Dad hands me a fifty-dollar note to cover the taxi fare, changes his mind, makes it a twenty and a ten, and I feel even better. Stingy bastard.
A cab pulls up, and now Dad’s last concern is over. ‘Well, Jonathan. Well, Gemma.’ He opens the car door and almost pushes us in. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be back again before Christmas. Your presents will have to wait until the New Year . . .’
(After all, we wouldn’t want to waste money on postage, would we? It doesn’t worry me, but I know Murgatroyd is always disappointed if she doesn’t get something on The Day.)
‘Bye, Dad.’
‘Bye bye, Daddy.’
But he is off. And so are we.
‘Just drop us at the quay, please,’ I tell the driver.
Gemma’s eyes sparkle. She is well and truly back now from the wherever it is that she disappears to. ‘Where’re we going, Jo?’
‘Lunch,’ I tell her.
‘But where?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Oh Jo, go on . . .’
We pull up now and the little Fishface eyes are goggling through their aquarium glass as they take in where we are. ‘Oh Jo! We’re not! We’re not truly, are we? Are we?’
‘Are we what?’ I tease.
‘Going to the – you know – the Revolting Restaurant!’ she explodes with joy.
It’s really revolving, of course, and she knows it, but once upon a time in the Good Old Days when Genghis Khan was still just your common or garden family fascist and not the High Panjandrum of Them All, we went on an outing – Dad, Mum and the two kids – to this restaurant that revolves as you eat. Little Gem-baby (she would’ve been about four at the time) called it revolting instead of revolving, and we all laughed (our family
laughed
, I can distinctly remember it) and so she said it again and we laughed again, and she said it again and we . . . Well, to tell you the truth Daddy got sick of it by the third go and made his Baby Bunting cry, but it was good while it lasted, and ever since then Sis has always begged please couldn’t we go to the Revolting Restaurant instead of the Royal Sydney Golf Club Dining Room? Daddy? Just once?
I tell you, just this once I hope and pray that Daddy takes his guest to the Royal Sydney, and not to some little restaurant that Lulu happens to know. At the Royal Sydney, see, he’s a member, so he just tabs it up on his account.
Of course he will, I reassure myself. He’s as reliable as Mussolini’s train timetable. Then with any luck it’ll be off to her place for a quick root before he catches a taxi (he uses Cabcharge vouchers, so that’s OK) to the airport in time to board the commuter special to New York.
All in all, I congratulate myself as the lift arrives at the zillionth floor and we exit into the restaurant foyer . . .
I drape my arm across the school badge on my blazer pocket, pull myself up to my full height.
‘Monsieur? Mademoiselle?’
‘A table for two,’ I tell the waiter. ‘By the window if possible. Mademoiselle likes to enjoy the view.’
‘But of course, Monsieur.’
The place is three-quarters empty. They’d be mad to quibble at a couple of customers, even if the monsieur does look a bit deformed with his arm across his chest and the mademoiselle is dancing for joy through the empty tables.
We are seated, and given the menus. The wine list, sir? No worries. I take my coat off.
All in all, I congratulate myself again as I scan the list (French champagne? Why not? It’s a special occasion after all. Only a half bottle, though. Don’t want to get like Ma), with any luck he’ll be in New York tomorrow morning (or last night or whatever time it’ll be when he arrives) before he realises what he’s lost.
‘Jo, how are you going to pay?’ Sis is nearly exploding with curiosity. ‘Did Daddy give you some money?’
‘He certainly did.’
I go like James Bond or something and open my blazer, which hangs from my chair, and let her see the flash of dull gold which I transferred from our father’s inside pocket into mine.
‘Oh Jo! Don’t you feel guilty?’
‘Gemmles, it’s not
stealing
,’ I explain carefully to her. (I don’t want the kid to get the idea that you can just go and take people’s things.) ‘It’s like when we were with Mum, remember? And she wasn’t able to feed us, and I used to take money from her purse and buy us a pizza. Dad wasn’t able to feed us today, and if we went back to school now, we’d have missed boarders’ lunch. So I just helped him do his duty. It’s the
law
, Bub. Fathers
have
to feed their children.’
Gemma isn’t as dumb as some people think. Once she gets the hang of the situation, she reads the menu with enthusiasm.
‘Do we just have to have an entrée and a main course, or a main course and a dessert, or can we have . . . ?’
‘Anything you like, Princess,’ I tell her.
In the end, she decides to skip the middle, and settles for a dozen oysters kilpatrick followed by strawberry chantilly with cream and ice-cream, and a glass of Coke.
‘Just half a dozen oysters natural for me,’ I tell the waiter, ‘and for my main course, the grilled gemfish.’ I tease.
Sis splutters. ‘Cannibal!’
‘Make that the lobster thermidor, with a double serve of garlic bread, chocolate mudcake for dessert, and a half bottle of . . .’ I change my mind again, remembering how boring it is for little kids when people drink, ‘I mean a large bottle of Coke. In an ice bucket, if we may.’
‘Of course, Monsieur.’
I could really take to this sort of thing, I think, as the city down below us slowly shifts and shifts again, like the gentle collapse of a Delaunay. But one thought leads to another, and after a while I think of a worry.
‘You know when you go away, Sis . . .’
‘In the holidays? To Auntie Roo’s?’
‘No –
away
. Like you did inside the picture.’
She gives me a guilty look. Dad always yells at her for day-dreaming.
‘It’s OK,’ I start to reassure her.
‘You did too!’ she accuses.
I sure did. As she says it, the feeling comes back, of the space inside. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there again. And actually, I’m not sure that I want to. But this one time, listening to Mondrian has been enough to let me go beyond the prison bars. And if you’ve escaped once, I reckon, you probably become like Zorro or the Scarlet Pimpernel or something: you’re always able to break free, one way or another.
But there’s still this worry . . .
‘You don’t go too far, do you?’ That’s all I want to know. I have a nightmare suddenly, in which I am searching through the archways, trying to find my little gemfish as she flicks away into the wide white yonder . . .
‘Oh no,’ she tells me earnestly. ‘I used to nearly, when I was little, and then after Mum went away, I was going to go for good. But I didn’t want to miss you. And then, I dunno. I learnt to do it like swimming, just to the first line of breakers and keep watching the flags on the shore, like you showed me. I don’t do it much, you know. Just in class sometimes, when the arithmetic goes all jangly on the board. And when Daddy’s – you know.’
‘I know.’
We toast each other:
‘Here’s to us.’
‘Here’s to us, too.’
‘Here’s to us two, too.’
When the bill comes, I go like the ads: ‘You take American Express?’
‘But of course, Monsieur.’
I sign the signature with a flourish. Add in a generous sum for a tip.
‘Thank
you
, Monsieur.’
‘Any time,’ I lie.
‘What now?’ Sis urges as we hit the streets. ‘How about we catch a ferry to the zoo? Or . . .’
I explain that we have no cash. ‘A liquidity problem, you might say.’
Bubba’s face falls. ‘So it’s back to school.’
‘Well . . . as long as we stick to places where they take plastic, we could go Christmas shopping first.’
Gem lights up again. ‘After all, he
owes
us prezzies. That’s the law.’
‘I could get you a globe of the world,’ I suggest.
‘And I could get you a wheelbarrow.’
‘A wheelbarrow?’
‘
You
know,’ my Gemini-twin prompts, ‘to fill with surprises.’
On Gramma’s bedside table, among the pills and medicines, the metho and tissues and cuttings from the obituary notices, there was a framed motto: ‘My Father’s house has many mansions.’ A few years ago, when Liv had first met Gramma, it used to puzzle her: how could lots of mansions fit inside the one house? It was like saying that a stack of beer cartons could be inside a shoebox. Or that a whole lot of girls could be inside Liv. Now, however, Liv knew exactly how it could happen. For within the ruins of the old blast furnace, Liv had mansions for all moods and all seasons.
As she approached it now, on this nothing-day when she was in the process of turning fourteen, its solid power reached out to her as it had the very first time she’d seen it.
An autumn afternoon. Liv is ten. Wearing an itchy pink wool dress (pink!) that Mum has specially bought her. (‘You can be bridesmaid!’ As if that’d reconcile her.) It is too tight. Already at ten Liv is a size 14, but since the Chinese smorgasbord after the registry office the pink dress pulls across her tum.
They drive – well, he drives, Uncle Bruce, that’s what Mum says she has to call him – up the highway to the top of the Blue Mountains, then turn off to the right. (‘Might as well take the scenic route,’ he says. ‘I told Ma we wouldn’t be back till four.’) Now the road goes through gum trees for a while, then zigzags up a steep hill and Liv feels sick. He stops at the top and they get out into a scrubby mess of saplings and charred stubble. The wind bites through the pink dress.
‘Thar she blows!’ he says.
‘Oh darl!’ Mum says first to him. ‘Oh darl!’ she says again to Liv. ‘Isn’t it going to be exciting, sweetheart, living in the country!’
Liv looks down into a town that huddles in the valley like a trapped beast. Roofs and roofs and roofs, a web of railway lines, mounds of black coal, and above it all a thick dark smear of smoke.
Coming in through the smell of coal fires, Liv feels the red sweet and sour sauce rising to her throat. What’ll they be like, her new family? Four boys. (‘Four brothers!’ Mum had said. ‘Won’t that be exciting?’) Liv hates boys. Boys always tease her, call her Fatso. And a new school. Liv hates school. Kids always tease her, call her Fatso. She hates him too, and hates this town, hates Mum for making her live here . . . and then she sees it.
A big brick tower, that rises above the surrounding wasteland. It has arched windows, the kind princesses lean out of, but it’s not all soft and fanciful like fairytale pictures. Nor is it haunted-looking, despite the fact that the roof is missing and the brickwork of the walls is tumbledown and gappy in parts. It is, rather, reassuring – like an elephant, or a cathedral.
When Liv sees it, she suddenly feels as if she has a friend in town.
After that, the rest of this first day is almost bearable.
They park in the street just across from the tower, and four boys (four
brothers
, Mum says) pour out from a weatherboard cottage. (‘This is Dougie. Dannie. Johnno. And Bruz.’) Inside, in the front bedroom, a skinny old witch inspects her. (‘Say hello to Gramma!’) Then his mates arrive, with a few slabs of beer and a couple of wives. (‘Is that the daughter?’ she hears the women whisper over a plate of Saos. ‘Big sort of girl, isn’t she?’ ‘She’ll wanta be, to stand up to Gordo.’)
Gordo? Oh, Uncle Bruce. Bruce Gordon. Mum is Mrs Gordon now, but I told her I wanted to stay Doyle.
‘What’s your name again, love?’
‘Olivia Doyle.’
‘O-livia!’ Dougie starts, doing the ‘O’ in an English voice.
‘Oh Livia!’ Dannie chimes in.
‘Oh Livia oh Livia oh Livia!’ Johnno and Bruz join the act.
‘We call her Liv for short,’ Mum apologises.
‘
We
call her Fatso for fat,’ Dougie mutters and the brothers collapse together in a scrum of laughter.
Liv looks across to the tower of her friend.
As Liv approached now, through the wasteland, past the new sign threatening ‘AUCTION INDUSTRIAL LOTS’ and the not-so-new sign promising ‘BICENTENNIAL REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT’ she was deciding: where today? For on this nothing-day, the season was unclear: not summer, not winter, not really even spring. It kept changing, as she herself had, back in her room a few minutes ago. Black tracksuit and her khaki army greatcoat; khaki army shorts and her black size XXL T-shirt; or her mid-season outfit of splodged jungle greens with matching top and bottom? She’d decided on the last little number eventually: felt in need of camouflage today. Which hadn’t of course helped her escape unnoticed.
‘Where you off to, girl?’ Old Gimlet-Eyes had screeched through the flyscreen that covered the window between her bedroom and the front sleep-out.
‘Over the blast furnace, Gramma.’
‘Have you done your chores?’
‘Yeah, Gramma.’
‘Your mother know?’
‘Yeah, Gramma.’
‘You’ll fall down one of them holes over there one of these days, girl, and that’ll be the finish of you.’
‘Yeah, Gramma.’
It was true – the site was riddled with holes. Huge gaping ones and thin slitty ones, and in one place the land fell down a kind of cliff into a large stagnant pond. There were tunnels too, that might fall in, and lots of broken bricks to lose your footing on, and twisted pieces of rusty tin to give you tetanus. The boys were forbidden to go there – last time they had, Gordo had taken off his belt – so it was the one place where Liv could get away from them. And apart from the odd tourist who’d drive in, take one look, and drive off again, no one else ever went there either. It was Liv’s place.
So, where today? Her mood, like the weather, was uncertain. Not quite in need of the Cry Cave, where she could huddle inside the earth, but not cheerful enough for Hilltop Grove, where fruit trees grew wild and the breeze blew fresh on your face. And not the Summer House, and not the Winter Quarters. Not the Dwarf Tunnels and not the Dragon Lair. Not the Chicken Coop and not the Elvey Dell and not, definitely not, Snake Lake.
In the end, it was the Tower that she chose, for she was feeling somewhat princessy despite the need of a fairy godmother this morning.