by Debra Oswald
There were new colours too. The front yard used to contain dry half-dead shrubs. Now the garden beds were full of tiny green vegetable plants. Several batik sarongs in deep reds and blues were draped over the balcony railing. Gold tinsel and what seemed to be Christmas decorations were Blu-tacked around the windows and the front door, even though Christmas was some months back.
It was as if that sad house had exploded into life because there were Novaks inside it.
Ash was walking through the front gate when a man came rushing out of the open front door with two big saucepans full of grey dishwater. He chucked the soupy stuff over the railing, to water the tiny veggie plants below. The guy was middle-aged, with a shaved head, a tanned face and clothes spattered with food.
When he noticed Ash standing on the path, he grinned and Ash could immediately tell this was Charlie’s father.
‘Are you Ash?’ he said. ‘I’m Vic. Charlie tells me you’re a good guitarist. Reckons you’ve got the soul of a bluesman.’
‘Oh –’ said Ash.
‘Come in, mate. Don’t listen to me blahing on. Charlie! Ash is here!’
Ash followed Vic inside the house. The hallway was stacked with boxes because the Novaks had only moved in the week before. The hall opened out into a huge back area that contained the kitchen and the dining and family rooms.
‘Ash! Welcome to Castle Novak!’
Charlie was sitting on the floor with his back against an old sofa, playing his bass without an amp. He was trapped in that position because two little girls were perched on the sofa behind him, working on his hair. Charlie introduced Ash to Billie and Nina, his eight-year-old twin sisters. They were not identical but they still operated as one unit, working together on their complicated creative scheme. These insane hairdressers were torturing Charlie’s hair with cream bleach, nail clippers and what looked like sparkly glue. He just sat patiently and let them do whatever their mad-little-girl minds could think up.
In the far corner, Ash saw the source of the drumming sound. A small boy was surrounded by a half-dozen different drums: bongos and drums that looked exotic, African maybe. Every few minutes, the little kid would go mental on the drums, flinging his head back and forth so it became a blond blur.
‘That’s Boy. He’s four,’ explained Charlie.
The twins had been allowed to name their little brother when he was born. His parents had always planned to give him a proper name one day but Boy refused to accept any other name.
Eventually Charlie escaped from the hairdressing clutches of his sisters and took Ash on a tour of the house. Apart from the boxes and some battered second-hand furniture, the house was full of amazing pictures and ornaments that the Novaks had brought back from overseas. Charlie’s mum was a doctor, a specialist in tropical diseases, so the Novak family had lived in wild places in Africa and Asia.
Everywhere, stacked against walls and boxes, there were big framed photographs. Charlie’s dad, Vic, was a photographer. He used to travel a lot, photographing rock and blues bands. Some of his photos had been on famous record covers. During the years the Novaks had lived in exotic countries, Vic had started taking photos of the local people for magazines and whatever.
In a tiny back room of the house, he kept his camera gear and the computer he used for his photographic work. Vic was also a blues music fanatic and that room was the home for his mind-blowing record collection. There were boxes and boxes of old vinyl LPs, audio cassettes and several hundred CDs. Vic had his own mad filing system to keep track of them but Ash couldn’t decipher the strange code written in black marker on the boxes. Charlie had a free run with the music collection and he understood the system well enough to find the records he wanted.
Part way through the tour of the Novak house, Ash heard a squeal from the twins. Charlie’s mum, Joanne, had arrived home. She limped down the hall – she had to limp because Boy was clinging to her leg like a monkey to a tree.
‘Lovely to meet you, Ash,’ Joanne said and shook Ash’s hand. She started to ask him about himself but Boy was nagging her to go and see something he’d drawn.
‘Sorry, Ash. We can talk more later,’ she said as Boy dragged her away.
While Charlie was busy going through boxes of CDs, Ash took in the chaos around him. The twins had started working on a play, building a stage set for their performance and forcing Boy to be in the show. A friend of Vic’s, an artist, turned up to get help fixing a power tool for sculpting granite blocks. Vic was dashing between his toolbox and the kitchen, where pots of food were bubbling on the stove.
Then, two musician friends of the Novaks’ arrived for a visit, hauling a double bass and a saxophone in the door. The double bass player needed to have stitches taken out of a wound above his eyebrow, so Joanne got him to sit on the sofa while she dug the stitches out with a scalpel.
In the middle of all the noise and activity, Vic called out, ‘Five minutes until dinner!’
He counted the heads in the room and then counted out a pile of dinner plates. All the Novaks flew into action to clear the big dining table. Within a few minutes, the clutter of CDs, art materials, tools, newspapers and hairclips was gone and the table was set for dinner.
The way it all happened was mysterious, slightly scary but wonderful. It was like being inside a huge organism you didn’t understand but that functioned surprisingly well.
‘Are you staying for dinner, Ash?’ asked Vic. ‘There’s plenty. Oh, maybe you’re expected at home for dinner.’
‘Uh, not really,’ Ash replied.
‘Fantabulous. Then stay,’ urged Charlie.
‘But you should ring and let your family know you’re here,’ added Joanne.
‘Oh, I guess so.’
Ash walked out to the yard and used his mobile to call home. As he expected, the answering machine picked up so he just left a message. ‘Having dinner at a friend’s place. Got my mobile on.’
Ash imagined his voice coming out of the answering machine, echoing up the empty hallway, the sound being sucked into the black hole of that house, no one listening. Just thinking about that killed his good mood and he felt like giving up and crawling away. But as he stepped back inside the Novak house, he found he was smiling again. It was as if the noise and energy of that household scooped him up out of the black hole.
Vic and Joanne filled the centre of the dining table with big pots of food. All the Novaks, plus the visitors, sat around and helped themselves. That just seemed to be how it was every night at the Novaks. The chaos stopped when everyone sat down together to eat dinner. The food was weird – stuff Ash had never eaten before – but he tried it because he was a guest. And most of it turned out to be delicious. Vic was a good cook.
Over dinner, Charlie raved on to his parents about the band they were forming at school. ‘It turns out that Mulvaney High is a hotbed of brilliant musicians.’
Ash wasn’t so sure that was true but Charlie sounded very definite about it.
‘Are you excited about the new band, Ash?’ Joanne asked.
‘Uh, yeah,’ answered Ash. ‘It’s our first rehearsal on Friday. I can’t wait.’
Later, after Boy and the twins had gone to bed, Charlie and Ash hung out in Charlie’s room listening to music. Every now and again, Vic would knock on the door to offer more CDs he thought Ash might like.
Ash would have been happy to stay at the Novak house all night. But when it hit midnight, he figured he should leave and let them all sleep. As he pushed his bike into the dark street and fumbled to get the lights working, various Novaks whispered their goodbyes to him from the front porch.
‘Try not to crash and sustain any major injuries on the way home,’ advised Joanne.
‘Come back for dinner anytime. Always plenty of food,’ Vic said.
The twins, who were supposed to be asleep, pushed open a window and yelled out in unison, ‘Bye, Ash!’
‘Sshh,’ urged Joanne. But that only made Nina and Billie erupt into cackles.
&nbs
p; Cycling home, Ash found himself desperately wishing that the Novaks were his family. Charlie seemed so matter-of-fact about it, as if he didn’t realise how fantastic his family was.
Chapter Five
Erin looked at the page in her diary for that Friday. ‘Blues band rehearsal. 3.30.’ This was almost certainly a very stupid idea. Still, she’d made Charlie a promise so she headed down to the music department. Somehow Charlie Novak had persuaded Mrs Vallentine to let them use the main music room to practise in.
As Erin approached the door, she remembered she had a muesli bar in her jacket pocket. She figured the sugar hit from that would help her face her nerves about the first rehearsal. But after one big bite, she realised the muesli bar was a mistake. It was so dry and crumbly, it sucked every tiny bit of moisture out of her mouth. So five seconds later, when she walked into the room and the new band members said hello to her, Erin’s mouth was full of oaty gravel. She could only respond with a weird ‘herrm mmrr’ noise. Great. Now these people would think she was a mumbling loon, like everyone else did.
‘Erin is our world-class keyboard player,’ announced Charlie.
Erin wanted to protest and tell them she wasn’t anywhere near that good, but because of the muesli bar predicament, she couldn’t speak. So she just did a little embarrassed wave and smiled with her lips pressed together. Charlie chattered on for a while about the band. That gave Erin the chance to chew like a hunger-crazed goat and try to get enough saliva happening for her lips and tongue to form proper words.
‘In this yet-to-be-named band, I’ll be playing bass,’ said Charlie. ‘We’ve got Lester on drums, Ash on lead guitar and Joel on saxophone.’
Erin smiled hello to Joel. Even though Joel Schneider was in the year above the rest of them, she had got to know him from music camps. He was quiet, into jazz, with a serious-looking face, but he was a really friendly guy if you actually talked to him. She felt a bit safer seeing Joel in the room.
Lester Preece was a drum tragic. If Lester didn’t have a drum kit in front of him, he played percussion on whatever he could get his hands on. It was as if he had rhythms pulsing through his body at all times and they had to come out somehow. So in classrooms he tapped pencils against desktops, thwacked a plastic ruler against the chair legs and kicked the wall as the bass beat. Teachers would ask him to stop, but five minutes later, the whole class would hear the tapping of Lester’s pen on the edge of the desk.
Half the time Lester didn’t realise he was doing it. For him, it was an involuntary and unconscious physical phenomenon, like breathing. But his drumming was still irritating to a teacher trying to explain quadratic equations. Teachers were driven to bellowing at him like cranky bulls and there had been several potentially ugly moments. In the end, Lester would grin his way out of deep trouble. He was such a buoyant, smiley guy that people couldn’t stay annoyed with him for long.
Lester was a good friend of Ash Corrigan’s. Those two guys had been in lots of Erin’s classes through high school. She liked both of them but she didn’t hang around with them. Until now, that is.
Ash was in Erin’s science and history classes. Their history teacher was a humorous individual, always cracking twisted jokes. Often, Erin and Ash would be the only kids in the class who laughed because they were the only ones who got the joke. A couple of times, when they’d both laughed, Ash Corrigan had turned to exchange a smile with Erin. But by the time Erin had realised what was happening, she’d missed the moment and Ash was already turning away.
Now, seeing Ash in the music room made Erin feel even more nervous about herself than she usually did. Which was really very nervous. She avoided making eye contact with Ash and tried to look busy inspecting the sound gear.
‘Does this band have a singer?’ asked Joel.
‘Well, finding the right singer is never easy –’ Charlie began.
Lester pointed at Charlie. ‘You. I thought you were the singer.’
‘I’ve heard Charlie sing,’ said Ash. ‘The world isn’t ready for that.’
Charlie and Ash cracked up laughing. Erin figured it must have been a private joke.
‘I confess there is some truth in what Mr Corrigan says,’ acknowledged Charlie. ‘But do not fret, my poppets.’
Erin noticed that Charlie Novak had collected a series of strange little phrases he liked to use.
‘I can assure you we have a delish lead vocalist. Lily,’ he said.
‘The Lily? Lily from Year 11?’ asked Lester.
‘Affirmative,’ said Charlie. And then in a solemn, dramatic voice, he added, ‘She is a goddess.’
At exactly that instant, Lily Opara appeared in the doorway. That’s what Lily was like. She could make an entrance with perfect timing, without seeming to make any effort.
Lily had a Nigerian father and a Swedish mother. Erin had seen them at a school function once: two impossibly tall, impossibly beautiful people gliding around the grotty Mulvaney High quadrangle like exotic beings from a much more elegant planet than earth.
Their daughter was a perfect mixture of the two parents: tall, willowy, graceful, with eyes like a cat and glowing golden skin that must have come from that other planet.
As Lily Opara walked into the room, Erin could feel herself becoming more dumpy, more blotchy and more clumsy with every second that passed. And she could see that Charlie Novak was breathless at the sight of Lily, utterly bewitched.
Erin was pleased to see that Ash didn’t come over all stupid at the sight of Lily the way lots of guys did. He just smiled hello to her and went back to fiddling with the strap on his guitar. Erin liked the way Ash Corrigan flicked the floppy bit of hair out of his eyes. Erin liked Ash Corrigan full stop.
That first-ever rehearsal, they worked on two numbers for almost an hour: ‘Help Me’ and ‘The Sky is Crying’. Charlie ran the show but not in a bossy way, just making sure that everyone knew the basics. Erin and Joel relied on the sheet music Charlie had provided but the others mostly played by ear.
Erin was concentrating so hard on not stuffing up that she couldn’t say she enjoyed it or even heard the music they were making together. Joel was an excellent saxophone player but even he was obviously nervous and playing rather stiffly. The others all sounded good to Erin, considering it was their first stagger-through of the songs. Ash played really well.
‘Far out, Ashman,’ said Lester, ‘didn’t know a loser like you could play like that.’
Ash chucked his guitar pick at Lester’s head.
‘I’m serious!’ Lester protested, laughing. ‘You can play.’
Ash shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I’ve had a chance to practise these songs for a while. That’s all.’
‘Talented and modest!’ shrieked Lester in a girly voice. ‘What a sweet guy!’
Ash laughed and aimed his guitar like a machine gun to shoot Lester in the guts. Lester jerked his body as if the pretend spray of bullets had hit him and then he collapsed onto his drum kit.
In ‘The Sky is Crying’ there was a lot of keyboard stuff for Erin to handle, so she was even more nervous on that one. By the third run-through she was getting the hang of it.
‘Hey, excellent work, Erin,’ said Charlie. ‘Mighty glad we found you.’
The other guys all murmured ‘yeah’ in agreement and Erin nodded her thanks. She didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but she was mighty relieved.
Lily didn’t pay attention to any of that because she was busy reading a text message on her phone. The Goddess wasn’t into the whole rehearsal thing. Half the time she was checking her phone or staring out the window in case there was something more exciting happening out there. But when she opened her mouth and sang, none of that mattered.
Lily was a fantastic singer, effortless and totally confident. She had a voice like maple syrup, the proper Canadian stuff that comes from trees, not the fake sugary version. Her voice was smooth, sweet but with a smoky edge to it.
Most of the time, Charlie was focused on the music but
there were moments when Erin noticed him staring helplessly at Lily, with his eyeballs practically rolling out of his head. Erin felt uncomfortable for Charlie. If you had such a massive crush on someone, it was better not to dribble and make it so totally obvious to everyone. Poor guy.
When Lily got to the end of ‘The Sky is Crying’, Charlie said, ‘Sizzle.’
‘What?’ said Lily, screwing up her lovely face as if Charlie was an annoying insect.
‘I mean, that was good,’ he explained. ‘That was sizzling hot. So, “Sizzle”.’
‘Oh. Whatever. Okay,’ said Lily, reaching for her phone.
They finished the rehearsal with a discussion about names for the new band. They didn’t get very far. Every name they suggested sounded lame or try-hard. Choosing names is tricky; even the names of famous bands would sound stupid if you heard them for the first time.
Joel suggested a few classy options like The Blue Notes, but they all sounded too much like a jazz combo.
Charlie was keen to have a name with the word ‘dog’ in it, like Blues Dogs or Dogs of the Blues. But there was no way the girls were going to have a name that implied they were dogs.
‘What about using the initial letters of our names?’ suggested Joel. ‘A few bands got their names that way.’
Erin scribbled the different letter combinations on the side of some sheet music.
‘Not sure that’s going to work,’ she said. ‘Jellac sounds like a brand of toilet cleaner. And Clajel sounds like an ointment you’d put on a particularly disgusting cold sore.’
Ash laughed and looked at Erin. She hoped it was because he thought she was funny. Or was he just being polite?
Lester came up with names based on sexual puns and dirty jokes. He made himself laugh, even if no one else thought they were funny.
Finally Ash said, ‘You’re the brains behind this band, Charlie. So why don’t we call it The Charlie Novak Band?’