Dark Fires Shall Burn (19 page)

‘The boys' home? Why?' he asks. He often passes the large Federation house on his escapes to the water, always holding his breath superstitiously. For a time he was fearful he might end up inside it.

‘She used to do it in person, marching up there with a great purse of cash, asking to pay for the children to go on a Christmas picnic and for each one to have a gift — a real present they could unwrap themselves. They let her do that a couple of years, until some biddy on some committee got wind of it and started a blue about “dirty money”. Now she has to do it on the sly.'

‘I wonder why she does that,' Dot mused. ‘And why they want to look a horse in the mouth.'

‘A
gift
horse. Not just any old horse,' Roberta corrects her with a laugh. ‘You tell me.'

‘It is not her who I worry about. That mad ape, Errol —'

‘Errol? He's just Dolly's attack dog. He does what she and Snowy bid him do.'

‘I don't think they have the leash on tight enough. Maybe they ought to give him muzzle as well.'

‘He won't mess with you unless you give him cause.' Roberta yawns. Beneath their thick lashes, her wide brown eyes blink lazily. ‘Oh, that's right. You can't seem to help it, Dot. You find trouble whichever direction you're pointed,' she teases lightly, with a playful glance in Dot's direction. Dot smiles.

‘The man's trouble. I wouldn't trust him far as I could kick him,' Templeton offers his opinion, feeling all of a sudden sage and adult.

‘You don't have to trust him, just stay out of his way. Stay out of Lorraine's way too, for that matter. She don't like you much either,' Roberta says.

Dot takes a large gulp, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.

‘But don't worry.' Roberta reaches up and places her hand in Dot's. ‘I do.'

‘
Dziękuję, truskaweczka
.'

‘That sounds pretty. What does it mean?'

‘It means,
thank you, little strawberry
. That's what my father used to call me. Or I can say it for you in German, if you'd prefer?
Kleine Erdbeere
?'

‘I like it when you speak in your language.'

Templeton rolls onto his side, smirking at Dot's showing off, pulling his coat tighter around his chin. He closes his eyes, their conversation washing over him.

‘You awake, Lucky?' Dot nudges him. He stays silent, the beer catching up with him, content to let them think he is asleep. Roberta reaches over Dot and brushes her hand along the stubble of his scalp. ‘He's a handsome boy, even like this,' she says. ‘He looks like he's fresh from a delousing in the infirmary.'

‘He looks like his sister.'

‘You care for him, don't you?'

‘Of course I do. He is my
rodzina
— my family. He and Annie both are.'

They fall silent. In the quiet, Templeton begins to doze.

‘You ever been in love with a man, Dot?'

‘With a man? No.'

Templeton hears Dot dragging deeply on her cigarette, and there is only the sound of the park around them for a long time. His thoughts wander, dream-like, to his father, a memory of standing on the verandah watching him, stripped to the waist, using a mallet to drive new fence posts into the baked dirt. Then he hears a strange noise, and it takes him some moments to realise it is the sound of kissing, hurried and wet. Roberta makes a little whimper, her breathing heavy. They are trying to be quiet for his sake, he realises, and he is skewered with embarrassment.

He is wondering how to stay perfectly and casually still in a pantomime of slumber when Dot speaks. ‘I can't,' she says in a pinched voice.

‘Why not?'

‘I just can't.'

He listens to the rustle of Dot's body edging away across the blanket until he feels her back up against his own.

‘It's because of her, isn't it?'

‘You do not know what you are talking about.'

‘She doesn't love you,' Roberta says, and her voice is barbed. ‘She's only got eyes for Jackie, that's obvious.'

‘Stop it. You don't know how it is. You don't know anything.'

Roberta starts to sniffle at Dot's sharpness, and then, after a few horrible moments, Templeton hears the sound of Dot rolling back to hold her, whispering, ‘I'm sorry,' and Roberta telling her angrily, ‘Don't.'

But then she surrenders, and he hears the rustle of Dot's arms sweeping around her, and soon their breathing finds a rhythm and he knows that they are asleep.

Templeton wakes with the sag of disappointment. He looks at his empty beer. He is cold and not nearly as drunk as he would like. His mind turns over. It is not yet light, too early to head for Dolly's. Roberta murmurs from somewhere beneath the tides of sleep. How nice it must be, to moor against another warm, breathing body, and for a moment he is jealous that she gets Dot's arms around her, that it is she and not he.

He dreamt of his mother again and can almost feel that familiar taste of muddy dam water in his mouth. He gets up and leans against the stone archway, aware of the possums scrabbling through the branches overhead, fighting and rutting. Without warning, the image of Frances' body, stretched out half-naked in the grass, lances him. He wants another drink, and the want seizes him.

It takes an hour, but he walks the long road down to Central Station, where he buys a beer from a tramp drinking with soldiers on the fringes of Eddy Avenue. Their fire flares in a scorched steel drum. Belmore Park looks still and slumbering, but as his eyes adjust he sees ruffles and flickers of movement in the trees on the gentle rises and in the basin. Men, and what look like a few shaggy and rectangular women, are everywhere. Lean-tos and nests of soiled coats and mattresses fill every arbour and hollow. A group in slouch hats eye him as he picks his way through, the whites of their eyes menacing in the firelight. Templeton walks faster. When he hits Elizabeth Street, he exhales in relief.

He drains his drink as he reaches Hyde Park, wandering towards the fountain while trying to remember the whereabouts of a gin place he'd been once with Annie, somewhere off College Street. He dips his hand into the water and leans back to look at the minotaur atop the stream. The light from the streetlights bounces off the water and upon the wide musculature of the monster. Its sinewy human arms strain against Theseus, the bull's horn tight in his mighty grasp. Sculpted turtles spray glistening hemispheres of water from their mouths, and Apollo, naked and resplendent, looks on.

After a minute or so, Templeton becomes aware that the man who has taken a seat nearby on the fountain edge is regarding him intently. It is the flash of his gold cufflinks that catches Templeton's eye. The man is wearing a sharp suit with a silk waistcoat, his hat pulled low, angled over his left eye.

‘Do you have a light?' The man slides over and stretches out a hand with clean, trimmed nails. His voice gravelly, though not coarse, with perhaps a tinge of an English accent. His little fingernail is painted red, Templeton notices with some surprise; he's never seen a man wearing nail polish before.

Templeton nods and rummages through his pockets. He takes a cigarette out for himself too. As he does so, he is looking at the man's finger, staring really, and the matchbook slips from his hand, landing with a plop in the fountain. His cheeks flush. ‘Sorry,' he mutters. Perhaps he is drunker than he thought.

‘Never mind.' The man reaches into his pocket and produces his own matches. He strikes one and holds it out. Confused, Templeton leans into the flame. The man grins and exhales a stream of smoke. He winks. Templeton turns to survey the park: the paved court around the fountain is strewn with knots of men, in pairs or clusters, smoking and talking, entering and exiting from the underground St James station. Plenty of blokes about to get a light from, so what's this fella's game? Templeton pats himself down to make sure his watch and the few coins in his pockets are still there. Outside of the lit circle, the bushes ripple and sway like sea anemones.

‘Fancy going some place for a drink?' The man stands expectantly as he asks the question, assuming a yes.

‘Do you know somewhere?' He is dead keen on another drink, but he'd seen shysters and conmen before. And not many bastards in silk waistcoats stopped to talk to the likes of him.

‘Sure I do.' The man rocks back on his expensive heels and sweeps his arms wide. His teeth glint large and very white.

‘Well, umm, alright then.' Templeton throws down his ember and stamps it out. If this fella wanted to rob him, he would soon find he was wasting his time.

He follows the man into the trees, a pace or so behind. A murmur of harbour salt from Woolloomooloo Bay mixes with the smell of mulch and the man's cologne. When they have walked a hundred yards or so to where the Moreton Bay figs huddle densely, they stop. The man leaves the path and ducks behind a tree. Templeton watches as he unbuttons his trousers and urinates. It is too dark for Templeton to see clearly, but he hears the bullish stream against the trunk.

‘Come here,' says a disembodied voice, lower and thicker than it had been at the fountain.

‘I thought we're gettin' a drink —'

‘I've got a quart of brandy.'

‘Well, come out and let's drink it.'

‘No. You come here.'

Templeton is too irritated to be wary. He walks into the shadows. The man has his back pressed against the vast fig. He gestures with the bottle and presses it into Templeton's hand. ‘Have as much as you like.'

The brandy is hot from being in the man's breast pocket — cloying — but it's welcome and he slurps it down. He wipes his moist lips and offers it back. The man doesn't reach to take it. Instead he has his hand on his crotch, adjusting himself unhurriedly. He has slipped off his hat and now pulls at his tie, allowing Templeton to sees the black hair spreading to his collarbones in a chevron. Templeton stares at the man's chest, the notch of his collarbone. The man moves towards him and he feels the gust of breath on his neck, fingers groping at his buttons. His soft cock in a cool palm, pulled out. The man slides his hand up to the head of it.

‘Get off.' Templeton reaches suddenly for the man's collar and pushes him. His open palm slaps skin, marble-hard beneath the cotton of a shirt. The man pushes the heel of his hand into Templeton's protesting mouth and pulls harder on Templeton's stiffening cock.

It only takes a moment. He doesn't know if it is the panting in his ear, the vigour of the man's grip or the solidness of the flesh pressing into him. He gasps so violently he grabs a fistful of the man's hair and twists it as he spends himself in the man's hand. Afterwards he sags, but almost immediately he senses the pressure on his shoulders, and a soft grunt forces him down onto his knees.

He tries to struggle, unsure, but the liquor befuddles him. The man manoeuvres him so his head is smacking roughly against the fig trunk. He feels the hard cock prod against his chin, his cheek, trying to find the wet entrance to his mouth. He starts to panic. He tries to knock it away with his hand but the man moves it back again, this time more urgently. Although it is dark amid the trees, he closes his eyes. Then the man is in his mouth — further than his mouth, hitting the back of his throat, hard, angled down, fucking his face, and he is pinned against the tree. He splutters, gags. Wiry hairs are getting caught in his teeth, and hips buck against his nose, smashing it flat.

‘Suck it.'

He chokes and retches loudly, fighting for his breath around the thick cock. The man backs off, allowing him some slack. Templeton can just make out the trouser material bunched under his testicles. The man shoves it deep in his throat one final time and a salty, creamy bitterness coats his tongue.

‘Towards your next drink.' The man picks him up, smoothes him down and pushes a pound note into his coat pocket. Templeton pulls up his trousers. He wants to say something, anything, but he can't think what. The taste of the man's seed is potent in his mouth.

‘So long,' the man puts his hat back on, tips it and walks away.

Templeton does not know how long he stands there, leaning against the tree. He takes the pound note out and gapes at it like a fool. The lights guide him back finally to College Street — a string of beacons along a foreign coast. The forbidding façade of the museum greets him, and the Grecian pillars of the posh boys' grammar school stand tall and austere. An armada of bats launch out from the canopy behind him, keening. They sweep over the William Street dip. Will they skim the hulked silhouette of the Bridge, or keep east and flock out past the dark headlands until there is nothing but unending sky? He takes the pound from his jacket again, looking at the King's head as though for the first time, and he breaks a grin, folds the note into tidy quarters and tucks it back.

NINETEEN

‘We must go and pay our respects. We must do our duty, love.'

‘I don't want to.' Nancy is aghast.

‘It's not a choice. That is what is to be done.'

‘I have a pound cake you can take. I'll put it in a tin,' Mrs Roberts contributes, ever-present, and mobilised by the plan. But then she rethinks. ‘Perhaps a cake is inappropriate? Oh, no — what do you think? Maybe the lamb stew instead?' Fretting, she returns downstairs to Izzy in the kitchen.