Between My Father and the King (24 page)

Charles heard Bluey's voice, loud as God, thundering in his ear.

‘Remember, I'll blow your brains out.'

‘Now Charles,' his mother said, ‘I want you to be a good boy. You're my son, you know,' she said, sounding surprised. ‘My only son, and I want you to take your father's place in the house. Your father and I are not living together any more. I want you to be the man of the house. Will you, for me?'

Charles forgot about the selling, and tears came to his eyes. ‘Okay, Mum,' he said.

Then he remembered, and looked bewildered. He knew his mother was telling him too much because there was no one else around; that later on she would be wild with him because she had told him too much.

He changed the subject; it was all too strange to think about.

‘We got sunburnt today,' he said.

‘We, who's we?' his mother said quickly. ‘Weren't you at your aunty's for the day? Where have you been? And I gave Bluey the money to give to your aunty for that little doyley set she made me. I gave him your tram fare too.'

‘Wasn't it all for fish and chips?' Charles said, without thinking. He knew then by the sound of his mother's voice that she was getting wilder and wilder with him for telling him everything, and perhaps he would cop it quite soon.

‘So it's fish and chips is it,' she said. ‘You naughty boy. Gutter food, that's what it is. On dirty newspapers covered with old men's fingermarks. And what else did you do today, with Bluey?'

‘I promised not to tell,' Charles said, ashamed. ‘But it wasn't anything. I made a sandcastle,' he said, hoping this would make
his mother remember that he was only a small boy and couldn't be taking the place of a father, not just yet a while.

‘And Bluey?' his mother questioned.

‘They . . . swam.'

‘They?'

‘Nick and Pearl and Liz and Bluey.'

‘And what else did they do?'

‘Oh just swimming around and that.'

To Charles' surprise his mother didn't question him any more. As a matter of fact she was only too pleased that Bluey had not been robbing shops or bathing sheds or any one of the number of things she had heard about. And she knew very well what the men and the girls would have been doing out there with the beach to themselves all day; and once again she felt grateful that she had no daughters. For it was the girls who paid, always. Too true, thought Violet Cleave — remembering, with a feeling of envy, that nothing like that had ever come her way.

The quick darkness in the lower part of the world, the way it grabbed away the light before anyone had a chance to share it, and the dreariness of
Only Temporary
, with his mother sitting there sniffing and half-writing letters, and not asking him whether he'd had enough to eat, or to take off his sandals that were filled with beach and made trails on the floor, had convinced Charles there was nowhere to hide from it all, that home was the dream, and the important thing to think about was warning Bluey, and then seeing about their father.

Charles knew that he should go to Bluey at the hotel, tell him, swear to him, thieves' honour, that he hadn't told on him; blackmail him, with his pocket-knife, to handing over a diamond
or two so he could set off up country to get their father back. As he thought about it, growing more and more excited, just sitting there, with the thoughts coming neat and coloured and ringed inside little marbles, like the thoughts in a comic, he knew that he was grown-up, that he should never have made the sandcastle at the beach; that he should have been stern and cruel when Pearl and Bluey and Nick and Liz laughed at him; that he should have teased them to death, eating the fish and chips by himself, even the shrivelled ones, without offering them so much as a grain of salt.

So he burst into tears then, thinking of it all, and ran over to his mother and put his face on her knee. She patted his head that she had licked when he was a baby, to make it grow curly, but it had taken no notice and grown straight. Straight and dark. She patted his head and kissed him. And then she noticed his sandals with the beach on them.

‘Sand everywhere, and we don't even own the place.'

So she clipped him across the ear, hard, and he knew he was copping it because she had told him too much, and not because of the sand, and he knew that once he had copped it, everything would be all right for a while.

Except that his mother, when he was lying in bed, remembering, and planning for Sunday night, came to the door of the small room:

‘It's time the light was out,' she said. She didn't kiss him because of the grown-up look on his face, but she said in a sad voice, full of tears,

‘You're my only concern now, Charles.'

Lying there, pretending to be asleep, he felt his heart, like a bullet, shooting at his chest; and he knew, finally and forever, that it was true; his father had been sold. Concern? Concern? Selling?

Now it was his turn. For how much, he wondered, but could not work it out for he was not good enough at sums; and besides, sleep came.

Waking up is the feeling of a bird with no scars in it flying up and up into the clear sky; and Charles woke up that way, feeling high up and free, except the hawk came, pouncing and swooping, and its long-hooked beak ready.

For Charles remembered everything he had to plan, and about their father and Bluey. One thing: he had to tell Bluey that
he
hadn't given the show away, that his mother had found out naturally, as people do find out things. But what if Bluey didn't believe him, and shot him? And what about their father? Sitting up country locked, most likely, in a little hut with no window, and dogs rousing about outside, guarding him, and the river rising, inch by inch? Though he wouldn't be drowned, no, they'd be too cunning for that, they had paid too much for him. And then there was the other question: what was their mother doing with the money from their father? But the first thing, if Charles had to stay alive, was to see Bluey, that night was best, and explain; take his pocket-knife for blackmail, if necessary.

So that night when his mother was down in the place underneath telling it all to the woman who cleaned the lawyer's office at the corner, Charles dressed himself ready. He combed his hair, slicking it down with some of Bluey's hair oil, pretending, for a moment, to be Bluey, and holding a conversation with himself, looking himself fair and square in the mirror to see how handsome he was.

‘Well, Bluey,' he said, ‘what'll it be tonight?'

The boy in the mirror, pale and frightened, looked back at him,

‘She found out somehow,' he said, ‘but not from me. Thieves' honour.'

‘You little tell-tit, you heard what I said I'd do.'

‘Leave go of my wrist. I didn't tell.'

‘Tell
that
to the Marines.'

‘But you do believe me, don't you, and I'm still in the gang, say you believe me that I didn't tell.'

‘Brother, say your last prayer. Just put your hands up against the wall, slowly now, I'm in no hurry. Just close your eyes if you're afraid to see yourself die; just count over your brains to see if they're all in place before I blow them high with this little toy . . . Now . . . I do think my finger's itchy on the trigger.'

Charles' white scared face gazed out of the mirror, and he saw himself very carefully take out his pocket-knife, hitch open the long sharpened blade, and get ready.

But Bluey would believe him, Charles knew that. He closed his eyes at himself in the mirror, to stop seeing what happened next. When he opened his eyes it was all over, and they were telling him, ‘Come upstairs, my boy, the diamonds are waiting. Just press the button. And now, how do you like looking down on the world? Take your time, there's no hurry, lad, the biggest are for you.'

Charles sneaked down the stairs and into the street. He looked up at the tall wooden building with its brown paintless walls and things like bobbins poking out of the roof. There was always a starling sitting on them when Charles looked up there, and it always appeared draggled and patched and thin, out of work, probably crowded out by the other birds. It wasn't there now. The spires poked up, empty, into the sky. Charles kept looking, to try to put off going to the hotel. It was Sunday night, with the traffic mostly sleeping, except for a few old tramcars rocking along, half-empty, and one or two buses, without noses, hissing softly and sneakily out of the dark, and back into the dark. High up in the
sky, day was still hanging around like a visitor that doesn't seem to know the right time to leave; and after it had gone the night would dust the sun from its hands, and close all doors and windows, and arrange the doilies where the light had handled them, and say,

‘Well, I never thought it would go.'

Or perhaps it was that way.

It must have been because it was Sunday, but there seemed not as many people in the world as other days; there seemed space for many more. There were no children throwing and bouncing ball on the footpath, or calling out high and sharp, or ganging together; in fact there seemed to be nobody ganging together at all. All the people that Charles passed were by themselves, there was not even a couple. And he knew it wasn't always that way on a Sunday, with the sailors in town, and people like Nick and Bluey with nowhere to go except
Only Temporary
or the hotel, jostling and joined into one big shout and excitement, knocking into people, saying sorry, sorry, and pinching ladies' bottoms; oh yes, Charles knew it happened all right, even on a Sunday; but not tonight.

Tonight everything was by itself.

Even the little dog that trailed along, sniffing at Charles' legs.

Charles felt its head to see if it had a collar, and it hadn't one, so nobody must own it; perhaps it was looking for an owner, the way it was sniffing at him, and wagging its tail. Charles felt very happy, and bent down, saying, ‘Here pup, here pup,' talking to it all the way along the street, telling it where he was going, and what had happened, and saying it could come with him up country if it liked. The dog seemed to understand, for it wagged its tail harder, and was so friendly, bubbling up and down, like boiling.

Then it turned suddenly and went down a side street, quite on its own, and seemed to know where it was going, and not to care that it had left Charles behind.

No, there was no ganging up at all that night.

It got darker. The trains down in the railway yard grumbled and shuffed and hissed, not all the time as on a weekday, but every now and again, for practice. The railway was a taste of what to be afraid of, and run from, with the huge dark buildings around it and the warehouses where the drugs were smuggled; it was there that the cats, skinny and black, paraded up and down in their fur coats, like filmstars trying to show their talent and get a break and a star part instead of a miserable job as a common ratter.

Ah, Charles
knew
. But this night there was no one to see the skinny black cats, and sign them up for a contract.

For there was no ganging up at all that night.