Six months ago Angus quit uni. He came home two weeks into his course complaining that his teachers were biased. I told him they were probably biased towards people who actually did work, and he moped about that for days as if I hadn’t just pointed out a basic true fact. Now when he isn’t on the couch at home he’s out wasting his savings at the Cri or various dipshit gathering points around town, concocting intricate schemes that won’t work. He disappears overnight sometimes, doing God knows what.
I tap the brakes when I see the pilot light up ahead and coast to a stop at the bottom of the observatory. Despite its name, it’s basically just a steel tower with a platform on top, a set of metal steps going up four storeys on the side of the highway. It has some sort of scientific significance, like, where it’s placed you can see certain stars or something, but no one ever goes up there for anything to do with astronomy.
I ring my bike’s bell at what I hope is an annoying volume and shout up, ‘Angus you gotta come home!’ and I can see him up there, the lit tip of a joint hanging in the air.
He doesn’t say anything so I get off my bike and kick the base of the metal stairwell. ‘You gotta drive me home! Mum made me come out here to get you cause Dad’s steaming!’ I hear him laughing. ‘Angus!’ I shout again. ‘Can you finish jerking off and get down here?’
I hear the clang of feet on the steps. ‘Jesus,’ he shouts. ‘Queen of comedy.’
‘Hurry up.’
He slides down the last set of stairs like a sailor on a submarine. ‘What’s happened?’ he says. His hair’s all messed up by the wind and he’s wearing one of his disgusting tank tops from Dollars and Sense that says Fat Kids Are Harder to Kidnap.
I shrug my shoulders. ‘Mum just says you have to come home.’
Angus rubs his hands together. ‘I’m kind of busy.’
‘With what?’
‘Planning the Big Hunt.’
I give him a look, like that again?
‘Whatever,’ I say. ‘I’m hungry. Dad’ll probably just give us a talk about hanging the toilet paper the right way round and we can all get on with our lives.’
Angus shakes his head. ‘This family,’ he says, with the world-weary tone of someone who has never had to take responsibility for anything his entire life.
5
My bike’s bouncing around in the tray of Angus’s ute because he hasn’t got any rope and I keep looking back, expecting it to fly off onto the road at any moment.
‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘Don’t you understand basic physics?’
‘Like you do.’
Angus is chewing on like eight sticks of gum. They’re wadded up in his cheek and he probably thinks it’s cool because it looks like tobacco or something. ‘How was work?’ he says.
‘Okay.’
Angus bats his eyelids. ‘Venn are you goink to be keeping zee lipstick on darlink? You are zo attractiff!’ I laugh, despite not wanting to. Angus smirks. ‘Is Dad actually steaming or is Mum just playing happy families?’
‘Dunno. Didn’t see him when I got home. Mum looked pretty upset though.’
‘Right. Let’s hope it’s over quickly, then.’
‘Gotta get back to the tower? Polish your telescope?’
‘Piss off.’
‘I hear Pluto’s right up in Uranus.’
Angus sighs. ‘You think I’m just wasting my time, don’t you?’
‘What else would you call it?’
‘Re-evaluating.’
I put my feet up on the dashboard, which I know he hates. ‘Failing, more like.’
‘Give us a break, Clance. I’ve got my whole life to work out what I want to do. I’m planning something pretty important.’
‘Chasing made-up monsters.’
‘As if. I’ve done the research. Just have to put it into action.’
‘And this is your big plan.’
‘You won’t be laughing when I’m on the news.’
I don’t dignify this with a response. Every few years some drunk spots a cow in the hills outside of town and says he’s seen a giant cat. Back in the seventies was when it all started, according to Dad. Some blurry photograph of what was probably a big rock got everyone obsessed with what the paper called the Beast of Barwen. People went out on weekends to try and photograph it or trap it but of course came back empty-handed. Angus has been obsessed with it since coming back home, spending hours on the computer at the library looking at psycho conspiracy sites.
The thing is, he used to love nature: in a proper, real way. He was top of his class in biology—needless to say the only class he was any good in; used to watch David Attenborough docos over and over the way other kids watch cartoons. He was the reason I started going to Nature Club. I joined back when I actually admired my brother, but my interest coincided with Angus activating his inevitable male douchebag chromosome and reclassifying anything to do with science as nerdy shit.
I still go to Nature Club, but Angus’s interests have morphed into making money and finding ‘the truth’, two vague philo-sophies melded together by various dodgy internet forums and the modern male obsession with Going to the Mines to Earn Easy Dollars.
We drive in silence until we reach the centre of town, where Angus is obliged by some unspoken idiot rule to wind down the windows and cruise slowly up Aggery St. There’s a small crowd spilling outside the Cri. I see Buggs’s broken head but Sasha’s nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly one of them points at Angus’s car and shouts out, ‘Hey, dickhead!’ and Angus grins but then Buggs gives him the finger and the rest of them follow suit.
‘Step out the car!’ Buggs shouts, walking towards us. Angus slows down but he seems to realise the same time as me that the crowd isn’t ragging on him in a friendly way.
One of them goes, ‘Hey dickhead, you wanna watch the road!’ and another one goes, ‘Y’old man oughtta watch the fucken road!’ and they’re coming right at us and I hit Angus’s leg so he plants his foot and we lurch forward. As we speed away I hear a scraping sound and when I look back I see the front wheel of my bike disappearing over the side of the ute’s tray.
Angus is driving fast and shaking his head like he’s just seen a puzzle he can’t work out. He hoons up the hill too fast and when we come down the driveway Mum’s out on the verandah with a torch that’s useless because the lights are on anyway. When she sees the car she motions us towards the house.
‘The hell’s going on?’ says Angus.
Mum comes right up to the window. ‘Get inside,’ she says. ‘Both of you. Right now.’
We get out and she pulls us in with one hand on each of our wrists and doesn’t say anything when I tell her about my bike. We go through the door and into the empty lounge room.
‘Seriously, Mum. What’s the deal?’ Angus puts his hands on his hips, unintentionally mimicking Dad’s default pose.
Mum looks suddenly shaken. ‘Just…are you both okay?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘We’re fine.’
I wonder if Mum knew about my bike already, but how could she?
‘Can you both sit down?’
‘Where’s Titch?’
‘He’s in bed. He…Can you kids sit down please? Now.’ Mum’s put on her forceful teacher’s voice, pretending we’re both in primary school, which I normally hate, but this time I just do what she says.
Angus sits down next to me and says, quietly, ‘What’s going on?’ and it’s weird to hear him talking to Mum without his usual pissy tone.
‘Nothing,’ she says. ‘Nothing.’
And of course neither of us believes her.
We sit there in silence for a while, which is nothing unusual for our family except normally we’re saved by the blare of the TV. Mum keeps playing with her hands, checking her fingernails like they hold all the secrets of the universe.
‘We were driving home,’ I say eventually. ‘Some of those dropkicks outside the Cri, some of them were shouting at us. I didn’t hear what it was.’
‘Some
thing about Dad,’ Angus says.
Mum goes, ‘Right. I see.’
‘Those dickheads are always shouting though.’
‘Language!’ Mum snaps.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I say. Something like dread shivers down my back. ‘Has something happened to him?’
There’s a flicker in Mum’s face, a rift in the mask of composure. ‘He’s fine,’ she says. ‘He’s fine.’
Angus leans forward. ‘Where is he?’
‘Out in the shed. He’s fine.’
I sigh. ‘Seriously, Mum. What the hell?’
I know something’s really up when she doesn’t pull me up for swearing. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she says, hoisting up her fake smile. ‘I’m sorry I snapped.’
I stare at her. The amount of time we all spend not talking to each other, it’s insane.
I say, ‘You made me ride all the way out to get Angus just because of nothing. You get us into the house and get us to sit here like a bomb’s about to go off, and you won’t tell us why.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. She goes to stand up. ‘I’d better get—’
‘I lost my bike,’ I say. ‘Because of you, I lost my bike.’
Mum sighs. ‘I just don’t have time tonight, Clancy.’
‘What?’
‘Not everything’s about you,’ she says. ‘You and that bike.’ She shakes her head and stands up.
‘The hell with this,’ says Angus. ‘Thanks for wasting my time.’
This is when Mum would usually explode. Instead, she just walks out of the room.
6
There are containers of frozen soup in the sink so I take one out and microwave it and eat it watching TV. Everyone’s in a different room, as per usual. I can’t really concentrate. I keep wanting to hear the shed door roll up, the back door swing back and slam and Dad’s footsteps come clomping in. Eventually, I realise this isn’t going to happen so I wash up my bowl and spoon and open the fridge and take a swig of milk straight from the container. I smack my lips, but there’s no one around to hear it. Just me, the blare of a bad sitcom, the aftertaste of watered-down dinner.
I know tonight means another day petering out without resolution. Our family, basically, is like a bad sitcom. Reality resets. Join us tomorrow for another madcap adventure of simmering tension and broken dreams! Only on The Underhills! Sometimes I think the only thing holding us together is the fact we all share the same last name, as if we’re just in it for the letterhead.
When Angus went off to uni it was a bit different. Mum thought it was maybe a fresh start, so she tried to make us eat together at the table each night, like a real family. It disintegrated pretty quickly, though. Dad’s weird work hours meant he wasn’t there half the time, and Titch’s feral-pig eating style was nearly impossible to put up with. Which left just me and Mum; the worst possible scenario. She’d think it was Serious Bonding Time and start to use phrases like ‘just us girls’ and ‘a really nice chat’, an obvious lead-up to questions about sex or my period or drugs (no, yes, yes) like we were best friends.
There’s no way in the known universe I will ever be friends with my mother. I know girls who have Mum Best Friends. I see them every Saturday morning at the shopping centre. Matching tans, matching hair, matching T-shirts that spell out, in sequins, DRAMA QUEEN or ZERO TO BITCH IN 2.5 DRINKS. Skankle-Dee and Cankle-Dum.
Whenever we’d eat together, Mum would always lean forward with her fingers steepled, like I wish to broach a subject with you, Clancy, as if we were in the United Nations (‘Now, Estonia, I know other countries your age smoke marijuana, and it’s fine to experiment, but I want you to know the dangers…’).
So we went back to kind of normal—dinner whenever, in front of the TV—but then Angus came back from uni and him and Dad went at it harder than ever, Dad thinking Angus had failed, Angus thinking Dad was being too hard on him. I feel for my brother, really, because I know he wants to do better, but at the same time he’s such a shithead and makes such shithead decisions.
I lock the front door and go upstairs. I see light under Angus’s door and stop outside it for a moment. I want to knock. I want to know what he thinks about what happened tonight. I want him, actually, to reassure me it’ll all blow over and be fine by the morning. I stare at the old X-Files poster on his door, telling me The Truth is Out There, hanging above a picture of a nuclear preparation pamphlet he cut out of his Study of Society textbook. You can still see the Ninja Turtle puffy stickers around the doorknob, stuck so fast that Angus couldn’t prise them off and had to paint over them.
The door suddenly swings open. ‘Whaddya doing?’ Angus says. ‘Trying to listen in?’
‘No,’ I say, sounding suddenly guilty of doing exactly that. ‘But you should probably put your tinfoil helmet on in case the government is recording this conversation.’
‘I never did that.’
‘I saw you wearing it.’
‘Piss off.’
I have a sudden thought. ‘Can you drop me at Landsdowne tomorrow morning?’
‘Nerd Club? Isn’t that just weekends?’
‘School holidays, genius.’
‘Get Mum to do it.’
‘Don’t think she’ll be in the mood.’
‘No way. That old pedo’ll try and talk to me.’
‘Just drop me off.’
‘It’s fine for you. Mister P doesn’t get hard for little girls.’
‘Get over yourself, Spangus.’
Mister P was George Parry, a scientist who’d worked at the Research Station for as long as anyone could remember. He’s run Nature Club forever, never been paid, put up with ungrateful turds like Angus for years. He is a weird guy, but really nice. Just because he doesn’t have a girlfriend or a wife people have always said he was up to something sinister, but he’s just devoted to his job. Passionate about passing on a love of nature. To be fair, though, he does look quite a lot like a pedo.
‘He always tries to get me to come back,’ Angus says. ‘Like I’d want to hang out with a bunch of little wieners counting grass stalks.’ He puts his hand over his mouth, pretending he’s said the wrong thing. ‘No offence.’
‘Dickhead.’ Nature Club is one of the few things in life I actually enjoy, and he knows it.
Angus reaches behind the door and lifts out his backpack.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Getting out of this nuthouse.’
‘For good?’ My voice cracks. I have this thing where I sound like a Disney princess sometimes and I hate it.
‘I’m just going out.’ He goes to push past me.
‘What do you reckon’s up with Dad?’ I say, blocking his way.
‘No idea,’ he says. ‘Probably buggered up another job.’
‘I’m sure it’s nothing, though. Right?’
Angus shoulders me out of the way. ‘Piss off, Pantsy.’
‘What about my bike?’ I say, hanging onto him the way I used to when I was little. Making him drag me along. ‘Why do you think Buggs and that were yelling at us?’
‘The hell should I know?’ Angus shakes free of my grip and tramps down the stairs, giving me the finger over his shoulder.
My mouth feels furry all of a sudden and I can taste the minestrone mixing with the milk in my stomach. There’s no light under Mum and Dad’s bedroom door and I hope this means Mum hasn’t heard us. She’s probably listening to the radio anyway, curled up on one side of the enormous bed that belonged to her mum. The bed she’s so often told me will one day be passed down to me, and I tell her there’s no way I’m going to sleep in a bed that two generations of my family have had sex on.
I go into my room and perform my patented kick-the-door-closed-and-face-plant-onto-my-do on a manoeuvre. It’s how I end most days, and I stay there, nose pressed into the salmon-coloured acrylic, for as long as it takes to forget the day I’ve just had. Tonight, I stay there for probably twenty minutes. Before long my face starts to tingle from either too much or too little blood f
low, but I stay there until I can make some sort of sense of what’s happened in the past few hours.
Dad probably did bugger something up. He’s on thin ice with the council as it is. After his back went they really wanted to fire him; instead they stuck him out in the middle of nowhere on roadwork crews. Traffic duties. In pain most of the time, probably. I heard him talking to Mum about it. Night crews were incompetent, he said. Got bugger all done, just stood around big machines drinking spiked coffee while he stood a couple of hundred metres up the road with a stop/slow sign to spin.
How the hell am I supposed to get to Nature Club tomorrow? No bike, no Angus, no Mum. I could drive, but Dad never lets me practise. I have to wait nearly half a year to even sit the learners test, which is ridiculous. Angus drove when he was sixteen, and there’s pictures of Dad on his dad’s property driving a tractor when he couldn’t even see over the steering wheel. Plus, Dad used to be in a motorcycle gang—Angus got him to admit it one night after a couple of beers—so he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. I’ll just have to ask again tomorrow, or at least threaten to take the car keys until my demands are met.
God. Another day. Same as this one.
I finally push myself up off the bed when I can’t actually feel my face, and get a headspin when I stand up. I stare at myself in the mirror and notice a purple tinge beneath my eyes. Lying on the bed has pushed my hair up on one side so it looks like I have an even more wonky oblong head. Just one of my many fun physical faults. I get my towel from the hook behind the door and drape it over the mirror so I can get into my pyjamas without having to accidentally catch a glimpse of myself in my underwear.
Clancy of the Undertow Page 2