Digging to Australia (20 page)

I stood up and left the church as quickly as I could. The sky was pale and lemony. I saw that the path was scattered, as I'd guessed, with the Christmas decorations I'd given Johnny, some smashed, some rolled into the grass. I picked up a silver bauble and put it in my pocket. I breathed in the air, sharp enough to sting my lungs, but wonderfully thin and clean.

Once I was clear of the church I walked slowly home. It was too early to arrive back from Bronwyn's but I wanted to be at home. I badly wanted to wash. My appetite had gone. I wanted to be somewhere where I felt safe, where I understood what was going on. An image of Johnny came sharply into my mind, his angry face, his bristles glittering sharply, his eyes pale and blank. I thought of the bones. I kept hearing Mama's voice in my head, in time with my footsteps, saying: skeletons, skeletons, skeletons. But it wasn't Bronwyn at all who had the skeleton, that seemed a kind of unfunny joke now. It wasn't Bronwyn but Johnny.

When I reached the corner of my road I stopped. Outside the house was a police car. I walked nearer to be sure, and I could see through the net curtains dark silhouettes, taller than Mama and Bob. I turned away and walked back round the corner, shivering, dithering, my mind in turmoil. I was tempted to run – but where? I couldn't go back to the church, not now I'd seen the bones, not now I'd felt the danger. I had no money, my thumb hurt, my bladder was full to bursting. Eventually I took a deep breath, turned on my heel and walked back, straight through the gate and into the house.

20

‘Jennifer!' Mania's voice was a high-pitched wail, and she grasped me to her in a way she hadn't done for years, or perhaps had never done. ‘Where on earth … oh thank God … we've been so … and the police …'

A policeman with a grim face emerged from the sitting room. ‘So, the wanderer returns,' he said. Bob's face glowered from behind the policeman's shoulder. A policewoman shook her head at me. ‘If you youngsters knew the grief you caused … If she was mine she'd be straight across my knee,' the policeman said to Bob.

‘We don't know what …' began Mama in my defence, loosening me from her clutch.

‘I need the toilet,' I blurted, my face burning, on the edge of tears. I dashed up the stairs and locked the bathroom door behind me. I used the toilet and washed my face and hands and unwrapped the scarf from my hair, which looked terrible. I looked despairingly at my reflection. And then I brushed my teeth over and over, spitting pools of froth into the sink to try and rid myself of the horror and the shock of the bones and the lies and the police and the frightening haggard look on Mama's face.

‘Jennifer!' Mama called eventually. ‘Come back down here, please.' I had no choice now. I had delivered myself back into their hands. There had been a moment when I could have run, but I hadn't the nerve.

I said that I'd been walking all night. They didn't believe me, but once they'd ascertained that I'd been in no danger, the policeman gave me a lecture about responsibility and danger and all at the taxpayer's expense, and then left. All the time they were talking Mama stared aghast at my hair and Bob stared fixedly at the carpet. When they had gone we all stood motionless in the hall, like a photograph of a scene from a play, Bob with his hand still on the door handle, and listened to the police car driving away. And then we continued to stand in the silence as if no one knew what the next move was, and the time stretched like a rubber band and I was seized by a terrible urge to laugh just to snap the tension – but that reminded me of Bronwyn's mother and the label of her blouse sticking up against her frail neck and I began to sob instead. And that was probably the best thing I could have done. Bob pulled his warm and crumpled horsey handkerchief out of his pocket and mumbled something and shuffled off, closing the sitting-room door behind him.

Mama took me into the kitchen and made me a cup of cocoa while she explained that Mrs Broom had been worried about letting me walk home alone and that she and Bronwyn had come round before bedtime to make sure I'd arrived safely. And of course, I hadn't, so they had been up all night, worried half out of their minds, and if anything
had
happened to me … and Mrs Broom was worried sick and blamed herself entirely. And all the time Mama was balanced between anger and relief, her voice shaking and coming to the point of breaking over and over again so that she had to keep breathing in deep brave breaths just to keep going.

‘And where on earth were you?' she finished, banging my cup of cocoa down in front of me so that it slopped over into the saucer.

‘Nowhere,' I said.

She reached out her hand as if to slap me and withdrew it again. ‘Nowhere indeed! I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Nowhere indeed!'

‘Just walking about.'

‘All night!'

‘I argued with Bronwyn.'

‘Then why didn't you come home?'

‘Don't know.'

‘Can you
imagine
what was going through our heads? Can you? Look at this.' She held out the local paper, folded open at a page which showed the blurry face of a girl, her hair whipped about by the wind, smiling and squinting at the camera. The girl held a candy floss. Mama's hand shook so much that the paper rattled. She put it on the table in front of me. ‘Another local girl missing,' she read, ‘police no further with their enquiries … appeals to the public … Jennifer, can't you
see
how serious? What danger?' She sat down heavily as if her legs had buckled beneath her, and hid her face in her hands. I thought she would cry, but she spoke slowly through her fingers in an even muffled voice. ‘I want you to tell me where you were.'

‘I told you. Nowhere.'

The sticky bones came into my mind and mad Johnny with his wings. But safe in the kitchen, even with the grainy mysterious face of the disappeared girl in front of me, I couldn't believe that Johnny was a killer. He'd never harmed me, after all, and he'd had the chance. ‘I was just walking about. I even walked past the house.'

‘Why didn't you come in.
Why
didn't you?'

‘I don't know. I'm sorry.'

Mama raised her flushed face from her hands and looked at me again. ‘And your hair! Mrs Broom told us about your hair. What a thing to do! It was so lovely. Of course, we'll have to go to the hairdresser's and get it tidied up. But it's not the last you've heard from Bob on the subject. Oh Jennifer, didn't you think about us at all? About how worried we'd be? Half out of our minds we've been … and Mrs Broom too.'

‘I didn't know you'd know,' I said lamely.

‘And what have you done to your thumb?' she said, noticing the bloodied handkerchief.

‘Just cut it,' I said. ‘It probably needs a wash.'

‘Cut it how?'

‘Don't know.'

‘What do you mean, “don't know”!'

‘Just cut it on a bit of glass.'

‘What bit of glass? Where? How?'

‘Don't know.'

Mama jutted out her chin and breathed fiercely, her eyes raised to heaven in exasperation. She turned angrily to get the first-aid box out of a drawer. ‘I've never been so tempted to give you a good hiding,' she said. ‘You've ruined Christmas, you realise that?' She ran hot water into a bowl and tipped some TCP into it. The antiseptic smell rose in a steamy cloud. I kept my eyes averted while she unwrapped my thumb and washed and dressed it more roughly, I thought, than was absolutely necessary. ‘You'll have a scar,' she said. ‘And serve you right. “Don't know,” indeed! I'll give you “don't know.”' She was over the worst of the shock now and was taking it out on me with this grumbling and scolding that sounded like someone else's parent, not like herself at all. She wasn't good at it. I went faint when I saw the blood in the basin, and ended up in bed, which was the best place by far until Mama and Bob had simmered down.

I slept for an hour or so, stretching my toes luxuriously between the clean winceyette sheets, but the day was bright, and the curtains not thick enough to prevent the sunshine from disturbing me. It was strange to be in bed, listening to the birds and the passing cars and the household sounds downstairs, and yet not ill. I felt well and strong. I felt as if some balance had been redressed and that now I could start again. I had not meant to hurt and worry Mama and Bob, just as they had not meant to hurt and worry me – but we had all done it, just the same. They had deceived me for thirteen years, and I still smarted at Mama's insensitivity. There was no cruelty involved, all it was was stupidity, and although I could forgive most things, I could not quite forgive that. Still, I had, inadvertently, paid her back, and that would have to do.

I stretched again and wriggled my toes. The radiator creaked its comforting warmth into the room and the curtain stirred in the breeze from the open window behind it. I remembered being ill in bed a long time before, ill and feverish, and I remembered Mama reading to me from
Alice in Wonderland
. I climbed out of bed and found the book and snuggled back between the sheets to read about Alice, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare squabbling about the words.

‘
Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on
.

‘
I do,' Alice hastily replied; ‘at least – at least, I mean what I say –that's the same thing, you know
.'

‘
Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. ‘Why you might just as well say that “I eat what I see” is the same thing as “I see what I eat”!
'

‘
You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, ‘that “I like what I get” is the same thing as “I get what I like”!
'

I laughed at that and laid the book down again. I closed my eyes and saw Johnny in a tall hat, bent, with a feather drooping from the brim. I saw him in the dim church, a tea-cup held to his lips, his little finger elegantly crooked, playing with words, talking his sensible nonsense. I wondered whether he was back yet, and whether he'd read my poem. I might never know what he thought of it now, because I might never go back. Not that I thought he was the killer. The bones in the church were old. They were simply old bones in an old cemetery – nothing sinister. They were nothing to do with Johnny. But Mama's fears had penetrated me at last. Someone was the murderer after all, and I shouldn't be putting myself in danger again, going to dark places alone. I was lucky to have got away with it. I had been like bait on a hook, or fruit arranged in a bowl, asking to be taken. And it couldn't have been Johnny, even if the body had been new. Why would he go off and leave it there like that, for anyone to see? A murderer would be more careful.

I got out of bed again and found paper and a pen. I arranged myself against the pillow, with Jacqueline's camera beside me and began to write her a letter. I found it difficult to write to someone I had never met. I didn't know whether she would ever get the letter – that depended on whether I could find out where she was – and that made it easier to write. I could be freer in what I said. As if, more as if, I was writing to myself. I wrote about how I tried to dig to Australia, and about the playground and the church, about Johnny and his wings and about Bronwyn and the bones. It took me ages to write. I copied out my poem for her and told her that I planned to be a poet when I grew up. Although even as I wrote that I wasn't so sure. I told her about my hair. I asked her to send me a photograph. I sent her all my love.

Mama brought me up some lunch on a tray. She sat on the edge of my bed for a moment, looking at me wistfully. Then she picked up
Alice in Wonderland
and smiled. I saw the gap where she was missing a tooth.

‘What are we going to do with you?' she asked, and I knew I was half forgiven.

‘Mama,' I began. ‘I'd like to send a letter to Jacqueline.'

‘Oh.' She put her hands together as if in prayer and looked down at her fingertips, compressing her lips.

‘Will you give me her address?'

‘I don't know it.'

‘I don't believe you.' We looked at each other and she did her sigh and she looked terribly tired and worn, an old thing about to become unravelled.

‘Don't you think I'd like to get in touch with her if I could?' she asked quietly. ‘She is my child. Sometimes I can't believe that she can have gone like that. Just gone and left you. Us. I used to think she'd be back. My own flesh and blood. So little feeling.'

I went cold. I pulled the blankets up over my chest. The curtain shivered. ‘What do you mean? You made her go.'

‘What nonsense.'

‘You made her go because of the shame. Because I'm illegitimate.'

Mama gave a humourless laugh. ‘Shame? Whose shame? Can you imagine Bob being ashamed? Or me?'

I closed my mind quickly, a curtain whisked across before I saw too much. ‘I don't believe you.'

Mama sighed. ‘Well, of course, that's up to you.'

‘Why would she?'

‘She had her own life to live …'

‘But why would she lie about it? Anyway, I don't believe you.'

‘We all have our own version of the truth.'

I put my head back and looked at the ceiling. It was papered in nubbly paper and painted the palest pink. I remembered Bob painting it. I remembered the splashes of paint on his shoulders and back.

‘She had her life to be getting on with,' Mama said quietly. ‘She wanted you adopted. We persuaded her to let us keep you, but her condition was that she would never come back. Not see you. Not until she felt ready. She said we could tell you when you were thirteen, if she hadn't been in touch by then.'

‘Oh,' I said. That wasn't how it was, not how it was supposed to have been. That wasn't it.

‘Anyway,' Mama continued. ‘There's been nothing until now. And now … a Christmas present for you. No address nor any message. But an Australian postmark.'