by Peter Twohig
But pubs couldn’t be open all the time, and Railwayman was the kind of bloke who could bide his time. However, before I could work out a plan, there were footsteps outside the upstairs door, and the sound of keys. I was on the wrong side of the cellar to make a run for my train, so I slid under one of the sets of shelves and waited. The bloke who came in switched on a whole lot of lights and what had been a dimly lit room became as bright as day. He walked right past me and I saw that his shoes were brand new and shone like black mirrors. His pants had a thin grey stripe at the sides and he moved, I thought, like a policeman. Oh my God, I was right! I thought. I am in a pub. The bloke only wanted to collect some bottles of wine, and he took his time about it, too. In the end he collected about a million bottles and put them in the dumbwaiter inside some cartons. I took a peek, to see how he was working it, and saw him press a button at the side. Up it went, without a sound.
He didn’t even wait for it to reach the top, but straightaway headed up the stairs and closed the door with a quiet click that told me it was locked again. Immediately, I formed a plan, one that was so clever it almost made me laugh, until I remembered that it’s always the bad guy who does the laughing. Then I thought What the hell, and laughed anyway. I would come back at a time when the pubs were all closed, probably tomorrow, and ride the lift to another great adventure. They couldn’t catch me in the Orange Tree and I was damn sure they’d never catch me in this pub either. Also, I now had a triple identity to protect me, for the Cartographer was not only the Outlaw as well, but also Railwayman.
I wandered around for a while, looking for a bottle of wine to take with me for the journey home, and finally decided on a bottle of Osborne Solera Gran Reserva, mainly because there was a kid in my class at school called Osborne — we called him Ozzy, but his mother called him Claude.
I retraced my steps to the little train and switched it on. The red dash light was sweet to see: it reminded me of a raspberry sugar umbrella. I made a mental note to buy one of those as soon as I got home — they lasted for hours, and after a while you could almost see through them. And the sticks were handy for making Plasticine people, too. All in all, a lolly with a thousand uses, thought Railwayman.
On the way back, I came to the junction with the USE line. To go that way I had to go past it a little, get out and switch the points over with the lever on the side of the track, then go into reverse for the rest of the trip. USE turned out to be a big station with half a dozen trains parked in neat rows. I hopped off and tried to start one, but these were the kind that needed a key. All I had to do now was see what was at USE. It might be the cellar of another pub: you never knew.
Well, USE had more than a railyard, it had a signal box full of levers, and I guessed that on weekdays it was a pretty busy place. It had stone stairs, just like at GH, but a set of double doors at the top. It even had a branch line to the right that said HQ VIA VB, a sign I’d already seen. Those double doors looked like they weren’t going to open for anyone, not even Railwayman, and after what happened with the dumbwaiter, I was a bit worried about getting caught. So I went up quickly and took a look around, but could find no way in. That left the lift.
It’s a funny thing that every one of the underground stations I’d discovered had a lift with tramlines inside it; this one was the biggest lift of the lot. At the side of the lift was a ladder that went right up to the top, and when I looked inside I could see that there were even lights on the lift ceiling. The outside lift door was closed but was easy to open, and inside the lift was pretty much just a big cage with a cable on top to pull it up. Beside the door on the inside there was a set of buttons that let me choose the floor I wanted, but I kept my hands off this, as most of the lifts I’d been in made a hell of a lot of noise, and that was the last thing I wanted. And besides, I didn’t want the lift door to open at another floor to reveal a thug with a machine gun. So I headed up the ladder.
It was an easy climb, and it wasn’t long before I came to the next level, which I knew was where the door at the top of the stairs probably was. However, the lift door at this level was not made of cage bars, but was a solid iron door like the ones in the department stores. I climbed up to the next level, but it was the same story. It wasn’t until I had climbed past five doors, and was beginning to wish I hadn’t started up the ladder, that I came to a wooden trapdoor right above my head. I pushed it open a little and had a peek: it was a room with a wooden floor and nothing much in it, but it was a start. I pushed the trapdoor all the way open and climbed up. Above me was a set of steel girders, and on the girders was the machinery for driving the lift. But the really interesting thing was what was right beside me: an ordinary door with no lock.
On the other side of that door there was a lot of stuff, mostly paper, and I found out that the US in USE probably stood for UNITED STATES, because it was written on every box, book and piece of paper in the place, though I still had no idea what the ‘E’ was for — EMPIRE, probably. Well, apart from a locked door, there were only two ways out of that room: a set of wooden stairs that led to the floor below, where the lift shaft terminated; and a door that led to another tiled tunnel. This one had lights, and went a long way, ending at a steel staircase with a small concrete room at the top. The room had no windows but had a heavy iron door that was painted green and was bolted.
As I stood in the concrete room, in the light that came from the small grilles high up in the walls, a funny thing happened: a tram went past quite close by. I had lived near a tramline all my life and the heavy banging of tram wheels on steel joints woke me up every morning, so I knew exactly what it was. I had been under the ground for hours, and I had come up near a tramline. I wondered which one it was, then I remembered that I had been following the river west. The nearest tram crossing was a long way off, wherever it was. I slid the heavy bolt aside and opened the door.
I was inside a small rectangular area surrounded by a high wire fence with barbed wire on top and dense bushes growing at the base. On the concrete wall beside the door was a sign that said: MMBW. DANGER. KEEP OUT. HIGH VOLTAGE. None of it was true, of course. MMBW stood for Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, but the concrete box I had just emerged from was empty. Through the bushes I could see flashes of colour as trams went past, and I knew that it would be easy for me to get out of that little yard if I had something to dig with. But the thing I couldn’t help feeling, as I looked around the area, was that this place had never been used, and maybe never would be.
With the door open, it was easy to use it to climb onto the flat concrete roof and have a look around. Up there I could see all kinds of things I recognised: the city, the top of Government House, the top of Victoria Barracks, which had cannons outside it, and, just along St Kilda Road, about five hundred yards away, the top of the Shrine, which I knew was across the road from Dorcas Street, where Aunty Queenie lived. On the other side of St Kilda Road there was a tall building which I knew was right on top of Railwayman’s domain, and must be USE, THE UNITED STATES EMPIRE. I got my Spirax notebook out and made some notes. I had just discovered Melbourne.
When I got back to the lift machinery room, I paused and looked down the lift shaft. I didn’t feel like making the trip down the ladder, but an adventurer has to grit his teeth and do what he must. First, though, I decided to look in at the old office with all the US stuff in it.
You know, sometimes Railwayman just can’t help himself: he just has one of those days when everything goes right and nothing goes wrong — hell, nothing can go wrong. And this was one of those days. On the wall beside the door to the lift shaft was a board with a map stuck to it and I could see that it was a map of the whole underground railway, showing turn-offs and tunnels I hadn’t even dreamt of yet. I could see my island, and the spot where I had saved Biscuit, and City Boys High, and the river and the railway lines and tramlines that ran above the ground — the real ones. Quick as a flash the map came down, folded itself up, and went into my explorer’s bag. Without t
hat map, no one would ever find me down there, and I would be as safe as houses, which was a pretty strange thing to say, considering the neighbourhood I lived in. I looked around for any other maps or books or equipment that might help me in my adventures, but all I could find was a storeroom full of gas masks and helmets, all too heavy to carry. So off I went back down the ladder.
The trip back to Josephine Island was quick, though nerve-wracking, as I had the headlight on all the way. At the City Boys High railway yard I left the train and walked down the tracks to my island fort. There, I spread out the map, to see where all the stations were, and discovered that I had just come from the United States Embassy, and that I had pinched the grog from Government House — all in all not a bad day’s work. All that remained was to celebrate with a snifter. The wine was strong-tasting and hot, but it was the best I’d ever had, so I sat on the floor and took a swig or two more from the bottle. And then a couple more.
After a while I heard a voice singing ‘The Happy Wanderer’, and forgetting the words in the same place that I always forgot them, which was, I thought, pretty odd. But the voice didn’t bother me, and just kept on going, only stopping whenever I had a swig from the bottle. That was so funny I just had to laugh like hell.
I wave my hat to all I see, and they wave back to me …
Tum-tum tum tum, tum-tum tee tum …
My knapsack tum tee tum …
28 Flame Boy
The worst thing about having a mum is that when you forget to come home because you’ve slept at the hideout, and you finally do turn up and chunder all over her shoes, she doesn’t see the funny side of it. On the whole, it was a pretty confusing morning, especially when Zac thought Mum was trying to kill me and bit her. He was lucky not to get sent to the Dogs’ Home.
I realised, as soon as I walked through the door, that I had stuffed up, and even tried to spin her a yarn about having spent the night over at Granddad’s. But Mum was not interested in that at all — all she was interested in was the bottle of Osborne’s that I was still carrying in my hand, because I hadn’t yet finished it. At least, in the middle of all the yelling and screaming, I found out that Osborne’s was sherry, which I now know to be a particularly nasty variety of plonk. I could see why the Governor had it stashed in the basement; he probably didn’t want his kids getting their hands on it and ending up like me. I reckon the world would have been a much better place if he’d just chucked it in the dustbin. Anyway, next time, I thought, I would give that stuff a miss and try something different, something a bit less poisonous. It’s true that Railwayman does like a bit of a drink after a hard day’s railroading — he’s a man who likes to live hard and play even harder. That’s why he’s Railwayman, for Christ’s sake. But he does not get a big thrill from waking up as sick as a parrot.
Looking back, I’m pretty sure I should have had a bad feeling about that morning, but I already felt so crook from drinking all that rotten grog that I wouldn’t have known one awful feeling from another. I spent the rest of the morning making notes and sketches to stick on the map, as there was a lot of new information to enter. My part of the world, the South Side, as I had come to think of it, was now fairly well filled, both above and below ground, and I felt that I somehow owned it. It comprised factories, living and dead; parks and tips; rivers — well, one river; houses, some tiny old dumps and some mansions; breweries and pubs on corners; people and their stories. And all of it was mine. I was the King of the South Side and could go where I pleased, either above ground or using my secret network of drains and tunnels.
I had not seen Granddad since we got Zac, and thanks to Mr Sanderson’s tip I knew that he had gone straight and was lying low until the heat was off. It meant that I had more time to put into practice all that I had learnt, and to perfect the map, which had become a work of art, and had had to be scaled down a few times to get all the new information in. Spiraxes had turned into volumes of Spiraxes, just like in Tales of the Texas Rangers — you know: Volume 1: The Early Days and so on. Well, I was well past the Early Days and heading for the Latter Days. The map had become a bit of a storybook.
Beginning with Granddad and the copper near the Orange Tree, I was now connecting the people on the map with each other, as I learnt about their relationships. As a result of this side to my project, some weird things started to happen. For instance, because there was a connection between Granddad and that copper, there was a connection between Mum and the copper, and in the same way there was a connection between the copper and Dad and so on. The more I stared at the map the more I saw connections staring back up at me. At first I thought they were magical, and happened all by themselves. But what happened next made me stop thinking of the connections that way, and start thinking of them as being about me, and they began to scare me.
In the afternoon, I thought I’d visit the Sandersons, as I had an open invitation. These days they loved me as if I had nicked the recipe for Vic Market doughnuts and still hadn’t decided who to leave it to in my will. So, despite having a terrific headache, which even a couple of Mum’s Bexes couldn’t put a dent in, the Cartographer packed his Spirax into his explorer’s bag, and went outside to alert his faithful companion.
I was just getting ready to set out when there was the sudden clanging of fire engines in Church Street. As they were visiting a house somewhere over the back of ours, we all rushed out into the street to see. Everywhere you looked there was a blur of red and gold. It was how I always imagined things would look if the local Chinese restaurant exploded. Anyway, they were not heading for our street, which was a relief, mainly because there wasn’t room in our street for one fire engine, let alone a dozen of them. Our street was probably meant to be a lane, but they must have run out of signs that ended with LN and still had oodles that ended with ST, so there you go. Anyway, the fire engines ended up in the next street down towards the river, and there was the usual smoke and people rushing out into the street with their dressing gowns on in the middle of the day, and their hair in curlers, and fags hanging out of their mouths — and I’m just talking about Mum here — to see what the hell was going on. I was down there with Zac in a flash. There was no way that the Cartographer was going to pass up the chance to see the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in action. Besides, Zac had probably never seen a house on fire, and I thought the experience would do him good.
Imagine my surprise when I realised that I already knew this street, and the house that was currently engulfed in flame, and the innards of that very house. Lucky I’d bunged it on the map, really. Standing on the street beside the only fire engine that could get close enough to run a hose down the little walkway to the house were the lollopy blind dame and her kid, and I have to say that I felt a tinge of pride as I looked at him and he looked at me and his mother looked at bugger all. Something passed between us; it was like one of those looks that the Sarge gives to his men when the chips are down, and they know they’re all going to die unless someone stays behind to hold the Jerries off while the rest of them make a run for it. They know it’s the Sarge who’s going to stay and they who have to go — it’s all decided, it could never have been any other way. It was always going to end like this.
There was triumph in the kid’s eyes — Hell, he deserved it just for the sheer bloody effort he had put in — but his mouth was turned down slightly at the corners, which Granddad had told me was the sign of a man who’d lost everything, and had nothing more to lose. Still, there was a hint of that lopsided smile I’d seen the last time I was here, when he was lying on the floor squirming silently in his own blood and staring at me. His mum had him by the hair, and you could tell by the look on her face that she was wondering if she had missed something, something vital that would shed light on how things worked in the universe, and how she might have avoided all this. I could have told her that pondering those mysteries only gives you a headache, that the best thing to do is to turn yourself into a superhero and to go out into the streets doing deeds of daring. H
er kid had understood that, and had turned himself into Flame Boy. I understood it — Jesus, all the kids did. You had to find your super identity and assume it. Typically, I covered my tracks by assuming an assortment of identities — call me excessive — but the principle is the same.
I’d seen the way blind people get on with Labradors, so I took Zac over to the woman and let him sit beside her. She put her hand on him and automatically started patting him, the way you do with dogs; and it was as if a big weight was transferred to Zac, who had been smiling all over his face one minute, and the next looking as sad as hell. I sighed out loud: now I’d have to start training him all over again.
Flame Boy’s mum turned to me and looked as though she could see me.
‘Who’s that? Is this your dog?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Zac — Zac Blayney.’
I wanted her to know that he was important.
‘So you’re Jean’s son.’
She said it with a soft, tired voice, and I felt that on any other day she might have been pleased to meet me.
‘Yeah.’