With great care she prises the first photograph from the album, mindful of bending or tearing it. Her mother’s habit is to write, on the flipside of each image, the name and age of those pictured, as well as the location and date. It’s a habit that fills a couple of hours each time an envelope of prints comes back from the chemist, but Elizabeth swears it must be done or else she’ll forget everything of which the photograph is meant to remind her. And sure enough there is her handwriting on the flipside of the photograph, recording her age and Joe’s age and, as Freya has known it would, the date. She stares at it glassily for a time, and around her the house breathes and goes on. The schoolbags, the cups in the sink, the volume knob on the television. The station wagon in the driveway, the branches stacked behind the garage, the holes in the fibro walls of the shed. The swing near the back fence hanging from its steel frame, a long leg of which javelins out of the ground if the swing is swung very high and forcefully. Her mother, who has moved into the kitchen to cobble together a dinner over which the children will moan. Sometimes, if their behaviour at the table is particularly deplorable, she will take her plate and go to eat in her bedroom. Probably she’s glad of the excuse for some peace, but her departure always makes Freya feel as grey as a gravestone.
She smooths the photograph into place fastidiously, and drapes the plastic sheet down on top of it. Then she slides the album into the sideboard and closes the cupboard with barely a sound.
Syd has been to the milkbar to get the milk and when he arrives home, after a longer-than-necessary journey, dinner is being served in the kitchen. He puts the milk in the fridge and takes his place opposite Declan and beside Marigold, a corner seat with his shoulders to the wall. They have a plain wooden set of table and chairs, and Syd likes this furniture very much. He likes it when supermarket bags are sprawled across the table’s waxy surface, he likes it when tea-towels, hung to dry over the backs of the chairs, go stiff enough to stand up on their own. Tonight’s dinner is something the children adore, sausage casserole with rice and beans. Their mother is always scrupulously fair about quantity and quality. No child likes to see another receiving more or better than themselves. Declan is her favourite, they all agree about that; it doesn’t mean he can be better-fed than the lesser lights.
Syd drops into his seat saying, ‘When I went past the Jensons’ I saw Avery and Garrick on the BMX. Garrick was pedalling and Avery was riding on the handlebars.’
‘That boy is not long for this world,’ says Elizabeth.
‘I hate Garrick,’ says Marigold.
‘You hate everyone,’ says Dorrie.
‘Yeah.’ Marigold sighs.
Peter is sitting in his highchair, which he loathes. He wants a proper chair, the same as his siblings; already he is wasting his life trying to catch up to them. He squirms and says, ‘Let me out!’ and Declan, reaching over to stuff him back behind the tray, asks, ‘Where was Colt?’
‘I didn’t see him. Or Bastian.’
‘The person I hate the most is Avery’s grandpa.’ It’s Tuesday, and Marigold is still wearing her school uniform, a dress dappled blue and white and stained down the buttons with orange cordial. ‘I bet Avery would rather fall off the handlebars and die, than live with that mean old man forever.’
‘You don’t even know Avery’s grandfather,’ says Syd.
‘We know him,’ says Dorrie mysteriously.
‘Yeah. He walks past the house and we see him. He looks at us.’
‘He should mind his own business,’ says Dorrie. ‘Old coot.’
‘Don’t say that, Dorrie.’ Their mother ladles casserole onto a plate, piles up rice and beans around it, and sets the plate aside. This is their father’s dinner, and the children know not to touch it. They don’t know where their father is, and they don’t remark on his absence. Now he thinks of it, Syd can’t remember his father ever eating at the table with them – which is good, because there’s not enough space for another chair. When their mother takes her seat they are allowed to start eating. ‘That’s not a nice thing to say,’ Elizabeth tells her youngest daughter.
‘He should mind his own business, though.’ Marigold shakes the soy-sauce bottle over her rice, sprinkling a black rain. ‘Me and Dorrie were outside today, and we were playing, and Avery’s grandpa came past, I think he was taking a letter to the box, and he looked at us, and then he stuck his nose in our business.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Well, we were pretending that Dorrie was a puppy, so she had a leash – it was one of Dad’s belts. And Avery’s grandpa told us to take the leash off because it was dangerous. And it wasn’t dangerous! Dorrie wasn’t even hurt.’
Dorrie lifts her little pie of a face and smiles. ‘See?’
‘But we took it off,’ continues Marigold, shovelling black rice onto her fork, ‘and when he’d gone I put it back on, because Dorrie had to have the leash, that was part of the game. And then a few minutes later he walks past again and says, What did I tell you? Take that rope off – it wasn’t even a rope! It was Dad’s belt! – before that child is killed! ’
‘So what did you do?’
Marigold’s hands fling out, spilling rice on Syd and the floor. ‘We came inside! We had to. He spoiled everything.’
Their mother asks, ‘Where was the belt tied on Dorrie?’
It’s the question on which everything hinges, including the indignation on Marigold’s face, which sets stonily. ‘It was around her neck,’ she admits. ‘But it wasn’t tight! She was being a puppy! She had to have a leash. She wasn’t choking —’
Dorrie makes a gagging sound, and Peter copies her, and Marigold rolls her eyes. ‘She wasn’t choking. We were just playing. And it wasn’t that old man’s business. He shouldn’t talk to us. He doesn’t know us. I hate him. And I bet Avery hates him.’
‘He doesn’t,’ says Declan.
‘Avery loves everyone,’ says Dorrie.
‘You’re just mad because Mr Price wouldn’t let you strangle Dorrie with Dad’s belt,’ says Syd.
‘No,’ says Marigold, ‘I’m mad because he doesn’t care about Avery, but he does care about Dorrie.’
‘Avery’s mum should look after him,’ says Dorrie. ‘Not the old coot.’
‘Eat your dinner and stop saying that,’ says their mother.
Marigold spears a wedge of pineapple sullenly. ‘When can we put up the Christmas tree?’ she asks. ‘Tonight? Tomorrow?’
The calendar has finally turned to its last page, an occasion of much excitement for the younger Kileys: the treasures on their wishlists suddenly seem within grasp. But, ‘Not yet,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Wait a few more days.’
‘Ah! Why?’
‘It’s too early for the tree.’
‘But it says Christmas on the calendar!’
‘No, Marigold.’
‘Why not? Why? Why? Why? Why?’
‘Marigold,’ says Freya crisply, ‘Mum said no.’
Marigold slumps, lip jutting. ‘What are you getting from Santa?’ Declan asks Dorrie.
Dorrie sits up straight and announces, ‘A crown.’
‘Like a queen,’ explains Marigold tiredly. ‘I already told you: you can’t have a crown, because you can’t buy them in shops. You can only have something you can buy.’
‘There are crown shops,’ says Dorrie.
‘You can only have a crown if you’re a princess,’ says Declan.
‘No,’ says Dorrie. ‘I saw a lady with a crown, and she wasn’t a princess.’
‘That’s another fib,’ says Marigold.
During this inane conversation Syd has been working steadily through his dinner, and now he folds his knife and fork. ‘Can I please leave the table?’
Normally he would hang about for leftovers, and certainly in the hope of dessert. They know there is neopolitan ice-cream in the freezer, the chocolate section gouged away, the strawberry likewise almost gone, only the vanilla remaining intact, a snowy wall standing in the centre of the vat. ‘W
hy?’ asks their mother. ‘Where are you rushing off to?’
Syd pauses to frame it correctly. ‘I want to ride the BMX. I know it’s a school night, I won’t stay out late —’
‘No,’ says Declan.
It’s unexpected, and Syd frowns across the table. ‘Why not?’
Declan doesn’t look up from his plate. ‘Don’t go by yourself.’
‘Then come with me . . .’
‘I’ve got homework.’
Elizabeth is looking at Declan. ‘Why shouldn’t he go there by himself?’
‘It’s night-time,’ says Dorrie. ‘Scary.’
Declan crinkles his nose as if he has unearthed something unidentifiable in his dinner. ‘He’s just a bit strange, Mr Jenson.’
‘What? He is not!’ says Freya.
‘Strange how?’ asks Marigold. ‘Strange like an alien? Remember you said he was an alien, Freya?’
‘Shut up!’ says Freya.
‘He’s OK,’ says Syd. ‘You’ve just got to keep away from him, that’s all.’ He smiles, and his fingers stroke the air like insect legs, and Declan snickers.
Elizabeth frowns down the table at her sons. ‘What are you talking about? Declan?’
‘Nothing.’ Declan sits back grinning, although his cheeks are stained faintly pink. ‘He’s all right. He just likes giving shoulder rubs. Patting your back, stuff like that.’
‘You gotta stay out of reach,’ reiterates Syd, and his fingers paw the air, and Declan chortles again.
Freya is staring icily at her brothers. ‘Don’t be mean. That’s really mean. Mr Jenson is kind. He bought us ice-cream. Why do you have to be so horrible?’
‘We’re not being horrible, it’s just funny —’
‘I’ve talked to him lots of times, I’ve sat next to him, and he’s never rubbed my shoulders or patted my back. I’ve never seen him do that to anyone.’
Declan looks at her, still smiling, and suddenly his face goes bright: ‘You saw him do it to Syd!’
‘When?’
‘At the barbeque! When we were leaving, when Syd wouldn’t get out of the pool.’
The whole family looks at Freya, even Peter, who is licking rice off his palm. Freya shakes her head. ‘He helped Syd get dry!’
‘Yeah —’
‘We were going home. Everyone was waiting. He got Syd dry. He rubbed him with a towel. That’s how you dry someone.’ She impales her brother on a glare. ‘What’s so bad about that?’
‘Syd’s not a baby,’ says Marigold. ‘He can dry himself.’
‘He’d been told ten times to get out of the pool. We couldn’t wait for him all night!’
Declan considers his sister, then looks away and says, ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘We’re just used to Dad.’ Freya speaks darkly. ‘Mr Jenson isn’t Dad. He likes everyone. He isn’t nasty —’
‘Dad’s not nasty!’ yikes Dorrie.
‘— and you shouldn’t say nasty things about him. So what if he pats you on the back? That’s called being nice.’
Declan is not a boy for fighting lost causes, but, ‘It’s still weird,’ he says.
‘Alien,’ says Marigold.
Freya wheels on her sister. ‘If you say that again I will smash you, Marigold!’
Elizabeth pushes her chair out and turns to the stove, and stirs the casserole more than it needs – as if, for a moment, she can’t stop stirring it. ‘There’s a bit of leftover,’ she says. ‘Does anyone want some?’
‘I bags!’ says Marigold.
To Syd, Declan shakes his head. ‘Don’t go.’
Freya snarls, ‘Ignore him, Syd!’
But Syd, although he’s childishly torn, has a businessman’s instinct for erring on the side that is most beneficial to him, and stays resignedly in his chair.
Their father is home late but he hasn’t been drinking, Syd can tell by the sound of his footsteps and because his mother asks, ‘How are you?’ which she wouldn’t if he didn’t deserve the question. The children are in bed but Syd isn’t close to sleeping. Since Christmas appeared on the calendar he has become more restless than usual. Now that he’s discovered the pleasure of a private swimming pool he’d like to have one of his own: given the unlikelihood of this happening, he’s staked all his hopes on a skateboard. He needs a skateboard. He has told his school friends that he’ll be getting a skateboard, so it’s more than imperative: the quality of his future hangs on the ownership of a skateboard. And every atom of his being has begun to tingle in fear that his wish will not come true.
He sees the skateboards at the Jenson house, propped against the wall of the playroom, both as good as new. Neither Colt nor Bastian knows how lucky they are to have them; Syd feels, as if it were manacles on his wrists, the ponderous unfairness of it. He detests being poor. From the chocolate biscuits he won’t eat for afternoon tea to the lessons in gymnastics in which he’ll only ever imagine excelling, Syd is already weary, at ten, of the constant deprivation that is the lack of money. He lies in bed, curled on his side, listening to Declan’s sleep-breathing, envisaging for himself a life in which he will own everything, he will give money away, he will never bother looking at price tags, he’ll have a thin red car and a big vicious dog and he’ll spend his holidays at the snow. His fabulous two-storey house will have an in-ground pool and a colour television with pushbuttons and a matching pair of leather recliner chairs and a dishwasher and a chest freezer and a tropical fish tank and an outdoor spa and a spiral staircase and a separate bedroom for every person who lives there . . . a house not much unlike the Jensons’, he supposes. He has wondered, on Colt’s and Bastian’s behalf, what they could possibly be getting for Christmas, and has decided it will probably be a trampoline. They seem to like toys they can share. Either a trampoline or a Green Machine, to add to their collection of fantastic wheeled playthings.
He doesn’t know how he’ll earn the money to sustain his anticipated life of luxury. He won’t be a printer, like his father – printing’s brought him nothing so far. Sometimes – and Syd does not tell Declan this – he thinks about a life of crime. It sounds exciting and, if one can stay out of gaol, seems a flash way to earn a living. A cat-burglar. A bank robber. He pictures himself wielding a gun. He could ask Garrick about that kind of thing, but Garrick would only big-note himself, though he’s never done anything more impressive than filch some lollies from the milkbar. Syd Kiley the gangster, thinks Syd Kiley the boy, will laugh in the face of Garrick Greene, then squash him like an ant.
But this lies a long way in the future: for now, skateboards are his concern, and he hasn’t got any money so he must pin his hopes on Santa Claus, in whom he has some faith but not belief. He doesn’t need an extravagant board, just something with a bit of dash, preferably one with red-and-white chevrons like Colt’s board, although in truth almost any kind will do. His friends will expect not only to hear about it, but to see it and ride it: so if he doesn’t get it, he might as well die. He’d be better off. He lies listening to the murmur of his parents’ voices, and in a lightning-bolt instant he is decided. Living in hope is simply too precarious, he must take matters into his own hands. It’s always best to ask their father for something – money, that’s all the children really want – when he is sober. When he’s been drinking, he is both miserly and impoverished. He will undoubtedly say no, but at least the thought will be put in his head; more importantly, his mother will witness the depth of his desire, the risks he’s prepared to take for it. It’s a brave move, to get out of bed, interrupt their conversation, request a costly something. It’s likely that what he’ll get for his trouble is more trouble – a shout to get to his bedroom, a whack to hurry him along. But once the decision is made, he can’t resist.
He slips from bed and out the door quickly, and pads down the hall on bare feet, the cuffs of his pyjamas flipping at his ankles. The kitchen light is on but he veers around the patch of fluorescence it casts into the hall. He hesitates in the shadows of the lounge doorway, colle
cting his meagre courage. From here he can’t see his parents but they are there, very near, and very far away. The television is on, not loudly. He hears his mother say something about school fees, and his father replies, ‘Yes, I suppose.’ His tone is testy, and Syd’s nerve wavers. He could go back to bed and his parents would never know he’d stood here in secret, overhearing them. But his mind is essentially the one-track kind, and this plan is all he has. He’s on the verge of stepping from the shadows and into the room when his mother says, ‘Syd and Declan said something funny about Rex Jenson today.’
Syd instantly ducks back into the darkness. ‘Who’s Rex Jenson,’ says his father.
‘Oh, you know. The man who cooked the barbeque the other day. The people with the pool.’
‘The dentist? He’s a try-hard, that bloke.’
‘Well. Him.’
The TV burbles and Syd’s father must listen; after a minute he asks, ‘What about him.’
‘The boys were saying . . .’ Syd can tell his mother is at the ironing-board, because she pauses the way she does when she’s turning a garment to press its intimate spots. ‘They were saying he rubs their shoulders, that sort of thing. Declan told Syd not to go to their house by himself.’
There’s quite a long lull in which neither Syd’s mother nor father speaks. Laughter erupts from the television, there’s a bad-tempered sigh from the iron. The audience applauds, and the TV show cuts to an ad: still his parents say nothing. Then his father says, ‘We had teachers like that when I was at school. Over-friendly.’
‘Maybe you should say something to him.’
‘To who? The dentist?’
‘Obviously, Joe.’
Again they are silent, and the advertisements jangle. Syd rests his head against the doorframe, feels the severe bite of the wood. Eventually his father speaks. ‘If it’s just a rub on the shoulders, there’s not much harm done. Is there.’
‘I don’t know. Is there?’
‘It never hurt us. We used to laugh it off.’
‘That’s what they’re doing, I think, laughing it off.’
Golden Boys Page 13