Came Back to Show You I Could Fly Read online

  I was pleased to see how well you look, Judy. I hope the baby isn’t causing you too many sleepless nights. She really is a little pet and so pretty. Judy, if you ever find things a strain, please don’t hesitate to give me a ring or come out to visit. You seem to be coping marvellously, but I know how hard it can be with a young baby. You know, I often look back to when you and Angie were at school together, giggling over the phone to each other and trying out new hairstyles…oh dear, it seems only yesterday!

  Take care, Judy, please let me know if I can help in any way, and please don’t forget to pass my message on to Angie if she contacts you,

  Love from Jeanette Easterbrook

  Chapter 3

  ‘Hello, where did you spring from, then?’ someone said in a languid, just-woken-up voice and he saw that it belonged to a girl in her late teens, lying on a plastic couch in the sunshine. The voice held no belligerence, but he stared at her in alarm, not knowing how to explain that he’d sought refuge from a bunch of kids, some of them even younger than himself.

  ‘I thought I’d shut that gate,’ said the girl. ‘But the catch on it keeps jerking open. Still, that’s not my problem, is it? It’s that old cow of a landlady who should do something about it. I haven’t had anything nicked yet, but I guess there’s always a first time. Was that what you had in mind, pal, sneaking in here to pinch stuff?’

  ‘No! I just thought…thought it was my back gate,’ Seymour lied, finding his voice at last. ‘I just moved here and they all look the same from the alleyway.’ His fingers scrabbled at the latch, seeking escape from this new predicament, but he found himself staring covertly at the girl. She was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen in his life. Her large gentle eyes were the colour of rain-wet lichen, fringed with dark lashes that curled back upon themselves, and although she was a grown-up, she wasn’t really threatening in any way. She just lay there soaking up the sun, quiet and calm and easygoing, with her hands linked behind her head.

  ‘Don’t take off, I won’t bite you,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘S…Seymour.’ The embarrassment of saying aloud that pretentious name, which sat so uneasily upon him! It should, he thought, belong to a middle-aged business man with a grey suit and briefcase.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said the girl. ‘Sort of classy. My name’s Angela, but you can call me Angie if you like.’

  Her long hair, haloed by the sun, seemed composed of fine gold and silvery threads. Angela, Angie, Angel…

  ‘Listen, Seymour, would you like to be a real pal and make me a cup of coffee?’ the angel said lazily. ‘You’ll find everything just inside that door there, even though it looks like a barn, but it’s not, it’s my flat. Sixty-five dollars a week and don’t you reckon that’s a rip-off for a shed in a back yard? I ought to report her to the Tenants’ Union, still…what was I saying, oh yeah, you’ll find cups and stuff next to the sink, but don’t take any notice of the mess, okay? I haven’t got around to cleaning things up today yet. Make a cuppa for yourself, too, why don’t you? Oh, and would you mind emptying this ashtray while you’re in there? There should be a plastic bin next to the sink.’

  She started taking polish remover and cotton wool out of a little pink basket and began to manicure her nails. Not knowing how to refuse, Seymour edged past reluctantly and up two shallow steps into an extremely messy room. The far end contained a hideous old wardrobe with a mottled mirror set in its door and an unmade bed strewn with clothes. In the nearer section was an ancient gas stove, a jumble of tiny cupboards and a sink. It was difficult to find cups amongst all the junk, hard to find anything.

  He filled an electric jug and switched it on to boil, dug two chipped mugs out of the pile in the sink and washed them, found a jar of instant coffee, and sugar congealed in a blue pottery bowl without a lid. There was a small fridge in a corner, containing only a few cans of beer, chocolate yoghurt and a carton of dubious milk. He put everything neatly on a tray and carried it back outside.

  ‘You’re a real star! Not many people can make a good cuppa, but you’re certainly one of them!’ Angie said, sounding so warm and grateful that Seymour blushed, unused to praise of any description. ‘Don’t stand up to drink it, grab a cushion and sit down and make yourself at home. Talk to me. If there’s one thing I love, it’s having someone to chat to while I’m doing my nails. Though you’re not exactly chatty, are you? Never mind, you can just sit there and listen and I’ll do all the earbashing. I’m pretty good at it, they tell me.’

  Seymour perched self-consciously on the lowest step leading up to the flat—if you could call it a proper flat. He sipped the coffee, trying not to think of the mess in the kitchen. You couldn’t be brought up by people like his mother and Thelma without being fastidious, but he was too polite to show reluctance at having to drink from a cup that had been in such a grotty sink. It was strange, really, because the girl herself was so immaculate, her hair sparkling like water in the sun.

  He watched, fascinated, as she attended to her nails. They were long and perfectly shaped and she was obviously very proud of them, spreading her hands out like a temple dancer. She shaped each nail with a slim pearl-handled file, then began to apply the lacquer. Jet black. Seymour had never seen anyone wearing black nail varnish before. Her clothes were unusual, too. She was wearing a short satin skirt and a blouse like a singlet, only made rather startlingly from silver lace. She bent to pick up a dropped pair of manicure scissors and Seymour nearly dropped his coffee mug. There was a tattoo—a little blue horse with outspread wings, stencilled on one shoulder. He’d never known anyone with a tattoo before, specially not a girl.

  ‘Hey, how about I paint your nails for you?’ she teased, and he shook his head vehemently. ‘Go on, live dangerously. Think of the sensation you’d cause.’

  ‘No! I mean, no thanks. Thelma…the lady I stay with, she’d go bananas if I came home wearing black nail polish! Geeze, blokes don’t wear nail polish!’

  ‘Go on, is that so?’ Angie said, smirking. ‘Well, never mind, one day I’ll sneak up on you when you’re asleep and paint your nails, toes and all. Cut your hair, too, while I’m about it, and make you…well, let’s say different. So, I guess you’re on school holidays, are you?’

  He nodded soberly, thinking of the excruciating four weeks before him, all those barren days like a long dusty road leading to nowhere in particular. ‘I’ve got nothing to do,’ he said. ‘I reckon I’ll be glad when school starts again.’

  ‘You’re crazy. Holidays are lovely! I’m on one, too, sort of,’ Angie said. ‘Well, between jobs, at any rate. What I’m really planning to do is open my own florist shop. Bet you never guessed I was a qualified florist, did you? Well, I am. At least, I never actually got the certificate yet, but near enough as makes no difference.’

  Seymour felt impressed. She didn’t seem quite old enough to be the potential owner of a shop, but she was so unusual, so unlike anyone else, that the idea didn’t seem very outlandish. Anyone who wore satin and silver lace and black nail polish, anyone who had a little flying horse tattooed on one shoulder, could reach heights undreamed of by other people.

  ‘I’ve got a name already picked out for my shop,’ Angie boasted. ‘ “Fleur”. That’s French for flower. Cute, isn’t it? And I’m going to have the benches and walls and floor and everything snowy white to set off all the flower arrangements, and a ceiling made out of that opalescent stuff you see inside shells on the beach. What do you think about that? I’m going to specialise in bridal bouquets, too, that’s where the big money is.’

  Seymour was captivated, having no difficulty in imagining such a shop, with Angie at its fragrant centre. He pictured himself inside the shop with her, permitted to watch as she arranged soft boughs of blossom, being allowed to make morning coffee in opalescent mugs, getting praised for it…

  ‘Have to get some money saved up first, though,’ Angie said and sighed and tossed all the manicure tools back into the little basket. ‘Bring the mugs
inside, will you, Seymour? The old dragon nearly has a hernia if you even leave a clothes peg on the ground out here.’

  She seemed quite proud of her flat, despite the horrendous mess. ‘Completely self-contained,’ she bragged, pulling back a curtain to display a tiny bathroom. ‘I’ve hardly ever managed to get a self-contained place before, you know, rents are that high. It’s been…well, sharing flats with real no-hopers, and sleazy old boarding houses where you could pick up God knows what from standing on the bath mat. This is only temporary, though. My boyfriend, when he gets…well, pretty soon he’ll be in a position to put down the deposit on our own proper house. I don’t know where yet, maybe a little place in the country. You could come and visit us, even though you never open your mouth to say more than two words strung together. Jas and me, we’ll keep chooks and grow all our own vegies and get an Old English Sheepdog and we’ll have a duck pond. I’m loopy about ducks. I used to have this fantastic pottery duck collection, only someone’s nicked it or I’ve lost it or something, I can’t remember exactly…Oh, strewth…it can’t be, is that the time? Someone’s pinched the whole morning off me! I’d better get my skates on now.’

  Seymour said hastily, ‘Thanks for the coffee. And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hold you up.’ He was so accustomed to things being deemed his fault that the apology tumbled out as automatically as breathing.

  ‘I held myself up, and you don’t have to go,’ Angie said, surprised. ‘Hang around a bit. You’re a nice polite kid, not loud mouthed and sassy like those other little yobs who live round here. And I didn’t mean it about you being too quiet. I kind of like it, because I natter on so much. Tell you what, while I have a quick shower, why don’t you pick out some earrings for me to wear? They’re all in this box.’

  While she was singing blithely in the shower, he tipped the collection of earrings on to the bedspread and sorted them into pairs. There were dozens of them—shells, moulded flowers, feathers, little animal shapes, silver dragonflies, swathes of sparkling multi-coloured stones. Using a couple of pink tissues from the box on Angie’s dressing-table, he lined the jewellery case and arranged all the paired earrings inside. The dressing-table wasn’t a proper one, just a small battered table with a propped-up mirror. Its surface was cluttered with cosmetics, cheap ornaments and magazines, and looked as though it hadn’t been tidied in weeks. Thelma, he thought, wouldn’t have tidied it, she would have dumped the whole lot straight into a rubbish bin.

  Angie came out of the shower and twirled about showing off a change of clothing. She was dressed completely in pink: a ruffled dress tied in narrow pink ribbons over her shoulders, pink plastic bangles that jangled from wrist to elbow, a long rose-coloured scarf knotted about her head with the fringed ends falling down one side of her face. She looked, to Seymour, as fresh and pretty as a carnation.

  ‘Well, now, what do you think?’ she said seriously. ‘Your honest opinion, mind, not just being smarmy. Are these shoes all right, or do you think I should wear my white sandals?’

  ‘I kind of like those shiny ones you’ve got on already,’ he said, unaccustomed to being called upon to give advice about girls’ clothes. He held out the earrings he’d chosen, tiny pink roses, because Angie had been so radiant when talking about her florist shop.

  ‘Thanks, love, you picked out a really good pair to go with Susan-Jane. I couldn’t have done better myself.’

  ‘Susan-Jane?’

  ‘That’s the name of this dress. I give all my clothes names, like this one’s sort of little girly and frilly, so Susan-Jane suits it, don’t you reckon?’ Angie held her long hair back to put the roses in, and he saw that she already had several silver hoops and studs in each ear lobe.

  She sprayed herself lavishly with perfume, pretended to do the same to him and followed, giggling, as he retreated outside.

  ‘Very funny!’ Seymour said.

  ‘Well, your expression certainly was—you just should have seen your face! Now then, where’s my blasted key…must be my lucky day, here it is right on top of the junk in my bag, and not only that, my spare key, too! Thought I’d lost both of them. I’m always losing stuff and locking myself out, so I had this other one cut.’

  ‘It’s pretty mad, carrying them both together,’ Seymour said, still upset about the perfume. ‘Most people leave their spare key under a flowerpot or something, for an emergency.’

  ‘Quite right, too, professor,’ Angie said and danced across the paved yard, holding out the wide ruffled skirt of her dress. She slipped the spare key under a flowerpot, then held the gate open and motioned him through. ‘Off you go now. Scoot! Might see you around some time, chatterbox.’

  Seymour looked out at the alleyway and remembered those terrifying kids who were perhaps still lurking there like Ninjas. Waiting for him to reappear. What they’d said about going to the oval, that could have been a ruse. He’d been tricked like that before. He hovered by the steps, unable to move, gazing at Angela with scared eyes.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’

  ‘I don’t…don’t…know which is my back gate,’ Seymour managed to get out. ‘Didn’t I tell you? I’m staying with this lady, Thelma…she’s a friend of my mum’s, sort of…and I climbed over her back gate and went up the shops and now I’m…lost. The house number’s 37 Victoria Road, but I can’t go around that way. Got no front door key, and there’s a trellis thing on the side path and it’s kept locked. I don’t know what to do…’

  ‘Well, don’t panic. You’ve struck it lucky, because I just happen to be going out that way. As a matter of fact I always do, so my landlady can’t bail me up and have a moaning session. Come on, then, useless. You’d be dead hopeless if you were one of those guys they sent off to explore the moon, you’d probably have landed up on Mars instead. Can’t even find your own back gate, I don’t know! Now, Victoria Road’s over that side, so your gate must be along here somewhere. The toffy-nose side of the alley, if it’s even got one.’

  Seymour looked anxiously up and down the alley, but it was deserted. Almost immediately he recognised Thelma’s gate, directly opposite, with the crescent-shaped cut above the lock. He climbed up with no difficulty, then sat on the top rail and looked down at Angela, thinking that in that setting of garbage bins and ugly corrugated iron, she was like a waterlily floating on a murky pond surface. But now she was turning to go, and he’d probably never see her again, and she was the only person he’d ever met in his life who’d made him feel as though his company was remarkable or worthwhile.

  ‘Hey, Angie…’

  She turned back and looked at him enquiringly, but he had nothing else to say. He just sat and gazed down at her from the loneliest face in the world.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Bored, aren’t you, nothing to do in the holidays. Well, listen, I just thought, how about you turn up at my place tomorrow around ten-thirty? I’ve got to go someplace first, but soon as we get that out of the way, I’ll take you on a tram ride and show you something really fantastic. It can be a special holiday treat.’

  ‘You mean it?’ he asked breathlessly, hardly daring to believe it could be so.

  ‘Course I mean it!’ said Angela.

  BUDGET

  Rent $65 (what a rip off!)

  Elect a/c $47 (apply for extension of time if poss?)

  D.M. $450 (!!!)

  Rick $76 (?) LIAR!!

  Part payment on black dress $5

  Floral art course outstanding fees final notice hell

  damn and blast! $100 less deposit = $75

  NEEDED URGENTLY:

  milk coffee groceries/fruit pantyhose

  hair colour rinse detergent powder Ant-Rid

  bulb for kitchen light new jeans

  In savings a/c

  $11.50

  In Jas’s a/c

  ? (Mustn’t touch!)

  Dole cheque due

  Tues

  Sickness benefit? Wangle it somehow? Through Rick or Gayle maybe?

  Loan from Jude $15 (pay back out of
dole cheque)

  Sell leather jacket to Recycle Shop? How much?

  In handbag $7.57 (!!!!!!!!!!!)

  HARD TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Chapter 4

  ‘I’ll be able to tell your mum when she comes on Friday you’ve been a good obedient boy and given no trouble,’ Thelma said. ‘Or hardly any.’

  He knew that meant the small scorch mark on the kitchen table where he’d absent-mindedly put down the hot saucepan last night. Thelma had been referring to it obliquely ever since.

  ‘With all this extra time you’ve got for study, you might even be ahead of the others in your class when you go back to school,’ she said. ‘If you look at it like that, it makes up for not being able to roam about on your own for a week or so. Not that that’s important. We all have our crosses to bear in this world, every one of us. You can’t start too early in life to learn what’s in store and people make a big mistake thinking everything should be fun. Now, Seymour, today you can make do with a couple of boiled eggs for lunch. Put bicarb soda in that little aluminium saucepan to soak afterwards, so it doesn’t discolour, and I’ll be home by six.’

  At last she was gone, clomping away down the street in her sensible shoes, and Seymour put the chain back on the door. He waited alone in the quiet house, listening to the mantel clock ticking imperiously from the front room and the heat crackling on the roof. At ten-thirty precisely he crossed the alley and went in through Angie’s gate.

  No one answered his knock on the door. He’d thought himself immune to disappointment, and wasn’t prepared for the sense of loss that assailed him now, of something promised and denied. He knocked several times more, quiet, tentative, despairing little knocks, and finally tried the handle, to discover that Angie must have gone out and left the door unlocked. It swung lightly inwards, catching against her striped handbag lying on the floor. There was one pink satin shoe tossed carelessly on a chair with plastic bangles on top.