Time's Long Ruin (9 page)

And when Dad had explained this to the man in the linen suit, the man closed his lips, lifted his eyebrows and breathed deeply through his nose. As if he was trying to help find Alex – to find a healing, a resolution, a setting-to-rights more tangible than a thirty pound quote.

He got in his car and drove off.

I looked at Dad, and smiled, but there was nothing to say.

Chapter Three

It was a steamy morning. Black and purple clouds massed high above the Southern Ocean, promising a storm that never seemed to arrive. Thunder rolled across the city, shaking kegs in the basement of pubs and drops of water from the tips of magnolia leaves. Lightning struck at the ocean and then retreated, waiting, marking time like a live wire in a meter box. A confetti of light, warm rain fell and quickly evaporated from concrete driveways and slippery roads; it pock-marked sand at Semaphore beach and sent mums and kids, swimming in their undies, running for the cover of the jetty. On the plains it wet dead grass and filled the air with a sweet, stale smell, and in the hills it dampened the top crust of soil without reaching roots. And through all of this, it filled the air with vapour – people pulled wet shirts from their back and cursed the weather, saying if they wanted this they'd go and live in Townsville.

It was our annual day at the cricket. The train was full, and in the space of two stops on the way to the city Dad and Bill discussed the Japanese emperor, the Korean War, the atomic bomb, Castro and the Somerton mystery man.

‘The cigarettes they found on him,' Bill said to Dad, ‘ – they were never tested for poison?'

‘No.'

Bill shook his head. ‘Well that could be it . . . since there were no puncture marks.'

‘Could be.'

‘His stomach was full of blood?'

‘Where are we gonna buy lunch?' Dad asked.

‘They should've tested.'

‘We should have brought sandwiches.'

‘And listen, I read the cigarettes were a different brand to the packet they were in. They missed that one, eh?'

‘Surely a spy wouldn't make that kind of mistake,' Dad said.

Bill looked across the carriage at Gavin. ‘You wouldn't think.'

Gavin waved at him, a secret wave he reserved for his dad, a clenching and unclenching of his fist. Bill returned the wave, secretly, as if he was the one being watched by spies. ‘It's like a glass of champagne,' Bill concluded. ‘Next morning you wake up sober, the kidneys've got rid of it.'

‘The liver,' Dad corrected.

‘Same difference.'

We crossed the Torrens and the parklands, and lined up for the cricket. Once we got into the oval we settled on the mound. This was the area under the scoreboard where the peasants sat. From here we could stare across to the members' stand, and if we were lucky, see Bradman sharing sandwiches with his wife. There was very little shade on the mound, just a couple of Canary Island palms that had seen much better days. We found a patch of dead grass littered with cigarette butts and beer caps. Dad spread out a rug and opened the esky that Bill had helped him carry all the way from the station. They cracked a couple of beers and a bottle of lemonade for us kids.

‘You'll have to drink it from the bottle,' Dad said. ‘Your mother forgot the cups.'

It was mid morning before the action began, slow at first, and then, after a few hours of beer and sunshine, revving up into an orgy of anything-but-cricket. Australia was batting, and one of our best (Dad explained, not that he knew anything about cricket) was given out two runs short of a century. The mound erupted in a roar of beer-soaked voices, paper cups were thrown onto the oval and an old, grey-haired copper shouted at the lot of us to keep quiet. Dad and Bill were laughing, sheltering under the esky lid from a shower of beer. Higher on the mound, closer to the beer van, voices were calling for the umpire to be replaced. Eventually it all settled down. ‘This could end in a riot,' I said to Dad, but he only laughed, looking around and saying, ‘What, this lot?'

After a few minutes we got bored and ran off through the crowd, with Dad calling, ‘Stay close.' We got to the top of the mound and Janice climbed one of the pylons supporting the scoreboard. She lifted Anna and Gavin and looked at me. ‘I'll lift you.'

I looked out at the small white figures on the oval. They were waiting for the bowler, who didn't seem in any rush. I looked up at Janice and she was trying to pull off Anna's jumper. Anna held on to it and pushed her sister away. ‘You'll faint,' Janice warned.

‘I won't,' Anna replied, sticking out her tongue.

‘Well don't expect me to help you.'

‘I've got an idea,' I said, and they all looked at me.

Janice smiled smugly. ‘You wanna find the Don?'

‘Maybe Himmler's here,' I replied.

Anna giggled and Gavin started to parrot her.

‘Let's play kidnap,' I suggested.

‘Who's it?' Janice asked.

‘Not me,' I replied.

‘Gavin,' Janice smiled, looking at her younger brother.

Back on the mound, Bill had made a friend. He had overheard a conversation and invited a tall, balding man to join them. He'd cracked one of Dad's beers and given it to the man. Then he'd asked, ‘This hotel you manage, does it have a dining room?'

Meanwhile, my crime was taking shape. I led Gavin behind the cafeteria under the scoreboard, sat him on a wooden crate and said, ‘Wait here.' Then I ripped a piece of cardboard from a box, took a pen from my pocket and wrote:
A thousand pounds by twelve o' clock or the kid gets a bullet.
I asked a man, returning to his family with an arm full of pasties, to deliver the note to the girl in the white jumper. I watched as he walked past, spoke to Anna and then handed her the note.

Back on the mound, Bill Riley was handing the man his business card. ‘Give me a ring. You'd be very surprised: tablecloths, napkins, the whole lot. If you want to make that dining room classy . . .'

‘They got years of wear in them yet.'

‘No, you don't want to think like that. What message does that give people?' He stopped to applaud a six. ‘Listen, you go into Ayers House – '

‘The Halfway Hotel isn't Ayers House.'

‘But it could be. It's just the small touches.'

Back behind the scoreboard it had all started falling apart. Gavin wanted his sisters. I sat down beside him and said, ‘It's a game. They've gotta pay the ransom.'

‘What ransom?'

‘Yours. A thousand pounds.'

But he wasn't interested. ‘I want Dad.'

‘In a minute.'

‘Now.'

And before I had a chance to do or say anything he exploded into tears.

‘Okay, come on,' I said, taking his hand. ‘We'll find Janice.'

But it was beyond that. He just cried louder and louder and a lady in an apron came out of the canteen. ‘What's going on?' she asked me.

‘It's a game,' I replied.

‘Where's his parents?'

‘Watching the game,' I said, taking Gavin's hand and trying to drag him off. He screamed and threw himself on the ground. ‘You go get 'em,' the woman said.

I hobbled off and fetched Janice. When his sisters arrived, Gavin stopped crying but the woman wouldn't let him go. ‘Get your parents,' she said to Janice.

Janice wasn't about to get herself in trouble. She took Gavin's hand and started to walk off. The woman took his other hand. ‘Your parents?'

‘Let go,' Janice screamed.

‘Listen to me.'

‘Fucking old bitch.' And with that she kicked her hard on the shin. The woman dropped to the ground, clutching her leg. ‘Come here . . . NOW!' We ran through a sea of hatted men, lost in a fog of body odour, men with shirts unbuttoned to the belly, smelling of beer, laying on dead grass with their Best Bets and rollies, men farting without shame, no longer bothering to clap for singles but mustering a few calls and whistles for a six.

Eventually we sat down, hiding nervously behind our fathers as the old bag scanned the mound. Then the clouds finally decided to open up.

Half an hour later we were still there, soaked through, sitting on our wet, muddy rug. As Bill and a hundred other men sang:

Lips that once were mine,

Tenders eyes that shine –

They will light my way tonight,

I'll see you in my dreams . . .

As the cricketers came back on without anyone really noticing.

The rabbit hutch was a place where things settled. Like the spot behind a cupboard or wardrobe, or under a bed – little bits of people's lives mixed with dust – a button and a cast-iron tram, a half-sucked sweet from nine Christmases ago, an odd sock, its partner waiting in a drawer for years.

The tyres in my hutch were all bald. There was a stack of ceramic pots and planter boxes, a half-f bag of grass seed that had got wet and sprouted and died, iron garden edging, and a pile of wood off-cuts that were never the right size for any job. In the middle of the stack of tyres was my box of things: stuff from some other place and time that had settled, stopped meaning something to someone – which, at the end of the day, is everything. It was an old wooden cigar-box containing a few shells, a starfish, two inches of tinsel, a flat battery, a pencil, a rock, Lego, jigsaw pieces, a brown pencil, a sock from Frome Road Grammar (dropped from Andrew's bag), a ping-pong ball, a Joker from a playing deck, and one of Dad's old police name badges. It was my communion box. Is. Still have it. If all of these bits were laid out on a table they might tell a story – they might describe me.

Inside, Mum and Dad were at it. I could hear her screaming at him. A door slammed then silence, probably as he tried to reason with her, whispering through the keyhole, apologising for nothing in particular.

I took out my exercise book, opened it and used the brown pencil to colour the Magic Pudding I'd drawn. I worked slowly, as a kind of meditation, as I listened and made out a few words.

‘Listen to yourself,' Mum screamed.

‘Ellen, seriously . . .'

‘
Seriously . . .

' As they continued I drew Ellen Page, with Hitler hair and a toothbrush moustache, holding the Magic Pudding's hand and leading him across a field of flowers. I gave Mum lederhosen and a swastika armband; I gave her jackboots and riding pants and a speech bubble saying, ‘Heil Ellen'. Then I drew Dad, holding the Magic Pudding's other hand, goose-stepping towards a distant
lebensraum
of used Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs.

The back door slammed and I moved into the corner of the hutch, squatting, holding my book against my chest. ‘Go away,' Mum screamed, jumping down the back steps, tripping over my quarter-size petrol bowser, picking it up, throwing it across the yard and storming into the woodshed. Dad was only a few steps behind but she slammed the door on him. Then there was silence again. Eventually I heard Dad whisper her name. ‘Ellen, I didn't mean it that way.'

‘Go to hell.'

‘Of course you're
able
to have another one.'

Silence.

‘I wasn't asking why you couldn't . . . just why you don't want to.'

As Mum replied, her voice shook the bricks that separated us by only a few inches. ‘Why do you think?'

‘It won't happen again.'

‘I never wanted kids.'

‘Ellen.'

‘I never did.'

‘Bullshit.'

‘What?'

‘'S not what you said at the time.'

‘Get stuffed.'

What was I thinking? Was I wondering how I'd become the cause of so many arguments, just by being born? Was I feeling bad, small, like a coin or piece of broken lead in my box of insignificant things? Did this make me want to curl up even tighter, to liquefy into a puddle of muddy water, to slowly evaporate? Did it make me smaller, did it twist my foot even more, did it make me want to hate the world? A clubfoot wasn't that bad. There was a lot worse. Like the kids who'd had polio, getting around in wheelchairs and calliper crutches.

‘How would Henry feel?' Dad pleaded through the door of the woodshed. Calmly. Quietly. The professional way. The way he talked to murderers and child abusers. Detached. Relying on the facts. The best way to get to the truth.

But Mum didn't reply. At that moment, I suppose, she didn't really care how I'd feel – if I could hear her, if I was squatting scared and alone nearby.

‘You were there?' Dad asked.

‘Go to hell . . .'

‘Flat on your back . . . I don't remember you trying to talk me out of it.'

Silence. Eventually a muted voice replied, ‘What you remember and what really happened . . .'

‘Oh come on.'

‘It was a mistake.'