The Serpent's Skin Erina Reddan (affordable ebook reader .TXT) 📖

All the tight went out of her little body and she had enough left to smile some relief. Dad had been so happy the night he was elected President a few months back. Funny to think that now, how happy he’d been. We’d all been. Came home roaring with the drink in him and waking us all up from our beds and on a school night, Mum squawked. But she was laughing when she did it.

Tessa ran back from the crystal cabinet in the lounge with Mum’s crystal cream jug and sugar bowl. Normally we walked slow if we had to carry Mum’s wedding things. Not this time. Tessa dumped them on the table, panic-signing at us to fill them. Philly and I went into overdrive. Philly spilled the sugar, but I swept it onto the floor and told her with my eyes not to let out a peep.

‘Where’s the car now?’ asked Tessa, throwing frozen scones on a tray and clattering them into the oven, fidgeting with the dial to make the gas real low.

Philly ran-jumped onto the bench to get a better look down the drive. She squealed, which was all Tessa and I needed to hear.

Tim came running back in, his arms loaded up with wood. He stacked up the fire nice and high.

‘Where’s Dad?’ Tessa asked.

Tim didn’t face us. ‘He says he’ll be in when he can.’

We all stopped short. Dad always, every time, dropped everything for Father McGinty. As Mum said, the Church was first, second and third for Dad. And the priest coming to your house was… I couldn’t think of a word because it never happened… an honour, maybe. And Dad was coming when he could?

Tessa fell on to the nearest chair. ‘What are we going to tell Father?’ she asked, her face full of big and scared.

None of us had any ideas.

‘We could hide,’ Philly finally whispered, which I thought was a good idea, but it was too late.

We heard Dolly barking up a storm as Father McGinty pulled on his handbrake to park beside the ute. All us kids glued to the window, one eye watching as he opened the door and heaved his big body out of the car, the other on the cowshed, praying like mad we’d see Dad heading this way.

‘What was he doing?’ I asked Tim.

‘Dunno,’ said Tim. ‘Nothing special.’

Father McGinty adjusted his long black robe over his belly. A priest didn’t belong on a farm. They belonged in their big red brick house beside the church. He looked around at the broken-down dray and the rusting combine. Mum would be having a fit. But his expression didn’t change, so that was something. I suppose he thought somebody should have been out there greeting him by now, instead of Doll jumping all over him with a fierce bark on her.

Tessa made her lips into one long line and took off her apron. She turned to me. ‘You go the back way to the cowshed and you make Dad come. Right now. You hear?’

I stared back. She just pushed me ahead of her. ‘You’re the only one who can make him do anything, so get.’

I took off, leaving her to go in the other direction to greet Father. I ran like the wind, filled up with this new thing that she thought Dad might listen to me.

‘Dad,’ I yelled with all my body before I got there. ‘Father McGinty’s here.’ I stopped short when I tore into the dairy. There he was, all hunched over a milk can, in a ball, like he was hiding, just like we’d wanted to. ‘Dad,’ I said, making my voice gentle. He looked up, then. Wiped his wet eyes with a brush of his forearm.

‘Why you crying?’

‘Not bloody crying,’ he said. He straightened. ‘Nothing to cry about. Your mother’s dead, is all, and now we have to bury her.’

‘Bet that’s why Father’s here, Dad.’ Trying to get my voice as soft as Dad’s talking to a skittish foal. ‘Came personally, cause you’re so important.’

He bit his lip. ‘That, or something else.’

‘What else?’

He looked blankly at me a good long while until I was full up on fright. Then he started like he saw me for the first time that day. ‘Nothing. Nothing it could be.’

‘You gotta get up there, Dad, otherwise he’ll think there’s something up.’

He grunted. ‘Right.’ He grunted again. ‘Right. You were always the clever one.’ But he didn’t say it like a compliment.

‘I’ll have your room, Tessa,’ said Aunty Peg when she arrived off the train after Father McGinty had gone, and we’d done the dishes and Tim and Tessa and I had been over everything.

‘Dad was out of his mind,’ was Tessa’s opinion. ‘You said he was crying. It was the grief talking.’

‘But to avoid the priest,’ Tim said. ‘That’s not natural. That’s not Dad.’

‘Shut up, Tim. What would you know?’ Tessa said. ‘You’re just a boy.’ As if that explained all his shortcomings and should be the end of it.

Tim and I exchanged a look behind Tessa’s back because being a boy had nothing to do with anything.

Dad set down Aunty Peg’s suitcase in the middle of the kitchen like it was the final step of a very long journey.

‘My room is all ready for you, Aunty Peg,’ said Tessa. She’d even put wattle and lilac in a vase by the bed.

‘Take this case in, then, Tim,’ said Aunty Peg. ‘I’ll get started on the vegies.’

Tessa smoothed Mum’s apron over the front of her. ‘All done, Aunty Peg. Cup of tea?’

‘Rots your gut,’ she said without blinking.

Dad rolled his eyes behind her back and passed the suitcase to Tim, who took off with quick feet. I was betting he’d be out the window of Tessa’s bedroom just as soon as he’d dropped Aunty Peg’s case.

‘I’ve got to set up for the milking.’ Dad disappeared out the front door.

Aunty Peg pulled out two chairs. She sat on one and hefted her feet onto