Eyrie (18 page)

K
eely got out of the lift, turned the corner and there along the gallery in a puddle of light outside his door was Gemma. He hesitated a second but it was too late. She’d seen him. And his moment of indecision. In cargo shorts and a singlet, she leant against the iron rail, sucking on a fag beneath a cloud of moths. As he tramped on towards her, she glanced up and scattered them with a savage jet of smoke.

Evening, he murmured.

She said nothing. Lent on her elbows and stared out towards the bridges. Her hands shook.

Everything alright?

On his doormat was the laptop they’d retrieved that afternoon. It felt like days ago. He gathered it up and unlocked his door.

Gemma?

Moths churned and wheeled above her. She blew them into disarray once more.

Keely went in, set the little Acer on the kitchen bench and opened the sliding door to catch whatever mucky updraught there was. He turned to see her stab the fag out against the rail and pitch the butt into the darkness.

You coming in or what?

She turned beneath her corona of moths, ran a hand through her hair and peered in at him. She came on in, but unsteadily. She was drunk. Or drugged. Or something.

Kai asleep? he asked.

I can’t get him off that bloody Nintendo.

What d’you want me to do with this? he said, pointing to the laptop.

I dunno. Set it up or whatever for Kai? Dunno nothin about em.

You want a cup of tea or something?

She shook her head.

You’re not working tonight?

What is this – quiz night? I called in crook, okay?

As she brushed by to flop into the armchair he saw how puffy her eyes were, as if she’d been crying.

Something’s happened, he said.

Let’s go for a drive.

Maybe you should tell me.

I feel like a drive, she said.

It’s late, Gem. I’m knackered. And what about Kai?

He can come too.

He’s got school. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

He’s comin, she said hotly. Don’t look at me like I’m some horrible slag. All I want’s a bloody drive in me car – is that a crime? Come or don’t come, I don’t care.

She blundered back out onto the gallery and up the way. He watched her fumble at her own door.

Leave us alone! she yelled back at him before stepping inside.

Keely retreated indoors. Alert to the prospect of a stormy return, he left the door ajar and tidied the kitchen, but she didn’t show.

He was brushing his teeth for bed when he heard Gemma’s angry shout in the distance. A door slammed. He went out onto the balcony from where a child’s wailing carried on the warm night air. Keely told himself it could be anyone’s kid. Every window in the building was open as residents courted the tepid breeze; the place was as porous as a birdcage – sounds you swore you heard next door actually boiled up from several floors below.

He went inside, uneasy but determined to get an early night. But another door thudded shut and then footfalls rang along the gallery.

Do what ya bloody told! yelled Gemma.

Keely stepped out to see her hauling the resistant boy by the arm and the sight of them struggling out there between the wall and the railing sent a ripple of fear through him. When he reached them they were both flailing and tearful. A few doors down, from the safety of the darkness, someone threatened to call the cops. Gemma told whoever they were to get stuffed. But she gave up the car keys the moment Keely asked for them.

*

It wasn’t until they were past the Old Traffic Bridge and the container terminal that the boy’s rending sobs finally gave way to silence. Keely cranked down the window to let in a soothing rush of night air. He steered them along the coast, savouring the quiet, not knowing or caring where he was headed, his bewilderment and disgust gradually softened by the smells of limey sand, ocean air and saltbush. The road narrowed and wound through unlit bush reserves. The little car burped and rattled. There were sparks behind his eyes and that deep ache in his skull further back, but he tried to concentrate on the sweet feel of the wind rummaging through his shirt. In the mirror he caught the pale flutter of Gemma’s hair, the swipe of a hand blotting tears. She sat in the corner of the back seat cradling the kid. Kai seemed to have subsided into sleep.

Swanbourne, Floreat, City Beach. Gulls orbited the orange sodium lights of the northern beaches and above them the sky was starless, inky. The waterside carparks were scattered with vanloads of backpackers and partying youths hunting shadows. Every rocky groyne bristled with fishing rods and the shadows on the dimpled sand looked like moon craters.

At Scarborough he circled the roundabout beneath the ugly clock and wound slowly through the old terraces.

Christ, she said.

I know.

Why here?

It wasn’t deliberate, he said.

I’m just sayin.

I’m just driving, he said. I could be in bed, you know.

She said nothing and he caught a glimpse of her running a hand through her hair, gazing out at the old sights. Keely steered them past the tawdry strip of shops, the Norfolk pines, the kids sitting on the bonnets of their cars.

Saw a boy surfin a Torana here one night. The mudflaps were on fire.

I was there, he said.

Riot police and everythin.

Happy days!

Loved that show.

That too, he said, pulling up by the northern shower block where the coolest surfers used to hang and the stink of hash was often more pungent than the reek of piss. A couple of kids hacked up and down on skateboards. It looked desolate here now. But at this time of night perhaps it had always looked a bit bleak.

Carn then, she said. We come this far. Let’s check it out.

Check what out?

You know what.

What happened tonight?

Five minutes, Tom. It won’t kill ya.

Why?

Old times’ sake.

Why now?

Cause we can. And I got the car, Tommy. I don’t care what that little shit Stewie says. I got the car. I can drive where I like. C’mon.

The skater boys flipped their boards warily, waiting for the old folks to get out or drive away. With one of them in the front and the other in the back Keely knew they probably looked dodgy. He wheeled the car around and a minute later they were on the four-lane east.

I remember this, said Gemma. I remember when it was a limestone track.

Keely said nothing. He recalled it well enough. Wished she would shut up.

When he pulled into the old street he felt uneasy. Why couldn’t he have tooled along the river, somewhere neutral? He hadn’t been back in thirty-five years; he wasn’t sure he wanted to do this tonight. Maybe another day – alone, on foot, in daylight. But he was here now. And he could smell wild oats and lupins from the empty lot on the corner. He remembered this, the smell and the patch of dirt, from all those long treks to school. He thought of bikes with banana seats, boys in desert boots, hot tar.

In the back Gemma twisted and gasped.

Christ, she muttered. They’ve changed the name. Grasstree Crescent.

Grasstree? he said as evenly as he could manage.

I’ll bet it’s to keep the Abos happy.

Keely let it go. But he felt the twinge of loss, despite himself. He eased down the hill in first, struggling to get his bearings. The road was the same; he remembered when this too had been limestone. The crescent curved down towards the swamp, so strange and familiar. But few of the old places were there anymore. The modest uniformity of the original neighbourhood was gone and with it the sense of egalitarian plainness, the peculiar comprehensibility it once had. The quarter-acre blocks had been subdivided, the small brick-veneer bungalows replaced by two-storey triplexes pressed together without eaves or verandahs. On nearly every roof sat an airconditioner and a satellite dish. Where there had been picket fences, high brick walls. No families out on porches watching TV, no cars sprawled across front yards, no lumpy aprons of buffalo grass.

Neither he nor Gemma spoke until they reached the swamp, now a recreation precinct of bicycle paths, pine-log gazebos and mown lawns under floodlights.

Fuck, she said.

Yeah.

Go back, she said. Chuck a u-ey.

A little dazed, Keely swung about and headed uphill at a crawl. Number 14 was gone. He idled out the front of a shrunken Tuscan villa behind whose wrought-iron gates stood a Chinese 4x4.

I don’t care about ours, she said. But I wanted yours to still be there.

Well. It isn’t.

A sensor light came on. He pulled away, heard her counting houses. But in the end they didn’t need to count. For there it was, unmistakeable.

Wouldn’t it rip ya? she said quietly.

The old Buck place had every light on, curtains askew, music pounding from open windows. On the parched front lawn a slew of vehicles, some on blocks. A dog flew out, flashing its teeth. From the porch a woman called it back with a foul stream of imprecations.

That’ll be why they changed the name, said Gemma. So more boongs could move in.

Stop it, he said, pulling away.

I wish we hadn’t come.

Well, we did.

It’s all different.

No, he said with pleasure. Your place is still the same.

Fuck you, she said lighting up a fag. Go fuck yourself.

He drove homeward in the stormy silence and as the lights of the container terminal rose before them he heard her weeping in the back.

I
nstead of settling for budget-brand muesli, Keely sat in Bub’s and ordered his morning usual. While he was waiting he fired up the newly charged laptop for a casual look at what needed doing. And a single glance was sufficient. He slapped the thing shut with so much force a woman cried out at the next table and all he could offer was a grimace of apology.

Keely thought he’d seen porn but he’d never encountered anything quite like this before. When breakfast came he ate it blinking dumbly at the battered Acer which had suddenly taken on a radioactive aura. Between that and the nervous glances from the poor woman alongside him, he wasn’t inclined to linger and the outing was an expensive washout.

Once he got the machine home he found the software was registered to Carly M. Fairlight, but he doubted she was the gonzo-porn enthusiast. He spent the rest of the day dumping files and running clean-up programs. He wondered about Gemma’s mood last night, whether she’d stumbled on this cache – or worse, found Kai with it. That was an ugly thought. But no. If she’d seen that shit she’d have pitched the thing off the tenth floor already, wouldn’t she? Maybe he was a resentful puritan – wasn’t that how the shock-jocks portrayed him? But that stuff was foul. He wished he hadn’t seen it.

Eventually he got the computer running smoothly, and for good measure found he could pirate other folks’ wireless networks right here in the building, and by way of exorcism or whatever sacrament applied to soiled machines, he wiped it down, inside and out, with antibacterial handwash.

In the afternoon he left the front door open but nobody knocked. He made a fiery and extremely cheap vegetarian curry and ate it at dusk in a virtuous sweat.

At eight the phone rang. He was expecting his sister or his mother, but it was Gemma. She was subdued; she sounded hoarse. Kai was being difficult. She had a shift to do. Would he mind coming over for an hour?

He met her on the gallery. She was dressed for work, made up a little too vividly. She looked wretched and spent.

You could have come by, he said.

I didn’t think I should, she murmured shakily.

It’s fine, Gem.

I’m just a stupid bitch.

What did he do, that bloke? What’d he say to you?

Somethin nasty. Somethin a bloke’ll say.

You won’t tell me?

She shook her head.

Last night.

It doesn’t matter.

I just needed somethin nice, she said. Somewhere I could remember bein happy.

It took some absorbing. After everything she’d told him, everything he’d seen for himself, Blackboy Crescent was where she’d been happiest? He didn’t say anything. She looked too tired.

Just sit with him, will you, Tom? Don’t make him do anythin. Just be there.

He nodded. She gathered herself, pecked him on the cheek and went.

Inside 1010 the TV was off but the flat was a mess. Kai was in bed flipping through the raptor book. As if his being difficult were directed at Gemma alone. Keely greeted him but the boy did not respond. There were blue pools like bruises beneath his eyes. Keely resisted the urge to natter brightly at the kid. He did only what Gemma had asked, pushed her pillows against the wall and sat with him.

The boy closed the book and sank deeper. He tilted the thing up on his chest and surveyed the cover. It was a close-up image of an eagle’s eye – black-rimmed, stark, the iris a web of yellow-bronze – and Kai wasn’t merely glancing at it but peering deeply, chewing his lips, wheezing in fervent concentration. Keely tried not to stare but it was difficult. The kid seemed to mesmerize himself, sink into the interlacing layers of the bird’s iris.

Eventually the boy’s eyelids began to droop and flutter. He seemed to struggle against sleep as if stalked by it, and this skirmish went on for a minute or so, until the book began to waver. At the last moment, as if to save himself from falling, the boy reached aside and took Keely’s arm. And was gone. Keely caught the book with his spare hand. Saw him down. Tried not to hold his breath. Watched him sleep.

H
e woke on the floor in his own place with the slider open to the baking wind and his legs stippled with mosquito bites. His face hurt, his mouth was woolly, but he didn’t remember drinking anything. In the bathroom mirror he saw what amounted to a shiner. He had no memory of hurting himself. But there was still an eerie sparkle behind his eyes. A sequin fizz. It took a full minute to unscramble the label on the toothpaste.

In the café Bub raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Keely drank one coffee only and paid with shrapnel. He was turning to leave when Bub sent down a double-shot on the house. He waved in sheepish gratitude and tried to savour it. But he thought of the boy, his dry little hand on his arm. And the bird’s yellow eye. And the troubling fact of the wide-open door.

After a few moments Bub emerged from the kitchen and slid a tall glass of apple juice onto the table.

Here, said the nuggety bald fixture. You look dry as a camel’s cookie.

I am that. And thanks.

Tom, said Bub, smiling at the black eye, you’re not the fighting type.

You think?

The kitchen bell chimed. Bub clapped him on the shoulder and headed back.