Nine Days (3 page)

She won’t forget that in a hurry. Scintillated, she was. What is her father thinking, letting her walk around the streets anyway? If I had a daughter like that, a girl with Annabel’s hair and Annabel’s smile, the last thing I’d do is let her walk in lanes and talk to the likes of me. And I’d never let her dance with Francis, not on your nelly.

So before long my throat’s remembered how to swallow of its own accord and now I’m thinking
what are you doing out of school early, Annabel
and
I love dancing, what is your favourite dance Annabel
and
I believe you’re an only child, aren’t you Annabel
and
Can I walk you home
and
Your hair is like fairy floss.
Bugger.

I own the lanes, mostly. I know the web of them, every lane in Richmond. I know which houses have a ‘to let’ sign on the front so they should be empty but there’s a light at the
back which means a two-up school’s moved in. I know the corner on the other side of Coppin Street where you can peel back the corrugated iron and get at the Hagens’ apricots. And down towards the river, the damp dog-leg where weeds grow as high as your hip and where the beetles meet in summer and you need to dodge the rusty tins and rabbits’ guts and I know which cat rules the stretch behind the fisho where he throws the heads but would you believe it as I come into the lane across the other side of Lennox Street I’m thinking about Annabel Crouch and smack.

I walk straight into the four stooges, lounging on the corner like it’s somebody’s front room.

‘Well, if it isn’t Westaway Junior,’ Mac says.

‘Yeah,’ says Cray.

So. The day has finally declared itself. It’s peeled off one fancy leather glove, slapped me across the face with it and thrown it on the ground. Now I’m the one who’s got to pick the ruddy thing up. On-bloody-guard, d’Artagnan.

‘Hello, my little fish-eating friend,’ says Jim Pike. ‘Are you doing errands for your ma like a good cat lick? Tell you what. Just to show we’re all friends here, all for the mighty Tiges, I’ll give you a ha’penny to shine my shoes.’

‘Hello Pike. I can see your shoes are a bit on the shabby side but no thanks all the same. I don’t know where your ha’penny’s been.’

We’re in the widest part of the lane, with bits of corrugated iron on either side and bluestones sloping to a channel in the middle, filled with muddy water and other stuff that doesn’t bear thinking about. Leaning against the fence is a
boy I don’t know. He’s smoking, shirt pulled out of his pants and socks down, no jumper. The kind that won’t let on when he’s freezing. He throws his ciggie in a puddle and it hisses and smokes. He says, ‘Who’s this one when he’s at home?’

‘This, Manson my old pal, is one Kip the drip Westaway, the baby brother of Saint Francis,’ Pike says. ‘He’s the most famous shit shoveller in all of Richmond. Straight from a cushy scholarship at St Mick’s, suit and tie and pious expression, to his current position at the rear end of a horse. It’s a wonder you haven’t heard of him back in Sydney.’

‘He cried when he left school. Like a weeping statue of the virgin,’ says Mac.

I know crystal where they heard that from. ‘As much as I’d love to stand around taking tea with you ladies, I have my own ha’pennies to earn.’ I try to walk past them but Cray grabs me by one arm and Mac takes the other. The parcel of meat falls to the ground. Again. By the time I get home it’s going to be mince.

‘Actually,’ says Pike. ‘There’s a job going where my dad is. On the line. You should pop your head in, Kipper.’

Mac shakes his head. ‘A problem with that plan, Mr Pike.’

‘Ah so,’ says Pike. ‘The notice says cattle ticks need not apply.’

Cray starts laughing.

‘This is one of them boys?’ says Manson. ‘Master Mick MacMichael of Ballymicksville, eh?’

‘Keep up, Sydney,’ I say.

‘Shall I tell you the story of Kip the drip?’ says Pike. ‘It’s a long and sad tale that reminds me of a storybook. Who was
that writer? The old timer, Kipper? He was, I believe, a— what you would call a proddy dog. English. Name escapes me.’

‘That’d be Dickens,’ I say. ‘Nobhead.’

‘Ah yes. Just like Grape Hexpectorations, our story starts with the family in somewhat reduced circumstances on account of the sudden demise of Kipper’s old man. Who dropped off the tram in Swan Street somewhat the worse for a whisky or three and hit his head. Blam, splashed his brains all over the read. A sad end.’ Pike shows his teeth. ‘Goodnight Josephine.’

I can feel Mac’s and Cray’s sticky fingers pressing the flesh of my arms. My heart’s racing like it’s going to pop through my chest. I don’t wriggle. I stand dead still.

‘Those shortsighted men in full and gainful employment who neglect to make provisions for their families in the case of accidental death or dismemberment deserve what they get,’ says Mac, whose father is in insurance.

‘Yeah,’ says Cray.

‘I see the elocution lessons are paying off, Cray,’ I say. ‘Any day now you’ll come out with a full sentence.’

‘Funny,’ says Cray.

‘A bit of respect, Kipper.’ Mac kicks the back of my calf with a thick toecap. It’ll come up in a beaut bruise tomorrow, but right now it hurts like there won’t be one. I turn my head to the side and deliver a huge yawn into my shoulder.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I say. ‘Don’t mind me. As well as a face only a mother could love, you’ve got a real knack for storytelling.’

‘With your permission, Fishface,’ says Pike, but all at once I am no longer here in the lane with these gorillas but back
in the kitchen those first days when I knew we would never see Dad again. I had been reading that morning before he left, sunk so deep in a book I barely looked up to see him go. His hat would’ve been pulled down over his ears like always, satchel in his hands, nails black from the ink, and when he rested his hand on the top of my head, I barely gave him the smallest glance before he went to work and then that night Ma crying, in shock the doctor said, and Connie red-eyed and running up and down the hall with tea and hot washers and tablets from the chemist’s. I remember the edge of Dad’s hat had some tiny black hairs stuck to the brim. The barber hadn’t brushed him down properly. I thought we should buy him a new hat for the funeral because he wouldn’t have liked to rest through eternity with those little hairs stuck there but I didn’t dare ask Ma, her face was so white before his Mass, and now he’s under the ground and it’s much much too late.

Pike is smirking now and the new boy, Manson, spits a big gob right next to my boot with remarkable precision for such a hefty hoik, clear and frothy white. He smiles. By that I mean the corners of his mouth go up. Cray’s fingers are hot on my arms and I have just one chance and I’m going to take it. No sense worrying about future repercussions if I’m not alive to enjoy them. I lean a little forward. On the bottom of Cray’s chin, a few stray hairs are peeking through.

‘Cray,’ I say. ‘You’re holding me awful tight and awful close. Are you not getting enough cuddles off Mac these days?’

He lets go and pulls his arms back and jumps away and Mac does too. I kick the meat as hard as I can and it goes flying down the lane. The paper unravels and I scoop it up
and I lose a sausage or two but I’ve gained a good twenty yards. ‘Get him!’ I hear.

But I’m Jesse Owens, I’m Jack Titus, I’m Decima Norman, excepting I’m not a girl. I fly out of the lane, pounding the cobbles like the Nazi hordes are hot behind me, across the road and they’re breathing hard, and I’m around the Hustings’ into our lane and I’ve taken the corner too sharp and down I go, bang crash, arse over T. My knee and elbow scrape on the bluestones and it stings like buggery but there’s no time for that now, up again, in the back gate and bolt it behind me.

Five minutes later I’m still sitting on the step, head between my knees, gulping like a landed fish when Connie comes out of the back door. I see what she sees: dirty meat spilling out of the paper on the ground, me with a knee and an elbow dripping blood on the path, one side of my shorts and half my shirt wet with mud and filth.

She sits beside me and slides an arm around my shoulders and she’s warm and she’s Connie and I’d like to sit there forever being held like when I was little but I know I’d blub so instead I say it’s nothing.

‘Nothing, eh. How did this nothing happen?’

‘I fell.’ I look at the stitching on the side of my boot.

‘I bet you did.’ She doesn’t ask anything more and I’m glad it’s her that’s found me, not Ma or Francis. She sticks out her hand and hauls me to my feet. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up.’

‘Sorry about the meat.’

She screws her nose up but says, ‘It’ll scrub up all right and what they don’t know won’t hurt them. I can’t, however, say the same for you.’

She helps me limp to the laundry then fetches a wet washer and some soap and that evil red stuff and I bite the inside of my lip while she pats and prods with tweezers and takes bits of gravel out of my knee and elbow and she’s gentle and she talks about nothing, a dress she saw in a window and that Italian family in Tanner Street, and I know she’s trying to take my mind off it like I’m a kid. I’m not a kid and soon I’ve had all I can take.

‘Mr Husting’s shovels,’ I say.

Connie stands with her hands on her hips, looking at my knee. She’s been cutting chokos off the back fence for tea and she’s wearing an old dress of Ma’s and her apron has green stains and her hair has fallen out of its bun and is across her face in black wisps.

She looks different now from when she went to art school. Tired. When me and Francis were little and she used to tuck us in, Connie’s hands were soft and now they’re rough. There’s a red scaly bit across her knuckles. It looks itchy and sore. Her nails are all broken off.

‘My medical opinion is: you’ll live. I’ll finish it after tea. Those stains should come out all right. Mrs Husting’ll have a fit if she sees you like that. Leave your shorts and shirt in the trough and I’ll soak them tonight.’

I do as she says and strip off and change and before I leave the yard I check. The lane is empty. They’ve gone back to Cray’s mother’s for sultana cake, the perfect little angels.

At the Hustings’, I’m cleaning shovels and it’s sweaty work and I put my hand in my pocket for my hanky and it isn’t there which is strange, I took a clean one from the dresser this
morning and Ma always says she’d rather we had no breakfast than no hanky.

Of course. These are new shorts. And then I remember. That shilling. It’s in my dirty shorts, in the trough. It’s not that I don’t trust Connie, of course. But you never know about Francis. He’s sworn to God but I’ve had things go missing from my pockets before: a cat’s eye I’d only just won back when I was at school, two pieces of English toffee in foil and the bleached skull of a kitten I found half-buried down by the river. If I get one more shilling I could ask Annabel Crouch to come with me to the Glacerium, but if I don’t get that one back right now I’ll be kissing it goodbye forever.

When they put me in my grave, I know what it’ll say on the stone, if I get a stone, if they don’t bury me like a stray cat at the tip.
It was wanting to skate on ice with a girl that caused his so-called life to hit the skids.

Hand on my heart, this is how it happens. I’m home early. Connie’ll be calling me for tea any second and I need to get to the trough, quick, in case Francis comes nosing around. The sun drops fast these nights and it’s nearly dark but I could find my way around the laundry blindfolded: roof tilting down on top of me, washing of clothes on the right and washing of Westaways on the left and I lean on the trough to find my shorts. The grey cement is rough and scratchy under my hands, mostly, with smooth patches already where Connie’s rubbed the clothes on it. We bought the trough not
long before Dad went. Ma was that proud. Lurking in the corner are the copper and the boiling stick and next to them an old tin bucket and the big brush. In the trough, there’s a pile of dirty clothes and I find my shorts and pocket my shilling quick smart, and then I see a kind of silky dullish green almost the colour of the copper and I wonder what that is. When I untangle it from the rest and hold it up I see it’s a pair of ladies’ undies with white lace along the edges and by crikey, are they big. The bottom that fits these undies must be a bottom and a half. The queen, no, the empress of bottoms. The undies look funny, hanging there in the air by themselves without any lady in them, and I think about Francis at dancing classes and I wiggle the undies from side to side like a big dancing bottom. Then I think about the American parachutists coming for Mrs Husting and I throw them in the air to watch them fall, like being under a chute when it opens, and they drop down on my face.

That’s when I see the light go on inside and hear the scream. A long, loud scream. I take the undies off my head. The kitchen bulb is swinging on its chain and the glow looks like a halo around her head and there in the doorway, Mrs Keith is holding her hands to the sides of her face like she’s got a toothache, and she’s screaming and screaming.