Six Bedrooms (9 page)

She nodded again, and sniffed.

Darcy breathed deeply. Then he said, ‘Can you tell everyone I broke up with you?'

Noor nodded very eagerly this time, and Darcy turned away. He didn't bother to tell her that he loved her. He didn't even feel like he did anymore. He let himself out the back gate without being careful, went up the side passage and out into the blinding street. He put his sunglasses on, crossed the road, and started across the grass.

 

At home his mother was making lunch. Darcy was starving. He pulled a chair up to the kitchen table and
sat down. He felt something crackle in his pocket and took it out; it was his father's note. His mother brought over a devon sandwich and put it down in front of him and he gave her the note to put with the others. She saw his eye and gasped, putting her own hand up to her cheek. She tilted her head at the ceiling. They could hear Darcy's father having a shower; she looked a question at Darcy.

‘It was him,' said Darcy in answer, and took a bite of his sandwich. He knew she would never tell. He watched her as her eyes filled with tears. And because she would never tell, he would never get in trouble for the lie.

I'
D
heard the boys at school say you needed to run after your first drink, to get the alcohol working. It got you drunk faster. I didn't bother with that. I was drinking Brandivino, a foul, sultana-flavoured brew. I took a painful gulp of it, and watched as a possum came gripping along the wire of a telegraph pole, not knowing the death humming along beside it. Its eyes were filmed with light as it reached the safety of wood, and then it went down face first like a lizard.

 

I was at the house of a girl named Rosanna. I had not been invited. My best friend Judy had, and I'd persuaded
her to bring me. Judy had been moved from our school for Year 12, to a school where she could spend more time on her music, and these were her new friends. We'd neither of us broached the idea that she had been moved because of me. I didn't understand that I was someone she might need to leave behind.

I had been to every kind of party now. This was one of the more humiliating ones. We girls waited in the kitchen, our haunches against the counter, while Rosanna's parents arranged circles of vegetables and dishes of dip. We eyed the single bowl of Cheezels. There was apple juice in plastic wineglasses, because Rosanna was still a year from drinking age.

‘Take these into the den,' said the mother, smiling at us, and handed Rosanna a plate of vegetables. We all followed Rosanna through a curtained doorway.

The den had lounges of brown corduroy, and two of the walls had the brick exposed, rough and vari-coloured, like brawn. Tall, cream-coloured curtains hid any windows. There was a portrait of the family done in pastels, the father and mother with their hands on the shoulders of Rosanna and her round-cheeked brother, who held a violin. Made some time ago, I guessed. I had seen the brother in the hall when we came in. He was tall now. He'd dodged into the crack of a doorway like a frightened spider.

All the food was put on a dark wood coffee table, and then the parents withdrew, pulling the curtain across behind them. I kept close to Judy, my bag against my stomach, one hand feeling the shape of the bottle inside it. The room
was
like a den, the den of a family of pipe-smoking bears. Who lived in the woods. I put my hand on the brick wall and it shed fragments of itself on to the white pile carpet.

There were no boys, only these seven girls who sat in a circle on the carpet, passing the bowl of Cheezels around. I put one on the finger and thumb of each hand and clicked them together, and then I ate them, cracking each between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Rosanna got up and took a record from beside the stereo. ‘Look,' she said, showing us the sleeve. It was the first Eurythmics album, now a few years old.

It was lucky that I had nothing to say, because I was not expected to talk, as we sat in our circle and listened to the music. ‘She trained in opera,' said Rosanna, and they all nodded reverently at each other. Even Judy. I nudged Judy in the side with my elbow, and opened the mouth of my bag to show her the bottle. She shook her head hard and looked away.

I listened to two songs, tonguing the paste of Cheezels out of my teeth. Then I stood up, annoying the girl beside me, and used the top of Judy's head as a pivot to
get me out of the circle. She looked up at me and I mouthed,
Toilet
, and then added in a whisper, for her amusement, my mother's word.
Lavatory.

The kitchen was chilly after the snug den.
Snug. Snuggly. Cute.
I used all these forbidden words to myself as I fiddled with the deadlock on the kitchen door and stepped out into the cold night. On to the patio. Off the patio and into the rock garden, under the false warmth of a street light. There was a rock that looked like a tortoise; I kneeled down to put my hand on it. But it was just a rock. I got to my feet again, and looked up, and saw at an upstairs window the face of Rosanna's younger brother. I took my bottle out of my bag and waved it at him.

 

I drank, the possum leapt off the telegraph pole and bolted across the empty street, and then the kitchen door split open, and there was the brother. He was wearing an army trench coat over his clothes, of the sort favoured at that time by boys who thought to show that they would not wear the uniform of their class. Though two years younger, he was nearly a foot taller than I was. He was the skinniest boy I had ever seen, with flimsy orange hair like his sister's.

At home my mother was reading poetry. I know this because when I finally got there, stepping into the dawn
light that yawned across the chairs and table of the kitchen, there was a book, flat-backed, open. Of course a glass and a bottle. Underlined was this:
The City's fiery parcels all undone.
I had been driven back over the bridge by Judy's mother, who was too furious to speak to me.

 

We had a real tortoise at home. It was mine, I found it, just after my older brother moved out. I was eight. It was women's group and I was at home pretending to be sick, but I had climbed out of my window and gone up the street. I had my matches with me, thinking to light a small fire. I loved the street in the day, when all the children had gone to school. So empty, all movement hidden behind fences, in houses. A river of silence.

I went up to the little reserve and the long grass. Rupert, the stupid red setter from the Lewises' house, was there before me. He had something in the grass. He was circling it, barking at it, rushing in to bite it then leaping away again. I whooshed him away with my arms as I reached him, and knelt down to see what it was.

It looked like an upturned soup dish, and it had parts of its shell bitten off, lying in flakes around it. It was inside itself; it had gone in, and Rupert the dog was looking at me expectantly, as though I might join the attack, now that I understood the enemy.

I whacked Rupert on the side, shouted at him, and picked the tortoise up. It was quite heavy, the shell a mottled army green, more pieces falling off in my hands. I felt it struggle inside itself when I turned it over to look at its underside, polished and worn, and then I turned it back. In the hole where its head should have been I could just see its blunt snout. The dog whined and jumped and I stood up, holding the tortoise out of its way, high in my arms – and immediately, although I couldn't see this, the tortoise pushed out its head and fitted its beak on to the lobe of my right ear.

A circlet, a little half-bracelet of pain, as though it had zipped its mouth shut on my ear. It wouldn't let go. I tried to pull it off and it felt as though my ear was tearing. The dog was around my legs, pawing at me, panting, yelping. I kicked out at it, and turned in circles, trying to get the tortoise off me, but I could not. So I hefted it against my shoulder, my head tilted sideways to accommodate it, and turned towards home.

 

It was a bottle to two bottles each night, if you count night as beginning when the dinner is being made. During the day I don't know. The glass was a part of her hand, coming with her from bedroom to kitchen to living room. However much she had drunk, plus a
sleeping pill, was enough so that she could not be woken by the repeatedly ringing phone. It was Judy's mother who was ringing, who had herself been phoned by Rosanna's parents.

First, that brother had been infected by the idea, the same as the boys from school, that you had to run to make alcohol work. So he drank some of the Brandivino and took off, trench coat flying behind him, carrying my bottle. I had to run after him. He ran to the bottom of the street, down a hill. I remember looking back to make sure I knew where the house was. I snatched the bottle back and then he wanted to put an arm round me. He did the thing of pretending to stretch, even as we were walking, and bringing his arm down around my shoulders. I skipped ahead of him.

We walked a long way, and sometimes I let him have the bottle. He would drink and then stage little choking fits, which began with sucking the breath between the teeth, like a man in a western after he has tossed back his shot. He even tried one of my cigarettes, but then was forced to throw it away, after a real choking fit. I liked the look of cigarette smoke in the cold air. His breath was thin, insubstantial. Mine came out in a stream in front of me, whipped over my shoulder as we walked.

We crossed the bridge over the river, the cars flying and clunking past us. He talked and talked. He was
telling me about the other time he had got drunk, how drunk he had been, how his friends couldn't believe it. It was heroic stuff. I wanted to push him into the traffic.

He'd heard that kids from the public school – forgetting that I went to the public school, that I was part of that fearsome pack – used to go under the bridge and climb up into the girders, and from there make their way into the centre, above the river. If the tide was high you could drop into the water without being hurt.

Under the bridge the rush-bump of cars was much louder. It looked surprisingly easy to climb up into the girders; there was a ladder. From there you had to inch along on your stomach, the road just above your head, on a piece of metal about two bodies wide. By this time the brother was seriously drunk, and I did encourage him. I was sick of him, and wanted him gone. I held the trench coat, and my bag with the bottle, and the cigarettes. After a while I put the trench coat on and sat down with my back against the concrete wall under the bridge, where it swelled up to meet the road. The coat stank of sweat.

I think I fell asleep. I woke up to hear shouting, and the empty bottle was leaning over in my hand. The brother was still on the girders, in the middle of the river, calling to me.

‘Come back,' I shouted.

‘I can't,' he called back, out of the darkness.

‘What do you mean?'

Bump-bump, cars passing overhead.

There was a silence, and then the brother shouted, ‘I suffer from vertigo.'

I waited a moment, taking this in. Then I called, ‘You'll be okay. Come on.'

‘I can't.'

The air under the bridge had a different quality. A sort of inky cold. I shouted, ‘I'll wait for you.'

I had no way of telling the time, and I did not know how long I had been asleep. There were fewer cars now. I waited, saying nothing, listening for the sound of him dragging himself back. Then I shouted, ‘Hurry
up.
'

‘I can't.'

The party would surely be over. We had walked a long way. Judy would be angry with me. I wondered when they had noticed I was gone.

‘Take it slowly. Bit by bit.'

‘I
can't.
I'll fall!'

I couldn't see him at all. Another car passed overhead, and then a siren started up.

‘They might be looking for us,' I shouted. ‘Maybe your mum and dad are worried.'

He might have been crying; it was hard to tell. The siren peeled away. I could hear the wind and its rush through the distance between the bridge and the water.
The lights were off in the houses on either side of the bridge. I felt sick from the Brandivino. I smoked a cigarette, felt sicker, and sat down for a while. Then I stood up and shouted, ‘I'll go and get help.'

This produced a kind of shriek from the brother: ‘Don't go!'

‘I won't go far – just to a house. We can call the police.'

‘Don't! Please!'

‘All right, all right.' I went back to my spot against the concrete wall and slid down till I was sitting.

‘Are you there?'

‘Of course I am!'

I probably fell asleep again, and then I heard screaming. Thin at first, and broken up, but soon louder. Then he was screaming without pause, at the top of his voice. I looked up at the bridge, at the cars, listened for a change in the traffic. He sounded like a woman. I put my hands over my ears.

It took ten minutes, perhaps more. A light went on in a house that overlooked the river. A figure appeared on the verandah of the house, stood still a minute, disappeared back into the house. Before long the police arrived.

 

The birds were waking up, and the book and the bottle and the glass on the table were in that stretch of new
light. It was as though somebody had wanted to paint a still life and had been in there during the night, quietly arranging. I could hear the sound of the house, a silence with something at its edges.

I went to bed. I was so tired but charged, switched on like a torch. I lay down and I could still hear the thump of cars overhead, the screaming across the water. I could feel the pull towards the boy stuck in the middle of the river. I closed my eyes and saw the fluorescent light in the police station.

Judy's mother had grounded her, which seemed unfair, and also pointless, as she rarely went anywhere. Judy cried when she saw me, and hugged me, which was something we didn't do, the same way we didn't say
cute
, and we didn't say that we loved each other. Later I understood that because she was grounded I would never see her, at all.

Rosanna cried too, and threw herself at her brother, all bosoms and hair, saying, ‘We were so
worried
about you!' Nobody looked at me except the sergeant whose desk I'd been sitting at for all those hours. His face went stiff when I met his eye.

 

My mother woke me in the afternoon. My mouth was dry. I sat up and took the glass of water she was
offering me. For a moment I thought she was going to sit on the edge of the bed, but she stayed standing, looking at me.

‘I didn't hear the phone,' she said.

I was not going to help her make excuses for herself. But it would have been reckless to try to get her to take all the blame. The water was cool and soft in my mouth.

‘Who are these people, anyway?' she said.

‘Friends of Judy's. New friends.'

‘That mother is a nitwit.'

‘Did she come here?'

‘They all came. The mother wants you to write a letter of apology to the boy. Also to the police, for bringing them out.'

She turned, and I thought she was going to leave, but it was only to pick up a wrapped bundle from beside the door. Now she did come to the bed and sit down, the bundle on her lap. ‘I brought the tortoise in,' she said, and opened the tea towel.