What’s up? I asked him, and, frustrated, I turned away, rolling my eyes in irritation as I waited for him to speak.
You’re so impatient, Marco would tell me when he saw me with Simon.
No I’m not, I would argue, but I would know he was right, and I would feel ashamed.
He’s not that hard to talk to, he would say whenever I came home to find them both out in the garden, smoking cigarettes and seemingly managing to converse with ease; not once, but several times.
Just because he’s a bus driver doesn’t mean he has no opinions about the world, and Marco would raise his eyebrows to reinforce one of his favourite points: I was, and always would be, just too middle class.
And I would be furious with him.
From behind me, I could hear Simon clear his throat.
My brother’s voice is soft. He often looks down as he talks; his words trail off as he realises that his attempts to be heard are floundering; half-finished sentences fall at his feet. He was answering me, but it was not just his uncertainty, nor just my failure to listen, it was the name that confused me, hearing it out loud after all those years, so that he had to say it again.
Mitchell.
And I was, for a moment, relieved. It wasn’t Vi. It wasn’t Bernard.
He wiped his forehead with the bottom of his shirt and, despite the cool, I could see that he was hot. Clammy. The perspiration condensing near his hairline.
What happened? I asked, my surprise at the mention of Mitchell’s name only just beginning to register.
I waited for him to speak. In the silence, I could hear them above me, Anton and Louise. She was sweeping the floor of the flat. This is what she does when she is agitated. He was helping her move the furniture. This is what he does when he feels guilty.
Simon, too, glanced upwards.
I watched him swallow, followed by the hesitant scratch of a cough. Wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
I want to go to the funeral, and I could barely hear him. I want to go to the funeral, he said again, lifting his head now and looking straight at me.
I did not want him to say what I knew he was going to say next. I guessed before he even spoke the words, before he even asked me if I would go with him. And I looked straight back at my brother and told him that I didn’t want to go.
Not to Mitchell’s funeral. Not to that.
three
I do not know how Mitchell was when they took him away.
He may have hung his head, his long blond hair stiff with salt and falling into his eyes as they put his hands behind his back.
He may have been silent, knowing there was no point, staring at the gravel underfoot as they walked him back up the incline towards the road, towards the waiting car. Or he may have shouted and screamed, struggled, swore at them to keep their fucking hands off him, as they pushed him into the back, slamming the door behind him.
I do not know whether he was scared.
There on the back seat, the vinyl sticky beneath his skin, one thin leg jiggling up and down, up and down, the slap of his heel against his thong, over and over again. Staring out the window. Nothing but the black hills and the white of the headlights as they turned back onto the road and drove away from that place.
I have always imagined they were the last to leave the scene.
But that may not have been how it was.
Down by the creek bed, dry at this part, there may have been others. Wrapping chains around my mother’s car, the clank of metal on metal, the groan and grind of the truck engine and the scrape of the body against the boulders, as they hauled and heaved it up to the road.
And in the hot stillness of that night, they might have stopped to wipe the sweat off their faces, the black grease from a singlet smeared across a forehead. In the sharp beam of the light from the truck, they might have seen how crushed the metal was and looked at each other.
Amazing any of them survived, one might have said, not expecting a response. Turning back to the task. Knowing they were just words, words about an accident that hadn’t really touched on their lives, that would soon be forgotten, words left to drift out in the dark closeness of that valley.
Bloody amazing, the policeman might also have said. Same words, somewhere else. Words that were not left to drift. Words that came down hard. Hard as the fist on the desk.
So, what have you got to say for yourself? And as he leant forward, waiting for an answer, expecting an answer, I can only guess how Mitchell might have responded.
I can only guess how Mitchell might have felt.
Because, the truth is, I never really knew him.
The truth is, none of us did.
It was Vi who brought Mitchell into our lives. About fifteen years ago.
She would deny that, if we talked about him, which we don’t.
She would say that it was a democratic process. That we all had a chance to have our say. That we took a vote.
I always listened to you, she says. I always took your views into consideration.
And, on the surface, she did.
Whenever there was a decision to be made, an issue that would affect us all, Vi would call a house meeting. It did not matter whether the question was large or small, Vi would put it to a vote. And somehow, the numbers always stacked in her favour.
We discussed Mitchell three days before we were due to go on holiday.
It is important, Vi told us, that we learn to share a little of what we have, and she waved her arm in the air to indicate all that we possessed, with others. I don’t think the three of you realise just how fortunate you are.
She laid a couple of badly typed sheets onto the table in front of us. I could only just make out the heading on one – ‘The Desmond Halls Placement Program’.
It has been set up, Vi explained, to ease adolescents from institutions, foster homes or disadvantaged families into adulthood. It’s for kids who are about to look after themselves.
She picked up the bottom sheet and started reading out loud. Ideally, the program will work as a give and take experience. It’s not only the adolescent who will benefit from their stay with the placement family, but the family themselves.
We looked at her.
Do any of you have anything you’d like to say?
Simon looked at his watch. He wanted to get back to the Stewarts’ house. Sounds okay to me, he said, which was how he responded to most of Vi’s proposals. Evie said she needed to go to the toilet, and I said I didn’t want a stranger on our holidays. Not at all, I added, in case I hadn’t been heard the first time.
And I didn’t. I wanted us to have time with Vi. Away from her work.
I’m disappointed in you, and she poured herself another glass of red wine, and pushed the bottle towards Simon and me. In fact, I really wouldn’t have expected it, and as she looked at me through her reading glasses, she cut herself a piece of cheese from the stale block she always brought out for these meetings. Why? she asked.
I could not think of a valid justification. Not a single one.
Well, not in her eyes anyway.
I think we’re all agreed, then, she said, and it was clear that the decision had been made.
When I told my father about the holiday, he made little effort to hide his disinterest.
Really, he said, but I could hear him on the other end of the telephone telling his new girlfriend, Jane, that he didn’t want any salad with his meal. Not yet, he liked it afterwards, on a different plate.
You’re not listening, I told him.
I am, darling, I am.
But he wasn’t.
You know what your mother’s like, and he tried to reassure me. Just humour her. Let it be. It won’t be so bad.
He had given up on Vi’s passions a long time ago. I doubt whether he was ever really that interested, although she assures me that he was.
He changed, she tells me with some disgust.
Bernard is a QC. When they met, he was instrumental in setting up the
first community legal centres. God knows what happened to him, Vi says, and it is clear that she wants to change the topic.
Simon, too, didn’t care. Not all that much.
It’s no big deal, he told me.
I tried: But if you came with me, and said you didn’t want him, then it would be two of us. Against one. We could ask for a revote.
He wasn’t interested.
And Evie was too young.
There was no point.
So, that was the way it stacked up.
That was the way it always stacked up.
Mitchell was dead and Simon wanted me to go to his funeral.
Why? I asked him and he did not answer.
I could only guess that it was some act of forgiveness. A gesture. A peacemaking. And I did not want to participate.
I stood in my doorway, listening to the clatter of plates from the flats next door, dinner being prepared, the low hum of television from the flats behind them, the sound of a car pulling out from the flats on the other side, and, from above me, from our own block, silence. I turned to go inside and then, faced with the emptiness in front of me, found myself stepping back into the garden, back to where the stairs down the cliff once began, and still were if you hacked your way through the knotted vines and sticky lantana, back to where I could see up to their windows. Lights on, curtains open, and the strain of the rusted sashes with each faint stir of breeze.
Evening. Mouse raised his hand in greeting as he walked past, his smirk just visible in the dark. He knew what I was doing.
I did not bother responding.
He had locked himself out again and I watched as he forced his window open and started climbing through, head first.
I willed him to get stuck.
Or at least fall, hard, onto the floor below.
Lost your key? I asked him.
There’s no rule that says you gotta use the door, and he slammed the window behind him, the glass rattling in the pane.
I was alone again. There was nothing to see. Nothing to hear. And I suddenly felt foolish.
Inside, I sat by my window and I tried not to think about Mitchell. The pages of the script were open in front of me, but I kept on looking out to the lights of the houses on the north point. Despite what I had said to Simon, the film was dull and tedious.
I was being auditioned to play a heroin addict. This is the type of part that I am always offered. Probably because, like Violetta, I am small and thin with dark circles under my eyes. As I closed the script, I saw myself, there in the reflection of the window, and I looked away.
It was not just Mitchell I was trying not to think about.
It was myself. It was the situation I was in.
I saw my reflection and I saw why the doctor had been concerned when I had gone to see her that morning.
You need to make sure you get plenty of iron, she had said, if you’re going to go ahead with this.
She had given me a card for a clinic. And a letter of referral.
Give yourself a couple of weeks, she had said, before you make any decisions.
I picked up the telephone and then, halfway through dialling Vi’s number, I hung up. I wasn’t ready to speak to her yet. I didn’t know what I would say, how I would attempt to explain the situation in which I had found myself.
I dialled another number.
Lizzie had friends over. I could hear someone laughing in the background, the clatter of cutlery falling to the floor.
It was not a good time to talk.
On the weekend, she promised.
And as I rolled myself a joint, I promised myself I would stop smoking if and when I made my decision.
But until then, if I was going to sleep, I needed all the help I could get.
four
Once, a long time ago, Simon had a lot of friends.
Always late home from school, he would drift from a neighbour’s house to the corner, and then on to the park, perhaps the newsagency; unaware of the time, even with the first flicker of the streetlights, he would simply forget he was meant to be home.
Vi would always tell me to go and find him.
And I would.
Always wanting to be where he was, to be part of whatever it was that the older kids did, I would know where to look for him. At the bowling green smoking cigarettes, his short pockets stuffed with stolen chalk, on the oval trying to throw boomerangs and get them to come back, out on the street playing handball, perhaps at someone’s house, stoned and listening to records; it never took me long to track him down.
I would come in and tell him dinner was ready. Now.
He would look up, surprised.
But it’s only five, he would say.
I would roll my eyes and show him my watch.
Unaware of how late it was, he would just be wherever he was. Completely.
And that was what drew people to him. That, and the gentleness in his nature.
You could not help but like him.
Simon no longer has the friends he used to have. There is really only myself and Vi. And we are his family.
I once asked Vi what she thought had happened to him. Why the change had occurred. But as soon as I articulated the question, I wished I hadn’t. I knew I had led us into a territory that neither of us had the heart to enter.
I watched as she tried to light a match, as it splintered against the flint and failed to catch. She tried three times before she spoke, drawing back sharply on her cigarette and staring out the window, as she told me she didn’t know.
It’s just the way he is, she said and she did not turn to look at me.
I did not press it any further.
Because when it comes to Simon, it seems as though we constantly fail, as though inaction is the path we choose.
The morning after he came to me with his news, I did not call Vi, dreading the prospect of mentioning Mitchell’s name but knowing it had to be done. I did not call my father and arrange to meet him for lunch that day. I did not ask him to speak to Simon.
I did not do anything.
I just learnt my lines, repeating them to myself in the mirror as I cleaned the bathroom that is shared by both the downstairs flats. Mine and Mouse’s.
I scrubbed the toilet until there was not a trace of Mouse’s footprints left. He likes to squat. It’s what they do in India, he tells me whenever I complain.
I cleaned the tiles around the shower until they were sparkling.
I washed down the floor.
I wiped the basin until it gleamed.
And I played out my entire scene five times.
When I was finished, when I had learnt all I had to learn, I dumped the dirty sponges at Mouse’s door, and I waited for Louise to go to work, for her footsteps down the stairs.
Louise is a sub-editor. She works shifts. When she is on the morning shift, she leaves at eight, when she is on the afternoon shift, two, and the evening shift, nine. I knew these times by heart. I still know them.
That morning she was late, and I stood, nervously, there on that bottom step, unsure as to whether I should go up, unsure as to whether I should knock on their door in the hope she had already left.
Louise does not like her job. She has told me this often. They moved to this city a year ago, and she was forced to take whatever was available.
It was Anton who wanted to come here, she once said, brushing her hair out of her face and then letting it fall back again. He thought there would be more opportunity, for his scripts, and she sighed. But he is still broke and I am still supporting him.
She would tell me she had no one else with whom she could talk. I hope you don’t mind, she would say as I opened the door to her standing awkward, unsure, a bottle in one hand, a pack of cigarettes in the other.
Once she told me Anton’s work hadn’t been the only reason for the move. I had a miscarriage, she said. I kind of fell apart.
Another time she told me it was because Anton had had an affair, and she had looked at me,
just for a moment, as she poured herself another drink.
Who knows? Marco said when I asked him what he thought the real reason was, and he looked up impatiently from the pile of notes he had brought home to read. Who cares?
He always found Louise irritating. He had little patience for her endless talk about her problems. It was self-indulgent.
Bourgeois, I would say to tease him.
Precisely, he would say, but he would usually smile back.
He had even less time for Anton. A sleaze-bag, and he would not look at me. A spoilt rich kid dabbling in the arts.
And each time he heard the footsteps from upstairs followed by a knock on our door, he would roll his eyes. Don’t, he would mouth silently as I would get up, ignoring him, opening the door to see her standing there.
I looked up to the landing at the top of the stairs and closed my front door behind me.
Before you make any kind of decision, you should talk to him, the doctor had told me, and I had nodded my head as though it was a given.
In the closed stillness of the corridor outside their flat, I knocked once, hoping she had somehow gone without me hearing her.
But she hadn’t.
She was the one who answered the door. She was the one with whom I talked. The two of us, out on the landing, Louise picking at splinters in the wood, staring down at her feet as she told me they had been fighting again.
I wish I had the courage to just go, she said, her voice hushed, quiet, because she did not want him to hear. Anton, just one thin wall away. I wish I was more like you. You just took action. It wasn’t working and you made your decision.
And she looked out across the overgrown garden, out across the low shrubs that cling to the side of the hill behind these flats, their roots gripping the sandy soil, only just, as she told me how lonely she felt.
If it wasn’t for you, I don’t know what I would do, and she lit a cigarette, holding it awkwardly in her left hand, the smoke drifting up and into my eyes. He tells me I’m mad. And now I’m starting to think I am. Now I’m starting to wonder whether I have just been imagining that he’s up to his old tricks, and I watched as she scratched the end of the match into the wooden railing, one thin black line. Perhaps I have just made it all up. Perhaps he does still love me.
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