Time's Long Ruin

by Stephen Orr

  Lips that once were mine,

  Tenders eyes that shine –

  They will light my way tonight,

  I’ll see you in my dreams . . .

  As the cricketers came back on without anyone really noticing.

  The rabbit hutch was a place where things settled. Like the spot behind a cupboard or wardrobe, or under a bed – little bits of people’s lives mixed with dust – a button and a cast-iron tram, a half-sucked sweet from nine Christmases ago, an odd sock, its partner waiting in a drawer for years.

  The tyres in my hutch were all bald. There was a stack of ceramic pots and planter boxes, a half-full bag of grass seed that had got wet and sprouted and died, iron garden edging, and a pile of wood off-cuts that were never the right size for any job. In the middle of the stack of tyres was my box of things: stuff from some other place and time that had settled, stopped meaning something to someone – which, at the end of the day, is everything. It was an old wooden cigar-box containing a few shells, a starfish, two inches of tinsel, a flat battery, a pencil, a rock, Lego, jigsaw pieces, a brown pencil, a sock from Frome Road Grammar (dropped from Andrew’s bag), a ping-pong ball, a Joker from a playing deck, and one of Dad’s old police name badges. It was my communion box. Is. Still have it. If all of these bits were laid out on a table they might tell a story – they might describe me.

  Inside, Mum and Dad were at it. I could hear her screaming at him. A door slammed then silence, probably as he tried to reason with her, whispering through the keyhole, apologising for nothing in particular.

  I took out my exercise book, opened it and used the brown pencil to colour the Magic Pudding I’d drawn. I worked slowly, as a kind of meditation, as I listened and made out a few words.

  ‘Listen to yourself,’ Mum screamed.

  ‘Ellen, seriously . . .’

  ‘Seriously . . .

  ’ As they continued I drew Ellen Page, with Hitler hair and a toothbrush moustache, holding the Magic Pudding’s hand and leading him across a field of flowers. I gave Mum lederhosen and a swastika armband; I gave her jackboots and riding pants and a speech bubble saying, ‘Heil Ellen’. Then I drew Dad, holding the Magic Pudding’s other hand, goose-stepping towards a distant lebensraum of used Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs.

  The back door slammed and I moved into the corner of the hutch, squatting, holding my book against my chest. ‘Go away,’ Mum screamed, jumping down the back steps, tripping over my quarter-size petrol bowser, picking it up, throwing it across the yard and storming into the woodshed. Dad was only a few steps behind but she slammed the door on him. Then there was silence again. Eventually I heard Dad whisper her name. ‘Ellen, I didn’t mean it that way.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  ‘Of course you’re able to have another one.’

  Silence.

  ‘I wasn’t asking why you couldn’t . . . just why you don’t want to.’

  As Mum replied, her voice shook the bricks that separated us by only a few inches. ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘I never wanted kids.’

  ‘Ellen.’

  ‘I never did.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘’S not what you said at the time.’

  ‘Get stuffed.’

  What was I thinking? Was I wondering how I’d become the cause of so many arguments, just by being born? Was I feeling bad, small, like a coin or piece of broken lead in my box of insignificant things? Did this make me want to curl up even tighter, to liquefy into a puddle of muddy water, to slowly evaporate? Did it make me smaller, did it twist my foot even more, did it make me want to hate the world? A clubfoot wasn’t that bad. There was a lot worse. Like the kids who’d had polio, getting around in wheelchairs and calliper crutches.

  ‘How would Henry feel?’ Dad pleaded through the door of the woodshed. Calmly. Quietly. The professional way. The way he talked to murderers and child abusers. Detached. Relying on the facts. The best way to get to the truth.

  But Mum didn’t reply. At that moment, I suppose, she didn’t really care how I’d feel – if I could hear her, if I was squatting scared and alone nearby.

  ‘You were there?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Go to hell . . .’

  ‘Flat on your back . . . I don’t remember you trying to talk me out of it.’

  Silence. Eventually a muted voice replied, ‘What you remember and what really happened . . .’

  ‘Oh come on.’

  ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘Ellen.’

  ‘You told me it would be safe.’

  Maybe, as I sat scrunched up into the tightest ball I could become, I was wishing I were dead. Stone cold dead. Like the mystery man. With a pasty in my belly and poison in my veins. Gone from the earth. Blown away like chalk dust. Except that Dad still needed me, relied on me, loved me. He was the voice of reason: God is love. And Dad was the voice of God back then.

  ‘You’re a bloody sook, Ellen. If you don’t want another one, we won’t have another one, but to go on like this . . . Bill and Liz are probably listening.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Like a bloody child – worse. Wouldn’t see Henry going on like this.’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘You’ve got an imbalance in the brain. Only explanation.’

  ‘Yeah, like a schitzo, a psycho?’

  Mum opened the door to the woodshed and confronted him. She’d taken a tin of mower petrol from a high shelf and opened it. She stood with it to her mouth.

  Dad just sighed. ‘Grow up.’

  Mum took a mouthful but didn’t swallow it. She must have been really pissed off. Dad was almost grinning. ‘Go on then, but I won’t help you.’

  Standoff. Silence for thirty, forty seconds, then she spat it out at him. He didn’t move. She threw the can of petrol to the ground and stormed off down the driveway. The petrol flowed into the rabbit hutch and pooled near my feet. The fumes came up into my face but I didn’t move – I just curled up even more, listening to Dad replacing the can in the woodshed, closing the door and going back inside. I listened to distant galahs screeching in a chaotic unison; I heard the calls of the rabbit-o and the sound of bells on the old Greek’s cart and, finally, Mr Houseman coming out into his backyard, dragging his seat around and then warming up with a ‘Danny Boy’, all grace notes and gasps for air.

  I reached for my cigar box. Clawing under the pencils and lint I found two old photos. When I was much younger, six or seven, I’d stolen them from our photo box. The first was of my parents on their wedding day, standing in front of a small, stone church. They were the only people in the photo – they were young, younger. Dad looked a bit like Stewart Grainger – grinning, almost good-looking, his tie-knot crisp and his hair combed as flat as Lake Eyre. Mum wore an old lacy wedding dress that revealed nothing. It looked much too short, like the dolls you use to cover your toilet roll. They were embracing, laughing, but they weren’t the couple I’d just heard. Unless I’d missed something. Unless people and lives and whole worlds can change in twelve years.

  And printed on the back: Holy Trinity, 1948. The father, the wife and the crippled son.

  The other photo was moving day, 1950. It showed my parents standing in front of our house as moving men unloaded furniture from a van in the driveway. They had the same pose: smiling, grinning, laughing. But were they the same people? By now Dad was more Alfred Hitchcock than Stewart Grainger. Funny what two years of steak, eggs and chips can do to you. Mum was never Audrey Hepburn, but perhaps the promise of a new house, new furniture and new curtains had refreshed what two years of marriage had dulled.

  I looked up, and Janice was staring at me. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I put the pictures back in the cigar box as she smiled. ‘Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me.’

  ‘What secret?’

  She took a lung full of air and opened her arms out like Al Jolson. ‘Oh Danny Boy,
the pipes, the pipes are calling.’

  Anna and Gavin came up behind her and she stepped forward. ‘Wanna see something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come on.’

  She grabbed my hand and started pulling me towards the front gate. Soon I was walking along Thomas Street as fast as I could. ‘Wait on.’

  ‘Hurry up.’

  She came around and pushed me from behind. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

  Anna followed close behind with a package wrapped in newspaper.

  ‘What’s in there?’ I asked.

  ‘Me to know . . . come on.’

  Gavin attempted to keep up with us. He was stumbling, carrying a bottle of lemonade in each arm. Janice cupped her hands and called back to him. ‘Whatever you do, don’t drop them.’

  ‘Can you take one?’

  ‘Hurry up and stop complaining.’

  A few minutes later we approached the park on Cedar Street opposite Himmler’s house. Janice found a hiding spot behind an enormous hebe and we settled in. ‘He can’t see us from here,’ she said, grabbing the parcel from Anna and unwrapping it.

  ‘Who?’ Anna asked.

  Janice pointed to the house. ‘The man in there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Himmler.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Don’t worry. Just keep watch.’

  Janice opened the parcel to reveal a red and purple bag of blood and tissue.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘A lamb’s stomach.’

  She’d been pestering Ron Wells for weeks, stopping at his shop every morning and afternoon. ‘Mister Wells, what animal would have the closest stomach to ours?’

  Mr Wells had to think. ‘A pig.’

  ‘Could you get a pig’s stomach?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A science experiment.’

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘A dissection. Mum’s gonna supervise.’

  Ron rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know. I’d have to ring the abattoir.’

  As Janice smiled sweetly. ‘Could you?’

  Eventually it arrived, and Ron presented it to her, wrapped in newspaper. ‘The best they could do was a lamb’s stomach,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Mister Wells. Mum said to put it on her bill.’

  Back under the hebe, I looked at Janice and asked, ‘A dissection?’

  She only smiled, taking the two bottles of lemonade from Gavin and holding her hand out to Anna. ‘You got it?’

  Anna produced a box of baking soda from under her jumper. ‘Mum’s gonna kill you.’

  ‘She won’t miss it.’

  ‘She will.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Janice looked at me with an expression of pure delight. She picked up the stomach and searched for the openings. Gavin turned up his nose and moved back. ‘Yuck.’

  Anna couldn’t believe it. ‘You’ll catch something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rabies.’

  ‘Sheep don’t have rabies.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Janice ignored her. She found where the stomach joined the intestine, went to reach in her pocket and then remembered the blood on her hands. ‘Anna.’

  Anna reached in her sister’s pocket and produced a stapler. Janice took it from her and tried to staple the tube closed. A few minutes later she’d completely macerated it. ‘Shit. Alright, Anna, you’ll have to hold it closed.’

  ‘I’m not touching that.’

  ‘Don’t be a baby.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Gavin?’

  Gavin moved back a few inches.

  ‘We won’t be able to do it,’ Janice pointed out.

  ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘Thanks, Henry.’

  As I held the stomach up, and used two fingers to pinch it closed on the bottom, Janice took a spoon from her pocket and started to fill the wet, warm capillary-covered sack with baking soda. When she was finished she poured in nearly a whole bottle of lemonade and pinched it off at the top.

  ‘What now?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘I read about this fella who drunk two bottles of Coke, and then ate some fizzy lollies. Know what happened?’

  ‘What?’

  But she only looked at the stomach. Anna and Gavin shot back as far as they could without leaving our hide. I looked at Janice. ‘What if . . .?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’ll just . . . break open.’

  We waited a few moments and then Anna said, ‘It’s getting bigger.’

  As I knelt I tried to move my body away from the stomach.

  ‘Look,’ Gavin said, as the sack continued filling with gas.

  Janice laughed a sort of evil laugh. ‘It’s working.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It might explode.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘If I get it on my clothes Mum will kill me. She’s not in a good mood today.’

  The stomach slowly ballooned. As it stretched it turned a translucent, cheesy-yellow, flecked with gristle and lines of fat.

  ‘It’s gonna go,’ Anna said.

  It seemed to be reaching its limit. Anna knelt forward and touched it but it wouldn’t indent. ‘Maybe they just keep stretching,’ I offered.

  Janice nodded. ‘Not forever.’

  And then the very worst thing happened: the stomach stopped growing. After a minute or so it started to shrink.

  ‘Are you holding it closed?’ Janice asked me.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  She was shattered. She let go of the stomach and it emptied everywhere. I dropped it onto the newspaper and said, ‘Thank God for that.’

  Anna pointed towards the Villa de Dionysis. ‘Look.’

  We dropped everything, sitting with blood and slime on our hands, pushing aside the branches of our hide for a better look. A black Mercedes had pulled up outside the house and a young woman was opening the boot.

  ‘That’s Gudrun,’ Janice said.

  ‘Who’s Gudrun?’ I asked.

  ‘Himmler’s daughter. She was about ten when the war finished.’

  I stopped to think. What could you say? Once Janice had decided, that was it. Gudrun took a large box of groceries from the boot, rested them on her knee and slammed it shut. Then she walked up the path towards the front door. It opened and a near-bald man in his sixties appeared in a singlet and shorts. He adjusted a pair of wire-framed glasses on his nose and smiled at the woman.

  ‘That’s him,’ Janice said, and we all looked on with awe.

  ‘G’day,’ we heard the old man say.

  ‘G’day?’ I asked.

  Janice shook her head and looked at me. ‘They wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes. They were probably being taught English way before the war ended.’

  You couldn’t argue with that. We watched as the old man took the box of groceries and stood talking to the woman. Janice strained to hear. ‘It’s no good. Wait here.’ Before I had a chance to stop her she was running across the road. Then she squatted in front of their fence, hidden by a viburnum in full flower.

  ‘Who is he?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Some old guy. Janice thinks he’s a Nazi.’

  ‘What’s a Nazi?’

  ‘The Germans, from the war.’ I pointed at Himmler. ‘She thinks this one killed six million people.’

  ‘Wow.’ Anna sat forward, straining for a better look. I waved my bloody hands to keep the flies at bay. I wiped them on the grass but stopped, watching Janice run back to us, looking over her shoulder to check she was safe. She crashed into our hide and fell to the ground, exhausted.

  ‘What did you hear?’ I asked.

  ‘They were talking about his specs. They’re not strong enough. I must check, but I think Himmler had problems with his sight.’

  I didn’t say what I was thinking. Instead I asked, ‘Did they have an accent?’

  ‘Henry, they’re not that silly.’

  Andrew Art
hurson rode across the park on his homemade bike. He saw us hiding behind the hebe and came over to investigate. ‘What you doin’?’

  ‘Go away,’ Janice said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’re watching Himmler,’ Anna explained, pointing.

  Andrew smiled. ‘Himmler? Wasn’t he the SS guy?’ He looked over the road at the old man, still standing at his front door. ‘I reckon I know him. He sells air-conditioners to my dad.’

  ‘Go away,’ Janice said. ‘He’ll see.’

  Gavin looked at Andrew, smiled and said, ‘He killed six million people.’

  Janice stretched out her foot and kicked her brother as Andrew laughed. ‘What, in Croydon?’ he asked. Then he noticed the lamb’s stomach sitting on the newspaper. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s a science experiment,’ I replied.

  Andrew wiped his nose with his forearm. ‘But it’s school holidays.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So?’

  Janice raised her fist to him. ‘Piss off . . . or else.’

  ‘Or else what?’

  Andrew laughed. He looked at Janice with half-closed eyes, like slits in a pillar-box; his pupils were brown, and deep, reflecting light from a distant sun; he had a square head, shaved up the sides, and a too-small nose, falling in a sculpted parabola – sunburnt, peeling, freckled – and finally, fine lips that barely opened when he talked.

  ‘You still helping Con?’ he asked me, grinning.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It helps him.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  And then I said something I wouldn’t have dared to without Janice around. ‘And what about you, you been to Mister Eckert’s shop lately?’

  His expression changed. ‘Why?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My dad’s onto it.’

  ‘Onto what?’

  ‘Me to know . . .’

  He stopped, sizing me up. ‘What’s that old bugger told him? He makes things up. He hates our family.’

  ‘If you haven’t done anything wrong, there’s nothing to be afraid of.’

  ‘Done what?’

  I shrugged. ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘You better tell me, Page.’

  Janice stood up and stepped out of our hide. She grabbed Andrew by the shirt, pushed him to the ground and knelt beside him. ‘Watch how you speak to Henry.’