Tree Palace by Craig Sherborne Read Free Book Online Page A

Tubbsy. ‘Moira, you and me is step-relations, yeah?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘And that means Zara is too. And now Mathew.’
    ‘Yip.’
    ‘Family. Close as you can get. So I was wondering. Can I watch Zara feed the baby?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Not now. I mean sometime. When she’s settled back home.’
    ‘No. What kind of question’s that? It’s a private time.’
    ‘I’m just interested because I never seen people do it. Seen heaps of animals—foals, lambs. Not people.’
    ‘What are you, a perv?’
    ‘No, no, course not.’
    ‘You will not watch Zara feeding Mathew.’
    He said he was sorry for asking and that she didn’t have to use a word like ‘perv’. He waited for her to say she was sorry.
    Midge sat at the kitchen table. It was a table meant for classrooms—Shane took it from a school near Avoca that was closed up. You could lift the top and put your valuables there. Only Midge did. He kept an envelope of photos from his jockey days. And the write-up he’d got in the Swan Hill press when he won by three lengths on Horsequake. It was his only write-up and his only winner but more than Moira had ever done, he brooded. You think you’re true family with someone and they won’t even say they’re sorry for calling you a perv.
    Then he noticed Mathew through the bedroom door. A miniature bed beside the big bed. Which made him laugh, as if the little bed was the bigger bed’s young. And he saw Mathew was in it and he said sorry to Moira for laughing too loudly. He whispered sorry twice more and asked if he could go take a look. Moira nodded and led him into the bedroom. ‘This is Midge,’ she said, smoothing a wisp of silk hair on the baby’s crown. ‘Midge is part of the family too.’
    Midge’s face crinkled with smiling. His whiskered skin folded upwards and inwards in deep rows. His brown buckled teeth were all on show. Moira’s introduction had taken the wind from him. He needed his puffer. His puffer was in the caravan and he wasn’t about to go and get it. He grinned, short of breath and pink in the eyes from happiness. He was sorry he’d ever had a brooding thought about Moira.
    ‘Tell you what, you can have a hold. You want a hold?’ she said.
    Midge shook his head. ‘No, no. He looks too—peaceful. I might drop him.’ He was wheezing and coughed into his sleeve.
    Moira slid her fingers under Mathew and lifted him to be against her neck. She took a step towards Midge and he stepped away, then he stepped forward as Moira reassured him that he wouldn’t drop the baby. All he had to do was make a cradle of his arms and be gentle. He made the cradle and whispered that he would. He took the baby’s weight and said, ‘I’ve got him. I’m holding him. Am I doing it right?’
    ‘Yip,’ Moira nodded. ‘How’s he feel?’
    There were no words in him to make a sentence. This kind of holding was beyond language. He stood as if connected to the world’s holy scheme.
    ‘Tubbsy? You took on Tubbsy?’ Rory said, walking backwards in front of Shane while Shane was walking from the toilet. Rory had wanted to sit on the toilet and was waiting for Shane to finish but that urge disappeared on seeing Shane’s face. The boy’s mouth was wide open with awe and Shane slowed his pace so Rory didn’t trip and stop talking. He was enjoying the admiration. Just a boy’s admiration, but that was the best kind, he thought, because boys don’t hide it. When they made you a hero they made it obvious.
    ‘Hey, Mum, Shane took on Tubbsy.’
    ‘I know, I know,’ she said, with her eyes closed, and a shake of her head. The anger was false, for Rory’s sake, so that he didn’t think she praised fighting. She really wanted to kiss Shane for this fight, a fight for family honour. A fight that told Jim Tubbs and anyone else that they may not be angels but they had standards.
    Then she did kiss him. She took his hand as he walked past her and lightly kissed his knuckles, their sticky wounds. She pulled a