Digging to Australia (18 page)

‘I don't know, that's stupid. I haven't got a father.'

‘But you must have one somewhere.'

‘Well I don't care who he is. I can't see the point of pretending I can choose.' Irritably I shrugged Bronwyn's hand off my shoulder where it was resting. She wiped her nose which was pink and runny from the cold.

‘Well, it's finished,' she said. ‘Do you like it?'

‘I think so,' I said, turning my head from side to side. I looked ordinary and I liked that.

‘It's much darker,' she said, ‘and it's not
quite
right at the back.'

‘Well it's done,' I said, turning away from the mirror. Bronwyn looked crestfallen. ‘Thank you,' I added. I felt even colder with my neck all bare. I ran my hand up the back of my head over the peculiar stubbly hairs. Susan's didn't look as if it was prickly like that, it looked soft and downy. On the dark carpet was the pale glistening pool of my hair. I scooped it up, and rubbed it between my fingers. It was my baby hair and my childhood. I held onto it for a moment and then I let it fall. ‘What shall we do with it?' I asked. Bronwyn took it and stuffed it into her drawer.

‘I'll burn it,' she said. ‘When Mum's out.'

‘It'll stink,' I said. She took the nugget of sugar pig from her drawer and gnawed at it.

‘It must be nearly tea time,' I said hopefully.

‘I don't know what Mum'll say,' Bronwyn said. ‘You look so different.'

I shrugged. ‘What shall we do now?' I asked.

‘Talk,' Bronwyn said. ‘My Moncrieff friends always wanted to talk. We used to talk for hours.'

‘About what? Anyway, where are your Moncrieff friends?' I asked meanly, because I was beginning not to believe in them.

‘After Daddy …'

‘I don't see what difference that makes.'

‘Oh don't you! That shows how much
you
know. I don't know why you're being so horrible
and
after I did your hair for you. I'm beginning to wish you hadn't come now. I
had
something to tell you.' She bent down and pulled up her socks. Her legs were purple and mottled.

‘What?'

‘I was going to tell you after tea.'

‘Why can't you tell me now?'

Bronwyn's face was losing its anxious look. She thought I wanted to know.

‘Tea's ready, girls,' Mrs Broom called up the stairs. ‘Wash your hands now.'

We stood in the bathroom waiting for the water flowing through the creaking pipes to warm a little. ‘
Wait
till you taste the gâteau,' Bronwyn said. ‘My dad had French blood you know. Garlic charm. That's why we have gâteau. A family tra-di-tion. But don't, don't you
dare
mention him.' She lowered her eyebrows fiercely at me.

I remembered what Mama had said about family skeletons and felt sorry for Bronwyn, even though I didn't like her much.

‘You won't will you?' I shook my head. ‘Anyway, we're both sort of the same, aren't we?' she said. ‘Sort of orphans. And your hair will soon grow back.'

‘
Sort
of orphans,' I agreed, but as I followed her downstairs, I knew that she was wrong. I was no orphan, and nor was she. We both had mothers. Mrs. Broom was a good mother, but when I saw her fussing over the table, faded and anxious in the apron, and then thought of Jacqueline with her cheekbones and her photography and her fine green ink, I knew which mother I preferred.

‘Jennifer?' Mrs Broom looked at me, puzzled. ‘You look as if … oh surely not …' She looked accusingly at Bronwyn. ‘Oh you haven't! You naughty girl!'

‘She wanted it. She asked me to,' Bronwyn wailed.

‘What a thing to do. Oh Bronwyn … and on Boxing Day of all days.'

I couldn't see what difference that made. ‘It's all right,' I said, ‘honestly. I like it. And Mama said I could have it cut.'

She stood looking at me, plucking anxiously at her apron. ‘It's
all right
,' I insisted.

She frowned at Bronwyn and shook her head. ‘You really are the limit. I don't know what to do with you. If your dad was here now …'

Bronwyn recoiled as if she had been hit. I shuffled my feet nervously. Mrs Broom's eyes went pink as if she was about to cry. ‘I suppose I'll have to ring your grandparents and explain … oh they'll wish they'd never let you come.' She began to sniff. ‘I've a good mind to make you go without …' She looked from the laden table to Bronwyn and back again. But she couldn't bear the thought of it all being wasted, I could see from her face, all the food and the scarlet serviettes and the crackers.

‘They haven't got a telephone,' Bronwyn reminded her.

‘It's all right, honestly,' I soothed. ‘It'll save Mama paying for a hairdresser.' I shifted my eyes to the table again. ‘It does look a lovely spread,' I said.

‘Yes.' Mrs Broom sniffed back her tears. ‘Well, we might as well enjoy it now I've gone to all the trouble.'

Bronwyn sat down. I watched her as we said our grace. There was a dark red flush on her face and neck and I thought she might cry too. It was the mention of her dad that had done it. But we pulled the crackers and put on our paper hats and read the silly jokes. They were the same crackers we'd had at home and I got the same joke:
Why did the lobster blush? Because it saw the salad dressing
. There were beautifully thick chicken-and-stuffing sandwiches and several different kinds of pickle: beetroot, red cabbage, large and small onions, gherkins and walnuts and a violently yellow piccalilli.

‘We always like our pickles at Christmas,' Mrs Broom said, cheering up. ‘It's a traditional craft you know, pickling, a way of preserving food for the winter.' I munched my way politely through a plateful until the vinegar wrinkled the inside of my cheeks. We compared our Christmases. I told them about Auntie May and the origami decorations and they told me about the cousins and their loud voices and the amount they ate.

Mrs Broom told me how much my help had been appreciated at the church bazaar. ‘You made quite a hit,' she said. ‘You'd be very welcome if you ever felt you wanted to …'

‘Oh no thank you,' I interrupted. She shook her head resignedly at me. ‘Oh well, never mind. If Jesus ever comes aknocking …'

Bronwyn choked on her sandwich. I couldn't look at her. I felt the giggle growing in the back of my throat like an awful swelling toad, and I frowned and kept my eyes on my plate thinking of possible tragedies until the amusement died. I didn't want to laugh at Mrs Broom. She was kind, good, a poor widow doing her best. I liked her better than I liked Bronwyn, and I refused to meet Bronwyn's eyes until the laugh had gone.

‘Time for the gâteau,' Bronwyn announced. ‘Shall I fetch it?'

‘No, I'll do it,' Mrs Broom said, getting up from the table. ‘More tea, Jenny? I'll make another pot.' As soon as she had turned her back, Bronwyn looked at me and knocked solemnly on the table and the toad leapt unexpectedly up and out of my mouth, a loud laugh, and an ugly one.

Mrs Broom looked round smiling, ready to be included in the joke. Bronwyn was sitting with her back to her mother and she crossed her eyes at me, while Mrs Broom looked expectant, the smile dying on her lips. And I hated myself but my nervousness made me giggle all the more at her watery anxious eyes and her little twitchy rabbit nose under the green paper crown. She turned her back again as the kettle boiled and I noticed that the label was sticking out of the back of her blouse collar and that her bra strap had slipped down over her shoulder and was visible through the thin stuff of her blouse.

Bronwyn crossed her eyes at me and knocked again and I was clutched by a terrible fear. My shoulders shook and my face contorted with hilarity. My face was like a gargoyle face, a rictus of hideous mirth. Tears came into my eyes and a pain in my belly and I had to leave the room and run up to the bathroom before I wet myself. I locked the bathroom door and leant against the smooth tiled wall, shuddering and shivering. My teeth chattered and a terrible vinegary taste filled my mouth and stung the back of my nose. I waited until the fit had passed – for it was like a fit, terrible paroxysms of the body, the conscious mind unwilling, unamused. I hated myself for hurting Mrs Broom's feelings, for being so terribly rude. And I hated Bronwyn too, for making me so cruel.

Eventually I went downstairs. The gâteau was on the table, a tall chocolate-and-cream confection topped with flaked almonds and sticky cherries.

‘Sorry,' I said to Mrs Broom, and I did not look at Bronwyn.

‘That's all right, dear.' She looked quite ordinary, as if nothing much had happened. I drank the tea and exclaimed over the lightness and creaminess of the gâteau and all the time there was a dullness deep inside me. Not a pain, more a kind of absence, as if something had been wrenched out of me.

Bronwyn ate three enormous slices of the gâteau. A rim of cream clung to the dark fluff on her upper lip.

‘Bronwyn tells me you're something of a poet,' Mrs Broom said. ‘I used to like poetry as a girl. We had to learn something off by heart when I was at school. What was it?' She screwed up her face with the effort of concentration. ‘Mind like a sieve …' I could feel Bronwyn looking at me again but I was full of dullness and I did not look back. The grey film had descended.

‘Deda deda deda deda the Lady of Shallott!' Mrs Broom said triumphantly. I took off my paper hat.

After tea Bronwyn washed the dishes and I dried them. When we'd finished, she looked at me slyly and said, ‘Come upstairs now, I've got something to tell you, remember.'

‘Oh, I thought we could all play cards,' Mrs Broom said. ‘Don't go upstairs into the cold just yet.'

‘It
is
cold up there,' I agreed, ignoring Bronwyn's meaningful looks.

Mrs Broom smiled at me. ‘Good girl. We could put a record on, some carols perhaps. Or are you fed up with carols, dear? What about a musical?
Carousel
. That's Bronwyn's daddy's favourite.'

‘Oh?' I said, carefully.

‘Let's go,' Bronwyn insisted.

‘Or
The King and I
? Or
West Side Story
? Roll on next Christmas,' Mrs Broom said, ‘then we'll be all back together again. Did Bronwyn say? Her daddy will be home again, God willing, by then.'

I looked at Bronwyn, but she stared fixedly at the floor. Mrs Broom ran a cloth round the sink and the taps. ‘That's that,' she said. ‘Thanks for helping, Jenny.' She took off her apron, the first time I had seen her without it. ‘Put a scuttle of coke on the fire, Bron, and switch the tree lights on. I'll just powder my nose, then I'll be with you.' She hurried upstairs.

Bronwyn and I remained in silence for a moment. Then she looked at me defiantly. ‘He's in prison,' she said. ‘He's not dead at all. All right?'

‘And I bet your mother
is
a cleaner.' She didn't answer. ‘A pack of lies,' I said, hearing Bob in my voice.

‘So what?'

‘What's the point?' I asked. She grimaced and shrugged. ‘Well what did he do?' I asked.

‘Fraud.'

‘Oh.' I almost felt sorry for her, standing there so awkward and embarrassed with her chest straining against the fabric of her childish dress, and her big blotchy legs.

‘I don't think I'll stay,' I said, looking away from her, feeling cruel, seeing my new shorn reflection in the dark glass of the kitchen window.

‘Why not?' Bronwyn said. ‘Can't you take a joke?'

‘Your hair does look rather nice you know,' Mrs Broom said, coming back into the kitchen. She had combed her hair and put a new-looking cardigan on.

‘I'm feeling poorly,' I said. ‘It's my tummy. I want to go home.'

‘Oh dear … I do hope it wasn't the chicken. Why not lie down, dear? What about an Alka-Seltzer?'

‘No really.'

‘Oh dear.' She wrung her hands. ‘Well we'll walk with you then, so I can explain. And explain about your hair.'

‘No really.'

‘But I can't let you walk alone. Not in the dark. Not on Boxing Day.'

‘Mama lets me walk in the dark. It's only seven o'clock. I like walking. I'll be perfectly all right. Honestly.'

‘Well. If you're sure,' she said dubiously. ‘Is everything all right? You girls haven't quarrelled?'

‘No,' I said.

‘Don't go,' Bronwyn said suddenly. She put on her most beseeching expression, but I wouldn't be moved.

She followed me to the door after I'd bidden her mother goodbye and thanked her for having me and accepted a soft slab of gâteau as a gift for Mama and Bob. ‘Don't you even want to know what I was saving to tell you?' she asked. I stepped outside into the sharp icy air. ‘I've started,' she hissed after me as I went off down the path.

I paused and turned. ‘Oh really? I started ages ago,' I lied, for I felt perfectly at liberty to lie to her now. ‘Cheerio,' and I went off, my bag over one shoulder and the squashy portion of gâteau wrapped in paper serviettes balanced on the palm of my other hand.

I felt I'd been tricked. ‘I told you
my
secret,' she'd said, but it hadn't been a secret at all, it had been a lie, a
huge
lie, almost impressive. ‘A whopper,' Bob would have called it. And she'd said she was my best friend and I'd told her about Jacqueline, stupidly. It was not Bronwyn but myself I felt angry with, for being gullible enough to let her trick me out of my own secret.

19

I walked slowly home. I was in no particular hurry. Here and there, where curtains had not been drawn I caught glimpses of the warm and glowing Boxing Days of strangers. There was a smoky smell and coloured lights dazzled. Someone was playing a piano, badly. It was the tune from my trinket box – ‘The Sugar Plum Fairy.' I quickened my pace. The air was cold in my lungs and issued from my mouth in long clouds illuminated by the street-lamps. My body was warm. My blood, which had become sluggish in Bronwyn's house, first in the coldness of her room and then in the stuffy warmth of the kitchen, began to flow quickly in my veins and I was invigorated. I started to trot and a little dog appeared at my heels and ran with me, its claws pittering on the frosty pavement. I stopped and patted it and then gave it the slice of gâteau which I had become fed up with carrying. The dog attacked the cream mess as ferociously as if it had been alive and I ran off, faster now, my bag bumping against my hip, me heart bumping in my chest, until I reached home.