The Haydons had a big house, lifted high up on flood stilts. A veranda ran the whole way round it, with faded hammocks and pot plants dotted about the place. Wind chimes hung silent in the heat. Vicky wore a fancy red Christmas dress that she swelled from, thick in the arms and thighs with a narrow waist, the kind you thought you could get your hands round. She wore the remainder of red lipstick and when she smiled there was a speck on her tooth. She smiled at Frank and held her arms high. ‘Frank! Happy Christmas!’ She moved forward to put the raised arms round him and planted a kiss, hard, on each cheek.
‘Good to see you, Vicky. Happy Christmas to you too and thanks for having me over.’
Vicky waved her hand in front of her face like there was a smell, and from behind the shield of her legs a dark-haired child peered, clutching a large unpeeled carrot. The kid watched him from underneath a heavy brow. It was impossible to tell what sex it was.
‘Mum’s drunk,’ said the kid, who was swatted on the head.
‘It’s Christmas, Sal, your mum’s allowed a drink at Christmas — this is Sal — the youngest. Now, what’ll it be, Frank? A Bucks Fizz? Bob’s just mixing up a batch.’
His stomach turned — youngest? Bob’d only mentioned the one kid — what if they were both boys? He couldn’t give a Barbie doll to a boy. And what the hell sex was this first kid anyway?
‘That’d be great, thanks, Vicky.’ He worried he was overusing her name. He supposed Sal must be a girl, because Sal was short for Sally, though you wouldn’t know to look at her. She was a Stig of the Dump.
Walking up the steps of the veranda, he tried to catch Sal’s eye, tried to make some kind of tongue rolling or friendly wink, but the kid was having none of it and frowned deeper still at his efforts, holding up the carrot as if using it as some kind of protective talisman.
Bob was squeezing oranges, or rather a robot was doing it for him. ‘Vick’s present to me,’ he said proudly, placing a whole orange in the shoot and following its progress down the perspex tube; watching it get pulped and ground into liquid.
‘That’s very impressive, Bob,’ said Frank, ‘my gift is a bit less useful.’ He handed the plastic bag to Vicky, who nosed into it hungrily.
‘Aw, Frank, youse shouldn’ have! Look, Bob, oysters!’
He wasn’t sure if she was being overly polite, or was drunk, or really liked oysters, but it seemed a pretty good reaction regardless.
‘Goodonya, mate,’ said Bob, not taking his eyes off the journey of the oranges. ‘Oysters make me sick,’ said Sal.
It became clear pretty soon that there was no other child — or if there was, it had moved out and wasn’t interested in spending Christmas with its parents. Either way, Frank gave Sal the doll and relaxed. The kid seemed quite taken with it, he thought. She disappeared, holding it with a look of having a great many important things to get done.
The three of them set about shucking oysters and Bob told a long story about his brother that ended cheerfully with, ‘An’ you could see right through the hole in his hand!’
They sat and ate and gabbled like a troop of magpies. It wasn’t two o’clock before they were all drunk and red in the face.
‘For you,’ Vicky said, wobbling over to him and grasping his hand. She pulled him over to the window, yanking him like he was an unwilling child. He glanced at Bob to see what he thought of his wife grabbing hold of someone she hardly knew, but Bob sat in his easy chair, a red paper crown square on his head, beaming at the two of them. Vicky pointed outside at the yard full of chickens. Two young chicks were cordoned off. ‘Kirk and Mary,’ she explained. ‘Only runty ones, I’m afraid, but they should come good.’
Frank looked at the chickens, a bubble of panic growing in his chest at the idea of caring for the birds.
‘Jesus, Frank! Don’t look so pale!’ crowed Vicky, pleased by his shock. ‘It’s a piece of piss — feed ’em and stop the foxes eating ’em, and you’ll be in eggs up to your balls.’
Frank blinked. ‘Far out, that is a generous gift. I… thank you.’
‘Can’t live on farmland without chooks. Who’d wake youse up in the morning?’
‘Why Mary and Kirk?’
Bob swilled his Bucks Fizz from cheek to cheek, then swallowed hard. ‘Sal names ’em. See all those chooks?’ He pointed to the yard where about a hundred chickens shucked and scratched and ruffled. ‘Sal names each an’ every one. This arvo, we’ll be sitting down to Simon.’
Sal appeared in the doorway and looked darkly at her father. She held her carrot close to her chest; it wore the pink jumpsuit that Barbie had worn earlier. Barbie the doll did not reappear for the rest of the day, but Barbie the carrot got by very well, with a seat to herself at the dinner table.
‘Who’s yer friend?’ Frank asked when they had all sat down and Simon had been quartered. She fixed him with one large black eye and said nothing. Vicky rolled on her hips to face him, poking her tongue in her cheek to dislodge some food stuck there. ‘That,’ said Vicky, ‘that is a carrot.’ She looked at Sal and Sal looked at her plate, kicking her legs under the table. ‘Ain’t it, sweetie-pie?’
‘Vick,’ Bob said quietly.
Vicky looked down at her plate. ‘Sorry, Sally, love,’ Vicky said, and she reached out across Frank and squeezed her daughter’s fist as it gripped its knife. Vicky tutted a little and leant back in her chair.
Frank surprised himself by standing up and on standing realised he had become pleb-head drunk. He held up his glass. ‘Thank you for having me,’ he said like a schoolboy, ‘and Happy Christmas!’ which made everyone apart from Sal cheer, although she sat a little straighter in her chair and watched, the hugeness gone from her eyes.
‘Happy fuckin’ Christmas!’ roared Vicky and they all snorted with laughter, even Sal, who couldn’t resist the word.
Vicky was telling a story and Frank couldn’t recall where it had started or what it was about, all he could see was the three of them, the small family feeding together, heads low to their plates, they all held their forks with a cocked little finger. A fogged memory crept in of a time at the shack when his mum had still been alive. The way he remembered it, when they were all three inside, the shack had taken on their smells and noises, soaked it up: the big hooked fish, the endless hand-washing and table-wiping, the filleting, oyster shells, clams in milk and school prawns, until the floor and the ceiling had smelt of burnt seawater.
In the early dark evening his mother started a game of bloody beetle and the three of them kicked back, inhaling the fug of themselves, eating shellfish with hammers and pokers. In bed, he’d found a dry fish scale stuck to his face, a mother-of-pearl toenail, and he’d put it under his tongue for safe keeping, for luck.
From nowhere the words came out of him, ‘Still no word on the Mackelly girl?’
‘Nah.’ Bob pushed the paper crown on his head back with his fork. ‘Poor Ian. Cripes I’d hate to be in his shoes.’
Vicky refilled her glass and drank from it deeply.
Stupid thing to say at Christmas. He felt his food go dry in his mouth. ‘Probably just gone walkabout, don’tcha think? Teenage girl, small-town-type thing?’
‘Probably,’ said Bob unconvincingly. ‘Still, that’s not much use to her parents on Christmas Day.’
‘Guess not.’ There was more quiet. ‘I made a break for it when I was a grommet. Headed for China.’ It was a lie, he realised once he’d said it.
‘China eh? What’s so good about China?’
Vicky laughed. ‘I’d run away to China just for those little deep-fried mussel parcels they do down at China Jack’s,’ she said, taking her nose out of her glass and focusing on the ceiling.