All eyes were fixed on the darkness into which Thommo had disappeared. The curtains suddenly moved. An arm appeared waving a Santa sack. Then Thommo wandered dizzily, teetering and swaying like a drunk, onto the stage.
Danny joined the loud applause, whistling and enthusiastic cheering. ‘Wahooo! Way to go, Thommo!’ Hearing the applause, Thommo took a bow. Danny chuckled to himself when Thommo reached behind and began scratching his butt fiercely.
‘It gets really hot,’ cried Thommo.
‘Friction,’ laughed Aine.
‘Whatever.’
It was decided then that a buffer might be needed at the end of the ride. They created a soft wall out of piled-up old curtains and seat cushions.
Then they had the time of their lives!
The old ducting tube, once filled with the wonderful voices of singing stars, was soon filled with the echoes of screaming children.
‘Yeeehhaaaargggghhh!’
It was brilliant. The old theatre was brought to life. Danny loved it. The speed down the tube was awesome, the spinning slide across the stage wicked and the spin at the bottom incredible. The avalanche of softness upon final impact always made Danny laugh.
Thommo was fastest and spun like a top every time. Cheering and raucous laughter followed his every ride. Each ending seemed more spectacular than the last. There was always an impressive explosion of cushions and old curtains. Aine and Weaver were amazed. Danny was proud of his big mate from Mundowie.
‘We need another bag,’ said Thommo. ‘Then we can ride rapid fire without waiting for the bag to be brought back.’
‘Good idea,’ said Aine. ‘Go and get one from up in the storeroom.’
‘Where’s that?’
She pointed back stage. ‘You go up those stairs and there’s sort of a big trapdoor, just push it open and you’ll be in the big attic where they store everything. You’ll find some Santa sacks in among the old sets. I think they’re somewhere near the pirate ship, cardboard forest and the crashed aeroplane.’
Thommo looked up to the deep darkness and the large trapdoor. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, grabbing Danny’s arm. ‘I’ll let you come with me.’
Thommo stood at the bottom of the wooden steps that led to the attic. ‘I’ll let you go first, Danny,’ he said.
Feeling that his courage might be questioned, Danny didn’t argue. Up he climbed. Once at the trapdoor he grabbed the metal handle and pushed. The trapdoor was on hinges like a little door.
It was heavy, so he used his shoulder to push the trapdoor open. It flipped back . . . squeeeak . . . bang.
With a bird’s-eye view, Danny took one last look back down at the stage. Thommo was at the base of the stairs looking up. Sam and Aine were walking across the stage.
‘Hurry up and get in there, Danny,’ Thommo called. ‘You’re not scared, are you?’
Danny peered up into the attic. He could hear pigeons, softly cooing. Danny climbed through the trapdoor.
When Danny rose through the darkness he smelt dust. Not like Mundowie dust, but old dust settled in long-time layers that hadn’t been churned up by wheels or devilish, hot north winds.
His nose twitched and he sniffed like a dog searching for a hidden bone. There was another smell that was somehow unsettlingly familiar.
He looked slowly in all directions. The attic storeroom stretched the entire length and breadth of the old theatre’s ceiling cavity. The light was dull, but not dark. Thick beams of light streamed in through large round air vents about the size of car wheels that were slatted with thin wooden ribs. There were four of them positioned on each of the outer walls.
Danny pulled himself into the attic. The light from below rose in a beam illuminating Danny’s back. He stood and looked around. High splintery timber beams as thick as Thommo’s midriff held everything in place. The floor was wooden like the stage, only not polished and smooth. It was dusty and splintery. Danny moved cautiously, tiptoeing. The floor creaked like the passageway in his old Mundowie house.
All around him were props and backdrops. He felt like he had walked into someone’s imagination.
On one side a pirate ship lay at anchor near a castle and a snow-capped mountain range, on another a yellow-brick road snaked away into fields of flowers, and behind him was a North Pole Christmas setting complete with sleigh, candy-cane poles, elves’ houses and a Santa throne.
Danny sat on the Santa throne and thought of Vicki. She would love this.
His smile was quickly wiped away when he heard an unfamiliar noise drift from the far side of the attic. Danny froze and listened. Something or someone was scratching, clawing.
Squeeeeeak . . . bang!
The trapdoor slammed shut. Danny jumped. ‘Thommo?’ he called gingerly. No answer.
He listened hard. He couldn’t hear Sam, Aine or Weaver riding the tube. Why were they quiet?
Danny moved forward stealthily, his feet placed carefully with each step. The light cast shadows on every wall. The props looked suddenly sinister. The colour of Santa’s world was lost to grey shadows.
‘Thommo!’ he hissed.
No answer.
‘Thommo, this isn’t funny.’
Still no answer.
Then he heard Sam calling from the stage below. His voice sounded distant and echoed in such a way that Danny, in his panic, couldn’t place it. ‘Danny!’
‘Sam!’
‘Danny, get down here – we’re getting out! Quick!’
Danny jerked his head in all directions. He was disoriented. Where was the trapdoor? He couldn’t remember! He leapt blindly over cloaks, pots and barrels, past lamp posts, park benches and a quaint railway station complete with platform.
His leaping body cut through shafts of light slicing through the drifts of floating dust. His feet thumped on the floorboards. He came to a door. He wasn’t sure if it was real or a prop. He heard a scratching sound behind it.
‘Thommo?’ he asked. ‘Thommo, are you in there?’
Danny reached cautiously for the door handle and spread his fingers. He pushed gently. The door moved slowly, eerily, without a sound. Danny craned his neck with eyes wide, scanning the space that was being revealed inch by inch.
There was light streaming in through a large round window with wooden ribs that divided four panes of glass like large portions of an Aunty Jean apple pie. The window was real. Danny could see the outside city sky. It was a colourless grey. Pigeons cooed from the windowsill, bustling for the best perch. Their shadows danced on the far wall.
A bed, neatly made, sat near the window. Photographs in frames arranged neatly sat on cupboards and a chest of drawers. Posters advertising stars and old stage shows hung around the walls. There was no dust on them. Danny was confused. The room and everything in it looked too real, too lived in, to be a set for a play. There was even a kitchen table with a red-checked tablecloth just like Aunty Jean’s.
Danny tried to open the door a little more, but it wouldn’t budge. He pushed harder. It still wouldn’t move. His heart pounded.
He heard faint scratching and a soft little moan coming from the far side of the room. Tracing the sound keenly he spied a box, no, a cage in the darkest corner. It was partially covered with a thick blanket. Danny stared hard. He focused his gaze. As hard as he stared, he couldn’t make anything out. There was more scratching, teasingly soft.
Danny lurched forward, slowly peering centimetre by centimetre around the door. Something soft touched his cheek. Then he saw it! Hanging on the brass hooks on the back of the door. ‘Ah!’ Danny gasped as he flew backwards. He rubbed his cheek frantically.
His face had brushed the blood-stained apron of Mr Carlo Caruso.
Danny’s heart pounded harder and faster. His nose twitched to a scent that suddenly caught his attention. The familiar smell. He knew it! It was the strange smell of the old woman who wandered the street with the two-wheeled shopping trolley.
Danny’s assumption was confirmed when he saw a photograph hanging proudly on the wall
. It was the old woman and Mr Carlo Caruso side by side. Danny was transfixed. They weren’t smiling. They looked to be, well, singing.
He tried desperately to think straight, his eyes darting back and forth between the photograph and the blood-stained apron. His mind flashed images of the incident he’d witnessed in the street: the screeching tyres, the mysterious meeting of Mr Caruso and the street woman. Danny swallowed nervously.
Danny left the door ajar and ran. He ran wildly, weaving past castles, pirate ships, cardboard forests and the lair of a huge dragon puppet, bearing down on him with eyes of glass and flaring blood-red nostrils. Everything seemed real and alive to him in his panic.
Danny scurried across the attic like the mice who loved to live there. He stopped running when he heard the heavy creak of the trapdoor hinges. Through the darkness just beyond the cardboard forest he saw the door rising slowly.
An arm was reaching up to push the door. Light streamed in a thick column rising to the rafters.
Danny was petrified as a head bobbed up to look at him.
‘Argh!’
Danny gave a huge sigh of relief. It was only Sam, his shadowy face rising through the trapdoor and peering into the attic.
‘Didn’t you hear me call you, Danny?’
‘I’m coming,’ Danny called.
‘Well, hurry up,’ Sam said. ‘We have to get out of here. Aine’s dad is back and he said the owner’s coming. She might not like us being in her theatre.’
Danny moved quickly towards the trapdoor. ‘Who’s the owner?’ he asked.
‘Some old bird called Mad Maggie,’ said Sam, disappearing below the horizon of the trapdoor.
Danny told everyone about the cage, the scratching in the attic and the blood-stained apron.
‘It’s just mice and Mad Maggie,’ said Weaver dismissively.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Danny.
‘She owns the theatre,’ replied Aine.
‘Yeah, but the blood on the apron and everything?’
Weaver leant in close to Danny. ‘They say Mad Maggie eats pigeons for dinner,’ he whispered. ‘It’s probably pigeon blood.’
Danny was aghast. ‘What?’
‘You don’t know if that’s true,’ said Aine. ‘We only found out about her when Dad came to start work here. He says she’s eccentric, whatever that means. We’ve just seen her around the park.’ Aine shrugged her shoulders. ‘It might be a pet.’
‘Yeah, or her dinner,’ said Weaver.
‘Never mind about some mad old woman,’ said Thommo, keen to shift the focus from blood to glory. ‘Let’s talk about my rides down that tube!’
Thommo was off again.
‘When I got to the bottom I tried to make myself spin as fast as I could.’ He bent his knees and spread his arms like the wings of a gliding bird. ‘You see, if you know how to use them, your arms can be like helicopter blades. I used them to . . .’
Danny didn’t get it. They weren’t taking any notice of him. It was like they didn’t want to know. He was disappointed in Sam and Thommo. Back in Mundowie a mystery such as this would not have been ignored. It would have been solved together.
He couldn’t believe how they simply dismissed his gory discovery. Especially Sam. But then again, maybe Sam was becoming hardened to the horrors of city living.
4
The Bird that Couldn’t Fly
Danny walked briskly from Old Kings Lane. The sun was no longer shining and blue sky had given way to a thick, lumpy, cloudscape. Danny lifted his eyes to see clouds the colour of purple bruises creeping across the sky.
Danny was grumpy. He walked just ahead of the others, annoyed that no one had taken him seriously. How could they dismiss bloodied aprons, skidding cars, mysterious scratching and . . . and everything else? All they wanted to talk about were slides and uncontrollable, butt-warming spins across the theatre stage. Pathetic! There was a lot of laughter, but not from Danny Allen.
A strong waft of wild wind that was obviously in the same mood as Danny wound its way through the streets to push at Danny’s back. A stormy change was coming. In Mundowie, Danny would have been happy to see rain on the way, but now he found himself sneering at the sky. It wasn’t fair! It seemed to rain a lot in the city, where they didn’t even need it.
Then Aine broke the mood. She spun like the whirling wind that was pushing the wisps of hair from her face and said, ‘We have to go.’
Danny stopped and turned, but didn’t go back to join the group. He was only a short distance away, but at that moment he felt a long way from them all, even his brother.
The wind tousled his hair and Danny’s expression darkened like the sky. Danny watched and waited. Goodbyes were awkward. No one knew what to say. Heads bowed, feet shuffled and bodies swayed uneasily, especially Thommo’s. ‘Right, time to say goodbye, then,’ he said, suddenly puffing himself up like a toad. ‘I’ll see you guys another time, maybe.’
‘Yeah, of course,’ said Weaver. ‘We’ll see you when you come back to visit. You will be back sometime soon, won’t you?’
Thommo shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yeah, I’m not sure when though. My dad hates the city.’
Aine pulled her shoulders back defensively. ‘How can you hate the city?’
‘I can list a few reasons!’ exclaimed the grumpy voice inside Danny’s head.
Thommo jumped in quickly. ‘I don’t hate it; I think it’s great! Mum and I even thought about living here once. It’s just Dad. I love the city – who wouldn’t? Nice place, nice people.’
Danny ground his teeth. The voice inside his head bellowed, What? I don’t believe you, Thompson! You slimy creep!
Danny’s grumpy expression darkened further. He wanted to say something, but didn’t. Why bother? No one took any notice of him anyway.
Thommo lunged toward Weaver, his face stretched by the thrill of what he obviously thought was a brilliant idea. ‘Hey! Maybe you can come and stay in Mundowie and I’ll show you guys some creek surfing!’ Thommo threw his arms out, bent his knees and mimed some surfing moves.
His large hips gyrated and his butt wriggled feverishly. It reminded Danny of the ducks in the park when the bread-wielding toddlers harassed them. The ducks would all sprint for the pond to seek sanctuary in the water and the little kids would stand at the water’s edge, bawling, ‘Ducky! Bad ducky!’
‘Okay,’ Weaver chuckled, slapping Thommo’s swaying shoulders. ‘I like the sound of that.’
Sam suddenly sprung into a jog. He dodged past Danny. ‘Come on,’ he said, glancing up to the window of their apartment. ‘We’d better go home as well. We’ve got to go and pick up Mr Thompson.’
Danny looked grumpily up at the apartment’s windows. His face was like the gargoyle. Home! Huh! Danny felt frustration rising. He didn’t want to go up there. It made him feel sick inside. His dad never spoke. Danny hardly even saw his face any more: it was always buried in the newspaper. And his mum was so different, no singing, no swaying. Even when the bank man made her angry back in Mundowie she would always find a minute or two to be happy, or at least pretend to be happy. She needed Aunty Jean or Mrs Fogarty or Mrs Thompson across the road.
So did Danny, he needed all the broken puzzle pieces of his life back where they belonged, then he could be back where he belonged. If only he were a professor or inventor, or Sam could make a time machine.
Sam could do it if he tried, Danny was sure he could, but Sam was different these days as well. He didn’t draw any more or design things or build with cartons and boxes or make Lego cities under beds and across floors with bridges, tunnels and castles. Sam hadn’t even unpacked the Lego. Instead, he spent most of his time in front of the TV. ‘Can you believe all the shows we have here, Danny?’ he would say. ‘Brilliant!’
Danny looked down and saw a feather. Before he could pick it up, the wind snatched it and took it away to the tops of the buildings.
Danny kicked at the grubby grey nothing of the footpath. There wasn’t even a stone to
kick! So many things were wrong: his family, life in the city . . . It didn’t matter what Aine said, he would never like the city . . . but he liked her.
She and Weaver were the only good things Danny could think of about the city . . . except maybe the park, he liked the park . . . and the Old Kings Theatre was pretty cool . . . and the Mercedes showroom. He wanted to trust Mr Caruso, but felt lingering doubt. The gift basket had been awesome. Danny would like to venture into Mr Caruso’s world.
Sam moved into the shadows of the stairwell at Waterford Towers. He stuck his head out of the doorway. ‘See you guys tomorrow,’ he said, waving to Aine and Weaver.
Then, keen to be first up the stairs, he was off. ‘Race you to the top, boys!’ he called back to Danny and Thommo.
‘Hey, wait up!’ Thommo bellowed. ‘Not fair, we have to start together.’
‘Ha, losers!’
Sam could be heard laughing gleefully as he went.
Aine waved. ‘See you guys.’
Thommo waved, but didn’t look back. He was off after Sam. He brushed past Danny. ‘Saaaam! Wait up.’
Danny watched him go, but couldn’t be bothered chasing.
Weaver suddenly sprang to life, leaping athletically with the balance and poise of a startled African gazelle and dodging people on the street like a sheep dog squeezed into a pen full of confused animals. ‘Come on, Aine,’ he called, ‘we’ll get wet if you don’t get a move on.’
Aine skipped backwards, smiling at Danny. ‘Take it easy, Danny Allen.’
Danny waved. ‘Yeah, see you.’
Then she turned and ran. ‘Weaver! Wait up!’
Danny Allen stood alone.
Mr Caruso’s illuminated globe of the world spun slowly on its pole. Danny was mesmerised, and gazed up at it, searching for Africa. The globe seemed brighter than usual. Danny looked into the enticing glitter and sparkle of the shop itself. He spied Mr Caruso – familiar apron, bright-yellow bow tie, blood-red shirt – as colourful as his cakes and confectionery. He was whistling.
Mr Caruso smiled when he spied Danny. He waved, but Danny had turned away.
Take it Easy, Danny Allen Page 9