Henry’s Daughter (25 page)

Some prime minister in the olden days once said that life wasn't meant to be easy, and oh boy, was he right.

Back in the kitchen, the man is looking at his watch, the woman studying the border of postcards Blu-tacked along the
eastern kitchen wall, little kids surrounding her. Maybe they know her from that time they were in emergency care.

Timmy pulls at her skirt, and Lori hopes his hand is clean. ‘Dat is a pitcher of da Colosim from Eba,' he says.

‘Colosseum,' Lori corrects, draws him away, checks his hand. It's clean enough. She offers tea. The visitors accept stale coffee, sit, then the woman asks about the twins.

So it was Eva who dobbed on them. Lori makes the coffee in new mugs, opens a packet of biscuits and decides it's no use trying to hide Eddy. She sends Alan to find him, and Eddy comes from the chook-house with an ice-cream container full of eggs.

‘Pleased to meet you guys,' he says, offers his hand. The man takes Eddy's hand, shakes it. The woman just stares from one twin to the other. They are
still the same person to strangers, though to Lori and the kids, they are not even a bit the same.

‘Your aunt was previously married to your father, Edward? I believe your father wished you to remain with your aunt, who you have lived with since nineteen – '

‘Since we were around two. We both had operations at two and again at five. Want to see my scar? Mine's bigger than Alan's.' He doesn't
wait, but flashes it.

‘Mmm. And you lived with your aunt until last February?'

‘Eddy did. Alan didn't. Our mother never wanted the twins to stay with Eva and Alice, but once those two got hold of them, they wouldn't give them back,' Lori says.

‘We want to live here now,' Alan says.

‘'Cause Eva pinched all Mavis's dollars, 'cause Eva is called a lebsian,' Neil says. The woman's mouth drops
four inches. They see her tonsils. And Jesus, how does that little twit remember that word? Nobody has said that word in months. He could have a brain in his head if he'd stop pulling faces long enough to find it.

‘You shouldn't say that,' Lori chastises.

‘Mavis says that,' Neil defends, but he's looking out back, looking into the brick room, looking right at what is snoring in the brick room.
He doesn't like Mavis and celery and broccoli, so he says no more. Matty crawls up on Lori's knee, cuddles his face against her, sucks hard on his dummy.

The visitors toss each other a few meaningful glances, then the man stands, walks to the brick room. Mavis has rolled over and her quilt has fallen to the floor; she's showing all her humps and bumps through the colourful material, showing two
very dirty bare feet, but there's not a lot of light in there and the visitors are standing back.

‘What time does your mother usually wake?'

‘It depends on . . . on things. She wanted to get the house looking nice so she was up at dawn and she exhausted herself,' Lori says. It's after twelve and Mavis is starting to lick her lips between snores. It's a sure sign she's dreaming of food and thinking
of waking. ‘At weekends, when we're home to look after the little ones, she occasionally sleeps all afternoon.'

‘She panics if she gets woken out of a deep sleep, thinks something is wrong with one of us kids,' Eddy adds.

‘The last time she had a heart attack we had to get the doctor and about six men to get her up off the floor. We can give you his phone number if you like.'

The woman looks
at the man. She's not here to make things worse, and she's got a bad back, can't lift a thing, and she's not going to attempt to –

The man raises his eyebrows. It's Saturday, after all. He's got a wife and his own kids and he wants to watch the football this afternoon.

Mick is not doing much, not saying much either, but he wants those visitors away from that green door. ‘Would you like to see
our vegetable garden?' he says.

They follow him to his onion patch. He's proud of those onions, which the bugs leave alone. He pulls two, offers them to the woman. She takes them, can't do much else; doesn't want them – they give her wind. ‘Goodness me. That's wonderful. Wonderful.' She turns away before he can pull any more and she walks back to the kitchen, glancing at the sleeping mound as
she passes, and at Jamesy, who hasn't left his post beside the green door. The man walks back, the kids at his heels. He's holding a bunch of silverbeet, probably full of bugs.

‘Perhaps your mother could arrange another time . . . ?' He speaks to Lori, who seems to be in charge. She nods, tries not to do it too emphatically. He juggles the silverbeet, offers a card. ‘School, Edward.' He's looking
from one twin to the other. ‘You haven't been attending school.'

‘I've got an IQ of a hundred and seventy. Alan makes sure I keep up – or I make sure he keeps up,' Eddy says, takes the offered card, puts it in his wallet beside a twenty. The man notices the twenty, loses his eyebrows. Twelve-year-old boys with mothers on supporting pensions shouldn't be carrying twenty-dollar notes around.

Eddy knows it too. He's like ten steps ahead of the rest of the world. ‘Mum said I'd be going to school on Monday. I've got to go to the shops to buy some books today.'

‘And why were you not enrolled before?' the woman asks.

‘It's a long story.'

‘Mmm?' the woman says. She's got time to listen. And she puts Mick's bloody onions down – on the clean tablecloth, and they are covered in dirt. Then
she sits down again. Bugger. The man doesn't sit.

‘Mum probably wouldn't want me to tell you,' Eddy says.

‘Mmm?'

‘Well, it's because of Alice, Eva's partner.'

‘Mmm?'

‘She's been putting the fear of God into Mum for months.'

‘Mmm?'

Eddy is inventive, but he's working hard on this one. ‘Well, with a heart condition and social phobia and her obesity, she's got enough problems without having
to worry about me being kidnapped every time I leave the house.'

‘Kidnapped?'

‘Yes. They've kidnapped me before and threatened to get me if I go to school. We blame anxiety for Mum's last heart attack, don't we, Lori?' He's running out of steam. He needs help. Mick isn't saying a word. He's leaning against the kitchen door looking pale. Alan is standing beside the fridge, looking paler.

‘Aunty
Eva has been . . . sort of appalling to Mum,' Lori says. ‘Like writing terrible letters all the time and getting her solicitor to send legal letters and stuff.' She hunts through a drawer full of junk, finds that last mad letter from Eva, which is perfect evidence, like the
loathsome, depraved, obese slut
bit, and the
born of corruption
bit, and the bit about cursing and wishing her dead. It sounds
totally mad. Neil has drawn a picture on the rear of it but it's only a fire-breathing dragon picture with red hair and probably celery and broccoli growing around its feet. She shrugs, offers the letter, right side up. The woman reads it, passes it to the man. And does it make his eyebrows disappear. She hands them another, this one from Mr Watts. It's sort of threatening.

They tut-tut for a
bit, shut up for a bit while the kids stand around, waiting for the buggers to go.

‘You have more – '

‘Our mother usually burns them. They . . . they upset her, make her scared stiff to let Eddy out of her sight.'

‘I was always their favourite – after Alice decided I was a borderline genius. Alan's IQ is only about a hundred and fifty, and he gave Eva a hard time when he found out our father
had left her because he was a bit old-fashioned about her and Alice having a lesbian relationship.'

‘Eddy said lebsian.' Neil pulls at Lori's T-shirt. ‘Lori, Eddy said – '

‘Anyway . . . anyway, Mum knew that if I left the house Alice would probably snatch me like she did the last time.'

‘The last time, Edward?' the man says.

‘I thought she would have told you about that.' The visitors shake
their heads. ‘That's Mum for you. She likes to keep family things in the family and that's the main trouble with her. If she'd just talk to people, just let it out, she'd get better.'

‘Not that talking to her psychiatrist does Eva much good,' Lori says.

‘You were saying, Edward, that your aunt's partner . . . grabbed you.'

‘Yes. When I was just a kid, about nine. I was playing in the drive
one day and Alice picked me up and threw me into the back seat of the car and the next thing I knew, I was in England for twelve months. I think they drugged me with Eva's pills. She's hooked on pills. She's got an eating disorder too. Like, she's scared to eat in case she gets fat like Mavis and her father, so she's always sick.'

It's twelve-thirty. Mavis's eating disorder will be waking her
any minute. Lori wants Eddy to shut up now. And saying about pills – he'll get Neil doing his Valium show-and-tell bit in a minute. But the visitors are both watching Eddy and shaking their heads, understanding so much more now. That poor woman. Saint Mavis, the martyr.

Lori picks up the onions, looks at the patch of dirt on her new tablecloth, which is keeping her eyes away from the visitors.

‘Mum knew once you got here, and saw things were okay, that you'd throw a spanner in their works. She said this morning. “Get your books today, Eddy. When the department people get here, they will see that you're so much better off with your family. We mightn't have much, but we've got love in this family”.'

Big-mouth actor, moron. Lori wants these people out. She walks, with the onions, toward
the passage. ‘I'll tell Mum what you said about making another appointment.'

The man looks at his watch, looks at the front door. Eddy is still talking. ‘She'll be disappointed she didn't get to talk to you, because she also wanted to speak about getting me and Alan back on her dependants list for the pension.'

‘We'll see that she gets the forms,' the woman says. ‘If she has any further threats
from your aunt or her partner, she can, of course, take out a restraining order.'

‘That's a last resort.'

And finally the woman is standing. She takes a last look at Mavis then walks. They're on the front verandah, Lori straddling the worst broken floorboard. She pushes the onions at the woman, who takes them, looks at the broken board, at the house, and God it looks bad, sort of grey and tumbledown,
guttering hanging, weatherboards hanging half off.

They walk to the car. But the buggers don't get in. They walk over the road to Nelly's. ‘She'll give them an earful about Mavis.'

‘She mightn't be home,' Eddy says. ‘Someone picked her up about half-past ten.'

‘That's over two hours ago.'

They watch at the lounge-room window, wait. Then the two are back at their car. They're driving away.

And they hear the green door slam and for five minutes the door quakes and the ceiling shakes and the neighbours are probably out watering their gardens. Nelly isn't. She wasn't home. Sometimes you can almost believe there is a God.

They make a coffee and a slice of toast and Aropax jam, then remember Mavis has already had one tablet – too bad. Upping the dose of Aropax might alter her brain waves
faster.

‘The welfare people said you were doing an excellent job, Mave,' Eddy says.

‘They said they're going to send up some forms for you to fill in, to get Alan and Eddy on your dependants list,' Lori adds.

Getting money out of the government always made Mavis happy before; it doesn't work today. ‘I'll fill in some bloody forms. I'll fill in your bloody death certificates before you're all
much older. You open that bloody door now, or by Jesus, when you do, you're going to be very sorry.'

‘That's why we won't open the door. You start acting like a normal sane person and then we'll open it,' Lori says.

This is communication. Maybe not the sort they'd hoped for, but at least there is a backward and forwarding of words! The toast and coffee are tempting. She claims them and walks
to her television, turns it on and sits down. She's still yelling but not so loud, just that she wants more toast. ‘And put some bloody butter on it!'

The market will be crowded today, due to the sun is out. The kids don't need anything, except potatoes, but they're in a celebratory mood so they take off early, all of them. Those social workers might have been pains in the bum, but they've made the twins free, and free together for once. People are staring at them too when they meet head on, on the bridge. Mick is scooting
along on Lori's bike, the two little ones are in the pram and the rest take turns at pushing it.

And typical, what happens when you go to the market when you're not looking for anything? You find everything, that's what happens.

At the first stall Mick pounces on a little bike with training wheels and it's exactly what he wants for some experiment. It only costs five dollars. About two stalls
up from the bike, Lori finds a roll of patterned curtain material with birds on it, which they can use for the little kids' room; their curtains are pretty much rags. They'll have to do something about that room eventually because it looks like crap beside those other rooms.

‘Cheep-cheep,' Eddy says.

It's cheap all right, and sort of water damaged, but the lady gives them the whole roll for
twelve dollars. They have an early lunch, a burned sausage on bread, and they walk again, head for the vegetable stalls, get their potatoes and Mavis's celery.

Then Eddy goes and finds a stall with boxes and boxes of old wallpaper. He digs around there for half an hour until he digs out five rolls that actually match. Twelve dollars the lot, the lady says. Eddy offers her ten and she takes it;
the sun has gone, black clouds are blowing in, and rain and wallpaper stalls just don't mix, due to the glue on the back of the rolls.

They're in the last row and heading home to feed Mavis when they see the lounge suite. It's on a trailer and it looks almost new with its bright grass green knobbly material. The guy has got ‘$150' on it so nobody wants it – except Eddy. He's got his ivy and bamboo
wallpaper in that pram, which he's going to stick around the top bit of the little kids' room above the panelling – so he says.

‘That green suite will match the ivy. We'll turn it back into a lounge room.'

‘And what do we do with the little kids' beds?'

‘Get rid of them,' Jamesy says. ‘And the kids.'

‘You and Mick have got your own rooms, and we've got three in ours. That's discrimination.
You take one little kid each and we'll put Neil in with Mavis,' Eddy says.

Neil nicks off, gets lost and they have to separate, spend the next half hour looking for the little bugger. And they haven't fed Mavis. She'll be yelling her lungs out.

‘We've got to go. Come on. It's going to rain.'

But that lounge suite is still sitting on that trailer, so bright that it keeps drawing the eye. Maybe
it's one of those fate things. Maybe the kids are still on a high from yesterday, but they start walking around it, talking around it and watching for other buyers. Not one person even looks at it.

‘If I can get it for a hundred, can I have it?' Eddy says.

‘Don't be stupid. And he won't let you have it for a hundred.'

‘Want to bet?'

Like a school of sharks rounding up a diver, they circle
that trailer, their circle growing smaller, like the price tag on the green suite has grown smaller. It's down to $120.

‘How much?' Eddy asks as soon as rain starts spitting down.

‘What's it to you?'

‘My mother needs a new couch.'

‘I'm giving it away at a hundred and twenty and I'm not splitting it up.' They can see his price tag, they can also see he's wanting to toss a tarp over the suite.
Eddy pokes at the couch, then the bloke says: ‘She can have it for a hundred and ten and that's as low as I'm prepared to go. It was my mother-in-law's and it's hardly been used.'

Eddy shrugs. ‘She said not to get green. She reckons green is unlucky. How long did your mother-in-law have it before she died?' Eddy asks.

‘I told you. It's damn near brand new. If your mother is interested, you'd
better get her because I'm packing it in for today.'

‘We'll take it off your hands for fifty and we'll dye it.'

‘Stop wasting my time, you cheeky little bugger,' the guy says.

Eddy walks away, but the spits of rain are getting bigger. The weather is bargaining for him. The guy gets the tarp over half of his trailer then the wind whips it back, flips it. Mick holds one end, but Neil has climbed
up to one of the chairs. He jumps on it, and they discover its wobbly leg.

‘Get off, Neil. It's broken. You'll break your neck,' Lori yells.

‘It only needs screwing in,' the trader says. ‘Where is your mother?'

‘Sick, and she's pretty weighty.' Eddy is on the trailer, upending the chair with the wobbly leg. Lori has claimed Neil, and she's threatening to put him in the pram with the celery.

‘She can have it for ninety-five.'

‘How much extra to deliver it?'

‘Ninety-five and I'll deliver it when I finish up here,' the trader says.

‘Sixty-five and you've got a deal,' Eddy bargains. That's what Eva would have done.

‘Piss off. You're keeping the serious buyers away.'

‘Okay. We'll go to seventy-five and that's our top offer. Take it or leave it.'

‘You cheapskate little bugger.' He's
looking at the couch, looking at the junk set out on a second tarp, looking at the sky. The kids are not moving. ‘Show me the colour of your money and I might start taking you seriously,' the guy says.

Eddy pulls out a five and some change. Lori digs deep for two fives and a handful of coins. They pool it, count it. ‘We can make almost twenty dollars deposit to hold it and my sister will go home
and get the rest.'

‘Where do you live?'

‘Down the end of Dawson Street. Out the East.'

‘Oh, you'd be Mavis's tribe,' he says. ‘Why didn't you say so? She can pay me the rest when I get there.'

It's funny the way he sort of changes his tune. Like, everyone seems to know Mavis, but they don't hate her. Maybe it's pity. Lori doesn't like pity. She eyes the guy up and down, watches him pocket
the notes, count the coins.

‘Do you want me to bring your other stuff over for you?'

Jamesy is pushing the new bike, Alan has got the roll of bird material on his shoulder. Matty and Timmy are sharing the pram with vegetables and wallpaper. Where's Neil?

‘Neil. Get back here!'

‘Thanks,' Eddy says and he starts unloading the pram. Jamesy's not too sure about giving up the bike, but it gets
tossed on the trailer, which the guy has now stopped trying to cover with his tarp. That's their lounge suite and too bad if it gets wet.

‘How's Mavis doing these days?' he says.

‘She's sick. Got a bad heart. We have to do all the shopping.'

‘Yeah? I've heard a bit of talk about her being crook. I'm real sorry to hear that. You give her my regards and tell her Wally Johnson said they miss the
laughs at the pub.'

Miss the laughs? Five sets of eyes stare at him, but he's loading his other junk now, and on top of their shopping. They walk off.

‘Is he talking about the same Mavis?' Jamesy asks.

‘Seventy-five dollars. It's a steal,' Eddy says. ‘So, what are we going to use for the rest of the money?'

‘What are we going to do with a lounge suite, more like it?'

‘What if Wally gets
there before we do? What if Mavis hears him – or if he hears her?'

‘What if he nicks off with our twenty dollars as well as our other stuff.' They are circling that trailer again, watching their new lounge suite get wet, Jamesy giving voice to what a few of them are thinking. They haven't had much of a chance to learn trust.

Lori shakes her head. ‘He's okay,' she says. ‘And if he's not, then
I think I know one of his daughters from school.' She turns the pram for home. ‘I'm pretty sure he's Wendy Johnson's father and I know where she lives. I chased her home from school one day when we were about seven.'

The spitting rain has turned to a gusty shower, which looks as if it might last for a while. No one is dressed for wet weather. ‘Someone take this pram. I'll dink Mick home and we'll
call in at the ATM and get out the rest of the money.'

‘Make Mave a medicated coffee before Wally gets there,' Eddy suggests.

 

The suite is dripping on the front verandah, but it will dry; they've moved the little kids' beds and cot into the middle of the room, due to Eddy wants to start wallpapering, like, yesterday. He hasn't got a clue how to do it, wants to run the paper around, horizontal,
not bother cutting it. Mick and Lori have seen it done before. Henry and Martin were good at wallpapering.

Mick's bad leg being no good for climbing ladders, he gets the job of measuring and cutting the paper on the kitchen table, then Lori rolls it, wets it in the bath, runs with it to Alan, who is halfway up the ladder. He hands it to Eddy and the two of them flatten it on the wall, which isn't
easy. There is a picture rail halfway up and brown wooden panelling below it, so it's only the bit above the rail they have to paper. They rip the first bit, wreck the second, get the hang of it with the third and by the time they hang the fifth, they even start cutting the top and bottom bits off almost straight.

It's faster than painting; it's magical stuff, because when it's done, which isn't
until after school the next day, it looks truly excellent – once the bubbles and wrinkles dry out. They wish they'd painted the ceiling, which probably hasn't been painted in fifty years. It's a dirty brown.

Pension day, and white paint is on special at Kmart. It takes two coats to cover up most of the dirt, but it doesn't take long to paint it with all the mobile big kids taking turns up Henry's
ladder. They've got paint left over too, so they paint the passage ceiling, only one coat, which doesn't cover up all of the dirt, but the passage is dark unless they put a new globe in the light; they don't put in a new globe.

But that lounge room! They can't stop looking at it. Every morning when they get out of bed, they look at it; every night when they come home from school, they look at
it. The wallpaper has got a green ivy pattern with brown bamboo on white and with the white ceiling, it looks like a proper room.

So the little kids get evicted the next Saturday.

Matty, who has grown heaps, has been rattling the bars of his worn-out cot for a year, so they toss it and move him and Timmy into Mavis's bed, then squeeze a single bed in beside it for Lori. Mick cops Neil. Having
Mavis only one wall away might scare some sense into him.

It's a bit like the old Henry days, playing musical beds. They get to talking about him, like how, in the old days, Henry used to cook rotten stews and cook bugs in the silverbeet and how Martin always called it bug stew. They talk about Vinnie and Greg, just memory stuff, and for an hour Eddy sits listening; he can't join in, due to he
didn't know Henry, Vinnie or Greg.

Then Alan starts on about Henry's flowers, Henry's songs, and Eddy gets up and walks to the bathroom, has a shower, like for half an hour.

He's a hard one to work out, so quick-witted that it's like living with an out-of-control computer sometimes; he's not scared to hit buttons just to see what happens, but he goes quiet too, and he disappears into the shower
or to the shops, just takes off to be by himself sometimes.

‘You'll wash yourself down the plughole one day,' Alan yells.