Time's Long Ruin (55 page)

‘No,' Bill said, drinking, ‘it's something to listen to.'

There was a long silence. Eventually Kazz said, ‘It must be quiet?'

‘Yes.'

‘I's just sayin' to Ron, we miss their voices, screamin' around the backyard.'

‘I know.'

‘We thought you were angry with us.'

Bill bowed his head.

‘We miss them too, Bill. It's the worst thing . . . but we didn't want you ending up hating us.'

‘I don't hate you. Don't hate no one anymore. What's the use of that?' He looked up, and then bowed his head again. ‘I apologise for going off at yers. I can see things clearer now, I realise it's not just me.' He smiled. ‘Like that thing Janice used to recite: No man is an island, entire of itself . . .'

Liz was trying to face life again. I can see her now, getting off the city train at Croydon station. She walks down the ramp, and Con, opening the gates, says, ‘Over here.' She follows him to his gatehouse and he hands her a lettuce, wrapped in newspaper and secured with a rubber band. ‘Greenhouse,' he says. ‘My uncle.'

‘He has a greenhouse?'

‘Imported it from Germany. Very soon everyone will want greenhouse lettuces. He's going to import two more, but he needs investors. Do you think Bill would be interested?'

‘I think he'll stick to linen.

Con stands back and looks at Liz, somehow thinner, smarter and younger in her John Martin's uniform – a black dress, falling around her knees in two-inch wide pleats, a lacy collar and gold ‘Big Store' buttons tracing her midriff like runway lights

‘And you?' Con asks.

‘I'll stick to fabric.'

Two shifts a week at the Big Store in Rundle Street. Third floor, the hum of fluoros and air-conditioning always ten degrees too warm or cold. Fine dust from rolls of cotton, nylon and polyester fabric, thousands of them standing like a lopped forest. There was tartan and floral, Tropicana and oversized toucans in banana palms. Scissors glided across fabric tables and register bells tingled as little dollar signs popped up in anticipation. Five pound notes were flattened out and pennies dropped into sweaty hands smelling of musk and the ink from bus tickets. All of this as Liz lost herself in a world of muslin and calico, time cards and over-cooked pasties eaten on the job. And sometimes, in the middle of all this, Liz would sit on a stool in the storeroom and think, Well, there's an hour I haven't thought of them . . .

Bill didn't argue when she told him she had an interview, after all, Joe Skurray's wife had been at the Big Store for twenty years. He supposed it was better than her sitting around playing the same pieces on the piano and endlessly re-tidying the kid's rooms.

So now there were two realities: Indian cotton at 7/6 a yard, or 7A Thomas Street. She'd got past needing to be there all the time in case they returned. If they were dropped at the gate, Janice knew the key was in the meter box. And if they caught the train home, there was always Con, or maybe, she dreamed, Janice would go straight to school and walk into her class – and imagine everyone's face, just imagine. She'd staged these scenes a hundred times – her out front watering the roses, three kids walking towards her, and her dropping the hose, and collapsing, trembling, before summoning the energy to stand and open her arms like a flowering camellia.

‘A hundred pounds,' Con suggested. ‘You could double your money in two years.'

Liz smiled. ‘Or lose it.'

‘No. People will always want lettuces.'

‘And fabric.' She smiled and went to go but he stopped her. ‘You're happy there?' he asked.

‘Yes,' she replied. ‘I'm doing something useful.'

‘Exactly. It's the best way, eh?' He heard the rumble of another train and turned to go. ‘Mention the greenhouses to Bill.'

Liz crossed Day Terrace. She stopped in front of Doctor Gunn's clinic, reading a cartoon in the newspaper that had been stuck across the inside of the windows. She smiled, stood back and wondered. The last of the yellow leaves from the skeletal plane trees blew around her feet, mixing with faded ice-cream wrappers and a child's glove that had fallen from a pram. Dark clouds, rolling in from the north, gathered in reflection on the cracked glass. The smell of liniment had gone. Something had become nothing. It was almost as though humans were a television show that could be switched on or off.

She continued on past shops, houses and the post office, its entrances protected with heavy wrought-iron gates. She pulled lavender spikes from a bush at number seventeen, rubbed them in her hands and smelt them. Then she jumped the few steps that led to St Barnabas' front doors, pushed them open and went inside.

The church was dark and warm, full of dust floating in shafts of coloured light from the windows. Bare globes hung low, surrounded by moths. A vacuum cleaner had been left on the aisle carpet beside a pile of cleaning rags and a bottle of Bon Ami.

Liz approached the altar. She took a splint, lit it from a lamp and touched it to the wick of three fresh candles. A few moments later an older woman appeared from the vestry. She wrote something on a notepad and put it in the pocket of her apron. Then she looked up and noticed Liz. ‘I gotta finish off,' she said. ‘I got bingo at four.'

Liz smiled. ‘Don't mind me.'

The vacuum roared to life. Liz closed her eyes and bowed her head. Soon she felt a hand on her arm. ‘You Missus Riley, aren't you?' a voice asked.

Liz looked up at a girl of eighteen or nineteen, dressed in a coat buttoned up tightly around her neck. ‘Yes,' she replied.

‘I thought so. I seen your picture in the paper. I read what happened.' She bowed her head and then looked up. ‘You haven't heard no more news?'

‘No.'

‘That's why I come here.'

Liz turned to face her. ‘Why?'

The girl nodded in the direction of the altar. Liz looked and noticed a single candle burning opposite hers.

‘My Ashley, he drank a whole bottle of medicine.'

Liz took the girl's hand in hers. ‘Goodness,' she whispered.

‘He was nearly two.'

And then she described him: blond hair and blue eyes, as thin as a crooked dropper, climbing over benches, scaling wardrobes and jumping on their bed; climbing the highest shelf in their pantry and tipping out their medicine basket; sitting on the ground and playing with pills, tasting them, swallowing them, washing them down with cough syrup.

‘It was only a few minutes, while I was hanging the washing out,' she explained, but then stopped. ‘Still, it's nothing, compared . . .'

Liz just squeezed her hand.

The girl continued, describing how she came in with the basket, and prodded him, thinking he was asleep. How she turned him over and lifted his arm and how it fell, lifelessly, like the skun rabbits hanging from the rabbit-o's cart. How she put her finger down his throat, and how he vomited, but how the vomit went into his lungs.

‘They said if I'd left him,' she continued, ‘he might have been okay. But he choked. That's how he died. He choked.'

Liz put her arm around the girl. ‘Feel like a cuppa?'

They walked past the cleaner and she pulled her hose aside with a bothered expression. When they were gone she went up to the altar, licked her fingers and extinguished the candles.

Liz and the girl walked slowly along Elizabeth Street. ‘You work at Johnnies?' the girl asked.

‘Yes,' Liz replied. ‘I'd go crazy at home all day. How long since Ashley died?'

The girl thought for a moment and then said, ‘A year in five weeks time.'

Liz unlocked the front door and showed her in. She took her into the girls' room and explained which dolls were Anna's and which ones Janice wouldn't give up. ‘They'd fight like cat and dog,' she explained, ‘if one dared touch the other's stuff.'

‘Did the same with my sister,' the girl said.

Liz made tea and they sat at the kitchen table comparing notes. ‘Only something a mother can understand,' the girl explained. ‘Barry, he was back at work the next week.'

Liz shook her head. ‘Maybe that's how he handles it. My Bill's back on the road. He sells linen. I think the travel's good for him . . . gets him away from this.' She leaned forward. ‘Listen, I don't even know your name.'

‘Sue.'

‘G'day, Sue,' Bill said, standing in the doorway.

Liz stood up. ‘When did you get home?' she asked him.

‘I been next door, with Ron, testing his homebrew.'

She could smell it on his breath. He pulled out a chair, sat down and smiled at the girl. ‘He's our neighbour. Not a bad fella. Just mowed all our lawns.'

‘Was it him?' Liz exclaimed. ‘We must give him something.'

‘He doesn't want anything. He's got more money than anyone around here.' Bill kept staring at the girl, smiling. ‘Who do you know's got a lot of money, Sue?'

She smiled. ‘No one. If I did . . .'

‘If. That's the key word, isn't it? If.'

He looked at Liz and almost said it – if Sonja hadn't got sick; if she hadn't let them go to the beach; if he'd been home to go with them; if that fella, whoever he was, had been on some other beach.

‘If,' he repeated. ‘Suppose you heard about our kids, Sue?'

‘Yes,' she replied, uneasily. ‘I met your wife at the church. I saw her picture in the paper.'

‘If . . .'

And then they talked, about lost children, about pets and cooking, the decline of Croydon, taxes, Tom Playford and books. ‘Janice loved books,' Bill explained. ‘She'd read anything – an instruction manual, the Bible. She was a clever kid,' as he tapped his head. ‘Buggered if I know where she got it from. I didn't finish Leaving, and her mum . . .' He lifted his gaze from the girl for a moment and looked at his wife. ‘No explaining it, eh?'

‘Sue lost her son too,' Liz explained.

‘You're kiddin'?' Bill said, looking at the girl. ‘When?'

‘Year ago.'

Sue explained it all again.

‘If,' Bill repeated, when she'd finished.

‘He was a climber,' she explained. ‘Who was to know? These things just happen.'

‘Yeah, they do,' Bill agreed, looking at his wife.

Liz glared back at him. ‘What?'

‘What did I say?'

‘I didn't know they could choke,' Sue continued.

‘I wouldn't have known either,' Bill consoled. ‘Just a bit of bad luck.' He looked at his wife again.

‘Piss off,' she replied. She stood up, grabbed a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the kitchen windowsill and went out and stood in the laundry. She lit up, looking back at her husband. He'd moved closer to the girl, placing his hand over hers, leaning towards her and joking. She laughed. Liz couldn't hear him, but she knew what he was saying. He was starting off with a joke about the Pope (I hope you're not Catholic, eh?) and then telling her about an imaginary workmate who dressed up like Janet Leigh and walked up and down Hindley Street every Sunday afternoon. Then came his impression of Bob Menzies and Betty Davis, his reminiscences of the Tivoli days and then finally, the whispered complaints about
her
.

She stepped inside, extinguishing her cigarette in the sink. ‘It was nice to meet you, Sue,' she said.

The girl looked up. She realised it was no longer about missing children. ‘You too,' she replied, standing, gathering her purse.

‘She doesn't have to go,' Bill growled.

‘I should,' the girl whispered, apologetically. ‘I got things to do.'

‘You're not expecting the Queen?' Bill asked.

‘No.'

‘Well sit down.'

Liz showed the girl to the door and closed it without even saying goodbye. Then she went back to her husband. ‘What was that about?'

He sat up, defiantly. ‘I lost me job.'

She turned to face him. ‘You did not.'

‘I did.'

‘I was on the phone to Rob for an hour last night.'

Bill took a while to reply. ‘So, you happy?'

She almost smiled. ‘Are you? Now you'll have to look closer to home.'

Bill stood up. He stepped towards her but stopped. ‘Just a bit of bad luck,' he whispered. ‘That's all it was, eh?'

Early the next morning I went for a walk with Dad. Mum was sleeping in again, as she did most mornings now – waiting until Dad had gone to work and then getting up for a pee, making a coffee, closing her door and returning to bed. Until I popped my head in and said, ‘I'm going to school now.'

‘Got your lunch?'

‘I made a sandwich.'

From stale bread. Disguised with one of a dozen toppings.