The Rules of Backyard Cricket (36 page)

The wake is at Wally's.

The house is bright and civil, as always. A house where no one leaves a phone bill on the bench, no one writes reminders to themselves on the wall. It's a big house for the two of them, but they must entertain all the time—clients, benefactors, politicians. A gleaming coffee machine squats on the counter like something medical. Pipes and tubes and beakers. Polished expanses of marble benchtop. White on white, artful fruit in a bowl.

How far we've come, Brother Wally.

A handful of Mum's old friends, couple of Wally's cricket mates, the one or two survivors among the nicotine-stained regulars she was feeding beer while we were in primary school. It's catered: food's small but exquisite, handed around by girls in black aprons.

When I've thrown back a few champagnes—Mum loved the stuff but always denied herself the extravagance—I wander back up the hallway towards the front door and take a left between the bedrooms, heading for the bathroom. Piss into the immaculately white, advertisement-grade toilet and take a line off the vanity.

Tidying up and regarding myself in the mirror, I pull the cupboard door open a little, and the angle reflects the hallway, the door to Hannah's room. The wooden lettering still in place spelling her name in lolly-shop calligraphy, backwards in the mirror. A cold draft of grief extinguishes the rip of the coke. A gaping hole in the world. Outside of myself, I step forward and push open the door. The room, untouched, smells clean and cared-for. Her posters, her sporting gear. Her bat, the one we duelled with in the backyard at Mum's. A hand-drawn chart above her desk with a homework timetable:
Term Three, 1999
. The lamp she read by. CDs in a row on a shelf above the bed-head. Oh Christ.

‘It's nearly eleven years.'

I spin around and there's Wally in the doorway, watching me.

‘She'd be twenty now.' He breathes a dry laugh. ‘Driving; probably finishing uni.'

He looks older in here, emptied somehow. He rests his forehead on the door jamb, regards his shoes. ‘The counsellor doesn't like us keeping the room this way. I think I'm ready to pack it up, but Louise…'

‘What happened to her, Wally?'

His head jolts upright, his eyebrows raised. ‘Hannah?' Drops his head again. ‘That's why the room's like this, because it doesn't make sense. This is Kew. Warm, safe corner of a terrible world. We don't have any idea what goes on out there. I can try to imagine it, but then I reach a point where I don't want to imagine it happening to Hannah.'

‘Have you let her go?'

He dwells on this for a moment.

‘At a logical level, yes. But I go through times I think she might walk through the door. Is that what you want to hear, that I'm hanging on?'

‘Just asking.'

A faint nod. ‘Never leaves you. Feels like, like everything that happened somehow comes back to
me
. Even though Louise was the one doing all the parenting.'

‘The story wasn't true, you know.'

His eyes meet mine. ‘What story?'

‘The one in the paper, Amy Harris. About me and Louise.'

‘Oh, that one. Yeah, I know. Lou told me. Don't worry about it.'

‘What are you going to do about her drinking?'

Normally he'd flare at such a question. But he's all punched out.

‘What am
I
going to do? Mate, she's not going to listen to me. Or you. Numbs the pain I guess, and most of the time she's under control. Worst stuff's within these walls. Doesn't get out.'

He wanders past me, sits on the swivelling chair at Hannah's
desk. Spins slowly from side to side. The gesture looks oddly disrespectful to me. But taking it as an invitation to do likewise, I sit myself on the edge of the bed.

‘The inquiry starts this week.'

I nod.

‘It'll be a nest of fucking vipers.'

‘Why?' I'd never considered it anything more than a political stunt, a minor diversion from the government's poor polling. Wally sighs.

‘Well, I was there. You were there—some of the time. You can make anything look bad if you talk to the right people, the
wrong
people. There's been fools punting on cricket since time began, and they're not going to stop. Doesn't mean the game's rooted, or that we're all on the take. Just another way people enjoy their sport. Some play it, some watch it, some punt on it.'

Faint squeaks as the chair rotates. I've never felt so clearly that Hannah is dead. Her ghost pervades everything in this room.

‘I mean, you were never…' He's fishing for reassurance.

‘Yeah I was. Remember that day-nighter in Sydney, '95? Rowan Cooper asked me to get myself stumped and I accidentally hit it out of the park. You were fucking furious.'

He seems to be straining for recollection, wants me to see that.

‘Oh
that
,' he laughs eventually. ‘I don't think they're interested in that sort of shit. That was a juvenile prank. I think they're after bigger fish, somehow.'

‘Felt pretty fucking big at the time. I don't think I've ever heard you so angry.'

He eyeballs me, management-style. ‘I'm sorry, okay. I'm sorry I did that to you.'

He's picked up a Hello Kitty hole-punch from the desk, is idly squeezing it.

‘You been subpoenaed?' I ask.

‘Well, yeah,' he replies. ‘But only because I've been a senior player through all those years. There's no suggestion, of course…'

‘Of course.'

‘You?'

‘Not yet. I don't know, you might be right. I'm small-time.'

‘You were always closer to Craig than I was.'

‘Yeah, but maybe they'll just go direct to Craig. I still can't help thinking that despite all the carry-on, he's just a big stupid bogan. Have you asked him if he's been called?'

‘You kidding? I don't think I've even got his number these days.'

He slaps his knees, a habit of his that indicates the end of a discussion. He starts to get up, but fixes me once more with a deeper look. ‘Okay, so you're not talking to them.'

‘I'm not saying that. I haven't been asked to talk to them. I dunno, I'd probably talk. Trying to get my life together, Wally. Do the responsible thing. But like I say, I haven't been asked.'

He moves back to the doorway, stops momentarily. ‘Yeah, but I'm hearing you. You haven't got much to offer them anyway.' He flicks the light switch on, flicks it off. Gestures to the doorway.

‘You done?'

The conversation bumps around in my mind for a few of the sad weeks after Mum's funeral, as my former teammates start to receive subpoenas. Then the coaches, industry people, a few well-known crooks. The media are talking about
massive revelations
, and
a sport rocked to its foundations
. Everyone's paranoid. No one talks.

It's around this time I start to receive the text messages.

Blocked number. Muddled, usually late at night, in no apparent order. Sometimes they look as though they've been typed by an
over-large finger that trips several keys in reaching for the right one. There's never any numbers or symbols: the sender never leaves the first alpha screen. Sometimes they look like a code, or a madman's ramblings. They don't make any sense.

Not until the one that arrives in the early afternoon on the Friday before Wally's due to give evidence. I'm in a hotel in Sydney, bright yachty view across to Cremorne Point. I'm looking out at the sunlight chattering on the surface of the harbour. Looking back at the screen. Standing there like an idiot in my underpants and socks, shirt on the ironing board. About to put on the suit to call a game that evening.

Clear typing this time, no fumbles. It says:

Matthew 18:15–20
.

I don't have any friends who are religious. Well, I wouldn't, would I? And as far as I know, I don't have any enemies who are religious either. But I was sufficiently brutalised by Brother Calumn to recognise a scripture verse, and this thing looks to me like scripture. I scout around until I find the Gideon Bible in the bedside drawer. Flip through the virginal tissue of the pages, print smell fanning back at me.

Kings, Psalms, Daniel, Zechariah…

Matthew. With a finger down the column I find it quick enough.

If your brother sins against you, go and point out their fault, but do it alone. If he listens to you, the matter is at an end. If he does not, take one or two others with you, so that every matter may be established in the presence of those witnesses.

It nags at me for the rest of the day, through the evening under the lights and across a succession of beers and a gram of crank at an Oxford Street bar afterwards. What have I done to my brother? Or what has he done to me? And who cares enough to send this?

We rationalise the inexplicable because we don't like it occupying that infirm ground in our hearts. So I laugh it off, shooting tequila
with a couple of fuzz-cheeked Navy cadets. Do-gooders and happy clappers have tried to redeem me before, proselytisers. Try saying that after a brace of firewaters. Not their business. It's my ongoing project and I'm doing my best, I tell myself as one of the sailors flames his lower lip on a burning tequila shot.

Then comes the day it all changes fundamentally. Headlines aren't typeset anymore, but if they were, they'd choose the giant font for this one.

Wally's fronted the inquiry and refused to testify on the grounds he may incriminate himself.

Louise

Having ungagged my mouth, I feel a surge of liberation within the wider reality of confinement.

I take to the cable ties with renewed enthusiasm, able to breathe deeply and grunt now and then with the effort. Fingers down and wrists bent, I can apply pressure to the ties with the fragment of tail-light lens, though it's impossible to measure my progress.

To stop my hands cramping, I make six firm passes at it, then rest and count to ten, try to pull my clenched fists outwards a couple of times. And somewhere around forty-eight attempts, the cable ties give up.

My pectoral muscles are burning with newfound cramp at the shock of these free-swinging arms, but now I have hope—and two major advantages.

Now I have hands.

The divorce is handled with trademark cold precision.

An email appears on my phone at 7.32 on a Friday night, just
after the ABC news has gone to air and just before the footy starts. Match of the round: a preoccupied public. Bullseye.

The message has obviously gone to a mailing list, the identities obscured. It says:

You may be aware that Louise and I have struggled with our relationship over recent years, due to a variety of pressures in our lives. We do not need to recount to you the enormous trauma we have endured over the loss of our darling daughter Hannah. You are receiving this email because you have been close to us through these years, and we thank you for your loyalty and your support.

However, these pressures have become more than we can bear. Despite the best efforts of both of us, we are no longer able to remain married to each other and have decided—amicably—to separate. We intend to continue supporting one another in all our endeavours, and we remain deeply respectful of each other and proud of each other's achievements.

We plan to say nothing further than this publicly. We will be notifying media outlets by press release immediately after you receive this email. We would be grateful if you would maintain your loyalty to us by refusing all media requests, although we are willing to discuss the matter privately with each of you in due course.

Thank you.

I can imagine her face during the drafting. A meeting room somewhere, the management company maybe. Alan the PR grub smirking away throughout, jabbing at that laptop of his.

Her jaw set, across a table from Wally, her silence a scathing indictment of the whole thing. Her eyes would be red-rimmed, the crying done somewhere out of sight, her pride now a barrier to all. She'd watch her hands, a thing I've seen her do under pressure; straighten the fingers and study them as though the rings had something to say about permanence.

And Wally. A suit with open collar, calm and immovable. His
need to interpret every adversity in life as a contest, a binary struggle of wills between him and the opposing force. Right down to the cellular level, his need to
win
. Aiming to come through this as the sole survivor of his own marriage.

The email is no shock to anyone.

Louise moves out of Kew, and shortly afterwards she moves to Seattle, where a punch-drunk NGO needs rescuing. Flight from herself and the rescue of others are the twin poles of her existence.

I've missed her every day since she left. Her damaged perfection, her dignity.

What was irreconcilably different about her and Wally was her ability to accommodate weakness, her acceptance of her own fallibility. Her alcoholism is a private reality that Wally sought to suppress out of existence. I've gone through adult life actively exploiting my mistakes—behold the dancing bear!—while Wally would have the public believe he's never erred. Steering a straight line between our two approaches, Louise has calmly prevailed.