Chapter Text
When Peter was very small, his mother used to sit him on the hot, sandpaper pavement with a sun-bleached box of multi-coloured chalks and draw all of the edible plants she found around the flats on the pale, rough concrete.
“This is chickweed, it tastes almost like nothing, you can use it in salads and things like that when the sprouts are small and young. Oh, and this is calendula, it's an edible flower, see the orange petals, you can sprinkle them on cakes, or treats. Nasturtiums are good too, peppery, crunchy, also orange. I think they sort of look like lions heads if you squint, red and gold too, I guess they’re gryffindor flowers.”
She’d talk to him as he smashed the powdery chalk against the many, tiny little rocks embedded in the concrete, they ground down at the chalks already dulled ends, little flakes and chunks broke off, the fine power being blown a short distance away by the hot wind. The sun baked down on them, the pavement hot and all of the flowers and plants his mother was presenting to him were yellowed by the summer. Everything had a sort of old photograph desaturation to it, though some things were bright as could be. Most of the world was shades of sunburnt chartreuse, the brown of their brick flats and the chalky green of the fences, balconies, door handles and fly screens surrounding them. He had a vivid memory of wrapping his tiny, chubby pink hand around one of those dark bars, the fence surrounding the park next to home, his knees on the sharp, large pieces of tan bark. When he brought his hand back, a thick coating of forest green dust was left on him, pale stripes of skin-that had been touching themselves rather than the fence's surface-were drawn across his palm. He rather thought he looked like a little green tiger. When he showed his Ma though, her friend Janis gasped and rubbed off the powder against his Mum's pale flowery pinafore.
“Oh no Pete, that can’t be good for you, don't touch the fences again. Did you hear, Enid, about the whole asbestos deal?”
His mum scoffed quietly
“I don't think it can be that bad,” then she faltered at the look on her face, thunderous is the best way to describe it “but best not risk it. Don’t do that again Petey.”
Pete often had nasturtiums in the salads his mum made for him growing up, chickweed and calendulas too, she taught him about others too, he remembered them as he grew up, the names, the uses, some were medicinal, some were just edible, some were good substitutions for more expensive food stuffs.
“See, if you pull up the big dandelions with a gardening fork,” she held up a dirt encrusted hand weeder and waved it about,“the roots can be dried down like this,” she waved the oven tray about a little erratically as well, the diced pieces of dandelion roots rolling about over the waxy baking paper. “And then it makes a good coffee substitute, tastes like it at least, sans caffeine, because that is bad for you Petey.”
He nodded, and she gave him a tattered box of crayons and a sheet of paper to draw a dandelion-shed pulled up and placed on the floral tablecloth-on. But the fabric made the drawing textured and his crayon punctured the paper a few times, she still stuck the drawing on the fridge, its title, dandilion, written in the top right corner in jumbled “pre-school homeschooled” type writing. The magnet slid down a few centimeters before resting still. His mother placed the baking tray on the balcony and slid the glass door closed behind her, a gust of hot air having blown in anyway.
Enid Pettigrew was pretty in her son's eyes, as every mother is. Her mousy brown hair fell pencil straight when she didn't curl it the night before. Tonight they were going out to dinner with her family, for the first time since she ran away, it was in curlers now, curing in the heat, she wouldn’t let it down in case the humidity ruined them. She was in her favourite flowery pinafore, she wore it almost every day. She used to have a matching apron but it had been worn threadbare and irreparable so now she just folded a tea towel over her belt and wore it that way.
She looked nervous and pale, she was wearing a delicate silver ring on her pinky finger, one she didn't usually wear. It dipped towards her knuckle-in a shape that resembled the tiaras princesses wore in the animated movies on the communal tv downstairs sometimes, if you turned it upside down. The point had two curved triangles of something shiny and pearlescent framing a small, white pearl right in the centre. It looked like a wedding ring. It looked too small for her. He wondered if it had fit her when she had been married. He wondered how small her hands had been then.
He remembered very little of the dinner, just the best food he had up until then and the eyes of a sour-faced man across the table. His face looked less sour when his eyes were on Peter though, almost… in awe? No one had ever looked at him like that before. When they were in the doorway of the restaurant, Pete’s hand clutching the skirt of his mothers best dress-a fluttery cream silk that bushed just below her knees-the man came over, crouched down, put a hand on his shoulder and stared deep into Peter’s eyes.
He didn’t say anything for a while, but then he looked up at Pete’s mum and whispered in a low, almost amazed voice “Peter.”
His face was soft when he looked at Ma, too.
She nodded even though it wasn’t a question. Just a quiet statement. He brushed a strand of blond hair behind the boy's ear. His mouth twitched.
He stood, brushed the dirt off his thighs and adjusted his collar, letting out a long sad sigh, gave them one last longing look and walked away.
His mother flinched forward, her hand half reaching out to the man.
“Mal-” then softer, slower, sadder, “mal… I’m sorry. I… I needed to. Stay safe. It’s… bad, out there, isn’t it?”
He nodded slowly and turned away even slower, walking over to the two older couples arguing under their breath by the counter-one of the men was writing a check and giving it to a boy behind the cashier. The young, sour-faced man spun on his heel, like it was a second thought, paced over with sharp quick clicks of his leather shoes on the tile floor and wrapped her in his arms. The couples stopped arguing. One of them had mum's blonde-brown hair cut around her lined face in a sharp bob. She looked disgusted.
“You stay safe too Enid. You-” his voice cracked. “Take care of him, take care of yourself.” He pressed a kiss to her brow. Peter just stared up at them, old enough to know that the man was probably his dad, and that he was leaving. He didn’t know the man. Had never met him. But the urge to grab onto his pant sleeve, cry and sit on the floor washed over him for a second. But he was quiet and small and no one liked a crybaby. His lip wobbled anyways.
“Malcom!” Called a black haired woman from the counter. He couldn’t see the details of her face, but the lines around her mouth were dark and defined. They didn’t look like she smiled much.
“Stay safe, Eddie.”
He glanced down at Pete, a pained look in his wet eyes and strode back toward what Peter supposed were his grandparents.
His mother was crying silently, tears streaming down her pink face. She stood very still, staring at the five people staring at her from across the restaurant foyer, peter stared with her. And then she turned on her heel and stalked out, grabbing Pete's hand and pulling him with her.
“Come on Petey, Janis is picking us up.”
They walked down two streets and found Janis looking into the open boot, one hand on the lip of it the other on her turquoise, pinafored hip. Ma just opened the backseat door, picked Pete up and placed him inside, did up his belt and slammed it shut, placed herself in the driver's seat and yelled a,
“Get in Jan.”
Over one silky shoulder, her hair swishing about and bending from where it was trapped between her and the leather. Janis hurried over, heels clicking on the tarmac, climbed in and was halfway through an “Enid,” before Ma pressed down on the excelerator with a small, high, square-heeled, foot.
They sped away from the restaurant. Janis’ eyes flicked between the road ahead of them and his mothers face.
“Were they bad? Your parents.”
“They brought Malcom. They didn’t say-” her voice broke off and the car stuttered as she accidentally pressed too hard on the pedal. She stopped driving.
“Oh, sweetheart.” She placed a hand on his mothers sleeve. She had dirt under her nails like Ma usually did, today though her hands were clean and her nails manicured, shining in the neon sign out the windscreen. They were behind it, seeing the scaffolding more than the light, Pete watches the two frame animation of it.
“Thanks Jan.”
She kept driving.
That night she stayed up, her feet pulled to her chest rather than on the warped linoleum floor, smoking one menthol cigarette after another. She had been prescribed them by her doctor, for nerves. Janis was sitting across from her, hands on the linoleum table. Everything was linoleum in the flats, the floors, the tabletops, the seats of the chairs, the countertops, the peeling fronts of the kitchen cupboards. Her acrylic nails clicked dully against it. Pete sat in a spinning salon chair that was placed in front of the home phone. He spun back and forth, playing with the curly wire of it, the round, black plastic cap had fallen off one end and it chipped the floral wallpaper each time he spun, white flakes falling to the ratty old rug Ma had placed underneath the chair. Sometimes he just sat and picked at the growing white mark, feeling the powder underneath the short white crescents of his bitten fingers.
She was opening a new pack, and squeezing the bead inside the filter when the Crack sounded outside of the window.
Her face dropped. The chair clattered behind her as she ran to him, pulled him to the doorway and fiddled with the handle, it clattered but wouldn’t open. Five more cracks sounded and Ma let out a panicked whimper.
“It’s alright Eddie, it’s not gunshots.” Ma gave an incredulous look over her shoulder, loose bun swinging, dangling behind her. There were bright orange and red flashes along with the pale moonlight through the window as the cracks had sounded, they were only fading now.
Then Janis hollered out of the open window “Boys, if you set off one more popper I will go down there and beat you myself.” Laughter and running footsteps sounded. the sound of someone tripping and falling, a ‘come on kid’ and more scuffling and “I see you McLocklan! I will tell your mother”
Ma looked down at him and then up again.
“Maria’s boy?” Jan nodded, “he’s Pete’s age.” She just nodded again. Ma just stared down at Pete sadly for a while, shock and panic still somewhere behind her eyes.“You should be in school.”
She asked Pete to slip a letter into the rounded red postbox the next morning.
Two nights later Ma was crying over a letter at the kitchen table. She pulled him to her side, kissed the top of his head and stroked his hair down with one shaking hand.
A week later he was in school. And a week later had inserted himself into Kaleb McLocklans little band of punks. Well… wannabe punks, they mainly lounged around near their older brothers and listened to loud angry music. When they actually did anything it was use tagging along with said brothers, like with the poppers. Kaleb had permanent eyebags and a face like an English bulldog, jowls, at eight. And big doleful, dark eyes that were usually covered by his lanky dark hair.
Pete trailed along, watching them wreak havoc on the Play yard, pushing kids into the tanbark, playing clown and swinging across the monkey bars like apes. Oden Malles had a mop of blond hair and a black eye, he was the reason Pete had been accepted into their little band of thieves and hooligans.
“Hey, new boy, why’ you so quiet, you dumb or something?”
He was the kindest of the boys but had a way of asking things the others wouldn’t, he didn’t quite understand what ‘rude’ was.
Pete shrugged, looking away, playing with his sandwich. There was too much Vegemite on it, he was still tonguing the taste off the roof of his mouth along with a sheet of dough. His stubby little thumbs were pressed into the white bread, compressing it down.
“I don’t know, like to listen better.”
“‘You heard anything?”
Year three kids didn’t have many secrets, but if they did, Peter knew. He had a way of blending into the background, he felt small sometimes, imperceptible, invisible. He liked it most of the time, barely being there. He wasn’t invisible to the boys though. Especially not to Oden or Kaleb. He barely even talked to the other boys, but to Oden and Kaleb… sometimes they sat on the wooden deck outside the classrooms and the two boys would talk to one another. Kaleb would string an arm around both of their shoulders, heavy for their small, childish frames and pull them in close, point at something across the way with both hands, one beside each of their faces and grin, side to side, At them.
Everything seemed so rational with them, they always had an excuse, always had a reason.
“I don’t believe in ‘excuses’.” Oden said one rainy winter's day in year 5, face leant against the glass of the window. He was staring out to where Kaleb and the other two boys were getting yelled at by one of the teachers, she smacked him on the side of the head, he grinned up at her. “I don’t think they’re real. I think if they’re true and you mean it they’re explanations and if they’re lies then they’re lies. I think teachers call them excuses to pretend we‘re lying. That we‘re evil little grubbs and not sad little boys.”
He looked up at Pete, his big brown eyes dark in the dim light. They weren’t supposed to be in the year two classroom, they’d broken in, a myki card slid up the gap between the door and the wall, clicking the lock away.
They were sitting on the itchy carpet, watching the show. They were fogging up the glass, Oden wiped a little circle away so he could keep looking out, Pete did the same. By the time he did, they were almost gone, Kaleb being dragged away by his ear, still laughing.
Open was looking after them strangely, almost sadly.
“Where are you going after year six graduation?”
“I don’t know. You?”
“Away.”
Pete watched him avoid eye contact, a halo of condensation surrounding his browny-blond head, dark brows low, lips sad.
“where?”
“Boarding school?” Pete's brows shot up,
“I don't know anyone who goes to a boarding school.”
“Obviously, they’re away all year, I can’t go to Brookshure with you lot. I'll be away.”
“We’ll see each other in the summers, and the Easter and Halloween holidays.”
“It won't be the same Pete. I'll miss you mob.”
“We'll miss you too.”
“Kaleb won't. He’ll think I’m a spoiled rich kid just like he did when he first met me.”
“To be fair, your name is Oden.”
He let out a broken laugh, eyes wet. He was looking away, refusing to dry them, pretending they weren’t about to spill over.
“I'll miss you, Don.”
He looked up, finally wiped his eyes on his plaid sleeve, and sniffed, a sad smile on his small mouth.
“Thought you would. You're always great Pete.”
Pete was two years too young for his class but his mother had insisted on being in this class. He never knew why. She said she wanted him to catch up quickly, learn quickly. He did, he was good at most things, he really tried to be. He listened in class, didn’t take thorough notes exactly, but notes nonetheless, he tried to remember, filled out all of the maths sheets he was assigned after class, wrote in all his books, did everything he was asked to do.
“Stop writing, I’m bored, let's talk, tell me something you’ve heard.”
“Let him, we’ll need his help later and we’ll be lost without. dont bully him for being smart, we need him.” Oden interjected, playing hangman with one of the other boys on his gridded paper.
“Oh, okay pretty boy, you tell me what I’m supposed to do now, I'm all on my own in the back, ‘cause of last Wednesday.”
“I don’t know Kay, you're a big boy, figure it out.”
They scowled at each other for a moment before breaking into wide grins. They scampered off to do something stupid.
Oden came back with a bruise on his cheek and Kaleb with a very pink ear but they both refused to tell him what they did.
The next year and a half passed like nothing. Barely weeks, it seemed. Pete spent his last summer with Oden on his balcony at the flat. Ten, turning eleven next year in February. It felt so bittersweet. He was eating a quickly melting icy pole, and Don was smoking a cigarette Kaleb had given him. He didn’t know what to think of that. He’d turned twelve a few weeks ago, and thought he was very grown up, but Pete still thought he was very young. It was expected of Kay, but Oden was… He seemed more responsible. I mean, it wouldn’t hurt, but it was sort of like alcohol, you had to wait until you were at least fifteen before sneaking off to have it. Maybe he was just boring like Kay said he was.
Oden leant down and laid his head on Peter's shoulder, their legs were dangling over the edge of the balcony, sticking through the bars. There were chalky green marks on both of their jeans. He leant his head against the top of odens, slung an arm over his shoulder, threw his popsicle stick at the neighbor's window. It made a wet smack and tumbled into one of their potplants. He only did it to make Oden laugh, he’d gotten sad again and he didn’t like that. It was summer, they were meant to be happy. The cigarette butt was dropped over the edge, onto the road by a freckled, tanned hand. Summer had treated him well, he didn’t burn like Peter did, just browned, his hair lightening to an almost blinding shade. He was now speckled like a yellow apple, or a rosella pear, freckles covering him like the splatters Ma left on the tabletop after she pushed the water off her brush on the lip of her paint water. His brown eyes almost looked yellow in the bright sun-pupils small enough to see so much of the colour it was noticeable-like honey, or the ochre mixed into the clay out in the bush. There were flecks of light green and little dark brown freckles in them.
“If you ask your mum, do you think she‘d let us catch the train down to the beach?”
Pete just nodded, only wanting his friend to be happy again, be excited. The beach didn’t sound too bad either, some fish and chips on the pier, more ice cream, thongs and swimming shorts, not too bad at all.
Oden splashed about in the water under the pier, near the shade where Pete was sitting, he cupped his hands and threw some water at him,
“Get up Petey, let's go into the sun, what’s the point of going to the beach if you're not going to swim or sit in the sun?”
“It's a nice day and the ocean smells good?”
“You're an odd one Pete.”
“Ughhhh,” he threw his head back and scrunched his face up “Fine, but you know I'll be peeling tomorrow.”
He clapped, jumped twice and pointed at Peter, doing a little victory dance. This behaviour was met with a laugh and a Splash.
They played about in the water for a while, wading over the sandbanks, swimming over the deep dips. Pete liked floating on his back, starfished, staring up at the bright blue sky, cloudless and So…summery.
Oden would bounce over and shake his shoulder,
“Pete, Pete, Pete, get up,” Unceasing, constant movement. “Did you hear about Samantha Brookwells sister, pregnant crazy huh, at sixteen!”
“I was the one who told you that Don.” He sighed, exasperated, fighting a smile. “May you please stop shaking me now, I’ll sink at this point.”
“Oh yeah, you did, do you know anything else, do you know who the dad is?”
“No,” another sigh, he let his feet sink down and press into the soft sand. The water was up to his chest, but only the bottom of Odens ribs. Pete hated being short. “I haven’t, and I don't.”
“Damn,” He said, not sounding deterred at all. “I bet it was Kay’s brother. We'll have to ask him next time we see him, he’s so busy all the time. Maybe we can see him after New years, or some other time before first week back-”
His face shut down, eyes dropping, brows too, mouth closing quickly.
“Hey, Don, you’ll be fine. We'll see eachother on holidays and stuff, and we can write, or call.” He still looked sad. Pete reached out and placed and on his brown, speckled arm,
“We’ll be fine, Oden. Kay and I will keep in touch.”
He nodded slowly and smiled to himself, then up at peter.
“Okay,” he conceded.
“Okay.” Pete nodded firmly, dirty blond hair falling about, Oden laughed and mussed it about.
There were so many people on the beach, little striped tents and umbrellas. People in swimsuits and swimming trunks, kids, a group of girls dressed like Hollywood starlets, a short blonde girl who looked a bit like Marilyn Monroe waved over in their direction. They waved back and waded out onto the beach. Pete lay on their towels and watched a singular misty cloud drift by while Oden talked to the girl, her bouncing blonde bob fluttering in the wind. If Peter turned his head he could see her standing, arms crossed he body, one hip higher than the other, one long tanned leg pointing forward. He blushed and looked away, crossing his own arms across his chest. All he heard was a ‘Have a merry Christmas girls’ from Oden before he lay down next to Pete and they both fell asleep in the warm sun, like snakes on a river rock.
When he woke up he was bright red, his head spinning and his moth cottoned. He had a white mark across his chest and from where his arms had been and his fingers hurt when he curled them, the skin felt tight.
“How long has it been?” His voice was groggy and his head slow.
“About forty five minutes, I woke up after thirty though,” He handed me a jumble of gold and silver coins. “Go get yourself a lifesaver. I didn't want to get one for you in case you slept too long, right Iwas, too. They’re three dollars fifty.” He was on his stomach, sucking on a stripe-stained popsicle stick, trying to get the last flavor out of it, probably only tasting sharp wood, staring up the beach at the pines separating them from the shops, he had turned a pleasant brown and was sunning his back equally now. Peter felt like he was dying.
He waddled, pain-edly up the sand, wincing when he had to lift his leg up and step onto the low concrete wall between beach and footpath, Odens laughs spurring him on.
“You look like a lobster with a bra on, lily white in the back though.”
“Shut up.” Pete half whined, half laughed as he shuffled to the shade under the trees then the lifesavers little building thing, a shop on the lower story. They had been sponsored by the icypole brand Lifesaver or something because that and Solos were all they had. He threw down the coins on the table.
“It’s only 2 dollars twenty five cents more for a hat and some sunscreen, you want that kid?”
“Do I have that much?”
“Yeah.”
“three fifty overall, fifty cents back.”
“I- okay.”
“You gave me enough for these too.” He waved the tube and hat at Oden. He just smiled, squinting up at peter, a hand over his eyes,
“you need it mate.”
Pete stared.
“Thanks.”
Pete made it a month of the new school year before he pestered Odens mum, Kayla Malles, into giving him the phone number of the boarding school.
He leant against the cover of the phone box, staring out of the clear plastic, bemoaning the sun beating through the open cover, now early February it was the hottest time of year, a poor Tradie was lying on the ground where he’d fallen asleep, hard hat over his face, dark mauve forearms already peeling. A woman was hanging up washing on the comunal hills hoist in the flats’ yard. The pieces she’d hung up in the beginning were already half dry. He waited and waited.
“Sarah Tade, Irving college.”
“Oh, hello, my name's Pete, I'm looking for Oden Malles.”
“What year?” Her voice droned, tired and bored.
“Seven, he’s blond.”
There was static over the intercom. Intercom, fancy. It was a Saturday so he should be out of school.
Oden Malles, year seven to the front office. I repeat: Oden Malles, year seven to the front office. Rang out quiet and crackly through the phone's speaker.
“On hold.”
placid, boring music. He waited for seven and a half minutes.
“Yeah who is it?” Dull bored voice, tired and pissed. He would have ruffled Odens hair if he’d been there, ‘cheer up den.’
“Denno!”
“Pete?”
“Yeah! You don't sound too good up there, how are you?”
“Shit. You?”
“Okay. Kale’s being a right prat without you though. He’s hanging out with John and Tommo more, I think he’s forgotten about me.”
“Forgotten ‘bout you, Huh? Thought that was me. Not so much as a letter, or a well wish. Sucks though. Send my annoyance and betrayal over.”
“He misses you.”
“Good, I miss him too. Miss you too, Petey boy. No one here knows a damn thing. Right cunts, they can bugger off.”
“Brookshure is shit too, bunch of poms and idiots. Shit’s hard too. So much more homework. More notes and shit.”
“Oh no! they've ruined you petey boy, swearing! Cursing the education system, have us aussies ruined you so quickly. And calling your own lot poms, what’s happened?”
Pete laughed, resting his face against the hot metal of the panel, grabbing onto the lip of the box, one foot sticking out below the barrier, his arm closest to the phone wrapped around himself, holding his sun soaked side.
“I'm not even that English, you're a fuckn’ twat you know that right?”
“Passstaaaa, yoooguttt. Vitaminnnn.” He mocked, crackly over the many kilometres to Irving.
“your mum's full Brit too. Big posh one too. Darlingggg kind.”
“I miss you Oden.’ He looked up at the numbers of the box from where he was resting his brow, like he could do the same to Oden all of those miles away, look into those dark honey eyes, there was an ache in his stomach. He didn't know missing well. He’d never really needed to when all of the boys he knew were on the flat with him. He missed Oden.
“I thought you just called me a twat, pommo.”
He survived until late June.
When the letter came.
His mother was happy, but not surprised.
He was.
He was fucking furious.
england, they were shipping him off to fucking england, where they start the school year more than halfway through the actual year. Where he’d have to buy snow clothes and all of this new, expensive shit that his mum stared worryingly at. They were sending him by plane. To england. They wanted him to live with his father for holidays. It was stupid.
But that wasn't it.
That wasn’t why.
He’d never see Oden again. Not face to face.
In his new summer holidays they’d be halfway through term two. He was losing all his friends.
And his mother was ecstatic.
The plane ride was long and he fell asleep quickly, the woman next to him was knitting. The sound of synthetic yarn on wooden needles woke him every half an hour or so, but he quickly fell back to sleep. He finally fully awoke to the cuffufle of people unseating themselves and pulling their luggage from the above head racks. The woman next to him climbed over his slouched form and pulled a forest green embroidered suitcase from the rack. The colour reminded him of home.
He waited for the queuing lies to thin before he packed all his things up and trundled down the steps to the cold tarmac. It was half cloudy and the wind was sharp, not too cold but... Wasn't September supposed to be around summer for them, he counted on his fingers, Christmas was cold for them so September was spring in Aus and autumn for them, it was cloudy. And the sky wasn’t as blue as he was used to, everything was a bit odd, he pulled a jumper from his carry on bag and yanked it on. His jeans scuffed under his boots as he walked towards the large airport, a man in bright clothing was waving them towards the entrance.
Inside was loud and cold and people were being greeted by family. He stared around as “The 230 flight from Melbourne has landed at terminal 4. The 230 flight from Melbourne has landed and is unloading at terminal 4.” Rang out across the space.
“Peter? Peeterrr?” Someone called, a small, quiet voice, not used to yelling.
He looked for the voice. A girl, around his age, holding his suitcase, and wearing a clean white dress, a blue woollen peacoat on top, waved about, looking through the throng of people.
He made his way over, forming his arms into a triangle which parted the people as he moved. Odens chirpy voice sounded in his head Pete’s famed ‘triangle of get the fuck out of my way’, you’d better pete snorted, it was followed by kalebs part them like the Red Sea Petey boy.
She’d noticed him by now and was jumping up and down, her dark hair flouncing about. She was so pale, her cheeks were pink and her eyes dark. She looked like the people who sat under the shade of their umbrellas all day in the sun, complaining about how hot it was. Sort of like him, he snorted again.
“There you are,” she grabbed his hand, her voice all relieved and tired and worried, “I was starting to worry you’d gotten lost. My names Nina, im here to take care of you. You need a coat.”
“I’ve got one in my suitcase, you dont need to baby me,” he was a little annoyed by the way she was fussing, her hand had grabbed his chin and was moving it about, inspecting his face from different angles.
“You’ve got a funny accent.” It was a statement, a mean one, and a bit rich coming from her, her tone was so clipped, so proper, she sounded like the voice his Oden put on to make fun of him. Hoity toity and all, what did he say? Bish bash bosh! He contained his laughter because that would be rude, she only looked twelve or so, Pete wondered why she wasn't with an adult.
“Come on then, put it on.” She handed him his suitcase and took a step back, her shoes were made of leather, like the ones him mum wore. “I didnt think you’d have one, coming from Australia.”
Hearing her say ‘Australia’ was strange, the A’s were pronounced and the L was so much clearer than he was used to. It sounded… posh.
“It does get cold there too, y’know. hails like a bitch.”
her eyebrows shot up and her hands on her hips curled into fists.
“you’re a little young to be cursing.”
“Your ‘ little young t’ think you c’n take care of me.”
I he made sure to push his accent as far as he could, just to piss her off.
Now she crossed her arms, one leg popping forward and her hip jutted, like the girl on the beach, but she was pale and pointy and dark haired, and she looked pissed.
Mission accomplished.
“Fine, your manners, you’ll either be my friend or I'll make your life hard, I clean your sheets, I cook you meals, you listen to me.”
“you’ll cook for me?”
“Yes?” She had dropped her imperious, wrathful, I am your queen bow to me, look and stared at him like he was stupid, he didn’t appreciate that.
“I can cook for myself.” Now he had his arms crossed, his suitcase open at his feet.
“Obviously you can’t seeing as you’re thin as a twig. Still manage to have chubby cheeks though, has anyone ever told you you look like a Bouguereau cherub.”
“A fucking what?”
“like Le charite by Bouguereau.” She was looking at him like he was stupid again.
“What are you, Italian?”
“He's French!” She had loosened her arms and was leaning towards him on her forwards foot, looking… concerned.
“Oh, sorry I dont know some fancy shmancy fucking French dude.”
“He’s really famous, he painted l’amour et psyche, enfants. I have a print on my wall at home.”
“Okay?”
She laughed, and hugged him. It was so strange. He’d hugged girls before, many, Fraceskar Palis had been one of his closest friends on the flat, he’d had a crush on her for a few months. But Nina was tall and thin and put her arms in the wrong spot.
“Let’s go home, you're staying with us because your father is away in France with the Blacks and the Malfoys until September so we'll be in the house alone from tomorrow, but it's too far of a drive in one day, we're stopping at my family home tonight.”
He pulled on his coat and they started walking.
“Who are you?”
“Im your maid. Well, your supposed to call me your carer, but think that makes me sound like your parent or like your an old person.”
“I have a maid?”
“Yes, you do.”
she seemed to expect him to take this in stride. He didnt.
“Why?” He drew out the sound, long and unsure.
“I'll explain it in the car. Do you know what a car is? Do you have cars down there?”
“Yes?” Now he was offended.
“Oh.”
“What did you think we did, walk across the country?”
“I thought you rode kangaroos?”
he stopped, a horrified laugh bubbling out of him.
“You're shitting me.”
“Im not!” She had an earnest wide eyed look on her face, “Jacob bright said he had a cousin who did!”
“Does his cousin still have organs?”
“i… suppose… so?”
“It’s a miracle then.”
She eyed him weirdly, laughed, then,
“You're an odd one, peter.”
Her voice was so much quieter, softer and more clipped than Odens but it spiked him through the chest. She had turned and was walking towards the exit, he trailed after her.
The car was shiny and black, with leather seats and driver.
“Hold on kids.” He called and they were shooting away, the car bent and warped and squished itself through traffic, it was nauseating. He flattened himself against the seats, feeling a bit sick. Nina was reading Jane Eyre, her whole body still and straight.
“Muggle litrature is fascinating isn’t it. So much could be solved with magic.” she said serenely, still staring down at the pages.
“what the f- what are you on about?” He corrected himself halfway through. It seemed to irk her when he swore.
“Oh, no one explained it to you then.”
And then she blew his mind.
Three weeks. With the best food he’d ever tasted and as much as he wanted all the time. He ate and read and sat on the carpet with Nina while she mended her clothing. He found a book on herbology, magic herbology. He read it over the arm of a chaise lounge while Nina finished the ending pages of Jane eyre. She looked a bit like the girl on the cover, dark haired and pink cheeked, pretty, like the girls painted by-
“John Singer Sargent, this one's by, the muggles think they have it but it's only a replica.”
It was a dark haired woman. It vaguely resembled her. Though she didn’t seem to notice that. Too busy pointing out the brushstrokes
“Your father collects muggle art and
Books and things. I borrow them from time to time.” She waved her copy of Jane eyre about. There were annotations in the margins. Some pages had been almost completely covered with text, circling around the whole outside of the writing, tiny slanted and dark. His handwriting. Peter ached.
The plaque below the painting read,
Sybil Sasoon, the Countess of Rocksavage, 1913
He though she was gorgeous, regal. Nina said she was pretty. They agreed on that at least. They were friends. He became quiet around her. As the boys made him loud, made him swear, made his accent come out, she quietened his voice again, made it clipped and his British accent (so subtle here yet so obvious in Australia) come out from it’s hiding. He’s always been told he was very British when he was in Aus. Teased and elbowed and ruffled about by his friends. Yet here even the other maids, the people on the street that they visited, noticed the Australian in it. Sometimes Pete found it hard to notice accents. Unless they were loud and obnoxious like the American tourists with their cameras and yelled conversations. People could tell his accent though. Most people couldn’t understand him. Someone called him exotic. He thought that was stupid. No one who grew up in Collingwood was exotic, well, Marla Caybid was as close as you’d get to what they meant by it. Jamaican, she was very pretty, dark in shadow and golden in the sunlight, she wore little golden cuffs in her ears and played with tarot cards on her balcony, in a Hawaiian bikini and an old faded button up that wasn’t buttoned up. There were lots of people from lots of different places in the flats, Papua New Guinea , Africa, the Middle East, South America, but Marla was what they called exotic. She was very kind. Very funny. She was “exotic” because everything she did was… velvetine. She lay in the sun and hummed under her breath in her dark honey voice, played card games with the kids on the hot tarmac, dressed herself in odd ways, wrapping shirts around her waist like dresses and skirts bunched up around her chest as cropped tops. She always smelt good, always looked good and was always good to everyone.
Peter wasn’t exotic. He found that when people said exotic they meant different. He liked it better when people meant it in the way she did.
‘I want to be… exotic, beautiful, glorious, I don’t want to be a fourteen year old girl in a council flat. I want to be worshiped on a chaise lounge, I want velvet carpets on my walls and incense always burning. I want to have a menagerie, I want to be a queen.’
He missed Marla. He missed Kaleb and Oden. He missed Francekar and Betty and all the other kids on the flats.
He missed Janis and Ma.
He missed the smell of eucalyptus and the oleander trees and the ash from the boys cigarettes put out on the toes of his shoes. He missed icypoles and weetbix and Vegemite sandwiches and beaches with hot wind.
They’d popped down to the beach one time. It was cold and windy and the sky was half in shadow. No wonder all the tourists were surprised when they got to Aus and found Altona beach, long white sand packed with people, an old wooden pier stretching out into turquoise waveless water, kids jumping off the pier, swimming about. Throwing the crescent shaped snail egg sacs at each other. And that was the south. His Ma and him went up to the gold coast sometimes, Byron bay, and to those untouched white stretches of beach, coconut trees and bushes and crashing jade water.
It was beautiful here, but it didn’t feel quite like a beach, it felt more like the stony bits just past and before Altona beach, during winter, the grey water.
A shore.
Nina caught him up as much as she could, explaining things, giving him books to read, clothes to wear.
When food was put in front of him he ate it all. It was so strange, always having as much food as he could want. He felt like he could eat everything in the world and it wouldn’t make up for the years of hunger spent sitting on the Mclocklan’s lino kitchen floor, eating their leftovers as Kaleb looked away, pretending he couldn’t see the hunger in Pete’s eyes. You don’t mention your friend going hungry on the flats, not if the don’t look like their going to drop at any moment. He’d decided I did. He still looked away though.
It wasn’t his to witness.
Nina found it difficult to understand him sometimes, He'd have to talk slowly and enunciate for her to get it. Some words she didn’t have.
Sometimes he would use words he usually didn’t just to confuse her.
“Where’s the dunny?”
“The what?”
“The dunny.”
She stared at him perplexedly for a while.
“The shitter.”
“Do you mean the toilet?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She just looked mildly horrified.
“What do we pack for lunches, a Sanger and a snag?”
“Why on earth do I bother? Speak English.”
“Isn’t it sort of summer for you. Where are the mozzies?” That one was genuine. A few minutes of back and forth resulted in,
“You call them mosquitoes every time?”
“Yes, we have the decency to use the whole word.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’? That’s what their called. They’re mosquitoes.”
“They’re bothersome is what they are.”
“You’re impossible.”
On the night of The 31st of august, Nina and him packed their trunks and said their goodbyes to the house, with its dark paneling and gilded frames. Nina took her wand and replicated some of her favourite paintings, small, about a5, and placed them in a folder that sat ontop her clean, folded clothes in her clean, neat, trunk. Pete tried to stay organised, he really did, but it would all end up being thrown about anyways so what was the point?
The ride to the station was quiet, the platform was loud and he lost Nina almost immediately. No one seemed to understand him, loud ‘huh?’s greeting his questions and perplexed, frightened looks from some kids around his age. Nina seemed to have a talent for understanding.
A tall, sandy haired kid shouted something in another language, or maybe just some very distorted English, at him rather desperately, looking wide eyed and Lost.
Pete just shook his head slowly and pointed towards the train and then flapped his hands about his ears for a second. They seemed to have the same problem.
They piled inside, Pete pushed his trunk under his seat, not wanting to to shake it about, also not being tall enough to reach the luggage rack and too proud to ask the tall kid, who picked up and slid his trunk into the rack without and issue, for help.
“So, let’s try this again, will we? My name’s Pete, and you are?”
Incomprehensible.
Silence.
Then a very tentative try at an English accent.
“What?”
Obviously Aussie accents are just as incomprehensible.
Pete gave up.
He pointed both of his hands towards his chest, trying his best impression of Nina.
“I am Peter, you are… what?”
The kid, Peter was still trying to figure out if it was a boy or a girl, stared for a while, reached his hand up to his chest and said,
“I am Remus, what language were you speaking before?” The accent was still thick but Pete could understand at least, he let his slip a bit.
“English, what about you?”
“Welsh.”
“Ah.”
“How was that English?”
“I’m Australian.”
Except he must have heard “‘m ‘str’yan” by the horrified, perplexed look on his face, yes, it was definitely a boy, the hair would have convinced his sooner if three of the girls on the flats hadn’t shaved their heads.
“I’m,”he spoke slowly and rather irritated, “oh-s-tray-li-an.”
“Ah.”
Pete nodded in the least frustrated way he could manage.
The compartment door slammed open.
“hello?” Said an exhausted looking boy, who propped his arms against the open door's frame, sagging between his white knuckled hands, pale cheeks flushed, eyes wet and wide.
Both Pete and Remus tried to speak at the same time, quick and exited. They both got a truly horrified look in return.
“Parles-tu français?”
They shook their heads.
“Loqueris latine?”
Again, slower, more frightened.
“Ty govorish’ po-russki?”
“Oh, no…” pete shook his head grimacing at the same time Remus said,
“No, sorry.”
It was getting easier to understand him.
“Ah well, you two are struggling too, ah?” Pete sat a while before deciphering it, then nodded, his neck was starting to hurt. The French was a little worse than the welsh accent but he could make it out if he waited a few seconds to let it sink in.
“No body seems to hear me, even when I speak english!” Remus bemoaned, bringing his long legs up to his chest, flopping his head back over the top of the seats.
The dark haired boy plopped down beside him.
“Sirius Black, pleasure to understand you.”
Remus lifted his head, peter watched.
“A Black?”
“Mn, yes, and you?”
“Remus lupin.”
“Ah, my father talks of yours on the occasion.”
Remus just nodded quietly.
Pete wondered if his neck hurt too.
A brown boy with a rather large mess of curling black hair popped his head into the compartment.
“Which one of you three is the French boy?” he managed to sound both utterly exhausted and perfectly cheery. he had a very posh english accent with something else just beneath it, almost unnoticable.
“Me, why?”
“Someone thought you were bleeding out of something. Apparently you seemed,” he lifted both hands and did bunny ears with his fingers “‘frantic and panicked by our lack of Frenchness’ according to Marlene.”
“They weren’t listening to me, it was very worrying. You lot are good though.”
He swung a thin wrists hand about, like a bottle spinning on hardwood.
“You seem understable to me.”
More nodding.
Was there a spell for neck pain?
“I’m Sirius, this is Remus, and…” he gestured to Pete.
“Pete.”
“I’m James potter, nice to meet you.”
“A Potter?”
The boy lit up with recognition, in a rather unreadable way.
“Father forbade me from talking to the blood traitors.” A short silence, one which felt rather long. “You should sit down”