The children were too afraid to enter the reptile house, which was dark and green and cool. Alex lingered by the doorway, terrified but unwilling to leave. Lizzie couldn’t even bring herself to look at the picture of the snake on the sign. Their mother, for the first time, was visibly frustrated with them both. As Susan called Alex away, a flock of dancers ran screaming from the reptile house, women at first, then men leaping and laughing. They’d obviously given the women a scare — a snake-hiss, a careful brush against someone’s ankle, a low-voiced story that ended in shouts. Now the women clapped and scolded. Rose knew Adelaide Turner even without her costumes and wigs and drawn-on eyebrows; her round face and the agile manner of her walk were unmistakable. She looked very young. Adelaide called to one man — ‘Roger, what did I tell you? No cake for weeks!’ — and when Roger hung his head and arms in mock dejection, she mimicked his pose perfectly, teasing. Her blunt accent wasn’t as beautiful as her dancing. Rose could have taken one step and been in her path; she could have said, ‘Excuse me, Miss Turner?’ But what if Adelaide was to smile as if Rose had just called her name in order to say, Your table’s ready, your car is here? There was no way to tell Adelaide about the nocturnal gulls after the theatre, the sensation of her body rising from the bed. Rose watched the dancers walk down the hill toward the seal pools, the women quiet now, holding hands and resting their heads on their friends’ shoulders. It seemed ridiculous, then — juvenile — to have cut out Adelaide’s picture and put it on the mantelpiece.
Susan sat on the low wall beside the reptile house.
‘I want the snakes,’ said Alex. He had run into the building, quickly in and out, made brave by the presence of the dancers.
‘Well, Lizzie?’ said Susan.
Like Rose, Lizzie was watching the procession walk toward the seals. She waited until the dancers were out of sight before turning to her mother.
Susan said, ‘What do you think of taking your brother in to see the snakes? While your old mum has a rest out here.’
‘I’ll take him,’ said Rose.
‘I want to,’ said Lizzie. She gave a small, triumphant laugh. ‘I was never frightened of the snakes.’
Alex seemed uneasy. He ran back into the semi-dark and his sister followed him.
‘They’re tired, aren’t they?’ said Rose.
Susan didn’t answer at once. Then she said, ‘We’re all tired, I think.’
‘You must be. So much to organise.’
‘I’ll tell you something. It’s absurd,’ said Susan. ‘It’s that I’m sure I’m going to see Jonathan again. I have that feeling. As if he’s waiting for me in California. You know, they say the climate there is basically Australian, and there’s the coast and gum trees.’ She laughed the way Lizzie had before saying, ‘I was never frightened of the snakes.’
Rose held her sister’s hand, which may never have happened before; Susan was years older and rarely tender. Rose didn’t love her, but then she thought of love as a hasty secret that drew out, eventually, into something slow and denied and sought and carefully planned. Loving Jonathan had been small for her at first, and then grew smaller, but it was in this smallness that she had found pleasure and safety, as if the secrecy had necessarily pushed it into a tiny space of compacted intensity. Anything larger would have frightened her; would have led to change, or confession. Rose was made impatient by confession. The possibility of it had sent her to Sydney. And it was better, wasn’t it, that she could sit like this with Susan, holding hands.
The afternoon was beginning to lengthen. Currawongs cried out of bubbling throats. There were also stranger sounds that travelled through the air from an indeterminate source, as if sprung from the mouths of some outlandish animal and his equally extraordinary mate. These noises hummed at the back of the ear along with other incidental roars and calls and trumpets that filled this unfamiliar world, briefly jungle, briefly savannah and mountain range. Rose understood before Susan did that the noises were coming from the children. She ran toward the reptile house.
It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. The light was low and green and the glass cases seemed to swim out of it, full of leafy foliage, full of fake creeks and desert rocks and their jewelled inhabitants, mostly sleeping.
‘Lizzie!’ called Rose.
‘You killed her,’ Lizzie was yelling, over and over. ‘You killed her! You pushed! You killed her.’
There was another sound, thinner: Alex crying out, high-pitched. Somewhere in the dark he was struggling and crying. The snakes didn’t move, except one python that continued to bury itself in the sand of its tank.
‘You killed her!’ Lizzie yelled again, and Alex cried and Rose ran through the corridors into the green darkness, afraid of what might be at her feet. Then Susan was there too; she also ran, breathing loudly, calling, and Rose saw her every now and then flashing against a lit case.
Rose found them first. They were deep in the reptile house, on the floor below the tank of a large, pouchy lizard. Alex lay on his back and Lizzie sat astride his chest, pinning his shoulders with her knees. She hit at his head again and again with her palms, her face teary and furious. Alex was half hidden beneath her; his legs rose slightly with each blow, his hands opened and closed, and his shoulders strained as Lizzie pressed tighter with her knees. She hit at him until Rose dragged her away, and even then she kicked at him with her bony shoes, and scratched and bit at Rose.
Lizzie quieted when Susan reached Alex. They were all quiet until they came out into the light, then Lizzie pulled herself from Rose’s arms and began to scream. She opened her throat and a large noise came from it, much larger than she was. The effort of it shook her whole body, and closed her eyes, and turned her red. Children walking past the reptile house stopped to look; their parents hurried them on. ‘Someone’s tired!’ called one jovial man. Rose smiled at him. She realised he thought she was Lizzie’s mother.
‘Elizabeth Rose,’ said Susan. Alex had slithered to the ground and pressed his face against his mother’s legs. Now Susan shouted, ‘Elizabeth!’
Lizzie stopped screaming. She sat on the ground, limp, worn out by the exertion of being so angry.
‘Explain yourself,’ said Susan. ‘We are going home immediately, you have ruined our day, but first you will tell me why you behaved so badly, so terribly, I’ve never been so ashamed of you. And no nonsense, Lizzie, no silliness about anybody killing anybody else.’
‘But he did,’ said Lizzie, collected now, and sullen.
Susan smacked her lightly on the arm. Lizzie opened her mouth as if to scream again, but she looked across at Rose and didn’t.
‘I’m not lying,’ she said. ‘Alex killed Julia.’ And now she began to cry in messy, unfeigned gulps, staring at her mother.
‘What are you talking about?’ said Susan.
‘Alex pushed her off the ferry. While we were getting on the ferry he pushed her off the bridge we walked on and she fell in the sea and drowned and she’s dead forever.’ This through sobs full of air and water.
‘She did not drown,’ Alex called out. He turned to Rose and she noticed blood in his hair. ‘She didn’t.’
‘You hurt your brother,’ said Susan. ‘You attacked your brother. Where does this come from, Lizzie? Why do you make these things up?’