Nine Days (16 page)

‘“Take it, take it all”,’ says Mac, lips pursed and eyes fluttering.

‘Westaway, I oughta thump you into the middle of next week, you cretin.’

‘Yeah,’ says Cray.

We are behind the milk bar and the boys are changing back into their school shirts. We’ve run almost all the way, flat out in the fading light. All that work, all that effort, for nothing. It’s just not our lucky day. Cray is snivelling. I’ve got my arms folded because my hands won’t stop shaking.

‘Was it me who pulled out the rhodedendron? Or was it me who got us out of it?’

‘Get out of this,’ says Mac, and I hear it before I feel it. A whump noise, like meat hitting a lino floor. Then I feel the pain in my nose and cheek and jaw, then I see I’m lying sideways on the grass. It takes me a moment to figure how I got on the grass. I can’t see anything. My face hurts. The shop,
the trees are blending together. I move my head so I can look up with the other eye, the one currently pointing down at the grass. Mac’s holding one hand in the other armpit, cursing and grimacing and jumping on one leg.

‘Yeah,’ says Cray.

I look up: he’s standing square above me and before I can say no Cray please, I see him pull back one foot and I know it’s coming and a second takes a minute then I feel the kick, hard, right in the guts.

I’m dying. I can’t breathe. I try and be sick but it’s just spit that comes up. There’s red on the grass, blood. I get on my knees and lift up one hand. It’s from my nose. The blood is coming out my nose and it won’t stop. I’m a goner. I feel like hurling again.

My head is down low then Pike kneels beside me and grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks my head back so I think for a minute I’m going to drown in the blood from my nose that’s pouring down my throat.

‘This is nothing compared with the accident that’s going to befall you if you say one word.’

I can hardly speak. It’s like I’m gargling. He lets go of my hair and my head falls down again and I spit and cough.

‘If you see us coming, Westaway, turn and go the other way,’ says Mac.

I collapse back on the grass and look up at the three of them. Cray spits straight at me: I feel it land wet on my throat. I close my eyes and wait and then I open them a smidge. They’re gone. I wait longer, but there’s no one else here.

The sun is down and my face is hot and throbbing and I’ve
got to find my way home yet. Standing is quite an operation. I hold on to a lamp post with my arms. I take a step, then another. Hands out to my side so I don’t go A over T. Then one foot feels funny, like the ankle won’t bend right. It’s not bad enough I’ve had a shellacking that’s pulverised my face that I have to explain to Ma and that’ll be a story and a half, but I’ve hurt my foot as well, sprinting away from the old lady’s house.

I reach down to my ankle and that’s when I feel it. The little bag from under her bed. I open it and under the street light I see a purple jewel hanging on a gold chain. It’s a beaut, the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. It sparkles under the light. I smile, and cry out loud my face hurts that much. There’s no way I’m sharing this. It’s mine.

THE
WOMEN’S WEEKLY
says mock sausages are delicious. I boil the oats for fifteen minutes in salted water, chop the onion and add the spices and egg and breadcrumbs. The mixture sticks to the spoon, the bowl, my hands. It smells faintly of Christmas pudding. I mould it in the shape of fat beef bangers, fry them in the last of our dripping. They spit and hiss like cats. When they turn dark brown I take them from the pan but they look like no sausage I can recall. The
Women’s Weekly
says they make an ideal luncheon to delight the whole family. Yesterday I made mock duck: onion, tomato, beaten egg and dried herbs, all mixed together and spread on toast. The
Women’s Weekly
said it was a tasty and nutritious sandwich filling.

I’ve a bone to pick with the
Women’s Weekly.

My father sits in the front room waiting to be called to lunch, already halfway through his third bottle. On the plates, the mock sausages are hot but the dripping is congealing. One end of the kitchen table is set for the two of us and the other end is covered with things that don’t belong there: the
Herald,
the empty fruit bowl, some candles in case the power goes off, the tea towels I’ve been folding. I’ll move everything after we’ve eaten. It’s only when the table’s set and we’re sitting that I can’t bear the empty space. One of these days I’ll get rid of the other two chairs. Or I’ll sell this whole setting and buy a table for two.

‘What are we mocking today?’ In the kitchen, he pours another glass. The whole kitchen smells of it: yeasty and almost sweet.

‘Guess.’

He prods a sausage with his fork. ‘Some kind of meat? Maybe we should draw the curtain.’ He smiles. ‘Don’t want the neighbours to dob us in.’

It’s another week before I can buy more sugar and we’re down to half a cup of tea and a scrape of butter. We’re out of pepper but that can’t be bought because the only countries that thought to grow it couldn’t get out of the way of the Japanese. We have our own potatoes and onions and Elsie next door gives us a quarter of a pumpkin when she cuts one. The war is over and we won. Or so they say.

‘Mock chutney?’ I pass him the last remaining cut-crystal bowl. It belonged to my mother. The mock chutney sits in a gluggy pile and has already formed a skin. He takes a
big spoonful. His enthusiasm makes me sad. Glistening and oozing, the mock chutney looks strangely like a mix of Worcestershire sauce, apricot jam and raisins.

My father slathers a hunk of sausage. He chews slowly. In all the years I’ve cooked for him, he’s never failed to pay due attention.

‘Tastes like Worcestershire sauce, apricot jam and raisins,’ he says.

‘You, sir, can choose any prize from the top shelf.’

He draws a long draught of beer and I watch his Adam’s apple move up and down. He fills the glass again from the tall brown bottle in the middle of the table. The glass is sweating from the cold of the beer and I can see the mark where his hand has been.

‘Very tasty. You’re a good girl, Annabel.’ And he smiles again. I’ve never seen the likeness, despite what people say. My great aunts recall how handsome he was as a young man, how much in love my parents were. I’ve seen it myself in the wedding photograph beside his bed: his shining face, smile like a hearth on a cold day. I’ve stared and stared at that photo. I can’t see anything of my mother in me.

‘You don’t have a few bob to spare, love?’

I harden my heart. ‘This grand sausage feast was the last of the housekeeping.’ I wave my hand across the table, a magician revealing her art.

We both look down at our plates. He feels the shame of asking; me, of lying. Maybe he knows, maybe he doesn’t. I’ve put so little aside it’s hardly worth hiding. A few coppers to get us through the week. Next week will have to worry about
itself. At least it’s November now, heating up fast. I only need enough wood for cooking. It was different when I was in the munitions factory, before the men came home and we girls got our marching orders. Even if I could get a job now, without me here to watch him he’d likely drink what little I’d make. The fear of the Nips coming made him a better man. That’s the cold fact about the war: me and Dad never had it so good.

We eat for a while in silence and I wait for the sentence that will begin it. It will likely arrive when he takes his last bite. And as I stand to put the kettle on the hob, he scrapes his plate and rests his knife and fork at six o’clock.

‘Stuck here,’ he says, ‘looking after your old man. You should have a family of your own by now.’

‘I do have a family of my own. You.’

This is our private dance, my father’s and mine. We know our steps by heart. It is our own play and like good actors we say our lines with true emotion as if every time is the first. Soon he will say something about me being alone and what it costs me to care for him.

‘No mother, no brothers. Working her youth away, looking after an old man. All your friends married or working.’

‘I love looking after you.’ I know he loves me. But some days when I hear him say
no mother, no brothers
, I think he really means
no wife, no sons.

‘It’s bloody unfair,’ he whispers.

Today he’s resigned. He is not always so tranquil, but even then I know it’s not me he’s angry at. I’m just the one who’s here. It’s not my fault, and it’s not the fault of the plates or the glasses or the walls or the furniture or what was once the set
of my mother’s cut-crystal bowls. Being with him on a bad day is like watching a storm break in the distance. It seems so far away that I am untouched, I am calm inside. But surely it would be better if I felt something.

Today is a good day. He drains his Melbourne Bitter. He doesn’t have to say a word; I am perfectly trained. I fetch another bottle. I serve the main meal in the middle of the day. Small adjustments for the reality of our situation: my father never takes a drop before noon.

‘If only I could buy you a new dress or take you to the pictures. I’m a terrible father, Annabel.’

‘You’re a wonderful father, always have been.’

At this stage, he’s still calling me Annabel. I have my tea and we sit and talk about this and that, neighbourhood things, the line-up of Saturday’s team, and after the sixth bottle he goes to stand, both palms flat on the table top. The chair clatters over behind him, so that’s good. If he can stand by himself it’s easier. When he goes out in his chair it’s very hard to move him—once he went while he was still eating, face forward, nose-first into the mash.

Another time he made it all the way through lunch and went to fetch something from the bedroom. It was a dark day, raining outside, and the blinds were drawn and I found him passed out on the floor, gasping and gagging, a trail of dark liquid running from his mouth. I opened his mouth and my fingers felt a sticky mass. His tongue, I thought. He’s bitten off his tongue and he’s choking on it. My fingers were wet with warm blood. I gripped the slippery glob and pulled it out and forced myself to look at it. It took a moment for my eyes to
adjust, and when they did I saw it was a toffee. A toffee! He must’ve shoved it in his mouth just before hitting the deck. Once it was out he could breath just fine. He lay there sleeping and I sat on the floor beside him, fingers stuck together by the half-chewed toffee and laughed until I cried.

Today, though, he stands by himself and stretches his arms out to the side. All at once he starts to wobble. I move quickly. Perhaps he’ll shake off my arm and say he’ll be fine and yell
what do you think I am, some kind of cripple, get away, I can manage.
His hands are slow and easy to dodge.

‘Here, Dad.’ I move the fallen chair aside and lift one of his arms around my shoulder and bend a little so we’re snug. He doesn’t say a word. I’m practised at this. Oh, there was one Thursday night I lost the balance of him altogether and we careened into the hall table and broke the lamp and the vase and he cut his head and I twisted my ankle. I lay there among the broken bits and blood and him sleeping like an angel and I thought, how the devil am I going to get him up now?

That was when I thought sleeping in the hallway was a disaster. These days I’m stronger and he’s thinner and I’ve learned to lean on the walls while I change my grip and to use his arm as a pivot.

I doubt I’d drop him now but if I did I’d check for injuries then lift his head and slide a pillow under it and cover him with a blanket and leave him. Now I know there are worse things than sleeping on the floor.

Today is easy. I use my hips and my legs and my shoulders. We are like slow runners in a three-legged race. We pass the hall table with no trouble, take the corner of the front room
with ease. His chair is ready, just as he left it. This can be the hardest part. I need to line him up exactly. I take both his hands, a moment’s pause—and there it is. He falls like a tree but the chair holds him and it is not yet four o’clock. I have time to get ready.

I am almost out of the room when I hear him mumble.

‘Are you going out, Meg?’

‘Yes, Dad.’ He knows who I am all right. It’s just that when he’s like this, my mother’s name is still the easiest to find.

‘Where?’

‘For a walk, maybe along the river. Then afterwards to a dance.’

‘Picking you up?’

‘In half an hour.’

‘Won’t be late?’

‘No, Dad. I won’t be late.’

Then my father opens one eye and it looks clear and sharp and blue, as if it belonged to someone else. ‘You know I don’t like that boy,’ he says. ‘I don’t trust him.’

He has never said this before. This is not part of our act.

‘Dad.’ I sit on the edge of the lounge and take his hand. It is not alert like his eye; it is limp and mottled and flabby. ‘That’s not true. You like Francis. You told me so.’

He gives a soft snort. I’ve said the silliest thing. ‘Not him. He’s harmless. The other one. Kip.’ He closes his eye and falls back to sleep.

I boil the kettle and fill the basin and there’s no way I can make sense of it. I wash my face and do my hair and change into one of my mother’s dresses taken in at the waist and perhaps I heard it wrong. Not one boy had called for me, ever, in my life, before Francis knocked on our door one Sunday afternoon. I’ve got Dad, he’s got me. We do just fine on our own.

Francis is different from the other Richmond blokes. He stands straighter, holds his mouth firmer. He makes the rest of them seem like kids; he’s close to perfect and even I can’t stain him. He’s been taking me out for the best part of six months but I’ve known him since I was a schoolgirl.

I’ve met Kip barely a dozen times since he’s been out of the army; Dad’s met him just once or twice. Kip is perfectly nice. Not as handsome as Francis on account of his nose, which he never got straightened the way Francis did, but fine looking. He’s a photographer’s assistant at the
Argus,
they put him on again as soon as he got back. Francis is a clerk in a law office: that’ll set him up for the future, he says.

Francis does say things about Kip that aren’t so flattering, about him being aimless and—what is it?—dreamy. I’ve always put that down to some kind of thing between brothers. The two of them only have each other. I’ve never thought there was anything wrong with Kip Westaway. I’ve never thought of him at all.

I’m so busy thinking I don’t hear the knock at first. I look out my window: Francis is standing at the door, holding his fist up like he intends to pound it to firewood. I have to rush before he ruins everything.

‘I thought there was no one home,’ he says. ‘Where were you? Never mind. Let’s go inside for a bit. Sit down. I wouldn’t mind a quick word with your father.’

‘Dad’s asleep.’ I slip outside and close the door behind us.