Secret Scribbled Notebooks

  Kate has three notebooks, the Red,

  Yellow and Blue Notebooks, in which she

  records her life. Through reading,

  writing, living and learning to love,

  she discovers things about herself

  that she never expected.

  Praise for Joanne Horniman’s previous novel,

  A Charm of Powerful Trouble

  ‘A tight, intriguing, beautiful story’ www.theblurb.com

  ‘Not to be missed’ Magpies

  SECRET

  SCRIBBLED

  NOTEBOOKS

  JOANNE HORNIMAN

  First published in 2004

  Copyright © text, Joanne Horniman 2004

  Copyright © cover and text design, Sandra Nobes 2004

  Copyright © cover image, Cody Alexander 2004

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Horniman, Joanne.

  Secret scribbled notebooks.

  ISBN 1 74114 406 X.

  I. Title.

  A823.3

  Cover and text design by Sandra Nobes

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria

  Printed by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For APW and LGN

  The Red Notebook

  Hello, Red Notebook! Of the three notebooks I bought, Red, Yellow and Blue, you are the one I most want to write in. What is so special about the colour red? Is it that it’s the colour of blood –of life; of Lil’s favourite lipstick?

  You smell (I have just sniffed you) clean and sharp and a bit spicy. Some books smell of mushrooms, but by the time you have developed that mushroomy odour I will be an old woman.

  For posterity (I love that word), for the people who might unearth you from a forgotten attic or trunk, I will offer the following information:

  My name is Kate O’Farrell and I am seventeen years old. I live in the town (some like to call it a city, but a real city must be more exciting than this place is!) of Lismore, on the north coast of New South Wales. I am in my last year of school, and when that is over I will be leaving this place for good –going to a proper city, where I will begin my new life.

  I have long red hair and pale skin. I like staying up very late at night. It is my ambition to see the sun rise, but sadly I am always asleep by then. I love eating and reading, preferably at the same time.

  I am very tall, and too thin.

  I have never been in love.

  I don’t know what I want to do with my life, except that I want it to be exciting, and full of people and places. Maybe I’m just another wannabe girl writer, but I won’t admit to it.

  I would really like to be a tree. Not for ever, just for a little while. A mango perhaps, with lots of sheltering leaves and luscious fruits.

  But for now, I live in a house called Samarkand with my sister Sophie and an old woman called Lil, who will not say how old she is. Sophie tells me that Oscar Wilde said to never trust a woman who reveals her age –she’ll reveal anything. Since I have already revealed my age to you, perhaps I will end by revealing anything (and everything). I don’t know yet. Can I trust you? Notebooks have been known to spill secrets.

  I have never been touched by death or disaster.

  I should say, though, that my sister and I are virtually orphans. Only virtually, because our parents didn’t die, they simply disappeared. And not even in mysterious circumstances. They left us when I was three.

  I have, however, just recently been touched by life! Less than twenty-four hours ago I became an aunt! My sister has had a baby –a girl, called Anastasia.

  I love her!

  (Oh. My accompanying music is Crowded House, ‘It’s only natural’.)

  Contents

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 1

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 2

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 3

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 4

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 5

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 6

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 7

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 8

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 9

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 10

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 11

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 12

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 13

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 14

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 15

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 16

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 17

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 18

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 19

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 20

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 21

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 22

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 23

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 24

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 25

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 1

  Sophie started reading to her baby in the fifth month of her pregnancy, so by the time she was born, my adorable baby niece was wonderfully well-read. She was familiar with Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, W.B. Yeats –Sophie had a thing about anything Irish –and Anna Karenina, of course, which although it wasn’t Irish was Sophie’s all-time favourite book.

  The Baby (because that was what we called the foetus) was very appreciative. She kicked and danced about, and Sophie’s otherwise perfect oval of a belly was always being pushed out of shape by a foot, an elbow, or possibly a head or a backside, as the baby rearranged her position. (We were always sure she would be a girl. We were also certain that she would have a lively and original character.)

  Sophie was often too weary to read. She’d moan, ‘Read to us, Kate.’ I could never get my head around James Joyce, so I read to Sophie and her unborn baby the poems of Yeats. One in particular, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’, I read time and again. I especially love the last verse for its rhythm, and its longing.

  Though I am old with wandering

  Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

  I will find out where she has gone,

  And kiss her lips and take her hands;

  And walk among long dappled grass,

  And pluck till time and times are done

  The silver apples of the moon,

  The golden apples of the sun.

  Sophie’s baby was born in early spring, not long before I finished school. A message was brought to the classroom when Sophie went into labour, and I tore off to the hospital on my bicycle straight away. I was one of two official birth helpers, so they allowed me into the labour room, but when I got there all I could do was stand and gawp.

  Lil was the other helper. She was feeding Sophie bits of ice, and when the pain got really bad, she cried to the nurses, ‘Oh Gawd, can’t you give the poor child something for this?’

  ‘No!’ cried So
phie. ‘No drugs!’

  But she was in such pain. I couldn’t bear to see her like that; I thought she might split open, like an egg. Earlier on she had been reading The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde between contractions to cheer herself up, and I took hold of the book and held onto it, hard. Later, I noticed that my fingernails had dug little half-moon impressions into the cover.

  The Baby certainly took her time to be born. I walked Sophie up and down the hospital corridors for what seemed like hours, stopping whenever she felt a contraction coming on. When she implored me to rub her lower back, I rubbed it, until suddenly that wasn’t what she wanted at all, and she snapped at me to stop. Finally, well into the early hours of next morning, the Baby decided it was her time to come into the world, though she wasn’t so much born as shot out, red and angry, her limbs flailing with unexpected, terrifying freedom.

  It must have been awful for her, to come so quickly from a confined, dark place to brilliant light and endless space. She wailed fit to wake the dead, until she was swaddled tightly by the comforting restraint of cloth. She had been covered with a gleaming, bloody, cheesy substance, which the nurse partially wiped away before wrapping her. Then she was placed at Sophie’s breast. Lil stroked the top of the baby’s head. ‘What a perfect little darlin’,’ she said.

  The baby looked like one of those Russian dolls, a bundle of cloth with a rather stoic little face emerging from it, dominated by bright, dark, knowing eyes. I imagined her clicking open to reveal, magically, a set of identical dolls in descending order of size. She was the beginning of us, our first descendant, the only other person we knew on this earth to be properly related to us. I thought that her life should be recorded in words and pictures and perhaps even song.

  Sophie named her Anastasia.

  It was almost dawn by the time the initial excitement died down. Lil had kissed everyone she could get her hands on, reaching up to grasp the sides of their faces with her old hands and puckering up her creased red mouth far too early for the actual kiss. The doctor looked very surprised to be rewarded by a kiss from Lil. If I hadn’t been so overwhelmed and pleased by becoming an aunt, I’d have died of embarrassment.

  When there seemed to be nothing else to do, the nurses said that we should allow Sophie to rest. ‘Kate, bring me back something new to read!’ Sophie cried as I made a lingering exit from the room, reluctant to drag myself away from the baby. ‘Bring me something interesting!’

  An inkling of light had appeared in the sky. I waited with Lil on the footpath for the taxi. ‘Anastasia!’ said Lil in a tone of disbelief. ‘It’s a big name for a baby.’

  I stood awkwardly, straddling my bicycle. I can’t think of words to express what I was feeling –fear and wonder and awe and exhilaration might be a start. I wanted to get away from Lil to savour my feelings privately. ‘I’m going to tell Marjorie,’ I said, and pedalled away down the silent laneways that surrounded the hospital, my headlight making a wavering beam in the darkness. When I arrived at Marjorie’s place I had to sit beneath a tree for a few moments to gather myself together, though where it was all the parts of me had gone, I couldn’t say. I sat there in the near dark, and dew came down on me, and finally, when I felt I could be with people again, I went to Marjorie’s window, and threw pebbles at the glass to wake her (I’ve read of this in books and had always wanted to do it).

  Marjorie had been my best friend for a long time; I knew that she would wake at once. She is one of those rare people who open their eyes and jump out of bed looking as fresh as . . . a daisy. I’ve seen her do this when I stay overnight, and it’s a bit scary. I don’t know if she ever needs sleep, really, or if she goes into a kind of suspended animation. And her pyjamas are never creased or wrinkled or even worn-looking.

  She let me in the back door. Her excitement (‘A girl!’ she kept saying, as if she couldn’t believe it, ‘A girl!’, though I’d been telling her for months that was what the baby would be) . . . her excitement finally allowed the whole amazing thing to sink into me, and we jumped up and down on the spot for a little while, though this was something neither of us would normally do.

  We made hot chocolate. Marjorie was in her mauve chenille dressing-gown, and her knobbly sleeve kept brushing against my arm as she moved about the kitchen. Despite the jumping up and down I was still in a daze, and Marjorie took hold of me and sat me down in a chair. Marjorie’s parents came out in their dressing-gowns. ‘It’s a girl,’ I told them. ‘We’re calling her Anastasia.’

  ‘Ah, the legendary survivor of the Romanovs,’ said Marjorie’s father, raising both eyebrows and stirring his chocolate with a slow, even movement. He was a doctor, a general surgeon, tall and thin, with humorous, watchful eyes and hairy wrists.

  I sat at the table and savoured the warm, full feeling that welled up inside me. It was a feeling that was absolutely new to me, and I sat and talked to Marjorie and her family and basked in it until Marjorie’s mother stood up to make toast.

  It was then I remembered that Lil would be wanting help with the breakfasts at Samarkand, so I tore myself away and pedalled like a mad thing through the streets that were already crawling with leisurely cars.

  Samarkand was still shrouded in mist, and it rose up like an apparition, enormous, ramshackle and old. It sat on a bend in the river, like a monument to earlier times, and had a view up an uninhabited stretch of water fringed by trees. Standing on top of high timber stumps (the underneath was a barren area regularly swept through by floods), it was two-storeyed, weatherboard, with deep verandahs, and a staircase zig-zagging up the front, punctuated by landings. The galvanised iron roof was almost entirely red with rust.

  I dumped my bike at the bottom of the steps and bounded up them, two at a time. SAMARKAND, said a nameplate fixed to the wall near the front door, in mirrored letters on oiled wood. If I peered into the worn, silvered surface, I could make out the tops of trees, and the sky, and bits of my own face –an eye, a scrap of red hair, a freckled forehead.

  I used to pause and gaze from the verandah, across the square grassed area directly in front, not quite a park, with a line of palm trees down one side. In front of that was a road, then the river. My secret childhood cubby was down there –an enormous fig tree which looked almost human, but which I also imagined was a rambling, spacious house, full of long corridors and secluded rooms.

  But I didn’t have the luxury of daydreaming now, with breakfasts to be served. Lil was in the kitchen, cracking eggs into a bowl with one hand and throwing the shells onto a plate, where they landed with a brittle sound. She had bandy legs and hunched shoulders; she seemed to be shrinking inside her skin each day. The sun streamed in through the windows onto the worn green walls. The coloured panels at the top of each window –gold, purple, green –threw jewelled squares of light into the room. It was an ugly room, but this morning it looked beautiful.

  I made piles of toast (I love toast, and think one should eat as much of it as possible), took it out to the dining room and went back to fetch the scrambled eggs. At the largest table that morning was a young man with a mournful face and long matted hair and bare feet, and a woman who kept crumbling her toast into bits and pushed away her plate of eggs without appetite. They were not together, but it appeared to me that they matched. At a small table next to them, a shabby businessman bent anxiously over a sheaf of papers, sipping coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry, we’re a bit at sixes and sevens this morning,’ said Lil, bustling into the room, ‘but Sophie had her baby in the early hours. Imagine! A girl! Anastasia, her name is. She’s beautiful –I’m over the moon, I can tell you!’ She beamed at all the guests in turn and twirled around and danced back into the kitchen.

  The guests had no idea who Sophie was, but Lil’s joy infected them, and they smiled shyly at each other with wary eyes. Their bodies softened and relaxed; they swayed gently like tentacled creatures in a rockpool stirred by a passing current. The thin woman pulled her plate towards her and began to eat, after all. The mournf
ul young man leaned across and asked the businessman whether he minded if he looked at his newspaper.

  I could see through to the kitchen where Lil was dancing to music from the radio. She moved easily and gracefully, her arms above her head and her feet making intricate patterns on the floor like a Greek dancer. Lil often danced alone this way. She sashayed into the dining room and threw her tea-towel and apron onto the back of a chair. ‘I’m done in,’ she said. ‘Let’s leave the dishes in the sink for once; I’m going to get some sleep.’

  I hoed into my breakfast, my head full of the baby. This girl, whom Sophie had named Anastasia. Neither of these words seemed to do her justice. I remembered her private little face as she lay sleeping against Sophie’s breast. She seemed to me to be not so much a child as a flower bud, or a newly-emerged butterfly, damp, enfolded, and full of promise.

  The Red Notebook

  Music: Rickie Lee Jones, ‘Chuck E’s in love’

  Found at Hope Springs:

  A Room Of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf, $3

  The Journals of Anaïs Nin, Volume Five, $4

  also, a boy (beautiful), brown and slender, whose name I don’t yet know

  So far, Red, you are the only notebook I have written in. Yellow and Blue lie languishing, waiting for me to feel the urge to use them. But what shall I write in them? I feel your impatience. You want more from me than random scribble, but will you get it? (Wonder all you like –only time will tell.)

  I want, I want, I want . . . At this point I’m just a mass of seething wants, but what I want I’m not really sure of. (Like going to the fridge and opening it, ‘letting all the cold air out’ as Lil complains, and not knowing what it is you want to eat. You stand with the door open hoping that something will inspire you.) I’m standing with the door open at the fridge of life, and I want.

  Sometimes I think I’d be happy if I could just make sense of all the fragments of my life.

  The Wild Typewritten Pages 2

  The day Anastasia was born I went out and bought three notebooks with shiny covers and fragrant paper to scribble down my secret thoughts. Three was probably excessive, but I couldn’t choose which one I liked best: the red, the blue or the yellow. I love stationery, and can never resist a fragrant piece of paper or a pen with a nice grip that writes in a pleasing way upon the page.