Time's Long Ruin (5 page)

‘Wasn't he a ballet dancer?' Nan asked.

Dad almost laughed. ‘No, we ruled that out. Although there were marks.'

‘Marks?' she asked.

‘On his feet, like he'd worn women's shoes.'

‘Really? Why?'

‘We don't know. He might have been . . .' Dad stopped short and looked down at me. ‘We've got DC Page on the case.'

Bill wouldn't give up. ‘I read it was suicide. But they didn't find a mark on him, did they?'

‘Could've been poison.'

‘And nothin' in his guts 'cept a pasty?'

‘That was twelve years ago. They didn't have any tests back then. If it was today . . .'

Bill's eyes narrowed. ‘Why don't you dig him up?'

‘Why don't you?'

‘I'll grab a shovel.'

‘They cremated him, Bill.'

Bill stopped. ‘Uh . . . why'd they do that? Shouldn't they have kept him on ice?'

‘Don't ask me. Listen, I shouldn't be talking – '

‘I read it began at the railway station,' Grandma continued, becoming braver. ‘He bought a second-class ticket – '

‘He ate your marble cake at the Comfort Shack,' Bill Riley laughed, and we all laughed.

Grandma shooed him away. ‘He bought a ticket to Henley Beach, walked onto the platform, but then changed his mind and went back out to the cloakroom. That's where he left his suitcase. You got his suitcase, Bob?'

‘We've still got it.'

‘So why did he change his mind?'

Dad shrugged. ‘That's one of a hundred things we don't know.'

‘Then he climbed the stairs to North Terrace,' Gran continued, ‘crossed the road and caught the bus to Somerton. Why d' you reckon?' she asked, slowly, her voice full of real concern. ‘Why?'

There was silence, and then a loud piercing scream from outside. Chairs were thrown aside, the table knocked and the sugar bowl upturned as we all rushed out. Gavin was standing in the middle of the dry, parched lawn, pointing to the woodshed. ‘A snake,' he cried, slowly turning and lifting his arms for Liz to pick him up.

‘Hold on,' Dad called, running up the three steps to the laundry and grabbing his spade. Meanwhile, Pop wandered over to the path between the woodshed and back fence. ‘Oy, look here,' he said, smiling at Grandma, ‘it's the Somerton mystery man.'

We all laughed, except Grandma, who folded her arms and smiled one of her holier-than-thou smiles.

‘There you go,' Dad said, handing the spade to Bill.

‘Never used one.'

Dad took the spade and slowly approached the woodshed. He looked inside, stepped into the doorway and lifted the spade into the air. Bill thought he was joking and yelled out, ‘Careful.' Dad just turned and looked at him. Then he thrust the spade down into the floor. For a few moments there was silence as we watched him watching the snake. Then he leaned forward, picked it up and stepped outside the shed.

‘Just a baby,' Bill smiled.

Dad stepped forward and flicked the snake at him. Everyone squealed and scattered. ‘Bob,' my mother scolded, but he didn't hear her. Then he took the brown snake and hung it over the back fence as a warning to other snakes. Wiping his hands he looked at Mum and said, ‘That cake done?'

‘Where's Janice?' she asked Liz.

Liz shrugged. ‘Prob'ly down the playground. Anna, go grab her, will yer?'

‘I'll go,' I offered, stepping forward.

And that's how I missed my own birthday party.

I headed off for the playground, past the Housemans, our neighbours on the other side at number five. Their front door was open and the smell of corned silverside drifted out from the kitchen, down the hallway, flooding their front yard and the intersection of Thomas and Robert streets.

You couldn't do it today. You'd have someone in your bedroom stealing your pearls. Not that anyone cooks silverside any more. It's not a popular cut. Now it's organically raised chicken cut into strips for a stir-fry. I didn't know what a stir-fry was until the 1980s. But years ago Mr Wells used to tell me, ‘I sell more silverside than anything'. Still unbeatable. Served with white sauce, boiled potatoes and a mountain of soggy cabbage.

Ron Houseman was a chemist in the city somewhere and his wife Kathy (Kazz) was just another homemaker, like most of the ladies in Thomas Street. The Housemans never had any kids. Why, I couldn't tell you. Mum used to say she was frigid (seemingly unaware I knew how to use a dictionary).

But Kazz was a woman before her time. One day she walked up and down our street, depositing handwritten business cards in everyone's letterbox.

Kazz
Spiritual Counsellor and Spirit Photographer
Are you grieving, want questions answered about the life
beyond? Want to learn how to recognise the signs the other
side gives you? Beginning your own journey of discovery?
Exploring the spirit world? I can help you. You will leave me
feeling inspired and with the strength and courage to go on.
Phone 46 78 92.
Love and Light

Later that night I watched from my window as Mr Houseman, still in his white tunic, shaking his head and muttering to himself, walked the length of Thomas Street taking the business cards out of every letter box. Mum said she saw him later, taking another card down from the noticeboard outside the Acorn deli.

I remember playing in the backyard one day when Dad, looking through a hole in our side fence, whispered, ‘Henry, come here.'

And there was Kazz, with a Box Brownie set up on a tripod, taking pictures of an old back shed that was mostly a pile of rubble. Dad stuck his head up. ‘Hi, Kazz, what you doing?'

‘Hi, Bob,' she replied. ‘He used to make furniture in there.'

‘Who?'

‘The old fella that used to live here.'

‘Yeah . . . so . . . what you doin'?'

But Kazz just smiled and tapped the side of her nose. Then she came over to us and said, ‘D' you know what I saw when I opened my back door this morning?'

Dad shrugged. ‘The washing line?'

‘No. All this was bushland, like it used to be,' and she used her hand to indicate our neighbourhood. ‘No houses, nothing, just some blackfellas sitting around a fire, and a wallaby, under where Con's healing tree is.'

Silence. Dad exhaled loudly. ‘Well . . .'

Ron and Kazz had a corner block, and their old, rambling house (one of the biggest in Croydon) was built on a diagonal, facing the intersection. A gravel path led up from the corner to their front door. Ron Houseman had planted a hedge of overcrowded conifers around their side boundary to shield them from the world (or maybe to shield the world from Kazz). I could access their backyard through a piece of loose iron. Still, I never played in their yard much. The garden beds were overgrown with capeweed and thistle. Unless the Rileys and I were looking for a jungle for our games, there wasn't much point.

I passed the rabbit-o and looked at the flies swarming on the skinned rabbits hanging from an iron frame above his cart. Luckily, Mum would never buy rabbit. She thought it was just for pensioners to make stews with, or for New Australians with their casserole dishes full of garlic and pepper. The Depression is over, she used to say. The war is over, now we can all eat beef.

I crossed into the playground and found Janice sitting on a swing, moving gently in a hot northerly that had dried out the palm leaves, leaving them sounding tinny and brittle. ‘They're gonna cut my cake,' I said.

She looked up from her book and smiled. ‘Happy birthday, Henry.'

‘Thank you, Moo.'

‘God bless you, Bull. Wishing you many more years.'

‘We could live to be a hundred.'

She frowned. ‘Hardly.'

I sat on the swing next to her and pushed myself. Then there was quiet, except for the palm leaves. ‘What you reading?' I asked.

‘
Little Women
.'

‘Haven't you read that before?'

‘Haven't you breathed before, Bull?'

‘What's it about?'

She flicked through the soiled, dog-eared pages and half-sung, ‘Four sisters.'

‘And what do they do?'

She shrugged. ‘Stuff.'

‘Like?'

‘Put on a play.'

I smiled. ‘Like the one we did that time?'

‘No. A good one.'

I still have it, in one of my earliest exercise books. A Croydon
Hamlet
. Abridged from an abridged version for children. Cut down to a cast of four with each part written on a separate piece of paper. I was the only one to remember my lines. Even so it was mainly just a lot of sword fighting, stage kisses and overblown speeches. Just like real life. I can remember our parents sitting on kitchen chairs in our front yard. Our verandah had a canvas awning that was lowered and raised by the stage manager-cum-Hamlet: me. I remember applause and whistling and Con and Rosa coming over to watch from behind our roses. A lizard skull doubled for poor Yorick as a few stolen moves from Olivier's
Richard the Third
enhanced what we tried to pass off as acting.

‘Jo's my favourite,' Janice said, twisting herself on the swing. ‘She wants to be a writer.'

‘Like you?' I asked.

She turned up her nose. ‘Perhaps.'

Janice had written poems and stories, just like me. And just like me she wouldn't show them to anyone. I only knew because of what I'd seen, and tried to read, in her arithmetic book – before she slammed it shut and asked Mrs Chittleborough if she could move next to someone else.

‘Follow me,' Janice said, standing.

‘Where are we going?'

‘You'll see.'

‘They're gonna cut the cake.'

I struggled to keep up as she led me along Thomas Street, straight past my house. ‘They're all waiting.'

‘Follow me.'

We passed our school, Croydon Primary, the main two-storey building encased in a scaffold for the painters. Minutes later we were sitting in a park further along the road. Janice pointed to a house opposite the park and said, ‘I reckon he's in there.'

‘Who?' I asked.

‘Heinrich Himmler.'

‘Himmler, the Nazi?'

‘Yes.'

‘But didn't he kill himself?'

‘No. They had stand-ins.'

‘Who killed themselves?'

‘They were fanatics. You don't think they would've let themselves be caught, do you? They had it all planned out. Some went to South America, some to Canada and some to Australia.'

‘Adelaide?'

‘Of course, it's perfect: small city, all the blockheads in the Barossa to help them.'

I sat staring at the house, and wondered. If you didn't want to attract attention, then this wasn't your house. The Villa de Dionysis was an old bungalow done over in Spanish mission style. Around the verandah someone had hung signs from the gutter:
Villa de Eros, Villa de Venus, Villa de
Dionysis
– take your pick. The outside walls had been rendered with grey mortar inset with shells in vortex, star, diamond and more abstract patterns. Here and there some of the shells had fallen out. In other places the walls were inset with panels featuring vases sliced down the middle and stuck on. The front brick fence had been tiled with slate. The gates had been overbuilt with archways, again tiled in slate, crowned at their highest point by urns. Under the front verandah oversized pots full of ferns swung from heavy chains and on either side of the front door there were Egyptian mummies in relief set into the walls.

It was the jewel of Croydon, or, to my parents, the nightmare. You could complain to the council, but what good would it do? Apparently it was the price we paid for letting the reffos in. It was the only house in Croydon with saloon gates on the front fence and a huge tiled fountain in the middle of a yard concreted and covered in fake grass. The only consolation was that there was a garden, of sorts: a few junipers and a cypress, grapevines running wild over a trellis of fishing line and an olive tree that was already starting to raise the footpath.

‘Have you ever seen anyone come out?' Janice asked.

‘I've never looked.'

‘And it's right next to a school. So they can recruit.'

‘Recruit?'

‘Hitler Youth.'

Janice had her moments. If there'd ever been a man in lederhosen walking under the monkey bars, I'd never seen him. Surely Mrs Chittleborough would've said something.

‘Why here?' I asked.

But she just smiled, opening the back cover of her book and filling in her log:

Date:

Period of Observation: