Birdseye Page 5

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They promised.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry, darling,’ Orville said. ‘It’s a beautiful day. And with the sun going down later, it’s easy to think it’s earlier than it is. If the fishing was good, they’ve probably forgotten the time.’

  I shivered.

  ‘What is it, Bird?’ Orville asked. ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just shivery.’

  ‘Ah,’ Orville said. ‘Someone’s walking over your grave.’ He gave a mock shudder.

  ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I don’t even have a grave.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Bird,’ Annie said. ‘It’s just an expression.’ She looked at her watch again.

  ‘Where are the girls?’ Orville asked.

  ‘Alice is at Jodie’s, studying,’ I said. ‘Angela’s at Andy’s, but she’ll be back soon. And Anthea said she’d be home for supper, but she’s never on time.’

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ Anthea said, clicking into the room on high-heeled strappy sandals. She’d just spent all her birthday money on them, and Annie had told her fifteen was too young for stilettos but Anthea ignored her, as per usual. She sat down at the table. ‘I’m starved. Where are the boys?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Annie said.

  ‘Late are they?’ Anthea said. ‘Naughty little buggers.’

  Annie said nothing. She was looking out the window, down the garden path.

  ‘Mom,’ I said helpfully, ‘Anthea said bugger.’

  All I got for that was a kick under the table. Nothing new – my shins regularly sported bruises from Anthea.

  5

  Annie never got very angry, but by the time seven o’clock came she was furious.

  ‘This is beyond a joke,’ she said, as Orville came back in through the front door. ‘Any sign of them?’

  ‘No,’ Orville said. ‘I tried the beach and the harbour. All the way along Main Road to Simonstown.’

  ‘Simonstown? But they’d never go there,’ Annie said.

  ‘I know,’ Orville said. ‘I thought maybe they’d met friends and gone off with them.’

  ‘Did you ask at the harbour?’ Annie said.

  ‘Nobody’s seen them,’ Orville said. ‘They haven’t been there all day.’

  ‘Nobody?’ The anger drained from Annie’s voice. ‘That’s impossible. That’s where they were going. They said so.’

  ‘Darling,’ said Orville. ‘There’s something else.’

  Annie sagged forward. ‘Yes?’ she whispered.

  ‘Their bikes were at the harbour. One of the men they fish with recognised them as Oz and Ollie’s, and put them in his bakkie for safety.’

  ‘So the bikes were there, but my boys weren’t?’

  ‘They weren’t anywhere,’ said Orville.

  ‘We have to call the police,’ Annie was babbling. ‘We have to tell them at once, Orville. At once.’ She was yanking on his arm, pulling him towards the phone.

  ‘I have, Annie.’ Orville’s voice was a bit wobbly. ‘I stopped on my way home.’

  The police? My dad had spoken to the police?

  Silence settled in Marchbanks.

  And then Ma Bess’s large bell trilled through the house. Followed by two muffled thuds from her cane.

  Annie glanced at her watch. ‘I can’t deal with her. Not now,’ she said. ‘Bird, run up and see what your grandmother wants.’

  ‘But Mom—’ I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t like the way Annie’s face had gone white and how she was clutching Orville’s arm.

  ‘Bird!’ Orville snapped. ‘Listen to your mother.’

  I turned and ran up the stairs. My dad was never horrible to me. He never spoke to me like that. I wanted to sit on the bottom step and wait for Oscar and Oliver. I wasn’t upset with them for not taking me any more. I wasn’t even angry with Annie for telling me I was too young. I didn’t like the feeling in my stomach. It felt like when I had shivered in the dining room. All creepy and uncomfortable. And besides all that, I hated going up to my grandmother.

  Ma Bess’s bell rang again and I started the long climb up the stairs to her room. It was gloomy on the landing; even on the brightest of summer days the sun struggled to make its way up that last flight of stairs to the white door and the small table standing to one side of it. I reached up to the switch on the wall and the landing outside her door flared into light.

  I knocked and waited.

  There was the soft sound of rubber wheels turning and then a voice said, ‘Come in.’

  She was sitting in her wheelchair. The curtains behind her were a gauzy grey and even though the sun was still in the sky, they were drawn, making the light in the room brittle and colourless.

  ‘Oh,’ she said when she saw me, ‘it’s you. I wanted to speak to your mother.’

  I stared down.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, child,’ said Ma Bess. ‘Show some backbone. Stand up straight.’

  Obediently, I lifted my head and put back my shoulders.

  ‘What’s all the to-do?’ Ma Bess asked.

  I looked at her blankly. She was always using odd words and expecting me to understand them. Not that I had anything against new words. I loved them, but I did like to know what they meant.

  She clicked her tongue. ‘What’s all the fuss downstairs? Your father’s been in and out of the house like a jack-in-the-box.’

  I wished my mother had come upstairs to talk to Ma Bess. She’d said she couldn’t deal with her. But what about me? Now I had to tell Ma what was happening. Suppose I told her something she wasn’t supposed to know? Even I knew that everyone kept secrets from Ma Bess. Or tried to. Somehow she always managed to find out what was going on – even when we all swore we hadn’t told her anything.

  Ma Bess made the funny clicking noise with her tongue again. ‘Well, girl?’

  I glanced behind me at the glossy white door; light shone behind it and I wished I could step out and away from the ashen cast of Ma Bess’s room. Anthea said Ma’s room was understated and stylish, that it wasn’t fair that Ma Bess could spend so much money on quality furniture while we had to make do with stuff from the last century, but I much preferred being downstairs, where the sofas sagged and the Persian carpets in the sitting room were ragged at the edges. Ma’s room was just like the clothes she wore – shades of white and dove grey with white and black tiles in front of her marble fireplace. The only splash of real colour came from a vase of roses, their copper blaze lighting a shadowy corner.

  ‘Get back downstairs,’ Ma Bess said, ‘and tell your mother I want to see her. Now.’

  Until then I hadn’t looked her in the face, but I did so now. ‘No,’ I said.

  Her eyes widened slightly and I saw how brilliant they were. Deep, icy blue set in the sharp bones of her face.

  ‘No?’ she repeated, and her voice was icy too.

  ‘She doesn’t want to,’ I said. ‘Mom says she doesn’t want to come upstairs. Not now, she said she can’t deal with you now.’ With each word I could feel myself sinking deeper and deeper into trouble. ‘I mean, it’s not that she doesn’t want to,’ I said, trying to regain lost ground. ‘It’s just that she can’t.’ I chanced a quick look at her. That didn’t sound too bad.

  ‘She can’t?’ Ma Bess gave nothing in conversation. No handholds, no room to wriggle.

  ‘No, she can’t.’

  ‘And are you going to tell me why? Amelia, isn’t it?’

  I looked at her, bemused. ‘Don’t you know my name?’ I asked.

  ‘You silly child,’ Ma Bess tutted again. ‘If your mother and father insist on outlandish names for you – and all starting with the same letter – how can they expect me to keep track of them? Especially when they keep adding new ones to the list.’

  I looked at Ma Bess more kindly. Maybe she was like me at school, trying to learn all sorts of new things.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I also find it hard to remember everything. School’s just started and there’s so much to do every day. It
’s really hard now, in Pre-School Two. Right from when I wake up I have to remember the ribbons for my hair and to do my laces and then I have to check my homework and make sure Mom has signed my activity card— ’

  A sudden cough stopped me and I looked up at Ma Bess again. Her fingers, where they gripped the padded sides of her chair, were turning white on the edges.

  ‘Are you a complete imbecile, child?’

  I stared at her.

  ‘A fool? Are you a fool?’

  ‘No,’ I said, hesitantly. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Enough! Answer my question.’

  I froze, trying to remember what the question had been. ‘Maybe Mom should—’ I said as politely as my shaking voice allowed.

  Ma Bess looked at me with those hard blue eyes and without her having to speak a word I knew that wasn’t an option.

  ‘It’s the boys,’ I said.

  ‘The boys?’

  ‘My brothers. Do you know their names?’ I asked, acutely conscious of the need to say and do everything correctly.

  ‘Never mind that,’ Ma Bess snapped. ‘What about them?’

  ‘They were supposed to come home at five o’clock today,’ I said. ‘In time for a bath before supper, because when they get home from fishing they can be very smelly. Especially if they’ve caught a fish. Because it’s impossible to keep the scales from sticking to your hands and there’s always a bit of blood and guts—’ Ma Bess’s fingers were getting tight and white again, so I hurried back to the explanation. ‘They have no excuse for being late, that’s what Mom said. Because now they have new watches. And it was all part of the deal. They were allowed out on their own, but they had to come back when they promised, and Mom and Dad were really angry. But now they’re not so angry any more. They’re downstairs looking sad, and Dad’s looked everywhere for them.’

  As I spoke I felt the crawling start on my skin again. All I wanted was to go downstairs and see if the boys were home. But I knew they weren’t. If they had been, we would have heard them, even up here in Ma Bess’s room, because Annie said over and over, ‘Quietly, boys, you don’t want to disturb your grandmother,’ and Orville would say, ‘They’re boys, darling, congenitally incapable of silence,’ and I knew what that meant because he told me.

  I sneaked a look at Ma Bess. She wasn’t looking worried like Orville, or pale and frightened like Annie. Instead, her face was empty, like the people I drew in my pictures before I put in their eyes and noses or mouths.

  ‘May I go downstairs now, please?’ I asked.

  She looked at her watch. ‘It’s well after seven now. If they aren’t back soon it’ll be dark. I warned your mother. I told her she was giving you children too much latitude. And then, when you don’t obey the rules, she doesn’t know how to punish you. Nor does your father. They let you get away with murder.’

  Her words washed over me, leaving behind only the thought of the summer sun going down and my brothers out there, somewhere, in the dark.

  ‘May I please be excused?’ I asked again.

  ‘What’s that?’ Ma Bess looked at me sharply, then she tweaked the collar of her stiff dark shirt. ‘Yes, yes, child,’ she said. ‘Go.’

  ‘Close the door behind you,’ she said as I turned to make good my escape.

  I shut it and collapsed against the wall. My hands were trembling and my legs felt as though they were full of water.

  Annie and Orville’s voices reached me at the top the stairs and I hurried down. They’d probably found Oscar and Oliver while I’d been stuck up there with Ma Bess.

  6

  By the time we sat down to supper, it was after eight o’clock. Thelma had left soup and home-made bread, one of my favourite meals, but I didn’t feel like eating. Nor did anyone else. The only sound was an occasional clink of spoon on plate. I looked around. Our table had never been this quiet. Usually we all got a turn to talk about our days, and Sundays were important because that was when we told Annie what we were doing for the week, so that she could make a note in her diary.

  But tonight, Annie didn’t ask any of us what we had on. I had to take my best toy to school on Tuesday. I hoped I’d be able to remember all by myself. Thelma always tied a knot in her hanky when she had to remember something, and Orville would move his wedding ring from his left hand to his right. But I didn’t have a hanky or a ring. If I was ten, like Oscar and Ollie, I’d have a watch and I could move that. But I wasn’t. And they weren’t here, otherwise I’d ask them to move their watches. And they would have. They were always kind to me. Not like Sonja James’s brother. A large tear formed in the corner of my eye and rolled down my nose.

  ‘Here, twerp,’ Anthea said, and for once her voice wasn’t sharp. She passed me a tissue. One after another the tears came. I pushed my soup away. ‘Please may I leave the table?’ I said.

  Annie didn’t say anything about my full plate. Nor did she give me permission to leave the table. Because just then there was a loud banging on the door.

  Finally, I thought, and before anyone could move, I was off my chair and down the passage, reaching up to open the door. Boy, I thought, Mom and Dad are going to be so mad with you two.

  But when I opened the door, a tall man in a dark suit was standing on the steps. I tried to look around him, but he was so huge I couldn’t see the twins.

  ‘Have you got my brothers?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Miss,’ he said and his voice was deep and came from very far up. ‘Are your mommy and daddy here?’

  And they were, right behind me, and Alice and Anthea and Angela, and Orville was shaking hands and the man was pushing his spectacles up on his nose and telling us his name was Detective Ace and I thought how strange to have the same name as a playing card and then they were showing him into the sitting room and Annie and Orville didn’t tell us to leave, so Angela and Alice and Anthea and me all found places to sit and I landed up on the ottoman where all I could see was people’s knees, and I had to crick my neck to see their mouths moving and hear what they were saying.

  ‘How soon can we do something?’ Annie leaped up from her chair and yanked the curtains open. ‘Look, Detective – look how dark it is. My boys are out there all alone and we have to find them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am.’ Detective Ace’s voice was rumbly and calm. ‘I know how hard this must be for you. We’ve alerted all the teams. We’ll do as much as we can this evening, get photographs printed, start questioning people in the area. The sooner we move—’

  ‘It’s the first twenty-four hours, isn’t it?’ said Annie. ‘That’s when we have to find them. And we won’t be able – you won’t be able to do anything tonight. Not in the dark. Oh my God, Orville.’ She turned to him, her face smudged as if someone had tried to rub her out and made her nose and mouth go all smeary. ‘The harbour wall. It’s slippery, isn’t it? At high tide?’ Tears were running down her cheeks and she put up a hand to wipe them away. Orville stepped forward and pulled her close to him.

  ‘Come, darling,’ he said. He took a hanky from his pocket and wiped her face. ‘Come. Sit.’ He pulled her towards the sofa, and pushed her down gently. He stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, the other tucked tight to his waist as if he was hugging himself. His face also looked fuzzy. Something large and wet plopped onto my leg, and I realised I was crying too. That was what was making everything go all blurry. I blinked and sniffed, quietly as I could. If they saw I was crying, they’d tell someone to look after me, or send me out of the room. I couldn’t miss anything.

  Detective Ace must have been used to people sounding worried and bursting into tears. He looked around as if he was trying to remember everything he saw. Behind his glasses, his eyes were soft and brown. His close-cropped hair was brown too, the stubble on his cheeks and chin dark. His shirt wasn’t very well tucked in and his tie hung a bit crooked. He looked like someone who started off the day trying to look neat and then forgot to check himself in the mirror. Even his face looked rumpled. He moved slowly an
d quietly, not making the glasses in the Welsh dresser rattle the way they did when I jumped on the wooden floor, or when Andy came to visit Angela and stomped by in his rugby boots. Detective Ace was more like a mountain cat, padding softly even though he was so big.

  ‘Do you have a photograph?’ he asked. ‘A recent one?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Orville, and he ran out of the room.

  ‘It will help greatly if you tell me what they were wearing,’ Detective Ace said to Annie.

  ‘Wearing?’ Annie looked at him and I knew she hadn’t heard anything. Outside the sky was dark. Pitch, pitch black and that’s where she was looking, where there wasn’t even a sliver of moon.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘They were going fishing. So they had their rods. They each had exactly the same watch on, they just got them for their birthdays. And then—’ I started from the bottom. ‘Proper tekkies because they aren’t allowed to ride their bikes in slip-slops so they wore their tekkies which are black. Then they were wearing the same clothes, because they always do. Old clothes, for going fishing. Brown shorts and last year’s white school shirts because they’ve got pockets where they can put extra fishing stuff.’

  Detective Ace was writing everything down. Orville came back and he was carrying the photos the school had sent. In them Ollie and Oz looked even more alike, their eyes brighter and bluer, their hair shorter and more golden.

  ‘Spitting image of each other,’ Detective Ace said and Orville tried to smile.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re very grateful that you’re getting things moving so quickly, Detective. I can let you have more photos soon. As soon as I’ve developed them. I’m a photographer,’ he said and shrugged. ‘Not that it’s important.’

  ‘But it is,’ said Detective Ace. He looked at us seriously. ‘Everything is important. Every small detail you can think of. I’ll get my team around first thing in the morning and we can start the questioning. It’s a good idea to get moving immediately. Just to be on the safe side. If we can get the family interviews over with, we’ll be free to start with neighbours and people in the vicinity. Now, when your memory is fresh, is the best time.’