The Piper's Son (34 page)

Tom puts an arm around both of them. “He wants to sleep with you. She wants to sleep with you. Just do it.”

Justine stares at Tom in horror and he recognizes the look that says she’s about to cry and then she walks away leaving him with an incredibly hostile violin player.

“They made me do it,” he says, pointing to his friends.

Tom follows her into the toilet where Francesca’s standing by, a filthy look on her face.

“Oh you are so dead, Tom.”

The Deluge wins the beer and drive away in the stolen car. It takes them forty-five minutes to get everyone out of the pub. Justine begins cleaning, while Francesca goes into damage control.

“He didn’t mean it, Justine. Tara’s always said that Tom’s the last bastion of arrested development.”

“I thought you’d like that he was into you,” Tom says, confused, as he mops the floor. He wished, with all his might, that there was a guidebook to life out there that he could follow.

Justine stops cleaning and looks at him. “I like him, Tom. A lot. I knew he probably liked me too. But that’s not the way it’s done.”

“Let me make it better.”

“No,”
they all say at once, even Stani. “Bloody bastard,” he had muttered when he saw his niece in tears. Tom believes it was most probably directed to him and not the violin player.

“How long’s he gone for?”

“Until uni begins again.
In March!
”

“I reckon —”

“No more suggestions, Tom,” Francesca orders.

“I just want to —”

“No more,”
she says, holding up a finger. “Or I’m telling Tara and Siobhan.”

“You’re going to tell them anyway,” he argues.

“Yes, but I was going to give you enough time to go to a place where they can’t track you down.”

“Stop!” Justine says.

“I didn’t say anything,” he argues. “Geez! Can everyone stop telling me to
stop
?”

“Stop,”
Francesca says, holding up a hand to listen.
“Shhh.”

Strands of music come from outside the door and they all rush to the window to peer out, even Stani tries to push them out of the way.

And while the violinist is playing his tune, the car thieves sit on the hood waiting.

“What is it?” Tom asks her.

“‘Calliope House,’” Justine answers.

“Are you going to go out there?” Ned asks. “He’s good.”

Justine shakes her head. “I’m so embarrassed. Everyone’s watching. I have to do this in my own time.”

“Justine, it’s been a year,” Francesca argues.

“I know,” she says honestly. “But not like this. Everyone’s watching and I just want to talk to him, alone. Or on the phone. Not with an audience.”

“Do you have his mobile number?” Tom asked. “I’ll go out and . . .”

“No!”

Justine backs away from the window.

“Great. Now the cops are here, and Stani, you’re going to get a fine for noise pollution.”

“Bloody bastards.”

When the violinist finishes, he walks to the window and slams his hand against it.

“He’s Post-it-noted the window,” Tom says, peering to see what it reads. “It says ‘Call me’ and his mobile number. I might just do that,” he muses. “He’s kind of cute.”

Justine and Francesca laugh. Ned does too. And there it is. The knowledge that it makes him happy to hear it. So simple. They laugh and it makes Tom happy.

He closes up and Stani hands him his pay. He started getting it a month ago. He can feel it’s too much and when he looks inside the envelope, he stares back at his boss.

“Back pay,” Stani explains.

“You don’t owe me back pay.”

“I do. What your friends did? Not your debt to pay.”

“Yeah, it was.”

“No.”

Tom flicks through the money.

“You earned it with the floorboards, anyway,” Stani says. “Don’t try to give it back or leave it behind, because you won’t have a job here if you do.”

Tom shakes his head but puts the envelope in his pocket.

He holds out a hand to Stani and they shake, then he turns and walks away.

“It’s been good to see your father again,” Stani says just as Tom reaches the door.

“He was a good in-between man, Dominic Mackee. A good union man. Kept the peace. Kept the dialogue going.”

He walks into the house later, into the kitchen, where his father’s sitting. Tom mutters a greeting and stands at the fridge door, staring at Georgie’s shit organic stuff as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world.

“I liked your choices tonight,” his father says.

Tom shrugs. “We didn’t know what else to play.”

But he’s lying and there is a part of him that hopes his father knows that too. The part that doesn’t have to explain away sentimentality. That doesn’t have to tell him the way he feels. He hopes, somehow, that ten minutes on a stage does that because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to say it with the proper words. They’d all sound contrived and forced.

He feels the wad of money in his pocket. “Do you want me to come along?”

“Where?” his father asks.

He shrugs, facing him. “With you and Bill. To bring Tom Finch home.”

His father stares at him. “To Hanoi?”

Tom nods. An in-between man. Keeping the peace and dialogue going. That would be a good profession to go into. Union reps to keep families united. Maybe that was his calling.

“I don’t have the money for both of us, Tom.”

“Got my own. And Bill reckons the government will pay anyway.”

His father doesn’t speak. Just nods and then says, “I think Nanni Grace would love that.”

Tom goes to walk out again, but something stops him.

“Would you, though?” he asks his father.

“Would I what?”

“Love it? Not just Nanni Grace. Would you love it?”

His father seems confused by the question, but then Tom realizes it’s not confusion he reads on his face; it’s disbelief.

“How could you ask me that, Tom? I’d give anything for you to want to come along with my father and me.”

Tom doesn’t ask which father Dominic’s talking about. It can’t be that confusing loving more than one.

At work the next day, Mohsin shows him the course he’s applied for at Sydney University.

“Hmm,” Tom says. “Molecular science. Sure you don’t want to aim higher?”

He goes online and finds himself looking at the deferment rules for the course he dropped out of two years ago. And then he sees the number 1 next to his in-box. Anabel’s at school camp, so it can’t be from her. He knows exactly who it’s from.

She doesn’t sign it off and he doesn’t even give himself a moment to think.

Georgie’s water breaks during breakfast one morning. It’s all pretty calm. She just says, “This is it, kids,” and then she picks up her phone and texts Sam.

“You can’t send him a text telling him his baby is about to be born,” Tom argues, looking around for Nanni Grace’s support. Nanni Grace has already gone up the stairs to collect the bag Georgie’s had packed ever since she read one of the books that told her to always be prepared.

“I don’t want to get into a phone conversation with him,” Georgie says. “He’ll ask really stupid questions and then we’ll get into an argument and I don’t want to be stressed.”

The phone beeps back.

“See,” she says, showing Tom the message. “Stupid question.”

It is a pretty stupid question, but Tom doesn’t give her the satisfaction of agreeing.

“I’m starting up the car,” Bill says, standing up.

“See?” she says again. “Starting up the car. Are we living in the mountains where it snows, Bill? Does the car need warming up? Or are we robbing a bank?”

Nanni Grace is pretty calm when she returns. “I think we should walk anyway. It’s only fifteen minutes and she’s been a bit of a blob these last couple of days.”

Deep down, Tom is really stressed. The women are not acting the way he thinks they should be acting.

“Bill, go outside and wait for Sam and warn him that Georgie doesn’t want to be stressed.”

“Why does everyone think that all of a sudden Sam’s going to act like he’s crazy?” Tom asks.

Outside, someone has their hand on the horn and doesn’t let up.

“Bill, go outside and tell Sam to get his hand off the horn,” Georgie says.

Tom thinks it’s a ridiculous idea that they walk. Apart from the fact that he will never get over the humiliation if she gives birth on Carillon Avenue in front of his ex-flatmates, and knowing Georgie, she’ll do that to spite him, he’s scared something’s going to go wrong and he just wants her in hospital as quick as possible.

It ends up a bit of a procession, like something out of those foreign movies where they have weddings or funerals tunneling through the town. Georgie leads the way with Nanni Grace and Tom and his father, and Sam and his kid and Bill follow.

“Baby’s coming,” he explains to Sam’s kid, in case no one’s told him.

“How?”

“Sam?” Tom asks. Because he knows that Sam will be pragmatic and sensible without using the word
vagina.

“I told you already, Callum,” Sam mumbles. There’s a very stressed look on his face, too. The whole walking thing isn’t working for him either.

Tom looks down at the kid. “What did he tell you?”

“A gift from God.”

Tom can’t believe that Sam would use such terminology. He actually thought Sam was an atheist. Sam gives Tom one of those threatening looks that promises a universe of pain if he says anything other than that.

“How old are you?” Tom asks the kid.