Charades by Janette Turner Hospital

beginning of time. My God, he says, what is this?
    It’s my past , she sobs. I can’t get free.
    She is being pulled away from him by the hair, she gasps with pain. First her golden hips slide away through his arms, then her thighs.
    I won’t let you go, he vows. I won’t.
    Already her voice is an echo, fainter than bellbirds: You’ll have to come with me, with me, with me.
    But what about Bea? he calls. I can’t just leave Bea …
    You could leave a baby behind, that’s fair. That’s fair, that’s fair, that’s fair, the echoes call.
    Then Nicholas sees his daughter, the changeling child in the tree ferns, the starling, the glowling, caught in the tangle of creepers.
    Yes, he agrees, that’s fair.
    What kind of charade is this? asks Bea in amazement, staring at the space where Nicholas was, where the baby is.
    That is Charade’s favourite version of the origin of herself, immaculate confection and changeling extraordinaire, bluestocking, semi-orphan, second brat of the Slut of the Mountain; but she has others, one for each day of the week, one for matins and one for evensong, one for before exams and one for the long summer holidays that stretch across December and January, one for cyclone weather, one to tell the bone man down by the curtain fig when the sun is hotter than the black stump that is back of beyond in Alice Springs.
    And she has Bea’s version, which came briefly and abruptly, one day when Charade was in an experimental mood and the suspense was too much for her to handle.
    This was what she did. She hid the photograph in amongst the peas in the chipped enamel basin. Bea sat on the front steps with a colander between her spread knees, Charade hid under the verandah, waiting. Pock, pock: there was the soft sound of the peas being burst open and stripped, then the muted clatter of green pellets hitting the dish. Pock, pock, clatter; pock, pock, clatter; pock, pock, clatter.
    Suddenly: silence.
    Charade, crouching in cobwebs and dust in the crawl space, held herself perfectly still, her eyes on her mother’s face. Ten seconds, twenty seconds. Charade’s muscles screamed. Bea stared into the basin of unshelled peas.
    There was nothing on Bea’s face that Charade could read: not shock, not grief, not anger. Just stillness, like someone waiting for a daydream to lift.
    Thirty seconds.
    Charade’s knees were tucked up under her chin. She thought that she might never be able to unlock her legs, she could feel pain like needles along her calves and behind her knees. She kept her eyes on her mother’s face.
    â€œCharade,” Bea said. “Come on out of there.”
    A bluff, Charade told herself, and did not move.
    â€œWhat is it you want to know?” Bea asked.
    Everything, Charade thought. Everything.
    â€œA photograph,” Bea said, “is no more use than a snakeskin after the snake has crawled out.”
    â€œBut is it my father and Verity Ashkenazy?” demanded Charade, crawling out from the dust.
    â€œThem two kids?” Bea shrugged. “Yes and no. It doesn’t have his smell, her smell, it doesn’t tell you anything at all.” She began to laugh. She stood up on the steps and held the colander of peas high over her head. “We were all mad,” she said. “He was mad, she was mad, Kay was mad, and I was mad. We were all completely bonkers.” She laughed again and whirled the colander like a discus and sent it flying across dusty gerberas and hibiscus clumps into the passionfruit vine. The peas trailed it like a dotted green line.

11
    On Bea-particles and
the Relativity of Scone Making
    â€œWhen you disappear,” Charade asks Koenig, “where do you go?”
    â€œOh, here and there,” he says vaguely “Conferences.”
    â€œSix nights. You were gone six nights without a word.”
    He frowns. Hadn’t he told her? Perhaps not. When the compulsion strikes, he