From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (20 page)

Though it was not like any friendship Barney had ever known.

‘Youngest to oldest, each round,’ said Orange Boy. ‘You first, Specs.’

Ren looked upon Orange Boy with a near relative of Fish-Eye, then seemed to think better of it. She held out her cup for a refill and Orange Boy obliged.

‘Is the first question Yes/No, or the second?’

‘First,’ said Crimson Girl.

Ren took a gulp of tea and set the cup back on its saucer. She looked at Crimson Girl.

‘Have you been watching us since November?’

‘Yes.’

They all looked at Barney.

‘Are the old couple in the zine your grandparents?’ he asked Orange Boy.

‘Yes. My turn.’ He nodded at Crimson Girl. ‘She’s older.’

‘Is the Jack kid your best friend?’ He addressed Barney.

This was so unexpected, Barney’s brain froze all over again.

‘Yes or No,’ said Orange Boy, sternly. He rubbed the bandana up and down again.

But he couldn’t give a Yes/No answer to that, Barney thought. He couldn’t say Jack was his best friend and Benjamin not. In his head, they were equal. If he said No he would betray Jack. If he said Yes he would betray Benjamin.

Orange Boy narrowed his odd, transparent eyes at Barney. He was going at the bandana again. Rub rub. You could hear the sandy sound of the hair beneath. It was a nervous tic.

‘Yes,’ said Barney, quickly, squeezing his eyes as if to negate the answer. He had to say something. Anyway, they wouldn’t know.

‘Lie! Lie! Lie!’ said Orange Boy, his voice shrill. He rose up on his knees. ‘You closed your hands! That’s how you tell! If you lie, your hand clenches.’

Barney looked down at his hands. They had indeed curled up into a loose fist. Blimey.

‘But I can’t give a Yes/No answer to that one,’ he said, aggrieved. ‘He’s not exactly my best friend, I don’t
have
a best friend. Jack and Benjamin are the same.’

‘Yeah,’ said Orange Boy. He shrugged. ‘I know. I was testing your truth telling.’

He held his palm up at Crimson Girl and she high-fived him.

Barney gaped.

‘Told you we knew everything,’ said Orange Boy. ‘Your turn, Girl.’

‘Your mates,’ said Crimson Girl. ‘You told them anything?’

‘Course not,’ said Ren.

‘Yes or No!’ snapped Orange Boy.

Blimey
, thought Barney. He’s a megalomaniac, too.

The long answers were more revealing.

But only a little more. It was tricky. You had to frame your question carefully in order not to waste it, and to elicit maximum information. It was no good, for example, to ask, ‘How old are you?’ as Barney did, thoughtlessly, and to Ren’s irritation. Of course, only one of them answered. You had to say, ‘How old are you
both
?’ But, anyway, the answer added very little to the sum of information about Orange Boy and Crimson Girl.

Within three rounds Barney and Ren knew that the other two played Twenty Questions as Albert Anderson played chess. Mercilessly. They had two goals: one, to find out everything they could about Barney and Ren; two, to reveal as little of their own lives as possible.

Orange Boy policed the game with ruthless vigilance.

‘Why are you called Orange Boy and Crimson Girl and what are your real names?’

‘
Two
questions! Choose one!’

‘Okay. What are your real names?’

‘Orange Boy and Crimson Girl. True fact.’

Lummox, thought Barney.

It couldn’t be true. Could it?

For most of the game he almost hated Orange Boy.

‘Are the zines all true?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where are your parents?’

‘Dead or crazy.’

‘Why are you living in the Post Office?’

‘No money.’ (Vigorous head rubbing.)

‘Tell us about the people in the second zine.’

‘Not a
question
! Make it a proper question!’

‘Can you tell us about the people in the big house in the second zine?’

‘No.’

Lunkhead.

‘How do you have showers or baths? No, no, wait! I’ll say it another way. How do you wash yourselves?’ (Ren, of course. The business of cleaning oneself would never have crossed Barney’s mind.)

‘Library toilets or the ones at the Basilica. When all the people are inside on Sundays. The reverend guy, the priest, he knows. He gave us towels.’

‘Father Barry?’

‘Is that a question?’

At 1.55 a.m. Twenty Questions was over.

Barney and Ren had learned that Orange Boy and Crimson Girl came from the North Island, that they had been homeless for six months, drifting around the city, that they called each other Obi and Girl –

(
O
range
B
oy, OB, Obi Wan, Obi. Geddit, Maestro?)

– that they had stolen most of their zine paper and pens and envelopes from the Stationery Warehouse, that Girl was the better thief though it was riskier for her because of her skin colour. That when they weren’t thieving or looking for food they spent much
of their time inside the Post Office, drawing, making zines and inventing games. That the tabby had adopted them in their last squat. That they called her Brown Cat so she would fit right in …

These snippets were something. But also, nearly nothing. Later, when Barney lay in his bed, wide awake despite his exhaustion, going over and over the facts of Obi and Girl, he realised how little it all amounted to. They had let go of small, unimportant facts. Small facts that added up to the thinnest outline of two lives; and lives with almost no pasts. Nor did the outlines fit precisely with the episodes shown in the zines. It was like two jigsaws, side by side, the pieces mixed, the true pictures impossible to sort and align.

But Ren and Barney? They had no such reticence. They let out a cascade of facts and detail, because Obi and Girl’s questions were so unexpected. So artful. And disquieting. They had begun with small curiosities:

Why was Sabrina’s shop called Mrs Corry’s when her surname was Maxwell?

Did Albert Anderson have a girlfriend?

Did Billie and Sarah Montgomery live with their father as well as work with him?

Then, slowly, slyly, they had become more probing, the questions demanding longer and more elaborate answers.

What was the inside of their apartment like?

What did they get for their birthdays?

What other things did they do, apart from filming?

How would they describe their parents?

What were the names of all their aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents?

Where did they live and what did they do?

They were practically stories, Ren and Barney’s answers. And they had warmed to telling them, Barney thought, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. They had forgotten to be sparing in their answers, like Obi and Girl, or they did not know how. They had
enjoyed
telling the stories of their life, the story of their lives; it was a good story with countless chapters. They had opened their mouths and out it all came.

But, it was something about their audience, too, thought Barney. The stills from the night spooled through his head, on a perpetual loop. It was the attention that Girl and Obi paid to their sprawling answers, the unblinking,
hungry
look in their eyes. It had made you want to go on, it had made you want to embellish and please, it had made you want to present them your story as a
gift
: the onceuponatime of the Kettle family, of Busby’s Emporium, on the High Street of town.

The candles burned nearly to stubs. The flames guttered and spat. They all watched each other across the table. Obi knelt up, loosened his dressing gown sash, retied it and knelt back on his haunches. Girl chewed a fingernail. She had gone off into a dream.

The silence between them was not uncomfortable. Or not quite. Barney lifted his cup to Obi and Obi poured a thin stream. The pungent tea was beginning to taste interesting.

‘We could get food for you,’ said Ren into the silence. She sounded sleepy.

‘Yeah?’ Girl grunted around her fingernail.

‘Why did you start hiding the zines for us?’ said Barney. Why hadn’t he asked this questions first?

‘No more questions!’ said Obi, peremptorily. ‘Only in Twenty Questions.’

‘But how come?’ said Ren. It was a question, but Obi answered anyway. Like most megalomaniacs he was inconsistent.

‘We like the rules,’ said Obi, having a good go at the side of his head. ‘And we get to ask questions back.’

‘We don’t mind if you ask us more questions.’

‘No. Only in Twenty Questions. And only once each time.’

Each time? What made him so sure they’d come back?

‘No offence,’ said Obi. His hand strayed to the side of his head then fell away.

Oh well. Okay then.

Oh, but who was he kidding? thought Barney. Of course he’d be back. Try stopping him. This was the most bizarre and intriguing night he had ever passed in his twelve-nearly-thirteen year life. And that was counting Benjamin’s twelfth birthday sleepover when they had all watched
Memento
and Barney had felt his brain turn inside out.

Obi and Girl were thoroughly disconcerting. Intimidating, even. And he was sludgy with tiredness. And the sick feeling in his stomach had not abated in the slightest all night. But he did not want to leave.

And he very much wanted to come back for more.

But the night had not ended there.

‘Another game?’ enquired Girl.

She rose to her feet in one graceful movement and moved to the beer can shelves.

‘How did –’ Barney began.

‘No!’ said Obi. He held his hand up, like a traffic warden. ‘Sounds like a question!’

It was a perfectly
innocent
question, said Barney, silently. About the beer cans. The recycling container outside His Lordship’s?

He glowered at Obi, feeling a little brave.

Obi shrugged.

‘Crazopoly?’ said Girl. ‘Or Strip Jack?’

He was certainly
not
taking off his clothes with strangers. He drew the line. He’d played Strip Jack with actual Jack and Benjamin and Edward but they’d always stopped at their boxers. Obi and Girl would have no such inhibitions, he felt sure.

‘Crazopoly,’ said Obi. He was clearing the tea party from the table.

‘I’ve never heard of Crazopoly,’ said Ren, carefully.

Oh,
fast
learner, thought Barney, a little sourly. No whats, whys, hows, whens, wheres for Ren. And she’d get an answer. Perhaps she really
was
Sherlock. Could you be Snowy and Sherlock? There was no way she was Tintin.

‘We invented it,’ said Girl. ‘Our version of Monopoly. Way better.’ She brought a box and a cardboard square over to the table. Obi brought the scented candle from the bedside. Close up the wafts of cinnamon were thick and a little sickly.

‘We need new candles,’ Obi said to Girl, in much the same way Mum said ‘We need rubbish bags’ or ‘We need more light-bulbs’ to Dad.

‘No bank,’ explained Girl. ‘No one’s got money. Just smarts. It’s about survival.’ She turned over the cardboard square.

Barney and Ren examined the board.

The background was the regulation pale green, the four sides of the board divided neatly into the property rectangles and coloured in the familiar spectrum. But it carried the stamp of the zine artists’ hands; you could tell by the faces of the characters that peopled the perimeter and centre of the board.

‘People we’ve met,’ said Girl. She touched the figures with a fingertip. ‘Stevo. He helped us a bit. Miri. She died. Reuben. Lives on the beach in summer. Mils, a good cop. Arsehole, the arsehole cop.’

The layout was a faithful replica of the Monopoly board’s organisation – streets, stations, utilities, collection points, Chance and Community Chest cards – only, the utilities were the City Mission and the Food Bank, the collection points were cash machines and the Go to Jail corner said Go to Foster Care.

The streets were the laneways, cul-de-sacs and alleys of their own inner city; the alcoves and steps of old government buildings, the abandoned houses, the grassy sanctuaries beneath bridges, the park benches and spreading trees in the Botanic Gardens. They
were the places, Barney and Ren soon learned, where you could stake a claim, set up a marginal residence, sleep for a few nights, maybe weeks, until someone took it from you – someone bigger than you, someone wilier or tougher, someone a little threatening, maybe. No questions asked. No answers given. Do not pass Go. Do not collect a thing.

It was a Monopoly for the homeless.

Girl placed two small piles of cards in the middle of the board. Bad Luck and Good Luck.

Ren inspected a card. ‘These are so perfect.’

Her voice had an ominous trace of Teeny Weeny Sweetie.

‘
A big guy steals your pillow. Go back five spaces
. Funny.’

‘You reckon?’ said Girl. ‘You ever had your pillow taken?’

‘No,’ Ren admitted.

She had two pillows, in fact, with matching covers, always plumped and perfectly positioned. Barney was forbidden to put his head on either of them. He checked Obi and Girl’s floor bed, a bumpy arrangement of cushions. Two sorry pillows, low on stuffing, old lady covers. Brown Betty was asleep on top of one. He thought carefully about his next statement.

‘Ren likes fat pillows,’ he said, ‘but I like them thin.’

Oh, but how
lame
it sounded. How
lunkheaded
. Barney felt an immense urge to rake his face and tear his hair.

Obi looked at him, gave his head a quick scratch. Barney was getting used to these silent assessments.

‘Try lifting pillows,’ said Obi. ‘Covers were in a sale bin.’

‘
Find lunch on park bench. Move forward four spaces
.’

‘This must have been so fun to make,’ said Ren.

‘We did it together,’ said Girl. ‘We made everything. Except the dice.’

The counters were assorted small badges. Barney chose one with skull and crossbones. It said,
Frack off
.