The Restorer

by Michael Sala

  The girls sat at their own tables, facing one another over neat assortments of food that they picked at.

  ‘So where in Sydney are you from?’ one asked.

  Freya told them. Someone asked her why they’d come to Newcastle, and she felt herself tense up.

  ‘Because of Dad’s work,’ she said.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He was a foreman. I don’t even know what that is.’

  ‘Was?’ one of the girls said. ‘He dead then or something?’

  ‘Ally,’ another girl exclaimed. ‘Don’t be so rude.’

  Ally’s reactions seemed slightly delayed, like she put a lot of thought into arranging them. She pouted. ‘What’s wrong with asking that?’

  ‘What if her dad really is dead?’

  ‘I wish,’ Freya said quickly.

  They all laughed, and half of them said they thought the same thing about their dads, but they didn’t really mean it, she could tell. The conversation trailed off.

  In that quiet, Freya thought of Nan, and the last time she’d seen her. In the kitchen, back in Sydney, Mum and Dad had been waiting outside at the car and it had been just her and Nan standing there. Nan had to look up at Freya when they stood close. She’d gripped Freya’s arm tightly—as if one of them at least needed to be supported—and given her the book about Greek mythology.

  ‘My phone number is inside,’ Nan had said. ‘On a piece of paper. Don’t lose it, don’t tell your mother, and definitely don’t tell your father.’

  Freya hadn’t known what to say. A blush had risen into her when she’d stepped out to the car, but no one had noticed. She wasn’t sure if it was bad luck to have that phone number, hidden from Mum, and especially from Dad, if it was like inviting something to happen. But the book was there, in her suitcase, under a pile of clothes, waiting.

  ‘So where do you live now?’ one of the girls asked.

  ‘Newcastle East,’ she told them.

  ‘Heaps of druggies there.’

  ‘And a brothel.’

  ‘Don’t walk around there without your shoes. You’ll step on a syringe and get AIDS.’

  Freya took an orange out of her bag and started peeling it. She didn’t tell them that she was sleeping on a foam mattress in a dingy living room because most of the house was a ruin. The day after they’d moved in, Dad had taken her up to the top floor of the house, to see what would be her room at some unimaginable point in the future. The staircase led up from the second floor landing into a kind of attic. It had large windows looking out over the street to the harbour beyond, and a small one overlooking the courtyard out the back. The underside of the tile roof was exposed, the two sides pitched together high over the middle of the room and then swooping low.

  ‘It’s a gable roof,’ Dad had told her. ‘You’ll have to watch your head when you get out of bed, but you get used to it. Before you move in, I’ll put up insulation and plasterboard, and I’ll paint it, so it’ll be a nice, clean finish.’

  They’d gone to the window together. ‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘How lucky are you? You can see everything from up here.’ Newcastle East, he told her, was the heart of the city, where everything happened. It was an exposed heart, laid out on a long, thin triangle of land jutting out into the sea. The southern side was all beach and cliff, and the other—he pointed out the window, swept his hand in an arc—was the harbour. Past the harbour was Stockton, and further up the coast, way out in the distance, lay the wreck of the Sygna. He talked about how the bulk carrier had run aground on its maiden voyage in a huge storm fifteen years earlier and had been left there to fall apart ever since. Dad had been happy, animated, boyishly excited, full of hope, like he always was at the beginning of things.

  Shouting erupted nearby. A boy was swearing, a meat pie slathered with tomato sauce and gravy dripping down his shirt. He jumped over a sprawled chair and grabbed another boy in a headlock. The two of them wrestled each other to the ground. The first boy began punching the other in the head. The other boy was throwing punches too, but his fists weren’t hitting anything. His shirt was halfway up his back. Dust kicked up as they scuffled. People came running from every direction, making a circle. A roar of noise lifted from the crowd, jeering and shouting, and chanting fight, fight, fight, and then a teacher barged his way through, and the boys were pulled apart and led away.

  Freya finished peeling the orange. She broke it open with her thumbs and put a segment in her mouth. It tasted bitter, and she tossed it in the bin with the peel. A wind picked up through the nearby trees. The air was so warm and dry it made her throat itch. Brown leaves spiralled down and scraped and swirled across the asphalt, propelled by sudden mad gusts that disappeared as quickly as they came. The girls were talking again, and she threw in a smile sometimes or a nod, to show that she was listening. She didn’t always get the timing right. The bell rang out for the end of lunch. No one showed any sign they’d heard.

  Out in the middle of the quadrangle, in the bright sunlight, some older boys were arguing over a game of handball in raw voices, whether a ball had been in or out. One boy pushed another in the chest. Out, he was saying. Someone raised another jeer, but there was no energy in it—no expectation that it would lead anywhere. The game started again. It was only then that she recognised the second boy, his flat, red face, as he smacked the ball away with his hand. Show us your tits. When he looked her way, his eyes slid over her in one motion.

  Wheeling her bike out of the school alongside Ally, she could hear raucous shouting at her back—You stupid fucking fag!—maybe the beginnings of a fight, no, just more play, followed by laughter that seemed to change direction like a lunging flock of birds. Sweetheart, you can ride me instead. She kept walking. It might not even have been directed at her. Every step she took felt jerky, as if she were in a spotlight, as if she weren’t quite in control of her limbs. Boys were hurtling past on bikes, spraying gravel in the air, weaving between the cars that passed the school gates.

  ‘See you tomorrow then, hey?’ Ally said.

  They had ended up together, after lunch, in a double period of maths. If anything was going to bring two people together, it was that sort of pain.

  ‘See you,’ she said.

  A couple of other boys walked past throwing a football between them, making it whistle through the air. It rushed by close behind her, but she didn’t turn. She didn’t get on her bike until the school was well behind her, until there was no one anywhere that might be watching, and then she rode alone through leafy side streets across the inner city towards home.

  Dad pulled up in his station wagon just as she approached the house. He got out, slid a cigarette into his mouth, and leaned back against the car. He was wearing a blue T-shirt that clung tight around his biceps, the material dark with sweat under his arms and on his back. The angle of the afternoon sun had thrown the footpath where he stood into shadow.

  ‘How was school?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  Dad nodded, the cigarette dangling from his lips. ‘That’s probably the most you can expect from it, trust me.’ He had a way of staring ahead, glancing at her side-on when they spoke, as if he didn’t want to admit that he was having a conversation. ‘Bike working all right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She began pushing it to the front door.

  ‘Freya.’

  The muscles in his shoulders shifted. He studied her. His dense, dark eyebrows made his eyes look like copper or gold at the right time of day.

  ‘You good?’

  She knew what he was asking, how he was trying to reach not just into the day that had passed, but into everything. He didn’t want to know—he wanted to be reassured, to feel right about the things he’d done.

  ‘I’m good.’

  Something relaxed in him, and he took the bike from her, gripping it with both hands, then walked up the steps and lifted it into the house. She came in and stood alongside him. He smelled of body odour and smoke.

  ‘Than
ks,’ she said.

  Dad nodded. ‘I remember when I got my first bike. A second-hand job too. I might have been seven. Had to climb on a wall to get on, and getting off was a bit tricky, but the second I got on there, I didn’t really care about anything. Something about the wind hitting my face and being able to go anywhere I wanted. I could picture you riding to school—that’s why I did it up. I knew I’d get a chance to give it to you. It’s a good feeling, isn’t it, riding a bike? Beats walking or catching the bus.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she answered.

  He glanced at her. ‘Let me know if it needs anything. Anything at all.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Your mother’ll kill me if she catches me smoking inside.’

  Freya wheeled the bike down the hall to the kitchen and then out the back door into the narrow courtyard. She leaned it against the wall, between the outside toilet and the gate, and chained it to an exposed water pipe. Whenever she sat out there over the next months, she’d glance at it and watch the unused tyres sag into flatness, the ivy claim the frame, the rust creep out from the cracks and functional angles and spread across every bare metal surface. They didn’t speak of it again, not her, not Dad. It would stay there until long after they were gone.

  3

  And then February was halfway through, and they’d been in the house for a month, and the heat grew heavier, and settled deeper, and they were in the part of summer where it didn’t seem possible that it would ever end. The four of them were sitting around the dining table, eating steak and salad. It wasn’t long after six. The front door was open, and the falling sun sent a blaze of light along the hall.

  Dad had replaced the floorboards in the living room, and he and Mum slept in there now, while Freya and Daniel still slept in the dining room, on either side of the table. The colour television had been moved to the living room, but they had a small black and white one in the dining room, sitting on a milk crate in the corner. It was on as they ate, and showed a grainy image of a column of tanks crossing a bridge. The Russians were leaving Afghanistan, or they’d already left.

  ‘I reckon it’s because of Rambo,’ Dad said.

  ‘Really?’ Daniel said.

  Mum shook her head. ‘Your father’s joking. He does that sometimes.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dad caught Freya’s eye and winked. ‘I think he must have knocked off half the Russian army in that last movie.’

  ‘I hate Rambo,’ Freya said.

  Dad made a face. ‘What’s wrong? Don’t you like big muscles?’

  ‘He doesn’t even open his mouth when he speaks,’ she said. ‘I hate idiots.’

  Dad pretended to look sad. ‘So does your mother.’

  ‘Can I watch it?’ Daniel said.

  ‘Can you?’ Dad laughed. ‘You wouldn’t make it through the first five minutes.’

  ‘They wanted to see me,’ Mum said, ‘when I came to pick Daniel up.’

  Dad kept eating. ‘What’s he done now?’

  ‘He hasn’t done anything. They say he’s musical. He’s got perfect pitch.’

  Dad ran a hand across his stubbled chin. ‘At least he’s got perfect something.’

  Mum’s mouth pressed inwards in an impatient way. ‘They want him to join the school band. Do you think we could manage that?’

  ‘How much is that going to cost?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Dad picked up his knife and fork, cut a piece of meat and looked at her as he chewed. ‘So it’s free—that’s what you’re saying?’

  ‘We only have to pay for the lessons. Ten dollars for half an hour.’

  ‘Not free then. Lessons for what exactly?’

  ‘The clarinet.’

  ‘Do you really think now’s a good time to be doing that?’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Paying for things we don’t need.’

  A small sigh escaped Mum’s lips. ‘We’re building a life here, aren’t we?’

  ‘What good will playing an instrument do him when he leaves school?’

  Mum gave a quick, slight shake of her head. ‘We don’t know what he’ll need or what he’ll want to do when he leaves school. He’s not even in high school yet. All we can do is our best, right now, don’t you think?’

  They looked at Daniel, who kept eating without lifting his eyes, as if he were sitting alone at the dining table.

  ‘Forget it,’ Mum said at last. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘No,’ Dad said, ‘if that’s what you want. If you want him to play an instrument, he can play an instrument.’ He levelled his fork at Daniel and spoke softly, a faint smile still on his face, his words slow and precise. ‘But you’d better look after it. Don’t make me regret it.’

  Daniel nodded.

  ‘What do you say?’ Dad asked him.

  ‘Thank you,’ Daniel said.

  They kept eating.

  After dinner, they went to the beach. It was startling in the open air after the dim, dirty confines of the house. The sun, sagging towards the horizon, filtered red by a muddy pall of smog that hung over the distant steelworks, was lost from sight as they turned the corner and began walking along the street that led straight to the sand.

  Down by the shore there was hardly any wind. The waves came smooth and clean, barely disturbing the water’s surface until they broke. Dad dove in just as a wave lifted towards him.

  ‘Come on,’ he shouted as he surfaced, shaking his head.

  Freya followed. She always felt free under water, out of sight of anyone. She plunged underneath a wave, let herself lift towards the sky, and burst through the surface near Dad. He floated there, the water up to his tanned neck. His hair was slick and black, and water dripped down the straight, hard line of his nose.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘You look so clean,’ she answered.

  ‘I clean myself up every now and again,’ he said.

  ‘Not that often.’

  He laughed.

  They turned to face Mum and Daniel, still there on the shore. Mum was sitting on the sand, her hands clasped over her knees, and Daniel was squatting by the water, drawing in the sand with one hand.

  ‘Your mother’s a good swimmer,’ Dad said. ‘Why doesn’t she ever come in?’

  Freya didn’t answer. She dove back under, found the bottom, ran her hands through the fine sand and lifted it in front of her, watching it spill through her fingers and dissipate on the current. She stayed under the water, could hear the intricate sound of small shells scraping against one another, and the soft, gathering rush of the next wave building towards her. The view stretched away from her, its clarity dissolving into gloom, and nothing moved in it, and it was full of a life she couldn’t see. When she broke the surface, Dad was on the beach, towelling off, and she was alone in the water, shivering, her feet not quite reaching the sandy bottom beneath her. She swam in.

  The air was growing hazy. They walked to the ocean baths at the northern end of the beach, climbed up to the top of the terraced blue wall that ran along one edge of the lap pool and surveyed the rock shelves and the coast on the other side. The sleek fins of dolphins carved up and down through inky waves. On the other side of the rock shelf a stretch of sand made a tapering arc towards a saltbush-covered headland at the mouth of the harbour—Nobbys Beach and Nobbys Head, Dad said. Nobbys Head was flat on top where a white lighthouse caught the luminous end of the daylight. A breakwall emerged from the base of the headland and cut across the sea—Freya wasn’t sure for how long, maybe half a kilometre—its darkening line broken by lifts of white sea spray. A single red light blinked on and off just at the dim point where the breakwall vanished into the ocean.

  ‘What’s that light?’ Mum asked.

  ‘A warning,’ Dad said, holding her hand. ‘For the ships. As they’re coming in. So they know where they’re going and don’t run into trouble.’ He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘A bit like you and me.’

  ‘Which one of us is the ligh
t?’

  ‘I reckon it depends,’ Dad said, letting go of her hand, turning back the way they’d come.

  The lights were coming on all along the concrete esplanade that overlooked the main beach. There was still a lone lap-swimmer traversing the baths behind them—Freya could hear the metronome slap of hands against the water. Between the rocks and the ocean, some children were splashing around in a wide, shallow circular pool. It was full of murky water at one end and sand at the other.

  ‘There used to be a map in there,’ Dad said.

  Freya followed his glance, but she couldn’t see anything. ‘Where?’

  ‘See how it’s oval, the pool? That’s because there used to be a map of the world in there, back in the fifties, made out of slabs of raised concrete. Someone was telling me about it at work. It was for kids. The British Empire was red. The rest was green, I think. They made it so that the water would come in with the tide half a metre deep. You could swim in the water and jump up onto the continents.’

  ‘What’s the British Empire?’ Daniel asked.

  Dad stared off into the distance. ‘It’s long gone now.’

  ‘Where’s it gone?’ Freya asked.

  ‘The British Empire?’

  She shook her head. ‘The map. I can’t see it.’

  ‘The sand and the water,’ Dad answered as they stepped back onto the beach. ‘Those two can destroy anything. It’s because they never let up. With every big sea, the place used to fill with sand. The concrete kept needing to be repaired. It was too hard to keep the whole thing from falling apart, so they demolished it and took the pieces away.’

  ‘What a shame,’ Mum said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dad said, staring at it. He looked thoughtful. He was holding her hand again. He winked suddenly at Freya. ‘Run up ahead. Be kids or something. Give us a bit of peace.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said to Daniel, ‘let’s put our feet in the waves.’

  They ran down the edge of the water. The sand had a pink glow to it now. That’d be gone in a matter of minutes, and the fine blue of the sky would bleed into darkness. But for now, clouds, luminous white, edged in brilliant amber, moved around their feet in the film of water left by each wave, as if they were walking on a pristine mirror.