Fire Fire (10 page)

If he was there for the sake of the kids, who was there for the sake
of Acantia?

Although Ursula occasionally remembered they had made up the explanation, she knew that something had happened and that soya beans marked the spot like texta on a calendar.

When they came back from Germany, they ate soya beans for six months. Pa ate everything but wasn't keen on soya beans.

Acantia said that times were hard.

Acantia made soya bean salad (cooked soya beans, onions, lemon, oil and salt) as their first meal in Australia. Pa said nothing. He didn't even burp. Soya bean porridge was soya beans cooked and vitamised with some milk. Soya bean coffee was soya beans roasted and ground. They ate lecithin instead of honey on soya bean loaf. Soya bean stew was soya beans cooked for a long time. Pa made no sound and ate them up.

So did they.

By the end of six months, during which they left the great world and found Whispers, Ursula was so sick of soya beans that she thought she might die. Then, one day, Acantia said that the hard times were over and various foods reappeared. However, food was the only thing that improved. Soon most of them forgot what life had been like before.

No one stole soya beans.

An army fights on its belly. The children trained in secret as guerrillas and raiders. An act of considerable bravery was the theft of something obvious and needed for that night's dinner. A portion, or even the entirety, of a packet of shredded bacon, for example. Not a common item in the fridge. Such major crime was rare. However, under the impact of sustained minor pilfering everything turgid sagged gradually and everything richly coloured slowly paled as it was leached away and topped up with water. Dark grape juice became see-through, taut sacks of wheat and flour acquired wrinkles and inched away. Eggs disappeared warm.

In season, lollies saved up for birthdays or Christmas were hunted down like rare game. By the time they had to track down the phone key they were all skilled guessers of Acantia's thinking. They had no one to call, but Arno had to know where the key was, so they would all find it for him. Acantia succeeded in hiding very few items of food or entertainment from the children. The only things left to her were her secret past and her unpredictability.

Acantia placed hairs from her own head over jam jars, sealing the fridge door, around the cheese. The children eased the fridge door open, removed and then carefully replaced the black strands after watering the jam, shaving the cheese. They were banned from opening the fridge, so it had to be done with silent easing of pressure with the fingertips onto the doorseal, making it open with a sigh not a smacking kiss. The door seal wore out quickly.

Acantia tried cooking one less dinner than she had children, to flush out the prematurely satiated. But the terror of going without anything made them all rush up, jostling and noisy, when called. She made the last go without anyway. And then a bad tempered, importunate crowd of seething bodies pressured around her whenever she called them, even if softly.

The cook in her withered and died. It was war. They stole everything and, as they got older and bigger and more desperate, they were not surreptitious about it.

When a new flour sack had had its bottom corner cut off to replenish some private store, Acantia lined them up from Beate to Arno.

‘Own up, whoever did this, or by golly I'll strap the lot of you!'

They had long grown out of accusing each other and stood in silent solidarity. She swung the reins around Beate's obediently extended wrists and went down the line. When she got to Helmut she whacked him with all her might, for she was sure that he had done it. When she got to Arno she swung extra light, for Arno was her angel. She had only reached Siegfried when Arno started giggling, snickering uncontrollably, nervously, behind his hand. As they left, nursing their arms, Arno was still giggling. He had got away with it. Taking a beating ensemble for so daring and stupid a raid was worth it. They all loved Arno's happiness. They all did anything for Arno.

Arno learned to read and write and play chess and do long multiplication without anyone teaching him. He collected hair, his own and that of his siblings. He spun and plaited from it a fine rope, which, by the time he was seven, was more than a mile long and had to be stored in a bucket. He was inconsolable when he found that moths had eaten the first few furlongs from the bottom of the bucket, and everyone cut their hair and gave it to him to cheer him up.

Ursula was something of a perfectionist and was proud of the length of time she was able to go without washing either herself or her trousers. She rode bareback summer and winter and washing her trousers removed the thick layer of horsehair embedded in them and made her feel the cold. In summer her legs were always two-tone. The insides were clean from horse sweat.

Ember stares with a familiar, capricious, perhaps-I-hate-you-today look and will not let herself be caught. Ursula, as always, persists until she can grab some mane and vault on. It is a move that impresses, both her and any real or imaginary onlookers. It has style. Ursula rides bareback, twisting and prehensile as a monkey. Over the flying hooves she crouches, her face to the wind, her eyes streaming tears, grinning, somehow floating in a bed of violent muscles, sweat and satin hair. She rides with whispers to Ember from her thighs, calves and heels, tiny coded signs which Ember can choose to ignore but knows well enough. She rides with no bridle, pretending that she is in control but really just sticking like a baby chimp regardless of the mean surprises the horse springs on her. This is Ember's opportunity and she exploits it with passion and invention.

Ursula prided herself on her trick riding, on the vaults, falls and daring pick-ups she could sometimes do, if Ember would cooperate. But she could never ride standing up, surfing a gallop. Ember wouldn't permit it.

Ursula was in love with Ember's beauty. She spent hours simply staring, touching grooming, and later covering up any bruises on her arms that were horse-inflicted. Sometimes the horse was loving, her huge black eye soft and sweet, blowing gently through her perfect nostrils onto Ursula's cheek. Sometimes she did everything Ursula asked, leaping and quivering.

Ember was, except in springtime, always too thin. For a while she was allowed to eat a quarter of what the cow got, since the cow had four stomachs.

Ursula twined her legs and arms around Ember's hot copper body when the horse was grazing, making sure she didn't take too much grazing time with riding. She read books, stretched like Mowgli along the horse's back, elbows propped against the broad rump. She sneaked extras in hay and bran and cooking oats to secret rendezvous points with her impatient beast. Ember became thinner and increasingly snarky.

Then Acantia noticed her staring ribs and angry eyes (the horse's, that is).

‘That horse will have to be sold. You have obviously lost interest and cannot be trusted to look after it properly.'

Ember's feed bill was added to Ursula's account to pay back when she was a grown-up, and Ursula began to resent every mouthful the cow ate.

Ursula planned the great escape into the outback. She would live the life of a bushranger, simple and free (hunted intermittently by Acantia and her Troopers).

But in her heart she knew that if she really escaped there would not be room for two. She would be leaving Ember behind.

Ursula sat beside Gotthilf helping him milk the cow. He told her a joke about a woman's letterbox and a postman and a letter. He was angry when she didn't get it and told her what rape really was. Ursula was sceptical. She needed more than a delinquent's word for that. Gotthilf screamed at her suddenly that she was mentally retarded and didn't know anything. He was crying with rage. His tears dropped into the milk and for a moment made a bluish space before they disappeared.

They bundled into the kombi, stacked it up with blankets and headed off for the Murray. Acantia checked out properties along the way, pointed out Count Ugolini's vineyards and said odd and gentle things now and then, like, ‘
We'll
be OK'. Ursula wondered if those who would not be OK included the other kids and her father at home. Acantia also bought unusually unhealthy food when off alone with them. Pies and pasties and beer-battered fish. Sometimes there were leftover chips which they fed to the seagulls, happy with the wonderment of stomachs so full that chips could be given away. Acantia enjoyed it and enjoyed the children enjoying it. It was obligatory to be happy.

They were all very happy to get home. The children bounced on the bench seats, hooted and screeched as they crept along the winding track and the encroaching bush swallowed the kombi:

We are home

we are home

we are himmy home

we are home.

The kids who stayed home had it better. As soon as Acantia left, Pa howled joyously and raced off to the shops and bought olive oil, margarine, bread, salami, jam, lemons and anything else suitable for the occasion, raced home again and threw together massive piles of food: hacked-up chunks of bread and salami and, ‘
Simbalabim!
' conjured huge salads. They gathered around and helped themselves, oil dripping off their happy chins. He grinned and served and chewed with his mouth open, while they did their best to compete and stuff the lovely lighthearted day into their mouths as fast and as securely as they possibly could.

Then they would wander outside into the sun and bask or gather around a huge fire and doze, thigh to thigh, stinking and steaming into the humid air, while Pa tuned his viola in the auditorium and played dances.

They met their Uncle Lochie, Acantia's brother, once. He looked a little like Count Ugolini, for he was male and grown up, but otherwise resembled Acantia. He was seen to be a man of daring, dash and derring-do. He stayed for a day and influenced their thinking for three years. It was apple season. He went for a walk with the excited kids scampering at his heels. He leapt nimbly into Mr Vatzek's, stole three apples from the well-tended orchard and then leapt back over the barbed wire, swing! Just like that.