The Cartographer (30 page)

It's a funny thing that every one of the underground stations I'd discovered had a lift with tramlines inside it; this one was the biggest lift of the lot. At the side of the lift was a ladder that went right up to the top, and when I looked inside I could see that there were even lights on the lift ceiling. The outside lift door was closed but was easy to open, and inside the lift was pretty much just a big cage with a cable on top to pull it up. Beside the door on the inside there was a set of buttons that let me choose the floor I wanted, but I kept my hands off this, as most of the lifts I'd been in made a hell of a lot of noise, and that was the last thing I wanted. And besides, I didn't want the lift door to open at another floor to reveal a thug with a machine gun. So I headed up the ladder.

It was an easy climb, and it wasn't long before I came to the next level, which I knew was where the door at the top of the stairs probably was. However, the lift door at this level was not made of cage bars, but was a solid iron door like the ones in the department stores. I climbed up to the next level, but it was the same story. It wasn't until I had climbed past five doors, and was beginning to wish I hadn't started up the ladder, that I came to a wooden trapdoor right above my head. I pushed it open a little and had a peek: it was a room with a wooden floor and nothing much in it, but it was a start. I pushed the trapdoor all the way open and climbed up. Above me was a set of steel girders, and on the girders was the machinery for driving the lift. But the really interesting thing was what was right beside me: an ordinary door with no lock.

On the other side of that door there was a lot of stuff, mostly paper, and I found out that the
US
in
USE
probably stood for
UNITED STATES
, because it was written on every box, book and piece of paper in the place, though I still had no idea
what the ‘
E
' was for —
EMPIRE
, probably. Well, apart from a locked door, there were only two ways out of that room: a set of wooden stairs that led to the floor below, where the lift shaft terminated; and a door that led to another tiled tunnel. This one had lights, and went a long way, ending at a steel staircase with a small concrete room at the top. The room had no windows but had a heavy iron door that was painted green and was bolted.

As I stood in the concrete room, in the light that came from the small grilles high up in the walls, a funny thing happened: a tram went past quite close by. I had lived near a tramline all my life and the heavy banging of tram wheels on steel joints woke me up every morning, so I knew exactly what it was. I had been under the ground for hours, and I had come up near a tramline. I wondered which one it was, then I remembered that I had been following the river west. The nearest tram crossing was a long way off, wherever it was. I slid the heavy bolt aside and opened the door.

I was inside a small rectangular area surrounded by a high wire fence with barbed wire on top and dense bushes growing at the base. On the concrete wall beside the door was a sign that said:
MMBW
.
DANGER
.
KEEP OUT
.
HIGH VOLTAGE
. None of it was true, of course.
MMBW
stood for Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, but the concrete box I had just emerged from was empty. Through the bushes I could see flashes of colour as trams went past, and I knew that it would be easy for me to get out of that little yard if I had something to dig with. But the thing I couldn't help feeling, as I looked around the area, was that this place had never been used, and maybe never would be.

With the door open, it was easy to use it to climb onto the flat concrete roof and have a look around. Up there I
could see all kinds of things I recognised: the city, the top of Government House, the top of Victoria Barracks, which had cannons outside it, and, just along St Kilda Road, about five hundred yards away, the top of the Shrine, which I knew was across the road from Dorcas Street, where Aunty Queenie lived. On the other side of St Kilda Road there was a tall building which I knew was right on top of Railwayman's domain, and must be
USE
,
THE UNITED STATES EMPIRE
. I got my Spirax notebook out and made some notes. I had just discovered Melbourne.

When I got back to the lift machinery room, I paused and looked down the lift shaft. I didn't feel like making the trip down the ladder, but an adventurer has to grit his teeth and do what he must. First, though, I decided to look in at the old office with all the
US
stuff in it.

You know, sometimes Railwayman just can't help himself: he just has one of those days when everything goes right and nothing goes wrong — hell, nothing
can
go wrong. And this was one of those days. On the wall beside the door to the lift shaft was a board with a map stuck to it and I could see that it was a map of the whole underground railway, showing turn-offs and tunnels I hadn't even dreamt of yet. I could see my island, and the spot where I had saved Biscuit, and City Boys High, and the river and the railway lines and tramlines that ran above the ground — the real ones. Quick as a flash the map came down, folded itself up, and went into my explorer's bag. Without that map, no one would ever find me down there, and I would be as safe as houses, which was a pretty strange thing to say, considering the neighbourhood I lived in. I looked around for any other maps or books or equipment that might help me in my adventures, but all I could find was a storeroom
full of gas masks and helmets, all too heavy to carry. So off I went back down the ladder.

The trip back to Josephine Island was quick, though nerve-wracking, as I had the headlight on all the way. At the City Boys High railway yard I left the train and walked down the tracks to my island fort. There, I spread out the map, to see where all the stations were, and discovered that I had just come from the United States Embassy, and that I had pinched the grog from Government House — all in all not a bad day's work. All that remained was to celebrate with a snifter. The wine was strong-tasting and hot, but it was the best I'd ever had, so I sat on the floor and took a swig or two more from the bottle. And then a couple more.

After a while I heard a voice singing ‘The Happy Wanderer', and forgetting the words in the same place that I always forgot them, which was, I thought, pretty odd. But the voice didn't bother me, and just kept on going, only stopping whenever I had a swig from the bottle. That was so funny I just had to laugh like hell.

The worst thing about having a mum is that when you forget to come home because you've slept at the hideout, and you finally do turn up and chunder all over her shoes, she doesn't see the funny side of it. On the whole, it was a pretty confusing morning, especially when Zac thought Mum was trying to kill me and bit her. He was lucky not to get sent to the Dogs' Home.

I realised, as soon as I walked through the door, that I had stuffed up, and even tried to spin her a yarn about having spent the night over at Granddad's. But Mum was not interested in that at all — all she was interested in was the bottle of Osborne's that I was still carrying in my hand, because I hadn't yet finished it. At least, in the middle of all the yelling and screaming, I found out that Osborne's was sherry, which I now know to be a particularly nasty variety of plonk. I could see why the Governor had it stashed in the basement; he probably didn't want his kids getting their hands on it and ending up like me. I reckon the world would have been a much better place if he'd just chucked it in the dustbin. Anyway, next time, I thought, I would give that stuff a miss and try something different, something a bit less poisonous. It's true that Railwayman does like a bit of a drink after a hard day's railroading — he's a man who likes to live hard and play even harder. That's why he's Railwayman, for Christ's sake.
But he does not get a big thrill from waking up as sick as a parrot.

Looking back, I'm pretty sure I should have had a bad feeling about that morning, but I already felt so crook from drinking all that rotten grog that I wouldn't have known one awful feeling from another. I spent the rest of the morning making notes and sketches to stick on the map, as there was a lot of new information to enter. My part of the world, the South Side, as I had come to think of it, was now fairly well filled, both above and below ground, and I felt that I somehow owned it. It comprised factories, living and dead; parks and tips; rivers — well, one river; houses, some tiny old dumps and some mansions; breweries and pubs on corners; people and their stories. And all of it was mine. I was the King of the South Side and could go where I pleased, either above ground or using my secret network of drains and tunnels.

I had not seen Granddad since we got Zac, and thanks to Mr Sanderson's tip I knew that he had gone straight and was lying low until the heat was off. It meant that I had more time to put into practice all that I had learnt, and to perfect the map, which had become a work of art, and had had to be scaled down a few times to get all the new information in. Spiraxes had turned into volumes of Spiraxes, just like in
Tales of the Texas Rangers
— you know:
Volume 1: The Early Days
and so on. Well, I was well past the Early Days and heading for the Latter Days. The map had become a bit of a storybook.

Beginning with Granddad and the copper near the Orange Tree, I was now connecting the people on the map with each other, as I learnt about their relationships. As a result of this side to my project, some weird things started to happen. For instance, because there was a connection between Granddad
and that copper, there was a connection between Mum and the copper, and in the same way there was a connection between the copper and Dad and so on. The more I stared at the map the more I saw connections staring back up at me. At first I thought they were magical, and happened all by themselves. But what happened next made me stop thinking of the connections that way, and start thinking of them as being about me, and they began to scare me.

In the afternoon, I thought I'd visit the Sandersons, as I had an open invitation. These days they loved me as if I had nicked the recipe for Vic Market doughnuts and still hadn't decided who to leave it to in my will. So, despite having a terrific headache, which even a couple of Mum's Bexes couldn't put a dent in, the Cartographer packed his Spirax into his explorer's bag, and went outside to alert his faithful companion.

I was just getting ready to set out when there was the sudden clanging of fire engines in Church Street. As they were visiting a house somewhere over the back of ours, we all rushed out into the street to see. Everywhere you looked there was a blur of red and gold. It was how I always imagined things would look if the local Chinese restaurant exploded. Anyway, they were not heading for our street, which was a relief, mainly because there wasn't room in our street for one fire engine, let alone a dozen of them. Our street was probably meant to be a lane, but they must have run out of signs that ended with
LN
and still had oodles that ended with
ST
, so there you go. Anyway, the fire engines ended up in the next street down towards the river, and there was the usual smoke and people rushing out into the street with their dressing gowns on in the middle of the day, and their hair in curlers, and fags hanging out of their mouths — and I'm just talking about Mum here —
to see what the hell was going on. I was down there with Zac in a flash. There was no way that the Cartographer was going to pass up the chance to see the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in action. Besides, Zac had probably never seen a house on fire, and I thought the experience would do him good.

Imagine my surprise when I realised that I already knew this street, and the house that was currently engulfed in flame, and the innards of that very house. Lucky I'd bunged it on the map, really. Standing on the street beside the only fire engine that could get close enough to run a hose down the little walkway to the house were the lollopy blind dame and her kid, and I have to say that I felt a tinge of pride as I looked at him and he looked at me and his mother looked at bugger all. Something passed between us; it was like one of those looks that the Sarge gives to his men when the chips are down, and they know they're all going to die unless someone stays behind to hold the Jerries off while the rest of them make a run for it. They know it's the Sarge who's going to stay and they who have to go — it's all decided, it could never have been any other way. It was always going to end like this.

There was triumph in the kid's eyes — Hell, he deserved it just for the sheer bloody effort he had put in — but his mouth was turned down slightly at the corners, which Granddad had told me was the sign of a man who'd lost everything, and had nothing more to lose. Still, there was a
hint
of that lopsided smile I'd seen the last time I was here, when he was lying on the floor squirming silently in his own blood and staring at me. His mum had him by the hair, and you could tell by the look on her face that she was wondering if she had missed something, something vital that would shed light on how things worked in
the universe, and how she might have avoided all this. I could have told her that pondering those mysteries only gives you a headache, that the best thing to do is to turn yourself into a superhero and to go out into the streets doing deeds of daring. Her kid had understood that, and had turned himself into Flame Boy. I understood it — Jesus, all the kids did. You had to find your super identity and assume it. Typically, I covered my tracks by assuming an assortment of identities — call me excessive — but the principle is the same.

I'd seen the way blind people get on with Labradors, so I took Zac over to the woman and let him sit beside her. She put her hand on him and automatically started patting him, the way you do with dogs; and it was as if a big weight was transferred to Zac, who had been smiling all over his face one minute, and the next looking as sad as hell. I sighed out loud: now I'd have to start training him all over again.

Flame Boy's mum turned to me and looked as though she could see me.

‘Who's that? Is this your dog?'

‘Yeah.'

‘What's his name?'

‘Zac — Zac Blayney.'

I wanted her to know that he was important.

‘So you're Jean's son.'

She said it with a soft, tired voice, and I felt that on any other day she might have been pleased to meet me.

‘Yeah.'

‘Tell Jean I said hello.'

I just nodded.
Another bloody connection
, I thought.

 

When I got back to my street and told Mum who God was giving the benefit of his warped sense of humour to that day, she gasped.

‘Poor Molly. She and I used to be the best of friends, you know. We grew up together — we were like sisters at one stage.'

I got a strange feeling, excited and worried at the same time.

‘Really? But that's the first time you've mentioned her,' I said.

‘Well, we had a falling out, didn't we, a long time ago.'

‘When?' Tenacious little bugger.

‘Before you were born — during the war.'

‘What happened?'

I realised that I had struck pure gold: Mum was in some kind of dream world, and if I played my cards right I could find out anything I wanted before she snapped out of it.

‘It was when I was … driving the ambulance —'

‘
You
were an ambulance driver?'

She gave me one of those looks that normally comes with a rap around the earhole, but this time there was no rap. She went back into her dreamy state — lucky that. I restated the point, injecting a bit of admiration into it.

‘Jeez, Mum, you were an
ambulance driver
! I didn't even know you could drive!' Much better.

‘Of course I can; we all could. Who d'yer think did everything when the men were all gone?'

Yeah, the men — the men were all gone, fighting the Jerries and the Japs. I had forgotten. It's just that it didn't seem real to me, because it was all before I was born. I forced myself to think it was real. Nope …
niente
.

‘But I thought you were a lieutenant. Do lieutenants drive ambulances?'

‘Yes, I was, and no, they don't. This was a special job I did for a few months. We all did what we were told.'

It was time to ask the question that I couldn't get Granddad to answer.

‘Is Dad upset because you were a lieutenant?'

Mum breathed in through clamped teeth as if she'd just seen Mandrake stick a knife through his hand, and I knew I'd bombed out again.

‘I thought you wanted to know about Molly? Anyway, I'd always known her, and when the war broke out, all we women had was each other … and the guys from Kansas, of course.'

She smiled to herself the way you do when you're starving, and you suddenly remember that you've got a sherbet bomb in your pocket. But I wasn't paying much attention to the smile. I was more interested in what she'd just said.

‘Kansas? What about Kansas?'

‘I don't mean the Kansas in America. No, Kansas was the name of the railway station where the Yanks who came to Melbourne used to catch the train. They weren't allowed to use Flinders Street Station — too many fights. It was up at Eden Park.'

‘There were Yanks in Melbourne?'

I suddenly knew how that bloke in
Oklahoma!
must have felt when he sang:

Just then I wouldn't have been surprised if she'd told me Henry Bolte was a commo.

‘Oh yes. Everything was different then. All we had was each other. Most girls didn't go out with Yanks, at least not at first.'

I left my money on the table and let it ride. I was on a winner.

‘I used to go over to Molly's after work and tell her all my troubles.' Mum smiled faintly. ‘She didn't have any troubles herself. You wouldn't think it though. See, she was blind — oh, you saw her, didn't you? Anyway, I introduced her to a bloke I knew, an American. She got a bit attached to him — we both did.'

There was one of those big silences you get when a pneumatic drill bloke runs out of road or a Salvos band stops playing.

‘So what happened?'

Mum shivered and pulled her dressing gown around her, despite it being eighty in the shade.

‘He was sent up to defend Port Moresby, and was killed by the Japs.'

She had snapped out of it, but not without leaving me with enough material to fill a dozen Spiraxes. Kansas …
Port Moresby!

‘I better get over there.'

She ran back into the house.

It was raining connections, and my brain had had all it could take. I decided that these would be the last connections I would draw. Maps are supposed to make things easier, not give you a flamin' migraine.

 

Well, if you're one of those people who's thinking:
House burns down; MFB knock over bits left standing; everyone goes home and lives happily ever after
, then you're probably one of those drongos
who backed Tellios for the Cup. The real world might work that way, but the real world ends at the top of my street. The first thing that happened was that while I was inside tossing up whether to go back to the fire, which had begun to get some interesting smells about it, or go over to the Sandersons after all or change my plans altogether and go exploring, there was the sound of a 500cc Triumph Speed Twin out the back, and in walked Dad.

After the usual light banter I explained what had happened, and where Mum had gone. He nodded and headed for the fridge. Life can be murder when the footy season is over. I hung around for a while wondering if he was going to have that talk with me that he'd promised his friend, but he had obviously chickened out of that, which made me think that the rest of the plan might fall through as well. I mean, how can you face up to a wife who's as peace-loving as a Gyrene Sergeant, when you can't even have a quiet word with a kid? I thought:
Well, that's that. Dad will henceforth be a bit of a fixture at our place, just like in the ‘good' old days. Mum won't kill him, but his girlfriend just might, if she ever sees him again
. Oh God! I reckoned you wouldn't be able to wipe the smirk off Aunty Betty's face for about six months, not even with a packet of steel wool and a ton of elbow grease.