Time's Long Ruin (39 page)

Janice, you're a sensible girl, don't go with anyone, he thought, as he lowered his foot on the accelerator. He could see petrol stations in the distance, morphing yellow, green and red in a heat haze of bitumen, and tennis courts overgrown with potato weed.

‘I shouldn't have gone to Snowtown,' he called out to Liz and Mum, who were falling further behind.

‘Bill,' Liz scolded. ‘Don't keep saying that.'

Where are they? he thought, as he drove into Port Wakefield.

Back on the road, he checked his fuel gauge and pulled into a BP. Then he patiently waited for a spot to fill up, watching his temperature gauge slowly climbing into the red. He noticed an old couple waddle back to their car with ice-creams, take a few minutes to put on their seat-belts, start their car, select the gear, release the handbrake and move off at the slowest possible speed. Then they stopped and the old girl got out to check the cover on the fuel tank.

‘Come on,' he mumbled, and she looked back at him. ‘Come on,' he repeated, as she stopped to straighten her rheumatic back, eventually returning to her husband.

‘Bill,' Liz called. ‘Slow down. Come here and talk to us.'

Bill turned around. ‘Don't you know what's going on?

Bert, tell her.'

Bert stopped and waited, but didn't say a word.

‘Do you know what he wanted them for?' Bill asked his wife.

‘Who?' she replied.

‘Bert, go on, tell her.'

‘We don't know any of that,' Bert managed.

‘Yes you do. Just cos you're not saying it. Go on, be honest, we want to know.'

‘C'mon, Bill.'

‘Want
me
to tell you?'

How he unzips his pants, he wanted to say. How he uses gaffer tape around their hands and feet and over their mouths. How he stops them from wriggling by lying on top of them. How he threatens them with a bread knife, its blade still streaked with butter.

None of them moved. Our group stopped and looked across the river. Dad sighed. ‘Christ.'

‘What's going on?' Rosa asked, squinting into the sun.

‘It's Bill,' Con whispered.

‘You lot okay?' Dad called.

‘Fine,' Bert called back.

And Bill was off again, head down, almost hopping over the ankle-deep mud. We watched as he shot further ahead of Liz and Mum, mumbling so loud we could almost hear him across the grey-brown water.

Back in his car, he could see the Mount Lofty Ranges on the distant horizon. He passed a paddock full of car bodies stacked four high with peas planted in plots all around them. An old man in shorts and a flannelette pyjama top was bent over weeding them. He looked up and caught Bill's eye. Bill smiled. He didn't mean it, but it was a reflex. The old man waved and returned to his peas. There was a fruit stall, set up in the shade of a derelict stable, and he almost pulled in for oranges that had been arranged in small pyramids on a table that was an old wardrobe door.

Road. Sixty miles of it. Slowly falling behind him as he pushed the accelerator to the floor, as the city started to emerge in small, black, angular blocks, eventually becoming roofs and chimneys and windows. Until he was passing through a suburb of red-brick homes, factories and schools with dead or dying grass.

‘There's no point looking here,' Bill called back to the others, without turning around. ‘Just a lot of nothing.'

Market gardens. Bordering the edge of the city. Drainage ditches and discharge pipes. Machinery sheds and fresh, brown alluvial soil.

He pulled over and looked out across acres of white, lavender and blood-red carnations. He tried to tune his radio to the news but found nothing but Mantovani and the Flemington races.

‘Nothing,' he repeated, stopping in front of the yacht club. ‘And where do we look next? The Flinders? Ayers Rock?'

He dropped to his knees and sank a few inches into the mud. The mums rushed forward to help him, and Liz dropped to her knees beside him. She put her arm around him and cradled his head.

‘It's over,' we could almost hear him mutter, across the water.

Liz pushed hair out of his eyes. ‘No it's not.'

And Mum and Bert stood beside them, trying to decide where to look.

Later that evening, with the mud washed off and the clothesline heavy with lemon-scented overalls and shorts, I sat in my rabbit hutch with my diary on my knee. Inside didn't seem a place for me anymore: crying and sadness heavy in the air like camphor. But outside wasn't much either: no faces standing at the chicken wire, silently watching me, no one rolling on the brown grass, screaming as they hurt their back on a sprinkler, no toys sitting about, no socks left under almond trees where Gavin had decided it was easier to climb barefoot. Just a quiet evening, with no fuss or fighting, like both sets of parents had always wanted.

I sketched Janice in my diary, trying to solidify the picture in my head: big white eyes that allowed her whole pupil to be seen at once, the sun reflecting off a little bit of sweat or oil on her nose, her biting at her bottom lip (which made her frown). But it didn't look like Janice. Just something our art teacher would turn her nose up at.

On the next page was the story of the boy in the box. I read the last paragraph and continued writing from where I'd left off:

He is aware of certain other children. Kids that he played with
once. They are kicking a ball, just outside his van. One of
them, a girl, is only a few feet away from him. Over here,
she says, and thump, the ball hits the panel closest to his head.
Janice, he whispers. But thats not her real name, of course.
Maybe it's Susan, or Vyerlet, or Amanda. Without knowing
her name he couldnt call out. Couldnt anyway. Then it would
just be him again, opening the cupboard, lifting the lid,
growling.

Dad came outside and stood on the back steps. He took a deep breath and stretched his arms out, locked his fingers together and clicked them. Then he jumped the three steps in a single go and sat down on the back lawn, cross-legged, like a monk contemplating the sunset. He took out a cigarette paper and filled it with tobacco, rolling it again and again, making it tighter and tighter. Then he licked the paper and sealed it, taking the time to look at it with amazement. He lit up, inhaled and laid back on the grass, watching Sirius wander into a velvet-blue sky.

He closed his eyes, waiting, perhaps, for Gavin to creep up beside him and jump on his stomach. He could remember the time this had happened. ‘Christ, you oughta be careful, Gav, you could break a man's ribs.' We all laughed. Or perhaps he was talking to Janice, about school, about why some teachers were such pricks. Explaining, ‘Some of them probably taught me. In those days things were done differently. If we so much as whispered – ' ‘Headley still hits people on the knuckles.'

‘Well she shouldn't. Only the principal can.'

‘She does. You could rip into her, Mister Page. She might lose her job.'

Dad smiled. ‘You're always thinking, Janice.'

‘What if you came to school in your uniform? What if you scared her, with your handcuffs and stuff?'

Dad lay still on the grass, fitted a few times and then ran a finger across the corner of his eye.

So, this is the time to tell him, I thought. It was just us, and we could discuss it rationally. He was calm, and he wouldn't overreact. I replaced my diary and left the safety of my hutch. He didn't notice me until I was standing beside him, casting a shadow across his legs. Then, without opening his eyes he said, ‘Hello, Henry.'

I sat down and crossed my legs and he sat up. ‘What do you do in there?' he asked, tipping his head towards the hutch.

‘Nothing.'

He inhaled until his lungs were full. Then he spoke as he exhaled. ‘You got some books in there?'

‘No.'

‘Well, you're no son of mine,' he said, dropping onto the grass again. ‘Never much liked my own company.'

‘Sometimes I write stories.'

He smiled. ‘Yeah, like Janice, eh?'

‘No, hers were good.'

‘I bet if you sent something into
The Argonauts
. Hercules 22.'

I breathed deeply. The crickets were loud, and I felt like asking if they were really frogs, but I knew they were crickets. ‘Dad.'

‘Yes?'

I paused. It felt like the moment had passed.

‘What is it? Hey, there was this waiter, walked around picking his nose. Fella calls him over, “I'd like to order,” he says. “Yes, Sir, what would you like?” Fella looks at him and says, “Two hard-boiled eggs . . . y' can't stick y' finger in those, y' bastard”.'

Mum, standing at the kitchen window, heard him.

‘Bob . . .'

‘What?'

‘Watch yer language.'

‘She could hear a parrot fart,' Dad whispered.

‘No, but I can hear language.'

Dad suddenly sat up. ‘Henry, that licence plate . . .'

‘You checked?'

‘Yes. Victorian. It was stolen from a carpark in Melbourne last year. The owner claims he's never gone further than Ballarat. Victorian cops say he has people to vouch for him. Derek's Carpet and Rug Cleaning. Not a registered business name, but he claims he didn't know he had to.'

‘What?'

‘Register the name. Anyway, it's not a lot of good. Unless we could find the fella that stole it.'

‘Can you?' I asked.

‘Funny thing, you said the fella you saw drivin' it was tall, and blond?'

‘Yes,' I replied.

‘Blond-blond, or brown-blond?'

I shrugged.

‘Well, we've just described half the blokes in the state.'

‘So that's it?'

‘Afraid so. We gotta know for sure, otherwise it will just confuse people.'

Plaster busts, ticket stubs, and lines of meaningless code inside
The Rubaiyat
. Hours of Dad's time wasted when he could've been thinking other thoughts, looking other places, or just watching television with me. A game he played with a clever or lucky mind – but in the end, more with himself than anyone.

I could try again. I should. I must. ‘Doctor Gunn,' I said.

‘Doctor Gunn?'

Mum emerged from the back door with a cup of tea for Dad. She placed it in front of him and sat on the grass with her legs splayed to the side, as though she was riding sidesaddle. ‘They're having prayers at the school, at eight,' she said. ‘We should go.'

Dad opened and then closed his eyes. ‘Who's organising that?'

‘The teachers, some of the parents. Bill and Liz are getting ready.'

Dad shrugged. ‘Ah.'

‘Bob.'

‘What good will that do?'

Mum glared at him. ‘It's not the point. It's to support them.'

Dad looked at her and lifted his eyebrows. ‘Okay. It's not Catholic is it?'

‘A few prayers, and a cup of tea.'

And what she didn't say, It's a way for people to say, I'd do something if I could, if money would help, if there was somewhere else to look. If we could chop off a finger or cut down our prized camellia. Anything.

‘I'll have to pop on a tie,' Dad said, quietly.

‘No need for that.' Then her face turned serious. ‘So, what are people saying, Bob?'

Dad nearly burnt his fingers as he held the butt and tried to inhale. Then he slowly stubbed it out, deep in the uncut lawn. ‘What if I wanted to kidnap a child?' he asked. ‘A local kid, say, Andrew Arthurson.' He looked at me. ‘Not that I can oblige, sorry.'

I smiled.

‘So, you follow him, see where he goes to school, when he gets off the train, where he walks home . . . and you say, Ah, there's a nice quiet spot. This is where I could grab him. Get it?'

Mum was almost with him.

‘Where he passes a vacant block, with no one in sight or hearing. Yes? It wouldn't be hard to do. No harder than stealing a pot plant from someone's front porch. And if, for whatever reason, you had that . . . need . . .' He paused, closing his eyes to think. ‘So, why then, if someone was after the Rileys in particular, would they wait until they went somewhere unusual, somewhere where their movements were unpredictable, somewhere crowded?'

We both looked at him.

‘It wouldn't make sense,' he explained.

‘So?' Mum asked.

‘I don't think it's anyone they knew. I think it was just bad luck. I think they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which means, the sort of people we're talking to, the questions we're asking . . .' He looked at me. ‘Lots and lots of carpet vans, Henry. But as for the fella in the blue bathers, we just need to hope he's forgotten something, bragged, left some mud on a tyre, smiled strangely to a cousin.'