The Cartographer (28 page)

While we were walking down to the station, Granddad says to me: ‘So what d'yer reckon you'll call him, boy?'

‘I'll call him Zac,' I say, quick as a flash. ‘That way I get me money back.'

And the three of us laughed ourselves silly.

 

The second thing that happened that week was that Granddad took the shotgun away. Which was great, because I felt as though I'd seen enough of the flamin' thing, even though I'd had plans for it. But Granddad's decision to take it changed all that. The only thing I had to do was quickly remove the spent cartridge, because of what I'd told him. He had brought over a couple of fish in a hessian bag and now put the gun into the bag and rolled it up. It smelt like fish, but then I reckoned that was probably the idea.

When Granddad left, I went over to the Sandersons' place to show Zac to them. They liked the way he had got his
name, and Mrs S thought it was lucky for the dog I hadn't paid a penny instead of sixpence. While Zac was lunching on a bone that was big enough to be a cocker spaniel, they took me out onto the front verandah where it was shady and Mrs Sanderson gave me some iced home-made lemonade and a piece of cinnamon cake.

I was sitting there wondering how the world was going to get on that day without my help, when Mr Sanderson produced a photograph and slid it over the table towards me. I looked at it. It was a large black and white photo, not the kind of photo you can take with a Brownie Box, but the kind I had seen on the wall at the Gala where they had heaps of pictures of the stars: Gary Cooper, Richard Widmark, Peter Lorre, Doris Day and so on — glossy pictures. This man wasn't a film star, but he could have been, because it was a nice photo. But it was a face I had seen before.

‘Now, I don't want to alarm you,' said Mr Sanderson, ‘but I do want to know: is this the man who killed my sister?'

For a second I didn't know what to say. It was like two short-priced thoughts had arrived at the post the same time and dead-heated. It
was
the man who killed his sister — and it was also a picture of the bloke who'd grabbed me at the racecourse, and the bloke I'd seen at Wonder Woman's house. It was the Bob Herbert Aunty Betty had talked about. A part of me had somehow always hoped that they were different people; that none of them was the murderer; that they were all upset with me for different reasons — I mean, I do get around. But the photo made the whole thing solid and real. It was evidence.

‘Yes, he is.'

I looked up at Mr Sanderson with a dry throat.

‘But I saw him get hurt … somewhere else. He might be dead,' I heard myself say, with a hopeful tone that I was too late to stop.

‘Yes, I know,' said Mr Sanderson, only half to me, and half to Mrs Sanderson. He nodded to himself. ‘We'll soon have him, you know. In the meantime, it might be a good idea if you stayed away from racecourses — not that he's likely to show his face
there
.'

‘The lady who died, she wasn't your sister at all, was she?' I said, feeling that it was safe to tell him of my suspicion.

‘Amazing!' he said with true admiration in his voice, and a quick glance at Mrs S. ‘No, she wasn't. She was a policewoman.'

I wished he had said something else, something like: ‘No, she rides Topsy the elephant at Bullen's Circus,' or ‘No, she was a clippie on the Camberwell tram.' I mean, I would have filed that away on my map under: ‘Oh yeah, and here's something
else
I heard at the Sandersons'.' But he had said one of those words that are practically taboo at our place, or anywhere else around the neighbourhood.

I felt that that would have been a good time to spit my lemonade all over him, like Lou Costello, when he gets a shock. But I had developed a few manners around at the Sandersons', not to mention the Palmers'. Also, Granddad had told me never,
never
, to let the punters see your real emotions. In other words, spit out your lemonade by all means, but only at a time when you want the punter to
think
you're shocked. But I really
was
shocked, so Mr S came as near as a toucher to wearing his wife's finest, that is, of course, if she really was his wife. I was so tempted to ask, it hurt, but Kim knew when to keep his mouth shut, and so did I.

But Mr S was like Mandrake the Magician and Wonder Woman all rolled into one. Listen to what he says next: ‘You're wondering if Mrs Sanderson is really my wife. Am I right?'

I nearly fell off my chair.

‘Well, she is,' he said. He took the photo back. ‘And that's all I can tell you, I'm afraid.'

‘Will I have to tell the police what I saw?' I had not yet trained Zac in running away from home, and besides, I did not want to tell anyone what I saw that day. I had put it on the map, complete with colours, and for me that was an end to the matter.

‘Do you want to?'

I thought back, to the noises and the purple face, and the staring eyes. Now Mrs S looked into
my
eyes.

‘It's all right, you don't have to. But there is one thing I'd like to know: does Mrs Palmer know what you know? Now I'm not talking about what you saw at this house any more, but about what you saw at
her
house. Does she know? It's all right, you can speak freely. We're not really interested in how it happened; he was a man who made enemies easily.'

‘You said “we”,' I said.

‘Yes, have you ever heard of COMPOL?'

‘No.'

‘It's a special police force. We aren't interested in the same things the local police are interested in, and we're not like them either,' he added, watching me carefully. ‘The kind of people we are interested in are big fish; you know what that means, don't you? What your grandfather and his mates might get up to is no concern of ours, though I can tell you this: the local police are cleaning up, and some of his mates are going to end up in jail. Don't worry; I've given him the drum, so hopefully he'll keep his head down for a while. So, Mrs Palmer?'

‘Yeah, she knows. She said she'd dob me in for B&E if I told anyone. And my aunty said the copp —, I mean the police, had my fingerprints. They got them off the phone the night I was there … I used the phone.'

‘It was you who called the ambulance.'

‘Yeah, then I shot through, but Wond — Mrs Palmer saw me through the window.'

‘Well you don't have to worry about the police record of your fingerprints —' he pulled a large brown envelope out of his briefcase and waggled it a bit ‘— because I have them in here. And tomorrow I'll burn them. And you don't have to worry about Mrs Palmer, either. She said those things before she knew you. Besides, she and I are old friends.'

Just when I thought I'd heard everything!

‘Why are you helping me?'

‘Because if someone doesn't help you, you'll get yourself into serious trouble one day, and I think you're worth more than that.'

 

The next thing that happened was that I walked into the house one day after a Commandos meeting — you wouldn't read about it, Matthew Foster had been made a lance corporal — and there was Dad, sitting on the sofa with Mum, holding her hand. Actually, when I looked more closely, I could see that it was Mum who was doing the holding — there's a difference.

My first t hought was that I had the DTs, like old Mr Begley down the corner, and was seeing things, and I swore to myself on the spot I'd never touch sacramental wine again — Matthew Bloody Foster was welcome to it. Looking back, it was a lucky thing I didn't swear on a cat's skull.

The second thing I thought was that he'd better get the hell out of there before Mum sees his friend, who wasn't better-looking than Mum, but did have bigger knockers, and I knew from what I heard at school that a girl with big knockers always had the inside running. But then I remembered that it was her idea that he go home, and she wouldn't be hiding in the broom cupboard, ready to jump out and yell
Surprise!
which is exactly what killed Uncle Owen — and don't get me started on
him
.

Then I thought someone was was playing a trick, probably God, to whom I was no longer speaking, and this wasn't Dad at all but some bloke who'd been paid to pretend to be him, like Ronald Colman in
The Prisoner of Zenda
; after all, he was holding Mum's hand — well, sort of — and the real Dad wouldn't have done that unless maybe he thought that hand was holding the winning Tatts ticket.

In the end I reckoned it would be simplest to accept that it
was
Dad, and no one was going to jump out of the cupboard, and Mum hadn't won Tatts, and I could still have the odd cruet of red if I felt like it, not that I did much, these days.

‘G'day,' he said with a shy smile. Funny, I thought, he doesn't
look
pissed.

‘G'day,' I said, wishing to hold up my end of the conversation.

‘I hear you've been up to mischief, as usual.'

You haven't heard the half of it, I hope.

‘Yeah.'

‘Heard you've got some new posh friends. Yer own family not good enough for yer any more?'

‘They're okay.' Ever the cryptic one, not unlike Kim.

‘Why don't you go and put your best clothes on,' says Mum finally, with a look on her face like Loretta Young introducing a guest. ‘We're going down to the Golden Pagoda.'

The Cartographer liked the Golden Pagoda, as it always reminded him of that Robert Stack movie,
The House of Bamboo
, which was chockers with back streets and dark canals. Let's face it: movies know everything.

‘Okay, Mum.'

I did as I was told. Lucky I did, really, because I think if I'd stayed I might have seen Mum kiss Dad — it was pretty much a one-way thing — and that was something I only imagined for me and Josephine Thompson, and of course, Tuesday Weld. And Annette Funicello. Except I was thinking more in terms of both ways.

Best clothes meant my cream shirt with boats on it. The rest didn't count as best. I decided to give them a minute extra to get reacquainted — that was long enough — then out I went.

‘So, Dad, where've you been?' I asked over the noodle soup, which was a bit like spaghetti in water. You know me — I like to see people squirm.

He took a slurp of his soup as if he liked it, which I doubt, as it had no grog in it.

‘Here and there,' he said. ‘Never you mind.'

Mum was looking at her soup as if she had just spotted the Loch Ness Monster swimming in it.

‘Okay,' I said. The Cartographer always knows how far he can go.

I imagined that Tom was sitting beside me, and that, secretly, we swapped looks — one of those looks that has no words.

I could tell by the way Dad gripped his soup spoon — as if it was a live cobra — that he was wondering how he got into this mess, and how he was going to get out again. And I wondered what would happen to him if his lady friend were to walk in right about now. Noodles, probably.

Well, as it turned out Dad's friend didn't have to walk into the Golden Pagoda for the happy reunion to come unglued. It happened all by itself about five minutes after we got home. I didn't even bother listening this time. I just retired to the map room and did a bit of cartography. Zac still had to be added to the map, and the Caulfield racecourse toilet incident, and a special commemorative bit for Biscuit, though, as I couldn't bear to draw him getting hit by a tram, I drew him trying to save me in the river.

Dad hadn't done everything he had promised his friend. He hadn't even made it clear to Mum that he was scratching himself from the family form guide. What he had done was chicken out.

So next morning, I told Mum that I was worried that Granddad might get arrested and that I wanted to visit him after school. Actually, while that was partly true, I wanted to visit Dad's other place in Eden Park, to see how everyone was getting on. There was something I liked about the lady, something peaceful, and I thought that that was probably what Dad needed. I wasn't worried about him being there, because now I knew where he was. And I reckoned that she was the kind of person who wouldn't give me a thick ear for giving her the benefit of my opinion. As I'd already souvenired one of their photos, I wasn't after any more, but a good cartographer
always likes a bit of a sniff around in any area that has already paid off.

But Mum told me that the last thing the police were going to do was put Granddad in jail, which I thought was kind of strange, as he once told me that when he was young he was sent to Pentridge for jobbing a bloke who'd turned out to be a cop on holidays. And on top of that, I always thought that he stood a better chance than anyone in South Richmond of getting arrested for something, just because, as he himself said, the coppers can't abide an honest businessman. Then I thought that Mum might only have said that because Granddad was sick, as he was a pretty old codger. In fact, I reckon if Mandrake sawed him in half and you counted the rings, you'd get to about sixty before you threw up. But no, he was apparently in the pink, and Mum said that he had a cup of tea with her in the Hibiscus Tea Shop just the other day, though that was very hard to imagine, as I had been in that place, and it actually did serve tea.

But Mum did agree, so I now had the opportunity to break the ice and see if Dad was keen to have his little talk with me, as Dad seemed reluctant to say what needed to be said. Understandable, really. Our family was probably not the most talkative outfit in Melbourne; in fact, I reckon if they held a claiming race for talkers, we'd probably only place if we entered Mum on one of her bad days, or Aunty Betty on one of her good days, or else not waste our entry fee. The rest of the family was about on a par with Joe Friday and Frank Smith from
Dragnet
. So I figured I had a duty towards Dad and his friend. After all, someone's got to keep the ball rolling, or where would we be? Anyway, it was time I introduced myself and added their house to my list of hideouts.

Should I travel by lane, drain or tram?
I asked myself. I'd definitely take a tram to the other side of Richmond, as it was less than one whole section, so I wouldn't be charged for a ticket, and besides, it would give me a chance to ask the clippie if she had any ticket stubs for my collection. The rest of the way, I'd walk via the lanes. That way, I'd be able to drop in on Dad without anyone seeing me, as the Cartographer likes to travel incognito.

Anyway, the tram ride is a winner. The clippie gives me a set of lime green five-penny ticket stubs and doesn't try to charge me, the way some of them do to kids who are by themselves, even if they're not going over into the next section. Also, I see Andrew McGuin, a boy from school, and his mother. He tells me his mum is taking him shopping for a new pair of shoes, then to the Gala to see
Carry on Sergeant.
He also tells me he has some new comics to swap and some of them are superhero comics, and I tell him I have a couple of Century comics, and maybe we can swap before the other kids get a look, so he says okay. His mum tells me that she saw my picture in the paper with Biscuit and she is very proud of me. That bloody picture again!

She says: ‘I heard that you never go anywhere without your dog, except to school.'

‘I used to, but now he's dead,' I say, smooth as a toffee apple, but feeling like a grenade went off in my stomach, because it hit me that this could be the tram that killed him.

‘That's terrible,' she says. ‘I don't know what we'd do without King; he's such a part of our family, isn't he, dear?'

‘It's all right. I've already got a new dog; he's just not used to trams yet.'

‘Well now, Andrew's birthday is in a few weeks, and we'd like you to come over for his birthday party. Andrew will give you an invitation to give to your mum next week.'

Andrew looks at us both as if his mum has complete control over his social calendar, and he never knows from one minute to the next who he's going to be entertaining. I know how he feels.

‘Thanks. I'd like that very much,' I say in my talking-to-parents voice.

‘Well then, that's settled.'

Then she looks around and says to me with a frown, the way Mum looks when she'd expected the cake to come out shaped like a hill, and instead it came out shaped like a valley: ‘Does your mother let you take the tram by yourself?'

‘No, never,' I say, using the face Granddad had taught me to put on whenever we were at the track. ‘She loves to go out with me. But today, for the first time, she's letting me go to my granddad's place by myself, because she's sick in bed.'

Actually, some of that was the truth; namely, the last two words. Sometimes when Granddad turned up with a crate of something on his shoulder, Mum would say: ‘What the hell is that?' And he'd say, with a funny look on his face: ‘Surplus to requirements.' That was me.

Then I suddenly realise that we've reached Swan Street, and I jump up and pull my bloke's hat down so that it's a bit tighter, and yelling a breathless goodbye to one and all step down onto the running board and swing out over the street, hanging on to the tram's getting-on-and-off rail with my right hand, ready to drop into a well-practised run before the tram can come to a halt. Behind me, I hear a car engine whining as it brakes suddenly to avoid running over me, and up front, the
trammie starts ringing the bell as if he just got it for Christmas, to tell me to wait until he has stopped.
Fat chance, Mario, or whatever your name is
. Tell you what, when the Cartographer gets off a tram, heads turn.

First stop was the lane at the back of the Gala to find out how much damage Flame Boy had managed to inflict. There was quite a bit to see, but the flames had not burnt the picture theatre down for the simple reason that the wall I had seen him setting fire to was not that of the picture theatre, but was actually a wall surrounding a small yard behind it, and probably belonging to it, because it was painted the same lurid maroon. In the daylight it was all painfully clear, and, indeed, I was embarrassed for him, as he struck me as the kind of bloke who likes to see a job done right. Also, I always like to see a fellow sportsman get a few runs on the board. And neither had occurred.

But the whole area had been wrecked, some of it by the flames — there were black bits all over the place — and a lot of it by water, which the fire brigade loves to squirt. Dad says that if the brigade gets called out to a false alarm, and they'd been enjoying a pie with sauce when the alarm went off, they'd always make sure they'd hose your house good and proper before they shot through, so that it would be a miracle if your house didn't fall down five minutes after they left. In this case, the wall had fallen over, then been blown to bits by water. I reckoned the brigade blokes had probably been having a Four'N Twenty or two.

 

Things were a little different with this second visit to the lady's place. For one thing I now knew who lived in the house, and I knew a few other things too. I knew that she had not been to
the footy today, as that was over for the season, and the Swans had been done like a dinner, if you must know. That meant that anything could happen, and I had to be extra careful. I went around the back, as usual, and what did I see but Dad's Triumph parked in the little back yard, with his leather jacket hanging on the handlebar. When I entered the yard I could hear it ticking as it cooled down, and I could see the little waves in the air around the cooling fins. That meant he had been for a ride, and not come straight from work, because his factory wasn't far enough away for the motor to get that hot. I bet he'd gone for a burn up the Boulevard to Heidelberg and back, because that was one of his favourite rides, especially when he just wanted to get away for a while and think of nothing but the twists and the turns and the fat sound of the bike. He had taken me on a ride around there a couple of times, and I could see why he liked it, even though it scared the life out of me.

Inside there was the sound of Dad and his girlfriend having a barney; she was very browned off about something, and you didn't have to be a fan of
Portia Faces Life
to figure out what it was.

I didn't want to listen: I'd heard blues before. You could say I was an expert on the subject. They were always caused by the same things: men messing around with other women; grog; gambling; and unemployment — and there was a hell of a lot of that about. But Dad wasn't a gambler and he had a job, and his friend was a beer drinker herself, so that left other women. And though I wasn't exactly sure who the other woman might be, something told me she was Mum. I think this was what Granddad meant when he said that the men in our family tended to affect their women in a certain way. Well, they were going at it hammer and tongs. I had never heard
Dad say so many words in my life. He was practically setting a new record for making excuses.

His case seemed to be based on the fact that she had told him to go home and chat to the natives. Even I could remember her saying that. Her case seemed to be that it was supposed to be a bloody visit, not the renewal of his bloody marriage vows. Dad was relying, too much I thought, on the word ‘but', but women love buts because it gives them an excuse to carry on for another half an hour.
Don't you but me
,
Bill Blayney
seemed to be one of her favourites, and she stuck it into him like an Olympic fencing medallist. Dad was hopeless; I was almost ashamed to be his son. I put it down to lack of match practice. He should have been kicking goals, but he was barely getting points and I thought he was lucky not to be disqualified for failing to fight at his best.

In the end, they both gave up at the same time, because this was one of those blues that wasn't going anywhere.

‘Listen, love,' she said, ‘all I want is for you to make your bloody mind up about your wife, and say something to your son. He can always come over and visit. He's old enough to catch the tram up here by himself, and there's plenty of room if he ever wants to stay for the weekend.'

‘She'll never agree. She hates you.'

‘'Course she does. But she loves
him
, that's what counts, and I think she'll agree. Anyway, it's either that, or we're finished. We can't go on like this. I mean, you still haven't got used to Tom being gone. You need your son. So go back there and tell her what you want, and don't forget to come back. This is where you belong.'

I wondered if he'd do it — I hoped he would. Life with Mum was bad enough when he was gone, but when he was there,
it was just one blue after another, and that was even worse. Also, since we lost Tom, life with Bill and Jean was not all beer and skittles for me, as I was having to be
two
bloody kids, and it'd been getting me down wholesale. At least this way, one of them would be happy, and maybe Mum would meet some nice bloke who was half deaf and had no taste buds.

I felt like running in and yelling: ‘Do it, Dad, do it!'

‘Okay,' was all he said; but he made it sound like a mouthful.

 

After I left I took a stroll down the lane where I'd seen the police drag the bloke behind the car, and where I had found my bloke's hat, which I was now wearing. There was nothing much to see except the rope the cops had used, which had been cut where it was tied around the bloke's ankles. I guess no one had been interested in that, nor, I'll bet, in the bloke either. That was the way things were round here. Granddad always said that this was one of those areas where it paid to watch your arse, but that wasn't always possible if you were a kid. If you were a kid, there was often someone not that far away with
his
eyes on your arse, and you couldn't expect to get paid for it either. So that was that, I thought, and headed off to Granddad's place. I had looked back and it doesn't pay to look back. So I would look forward.

A few minutes later I arrived in the lane behind Granddad's house. It used to be Nanna Taggerty's place as well, till she died, and now the place seemed quiet, and the garden was a bit overrun with weeds. The flowers were still there, but with all the weeds they didn't look as good. I made a mental note to come around tomorrow and do something about it, though neither I, the Cartographer, nor the Outlaw knew much about gardening. In fact, all of us put together would have had more
chance of figuring out how Captain Video was going to get out of the fix he was in the last time we saw him. But I had helped Nanna in the garden tons of times, and knew that the best thing you could do was pull the weeds out and bung on plenty of water. How hard could that be?

I knocked on the back door, but there was no answer, so I thought I'd let myself in, because I knew where the key was, and Granddad had always told me to let myself in if he wasn't there, and I had a few times before. It had been quite a while since my last visit, and I'd forgotten how
good
the house smelt. It still smelt a bit like Nanna, even though she'd been dead for a couple of years, and the kitchen still smelt of the way Nanna cooked, and I guessed that was because Granddad had carried on cooking pretty much the same way. The house was quiet except for the ticking of Nanna's old clock, and the living room was full of her pictures. Nanna had once told me that she was damn lucky to have Granddad, because he could have had any girl in town, even though to look at, he was no Victor Mature. She said that was because he had style. Well, he had that all right.