Hope Farm Page 9

  I thought it was all over then, I thought theyd won. It was lucky the almoner didnt come back because I probably wouldve signed the papers. Nobody came in for hours. I got up but the door wouldnt open it must have been locked from the out side. Then at last it opened and I thought it would just be another nurse come to poke around and jab me with needles but I couldnt believe it, it was Mira again in her strange clothes. There was a man too in a suit with a briefcase and there was the almoner all huffing and puffing and red in the face. Only Mira sat down, she held my hand then she nodded at the almoner. The almoner wouldnt look at me. There has been a misunderstanding she said, We were not aware you had a safe place to go and someone to support you. Then the man said to me Now just to make sure we all understand whats happening could you please let the social worker here know what you want to do with your baby. He meant the almoner. I want to keep her I said. I dont want to give her up. The almoner looked like steam might come out her ears. Is that clear enough? said the man. Yes said the almoner and went out.

  From time to time Ian would cop it especially hard at school. I’d see him at the morning break with Dean Price’s sausage fingers hooked into his armpits, his toes barely touching the ground, his head slack, eyes lowered while something unintelligible and foul was bellowed into his face. With this came a corresponding increase in attention from Dean Price’s cronies who caught our bus; they were kept pretty well under control by the driver but still managed to deliver menacing looks and comments as they sloped, pack-like, up or down the aisle.

  When these things happened there were changes in Ian’s own behaviour. He went missing — sometimes arriving at the creek bank late, and sometimes not showing up at all — and he never said where he’d been. His face looked extra thin and pinched, and he would hardly keep still, talking a hundred miles an hour, maniacally adjusting settings on the camera, sending the collection of balls hurtling into the creek, his whole body almost flying down after it.

  His actual speech also changed, became even more affected. ‘Ah, manna from the gods,’ he would intone, when I brought some honey sandwiches. ‘Come sup with me, fair maid, and let us forget our woes.’

  He began branching out, too, with his acts of revenge. One afternoon he boarded the bus with a swollen lip and a graze on his chin, composed but slightly unsteady as he approached his seat. The next day at the creek, he produced with trembling hands an exercise book that had D. Price: Maths printed on the front cover. I stood by while Ian tore the pages out one by one and dropped them into the brown flow, the paper turning translucent so little clusters of numbers appeared to float directly on the water.

  Another time, I saw him up against a wall near the boys’ changing rooms with the flat of Dean Price’s hand against his ear, his cheek pressed against the bricks. A couple of days later it was a single, knobbled football boot that entered the creek, laces trailing, its opening like a mouth gulping as the water went in.

  These attacks and retributions were not acknowledged by Ian beyond his sharing, wordlessly, the celebration and disposal of his spoils. Afterwards — once the pages had all floated away, or the boot, glugging its last breath, had sunk below the surface — he turned as if waking from a trance, blinking his invisible lashes, and I saw that it took effort for him to rejoin me, to bring himself back.

  ‘Well,’ he might say, dusting off his hands with exaggerated briskness. ‘What shall we do now, gypsy girl? How about a scene?’ His latest passion was Shakespeare, and we spent a lot of time reading scenes from the matching tattered copies of King Lear that he’d got from a box of discards from the school library. Ian was an excellent reader, rarely stumbling over even the most obscure language.

  When he read aloud, all of the usual drama — his flamboyant emphasis on certain words — left his voice, and it grew clear and steady. His face, too, became calm, the skin softening, losing its pallor. But this only lasted while he was reading, and too soon the book was closed and his jumpiness returned, and a sad, protective feeling swelled in me as I watched the white spots reappear over his cheekbones, like the skin was stretched too far.

  Not long after the almoner left, a nurse brought me the baby. She was so tiny and she did look just like me, even Mira said so. I had my first try at feeding her which didnt go very well but Mira said that was all right if I just kept trying my milk would come. It was strange because normally I would be so embarassed showing my breasts and especially with the man there but I didnt mind at all. The only thing that mattered was that my baby was crying and it seemed right to feed her. It must have looked so silly but when she had finished drinking I hardly even thought to cover myself up again. I just sat there staring at her and saying Isnt she beautiful isnt she beautiful? Yes Mira said, Shes lovely. Then the nurse came to take her away again, I got upset but Mira held my hands and said Dont worry theyll bring her back when shes due her next feed. What if they dont? I said. I will make sure they do she said, I will visit every day. Still, I couldnt believe her. They were all so mean I said, And what if that almoner comes back? Mira kissed me and stood up. You just stay strong she said, Dont sign any thing. If they bother you tell them you have a place to go and Welfare have been informed you are keeping the baby. I will be back tomorrow and Im going to visit every day until they discharge you.

  They took me out of that room and put me in a ward with other women who were all new mothers but married. I saw some of them look at my finger that had no ring on it, none of them spoke to me but I didnt care as long as my baby was brought to me like all the others for feeds that was all I cared about. Some of the older nurses were rude to me and nobody helped at all with the feeding which was hard. All I wanted was to hold her and feed her and kiss her she was so beautiful. Mira came every day like she said. She was always dressed in the skirt and blouse and with her hair up, she looked so different but she had that calm way about her and she sat very straight and just her being there made me feel better. The man in the suit didnt come again. But a funny thing happened on about the third or fourth day. One of the married women walked over to my bed and said was it true I had a lawyer in and caused a big scene with a social worker? I didnt know what to say. I thought about the man with his briefcase and how hed made me say that about keeping the baby to the almoner in front of him and Mira. Is it true? said the woman. Because thats what we heard and she nodded at all the other married mothers who were just about falling out of there beds trying to listen. I didnt cause a scene I said. Well not you said the woman, Your friend you know Mary Poppins. One of the other women laughed. Shes not your mum is she? said the first woman. Its none of your business I said, Please leave me alone. She said some thing snippy going back to her bed but I didnt care, the nurse was coming with my baby and I was looking forward to feeding her. My milk had just started properly. I still hadnt got the hang of feeding and it hurt a lot but I was just so glad that at last she was actually getting some thing in her little stomach. The almoner never came back and nobody brought any more papers for me to sign but I still worried. Then one day a nurse came and said Your aunt is coming to take you home this morning. I guessed she meant Mira. This nurse was new, she was actually nice and she was the only one whod tried to help me with breastfeeding. She brought me my case so I could get dressed, all I had was one of my horrible tent dresses and it was ridiculous it was so big. The nurse was very polite though, she didnt say any thing. But she did ask where were the babys clothes and I didnt know what to say. Dont you have any? She spoke quietly because all the married mothers had there ears flapping. Yes I said, but my aunty must have forgotten to bring them. Never mind she said, Lets just keep this nightie on her shall we and the little blanket. Thank you I whispered. I was so grateful. She whispered right in my ear You are very lucky, I used to be on the ward for unmarried mothers and there are so many girls like you whod keep there babies if they had the opportunity and the way they are treated its just plain wrong. I didnt know what to say back so I just sai
d thank you again. I thought about Pat and all the other girls at the Home and Evie Dyer and how I never couldve understood before what it felt like to have your baby taken away and how I still couldnt imagine never having gotten her back. I would want to die. Then Mira came and it was time to go.

  One Saturday, Ian and I were by the creek sharing the lunch his mum had made him, me sitting on the ground, Ian pacing around, waving his arms and talking. He had been out of sorts for a few days. The lunch was white-bread sandwiches with Vegemite and rubbery cheese. He had gone quiet for a minute or two, which was unusual, and was standing still. Then he gave a stern nod, as if confirming something to himself, and turned to me.

  ‘I want to show you something.’ He scrunched up the wax-paper wrapping from the sandwiches and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘Come on.’

  Through the scrub we went, back towards Hope. We reached the bridge and climbed up and crossed it, the ringing of our shoes bouncing off the water below. Ian turned back into the bush, staying on the same side of the road, and before we climbed too deeply into the trees I was able to look across and see all our landmarks — the steep part of the bank where we sat near the bridge, and an especially big wattle tree, and the clump of grass where the balls had collected that day — from this new angle. Everything looked strange, small and lonely somehow.

  We moved up, diagonally climbing the slope, and after a while Ian stopped. ‘There used to be a track here — can you see?’

  I looked around. ‘Not really.’

  ‘See how there aren’t any really enormously big trees in this bit?’

  I looked, ahead and behind, and saw the line of lesser growth: smaller trees with thinner trunks, more bracken and low shrubs. The greens seemed brighter too. ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘It’s how they got in.’ He started walking again. Some colour had come into his face.

  ‘In?’

  ‘The miners.’

  ‘Miners?’

  But he wasn’t going to give any more away. On he marched, his steps springy with importance, and I followed. After a bit longer he turned and went between two big trees that had pinkish-white trunks, wrinkled at the joints, like skin. There was a line of rusted wire, very low to the ground, and some fallen timber posts — the remains of a fence. We stepped over them and Ian halted. ‘Stop!’ He spread his arms dramatically. ‘Careful!’

  I stopped, and looked ahead. My eyes were still adjusting to the shadows under the bigger trees, and at first I thought there was something there, lying on the ground a couple of metres away: a square, black thing, about the size of a car door. I blinked and squinted, struggling to make it out, because there was something funny about it. As my vision cleared I realised that it wasn’t a thing that I was looking at, a car door or sheet of black plastic — it was nothing, it was space. It was a biggish hole in the ground.

  ‘It’s a mineshaft.’ Ian flung himself down beside it. ‘Well, actually, it’s not. They go in sideways, usually, and then slope down gently. This is a kind of testing hole. They made these to assess the coal seam, so they knew where to actually mine. My grandad told me. He worked in the big mine, the real one, before it closed. But these little ones, up in the hills, they’re really old — from the olden days.’

  Slowly, I moved closer and got down on my knees. The opening of the shaft was lined with planks of decayed-looking wood, broken away in parts. I lay on my front next to Ian, and looked right in. It went straight down into complete darkness, the higher reaches of wall showing earth and more ruined and missing boards. The air that rose from it had the cold, dead smell of a place where no light penetrates.

  ‘It’s really deep,’ said Ian, his voice sinking echoless into the void. ‘More than a hundred feet, according to my grandad. Probably more than a hundred and fifty. That’s fifty-odd metres.’ He dropped a handful of twigs in and there was a long pause before the faint splashy patter of them landing. ‘Hear that? There’s water at the bottom.’

  I wriggled back and away, sat up. ‘So there are more?’

  ‘Of course. They’re everywhere round here.’

  All the times I’d run, unthinking, through the scrub, feet crashing down, landing anywhere. My skin tightened.

  Ian looked at me properly, without staring through me the way he’d been doing for the past week. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘They’re only up here, on this side of the creek. Our side’s fine.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Of course.’ He made a dismissive gesture. ‘That’s why all the houses are down on that side. Up here it’s just mines. Old, old, forgotten mines, full of skeletons and ghosts.’ He leaned on his elbow and spat the words down into the hole, which swallowed them up.

  ‘Careful.’ I scooted further back. ‘I can’t believe it’s just open like this,’ I said. ‘I mean, anyone could just …’

  ‘Ah.’ Ian also sat back. ‘Well, there was the fence.’ He tipped his head in the direction of the lines of rusty wire that we’d stepped over, and that I now saw ran in a square around the shaft.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s fallen down.’

  ‘Well.’ He threw me a grin, and despite the feeling that I was about to find out something I didn’t really want to know, I felt a little twirl of happiness — it was so good to see him smile again. ‘It wasn’t quite so fallen down. I helped it a little bit. And there’s the sign, didn’t you see it?’

  I scanned the entrance to the clearing and eventually made out a rectangular shape lying in the undergrowth, off to one side.

  Ian took up a long stick and began breaking bits off and tossing them into the hole. ‘I didn’t knock that down,’ he said. ‘It was already like that.’

  The sign was too well covered to read. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Danger. Keep out.’ He waved a hand. ‘Most of the mines are marked. My grandad says the government did it, years ago, when they shut everything down. And there would’ve been a cover.’ He indicated some splintery remnants of timber at the edge of the hole.

  ‘Did you …’

  Again he grinned.

  I moved further away. The uncomfortable feeling was growing, a lump in the pit of my stomach.

  Ian had started on another stick. ‘I hardly had to do anything,’ he said. ‘It was only a couple of tiny bits left, and they were really rotten. I mean the whole thing was pretty badly secured. A lot of them are like that — nobody bothers to check. Nobody comes up here.’ He glanced at me. ‘It’s cool, isn’t it?’

  I didn’t answer. It was good to see him looking less miserable — but this thing was scary, and dangerous. We weren’t supposed to be here; even if they had all fallen down, the sign, the fence and the cover had been put there for a reason. I pictured the one-hundred-metre sprint track that was marked out on the oval at school, cut in half and then made vertical. Fifty metres was a long way down. ‘I don’t like it,’ I said.

  ‘Pardon?’ He had gone back to lying with his head out over the lip of the shaft, and was dangling one arm in.

  ‘I don’t like it.’ I knew I sounded prissy, uptight, worrying about the rules. I felt myself flush. ‘I mean,’ I added, ‘I’ve just got a bit of a thing about heights.’

  Ian sat up again. ‘Fair enough.’ His tone was determinedly light and casual.

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence, with no eye contact.

  At last I cleared my throat. ‘I might go then.’

  ‘Rightio. I’ll come back down soon. Meet you at the bridge?’

  ‘Okay. Be careful.’

  ‘Always.’ He gave me a comical wave, wiggling his fingers.

  There was, of course, more to my dread of that shaft than a simple fear of heights, or depths, rather — of falling. It was to do with what the discovery of it meant to Ian, the way the white spots over his cheekbones coloured when he showed it to me, the an
imation in him, the excitement. That this jubilant engagement with something so risky was how he picked himself back up, recovered from what Dean Price had been doing to him. I didn’t reflect on it in this way then, or articulate it to myself — it was just another thing that made me feel bad, and that I therefore tried my best to take no notice of. And it was such a relief to have Ian back to more or less his normal self. Neither of us mentioned the shaft after that, and we returned to meeting by the creek most afternoons.

  If he didn’t show up I didn’t think about where he might be — a kind of blankness came over me, and I’d take on some repetitive task, like carefully removing petals from the tiny purple flowers that grew on the bank, until it began to get dark and was time to get up on my frozen legs and jog back along the path and over the hill to Hope.

  Then one day, somebody was doing a clear-out, and had put a pile of books on the kitchen table for everyone to help themselves from. In the pile was a beautiful leather-bound copy of The Tempest. I snatched it and ran to the creek, calling for Ian — but couldn’t find him. Thoughtlessly, and in the heat of my excitement, I crossed the bridge and ran up towards the two big pink gumtrees.

  I kept calling as I got closer, but he mustn’t have heard. He didn’t notice me even when I got near enough to see him, just before I reached the fallen fence. He was standing in the clearing, turned away from me, and he had a lump of wood — a small log really — in his arms. I had drawn in breath to call again, but I faltered, thinking either I was going mad or there was something wrong with my eyes. The hole appeared to have vanished. Ian stood on a perfectly uniform carpet of clear ground, evenly sprinkled with leaves and twigs. As I watched, groggy with confusion and forgetting all about the book, he took one step back, bent his knees and bucked his hips forward, letting go of the log. The hunk of wood went out in a slight curve away from him, fast and heavy — but instead of landing, it plunged through the ground, dragging a portion of grass and dirt and leaf litter with it in one quick, fluid movement, like the last surge of water draining through a plughole. And there it was — the sudden, gaping square of black space.