Sunny Side Up Part 9

'I'll be fine, Granny. I'd like to explore, anyway. Maybe look in the gift shop. Do you feel sick, with CLL, I mean? Does it hurt or anything?'

'Oh, I have my good days and my bad days, Sunny. It comes and goes. Sometimes for months and months I'm as right as rain, and then suddenly I can't get out of bed for days, which is why I have to seize the moment when I've got energy for adventures. I'm slowing down now, though. I can feel it, but it's a peaceful time, too, and right. I plan to slip away quietly, when my time comes. I can already sense how gentle it will be.'

I went out an exit door to the back deck. We were already a long way from sh.o.r.e. I could just see the hazy outline of the city across the water. It reminded me of New York, even though I've never been there. I edged down to the back of the boat, holding the handrail all the way. The sea was calm, but I felt as if the wind might blow me off. It hurt my ears. There was a man in a bluey jacket sitting at a table having a Big M and trying to read a paper that was flapping in the wind.

'Getting a bit nippy,' he said, folding his newspaper under his arm. 'Might head back inside.'

I held onto the cold white railing at the very back of the boat and leant over to where I could hear the engines roaring and see the water churning like a was.h.i.+ng machine. It reminded me of the part in t.i.tanic where Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet first kiss, but then I got off that topic entirely because it made me think about Claud and Buster and how sickening it would be if they actually were kissing. So instead I thought about the Stash-O-Matic and in particular throwing it overboard. I could hear the crunching of metal as it got all munched up by the propellers. And then I had scary imaginings about leaning over too far and falling into the deep dark water and waving like crazy but n.o.body noticing that I'd gone, and having to watch the Spirit of Tasmania head off without me.

When I got back to our cabin there was a note from Granny Carmelene saying she would meet me at the lounge bar on Deck Seven for a c.o.c.ktail before dinner.

When I found the bar, she was sitting at a table in a blue curvy chair that wrapped around her like a clamsh.e.l.l.

'There you are, Sunny. Isn't this lovely?' she said as a waiter delivered two drinks to our table. 'The perfect remedy after a cat nap! How was your exploring?'

'Great,' I said. 'I bought a postcard, even though I'll be home before I get to send it.'

'I ordered a couple of martinis, although yours, I'm afraid, is a mock-martini.'

I didn't tell Granny Carmelene how I'd had a champagne once a at Claud's for her mum's fortieth a or how it made me wobble. I was feeling suddenly uneasy. What if Mum and Dad had spoken to each other and I'd been busted doing my disappearing act? What if they'd called Claud and cross-examined her?

I sat down on the other blue clamsh.e.l.l chair.

Granny Carmelene held up her gla.s.s. 'Cheers, Sunday,' she said as we clinked our martini gla.s.ses together. 'Here's to building bridges and a lifetime of adventures.'

'Cheers, Granny,' I said, and then I just blurted out, 'Whatever happened to Grandpa Henry?'

'Good lord, girl, you certainly know how to spoil a moment!' she said, clunking her gla.s.s back down on the table.

'Sorry, Granny, it's just that-'

'I know, Sunday, I know. You're just trying to piece things together. It must be very confusing.'

'I just don't think all these wonderings are good for my imagination. It makes me think too much about all the possibilities. I'm scared my imagination is going to run out of ideas because I've wasted them all on trying to work out everybody else's secrets.'

'You're absolutely right, dear.' Granny Carmelene took another sip of her drink, and a deep breath. 'Here goes then. Your grandfather, although a charming character in many ways, was somewhat of a ladies' man, if you know what I mean. Quite unfaithful. Although, it turns out, I never knew the half of it.'

I wasn't really sure what a ladies' man was. I thought maybe it meant dressing up a like the men in the Sydney Mardi Gras.

'Does that mean Grandpa Henry wore lipsti-'

'It means, in short, my girl, that one day Henry took off to live abroad with my very own sister a and I never saw either of them ever again. They'd been carrying on with one another for years, as it turned out, behind my back.'

I felt a flash of cold down one side of my body, even though there was nowhere that the cold could have been getting in.

'Was Mum very old?'

'Old enough! Yes, Sunday, she knew all along and said absolutely nothing. It was quite clear where your mother's loyalty was. Not with me, that's for sure. Not with her own mother. And it's the same today, I can a.s.sure you.'

'But maybe she-'

'My dear Sunday,' Granny said, holding up her gla.s.s to toast again. 'May you discover many things, but may you never know betrayal.' Granny Carmelene's lips grew tight and thin, and for the first time I could see a resemblance to Mum.

'So it's not only that Mum isn't forgiving you, but also that you've never forgiven her?'

'Something like that,' said Granny Carmelene, looking away. 'Time doesn't always heal,' she added under her breath.

'Why did you send Mum a present, then? At Christmas.'

'Because years and years of not forgiving is exhausting, and I was hoping to get to you, Sunday. I did it for you.'

It was pretty hard to get over that conversation, I can tell you. Granny Carmelene was all gla.s.sy eyed and inward while we ate dinner, and I felt awful for forcing her to remember things that made her unhappy. I think it's what They call being a killjoy. Still, it was a dead relief to find out the reasons for the divorce. I could see how one divorce could cause another, and how not knowing the real truth could make you get all your opinions and feelings in a muddle. I felt bad for being so angry with Mum. I mean, it wasn't exactly her fault that Grandpa Henry was a ladies' man. And it must have been awful to get the blame. With all those bad feelings inside it's no wonder she's addicted to cigarettes. I wanted to go back to Mum's a to go home a right away, which wasn't such an easy thing to want, on account of being half way across Ba.s.s Strait on a secret adventure. But it was good to feel like home was really home again a even if it did have a lot of new rules and a whiteboard.

I woke to the sound of Granny Carmelene zipping her bag. It felt very early. I knelt on my bed and peered out the porthole.

'We're less than an hour away, Sunny, just enough time for some breakfast.' Granny Carmelene was already dressed. 'Should I meet you down in the cafeteria?' she asked.

I wasn't that hungry to be honest. I still had a tummy full of dinner, not to mention the hummingbird cake we'd had for supper in our cabin, before bed. But I agreed to meet her in the cafeteria because I was feeling super-grateful. Not only had Granny Carmelene finally revealed the answer to the biggest mystery of my life, but she had also introduced me to an entirely forgotten food group. Peas! Can you believe neither Mum nor Dad had ever given them to me before? Honestly, I think I should call the Kid's Help Line. Peas are delicious and perfectly round and really fun to eat . . . but I know I'm on a tangent, so I'll get back to the story. And as if there is anyone reading this who has never tried a pea.

'Bring the map down with you, Sunny,' said Granny Carmelene as she left the cabin, 'so we're clear on exactly where we need to go. I'm thinking we skip the A1 and take the B13. The back roads always make a nicer journey.'

Granny Carmelene took a pair of large round sungla.s.ses and a pair of short leather driving gloves from the glove box. I liked the way she drove the car a sort of too slow, but in a good way that made turning corners last longer. I was more comfortable with her now, and I didn't have to feel bad about not knowing what to talk about, or worry about saying dumb things to stop myself from blurting out things that I shouldn't mention. Finding out the answer to a mystery was just as relieving as getting rid of a secret. It's as though no matter which side of a secret you are on, that secret's got a hook through you, pulling you about, like a fish caught on a line.

I checked the map and directed us out of Devonport and onto the B13. The sun was gentle through the gla.s.s. I closed my eyes and felt it warm my face for a few moments, wanting to go back to sleep. But I was the navigator, so I pulled my attention back to the map so as not to miss the turn-off for Mole Creek. I thought about school and how I was meant to be there and how far away I was from being anywhere at all.

Granny Carmelene eased the car into a park at King Solomon's Caves. We were the only ones there, I guess because it was a Monday and most people do cave visits on weekends.

'With any luck we'll have a private tour,' said Granny Carmelene as she locked the car. 'What a G.o.dsend!'

We bought two tickets for the next tour from Perry, the tour guide. Apparently no one is allowed to go into the caves alone. You might be tempted to graffiti them, I suppose. I'd never met anyone called Perry before, which made me think it could be a Tasmanian name in particular. It happens like that you know.

We were a little early, which is common for on-time people, kind of like getting to see the sun rise while everyone else was still asleep.

Perry told us some facts about the caves before we went inside: how they were discovered (the farmer in the twenties, chasing the wallaby); how they were nine metres below the surface (gulp!); and how we'd be going through a series of natural chambers full of stalact.i.tes and stalagmites which were formed over millions and millions of years from water droplets seeping through rock crystals and minerals back when Australia was part of Gondwana. Then he took us down a narrow sloping path towards the opening, and Granny Carmelene clutched my hand.

The first thing I noticed was the temperature dropping. Maybe we'll all be living in caves when global warming goes nuts? Maybe Osama Bin Laden is onto something with all that cave-hiding although, come to think of it, he's probably all holed up in a Gucci cave with gold-leaf stalact.i.tes. I wondered if I should change my school design project to a cave. Granny Carmelene must have read my mind.

'Is this not the greatest work of art, Sunny?' she said as we made our way between two enormous stalact.i.te columns. They were wet and glistening, as if alive. I touched one and it was cold, which made it seem dead and alive all at the same time. I looked up to the ceiling, which was one of the highest I've ever seen and not at all what I was expecting from a cave.

'Of all our earthly endeavours, Sunny, all the great works of architects and engineers, and artists a to think that this has been here all along. Just think, some of our most respected minds have merely been reproducing nature without even knowing it.'

'Gosh,' I said, thinking that maybe I had inherited the tangent thing from Granny Carmelene. Just like I've obviously inherited a gene for divorce.

'When G.o.d wants you to do something, Sunday, you think it's your own idea.'

It felt like being inside the stomach of an enormous slumbering beast, but one that smelled like rock. The walls were pinkish, which Perry said was because of the iron in the rock. In some places the colour turned more yellow, which was apparently due to calcium. There were stalact.i.tes and stalagmites everywhere, which sometimes looked as though they were dripping from the ceiling, and in other places as though they were melting out of the walls. Some had even joined together to form pillars of curtained rock that you could squeeze through, like a doorway.

We went deeper and deeper into the earth and each chamber was slightly different, and slightly colder than the last. Perry showed us the original entrance in the ceiling where the wallaby had fallen in, and I wondered if the wallaby had ever got out again and hoped it hadn't broken anything in the fall.

Granny Carmelene squeezed my hand. 'Isn't it marvellous, Sunny?'

'I've never seen anything like it,' I said. 'It's like being inside a lung.'

'Or inside the womb of the great mother,' she murmured.

'Or a cathedral,' I whispered as we squeezed through an opening into the last chamber.

'Ah, yes,' she said. 'This is the place.' And she took a deep breath and held it in.

Perry must have sensed something because he stopped talking about the caves and said he'd give us time to be alone. The rock formations were like the pipes of the biggest organ I'd ever seen, and a shaft of light shone through a crack in the ceiling.

Granny Carmelene became very quiet and very still, and leant into me, not letting go of my hand. I wasn't sure what to do, or what there was to do, other than to sort of prop her up and sway back at her with the same amount of sway she had towards me.

She started humming as we swayed. Then the hum turned into a type of singing, as though her voice was a crystal clear musical instrument. The sound bounced all over the cave walls and back at me, making my body s.h.i.+ver. I felt warm then suddenly cold, as though I was stretching out of my body, then shrinking back in again.

Granny Carmelene's voice was like nothing I'd ever heard before. And all the echoes made it sound like a whole choir, which reminded me of harps and lyres and angels. I know you probably won't believe this, but I really did see an angel, disappearing up and fading into the shaft of light. I really did.

That night on the Spirit of Tasmania I wrote a postcard to my little baby nearly-born sister, Flora.

Willow jumped and leapt and spun all around me when I came home from school on Tuesday. I could hardly get in the front gate.

She raced up and down the driveway and did laps of the Hills hoist while I was getting the spare key out from its hiding place under the brick near the shed. Boris was watching from up on the garden wall, hissing as Willow sped past.

'Come on, girl,' I said. 'Let's have ourselves a bit of couch time while no one's home.'

There was a note from Mum on the kitchen table.

I kicked off my shoes and lay back on the couch. I had so many big feelings churning around all at once, and I wasn't sure which one to pay the most attention to. I was happy for Granny Carmelene that she got to go to King Solomon's caves, but sad because it had felt like she was saying goodbye. I mean, what else could it have been, given that there was an angel? And I felt guilty about Mum, and how I'd done so much behind her back a and for how I had thought she was so cold-hearted. I felt relieved to be home alone, just like the good old days, and better about Claud and me, and excited about Flora, who was coming really soon. It was all too much.

I closed my eyes and imagined myself up to seat 44K, but I was plonked back on the couch again because both 44K and 44J were occupied by loud Americans, and the rest of the flight was completely full. So I turned the TV on, which is the next best thing when you really need to avoid your feelings.

Mum and I walked down to the back-room restaurant at the Elwood RSL. I actually liked it far better before the grumpy new owners took all the giant wooden salad servers off the wall and painted everything beige and hung a boring picture. I mean, salad bowls on the wall are far more interesting, but maybe that's just me wanting everything to stay the same, no matter how much Mum keeps saying: the only thing that never changes, is that everything changes. Boy, am I tired of hearing that one.

We ordered our dinners and sat down. I really wanted to tell Mum about the Spirit of Tasmania, but I couldn't, which is another reason why secrets are totally bad news. Mum would have loved to hear about the cabins and the tiny little windows, not to mention the caves.

'Did you hear any news on Buster's mum, Sunny?'

'They still haven't found her,' I said. 'They think she may be sailing to Vanuatu with some guy she met who needed a cook on his boat. That's what her last boss said anyway, the one on Great Keppel Island.'

'You'd think she'd at least write,' Mum said, sipping her red wine.

'Yeah, she's not being exactly motherly,' I said, and then I remembered how Granny Carmelene hadn't been exactly motherly either, and I felt bad again, for both of them.

Mum must have read my mind because right after the waiter brought our meals to the table, she looked me right in the eye and said, 'Sunny, you haven't contacted your grandmother, have you? You haven't broken your promise?'

So that I didn't have to tell a lie, I said, 'Would you care if she died, Mum?' and focussed very hard on cutting my chicken.

'I'd care, Sunny. I'd hope she died in peace. I'd hope she didn't suffer. I'd hope her life was fulfilled. I don't wish her any harm, but that doesn't mean we have a relations.h.i.+p, not one that works. It's not going to change anything when she dies. Dying has nothing to do with it, Sunny.'

'Do you want some pepper?' I asked, pa.s.sing over the grinder.

'Sunny a you didn't answer my question.'

It wasn't only because I could still hear the faint and gurgled pinging of the Stash-O-Matic all the way at the bottom of the sea, that I ended up telling Mum the truth. It was mostly because my head felt so cluttered, and I was in the habit of having Mum help me get my cluttered feelings in order. Besides, I really wanted to hear her side of the story about Granny Carmelene and Grandpa Henry (because there are always two sides to a story, sometimes even more). I told her everything a even about wagging school and even about going to Tasmania, which meant she'd dob me in to Dad and Steph and I'd get in trouble for lying to them, too. The only thing I didn't tell was about Granny Carmelene's condition, because that was a secret that I still felt was important to keep, and not one that involved lying to anybody or sneaking about.

Mum was really angry about the Tasmania part.

'For G.o.d's sake, Sunny, what if the d.a.m.n boat had sunk?' She called the waiter over and asked for another gla.s.s of red wine.

But I hardly noticed the trouble I was in at all, and hardly listened to a thing Mum said. Besides, I wasn't necessarily sorry about what I'd done, just about the order I did it in. Finally Mum stopped talking and gave a deep sigh.

'I just wanted to help you and Granny make up,' I said. 'I really thought I could.'

'I know, love. I know you were trying to figure things out,' said Mum, reaching over to hold my hand.

'And you just wouldn't give me any answers, and-'

'It's painful for me, Sunny, to be blamed all these years for something I shouldn't have even had to know about. If I'd told my mother what I knew, it would have caused more trouble than I thought I could handle, and I really wanted to believe it wasn't happening, so I just ignored it and hoped it wasn't real. I convinced myself it wasn't true a not to mention how angry I was with my father and Aunt Clementine.'

'Granny's own sister! And I just thought having a brother would be bad.'

'It's what you call a double betrayal, Sunny. It's the worst sort.'

All that trouble had made me lose my appet.i.te, so I drew my knife and fork together and Mum did too, even though she'd hardly touched her meal either. 'I hope the chef doesn't take it personally,' she smiled.

'Mum, I like Granny Carmelene. I don't like how she was with you, but I like how she is with me.'

'It's all right, Sunny,' Mum said. 'I understand. I used to like her too, you know.' And she looked hard up to the ceiling and tipped her head back a little, to try to make her tears go back in.

Before I went to bed I snuck outside with the cordless phone and rang Granny Carmelene. I was worried about her coming back from Tasmania to an empty house, even though I'm sure for her it was nothing new.

'I'm perfectly fine, thank you, Sunday. I feel remarkably refreshed, actually, and came home to the most wonderful news from my art dealer. Would you believe, he's managed to locate one of the most precious maps on earth, an original, one of the old Chinese ones I told you about, from the fourteen hundreds?'

'That's amazing,' I said.

'It is indeed. I can't wait for you to see it, Sunday. It's made me sing with joy all day!'

Dad was dead angry when Mum told him about my secret trip to Tasmania, especially as Steph was about to have the baby.

That's the trouble with divorced parents who are still friendly: you can't get away with half the stuff that kids do who have the sort of divorced parents who swap them over in the playground on Wednesday afternoons and only speak about whose turn it is to pay for things. Mum and Dad spent ages on the phone thinking up a suitable punishment. I was just hoping Mum didn't talk it over with Carl because he'd come up with a beauty, for sure. Can you imagine? It would be dishes duty for the rest of my life, I reckon. You'd think Mum and Dad would at least have some compa.s.sion, though. I mean, I couldn't tell them about Granny Carmelene's illness, but I did at least own up to my crime. Surely that should lighten my sentence?

Meanwhile, Boris had taken over Willow's dog bed. Every time Willow snuck past, Boris stood up and growled, swiping at Willow with a front paw. Boris also ate Willow's dinner. Willow just sat like the Sphinx, but with her head on the floor, and waited until he had finished. Because Willow had nowhere to sleep at night she'd taken to sneaking onto the bottom bunk in my room. n.o.body had noticed, so I let her keep doing it. Besides, I was worried about Willow becoming depressed. I told Buster about it when we were practising goals before school. He knew all about dogs, which not only made him far more interesting than I'd given him credit for and possibly even nice (don't tell!) but I thought he might also know some sort of way to help, or at least cheer Willow up.

'Cats always win in the end,' he said. 'But I'll think of something.'

'Buster's going to give us a hand with Pizza-A-Go-Girl tonight,' said Claud. 'He's even got some new pizza ideas. Haven't you, Buster?' Claud nudged him with her elbow and gave him the eyebrow.

'Yep, might be just what you need,' he smiled, before shooting his second swish in a row. Buster's idea of just what I need was a bit of a worry. Especially when Claud told me she'd caught Buster pas.h.i.+ng the mirror when she accidentally walked in on him in the bathroom. Can you imagine? Whether he was pas.h.i.+ng the mirror 'cos he loved himself, or whether he was practising so that he could pounce on Claud, pas.h.i.+ng a mirror is just about as wrong-town as you can get! Even Claud thinks so.