Digging to Australia by Lesley Glaister Read Free Book Online

air, as if someone had stopped talking and was waiting for an answer. Of course I had known that Mama and Bob weren’t my parents. They were too old. Anyone could see that. The funny thing was I’d always wanted a granny, and I’d had one all along. Only it wasn’t funny. I sat on the swing for a long time, letting the knowledge percolate through me, like water through layers of sand. Jacqueline. My mother. Also, in a sense, my big sister. I felt nothing more than interest for a time. I waited for a feeling to arrive, dangling in time, there on the swing. All I felt, in the end, was cold. The cold seeped through my clothes and my skin, the complications of muscle and sinew and bone until my blood, my heart itself, was cold.
    I squeezed back through the hedge eventually and wandered around the cemetery. The sun made the angel glitter like sugar. I glanced at her and she shuddered. There were toadstools in the grass, a fat brown cluster which flaked when I kicked them, turned to pulp under my grinding feet. There were blackberries rotting in the hedge. The dark yew tree was studded with poisonous berries.
    Small mysteries were explained. Although my name was Jennifer there had always been time when Mama would hesitate over my name, especially when she was calling me. ‘Ja … Jennifer,’ she’d say. I’d grown used to it. Now I thought about it, I was sure I could remember the whole name coming out, hanging inexplicably in the air. Strange that I hadn’t thought it stranger. And Auntie May, who was really my great-great aunt, always called me Jacqueline, but I had put that down to age.
    I’d never called Mama and Bob Mum and Dad, or only when referring to them to outsiders. I think I asked Mama why once, and she said something vague about a family tradition and I was satisfied.
    â€˜Grow up innocent,’ the letter said. Ignorant, more like.
    I looked up at the church, which was not used as a church. There was no glass in its windows. They were bricked clumsily up, except for the arched spaces at the top. The walls were tall and dark grey, damp looking, spattered with pigeon droppings. The knobbled spire rooted its way into the sky like some grubby vegetable. For the first time I walked right round it. I didn’t like the church, I’d hurried past it before, taking as little notice as possible. The ground was spongy as if it might give, and I walked lightly. Old gravestones leant against one wall on the side I’d never been. Moss grew on their tops in luminous green cushions, softening the uneven edges. Behind the stones, against the wall, was a wedge of rustling shadow, the home I guessed of rats and spiders. I traced my finger over the almost vanished inscription on one crumbling stone.
    With restless days and sleepless nights
    This weary frame was sore oppressed ,
    Till God the silver cord unloosed
    And gave the heavy ladened rest .
    I liked that: the image of a silver cord. It made me think of Jacqueline and the strings that she said bound us together and I thought that however far she’d stretched them they remained unbroken. The wet grass glinted in the pale sun; soaked strands of gossamer reflected light. It was as if the whole place was a web of silver cords holding everything in its place, delicate and precarious. The birds’ music stopped and there was silence. Everything still. Everything balanced, glittering, motionless. Even the clouds paused in the sky. I held my breath and experienced a warm tide of meaning beyond words, of understanding that had nothing to do with thought. I was at once both happier and sadder than I’d ever been in my life. My heart seemed to stumble. And then, as if with a creak, the earth wheeled on. Birds resumed their singing, the grass began to nod with the weight of its wetness.
    The leather of my shoes was sodden and my toes were numb. A shadow passed across the sun. I walked back towards the playground thinking of the