Читать книгу Wrath - Anne Davies - Страница 10

Dad was away for a month before he came home the first time. Mum had told me he’d be there by the time we got home from school, but part of me didn’t really believe her. Nothing had seemed right since he’d gone. It was like he, Mum, me and Katy were four parts of a machine that belonged together, worked together. With one part gone, we just didn’t work. It was like we were holding our breaths; real life had somehow stopped—for me anyway. Mum hardly spoke to us. We’d drift in after school through the wire door, letting it slam as always, but she never called out, “You kids have a good day?” More and more often, she just looked up and said, “Say hello to Mrs Brockman.”

Alma Brockman was always there now. Neither Katy nor I liked her. She was tall and kind of hefty with big arms covered in pale-orange freckles. Those arms were leaning on the table where Dad always sat, a pot of tea and Mum’s best cup and saucer in front of them.

Mrs Brockman turned to look at us and smiled in that corny, fake way some adults do when they’re talking to kids. “Hi, kids. How do you like being the man of the house, Luca?” She laughed without waiting for me to answer, lips peeled back, showing small, even teeth covered by too much gum. Crossing her fat, freckly legs awkwardly in her tight skirt, Mrs Brockman turned back to Mum and said, “Well, then he said…” and we took the chance to grab a couple of apples and headed to our room.

“Can’t stand her,” said Katy when the door was closed, and she started strutting around the room as though she had on heels that were too high and a very tight skirt. We both laughed, and Katy farted, a querulous brrrp of a sound that sent the pair of us into screams of laughter punctuated by long, silent painful gasps. I flopped onto the floor, holding my stomach till I could control myself. How can such a basic function never fail to get the same response even though we’ve heard it hundreds of times?

We sat there in silence for a while, and then I blurted out, “I hate it without Dad here!”

She put her hand on my arm and rubbed it. “I’m getting used to it. Dad doesn’t really talk as much to me as he does you.”

A pang of guilty delight swept over me. It was true. Although I wished sometimes that Dad would throw me around and tickle me like he did Katy, I wouldn’t have swapped that for the things we did together, the things he talked to me about. He never would have talked down to me like Mrs Brockman had just done.

“Mum talks to you a lot though,” I mumbled.

She nodded, smiling a little, and then she lay down next to me on the floor, still sighing now and then from her attack of laughter. Her smile made me see something I’d never seen before. In our little four-cornered machine, Dad and I were kind of paired, Katy and I were, Dad and Mum were, and Katy and Mum were—but not me and Mum. I loved her and she loved me, but not the same way she loved Katy or I loved Dad. It was hard for me to put into words, but I felt Dad’s absence much more strongly then. I felt alone and rolled over and hugged Katy’s back. She curved into my belly and chest automatically like we’d been doing since we’d been born, even before probably. I lay there, smelling her slightly musty hair, curving around her back, my top arm lying across her shoulders. How strange that we fitted together so comfortably even though she was a bit taller than me and quite a bit plumper. We even knew somehow when we needed to move, and we both changed positions at exactly the same time, reforming into another perfectly comfortable spot.

I’d slept with Mum once when I had tonsillitis and couldn’t sleep. She’d come in with a glass of water in the dark and climbed in with me, but I’d lain there awake. Her knees had stuck into me, her arm had crushed me, and I was too hot. I’d listened to her even breathing, not wanting to hurt her feelings by getting out and going in with Katy, where I knew I’d be asleep in a second. I’d lain as still as I could till the birds started twittering in the trees outside and a pale grey line rimmed my blind, and then I’d fallen into a half-sleep, waking up groggy and bleary-eyed a couple of hours later. I could hear Mum in the kitchen, and I had stretched, relishing the space I had till it was time for breakfast.

We heard the wire door swing out and women’s raised voices coming from the kitchen. “See you, love,” said Mrs Brockman. “Thanks for the cuppa.”

“Thanks for the company,” Mum said, and as soon as we heard the front gate close, we knew it was safe to get up and go into the kitchen. Mum came back in, her face serious, a little crease running deep between her eyebrows.

“She’s yucky, Mum,” said Katy from behind the fridge, where she was rummaging for another apple. “Why doesn’t she stay at her own place?”

Mum frowned, the crease deepening. “Don’t speak like that, Katy. She’s a very nice lady, and she keeps me company.”

“But she’s here nearly every day, Mum,” I whined, something I knew she hated but it was too late to take back.

“Well, I’m lonely every day!” Mum snapped. “Now get out from under my feet and go and do something constructive, or I’ll find you something to do.”

We both turned and bolted, Katy to her room and me to the shed. The shed was cool and dim and creaked constantly in the heat, like an old man trying to get comfortable. Even though Dad wasn’t there, I still felt good surrounded by all of his things. It made me feel like he’d be back soon and life would be normal again. I pulled out a few old sugar bags from under the bench and lay down. I could hear some bees droning away in the wattle tree outside, and I drifted off comfortably, thinking of how Dad would be home in a few days, and slept.

Saturday came, and I woke early. I slid my feet out from under my blankets, and they hit the linoleum floor. It was cold! But I pushed the blankets off and dressed quickly, tiptoed through the house, and unlocked the front door. Then I was running across the grass, wet and tickly, down the road, my breath following in smoky drifts.

The sun was nearly up. I loved this time of day, although I’d often wondered what the difference was between dawn and dusk. The sky would be streaked with the same colours, and the shadows would be long. Only the birds gave it away. The mudlarks were carolling, the roosters were crowing—answering one another as though saying, “I hear you!”—and swallows rolled and flipped through the sky like fish in the sea.

But now wasn’t the time to think about all of that—Dad would be home soon. I kept running till I hit the school, and then I sat on the fence, scanning the horizon for any sign of dust, my ears pulled back with the effort of listening for the faraway rumble of the truck. The sun climbed, the dew seeming to be sucked up by its rays, and it began to get hotter. I don’t know how long I sat there, half-dozing in the warmth yet alert in another part of my brain, and then I heard what I had been waiting for—the faint hum of a truck, travelling fast.

Jumping down, I ran to the middle of the road. Sure enough, I could see a faint cloud of orange dust, and the low drone of the truck was becoming higher in pitch as it got closer. I climbed onto the top of a fence-post, where I knew I would stand out and Dad would see me.

And then he was there, the truck’s bellow deepening as he changed through the gears to slow down. It came to a halt in a long flurry of gravel and dust, and then there was silence apart from a ticking noise as the truck cooled down. The door swung open, and Dad smiled down at me, his eyes hollow and tired, and I leapt off the post and clambered inside the hot, smelly cabin. Dad’s arms were around me, and I buried my face into his khaki, sweat-stained shirt. Ah, the smell of Dad. Everything felt right again, in place.

We drove home, me chattering away, asking questions, unable to shut up. He laughed at me and said, “Slow down, mate; my ears are falling off.”

I grinned up at him, and we pulled up outside the front fence. Mum and Katy were waiting there, and Katy bounded out, but Mum just stood there with her arms wrapped around her. Dad swung Katy up on one arm, and I hung onto the other, and he stumbled, laughing, towards Mum. She smiled, turned and walked back through the front door, and by the time the lumbering beast that was Dad, me and Katy arrived in the kitchen, she had the kettle on and biscuits on the table. Dad sat down laughing, pushing us both away.

“You’re worse than blowflies, you two. Buzz off for a minute and let me say hello to your mum. Just wait here for a sec first, though; I’ve got to get something out of the truck.” He was back in a minute or two, a little grin at one corner of his mouth. “There’s a bit of rubbish on the front lawn. Could you kids pick it up?”

We dragged up the passage, unhappy at being dismissed so quickly, and then Katy gave a squeal.

“Luca, look!” There, leaning against the fence, were two bikes, both Malvern Stars—a red one and a blue one. That’s the one time I really remember Dad coming home happy.

After that, even though I always waited for him and rode home in the truck, it was only good till we pulled up outside the gate, and Dad would just sit there for a minute, looking tired and sad. I’d say, “Are you ready now, Dad?” and he’d smile at me, and we’d go in. I don’t really remember many of those times—everything’s a bit of a blur: school, waiting for Dad, feeling a bit left out of things with Katy and Mum. Somehow when Dad was there, I felt that things had changed in a way I couldn’t really work out.

During that time—I suppose over the course of about a year—I came to see that we weren’t really the single unit I’d thought we were. Katy and I were pretty much the same—although she was loving having Mum to herself, and they spent a lot of time together—but for the first time in my life, I could see that Dad and Mum weren’t really connected any more. Somewhere along the line, they had started to exist as totally separate people, and though I couldn’t put it into words then, I remember feeling as though the solid ground under my feet had some cracks in it and they were somehow greatest between my parents.

I need to stop now. The next part I see as the beginning of the end. Just thinking about it starts my chest tightening.