The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

by Kimberley Starr

  Jackie looked at me. She must have known my grandma from the days when she lived here with Daniel. “Well then,” she said, her eyes a bright contact-lensed green behind their artificial lashes, “you’re Joanne’s daughter.”

  I nodded dumbly.

  “I used to know Joanne. You don’t look much like her. She was really pretty.”

  Andrew turned to me, mute appeal in his eyes. Jackie was awful, but she was his mother. He didn’t want me to take any notice of that remark. My simmering temper began to cool a little.

  “Brigid and I are just going for a walk,” I said, and we walked off.

  We went back to the semi-concealed spot behind my grandma’s shed and sat facing the river instead of each other. Brigid carefully smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt, and I pulled a stale cigarette out of its packet.

  “Do you think she meant to be so rude?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Jackie!”

  “Was she rude?”

  I puffed away. “Yes! She was rude! Andrew could have stood up for me, too.”

  Brigid pulled her hair back from her face, separating the sticky strands from her skin. “Andrew never says anything bad about his mother.”

  I turned. From here, I could see a portion of the Colemans’ pool fence before the river curved up past the park and the houses of the Morgans and the Seymours and Kevin Mathers. A shadow had moved in front of it.

  Andrew Coleman stood there on his own, looking down at us, an odd expression on his face. I pulled the cigarette out of my mouth, hoping he didn’t dislike girls who smoked, and waved at him. He gave something of a half-wave in reply, before turning back in the direction of his home.

  That evening the newsreader briefly speculated that Cameron Seymour was dead, but he had already dropped to the end of the news, just before the weather bulletin. Reporters and photographers had abandoned our street to chase whatever the new story was that week. I sat behind my grandma’s shed, staring in the direction of the Colemans’ house, making aimless small squiggles and dashes in my sketchbook as I prepared to smoke the last of my carefully preserved cigarettes. Leaning back against the drab metal of the shed, I watched the antics of some nearby pigeons and tried to draw the muscles and ligaments and feathers of a wing.

  “Hello?” a voice said, behind me.

  Andrew! I might have been less surprised to turn and see the ghost of John Lennon standing there. Or anyone else famous for being dead. I inhaled the wrong way and coughed violently.

  He smiled slightly, head cocked to one side and hands pushed deep into his jeans pockets. “Naughty Maddy,” he said. “I thought I smelled smoke.”

  “You want one?” I was amazed at my own audacity.

  He took a couple of steps towards me. “Um, no thanks. You got room there?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “It’s a nice place.” His leg brushed against mine as he lowered himself, and tingles ran right up my spine. “I saw you here with Brigid earlier.”

  “I know,” I said, too quickly. “I saw you … um … seeing me.”

  His laughter didn’t sound at all mocking. “It’s good to be somewhere quiet.”

  “I thought you’d be at swimming practice.”

  “I’m going back tomorrow.” Andrew rubbed his nose. Even that gesture looked sexy to me.

  “It’s a tough time for you. I’m sorry.” I really was, too. Someone as golden and perfect as Andrew shouldn’t ever feel sad.

  He looked out over the river and the mangroves, his gaze sharp, as if he was searching for something hidden out there. Now and then he slapped at an evening mosquito.

  The river looked muddy and slow and the mangroves buzzed with insects. I wished he would say something.

  “It’s a nice view,” I said. “You sure you don’t want a smoke?”

  “Ah well, maybe. Don’t tell my coach.”

  “I won’t tell anyone.” I hoped the way I looked up at him was suggestive. Our saliva was mixing on that butt. “I won’t tell anyone anything, ever, I promise.”

  He grinned and suddenly the water here was beautiful, everything was beautiful. Stretching out in the heat, I pulled off my T-shirt. I was only wearing a singlet underneath, not even a bra. It seemed like a great idea at the time, a great way to figure out what Andrew had on his mind. He puffed again on the cigarette, before asking carelessly, “You got anything stronger?”

  “Stronger?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Even though I suspected he was more interested in scoring dope than in scoring with me, I grinned back. He had those teeth, those arms. It was worth the risk.

  “Come with me.”

  Together, we walked into the dark cool of my grandma’s shed, where an abandoned pottery wheel stood, dusty and covered with spider webs. I reached behind one of her old shelves for my small stash.

  Andrew stood behind me, and he laughed. “You are a bad girl.”

  I looked at him and laughed too. He was so gorgeous it made my insides ache.

  “Let’s be bad together,” he said, when we were outside again.

  I gave him a long look from the corner of my eyes and pushed my chest out as far as I could. Until quite recently I’d viewed the development of my breasts as threatening and had hoped they’d go away. But now I thought of their swells and hoped he would notice.

  Andrew pulled a lighter from his jeans.

  “Have you done this before?” I asked.

  “Not as often as I’d like.” His eyes shone bluer than the sky.

  The day started to get blurry around the edges and the world became a cosier place. I wanted to ask if it was true that his mother might take him away. I used to hate families for rubbing in their togetherness, like salt into a wound. Now I hated them even more, because when their togetherness ended they hurt me anyway.

  But the words to ask him these things wouldn’t form, and it wasn’t just because of the pot. It was because the day was so sunshiney and blue, and because my anger felt like it was going to dissolve even as I worked on building it up. It was because the river was rippling, like muscles, and so promising, the way it twisted, as if anything might be just around the corner.

  And it was because of Andrew, so close even though we were still only lightly touching. If anything was going to happen to spoil this little bit of happiness, I didn’t need to know about it just yet.

  Andrew didn’t let me just sit there lost in dreams. The next joint he rolled was the thickest one I’d ever seen. He emptied my sandwich-bag stash getting it that thick. Every last leaf. I eyed it and him with an odd mixture of suspicion and hope. Was something phallic going on here?

  For a moment I thought he was going to bite the end off it, the way they do with cigars in old movies, but he lit it normally and then took a long, deep drag. The look that crossed his face was intensely satisfied.

  He passed the smoky thing to me with a leery grin. “Here you are, Maddy.”

  I sucked on it carefully then Andrew took it back. “You don’t give this stuff to Brigid, do you?” he asked.

  I laughed. Brigid was just a kid compared with us. “She won’t even try a ciggie.”

  He took another enormous drag. “This is an excellent moment,” he said, exhaling.

  We were quiet for a while. “You probably haven’t had much fun recently,” I said.

  “It’s a hard time. It’s nice having Jackie here.”

  I was as surprised about that as I was about his presence. But I couldn’t admit it. There’s nothing particularly wrong with liking your mother, I thought. In this case, though, it was just a bit unusual.

  “You get on well with her?” I asked.

  “Rebecca’s great, but it’s not the same.” He turned. “Mum and Dad got divorced when I was just a little kid.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  He laughed, bitterly, and I wondered why.

  “They’re not sorry,” he explained. “I mean, Dad wasn’t and Mum isn�
��t. They were both quick enough to get married again.”

  I took a long, thoughtful drag. “Maybe they were sorry about it at the time. Maybe they just moved on.”

  He didn’t look convinced. “I’d never do it to a kid.”

  After his next puff, Andrew tossed his head back and shuffled forward so he could lie down. His eyes drifted closed and he looked so relaxed.

  I’d smoked enough that I wasn’t worried about spiders or snakes in the long grass any more — at least, not real ones — and I wriggled down beside him.

  “Your mother died, didn’t she?” Andrew asked suddenly.

  Something inside me went stiff. “I don’t talk about it much,” I said.

  “You probably don’t want to. Normally, I don’t want to. Even my coach just says I’ll get over it …”

  I held my breath to better listen to his. Why was he here? So I could distract him from thinking about the accident? Brigid said he’d barely spoken in days. But he’d spoken to me. It seemed ungenerous not to share with him.

  “People keep giving me advice about how to deal with it,” I said. “There’s only one thing anyone’s said that’s helped me understand, and that’s that everyone’s parents have to die sometime —”

  “That’s useful?” Andrew interrupted. His voice was low, dull with rage. I was still pretty angry myself a lot of the time. I knew better than to think his anger was directed at me.

  “I didn’t think so either when I heard it. Maybe ‘useful’ isn’t quite the right word. But that’s just something my grandma said. It helped me realise …”

  My words drifted off. Andrew was staring in the direction of Kevin Mathers’ house, his shoulders tightening as if he was waiting for something to happen. After a while, he turned to me and said, “Realise what?”

  I took a deep breath. “That there’s another thing people say that’s true,” I told him.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. That life goes on.”

  Surprised at myself before, now I was staggered. Life goes on? This was a truth that I knew? When had I managed to learn that? And the part of my mind that knew, why hadn’t it managed to notify the rest?

  “Life goes on.” Andrew sounded deeply sceptical, and I couldn’t blame him at all. “I started swimming because of him, you know. My father. That’s what he did. He was the strongest man I ever knew. This wasn’t meant to happen.”

  “I know.” Who did I think I was? Some sort of counsellor?

  But Andrew didn’t stand and leave. Eventually he turned to speak again. “Your grandmother helps you through all this?”

  “I’ve never thought so. Maybe she does. A little bit.”

  “It must be hard with your father away, like my mum. I suppose we’re in similar situations.”

  “I suppose we are.”

  We sat like that for ages. Together, while the river lapped peacefully past, and strolling clouds high in the sky mingled with wafting smoke from our own breath.

  I washed my clothes, rinsing out the smell of smoke, and went to tell my grandma that I was having dinner, as well as lunch, with the Colemans.

  She sniffed, of course. “Do you really have to go?” she demanded. “They mightn’t want company at the moment.” Her eyes avoided mine, as if this wasn’t quite what she really wanted to say. Not until later did I wonder if she was lonely herself, if she wanted me to be there.

  “They asked me,” I told her.

  “I don’t like to see you abusing their hospitality —”

  “I can go over there today, though?”

  She nodded. “Just make sure you’re home by ten and please say goodnight to me when you get in.”

  Four

  On the morning that I am scheduled to interview the man the newspapers call the Brisbane Boy-Killer, I exit my doctor’s surgery, trying to force his news from my mind. I wait on a city footpath, waving for the service of a passing taxi. It’s past peak hour. Cars have finished pouring downhill into the city, and it’s not yet the time when they spill back out again. A yellow cab rounds the corner into Wickham Terrace and I race for the curb, nearly twisting my ankle in the process. The cab doesn’t stop. I step back, cursing. I’ve just been in the company of a man to whom I am a patient, not a person. In his company everything that makes me a unique individual has been removed so my breasts can be squashed and prodded like fruit that might be overripe. Have I become invisible out here too?

  I cross the road, attracted by a sandstone mill that stands there, built by convicts. A plaque announces its protection by some sort of heritage order. That’s not the Brisbane I remember, when almost anything could cheerfully be torn down in the name of progress. I imagine a group of doctors coming out of their frightening rooms to band together and sign petitions threatening the councillors with various plagues if their view was destroyed. (Brisbane’s never been averse to a bit of bribery and corruption.) The medical offices, too, are in grey stone buildings designed to inspire awe and respect with their age and strength. It seems the doctors are better at saving buildings than they are at saving their patients. I’d like to go back inside and repeat this observation to the doctor I just visited. I recall the way he turned from me so I could dress, so I could cover my breasts before he broke the worst of the news, as if they shouldn’t have to hear his diagnosis. There’s cancer in there. We could have been discussing fruit-fly infestation. He discussed various ways of getting rid of it. He knows all the options, and has firm opinions. It seems my breasts are destined for the scrap heap sometime — possibly years — before the rest of me.

  Another taxi drifts by without stopping. Lost in thought, I haven’t signalled. The next time one approaches, I walk towards it and remember to wave, but it’s already occupied and goes on its way. I check my watch, aware that I’m running a bit late.

  What can I do? Brigid, now a lawyer, has an office somewhere near. I told her I’d visit, but no longer feel inclined. A neo-Gothic church sits on the opposite corner, darkly brooding, as if it has been waiting for me. I drift onwards, buoyant with the resolution not to pray. Two young men in business suits lounge before the front door, in line with the altar, eating something greasy from paper bags. Another of them leans against the nearby railing, talking to a girl. None of them look at me. The very ordinariness of their poses strikes me as something of an affront. Don’t they realise nothing will ever be the same again? But I am in a medical area, full of surgeries and hospitals. Here, what I have been through, the type of person I have become, the dazed way I have been walking, is probably commonplace.

  Finally, a taxi does stop. I slide inside. I have a few minutes to pull myself together. I might have this disease but I’m still a person with a productive job, and a reason for living that goes beyond waging war with reckless cells that have, for some unknowable reason, turned on me. I tell myself that I don’t have to become a pink ribbon, printed T-shirt, group-hug-therapy sort of woman, like those whose photographed smiles on the surgery walls terrified me far more than the mastectomy pictures. All that has to be excised are my breasts. I don’t have to lose who I am as well.

  I pull my jacket down and suck in a deep breath, as if air were comprised of confidence. The Brisbane Boy-Killer waits for me inside. He’ll be glancing at the two-way mirror even now, aware of what it represents. I want to tell him to get used to being watched, picked over, observed. I’d like to tell him exactly what I think, how much of my sympathy remains outside, where picketers, having read the paper or seen the news, parade, demanding that we think of our children and bring back the death penalty. I used to think that, with experience, I’d learn to handle certain situations, the gaze of rapists whose distorted awareness of my body distorts my own, so that I’m overly aware of being female, physically less strong. But although I’ve never reached the point where I’m even professionally comfortable with such men, I still find these other prisoners, whose sexuality doesn’t include women, even more difficult to deal with.

  The door closes behind
me. I cough and wish the prisoner a good morning.

  “Hello,” he responds.

  I look up. I know who he is. I know him. He is older, greyer and lined but still essentially the same. I want to turn and leave. I want to run out of the room and yell abuse at Ken Richardson for not telling me. I look deeply into the man’s eyes for some sign of recognition, but there is none. Of course, it’s been a very long time since we last met. Perhaps he doesn’t really believe that children grow up.

  But my name — will he recall that? As a professional I don’t have the option of keeping it to myself.

  “How are you today?” I stall. “Mr Ferris?” It is not his name.

  He swallows. “I don’t like it here.”

  I don’t blame him. I don’t like it here either, even though, technically, I’m free to leave. Straightening my jacket again, I sit. The prisoner blinks his simplicity and sincerity at me again, eyes vacant and ignorant as a child’s. I realise that simplicity is the best approach for me to take, too.

  “Do you know who I am?” I ask.

  He nods. “You’re the psychiatrist.”

  “Psychologist,” I correct. “My name’s Madeleine Jeffreys. Do you know why I’m here?”

  He’s barely stopped nodding before the movement morphs into a shrug. He doesn’t seem to recognise my name. I relax a little. “You’re trying to work out what I did or why I did it, probably,” he says. “Plenty of your sort have been round asking if I want tea or coffee and did I kill anyone.”

  I roll a blue biro between my palm and the desktop. He watches. I try another approach. “What would you like me to call you?”

  His eyes narrow. “Bradley,” he says, not giving me anything. “Brad, if you like.”

  Names can wait until later. “You know that people like me are called into cases like this for a variety of reasons? For instance, you might have been treated by a psychologist in the past.”

  He shrugs. “No. Can’t say I have. ‘Cept last time I was in jail, of course.”

  There’s a look in his eyes now. A flash of something. Did I imagine it? How cunning has he become?