The Hands (29 page)

29

Aiden drove towards Port Augusta. He was still in his shorts, T-shirt and slippers. Harry sat in the back, a case in his side, clothes (a small mountain of them they'd just thrown in) under his feet and across his lap. Shoes and boots. Books (dozens he'd pulled from his bookcase and shoved under the seats and in the gaps between the half-tonne of junk they'd salvaged).

As Murray stood on the porch shaking his head, saying, ‘Nice performance, son.'

By now, Trevor didn't see the point of speaking to him. He just kept going between bedroom and car, loading, squeezing, telling Harry to get his assignments, his toothbrush, his pyjamas.

‘Leave it to me,' Murray was saying. ‘Chris can help with the muster.'

Fay had returned to the kitchen to clean up. Her job was done. Things might, in one way or another, fix themselves now. But she would still have to live with her brother. So it was back to the kitchen and the part she'd played for the last forty years. It was back to Bruce Willis and the smell of cheap tobacco, the memory of the Tea and Sugar.

Trevor had put his chair back. As Aiden drove he watched the desert pass, but didn't feel a part of it anymore. It was just landscape. The grass would grow without him. The animals would still fuck and have their own little children (full of spirit and a million possibilities) but he mightn't be there to help them breech.

For the first time in a long time, he was happy. He looked at Aiden and felt proud to the point of crying. Everything was right; everything would work out. This was the realisation he'd had, in the desert, as he heard, but couldn't see, the distant Indian Pacific. Harry, too, would be the greatest man who ever lived. He shuddered when he thought of the accident and what might have happened but fought for breath when he remembered, realised, how much he loved his sons.

There was nothing else now except the three of them, the four of them.

He turned and looked at Aiden. ‘I'm sorry,' he said.

‘Why?'

He couldn't answer. But Aiden knew it wasn't about Gaby or his mum or his walk into the desert. It was about how they'd been living, for so long.

And then he remembered.
Be!
He felt in his pocket and the small piece of paper was still there.
Be!
He didn't even take it out. He remembered what it said; about the voice of life crying:
Be!

An hour after they'd gone, Murray went into his son's room and lay down on his bed. He wondered how long he'd be gone. Overnight, at least. A few days at most. He wondered why he'd taken so much gear. But that was Trevor—always the actor. The drawers were all hanging open, empty, apart from some of Carelyn's clothes; the hangers in the wardrobe were twisted at awkward angles.

Then he noticed a letter on the bedside table. The name, Murray, printed on the front. He sat up, took it, studied it. Opened it. It was written on lavender-scented paper. He imagined what Fay had said to Trevor. He knew she would've told him, or at least encouraged him, to go. She had never put down Bundeena roots. She'd never understood the place. But it had been his responsibility to take her in. That's what no one seemed to realise. It wasn't about what you wanted.

Time to sell up. If you put it on the market I'll come back and help you sell it, destock. Then, I take enough to buy a place in town. Somewhere close to Mercy, and the garage. You keep enough for a unit. You decide. My mobile number's on the fridge.

He screwed it up and threw it across the room. It settled in a pile of abandoned underwear.

The Wilkie men stopped at the car-house. They got out, sat on the bonnet and drank from a bottle of flat Coke Trevor had grabbed on the way out. ‘It's gonna be hot,' he said to his sons.

‘Fucking hot,' Aiden replied, smiling.

‘Really fucking hot,' he said.

There was nothing but silence; then a B-triple hurtling past. Harry ran over to the old house, with its bonnet walls, its hub-cap tiles, its wind-down windows. He looked back at them and said, ‘This place is so ugly.' Ripping a hub-cap from the wall, he threw it into the yard. And again. Until Aiden joined him, and they had a competition to see who could throw the furthest.

‘Ugly!' Harry called. He kicked one of the wall panels, and another. He ripped a few down. He stood on a bucket seat and kicked in a window; another. Aiden joined in. They pulled down tyres and rolled them out towards the highway; they pulled down a row of ornamental carburettors and kicked over a table fashioned from an engine-block. Then they moved away from the house, gathered stones and started smashing windows. One after another, as they laughed, and dared each other, and Harry called, ‘Ugly!'

Trevor just watched, wondering if they should burn it down as well; wondering how Chris would keep, as the sole moving target.

… Fay and Chris can live with us, then you won't be bothered by anyone.

The boys returned to the house and he could hear more smashing, more breaking.

Murray sat on the porch, looking out towards the long train. Fay was cooking chops; was always cooking chops. He finished rolling a cigarette, put it in his mouth and lit it. And thought: I can't go. I can't.

Yanga was sitting at his feet. She looked up at him. She twisted her head as though she was confused about something.

He studied the phone number on the scrap of paper on the table beside him.

I can't
.

Yanga stood up and walked away. She found another spot and sat down.

I can't
.

The undersides of the clouds were red, and he thought it was more beautiful than anything. The land was hot, honey-coloured, breathing. It promised life, a future, income; it always had.

Fay popped her head out. ‘You can come in now.' And she was gone.

He could never leave the ghosts: Bill, John. Although, he supposed, his son and grandsons had given up their mother. Maybe that's what it took, he thought. Maybe something had to be given up. Something precious. Something irretrievable.

I can't
.

He picked up the number, and studied the digits.

‘Come on,' Fay called.

He could smell the chops; but couldn't go in.

It was after nine as they drove through the back streets of Port Augusta.

Trevor was feeling excited; light.

Aiden stopped at a roundabout to let a boy on a dragster pass.

‘That's an old one,' he said to his dad.

‘Don't think I ever had a bike,' Trevor replied.

‘Not much point,' Aiden said, as they drove on.

It was hot in the small houses. People had come out onto front porches to escape the heat. Some of them sat on old benches, some on car seats; others on lounge suites.

As they drove into Gaby's driveway, Harry woke. He looked and saw where they were; remembered why; felt it under his feet; board games, even, on the parcel shelf behind his head.

Gaby was soon out, waiting beside her dead garden, her arms crossed. She could see they'd filled every inch of the car with their crap.

Harry was out first, and he ran over to her; across the dead lawn, catching his T-shirt on her mouldy roses.

He tried not to smile. ‘Guess what?'

Then she wrapped him in her arms. She looked up at Trevor, emerging from the car, stretching. ‘Come on,' she said. ‘I'll make you a coffee first.'

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Michael Bollen, Angela Tolley, Margot Lloyd, Molly Jureidini, Michael Deves and Julia Beaven.

Songs

‘Comrades'    Felix McGleason

‘Eileen Bawn'    words H.J. St Leger, music M.W. Balfe

‘I couldn't even swear to the colour of her hair'   words Harry Hunter,    music Walter Redmond

‘Tell me, darling, that you love me'    John A. Orway

‘Underneath the mellow moon'    Wendell W. Hall

‘When you and I were seventeen'    words Gus Kahn, music Charles Rosoff