, it could mean there's conflict or change or trouble coming to you.

‘She's a very powerful queen,' she went on, glancing at Stella with a look that I stored away, so I could work out its meaning later. ‘She can bring whirlwinds, tornadoes and gales; she's ardent, deceitful and selfish, never a friend of her own sex.'

There was something about my mother that suggested danger. Stella laughed uncomfortably. ‘Quite a lady,' she said.

‘I like this one best,' declared Paris, taking the Queen of Swords. ‘Chloe can have the other one.'

Chloe and Paris tossed the tarot cards on the ground, joined hands, and danced in a circle. Then they let go and danced separately, and it became wilder and wilder. Without warning, Chloe ran up to Emma, grabbed her by the hand, and bit her, hard, on the arm.

Emma pulled away with a cry ‘Oh! Chloe! Why did you do that?'

‘Because I'm wicked,' said Chloe, and grinned at her, showing her teeth.

‘No, you're not, no, you're not,' murmured Emma, and Chloe crept onto her lap, thumb in mouth. Her other hand slid inside Emma's shirt and found a nipple, and she kneaded it between her fingers. My mother cradled Chloe in her arms and rubbed the plump curve of her bare bottom.

Stella pulled Paris onto the sofa, nestling her in the crook of her arm. Paris's pointed little face was stern, her lips pursed. The stuff she'd painted on her body had smudged and worn away, so that she looked merely grubby and uncared for. Stella dreamily kissed her on the forehead.

Late on an overcast day, with storm clouds building, we went to the beach. It was a long, empty beach. The sea was grey and green. I watched my parents walking along the edge of the water. Claudio had taken himself off alone, and his face had a storm-cloud look to it, which I knew didn't mean that he was especially angry or upset; it was just moodiness. His eyes could just as suddenly spark with fire and good humour, and his astonishing eyebrows, one with a zigzag break at the apex, would shoot up towards his receding hairline.

My mother trailed after him, but she eventually caught him up and took his arm, looking in vain into his face as he stared out over the water.