The Secret Lives of Men

by Georgia Blain

  ‘You tell your sister that if she hears one whisper from that bastard and doesn’t tell us’ — he lit his cigarette, flicking the dead match into the scrub and blowing the smoke right into her face — ‘she’ll find herself in jail.’ And with those last words he spat on the road, the phlegm sizzling on the bitumen.

  Jen put her hand in mine and pulled me after her. I had to walk fast to keep up, the bag of food swinging against my leg. I could hear her muttering as she strode faster, the soles of her sandals slapping on the road, ‘Arsehole, bastard, arsehole, bastard …’

  ‘Fucker?’ I offered, using one of my mother’s favourite terms for my father.

  She turned to me and grinned. ‘Fucker indeed.’ And she shouted the word into the sky, loud enough to enjoy yet not too loud to bring the fucker after us.

  That night, my father came home with a woman, introducing her as Thea.

  They were outside, the light burning through the matchstick blinds and straight into our eyes as we lay on our camp beds in the lounge room. The glass doors were open to the warm evening and the constant sound of my father’s voice as he drank more wine, the bottle clinking against the glass each time he poured. Even if they had been quiet, it would have been hard to sleep, and we tossed and turned in the heat, neither of us wanting to witness our father’s attempts at flirtation.

  Sitting back in the butterfly chair, he told Thea she was wasted in radio. ‘Television is the medium for someone as lovely as you.’ And he raised his glass in contemplation of her beauty.

  She laughed. ‘I’m a secretary.’ She lit another cigarette and checked her watch, telling him she was going to have to find her way home soon.

  ‘Let me drive you,’ he said, knowing full well she would refuse. He was too drunk.

  She told him so.

  ‘Then your only choice is to stay the night. Although the house is somewhat full. In fact, my room is probably the only one where we could squeeze you in.’

  This time her laughter was a little higher.

  My father suggested opening another bottle.

  Next to me, Sass rolled over, the metal springs on the camp bed creaking. In the light, I could see she was trying to drown out his words with the pillow over her head.

  ‘And with the police up on the road, you’re probably right, I shouldn’t drive.’

  Thea’s voice was clear across the courtyard. ‘They must be very keen to catch him —’

  My father interrupted. ‘He shot one of theirs. Unforgivable in the police code of honour.’

  I didn’t hear her response. He probably didn’t give her time to make one.

  ‘He’s an interesting man.’ The hiss of a match cut through the stillness. ‘He’s ill-educated, a brute in many ways. But he’s quick-witted. Knows how to hold your attention with a story, can be charming one minute and then — in the next breath — a bully boy without a clue.

  ‘We’re going to get a lot of attention when the shows go to air. Some not so good. The police are going to want to know why we didn’t hand him over.’

  I could see the glow of her cigarette tip as she listened.

  ‘I’m expecting harassment, possibly even charges — but it’s important the public hears the story he has to tell. And it’s a classic tale: working class, no education, unemployment. Jail is the inevitable destination for someone like him. We’ve failed him. As a society, we’ve failed him.’

  From the other side of the courtyard, Jen’s light came on. She was sitting on the bed, her silhouette clear.

  Thea and my father were too drunk to notice.

  ‘Why are they so convinced he’s going to visit his girlfriend?’ Thea’s words were slurred now. She helped herself to another glass of wine, giggling as she almost knocked the bottle over.

  ‘She’s pregnant.’ My father’s voice carried right through the house. ‘Silly trollop got herself knocked up just after he escaped, and rather than getting rid of it, she’s gone for the whole romantic teen-pregnancy number.’

  The sound of Jen’s window opening was the scrape of swollen wood against swollen wood, a shudder as she pushed the frame, her voice ringing out harsh and angry. ‘It’s my sister you’re talking about. And the man she loves.’ She slammed the window shut and snapped off her light.

  For a second there was silence, and then Thea laughed, nervously. ‘Whoops,’ she whispered as my father leant over to do what he did best — take full advantage of the awkward moment, offering himself as a co-conspirator, or perhaps a comforter; in any event, a man who was more than ready to deliver a full-bodied red-wine kiss and all that followed.

  In the morning, Jen made her tea in silence, taking it back to her room and sliding the door shut behind her. Thea was at the kitchen bench, applying her lipstick and powder, and she grimaced at me in embarrassment.

  Wrapped in a towel, the hair on his chest still damp from the shower, my father sang as he put the kettle on and buttered a slice of black bread.

  Thea nodded towards Jen’s room. ‘I think someone may be angry.’

  My father took a hearty bite out of the bread, and he reached to tickle me under the chin, but I pulled away. He poured himself a coffee, and kissed Thea with a resounding smack on the cheek. ‘Time for work. Although how I will be able to keep my hands off you in the office is beyond me.’

  She shooed him away playfully and went back to applying her make-up.

  ‘Jen!’ he called out in the hallway.

  ‘What?’ Her response was equal in volume, although she didn’t open her door.

  ‘Can you tell your sister I will be seeing the man she loves sometime tomorrow. If there’s anything she would like me to deliver — loving wishes, kind words, or gifts — I am happy to do so.’

  He was intending to be conciliatory. I knew that. I’d heard it often enough with our mother. He would bluster and joke and flirt, then there would be a chink of awareness, a crack that revealed a filament flickering briefly, a softening of the voice — so little, really, but enough to make her open her door.

  ‘You shouldn’t have said those things.’

  She was much younger, alone in a house with strangers, not in her own country, yet she seemed to have no fear about standing up for herself.

  He nodded, voice even lower now. ‘Point taken.’ He called out again. ‘Thea, my dear — it’s time we were away. Children! Come and give your father a loving kiss goodbye.’

  And then he was gone.

  The house was always emptier after he left.

  Sitting on the floor of the hallway, rolling a tennis ball against the wall, I listened to the sound of his car going up the driveway and then the silence. It was so quiet that I jumped when the telephone rang — I almost knocked it off the table in my haste to answer, my heart thumping in my chest as I realised who it was, the broad accent a dead giveaway to a boy who’d always been drilled in clear enunciation (one of the few things my mother and father agreed on). People who spoke like that were working class. Or worse still, criminals.

  Jen was in the shower, I told him, and Ross (I felt very grown-up using my father’s name) had left for the day.

  ‘Who are you?’ His voice was wary.

  I was Ross’s son, I replied, the excitement at speaking to a real criminal almost too much for me. He could trust me, I added, if he had any message he wanted to pass on.

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  ‘I need to speak to Steph.’ He sounded worn down. ‘Tell her to call me as soon as she can. This is the number —’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. I was scrabbling for a pen and paper, reaching across the kitchen bench for a shopping receipt and a pencil. ‘Okay,’ and I took down the details, repeating them to him as my mother had taught me, only to find that he had hung up before I got to the end.

  The pl
an was simple. Jen would walk over to the Donaldsons’ and be Steph for the day. Steph would come here and be Jen.

  ‘And?’ I didn’t understand.

  ‘She needs you — or at least one of you.’

  Sass tore the crusts off the bread, took one bite and pushed it away. ‘He always gets this shit.’ She told Jen she was in. ‘Anything is better than sitting around here killing time.’

  Steph wanted to see Les. They had arranged a place to meet. If she took us with her, the police would think it was Jen and wouldn’t follow.

  I felt I was living an episode of Matlock.

  ‘What do we have to do?’

  ‘Just go with her,’ Sass said impatiently. ‘It’s not brain surgery.’

  We took a taxi to the closest train station, both Sass and I glancing behind us to see if we were being tailed. The road was empty. Steph stared out the window, silent, apart from monosyllabic replies to the driver’s attempts at conversation. It was hot again, and the air that came in was dry and dusty, grit settling on our skin.

  We waited while she paid the driver, and then followed her, still silent, down to the platform. There was no one else in our carriage. Sass took a seat on her own, legs stretched out, chin resting in her palm as she watched the slow build of suburban density culminating in the knot of tracks just outside the city.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked Steph.

  She checked the station map and pointed. ‘Five more.’

  Close to Dullsville, I thought, and I suddenly wished I were home in my room in my mother’s house. I was a little scared now, although I would never have admitted it to either of them. I wondered whether Sass felt the same.

  At the station, Steph checked the scrap of paper with the address written on it. ‘Can one of you ask the guard for directions?’

  Sass took it over. I watched her at the ticket window, leaning in, nodding and then returning to us. ‘About a ten-minute walk.’

  As far as I could tell, no one had followed us. I glanced around. There could be police lurking behind trees, a SWAT team hidden in upper windows, plainclothes detectives spying out of car windows as we passed. Anything was possible. Yet, walking along the footpath past houses closed up to the heat of the day, neatly swept paths and swing sets in front gardens, I felt reassured by the familiarity. This was the land I knew.

  ‘When did you last see him?’ I asked Steph, my voice surprisingly loud after our silent journey.

  She was startled, and Sass punched me on the arm. ‘You’re a dickhead.’

  ‘No one heard me,’ I hissed.

  Steph’s face was pinched and drawn, and slightly flushed from the heat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel very well.’ She wiped a slick of sweat from her forehead. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’

  As she bent over the dried heads of hydrangeas bordering one of the gardens, she vomited, her back heaving. She turned on the tap at the side of the house and splashed her face, drinking great gulps of water from her cupped palm.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said.

  The place we were headed to was just the same as all the others: respectable, suburban, not where you would expect a man on the run to hide out.

  It was Steph who knocked on the back door, a pattern of sharp and slow raps on the timber, her fist clenched. The three of us waited in the sun, blistering hot as it bounced off the white gyprock walls and cracked concrete steps. Sass’s face was pale as she squinted, and I saw that she, too, was nervous. She tapped her fingers against her thighs, an agitated rhythm as we waited.

  We heard him before we saw him, the sound of his footsteps, and the door opening a crack to reveal an ordinary young man, wide-eyed and frightened, a gap-toothed grin of such relief as he saw Steph.

  She didn’t move for an instant and then, her sob guttural, animal, she fell into his hold, all of her body shaking.

  ‘Oh god,’ she cried. ‘Oh god.’ And she stepped back to absorb him, laughing and then crying again as he held her close.

  ‘We haven’t got long,’ he told her.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told Jezz to call them.’

  She moved away. ‘Who?’

  He had his hands on her shoulders now, and I could see his face, the fine line of acne along his jaw, the spasm of a vein in his forearm, his whole body fever-pitched, fine-tuned, tensile and so close to collapse.

  ‘The cops.’

  As he uttered the words, she shook her head.

  ‘I can’t do it anymore,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep running.’

  And she slid down to the ground, her back against the wall, her knees drawn to her chest, reaching out for his ankles to bring him down with her.

  We waited, Sass and I, in the shade of the back sunroom, drinking tall glasses of water, the television in the corner on low — an afternoon movie starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. I guess we both knew they were in the front bedroom having sex, but neither of us said a word, we just watched the show, not laughing at any of the jokes, not even hearing what they were saying.

  Outside a dog yapped insistently until it was silenced by a croaky woman’s voice calling out to it — ‘Daphne’ — the name a quavering tremble, just enough to make it stop for a moment or two, before the barking would commence again. There was also the sound of a sprinkler, ticking back and forth across a nearby lawn, and from somewhere in the distance, the splutter of a mower starting and stopping.

  ‘How are we going to get home?’ I asked Sass.

  She glanced at me, flicking her eyes straight back to the television screen as she spoke. ‘The same way we got here, I guess.’

  ‘But what happens if she goes with him when they take him back to jail?’

  Sass shrugged. ‘The police will drive us.’

  I wanted to call our mum.

  ‘You can’t,’ Sass said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe we heard it wrong. Maybe he isn’t going to hand himself in, maybe it’s all going to be okay.’ She kept her eyes on the screen.

  From out on the street we heard kids playing. It sounded like cricket, the slap of the ball against a plastic bat, followed by a ‘Howzat’ as someone got out. There was the beep of a horn and shouts, and far, far away a Mr Whippy van, the faint strains of ‘Greensleeves’ tinkling in the fading afternoon.

  ‘Do you think we’ll be here for much longer?’

  Sass just shrugged again, but she shifted over on the cane couch, and I went and sat nearer her.

  ‘We could call Dad,’ I suggested.

  ‘As if he’d care.’

  The telephone rang in the hall but no one answered it. A clock chimed five, each dong thudding heavy in the carpeted hush of the front room.

  And then we heard it, the police siren, distant and then closer, its harshness coming to a stop right outside the house.

  The bedroom door opened, followed by the front, letting in a blast of late westerly light, flooding golden through the house.

  ‘He’s in here,’ Steph said.

  The policeman’s voice was shotgun loud as he told Les to get down on his knees, hands behind his back. ‘Now.’ The sound cracked through those rooms, shuddering against the walls as I moved closer to Sass.

  ‘Don’t!’ Steph screamed. ‘He’s given himself in.’

  We could hear her crying, the slam of the car door again and the sound of another policeman as he told Les to get to his feet. ‘You little piece of shit.’

  I think they would have hit him if we hadn’t come in then. Sass and I stood at the entrance to the lounge room, two children they didn’t know were there, and it was Sass who spoke, who told them to stop.

  ‘Don’t hurt him,’ she said, her voice high and clear. ‘You’ve got him.
You don’t need to hurt him.’

  It was enough to stop them, her words bringing everything to an instant of stillness as they saw us, brother and sister, hand in hand in the doorway.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Sass tried to speak but Steph cut in, crying as she explained that we had nothing to do with any of this.

  So we just stood there, ignored while they walked Les down the drive and into the waiting wagon. They probably would have laid into him once they got him in the back. But at least it didn’t happen in front of Steph. And I watched as she followed, escorted down to the second car, leaving us there in that house with the youngest of the policemen, his eyes betraying his fear as he tried to be a grown-up.

  ‘Show’s over,’ he told us, his voice deeper than I had expected, and he looked at Sass and me, two children almost as tall as him, the three of us waiting for someone in charge.

  North from South

  It was almost dark when they stopped for the van at the side of the dirt road. Jai was the one who noticed it — he was driving, so he had to pay more attention than Kat — and when he pulled over she wasn’t even sure why.

  He left the driver’s door open, and she could hear him talking, his drawl hard to hear above the heavy buzz of descending insects. She thought about leaning over to take a look, but the heat had worn her down, and she stayed where she was, clammy thighs sticking to the torn seat.

  They’d been at the waterhole, floating in the tepid green in a bid to cool down. It was Kat’s suggestion. Jai had been quite content to continue doing his books, but Kat was bored. The truth was, she’d been bored since she arrived a week ago, the complete enervation only slightly alleviated by their sweaty fucks in the evening, so it wasn’t like the boredom of that afternoon was any different or more intense than it had been to date. She just gave it a little more voice.

  ‘Draw me a map,’ she’d said, ‘and I’ll go myself.’

  He’d tried, constantly scribbling out his attempts at marking the turnoffs when he realised she had no idea of any of the local landmarks.

  ‘It can’t be that hard,’ she’d protested. ‘I mean, other people find their way around.’