Time's Long Ruin (23 page)

She looked at him, trying to smile.

Mum opened the boot of our car and retrieved an armful of parcels. Kevin passed her, looking at them and then back at Dad. ‘Better you than me,' he said, passing on, getting into his car and attempting to start it.

Dad looked at Mum. ‘What you got there?'

‘A surprise.'

‘For me?'

‘No, for me.'

He sighed. ‘Ah,' thinking about our finances but not saying a word. Mum went inside and Liz sat down with us on the verandah. ‘How was the movie?' she asked Janice.

‘It was okay.'

‘Just okay?'

‘It was a kid's movie.'

Liz saw her fabric scissors sticking out of Janice's pocket. ‘There they are,' she said. ‘Why are they in your pocket?'

Janice shrugged. ‘I was using them this morning.'

Liz turned to Dad. ‘Thanks for looking after the little ones.'

‘Don't thank me. Henry did all the work.'

She ruffled my hair, like everyone did. That was enough thanks, apparently. No mention of money or chocolate or a comic, or anything. Just, ‘Good boy,' Henry. ‘That's what Henry does, helps people out.' Still, when it came to babysitting, there were limits to my generosity. ‘I was going to go over to a friend's house,' I said.

Liz tried to look concerned. ‘Oh, I'm sorry, you should've – '

‘You haven't got any friends,' Janice interrupted.

‘Janice,' Liz scolded.

‘I have so,' I retorted.

‘Who?' Janice asked.

‘Ashley Maywald, Davin Hunt.'

‘You've never been to their places.'

‘Have so.'

Dad shook his head. ‘Come on, you two.'

‘What's all that about?' Liz asked her daughter.

‘He wasn't busy,' she replied.

‘Was so.'

‘Wasn't.'

‘Just cos you're in a shit,' I barked.

‘Henry,' Dad scolded.

‘What?'

‘One: language. Two: no one asked for your opinion.'

‘Well I didn't ask for hers.'

Silence. Standoff. Janice stood up, jumped across the hedge between our yards and was gone.

‘What's got into her?' Liz asked.

‘She's missin' Bill,' Dad replied. ‘Where's he gone?'

‘The South East.'

For some reason I found myself looking at Liz and saying, ‘I have been to Ashley Maywald's house.'

‘Good for you,' she smiled.

Anna and Gavin were nearly at the end of their mural. They'd drawn every house they knew, but were still four pieces of paper short of the end. So they drew the school. They scribbled and painted two-storey high teachers running around chasing children with meat cleavers and axes, horns growing from their heads and steam venting from every orifice, reciting their four times tables and the definition of an adjective. Until the mural came to the end of the known world, two blank sheets short of completion.

I looked at Anna. ‘What else?'

She shrugged. She was out of ideas. The streets of Croydon were long, but everything finished somewhere. Even time. I looked at the two blank sheets of paper and imagined the rest of my life squeezed in – a home, a wife, children and travel. Would it all fit in, or would there be too much room? No. My life would be so full I'd have to stick on more sheets – dozens and dozens of blank pages taped together, stretching the entire length of the real Thomas Street, past Croydon and all the way to Melbourne.

And then a strange woman appeared from inside our house. She was dressed in stockings and high heels, a short cherry-coloured dress and a cream cardigan, all with their price tags still attached. Her face was made up like china doll: rouge and lipstick, eye shadow and liner. She wore a pair of single pearl earrings that dangled beside a price tag Dad pretended not to notice. And finally, her hair was done up in a bun, Japanese style, with a pair of what looked like wooden chopsticks holding everything tightly in place.

‘Well, what a surprise,' Dad said. And then there was a chorus of delight and admiration from me and the little ones.

‘Ellen Page is wearing the latest from Paris,' Mum began, walking around on our verandah, turning, almost tripping on her twisted foot and striking a variety of poses for a couple of passing Greek grandmas. ‘Her dress is modern, practical, just the thing for a day of shopping.' She looked at Dad as she emphasised this last line. Then she turned to Liz and they both started laughing. Dad replied with a look of barely disguised contempt. After all he'd done for her. Women: infinitely more perplexing than the mystery man. Building you up one day, pulling you down the next.

‘Shoes from New York, via David Jones,' Mum continued, testing my father, seeing just how glad he was that she'd come good. ‘And earrings, real pearls.'

‘Real?' Dad asked.

‘Real.' She smiled. ‘So, what do you think?'

Me, Liz, Gavin and Anna applauded her parade. Eventually Dad joined in. ‘You look wonderful.'

‘Thank you, dear. I knew you'd be pleased.'

‘I am.'

‘Well, how about your little Croydon housewife puts on the kettle?'

‘Good. Wearing all that?'

‘Why not?' She went inside, whistling as she passed down the hallway.

Dad looked at Liz. She shrugged. ‘Aren't you gonna say thank you?'

‘For what?'

‘For cheering her up.'

He tried to smile. ‘Thank you.'

Silence. They stared at each other.

‘You couldn't have just got her a book?' he asked.

‘She wanted a hat as well. I talked her out of it.'

Dad squeezed his chin with his bony red fingers. ‘Thank you very much. What did it come to?'

‘None of my business. She's got the receipts.'

Mum wore her new outfit all afternoon. She washed up the dishes and hung out the washing without so much as putting on an apron. She even helped Dad fix the wheels on our mower. Then she finished mowing the front lawn, waving at cars that slowed down to look and at Mr Hessian who was out thinning his agapanthus. Then, at four-thirty, she opened one of Dad's beers and made herself a shandy. She went and sat in his recliner and switched on the telly. When Dad came in with his own beer and switched on the air-conditioner, she said, ‘We don't need that on, it's barely seventy degrees.'

He sat down next to her, looked her over and said, ‘You look good.'

‘Thanks,' she replied.

‘You look like fifty quid.'

‘Close, but not quite.'

My mother could always attract a few stares. When we walked down Elizabeth Street everyone would say, You look good today, Missus Page, and when we went into the shops Mr Skurray or Mr Hessian's face would light up with a half-moon glow.

Mum wiped shandy froth from her lip. ‘It makes me feel presentable,' she said.

‘Good.'

Like the world wants to look at me. Like the world has a place for me. Like I'm needed, wanted, loved. And who was Dad to argue with this? When good fortune smiled, you smiled back, even if you did have your suspicions.

Mum looked at me, sitting on the floor watching cricket I wasn't interested in. ‘I've ironed your clothes for church, Henry.'

‘Do I gotta go?'

‘Yes you do.'

She looked at Dad.

‘What?' he said. ‘I'm not going.'

She didn't say a word. She just adjusted her left earring. Then she said, ‘Your clothes are laid out too.'

We walked to church with Liz, Janice and the little ones. At five o' clock the sun was still strong on our skin – the bits, that is, that hadn't been covered. I was dressed in my best long pants, ironed until they were paper smooth, a long-sleeved white shirt and one of Dad's ties that hung down past my crotch. Apparently this would make me more acceptable to God: old mutton served up with a sprig of parsley. Mum had sprinkled poppy oil into my hair and combed it flat, cut my fingernails and even trimmed my hair so it sat above my collar. Then she stood looking at me, thinking, He'll have to do.

Dad was an entirely different problem. He was the closest thing Thomas Street had to a full-blown atheist. Mum wouldn't let him say this word, especially in front of me, but that's what he reckoned anyway. I've seen too much to believe in all that, he'd tell Mum.

Like what? she'd ask.

And then he'd stop (thinking, I suppose, of some bruised, bloodied child being prised from a car wreck), but just say, Terrible things, shaking his head. And Mum would say, You can't blame God for everything, and Dad would reply, Well, he's the one says he's runnin' things.

So, Dad needed extra attention: shower, talc, shave, balm, suit and tie, as he argued, ‘It's not a bloody wedding.'

‘Doesn't matter.'

‘That church is like an oven.'

‘Doesn't matter.'

‘These days most men just wear – '

‘Bob!'

St Barnabas' single, cracked bell rang out as I chased Janice and the little ones around the privet hedges that ran down either side of the church. Dad was standing with his hands in his pockets as Mum, minus her price tags, and Liz talked to the priest, done up in a long, white robe embroidered with gold, red and green Latin words that nobody understood. He was old, his hair was talcum white and he had bloodhound cheeks covered with fine capillaries. ‘I must begin,' he said to Mum, holding her arm.

‘Of course,' she replied, following him in, looking at Dad to do his job and gather us up.

Dad, the reluctant shepherd, clapping his hands and giving a little sheepdog whistle as he watched an old man sitting across the road on his verandah, lighting a cigarette, lifting his bum, farting, and grinning at him.

You'll keep, Dad thought, as he went into the church, following Mum down the aisle, watching her kneel and genuflect and thinking, Spare me, when did you become a Christian? We sat one row back (Mum wasn't quick enough for the front, Dad's fault) and I surveyed the stained-glass window, cracked and broken around the heads and bodies of saints and martyrs.

The opening hymn was accompanied by a twelve-year-old pounding out the melody with one finger on an upright piano. Apparently Mrs Headley was sick. Dad pretended to have no idea what he was singing, allowing his voice to crack and wander into a spastic falsetto. Mum looked at him and he improved, turning to me with a look of mock innocence and a smile.

God this, Jesus that, blah blah, a reading from this, praise be, and John said unto them.

And then the homily. ‘What is faith?' the priest asked. ‘Who am I to tell you?' he smiled. ‘Faith is an unknown quantity. It's
x
in algebra. But unlike algebra there is no simple solution. Faith is that crush you had on a girl when you were thirteen. It's a feeling, a longing. It grows inside you and you have no control over it. Like public speaking.'

And then he was off, describing a speech he'd once given in Wellington in front of five hundred Church of England ministers. ‘I got up to speak but my mouth was dry. I picked up a glass of water but my hand was frozen. I put the water down and tried to speak but my tongue had
cleaved to the roof
of my mouth . . .
'

Laughter. A sprinkling of applause.

‘So,' he said, summing up, ‘who are these men who try to prove or disprove that Jesus existed? Do we really need to find splinters of His cross to prove our faith? Do we need to know if His shroud was real or if He drank from this or that cup at His final meal? Jesus had no headstone, but He was real.'

Dad was actually listening. I looked up at him and his mouth was open, as it always was when he was thinking.

‘Jesus is a mystery,' the priest said, slowly.

And instead of Jesus on the crucifix on the back wall, Dad saw the Somerton mystery man, still dressed in his suit, holding a half-smoked cigarette. Dad watched as the figure looked at him and asked,
Do you have faith?

Who are you?
Dad replied, without speaking.

The mystery man smiled.
You'll never find out, Bob Page.

But I have to, it's my job.

‘The words of the Lord,' the priest said. ‘Jesus speaks to us, through others, through the Bible.'

There are clues
, Dad suggested.

No, just more red herrings
, the figure replied.
If they could've
worked it out, don't you think they would've by now? Just have a
little faith, Detective.

There was a bust of John the Baptist on a windowsill. Again, it was the same face, stolen, perhaps, from the evidence room at Thebarton barracks. The mystery man was speaking to Dad. More clues.
Taman Shud
. The End.