Henry’s Daughter by Joy Dettman Read Free Book Online Page A

bawling and Mavis comes back, unbuttoning her tent, just at the most interesting part of the movie. The girl has got naked and the man’s head is –
    â€˜What are you doing watching thatthing, you disobedient pair of little buggers?’ She reaches for a long electrical cord that has been hanging on a nail behind the back door for all of Lori’s life. Mavis can crack that cord like a whip when anyone gives her big strife, and if she doesn’t hit the one she’s aiming at, she gets close. Someone yells. A calendar also hangs behind the door. It is beautiful. Blue water, yellow sand,sailboats gliding, seabirds soaring. Cool. It makes the room hotter, and the whip harder.
    Jamesy dives under the table and out, he’s through the brown curtain door. Lori goes the other way. She’s on the back verandah. They’ve got a pact, these two; divide and conquer.
    The two big globes in the kitchen are bright enough to cast their light on the verandah where Mick is building a bike. He’s beenout there all the time, sitting on a box, surrounded by bits of bike, his bad leg with its brace stuck out in front. When he takes the brace off his leg is rubbery, so Greg and Vinnie call him Pullit, as in ‘pull the other one, it’s made of rubber’. His arms and his right leg are strong, which make up a bit for his left leg; he can swim okay, but he usually only swims at night so people can’tstare when he takes that brace off. He’s one of the redheads, but not carrot red, sort of dark and quiet, like the inside of his head is quiet, like his eyes are quiet.
    No one is allowed to thump Mick, due to he’s got no balance. Not even spoilt-rotten Greg thumps Mick, which might be the reason why Mick got to be so lovable. Also, he never does anything to get thumped for, so it’s like thiscircle of good just keeps wrapping around and around him. Summer and winter he stays close to the house, except when he’s at school. He fixes things, just loves screws and nuts and nails and he collects them, picks them up from everywhere. All the bikes and bits of bikes the brothers bring home are treasures to Mick – bikes being his favourite things to fix, even if he can’t ride them. It’s likehe enjoys the freedom they give his brothers, so maybe fixing them gives him a bit of borrowed freedom.
    â€˜Lorraine. I said, Get. To. Bed. And you too, Mickey.’ He doesn’t like being called Mickey and he doesn’t want to go to bed, but he packs up his spanners and takes them with him, leaves the bike bits there. ‘You’d better move it, Lorraine.’
    She doesn’t move. When she was ten, she was afraidof Mavis’s whip, but now she is eleven she’s not afraid at all. She walks back to the open door as soon as she hears that couch groan and the wall moan.
    â€˜Mick hates being called Mickey and I hate being called Lorraine . I said for everyone to call me Lori.’ She thrusts out her chest. There are no brothers around to see her twin boils. ‘I’m eleven now, and it’s Friday night, and me and Mick shouldn’thave to go to bed with the chooks.’
    â€˜If you make me get up from this chair then you won’t live to see twelve, you cheeky little skin-head bugger. And if you ask your father to cut your hair again, I’ll shave the lot off.’
    Lori shrugs and gets.
    The lounge room is big, which is lucky. It’s got three beds and a cot in it, also a chest of drawers and huge old-fashioned wardrobe. Matty’s bassinettewill probably be moved in soon. All the babies get put in this room because its door is just across the passage from Mavis and Henry’s door. Lori’s bed is the one nearest to the door so she can hear Mavis and Henry talking some nights when the heat is too bad to sleep. She has learned a lot in that bed, like why Henry never got a divorce from Eva, which isn’t due to divorces costing heaps of