Marnie paid for his funeral. His family didn’t come, sickened and horrified by his lifestyle and youthful death. The disbanded Steele Street household all turned up. She didn’t know it then, but it was the last time she would see any of them, and she wished that she had looked at each of them more carefully, more lovingly. There was a comfortable camaraderie between them, bonded by their love for Danny; they were all shocked that he had perished so rapidly, and wept through the service. She took the ashes home, taking some to the nightclub to be scattered on the floor. The rest she put under a flame tree and organised for an exhibition of the drawings, prints and photographs to be held to honour him. The gallery sold them for a large sum of money, and decades later they would become her most famous pictures. So many people wanted to be her friend now, but she was still the quiet girl from the country, used to solitude and introspection, and didn’t trust the shiny new people who seemed to all want something from her.
Later on, she heard that Alex and Lea had also become sick in the same way, and she eventually found out they had both died. She remembered them sharing needles with Danny; she had watched them in his bedroom. She had said no when they’d invited her to join in. She wondered who had had it first, the virus, and given it to the others. Her gallery picked up Alex’s photographic work posthumously. There were many pictures of her and Danny and of the household, as well as the highway scenes and storms, richly textured, elegant photographs. Their careers entwined as the public curiosity about her life and work grew.
She couldn’t believe she could pay for a haircut, and shoes, rent and a new bed. She sent a cheque home to her mother, with a drawing of a handsome rooster. She bought herself a pair of silver sandals, imagining herself as Hermes, the messenger to the gods and guide to the underworld. She bought an etching press and put it in Danny’s room, spending her days scratching on plates, sticking the proofs up around the walls, and drawing, always drawing. At night, she curled herself against Quinn, staying awake to listen to the rhythm of her breathing, feeling the life beating through the pulse at her wrists, their black hair tangled together. Quinn also quit the brothel and became her manager and muse. Her mistressing skills were perfect for harnessing the art world, and keeping the unwanted callers at a distance. Danny came to her in dreams, alive and healthy, laughing. She felt him in his flame tree, in the brightness of the sky, in the palm of her hand. She felt her love for Danny, brimming and bursting within her. For the first time in her life, she allowed herself to fill the space made just for her, to expand to the edges, and to feel herself whole and clear and radiant.
About the author
Elisa Hall was born in Adelaide and grew up in the Adelaide Hills. She studied printmaking at the art school there then moved to Sydney and studied painting. She has had many solo and group exhibitions over the years, and ran Bare Gallery in Newtown. She began teaching oil painting in 1999. She has been writing fiction for two years. Elisa currently lives in Bellingen, NSW, with her nine-year-old son, where she teaches oil painting and drawing and has an abiding love for disco, growing flowers and social justice. The Hope Prize anthology will be her first publication.
Biographies of the British Monarchy
Eleanor George
Co-Winner, Young Writer
Lucas’s backpack feels like it weighs a million tonnes, but in real life it probably only weighs a few kilograms. He takes his time anyway, looking down at the footpath and making sure not to step on any cracks. He’s beating his record by fifteen days at the moment; he’s gone seventy-four days without stepping on a single crack in the pavement, including at school.
But the thought doesn’t make him smile as usual. Today Neil hadn’t sat with him under the tree at school, even though he knows that means Lucas is by himself, and that means it’s easier for the Year Ten boys to pick on him. His shoulder is throbbing now. The backpack strap hurts it, because the bag, with Mrs Fisher’s letter inside it, weighs a million tonnes. Dad won’t be happy. He’ll be the complete opposite of happy; he always is whenever something comes home from school. Lucas feels like King Ethelred the Unready. But instead of going to war against the Danes, he’s going off to do battle with his parents.
There’s nowhere for him to hide at school, and there’s nowhere for him to hide at home. The front door looks like the mouth of a monster, waiting to swallow him up. But in real life, it’s just his normal, ordinary, brown front door. He opens it, and goes inside.
Lucas gets home from school a bit later than usual, so Anne is waiting for him in the kitchen, home from work. He walks in and shuts the door behind him. When he turns around, he catches her eye for a moment, but then he looks away quickly and wordlessly ducks into his room. Anne frowns, and follows him.
‘Hi, sweetie.’
‘Hey, Mum.’ He is sprawled on his bed with his copy of The Monarchs of Britain open. She decides not to push it. ‘Make sure you unpack your bag, okay?’
Lucas nods absently and she knows he hasn’t heard a word she just said, so she picks up the backpack and takes it out to the kitchen, leaving her son to his kings and queens.
Roger gets home at six thirty as usual, while Anne is doing the washing up. He is a lawyer, and proud of it; sometimes Lucas calls him King Henry I, the Lion of Justice. Sometimes Anne isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean.
He kisses her on the cheek. ‘You should get Lucas to do the washing up for once,’ he says, putting his briefcase down. ‘All he does is sit in his room all afternoon and read.’
‘Yes,’ she replies, raising her eyebrows at him. ‘And maybe you could give it a try it, too.’
‘Very funny,’ Roger says, smiling. ‘I’m serious though. Something’s got to change for that boy. Maybe we need to start being more strict. Have some more concrete rules here at home or something.’
Anne frowns. ‘We never did anything like that with the girls.’
‘The girls didn’t have problems like Lucas,’ he replies. ‘He never goes out – isn’t that funny for someone his age? I was always going out. Sneaking out, even. And at school . . . it’s like he isn’t even trying. You saw what his last report was like.’
‘Speaking of school,’ Anne says, handing Roger the letter she’d found in Lucas’s bag. She’s already read it; she knows what it says.
Dear Mr and Mrs Martin, it reads.
I would like to formally request a meeting with you both sometime this week concerning your son’s progress in class. Please call the school reception to advise a time that would be suitable for you.
I look forward to meeting with you soon.
Regards,
Margaret Fisher
Year Nine Coordinator
Anne doesn’t wait to see Roger finish reading the letter. She goes to make a cup of tea.
Lucas hops over a particularly cracked piece of pavement. Today is the seventy fifth day of crack-free walking. There is a rhyme that his sisters taught him when he was little that they used to chant together:
If you step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back.
If you step on a line, you’ll break your father’s spine!
It has a good rhythm. It stays in his head all the way to school.
Mum had found the letter, but she hadn’t mentioned it over dinner. Neither had Dad, but Dad doesn’t usually like talking about anything to do with school, or Lucas, over dinner. Lucas feels like Dad had been building a wall with the silence, a wall that had WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY SON? written on it in graffiti. Miss Morris would say that’s a good metaphor. But in real life, Dad just hadn’t said much.
It is nearly bell time when Lucas gets to school. He hadn’t thought that Neil would be there after abandoning him yesterday, but he is, waiting for Lucas at their usual spot under the King Richard III tree. Lucas called it that because it has a gnarled, bent trunk. A hunchbacked tree, like the hunchbacked king. It’s a good spot, because all the other kids flow around it without stopping to look or see who’s there; it’s like a rock in the
middle of a river.
‘Hey, man,’ says Neil, without looking up from the gadget he has in his hands. Neil is painfully skinny and has a really loud laugh, but he knows everything there is to know about computers, and the internet, so that makes up for it. He has a fading bruise on the side of his face. Lucas feels the matching one on his shoulder.
‘Hey, Neil,’ he replies. He doesn’t want to mention what happened yesterday, in case Neil leaves again, so he just asks, ‘What are you doing?’
Neil says a lot of stuff about the thing he’s pulling apart that Lucas doesn’t understand even a little bit, but he pretends to be interested because that’s what you have to do to be polite.
‘Did you know,’ says Lucas, when Neil is finished, ‘that the first modern computer was designed and invented during the reigns of King William IV and Queen Victoria?’
‘Yeah,’ says Neil, sniffing and pulling a red cord out of the thing in his hands. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘No they don’t!’ says Lucas, indignant. For a moment their argument is interrupted as the Year Ten boys drift a little too close to the King Richard III tree. Lucas and Neil look down and shut up. But the river tugs the boys away, and they breathe again.
‘Yeah!’ Neil says. ‘First computer, 1830s, Charles Babbage. In England.’
Well, in real life it probably isn’t everyone who knows that. Just people who know about kings and queens and computers. The bell rings. Neil packs up his little device, and they go to class.
Roger won’t stop muttering under his breath as they walk through the empty corridors to the coordinator’s office. There is a conspicuous, fragile silence in the school, waiting to be broken by the lunch bell. ‘Roger,’ says Anne. ‘Keep it down.’
‘This is a waste of time,’ he growls back. ‘All Lucas needs to do is put his head down and actually do some study, and he’ll stop failing his classes. I don’t need some jumped up Year Nine coordinator to tell me that.’
‘Maybe, but it would have looked bad if we didn’t show up,’ she mutters back. They arrive at the door, marked Interview Room in black letters, and she punches her husband playfully in the arm. ‘Come on, put your game face on.’
They knock and go in. Inside, there is a woman sitting behind a desk, waiting for them, whose proportions can only be described as snowman-like: she has a round bottom, a round middle and a round face. Anne has to keep from smiling. That’s something Lucas would say.
The teacher doesn’t stand when they come in, but she smiles and gestures to the seats in front of her desk. Roger and Anne sit, both gingerly.
‘Thank you so much for coming in,’ says Mrs Fisher. ‘I’m Margaret. It’s so wonderful to finally meet you.’
Anne smiles and nods. Roger surreptitiously checks his watch. There is an awkward moment of silence, and Anne realises that the teacher doesn’t quite know where to start. She wonders if she should say something, but at last Mrs Fisher clears her throat.
‘Mr and Mrs Martin, I am sure you have both read Lucas’s half-yearly report?’ They both nod, and she continues. ‘Then you will know that his marks are uniformly well below average –’
‘Yes,’ Roger cuts in. ‘We’ve begun working on a more structured study timetable for Lucas, to help him get back on track.’
‘Mr Martin, these results are not unusual for Lucas. They are typical of Lucas’s performance all through his years at high school. I’m . . . well, I’m not sure creating a study timetable will cover it.’
Anne feels Roger tense beside her. Of course he already knows this; it’s just the fact that he’s being told to his face, by a stranger. ‘What are you suggesting then?’ he asks, his voice icily polite. Mrs Fisher pales a little, but forges on. Anne feels a flash of admiration for the woman.
‘Mr Martin, your son is by no means unintelligent. Just look at the extraordinary amount he knows about those kings and queens of his.’ At this, she smiles slightly. ‘Mr and Mrs Martin, I – and many of the staff here at the school – have reason to believe that your son could possibly be on the autism spectrum. Have you ever heard of Asperger’s syndrome? It’s a type of high-functioning autism –’
‘I know what it is,’ Roger says. He is livid. His voice grows louder and louder as he speaks. ‘But you, and – and “many of the staff here at the school” – are mistaken. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my son!’
‘Of course there is nothing wrong with your son, Mr Martin. Being on the spectrum doesn’t –’
‘Please, Mrs Fisher, don’t be ridiculous! We have two daughters out of school now, both at university, and neither of them had any difficulties at school whatsoever.’
Mrs Fisher is clasping her hands very tightly together on the desk. Her fingers are white. ‘This is not just a question of school, Mr Martin. Nor does it have any tangible link to your other children. Asperger’s syndrome is not a disease. If we are able to help your son, it shouldn’t limit him academically.’ She looks down at her hands for a moment and sighs, and then looks back up almost reluctantly. ‘I strongly advise you take your son to be properly diagnosed, by a professional. That way we’ll be able to give Lucas access to a number of resources here that could be a huge help in improving his grades. We just need your cooperation.’
For a moment, there is utter, trembling silence. Then, without warning, Roger stands. ‘We’ll continue to work on the study timetable. Thank you for meeting with us, Mrs Fisher.’ He spins on his heel and stalks out the door.
For a minute, Anne doesn’t move, her eyes on the scuffed blue carpet at her feet. She can hear a clock ticking. She knows there are words she wants to say, but they all disappear before they reach her lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ she finally whispers. She doesn’t understand the way she’s feeling right now; everything she’s had tied in place is coming apart and slipping away. She’s losing the control she thought she had.
‘You’re right, of course,’ she continues, glancing up at the silent Mrs Fisher. The teacher returns her gaze, her eyes sympathetic. ‘Lucas is . . . he’s always been different. I’ve kept telling myself he’s just absent-minded, that he’ll grow out of it, but of course I knew, I’ve always known that that’s how he is . . .’ To her horror, she feels a hot prickling behind her eyes. ‘Sometimes, I don’t know how to talk to my own son,’ she says, barely audibly, her voice quivering. ‘When he’s upset or worried, he’ll stay in his room and refuse to listen to anything. He always talks so . . . formally, you know. And socially . . . it’s like he has all the right pieces, but he’s not sure what order to put them in. It all makes sense, it all fits, and I never saw it . . .’ She digs around in her handbag for a tissue, but she can’t find one.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Martin,’ Mrs Fisher says quietly, passing her a box of tissues, and Anne looks up. Suddenly she’s mortified; suddenly she remembers that she barely knows this snowball-woman. She takes a tissue, smiles, shakes her head and stands.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Fisher. I know you want a diagnosis, but it’s not going to happen. You’ve seen how my husband feels about this.’
Mrs Fisher nods, resigned. ‘Thank you for coming in, Mrs Martin. We’ll help Lucas as best we can.’
William I William II. Henry I Stephen. Henry II. Richard the Lionheart.
Lucas knows more than anybody else he knows about the kings and queens of Britain. Mum said that when he’s older he could be a professor of English history, and he’ll be famous all over the world because he knows so much.
‘Lucas, pay attention please,’ Miss Morris says, and then continues her lesson without missing a beat. ‘So if we look at the structure of the poem, we’ll see . . .’
John. Henry III. Edward Longshanks. Edward II. Edward III.
He can name every British monarch since the Norman invasion, in order, and say when they died and how long they ruled for. The ones before the invasion – Eadwig, Athelstan, Ethelred and Ethelbert – are harder to remember. But nobody except Lucas has heard of them anyway. They
lived too long ago.
‘Lucas, I want to see your notes before the end of the lesson,’ Miss Morris chides again. ‘Now the special thing about this particular rhyme scheme is . . .’
Lucas isn’t worried; he knows Miss Morris doesn’t have her heart in it. And he doesn’t need to listen anyway. English isn’t his thing.
Neither Anne nor Roger have ended up going back to work today. It’s almost four o’clock, the time that Lucas usually gets home. Roger has been drinking endless cups of coffee and pretending to read the paper, and she’s been sitting silently at the kitchen bench, picking at a thread on the cuff of her shirt. Suddenly, Roger speaks. ‘Maybe we should move Lucas to another school. You know, since all the teachers at this one think he’s . . .’ He trails off, staring into his half-empty cup.
Anne shakes her head. ‘Lucas wouldn’t cope well with that,’ she murmurs. Roger’s head shoots up and he glares at her. She shrugs defensively, ‘You know he wouldn’t, Asperger’s or not.’
Roger shakes his head disbelievingly. ‘You too now? How could you think your own son is autistic?’
‘Why do you think that it’s such a bad thing? Autism isn’t a disability, it only means Lucas thinks in a different way to us. And we can deal with this, Roger. Maybe knowing what it is could actually help us.’
Roger stands and puts his coffee cup in the sink. ‘You actually believe them, don’t you?’ he asks softly, but Anne can hear the accusation in his voice. She looks down at the kitchen table and shrugs again. Roger doesn’t reply; she hears him pick up his car keys. The front door opens and then shuts. The silence is heavy, and Anne feels overwhelmed.
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