Time's Long Ruin (2 page)

Back to Thomas Street, a few days later. I'm imagining it's night, three or four in the morning, and I'm in nothing but a singlet and nappy. Dad holds me and sits in a rocking chair. There's a light breeze coming in the window and I can hear it rustling the leaves of Con and Rosa's healing tree. I can also hear a cart unloading in Elizabeth Street. Maybe spuds for Ted Bilston's Half-Case Fruit Shop. Then the sound of a horse moving about, but being steadied. A hush: the last of yesterday's heat rising into a Sputnik sky. A magpie squawking. The smell of coal smoke. Yes, you think I can't remember, but I can. I can remember everything. I can remember my dad whispering, ‘How was I to know?' and then singing:

Bring back, bring back, bring back my love o'er the sea,
Bring back, bring back, bring back my bonnie to me.

And then he lays me on my bed and goes in to Mum. She is lying awake. I can hear them talk. Again he tells her the name of the doctors, and where they've worked, and what universities they went to. And then he says, ‘He's got the bluest eyes,' and she replies, ‘And mousy hair . . . did you have mousy hair?'

‘Oh yes, but it didn't last long.'

And then I go back to sleep, still hungry.

My story – the story of the Pages and the Rileys, of Con and Rosa Pedavoli and Mr Hessian the widower, of Adolf Eichmann and the rag and bone man – begins on New Year's day, 1960. This is the first fragment of the story I remember. A fragment like a hundred others from the summer of 1960. A fragment I intend to recall faithfully – although if I do add and subtract a bit here and there, change the painted side of a deli from Weet-Bix to cough drops, make a sunny day overcast or give a neighbour a limp he never had, have someone die of cancer instead of a stroke – please forgive me.

We're in the Rileys' backyard. There's no fence between our yard and theirs, just a long flower bed filled with pansies and lisianthus, bisected by a paved path shaded by an arbour overgrown with bougainvillea and wisteria, woven together in a curtain of colour and smell. It's nearly lunchtime and I am chasing the Riley kids around the old trees in their yard. Someone catches me and I hide my face and count to a hundred. The Riley kids scatter, run around, squeal and eventually hide in the same spots they did last time.

Gavin, the youngest, hides behind his dad's shed.

Bill Riley, a linen salesman, always said that us kids should never go anywhere near his shed. But one day we found the door swinging open. Strange. It was usually secured with four padlocks and there were steel bars on the window. We went inside and found the walls lined with shelves. Each shelf was packed full of new linen, still wrapped: sheets, pillowcases, tea towels, you name it. Later that night, when I told Dad what we'd found, he said that was where Mr Riley kept his samples.

‘Don't they have a warehouse?' I asked.

‘No. What were you doing in there anyway?'

‘The door was open.'

‘He told you to stay out,' Dad shouted, leaning forward and threatening me with his beer.

‘But . . .'

‘It doesn't matter.' He sat back in his chair and opened his paper. ‘And don't say anything to anyone at school.'

‘Why?'

‘Things get around.'

That was adult logic. Why would it matter if other people knew what was in Mr Riley's shed? Anyway, I wasn't stupid, I knew. Still, I always found it curious why my dad, a copper since he left school and a detective since 1955, was never too concerned.

That's how neighbourhoods were back then. Now I don't know most of the folks in Thomas Street. Now I've got a ballet dancer next door. He knocked down the Rileys' trees and put in a pool. Hardly says a word. Wears his hair in a perm and lives with his younger brother.

Anyway, there's Gavin, hiding behind his dad's shed. He's peeling flakes of paint off the old iron: grey, and under that green, and brown, and more grey – decades of cheap (or souvenired) paint applied in a thick icing to stop rust. A skin that burns and peels in the sun as the shed's wooden frame sags and the whole thing sways in the breeze. The roofing letting in rain. Mr Riley covering his blankets and lace tablecloths with a tarp.

Gavin is tall for his age, nearly up to my shoulders. He sits smiling and grinning as I start to search. ‘Coming, ready or not.' I see him, but pretend not to. He's squeezed himself into a ball of pyjama pants, rubber boots and a fresh white linen shirt with the pins still in it, blowing around him like the torn sails of the
Marie Celeste
.

I stop to take a wedge of watermelon from the table and my mother pretends to smack my fingers. She's smiling, laughing, adjusting her bra strap under a cotton frock my father thinks shows too much skin.

‘You're not wearing that,' he'd said, standing in our hallway.

‘Why not?' Mum asked.

‘You'll burn.'

‘I will not.' She stopped. ‘This cost me a lot of money, Bob, I need to wear it before I'm too fat.'

‘Fat?'

She was struggling to pull the frock down over her bum. ‘It happens at my age.'

I dropped the watermelon and licked my fingers.

‘Let him have it,' Bill Riley said, picking up his ukulele. ‘You're a long time dead.'

‘He can wait,' Mum said.

‘Let him go,' Dad replied.

Mum looked at him. I looked at all the adults in turn. Mr Riley just shrugged and started to strum his ukulele.

Lonely days are gone

Twilight sings his song

All the happiness that used to be . . .

Next thing I knew he was kneeling on the ground at his wife's feet. Liz Riley laughed and pushed him away. He toppled over, rolled onto his back, but just kept playing and singing:

Soon my eyes will close

Soon I'll find repose

And in dreams you're always near to me . . .

‘Where am I?' Gavin called out from behind the shed.

‘Coming,' I replied, grabbing the watermelon and shuffling off in the wrong direction.

Janice Riley jumped out from behind the water tank. ‘Hi, Henry.'

She screamed and ran off down the driveway. I went after her but she knew the deal. Go easy on Henry. She pretended to trip over and sprain her ankle; then she sat on the concrete, holding it, moaning, ‘Oh no, what are you going to do to me, Henry?'

Nine-year-old Janice was the eldest of the Riley kids. She had short, cropped brown hair that stuck out at every angle, catching the sun. She had a flat, stumpy nose and teeth as white as her mum's piano keys. During the holidays she turned feral, getting around in a singlet and a pair of old cotton boxers. Janice always had bare feet and her skin was the colour of Jersey caramels.

Anna Riley appeared from behind a lantana hedge. She grabbed her older sister by the arm and tried to pull her up.

‘It's no use,' I cried. ‘I love the taste of little girls.'

They both screamed. Liz Riley stood up and looked over to see what was happening. ‘Keep it down, girls.'

But they just ignored her.

Gavin ran past me. He flew to Janice's side and grabbed her other arm. As Gavin and Anna tried to pull their sister to safety she screamed even louder: ‘No, Henry, eat the young ones first.'

I growled and raised my hands in the air.

‘Children,' Liz called out again. ‘Please.'

‘C'mon, Henry,' my dad echoed, half-heartedly, as Bill Riley, still on the ground, kept strumming:

I'll see you in my dreams,

Hold you in my dreams . . .

Anna was distracted. She stopped screaming, walked over to the garden and picked an arum lily. We all waited and watched as she smelt it, smiled, and looked at me, ‘Hey, Henry,' before returning and holding it under my nose. ‘Nice, eh?'

I growled again and they all screamed. The game recommenced: Janice pretended to faint and the other two dragged her along the drive. I contorted my body and became a monster. It always ended this way, as though the Rileys couldn't be separated.

I'd had enough. I came up behind Anna and grabbed her. I took the lily from her hand, ripped it in half and threw it into the garden. Anna tried to act scared but could only laugh. She fell to her knees, dropped her head onto her legs and lay back on the driveway.

‘Careful,' I said, sitting her up, as oil from her father's old Austin smudged on her white woollen jumper, the one my mum had knitted her.

Anna looked at me, turned serious, but then laughed again.

She always wore a jumper, no matter what the temperature. Liz was always taking it off her and she was always putting it back on. She always wore long pants. This day it was a pair of old brown cords, worn through on both knees and frayed on the cuffs. Her hair was browner than her sister's, but flatter, manageable, turned up at the ends like a German helmet from Hitler's war. Her face was rounder than Janice's and her features were smoother – her eyebrows thin and rounded, like the curve of an arum lily, as they dropped onto her button nose.

I turned my attention to Janice. As she tried to get up I dropped on top of her. I held her arms down and put my face an inch or so in front of hers.

‘Henry,' she said, speaking slowly and deliberately.

‘What y' gonna do?' I asked.

‘Get off.'

And what she wanted to say, If I didn't have to go easy on you . . .

‘The little ones can't help you now.'

‘Get off.'

She pulled her arms loose, shoved me in the chest and I fell back heavily.

Anna looked at her older sister. ‘You shouldn't do that.'

Janice turned to me. ‘So what?' She walked back around to the adults. Anna and Gavin stared at me for a few moments and then followed her. I sat up, crawled over to a fence post and managed to stand. Then I walked through the Rileys' front gate to the street. I went across to our house, walked down the drive to the backyard, and shuffled into the old rabbit hutch.

I sat on a pile of old tyres, dropped my head onto my chest and closed my eyes. Across in the Rileys' yard I could hear Bill still singing. Everyone – Liz, Mum, Dad, Janice, Anna and Gavin – had joined in.

‘Where's Henry?' I heard Mum ask.

‘He went out the front,' Janice replied.

‘Where to?'

‘Dunno. Maybe the playground.'

‘Go look for him please,' Liz interrupted.

‘Mum.'

‘Go on,' Bill insisted, still singing.

Janice set off down the drive, followed by Anna and Gavin, holding hands. ‘Can we go on the swings?' Gavin asked.

‘No,' Janice replied, calling, ‘Henry, where are you?'

As the singing continued I removed a brick from the back wall of the rabbit hutch and took out a rolled-up exercise book. It was a diary and book of thoughts, a playscript and novel, an art book, a collection of scientific observations, and anything else that came into my head. I still have it, yellowed and scribbled over, covered with twenty-year-old beetroot and rice pudding stains.

I opened the book to a new page and a freshly sharpened HB pencil fell out. I ruled under the last entry and then wrote:

The Chiropracter, A Short Story by Henry Page

Janice followed Dr Gunn into his workroom. He told her to
lay face down on a long, leather-covered bench. She climbed a
small ladder and did as he asked. Then she felt his cold hands
on her legs.

Ten minutes later they imerged from the workroom.
Janice's left leg had been turned back to front and she
limped as she walked. Her right arm had been twisted
behind her body and her right hand turned upwards.
And worst of all, her head had been turned around to
face the other way.

‘What have you done?' she asked the doctor.

‘What do you mean?' he replied.

‘What do I mean!?'

The doctor took two shillings from his change pocket and
placed them in her upturned hand. ‘Youll be right
tomorrow . . .'

The music had stopped. Bill Riley was talking quietly, as though he didn't want to be heard by the kids, although there were none around.

‘I tell you, Bob, I'm waiting at the back of his shop with me samples when I hear this dog start to bark. I go to the window and this thing jumps up, yappin' its head off. Then I'm lookin' around his backyard: tyres, bumper bars, car doors . . . and then guess what I see?'

I stopped writing and listened carefully.

‘This story gets better every time,' Liz Riley half-laughed.

‘Shut up,' Bill replied. ‘You think I'm makin' it up?'

‘Not all of it.'

Bill was a performer, and always had been. He'd played the Tivoli Circuit for twenty-five years, or so he told us. Once I did the sums and said to him, ‘You must have been five when you started,' and he just replied, ‘Maybe I was.' It all went back to when he was one of J.C. Williamson's greatest assets: Bill ‘Irish' Riley, singer, juggler, straight man and joker, acrobat, dancer and everything else that ever walked a stage. Until radio. He told us he struggled valiantly for a few years but by the time Mo was doing
McCakie Mansion
he was selling linen.