The Cartographer

by Peter Twohig

  ‘Tell Jean I said hello.’

  I just nodded. Another bloody connection, I thought.

  When I got back to my street and told Mum who God was giving the benefit of his warped sense of humour to that day, she gasped.

  ‘Poor Molly. She and I used to be the best of friends, you know. We grew up together — we were like sisters at one stage.’

  I got a strange feeling, excited and worried at the same time.

  ‘Really? But that’s the first time you’ve mentioned her,’ I said.

  ‘Well, we had a falling out, didn’t we, a long time ago.’

  ‘When?’ Tenacious little bugger.

  ‘Before you were born — during the war.’

  ‘What happened?’

  I realised that I had struck pure gold: Mum was in some kind of dream world, and if I played my cards right I could find out anything I wanted before she snapped out of it.

  ‘It was when I was … driving the ambulance —’

  ‘You were an ambulance driver?’

  She gave me one of those looks that normally comes with a rap around the earhole, but this time there was no rap. She went back into her dreamy state — lucky that. I restated the point, injecting a bit of admiration into it.

  ‘Jeez, Mum, you were an ambulance driver! I didn’t even know you could drive!’ Much better.

  ‘Of course I can; we all could. Who d’yer think did everything when the men were all gone?’

  Yeah, the men — the men were all gone, fighting the Jerries and the Japs. I had forgotten. It’s just that it didn’t seem real to me, because it was all before I was born. I forced myself to think it was real. Nope … niente.

  ‘But I thought you were a lieutenant. Do lieutenants drive ambulances?’

  ‘Yes, I was, and no, they don’t. This was a special job I did for a few months. We all did what we were told.’

  It was time to ask the question that I couldn’t get Granddad to answer.

  ‘Is Dad upset because you were a lieutenant?’

  Mum breathed in through clamped teeth as if she’d just seen Mandrake stick a knife through his hand, and I knew I’d bombed out again.

  ‘I thought you wanted to know about Molly? Anyway, I’d always known her, and when the war broke out, all we women had was each other … and the guys from Kansas, of course.’

  She smiled to herself the way you do when you’re starving, and you suddenly remember that you’ve got a sherbet bomb in your pocket. But I wasn’t paying much attention to the smile. I was more interested in what she’d just said.

  ‘Kansas? What about Kansas?’

  ‘I don’t mean the Kansas in America. No, Kansas was the name of the railway station where the Yanks who came to Melbourne used to catch the train. They weren’t allowed to use Flinders Street Station — too many fights. It was up at Eden Park.’

  ‘There were Yanks in Melbourne?’

  I suddenly knew how that bloke in Oklahoma! must have felt when he sang:

  I went to Kansas City on a Friday

  By Saturday I learnt a thing or two

  Just then I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d told me Henry Bolte was a commo.

  ‘Oh yes. Everything was different then. All we had was each other. Most girls didn’t go out with Yanks, at least not at first.’

  I left my money on the table and let it ride. I was on a winner.

  ‘I used to go over to Molly’s after work and tell her all my troubles.’ Mum smiled faintly. ‘She didn’t have any troubles herself. You wouldn’t think it though. See, she was blind — oh, you saw her, didn’t you? Anyway, I introduced her to a bloke I knew, an American. She got a bit attached to him — we both did.’

  There was one of those big silences you get when a pneumatic drill bloke runs out of road or a Salvos band stops playing.

  ‘So what happened?’

  Mum shivered and pulled her dressing gown around her, despite it being eighty in the shade.

  ‘He was sent up to defend Port Moresby, and was killed by the Japs.’

  She had snapped out of it, but not without leaving me with enough material to fill a dozen Spiraxes. Kansas … Port Moresby!

  ‘I better get over there.’

  She ran back into the house.

  It was raining connections, and my brain had had all it could take. I decided that these would be the last connections I would draw. Maps are supposed to make things easier, not give you a flamin’ migraine.

  Well, if you’re one of those people who’s thinking: House burns down; MFB knock over bits left standing; everyone goes home and lives happily ever after, then you’re probably one of those drongos who backed Tellios for the Cup. The real world might work that way, but the real world ends at the top of my street. The first thing that happened was that while I was inside tossing up whether to go back to the fire, which had begun to get some interesting smells about it, or go over to the Sandersons after all or change my plans altogether and go exploring, there was the sound of a 500cc Triumph Speed Twin out the back, and in walked Dad.

  After the usual light banter I explained what had happened, and where Mum had gone. He nodded and headed for the fridge. Life can be murder when the footy season is over. I hung around for a while wondering if he was going to have that talk with me that he’d promised his friend, but he had obviously chickened out of that, which made me think that the rest of the plan might fall through as well. I mean, how can you face up to a wife who’s as peace-loving as a Gyrene Sergeant, when you can’t even have a quiet word with a kid? I thought: Well, that’s that. Dad will henceforth be a bit of a fixture at our place, just like in the ‘good’ old days. Mum won’t kill him, but his girlfriend just might, if she ever sees him again. Oh God! I reckoned you wouldn’t be able to wipe the smirk off Aunty Betty’s face for about six months, not even with a packet of steel wool and a ton of elbow grease.

  Well, Dad wasn’t exactly talking the legs off any of the chairs so Zac and me decided to return to Flame Boy’s triumph and take notes. It turned out that all the Commandos, bar Matthew Foster, were down there, and having the time of their lives. To commemorate the occasion we decided to award all the members who turned up the House Fire Medal. We stayed until we had given the firemen all the advice we could think of, and our dogs started fighting, then we called it a day. Nothing could destroy the beauty of that afternoon. I had seen a house burn down, and that is better than dying and going to heaven.

  When I got home I found that all was not as it should be. In the living room I found Molly and Flame Boy sitting on the lounge clutching each other and looking pretty worried, as you would, I think, all things considered. And coming from Mum and Dad’s bedroom there was the sound of voices, one of them deep, muffled and filled with lots of easily distinguishable ‘buts’ — I’d know those ‘buts’ anywhere — and the other a bit more excited, more like a racecaller who had drunk too much coffee.

  I can see what has happened, of course — Blind Freddy could (yeah, I know) — Mum’s old girlfriend’s house having just been torched by a person or persons unknown, Mum has done the neighbourly thing and asked her to come over for a cup of tea laced with brandy — don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it — to steady her nerves, while the Arson Squad sort through the soggy debris, and Dad feels that this is a bit of an imposition, as he was just about to open a bottle of beer and watch Six O’Clock Rock. After they have calmly discussed the matter he will agree with Mum and normal transmission will be resumed.

  Molly says to no one in particular: ‘It looks like we’ve come at a bad time.’

  ‘Not really,’ I say. ‘They do this all the time. It’ll be okay. I’m used to it.’

  Just then there is a sharp crack and Dad comes out looking like he just got his face slapped. It must have been the ‘buts’: you can overdo that. Mum is right behind him and throws something at him that’s crumpled up. It hits him in the back of the head, but he doesn’t care if it’s a bit of paper or half a brick; he’s
out the back door and on the Triumph Twin like a rocket. I’m guessing he finally had that little chat with Mum — call me psychic.

  Mum straightaway says to Molly something that I thought was worth bunging in the Spirax. She says: ‘I’m sorry you had to see that, Molly, love.’ And she goes over and tries to calm herself by pouring a cup of tea. Meanwhile I pick up the crumpled thing and shove it into my pocket and take it down to my room. When I’m by myself I open it up to see what the ruckus was all about, half expecting it to be Mum’s old driving licence from the war. But it’s something that sort of flushes my thoughts away like water down a toilet, leaving me sitting like a statue.

  It’s a photo, and I see the back of it first. It says: At St Kilda Beach on our anniversary.

  29 Josephine Island

  I wish I could say that Dad went down swinging, but it was a bit of a walkover and, technically, someone should have told Mum to retire to a neutral corner. But in my street, there are no neutral corners.

  So it was Dad who did the retiring, to his motorbike. I hurried out the back to open the gate for him, the way I always did, and found him sitting on the bike with the motor idling, looking as if he was in another world, and I knew where. I walked up to the tin gate and pulled it open until its drooping foot jammed against the ground. I waited.

  ‘Hop on.’

  Dad didn’t look drunk or particularly upset, so I thought it might be safe to agree to a little ride.

  I stepped up on the footpeg, climbed onto the seat and clung to the loose buckles at the back of his leather jacket; and he kicked the bike into gear and rode out into the lane. I had expected one of those rides around the river that gives you a heart attack, because Dad was especially good at those, and pretended to be a TT racer. But instead we turned up Church Street and rode straight up to North Richmond without even getting out of third, as if we were part of the Moomba procession, which is no way to treat a Triumph. But I could tell by the way Dad ignored all the red lights and the frantic bell-ringing tram drivers that he was preoccupied. I knew Dad, and I knew he was rehearsing a speech, because Dad spent half his life rehearsing speeches, and the other half chickening out of making them. We went to his other home, in North Richmond, and pulled up outside the front door with the motor running. Straightaway his girlfriend came out with a big smile on her face and walked over to us. She put one hand on Dad’s shoulder and shook my hand with the other. I responded automatically, like a Labrador — it must have been her smile. Dad turned the motor off and made his speech.

  ‘This is Tom.’

  You wouldn’t read about it; I mean, he only had to get one word right.

  ‘No, love,’ she said softly.

  He was now properly flustered and corrected himself.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you at last,’ she said. ‘I’m Lorna Bentley. I’m a friend of your dad’s,’ she added, just in case I was blind. ‘Got time for a cuppa?’ she asked. ‘Come in.’

  She watched as Dad propped the bike, then we all went inside. In the kitchen, Dad and me parked ourselves at the table, while Mrs Bentley made tea, making it look about as easy as playing the clarinet. As she bustled around nervously she talked in the same kind of friendly way as the time I’d hid in the hall cupboard.

  ‘Well now, what have you been up to today?’ she asked me.

  ‘A house burnt down near our place; I’ve been at the fire.’

  ‘Molly Kavanagh’s place,’ said Dad tonelessly. ‘It was just a matter of time — her son probably did it. I still say it was him who set fire to my old Morris Cowley.’

  ‘I didn’t know Molly was still alive,’ said Mrs B. ‘Are they all right?’ she asked me.

  ‘They were okay when I left,’ I said, feeling that I had completely lost control over the connections and that they now had a life of their own, like the Creeping Unknown.

  ‘But where will they go?’

  ‘They were in our lounge room when I left.’

  ‘And did you get a chance to, you know …’

  Dad looked around the kitchen for a place to hide, like a cockroach when the light comes on.

  ‘I see,’ was all she said.

  ‘She knows; she saw a picture of us together.’ He sighed and folded up a bit, like a piano accordion.

  Mrs B sighed too. She smiled at me, in that way adults have of changing the subject using just their face.

  ‘Best I get him home,’ said Dad, and we all got up, and Mrs B tucked a few cream bikkies into my pocket with a wink.

  The trip home was much longer because this time we went the scenic way, around the river. Both Dad and me needed the time to think. I thought about Flame Boy and Dad’s car. For the first time I envied him. He was not just a superhero in the making: he’d made it. I thought about all the adults in my life and how most of them had no super powers to help them make things happen. But then, how different would they be if they did have super powers? Would they know when was the right time to use them? I thought again about Flame Boy. He hadn’t even grown up and already he was losing control over his power. I started to think about my own super powers, then stopped. I didn’t want to.

  As the bike swept around the big curves of Alexandra Avenue I looked over to my right and saw beautiful Josephine Island turning away gracefully, and realised that we were right on top of the secret railway, and following it. I tried to reach down with my toe to touch the road — to let the little train know I was there — but it was too far. Just then we leaned left and my dangling ankle brushed the hot pipe for a split second, and I knew I was sick of living like this. That was when I started thinking about the mission.

  Dad rode down our street and dropped me off. Then he reached into his pocket and gave me ten bob, which was a fair bit of money.

  ‘Take care of your mum.’

  Then he was gone again, this time for good, I think, and I was left to wonder how he was going to get on when he arrived back at Eden Park, because there was no coming back here for him. It was weird, really, because I never worried about Dad, just as I always assumed that he never worried about me, but just then I did. I hoped he and Mrs Bentley would be okay, and that I could visit them, as they had discussed. The important thing was that I knew where he was and that he had a friend — one who was free and easy with her cream bikkies.

  In the meantime I was curious to see how Molly and Flame Boy were getting on. Would I return to the living room to find Mum and Molly getting stuck into the brandy while Flame Boy knelt behind the couch piling up Australasian Posts against the wall? Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of The Cartographer Faces Life!

  What happened was this: I walked into the living room to find everyone having a cup of tea and a bit of a cry. There were also two new people in the room, one whose appearance made my blood freeze and my face cook. It was Murphy, the fat copper who lived near the Orange Tree, and this time he was wearing his uniform and taking notes as if note-taking was going to be banned any second. He must have heard me come in, because he looked up from his notes and gave my bloke’s hat the once-over.

  ‘Where’d yer get that ’at?’ asks Murphy.

  ‘Me granddad gave it to me.’

  I like to deal with issues economically, if not truthfully.

  ‘Just don’t forget, I’ve got my eye on you.’

  Now there’s a conversation stopper. Then the fireman — the second new person — pipes up: everyone hates the kid.

  ‘Can you explain where you were and what you were doing when the fire started?’ he says, lacking the punchy style of the copper so much that I feel like telling him to stick to fighting fires.

  ‘Over at my granddad’s place.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ cuts in Murphy.

  ‘Yes, he was,’ says Mum. ‘He just got here.’

  The fireman looks at Flame Boy and draws breath to speak, but is cut off at the knees by Flame Boy’s mum.

  ‘And you can leave my boy alone, too,’ she barks, sounding like the Sarge. ‘He’s been looking afte
r me all afternoon.’ You can almost hear the fireman’s balls shrink.

  Mums hate everyone.

  So, getting no change out of any of those present, the authorities leave us alone to examine our situation, because a situation is just what it is.

  Mum comes back from the front door and says to me: ‘Constable Murphy wants to have a word with you,’ and jerks her head back towards the door. I wait for a sec, hoping she will add: But you just stay right here and let that bastard wait till hell freezes over, but I can see she’s got other things on her mind.

  Murphy gives me one of those looks that kids hate unless they’re seeing it on Robert Newton’s fizzog in Treasure Island.

  ‘So, you little bastard, lost yer dog, ’ave you? Look on it as a little lesson. I ever see you at my place again and it’ll be you who gets a bullet in the head. Now piss off.’

  He walks off, leaving me glued to the spot and feeling like my guts just fell out. It’s one of those moments — I’ve had a lot of them, so I can spot them — when you realise that despite a lifetime spent putting in a hundred per cent effort in the getting things right department, you’ve really only been standing still pulling your dick, as Dad says, while someone else, in this case the biggest prick in town, is working the levers.

  I drag myself back into the living room and am surprised to find Mum standing there quietly waiting for me, as if she is expecting me to announce that not only have Constable Murphy and her beloved son decided to bury the hatchet but there has been talk of adoption. But as that news is not forthcoming, she flops down into an armchair and looks at Flame Boy. Then she looks at me. Then she kind of hangs her head for a moment, as if she’s trying to work out where Burke and Wills went wrong. The look on her face reminds me of one of those two-year-olds at the training stable when you offer it a carrot and an apple at the same time. Finally, she looks up, and I can see an expression like the one she gets when she’s halfway through making a cake, and she turns the page and the rest of the recipe is missing.

  ‘Molly, you and Keith will stay with me.’