Came Back to Show You I Could Fly Read online

  ‘Okay,’ Angie said coldly. ‘I get the message loud and clear. I guess I’d better shove off before Lynne and David come home, isn’t that what you want? You wouldn’t want me around contaminating them, would you? I bet they didn’t even have any ballet lessons or dental appointments at all, it was you and Dad making sure they were kept out of my way! I came out here to tell you something, but I guess it’s not the right time. Maybe it won’t ever be the right time. Maybe it won’t even happen, anyhow. I think I’d better just take myself off now, okay?’

  ‘The only good news you could tell me is that you’ve booked yourself into Lakeview and you’re prepared to stay there for as long as it’s necessary,’ Mrs Easterbrook said heavily over the scrape of a chair being thrust back from the table.

  Seymour crept off the patio and out into the middle of the lawn and pretended to be looking at a rockery, so that when Angie called him, she wouldn’t guess he’d overheard that anguished conversation which wasn’t meant for anyone else’s ears. At the front door as they went out, Mrs Easterbrook’s face was composed and neutral, and she even chided Angie gently for wearing such tight jeans instead of a cool dress in the heat, but not in a nagging way. Angie bent forward to kiss her on the cheek, but Mrs Easterbrook just held her face still, suffering the kiss, not returning it, and the door closed before they even reached the front gate.

  Mrs D. Rusden

  Supervisor

  Mountain Gate Child Minding Centre

  Mountain Highway

  Elthwick

  Dear Mrs Rusden,

  I’d like to apply for the position of Childcare Worker you advertised last week. I haven’t had any experience professionally in this area, but I know I could handle it very well. I really like kids and being with them, and I have a younger brother and sister I used to babysit for.

  Previous jobs include the following: Working at a race stable; flower stall assistant florist; dress shop assistant; barmaid waitress; pizza hut assistant manageress; vet’s receptionist; home help for an elderly lady. (Unfortunately, as I’ve moved recently, I can’t enclose copies of references as the box they were in is still in storage). However, I would appreciate it very much if I was given the chance of an interview. I can begin work at any time and also work flexible hours if you like. I’m sorry I don’t have the phone on yet for you to contact me, but either of the two people mentioned below will pass on any messages.

  Yours sincerely,

  Angela Fleur Easterbrook

  1) Judy Anderson, Tel. 656 1123

  2) Rick Harkmann, Tel. 798 7756

  P.S. I’d really love working in a creche and am very anxious to find a steady job. I know it wouldn’t matter that I’ve had no experience working in a creche before, as I’m a hard worker and learn things really fast!

  Big White Mansion

  Gresham Avenue

  Nobbs Hill

  Sunday or something

  Hey, Seymour, little buddy!

  Don’t even know if you were planning to pop around, but let yourself in with the spare key if I haven’t got back yet. Had to go out unexpectedly. Don’t take any notice of the pair of jeans soaking up the water in the fridge (defrosting it and couldn’t find the drip tray thing)!

  I left a Mars bar and some marshmallows on the sink for you—(Vant some nice candy, liddle boy?)

  Hey, heard this joke?

  Q: What’s the difference between ‘Ugh!’ and ‘Ugh! Ugh!’

  A: ‘Ugh!’

  (Pretty sick, huh?)

  See ya, don’t go away if I’m not there. Be back as soon as I can and I’ll bring us both a yummy pizza and all the trimmings for afternoon tea!

  Love from Angie

  P.S. Have you got rid of that DAGGY shirt yet?!!! Don’t go putting it in the charity bin, either, you’ll have all the derros chasing you round town trying to hit you over the head with wine bottles.

  P.P.S. Hey, we could go up the market one day and buy you some fantastic tee shirts, saw one there with the Phantom on it and his eyes light up behind his mask.

  P.P.P.S. Hope this letter doesn’t land on Thelma’s head by mistake if she’s hanging up the washing! Couldn’t find a stone to weigh it down with, so I want this elephant earring back!

  Chapter 7

  His mother came for her promised visit and stayed the weekend. There were many secretive, murmured conferences between her and Thelma in the front room, with Seymour banished to the kitchen to make endless pots of tea. In between the conferences in which he had no part, his mother kept insisting how wonderful it would be when they were back together at the end of the month, how the new situation at Carrucan would make up for these four trying, solitary weeks. Seymour made agreeable responses, but kept his mind perfectly blank, not allowing any expectations to take seed. He knew just how stark the gap between imagination and reality could be.

  She took him out on Saturday, but it wasn’t an enjoyable excursion. Even the start of it was charged with drama. First she opened the front door a crack and peered through, then went dramatically to the gate to check that his father wasn’t lurking about in Victoria Road. And when they travelled into the city, most of the time was spent in buying new school clothes. The only emotion Seymour felt when he tried on the new uniform was a detached curiosity about how much wear he’d actually get out of it before they moved on to some other place.

  Uniforms, he thought dully, were really only suitable for kids who lived predictable ordinary lives. In nice predictable ordinary suburbs where nothing ever altered except someone building a new garage, someone else having an extra room added to their house. That’s what his mother wanted, to live in a place like that. She’d keep such a house so trim, too, as neat as a little cuckoo clock. Suddenly he noticed how she glanced at certain things on display in the store—curtain material, cushions—and in those glances he thought he detected the same degree of yearning he’d experienced himself over objects. It was…sad.

  He raged silently at his father, seeing him as a useless wastrel, a no-hoper. It wasn’t too much to ask, a permanent home somewhere, a job like everyone else’s father. Only…a memory edged into his mind, of the little fold-down table in the caravan and a newspaper spread out at the employment ads, some of them ringed with pencil. Seymour, almost asleep in the top bunk, had watched the pencil suddenly roll away from tired fingers and drop to the floor. He had watched his father’s hands go up to his temples, and the worry lines across his forehead deepen into something like despair.

  There was no way they’d ever all live together in a little cuckoo-clock house in a garden suburb like—well, Merken, where Angie had grown up. Only, perhaps it didn’t matter all that much, anyhow. There hadn’t been much evidence of happiness in Angie’s former house. She hadn’t liked it, she’d moved on. Perhaps it was as he’d suspected all along, no place was ever going to be any good, and you just had to come to terms with it.

  Maybe he’d been wrong about his mother hankering after curtain fabric and cushions. She certainly wasn’t now—she was hurrying him briskly towards the cafeteria, pleased with herself because she’d found some needlework stuff at half-price on a display counter. All those little mats she made, he thought, sitting down to lunch. Why does she bother? She’s got no house full of tables and shelves to put mats on, no place of her own…But she chatted, with what seemed like enthusiasm, of the new job and the possibility of it being permanent if things worked out as she thought they might.

  ‘We could even get some of our stuff out of storage,’ she said. ‘Take it along with us when we move, just in case. There’s my little chintz chair…Don’t put your elbows on the table, Seymour, you know better than that.’

  ‘What if…’ Seymour began, intending to say, ‘What if Dad gets that maintenance job at the golf links he was talking about, aren’t you going to give him another chance? Aren’t we all going to be living back together again?’

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ said his mother. ‘Goodness, I hope you haven’t
been doing that at Thelma’s. She’ll think I haven’t brought you up properly. I don’t want you getting into sloppy habits, dear. It was a mistake letting you go to your father even for that short time. I don’t know, every time I go against my better judgment and let you visit—not that he deserves it—what was it you wanted to say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  After lunch in the department-store cafeteria, they went to a film, but not one of his choosing, for his mother had already booked the tickets. Going to the movie was his birthday outing treat, and the school clothes, a five-dollar note and new pencil box were his gifts.

  The rest of the weekend seemed interminable, just more whispered conversations which changed to facile general chat when he brought in fresh pots of tea. He gathered that some sort of legal custody action was being planned, but his mother didn’t tell him any details. He was even relieved when Monday morning came and she left at the same time as Thelma.

  No one answered his knocking when he went across to visit Angie at ten-thirty, although the door wasn’t locked. He put his head inside to investigate and saw that she was still half asleep.

  ‘Angie…hey, Ange, wake up! You’ll be late picking up your medicine at the hospital,’ he said, but she only muttered something about it being too late, that he should nick off and for God’s sake leave her alone, and slumbered on. The room was even more untidy than usual. Quietly, being careful not to disturb her, he filled in time by straightening up the kitchen section. He tackled the washing up and scrubbed a patina of grime from the little sink. Then he glanced uncertainly at Angie, who had slept through all the subdued clatter of things being made orderly. She looked ill, her eyes circled by dark rims like bruising, and apparently she hadn’t bothered to change into a nightgown, but had just tumbled fully clad into bed the previous night. He made coffee and took it to the bedside.

  ‘Come on, now, lazy,’ he coaxed. ‘You can’t stay in bed sleeping all day. How about what you told your mum, that you were going to look for a job?’

  It took many persistent shakes, but finally Angie opened her eyes and sat up and glared at him. Groaning quietly, she sipped the coffee and lit a cigarette. The ashtray by the bed was choked with stubbed cigarettes and ash, so he emptied it into the kitchen rubbish bin and brought it back clean. Angie didn’t thank him or even seem to notice.

  ‘You could still make it out to the hospital if you get a move on,’ he said, for punctuality and routine had been instilled in him all his life by his mother and it made him edgy when people deviated from it. ‘You said you had to pick up that medicine every day, Angie.’ He paused and added, without looking at her, ‘What sort of stuff is it? What’s it for?’

  ‘Told you that already, and don’t nag, my head can’t stand it…’ Angie snapped. ‘My metabolism. I’m giving the hospital a miss this morning. No point. I don’t think I’ve quite got the hang of today, yet. Thanks for the coffee, anyway.’ Her hands shook, splashing coffee and ash on to the blanket, and Seymour dabbed ineffectually with a tissue from the bedside table.

  ‘Sit down,’ Angie said irritably. ‘Don’t be darting about like Sadie the cleaning lady. You’ll end up a fuddy-duddy old bachelor before you even reach your teens if you don’t watch out.’

  The chair was piled with clothes, so he perched awkwardly on the end of the bed, feeling depressed because the day wasn’t turning out as he’d planned. He’d been looking forward to choosing earrings to match whatever she planned to wear, hadn’t even minded about the lengthy trip to the hospital, for after that was over they could have gone somewhere else and spent a cheerful, bright afternoon.

  Angie certainly didn’t look cheerful now, and he thought of the quarrel she’d had with her mother, all those things he’d overheard and didn’t understand, or only half understood. They fluttered softly about in his mind like bats in a cave, but suddenly alarmed, not wanting to know, he pushed those thoughts into a separate compartment and slammed the shutters down. Angie smiled at him over the coffee, a wan shadow of her usual joyful smile, but his spirits lifted a little.

  ‘So, where’d you get to yesterday, Buster?’ she said moodily. ‘Standing me up, eh? I could have taken you to the zoo, you know. There’s this cute orang-outang there. He’s got this old chaff-bag like a security blanket and he just sits with it over his head, like he’s got it lined with rude postcards or he can’t bear the sight of the world. He kills me, that orang-outang. Only you didn’t show up…’

  ‘But I told you I couldn’t drop in over the weekend, Angie, don’t you remember? It was when we were coming back from your mum’s, that’s when I told you. I had to go into town for school things.’

  ‘Oh, well, maybe you did tell me, my mind’s like a colander. I had a sort of busy weekend myself, anyway. Ran into some mates I hadn’t seen for ages. We went…went…’ Angie wrinkled her forehead, shook her head as though it were too much of an effort to remember and slid down with her arms folded behind her tousled head. She stared through the tiny window at the patch of cornflower sky, and seemed to forget that he was there. Her face emptied of everything else except melancholy.

  ‘You look sort of white, Angie, like you’ve got the flu or something,’ Seymour said. ‘Maybe it’s not a bad idea if you got your act together and went out to that hospital and saw a doctor.’

  ‘Doctors,’ she scoffed. ‘The ones at that hospital aren’t any good. They’re jerks out there. I reckon they’ve all been deregistered for funny business, and they’ve snuck in again through the back door. It’s the pits, that clinic, stuck all the way out on North Road. They expect people to hold down jobs and still get out there every day somehow, and they don’t dare be ten minutes late. Doctors only tell you things you don’t want to know about. I’ll be okay, you don’t have to worry about me. I might get up later and do a few things, but right now I’ll just lie here and rest. I feel really tired…Oh God, I feel so damned tired…’

  ‘Do you want me to go, then?’ Seymour asked, thinking of Thelma’s house and the hours of arid boredom that waited for him across the alley.

  ‘No, you don’t have to scarper. Stay and talk to me, keep me company. Keep me comforty, that’s what my little sister used to say when she was learning to talk. Cute, eh? When she was sick in bed she’d say, “Don’t go to school, Angie, stay home and keep me comforty.” Lynne’s pretty, isn’t she? Talented, too. She’ll get a place in any ballet company she applies to when she’s older, no doubts about that. She’s got one of those ballet faces, you know the sort of faces those girls always have, neat and pure like flowers. Didn’t you reckon she was pretty?’

  ‘But Angie, I never met…’

  ‘It’s beaut having a little sister, though I guess fourteen isn’t little any more. And my brother David, he’s a real whizz with maths and computers and stuff like that. You should have seen the things he used to make when he was only in primary school. Good at sport, too. Takes after my dad, he’s pretty smart as well. High achievers, that’s what my family’s all about—did you just happen to notice all those trophies and certificates and stuff on the mantel, cups for this and that?’

  ‘Yes, I saw them.’

  ‘I’m the odd one out. Not that they ever let me feel it, mind. I mean, they weren’t always staring at me over the table and saying things like, “What a shame Angie’s so dumb, maybe there could have been a mix-up at the maternity hospital when she was born.” Nothing like that, I haven’t got that as an excuse…oh hell, all it takes is one lousy party! Just one lousy rotten party and showing off, wanting to sparkle like a Christmas tree…Little smartypants Angie, in over her neck…I must have been a very big disappointment to my family, you know. I didn’t win anything, even when I was in Brownies. Only ever got one badge for First Aid and that’s just because the lady doing the testing was a friend of mum’s, so she couldn’t very well not pass me.’

  ‘I never won anything, either,’ Seymour said. ‘At school or anywhere else. I guess it’s because we move round a lot. It’s rotten
. I don’t mean not winning stuff, but you don’t stay anywhere long enough to make friends, either. Not that I’m much good at that. Kids sort of pick on you when you’re new.’

  ‘Only if you let them. You’re not tough enough, Seymour.’

  ‘Can’t help it. I don’t know how to…you know, stand up to people.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to be a prize fighter all covered in battle scars. There’s other ways of coming out top—you’ve just got to outsmart people when they start to hassle you, be one jump ahead. Sort of talk your way out of things if you can’t do it the other way. Like having a secret weapon.’

  Seymour contemplated that advice dubiously and didn’t think it applied to him. He saw himself as a soldier with no weapons at all, secret or otherwise. Someone had forgotten right from the start to equip him with any weapons and soon there would be another stage in that long haphazard march.

  ‘Got my new school uniform yesterday,’ he said glumly. ‘Geeze, I’m dreading it. You just get used to one teacher and then you have to move on to some place else and start all over again…’

  ‘Some place else and start all over again…’ Angie murmured, and sighed.

  Seymour remembered his pencil case and took it out of the paper bag to show her. A birthday gift, even if this wasn’t a spectacular one, was after all something out of the ordinary. The pencil case was made of stone-grey fabric with a strong zip, utilitarian, practical as concrete. As he gazed at it, he wished suddenly he hadn’t brought it across the alley, after all. ‘Got this for my birthday on Saturday,’ he explained, embarrassed.

  ‘It’s…very nice,’ Angie said politely, then she grinned, then burst out laughing. ‘Seymour, who gave it to you, the Gospel Hall Benevolent Fund? It’s exactly like something those nerdy kids at school would have, you know those kids—every school has them, always sucking up to teachers and putting the date on their work without being told and they never let you have a loan of their coloured pencils.’