The Beloved Read online

  She smiled and kissed my cheek. ‘Happy birthday, drágám; sweetie girl.’

  Stefi handed me a parcel and stared at the floor.

  ‘You think I’m a freak,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Not you,’ she said, ‘only your dress.’

  Some time after Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Pass the Parcel but before the candles were lit, before the cake was cut, before Happy Birthday could be sung and a hideous photo taken, I went out the back door and down the stairs. At the far end of the house, the ground rose to a narrow gap beneath the floor. I crawled up there and lay on my side in the dirt. Overhead, voices, footsteps and party sounds came and went. I heard Mama calling, laughter and singing and scraping chairs, and Mama calling me again. Voices burst and faded and cars pulled into the driveway. Feet clattered down the stairs, perfect feet in black patent-leather shoes. Doors slammed, engines started, cars drove off and still my mother called. When all the cars had gone and her voice wavered between anger and desperation, I crawled out.

  ‘God almighty, Roberta. I was worried. Where have you been? You’re filthy.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘You ruined your party. How could you treat your friends like that?’

  ‘They’re not my friends. I didn’t invite them.’

  ‘I don’t get you, Roberta. You want to be normal but you won’t behave like other people. Normal people have friends. You push them away. Those children were your guests. You should be ashamed.’

  I was ashamed. Of my dress, my boot, my limp, myself and my mother.

  She dragged her fingers through her hair. ‘I can’t punish you on your birthday but if you ever pull a stunt like that again – birthday or not – I will.’

  Chapter Nine

  Stefi and I stood in the toilet block at school, examining our faces in the mirror. My reflection showed how much I’d grown in the last ten months compared with Stefi – almost two inches.

  She screwed up her nose. ‘My father says I look like a rat.’

  ‘You don’t look like a rat. Rats have long noses and whiskers. You look like a pixie.’

  ‘I’d rather look like a ballet dancer.’ She scraped back her ginger hair. ‘Or like you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘My father says you’re a looker.’

  I felt my face grow hot. I liked being called a looker but not by Stefi’s father. I gazed at the tiny ripples of brown and red that flickered from my friend’s head and wondered what she was thinking. I’d told her I saw auras but had sworn her to secrecy. She’d been surprised but said there was probably some scientific explanation and had gone to her encyclopaedia.

  ‘Crikey. It says here epileptics see auras before an attack. Do you have fits?’

  ‘You know I don’t.’

  ‘All the same . . .’ she’d sniggered.

  I never knew what was coming next with Stefi. One minute she was bouncing around and chattering, the next she was as silent as a pillow. Chattering Stefi had too much energy to hang about while I drew pictures but quiet Stefi sat beside me on the swings while I sketched, twisting around and around until the chain tightened and then spinning undone, staring at the ground, sometimes so far gone inside her own world it was like she’d slid from her body and left behind a pile of clothes.

  The bell clanged for class.

  ‘I suppose we’d better go,’ she sighed. ‘More stupid Rootey-Snooty.’

  Miss Roote was our grade three teacher; sharp and bony with a mouth like a ruler. The kids hated her but, thank goodness, there was only a month left to the end of the school year.

  ‘Boring and thick,’ said Stefi as we walked to class. ‘She gets everything out of a book. Rootey-Snooty, silly old cow, wants to teach but doesn’t know how. Hey, it rhymes. I wouldn’t be a teacher for quids. When I grow up I’m going to be a famous scientist and discover things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Oh, Bertie, honestly! How do I know until I’ve discovered them? Planets maybe, people on Mars, killer germs. What are you going to be?’

  ‘An artist. And a mother I suppose. Everyone grows up to be a mother, don’t they? Except fathers.’ And Aunt Tempe . . .

  ‘I don’t like fathers,’ said Stefi, tugging a blade of grass sprouting between the stairs. It snapped, its sharp edge drawing a razor-thin line of blood across her finger. She watched the blood well up then stuck her finger in her mouth.

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘What else are you going to do, besides being a mother?’

  ‘I told you, I’m going to be an artist. Mrs Potts wanted to put one of my pictures in the Sogeri Show last year but then she left.’

  Stefi rolled her eyes. ‘A picture in the Sogeri Show is nice, Bertie, but it isn’t a career.’

  ‘You sound like my mother.’ Aim high, get on top of math. Be somebody, Bertie: a lawyer, a scientist, a doctor or all three. Imagine being able to cure polio, Bertie – wouldn’t that be wonderful?

  Curing polio, yes. Being a doctor, no. Stinking of hospitals, leaning over people and poking them with horrible instruments? No.

  Dad was at his desk when I got home, totting up columns of pounds, shillings and pence so fast it made me dizzy. I looked at the roundness of his sixes and nines and the fat little tummies of his fives and it gave me an idea. I sat at the other side of his desk, ripped a page from my exercise book and drew a pair of twos back-to-back. They looked like eye sockets and a big nose. Inside the curve of the twos, I put noughts for eyes and ones for pupils and over the top, two sevens facing down for eyebrows. Under the nose I put a one lying on its back for a mouth. A face made from numbers. It looked, oddly enough, like the headmaster, Mr Boswell. I wondered what I could do with Miss Roote. Sevens for eyebrows and a nose, fours for eyes and a pile of threes and sixes for her wild hair. One for her mouth. Arms and legs – ones and sevens. Next, feet. No, not feet, roots. A jumble of threes, sixes and nines at the bottom, and Miss Roote was complete.

  Tim banged through the screen door.

  ‘Look,’ I said, holding up the drawings.

  ‘Oh, clever. All numbers. That one looks like Miss Roote.’

  ‘It is Miss Roote.’ Beside the drawing I wrote, Miss Rootey-Snooty, and Stefi’s ditty.

  Rootey-Snooty, silly old cow.

  Wants to teach but doesn’t know how.

  Then I added two lines of my own:

  All she knows is how to moo,

  Her colours are like cowpats, too!

  Miss Roote was droning on about glaciers. I wiped the dampness from my forehead and thought about the marbles I’d won at lunchtime from Billy Brough – eight in one hit. Shooting marbles was the one schoolyard game I was now able to play and I was good at it. I seemed to be good at anything that needed a straight aim. Mama had bought me twelve marbles to start with and now I had ninety-eight. She preferred I play marbles to painting or drawing because marbles was a social game.

  Miss Roote tapped the blackboard. ‘Copy this into your books.’

  I opened my exercise book and the drawing of Miss Rootey-Snooty fluttered to the floor.

  ‘What is that, Roberta?’

  ‘Nothing, Miss Roote.’ I bent down and grabbed the picture but fumbled and dropped it again.

  Miss Roote came down the aisle. ‘I asked you a question.’ She snatched the drawing from the floor and studied it. ‘I suppose you think this is funny. It isn’t. It’s vulgar and offensive. No doubt Mr Boswell will agree. You can take it to him.’

  Mr Boswell gave me a week’s detention and a mountain of sums. He put a note and the drawing in an envelope and told me to give it to my father and mother when I got home.

  That evening, while Mama was getting supper and Dad sat in his chair with the newspaper and a beer, I handed him the envelope. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You in strife, CP?’

  He opened the picture, studied it and then read the note. Mama came to lean over his shoulder and scowled as she read.
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  ‘When drawing gets you into trouble,’ Mama said, ‘it’s gone too far. What’s this, here, about colours like cowpats?’

  For a moment my brain went dead. ‘Um, um, her ah . . . dress. Kind of poo-brown.’

  Mama’s eyes bored into mine. ‘Is that right?’

  I turned and went to the drawer for cutlery. I felt sure Mama could see into my mind, with or without colours, so I busied myself setting the table.

  ‘I’d be careful if I were you, Roberta.’

  I put a knife on the table, feeling its sharp edge against my thumb. ‘Why?’ I asked, trying to sound normal.

  ‘Unflattering pictures of your teachers, people with green faces and no mouths. For someone who dislikes attracting attention, you’re going about it the wrong way.’

  ‘They’ve got green faces because they’re jealous and they’ve got no mouths because people won’t listen to them.’

  Dad set aside the drawing. ‘Hey, girls . . .’

  ‘You tell her, Ed,’ said Mama.

  ‘Next time, CP, leave your drawings at home. Still, it’s a good caricature.’

  ‘What’s a caricature?’

  ‘Oh, Ed! You’re supposed to be the disciplinarian, not the cheer squad.’

  ‘I’m just explaining. A caricature is an exaggeration. Big ears get bigger, a small mouth gets smaller.’ He thumbed through the South Pacific Post and found a photo of a man with a big jaw and too many teeth. Beside it was a sketch. The artist had turned his jutting jaw into a tray and made his teeth like fence-palings. It was clever because it showed what made the man different from everyone else.

  ‘It’s good,’ I said.

  ‘It isn’t good,’ said Mama. ‘It’s silly.’

  I knew she didn’t think it was silly. She just didn’t want me encouraged. She didn’t like my drawings because they showed what people were like inside. Mama wanted me to be the same as other kids, except smarter. But I wasn’t like other kids – my leg made me different. She’d been teased when she was little for having darker skin, so why didn’t she understand that you couldn’t help being different; you couldn’t help being the way you were?

  Dad stood with a snowy towel wrapped around his middle, bellowing for socks. His drawers lay open and stuff was chucked all over the bed.

  ‘Bertie,’ said Mama, ‘would you mind checking with Josie?’

  ‘I’ve got some of his socks,’ I said, and brought four socks bulging with marbles from my wardrobe.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Dad. ‘They’re stuffed. Why don’t you use your own damn socks?’

  ‘Yours are bigger.’

  ‘How many have you got?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Ten? No wonder I can’t find any.’

  Mama giggled. ‘Give him some of those socks, Bertie.’

  ‘What about my marbles?’

  ‘Sod your marbles,’ said Dad.

  ‘I need a bag.’ I lusted after a big flashy bag.

  ‘It’s nearly Christmas,’ Mama said. ‘I expect Santa could organise something of that ilk.’

  ‘I don’t want a reindeer, Mama, I want a bag. Anyway, I’m nearly nine. I don’t believe in Santa.’

  ‘You’re still eight and of course you believe in Santa.’

  On Christmas Eve Dad came home early. He just made it into the house before heavy drops of rain plonked on the tin roof. Moments later it was pelting down, turning the parched earth to mud. The Wet was back.

  ‘Look,’ Mama said, holding up a bundle. ‘I actually made a Christmas pud.’

  Dad put his arm around her and said all he wanted for Christmas was peace and quiet and a bit of breast. I reminded him we were having turkey tomorrow with the Breuers but Dad said not any old breast would do.

  I wondered if ‘Santa’ would bring seventy-two Lakeland colouring pencils this year. Probably not, with the way my mother felt about my pictures.

  ‘Santa’ brought me a beautiful marble bag made from burgundy velvet and threaded with gold silk. I upended Dad’s bulging socks and the marbles cascaded out in a waterfall of colour. ‘Santa’ also brought clothes for last year’s doll, Margaret, which I never looked at, let alone played with. Mama must have thought I was still a baby.

  After breakfast, we took presents to Josie and gave her money for a trip back to her family at Milne Bay. Her new ‘husband’, Matthew, was visiting, her second in eighteen months, and it took a while for her to answer the door.

  At five o’clock, we drove to the Breuers’ for Christmas dinner. Stefi was in her room tugging on the thin straps of a new dress. It was too big and too old for her and had almost no back.

  ‘Christmas present?’ I said.

  ‘From my father. He’s making me wear it. I hate it.’

  ‘It’s a bit big for you. What does your mother say?’

  Stefi shrugged. ‘What did you get for Christmas?’

  ‘A marble bag and dolls’ clothes.’

  ‘Dolls’ clothes? You’re nearly nine! My mother gave me a camera.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  The adults were guzzling whisky and someone put on a new Frank Sinatra record. Mr Breuer grabbed Mama and swung her around the room, pressing his stomach against her and pulling her close. She leaned away from him and when the record stopped she wiped her hands on her dress. Stefi watched them, gnawing her fingernails. Mr Breuer changed the record but before he could grab Mama again Dad pulled her into his arms, rested his cheek on hers and closed his eyes. Mama leaned into him and let Dad move her around. I felt relieved. It was lovely to see them together; I just wished she’d hold him the same way he was holding her. At six o’clock Mrs Breuer brought a turkey to the table, golden and glossy. Mr Breuer took a knife and stabbed it right through from top to bottom. He grabbed a leg, hacked it off and stabbed the turkey again, twisting the knife and making the bones crack.

  ‘Konrad!’ Mrs Breuer shrieked. ‘You’re ruining my bird.’

  Stefi stared at her plate, her arms dangling by her sides like shoelaces.

  Dad pushed back his chair. ‘For God’s sake, Breuer, you’re making a botch job of that. I could do better with my machete.’

  Mr Breuer’s pale fingers hovered over the gaping flesh. He handed the knife to Dad. ‘Go on, then.’

  Dad carved whisper-thin slices of turkey that fell neatly onto the plate. ‘Always wanted to be a surgeon. Reckon I’d have made a good one.’

  This was something I’d never heard before. What else hadn’t he told me?

  ‘Why didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘We don’t always get what we want, CP. My parents didn’t have enough money for me to go to university. But you can. You can be our family doctor, eh?’

  Oh, no. Not Dad too.

  Stefi nudged the turkey to the edge of her plate. She reached for the bowl of vegies, stacked up a mound of potato and peas and doused them in gravy. When she’d finished eating, the turkey was still there.

  Seven weddings, three murders and four stabbings. Mama was busy. She liked the weddings but not the other stuff. Her favourite things to report on were nature and how people lived. Like the year before, I spent most of the school holidays with Josie or Stefi or at Dad’s office but a couple of times Mama took me with her.

  In the New Year we went into the hills so she could interview a patrol officer. While Mama sat with him on the verandah taking notes I lay on his springy lawn making pictures out of the shifting clouds. From the jungle came the sounds of screeching parrots, birds of paradise and hornbills and . . . woof! Two dogs appeared on the lawn. I sat up and watched. For a while they circled each other and I wondered if they were going to fight but they seemed more interested in each other’s bums. The circles gradually got smaller and smaller until one dog jumped on the other’s back. The dog underneath sagged and clawed the ground but the first one hung on and began to whine.

  Mama came down the stairs. ‘Ready to go, Bertie?’

  ‘Look at the dogs, Ma.’

  ‘What? Oh . . .’ />
  They were staggering about the lawn, well and truly stuck together.

  ‘Come on.’ She grabbed my hand. ‘Let’s go.’

  I pulled away. ‘There’s something wrong with them, Ma.’

  ‘Don’t call me Ma.’

  The dog underneath was howling. The patrol officer leaned over the verandah. ‘Pius,’ he snapped at the haus-boi. ‘Get a hose on those animals.’

  ‘What’s wrong with them, Mama?’

  ‘Nothing. Forget it.’ She hauled me to the jeep and almost shoved me in.

  But I didn’t forget it, and later I asked Dad. As soon as I started telling him what the dogs had been doing he changed the subject. ‘Guess what I did today, CP? Renewed my pilot’s licence. One of these days I’ll take you up.’

  ‘The dogs, Dad, what were they doing?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Obviously my parents weren’t going tell me so I asked Stefi.

  ‘They were making puppies,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Humans do it like that, too.’

  ‘Make puppies?’

  ‘Babies, you dill.’

  ‘They don’t.’

  ‘They do.’ She shut her eyes, looking suddenly slack and pulled apart, like her father’s turkey. ‘Ask your mother,’ she said.

  ‘I did; she won’t tell me.’

  But I did ask her again.

  She was in her bedroom, sitting on the high double bed, fiddling with a ring of tiny diamond flowers. Beside her was the mother-of-pearl box she kept in her underwear drawer, the box that held the photo I’d been forbidden to touch when I was little.

  ‘Where did the ring come from, Mama?’

  She dropped it in the box and snapped shut the lid. ‘Nothing to do with you. What did you want?’

  ‘Can I have a look?’

  ‘No.’ But her no sounded sad, rather than forbidding.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Roberta, what do you want?’

  ‘How do babies get here?’

  She sighed. ‘That’s for later, when you’re older.’