Nine Days (13 page)

On the footpath on the other side of the road, an older woman is walking a small white dog. She steps off the footpath as a boy passes on a bicycle. He’s very late, out riding his bike alone. Probably he lives close, probably his parents know where he is. Everyone is going about their lives oblivious to what’s happening to me. I don’t know if I can bear to disappoint my father. And I can’t think about the money it takes to raise a child, money I don’t have. I think of this house, my parents and their home, the age they are now, all they’ve given me. I would
have to move back to my old room with a baby. I don’t think I can do that to either of us.

‘Right. Shutting up. I thought you’d appreciate some advice. I’m trained, you know. I’m a professional.’

‘I do appreciate it.’

‘Because I don’t need to do this. I’ve got better things to do than sit in a car outside Uncle Frank’s place.’

‘What things, exactly? What have I taken you away from?’

She bites her bottom lip. ‘Well. Nothing right this second. But I could have had something.’

‘I know that, Stanzi. Of course.’

‘I have a busy life. I don’t sit home every night waiting for you to come around and tell me you’re pregnant. Next Thursday night I’m going to a seminar. Ergonomic office design. I’m almost sure my chair’s too low.’

‘I appreciate that you’re here with me.’

‘I’m not out every night bonking some no-talent hippy guitarist, that’s for sure.’

‘He’s a bassist.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Right. We’re going in.’

No one answers when we ring the bell, so Stanzi calls and knocks on the door. Finally we hear Uncle Frank yell
coming, coming,
then it takes a while for him to look through the peephole and undo all the locks and then the security door.

‘What’s wrong?’ He opens the door an inch. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’ Stanzi gives me a sharp look that says
see the trouble you’ve caused?
‘Nothing’s wrong.’

‘Kip! Annabel! The girls are here! There must be some emergency!’

‘An emergency!’ We hear Dad yell from the lounge room. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘No emergency, Uncle Frank,’ says Stanzi. ‘We thought we’d make it a family affair.’

When we finally gain admittance through Uncle Frank’s wall of fluster, we follow him down the hall to the lounge. Uncle Frank doesn’t own a couch or a lounge chair. Along one wall facing the TV are four cherry-red recliners that take up the whole space, the kind where the footrest swings up when you pull a lever on the side. Why he has four, I have no idea. Perhaps waiting for a wife and kids who never came. Along another wall he has two purple bean bags in a puddle. Mum and Dad are sitting in a recliner each, still wearing their coats and scarves because Uncle Frank believes heating should be saved for special occasions. Their legs are swung up so they are V-shaped, balancing on their bottoms with the soles of their feet in the air like
paripurna navasana.
In their angled laps, they each have a teacup. We both bend down to kiss Dad.

‘What’s wrong?’ says Mum. She struggles to sit up straighter without spilling her tea. ‘What is it?’

‘Can’t we drop around and see Uncle Frank?’ says Stanzi. ‘We’re being good nieces.’

‘They’re good nieces, Annabel,’ says Dad. ‘They’re dropping in to say hello.’

‘Dropping in unexpected! That’s just like you two. The blokes at Rotary were almost grandfathers by the time you two arrived. I kept saying to your father, no babies yet? And then
you two arrived after we’d all given up. Let me look at you both! More beautiful every day. Take after your mother. We’ve eaten. I don’t have any more. I didn’t know you were coming. Where’s my kiss?’

We both kiss Uncle Frank. He’s fragile with fine, pale skin and he smells of potato peel. ‘We don’t need anything,’ says Stanzi.

‘Besides, I cooked a roast lamb. This one won’t eat lamb. Free the cows! Save the whales! I’m kidding. You’re a good girl to care about things like that. Your father must have known you’d be an animal lover, from when you were born.’

‘Francis,’ says Dad.

‘And she’s beautiful. What a beautiful girl.’ He pinches my cheek, like we’re in a fairy tale.

‘She is beautiful,’ says Stanzi.

‘And you! So clever. An apprentice headshrinker. Why don’t you girls come around more often? I haven’t seen you since our birthday. I’m too old. I’ll be dead soon. Me, I love a lamb roast. If I have to die, why does some useless sheep get to live? Tell me that. I’d eat steak every day if it didn’t get stuck in my dentures. Free advice. Always look after your teeth. Brush them. Floss them. I have some cream biscuits. That’s it. Take it or leave it.’

‘Cream biscuits. Yum,’ says Stanzi.

‘Cream biscuit, Annabel? Kip? They’re the expensive ones, I can’t remember the brand.’

Stanzi gives me a look that says
biscuits, of course.
Mum says, ‘Biscuits! Lovely,’ and Dad nods. Dad and Uncle Frank won’t eat cake, won’t even have it for their birthday: Mum uses
chocolate icing to mortar together layers of shortbread then writes
Happy Birthday
in Smarties on the top.

Uncle Frank keeps talking as he shuffles to the kitchen. ‘If you had called this morning I could have got some Kingstons. It’s a waste when it’s just me. Go on, sit, sit.’ He means the beanbags. The recliners are for the grownups. The beanbags are for the kids. That’s us.

‘What is it, really?’ whispers Mum.

Stanzi stares at the floor for a moment. ‘Just drink your tea.’ She lifts up one of the bean bags with two fingers. ‘This looks like a enormous purple scrotum,’ she says.

She drops the bean bag, folds one knee, then the other. When she reaches the floor she nestles in it with her arms around her knees. She’s still in her work suit. She couldn’t be more uncomfortable if she was in
padmasana
on a bed of nails.

‘Charlotte? How’s Craig?’ says Mum.

‘Well, apparently. With more get up and go than I would have imagined,’ says Stanzi.

‘Have you two split up? Is that why you’re here, Charlotte? What is it?’

Stanzi says nothing. Dad says nothing.

‘Well?’

‘I need some fresh air,’ I say.

I walk back along the hall, undo all the locks and step outside. I know this house. We played here often when we were very small. The front patio is fifties terrazzo, always cold regardless of the weather but quite lairy for Uncle Frank, whose love for concrete is everywhere. I remember thinking terrazzo was the ultimate evidence of the beauty of the
natural world, this stone inlaid with sparkling chips of every colour. Stanzi laughed and told me it was man-made and this made me even happier. Humans can make something beautiful and useful from tiny things that would be inconsequential by themselves.

Mum doesn’t like this house but Dad does. I think Dad would prefer to live near here, closer to where he grew up. Instead he sold his half to Uncle Frank and bought our house for Mum. Family house, family suburb, family man. Stanzi and I had a beautiful childhood. We were at the centre of both their lives. What they must have sacrificed, I am only now realising.

I hear someone approaching—probably Uncle Frank to rebolt all the doors—so I walk the narrow side path that separates the house from the lane. In the backyard, I look up. The shop across the lane is much bigger, more substantial, brick with a tiled roof. It looms over this little weatherboard house. Someone lives on the upper storey: in one window I can see curtains and a light. I wonder what it would be like to live above your own business, looking down on the little houses nestled in your shadow.

Some parts of the backyard have escaped the cement. There’s a vegetable patch and a shed and a little way inside the fence near the corner is a huge lilly pilly. It towers over the yard and even stretches across the corner of the lane. The cement under the branches is a carpet of squashed purple fruit. I run my hands around the tree; the bark is rough on my palms and they tingle. My nose bristles from the cold. I sit on the bed of earth near the trunk. I cannot delay now,
not one more second. I am being consumed and the decision must be made. I have no incense, no oils, no candles, but soon I need to go in and speak to my parents. I cannot wait.

I rub my hands together, reach around my neck to unfasten the pendant and warm it in my hands. It is perfect, purple and gold with sharp edges, the right thing to make this decision because it is part of my family. My mother gave it to me and my father gave it to her. It is my connection with all those who have gone before me.

The trough is rough against my back. The lower branches have tilted down and I feel enclosed by nature. I lift my shirt and pull down the band of my skirt a little so that my stomach is bared. I say the question over and over: should I keep the baby?

Now it is no longer my problem. I have offered it up to Gaia. The pendant will circle clockwise for yes, anti-clockwise for no. I close my eyes and raise my hand. The pendant begins to move.

CRANSTON IS PRETENDING to sleep. The old mansion is dark and spooky and the only light in the bedchamber comes from the full moon that floods in through the big glass windows facing the moor. Cranston examines the surrounds with his experienced and brilliant eyes. They suspect him, he knows. That is why they’ve set a guard to sleep in the next bed, not for his own protection as they said last night. The guard is one of the assorted nameless goons that slink around masquerading as servants. Yet there is no choice. It must be tonight. Cranston may not get another opportunity to search the mansion.

Silence is of the extreme essence. If his country’s enemies were to find him wandering about like he owns the place,
looking for the top-secret room that contains the top secret stolen uranium, they would know he is not the debonair playboy adventurer he pretends to be. A chance presents itself, forthwith. The guard is a stupid, weak-willed buffoon who has failed in his duty and fallen asleep while on watch. Cranston looks at the guard, at his gormless boofy head. He lacks even the rudimentary intelligence required of a valet. Who knows what hideous crimes this oaf has committed? What violence he is capable of? Yet Cranston must seize this moment. He must move with no more sound than the wind.

He removes the bedclothes: first the blanket, then the sheet. He sits up, silently. He slides his feet into his slippers.

Wait! Is that the guard stirring?

‘Francis if you get out of bed again so help me I’ll brain you,’ says the guard, who is clearly a drongo of the first order.

But Lamont Cranston will not be caught so easily.

‘Righto. I’ll piss right here in the bed, shall I? And tell Ma it was your idea?’ Cranston replies, devastatingly outwitting his inferior foe. The thickheaded guard has his eyes closed and cannot see Cranston smile in victory.

‘Jesus Mary and Joseph,’ says the guard, adding blasphemy to his long list of character flaws. ‘Your bladder must have been made in Japan.’

The guard could not be more wrong. Cranston’s bladder is as good as cast-iron, the result of his superior willpower and years of training in the mysterious ways of the Far East. The guard suspects nothing. He rolls over to face the wall and Cranston escapes the bedroom and closes the door softly behind him! He is free! Serves them right. Everyone in the
world should know by now—THE SHADOW CANNOT BE DEFEATED!

The huge stone corridor is pitch black and lit only by old-fashioned torches ablaze in holders attached to the wall. Cranston inches his way along, soundlessly yet manfully, on his tippy toes. He moves along the wall, avoiding the floorboard that creaks third from the end.

Then I see it. The kitchen. The cakes.

The cakes have been coming for three days, ever since the funeral. On the drainer and in the cupboard and even on top of the ice box. Pound cake with butter, jam roly-poly, cinnamon tea cake, all wrapped in wax paper. We could have cake for breakfast, dinner and tea for the rest of the year. Two weeks ago this would’ve been heaven.

The cakes are from friends and neighbours and people from the church and mothers from school. One thing I’ve learned about funerals is this: even if you’re not a relative, you still have to go, you have no choice in the matter, but you don’t have to say anything except
a terrible thing
, over and over, as long as you shake your head and look at the ground and send over a cake. I’ve already got a sultana and date fruit cake with lemon icing in my bag for school today. In case anyone tries to talk about Dad and I can’t think of what to say.

At the head of the kitchen table is his chair. It looks the same as the others but it’s his. Was his. I run my hand along the wood, the square corner, down the slats at the back. I
pull the chair out. I touch the seat, scratch my nails along the padded bit. It’s brown roses like the lounge. This is where he sat, every single night. When we were little, me and Kip’d sit under the table. It was our fort. He’d sit down and say to Ma,
where the devil are those boys?
We could only see up to his knee; his shin was about our size. His socks were thick and baggy—boots left at the front door, Ma insists. We’d take it in turns to poke his ankles. Soft at first, then harder.
Jean we got mice under this table,
he’d say.
Shoo, mice.
Then he’d give a little kick and we’d scramble out of range until our giggling gave us away and he’d haul us out.
Jean this is the funniest looking pair of mice I ever saw! I’ll just pop them over the back fence.
He could carry both of us, one squirming under each arm, legs kicking. When we were small.

I’m nearly thirteen and there’s no one left in the world big enough to carry me under one arm. I crawl between the chairs and sit there hugging my knees and the underside of the tabletop hits the back of my head and I can’t believe the two of us ever fitted. I shut my eyes and imagine Dad’s legs just there. Like I could touch them if I just reached out my hand.

I sleep late and when I get up I see them sitting in their usual places as if it’s a usual day, as if he’ll be along any second. The clock on the mantel has just gone seven. Dad would be going to work.

‘Sit down,’ Ma says. ‘Eat something before we drown in cakes.’

I sit down in my chair and Ma gets up and opens the oven
and takes out a pile of scones she’s wrapped in a tea towel to warm. There’s jam on the table, and butter. For the life of me I can’t even touch them.

‘They’re not going to waste,’ Ma says. ‘People are good enough to bring them.’

Even Kip doesn’t move. Connie looks like she’s going to be sick.

‘I’m waiting,’ Ma says.

I cut a scone in half and butter it. The butter melts like a slick. Kip takes a plain one. Connie cuts it in half and has a tiny nibble.

The butter and the jam. On the table. They’ve been bought with Dad’s money, with his wages from the
Argus.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.

‘Ma,’ I say, but I don’t know how to go on with it.

‘What?’

Payments on the house, wood for winter that’s nearly here. What if someone gets sick and needs the doctor? Kip and I have our scholarships, but there’s books and we’ll both need new uniforms pretty soon. Connie’s art school. Food.

‘Cat got it, Francis?’ Ma says.

Ma’s old. Nearly as old as Dad, close to forty. If she dies too there’ll just be me and Connie and Kip. I don’t have the foggiest what Dad used to earn, what it costs to keep the house, but I know what happens if we can’t afford to stay here in Rowena Parade. Those slum shacks in Mahoney Street, what they call the Valley of Death on account of the diphtheria. Whenever we passed it, Dad used to say there but for the grace of the
Argus
go us.

‘Well?’

‘What are we going to do for money?’ I say.

Kip slams his fist down on the table. ‘He’s not been in the ground a week!’ he says. Then all at once he’s out of his seat, grabbing me by the collar, tipping over my chair and pulling me up and against the wall like he’s going to clock me and it takes Ma and Connie to pull him off. Ma gives both of us a whack and my ear is red and stinging and ringing.

‘We will all sit down like Christians or I’ll give the pair of you a hiding you’ll remember till this time next year.’ Her mouth is that tight and white I know she’d do it. When we were little, Dad was never the one that done it. It was always her.

Connie rights my chair and we all sit and Kip is snivelling and looking at me fierce.

‘If you had half a brain Kip Westaway you’d be dangerous. Your brother is, as usual, the grownup one.’ Ma takes the scone from Kip’s plate and puts it on mine. ‘This is nobody’s business but mine. But this is how it’s going to be.’ Ma tells us we have a little money: a collection at St Ignatius and another from St Kevin’s and from the
Argus.
And tomorrow morning, she starts work.

‘Not in a common factory,’ she says. ‘I’m to be a housemaid in a big place at Kew. Father Lockington himself arranged it. They’ve given me a black dress and all. And Connie. You tell them.’

‘I won’t go back to art school. I can get a job too.’

‘A job? Not on your nelly. I won’t have these two roaming the streets like urchins. We’re taking in a boarder. Myrna
Keith’s sister-in-law, the widow. She’s a bit of money from her uncle that passed and she wants to live around here, near her relations. The boys can share a bed in our room and you can stay out in the laundry. You can look after her and the boys.’

For a while nobody says anything. Connie stirs her tea and the clink of her spoon sounds that loud.

‘It’d be better if we weren’t at school. Wouldn’t it, Ma?’ says Kip.

‘Well you are at school and that’s that. Brother Cusack had a word at the funeral. The scholarships keep going till you finish if you keep your marks up, and the brothers’ll find whatever books you need, and uniforms, and anything else. After that, who knows? Three boys that finished last year went on to the university. You’re too young to leave school besides.’

‘You can get an exemption certificate from the government. Trudy Lee is thirteen and she got one and now she’s at the match factory.’

Ma’s throat is red. I wonder if she’s scratched it by accident but her nails are that short I don’t know how she’d do it. She gives Kip a look that means
one more word and I’ll knock you into the middle of next week
but instead she says, ‘Respectable people keep their children on at school. Your father, he gave up everything for us. That’s that.’

The three of us look at each other. We know the story word for word, mostly because when Connie was little she’d be at Ma all the time.
Tell it again, Ma, tell it again.
Like it was the greatest romance ever, better even than a film. Dad’s people were of a different persuasion and didn’t approve and
wouldn’t even come to St Ignatius for the wedding, and that’s how come we don’t know our grandparents and aunties and uncles from that side. All Father Donovan asked, Ma says, was that we were brought up Catholic and went to Catholic school and Dad gave his word. Even though Dad never came to St Ignatius with us, every Sunday he made us go. Until you’re old enough to decide on your own, he’d say.

‘Happy now, you pair of worry warts?’

We nod, but happy doesn’t come in to it. My scone is still lying there, slit up the middle. Kip keeps looking at it like he’s never seen a scone before. Connie is giving up art school when all she cares about is drawing pictures. Ma is going into domestic service, cleaning someone else’s house. But, for me and Kip, life will be just the same as before: St Kevin’s, our friends, the brothers. What’s going to happen to Ma when she gets old, when Connie goes off to get married? Who’s going to look after her now Dad’s gone? That’s what I’d like to know.