‘Hey, Dad,’ he yells again. ‘You around?’
Still no answer, so Tom walks through the glass sliding doors onto the back verandah and squints into the darkness. The night has come down while he’s been inside. There is the familiar quietness, the smell of gum trees and mint. It isn’t long before his eyes adjust and he sees the dark bulky shape of his father and the spark of his cigarette through the leaves of the lemon tree, right up the back near the fence.
‘Hey, Dad,’ he called. ‘You there?’
‘Tommo!’ His father comes out from behind the tree. ‘You made it at last!’ He is grinning sheepishly as he walks back towards Tom, as though he’s been caught in some illicit act. He takes one last deep drag of the cigarette before stamping it out in the wet grass. He holds out both arms and hugs Tom hard, then blows the last lungful of smoke out over his shoulder and shudders.
‘You have trouble with the car?’
‘Didn’t leave till late,’ Tom laughs. ‘Still smoking, I see?’
Luke runs one of his big hands across Tom’s head and grabs him for another bear hug. ‘Jeez you’ve got thin, Tommy boy. You hungry?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Good. Come on then.’ Luke flings an arm around his son’s shoulders and pushes him towards the back door.
‘Seriously, Dad? What you doing out here? It’s bloody cold.’
‘Not allowed to smoke on the verandah anymore,’ his father sighs. ‘Anyway, according to her, I gave up about three months ago, so . . .’
Her? Tom had forgotten about Nanette, the glamorous red-headed local businesswoman that his father was seeing.
‘Is she here?’ he asks anxiously.
‘At some hospital board meeting,’ his father grimaces. ‘But she’ll be around later.’
‘Hey, Dad, is this going to be okay with her?’ Tom pulls the sliding door shut behind them. ‘I mean, me coming to stay.’ He’s wondering what the hell he’ll do if it isn’t okay with her, and why on earth he hadn’t thought to ask before.
‘Of course it is!’ Luke heads over to check the oven, which has started blowing a bit of smoke, and then mutters to himself, ‘It’s my bloody house! She doesn’t even live here, although you’d be forgiven for not knowing that. Anyway, she’ll love having someone else to boss around.’
Nellie always comes back from her visits to Luke with horror stories about Nanette, how vain she is and how bossy. Tom figures his little sister needs to blame someone for their parents’ break-up. But Luke had an affair with some other woman before Nanette and that was the reason that their mother left. It wasn’t Nanette’s fault. His father had never wanted the split, always maintaining that his ‘fling’ with the mystery woman was a stupid mistake and meant nothing. He also made it plain to everyone, including Nanette, that he had no intention of ever marrying again.
‘Right,’ Tom nods awkwardly, ‘but . . . you and her going okay?’
‘Oh, sure,’ Luke smiles in his doleful way and shrugs. ‘You know how it is.’
‘No, I don’t, Dad,’ Tom says, watching his father pull a couple of beers from the fridge, thinking he is looking older and tired, and heavier, too. ‘That’s why I asked.’
‘Want one?’
‘Thanks.’
Luke snaps the beers open, gives one to Tom, chucks the tops in the vague direction of the rubbish bin, then leans back against the bench and holds up the bottle, looking at Tom and smiling.
‘Tom! My first-born boy, I’ve been looking forward to this!’ He takes a deep swig, moves over and tousles Tom’s hair. ‘You coming to live here is going to be . . . bloody fantastic.’
‘Yeah, well . . . thanks, old man.’ Tom smiles, pleased by the obvious pleasure his father is taking in just having him there. He feels a stab of guilt, too, when he thinks of how he stayed away when his mother first left – even though he knew Luke was doing it hard. He holds up his bottle and meets his father’s eye.
‘I’ve been looking forward to it, too, Dad,’ he says quietly.
‘Yeah?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good man,’ Luke says softly, and smiles before turning around to the cupboard. ‘Now, some forks and knives.’
Tom watches his father bustling around putting out the plates and cutlery in a roughly organised way, feeling affection for him rise in his chest like a sweet soufflé. The three kids – Nellie, Ned and Tom himself – all take after their mother: tall and narrow. They all have her colouring, too – thick, curly, almost-black hair and dark-blue eyes. Although not short exactly, Luke has a stocky build and a tendency to stack on the weight. He is dressed, as usual, in a cheap, crumpled suit, a loosened tie around his throat and his feet pushed into old slippers. His face is deeply lined, and his skin pallid from not enough sun and too many cigarettes. His sandy hair is thinning on top. Luke must feel Tom looking at him because he looks up and smiles.
Tom grins back, relieved. His father’s light-blue eyes are the same as they’ve always been: bright and shrewd, like little gas lamps, lifting his ordinary, old-man’s face into something else entirely. He’s lost whatever looks he’d had as a young man, but those little lamps somehow get him across the line.
‘Let’s get some food into you,’ Luke mutters, picking up one of the sharp knives and slicing into the meat. ‘You look like you could do with a feed! Come on, kid, tell me the news. Heard that Bali wasn’t such a success? But did you at least get a surf there?’
‘A bit,’ Tom muttered. His father had never been one to pry. Anna would probably have raved on to him about the weird state Tom had been in when he first came home – sleeping all day, not going out or seeing his mates and all the rest of it – but most of that would have rolled off Luke’s back. He was never one to overreact.
‘Mum says to say hello,’ Tom tells him, ‘and she wanted me to remind you to keep taking the iron tablets.’
They are sitting at the table eating the roast lamb. The football is on in the background. Luke has forgotten about most of the vegetables – they are still lined up, chopped but uncooked, on the bench – but Tom doesn’t care. He couldn’t have wished for anything more delicious than these hunks of meat, covered in mustard, pepper and salt, inside thick slices of fresh white bread, along with chopped-up fresh tomato.
‘How is your mother?’ Luke asks slowly.
‘Good.’
‘Still with Mr Universe?’
‘Yeah,’ Tom laughs, as his father gets up for another beer. His mother has been seeing a rich plastic surgeon called Heath for the last couple of years. He is a way better catch than his father, Tom supposes, at least on the surface. His mother is fifty, and Heath a couple of years younger. He has a silver Merc in the garage and a fancy pad down the coast. He keeps himself fit and doesn’t smoke or drink too much, and he doesn’t get around in suits from Target, either. She seems to like him well enough, although Tom finds the guy a bit straitlaced. Anna and Heath don’t live together, so Tom hasn’t had a chance to see evidence of really strong feeling. But then, he figures he wouldn’t anyway, being her son and all. Anna tends to be more reticent than Tom’s father.
But she always grilled Tom about Luke, in just the way he did about her. How are his spirits? Is he looking after himself? Still working too hard? Tom, you’ve got to convince him to have a proper break this year! It is funny, almost as though they are still joined at the hip, even though they are divorced and live totally separate lives.
‘Why don’t you poison his soup for me?’ Luke mutters as he gets up to turn off the TV.
‘Righto,’ Tom says with a wide yawn.
‘I hate the way that bastard moved in on her life!’
‘Okay,’ Tom says slowly, thinking that his father is so far off the mark that it’s laughable. But he doesn’t contradict him. Tom has already decided he is too tired for anything but bed. The facts are that no one moved in on his mother unless she wanted it, and his father had to know it too, if he bothered to think about it.
‘How co
uld she go for a twerp like that?’ Luke groans. ‘The guy must have had a personality bypass!’
‘You were the one at fault,’ Tom reminds him savagely.
‘It was a bloody midlife crisis!’ Luke slumps back into his chair and groans again. ‘Worst mistake I ever made. But I’m not Robinson Crusoe. A lot of men go crazy at fifty! There were no affairs before. Ask your mother.’
Tom has heard all this before so he sighs and says nothing.
‘Do you like him?’ Luke asks tentatively.
‘You ask me this every time I see you, Dad.’
‘Well, do you?’
‘He’s okay.’ Tom shrugs. There is absolutely no mileage in any of this kind of talk as far as he is concerned. ‘I don’t see much of him.’
‘Are they going to get married?’
‘Well if they are, they haven’t told me.’ Tom watches his father throw a couple of cushions at an ugly picture on the back wall. For something to do, Tom follows suit with a few more, and they both laugh because Tom is first to get the picture and Luke doesn’t even come close.
‘I win!’ Tom gives him a light punch on the arm and gets up. ‘I’ve got to hit the sack. I’m bushed.’
‘Yeah,’ Luke sighs. ‘God, I miss your mother, Tom.’
‘I know,’ Tom says, not bothering to stifle a yawn. His eyelids are starting to feel as though someone has injected them with lead. Besides that, he isn’t really interested in hearing about the emotional life of old people, even if they are his parents. He has enough of his own shit to think about.
‘You know what I miss most?’ Luke grumbles on, throwing his head back and putting his feet up on the coffee table. ‘Your mother likes to ease up and have a bit of fun. She gets a kick out of life in her own quiet way, doesn’t she?’
Tom nods, trying not to look bored.
‘So many women don’t,’ Luke goes on. ‘They’re always trying to improve themselves and everyone else around them. I’m Nanette’s latest project, you know. She sees it as her task to make me healthier, slimmer, kinder and richer . . .’
‘What you mean is that Mum let you get away with all your vices,’ Tom laughs.
‘Yeah!’ his father sighs longingly. ‘Smoking, football, eating what I like! Nanette hates football. Can you believe it? If I even look at a pie or snag she has a fit. And there is no sex anymore.’
‘Ah, shut up!’ Tom gets up and goes to the sink for a glass of water. ‘I don’t want to hear about anyone’s bloody sex life, much less yours!’
‘Once a month if I’m good,’ Luke chortles, throwing another cushion at the picture and then a last one straight at his son’s head.
‘Shut the fuck up, Dad!’ Tom ducks and throws it back.
‘Okay,’ Luke sighs, ‘let’s hit the sack.’ Then he smiles. ‘I got things planned for you tomorrow.’
‘Such as?’
‘The hedge.’ He nods, still smiling. ‘And we might have a go at the garage.’
‘Okay.’ Tom shrugs and opens the door leading to the hallway. ‘Whatever. I don’t mind. Night then.’
‘See you tomorrow, Tom,’ Luke grins. Tom has walked out and is about to close the door on his father but something stops him.
‘Jonty van der Weihl rang me today,’ he says nonchalantly.
Luke is filling the dishwasher. He looks up with one raised eyebrow, waiting for Tom to go on.
‘Reckons he’s got some new lead on the case.’
Luke sighs and stands up straight, then picks up the roasting pan and begins to scrape the congealed fat into the rubbish bin, taking his time.
‘He rang me, too.’
‘When?’
‘Last week.’
‘What did he say?’ Tom asks quickly. ‘Has he got anything new?’
Luke settles the pan on the sink and yawns again, shaking his head. ‘Poor Jonty,’ he sighs. ‘Poor bloody silly sad kid.’
‘He’s back here.’
‘Yeah,’ Luke nods. ‘Saw him the other day. Working at Thistles. Good luck to him, too. It would be good if he could make something of himself after . . . all that business.’
Tom is on the point of asking him outright if he still thinks Jonty killed Lillian, but he can’t quite manage to get the words out. Something in him baulks at bringing it all out into the open as though it is a reasonable thing to talk about when . . . even thinking about it makes his breathing go strange.
‘I’ve got little Alice coming to work for me next week,’ Luke suddenly says cheerfully.
‘Alice?’ Tom has no idea who he means.
‘Lillian Wishart’s daughter.’ His father frowns. ‘She’s deferred university for this semester. I think the poor kid found it all a bit much. Some of the country kids find the city hard, you know. So she’s taking a break and is going to go back next year.’
‘Yeah?’ Tom finds this news weirdly disconcerting. ‘And she’s coming to work for you?’
‘What is so strange about that?’ his dad yawns. ‘The other gap-year kid was hopeless. I put an advertisement in the paper and young Alice was the best applicant by far. She seems to have her head screwed on.’
‘What kind of job is it?’
‘Just basic office work. Answering the phone, a bit of typing and sorting.’
‘But . . .’ the more Tom thinks about it the more it seems wrong, ‘is that a good idea? I mean, you were Jonno’s lawyer and . . . you got him off the murder charge.’
‘It was over before it began!’ his father contradicts him sharply. ‘The prosecution’s case was weak.’
‘But you were his lawyer.’
‘I told Jonty to shut up.’ Luke looks at Tom as though he is refusing to understand a very simple fact. ‘They couldn’t pin anything definite on him.’
‘So, you think Jonty might be . . .’ but Tom’s voice peters out. He is unable to meet his father’s eyes so he looks away again. Innocent? But did he really want to know?
Luke was looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Let’s say Jonty is one lucky boy,’ he says bluntly. With that, he puts the milk away and closes the fridge door. ‘Now listen, Tom, Nanette said she’d change your sheets, but if she forgot then you know where to get clean ones.’
‘Thanks.’ Tom wishes like hell he hadn’t brought Jonty up. It is his first night home and he doesn’t want to have it churning away there in his subconscious while he sleeps. On the trip down he’d decided that the way to make the next three months work was to keep a lid on the whole business.
‘Anyway, that little Alice came to me,’ his father explains thoughtfully as he begins switching off the lights. ‘She wanted the job. The business about her mother wasn’t mentioned. That’s all finished now.’
‘Except it’s not,’ Tom says sharply. He is standing in the hall, one hand on the door, waiting for his father to finish.
‘Oh,’ Luke waves his hand dismissively, ‘that’s all hot wind! Jonno is like a dog with a bone. Can’t leave it alone. This Alice is a nice kid and I think she’ll be good in the office.’
‘How old is she now?’ His father has deliberately missed the point. Last time Tom looked, when a person is murdered, it isn’t finished until someone is doing time for the crime.
‘About eighteen, I think,’ Luke says. ‘You wouldn’t recognise her.’
Tom frowns, trying to picture Alice Wishart. She was a few years younger than he and Jonty, and had gone to the Catholic school. A shy kid, if Tom remembered rightly. She hadn’t stood out in any way back then. When Jonty and Tom were around at Lillian’s place she was just this quiet presence in the front room, reading her books and mucking around with girlfriends. Tom remembers that she used to draw a lot. There were always new paintings and drawings pinned up around the house.
‘So what is she like now?’ he asks his father.
‘Well . . .’ Luke says thoughtfully, ‘I got a bit of a start when she first walked into my office. It was a younger version of her mother all over again.’
‘Really?’ A sharp c
hill runs down Tom’s back. ‘So . . . she looks like Lillian?’ It gives him the creeps trying to imagine that.
‘Well,’ his father smiled, ‘wider, I suppose, but . . . the face.’
‘What do you mean wider?’
‘Oh, the girl’s got too much weight on her. But underneath she is a beauty. Like her mother.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘Go and sleep, Tom,’ he waves, ‘you look buggered.’
It doesn’t look as though anyone has been inside Tom’s bedroom since he’d last slept in it eighteen months ago. Football posters cover the door and a big U2 colour shot is on the wall. It is cold and smells musty. He opens the window to let in some fresh air and pulls back the sheets. Something tells him Nanette hasn’t changed them, but he is too tired to care. He throws his case onto the spare bed and grabs an extra blanket out of the cupboard. Then he pulls on some old trackie daks from the drawer. After cleaning his teeth he crawls in and turns out the light.
She’s a beauty . . . like her mother.
Tom and Jonty were sitting at Lillian’s table laughing. They’d been there a couple of hours, getting stoned and listening to some wild old bluegrass singer call Stingray that Jonty liked. Lillian had made pizza and they were snorting with laughter because Jonty, who’d never eaten anchovies before, couldn’t believe the other two actually liked them. He was carefully picking each one off his pizza slice and giving it a name and a history.
‘And this is little Polly Waterlog. An angel until she started hanging out with a certain plankton high-flyer. After he dumped her she just went wild. You could hardly keep her in the water! She was scared of nothing and so,’ here Jonty’s voice became soft with mock radio-announcer concern, ‘she came to an untimely end. About the same time as Sir Slimy Leak here, who . . . ’
It was just your ordinary stupid stoned talk, but something else was happening too. Lillian seemed unusually agitated. It was nothing for her to get a bit charged up every now and again about something that was bugging her, but this night was different. She wouldn’t let up about Jonty’s mum.
Whenever Lillian saw Jonty she always asked after her sister. How was Marie’s health? Had she been anywhere or done anything different? The worry in her voice was always there, but this night Tom could tell it was eating away at her. She kept coming back to it. How Marie used to be the sweetest girl. How clever she was when she got a little encouragement, and how much they loved each other as kids.
Somebody's Crying Page 4