One Whole and Perfect Day Read online

  Lonnie rose from his chair and floated through the window into a landscape of stones and rough dry grasses and banks of purple flowers. He could hear water bubbling over pebbles and a small brown bird rose up from the grass and spiralled into the wide blue sky. ‘Emily!’ he called, and the tall young woman striding along a little way ahead of him turned, her great sombre eyes shining, the corners of her long mouth lifting in a smile. ‘See, she likes me!’ Lonnie murmured joyously. ‘See, Emily Bronte likes me! She understands. And if she likes me, then – Ah!’ he broke off with a small sharp yip, because someone, someone right next to him, had pinched his arm, hard.

  He woke to see a pair of eyes, darker than Emily’s, beneath a glossy blue-black fringe, and recognised the fourth-year girl who sat in on some of the first year tutorials. ‘What – what’s up?’ he floundered.

  The girl rolled her eyes sideways, and Lonnie turned his head to find Dr Finch standing beside his chair. ‘Ah, so you’re with us again, Mr Samson.’ He was holding Lonnie’s essay, ten creased and tumbled sheets on the poetry of Emily Bronte fastened together with the lucky paper clip Lonnie had kept from primary school, from Mrs Phipson’s Grade 4 class where he’d won a chocolate car for his project on ‘What I Want to be.’ Lonnie had wanted to be a Flying Doctor. How sure he’d been of everything back then!

  He flipped through the pages, avoiding the last one where the mark would be. He knew it wouldn’t be good; Dr Finch’s agitated handwriting, peppered with exclamation marks, glared at him from every margin. A NO!! in block letters had torn the corner of a page.

  ‘Mr Samson?’

  Lonnie looked up; Dr Finch was still standing over him. ‘Too personal, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Too much detail about the author’s life. That page on the chair she died in, for instance –’

  ‘It was a sofa,’ said Lonnie. ‘A black horsehair sofa.’

  ‘Yes, well –’ Dr Finch waved a hand dismissively. ‘Details like that aren’t important, Mr Samson. This isn’t a pensioners’ reading group.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lonnie, wishing it could have been. All at once, as if he was drowning, his life began to flash before his eyes in a series of little pictures: primary and high school, the writing course, Horticultural School, Economics 1, the whole confusing struggle to find something he could be. Pop’s angry face, Mum’s anxious one, Lily’s scornful smile. If only he was a pensioner, then surely they would let him be.

  ‘Without an understanding of contemporary literary theory, Mr Samson,’ Dr Finch was saying, ‘I’m afraid you’re not going to get very far.’

  ‘I don’t want to get far,’ muttered Lonnie childishly.

  ‘So be it,’ said Dr Finch, and turned away.

  So be it. Lonnie felt a deep chill gather in his chest. ‘So be it’ sounded ominous. Was it worse, pondered Lonnie, or better than the phrase so many other teachers had left him with? ‘It’s up to you.’

  Lonnie thought it sounded worse.

  9 CLARA LEE

  Out in the corridor, the students checked their marks, something they’d been too proud to do in Dr Finch’s company. There was a rustling of pages, little moans and sighs and grumbles, and the occasional gasp of sheer surprised delight.

  Lonnie had a C.

  C was undistinguished. C was borderline.

  And yet when he’d written that essay on Emily Bronte’s poetry, Lonnie had felt it was so right. Each idea, each image and detail had fallen into place so simply it was as if the essay had always existed, fully formed and perfect, in some happy, cloudless region of his mind – perhaps the very same place his Grade 4 project had come from. Writing it, especially the piece on Emily’s death which Dr Finch had so derided, Lonnie had felt he’d at last begun to find himself.

  Only he’d been wrong, it seemed.

  The familiar panic began to surge inside him; the panic which had sent him to the Admin. buildings of two colleges, to give up his course and try something else again. This was the worst time, because he’d begun to feel at home with English Lit, and now he realised this feeling must also have been an illusion – like having a dad had been an illusion, a long long time ago. Lonnie crumpled the pages in his hand and began to run, swerving round the little groups of students, on down the corridor, bursting through the door into the courtyard, along the path towards Administration. Behind him a girl’s voice called ‘Hey!’ Lonnie kept on running. She couldn’t be calling him; he didn’t really know any of the girls at this university.

  ‘Hey!’ The voice was right behind him now. He turned and saw the dark-haired girl who’d woken him in the tutorial. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said breathlessly.

  Did she mean him? Lonnie glanced back over his shoulder, but there was no one else on the path. ‘Me?’ he asked, pointing to his chest. ‘Do you mean me?’

  She laughed. ‘Yes, you.’

  Clara had no clear idea why she’d run after this boy – the tall thin fair-haired boy who’d fallen asleep in class, and whom she’d always thought looked romantic, as if he might live in a garret and write poetry. Was it these soft looks that appealed to her? Or was it that sentence she’d heard him mutter in his sleep back there in Dr Finch’s room: ‘You’re no grandfather of mine?’ Certainly that had struck a chord in Clara, because it was exactly the way she felt about her dad. ‘You’re no Dad of mine!’

  All she knew for sure was that when she’d seen the anguish in his face as he studied Dr Finch’s comments on his essay she’d simply had to run after him. Perhaps he didn’t know Dr Finch never gave anyone a good mark if he could help it.

  ‘Marked you down?’ she asked him boldly, gesturing towards the crumpled wad of papers in his hand.

  ‘Yeah.’ Lonnie flushed and looked down. He saw her feet, the little red boots she wore. They looked like shoes from a fairytale.

  ‘I know it’s none of my business –’ she was saying.

  He raised his eyes. ‘Oh, it is,’ he said fervently. He didn’t want her to go.

  ‘It is?’ asked Clara, surprised. ‘You mean you don’t mind me butting in?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ He flicked the long pale lock back from his forehead, and it fell right back again.

  ‘Only you looked so upset back there, and I thought – I thought you mightn’t know Dr Finch does it to everyone. Marks them down, I mean.’

  ‘Does he?’ Lonnie smiled.

  Clara smiled back at him. ‘Especially if they’re good.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not good,’ said Lonnie modestly. ‘Not normally, anyway. It was just that this time, for once, I thought I’d got it right, you know?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It made me feel like chucking it in.’

  ‘Oh, don’t!’ She sounded like she really meant it.

  ‘It was only for a moment. Anyway, my pop would kill me if I dropped this course.’

  ‘Your dad?’

  ‘Haven’t got a dad. I mean, I did have, but he left.’

  Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh! Sorry!’

  ‘S’okay. It was ages back; I can hardly remember him.’

  And that was true, no matter that Lily never believed him when he said so. He couldn’t remember much about Dad at all, except for these random little flashes he was never sure about. The only thing he remembered properly was the feeling in the house after Dad had gone, as if he and Mum had been let loose into an empty sky. ‘Pop’s my grandpa,’ he explained. ‘He’s got this axe, and he says he’ll use it on me if I drop out anymore.’

  ‘Oh, I bet he wouldn’t.’

  ‘He might, if he got mad enough.’ Yet all at once Pop’s hostility didn’t seem to matter quite so much, and even the wasted essay wasn’t so important. Lonnie had the definite feeling he was going to do better next time round. He bounced on his toes; feeling strangely light, as if some heaviness had lifted from him and floated away like the mist his nan called ‘foggy dew’.

  The girl was smiling at him again. She was so small and slender, no bigger than those Grade 6 girls who call
ed out to him every time he walked past Toongabbie Primary on his way to the station. She wore a pleated skirt and a long green sweater in a wool so fine and soft it made you long to touch. When she blinked, her long black lashes swept against the warm curve of her cheek; Lonnie thought he’d never seen anything quite so lovely, unless it was her tiny feet in those fairytale red boots.

  ‘Would you like –’ Lonnie paused, aware that he had to go carefully here. Last time he’d asked a girl this sort of question – a first year girl called Maureen, in his Bibliography class – she’d stared at him, astonished, and then said simply, ‘No.’ There’d been no explanation, not even the hint of an excuse, and now when he walked into Bibliography, Maureen and her friends all giggled at him.

  Could it be that he’d grown weird, living on his own? So weird he no longer had the ability to realise he was weird?

  Lonnie felt he couldn’t bear it if this girl giggled at him. Surely she wouldn’t? She was older, for a start. Would that make a difference?

  She was staring at him. She had these beautiful soft eyes. Dulcet eyes, he thought.

  ‘Would I like . . .?’ she echoed softly.

  ‘A coffee,’ he blurted. ‘Like a coffee? Over at the Union?’ He held his breath, waiting for her reply. The thick lock of hair felt heavy on his forehead. He flicked it back, the lock fell forward again, hot and clammy against his skin. He flicked once more, and then remembered Lily telling him the gesture made him seem what she called ‘lacking’.

  Then something astonishing happened. The girl leaned forward and gently smoothed the stray lock back from his hot forehead.

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’d love to have a coffee.’

  For a long moment they simply stood there. Then she held out her hand. ‘I’m Clara Lee,’ she said.

  ‘Lonnie. Lonnie Samson.’

  His hand seemed to melt into hers.

  10

  DANIEL STEADMAN

  Now that Lonnie had moved out, the house seemed extra lonely when Lily came home from school.

  ‘Mum!’ she called, twisting her key in the lock, pushing the door open, stepping into the hall. ‘Mum!’ Because there were some days, very rare days, when her mother got home before her.

  Today wasn’t one of them. Lily walked on down the hallway, switching on the lights, her school shoes clumping on the dull scuffed floor, and when she kicked them off and dropped her schoolbag and sank down onto her bed, then everything was silent and the cold air hummed inside her ears. Hollow, that was how their house felt now, and all at once she wondered if this was how it might have seemed to Lonnie after their dad had gone.

  The idea surprised her. She’d never thought of Lonnie in this way before; as a little kid whose dad had vanished. He’d been almost six at the time, which was old enough to feel abandoned – old enough to miss someone, anyway. Could that long ago desertion even be the reason her brother was so hopeless? As if their father’s leaving had left a hollowness, not just inside the house, but inside Lonnie, too?

  If it was, Lonnie didn’t seem to be aware of it. ‘I can hardly remember him,’ he’d always say when Lily asked about their dad.

  ‘What did he look like?’ she’d ask, and then Lonnie would close his eyes, a pained expression gathering on his face, one hand up to his forehead. Like a medium in a séance, Lily thought.

  ‘He had a beard. And –’ (here Lonnie’s fingers would twitch against his brow) ‘And a long sort of face. Long cheeks.’

  ‘Is that all? You must remember more than that! You were nearly six! I can remember heaps of things from when I was six! What about your first day at school?’

  ‘My first day at school?’

  ‘Yes! Did he take you? Bring you back?’

  ‘Mum did. At least, I think it was her.’

  Lily would give up at this point. It was hopeless asking him anything.

  ‘I can remember him,’ she’d confided once.

  ‘But you weren’t even born!’

  ‘Unborn babies can hear, can’t they? Inside their mother’s tummies? They can hear music, so why not voices? I can remember his voice.’

  ‘That’s from the telephone,’ Lonnie had told her. ‘When he rings up at Christmas and stuff. That’s what you’re remembering.’

  Lily was sure it wasn’t. The voice in her memory was younger.

  Now she went into her mother’s room and took the old shoe box from the top shelf of the wardrobe. A shoe box! Proper families kept their photographs in albums, labelled with names and dates and places.

  Lily sorted through them; there weren’t many, no more than a handful, really. A small Lonnie in a party hat at someone else’s party. Lily as a baby in her mother’s arms. And then in Nan’s arms. Two-year-old Lily holding hands with Lonnie. Pop and Nan. School photos. No wedding photos. What kind of family had no wedding photos? Right at the bottom, she found the single photograph their mum had kept of their father.

  Oliver DeZoto was standing at the end of a jetty, leaning against a sign that read ‘DANGER!’ And ‘NO FISHING ALLOWED’. He was barefoot and bare-chested, wearing tiny ragged shorts. Lonnie had been right about the long cheeks. And the beard. Apart from that, the rest of their father was – scrawny. He had no hair on his chest. Harmless, you’d think, looking at him. Inoffensive.

  Pop hadn’t thought so. ‘I knew he was no good the minute I set eyes on him!’ Pop still loved to say.

  ‘The only time you saw him,’ Mum would retort.

  ‘And that was enough. Eyes too close together, I spotted it at once. Shifty.’

  Was that true? wondered Lily. Were people with their eyes set close together shifty, never to be trusted? She put the photo back in the box and returned it to the wardrobe. Then she went into her own room, opened the drawer in her bedside table and took out her copy of last year’s school magazine. The pages fell open of their own accord, to page 53, where there was a photograph of the Drama Society, with Daniel Steadman in the middle of the back row.

  Lily lay down on her bed and gazed into Daniel’s face. These last two days, since that moment in the kitchen when she’d said to herself ‘I should fall in love’, she’d found herself haunted by the image of Daniel Steadman. It was the stupidest thing, it was – weird. Lily bent her head over the magazine, studying Daniel’s face, trying to make out if his eyes were set too close together. It was hard to be sure, as there were so many kids in the photograph, and his face was so very tiny – all the same, she was almost certain the position of his eyes was normal. And they were such beautiful eyes. Even in such a poor photograph, you could see –

  ‘Oh!’ she burst out, suddenly angry with herself. How on earth had she got like this? She hadn’t been serious, she hadn’t actually meant to fall in love.

  And yet it had happened, despite her, as if a spell had been cast, some spirit conjured. Lily shivered, remembering that tiny corpse-like shape in the corner of the room, the shape she’d imagined looked like Seely, or his ghost.

  She threw the magazine aside and crept out to the kitchen. It was strange how the empty house always made her creep, as if she was an intruder in someone else’s home. Once again the Seely-coloured dishcloth wasn’t where it should be, hanging on its hook; this time it lay bundled in the soap dish on the edge of the sink, curled like a tiny creature fast asleep. Lily prodded at it cautiously, but she felt only cold wet cloth, and the dark red splotch on its side that looked like fresh blood was only a stain of tandoori sauce from the chicken they’d had last night. She took a fresh dishcloth from the drawer, thrust the old one into a plastic bag and took it outside to the bin.

  It was a clear still night. How long had she spent going through those photos, searching for her father, and then goggling at Daniel Steadman’s face in the school magazine? Above their small back garden the stars blazed down, the same stars Daniel would see if he paused to look out of the window in the middle of his homework, or wandered out into the garden for a breath of air. The very same stars! The simple thought of it mad
e her feel close to him, as if she could reach out her hand and touch his. ‘Oh, stop it!’ fumed Lily, stamping her foot on the grass. ‘Stop thinking about him!’

  But what did she do, the very minute she got back to her room? Picked up the magazine, of course, still open at page 53, picked it up and kissed the photograph.

  Actually kissed it, before she could stop herself.

  She could hardly believe she’d done that. ‘I’ve got a crush on Daniel Steadman,’ she whispered miserably, because it was so embarrassing; a crush, like some little girl in Year 7. Ugh. The sort of thing that made your toes curl up inside your shoes. She’d wanted to stop feeling middle-aged, and she’d succeeded. She felt young now, only it was the wrong sort of young – like a very little kid who couldn’t talk properly and kept falling off her bicycle.

  ‘Daniel Steadman doesn’t even know I exist,’ she said out loud. Bracingly.

  Of course he didn’t. And yet it seemed to Lily now that when they passed each other in the corridors and playgrounds there was a tension between them. She couldn’t tell whether the tension was desire or disgust. Or was she imagining the whole thing? Of course she was.

  The phone shrilled out in the hall and Lily tossed the magazine down on the bedside table and ran to answer. Oh, it was embarrassing, it was shameful – how when the phone rang she always thought it might be him. How could it be?

  She picked up the receiver. ‘Hello,’ she said, and listened tensely.

  It was only Nan.

  11

  A CALL FROM NAN

  ‘Lily?’

  ‘Nan?’