My skit was turning out to be an unmitigated disaster. (Extension spelling list, week six. Topic? Prefix ‘un’.) For a tragedy it sure was looking grim, just not in any of the ways that I’d planned. For a start there were all the normal problems that came with writing and directing a play (uncooperative cast, unlearned lines, unavailable star). There were so many ‘un’s during those two weeks of rehearsals, I could have written that spelling list myself.
I thought it would be easy writing a play about a true story – one that already existed. And so as I sat down to watch the news each night at home, as Dad rustled his newspaper and Mum told Laura to get her feet off the couch, as angry courtroom scenes flashed across the TV screen, I sat with my 2B pencil and a blank piece of paper and simply transcribed each thing as it appeared.
It was four years since Lindy Chamberlain had been found innocent of killing her baby, Azaria, and had had her murder conviction quashed. Now the family was wading through a minefield of compensation.
‘What’s a coroner?’ I asked Dad while we watched. I hadn’t cast one of those in my play.
‘It’s a person who investigates the circumstances of someone’s death. They weigh up all the evidence and then they work out how the person died. In this case, the coroner is trying to come up with an answer for how Azaria Chamberlain died.’
‘What, they still don’t know?’
I reckoned finding the baby’s clothes near a dingo den was all the evidence anyone could ever need.
‘Two inquests have been heard, Tik, but that was back before they discovered the baby’s matinee jacket. That was new evidence. A lot’s changed since then.’
‘Like, Lindy Chamberlain’s been released from prison?’
‘That’s right. She’s been released and pardoned, but the Crown hasn’t yet made a finding on who or what was responsible for the baby’s death. As far as they’re concerned, it’s still a mystery.’
I was glad I didn’t have to include all those inquests in my skit. My skit would mostly be about the night Azaria disappeared, about the dingo that stole her away.
I knew the Chamberlain story would have the right effect. Everyone in our house was glued to the TV whenever it came on the news. And if I wanted to give Hannah and Cordie the best chance at running away then, what better story to stage? I knew it was controversial but that was the point. I wanted to create a proper diversion.
I’d had to change it a bit so that Azaria Chamberlain was nine years old, instead of nine weeks old (I didn’t know anyone who had a baby that small and, even if I did, you could bet they wouldn’t lend her to me). I’d cast Melanie Firth in the role, even though Cordie was meant to be the lead. Cordie had the right star power for it. And she could have snuck off the stage during the disappearance in the play and no one would have suspected a thing. (It’s not like the audience would have expected to see her again.)
Only that was the problem: we never saw Cordie. She was off sick from school so often lately. She’d been away so many days that I couldn’t very well give her the lead role when she’d never been to a single rehearsal. She never even knew we were holding rehearsals, and the rest of my cast had turned up for three hopeless run-throughs at recess already.
At rehearsals we’d decided Carly Sawtell would be the dingo – we were relying on good costuming there. Sharrin Helpman and Jodi McNally would be police officers, while I read out the lines for the mum. In fact, I read out the lines for everybody’s part because no one had bothered to learn them. Not even Melanie, who must have known about learning lines from her drama classes. You’d have thought she’d be more professional.
I didn’t like cutting Cordie out of my play. Not even considering she hadn’t known she was in it. It hurt to shove her copy of the script under my bed, with all those pink highlighted lines she never learned. But I’d hardly seen her since the night of Hayley’s sleepover party, and whenever I did see her now, she was busy plotting with Hannah and Laura. Busy leaving Ruth and me out.
They were so busy not telling us about their runaway plan, we never got the chance to tell them we already knew.
Until the day before the Showstopper, that is. Then we got to say it all right. Only trouble was, we weren’t expecting Mr Van Apfel to appear out of nowhere like that.
At first it was just Ruth and me, like always. We walked home from school together, bags heavy, hats pulled low. It was strangely silent for that time of the afternoon. The cicadas sat and quietly slow-roasted in the trees.
‘I saw Mr Avery today at the bubblers,’ Ruth said, and a small droplet of sweat slid out from under her legionnaire hat and worked its way down her face. I could imagine Mr Avery, there at the bubblers. Water beading on his thick beard.
‘What, drinking?’ I asked.
I took off my own hat and soaked it with the last of the water from my drink bottle and a deeper shade of blue bled across the cotton as it got wet. I wrung it once, then put it back on my head, and fingers of cool water pressed into my scalp.
‘No, just standing,’ Ruth said.
Fat beads of water clung to the brim of my hat, threatening to fall if I moved my head.
‘He wanted to know why Cordie was away today,’ Ruth went on, and I drew a sharp breath and the jewels of water tumbled off my hat.
‘How did he know she was away?’ I was aghast.
‘Because she’s in his class, that’s why. It’s his job to know who’s at school and who’s away.’
My cheeks burned at the indignity of being chastised by Ruth. Of course, if I’d thought about it for even a second I’d have known Mr Avery was Cordie’s classroom teacher and so he would have marked a small cross next to her name on the roll. It was just he always acted so suspiciously, that’s all.
‘Anyway, why was Cordie away today?’ I asked. ‘She sick again?’
‘She’s a faker,’ Ruth said.
We walked along in silence and two lorikeets went belting past. A flash of jungle green.
‘I saw Mr Avery the other day at school too, you know,’ Ruth said as we rounded the corner to Macedon Close. She spoke cautiously, warily, as if she wasn’t sure she should be telling me but that we were so close to home now it might be safe to say. But I was wary now too, and I wasn’t about to be outsmarted by a Year Two kid again.
‘So what?’ I replied. ‘He works there, you know.’
But Ruth was trying to tell me something.
‘No, I saw him with Cordie. The two of them were down beside your classroom. I saw them when we were in the playground, doing map-reading worksheets.’
My classroom stood away from the all the other classroom buildings, like a kid in the corner. In disgrace.
‘What were they doing?’ I wanted to know.
‘Dunno. Just talking. Cordie didn’t seem to be saying that much but she was laughing at him a lot.’
I thought about the two of them, down there, alone, by the rear brick pier of our classroom. Cordie, with her back leaning up against the pier, one leg raised, one sole pressed flat against the bricks. Cordie and Mr Avery. Out of sight from almost all of our school.
‘Well, did you ask Cordie about it?’
Ruth shook her head. ‘She’d never tell me anyway,’ she said. ‘It’s not like they’ve told us about their runaway plan, and that’s heaps more important than this.’
I had to admit, Ruth had a point. But that didn’t mean it didn’t sting.
‘They’ll tell us when they’re ready,’ I said defensively. ‘They can’t keep it a secret forever. They’re just waiting for the right chance to say.’
Ruth looked unconvinced, but she said nothing as we crossed the top of Macedon Close together. I walked her to her drive and then turned to go home, when we heard voices drifting out of the backyard.
They were familiar voices. Plotting voices. Leaving-us-out-again voices. Ruth squared her shoulders and gripped the straps of her schoolbag.
‘C’mon,’ she said as she led me into battle.
I followed Ruth along the shady side passage of the house, across the roots of the peppercorn tree. When we emerged, all was sunshine and bare legs and that shimmering pool. A backyard arcadia spread before us.
There were Hannah and Laura lying side by side in the grass, discarded ice-cream wrappers beside them, their schoolbags propping up their heads like pillows, their eyes closed to the blistering sky. Cordie sat beside them. She wore a babydoll dress made of faded check cheesecloth, her brown legs stretching out long below the skirt. She wore a frangipani nicked from Mrs McCausley’s yard behind one soft, tiny ear. Between her splayed legs, her pet mice played in the grass.
‘What are youse doing?’ Ruth announced our arrival. Her voice was accusatory and loud. Fury simmered not far below the surface. ‘We didn’t know you were here together. And you got ice creams.’
‘I didn’t,’ Cordie said carelessly. She raised her palms to show she was empty-handed.
But Ruth wasn’t interested in Cordie’s virtue now. It was too little, and it came far too late.
Ruth had been ignored and excluded. She’d been babied long enough. Missing ice cream was tantamount to sin.
She charged at the older girls, her school backpack swinging, her plait lashing like a scorpion’s tail. She was headed for Cordie but then she swerved at the last instant and ran instead towards Hannah and Laura, yanking the schoolbag out from underneath Hannah’s head so her skull crashed onto the grass. Hannah yelled and sat up, but Ruth ignored her. She held Hannah’s bag high above her head. She swung it from side to side and then she upturned it savagely so its contents rained down on the lawn.
‘Rope!’ Ruth said triumphantly. ‘A torch! Warm clothes! I told you they were running away.’
‘Give it here . . .’ yelled Hannah and she stood up and moved angrily towards Ruth.
‘Give it here,’ said another voice evenly. We swung around in surprise.
And Mr Van Apfel stood up from where he’d been crouched, in his red PVC gloves, scrubbing mould off his pavers.
We never heard him there, by the pool gate. Never heard the back-and-forth swish of his brush. The older girls must have known he was in the backyard, but then they’d been there before us.
Blood pulsed in my ears as he walked across the lawn, though the rest of the world fell silent. He swung an open bottle of Handy Andy original ammonia from his fingers and the smell was sickening.
‘This,’ he said, his face twisted in disgust as if he couldn’t bear to look at us. ‘This is how you treat me? This is your idea of “honour and obey”!’
His sleeves were rolled up for scrubbing and, emerging from his red rubber gloves, his forearms were an angry striated pink. He waved his free arm over the upturned backpack. Over its spilled guts on the lawn. Over the rope, the torch, the pile of fleecy clothes. Over the five of us. Petrified in the sunshine. Laura was still lying on her back on the grass, her head raised awkwardly in the air. Hannah was still reaching out to grab Ruth, who was busy cowering from her. Cordie sat cupping her mice in her hands, her legs still splayed in the sunshine.
Meanwhile I stood uselessly over to one side, my hat leaching water in warm trickles down my neck.
‘Run?’ he bellowed. ‘Run? You would run!’
The word sounded feebly small.
He, on the other hand, was so tall, so broad-shouldered. He loomed above us and caused an eclipse. His shadow slanted all the way across his zoysia grass and to the roots of the peppercorn tree.
Van Apfel. From the apple. From the tree of knowledge. Mr Van Apfel knew. He knew about the plan to try to run away, and all hell was about to break loose.
‘Where did you think you would run away to?’ His voice was dangerously low. ‘Or hadn’t you worked that part out yet? Go on. Tell me. Honestly, how far did you think you could get?’
For a moment no one spoke.
‘I didn’t think . . .’ Hannah started. ‘I mean, we didn’t want —’
He cut her off with the sweep of his hand. He wasn’t interested in what Hannah had to say. His eyes were fixed on Cordie, whose eyes were fixed on her mice. She placed them down onto the grass.
‘You’d never leave me,’ he appealed to her.
Cordie said nothing. Either she was too scared or she wasn’t sure what to say. Or maybe she never realised he was speaking to her because she never looked up from her pets.
‘You won’t leave,’ he said again, looking directly at her. Willing her to agree. ‘Say it. Say you won’t leave. Go on, say it now.’ He sounded hurt. Almost whiny. And the wounded tone that had crept into his voice was what frightened me most of all.
Between her legs, Cordie’s mice crawled and sniffed at the grass. She had trained them to stay when she let them out of their cage. Even for pets, they were incredibly tame. Maybe that’s what enraged Mr Van Apfel in the end.
The fact Cordie wouldn’t say what he was asking of her. The fact she had more control over her mice than he had over his daughters. And when Cordie finally turned her face to him, she saw Mr Van Apfel upturn the bottle he’d been carrying and empty it over her pets.
Cordie screamed and propelled herself backwards on her hands, away from the falling liquid. Drops of ammonia splattered onto her legs. Beside her, her sisters stood wild-eyed in terror. One mouth gaping, the other clamped shut. On the grass there was squealing. High-pitched mewling. Blind mice panicked in the bright daylight. Except for one mouse, which fell still in a matter of seconds, its tiny body rigid, its legs taut. It was full stride like a carousel animal.
Cordie moaned and shook her head: ‘No. No, no, no.’
She reached out and scooped up the remaining three mice. Tried to wipe them clean on her check dress. She cradled them to her chest, where the fabric started turning pink. Those mice weren’t even three check-squares long.
Mr Van Apfel looked worn down by Cordie now. A grim sheen appeared on his upper lip. As if he was exhausted by her constant failure to satisfy what it was he was asking of her. He turned his bottle the right way up.
‘Cordelia,’ he said, ‘I’ll deal with you later.’ Ammonia and disgust dripped from his red gloves.
‘They’re dead,’ Cordie said dully, ignoring her dad. She uncupped her shaking hands and the three last mice lay silent and stiff, their dead bodies cutting a path across Cordie’s open palms.
‘I think,’ Mr Van Apfel said in a voice that was at once recognisable as the one he normally used, and also shockingly calm, ‘that it might be time for Laura and Tikka to go home.’ Like it wasn’t too late to make a start on our homework, maybe catch some cartoons on TV. And I wondered if the Van Apfel girls might like to do the same thing. To walk up the side of the house and across the drive, head down the slope of Macedon Close as though none of this had just happened. To let themselves believe that everyone’s parents were violent like this and today was simply the day they’d grown bored of it.
Laura picked up her schoolbag and threw Hannah a look that said everything and nothing all at once. I was still carrying my bag – had never taken it off – and I went and took my place next to my sister.
‘I’ll walk you out, girls,’ Mr Van Apfel announced. ‘I’m headed for the garage myself.’
And nobody spoke as he retrieved his scrubbing brush from where he’d left it on the pavers. He carried it in the same hand as his bottle. And Laura and I followed him into the shade at the side of the house.
‘I’ll leave you here, girls,’ Mr Van Apfel said as we reached the roller door to the garage, and we nodded dumbly and walked up the drive. And there, at the top, Dad’s car swung into the cul-de-sac as if he’d been waiting around the corner for us all along.
‘Dad!’ I shouted with relief. I waved him over the curb. The car windows were wound down into their sills and the aluminum casting framed his face.
‘Tikka-Likka,’ he greeted me. He smiled at Laura. ‘Like a ride?’
We slid into the back of the car.
‘You two are quiet this afternoon. What’s going on?’ he joked. ‘Cat got your tongues?’
In the back seat Laura placed her hand over mine. ‘I won’t tell,’ I mouthed in defence. But Laura shook her head and I realised she wasn’t trying to silence me. Only that she wanted to hold my hand just as much as I needed her to.
Dad released the handbrake, ready to drive off, when Mr Van Apfel appeared at the top of the drive. He waved and for one moment I was worried he was going to come over.
‘Graham!’ he said to Dad, as if Dad was the very person he’d been hoping to see. His wide mouth broke into a comradely grin. Beside me, Laura shrank back in her seat.
‘Thanks for having the girls,’ Dad called out, then he paused and leaned further out of the car window. ‘I take it they’ve just come from your place?’
Mr Van Apfel smiled worse than before.
‘Impossible to keep track of, aren’t they?’ he commiserated.
Dad returned Mr Van Apfel’s smile awkwardly. Then he waved and steered our car down the slope using his free hand, while Mr Van Apfel walked over the crest of his drive like the sun setting on another God-given day.
* * *
Lor and I never told anyone what we witnessed that day, so no one could be blamed for not knowing. (Though Mrs Van Apfel must have wondered why the aquarium in her laundry sat empty, and where Cordie’s mice had got to.) I guess I figured if I never said the words out loud, then maybe the terrible things we saw never really happened. So we kept our mouths closed, like we squeezed our eyes shut.
Our family of four blind mice.