Free The Submerged Cathedral by Charlotte Wood Page A

or playing with the other children. Butshe is still there in the same spot, sitting in the blasting sun with her feet in the water.
    Jocelyn sinks down in the water again, pushes off from the wall, stroking and breathing, emerging and submerging, concentrating on controlling her breath. She can’t remove the image from her mind, of Sandra’s expression when she had reached out from the water. She had seen in Sandra’s face a kind of fear that children should not have.
    On the way home in the car, Sandra says, ‘You’re my mum’s sister.’
    â€˜Yes,’ Jocelyn says.
    â€˜I’m going to have a sister,’ Sandra says, lifting her chin. ‘When I can swim, I’ll teach her.’
    Jocelyn nods as she drives, thinking of Ellen’s baby. For whom they all wait, for whom they wish good things. The baby will have pianist’s fingers, her grandfather’s mouth. The baby will be an early walker, will be held in the water with her sister kissing her tummy.
    Â 
    On the next swimming outing Sandra sits again on the edge of the children’s pool while Jocelyn swims laps. Then Jocelyn returns to the little pool and lies back in the shallow blue water at Sandra’s feet, propped on her elbows, asking her about school, about the numbers she’slearned, her friends. Sandra grips the concrete edge, dark hair hanging round her face. She sways her feet, answering yes and no, staring into the milky water. Then she says, ‘My dad’s not bad, you know.’
    Jocelyn stops still in the water. ‘I know,’ she says quietly.
    Sandra stares back, her dark eyes wide. ‘Not on purpose.’
    Jocelyn cannot say anything, only nods. They both turn to watch a boy walking with his father over the lawns towards the car park.
    Â 
    The heat intensifies, and Christmas is almost here. They have Sandra making decorations from cotton reels and milk-bottle tops, covering the dining table with glue and crêpe paper and tinsel. On the previous weekend Martin dragged in a tree and it leans in a corner of the living room, its tip curled against the ceiling.
    Ellen and Jocelyn and Sandra take the train to Sydney and meet Martin for lunch, and then they all scatter through the department stores. In David Jones the pianist trills Christmas carols, and women strut, hats bobbing. Jocelyn chooses for Ellen an opal brooch, heavy and trimmed with gold lace, but it still has the feel of a stone taken from the earth. Only later does she realise she haswanted to give Ellen something from Australia. As if she is only a visitor.
    Sandra’s gifts are easy, and she piles them in her arms. A swimming costume with vertical red and white stripes, a box of pencils, books.
    The four of them meet again at the department-store coffee lounge for afternoon tea, squirming to peek into one another’s shopping bags. Martin is especially dramatic, snatching bags from Sandra’s sight, making her shriek, and Ellen tells them both to be quiet. When Ellen turns away Martin makes a face and Sandra convulses with giggles. He murmurs to her, begging her not to tell, and they spend the hour whispering and sniggering.
    Â 
    Before bed on Christmas Eve, Jocelyn watches from the corridor as Ellen lowers a lumpy pillow-slip onto Sandra’s bed. The child is heavily asleep on her back, one leg dangling from the bed and the sheet twisted across her, arms flung back.
    At dawn Jocelyn wakes with Sandra’s breath on her face, whispering loudly: ‘ I got Ludo! ’ Holding up the box in the pale light. ‘Do you want to play?’
    Jocelyn, still half-asleep, shakes her head but moves over to let Sandra climb into her bed, and lies back withan arm around her. Sandra’s halting, whispered reading of the game’s instructions lullaby her back to sleep.
    When she wakes later she has the bed to herself again, and she can hear Sandra’s and Martin’s shouts in the midst of the game