Digging to Australia (12 page)

‘Till God the silver string unloosed …'

‘Silver cord, yes.'

‘It will have been moved from somewhere else.'

‘But why should anyone want to move an old gravestone?'

Johnny shrugged. ‘People do things for their own reasons. Or for no reason at all.'

‘Anyway,' I said, ‘it isn't a holy place now.'

‘Holy place,' Johnny mused. ‘Holey places graveyards. Get it?' But I would not smile.

‘Lacks sense of humour,' he noted.

‘I don't want you here,' I said, and the feeling of power that Bob had triggered in me that morning glowed under my ribs and made me brave. ‘Get out.'

He gave a surprised laugh. ‘That's nice! After all my hospitality to you! What's brought this on?'

I knew I was being unfair. I shrugged and I felt my face grow thin and sullen. ‘I didn't invite you,' I mumbled. ‘It's my place, that's all.'

‘Ah, but it isn't, is it?' Johnny said. I tossed my head back and began to swing. ‘It isn't really yours any more than the church is really mine. We borrow them, such places, such spaces, in the same way that we borrow our bodies.'

‘Borrow our bodies?'

‘Yes. Bodies are puppets, just puppets, machines …'

I swung higher and higher in an effort to dodge the possible truth of this, and the frame clanked and swayed.

‘And when you've worn it out, or someone's wrecked it, you bugger off somewhere else,' he shouted. ‘The only thing that's truly yours you cannot see.'

‘What are you on about?' I mocked. The frame jolted violently.

‘Watch it,' Johnny warned. ‘Stop. Look, the ground is coming up. It's cracking.' I slowed down and put my feet to the ground and saw that around the base of the swing there were indeed fresh cracks in the concrete.

‘It wouldn't fall down, would it?' I asked.

‘Don't ask me.
I
wouldn't risk it though.' He smiled at me and I met his eyes for the first time and they forced a smile from me.

‘I've brought your book back,' I said.

‘Did you enjoy it?'

‘Some, bits of it … I found it difficult, but I like it, what I read of it. The way it's written.'

‘Well you would.'

‘Would I?'

‘With your poetic soul.'

‘Oh yes …'

‘Do finish it. It deserves to be finished. My intention is to remain in the immediate vicinity for an indefinite span which may indeed exceed the quarter. That should allow you ample time to digest such a slim volume.'

I laughed. ‘You do talk funny, sometimes,' I said.

‘Do talk funny,' he repeated, ‘there's grammar for you.'

‘Well you do.'

‘I like to exercise my vocabulary,' he conceded. ‘And you're not the first to remark that I employ, upon occasion, a somewhat idiosyncratic, not to say eccentric, idiolect.' He grinned broadly, and I was reminded of a clever little dog sitting up to be patted.

‘But you don't always talk like that,' I said.

‘I don't
always
do anything.'

‘And when you go, where will you go?' I asked.

He turned away. ‘I'm about to put the kettle on,' he said. ‘Can I interest you in a little refreshment?'

‘Won't you tell me what it is?' I asked, walking all round the wooden structure. ‘Go on. I won't tell. Who would I tell?'

‘Can you not see what it is?'

I squinted at it from all angles, and racked my brains but had no idea. It was an enormous thing, a kind of scaffolding or framework.

‘Look at it without preconception of possibility,' he said.

‘Pardon?' I said. But I quite understood him. I closed my eyes and opened them again and let myself see whatever was there, and suddenly I could see it was wings. It was so obviously a pair of wings that I couldn't understand why I hadn't been able to see it before. I was standing at one wingtip and recognised now that the structure was symmetrical, joined in the centre. Each wing was hinged and jointed in several places so that it would flex and flap like a bird's, rather than than stick out stiffly like the wing of a plane.

‘Well, it looks like wings,' I said, feeling ridiculous.

‘Absolutely!' he exclaimed. ‘What perspicacity she shows.'

‘What?'

‘Wings. For the purpose of flight.' He looked pleased, no, more as if he was suppressing pleasure or glee.

‘Really? Truly?'

‘Unfinished of course.'

‘But will it be possible? For you to fly?'

‘Daedalus did it. Do you know your Greek myths? And his son – Icarus – but he flew too close to the sun, youthful high spirits …'

‘And what happened?'

‘He fell into the sea with an almighty splash, like a great fried fowl.'

‘And Daedalus?'

‘He made a safe landing. A brilliant man, Daedalus. He accepted no impossibility.'

‘Like you?'

Johnny laughed, pleased. ‘They're not complete, of course. Once I've completed the basework, I'll have to cover them.'

‘With feathers?' I suggested.

He furrowed his brow at me as if this
was
ridiculous. ‘Feathers my foot! No, silk. I have silk. A parachute. I'll be like a butterfly, a bloody butterfly. No, a moth, soft as a moth.' I looked back at the heavy splintery wood. ‘You're sceptical,' he said, and I thought that I was more than that. ‘Look at this,' he said and bent down and from somewhere in the shadows, behind his suitcase, he pulled a stream of what looked like water flowing upwards into his hands. He pulled until his arms were full and it billowed to his feet.

‘Beautiful,' I breathed.

‘Come outside,' he said. He walked towards the door, the stuff trailing behind him like a bridal veil. Outside in the sunshine he flung it up, brushed off the clinging woodshavings and spread it out, a thin glistening skin through which the gravestones jutted like bones. ‘Go over there.' He indicated the other side of it and I obeyed and then between us we lifted and lowered the silk, in unison at first, the silk gasping against the air, and then we got out of time and flapped it crazily so that it billowed and rippled like moonlit water in a storm. I shouted with laughter.

‘See, it almost has a life of its own,' Johnny said, laughing too. He gathered it up into his arms. I followed him back into the church and watched as he made the tea.

‘I still don't see how you're going to fly,' I said. ‘You could float with the silk maybe, but the whole thing together will weigh a ton.' I put my hand on a wooden strut. A shaft of sunlight struck it, making a brass nail head gleam in the centre of an odd streak of red paint. He lifted his eyebrows at me. ‘In fact,' I dared to say, ‘I think you're potty.'

‘Perhaps,' he agreed, regarding me with blank eyes, and now I was not sure whether they were mad or wise.

‘Where did you say you were from?' I asked.

He smiled. ‘You're wondering if I've escaped from the loonybin now, aren't you?' He added sugar to his tea and stirred the spoon round and round in his cup, making an irritating repetitive clink. ‘Or perhaps I'm an outlaw, an escaped convict. What do you say to that?'

‘I had an ancestor who
was
a convict,' I said, and I felt proud.

‘Oh yes?'

‘She was called Peggy and she stole a peacock and she was transported to Australia.'

‘A poacher then.'

‘No … I think it was more of a pet,' I said, hesitantly, realising how much of what I knew was my own invention.

‘She went on a ship you say? To Botany Bay?'

‘Is that Australia?'

Johnny held his finger up to silence me. He put his cup down and turned away. He slicked his hair back from his brow and turned back, stepped into a spot of yellow light, put one foot on his box, cupped his hand over his ear and began to sing in a curious nasal voice, as if he had troublesome adenoids.

‘
Come, all you daring poachers, that wander void of care
,

That walk out on a moonlight night, with your dog, your gun, your snare;

The harmless hare and pheasant – or peacock – you have at your command
,

Not thinking of your last career upon Van Diemen's Land
.

‘
There was poor Jock Brown from Glasgow and Auntie Peggy too
,

They were daring poachers the country well did know;

The keeper caught them hunting with all their guns in hand
,

They were fourteen years transported into Van Diemen's Land
.

‘
The very day we landed upon that fateful shore

The settlers gathered round us, full forty score or more;

They herded us like cattle, they sold us out of hand
,

They yoked us to the plough, my boys, to plough Van Diemen's Land
.'

I had laughed all the way through the song at the serious way Johnny included Peggy in the song, but I stopped when he had finished, picturing Peggy with her paper crown on her head, bent under the weight of the yoke, the furrows of the earth stretching red behind her.

‘They built Australia. Made it what it is. All those mad bad people. You'd think it would have turned out worse,' Johnny said, sitting down on his box.

‘Although there were people there already, weren't there?'

‘Aborigines, yes.'

‘I wonder what they thought when the convicts arrived?'

‘I doubt if anyone thought to ask. And by the way, for the sake of accuracy I must point out that Van Diemen's Land is in Tasmania, not Australia itself.'

‘More directly underneath than Australia if you look at the globe,' I said.

‘Is that so?'

I looked hard at Johnny. He had changed again. All the fun had suddenly gone from him and he actually seemed smaller, his shoulders narrow, his voice flat. He had finished with me. I couldn't get used to it: the sudden way he changed. He went to the door and flung the dregs from his cup out into the grass. ‘Must get on, while there's still a bit of light.'

I put my cup down beside his suitcase, and looked at the picture of his miserable grandfather, held for an instant by the pale gleam in his eyes. I wondered if insanity ran in the family.

‘Mad as a hatter,' I thought.

Johnny began getting out his tools, ready to work. ‘Are you perchance, referring to me?' he said.

I winced, startled to find that I'd spoken. ‘No, not really. I was thinking about the Mad Hatter's tea party,' I explained. ‘You know, in
Alice in Wonderland
. With the dormouse.'

‘Weren't they
all
mad, in Wonderland,' Johnny said. ‘Wasn't that the point?'

I considered. They were certainly illogical. ‘All except Alice,' I said.

‘And they would have thought she was mad, you can depend upon it,' Johnny said. ‘Now hop it.'

‘What I
don't
quite see,' I said, ‘is, how you're going to get the wings out, even if you could fly with them. They won't fit through the door, you know.' I went to the door and looked back into the gloom.

Johnny had already started planing a piece of wood. I wasn't sure whether he'd heard me. ‘By the way,' he called, pausing for a moment. ‘I'd like to see some of your poetry.'

‘All right,' I said. ‘Cheerio.' I went outside to find the brightness already fading, the sun hidden behind the dark spire. Far above me an aeroplane scratched a pink weal on the wintery sky. I trailed slowly home worrying about poetry, wondering whether one poem would do, or whether he'd expect sheaves of them.

In bed that night I thought about Johnny and his wings. I tried to imagine him soaring or gliding. I tried to picture the silken moth that he thought he would be. But all I could see was the rough splintery wood more like floorboards than wing-bones. All I could picture was him plummeting and crashing. It was a grand idea. I
could
see that. But it was quite mad.

15

‘Only a week till Christmas,' Bronwyn said, linking her arm through mine. ‘Only two more days of school. Aren't you excited?'

‘Of course,' I said, and I
was
trying to be excited. The house was crammed now, with fragile folding things, angels and stars and reindeer, even a Father Christmas, all papery and frail. Mama had spilt a packet of glitter and it had gone everywhere so that we trod it into the carpets and found it in our hair. Even my porridge had sparkled that morning. We didn't have a tree yet. Our household tradition demanded that Bob dressed late on Christmas Eve and went out to buy a Christmas tree. We decorated it, all together, after tea, and then ate mince pies and even sang carols, sometimes, until it was my bedtime. And then there was the business with the Christmas stocking, and leaving a glass of sherry for Father Christmas and a carrot for the reindeer. Mama had decided that I could have a stocking this year, but it was to be the last. And in the morning, as always, Auntie May would be fetched after breakfast by Bob, who would look strangely formal in a collar and tie, and then there'd be the presents and the feasting and the crackers – and the games.

I was trying hard to be excited, but there was a dullness over it all for me, like a darkish film. Perhaps I had courted it at first, what with my anger with Mama and Bob, what with their lies. I had wanted to feel separate, to see them as foolish little people, to see them and all they did as trivial. But now I wanted to go back. I wanted to peel away the film and see everything in bright simple colours again. I wanted Father Christmas to be red and white and jolly and make-believe; not dismal and greenish and – quite possibly – real. I wanted to retreat from the fright I had given myself, to step off the thin ice onto solid ground that I could never, ever fall through.

‘You must come round over Christmas,' Bronwyn said. ‘Mum insists. Not on
the
day, we have all my boring cousins over then. But after Christmas. You could even stay the night. Would you like that? Oooh, you've got glitter on your nose.' Bronwyn licked her finger and pressed it on the end of my nose to remove the sparkle. ‘Would you be allowed to?'