Henry’s Daughter (11 page)

The big boys look at him. It's not a bad idea. They look at his basin, which has got the taps and pipes still connected. They walk the brick room again. It's sure long enough. Narrow, though. For two days they talk interior wall, but Karen is talking of breaking it off so that wall gets tossed into the too-hard basket and the boys' talk changes to finding
a plumber who will connect it all up to the sewer pipes and not rave on about the legalities of a loo and washbasin in a bedroom.

Martin talks to an apprentice he knows, then Vinnie is into digging a sewerage trench from the eastern corner of the room, down the back of the outside laundry to the existing loo.

The plumber kid, Jeff, comes one Saturday and joins up the sewerage pipes to the old
loo pipes, then he joins in a piece of copper pipe to take the hot and cold water down to the basin and Lori's brick room is turning into a self-contained flat. She'll be able to lock herself in there and only come out to eat.

‘Incredible,' Alan says, getting a cup of hot water from the brick room tap so he can mix his salt and water gargle. He doesn't want to go to the hospital to get his tonsils
out, and it's that salty water gargling twice a day that has got him fit.

‘I-n-c-r-e-d-a-b-l-e,' Mick spells.

‘It's i-b-l-e, not a,' Alan says.

Natural disasters are incredible and do incredible damage to people and places
, Lori writes in her essay about natural disasters.
However, all of australia's volcanos are exstinct due to the country is worn out. We still have a few hurrycans up the
top of australia, which are caused by hot and cold air mixing or something. We also have a few earthquakes which are caused by two bits of the earths foundation which has got a falt in it so it doesn't join up properly. that's why you have to poor all of you house foundation in one day so you dont get a falt line.

Schools are also natural disasters and I hope there is a earth falt or a foundation
falt right under this one and one day while everyone except me and my family is in it the school falls down.

That teacher hates her guts, but who cares? Home is the best place. Home is like a magic place. Daylight saving starts up again and the boys move Lori's bed into her new room. It's a whole huge space and it's all hers. She's got her own chest of drawers which Henry got from the op shop
and he's going to get her a wardrobe too when the op shop gets one in. She's in heaven.

For two weeks she folds her jeans and shirts and even her pyjamas and she puts them in the drawers and she makes her bed, and the room looks like a room, not much light for reading, and not much air for breathing, but she can get dressed without people walking through. She's got a dangling electric light bulb
which Martin fixed up by joining a new wire to the light wire in the big boys' bedroom then poking it through the brick room ceiling. It's a bit of a madman's light, and illegal, so Henry says, if Lori wants to turn it on, she has to use the switch in the big boys' bedroom, which also works backwards, like if the big boys want light, Lori gets it whether she wants it or not. Martin and Donny come
home at all hours so she gets a lot of light she doesn't want.

Also, at night everyone in the world wants to use her loo instead of walking in the dark all the way down behind the laundry, which is darker now since the brick room cut off the light from the kitchen. No one takes a scrap of notice when she slides her bolt at night, or if she hangs a ‘do not disturb' sign on the outside, if she
yells at people to nick off. They just belt on that door until she gives up and opens it.

‘The whole idea was to get Splinter away from all the boys,' Martin says. ‘She's growing up, Henry.' He, Donny and Henry never use her loo.

Anyway, after those first few weeks Lori's room loses its wet brick smell and takes on the stink of a public loo, and then, on one hot as hell night, Greg comes home
around daylight. Lori's door is open to let some air in, and she's sound asleep and he . . . well . . . Greg does something worse than bad and she's only wearing a T-shirt and knickers. But he's drugged or drunk and she isn't, and he gets a wild horse kick in a place that nearly cripples him, and while he's nearly crippled, he gets his eyes nearly gouged out too, so he won't be trying that again
in a hurry, but just in case he does, Lori runs in and dobs to Martin, who gets Donny out of bed to help finish off what Lori started.

After they toss Greg into the back yard with the rest of the junk, they drag Lori's mattress back to the lounge room, where she sleeps on the floor, close to Mavis and Henry's door, sort of safe – with the stink of stiff socks and Vicks VapoRub up her nose. Maybe
she knows now why she always had to sleep beside Mavis and Henry's door.

Martin and Donny move her bed out the next day and move their beds in, which is a bit crowded. When Henry wants to know why they are doing it, they say it's because of the loo and everybody using it. No one is allowed to use it any more, except Martin and Donny. Martin buys a big sliding bolt for the outside of that old
green door, and puts it up high so the little ones can't reach it. He puts a stronger one on the inside too, so no one can get in while he and Donny are in bed. They buy disinfectant and air-freshener and the room smells better than okay for a day or two.

It's a waste of time, though. Mavis prefers their loo and she can reach the bolt. Not only has that room got a light globe, but it's got a
higher loo seat and it backs up to the far corner so she's got more room. She's never been modest, and she likes to smoke while she's sitting. The floor gets covered in ash and butts, so Martin and Donny give up.

Something else is happening too, which probably helps make them give up. Since two months back, Henry has been going to the chemist to buy packets of those women's things for Mavis because
he's too embarrassed to ask Donny to buy them at the supermarket.

She's so happy, so really honest to God happy, like cuddling little kids happy, like laughing happy, like even playing cards with the kids at night instead of watching television, like playing chess with Henry – and she's looking at him with her beautiful big sad eyes measuring him up, wondering if she can squeeze that baby girl
out of him.

It's embarrassing, sleeping beside that door now and having good ears that hear everything, even if sometimes they don't want to hear anything.

It's safer, though, due to Martin and Donny have both left home.

It's a pity that brick room ever got built, really, because it stole a perfectly good back verandah with no broken boards; it killed a cool place where you could always get a bit of shade, find a bit of breeze and also find Mick working on his bikes. Now there is just a big ugly multicoloured mound of bricks with an old green door, and it's there, in your face, every time
you step outside the kitchen door, and due to Greg spending his days sleeping in there on an old mattress, it smells like a wolf's stinking den.

Henry has given up on Greg. He and Vinnie moved the big boys' beds back to their empty bedroom and now Vinnie sleeps there on his own; he won't share with Greg, won't talk to Greg. He knows what Greg did. Henry and Mavis don't know, but even Mavis is
now saying, ‘Give him enough rope and he'll hang himself.'

For a few weeks after Martin and Donny moved into their flat, there seemed to be so much more room in the house, but it's interesting, really, like when Lori had that baby European carp in a jam jar one year and it only grew as long as her little finger, but when she filled up an old baby bath with water and tipped the fish in there,
well, it started suddenly exploding, like every day it grew bigger – until a bird got it.

That's what is happening to Mavis. She's filling up the space the boys leaving made. She's so happy, though. She's looking after her hair and putting her make-up on every day and not going to the milk bar. She's going to bed early instead of making her custards and pancakes, though Vinnie reckons he caught
her washing up a pile of dishes and stuff one day when he nicked off from school early.

Henry wouldn't notice if food was missing. He's not noticing much at all. Christmas is coming to get him. He's the one who needs Valium and antidepressant pills now. He's the one who's not sleeping.

He always gets this way at Christmas time, all wound up with sad talk about England and his English parents
and about going home to visit their graves before he dies. He's not that old, and who cares about dead people's graves? Mavis says she's never been near her father's grave, but once Henry gets going on England, he can't shut up. He's like an old-fashioned record player with one record, and the arm of the player is broken so it keeps on playing the same old boring stuff, over and over and over again
– he never tells anything interesting, like what he did with his friends, just castles, and old villages.

Every night he's sitting in the kitchen instead of going to bed, and maybe that's just sort of self-preservation – except he's talking, talking, talking to Mavis and she's pretending to listen while she's beating him at chess or baking him apple pies.

He'll get over it. He always does. The
kids have learned to live around the moods in this house.

So school finishes, and on the last day everyone is giving that rotten old teacher Christmas cards and presents so Lori gives her the wormiest old Bert Matthews apple she can find, and who cares, next year she'll be at high school. And thank God she didn't get failed.

Poor old Vinnie did. He has to repeat year eight so next year he'll
be in the same group as Mick, which is killing him, due to he's now six foot one and not skinny and already shaving. He looks about eighteen and exactly like the old wedding photograph of Mavis's father. It's pure reincarnation. Lori has never seen a photograph of Grandmother Hilda. There is not even one in the photo box.

Lori didn't know it, but that bike Mick and Alan have been working on isn't
for Alan. It's a girl's bike, and they tricked Lori by hiding the girl's frame down behind Nelly's place. They get up with the birds on Christmas morning and go over to Nelly's to finish putting the bike together, then they bring it back to the east verandah and cover it over with an old sheet. As soon as Lori wakes up, they blindfold her with a tea towel and take her out to the verandah.

And
like super cool wow! Mavis even gave them money to buy brand-new tyres for it, and Mick has painted it bright red and painted LORI on the bar, like a brand name. And Henry bought a carry seat to put on the back so she can dink Mick to and from school each day, which will mean he won't have to hang around waiting for Henry.

She loves it, and she loves Mick and Alan too, loves how their faces sort
of look nearly happier than her face when she pulls the old sheet off the bike and sees it. This is the best day ever. This is the best day ever in her whole entire lifetime. The Christmas chickens are roasting and the pudding is bubbling in the biggest pot, and the table looks like a picture in a magazine with flowers in a jar and paper Christmas serviettes from Kmart.

Mavis is overdue, and
boy, is she happy today. Henry helped her have a shower and wash her hair, which has just been cut. All of her curls are standing up tall and she's wandering around smiling, waiting for the food, and peering into the oven, checking on her potatoes.

Henry isn't smiling. He's staring at her back as she walks out to the brick-room loo, like he's hoping against hope that she's not pregnant, just
late. She probably is pregnant because today Henry looks more grey, like she's finally got the last of him – even his fingernails look like grey rags. He picks at them as he watches Mavis walk back to the table and he can tell by her smile that it's no use hoping.

‘Six days now,' she says. ‘And it better be a girl this time or I'll drown it at birth.'

He nods, walks to the door, looks at that
lump of brick room, looks as if he's thinking of throwing himself at it, ramming his head into it, or bricking up the door and window, building himself in while he sings ‘Land of Hope and Glory', forcing that final brick in to silence his song.

The television is on and some mob are singing Christmas carols. Henry sighs, leans against the door. ‘The date might be the same, the songs might be
the same as I sang in England when I was a boy, but the shift, the mental switch to acceptances of southern hemispheric Christmases won't happen in my head. A pine branch, draped with tinsel, does not a Christmas tree make.'

Southern hemispheric Christmases? Henry's off again.

‘I was born here. I was born in this land, but my roots are in England,' he says as he turns glazed eyes away from brick,
to the window, then down to the bunch of red geraniums in a jam jar. Apricot jam, Mavis's favourite. He starts laughing, but it's not like happy laughter, more like howling.

The table looks good and the jam jar doesn't look too bad, though Lori couldn't get all the label off it. The flowers look good.

Henry can't see the good. This kitchen, maybe the whole world, looks as bad as it can get,
worse than yesterday when Mavis was only five days overdue, and it will keep on getting worse. He's got holidays. Four weeks of watching that new baby grow in her belly. Four weeks of thinking of a new baby, thinking of more napkins, more bottles, hiding more tins of condensed milk, thinking of little Matty, who can't even walk yet, and he's thinking, when will it end?

Lori looks at Henry, then
by him to the plaster walls. It's time they were painted again, or wallpapered. Martin helped him wallpaper the middle-sized boys' bedroom walls when they bought the new bunk beds and those walls still look clean and strong. Back then, those two were always doing something, painting, mopping, sweeping up, keeping the rooms looking okay.

But Martin has gone and Henry has stopped doing things.
Maybe it happened when the big boys left home, or maybe it was sooner, when Greg got kicked out of school . . . or maybe when the brick room turned into a hot white elephant and Henry realised that there was no
more
, that the most fantastic of dreams all end up stinking like a public loo.

He used to help Mavis shower most days. He used to get Nelly to make new tents when Mavis grew out of the
old ones. He stopped that too, like he stopped nagging the brothers to hang their clothes, like he stopped reading library books, stopped watering his strange flowers in the shed, stopped his singing. He just stopped. Lori waters his flowers now, but half of them look sick from too much water or not enough and she doesn't know which, so she just keeps on adding water.

Today Henry has got that
wanting look in his eye, that reaching for things he knows he can't have look, like life in this house is a cruel joke someone played on him.

‘Snowmen peeping in the windows, calling children from their beds,' Henry sings to the window. The sun is hard on him, hurting his eyes, making them wet, making water run from them, trickle down his wrinkles. It's hurting his head too; he's rubbing it,
rubbing it, shrugging his shoulders up to his ears, trying to think of the words. ‘Dar dar dar the sleigh bells ring, dar dar dar dar – '

Greg looks at him as if he's gone crazy. The closest he's ever come to a snowman is the supplier of the stuff he shoots up his arms when he can get it. He sniggers, sniffs the air like a diseased hyena.

Lori moves closer to Henry. She's standing beside him,
wanting him to sing of his snow, wanting him to remember that better place and not be so bloody sad. It's Christmas Day and she got a bike, which she's been riding up and down the road all morning. And Martin and Donny are coming home for Christmas dinner. They'll bring a heap more presents.

But Henry has stopped his singing. He mops at his face, wipes his eyes with a crumpled handkerchief, keeps
staring west. Then he says something weird – for Henry. ‘Had someone told me thirty years ago that I was born to this heat, I would have named him a liar. I had no idea,' he says. ‘No idea. I thought I was an Englishman. My parents allowed me to grow to adulthood believing I was their natural son. Adopted? Me? Henry Smyth-Owen's first Christmas spent in an Aboriginal camp? I would have named
him a liar, my little lost Lorraine.'

For a second Lori feels lost, sees a man she doesn't know. Maybe a man who doesn't know her, or himself. She's staring at a wrinkled old stranger and it's making her afraid of what she is, of who she is.

Who is she, anyway? She's half of Mavis and the English and German people of the old photographs before Mavis. Okay. But she's half . . . like, who is her
other half made of? It's not made of Henry's Kathleen and Daniel photographs, like she used to think it was. It's like there's a gap now, a gaping greedy gap hidden behind Henry and she's never going to be allowed to see into it. So she
is
lost. Half of her is lost.

Lori gets scared, moves in even closer. She's almost standing on top of him, breathing his air, when Donny comes in. He's got his
presents stuffed into three supermarket bags. He stands in the doorway listening to Henry, who is still going on about Aboriginal camps.

‘Ever think about trying to trace your natural parents? They'd only be in their seventies,' Donny says, putting his bags on the floor, sits down.

Henry tries to smile. Can't make it. His face is too thin, like he's been eroded, like time has dug deep gullies
from his eyes to his mouth. No more Henry smile. He looks about seventy, more Indian than pom. Maybe he's like his grandfather, old Woden, eyes sunk into pits of shadow, looking today like two lost and lonely beetles, trying to find a way out. They search past Lori, search for Alan. He coughs, shakes his head. ‘My parents gave me a wonderful childhood, a wonderful life. I could not have asked for
better.'

‘Lucky you,' Mavis says.

‘Everyone is into searching for their roots these days. It's the in thing. There are a heap of people in Willama finding out they've got Aboriginal ancestors . . . or just admitting that they had them,' Donny says.

Henry looks at him, then at Mavis. ‘The thread has been broken, my boy. A late knot would only be another obstacle for me to climb over at this
stage.'

‘It could be interesting, though. We've probably got a heap of relatives out there. You've probably got half-brothers and sisters, people who look like us. Ever think of that, Henry?' Donny is trying to make him feel better but Henry doesn't want to.

‘Not like you, my boy. You and Vincent lean towards the Irish, the Scottish, the German on your grandfather's side.'

‘And double so,'
Mavis says.

‘As you say, and doubly so, my dear.'

Mavis slams the oven door, a baked potato impaled on a fork. She's blowing smoke, biting at the hot potato. She's not going to be dieting today. ‘There's all sorts of help out there these days for people wanting to trace their families. You were one of the stolen generation. Instead of talking about it, why don't you do something, find your roots
and – '

‘And demand compensation for the medical treatment I received, for the education, the love of gentle parents, my dear?'

‘That's not what I said, and you know it.'

Henry looks at her, smiles again. ‘Dwelling on the past cripples us. We hobble into our future instead of walking forward, head high.'

‘Yeah, I noticed that,' she says. ‘Your head is always held high, Henry. Ha ha ha. You've
been crawling around this house for days with your tail between your legs and your chin dragging on the bloody ground, and I'm getting sick of it.'

He coughs, has a suck on his inhaler. ‘And how would you describe your own posture, my dear?'

Lori's neck is beginning to crawl. If he keeps this up he's going to spoil a perfectly good day.

‘I don't know. You tell me how you'd describe it.'

‘Ah,
you are siren, the earth mother, the huntress.'

Greg starts laughing, and Vinnie, the moron, joins in.

Mavis stares at them, then turns to Henry. ‘Yes, I remember that siren. I can also remember a poor, mixed-up, drowning bastard clutching at straws – '

‘That's enough!'

‘You started it. You've got a great habit of starting what you can't finish, Henry. Have the guts to finish what you start
or don't start it.'