The Heaven I Swallowed Read online

  Sure enough, as I walked past my neighbour at number 22, watering with the hose at a suggestive level of his hips, he called out, ‘Left the little darky at home today, have we?’

  I replied with a nod and a smile and walked on, heading toward the park and the little beach. It was a Saturday so the children were out on bicycles and scooters. I spotted the Thompson boy playing marbles with a group of lads near the broken bayonet statue. On the corner, still with the street between us, I hesitated. Could I walk over and ask him if he had seen Mary, if he knew where she was? Such a question would spread the news of her disappearance, the whispers shooting off like a cat’s eyes or an oxblood. As I watched them play, a little girl trotted up with two ice-cream cones in her hands, a splash of white on her front. She licked one of the cones around the edges, holding the other out to avoid more drips. I saw her deliver the cone to one of the boys. She received no thanks. Her brother turned back to the game immediately, devouring the top half of the ice-cream in one gulp.

  I strode on. Down at the beach Mary was nowhere to be seen so I took the path away from the water into the hilly, leafy suburbs. The houses I passed were on double blocks, sprawling with numerous possible hiding places, large empty back gardens with sheds, chicken coops and vegetable patches kept since the war. In my mind’s eye, Mary was so small she could lie under a pumpkin leaf and I would not spot her.

  My head started to itch from the heat pounding down onto my hat. My feet, trapped in stockings and jammed into navy-blue pumps, felt as if they were on fire, flames in the arches and heels. How much I wanted to sit down and throw my shoes off. How weak I was to already feel this way, after less than an hour’s wandering.

  I tried not to believe in Fate—it seems sacrilegious—but it did seem to be Fate when I realised I was outside Mr Roper’s house. The neat brown-brick fence with a green wire gate lower than my knees; an overwhelming smell of sweetness from the gardenia bushes lined along the path up to the door, their white petals only just beginning to brown and drop; the verandah front with a couple of wicker chairs I had not seen him use, detached ends of cane sticking out from their edges. All familiar enough from my occasional visits over the years, after-church lunches, with another couple of women invited along from the Widows’ Group to make it proper.

  Knocking on the door aroused Will, Mr Roper’s cockatoo, kept in a cage in the back garden. The squawking overtook all other sounds so I could not hear whether Mr Roper was coming to the door or not. His abrupt appearance caught me off guard.

  ‘Well … Mrs Smith …’

  He wore a pair of beige trousers with no belt, a white short-sleeved shirt and, most disconcerting of all, no shoes or socks. Who had he expected me to be? I had taken my hat off, could feel my hair flattened against my head. I still had the shopping basket in the crook of my arm, sticking out from my side like a third appendage.

  ‘Mr Roper, I need some help.’ I had rehearsed what I was going to say on the way up the front path. ‘Mary … the little girl … my ward … seems to have gone … missing … seems to have left the house … last night.’ This part of the narrative was not going quite as I had planned. How to describe the previous night? I certainly could not tell him of my transportation to the back steps, nor the words that flared up in my head at the sight of Mary. He was a gentle man, I was sure, his conscience clear of blame.

  ‘Come on in, Mrs Smith.’ He moved back to let me through into the corridor that ran all the way to the back of the house, the cream walls peppered with landscapes of snow-covered forests and icy ponds. I had never asked why he had such pictures. I did not ask him on this occasion either.

  ‘Perhaps a cup of tea?’ Mr Roper offered as we made our way to the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t know. I feel I should be searching.’ Even as I said this, I lowered myself into one of his kitchen chairs, feeling the relief of getting off my feet. I would have liked to slip off my shoes but Mr Roper’s own lack of footwear made the thought of it impossible.

  ‘I’ll just go and umm …’ he said after putting the kettle onto the stovetop and disappeared up the corridor again. While he was gone, I took my feet out of my shoes, wiggling my toes as if I was a baby discovering them for the first time. I put my elbows on the table, breathing out the fatigue in loud, unpleasant exhalations.

  I could hear Mr Roper, now in shoes, returning and quickly made myself presentable again.

  ‘So, what is to be done?’ he asked. He had put on a black leather belt and a pair of black shoes, both looked harsh and blunt against the muted colours of his pants and shirt.

  ‘I was hoping you could help me look.’

  ‘But she could be anywhere. Gone on, what do they call it? “Walkabout”?’

  ‘Dear Lord.’

  ‘What did the police say?’

  I hated the way he stared at me, as if he knew my answer would not be to his liking.

  ‘I didn’t think it was necessary to tell them, as yet.’

  He turned away from me to check the kettle which had started a faint whistling, the beginning of the boil. I had expected him to show more exasperation, to berate me for my pride.

  ‘We can take my car,’ he said and it was settled.

  ‘So nice to not have petrol rations,’ I said and drank my tea without really tasting it.

  †

  Mr Roper’s FJ Holden smelt of the thin brown cigars, or cigarillos, I often saw him smoking after church. His house seemed to have avoided the stale stench and it had compensated by ingraining itself into the upholstery of the car. I tried not to let it remind me of Fred, concentrating on the solid chin of Mr Roper beside me.

  We began driving slowly through the back streets, retreading ground I had already walked along although I did not point this out to Mr Roper. A man’s search needed to be self-directed and any comments from me would sound like nagging. The boys were still playing marbles near the statue although they had moved along the path to catch the shade cast by a hydrangea bush. I was struck by the absurdity of expecting Mary to be out here. She would be much further away by now. Could I really expect to see her strolling benignly past the sprinkler-dotted lawns, the rose beds, the concrete effigies of her tribesmen, those plaster savages who stood on one leg in front gardens for eternity?

  ‘That one is in good shape.’ Mr Roper nodded over to one of these blackman–gnomes as we crawled past. Its red loincloth was perfectly vermilion and even the tip of its spear was intact.

  ‘We could take him home,’ Mr Roper said. ‘I’m sure no one would notice the difference.’

  He laughed at his joke. I could only manage to raise a smile.

  †

  At first I was not even aware my subtle directions were manipulating us towards Hyde Park. Perhaps there was also a part of Mr Roper that was naturally drawn to the city. I had often seen his face animated with descriptions of the centre—‘all that hustle and bustle’—his voice longing for a life he could not find in the suburbs.

  Whatever it was, we soon found ourselves driving down William Street, following the tram down the hill. I felt the sensation of being completely out of control as we dipped and then rose again along the avenue, so much so that I wanted to grab at the wheel just to have something to hold onto. To prevent this, I clung to the inside door handle. I saw Mr Roper glance over and see my grip. He did not say anything, nor did he reduce his acceleration. I could not determine if his thin smile was one of amusement or annoyance. How little I knew about this man, our lives travelling next to each other these past five years without ever truly joining.

  ‘Where in the city, do you think?’ he asked, as if in reply to an unvoiced question. I told him to park on Elizabeth Street.

  We walked along the footpath towards the southern entrance of the park. We did not hurry. Our pace was similar, we moved side by side. The ride in the car had revived my legs and feet, yet it was not just this that created the odd feeling of being there but somehow above it all. I was holding myself tall, at ease. At the
kiosk families recovered from the heat with glasses of lemonade. With a strange awareness, I saw a slender mother leaning into a pram to check her baby’s temperature, knowing I would appear to be a wife too, out with my husband for an afternoon stroll. To have a man by my side again. That was it. What did it matter if he was not actually my spouse? What did it matter if this wasn’t the absolute truth?

  We pushed on through the humidity. As we got closer to the ANZAC memorial I was tempted to take Mr Roper’s arm, to maintain the illusion for a little longer. By this point, however, there was no one around to see. The steps up to the cenotaph were deserted, their pink stone absorbing heat and throwing up an unwelcoming glare. I had to shade my eyes with my hand, negotiating the ascent through the slits of my fingers as Mr Roper barrelled on ahead of me. I had told him Mary might have wanted to see inside the memorial, see what I had not shown her. This was my only, rather weak, explanation for coming here.

  A young couple stood in the circular Hall of Memory, both their heads tilted reverently downwards into the Well of Contemplation, a circle cut into the floor with a wreath-like, waist-high balustrade surrounding it. I knew what they would see below them. The statue of the spread-eagled figure of a fallen soldier lying on his shield and sword, an emaciated body with not a skerrick of clothing, not even the loincloth given to Christ on the cross. From this level you could see only the boy, not the women who carried him.

  Mr Roper headed over to the winding stairs leading to the Hall of Silence below. I didn’t follow him. Down there he would see the figures of the mother, wife and sister draped in Romanesque clothing, as if to atone for their soldier’s nakedness. Around their feet, a burst sun spread out in brass waves across the floor.

  I walked quietly over to the round balustrade, now wondering if I had brought Mr Roper to the wrong place. Surely, if a young girl were curled up beside the statue—for some reason I imagined her asleep on the sun—the couple would not be looking so placid. Yet if Mr Roper had found her, he would not be able to call out, unable to ignore the plea written in the floor entrance: ‘Let silent contemplation be your offering.’ In all my visits here, I had never heard a word spoken in the chamber below, nor many uttered in this hall. There was something that erased the ability to talk, the weight of death pushing down the air, making it difficult to breathe, let alone speak. I had often found myself staring at the domed ceiling above—120,000 stars spotted it, one for each WWI volunteer, crowding together so that in the middle it looked like a blanket—only to realise I was holding my breath. The eternal flame wafting gas throughout the edifice did not help either.

  Re-entering had reminded me of the eerie quality of the place. Surely a twelve-year-old girl would not seek this? I loved the way the building was imbued with reverence, stateliness, the supremeness of the sacrifice. Taken up in glory. Here, in stone and bronze, lives made immortal and meaningful, the lives of their women transformed from the ­ordinary into the godly. Mary would not be able to see this. It was a magnificence some did not seek.

  ‘She’s not here,’ Mr Roper whispered into my ear. I had not heard him return.

  ‘We’ll look in the park,’ I whispered back. The young couple looked over at us disapprovingly as if we were talking sweet nothings to one another. To be silently reprimanded by them! It was almost more than I could bear. I turned away from Mr Roper, laying my hands on the top of the marble ledge. Mr Roper coughed to signal his impatience and strode away, disappearing down the stairs that lead to the park.

  When I gazed down into the Well of Contemplation again, a shadow moved. A black shape scurried into the space under my feet, out of view. I heard a small hissing sound. Was it a rat? I crossed my arms tightly and leaned over further to catch another glimpse. Over to my right, I could feel the girl of the couple watching me. Had she seen it too? For a moment, leaning over the barrier, I was too scared to move, in case the creature scrambled up over the marble and found its way to me. I tried to breathe slowly, to listen for another sound. I stared now at the gold floor below, at the lines engraved in the flames, which appeared to be rippling. I held myself still, becoming one of the statues below—a wife, a sister or a mother? None of these.

  The girl had left her partner and was standing next to me. She put her hand on my shoulder and gently pulled me back from the edge. I sighed.

  ‘You need to be careful,’ the girl said. Her boyfriend now hovered behind her shoulder, bouncing from foot to foot, not comfortable with this touching of a stranger.

  ‘Thank you.’ I spoke too loudly. Two red-breasted starlings flew out from the alcove holding the eternal flame. The three of us watched as the birds spiralled up into the dome for a moment then shot out the archway to join the ibises and seagulls on the reflection pool.

  †

  Dear Grace,

  I am alive and that, in itself, is a miracle. How strange it feels to no longer be afraid, to sit in a chair on a verandah, and write to you, to be bathed in the sunset without always watching for those nasty little Nips coming to shoot us to hell.

  Most of the men here are jumping on board ships to go home but I have chosen to stay. I have volunteered to be part of the Occupation Forces heading to Japan. Some of the boys think I am mad to want to go there but, then, there are enough volunteers to make up more than a couple of battalions for the Occupation Forces, so I guess madness must be contagious.

  They’ll station us at a place not far from Hiroshima. You’ll have heard of it, the city that took the force of the American’s super bomb to ‘end’ the war. You would think we’d done nothing, our fighting meant nothing, the way the Yanks talk themselves up over here.

  They speak of this place, this Hiroshima, with fear in their voices, the centre of a new world, an atomic world. Children turned to ashes in a blinding flash, human monsters created from something called radiation, fire that cannot be put out. A clearer vision of Hell I have never heard described. What a place to see in the flesh, then, what a place to be able to say I have walked. Maybe that’s what this war was about: bringing damnation to the Earth so we can fully appreciate how godless we truly are.

  I will write with more news as soon as I have some,

  Fred

  5

  I had heard about Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the radio and, on the day of the surrender, went out to find Wayville Street awash with the jubilation of victory. I stood in my front yard, smiling over the oleander bushes to my neighbours hugging each other and waving at me, laughing and crying. It was not a day to be inside and even if I had not forgiven them for their avoidance of me after the loss of my baby, I still wanted to be part of the joy, wanted to watch the children skipping about.

  On that day, we tried to be oblivious to the deep grief. Every one of us knew someone who had been lost: Auntie Iris’s son taken by the Japanese, Fred’s brother buried in Europe somewhere. I held my hands in prayer although—and I would never have admitted this aloud—I had nothing to say to God. I should have been thanking Him for the end of it finally but I felt too tired, still too alone, to give Him gratitude.

  If I had been able to I would have lain down on the grass and wept. As it was, I continued to stand, watching the late winter sky gradually darken. I could hear celebrations going on in houses all around, doors left open, lights spilling out as surely as the alcohol was. Radios blared in a way that never would have been acceptable on any other night; ABC voices mixed with ‘God Save the King’ competing with the raucous shouts of old men and shrill laughter from giddy girls, and too-young siblings fighting over a share of their mother’s attention so sharply focused elsewhere—mothers thinking of the ones who were not home yet, waiting to hold them.

  I had been separate from all of them, though I could still imagine my future within such rooms: surrounded by my own children, hopefully untouched by war, but still basking in the glow of domestic assurance that can only come from knowing the world has been fought over and is safe. I had looked up at the night sky again, looking for the shooting s
tar that would carry my Fred home, my still poetic-self believing I had control over fiery Fate.

  †

  I walked along the edge of the reflection pool, the strange shadow of the memorial still with me. Mr Roper had forged ahead, crossing Park Street without a glance back. The sun almost gone, I felt as if I had lost more time than I should have inside the Hall of Memory.

  Ahead, yet another couple walked hand in hand. I watched their arms swinging back and forth and a little girl ducked under their joined hands, running in my direction. If the couple had been her parents, rather than strangers, it might have been a game and she would have turned back to run under their arms again and the pair would have laughed at her antics. She was not their child, however. The little girl kept running, brushing past my hip.

  The woman ahead seemed to barely notice the girl ducking under her hands and, unlike her husband, did not turn her head to see where the child was going. He swivelled his head, like me, to watch the little girl run; her brown shoulder-length hair flying out above her pale-green dress and white ankle socks under sandals.

  ‘Mother!’ I heard her cry, and in the distance a woman turned in a daze as if she had forgotten her daughter existed.

  I continued to the fountain. No longer ahead of me on the path, Mr Roper seemed to have plunged into the surrounding gardens, perhaps imagining himself an intrepid explorer fighting through the jungle to save the savage child.

  The statue of Apollo in the fountain drew closer (more bronzed male flesh, every man hardened in this city, turned cold and distant). Mary was there, sitting on the grass. I felt a surge of relief. She had not seen me and I stopped for a moment; a strange deliciousness, to be able to watch her without her knowledge. Her gaze followed the water as it spurted from the turtles’ mouths, her sandals next to her on the ground, her bare legs crossed beneath her. People walked by and I saw they didn’t even look in her direction, as if she were invisible. She was a little girl, clearly on her own. Did they assume she had a mother waiting nearby whom she could call to when needed? Did her apparent calmness show them she was not lost or helpless? Or did a little black girl not deserve their attention?