Time's Long Ruin

by Stephen Orr

  ‘A hundred pounds,’ Con suggested. ‘You could double your money in two years.’

  Liz smiled. ‘Or lose it.’

  ‘No. People will always want lettuces.’

  ‘And fabric.’ She smiled and went to go but he stopped her. ‘You’re happy there?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’m doing something useful.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s the best way, eh?’ He heard the rumble of another train and turned to go. ‘Mention the greenhouses to Bill.’

  Liz crossed Day Terrace. She stopped in front of Doctor Gunn’s clinic, reading a cartoon in the newspaper that had been stuck across the inside of the windows. She smiled, stood back and wondered. The last of the yellow leaves from the skeletal plane trees blew around her feet, mixing with faded ice-cream wrappers and a child’s glove that had fallen from a pram. Dark clouds, rolling in from the north, gathered in reflection on the cracked glass. The smell of liniment had gone. Something had become nothing. It was almost as though humans were a television show that could be switched on or off.

  She continued on past shops, houses and the post office, its entrances protected with heavy wrought-iron gates. She pulled lavender spikes from a bush at number seventeen, rubbed them in her hands and smelt them. Then she jumped the few steps that led to St Barnabas’ front doors, pushed them open and went inside.

  The church was dark and warm, full of dust floating in shafts of coloured light from the windows. Bare globes hung low, surrounded by moths. A vacuum cleaner had been left on the aisle carpet beside a pile of cleaning rags and a bottle of Bon Ami.

  Liz approached the altar. She took a splint, lit it from a lamp and touched it to the wick of three fresh candles. A few moments later an older woman appeared from the vestry. She wrote something on a notepad and put it in the pocket of her apron. Then she looked up and noticed Liz. ‘I gotta finish off,’ she said. ‘I got bingo at four.’

  Liz smiled. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  The vacuum roared to life. Liz closed her eyes and bowed her head. Soon she felt a hand on her arm. ‘You Missus Riley, aren’t you?’ a voice asked.

  Liz looked up at a girl of eighteen or nineteen, dressed in a coat buttoned up tightly around her neck. ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  ‘I thought so. I seen your picture in the paper. I read what happened.’ She bowed her head and then looked up. ‘You haven’t heard no more news?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s why I come here.’

  Liz turned to face her. ‘Why?’

  The girl nodded in the direction of the altar. Liz looked and noticed a single candle burning opposite hers.

  ‘My Ashley, he drank a whole bottle of medicine.’

  Liz took the girl’s hand in hers. ‘Goodness,’ she whispered.

  ‘He was nearly two.’

  And then she described him: blond hair and blue eyes, as thin as a crooked dropper, climbing over benches, scaling wardrobes and jumping on their bed; climbing the highest shelf in their pantry and tipping out their medicine basket; sitting on the ground and playing with pills, tasting them, swallowing them, washing them down with cough syrup.

  ‘It was only a few minutes, while I was hanging the washing out,’ she explained, but then stopped. ‘Still, it’s nothing, compared . . .’

  Liz just squeezed her hand.

  The girl continued, describing how she came in with the basket, and prodded him, thinking he was asleep. How she turned him over and lifted his arm and how it fell, lifelessly, like the skun rabbits hanging from the rabbit-o’s cart. How she put her finger down his throat, and how he vomited, but how the vomit went into his lungs.

  ‘They said if I’d left him,’ she continued, ‘he might have been okay. But he choked. That’s how he died. He choked.’

  Liz put her arm around the girl. ‘Feel like a cuppa?’

  They walked past the cleaner and she pulled her hose aside with a bothered expression. When they were gone she went up to the altar, licked her fingers and extinguished the candles.

  Liz and the girl walked slowly along Elizabeth Street. ‘You work at Johnnies?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Liz replied. ‘I’d go crazy at home all day. How long since Ashley died?’

  The girl thought for a moment and then said, ‘A year in five weeks time.’

  Liz unlocked the front door and showed her in. She took her into the girls’ room and explained which dolls were Anna’s and which ones Janice wouldn’t give up. ‘They’d fight like cat and dog,’ she explained, ‘if one dared touch the other’s stuff.’

  ‘Did the same with my sister,’ the girl said.

  Liz made tea and they sat at the kitchen table comparing notes. ‘Only something a mother can understand,’ the girl explained. ‘Barry, he was back at work the next week.’

  Liz shook her head. ‘Maybe that’s how he handles it. My Bill’s back on the road. He sells linen. I think the travel’s good for him . . . gets him away from this.’ She leaned forward. ‘Listen, I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘Sue.’

  ‘G’day, Sue,’ Bill said, standing in the doorway.

  Liz stood up. ‘When did you get home?’ she asked him.

  ‘I been next door, with Ron, testing his homebrew.’

  She could smell it on his breath. He pulled out a chair, sat down and smiled at the girl. ‘He’s our neighbour. Not a bad fella. Just mowed all our lawns.’

  ‘Was it him?’ Liz exclaimed. ‘We must give him something.’

  ‘He doesn’t want anything. He’s got more money than anyone around here.’ Bill kept staring at the girl, smiling. ‘Who do you know’s got a lot of money, Sue?’

  She smiled. ‘No one. If I did . . .’

  ‘If. That’s the key word, isn’t it? If.’

  He looked at Liz and almost said it – if Sonja hadn’t got sick; if she hadn’t let them go to the beach; if he’d been home to go with them; if that fella, whoever he was, had been on some other beach.

  ‘If,’ he repeated. ‘Suppose you heard about our kids, Sue?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, uneasily. ‘I met your wife at the church. I saw her picture in the paper.’

  ‘If . . .’

  And then they talked, about lost children, about pets and cooking, the decline of Croydon, taxes, Tom Playford and books. ‘Janice loved books,’ Bill explained. ‘She’d read anything – an instruction manual, the Bible. She was a clever kid,’ as he tapped his head. ‘Buggered if I know where she got it from. I didn’t finish Leaving, and her mum . . .’ He lifted his gaze from the girl for a moment and looked at his wife. ‘No explaining it, eh?’

  ‘Sue lost her son too,’ Liz explained.

  ‘You’re kiddin’?’ Bill said, looking at the girl. ‘When?’

  ‘Year ago.’

  Sue explained it all again.

  ‘If,’ Bill repeated, when she’d finished.

  ‘He was a climber,’ she explained. ‘Who was to know? These things just happen.’

  ‘Yeah, they do,’ Bill agreed, looking at his wife.

  Liz glared back at him. ‘What?’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘I didn’t know they could choke,’ Sue continued.

  ‘I wouldn’t have known either,’ Bill consoled. ‘Just a bit of bad luck.’ He looked at his wife again.

  ‘Piss off,’ she replied. She stood up, grabbed a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from the kitchen windowsill and went out and stood in the laundry. She lit up, looking back at her husband. He’d moved closer to the girl, placing his hand over hers, leaning towards her and joking. She laughed. Liz couldn’t hear him, but she knew what he was saying. He was starting off with a joke about the Pope (I hope you’re not Catholic, eh?) and then telling her about an imaginary workmate who dressed up like Janet Leigh and walked up and down Hindley Street every Sunday afternoon. Then came his impression of Bob Menzies and Betty Davis, his reminiscences of the Tivoli days and then finally, the whispered complaints about her.
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  She stepped inside, extinguishing her cigarette in the sink. ‘It was nice to meet you, Sue,’ she said.

  The girl looked up. She realised it was no longer about missing children. ‘You too,’ she replied, standing, gathering her purse.

  ‘She doesn’t have to go,’ Bill growled.

  ‘I should,’ the girl whispered, apologetically. ‘I got things to do.’

  ‘You’re not expecting the Queen?’ Bill asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well sit down.’

  Liz showed the girl to the door and closed it without even saying goodbye. Then she went back to her husband. ‘What was that about?’

  He sat up, defiantly. ‘I lost me job.’

  She turned to face him. ‘You did not.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I was on the phone to Rob for an hour last night.’

  Bill took a while to reply. ‘So, you happy?’

  She almost smiled. ‘Are you? Now you’ll have to look closer to home.’

  Bill stood up. He stepped towards her but stopped. ‘Just a bit of bad luck,’ he whispered. ‘That’s all it was, eh?’

  Early the next morning I went for a walk with Dad. Mum was sleeping in again, as she did most mornings now – waiting until Dad had gone to work and then getting up for a pee, making a coffee, closing her door and returning to bed. Until I popped my head in and said, ‘I’m going to school now.’

  ‘Got your lunch?’

  ‘I made a sandwich.’

  From stale bread. Disguised with one of a dozen toppings.

  She’d even sleep in on the weekends. Dad would take me on the train to the museum or Port Adelaide and we’d arrive home at lunchtime to find Mum still in her nightie. Dad would say, ‘Come on, Ellen, what would the neighbours think?’ and she’d reply, ‘Who cares? Doesn’t bother you, does it, Henry?’

  ‘No,’ I’d say, looking at my feet.

  We walked past the playground, past kids playing in cold, clean air, wearing nothing but T-shirts and shorts they had to keep pulling up. We went over to Con, standing outside his gatehouse, and Dad said, ‘All taken care of?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, going inside his wooden shack and reemerging with a small wire-haired terrier on a chain. Con offered the leash to me. ‘Say hello,’ he smiled.

  I looked at Dad. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  I took the leash and knelt down and the small grey-black-brown mongrel jumped into my lap, licking my face and neck, sniffing around my feet and then coming back for more.

  I looked up at Con. ‘Whose is he?’

  ‘Yours,’ he replied.

  I turned to Dad.

  ‘Well?’ he smiled.

  I picked up the dog, approached Con and extended my hand but he just pulled me close. ‘You’re a lucky boy,’ he said. ‘I had a friend who was moving, and she had to get rid of him.’

  I still wasn’t quite sure, so I looked at Dad. ‘I can keep him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What are you going to call him?’ Con asked.

  I stopped to think. ‘Diogenes 34,’ I replied.

  He looked confused. Dad patted the dog, but then wiped his hand on his pants. ‘You know what this means?’

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Two walks a day. A weekly bath. Clean up his poo.’

  But I didn’t care. I could smell saliva on my face and I was happy. ‘Can we get a kennel?’ I asked.

  ‘What about the rabbit hutch?’ Dad replied.

  Diogenes 34 had lost interest. He jumped down and pulled me towards a Stobie pole. He stopped and sniffed, pissed, sniffed, pissed, and then braced himself above a pile of fresh shit.

  ‘Thanks,’ Dad said to Con, ‘it will do him good.’

  ‘I know,’ Con replied. ‘I had a dog when I was a boy. He lived for years and years. And when he couldn’t walk or see, Dad put him on a leash, loaded a rifle and took him to the quarry.’

  A life in miniature, Dad thought. Ended neatly.

  Con checked the tracks, as he did a hundred times a day, just in case the timetable was wrong (it never was) or he’d missed something (he never had). ‘Nothing new?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Dad replied. ‘Nothing. Now we just wait, and hope. All we need’s something small – a thong, a train ticket.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Con continued, brighter, ‘maybe me and Rosa could take Henry to the pictures during the holidays.’

  Dad smiled. ‘That’d be nice. He’d like that. Just have to check with his mother first.’

  ‘How is Ellen?’

  ‘Fine.’ Dad stared down the tracks towards the city. ‘Same old routine.’

  And what he didn’t say: What does it mean when they don’t talk to you anymore, Con? When they look at you like they hate you? When you get into bed, and they get out and sleep on the lounge? When you come home from work at seven and your kid is sitting in front of the television eating baked beans from the can? When your wife just lies on the bed and doesn’t wash for days, and someone pops in and she says, Tell them I’m crook. People aren’t stupid. Crook? For how long? And since when did that mean you went to the deli in your nightie and slippers, asking for fags and milk for the ‘child’ and bread for the ‘detective’?

  Soon everyone understood – everyone in Elizabeth and Thomas streets, Day Terrace and the staff room of Croydon Primary. And soon a fine cloud of shame, like bulldust, settled on our house. People stopped visiting, avoiding awkward moments they’d heard described over the hum of the slicer in Ron Wells’ shop.

  ‘The dog will be good for Henry,’ Con repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ Dad agreed.

  ‘He’s a good boy,’ he said.

  Dad didn’t reply. He couldn’t understand why my mother was lost, or more importantly, how she’d lost interest in her own child. When he thought of her now he thought of his own father, lying motionless on his bed in a nursing home, a body without spirit, without warmth or love or feeling.

  ‘It’s been rough on him,’ Con continued. ‘Janice was like his sister.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dad replied.

  Con checked the tracks again and then said, ‘We can watch him, after school.’

  Referring to the day I got home from school and couldn’t find Mum. I searched the house and yard. Things were in a worse mess than usual, like she’d left in a hurry. So I went and asked Rosa and she took me in and gave me a bowl of green pea soup. And then, at eight o’clock, when Dad got home, he came looking for me. He apologised to Con and Rosa and took me home. The next morning Mum was back in her room. There was dry mud on her feet, ankles and legs. She sat in bed with a fag in her hand and when Dad told her to go outside she screamed at him and slammed the door, but he just ignored her, looking at me and smiling, Let’s get you ready for school.

  ‘Rosa loves his company,’ Con explained. ‘He’s no trouble.’

  Dad looked at me intently. ‘We’ll see. I’ll let you know. Thanks for the offer.’

  Con smiled. ‘We’re just a couple of old wogs, Bob. Help out where we can.’

  A large truck slowed and pulled up on the dolomite beside the tracks. It carried a pair of black and white boom gates, red signal lights, a transformer, cables, lengths of metal and wire, and bags of nuts and bolts. It was all tied down with a frayed rope, the only thing that looked remotely old fashioned.

  The engine died, and a bulky, heavily tanned man jumped from the cab. He walked to the back of the truck, released a hook from a small hydraulic crane and started moving its arm into position above the load. Then he stopped and started undoing the rope.

  You had to say, even then, it looked ominous. I picked up Diogenes 34 and walked over to Dad and Con, who by now were standing talking to the bulky man.

  ‘Just here?’ he asked Con.

  ‘What is it?’ Con asked, knowing full well.

  ‘Out with the old, in with the new,’ the man replied.

  Con couldn’t believe it. He walked along and looked at the signals. ‘I wasn�
�t even told.’

  The man shrugged.

  ‘You can’t unload them here.’

  ‘I’ve got a work order.’

  ‘Check it,’ Con screamed, suddenly losing his temper. ‘It’s not the right crossing, I wasn’t told.’

  The man took a sheet of paper from his pocket, read it and said, ‘Elizabeth Street crossing.’

  Con shook his head. ‘It’s a mistake.’

  ‘I don’t think so, old man.’

  Con took a moment, and then his face turned to stone. ‘This is my crossing!’

  ‘You’ll have to take it up with Engineering.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘And in the meantime, I’ll unload this lot.’

  ‘No.’ Con stood in the spot where the signals would go.

  Dad stepped forward. ‘Why wouldn’t they have told him?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘It seems very unfair.’

  ‘Life’s unfair.’

  ‘Like someone taking your truck away.’

  He smiled. ‘It isn’t my truck.’

  ‘I don’t like your tone.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Brave Detective Page! Rob Roy and Ben Hur, Mahatma and Joan of Arc all rolled into a polyester suit. Dad pushed the driver against the side of the truck. ‘You ever heard the word respect?’

  ‘Get off.’

  ‘You wanna be up for assaulting a detective?’

  A long, quiet pause. Crows and a factory whistle and Don Eckert standing in front of his shop watching.

  ‘Okay,’ the man said, ‘I’m sorry. You happy?’

  Dad waved a finger in his face. ‘I’m never fuckin’ happy.

  Got it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A shorter pause. Dad turned to me and winked. Then he approached Con. ‘What time you knock off?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘I’ll drive you into North Terrace and we’ll see someone. I’ll pick you up here, eh?’

  ‘Thanks, Bob.’

  ‘Let him unload his bloody signals. Doesn’t mean they’ll ever use them.’

  So Con moved, standing, watching with his arms crossed as the signals were unloaded. And deep down, I suppose, he knew it was all over. That the signals would go up, and he would become obsolete. Still, he would go to North Terrace with Dad. He would argue and pound his fist on a table and get his blood pressure up and ask why no one had ever bothered telling him.