Past the Shallows (8 page)

A
unty Jean’s house was white on the outside and white on the inside, and they had to leave their boots at the door. Sometimes
she made them take off their socks as well in case they were damp and left marks on the thick new carpet. She always offered
them clean socks to put on but Miles would never touch them. Anyway, the carpet felt nice on his bare feet, springy and soft,
but the Saturday afternoon roast always took forever to cook.

It was some kind of dark meat this time. Beef, maybe, and it did taste good. The gravy was salty and it soaked into the roast
potatoes. Miles ate fast. If they got out of Aunty Jean’s soon, there would be time for a surf with Joe when he picked them
up. But when he finished he saw that Harry had barely touched his. He didn’t like meat much. He’d only
eaten the potatoes. It was driving Miles mad watching him move bits of meat and carrot around and around making rings of gravy
on the plate.

‘Try and eat some meat, Harry,’ Aunty Jean said.

Harry looked at Miles and Miles stared back. He kicked Harry’s leg under the table, but that didn’t work. He wouldn’t eat
any more.

Aunty Jean put her knife and fork down on her plate and finally they were allowed to get up and take the dishes into the kitchen.

The clock above the cooker said it was 1:55 pm.

Miles filled the sink and started to wash the dishes. He squeezed the detergent hard, made the water slimy and full of suds.
And he washed like mad, lining the dishes up neatly in the rack until it was full.

Aunty Jean came into the kitchen and put the kettle on. She got out three teacups and put them on the bench.

‘I don’t want any tea,’ Miles said, and he picked up the tea towel, began drying the plates.

Aunty Jean crumpled up her nose. ‘Well, I do,’ she said.

‘I’ll have one,’ Harry called from the dining room.

Miles knew he just wanted the biscuits that came with the tea.

‘I’ll cut your hair after,’ Jean said. ‘You both need it.’

And then she smiled.

They were stuck.

Miles watched Harry squirm on the stool in the kitchen as Aunty Jean pulled at his hair with the comb.

Every time he tried to move his head, she grabbed his face and held him still.

‘That’s what you get for having curly hair, young man,’ she said.

She wasn’t even a bit like Mum. It was hard to believe they were sisters because Aunty Jean was like an old lady.

She dressed like an old lady and she smelled like an old lady and she had arthritis like an old lady.

And he hoped they hurt, her fat knees. Her puffy ankles that spilled over her shoes. All that fluid moving around when she
walked. Moving around but never going away.

‘Go to the cupboard and get a towel,’ she said suddenly, and when Miles looked up she was staring right at him.

He turned away, walked down the hall. The linen cupboard was huge and there were piles of sheets and pillowcases and quilts
and Miles didn’t know what
the hell they were all for. Aunty Jean lived alone. She had been alone for ages, since Uncle Nick, and no one ever came to
visit except them and they never stayed over. Never.

The towels were on a shelf at eye height and they were all white. There were no other colours, not even cream. It was weird.
Miles pulled one out but they were packed in so tight that about five came loose and fell on the floor. He bent down to pick
them up and there was a wooden box at the bottom of the cupboard. It was a big box, pushed right to the back – old wood, dark
like blackwood. He had never seen it before.

He looked down the hall. He could hear Aunty Jean talking, but the door to the kitchen was closed just enough so that he couldn’t
see her.

He squatted down, pulled the box out. It had brass handles and carved flowers on the lid.

Inside there were carefully folded things.

Soft things.

They were all baby things.

‘Miles! The towel!’

Miles shut the lid and slid the box away. He picked up one of the towels and shoved the rest back in the cupboard without
folding them.

While Aunty Jean cut his hair, he stared straight ahead. She talked on and on about selling Granddad’s house, but he just
kept thinking about the box. He just kept thinking about the little blankets and the baby clothes and how all that stuff was
perfect and clean and never used.

‘What am I meant to do? What am I meant to do?’ she kept saying.

And he heard her voice rise up, the familiar tears come.

‘I grew up in that house, Miles. Don’t I deserve something?’

Harry was sitting on the edge of the bath when Miles walked into the bathroom.

‘Jesus,’ he said, his curls all gone, his eyes bigger than normal because his hair was so short. And it made Miles smile,
the way Harry just said Jesus like that, the way they both looked terrible like freshly shorn sheep.

Mum never used to cut Harry’s hair short. She told him that curls were lucky and should be left alone. Harry liked that and
he believed her. He believed everything. He even let her brush his hair every night without complaining.

Dad even brushed Harry’s hair back then to stop it getting knotted.

Miles wiped his neck and face with the face washer to get the hair off before it started itching. His hair was really short.
She may as well have just used the clippers.

‘That’s the last time,’ Miles said.

Harry nodded but he didn’t look convinced.

B
y lunchtime the shed was half empty.

Out on the grass the ‘throw away’ pile was much smaller than the ‘keep’ pile thanks to Miles. He fought Joe over every piece
of furniture and every tool, saying it was wrong to throw any of Granddad’s stuff away. Harry agreed but he didn’t say anything.
He just tried to stay out of the way. He waited on the lawn until someone told him what to move and what he could touch and
where to put things because he kept doing everything wrong. Most of the things in the shed were too heavy for him to lift
and it was dark and full of cobwebs and he knew there were spiders in there. He’d already got two splinters from moving wood
because there were no gloves that fit his hands. They were all too big. He should have just gone to Stuart’s.

Joe took the first load of junk to the tip and Harry thought about going into the house and sitting down inside for a bit.
It was cold and the wind was coming off the bay and Miles hadn’t called or come out of the shed for ages. Maybe he’d gone
in the house and Harry hadn’t noticed.

Harry walked over and poked his head through the shed door. It seemed so much bigger inside now that it was half empty – big
and dark. He couldn’t see Miles anywhere.

‘Miles?’

No answer. Harry stayed in the doorway anyway. There was still so much stuff in the shed. It was going to take them all day.
They wouldn’t be doing anything else. Just this.

‘Miles?’

‘I’m here,’ he said. His voice came from down the back, behind a stack of old chairs. Harry made his way over, ducking through
the spaces left between furniture. Miles was sitting down on a low seat leaning against the back wall of the shed.

‘It’s Mum’s,’ he said.

Harry didn’t know what he was talking about. He looked on the ground and then behind him.

‘It’s from the car. The back seat from Mum’s car.’

Harry looked at what Miles was sitting on. He couldn’t tell what colour the seat was because there wasn’t enough light, but
he remembered that the seats in Mum’s car were red, dark cherry red, and that they were always slippery and shiny and cold
in the mornings. He remembered that the doors in the back had wooden panels that he could run his Matchbox cars along.

‘You wouldn’t remember,’ Miles said.

Harry sat down next to Miles. ‘I remember,’ he said.

He ran his fingers along the cold leather. The seatbelts were still attached. He found the middle metal buckle, pressed the
button with his finger. It still worked.

He looked at Miles. He didn’t know why the seat was here. He didn’t understand. Miles was staring ahead. Harry watched him
slip both of his hands into the wide gap where the seat bottom and back joined. Harry remembered that his Matchbox cars used
to end up there sometimes and Miles would fish them out for him.

He put one hand into the gap, too, but his fingers only found dust and grit. Then his hand touched the sticky threads of a
spider web and he pulled it out quickly. He stood up.

Miles had something in his hand. He’d found something in the seat. Something small attached to a string.

‘What is it?’ Harry asked.

Miles held the string out for Harry to see. For him to take. And it was heavy. A big triangle of bone, sharp on the sides.

‘What is it?’

‘White pointer’s tooth,’ Miles said.

And he said it like he knew it. Like he was sure.

‘Hello?’

It was Joe. Harry hadn’t heard his van pull up, but he was standing in the light by the shed door.

Miles grabbed the tooth out of Harry’s hand. He stood up and put it in his pocket.

‘What are you doing back here?’

Joe bent over and picked up something from the ground. It was a steering wheel. He held it up in both hands.

‘Jesus,’ he said.

And Miles showed him the rest. The crumpled bumper bar, and bent doors. The whole boot and back axle. But he didn’t show him
the tooth.

Joe put the steering wheel down and wiped his hands on the front of his jeans.

‘Maybe we should stop for a bit, have lunch.’

Outside, the light hurt Harry’s eyes. Miles and Joe walked towards the house but Harry stayed on the grass. He shielded his
eyes with his hand.

‘What are we going to do with it?’ he asked.

He knew Miles would never let Joe chuck Mum’s seat out, take it to the tip. The seat and the steering wheel and whatever else
was there would go on the ‘keep’ pile. They would keep it.

But Miles kept on walking. He went into the house. Joe stopped on the verandah, rested his arm on the railing.

‘I don’t know why Granddad kept all that stuff, but I don’t think he should have. I don’t think he should have kept those
things.’

And he turned to go inside. He told Harry he’d make him a sandwich.

But Harry stayed where he was. He stayed among the piles of Granddad’s things left on the lawn – all the things that were
no longer needed, no longer useful – and he wished that Joe would stay.

H
arry climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. He liked going to the tip. Lots of devils had dens up there and
they were slow and fat and almost tame from eating scraps and rotten food. Sometimes you could see them hanging around in
the day, not like the ones near home that you could only hear late at night, growling and screaming and fighting when everything
was dark. Sometimes Harry looked out the window and tried to see them. And sometimes he thought he saw eyes – little red eyes
staring out through the scrub – but he was never sure. He knew Dad hated them, the sound they made. He knew if any devils
ever made a den under the house then Dad would shoot them.

Harry hoped he would see some today.

They had found even more of the car as they emptied the shed, mostly dented panels, bits of the engine, and it was all loaded
up in the trailer. The back of the van was full, too. There was so much junk at Granddad’s that they would probably have to
make four trips or more to the tip.

Joe backed out the drive and Harry waved to Miles. He was sitting on the verandah and he didn’t wave back. He was meant to
be going through the stuff in the house now, but Harry knew he would just sit there until they got back. He wanted to keep
the house more than any of them. Joe didn’t seem to mind much and Aunty Jean said it had to happen. ‘We could all do with
the money,’ she said.

Harry just thought Granddad would be sad about all his stuff going to the tip.

Joe asked him if he was all right. ‘Is it because I’m leaving?’ he asked.

Harry shrugged. He wanted to wind down the window so he could breathe some cool air, but the car was kicking up so much dust
off the road that he’d better not.