Free Sorry by Gail Jones Page A

the war, but it was the Blitz, in particular, that most aroused his excitement. In the air offensive on 15 September, Southampton, Manchester, Bristol, Liverpool and Cardiff were all bombed. Nicholas talked of Hawker Hurricanes and Supermarine Spitfires. He spoke of thin-fingered searchlights clutching at the sky, of anti-aircraft fire sparking in all directions, of explosions, smoke, civilians burned to cinders in their demolished homes. Calamity was glorious, tragedy was seductive. Something in the shattering of substance attracted and inspired him. Perdita knew he wanted to be in London to see it falling down about him, to sniff death and to enjoy the disaster of warfare. Cuttings from the Western Mail began appearing tacked to the walls: grainy and imprecise vistas, buildings aflame beneath flourishes of smoke, figures huddled in bomb shelters, sometimes with insect-like masks, a German plane – one of the most imprinting and memorable images of all – heading downwards, like a crucifix, straight into the earth.
    In this remote part of the planet that was Perdita’s centre, where there was no electricity, or school, or modern-dayconveniences, the war visited in these textual and solemn ways. Here, where there were three dimensions and irrevocably solid things, where bodies sweated and were scratched and smeared by the world, where there were fires at night, and insects, and banal forms of loneliness, and noise no louder than that of thunder and of rain on a galvanised roof, the newspaper cuttings were like movie stills, fake-looking and stagy.
    One day Billy put his face in the doorway and his eyes grew large. Perdita saw at once how very unusual their little dwelling had become, all books, all symbolic strife, the missing mother, the remote father.
    Billy would not enter the room but simply stood there, staring, his eyes scanning the Blitz photographs as they trembled in a slight breeze, his expression baffled. His large hands began slowly to bat the air. In the accustoming texture of childhood, where the startling becomes the expected, and parental peculiarity is adapted to the everyday, Perdita had few experiences of imagining her home from the outside. Billy, who spoke no words, but simply looked with exceptional gravity, and told his responses through the wayward movements of his body, gave her pause. It was the first understanding, perhaps, that her parents were locked in their obsessive devotions, that only Mary, finally, could be relied upon to notice her, her own small life, there in the background, her own small, unfinished life, with all its huge, aching questions.

    Although Mary had told Nicholas that she was conducting regular lessons, in truth she was not. Lessons, such as they were, were random and occasional. Perdita knew many things Mary had never heard of and Mary had other resources Nicholas would never have guessed. Perdita enjoyed telling Mary the story of her name: it sounded astonishing as she toldit. A mad Sicilian, a wronged mother, an enchanted woman-statue, paranormally – magically! – brought back to life; the child with her name abandoned on the bear-infested sea coast of Bohemia.
    â€˜Antigonus is eaten,’ said Perdita, ‘but the baby girl is saved.’
    â€˜Saved,’ Mary repeated.
    â€˜Yes, saved. She returns to her father. She makes her mother live.’
    Mary looked interested.
    â€˜Like magic,’ insisted Perdita.
    As she told the tale Perdita realised that what she liked most was its ending; so that although there was a rage of passion, a convulsion of injustice, a good man eaten offstage by a savage bear, there was also restoration, stability, a royal family reunited.
    Mary also liked the story, particularly the part about the statue coming to life. In the chapel at the orphanage in Perth, she said, there was a statue of the Madonna that sometimes shivered and wept. One of the nuns had seen it. The Madonna wore a long blue robe covered with