Past the Shallows (13 page)

‘I’ve been going over there to play with Jake.’

Miles grabbed Harry with both arms now.

‘Who the hell is Jake? What are you talking about?’

‘George lets me play with his puppy, Jake, and we have lunch. He told me all about Mum.’

Miles started walking again as fast as he could away from Harry, but Harry kept talking.

‘He was friends with Granddad and it isn’t true what people say about him and –’

‘We’re not going there, OK? I don’t know him.’

They walked in silence for a while, Harry still behind Miles, until they got to the bridge.

‘George is on the other side,’ Harry said.

‘I already told you, we’re not going there.’

‘Well, where are we going?’

Miles stopped. His eyes burned. He hadn’t told Harry that Joe had gone.

‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. And he didn’t know.

Harry stood beside him and put his hand on his shoulder. He kept saying ‘We’ll be all right. We’ll be all right’ and Miles
didn’t know how long they stood like that, but the cold had got in and he could feel it. He could feel something. Now his
head hurt. It ached and stung and his right eye felt wrong. It wouldn’t open properly.

‘OK,’ was all he said.

Harry led them across the road and onto a track, almost running.

T
hey were close when a dog started barking from inside.

Miles stopped dead but Harry kept moving towards the small wooden shack.

‘It’s just Jake,’ he said, without bothering to keep his voice down, and a light came on from inside. A figure stood in the
half-opened doorway.

‘It’s me and Miles,’ Harry said.

A dog bolted out the door and ran to Harry. It jumped around his feet and the man at the door waved them in. Harry went inside
but Miles followed slowly. He stepped carefully onto the creaking verandah and he tried not to stare at the dark hollows and
missing pieces of the man’s face. Miles had never really seen George Fuller up close, had never seen his face, but somehow
it didn’t shock him now. Somehow the man
standing there just looked like an old man. He was just an old man.

Miles turned away and stepped through the door. Inside a small gas lamp lit the room. The place was neat and ordered, clean,
the walls painted white against the dark wood ceiling and supporting beams. There was a small bed against one wall, a table,
one armchair and two wooden chairs, a single shelf with a few pots and things, a wood heater in the middle of the room, a
rug, a metal trough with one tap attached to the wall. More things than Miles would have thought could fit in a place like
this, and yet it all did.

George gestured for Miles to take the armchair, but he put his backpack on the table and sat on one of the small wooden chairs
instead. Harry seemed happy to just stand there and not introduce Miles, so Miles didn’t say anything either. He watched George
fill an old kettle at the trough, the water from the tap running slowly, then he put the kettle on the wood heater. Harry
fed the fire some more wood and sat on the floor with the dog in front of the fire like nothing had happened, like tonight
hadn’t happened and he’d always lived in this tiny wood shack with this old man. Miles looked at his backpack and then at
the floor. His head really hurt now and the heat
of the room was making his eye swell up. He could feel it growing, his eyelid fat and heavy. He cleared his throat.

Harry turned around.

‘This is Miles,’ he said.

The dog looked up at Miles for a second, then put his head back down on Harry’s lap. Miles thought he should say something
but he couldn’t think of anything. George stood up and got a box down from the shelf. He put it on the table and pulled out
a bottle of Dettol and a cloth.

‘OK?’ he said, and the sound came from deep in his throat and nose, rather than out of his mouth. He pointed at the cut on
Miles’s forehead. Miles nodded.

George diluted some of the Dettol with water and soaked the corner of a cloth in the liquid. He moved towards Miles, touching
his forehead lightly. He brushed the hair away from the wound and dabbed gently at the cut. The antiseptic stung the broken
skin and Miles pulled away. There was blood on the cloth, bright and fresh. Miles breathed in.

‘You OK?’ Harry asked, and Miles nodded.

George fished around in the box and found a butterfly clip. He squeezed the skin tight and applied the bandage, then put blobs
of some kind of cream around Miles’s eye and cheek. It was cold and it
smelled like Aunty Jean’s herbal tea, but it made his head feel better.

The kettle boiled. George poured some tea into a teapot, followed by the hot water. There were two teacups and one mug. George
went outside to the verandah and came back with a bottle of milk. He poured it in all three cups and put the bottle on the
table. Miles stood up, having a purpose, and took the bottle in his hand. George nodded. It was really warm inside now and
wouldn’t take long for the milk to go bad.

He could see quite well on the verandah because of the light coming though the window, but the moon was still behind clouds.
There was a meat safe hanging from the roof and below it a wooden cupboard with flywire sides. Miles put the milk in the otherwise
empty cupboard and went back inside.

A cup of tea was waiting for him on the table. Harry had the other cup in his hands.

‘George put the sugar in already. I told him you have it like me.’

Miles looked at George as he sat down on the chair again. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

Harry gulped his tea down like it was a cold drink. Joe always added some tap water to Harry’s tea when he wasn’t looking
because he always gulped it down,
no matter how hot it was. He got up off the floor and put his empty cup on the table.

‘These are like Mum’s cups,’ he said.

Miles looked at the cup in his hand. It was like the ones Mum liked, like the ones she had. Aunty Jean had taken all the cups
away after she died. She said Harry and Miles would just break them if she left them at the house. Now they were displayed
in a glass cabinet at Aunty Jean’s and they were never used for tea. They were never used for anything.

‘If you need to go to the loo, it’s outside. I’ll show you where it is if you want,’ Harry said.

Miles watched George go over to a cupboard and get out a pillow, a sleeping bag and a rolled-up sleeping mat. Harry helped
him unroll the mat on the floor and unzip the sleeping bag so that it opened out to double size like a doona. They seemed
to have an understanding, George and Harry. One that didn’t need words.

‘We have to share,’ Harry said.

Miles didn’t care. The sleeping bag in front of the fire looked good. It was warm and the light was low and now he just felt
heavy and tired. He just wanted to close his eyes.

George sat down in the armchair.

Miles lay on the floor next to Harry under the sleeping bag and the dog burrowed in between them. He patted and cuddled the
dog, felt its small heart beat into his hand, and wondered how it was that George came to live here in a wooden shack with
no power and not much of anything.

Harry’s breathing changed. Miles guessed he was asleep already. The gas lamp went off and soft, warm light filled the room.
Miles heard a match strike. He watched the flame, watched George light his pipe and the smell washed over him. He closed his
eyes. He knew that smell. It was the smell of Granddad’s house, the smell of rich sweet pipe tobacco. And Miles could see
Granddad sitting by the fire listening to the radio, his eyes almost closed, slowly puffing on his pipe. And he was there,
too. Just a small boy, playing on the floor with his Matchbox cars.

G
randdad had made him a toolbox.

And he’d watched Granddad make it. He’d tried to help. He’d handed Granddad things when he needed them. The plane. A chisel.
The four screws that held the whole box together. And Granddad had carved his name carefully on the side, M. Curren in curly
writing.

Granddad said Miles would be old enough to have some tools of his own soon. Old enough when he was five. And he held on tightly
to the handle of his toolbox when Mum came to pick him up. He cradled it on his lap and waved goodbye as they reversed down
the drive.

It was getting dark. When they got on the road, the radio crackled with some old kind of song and a man was singing low and
soft like sleep. And with
the sound of the car and the sound of the radio and with Mum’s voice softly singing along, Miles had to close his eyes. He
had to rest his head down against the window.

But the car stopped.

Miles lifted his head, blinked his eyes. They weren’t at home. They were still on the road. On the road near the bend where
the track was narrow and dark, and Mum opened the door. She got out of the car and left the door open and the cold air rushed
in. Miles called out, but she was already into the trees and she didn’t hear, or at least she didn’t stop. She just walked
into the darkness and was barely there to see at all except the white frill on the bottom of her skirt that flashed as she
moved.

Miles opened the passenger door. He got out of the car and he stood on the road.

‘Mum?’ he said, and he looked into the trees.

Now he couldn’t see her at all.

He stepped onto the earth covered with leaves and cracking sticks and he touched the rough trees with his hands. The wind
rustled high above, invisible, and made the air rain leaves. They fell on his face. He kept on walking. He kept on going deeper
into the forest until he saw her, almost see-through in the
dark. Just an outline now. Mum leaning against a tree, her arms hugging her sides. And she was crying.

Miles stood silent until he could barely see her anymore, and then he asked quietly if they could go home.

And her voice was small, but he heard her. A whisper.

‘I left here once. But I came back.’

Miles moved closer. He felt for her hand.

‘My darling,’ she said.

And he led her back through the trees, and back to the car and her skin was like ice.

Miles rolled over and opened his eyes.

Harry was there next to him on the floor, fast asleep. He sat up. George wasn’t in the room. His bed was made, neat and tidy,
and maybe he’d never slept in it at all. Miles had seen him there, his dark silhouette still in the armchair. But then he’d
closed his eyes. He’d slept like stone. And he didn’t know how the night had passed or how long he’d slept. He just remembered
feeling the warmth of the dog on his back and then there was nothing.

It must have been because of his head.

He touched the cut with his fingers, traced over the butterfly clip. The lump around it was hard as
bone, but his eyelid opened properly. His eye was working. He could see that the light coming in the window was mid-morning
light. They had slept late.

He slid from under the sleeping bag and stood up. The air was still warm in the little room, warm from the wood heater, but
through the window he could see that the sky outside was clear and cold. He put his jumper on and opened the door.

George wasn’t outside; neither was the dog anywhere that he could see. The outhouse was down the back of the paddock and he
walked there in bare feet. The earth was cold and damp like always, but at least it wasn’t muddy.

He knocked on the door of the toilet just in case George was in there, but he wasn’t.

When Miles got back, Harry was sitting at the table eating a slice of bread and butter.

‘Your eye looks bad,’ he said, and he pushed a plate of bread over towards Miles.

Miles sat down. It looked good, the bread, thick and dark and homemade. But he didn’t touch it.

‘It’s not our food,’ he said. Harry just stared at him and kept eating.

Miles looked at all the things on the table. Bread, a jar of honey, butter on a small plate.

‘Did you get the butter out of the cool box?’

Harry shook his head. He got up from the table and walked outside. He came back in with the milk, but it wasn’t the bottle
from last night. It was a full bottle. He poured himself a glass.