The loudness of unsaid t.., p.1
The Loudness of Unsaid Things, page 1
Hilde Hinton has been a dedicated big sister to Connie and Samuel Johnson her whole life. She avoided being a writer for many years but has finally succumbed. The Loudness of Unsaid Things is her debut novel.
She lives in a boisterous house in Melbourne with a revolving door for the temporarily defeated and takes great pride in people leaving slightly better than when they arrived. Her children are mostly loved.
Contents
About the Author
Title Page
Dedication
The Institute
Part One: The Girl
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Pole Dancing
Part Two: A Growing Pile Of Unsaid Things
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Intake
ADC
Part Three: Left Unsaid
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
The Moon Is Big Tonight
An Accidental Syllogism
Part Four: Said Things
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Copyright
TO SAM AND THE BOYS, FOR RUNNING AROUND THE BACK PORCH WITH WINDMILL ARMS WHEN I REVEALED THIS BOOK WAS GOING TO BE AN ACTUAL BOOK.
THE INSTITUTE
The Institute. For the damaged, the dangerous, the not-quite-rights. The big mistake-makers, the ill at ease, the outliers. A hot pot. They use sur names in The Institute. Impersonal; respectful. Everyone was called Miss. The women. The workers. Miss this. Miss that. When Miss Kaye first started working at The Institute, she found ‘Miss’ odd. It was far from a school. Farther than Mars.
The Institute had well-manicured gardens. The women worked on them during the day between appointments. Miss Kaye never knew where she was going to work within The Institute until she arrived for the day. Or night. It’s a twenty-four hour business. She looked at the running sheet and was not disappointed to see her name on ‘the grounds’. Walk, make sure all was in order, chat idly to the clients, admire the odd flower. Time goes slower in the grounds. Non-eventful. The grounds, like the buildings, don’t contain time. It could be 1950 or 2050. Utilitarian buildings – grey. Concrete rooms. No sign of era. No soft furnishings. Likewise, the gardens. Plants could be from 1950, and unless there’s an apocalypse, a flower will be a flower in 2050. No sign of time in the clients either. Uniformed; unmanicured. Same with staff. Waiting. Wandering. No time.
Miss Kaye tried to make herself smaller in the gardens, just as she needed to be bigger in the buildings. Her presence was an intrusion as she walked past the women clipping shrubs or shovelling tanbark. There was an edging plant that turned up everywhere. The leaves didn’t know if they were grey or green. The flowers pure white sousaphones.
‘What are those called?’ she asked a waif pulling weeds.
‘Silver Moons, Miss Kaye,’ the waif said in a barely-there voice.
‘How do you know?’ Not a lot of trust in The Institute.
‘I’m learning horticulture,’ she said as she stood and put her hand on her mini hip. Hard not to be defensive when it’s in the air. Pea soup.
‘Good for you,’ Miss Kaye said as she nodded approval. In fifty steps she would reach her favourite rock. It was so flat. A stage. And as big as a car; if it was flat. It was elevated and surrounded by Silver Moons and smaller rocks. Although they weren’t symmetrical, it didn’t disturb her. She glanced ahead. There was a woman standing on the rock. That was against the rules. The meander became a brisk walk.
‘Get down, Miss,’ Miss Kaye said firmly.
‘NOOooo waaaay, there’s a snake, Miss Kaye. A fuckin’ snaaAAAake!’ she said, dancing on the rock stage. Miss Kaye fought back her absolute desire to join her on the rock. It was not the rules. The yelling and dancing brought more women over. Tentatively getting closer. Miss Kaye put one hand on her radio. As the women drifted in, Dancing Girl told them there was a snake. An older lady with a water-stained leather face stood up straight and asked how big it was. Dancing Girl put out her pointer fingers like someone had scored a goal, but her hands weren’t that far apart.
‘It’s a baby,’ Leather Lady said, ‘we need to be more concerned about the mother.’ Commanding. Like Miss Kaye should be. She darted her leather face from rock to rock. Everyone else froze. Leather Lady took a step to the left, crouched down, stood up, took a step to the right, crouched down. Everyone else only breathed. But only when it was necessary.
For a moment Miss Kaye questioned her professionalism. It was time for her to take charge, to direct the women away from the baby snake. But she didn’t. Baby snakes still bite. Leather Lady took a large step south-west, away from the group, and swooped down to the ground. She shot her arm out like lightning. When it emerged from a group of Silver Moons, it held a wriggling mini snake. The girls screamed and ran. Except Dancing Girl, who threw her drink bottle to Miss Kaye.
‘PUT IT IN THERE,’ she said loudly, crouching down into a ball.
Miss Kaye just stood there watching the running women and wishing she was one of them. Parched with fear, she opened the bottle and held it out to Leather Lady. She turned her head towards the snake just enough to look brave. Leather Lady dropped the baby snake into the bottle. Plop. Miss Kaye slammed the lid on, turned it more tightly than she’d ever turned a lid and held the bottle between two fingers at its very top.
‘You can get down now,’ Leather Lady said to Dancing Girl, who jumped down from the rock and stood as close to her as she could. Her protector.
‘Oh. My. God. You. Are. A. Hero!’ Dancing Girl said. Miss Kaye could see the Chinese whisper line that would follow this yarn. Umbilical cord thick. Hopefully the story would get so much larger than life that she would be portrayed as the opposite of how she felt. There’s no visible fear when you work in The Institute. Or you don’t work in The Institute.
Other staff members approached and said the Snake Catcher was on his way. Word had spread. Miss Kaye tried to hand over the bottle, but other things became more important to the others. Things in the distance. Pretend things.
‘Open the lid, we don’t want to suffocate it,’ Leather Lady called over her shoulder.
‘Yeah, we don’t want it to, like, diiieee,’ Dancing Girl added, her arm draped over Leather Lady. Morals get bigger with distance. Miss Kaye mimicked the motion of a partial bottle opening. The women nodded in approval and went on their way. It was normally one hundred and sixty steps down to the front gate, but it was a lot less with a snake in a bottle.
PART ONE
THE GIRL
CHAPTER 1
The girl crawled into the space between the glove box and the floor of the HR Holden and curled herself up as tight as she could – but not before she’d checked that all four door locks were firmly pressed down. The tops of the locks looked like golf tees and they had perfect swirls cut into the plastic. They felt like fingerprints looked.
‘I’m just going to the chemist,’ her father had said, ‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’
The amusement dancing around his eyes annoyed her. She had told him her fears and he explained that facing them was character building. Although she was only seven, she’d had her fill of character building.
Boland and Eastwood were criminals who had kidnapped a bunch of kids from a nearby town just a few months ago and it had frightened her to the end of her toes. Whether it had been coincidence or not, she had been given a golden Labrador within a few days of the kidnapping. She’d been on and on about having a dog for as long as she could remember. For at least half her life anyway. Whether or not the dog was related to the kidnapping no longer concerned her. He was handsome and his tongue was big and floppy, it made her laugh. She knew she would never tire of him for as long as she liked aniseed ice cream – and that was at least forever.
Ever since the kidnapping she had been waiting for Boland and Eastwood to escape from jail and kidnap her. Life had changed. When she was alone, the threat became so imminent and inevitable that she had taken to hiding, as she was now in the car, balled up so tight she could surely fit in a matchbox. Since the kidnapping, sleeping between her Holly Hobbie sheets had become fitful and difficult and lengthy. Catching the Hepburn to Daylesford school bus was now a test of how long she could hold her breath. She could probably swim the whole pool underwater now. Not the local pool – the one they used in the Olympics. She would picture how far along the pool she would get as she waited for Boland and Eastwood to come to take her bus, hoping all the while that she wouldn’t blow up like the blueberry girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The taunting from the kids who went to the state school didn’t bother her anymore. Nor did the fact that she had to wear a dumb tie and they could wear whatever they wanted. No one would care about that stuff o
There was no thought required when her dad asked her what name suited the dog.
‘Boland, so when he kidnaps me he’ll let me go because I named a whole dog after him,’ she said as she tugged on his velvety ears. When it happened, she would stand tall and pretend not to be scared – she’d push her fear to the ends of her fingers. Boland would be so impressed he wouldn’t notice her fingers were blue because she was so scared. Not many people had dogs named after them.
Then it happened.
Boland was at the chemist too. He had gone behind the car and he was so stealthy that she hadn’t even heard him trying the door handles. But mastermind criminals aren’t stupid enough to make a sound while trying the doors. He must have used his eyes and seen that the golf tees were firmly pushed down before he realised he needed a plan B to kidnap her. The only option he had left was to push the car to wherever kidnappers take kids. Panic sat at the bottom of her stomach with the cream puff she’d eaten ten minutes before. It was tight in there and she wished she hadn’t eaten it, even though cream puffs were her favourite after aniseed ice cream. The car was moving. Boland and Eastwood must be pushing it. She reminded herself to remember Boland was the boss and to make sure she gave him more attention than Eastwood. But where to? Probably a barn. That’s usually where victims were taken. Even though she lived in the country, she didn’t know what a barn looked like. Except that they were big, and no one would hear her scream.
Before she could process her actions, she peeked her eyes over the dash and through the bottom of the windscreen. The car was heading straight for the chemist. In Daylesford, people parked perpendicular in the middle of the street as well as alongside the shops. Perpendicular was one of her new favourite words. Maths always made the best words, like equilateral. Maths even found a new way to say pie.
‘Oh my god,’ she thought to herself. She’d never really believed in God, even though she did her Holy Communion. She didn’t believe in God because she couldn’t see him, but she could believe in Boland even though she hadn’t actually seen him herself, because the bus full of kids he took had seen him. Besides, even if God was real he wouldn’t like her because she hadn’t respected the wafers. If only she had swallowed them instead of seeing how long she could keep them in her mouth before they disintegrated. She and her friend Claire always poked their tongues out at each other from across the church aisles with the wafers balanced on them, to see whose could last longest. One time, Sister Sylvester had seen their competition and she had her bum smacked with the metre ruler for being disrespectful to God. Sister Sylvester had lifted her skirt to hit her in front of the whole school. She was wearing her orange undies that day and everyone saw them. It made the ruler hurt less because the orangeness of her undies was so much more painful. Fat Donna put an orange on her desk for a week after that. No; God was not going to help her now, so she put her head down as far as she could and hoped Boland would make a mistake.
BANG!
The side of her head hit the glove box so hard it hurt more than the orange undies. Through the throbbing she tried to stay calm and think of dog Boland’s big floppy tongue that somehow managed to fit in his mouth, even though it was so big. She tried to focus on the humour dancing in her dad’s eyes, even though it usually made her mad. Her dad’s eyes were a happy place. She wanted to see his face so badly. She told herself to think of the stupid orange curl that always stuck out of Sister Sylvester’s head thing. That always made her giggle; but not today.
She didn’t know whether she was going to be sick in her own lap when she realised the car was no longer moving. All her bravery was summoned and she peeked her eyes up above the dash again. The front of their car was in the side door of another car parked alongside the shops. There wasn’t any sign of Boland or Eastwood. Cool. Boland buggered up, like the time she got caught pouring sand in the back of Fat Donna’s chair-bag so her books would be all gritty. She’d only wanted to get even because Donna left oranges on her desk and dobbed on her, even for thoughts. Boland and Eastwood must have had to run away when all the shoppers and shopkeepers came rushing out to see what was going on. She couldn’t believe they had made a mistake.
‘Unlock the door,’ her dad kept saying really loudly as he pelted his hands on the driver-side window. His eyes weren’t full of fun.
She put her fingers either side of the golf tee lock and lifted. He pulled her up through the car and past the steering wheel and gave her a huge hug. She felt like she was in heaven, even though she didn’t believe in it.
‘Boland came and tried to get me, Dad,’ she said in between small gasps because her chest was squashed. ‘But he ran away when we hit the other car,’ she added, boiling with relief. She thought she heard him say a naughty word and something about the handbrake, but she was so full of happy and relief that she didn’t have enough room to listen.
CHAPTER 2
She lay there between her Holly Hobbie sheets in the new concrete house thinking how slow birthdays come around, but how quick changes happen. One minute her dad was sitting her down saying that the family needed to move back to the city and SHAZAM, here she was. Her bedroom was in the front of the house and the street felt close. Back in Daylesford the street was a dirt road ages from the house. There was more noise here. She liked having a front fence. It was thick like the concrete walls of the house. It was perfect to walk along. She could be a gymnast on a balance beam – even though the fence was fatter and she never actually did backflips. But she could stand like she’d just landed and look over at the imaginary judges holding up scorecards. It was also a great place to just sit and watch people and cars go by. There were so many people here. Although she had lived in the city before moving to Daylesford, all she really remembered was a lady called Carmel who knitted her some mittens. Other than that, there was no pre-Daylesford. Strange how her dad said they were going back when she didn’t remember being there in the first place.
What she did know was her mum seemed happy about it. She didn’t see her mum much anymore. She floated in and out. It was hard not knowing which side of Mum she was going to get; maybe it was character building like facing her fears by being scared. Was her mum going to be a woman sitting in the corner living in her own brain, or a woman with big enthusiastic eyes wanting to dance and prance while she did normal stuff like stir the porridge? Stirring the porridge was a serious business that required the same pace all the way through to prevent lumps. It was meant to be her job anyway, not her mum’s. Once, when she was stirring, she saw a ladybird on the wall near the stove and she lost her rhythm. Why a ladybird would want to crawl up a long blank wall was a mystery and before she knew it the porridge was lumpy again. When she was smaller she had a little kid’s chair that she would drag over to the stove. Now she was bigger she didn’t need the little chair, but it sure made a great platform to stir the porridge from back then.
After they moved to the concrete house in the city, her mum moved out to a little flat a couple of kilometres away in North Melbourne. It was made of thick bricks too. She knew the flat was in North Melbourne because that was her football team and she could almost see the players’ jumper numbers when she looked out her mum’s new kitchen window from the eighth storey. The Galloping Gasometer stood out a mile because he was big and square and different from the other players. She had to go and see her mum every second weekend no matter what. She had tried to talk to her dad about staying home, but he said no. ‘Your mum’s your mum,’ he said, every time. And that was that. Even though she knew very well that her mum was her mum she still didn’t want to go. But some things weren’t worth mentioning. Final, like the final siren.
One day she told Helen Gallos that she didn’t much like her mum. She was full of courage and chicken twist chips at the time. Helen Gallos lived down the road in McCracken Street, Kensington. It sounded good when you said it really slowly, like a prime minister. ‘Mc-Crack’n Streeet, Ken-ziiinng-ton!’ Before her dad would let her go for bike rides in the area she had to chant ‘Sixty-four Mc-Crack’n Street Ken-zing-ton’ so that if she got lost, she could help herself find her way home. She wasn’t scared anymore because Boland, the person not the dog, didn’t even live where there was concrete. Unless there was concrete in jail. She didn’t worry about him much anymore since they’d moved. He’d never find her here. She could hardly find herself. At first she’d cried when her dad had said that the dog Boland couldn’t come to the city. Now that she lived in the concrete she could see that he was better off back home. Her dad had found a nice farm for him to live on.
