Brothers & Sisters - Charlotte Wood [86]
We weren’t going to be stuck here for too long, she explained. Although we hadn’t seen one when we drove through the town, she was sure there’d be a pub around, and she’d get some work behind the bar for a couple of days. Then we’d be back out on the highway and heading for home, wherever that might be.
She was still going on about how things were going to pick up for us when I fell asleep.
Early the next morning the hackling grate of a bird and a dull tapping sound woke me. I sat up and looked out through the windscreen at a large blackbird perched on the end of the car bonnet, pecking at the duco. The bird tilted its head to one side to get a better look at me before lifting its wings and vanishing into the sky.
I looked over at Nez. She was still asleep.
I got out of the car, hobbled across the gravel yard in my bare feet and took a piss behind a tree. When I came back Gwen was sitting in the driver’s seat with the car window wound down, puffing on a butt that she must have retrieved from the ashtray.
She looked out through the cracked windscreen at me as I walked by the car. Smoke hissed between a gap in her front teeth as she spoke. ‘I’ve stuffed up this time, haven’t I, Jesse?’ She tried laughing.
I said nothing as I shrugged my shoulders. There’d been so many other times she’d got us into trouble there didn’t seem to be a lot of difference this time.
Nez was awake. She rolled around inside her blanket a couple of times, sat up and looked around the car as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. She didn’t have much of an idea about where she was. She complained that she had to go to the toilet. When Gwen told her she would have to do it behind the tree like I had, Nez looked at her in horror, which surprised me. Both Nez and me had been forced to take a piss in plenty of places worse than this one.
‘The tree? I’m not going over there.’
‘Yes you are, Nez. You’ll go where I tell you to go.’
Nez screwed her face up. ‘Well, I’m only going to pee then. That’s all I’m going to do.’
Gwen held up her miserly butt and stared at it. ‘Piss or don’t piss then. See if I care.’
Nez got out of the car and slammed the door in protest. After she’d finished squatting behind the tree she ran back just as Gwen got out of the car herself and went to the boot. It sounded like she was rustling around in the garbage bags. After a couple of minutes she closed the boot and walked around to the side of the car.
Gwen had changed into what she liked to call her ‘lucky dress’. It was sleeveless and a deep red colour with a low neckline. She smiled at us as she smoothed the creases of the dress with the palms of her hands. ‘How do I look?’
Neither of us said a word. Me because I didn’t care how she looked, and Nez because I could see that she was already worrying herself with the thought that Gwen might be about to shoot through on us. Gwen had done it before, and more than once—left us behind when things got so tight for her that all she could think to do was run away.
I looked along the stretch of highway leading away from the car. It would not have surprised me at all if Gwen walked away from the car and didn’t come back. I also knew that if I didn’t have Nez to look after I’d go too, as far away from Gwen as I could get.
Gwen told us we weren’t to stray from the car, and if anyone came snooping around asking questions I was to tell them we’d broken down and that our father would be back soon with a mechanic from the town.
‘What about the toilet?’ Nez asked. ‘What if I need to go? If I have to . . .’
Gwen ignored her. She was busy doing her lipstick in the side mirror. She then stood up, pointed the lipstick at Nez and jabbed the air with it as she spoke.
‘Use your brains, Nez. Go where you have to. There’s a toilet roll in the boot.’
As Nez got out to search through the boot Gwen took a final look at herself in the mirror, stood up and grabbed