Henry’s Daughter (7 page)

It's a bomb shelter with strong metal legs, a house within a house. It's spare, unused floor. Lori has done her share of time beneath that table
and today looks like a good time to see if she's still small enough to fit.

Eva's high-heeled shoes make ground back to the table. They are almost toe to toe with the flattened scuffs. Then they head them off at the pass, giving the twins a clear pathway out the back door.

‘Out to Alice, boys!' Eva yells. ‘Run for your lives!'

Those twins have been well trained. They make their break for freedom
from either side of a table leg. And they're through the door and running, until one falls over Mick's bike parts and sprawls on the verandah, lies there and bellows.

‘Help me, someone,' Mavis yells. She slams Eva against the table, beats her to the door. No one is helping her, so she's helping herself. She's slow moving, but if she's going through a doorway, there is no room for anyone else
to get by. And she's on the verandah, dragging the bawling twin up by his arm; he's probably split his head open, but she gets his head and his shoulders captured beneath her arm while Eva screams for Alice and the chooks cackle and squawk and Murphy's dogs over the road want to eat meat but can't get off their chains to party.

Eva is running down the drive, looking for her reinforcements while
the captured twin screams and his other half is bundled head first into the rear seat of the car.

‘Get the other one!' Mavis yells. All Henry is doing is trying to remove the captured twin from Mavis's armpit. He might get the body, but he won't get the head.

‘You can't do this, Mavis,' Martin says, goes to assist Henry. She thumps him with her free elbow, curses him and Henry for a pair of
blind fools, then heads for the bathroom, dragging the twin with her. It's got the only door with a key, and she's in, throwing her weight against that door, she's turning that key.

Martin and Henry have a go at twin retrieval by trying to go in through the bathroom window. She slams it down, almost takes the first knuckle off Martin's thumb. He probably won't be doing any bricklaying for the
next week.

Eva is in the drive and she's bawling but there's no help to be gained from Alice and the solicitor. They're in the car and it's moving, one twin safe in the back seat.

‘Get in, lass. Get in,' Alice urges.

Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? Eva looks at the house, sees, hears bedlam. She cuts her losses and runs after the moving car.

It looks as if one of Henry's twins
has come home.

No one has cooked any stew. It's after six o'clock and that twin is still screaming. He's doing it in the kitchen now because two hours ago Henry and Martin went around to the motel to talk to Eva, so Mavis came out of the bathroom to heat up her chicken and roast potatoes while standing guard over that twin and not letting anyone else in the kitchen. She's armed with
her whip now. No one wants a dose of that so they're giving her plenty of space.

The twin is under the table again and he's going to sit there and scream until Eva comes back. He'll be ten in a few weeks time but you'd think he was about three because he's wet his funeral pants. No one knows which one he is, either; Mavis couldn't get his pants off to see if his mole is on the right or left side
of his bum. All of the kids are outside, even the little ones. Most of the neighbours are out too, watering their gardens so they can get an earful.

Donny comes home from work around half past six and doesn't know what's been going on, but he says that the cops will be coming around here in a minute. He could hear that kid screaming from up at the corner. He's not treating Mavis as if she's got
the plague, though, so they sort of get their heads together, get her Valium down from the top cupboard over the sink and crush a tablet between two spoons, mix the powder in condensed milk, then Donny grabs the twin from behind, drags him free of table legs and Mavis forces the spoon into his mouth, which isn't hard to do because it's sort of open in a never-ending scream. He gags and chokes,
but he swallows some of the concoction and ten minutes later he's zapped. Donny picks him up and they put him into Neil's bed.

The silence is so good, until Henry and Martin come home and Mavis has to go in and sit guard on the bed while she feeds Matty. She's not modest about breast-feeding, but Martin is, because it is a seriously awesome sight – Nelly makes those tents with buttons on the
shoulders instead of down the front. Martin waits until she's buttoned before he tries kidnap. A lot of cruel stuff is being said, but the twin isn't hearing it; nor is Henry, who is outside rounding up the rest of the kids, except for Greg and Vinnie, who are long gone. He finds Timmy asleep on Nelly's front lawn and he puts him to bed down one end of the lounge room while Mavis and Martin are still
going at it at the other end.

Donny, who has been back to the supermarket for bread and cold meat and stuff, starts making a pile of sandwiches, and saying he's going to murder Martin if he gets that twin screaming again. He's been at work all bloody day and he's come home to bedlam and nothing to eat. And it's bloody Sunday tomorrow, and Martin might be able to piss off out to his girlfriend's
place but Donny has to work again, so everybody just shut up their yelling and come out and get a sandwich.

‘One way or another I'm taking that poor little bugger around to that motel, and that's the bloody end of it,' Martin yells. ‘She can't do this to a little kid. You can't do it, Mavis.'

‘I've done it, and you as much as touch him, then I'll do something to you too, you treacherous little
swine,' Mavis yells back. ‘Why didn't you help me get the other one instead of turning on me, and crawling around that twisted bitch?'

They are screaming across that bed now, but the twin keeps snoring. He's probably in a drug-induced coma, and it's a pity someone doesn't give Mavis a dose of her Valium and put her in a coma for a while. It's not good for her to get riled up like this, and Martin
knows it. Maybe that's why he gives up, slams the front door and takes off in his ute, screaming the tyres, roaring the guts out of the motor. He's going out to Karen and the farm to find some bloody sanity. That's what he yells.

‘And you better stay out there too,' Mavis screeches after him. ‘We're going to need your bloody bed.' Then she goes into her bedroom and actually goes to bed and it's
not even eight o'clock. She doesn't even have a sandwich. She must be worn out.

Donny makes good sandwiches. The kids eat, they drink their mugs of half milk and half tea then, without being told, they go to bed. Lori zaps her two five-dollar notes under her pillow. She's dreaming a gorgeous dream about a beautiful house when something wakes her up right in the middle of the best bit of the dream.

The world is almost cool and it's silent and she doesn't know what woke her. She listens. The baby isn't bawling and it's still dark outside, like it's the time-space between when the sun falls down in England and rises in Australia, an unreal, sweet-smelling time. The front door is always left open on hot nights, and the windows. She can smell the mint growing wild in Nelly's garden, and even
the roses and the red geranium. Sweet smells are so delicious.

Then she sees what woke her. It's a tiny flame, just on, then off. It's a cigarette lighter. She freezes in her bed. It's not Mavis, because if she was up she'd have all the lights on. It's mangy old Alice and she's pulling Lori's sheet back. She's either half blind, or dark red hair and dark brown looked the same by a cigarette lighter's
small flame. It's out now but she's found the right-sized arm and she's pulling on it. ‘Up you get, boy,' she whispers, trying to drag Lori from her bed. ‘On your feet now. Hop to it.'

‘I'm the wrong one, Aunty Alice,' Lori whispers back.

Alice drops the arm, and she's gone. Lori yawns, hears a car door close soft, hears the car creep away, then she rolls over, yawns again and wonders why she
ruined her chance of being kidnapped to television land where nobody sweats and you get to live in a house like the one in her dream.

If Alice had dropped in an hour later, she would have found the right body with no trouble at all. It's barely daylight when the Valium wears off and the twin goes off like a mad alarm clock. Henry is up, giving the baby a bottle. He always gets the dawn shift
with babies.

No more sleeping is going to get done in this house. Soon everyone is up, scratching ribs, yawning and going about the business of trying to find something for breakfast. There's no milk left and the milk bar doesn't open for an hour. No one except Henry ever gets up this early on Sunday anyway. Donny doesn't start work until eight-thirty.

‘Use some of the condensed milk in the
shed. It's under my begonias, behind a packet of potting mix,' Henry says. He gives the baby weak condensed milk when Mavis is asleep, hides emergency rations in his potting shed with his strange flowers because Mavis really likes condensed milk. She can open a tin and sit there eating it with a spoon as if it's yoghurt.

‘I want my mother,' the twin wails. He won't eat his breakfast. He stands
in the kitchen bellowing. ‘I want to go home. I want Eddy.'

And they finally know which one he is. They all start calling him Alan. Like, come and see the new baby chickens, Alan, or come and play under the sprinkler, Alan. He sure needs that sprinkler. He's hot as fire, but he won't move from the kitchen. He's red in the face and sort of panting, but he won't even sit down.

‘He's Alan,' Henry
tells Mavis when she gets out of bed, due to Matty is also throwing a screamer and Timmy, who never bawls, is bawling with him. Neil isn't, he's sitting under the table with Alan, making demon faces at him. Jamesy has left home. He's sitting on Nelly's front fence. Lori wanders over the road and sits with him, smells mint, smells roses and waits, waits for the waiting to end.

It doesn't. By lunchtime,
more sandwiches, Henry is looking pasty grey and exhausted. He didn't take the twin to the motel while Mavis was asleep. He could have. He knows he should have, but he knows life wouldn't have been worth living if he had, though he's not too sure this morning that it's worth living anyway.

The little kids are still howling in sympathy with Alan, and Henry is trying to plug Matty's wail with
a dummy, but Matty keeps spitting it out. Henry gives him to Mavis then he walks out back, walks in circles like a little grey shadow.

‘I want to go home. I want my mother. I want Eddy,' Alan screams, and won't eat his sandwich. ‘I want my Eddy,' he wails while the sun moves across the iron roof and Matty bawls and won't drink from Mavis. She's howling too. She sort of tosses the baby at Lori,
then goes outside to walk in circles.

Lori plugs one bawl with a dummy, holds it in so Matty can't spit it out while she stares at that twin, wishing she could plug his mouth with a dummy.

‘I want to go home.' Alan's voice grows husky as the day wears into night. He's done so much screaming there's barely a croak left in his throat.

Donny comes in from work, he's got a pile of shopping, even
ice-cream, which Alan won't look at – he's got to be retarded. Anyway, Donny and Mavis try the old Valium in condensed milk trick but Alan's stomach isn't up to it. He gags, vomits on the kitchen floor.

He's burning hot, dry retching between croaks, and Henry is worried. They fight Alan's funeral clothes off, get him into a cool bath and find out he's Eddy, due to the mole being on the left cheek
of his backside instead of the right. Stupid Eva has gone and got them mixed up. It's too late now. While they're talking about it, Alan fights his way out of the bath and runs for the space beneath the kitchen table and he's stark wet naked, and no one runs around naked in this house after they're about three years old.

Henry is trying to get some underdaks on him, but that twin is slippery
when wet, and he's kicking back now. No one is going to save him so he has to save himself.

‘We'll have to get the doctor to you, Alan,' Henry says. That threat works well on the rest of the brothers, it's usually enough for them to shake off appendicitis or even pneumonia, but it just makes Alan scream with new hope, makes him dart backwards like a yabby, get his borrowed underdaks on, pull
on his borrowed yellow shirt. He's getting ready for the doctor. God, give him a score of doctors. God, give him a brain transplant, just transplant him out of this place. He wants trousers. They haven't given him trousers. He wants his expensive shoes. Jamesy is wearing them.

Mavis has had enough of Henry's eyes accusing her every time they meet head on. The fridge is a gold mine and she keeps
digging into it. She gets out the ice-cream, starts looking for a spoon and not worrying about a bowl. Henry tries to take it from her, but she snatches up her whip. One way or another, she's going to clear her kitchen and eat that ice-cream.

‘Will you stop your gluttony! Can't you see what you've done here? Can't you see what you've done to this boy?'

‘You did it, not me. You let them stay
there when I begged you to bring them home. Two years ago I begged you and Martin to go down there and get them for me, but you wanted them to stay with the queer bitch, didn't you? You wanted something better for them than me, didn't you? I'm just a vile-mouthed, obese, eating bitch, aren't I? You wanted something better for yourself than me too, didn't you? Why don't you go back to the bitch and
try it three in a bed? I don't need you. I don't need any man. You're all perverted bastards anyway. Get! Get out of my sight. Go and sing your love songs to her, like you used to, and give her “Mumma” while you're about it.'

Henry walks outside and the twin screams louder.

‘For God's sake, will you shut up,' Mavis moans. He wouldn't know how, even if he could hear her. ‘Have some ice-cream,'
she says. ‘Here. Look.' She offers him a spoonful.

He won't accept it and won't shut up and Mavis is sweating and pale and sort of shaking, but she's eating ice-cream, shovelling it in fast. She tries a different tack. ‘One more peep out of you and you'll get the whip around your bum,' she warns. ‘Do you understand me, Alan? You're home, where you should have been five years ago, and you're going
to stay home with your family. Do you understand me? We are your family.'

‘I want my mother.' He's staring at her, screaming at her.

‘I am your mother, not that lying, money-hungry bitch. This is your home. All of these kids are your brothers, for Christ's sake.' She thinks she's explaining things but he hasn't got a clue what she's talking about.

‘I want my own brother,' Alan screams.

Lori
watches, listens from the doorway, seeing this twin as a hostage in some mad old war that has been going on since Eva and Grandmother Hilda first set eyes on Mavis. Maybe she was supposed to be a boy and she turned out a girl. Lori doesn't know why that war got started but now some poor innocent little country has gone and got itself caught up in it and it's going to get bombed; it's going to get
wiped off the planet.

That peculiar feeling has come back, that weird eleven year old, lonely knowing feeling – like she's a girl whether she wants to be or not. Like those twin boils under her T-shirt are going to turn into great Mavis boobs one day and she can't stop them doing it no matter how much she flattens them with Neil's singlets. And it's like, this is a female war, and only females
can fight in it, so she has to fight for that little country's freedom or he's going to be dead. She's just got no choice . . . except her legs won't move her to do anything. Her head is running wild with making mad pictures which she can't keep in a straight line. They are all curving around things, curving into something different while her skin gets cold and goosebumpy, and the inside of her
head sort of swells up like it will explode with doing nothing.

Then Mavis has had enough of Alan screaming for Eva and not her. Her whip flicks at Alan's round bare legs. It probably doesn't hurt that much, but his scream is cruel, his air-intake scream more awesome than his air-out scream while his bare feet stamp the floor, running, running, running to nowhere.

‘For Christ's sake, leave that
poor little bugger alone, Mavis,' Donny yells and he grabs at the whip. Mavis is out of control now. She's bawling, shaking, screaming crazy stuff. She aims the whip at Donny and gets him a beauty around the ears. He grabs the end, pulls on it; he might be taller than her, but he's a nine-stone weakling trying to pull a tractor.