The Beloved Read online

  Dad put down his newspaper and smiled. If his eyes had been arms she’d have been pressed against his heart. ‘I can think of something.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘Why not? You look good enough to eat.’

  She shrugged.

  His smile faded.

  ‘Sorry. I’m bored. But there’s a vacancy for a reporter on the South Pacific Post and I’d like to apply.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Yes, work. I need to use my brain and the money would come in handy. I want a trip back to Canada; I haven’t seen my family in ten years. And there’s the kids’ education.’

  Dad scowled. Mama wanted Tim and me to go to boarding schools in Australia when we finished grade seven but Dad wanted us to stay in Moresby. ‘Why have kids just to pack them off?’

  ‘Because a good education is the most valuable thing we can give them and I want them to have the best.’

  ‘Okay, okay. I’ll have money for their expensive ruddy educations by the time you need it, and a trip to Canada. You don’t have to work.’

  ‘I want to.’

  And she did. Soon she was travelling all over the country for stories and pictures.

  Dad grumbled when she stayed away overnight. ‘Can’t you work nine to five? The kids need you.’

  ‘They have Josie.’

  ‘She’s not their mother.’

  ‘She’s the next best thing.’

  It was true. I loved Josie and I trusted her because she was the only person I’d met whose colours matched their words. Josie told the truth and too bad if you didn’t like it.

  ‘What’s wrong you foot, Bertie? Truck run ’im over?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Burn ’im?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Foot sick?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Better you cut ’im off. Get new foot.’ She giggled.

  ‘You’re just like Monica.’

  But Josie was nothing like Monica. She was my best friend. My only friend.

  Until Stefi.

  By early November Christmas had arrived at Steamies. Decorations, tinned puddings, frozen turkeys, toys, gifts, pictures of stockings hung on mantelpieces in front of crackling fires.

  Mama was looking for work clothes and I’d just seen a pair of black patent-leather court shoes.

  ‘Mama, look at the beautiful shoes. Can I have them, please?’

  ‘You can’t wear ordinary shoes, Bertie. I’m sorry.’

  ‘When can I, Mama? When can I?’ I pulled myself up tall. I now had a cane instead of sticks and next stop was nothing.

  ‘A long time, sugar. But you can wear shorts – how about we get you a pair?’

  ‘No.’ Never. I’d never expose my ugly withered leg in shorts.

  ‘Oh, Bertie. I know how difficult this is for you. Believe me, if I could wish your leg back to normal, I would. If I could dress you in trousers and gumboots to hide your foot I would. I don’t enjoy putting you on show but we live in the tropics and you can’t hide your leg beneath long dresses. At least in shorts you’d be cool and look more like other children.’

  I trawled through the dresses looking for plain, long smocks without belts. There weren’t any. I left Mama at the cosmetics counter, dabbing lipsticks on the back of her hand, and wandered among counters piled with fans, toasters, bicycles, tools and rolls of material. At the stationery counter I found something that made me forget about the shoes: a three-tiered box of seventy-two perfect colouring pencils. Aqua, pink, gold, indigo, scarlet – beautiful colours.

  ‘Aren’t they pretty?’ A saleslady pushed some paper towards me. ‘It’s a sample box, you can try some if you like.’

  I chose a dark pink pencil and drew a small circle. It felt smooth and creamy on the paper and the colour was like strawberries. Aqua next, ovals coming from the circle like petals on a flower. Gold, purple – two at a time. Blue flowers with lemon centres, red bees with purple stripes. Pictures everywhere.

  ‘Boring, boring, borrrr-ing!’

  I knew that voice; it belonged to Stefi, the new girl at school. She was bouncing against the hosiery counter, muttering while her mother talked to a saleslady. A frail-looking kid with a heart-shaped face and wispy ginger hair, Stefi somehow managed to looked sad and hopeful at the same time. Her parents came from Hungary. We laughed when she said that; we thought she said Hungry. Mrs Potts pulled out an atlas and explained that Hungary was a country in Europe. We had quite a few kids from Europe. One reckoned she was an exiled Austrian princess and that she and her mother had escaped Vienna when her father became a Nazi during the German occupation. We thought she looked more like a gypsy than a princess.

  ‘Stefi!’ I called.

  She looked up and grinned. There was a hole in her mouth where a tooth had fallen out. ‘Hello, Bertie Lightfoot!’

  I waited for her to say something smarty-pants about my name but she didn’t.

  ‘So this is where you are.’ Mama arrived with a pile of boxes.

  Stefi scooted over. ‘Hello. Are you Bertie’s mother?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘I’m Stefi Breuer.’

  Mama smiled. ‘Nice to meet you, Stefi.’

  ‘You too,’ said Stefi, but she was looking at my boot. ‘Polio, was it? Polio’s a virus. A bug too small for the human eye to see. Without a microscope, that is, and a much bigger microscope than mine.’

  ‘You have a microscope?’

  ‘Yes. Want to come to my house and see it?’

  See it? At her place? ‘Yes!’

  ‘Mother!’ Stefi shouted. ‘That’s my mother,’ she said to Mama, pointing. ‘She’s buying stockings.’

  Mama’s eyes widened. ‘Stockings?’

  Stefi’s mother looked up. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Mama said. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘It’s a little . . . unusual, stockings in this climate.’

  Mrs Breuer pulled a pound note from her purse. A tiny muscle beat in her jaw. Mama went over and held out her hand. ‘I’m Lily May Lightfoot.’

  The shopkeeper counted out the change. Mrs Breuer studied the coins in her hand, counted them again and tipped them slowly into her purse. Mama lowered her arm. Mrs Breuer put the purse and the parcel carefully into her woven Buka basket, then suddenly she smiled and held out her hand. ‘I’m Magda Breuer.’

  Over the small end of her microscope, Stefi and I became friends. We examined the amazing detail of leaves, ants and bugs. There was a whole other life going on under the microscope, right beneath your nose. I liked Stefi. You never knew what she was going to do or say next and she never stopped asking questions. Why did zebras have stripes? Why didn’t snakes have legs? Why did oil – which felt heavier than water – float on top when you mixed them? She was always inventing things: a message machine made from a matchbox hung on a cotton reel that flew across the yard on a string. Telephones made from holes punched in Craven A tins and threaded with wire so we could talk to each other in different rooms.

  Mama liked Stefi too. ‘She’s the brightest kid I’ve ever met. Hopefully, her brains will rub off on you.’

  The Breuers lived in Boroko, not far from school, in a big house full of bright cushions and cane furniture. Their dunny was out the back and Stefi said a man in a red truck came twice a week to empty the cans and you could be sitting on it when suddenly there’d be a blast of air on your bum. The dunny-cart man had snuck in and replaced the cans while you sat. Mrs Breuer smoked like a bushfire. There were Craven A tins, matches and smouldering ashtrays everywhere and Stefi said it made her nervous to see her mother heading off to the toilet with a cigarette. Methane and matches, she said, could blow her and the dunny sky-high. Mrs Breuer worked part-time at the library, another place I reckoned those cigarettes could be a menace.

  Stefi’s father, Konrad Breuer, was a tall man with eyes like tapioca and trousers that he wore too high at the waist. I didn’t see any colours on Mr Breuer at first bu
t straightaway something about him gave me the creeps. His strange eyes took in everything – people, machines and tropical ulcers – all with the same flat stare. Only when he looked at Stefi did they go kind of slitty, as if he was trying to work out what she was thinking. Mr Breuer sold aviation equipment and was looking for an office in town. When he saw Dad’s office he wanted one in the same building. Dad said they were all taken, but Mr Breuer said ‘all taken’ meant nothing to him. Sure enough, a week later someone moved out and Mr Breuer moved in. The other thing he wanted was a piece of Dad’s export business. Dad had so many orders he could hardly keep up and Mr Breuer was offering a lot of money. Though he didn’t want to sell, Dad was tempted. Aside from Mama’s trip and our education the extra capital would help expand the business. But he and Mama were wary.

  ‘I like Magda,’ Mama said, ‘but I’m not sure about her husband. Now that I’m working we’ll have money for those extras so let’s try not to involve Konrad Breuer.’

  As Christmas got closer I discovered I already had what I never knew I wanted – a best friend. Knowing Stefi’s family and ours would share Christmas dinner this year made the day extra special.

  Our Christmas tree was only plastic, but pretty. Shiny red, gold and blue bubbles caught the light as they twirled, and tinsel winked among the branches. At the base of the tree was a pile of presents but Tim’s was too big to fit beneath the branches. Santa had brought him a bike.

  ‘What about me?’ I wailed.

  ‘When you’re bigger,’ Dad said, passing me a long box. ‘But look, CP, Santa left you this.’

  I wondered about Santa. He’d be awfully hot in that woolly suit and there were no chimneys in Port Moresby so how could he get in? The verandahs were fly-wired and the doors were locked every night. Santa left me a doll with yellow hair and staring eyes. Mama named it Margaret. I didn’t care what she named it, I didn’t want Margaret. I had Moose and Molly and besides, I didn’t want dolls, I wanted a box of seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils.

  Tim spent the holidays out on his bike. He and his mates went everywhere together: to Jackson’s Strip to watch planes take off, to Mrs Scott’s farm to see real cows and goats, to Boroko, Murray Barracks, even as far as Ela Beach and the movies in town.

  Mama chased after stories and tapped them out on her new portable typewriter at the kitchen table. She tried to be home as much as possible over the holidays but I liked it best when she wasn’t there because when she was, she gave me sums. ‘If I can’t get you up a grade at least you can be top of the one you’re in.’

  Sometimes when Mama was out I visited Stefi but mostly I stayed at home with Josie. She let me plait her fuzzy hair and draw as many pictures as I wanted. One time I did a picture of her sitting cross-legged on the ground, pulling husk from a coconut. She had on a black dress with red and yellow polka-dots and behind her, hot pink and orange bougainvillea climbed over the roof of her little house. I drew the round outline of her body, bare dusty feet and springy hair and coloured the dress and dots. But her brown body looked drab in the black dress so I made her skin blue instead. I could see bougainvillea through the coils of her hair so I coloured pink, orange and green between the curls.

  When I showed her the picture she laughed.

  ‘It’s not supposed to be funny.’

  Josie patted my head. ‘Namo herea, Bertie. Very good. Blue legs nice.’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Yes, number one picture.’

  My first fan.

  My colouring pencils were worn to stubs so I asked Mama for a box of Lakelands. She came home with a small packet of six gritty pencils.

  ‘I wanted seventy-two Lakelands.’

  ‘Lakelands? You still can’t colour inside the lines for Pete’s sake.’

  ‘I don’t want to colour inside the lines.’

  ‘Do you want these or not?’

  Dad came home early one afternoon to find Josie and me in the kitchen playing cards.

  ‘What’s the game?’ he said.

  ‘Poker.’

  ‘Poker? You’re seven! What happened to Snap?’

  ‘I’m nearly eight. And Snap’s a kid’s game.’

  ‘But that’s what you are, CP.’

  He grumbled to Mama. When I knelt down on my pillow and pressed my ear against the wall I could hear them arguing.

  ‘Poker, for God’s sake. At her age!’

  ‘Well, at least it’ll challenge her mentally.’

  ‘She’s a kid; she should be playing kids’ games.’

  ‘I’d rather she played poker and used her brains than wasted her time drawing. Pencils and paints won’t get her anywhere.’

  ‘She’s seven. Drawing is what seven-year-olds do.’

  ‘Not like she does. She’s obsessive. She needs to be reined in before it gets out of hand. Our daughter’s a very wilful little girl.’

  The holidays stretched on through January; hot, steamy and raining nearly every afternoon. Mama took me with her a couple of times when she went after stories. One time we drove deep into the jungle to a village where somebody said a giant python had swallowed a pig. When we got there we saw chooks pecking at the ground, pigs snuffling about and little black babies playing in the dirt but no sign of the snake. Either it had gone or the story wasn’t true but Mama took some pictures anyway and I pulled out my pencils and paper.

  ‘Forget that stuff for once, Bertie,’ she said. ‘I’ll teach you to use the camera. Now watch. You hold it in both hands like this, and look through here, and when I move this ring . . .’

  She moved the ring and a little girl with snot running from her nose blurred. The trees made a green halo around her head and you couldn’t see the snot any more, just the dark blob of her face. I pressed the button.

  ‘No, not yet! You’re wasting film. Here, let me.’

  Mama walked around the compound taking photos of people, huts, dogs and pigs. Then she put the camera down and wrote in her notebook. I picked up the camera and looked through the viewfinder, fiddled with the dials and zoomed in on the tail of a parrot. Next, I found a knot on a tree. Seeing things up so close with the camera reminded me of the kaleidoscope; move it and you never knew what you’d see next. I pressed the button, moved the camera, found a pig’s bum-hole and bristly skin and snapped again. I found Mama’s ear and a tendril of black hair. Click, click.

  A few days later Mama came home and spread a stack of ten-by-eight photographs on the kitchen table. Black and white, sharp and smart.

  ‘Nice,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, they are nice. Except for these. Now who do you suppose took them?’

  I recognised the parrot’s tail but it didn’t look like much, just some stripes. Mama’s ear was a strange blurry blob but the pig’s bum and the knot were wonderful. Clear and close, they didn’t have to be a bum and a knot, they could be whatever you wanted.

  ‘These are good!’

  ‘Good? A pig’s . . .’

  ‘It looks like a star!’

  She dropped her head back and shut her eyes and I knew what she was thinking. Why did I have to be the kind of kid who took photos of pigs’ bums and knots?

  My eighth birthday fell at the end of the first week of the new school year and Mama wanted me to have a party. My idea of a party was to have her and Dad, Tim and Stefi, toasted cheese sandwiches, chocolate cake and seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils. Stefi’s mother could come but not her father.

  ‘I don’t want Mr Breuer,’ I said.

  ‘Of course not,’ Mama agreed. ‘It’s your party.’

  ‘But Stefi can come.’

  ‘Naturally. And who else?

  ‘Mrs Breuer.’

  ‘Children, Bertie. Your friends. Who do you want to invite? We need to make a list.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone else.’

  ‘Of course you do. Friends are important.’

  ‘I don’t want anybody.’

  ‘If you don’t tell me who to invite, I’ll ask Stefi.’<
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  On my birthday, Mama came home with an oblong box. Too big for seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils but not too big for a dress. It lay in folds of tissue; a pink gingham skirt with miles of petticoats and a pink satin top. It looked like a cup-cake. How could Mama think I’d like it?

  ‘What do you say, Bertie? Scrumptious, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’ll look silly with my boot and stick.’

  ‘Ah!’ She grinned. ‘I have something else, made specially.’

  Another box. Even worse. A white lace-up platform boot and shoe. I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘You’ll be the prettiest girl at your party.’

  She’d asked Stefi to invite six kids, so Stefi had chosen the ones no-one else wanted. ‘We don’t want the show-offs,’ she’d said, but I knew she’d been worried the popular kids mightn’t come.

  After lunch, my mother fussed around the table laying out hats, balloons, prizes and plates of food. ‘It’s nearly time,’ she said. ‘Go and get changed.’

  I went to my room and sat on the bed. On a piece of paper I drew a grid of pink checks that looked like a cage made out of chicken wire. Inside the cage I put a face with its mouth open, shouting to be let out. A car pulled up outside. Mama poked her head in. ‘Your first guest is here . . . Why haven’t you changed?’

  I put down the pad and pencil. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘Roberta, get those clothes on. Now.’

  When I didn’t move she hauled me off the bed and tried to pull my smock over my head but I clamped down my arms. She pulled harder and I jerked away, so hard I fell over. She bent down, yanked off my smock and flung the clothes at me.

  ‘Get them on.’

  I shook my head.

  She picked up my colouring pencils and drawing paper. ‘Put that outfit on now or this stuff goes into the bin and I won’t be buying you any more.’

  I pulled on the clothes. My mother dropped the pencils. When she left I hid them under a stack of tee-shirts but I had a feeling it was too late. She’d find them wherever they were.

  In the living room, eight pairs of eyes stared. Mrs Breuer came over waving a cigarette.