Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [35]
Mum came down after a while. ‘I must make our dinner,’ she said, and she sent Dad up to do the soothing and sponging of Hickory. Which I was grateful for; I had thought she would send me. But he must be seriouser than that. Oh, I didn’t want to see him—and at the same time I wanted it very much, to see how much like a monster he was growing. I was very uncomfortable within myself about it all. When I remembered to, I prayed, stirring the foment there for Mum over the fire. But face the truth of it, praying is terribly dull, and who would be Our Lord, sitting up there with the whole world at you, praising and nagging and please-please-please? He must be bored out of his mind as well with it. Some days he must prefer to just go off and count grains of sand. Or birds of the air. Like he does. Like the prophet says he does, who gets to talk direct to him.
We ate and it was almost like normal, but after that, the light was gone entirely from outside and the usual noises— music trailing down the hill from the Gypsy houses and their laughter from their rooftop parties, and tinkling of glasses and jugs and crashing of plates sometimes—there was none of that.
Every now and again someone would tap-tap on our door and whisper to Dad, someone very wrapped—women mostly I think, who were less likely to be stopped and asked their business flittering about so in the evening. Dad would close the door and say, ‘Baron Hull’s boy has it, and all in that region.’ Meaning, by all, only the biggest boy of each family, we came to know. It was an affliction of the heirs and most precious—very cruel of God, I thought. Dad would go up and tell Mum, and come down again before long, and be restless with us.
Gramp lay abed but did not sleep; there was always the surprisingly alive glitter of his eyes in the middle of his wrappings and covers. No matter how hot the weather, he always was wrapped up warm. It is because he does not shift his lazy backside, Mum said, so his blood sits chilling and spoiling inside him.
And I’ve a right, he would say. I’ve run around enough in my life at barons’ becks and calls.
‘Come, Dawn, lie down by me,’ he said when Dawn drooped at the table. No one wanted to send the boy to bed, or to go themselves. No one wanted to leave the others. Something was coming, and no one wanted to be alone when it came.
Dawn went and curled up in the Gramp-cloths, and before long slept, and the three of us stayed there, listening to his breaths, which normally would send me to sleep quick smartly, but tonight only wound my awakeness tighter, until my eyes took over my face, my ears took over my head, all my thoughts emptied out in expectation of the thing that was on its way. All I had left inside me was Dawn’s breath, softly in, softly out, trusting us to look after him while he slept.
I was leaning almost relaxed, making letters in a mist of spilled flour on the table. Kowt … beerlt … hamidh. One day I might have enough to make words, to read Gypsy signage, to get a job writing for them. Opposite me Dad knotted his hands together on the table, watching my clever finger in the flour.
Everything shook a little, that was the first thing.
‘Oh, God.’ Dad looked at the ceiling. ‘Please do not harm my family, please—’ But I ran around and put my hand to his mouth. I climbed up into his lap as Dawn had climbed into mine, because it is comforting to have a child to look after, and even when he dropped his prayer-gabble to a whispering I stopped him with my fingertips.
‘Shush, Dad,’ I said. ‘Just listen.’
Which he did.
How can we sleep, other nights, with that enormous darkness all about, going on and on all the way to the million stars, with all that room in it for winds and clouds, dangers and visitations?
A noise began, so distant at first I wasn’t sure of it, but then Dad and Gramp turned their heads different ways, same as me, so I knew it must be: a slow beating, that sucked and pushed the air at our ears.
Dad held me tighter