Tree Palace (12 page)

‘There you go. Steady, Midge. Slow breaths. Slow breaths. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about Rory. I’ll patch things up. Slow breaths.’

When the breathing became regular Shane helped Midge up and offered him his hand to shake. ‘Come on, say we’re sweet. Go on, squeeze a bit. You got to mean it. That’s better.’

12

Shane never thought he could feel close to a child that was not his own blood. He and Zara had never clicked in that way, which he was glad about. For him step-fathering was more natural man to boy than man to girl. Showing affection to a girl could be taken the wrong way. Man to boy there wasn’t any danger. Rory had never once said to him, ‘You’re not my father.’ Never once said, ‘I’m not your son.’ Threatened with a hiding you’d think the boy would say it. They’d become close as blood, as if really related.

That meant getting in the wag and going after him where he’d bolted up the dirt road, north where the wind came from. No boy would get far in that wind. It pushed you back like a hand pushes. It reached out of the sky and would not let you pass. He found him in the disused school bus shelter where Loop Road dipped across Curdle Creek, which was a creek only in name.

He stretched over and wound the passenger window down and said, ‘Come on, mate. Hop in,’ but Rory refused to look at him. He wiped his eyes and stood up and walked along the road edge towards town. Shane eased the car up alongside.

‘Come on. I was only saying I’d give you a hiding to scare you. I wasn’t going to give you a hiding. I was bluffing. You got to learn about bluffing. Bluffing is where you get what you want without actually going through with the threat. ’

There was no break in Rory’s stride.

‘Come on. When have I ever given you a serious hiding? You was holding a knife on me, Rory. Come on. If you’re bored and looking to play this crazy dragons crap then let’s think of something else for you to do.’

Rory halted. ‘I don’t want to go back to school. I’m shit at it and I hate it.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. Fuck school. What do you want to do instead?’

A shrug was the only answer that Shane expected. He did not expect what came next.

‘I want to be like you.’

He frowned at first and thought Rory was playing. If it was snideness a sneer or smirk would break out on the boy’s face. But there was no smirk or sneer.

‘You want to be like me?’

Rory nodded.

A jolt came low down in Shane’s chest. A missed heartbeat. Pride and the thrill of responsibility.

‘That would be good,’ he said, palming the door open for Rory to climb in. ‘You could be my apprentice. You like that?’

‘What’s an apprentice?’

‘Someone training with someone. My trade is the future, Rory. There’s an old saying, and I can’t remember exactly, but it’s about how you’ll have one man who owns this stuff he doesn’t give a shit about. And there’s another man, and to him that stuff it’s like treasure to him. You understand? The more the old ways die out here, the more we’ll do well.’

Shane took Rory’s hands and turned them in his own for inspection. Thin scarless fingers, pink on the underside compared to his own grainy, rough ones. Those hands would have to change.

‘Strong hands are very important in our game. All the lifting. And they’ve got to be gentle too. Because when you’re dealing with brittle things like leadlight and finicky bits of wood you need gentle hands to work with. How about I start showing you? You come on the Mortlake trip and we’ll start you learning.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise. You feel better now? Had a good cry?’

‘I wasn’t crying.’

‘Why are your eyes red?

‘You promise I can go thieving with you?’

‘Promise. Shake on it.’

They shook hands and held on a long time with Shane squeezing harder by degrees and Rory trying not to flinch. Then flinching and laughing and asking to try again.

They were still trying when they got back home. Moira and Midge were pleased to see them bantering but they were in an exchange of their own that wasn’t quite settled. Midge had said, ‘Why would Zara think those cops wanted to speak to her?’ Moira had answered, ‘Who knows?’ And Midge said, ‘She’s done nothing bad, has she?’ Moira waved the question away. Midge thought that was strange. A wave instead of plain no.

With Shane and Rory arriving he didn’t bother asking further. They were handshaking and twisting arms up each other’s spines. Shane was letting Rory have a couple of victories. They were giggling but Midge was wary in case the horseplay went awry.

‘See, Midge? Me and dragon boy here are best of friends. My best mate next to you.’

He held out his hand for Midge to shake it but Midge didn’t want his arm bent and fingers squeezed hard.

‘I won’t do nothing,’ said Shane.

Midge gave in and straight away he winced and dropped to one knee.

‘You fell for that, brother.’

Moments like this he wanted to rail against Shane and make
him
the feel the brunt of teasing. But he accepted his lot and pretended to laugh.

Cutting Rory’s hair was Moira’s priority. The car licence problem was more important but she could see no way to solve it. Cutting Rory’s hair was something she could control. She sat him under the porch in the least line of wind and got the scissors and a comb. She shaped the length to match up with his burnt fringe. Dabbing his scalp with water where flames had left a red patch. A rash more than a wound. He didn’t moan too much when she touched it.

Shane said a haircut would make him manlier than having messy hair long and curly. ‘You’ll look like you mean business.’

That made the boy sit still and take the haircut as if being initiated into a special apprentice look. The first step of his working life.

‘I’m going to Mortlake. Our trade’s the future.’

‘I want to keep him out of trouble,’ Shane said to Moira. ‘Teach him to pinch proper.’

Saying the word trouble prompted him to make a rule about Moira and the car.

‘You’ll just have to stop driving. Simple as that.’

‘I can take the back roads.’

‘You’ll get caught again. They’re on to you. Didn’t matter when we kept on the move. But we’re not on the move no more.’

The problem came down to reading and writing. Moira could do neither. Words got jumbled since she was a girl. They made no sense and she couldn’t spell them. She grew to hate their humiliating letters. Spent her life faking understanding them but she could not fake reading the driver test. She tried it once and put her ticks in all the wrong boxes. Even trants could do reading and writing, but not her. She called it her blank spot. Her blank bonehead.

She pulled Rory’s ear down to cut the hair behind it and he complained she was pulling too much.

‘I’ll be able to go nowhere. I’ll be trapped,’ she said.

She had to stop trimming because her eyes were welling.

‘You won’t be trapped. I’ll be your chauffeur,’ said Shane.

‘Me too,’ said Midge.

‘But I won’t go by
myself
. And if Zara gets that job I’d drive her.’

‘She probably won’t get the job,’ said Shane.

‘She has to. She needs to get out and be doing something.’

‘I’ll drive her,’ Midge said.

Shane gave a single clap of his hands. ‘There you go. Solved.’

The haircut resumed despite Moira’s bonehead feeling heavy and inclined to hang. Blank, ignorant head, she said to herself. The wind parted Rory’s hair at the side. She’d left that side too long and had to cut more. Blank bonehead. Ignorant moron Moira.

When Rory was done Midge praised the result and asked if her talents could make him tidier, please. She was grateful for his compliment and his manners and sat him down. She did her best to sculpt his greasy strands. He got splinters of hair down his back and itched and wriggled through the procedure. Bush flies flitted around his face like snips of darker hair. They bit his bare arms.

When he saw his reflection in the house window he said he felt ten years younger. He called her a miracle worker.

Shane agreed—a miracle. He sat and asked for her wonder treatment on him. She was smiling by now and said, ‘Since you asked nice.’

They didn’t notice Zara come out of the tent and stand in the gusty sunshine wearing a black shirt she’d fished out and was ironing smooth with the flat of her hand. She wore her best jeans which also were black and had minimal fading down the leg fronts. Her shoes were slip-ons, too tight from being outgrown but brown and only scuffed at the toe tips. She had make-up on, a powdery pallid layer. Eyelids blue when she blinked and her lips shiny purple. She held out her hands like a model showing off to get attention. She said, ‘This good for the interview?’

Shane and Rory only nodded but Midge and Moira said, ‘Wow.’

13

A character reference was desirable, Midge said, if Zara’s résumé was to look official. But who would provide it—Midge himself? He had no community standing. Shane suggested Alfie might do it.

In Midge’s opinion a résumé should be typed. School was closed so Zara could not use the computers there. Would Alfie let her use the one in his office?

Next day they drove into town, Zara in the front seat with Rory and Shane to her sides. Moira was in the back ‘doing the honours’, as she called feeding Mathew. Midge tightened up the straps on the little bed and sat the other side of it and sang ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm’ badly and with wheezing between words, but it hardly mattered given the baby’s slumbering.

Alfie agreed to let Zara sit at his desk and type if she was quick. As for a character reference, he thought it best to decline. He hardly knew the girl and it was wise to keep a professional distance. They decided to use Midge’s name after all and refer to him not as a former jockey but something impressive—thoroughbred industry consultant.

Moira was keen for Zara to be turned out extra-clean. Given the shiny state of that Indian lady she needed to be clean and classy in presentation. In Alfie’s office, along the window-wall that faced out to the shop floor, there was a glass cabinet displaying earrings and finger rings with diamonds and rubies set in silver and gold. Necklaces and brooches of intricate filigree.

‘Can I ask the prices on these?’

Alfie smiled and shook his head. ‘Those are expensive. That diamond ring is almost five hundred dollars. That gold necklace is four hundred and so is the bracelet. They’re estate jewellery.’

‘What’s estate jewellery?’

‘When someone has died.’

‘Five hundred dollars for something someone died with on their body?’

She shivered at the notion of slipping the rings off corpses. Selling them for big money seemed cold and wrong. And yet how important they looked, like treasures families hand down to prove their good breeding. Which you could join yourself up to if you could only afford them. Hold your head higher as if superior.

‘I was wondering,’ said Moira. ‘That lovely gold necklace there with the thick chain and locket at the end? And that bracelet there with the red stones in it. Would you rent them out?’

‘Rent them?’ Alfie laughed. Then his brow furrowed with thinking. He started doing his watch-lid clicking. ‘Never thought of renting.’

‘How much to rent them?’

Shane took her elbow and tugged her towards him. ‘What you doing?’

‘Zara would look so good in them.’

The watch stopped clicking. Alfie’s brow twisted and a fringe of sweat appeared. ‘You mean
you
rent them?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I thought you meant generally as an idea.’

‘What price to rent them?’ said Moira.

He put his hand on the cabinet glass and patted it. ‘I wouldn’t rent them.’

‘To us, you mean.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You’d get them back if that’s what you’re worried about. We’d only want them for an hour or so.’

Shane tugged her again. ‘We don’t want to rent them.’

‘They’d make Zara look so special.’

‘They’re not for rent,’ Alfie said.

‘I’m not going to take off with them.’

‘I’m sure you wouldn’t. It’s just that—’

‘You don’t trust us.’

‘Sorry about this, Alfie,’ said Shane, standing in front of Moira and turning her towards the front door.

‘You’ll rent us a vehicle but not these?’ she said.

‘Jewellery’s different.’

‘How?’

‘Um—well, no number plates, for one thing.’

‘Ask him as a favour, Shane.’

The word ‘favour’ made Alfie hold up his hands and close his eyes. He spoke before Shane had a chance. ‘Like I was saying with the referee issue, it’s good to keep a professional distance. Not blur the line and get too, what’s the word, informal and complicated.’

‘Understood,’ Shane said. He used his eyebrows and a jerk of his head to motion for Moira to keep quiet. ‘Thanks for letting the girl type her thing, Alfie. Cheers and all the best.’

He took Moira’s wrist, attached her hand to the pram handle and urged her to go. He looked around for Rory to make sure he was following. He glanced for any unusual bulges on the boy, just in case. He told Midge not to stand about reading Zara’s résumé page. He could do that out in the street. Zara said she’d made a typo spelling
thoroughbread
. Shane said too bad, they’d used up enough of Alfie’s generosity.

As soon as they were out through the shop door Moira cursed, ‘Arsehole,’ through her teeth. She directed it at Alfie’s name on the sandwich board on the footpath. ‘Arsehole,’ she repeated to double the disrespect to him.

Rory gasped. ‘Mum swore.’

‘Shut up,’ Shane said.

The pram’s wheels squeaked from the brisk pace of Moira’s pushing. Her left thong came off and she jabbed her foot back into it as if she were kicking something.

The Barleyville town wind was different from the Barleyville out-of-town wind. Out of town the wind flowed at you and however powerful it had a natural ebb to it, a personality of sorts. One minute tearing about in a temper, the next stroking the grass across paddocks. The in-town wind came from all directions. It squeezed between buildings and side streets, disorderly and whistling. It came out of the concrete with extra heat on its breath and had nowhere to go but around.