Fire Song (6 page)

Ingrid thought about it. What in the world was she going to say about Mum’s face? Unless, as the ambulance man said, it was already untwisting, and she could tell Mum the good news.

Unwilling footsteps along the pavement, long pauses as Blackie sniffed at fences and gateposts, flower scents, bush scents and other dogs’ scents, and every now and then the dark Creosote bases of telegraph poles. It was good for Blackie to get out like this.

‘Twenty minutes sniffing new smells – absolutely essential for a dog,’ Uncle Ken always said. Mum often kept Blackie tied up in the yard too darned long. Good for him, this investigating of smells, and it slowed things down.

Wallerawang. Wallerawang.
The song began the minute she saw the neat cream building at the end of the road, and the flower-bordered walkway across the garden that led into the hospital. She walked quickly to a different beat down that path, so that Freddy’s song wouldn’t be in her head.
Wallerawang, Wallerawang, Way away, way away, wailing away in Wallerawang!

‘No dogs allowed,’ a man by the door said. ‘This is a hospital!’ As if she didn’t know.

‘Yes, sir, I know that!’ she said, feeling silly, because in her confusion she’d forgotten all about tying Blackie up. Not that she wanted to find Mum too quickly, in that maze of corridors and wards with their lines of beds. She turned
away and crossed the lawn slowly to the big pine tree, where she’d leave the dog while she visited her mother.

Mum!

Ingrid noticed her hands were trembling as she tied the knot, as she patted Blackie’s old faithful head, wishing right now, wishing like hell that she was a dog that never had to make decisions about a mother like she did. A dog that could stay here in the cool shade, while someone else altogether went on inside.

She pushed open the swinging doors that announced the visiting hours – no one said she shouldn’t – and stepped inside, to the enquiring face of a nurse.

‘Ward 3, Bed 3 and she’s doing well, your mum.’

Ingrid didn’t like to ask about Mum’s face, but surely ‘doing well’ meant something good.

‘So go right down there, love. No one’s going to bite you, you know!’ Ingrid took small steps on the deep brown lino, slippery with polish, thinking that Mum as well as Grandma Logan would approve of its shine.

Grandma Logan! If only she’d been here.

Ward 3, Bed 3 – and here she was at the door. The ward seemed a long room with lots of beds in it, most of them empty. The furthest one had a curtain drawn around it. She tiptoed over. Maybe Mum would be asleep. ‘Please, God, let her be sleeping,’ she prayed for the second time that day. ‘Let her be all right and let her be sleeping.’ But when she pushed back the curtain, she saw at once that Mum was awake. She seemed absurdly small, lying there on two big pillows, looking like herself in the face, except for the droop of her mouth. Maybe one of her eyes was a bit wonky, too.

‘What took you so long?’ Mum asked in her usual voice, but as she struggled to sit up further, Ingrid saw the colour rise in her pale face.

‘Mum, the doctor said, Mrs Harry Williams, too – I mean, they all said that you should be left to rest.’

‘Pah! Left to die, I s’pose they meant,’ she said dramatically. ‘Whereas,’ there was still the glint in her eye that Ingrid didn’t want to see, ‘I’ve been lying here semi-helpless, just waiting for you to come.’

Ingrid didn’t know whether to be pleased or not.

‘Sorry, Mum, but Mrs Harry Williams –’

‘Never mind, never mind.’ Mum cut her off crossly. ‘Just pull that curtain to. So many busybodies.’

Ingrid looked around. There were eight beds in the ward and only two of them with patients far down at the other end. But this was Mum’s way. She pulled the curtain along the track that closed out the world. She was in a pink cocoon that might have been private, but it didn’t feel safe. It was awful, but she didn’t want to be here alone with her mother.

Now that the curtains were drawn across, Mum allowed her head and shoulders to rest on the pile of pillows. ‘I suppose I look a wreck.’ She started smoothing her hair. ‘I need a mirror, but do you think anyone will fetch one?’

So she didn’t know about her droopy mouth and her wonky eye.

‘You look fine, Mum. A bit –’

Her mother’s face clouded.

She
did
know about it, then.

‘They said I’ve had a stroke. A mild stroke. One hand’s a bit useless, see. But not the other. I must look a fright. But enough about that at the moment. Here, come closer.’

She clutched her hand in a way that Ingrid didn’t like – at all. The same as that old man, Joe, who used to sit on the front fence of his mother’s house and tell stories to all the kids who came by. He’d been in the war and they said it was his nerves that made him rave the way he did. And if you got close enough to him, he’d grab you, just as if he was a drowning man, and he was so hard to get away from. Now Mum was holding onto her with her good hand just like that, and trying to sit further up on the pillows.

‘Please, Mum, you shouldn’t sit up!’

‘I may be down, Ingrid child, but I can tell you one thing. I’m not out! No siree! Come closer. I don’t want any busybody to hear what I got to say.’ Ingrid’s heart sank. Something bad, something maybe worse than Mum’s changed face was about to happen, and there wasn’t a darned thing she could do about it.

‘
Youve
got to do it now,’ she hissed. ‘And that’s all there is to it. I hear you’re staying next door with the God-botherers. Well, then, you can get away from Mrs Harry Williams after dark. Out the window if you have to. Might be best, out the window. Easy.’

Mum, stop. Just stop!

‘I’d not filled every bowl like I’d planned to, but there’s one in the lounge room under the curtain, so that’s enough if you light ‘em front and back, and then get the hell out of there, back to your bed. It’s perfect. No one’ll ever know!’

‘But, Mum –’ she said, and nothing more.

There was a terrible silence then as Mum showed the full force of her disapproval, squeezing Ingrid’s hand hard, but then falling back onto the pillow, her face clouded in a
look that Ingrid knew could escalate to rage. Yet when she spoke it was softly, her weird eye fixed on Ingrid’s face.

‘I’m counting on you, Ingrid, like I never have before. D’you understand?’

‘Mum, I –'The word ‘can’t’ just wouldn’t come out.

‘Don’t say anything, love; just listen. You know very well we’re at the end of our tether, don’t you?’

She nodded miserably, thinking of Blackie at the end of his tether, stretched out happily in the shade of the pine tree and not having to listen to the wrack-and-ruin song, the out-on-the-street song. Nothing but the birdsong and the cool mountain breeze music. It was stifling in here.

‘Well, then, I’ve explained what that means. It’ll be the end of us. You and Pippa in a home and Freddy and Charlie, of course. A horrible home.’

Ingrid nodded dumbly.

‘But it’s not just that.’

‘What, Mum?’ Surely to heaven there couldn’t be anything worse. Once again Mum reached out to take her hand.

‘It’s about that no-good dad of yours,’ she whispered angrily.

She felt fear, anger at her mother for making her heart go wacky again, but she just nodded, waiting for the worst.

‘Seems he could get himself knocked about a bit, your daddy.’ She spoke with that mean edge of triumph in her voice.

‘Ran up a massive gambling debt in Sydney, the fool. See, he needs money help, too.’

Oh no, Mum! It wasn’t fair to use Daddy like this. And yet, how was she to know if it was true, what Mum had just
told her? It might have been a trick to make sure she’d go and do this wrong thing.

‘So you need to do it tonight, the way I planned. That’s all! Better still that I’m cooped up in this place, as it turns out. Now do it!’

‘I hate you!’ Ingrid wanted to yell out so that everyone in or near the ward, the whole world, could hear. ‘I won’t do it. I won’t set Grandma’s house on fire for anything. Not for the insurance money, not for you or Daddy, not for anything! I won’t!’ But even as these thoughts raced through her head, she was nodding yes to her mother – a sad sack of a nod, but it was yes!

She could see a change in Mum’s face at once, a crooked smile, as she lay back, pale and exhausted, relieved. But she wasn’t finished yet.

‘There’s something else I need to tell you. I’m not sure this is the right thing, but just so you won’t get your hopes up. Your father and I, well you see, we’re divorced now. It’s a horrible word, I know, but it’s better for us.’

How? How could it ever be a better thing for Daddy to be divorced? Divorced from all of them, separated forever. The words made her feel cold.

‘It’s the truth, Ingrid – divorced a few months back. I was going to tell you at the right time and now this is it. We’re divorced and I think you should know, because he’s not coming back to live with us ever, and I’m not having you be like Mrs Harry Williams, waiting and waiting for nothing. And if he gets over this stupid gambling thing, you know what he plans to do?’

‘No, Mum.’ How could she know what Daddy planned to do, when she’d never heard a word from him or about him?

‘He’s going off with your Auntie Ivy to live in Queensland and I’ll never forgive him or her for that. Never!’

‘Then that means –’ Ingrid was confused. Exactly what did it mean? Why was Mum saying this now?

‘But we’ll help him,’ Mum added just a bit too quickly. ‘Only this once, so he can get out of his money worries and all, at least that. He’s your father. But once we’ve done that, I don’t want to hear either of their names ever again.’

‘No, Mum.’ Her voice was a strangled whisper. She mustn’t cry. No crying.

‘Come and look at me, Ingrid.’ Mum beckoned. ‘Stand up and look at me, ugly and all as I know I must be. And listen hard!’ Her eyes, even the wonky one, glinted with power again, though her voice still came in hoarse whispers.

‘You’ve got a job to do and you’re going to promise me that you’ll do it! All right? For me and for your – our – family. Our whole family. Understand?’

Ingrid nodded dumbly.

‘Let me hear you say it. Let me hear you promise.’

‘Yes, Mum, I promise.’

‘See, if I don’t smell smoke tonight, my dear.’ She never called Ingrid that, and Ingrid hated to hear it used like this. ‘If I don’t hear that fire truck roaring by, so help me God, I’ll find a way to get to
Emoh Ruo
myself.

‘I’ll take a wheelchair and I’ll get down there somehow and do what has to be done, even if it kills me. And you’ll be –’ But Mum began coughing and her face started to twitch in weird ways and Ingrid pressed the buzzer for the nurse and that was all there was to be said, for the nurse soon sent her packing.

‘You’ve tired her out, your poor mum. Off you go now.’

It was then that Ingrid wanted to make her mother believe in her. She wanted to take her mother’s hand in hers and look in her face and get to that stony heart and say, ‘Mum, I’ll look after you. Honest to God, I’ll look after you somehow, some way, and we have no need to do this thing you’re asking me. We’ll find a way just like Grandma Logan always said. We will!’ And then Mum would say, yes, of course we will, and she’d kiss her poor hand and then she’d put her arms round her mother and hug her better, just as she did with Pippa when she fell over.

But the nurse shooed Ingrid away. ‘She’s going to be all right, if she can just get some
rest.

‘No more talking, no more visitors for you today, young lady!’ The nurse was all over Mum then. ‘That’s the way. We’ll have you right as rain in no time.’

And then Ingrid was outside on the lawn, sobbing into Blackie’s collar, where no one could see her, a new damned fire song starting in her head.
Fire and brimstone, fire and hearthstone, fire and stone, her stony, stony heart.

When she stopped her crying and mopped her eyes with her hanky, she made a kind of plan. Everything was so awful she couldn’t – wouldn’t – think much more than an hour ahead. But for now, she was not going to go straight home to Mrs Harry Williams’s place to play Sevenies or anything else with Gracie. She’d go home to
Emoh Ruo
and collect a few things from round the house, no matter what Mum had said about not taking too much, because now she’d gone and promised to do what Mum wanted tonight.

She could take everything next door without a worry, because she was staying there now. She could get Mum’s overnight bag, the strong leather one that Mr Neville Franks
had left behind. Mum had said it was his bad luck and she wasn’t chasing all over Australia for him, if that’s what he thought about his blessed bag. He could come back and get it if he wanted, but he never did. It was big enough. She’d grab clothes, of course, some books and photos and other precious things.

Most of all she was thinking of Freddy’s letter, the only one they’d ever received – had to be almost a year ago. It was curling up at the ends now and a bit worn from so much reading. She wouldn’t let that precious thing go up in flames, no matter what else did, when
Emoh Ruo
burnt to the ground.

‘It’s funny, you know, Blackie,’ she said, as she went out the hospital gate and headed for home. Of course she couldn’t say out loud what was funny. You never knew who could be passing by and think you were nuts – even if you weren’t exactly talking to yourself, but to a dog. The funny thing was that the thought of collecting some of their things from
Emoh Ruo
made her feel calmer again, even though the reason she was doing it was nothing short of monstrous.

W
allerawang
C/-Wallerawang Post Office
   (but don’t post anything here, because she gets it first and I won’t ever see it. I’ll send you an address. Maybe for Cessnock Post Office next time, but let me find out.)

So he hated Wallerawang and that was why the Wallerawang song got stuck in her head like some bad off-note. He hated it from way back then when they’d been there six months! And so did Charlie, despite Mum saying when she’d talk about them – which was hardly ever, now – how they both just loved it, those boys, free and easy out there on a lovely big healthy farm.

Bitchbiddy. He was calling her the bitchbiddy. Freddy had nicknames for everyone. He called her Funnyface, when he was being extra friendly or wanted something. Mum was Queen Liz and Charlie was Chizza. And he was the one who called Philippa ‘Pippa’.

So Mum had never written, though she said she had, the liar! And Mum had never sent the letters Ingrid had written, either. Those long ones at first, written so neatly and brightly to Freddy, trying to keep the ache out of them for his sake, and wondering why on earth he never answered. ‘Too happy and busy and active, two boys all over the farm. ‘ The liar!

Or she’d look up and when she could stop crying she’d say, ‘Boy am I glad to see you!’ And she’d hug them both to pieces and
Mum would be that glad to see them, she’d never send them away again. They’d all be together again one day soon!

Ingrid had been home alone when the letter arrived. She saw the postie stop at their letter box, when she’d just begun on one of her jobs that morning, mopping the wide verandahs round three sides of the house. It was a job she liked, and Mum said she did it extra well. Swirling the mop head into the metal bucket of water spiced with vinegar and carb soda. The bucket had fancy rollers that squeezed the mop out, so you didn’t have to do it with your hands and Grandma Logan said it was one of the best household inventions ever.

She’d mop a while and then stop at the back verandah rail to see what was going on in the garden, or over at Gracie’s place a long way off, or in the far distance, the valley. Then she’d stop at the side verandah to peer at the comings and goings of the town; or the front verandah to look across the train tracks to the houses way over, or down the tracks, if she heard a train coming. Verandahs could be busy places.

Today she began at the front. For the postie to stop at
Emoh Ruo
was unusual in the first place. From time to time he’d stop, but generally with one of those window envelopes, bills that always made Mum cranky. Ingrid waved to him and she could see at once it wasn’t a window envelope he was poking into their letterbox, but a big fat letter that could only mean one thing. Family news. She ran out to fetch the letter for Mum. Maybe Daddy knew where they were and was writing to tell them he’d be coming to visit soon.

But then she saw the writing and the postmark
Cessnock
and read her own name scratched in ink on the envelope, as
if it had taken Freddy a lot of effort. Seeing this, she couldn’t speak to the postie to say hullo, goodbye or anything else, but had to turn away. She carried the letter inside with both hands, as if it could break.

Freddy! Charlie!

At first she just laid the envelope on the kitchen table and stared at it a long time, because it was like seeing Freddy himself in a way – those bold long loops he made, those funny curls that formed the capital I and C in her name. She was surprised she could remember his handwriting so well. Even the blots, one right under her name and one on the side of the envelope, were just like him. She could see him mouthing ‘damn’ and ‘damn’ again as each of them formed. He probably didn’t have any blotting paper to hand, because they were heavy and dark blue. Because there had been so many long months with no news, she was scared to open the letter in case –

In case what?

‘Ingrid Crowe,’ she said out loud. ‘Open it, you big ninny!’ That gave her courage and she pounced on the letter like it was food she was longing for, tore it open and devoured the whole laboriously written thing – all three pages of it. And when she’d finished reading, she started all over again, and then again, dashing away the tears every time she read the bit about giving Pippa a kiss for him.

She wanted to kiss his dear handwriting back, but she didn’t, because it might make the ink run and she wanted to be able to read every word clearly and easily. She’d show it to Mum as soon as she could, but she felt so proud that he’d addressed the letter to her. Barring a card on her birthday from Auntie Marj, she’d never had a letter in her life.

She read it so many times she’d practically be able to recite it word for word when Mum and Pippa got home from the shops. She hadn’t finished mopping all the verandahs as she’d promised – she’d only just got started – and Mum would be here any minute. But Mum would understand, when she saw the letter from Freddy, and she’d be glad.

She ran up the hall and peered through the bay window of the lounge room, to see if Mum was coming up the road. There she was with little Pippa trailing behind. As Ingrid watched them come closer, a terrible, crushing thought occurred to her.

Mum mightn’t be so happy to read Freddy’s letter, after all. She’d know what Freddy was talking about. Not how bad it was – but she must know something. Specially when she’d spoken to the bitchbiddy herself. Still and all, when she and Pippa came in the door, Ingrid couldn’t help but thrust the letter in front of Mum’s surprised face and she couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice.

‘It’s from Freddy. A letter from our Freddy. And it was addressed to me. Mum, we have to go and get Freddy and Charlie, real quick!’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ingrid. Give Pippa some sarsaparilla and just let me sit down a moment. Here – give it to me!’

‘I’ll make you a cuppa,’ Ingrid said, hoping her mother would stay put and read Freddy’s precious letter right through.

Mum took it and Ingrid kept stealing glances as she skimmed it. What was she thinking? Wouldn’t her heart be torn to bits? To think of Freddy and Charlie hungry. To think of Freddy’s pants in rags, of him sitting there and stitching bags together like that. It would surely break her
heart. She placed Mum’s favourite cup and saucer beside her, the thin china ringed with powder blue stripes.

Mum was frowning as she read. Should she say something? Anything? Mum threw the letter down on the table.

‘I’m going to speak to that woman, Ingrid, letting them go hungry like that! Don’t you worry – I’ll telephone her tonight and give her a piece of my mind. And they should be going to school every day. She promised they would.’

‘But, Mum – it sounds so rotten for Freddy and Charlie at Wallerawang. We have to fetch them home right away.’

‘I don’t
have
to do anything you say, miss,’ Mum said sharply. ‘And Freddy is always one to exaggerate! Still, I’ll call her, that one, like I said. Tonight.’

She sounded angry, but there was something else Ingrid didn’t understand.

‘Those verandahs are still covered in dust, miss, so you’d better get a move on. Sitting around
reading.’
And Ingrid was dismissed.

‘Could I keep the letter, Mum? Freddy wrote it to me.’

‘I can see that! I’ll mind it for you,’ Mum said in that final way of hers and the letter was placed in a bowl on the high shelf, where she kept rat poison and the like, quite out of reach.

Why? Why was she trying to hide the letter when Ingrid already knew what was in it? And why wouldn’t she fetch the boys when the letter said how bad things were? Most of all, why did Mum sound kind of scared when she said she’d ring her, that bitchbiddy? She was the mother. Freddy and Charlie’s mother. Or weren’t they ‘our boys’ anymore?

The mop moved up and down and round and round and Ingrid banged the rollers on the bucket together carelessly,
not delighting one bit in the way the mop head was squeezed dry and thin. She’d get his letter back tonight. She’d get the high stool, climb up there and get Freddy’s precious letter before Mum did something to it. And she’d find out where Daddy was and she’d send the letter to him. She wanted him to read the bit about bringing them home, because even if Mum did ring – and she wasn’t even sure about that – Ingrid somehow knew she wasn’t going to do a thing about getting them back here.

At bed time that night Ingrid made a bigger fuss of Pippa than usual.

‘This is my goodnight kiss, Pippa baby. But this kiss, THIS KISS IS FROM FREDDY.’ Mum would hear her down the hall in the lounge room, where she was playing her silly old records on that record player Grandma Logan had been so proud of. She’d hear above the scratchy music, ‘Ah Sweet Mystery of Life’ – the words that made Grandma Logan teary. Funnily enough, it was one of the songs that Mum sometimes liked to play, when she wasn’t listening to Benny Goodman’s band over her last cigarette before bedtime. Her mother would surely remember the letter with that music on, and feel very bad about Freddy and Charlie. Stinking rotten bad, Ingrid hoped.

‘Another kiss from me, and another from our big brother who’s far away in Wallerawang. Yes, Pippa, THIS KISS IS SPECIAL. THIS KISS IS FROM FREDDY.’