Oliver of the Levant

by Debra Jopson

He must have seen me falter. ‘No need to sully yourself with nasty Fleet Street habits. You can have this pic here. I told Babette I’d send it to her, but she said she didn’t want it. I think it would do her good to know the fruit of her loins is faring well, but she becomes tetchy if you mention him.’

  He pulled the frame from the wall and pushed it into the crook of my arm. I looked into the boy’s cat’s-eye marble peepers. He probably had no idea how his real mother cried for him, but was I going to tell him? Babette was ours.

  ‘She doesn’t want to be reminded of her past,’ Phillip said. ‘You might come to that, too, one day … Now, let’s do a reveal on that roll you just finished, with the mystery scenes of Lebanese life.’

  Ringo’s image started as a wisp puffed onto photographic paper, mushroomed into the silhouette of a man and then emerged, full-blown, into the Chelsea studio. His curls gathered around his shocked mouth. No wires fell out of the box at his feet. He looked like a kid wagging school, dumping his suitcase in the bush. I switched my attention to the background; the boarded-up cave where Abdo’s militias kept their weapons. What had I imagined happened behind the warped wood held together by rusty nails? I had vaguely thought of it as a kind of cubby-house for kids. I felt a breath of Arctic wind run through my whole body in the windowless room.

  It was an arms stash. Which we blew up.

  Phillip’s voice behind me made me start. ‘He looks guilty of something. What was he doing?’

  I mashed the paper in my hands before he could study it any further. ‘Not my best work.’

  I held up the photo of Babette’s kid, to divert him. ‘Why didn’t she keep him?’

  ‘Ah, to tell you that would be to talk about the father, and I can’t do that.’

  Phillip lowered his eyelids, just as Babette did when she wanted to swish a curtain over a secret. It made me ache with a longing to know. That photo didn’t frighten me. The one crumpled in my fist did.

  44

  Bomb Boy

  I lived nowhere now, except on the couch beneath Phillip’s eiderdown. It pinned me down like a thick cloud fallen to earth. If I could have lifted the cloud, I would have got up and gone into the world, but I could only lie and stare as the flickering TV fretted with other people’s concerns, which mostly seemed trivial to me. Except for the Irish bombs on the London train lines. When I saw the fear lodged in the eyes of the witnesses to the blasts, I choked off the TV. I didn’t want to think of myself as being like those bombers who had slunk away from their victims.

  Ringo was on an operation. Abu Iyad had asked about Madame Khoury’s village. He had a map.

  ‘You’ve got an infection.’ Phillip called a doctor with an unshaven face, who dropped cigarette ash on my sore hand and injected me with penicillin.

  He coughed and gave Phillip a filthy look. ‘I could report child abuse.’

  ‘I’m not a child,’ I said.

  Phillip deepened his voice. ‘Oliver’s due to fly to Australia the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, he can’t go until he’s recovered from this.’

  The doctor made a prune face. I didn’t save the man from thinking that Phillip had hurt me. Because now I knew that all along he’d been planning to trick me into flying back to Australia.

  ‘I’ve got to speak to Babette. I’m not going anywhere until I do.’

  ‘Hoh. Hissy fit! All right, diddums. What time is it in the Muddle East? Middle of the day. Perfect. Time to be up and at ’em, but not yet wine o’clock. Although with Babs, that can be flexible.’

  He dialled. It was that easy. She answered, way over there in the Levant, where the sun rose before it became all stingy. Her voice was an insect in the phone receiver.

  Phillip smirked. ‘He has a list of demands, darling, and you are one of them.’

  I grabbed the receiver. ‘Babette, I’m sorry I made all that trouble for you. I didn’t mean to be a dobber. I never meant to do anything to hurt anyone …’

  ‘I hear you’re doing a dying swan act. That’s not like you, my action man.’

  ‘Have you seen Mahmoud?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘What about Abdo?’

  ‘He’s not top of my party list. Oliver, you’re winding yourself up into a hysteria. Pull yourself together. It’s all pretty straightforward. You go home and everything will calm down. Jess is already there, at your new boarding school.’

  ‘Can’t you come to London?’

  ‘God, no. Spare me. You need to cooperate with Phillip and get on that plane to Australia. Come on, my little gentleman. We can’t have you here. Go home where it’s safe.’

  ‘Only if you promise you’ll come, too.’

  ‘Oliver, your father –’

  ‘Only if you say you’ll come. Is it a date? I’ve got to talk to you. Show you something.’

  ‘All right, Oliver, I will.’

  ‘You haven’t got your fingers crossed?’

  ‘No. Now put Phillip on.’

  Now I had Babette making the incomprehensible blah blah on the other end of the line and Phillip here, busy being her Slave. ‘Yes, Babette.’ ‘He’s really fine, Babette.’ ‘If you really want me too, I will, Babs.’

  He hung up and whistled. ‘She wants me to give you a valium, but you’re not that bad, are you?’

  I shook my head but then lay with my soul slowly dissolving, imagining my body would follow.

  I will not die in my pyjamas.

  I swooned into a dream in which Babette and her son met, at last, with slow, shy smiles in their cut-glass eyes. Phillip had said that the kid loved the carnivorous plants in the Chelsea garden glasshouse: ‘The place must give the nanny the creeps. She sits outside.’

  I was with Babette. We crept through the garden, up to the greenhouse. I had P’s photo so we’d recognise him. She’d agreed to come with me because when I’d shown it to her, she’d fallen in love with her baby all over again.

  As real mothers do.

  Phillip was with us. He leapt out of the bushes and shoved his long lens at the nanny. She ducked. I lured Babette into the greenhouse, hypnotising her with my special magnetic eyes as I walked backwards. The mother and her son, their hair flaming auburn in the dim, flat light, saw each other and understood instinctively that they were of the same flesh. I looked into her face. It was luminous.

  I’m looking into her face because I am the little boy. Her son.

  When I woke, I wished I hadn’t. Phillip was rattling his newspaper above me. It was almost as big as a Muslim prayer mat, woven with tiny black words.

  ‘Cat out of bag, my friend.’ He shoved it at me.

  EXCLUSIVE

  BOMB BOY LIVES IN FEAR

  By a Special Correspondent

  An Australian youth who built a bomb, which he exploded in a Middle Eastern country, is hiding in London in fear of his life.

  The family of the boy, 16, smuggled him out of Lebanon after he detonated explosives in Beit Zizi, a mountain village controlled by a Christian warlord.

  The warlord is believed to have demanded the youth be returned to the capital, Beirut, for punishment, according to a source close to the family.

  The young man, who quit his American school after refusing to place his hand over his heart and sing the US national anthem, could possibly have planted the bomb on behalf of a Muslim Palestinian group, sources say.

  ‘His father got him out as fast as he could. There are all sorts of shootings and bombings that are never reported. It’s like a silent war that the West ignores,’ the source said.

  The father, a pilot for the Lebanese Cedar airline, smuggled his son out to London about a week ago.

  The youth’s whereabouts are unknown and a Scotland Yard spokesman said there had as yet been no communication from the Lebanese Government requesting that he be quizzed. British police would take no action until there was such a request, the spokesman said.

  I growled with frustration. ‘It wasn’t like this … It was a cigar tri
ck. It just went wrong … It wasn’t me …’

  Who was the dobber? It had to be Walid, to get back at Dad.

  ‘I’m never giving you any cigars.’ Phillip laughed. ‘The best thing about this, Bomb Boy, is that your name was left out of it. But it wouldn’t take much snooping for a good journo to track you down.’

  ‘I’m not running away from anything. What’s this warlord thing?’

  Phillip waved his hand. ‘I do fashion, darling. For me, warlord would be a look. Or a costume on a schmooze-artist that a society hackette wanted me to shoot. It looks like the safest place for you is back home. You pack. I’ll pick up your ticket. Please don’t run away. London’s not a kind city, and it’s the end of a long winter … Bomb Boy.’

  I looked at the sun’s miserable offering. It had already given up for the day. I pulled the roll of negatives from my stash-hole beneath the couch cushions and unfurled it into Phillip’s fire. It filled the air with a thin, venomous snake of smoke as it caked the fake coals with plastic melt. No-one would ever be able to coax the image in the Beit Zizi forest back into life.

  But I couldn’t burn the ghost that had taken up residence within me. Those baby lips were inside my bony skull now. The warlord who wanted to get me had to be Abdo.

  It’s kinda cool that someone thinks I could build that bomb, though.

  45

  Wreckage

  It was Easter Sunday, but there was no chocolate, no champagne to celebrate this year. I flew counter to the arc of the sun, but it was almost always there, in the window, burning my eyes. A life lay behind me. And below, maybe death, twisted metal strewn across the land – one of those plane wrecks Dad said he saw in the Egyptian desert, glittering in the sun.

  Babette was still Babette, somewhere down there, remembering her baby but unable to reach him and, now, far away from Jess and me. Sabine was lost to me and her husband wanted my hide. I had left behind Ringo, my Palestinian friend, to be pushed and chased about by his uncle, his mother and, maybe now, the Phalange.

  It began to dawn on me that I hadn’t entirely got things right.

  46

  One Brave, Bad Thing

  Lebanon was lost on the other side of the world. At first, I hung around the radio at news time, but the war was never mentioned. I missed it: the tit, the tat, the rat-a-tat. Australia felt foreign and too quiet. I spent the first few weeks crashed out in the spare bedroom of an old pilot mate of Dad’s.

  Dad had booked me into the same scabby country boarding school where he’d sent Jess, who was on some fancy vacation with a rich mate’s family for the Easter school holidays. Dad had ended up in a boarding school in the Yoo Kay when he got into big trouble with his father, but we just got sent out to the Australian boondocks to live with sheep.

  Dad’s mate put me on the train from Sydney and I was rocking along – doo wah diddy doo wah diddy – believing that dreary days of slavery were inescapable, when the guard announced a familiar station: ‘Wadi Wadi.’

  Salvation.

  I jumped out, leaving the school jacket Dad’s friend’s wife had bought me swaying from a hook in the carriage, with its silly embroidered badge of an emu and a kangaroo opening a giant book.

  Grandad’s bus had sunk deeper into its bed of weeds; the trees had grown taller above it. Below the red blister of the evening sun, I glowed beetroot from lugging my bag. I still had another time zone in my head, and it didn’t seem right that the darkness was creeping in. Grandad wasn’t there. Cobwebs hung around the doorframe. I called out, frightened I’d find his skeleton inside.

  The neighbour with the plaits came to the fence, said nothing, walked away. Grandad appeared in her place. He seemed smaller and beaten down by age. I could smell blood. It made his shirt dark. He shook my hand, as though I was a relief to the eyes, and told me to climb through the fence.

  ‘Sorry about the decorative splatter. Been mulesing. Need a translation, you city slicker? Cutting the rear end off sheep to stop flies burrowing into their bums.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I suppose that’s nothing to a boy who lets off bombs for a laugh.’ I looked away. Grandad already knew about me mucking around with explosives at Wadi Wadi. I hoped that was all he meant.

  ‘Blowin’ somethin’ up in Lebanon. Bit like takin’ coals to Newcastle, eh?’ Either Dad or Jess had blabbed. I suddenly felt foolish, hearing how childish my exploits sounded in Grandad’s mouth. He put a bloody hand on my arm. ‘A boy has to do one brave, bad thing once to learn how to be a man.’

  Something tight crumbled inside. ‘I’m okay around animals, you know. I had mice in Beirut.’

  ‘Experience, huh? Fleur and I’ve been looking for an offsider. Hang around and I’ll let the cockies know you’re their man for working with the bulls, then –’

  ‘Fleur?’

  He jerked his head towards the house with a sly smile. ‘My former neighbour. Her husband died. She invited me to move in and help out around the place … She’s a rich widda.’ In the last of the daylight I could see that, even though Grandad was stooped, he was more sinewy than before. And he didn’t have a can in his hand. ‘But wotcha doing here? Not keen on shivering in the bunks at Stannies?’

  I didn’t say anything. He banged my back. ‘One brave, stupid thing. But only one.’ He held up a finger.

  The next morning I was woken by the drub of gelignite through earth. I started up with a ragged breath, thinking I was in Beirut.

  I left behind my lucky rock, the rock that nearly killed me. Up there, somewhere near Beit Zizi.

  Grandad was unruffled. ‘They’re puttin’ in another sewer pipe. Few hundred more rat-race refugees will pour over the mountain. See that fence down there, bottom of the far paddock? That’s the border between the city and the bush.’

  I’d thought that I might see my mother, that she could have missed me. Grandad’s composure withered. ‘No, mate, your mum’s decided to cut us out of her life.’

  My eyes stung, as if I’d suddenly turned my face towards a salt-spray wind.

  ‘Don’t you worry. Julia gets her hands on the H in the clink. Smuggled inside chicken cavities, so she volunteers for mess duty.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried.’ It was over with her. But it didn’t take the sadness away.

  I didn’t like Fleur. She put her hand over Grandad’s so he had to eat one-handed with a fork, and she wouldn’t look me in the eyes, as if I was planning to thieve his heart away from her. I wanted to ask him about his war in Lebanon, but whenever he was around the house, she was there.

  I followed him down to the paddocks where she had him toiling so hard with the farmhands that he couldn’t speak to me.

  I lazed in a paddock under airy blueness, the outlines of small, high-flitting clouds on my closed eyelids. As my shirt grew damp and patterned with the crisscross imprint of kikuyu, I began to hear the bird tink, insect purr and the tearing of grass stalks as a grazing horse, becoming used to my company, wandered closer. Suddenly, I was back from Lebanon. I remembered how it was to believe that life would continue as you knew it. Here, people had a calm confidence that cars, buses, houses and shops wouldn’t shatter, splinter and lie in shards. A peace settled on me, light as the dandelion fluff fluttering in the air.

  I carried a smile into the dark house and Fleur beamed back. ‘Ah, you’ve brought the sunshine in.’ She was all right, just shy.

  Grandad let me stay in the bus. He fought an international war with Dad and won when I promised on the phone – crossing my heart and hoping to die – that I would attend Wadi Wadi Secondary School.

  Dad’s voice sounded far away and resigned. ‘At least it’s as far from Beit Zizi as anyone can get. You’re very lucky that the Lebanese authorities have their hands full with all the wannabe hotshots, thieves and murderers taking advantage of the situation here. So you’re just one annoying drip in a very large ocean of grief for them. Joseph’s another matter. He cornered Babette in the foyer and said he was convinced that you were possess
ed by Satan the day you went to Beit Zizi. He made her promise that she would take you to church and get the priest to deal with it.’

  There was a stretch of silence between us long enough for me to think that I might as well help ease the hostilities between us, by uttering a saying borrowed from Fleur. ‘No harm done, then.’

  There was a volley of cursing. I held the receiver away but the words ‘Abdo’, ‘grave’, ‘idiotically following like a sheep’ and ‘useless no-hoper’ still penetrated.

  So, Dad was still all worked up about the bomb. I had to dream up another plan for getting back to Lebanon.

  Fleur used to be a teacher, so she knew how to talk to me. ‘What do you really want to do, Oliver?’

  I wanted to work as a cub photographer, piling money into some stash-hole until there was enough to take me to Beirut. I tingled at the thought of taking pictures and watching images take shape when I rocked them under liquid, as I had in Phillip’s darkroom.

  ‘That won’t happen without more school.’ Fleur rescued my essay from Grandad’s egg-and-sauce splatter on the kitchen table.

  Oliver T. Lawrence

  History

  The Age of Discovery

  Before the Age of Discovery, Europe had too many bored young men with nothing to do. They would rampage through villages, burning crops. They got into trouble and filled up the jails.

  The authorities decided to occupy the rabble-rousers by having a war. This is an age-old solution to the problem of what to do with young men.

  The authorities had another idea. They could create colonies and send the troublesome men overseas.

  I was stuck after that.

  ‘It’s not so hard to write about such a vast subject.’ Fleur’s soft voice filled me with shame. She brought me books, then helped me finish my essay. I got seventy-five per cent.

  Outtasight.

  I started to read. Fleur handed me Papillon, the story of a French guy who gets the blame for a murder he didn’t commit and connives and plans until he makes a genius escape from his prison on Devil’s Island. I stayed up all night being him. Fleur gave me crime novels, then war stories, and even Catcher in the Rye, which she said was ‘risqué, but suitable’. While my nose was in the book, I was Holden Caulfield. Within a month, I was roaring through that big brick of a book The Agony and The Ecstasy, becoming Michelangelo as he sculpted David in marble. When I had devoured Fleur’s books, I worked through the Wadi Wadi school library. Grandad was worried. ‘We’ll be gettin’ ya glasses soon, Ollie.’