Volcano Street (24 page)

‘Let’s get more dosh,’ said Honza, and made Skip follow him to Cartoon Fun Time where, at the end of a fuzzy beam of light, a flea in a Mexican hat spotted Elmer Fudd’s dog and yammered out that there was food around the corner, food around the corner for me. On the floor, little kids variously wailed, laughed, punched each other, or curled up on cushions, asleep.

Skip hung back while Honza begged his father for just a few more dollars. Mr Novak sighed and reached for his wallet. He winked at Skip. ‘Having a good time?’ She shrugged. Twice that afternoon
she had thought of telling Honza what she knew about his father: once on the Ferris wheel, before they spotted the Lum’s Den; once as they squatted between tents, eating candyfloss. But both times something had held her back. Her thoughts, the revelations she might make, had seemed no more solid than the sugary nothingness on the stick in her hand.

Mr Novak threaded a new film through the projector. Light, juddering into brightness, caught his foreign face and cut it into jagged, shadowy planes. He was a strange man. A stranger. Like Vincent Price.

On their way back to the sideshows, Skip and Honza passed a lady in a violent floral frock who tugged a boy by the ear. Skip had to look a second time at the villain: Shaun Kenny. Twisting away from his mother, he threw up on the grass. Mrs Kenny looked away with lemon-sucking lips.

‘Guess what?’ said Skip. ‘That means Lummo’s alone.’

The afternoon had drawn towards dusk, and the painted colours on canvas and plasterboard took on an unearthly glow. Rows of bulbs, suspended like grapes, winked on above the alleys, where the crowds remained unthinned and their fervour rose with the empurpling sky.

They found Lummo at the Ferris wheel. The wheel was becalmed and a queue waited, impatient and complaining, as the fat boy on the creaky wooden platform demanded a turn on the ride. The man without an ear said no. ‘You’re drunk, boyo. You’re disorderly.’

‘I can pay!’ Lummo plunged a hand into a bulging pocket. A seam gave way and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre, like a sudden nightmare pants-wetting, clattered down his trouser leg. He was on his knees, scrabbling for the bullion, when the man with no ear kicked him in the arse, sending him tumbling down the steps. ‘I’ll get you!’ Lummo spat, and forced his way through a group of kids. Squealing girls parted to let him by; a boy tripped him, and he sprawled again, but picked himself up and plunged into the gap between Marvel of Marvels and the fortune teller’s tent.

‘He’s off to his hideout,’ said Skip. ‘I’ll bet he is.’

On the platform outside Marvel of Marvels, now lit brilliantly, a bearded lady sashayed in a many-tasselled bikini while the Wizard of Oz barked through a megaphone, inviting all the ladies and gentlemen and little chickadees to roll up, roll up for the strangest critters in creation: half-man, half-goat! Man with no limbs! Smallest boy in the world!

‘Let’s get him.’ Skip followed Lummo into the gap. She couldn’t see him ahead; he must have turned a corner. Honza came after her, but it seemed without enthusiasm. Briefly, she wondered why.

Behind the tents was another, wider grassy corridor where the caravans of sideshow folk backed on to the alley. Skip peered around the corner in time to see Lummo propel himself forward, as if he too were about to chuck, then lunge into the back of Marvel of Marvels. He was gone. Puzzled, Skip looked at Honza.

‘Through here.’ He led her along the canvas wall and lifted a flap. Wooden steps led up to the freak-show stage from the rear. They quickly drew back as the bearded lady swished by them in a sweaty cloud and vanished into a caravan across the way. But where, Skip wondered, was Lummo?

Honza pointed. Beneath the stage was a dark space, like the cavity under a house. Skip leaned down and in the gloom saw Lummo lying on his side, turned away from them, holding his belly. He groaned. On one side of him lay Honza’s rucksack, open and empty; on the other was a flagon of cider. Sacks, rags, ropes, boxes and discarded planks and beams littered the grass around him.

Skip slapped him. ‘You knew this was their hideout, didn’t you?’

‘Don’t hit me. Why should I know?’

‘You’re one of them. I’ll bet they use it every year.’

Above them, the Wizard of Oz had repaired to the front of the stage, pacing before a drawn curtain. They heard his footsteps creaking and his voice, distorted oddly, speaking again of marvels
and miracles, this time to a paying crowd enticed into the tent. Reddish lights flashed through cracks in the boards.

‘Scat! Scat!’ A Munchkin in shorts, braces and bow tie, labouring down the steps, flicked pudgy hands at Skip and Honza as if at unwanted cats. Breathlessly, the Munchkin climbed into the caravan and emerged, moments later, leading a man in a rooster suit with an enormous floppy comb. The rooster swigged from a bottle, jabbing it with difficulty into his beak, before the Munchkin sprang up and batted it away. The bottle fell; acrid-smelling brown liquid fizzed into the grass.

‘Bugger you,’ slurred the rooster, but allowed himself to be prodded up the steps, just as the curtain pulled back above and applause broke out.

In that moment the plan emerged fully in Skip’s mind. It was irresistible. ‘Quick,’ she urged Honza, and crawled into the space beneath the stage. First things first: rag, sack, rope. Footsteps thumped above and light made zebra stripes through the boards as she tore back Lummo’s hair, stuffed a rag into his mouth, and bundled his lolling head, like a cabbage, into the sack. Honza gasped. Lummo protested a little, but was too sluggish to resist as Skip, fighting her revulsion, tugged off the drunken boy’s shoes, socks, shorts, shirt and, last – no flinching now – his Y-fronts too. An awe-struck Honza, comprehending, wrenched Lummo’s arms behind his back and bound the wrists with rope.

The rooster had finished his strutting, his flapping, his drunken cacophonies of ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ as Skip, with Honza’s aid, rolled the naked Lummo into the grassy corridor. Just then the Munchkin, resignedly following the giant fowl, thumped down the steps again, ready to summon the next act.

Rooster and Munchkin disappeared into the caravan. Skip and Honza exchanged a thumbs-up. Honza slammed shut the caravan door and stood against it, bracing himself as little fists hammered
within. Triumph! They forced Lummo to his feet and prodded him, swaying, up the steps.

In the tent, the Wizard of Oz announced the next atrocity of nature; the curtains pulled aside again, and blundering into the light came the obese pale naked form of Brenton Lumsden. Cries broke out; the Wizard, shocked, tried to hide his confusion, while a writhing Lummo, shocked into alertness by the noise, wrenched his hands free and tore the bag off his head. The laughter was tumultuous.

‘Got him,’ Skip whispered to herself, only wishing she could see the horror, the disgust, the appalled fascination on the jeering faces. She reeled around to Honza. ‘Got him!’ she cried, and both raised fists in the air.

By the time Lummo had been hustled from the stage, they were long gone, rushing off into the gathering night. They held hands. Honza had snatched the bottle of cider. He hugged it against his chest.

Chapter Thirteen

Imagine being Marlo Wells. Probably you wouldn’t go out with Pavel Novak. What could he offer, especially now, when you would soon sit your exams? He wasn’t the most attractive boy; he was gangly, his teeth were horsy, and his high-templed head, with its springy curls, really did look like a test tube bubbling over. He had done badly at school; he was unambitious and, no doubt, not very smart. Your scholarship was almost in the bag (you’d sit those exams – Auntie Noreen couldn’t stop you); in a few months you’d be gone, spirited away, and where would he be? Shouldering boxes in the back of Puce Hardware, now and for all time. And if you’d met another man, one who didn’t wear a blue apron at work, who could stage a play and have a ‘vision’ for it, who opened up the world of knowledge for you like Aladdin’s cave, what time could you give to a blundering country boy who drove you down the main drag in his Land Rover and said, quite sincerely, ‘The Lakes is really going ahead’? No, you wouldn’t go out with Pavel Novak.

But if, on that Saturday of the Show, you had worked back late, typing invoices until your fingers ached, and knew he was out there beyond the office door, hanging around to keep you company,
because that was the kind of boy he was, perhaps your feelings might soften a little.

The shop had shut at midday; it was now after five.

‘Give it a rest, eh?’ Pavel said at last, and Marlo looked up gratefully. He had taken off his apron and leaned against the doorjamb in his jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt. Muscle balled tightly in his crooked left arm.

‘I can’t go home,’ she said, before she could help it. ‘I can’t stand it. Everything’s so horrible.’ She stood, with a scrape of chair, and went to the window.

‘Hey.’ He came to her. Would he put his arm around her? He was thinking about it, she could tell. But all he did was gulp, sniff a little, and say as if he meant it, ‘It’s all right.’

‘He was your friend. You didn’t cry at the service.’

‘It wasn’t real. I just kept thinking about the body and where it might be. Did they even find him? Is he lying in the jungle somewhere, rotting away? They said he was on patrol. That could mean anything.’

Marlo hugged herself as if she were cold. Sunshine streamed between the dusty curtains. ‘Funny to think of a boy our age going to war. Once I asked Uncle Doug what he did in the war, and he just sort of clammed up. Auntie Noreen said he was in New Guinea. He must have killed men, seen men killed, seen guts spilled on the jungle floor. He’s buried all that so deep he can’t even find it. Poor Uncle Doug. He’s a dead man walking.’

She felt the warmth from Pavel’s arm, so close to hers. ‘How about the Show?’ he said softly. ‘Whole town’s there.’

‘Yes. Let’s.’ Marlo swung back from the window. Quickly she began putting away the files that cascaded in cardboard waves across her desk, while a smiling Pavel, who had slumped into her chair, drummed his fingers with mock impatience. The cup of Nescafé he had made her an hour ago sat before him, undrunk. Turning in
haste, she knocked it. Dark liquid soaked his lap.

Marlo gasped. ‘I’m so sorry.’

His smile didn’t drop. He raised the cup as if in a toast. ‘Guess I’ll have to scoot home and change first.’

Pavel remained in good spirits as they hurtled in the Land Rover out of town. All was quiet but for distant sounds of the Show, buffeted on the wind: loudspeakers, carnival tunes, birdcall flurryings of an excited crowd.

‘Tracks get laid down in our heads so fast,’ Marlo said, as houses gave way to green paddocks. ‘Round and round we go, Puce’s Bend to Volcano Street and back, and it seems we’ve been doing it all our lives.’

‘I have been. It’s all I’ve ever known.’

‘Don’t you want to go away?’

‘Dunno. Is there all that much, out in the world?’

‘There’s everything.’ What could she say? London, Paris, decadent Berlin and the Côte d’Azur – would the names mean a thing to him? Perhaps there
was
only Crater Lakes, and all else was illusion. But no. For so long Marlo had thought: I’ll go away like Germaine and not look back. My life is rising like a Saturn V rocket, shedding stages as it shoots up through the sky. Those years in Glenelg have crashed and burned and so, soon enough, will these months in Crater Lakes. But uneasily Marlo knew that life, for almost everyone, could never be a rocket. It could never leave the earth.

‘Your father lived in Prague.’ She looked at Pavel.

‘I’m not even sure I could find that on the map.’ Gooseflesh stood out on his arms beneath the frayed sleeves of his Rolling Stones T-shirt. The stain, black in the middle, brownish at the edges, covered the bottom of the T-shirt and his denim thighs. Marlo felt her cheeks grow hot.

Parked outside the Novak house was a red Morris Minor. ‘Brooker’s car,’ Pavel said in a sour voice. ‘He’s driving Mum to the Show Ball.’
He jumped down to the drive with a stony crunch. ‘Coming in? Only take a minute.’

‘I’ll wait in the Land Rover,’ Marlo said. She felt confused, a little ashamed, as he vanished into the house. White walls glimmered in the early evening sun and she thought of Spain, as seen at the Ozone, Glenelg. Turning, she looked across empty paddocks. Would they all be covered with houses one day? There were so many people in the world. Too many.

Marlo remembered a time when she was small and Skip was a baby. They had lived with Karen Jane in dirty rooms in North Adelaide with a garage mechanic who reeked of beer and fags. On many a drunken night he smashed Karen Jane to the floor. In the mornings he was all tenderness, declaring that he had been mad, that he didn’t know what had come over him, that he hated himself and would do anything to make it up to her. Marlo had seen her mother draw him towards her, stroke his hair, and tell him to hush, hush, it was all right. On his birthday, she cooked him a special dinner, but Jimmy – that was his name – didn’t come home. He had promised! Karen Jane refused to give in. She would go and get him. Brutally, she dragged Marlo out of bed, flung a coat over the little girl’s shoulders and buckled her shoes. The baby had woken up and began to howl. ‘Shut up, shut up.’ Karen Jane wrung her hands helplessly, then grabbed the swaddled form and thrust it into Marlo’s arms. Yes, they would all go. Let Jimmy see, let all his drunken mates see, what he’d been neglecting! The smell of a burned roast lingered in the air. On the table between the dinner plates was a little box wrapped in paper: cufflinks, Jimmy’s present – as if he would ever wear them! Karen Jane snatched up the box and laughed. Marlo clutched Skip tightly. Helplessly, she followed their mother down the stairs.

In the leagues club, Jimmy looked first startled to see them, then angry. He had been leaning at the bar, slurring out some anecdote to his sozzled cronies, when blearily he took in mother and daughters:
Karen Jane accusing, Marlo whimpering, the baby howling. Swaying, pint glass in hand, he slurred, ‘Whadya doing, woman?’ Karen Jane said nothing, only flung the little box to the floor at his feet and blathered out a tuneless ‘Happy birthday to you …’ He laughed then, and his mates laughed; all around the clubroom men were laughing, flinging back sunbeaten necks, baring brown teeth and baying like dingoes.