Time's Long Ruin

by Stephen Orr

  Dad shrugged. ‘The washing line?’

  ‘No. All this was bushland, like it used to be,’ and she used her hand to indicate our neighbourhood. ‘No houses, nothing, just some blackfellas sitting around a fire, and a wallaby, under where Con’s healing tree is.’

  Silence. Dad exhaled loudly. ‘Well . . .’

  Ron and Kazz had a corner block, and their old, rambling house (one of the biggest in Croydon) was built on a diagonal, facing the intersection. A gravel path led up from the corner to their front door. Ron Houseman had planted a hedge of overcrowded conifers around their side boundary to shield them from the world (or maybe to shield the world from Kazz). I could access their backyard through a piece of loose iron. Still, I never played in their yard much. The garden beds were overgrown with capeweed and thistle. Unless the Rileys and I were looking for a jungle for our games, there wasn’t much point.

  I passed the rabbit-o and looked at the flies swarming on the skinned rabbits hanging from an iron frame above his cart. Luckily, Mum would never buy rabbit. She thought it was just for pensioners to make stews with, or for New Australians with their casserole dishes full of garlic and pepper. The Depression is over, she used to say. The war is over, now we can all eat beef.

  I crossed into the playground and found Janice sitting on a swing, moving gently in a hot northerly that had dried out the palm leaves, leaving them sounding tinny and brittle. ‘They’re gonna cut my cake,’ I said.

  She looked up from her book and smiled. ‘Happy birthday, Henry.’

  ‘Thank you, Moo.’

  ‘God bless you, Bull. Wishing you many more years.’

  ‘We could live to be a hundred.’

  She frowned. ‘Hardly.’

  I sat on the swing next to her and pushed myself. Then there was quiet, except for the palm leaves. ‘What you reading?’ I asked.

  ‘Little Women.’

  ‘Haven’t you read that before?’

  ‘Haven’t you breathed before, Bull?’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  She flicked through the soiled, dog-eared pages and half-sung, ‘Four sisters.’

  ‘And what do they do?’

  She shrugged. ‘Stuff.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Put on a play.’

  I smiled. ‘Like the one we did that time?’

  ‘No. A good one.’

  I still have it, in one of my earliest exercise books. A Croydon Hamlet. Abridged from an abridged version for children. Cut down to a cast of four with each part written on a separate piece of paper. I was the only one to remember my lines. Even so it was mainly just a lot of sword fighting, stage kisses and overblown speeches. Just like real life. I can remember our parents sitting on kitchen chairs in our front yard. Our verandah had a canvas awning that was lowered and raised by the stage manager-cum-Hamlet: me. I remember applause and whistling and Con and Rosa coming over to watch from behind our roses. A lizard skull doubled for poor Yorick as a few stolen moves from Olivier’s Richard the Third enhanced what we tried to pass off as acting.

  ‘Jo’s my favourite,’ Janice said, twisting herself on the swing. ‘She wants to be a writer.’

  ‘Like you?’ I asked.

  She turned up her nose. ‘Perhaps.’

  Janice had written poems and stories, just like me. And just like me she wouldn’t show them to anyone. I only knew because of what I’d seen, and tried to read, in her arithmetic book – before she slammed it shut and asked Mrs Chittleborough if she could move next to someone else.

  ‘Follow me,’ Janice said, standing.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘They’re gonna cut the cake.’

  I struggled to keep up as she led me along Thomas Street, straight past my house. ‘They’re all waiting.’

  ‘Follow me.’

  We passed our school, Croydon Primary, the main two-storey building encased in a scaffold for the painters. Minutes later we were sitting in a park further along the road. Janice pointed to a house opposite the park and said, ‘I reckon he’s in there.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘Heinrich Himmler.’

  ‘Himmler, the Nazi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But didn’t he kill himself?’

  ‘No. They had stand-ins.’

  ‘Who killed themselves?’

  ‘They were fanatics. You don’t think they would’ve let themselves be caught, do you? They had it all planned out. Some went to South America, some to Canada and some to Australia.’

  ‘Adelaide?’

  ‘Of course, it’s perfect: small city, all the blockheads in the Barossa to help them.’

  I sat staring at the house, and wondered. If you didn’t want to attract attention, then this wasn’t your house. The Villa de Dionysis was an old bungalow done over in Spanish mission style. Around the verandah someone had hung signs from the gutter: Villa de Eros, Villa de Venus, Villa de Dionysis – take your pick. The outside walls had been rendered with grey mortar inset with shells in vortex, star, diamond and more abstract patterns. Here and there some of the shells had fallen out. In other places the walls were inset with panels featuring vases sliced down the middle and stuck on. The front brick fence had been tiled with slate. The gates had been overbuilt with archways, again tiled in slate, crowned at their highest point by urns. Under the front verandah oversized pots full of ferns swung from heavy chains and on either side of the front door there were Egyptian mummies in relief set into the walls.

  It was the jewel of Croydon, or, to my parents, the nightmare. You could complain to the council, but what good would it do? Apparently it was the price we paid for letting the reffos in. It was the only house in Croydon with saloon gates on the front fence and a huge tiled fountain in the middle of a yard concreted and covered in fake grass. The only consolation was that there was a garden, of sorts: a few junipers and a cypress, grapevines running wild over a trellis of fishing line and an olive tree that was already starting to raise the footpath.

  ‘Have you ever seen anyone come out?’ Janice asked.

  ‘I’ve never looked.’

  ‘And it’s right next to a school. So they can recruit.’

  ‘Recruit?’

  ‘Hitler Youth.’

  Janice had her moments. If there’d ever been a man in lederhosen walking under the monkey bars, I’d never seen him. Surely Mrs Chittleborough would’ve said something.

  ‘Why here?’ I asked.

  But she just smiled, opening the back cover of her book and filling in her log:

  Date:

  Period of Observation:

  Movements:

  When we finally got home, Dad and Bill were both asleep on the lounge, beer in hand, cricket on the radio. I could hear Mum, Liz and the little ones busy next door. In our dining room flies buzzed around the half-eaten cake, landing and rubbing their feelers in the melted cream before flying off to drink cold tea spilt into china saucers.

  We sat at the dining table and ate the last of the cake. I picked up a singlet. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  Chapter Two

  Back then you were never far from the beach. My next memory begins with four children and two fathers, headed for the station; two mothers left at home to wash bed linen, drink tea and pick sultanas from Jubilee cake as they discussed their husband’s shortcomings.

  We passed Mr Houseman, sitting in a chair in the middle of his front yard practising his bagpipes. They’d been a gift from an aunt in Glendambo. He’d nearly mastered ‘Scotland the Brave’, but not much else. Whereas most beginners started off on the drone, Mr Houseman had to have the full production. Every grace note, every good note, every bad note, every pause to find his spot in the music, every trill and every Christ-all-bloody-mighty was broadcast at full volume across the streets of Croydon. Dad claimed he was slowly getting better but Mum didn’t agree. She’d got him on to ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Danny Boy’ but
it was mainly just ‘Scotland the Brave’, as accompaniment to endless jigsaws in our living room as Dad jumped back and forth across the Hoover hose.

  Bill Riley stuck his head over Mr Houseman’s fence. ‘Morning, Ron, any luck yet?’ as Janice picked up a pair of sticks and improvised on the iron.

  Rosa Pedavoli, on her way to the gatehouse with a thermos of coffee for Con, caught up with us and asked, ‘Where you all going?’

  ‘Semaphore,’ I replied.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, her eyes lighting up, ‘no good, no good. They saw a shark at West Beach. You should go to a swimming pool.’

  ‘The sea is shallow,’ I explained. ‘You’d see its dorsal fin.’

  ‘Just the same.’ She nodded her head knowingly as she waddled around the playground towards the gatehouse.

  Ten minutes later we were crammed into a carriage, struggling for air in the gaps between tall, bronzed teenagers smelling of coconut oil, and fat grandmothers whose bums took up most of a double seat. People stood in the centre aisle clutching overhead straps, allowing good views of hairy armpits dripping sweat onto the black rubber floor. And other armpits, shaved but not shaved; or cotton frocks with wet patches where skin touched skin; sweaty boobs, pre-packed into loose bathers, channelling perspiration into a valley of cleavage; people spreading legs apart to ventilate thighs, or straightening them to cool the pink fleshy bit under their knees.

  ‘You’d think they’d put on a few more carriages,’ someone said, in a thick Irish accent.

  ‘They don’t think that way,’ someone else replied. ‘You can fit a hundred people into two carriages, or into ten. If this were the eastern suburbs, things’d be different.’

  But to me it was paradise, squeezed in between Dad and the window, squirming to avoid a spring that had worn through the upholstery, filling my lungs with steam and smoke as I tried to stop my underpants riding up. I looked at boys my own age standing in the aisle clutching inner tubes, wearing bath towels like skirts that covered shorts that covered jocks that would do as bathers. Their bodies as brown as the wood veneer. Their backs freckled and peeling and their shoulders straight and broad from hanging off the edge of the Semaphore jetty. Their bare feet hard and black on the underside, toes pointing straight ahead, towards an afternoon of cool, shark-infested waters and stale sandwiches eaten in the shade of the war memorial.

  I was more the white-skinned indoor kid. It wasn’t entirely my fault. I had a couple of cold climate parents. The jetty jumpers (I guessed) probably had parents with a touch of the Spanish or Greek.

  Bill Riley, sitting next to Dad, gently kicked his foot and said, ‘They’d removed all the labels from his clothes.’

  ‘Whose?’ Dad replied.

  ‘The mystery man.’

  ‘He might have removed his own.’

  Bill stopped to think. ‘Yes, that was probably the case. Which meant he wanted to hide his identity. Why?’

  Dad shook his head. ‘We’ve had detectives on this for twelve years, Bill. You’re not going to solve it on the way to the beach.’

  ‘It just needs a fresh mind, Bob. What else did they find on him?’

  ‘The unused railway ticket, a bus ticket to Glenelg, fags and matches.’

  ‘And that’s it, no wallet, no keys?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And the claim for his suitcase?’

  ‘Missing.’

  ‘Stolen, perhaps, but why didn’t whoever it was go and claim the case? Not enough time?’

  ‘Plenty of time.’

  ‘A mystery.’

  Janice came and stood beside me, staring out of the window. We slowed for the Woodville Road crossing and she waved at someone.

  ‘Who was that?’ Bill asked.

  ‘A man with a greyhound,’ she replied.

  The train stopped at Woodville station and even more people squeezed in. The man with the Irish accent cursed the South Australian Railways as people jostled for room. The smell of talc and deodorant almost cancelled out the BO.

  ‘Some bastard stinks,’ the Irishman began again. ‘Needs a fuckin’ operation.’

  ‘Hey, language,’ Dad grumbled, looking around and finding the voice.

  ‘You can’t smell it?’

  ‘So what, five more minutes.’

  ‘Five more minutes of fuckin’ hell.’

  Dad turned right around. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, opened it and showed the man. ‘We can get off here if you like.’

  ‘Ah, big man.’

  ‘Would you like?’

  And that was it. Could anyone have a better dad than mine? People went to the movies to see this sort of thing but I had it all the time. My dad could stop traffic, save lives, and throw people off trains. Other people’s dads made furniture and sold radios; mine stood up to murderers and thieves.

  Janice could see the pride in my eyes. She smiled and almost laughed. Looking back out of the window she said, ‘Maybe one day, Henry.’

  Bill wasn’t finished with Dad. ‘I read he was clean shaven.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘That’s a problem. Why would you shave if you were going to kill yourself?’

  ‘And put on a suit and tie?’

  Bill stared down at the floor. ‘Yes . . . still . . . no . . .’

  ‘Could be, if you were thinking about killing yourself, a familiar routine might help you along. And the suit, might have been his profession. Salesman? You know how it is. You gotta be well turned out . . . a habit.’

  ‘No, doesn’t seem right to me.’

  ‘You’re not the mystery man.’

  ‘That could be any of us. If what happened to him happened to us.’

  Anna, sitting against a window on the far side of the train, called across to her dad. ‘Where’s Gavin?’

  Bill and Dad looked around and then stood up, scanning the carriage. ‘Gavin,’ Bill called softly, and then louder.

  No reply. ‘You kids stay here,’ Dad said to us, as he headed down one end of the carriage, and Bill the other. They stumbled over bags left in the aisle and Bill nearly fell into someone’s lap. I turned around and saw the Irishman half-smiling. ‘It’s not funny,’ I said, but he just looked out of the window.

  Dad and Bill passed into the connecting carriages. Anna came over and sat with us, anxious. ‘I didn’t see him,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s always wandering off,’ Janice replied.

  Anna shook her head. ‘He shouldn’t. He could get into a lot of trouble.’

  Bill reappeared from the front carriage. Gavin followed behind him, moping. Bill sat down and placed Gavin on his knee. ‘Have you got that through your head?’ he asked the boy, shaking him.

  Gavin didn’t reply.

  ‘Have you?’

  Bill shook him again and Gavin’s head jolted back so quickly he started to cry. ‘Shut up,’ Bill said, his face set hard, his hand tight on Gavin’s arm.

  We were all silent. Janice lifted Gavin onto her lap and tried to calm him, stroking his hair and wiping his tears with her top. She dared not look at her father, or say a word. She just sat it out, like we all did, knowing he’d eventually calm down. She was the pacifier. She’d learnt how to turn a shitty situation around. She’d learnt that sometimes she was the one her brother and sister could rely upon.

  A few moments later Dad returned. ‘Where was he?’ he asked.

  ‘Playing with some other kid,’ Bill replied, arms crossed, shaking his head. ‘He’s got no bloody sense.’

  ‘It’s the age,’ Dad said, sitting down. ‘You gotta watch ’em like a hawk.’

  ‘You can’t tell them. He’ll end up on a road somewhere.’

  ‘He’ll grow out of it.’

  ‘Henry wasn’t like that.’

  ‘Henry was different.’

  Thanks, Dad. At least you always knew why my dad said what he said.

  The shark hadn’t been seen for three days. The fisherman who’d sighted it, a hundred yards off W
est Beach, said it was twice as long as his fishing boat. Hardly. Still, it gave the papers something to go on about during an otherwise dull week. Should the shark be killed or left alone? It’s their territory, some said, but others reckoned you should always shoot a wild dog.

  The consensus seemed to be a bullet. Fish belonged in a can. The Advertiser carried pictures of men in boats with rifles and shotguns, throwing out a berley of viscera someone from the abattoir had donated. If that didn’t solve the problem then nothing would. There were photos of a Dunkirk flotilla heading out with javelins, kindly donated by Findon High, of potbellied Ahabs holding bottles of beer as they scanned the horizon. Sharks might be vicious, but humans were smart, apparently.

  We sat in the sand dunes eating vinegar-drenched chips and flake. Bill held up a hot, golden portion and blew the smell out to sea. ‘He who laughs last,’ he said, looking at me and asking, ‘Is that how it goes?’

  ‘I think,’ I replied.

  He finished the fish in three bites and then stuck a chip up each nostril. ‘Some bastard stinks,’ he said, in his best Irish accent.

  We all laughed. Gavin tackled him, pulling out the chips and eating them. ‘That’s disgusting,’ Janice said, screwing up her face.

  Bill wiped his hands on his shorts and took his ukulele out of his beach bag. ‘I stole this one from Lester Barrett,’ he said.

  They’re plump and healthy, kind and free

  With appetites the same as me

  And you should see them shift their tea –

  They’re all fine girls . . .

  Without a thought for hats or zinc cream, the Riley kids tumbled down the dunes towards the beach. Bill was soon after them, screaming, singing, running like a monkey.

  ‘Come on,’ Dad said.

  ‘I’ll wait here,’ I replied.

  ‘Come on.’

  Dad helped me down from the dunes, and across the soft sand. As we went we picked up the Rileys’ clothes, thrown off in a frenzy that stopped at the water’s edge. I let go of Dad’s hand and walked across the hard sand. Then I took off my sandals and waded in to ankle depth.

  ‘You’d see his fin,’ Dad said, smiling.

  I shrugged. I watched as he looked up at the Rileys – jumping about up to their chests, launching themselves off their father’s shoulders. Then he looked at me. I wandered off, looking for shells. He turned back to the Rileys.