CHAPTER 15

The next day was a Friday, and it should have been an excellent day because Dad said he was taking the morning off work and that we were going on an outing. We thought this might help Caleb to let go of this sacrifice theory because Ruthy and I were plumb out of ideas about how to help him get past it. Ruthy and Caleb were very excited because I think they saw this as the end of what Ruthy called ‘the Cold War’ between Mum and Dad, but I had a feeling in my guts that said it wasn’t going to be so easy to get Mum back to a good place. As it turned out, it was a terrible day. It was even worse than the day I found Sixpence dead in the box, and that’s saying a lot because I didn’t think any day could ever be that bad again.

We got ready to go. Dad said we were going to Cleland conservation park to see the animals, and that sounded like the best idea ever. We got dressed and put things in the back of the station wagon we thought we might need, like Ruthy’s notebook and Caleb’s Ventolin and Milly Molly Mandy and a yellow truck and three jars with holes punched in the lid Mr Driver had made for me in case we found interesting insects, and Ruthy’s torch and a pair of scissors in case we needed to cut something interesting.

I ran into Mr Driver’s place to tell him about the outing, but he seemed rather sad and just mussed up my hair and told me to try to have the best day I could have. Something in my insides did a little somersault when he said this, but I pushed that thought away, ran down to Sixpence’s grave to tell her where we were going, and raced back to the car. Mum and Dad weren’t ready, but I was full of light, air and energy and ran down to the end of the street and back just for something to do while I waited. I was out of breath and a bit sweaty when I got back, and my parents still weren’t in the car so I ran back to Sixpence to tell her what kind of animals I hoped I would see.

The first sign that it was going to be a bad day was that Dad told us to get in the car and then he got in too and started the motor. Caleb started laughing and said Dad was a duffer because he had forgotten Mum, but Dad said Mum wasn’t coming with us to Cleland, which made us all go very quiet and perfectly still in the back seat. Caleb asked how come Mum wasn’t coming, and Dad said she had a busy day and needed some time to sort things out for herself. He seemed cross more than sad about it, but he said it in a voice that invited no comment.

Ruthy and Caleb looked at me, but I didn’t look back, because the thing inside me that went a bit haywire when things were bad was rushing around my innards and I was feeling quite panicky.

We drove to the park in silence. It was quite a long way, so there was quite a lot of silence. Dad didn’t look in the rear-view mirror to check on us, which he usually did. Caleb curled up in a little ball and Ruthy hung on tight to Milly Molly Mandy and buried her head in the rag doll’s woollen hair. When we reached the park, we all got out of the car quietly, and just sort of stood around it for a minute. Usually we would have already run to the gate and be screaming for Dad to hurry up.

Inside the park, Dad walked to a shelter shed and put our lunch basket on a bench. He sat down and took out his newspaper and told us to go and have a good time. Caleb asked if he was going to come with us, but he said, ‘Not right now, off you go and play.’ This didn’t feel right, but after a few minutes we raced off to explore, and for a little while we forgot that Mum wasn’t with us and Dad didn’t look happy.

Normally we would have disappeared for hours but after a while we met up at a water fountain and decided we should go back to see Dad and to ask him to look at the kangaroos with us. When we ran back to the table, he was just sitting and looking at nothing. His paper was folded flat. Caleb pulled at his shirt and asked him to come to feed the animals with us, but he said he wasn’t really in the mood. He took some stale bread out of the picnic basket and told us to go and feed things with it.

We went to a little lake and threw the bread to some birds that were hanging around. They seemed to enjoy it enormously, and I thought it was good that someone was having a good day. Caleb plonked himself down on the ground by the water and started to cry. Ruthy sat next to him and put her arm around his shoulders and I noticed she didn’t tell him there was nothing to worry about, because we all knew there was, even though we didn’t understand what it was exactly.

‘Dorcas, you think it’s just that Mum is having a head day?’ asked Ruthy.

I shook my head no.

‘Well, what do you think it is then?’ she asked.

Part of me wanted to tell her what Mrs Edwards had told me about Mum leaving, but my mouth couldn’t make those words come out of it because they were too scary and sad. We sat there together for quite a long time, not saying anything, Caleb whimpering quietly. I wanted to cry a bit, but my throat was all tight and sort of strangled.

We saw Dad’s shadow before we saw him. It was tall and thin and his head of dark bouncy curls made a nice curly shape on top. He came and sat down next to Caleb. The four of us were a sad, little row. Dad stretched his arm out so it went around all three of us. His hand was on my shoulder. It felt heavy.

After a while, he said, ‘I have something to tell you, and I need you to be very brave.’

We waited. I don’t think I was breathing.

‘Your mum has left for Scotland today. She needs to visit your grandma. You know she has been missing her mum very much, and although I wanted Grandma to come to visit us, she is not very well and can’t travel, so Mum is going to see her.’

‘But can we go with her?’ asked Caleb.

‘No, we have to stay here and keep going to work and school and the meetings. That’s what she would want us to do. And she will come back and tell you stories and bring you presents, and she will probably be wearing a kilt like everyone does in Scotland and she will be very happy because she’s seen her family again.’

‘Will she be able to play the bagpipes?’ asked Caleb.

‘Possibly. Who knows,’ said Dad.

‘Why didn’t she come with us today, Dad?’ I asked.

‘She is leaving this morning and she thought it would be a bit sad for us to see her get on the plane so Mr Driver is going to take her to the Adelaide Airport. She wanted you to be having a lovely time somewhere when she got on the plane so she could remember you all happy and excited,’ said Dad.

‘But she won’t remember us all happy and excited because she didn’t even get out of bed to see us and she didn’t say goodbye,’ I said. Ruthy started to bawl now.

‘She didn’t say goodbye to you when you were awake, but last night when you were asleep she sat next to each one of you and stroked your hair and told you she loved you very much and that it would break her heart not to see you every single morning and every single night,’ said Dad.

‘Did … did she mean that? Even for me?’ I asked.

‘She did mean that, and she meant it just as much for you as for Ruthy and Caleb. She loves you very much, Dorcas. Sometimes her sadness just gets in the way of her showing it,’ said Dad.

‘Will she be home by next Friday for tellie and chocolate?’ asked Caleb.

‘No,’ said Dad.

‘Will she be home to wash my school shirts for next week?’ asked Caleb.

‘No,’ said Dad.

‘Will she be home for the Sunday school prize night?’ asked Ruthy.

‘No, Ruthy. But she’s finished your frocks and they are waiting for you in her wardrobe. They are very beautiful yellow dresses with white dots on them, so you will be very happy, Dorcas.’

‘But, Dad,’ said Ruthy, ‘prize night is still weeks away. How long will Mum be gone for?’

‘She will have Christmas with her family,’ said Dad, ‘so she will be away for quite a long time.’

‘Noooo,’ howled Caleb. ‘I want my mum. I want my mum.’

Dad wrapped himself around Caleb and rocked him to and fro.

‘Come on, Caleb,’ said Dad. ‘Don’t be a baby now. Big boys don’t cry. Don’t you want your mum to be happy that she can see her family?’

‘No,’ said Caleb. ‘I want her to be happy here with us.’

‘Not going to happen,’ I heard myself say, and Dad snapped his head to look at me but didn’t say anything.

‘But why didn’t Mum say goodbye to us?’ said Ruthy, who had tears rolling down her cheeks now. ‘Doesn’t she love us anymore?’

‘I told you, she did say goodbye, and of course she loves us,’ said Dad. But that was all he said.

‘But who will make our lunches and look after us when you are at work?’ asked Ruthy.

And that was the question that shot a big bullet of fear right through my gut. I could feel the blood rushing to my face. My hands got all sticky and sweaty. I held my breath again, waiting for what I was dreading to know.

‘Well. It’s going to be fine really. Caleb is going to stay with Aunty Maisie and Grandpa. Because they live so close, he will be able to finish the school year at Rostrevor.’ He addressed Caleb, ‘Aunty Maisie will walk you to school every day and pick you up. And you will be able to see Grandpa every day and that will be lovely.

‘Ruthy, you are going to stay with Brother and Sister Hodgeson, who really love you and can’t wait to see you. I’ve spoken to your teachers and they are going to give you a big packet of work to do at the Hodgesons. They said you are very clever and it won’t put you behind.

‘And Dorcas, you are going to stay with the Roystons. You’ve known them all your life, and Maudie and Helen and Peter will be your friends. You are going to go to school with Maudie until the end of the year, and your teachers say you can sit their exams instead of the ones at your school and it won’t be a problem,’ said Dad.

We were all three crying now. Caleb was making noises that sounded like ‘woa, woa, woa’. Ruthy was doing her very distressed cry where she stops breathing and her face is all screwed up and her mouth is an ugly big hole with dribble coming out of it. I had tears streaming from my eyes but made no sound. There wasn’t a sound that could match the awfulness of it all. I was pretty sure my eyes would leak forever.

A couple walking past us slowed down as they heard us crying and turned to look as they went past. The woman made a little ‘oh what a shame, poor poppets’ face, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. A little boy raced past us then noticed we were something interesting, came to a halt, stood stock-still just a little way behind me, staring and listening. Then he ran off calling to his mother, ‘There’s people crying, Mum. There’s people crying over here.’

Dad didn’t say anything else. He just sat with us and stared out at the water. In a way, I thought that was okay because he was being honest about the terribleness. But I also wanted him to say things to make it all right. This silent Dad was part of the huge bubble of misery that was getting bigger and bigger in my chest.

After a few minutes that felt like days, Dad said, ‘Come on, you three. Let’s go and get an ice-cream.’

Ruthy said, ‘I don’t want one, Dad.’ But he stood up and gently pulled her to her feet, and Caleb and I followed. We all walked silently to the shop. Dad said we could have any ice-cream we wanted. Caleb was still hiccupping, and my eyes were still raining on my cheeks. Ruthy had her little pouty face going on. The woman in the shop had purple hair. I thought, Mum would never agree to dye someone’s hair that colour. I wondered if Mum would take Orlay’s Audrey Auburn hair colour with her to Scotland. What if they don’t have Audrey Auburn there? What if she comes home with different-coloured hair? Would she go black? Or blond? Would she look the same?

‘They can get overtired on outings, can’t they?’ said the purple-headed serving lady. I noticed her roots were very grey for a good half an inch around the line of her face. I also noticed she was wearing an orange jumper. Mum would have said, ‘What are you thinking wearing purple with orange?’

Dad just nodded and handed her some money.

‘I make mine have a lie-down before I take them out,’ she said. ‘About your ones’ ages I’d say.’ She leaned into the freezer and pulled out our ice-creams. ‘Oh, they don’t like it, of course. But I say, no lie-down, no treat. I’d try that, a lie-down before you leave. We see a lot of tired crying and tantrums here. I always recommend the lie-down.’

Dad just nodded again.

When we pulled into the driveway Caleb said, ‘Dad, will Mum be inside?’ and Dad said, ‘No, Caleb. Your mum has gone to Scotland.’ We all walked to the back door because it wasn’t a running kind of event. There was no one in the kitchen. The house was quiet and empty. It didn’t feel right that everything looked the same, when nothing was really the same. Dad told us to put our things away. We went into our bedrooms, and then we all started to cry again, because Mum had packed a suitcase for each of us and put it on our beds.

‘But, Dad,’ howled Ruthy, ‘we don’t have to go right now, do we? Can’t we stay with you, Dad? We will be really good and we can do the cooking and cleaning and Dorcas can look after us until you get home from work and we can get Mr Driver if there are snakes or spiders or robbers.’ She was pleading.

‘Or pirates,’ added Caleb, a bit hopefully for a minute.

‘It’s too long a time for you to look after yourselves,’ said Dad. ‘We need to go now so you have time to settle down a bit before the week starts. I’ll see you every Sunday and sometimes I’ll come and have tea with you during the week.’ He picked up Caleb’s suitcase and took it through the house. I thought, They sent Daniel away and he hasn’t been back since. They don’t see him on Sundays and they don’t have tea with him during the week sometimes.

I suddenly realised I wouldn’t be able to see Sixpence every day and raced through the house, and past the car to Mr Driver’s, even though I could hear Dad calling me to come back.

I sat on the little stool next to her. I was crying as I explained things, so the words came out a bit stuttery. I felt as though a big hand had reached into my heart and was squeezing it hard. At first I thought it might have been God’s hand, but then thought he probably wouldn’t squeeze a child’s heart, so maybe it was a witch. But then I thought it might have been Jesus because he did say, ‘Suffer the little children,’ and suffer was a good word for me right now.

I said, ‘I love you very much and I will never forget you but Mum has gone to Scotland and I have to stay at the Roystons’ until after Christmas. Mr Driver will take very good care of you. It will get lovely and warm soon so you can rest in the spring and I will see you in the summer and water the garden around you so you stay nice and cool. Love, Dorcas.’

Ruthy used to ask me why I spoke to Sixpence as though I had written a letter to her, but Mr Driver said letters were powerful things and that was okay. He said that in the war sometimes letters were the only things that kept a man alive, and you could keep them and read them over and over to keep your heart from stopping from loneliness. Ruthy said sure but Sixpence wasn’t at war and I wasn’t actually posting a letter to her and Mr Driver said, ‘There’s more than one way to send a letter,’ and neither of us knew what that really meant but I felt Mr Driver had said something that was on my side so I said, ‘So there,’ to Ruthy, who shut up.

Dad dropped me at the Roystons’ first. I asked if I could be last so I could sit in the front seat with him for a while, but he said no, it made sense to do it in this order because of where everyone lived. I thought Caleb should go first because Aunty Maisie lived quite close to us but Dad said he was having dinner at Maisie’s when he took Caleb there, and that made Jesus squeeze my heart again because I thought that might mean he loved us in the order he dropped us off, from least loved to most loved, and it made me think of the beads on our string in the tree house.

That made me gasp and I said, ‘Dad, we have to go back and get the beads in the tree house. We can’t leave them behind.’

But Dad said, ‘Just make a list of anything you need once you’re settled in and I can bring it into Sunday school for you. But only things you really need. I can’t imagine why you need some beads from the tree house. What are they, anyway? A necklace?’

None of us answered, because we didn’t want to explain the way the family was represented on the string to Dad. But as we drove on our way to Henley Beach, where I would be staying, which is quite a long way from home, I thought about those beads and where they should be on the string now. Should we take the Mum bead off altogether for a while? Or should we just make a much bigger space between the Mum and Dad beads? Was the string long enough at all now? And if we took the Mum bead off, should we take mine off too, because I had a feeling Mum would say I was the main reason she had to go to Scotland.

And there it was, my big fear. Was I the reason Mum couldn’t wait any longer for Grandma to come to visit us? Was I the reason she had to fly across the world to be with her mum? Was she going to say, ‘Honestly, that child is the living end,’ as soon as she walked into Grandma’s house? I didn’t know my grandma, and only got a flowery card from her for my birthday every year that said Happy birthday from your gran in spidery writing. But I had always hoped she thought well of me. I had the idea in my head that I was quite like her and so she would like me, and perhaps I would even be a favourite. For Mum to talk to her first and give her a bad impression of me was not ideal.

Caleb whispered loudly to Ruthy, ‘I can go and get the beads after school.’ But Dad heard him and said, ‘No, Caleb. No one is to go home without my permission.’

But Caleb looked at Ruthy and mouthed the words, ‘I will. I will get them.’

And then I thought of Daniel. ‘Dad, does Daniel know where we will all be now? Does he know about Mum? Will he know where to send Ruthy letters? Can we ring each other and talk sometimes?’

Dad said, ‘Enough questions now, Dorcas. Just settle down with the Roystons, and we’ll sort everything else out after that. Just hush for a while now.’

I looked at Ruthy who mouthed, ‘I’ll tell Daniel. Don’t worry.’ I wondered where Daniel’s bead would be now. And then I thought again about my mum, who was flying right across the world all by herself. I worried about who she might have to sit next to. What if it was a man who made bad nose noises like Brother Jupitus did when he sat behind her at the Memorial Meeting on Sundays? She hated men who made sniffy or whistling noises through their nose. Or what if there was a chatty woman next to her? Mum didn’t like chatty women. She called them all show and no go. And she might have hours and hours of someone blethering on. I wondered if she’d tell them off, like she’d tell me off. And what if when Mum needed to go to the toilet on the plane, there was a big queue of people? Venita said her mum nearly wee’d herself when they went on a big trip because there’s only one toilet and so many people.

And what if Mum was crying all the way to Scotland because she was already missing us so much? Crying and crying and messing up her make-up and running out of tissues. And then I had the worst thought of all.

What if Mum wasn’t missing us at all?