Molly's Dreams

 

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Prologue

A rocky headland stood above the long curve of beach, brooding and sinister in the dull light of late afternoon. A pathway rose from the beach, carefully climbing through the rocks to reach the windswept grassland where occasional low bushes of coastal tea trees and banksias crouched like old men hunched over a campfire.

A young family was out for an afternoon walk along the cliff top path; the husband and wife were holding hands and talking, their heads leaning toward each other with loving familiarity. I could hear the children laughing and squealing as they ran past the spot where I was standing silently. They didn’t notice me though; I was invisible to them.

Across the bay, the white sail of a yacht was disappearing over the horizon. It was just a speck now, drifting on the breeze and drawn by some inexorable force to leave this shoreline and seek adventure elsewhere; sailing away from its past through the whitecaps and the ocean swell.

I watched the family walk on, before moving myself slowly to the edge of the cliff, arms open wide to reach for the clouds drifting in the baby blue sky. My skin was pale against the dark bushes that clawed at my legs and left red scratch marks. The late afternoon breeze whipped long auburn hair around my face, its chill blowing through my thin cotton dress and pressing it against the curve of my belly. But I didn’t feel the cold. All I could feel was the ache in my heart and the roaring confusion of painful words in my head, the taste of salt on my lips.

Shadows of cloud raced across the grassland, flowing over me with dark trailing ribbons that painted my face grey. The only sound now was the rushing wind and the cry of a sea eagle in its solitude, so hopelessly lonely and unwanted.

Wild surf on the rocks far below beckoned to me, promising an escape from all the turmoil, the loneliness, the bruises on my heart and face. So many years had passed by as the sea eroded those rocks into jumbled shapes, so beautiful and eternal; so many choices that had led me to this one point in time. All I needed to do was take a step forward to make my next move and sink gracefully into the waiting depths. That was the only choice left, the only path that was clear to me. My hands had stopped shaking; there was no more fear, just quiet certainty and all the time in the world.

I closed my eyes and felt the tears on my cheeks. From a distance I heard a voice calling out across the coastal heath. “Molly,” it called desperately, rising and falling with the wind.

“Molly, where are you?”

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Chapter 1

It was my fourteenth birthday and I was officially not a little girl anymore, as if anybody noticed or cared. I didn’t want to lift my head off the pillow and my eyes were sore from crying. I hadn’t slept very much through the night, as usual. The nightmares still bothered me when I did fall asleep so I usually just let myself lay there for hours staring into the darkness. Sometimes I could see stars shining through my bedroom window and I watched them move slowly across the night sky. I could feel time standing still around me while the rest of the world kept spinning in ever increasing circles.

I rolled out of bed and my feet hit the cold floor. The clouds outside were grey and the wind had blown all the autumn leaves away. The bare branches against the window were pointing at me. “Look at the freaky teenager,” they said.

I couldn’t bear to look at my face in the mirror, so I got dressed with my back turned. My school uniform was so drab; black shoes, grey stockings, black skirt, a white blouse and an ugly grey school jumper. I usually wore my hair tied up so that I didn’t have to be bothered with brushing it. Nobody likes red hair anyway.

I skipped breakfast as usual and gave Mum a quick kiss goodbye. “You should eat something, darling,” she said as I ran out the back door. I just waved my hand and headed for my bike. “Don’t forget to come straight home this afternoon.” No mention of my birthday or anything. She had probably forgotten all about it.

I climbed on my bike and rode down the laneway. This was the best bit, feeling the cold wind biting against my cheeks. It was almost like punishment, except it made me feel free. I usually liked to take my time on the way to school but I rode fast because there was something I needed to do on the other side of town first.

My breath was rasping in my throat as I pushed my way up the hill and coasted to a stop. I walked my bike through the gates of the crematorium and leant it against a tree. “Well, here I am again,” I whispered. “It’s my birthday today, but I guess you already know that.” The branches above swayed as I stood there in silence, tears running down my cheeks. It had been five years but it still hurt and I missed him every day. The minutes ticked away and I took a deep breath. “I’d better go, I’m already late.” I walked back to my bike and rode off to school.

I was late again, of course, and got put on lunchtime detention. It was the third time that week. I didn’t mind though because it meant I didn’t have to talk to anyone or be out in the playground with all the other kids. I could just sit in the classroom and read. I hated school anyway; I was terrible at all my subjects except English. Actually, I was bad at English too because I just got zero on that last assignment. We were meant to keep a journal of all the books we had read during the year and write about them. I had read more than a dozen books and had filled up my journal; but I forgot to hand it in on time so I got a big fat zero.

Mum had tried really hard to get me interested in an activity of some sort. She said I spent far too much time sitting in my bedroom with my nose in a book. It was time I did something like making friends and playing outside. I had never told her about school and how all the kids thought I was a weirdo.

Last year Mum bought me a guitar. I lasted one lesson because it hurt my fingers so much that I never touched it again. She then made me sign up for the school choir. She said it was because I used to love singing when I was younger and I needed to discover that again. I went to practice once and heard some boys laughing at me. One of them even came over afterwards and told me I was singing flat. So I never went back again. Then Mum tried netball, soccer, athletics, and a heap of other things. I proved I was completely uncoordinated and hopeless at all of them and just wished that she would give up. In the end she bought me a blank notebook in frustration. She handed it to me and said, “Why don’t you just write down the things you want to do?”

The notebook sat on the desk in my bedroom for months before I touched it. It was that English assignment that got me started. One afternoon, I thought I would see if I could write about how different books made me feel. I sat there staring at the blank first page for ages, not sure how to start, but then the words just started flowing.

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If I were to wind the clock back and start all over again, I would go back to that snowy winter night in July, so many years ago, when my mother first suggested that her husband should call the neighbours to come and look after the children while he rushed her to the hospital.

Three little girls and their big brother were tucked up in bed when Mrs Smith came from next door to sit with them through the night. Outside, the icy air was filled with occasional snow showers as silver clouds blocked out the stars that heralded the impending arrival of a new baby. Somewhere in the heavens, forces were aligning to influence this baby’s destiny.

The heater in the car struggled to warm itself against the freezing night as my father hunched over the steering wheel, peering into the darkness and trying to follow the road through the frozen windscreen. Beside him my mother sat calmly, rugged up in a heavy overcoat and thick blanket. She had been through this a number of times before and the excitement was starting to become part of her routine. With her body aching from periodic contraction pains and the weight of the baby in her belly, my mother let her mind wander as she closed her eyes and waited patiently as the car found its way down from the mountain pass.

She thought about her children still asleep in bed at home. They will be well looked after for a few days; it will be exciting for them to have the routine broken and Mum away for a change. There will soon be another little mouth to feed and extra loads of washing though; the older girls will have to help more around the house now. The baby’s cot has already been moved into the bedroom and small dresses and nappies unpacked, so there won’t be much to do at home at first. She opened her eyes and watched her reflection in the window, tinged with green from the dashboard lights, and sighed.

It all started at Lithgow, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney, surrounded by coal mines, brick works, pottery and iron works; the railway line connected to the outside world, cutting through sandstone cliffs into crisp mountain air; through tall gum trees that clung to frost covered slopes of heath, grevillea and waratahs; snow filled gullies that melt to feed fast flowing streams splashing through bushfire scarred scrub. It was there, on that snowy winter night, where I took my first look at the world and cried.

I had been in no hurry to leave the cosy world where I was part of my mother, but eventually I poked my head out to take my first timid breath.

“It’s a girl!” the doctor announced as he placed me in my mother’s arms.

“Molly,” my mother whispered as she gazed for the first time into my blue eyes, her face still flushed and tired. The busy nurses buzzed around the room and took me away from her to be wrapped in a hospital blanket that was coarse against my soft pink skin. The hospital ward was white and scrubbed clean, cold and impersonal, but everything was shiny under the bright fluorescent lights. My mother was allowed to nurse me for a little while but I was soon taken away again so that she could rest and I was put in a crib in the nursery with a whole lot of other small babies, all wrapped in pink and blue blankets. Some were sleeping soundly and others were like me, crying for the gentle touch of their mothers.

After a week in the hospital that was spent sleeping and learning to feed from my mother’s breast, I was taken home slowly in the car, cradled in her warm arms and oblivious of the glimpses of sandstone gorges and mist rising from gnarled gum trees. My father turned the car onto a dirt track at the back of the railway station, searching for the house that would be my first home. The sky was grey with a cold breeze blowing against my tiny face. Inside the house was ringing with the laughter and squeals of an excited group of children eager to meet their new baby sister.

The house and children were my mother’s whole world. She was a gentle country girl with soft freckled skin and red hair that she always kept cut short. Her days were filled with cooking and cleaning, making beds after the children had left for school, putting loads of washing on, and a thousand other tasks. Throughout the mornings she had the radio turned up loud, dancing around the house as she worked and singing quietly and moving in time to the rhythm of the music. After a short break for lunch, the afternoons were spent sewing as she made new clothes for the children or pretty dresses to sell at the local craft shop. She lost herself sometimes when sewing; moments when there was no thought of time, only the world she saw of colours and shapes as her swift fingers stitched pieces of fabric together. The extra bit of money the dresses brought in helped her make ends meet.

The afternoon sun shone through the window, casting a beam of light on her pretty face and making her hair glow in a reddish-golden halo. She stifled a yawn and looked at the clock. It was getting late in the afternoon and the kids would be home from school soon, and it was nearly time to start getting dinner ready and then feed the baby. She looked across at where I was laying in my cot and smiled when she saw that I was watching her. She was my whole world.

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Chapter 2

I sat in the classroom during lunchtime detention with my writing journal open and stared out the window. I was worried about what Mum was going to say when she saw my school report. My marks were getting worse and worse all the time. She didn’t know that I sat in the classroom every day staring out the window instead of at my school books. I looked down at my journal and started writing again.

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When I first began to be conscious of the world around me, there was a quiet house during the day when it was just my mother and I, then she would take me with her tucked up in a pram on the way to give my father his lunch. From the pram, the world outside the house was all sky and occasional tree branches stretching their fingers out to try and catch birds.

In the afternoon my sisters and brother would come running into the house in a whirlwind of noise and excitement. The air seemed to swirl with laughing children as I was such a tiny baby and they always seemed so big. A smiling face would suddenly appear in front of me, squeezing my hand then running off again. Sometimes they would sit and nurse me for a moment, as I gazed up and listened to their voices talking and laughing.

Night time was much quieter after my father got home from work. As I fell asleep each night I could hear the muffled sounds of the television coming from the next room and the rumble of trains passing by as my mother read stories to me.

I never felt as loved as those moments snuggled on the lounge next to my mother’s warm body where I was safe. I watched her lips moving as she read; pink and gentle, they changed shape so often, and every now and then I could see the tip of her tongue. I moved my lips too, pretending that I was reading silently along with her. As she turned the page, my mother looked at me and smiled.

I smiled back but my head was feeling heavy, like it was full of cotton wool. The cushions were soft against my face, with little buttons that I traced with my fingers. I wondered if tiny little people like the ones in the story lived in villages under those buttons. Then I became tiny as well, so tiny that I could crawl under the pillow button and feel long strands of cotton tickling my face.

By the time I was four years old I had grown from being a baby to be a small child with curly red hair and soft milky white skin and a trace of freckles forming across my nose. Mum called them sun kisses and said they made me look beautiful. All of the excitement from my birth had worn off a bit with the other children though. By now I was just another part of the family, although I was much smaller than the others and always seemed to be a step behind. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t keep up with my sisters and they seemed to be interested in more grown up things than I was.

We had moved away from the mountains to a town near the coast because of Dad’s job. This new world was the bright green of a huge backyard, a big house with a verandah across the front, mango trees, mulberry trees, and lots of open space in between.

Over the road from the house there was a farm that ended up in a swamp at one end. Sometimes I dreamt I was flying across that swamp, looking down on the world as I floated on my silvery wings, until I was suddenly running through water with legs of lead; the lights of my bedroom hung just out of reach of my fingers and I woke up crying as my mother came in and held me until I fell asleep again.

Dinner time each night was full of noise and bustle with everyone sitting at the dining table talking at once. The television blared away in the background as Dad listened to the evening news, competing with cutlery rattling against plates. The girls talked about things that were happening at school, or repeating jokes that were heard during the day, followed by lots of laughter. Sometimes Mum would jump in with a question and set the conversation off in a completely new direction until Dad roared at everyone to be quiet when he wanted to hear something on the news.

After dinner, my sisters could always be found in the kitchen washing the dishes. Catherine was the eldest of the girls at twelve years old; a lot like my mother, she was down to earth and sensible.

She was still wearing her school uniform and her straight brown hair hung down to her shoulders as I watched from my stool at the kitchen bench. Her hands moved with the tea towel as she dried the dishes, while her green bangle bounced up and down her arm. It caught the light and sent diamond sparkles dancing across the kitchen bench; I tried to catch them in my fingers.

Samantha was ten years old and the ring leader, always setting the direction for the other girls to follow. Her hands were covered in long pink rubber gloves as she scrubbed the dishes in the sink and then placed them on the drying rack. She had her back to me and all I could see was her long black ponytail bouncing up and down as she moved back and forth on her bare feet. Every now and then her head turned slightly and I could see the sharp outline of her face.

Jasmine was busy putting the dishes away as Catherine dried them. She was a dark and mysterious eight-year old, a little unsure of herself in the shadow of her two older sisters. She longed to be part of the inner circle with the two older girls but was often left on the outer, so she made up for it by being mischievous and full of fun. Sometimes she was quiet and moody as well, and I often caught her green eyes looking into space, deep in thought. I sometimes wondered what she was thinking, but she never told me because I was just her little sister.

As my sisters washed and dried the dishes together the kitchen became a stage filled with singing, dancing and laughter. “The marching band came down the street,” Samantha sang in a loud voice with her feet marching around the sink.

“And with her head upon his shoulder…” Catherine’s voice was higher and sweeter and it made me think of the wings of a butterfly as she danced across and put her head on Samantha’s shoulder. I wanted to cry because it sounded like such a sad song.

Jasmine joined in for the chorus as she put some more plates back in the cupboard; Catherine and Samantha always sang the verses on their own. I had heard some of the songs they sang being played on the radio during the day, but I didn’t know this one at all; the girls must have learned it at school. I tried to join in and made up the words in my little voice.

“Billy, don’t take your pillow,” I sang from my stool.

“Molly! That’s not how it goes,” laughed Catherine musically.

“Stop being annoying, Molly,” Samantha said with her hands in the sink and flicking her long black ponytail back and forth, just like the cat’s tail. She was always like that, but I wasn’t being annoying; I was just trying to join in.

“Billy, don’t take your pillow,” I started again.

“Mum! Molly is being annoying again!” Samantha called out.

Mum’s voice came back from the lounge room, “Molly, leave the girls alone. Why don’t you come in here and read a book?”

Pouting, I hopped off the stool and wandered into the lounge room. “Come and sit over here, Molly,” Mum said, looking up as I came into the room. She had some sewing on her lap and the television was on. I could still hear the girls singing in the kitchen. Dad was sitting in his arm chair reading the newspaper; he didn’t look up when I came in.

I sat on the lounge and picked up one of my favourite picture books, the one with animals in it. I heard Mum sigh, but I wasn’t sure whether she was tired or frustrated. Dad cleared his throat loudly and Mum looked at me and smiled secretly with her blue-grey eyes, as if to say, ‘I smile just for you’. But she turned back to her sewing and I looked down at my book. I couldn’t read yet but I was going to school next year and I couldn’t wait to learn how to make sense of those black squiggles on the page. I already knew some letters and the sounds they made. “That one is ‘cuh’ for cat,” I said out loud. I wondered where the cat was; maybe he was out chasing mice. Yuk, I wouldn’t want to be a cat and eat mice.

The newspaper rustled as Dad turned the page. “The price of petrol is going up again,” he said. “It’s a wonder anyone can make any money these days.”

“Oh dear,” said Mum, “It never stops.” Her busy fingers painted stitches in the cloth. “I ran into Robyn today. You know, I think her and Paul will get married soon.”

“What makes you think that?” Dad replied.

“Oh, it’s just a feeling. The way she talks about him. She was looking at flowers.” Dad grunted and continued reading the newspaper; Mum kept sewing. “I think it would be lovely if they got married.”

“It’s about time, anyway.”

“’Duh’ for dog,” I said as I turned the page. I don’t like dogs very much because they are scary the way they bark and jump all over you. I’m glad we don’t have a dog. “Woof! Woof woof!”

“Molly, be quiet,” said Mum, “We are trying to watch the television. Just read quietly to yourself, please honey.” The needle stabbed the cloth, leaving a row of neat little stitches. “She will make a beautiful bride.”

“Paul had better get a proper job first,” said Dad. More singing could be heard coming from the kitchen.

“Oh, they’re only young. They have plenty of time; they want to travel first.”

I turned over a few more pages. “Huh for horse.” I had never seen a horse up close, only those ones across the road. They looked nice standing there and eating grass. I wondered what it would be like to ride one. Maybe I could be a princess and ride through my kingdom on a beautiful white horse. Everybody would come out of their houses to see me go past and I would wave back at them.

“I wonder when the wedding will be.” Mum was already sewing the wedding dress in her mind.

“Is that all you can think about?” The newspaper rustled again.

“Sh for sheep.” I like sheep; they are all soft and woolly, I thought to myself as I ran my fingers over the picture. “Baa, baa.”

“Molly! I think it’s time for bed; you are being far too noisy tonight.” I looked up at Mum quickly because she was annoyed with me. “Come on, let’s go and clean your teeth and I’ll tuck you in bed.”

I trotted off to the bathroom and stood on a little stool to reach the sink. I hated the taste of toothpaste; it made my tongue feel all funny.

“Mum,” I said as I climbed in bed, “Do you think I will ever be a princess on a horse?”

“You’re already a princess, sweetheart. Now go to sleep, there’s a good girl.”

“Goodnight Mum.”

“Goodnight Molly.”

As the light went out, I lay in bed thinking about those horses again. I wouldn’t like it if one started to run though. I closed my eyes and saw the neatly trimmed hair of my horse’s mane fluttering in the breeze like the ribbons in my hair. The clip-clop of hooves rang on the pavement as I rode out of the castle courtyard; my long white wedding gown was billowing behind. I was sitting up straight in the saddle because I was a princess, moving serenely through my kingdom, long elegant legs striding across my dream landscape until I eventually fell asleep.

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