Henry’s Daughter (28 page)

‘One day Mavis may be sorry for the harm she has done to those who loved her.'

‘Loved her? You lying bitch.' They hear that bawl from the brick room and from Mick's room up the hall. Alice steps back. Eva steps forward. They look from door to door. ‘Get out of my house or I'll come in there and throw you out, or call the cops to do it for me, you apology for a bloody mother, you lying, child-abusing,
queer bitch.'

They hear the toilet flush. Alice walks fast to the passage door. There is thumping coming from the room beside the kitchen. An ogre stomping in high heels. The kids know what it is. It's Mavis belting into Mick's timber wall with the loo brush.

‘Get out to that car, Edward,' Alice's teeth snarl.

‘Get yourself a chihuahua. It will stay small enough to kick around,' Eddy says.

Alice leaves, via the front door. Eva stands on, watching the back door. The noise is coming from behind the back door, but when she moves to follow Alice, the footsteps seem to be heading for the passage.

‘How can you tolerate . . .
this
, my darling boy? How can you tolerate her? After what you have been
accustomed
to.'

‘How can you stand kissing those teeth?' Eddy says. He's getting mean now,
and he's looking mean, and Eva doesn't like it. She flinches and her high-heeled sandals trip-trip-trip down the passage.

‘I'm taking out a restraining order against you tomorrow,' Mavis screeches, and it's too clear. Maybe she's broken through Mick's wall.

The kidnappers move out to the verandah. They don't know which floorboards to watch out for and Eva goes through one. And she's down, sprawled
flat, one leg knee-deep in the verandah. Even the old house is fighting for Eddy. Maybe it heard him thinking about white paint.

Lori isn't far behind them. She closes the front door, except for a crack. You can see a lot through a crack in a door, hear a lot. She's listening as Alice lifts Eva's leg out. Her pantihose is ripped to shreds, her shin bleeding and she's bawling for real now.

‘Look
at the hovel. It should be condemned, and she's in there laughing at me. She's not going to beat me, Alice. Let her take out her restraining order. Let her take it to the courts. No court in the land would fail to see that those boys would be better off with me.'

‘It's immaterial to me, lass. If that's what you want to do, then we'll do it together, but she knows too much. The media will tear
you to shreds.' Eva is sitting on the edge of the verandah, already torn to shreds. Alice is lifting her skirt, tying a man's handkerchief around her shredded shin.

‘Hop in the car, lass.'

‘That stinking, filthy hovel. Do I need stitches?'

‘It's just a scratch. Hop in the car, lass.'

‘I want them. I am their mother.' She's a bawling banshee! Alice sits beside her, puts her arms around her,
hold her while she bawls.

Henry never put his arms around Mavis, comforted her when she bawled. Henry never touched anyone, except when he cut their hair. He never really said nice things – never said much at all, when you come to think of it, and when he did talk, like he did at Christmas, it wasn't conversation, just sort of . . . sort of self-indulgent.

Growing up is too hard. It makes you
see things, understand things that you don't really want to understand. Like those two women. They look like a loving couple sitting there.

You get pictures in your head about things when you are a kid, Lori used to think all lesbians had short hair, muscles and were all about thirty. These women are old and they've been together since forever, so Mavis says. They were together when Mavis was
a little kid, back in the seventies. Mavis used to say Eva only married Henry because her mother was starting to wake up to what was going on with Alice in the bungalow and Eva got scared Grandmother Hilda would leave all her money to a lost dogs home.

These days it doesn't matter much if you're gay or straight, but those two are still playing it like it's 1970. Maybe they started a lie and now
they are trapped in it and Eva has to have those twins so she can keep that trap locked fast.

Why didn't Henry get those twins back? What was wrong with him? He of all people should have known that kids need to know their own families or they get lost. She thinks of Eddy, the way he was clinging to Neil, as if he was trying to soak up some of Neil's life force to make himself strong. She thinks
about wild little bugger Neil too, fighting hard for Eddy. That's what a family is, it's caring about each other and fighting for each other, being there for each other. And maybe holding people close when they cry, making them feel better.

Eva is feeling a bit better. She's looking at the house and wanting to kill the sister who ruined her childhood then stole her husband with her gaping legs.

Mavis used to tell a different story – like, she told Martin one night that Henry had been too dumb to see what was going on with Eva and Alice until the night he came home from the club where he used to sing, due to it catching on fire, and he caught Eva and Alice together in the bungalow. Mavis found him trying to hang himself from a tree branch that wouldn't hold his weight. It snapped and
Henry snapped and that's the night Martin got started. Mavis was seventeen and still at school. Henry was thirty-seven. She was probably one of those wild free-love kids. She used to talk a lot a few years back, talk about the city and parties and sleeping on the beach all night.

Alice lights a cigarette. ‘We certainly have more freedom without them, Eva. There's no denying that.'

‘What sort
of mother would send her sons to England to live with relatives? What will people think of me?'

‘You worry too much about what people think, lass. We're old enough to let them think what they like.'

‘We could . . . go to . . . England. We always intended to travel when you retired, didn't we? Go to Paris, remember, darling?'

‘Live like the natives for a year, lass.'

‘When we were young. God,
I must look a sight.'

‘Never to me, lass. Never to me.'

‘If she takes out a restraining order, the media will get on to it. Lord knows how much she'll tell them.'

‘She'll make certain that we have the television hounds baying at the door.'

‘I couldn't live with it. Not after all these years. I
couldn't
, darling.'

‘It's up to you, always up to you, but I'll tell you now, I'm getting too damn
old for this.' She puffs smoke, blows it fast through her nostrils. ‘How's that leg feeling now?'

‘Throbbing. We'll have to go somewhere, buy a bandage and disinfectant. That filthy hovel! I should get a tetanus injection.'

‘Get the doctor to look at it when we're home.'

‘You're so good to me.' Eva is wriggling out of her pantihose, trying not to lift her dress too high, then they are off,
and she tosses them at the front door, gives the house one more murderous look and, leaning heavily on Alice, limps to the car. ‘We
will
go to Paris, darling. We
will
. We'll rent the house, and by the time we get back, the boys will be more than ready to come home. You see if I'm wrong.'

Mick comes to stand behind Lori as the car moves away. They watch it turn, watch it to the corner, watch it
until Timmy comes to pull at Lori's shirt.

‘Eddy's wun off cwying,' he says.

They find Alan down at the river, three decapitated, de-tailed carp strung on a stick he's propped between two tree branches. Eddy is down there too. No court jester now, he's sitting on a high clay bank, his head on his knees, Alan standing off, watching his fish, watching Eddy and looking relieved, like, phew. So that's over.

He glances at Lori. ‘Phew,' he says, then he
wanders off and she takes his place leaning against the tree, looking at the fish. They are small. The small ones are best.

She's looking at Eddy too and he won't lift his head. Maybe he's sorry already that he's stuck here with them. She doesn't want him to be sorry so she walks to his side, thinks she'd like to say something nice to him, make him feel better. Cuddling and touching people were
pretty much alien in Henry's time, but she's learned how to cuddle the little kids and make them feel better when they cry. She can't cuddle Eddy, but she could probably find something nice to say, if she tried. She sits beside him on the clay, not too close, sits for a long time, tossing pebbles and small clods into the river and trying hard to think of something nice to say.

‘Alan can remember
Henry from when he used to go down to visit you. I bet you can too.' Eddy shakes his head, wants her to go away. She's not going. ‘He used to sing a song about you and Alan, and Alan says he can remember him singing it in Melbourne.'

Eddy shakes his head, sniffs, a fuck-off sniff. His eyes are red and his nose is stuffy and he is feeling like a howling fool. She knows this but she won't go.

‘You were like his hidden treasures, you know. I always thought of you as Henry's twins, not Mavis's. Nearly every night when he was watering his flowers he'd sing this song. I can't sing it, but it was something like, “My precious sons, my boys, you are the best of me. My precious sons, my joy, you'll live the rest for me”.' She talks the words, surprised she remembers them, and she knows that she
keeps turning the son and boy into plural, but she wants Eddy to think that that song was about him and Alan – whether it was or not. He sniffs, lifts his head, looks at the sky but won't look at her. She keeps on talking, just like Nelly kept talking that night she found Lori sitting almost in this exact same place. ‘He must have sung that song to you when he went down for visits – if Alan can
remember it.'

‘I didn't know Henry! Leave me alone, will you?'

‘I remember heaps of stuff from when I was five. I remember stuff from when I was three.'

‘Cool for you! Now fuck off.'

‘I bet you remember him. Anyway, you saw him that day you came here for dinner.'

He turns to her then and his face is hurting, like Henry's face used to hurt, and his mouth is trembling; he's going to start bawling
again in a minute. ‘That day we came here he looked like a grandfather and he belonged to you kids, not us. And no one told us he was our father, anyway. Eva just told us we were going to visit Aunty Mave and her children. I didn't know who Henry was that day and I can't remember him singing. All I remember of my father is . . . is maybe a shadow of him coming into the bedroom at Eva's then
going out, so fuck off, will you, and leave me alone.'

She shrugs, doesn't move. ‘Henry, the little shadow, coming and going? That's all he was, really – to all of us. A stooped little shadow, coming and going and never stopping long enough for anyone to touch it. He was always doing things. Every time we saw him he was cooking, cleaning, cutting hair. The only time you could get near him was
when he was cutting your hair. He had to touch you, move your head. I used to keep putting my chin down, just so he'd have to keep lifting it up. And I used to make him cut my hair about every three weeks, so I could be close to him. And in the potting shed, sometimes I could creep right up close when he sang, sort of breathe his used-up air.

‘My precious sons, my boys, no more I fear the pain,
though summer's gone for me, I know you'll warm the rain . . . ' She's singing the words now, just singing soft. She can hold a tune, though her voice is thin compared to Henry's, but in her head it's like his powerful voice is singing along with her, leading her on, telling her the words she doesn't think she knows until she gets to them, and then they're there, waiting and ready.

‘
Fear the
pain
?' Eddy is actually looking at her.

‘Yeah. It was about a man who was dying. He used to sing a lot of songs about dying. He probably always had a death wish.'

He looks at the sky for a long time, sniffs. ‘I remember someone singing a song about fearing the pain and winter rain. I always had an earache and tonsillitis in the winter and I thought it was about summer being over and the pain
starting up again.'

‘I told you so, you smartarse. Henry was probably the only person in the whole world who ever sang that song.' She slaps at a nonexistent fly on Eddy's back, like she used to swat nonexistent mozzies on Henry, and she does it so the smartarse bit won't hurt; leaves her hand on his back too, rubs it a bit, just for a second. ‘None of us wanted you to go back with Eva. We couldn't
cope here without you. Two days and we'd be back to living in a pigpen.'

He's not ready yet to talk. He's feeling embarrassed about his tears, and it hurt him to hurt Eva. Maybe life force can trickle over into an aunt – not that Lori has ever felt the trickle, and Eva is always so doused in perfume, there's not a chance of homing in on any family scent. For a long time they sit quiet, watching
the others muck around and yahoo through the trees.

‘How about Neil, eh?' Eddy says.

‘That wild little bugger! I think he must have been born wild, like Greg.'

‘I don't know Greg, and I don't know the other one either.'

‘Vinnie.'

‘I'm not part of this family and I'm not part of Eva and Alice. I'm no one. And I didn't ask to be given away.'

‘You weren't given away, it's just that you nearly
died up here. Mavis never gave you away – just let Henry rent you out for a while, like Eva rents her house. She knows she can get that house back whenever she wants it and Mavis was always planning how to get you back. She tried all the time – until she got too fat to do anything about anything. And Henry . . . I don't know. Maybe he had too many kids. Maybe he just gave up.'

‘You mob were lucky,
growing up with your own parents.'

‘You didn't miss much, Eddy,' she starts, then bites her tongue. ‘Of course you missed knowing Henry, but as far as knowing him and Mavis together, like proper parents, then you were lucky to miss some of that. I never ever saw him hold her or kiss her like husbands do on television. Not once. Alice kissed Eva and she held her when she cried and she petted her,
said all the right things.'

‘Henry must have thought Mavis was okay. They had enough kids.'

‘Henry didn't want the babies – or not the ones I can remember coming. Having babies was Mavis's thing, just a part of her civil war. Every baby she had she got fatter. Or maybe her fat was a war against Henry.' She shrugs. ‘Who knows why she had us? We could have been like her private revolution against
the government . . . sort of a financial-based takeover. She always got money from the government – even before Henry died, not heaps, like now, but an allowance for each kid she had.'

They are quiet for a long time, thinking their own thoughts, then Eddy says, ‘I didn't think much about fathers until we went to London. We rented a flat there and old Alice used to sleep in Mum's bed. Mum said
it was because there weren't enough beds and we couldn't find a big flat.' He shrugs, looks at the sky. It's changing colour. Night is coming. ‘I missed Alan like crazy, but he wasn't missing me.'

‘He was so. He screamed for you for about two months.'

‘You're cow-crapping. All he wanted when he came back to us was you lot.'

‘Cow-crap nothing! He screamed blue murder for you. “I want my Eddy.
I want to go home”. It was pure awful. Don't tell him I told you, but he used to wet the bed too, and he wouldn't eat anything, and he spent his first winter here catching every bug invented.' They are quiet then for a long time and Lori doesn't like the quiet. ‘What's England like, anyway?' she says.

‘Wet.' He smiles a bit, then shrugs. ‘I saw a lot of stuff.'

‘Like what? Castles and cathedrals
and daffodils?'

‘Yeah.'

‘That's all Henry used to tell me about England. And snow, and green fields and old villages and houses with thatched roofs.'

‘I saw that. And I saw Mum kissing Alice one day, sort of taking her shirt off kissing.' He shakes his head. ‘And I heard stuff. She had a baby once. I heard her and Alice talking about it and thought for a while she was talking about having me
and Alan. It wasn't about us. It was another one.'

‘What did she do with it?'

‘Adopted it out, I suppose. That's what they did in the old days.'

‘So somewhere out there we've got a cousin, floating around like Henry and never knowing his own people?'

‘I suppose so. That's what screwed Mum up, I think. She was probably raped or something. She hated that baby's father, went on and on about him
hurting her. That's . . . that's when I got obsessed by fathers, started wondering about mine – wondering if she'd hated him too. I started watching kids with their fathers. Mum had always told me and Alan that our father lived in London, and I was in London, so I told her I wanted to see him. Nagged her about it. She wouldn't produce him. Nothing made any sense over there. The stuff I heard .
 . . you don't know much when you're ten.'

‘I know. And no one will tell you the answers you need. Like, when I was about ten, I actually asked Henry what gay meant, and he said happy. I knew that wasn't right so I asked Martin. He was about eighteen, and he said it stood for
get
rid of
all yobbos
, which was a government undercover conspiracy to control overpopulation of the lower classes, and
that I shouldn't go around asking anyone else what that word meant or the FBI would come looking for me.' Eddy laughs, and it's so good to hear him laugh, Lori laughs with him.

‘Gay women still want kids. That won't stop overpopulation,' he says.

‘Yeah, but they sure have a lot more trouble doing it. And just think of China for a minute. Like, for years married couples over there have only been
allowed to have one baby and they all want sons so they abort the girls. There won't be enough girls for those sons to marry, so they'll have to go gay. No wife, no baby.'

‘They'll clone themselves.'

‘They'll still need a woman to incubate it.'

They're mucking around now and their theories are becoming more absurd, until Lori yells out to Matty, ‘Stay away from the water, Matty. You do as you're
told, or next time we'll leave you at home with Mavis.'

Matty is going on three, a redhead, but he's a brownish red, closer to Mick's colour. He needs a haircut, too; he's starting to look like a girl with his mop of curls, but he looks cute. His blue-grey eyes wide above his dummy, he walks to her side, looks towards home. Mavis makes a good bogyman. She sure scared Eva away.

Lori brushes the
curls from his eyes, lifts him onto her lap. ‘He's going to be another Mick. He's not as smart as Timmy was at the same age – ' She stops short, didn't mean to say that out loud, but she knows in her heart that Mick is better with his hands and his nuts and screws than with his books, even if he does wear them out with studying.

‘You've got a brain in your head. You could do a lot better at
school if you studied a bit,' Eddy says.

‘Who wants to? Anyway, I'm dumb, ask old Crank Tank. She hates me.'

‘She thinks you're a big-mouthed smartarse.'

Lori is seeing something new in Eddy tonight. It's like he's ten years older, almost as old as her. It's been a hard day, and on such days she ends up feeling about thirty. It's been interesting, though, talking to him alone, learning more
about him, but the talk is over because Mick crawls up the bank and flops down beside them.

Alan wanders up. ‘Burned your bridges now,' he says. ‘I hope I didn't sort of . . . make you do it . . . if you didn't want to do it, that is.'

‘I'm a Sticksville convert, Sticksville.'

A speedboat races by. They watch it, read the name on the boat.
Flighty
. It's sure flying. The brothers wave while
Lori scratches her name in the clay with a twig.
Lori Smyth-Owen
.

It's a borrowed name. Henry didn't have his proper name to give her. Maybe he was Henry Woden, but Lori Woden sounds ridiculous – so does Lori Smyth-Owen. It's plastic-coated tourist stuff, something to take home from your holiday and shove in a drawer. She scrubs out the hyphen and the Owen with her twig.

Lori Smyth. Martin calls
himself Smyth. She likes it. It sounds more like her – no bullshit, and maybe not so dumb, just a big-mouthed smartarse. She liked what Eddy said, and she likes it that he likes her and the kids better than Eva's money. She feels older somehow, and more proud tonight than she's ever felt before. In part it's because of what Eddy said, and also part of it is knowing she was able to care about
him, sit with him and find the right words to start making him feel better.

‘I suppose we should get back and cook Mavis a nice dinner – for helping us out.'

‘Have to keep her metabolism running, the book says. Regular food.'

But they sit on, looking at the sun sinking down behind the trees, sinking down in the west. Henry's west.

‘What got into her today? Why didn't she yell for help?'

‘She hates Eva more than she hates us, that's all. It doesn't mean anything.'