Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  Meanwhile, Vivien’s purse lay where she dropped it in the gutter, heavy with the presence of an unknown mother, not noticed by anybody except the punctilious Rupert Ping stationed in his doorway once more.

  Four

  Miss Bertha McAloon discovered to her surprise that Senator Halloran had been on his way to visit her at the time of his misfortune. His flat tyres delayed him for a day, but he still honoured his obligations. Whilst she distrusted him, she wasn’t the woman to deny herself a taste of refined company. Actually it turned out to be the refined company of two men, not one, plus the dog Ocker who had been recaptured, because the Crafts Consultant of the Australian Historic and Aesthetic Resources Commission had been scouting in the area. The introductions were formal: Miss McAloon Mr Simon Harper-Richards, Simon Miss McAloon, how d’y do, how do you do, good morning or is it past midday time does fly, really, doesn’t it, we’ve come on the suggestion of your neighbour Mr George Swan, my son he is, your son I see Miss McAloon, and what would George be meddling in my affairs for, simply co-operating in our search for notable buildings in the district he assured us your own house is unique inside and not to be missed, well it’s tidy I’ll say that for it and I’m sure it won’t do any good coming in but if you must and see for yourself Senator Mr Simon …

  (I’m silly and I know it, silly and bad too, George’ll cop it from me, only yesterday this bloke went siding with the highway folk, whoever saw Sebbie so carried away looked like he’d have a stroke and good on him I say, smashing our mountain about, the only one we’ve got, I ought be to sending these pansies about their business with a flea in their ear by rights, but then there’s my rights and it’s about time, with the interest of them in power, who knows but they mightn’t laugh, they might see, I’m not that silly I’m afraid to look opportunity in the face and give him the wink.)

  – Come in then. You have to step on this side, the other’s gone rotten on me.

  (No going back now, O glory woman you’re making a fool of yourself sure enough, but it’ll be one in the eye for all them back there, Arthur and all, the art man didn’t go to their places I notice, so it must be he’s heard about my talent, it must be he’s an expert on knitting, well I’ve got a thing or two to show, what a dill to let them in, such threads and tatters, look at those hideous clumps of wool, but it’s all fallen to bits since I went out, a dirty old spider-web, not even proper walls now and I never noticed, nor the carpet gone except round the edges, and the stink of naphthalene it’s a wonder I haven’t gassed myself or maybe it’s what keeps me young probably, I could cry I’m so ashamed, but I deserve it, haven’t I told myself a thousand times the vanity’ll be my downfall and so it stupid-well is, go on you pansies, let your eyes pop out, laugh yourselves silly at my expense, I’ll get young George for this, it’s because I ticked him off about cutting down my tree, that’s what it is, I’ll pay him back you see if I don’t, that’s right Simon Whateveryournameis stick your froggy fingers through the moth holes, ever heard of a moth, well you try to keep them down and you try reaching up there to mend it if you’re my height, no I wouldn’t stand on a table to save Isaiah from temptation, oh I could cry I feel so angry, fat lot of good you’d be in bed I don’t suppose you’ve got anything between your legs bigger than my little finger anyhow and enough hairs to make a decent set of eyelashes, it makes me so angry, and at my age I shouldn’t have to put up with it, I deserve better, haven’t you noseyparkers got more to do with your time, I wish I’d had the chance to straighten my hair at least.)

  – Miss McAloon! Miss McAloon! this is … stupendous. I have never … Frank just look at it, oh Miss McAloon …

  (What’s this he’s raving he’s laughing at me now and him no more than a kid in long pants, no not laughing, can it be, he’s going a bit far isn’t he, just a lump of old knitting, though I must admit a good job, or was when I did it.)

  – Please Miss McAloon may I bring my camera in and take some pictures? They’ll never believe at the Commission. You’ll be famous I promise you.

  – I suppose yes if you really want to Mr Simon … I used to click the button on occasion myself with the Kodak, especially when there were decorated cycles, or the picnic races, or my dear little sister Edith in her wheel chair, but that was a long time ago now, to be sure.

  – We’re most grateful to you Miss McAloon. This will mean so much to Mr Harper-Richards.

  – Of course you’ve caught me unprepared.

  – It’s very kind of you. Now Simon, do you want us out of the way? Miss McAloon to be in the pictures, of course, over here Miss McAloon, should she smile Simon or be serious? whatever you feel Miss McAloon, I’ll make myself scarce then, so I don’t get in the way, give me a call when you’re finished will you? I’ll be out in the car with Ocker.

  (He’s touching my knitting, putting his fingers all over it, what would a fellow like that do for a job with those soft hands? He could put them on me if he likes, just for the trial to see what they’re like.)

  – Your house is one of the marvels of homecraft. And so wonderfully preserved. We’d need to restore it of course. Might be tricky. This doorway is a masterpiece, a masterpiece; what’s that stitch called? Just point towards it please and perhaps a little smile this time thank you.

  – Ribbing.

  (That was done when I was so unhappy, I hate that door it’s such an unhappy door I’ll never forgive Arthur in all my days I’ll never forgive, I never will for wasting my life.)

  – You know I’d be inclined to suggest a buckram backing for the passageway, the walls have been too heavy haven’t they, for the wool, sewn-on buckram backing might answer the problem, but what’s on the other side may I see? Thank you. A monumental wall, really, purely in concept it’s unique, unparalleled, I assure you I see craftwork all over Australia, weaving and tapestry and so forth, but never such knitting. Ah! Ah! Miss McAloon, this ceiling! Ah what a … the ceiling my dear lady is a masterpiece, it’s like the roof of a mosque, were you ever in the east? it’s like the Alhambra.

  – You can’t get much further east than this, she laughed bitterly. Or you’d be in the sea.

  (Three years it took me, that ceiling, and what a waste, I must have been out of my mind to think of it, I wish he’d go away, what did I let them in for, I’ll bet Arthur put them up to this, prying with their camera, all these years he’s dearly longed to see inside where I live and set foot in my house, he knows I’ve got a secret I won’t show him, this’ll be Arthur’s doing. I thought George wasn’t up to it.)

  – How is the ceiling hung?

  – Off of the rafters.

  – The arches are beautiful, exquisite. It’s a lovely lovely house. No amount of cost would be too great to preserve this. It’s priceless. Like nothing else ever thought of.

  (Now everybody can see in to what I’ve been doing and how they’ll laugh, that window’s the death of Grannie, and the ceiling’s what I did without when Arthur went and all those gossips waiting for me to put a foot wrong, which I never would do, not even in a pink fit, oh the dirty smelly place and these city folk tramping in, they’re having me on, the big joke in the photographs.)

  – We’ll mount these photographs and make an exhibition of them if they turn out well enough to do justice to your talent. You’ll make a fortune from tourists.

  (Tourists poking their noses in, I’d sooner be a clown and dressed up, what have I let myself in for, well they won’t come, and I’ll tip you out on your ear too young man.)

  – Miss … Words fail me. Miss McAloon dear, the pictures. The knitted pictures.

  – That’s only what you’d see if you could look outside. They’re kind of windows.

  – Mind-blowing. Please, please come and stand by this one.

  (That’s a picture of how lonely a mad old lady can be, you think it’s just a view of the mountain, it’s a great heap of loneliness, that mountain is, it’s all my mad hopes, I’ve cried more tears than you’d imagine Mr Pansy-Pansy.)

&n
bsp; – The people here, these sculptural figures in the chairs, might I enquire if they’re of anyone? Known to you?

  – Oh yes as it happens. This is the Maharaja of the Hindoos and this here is Queen Victoria for when I want a stand-up argument. I’ve got to have somebody to talk to. Or it’d be madness I’d face. So if nobody comes … And Florence Nightingale over there by my bedside. I was a nurse myself you know and when I was only fifteen I went to Yalgoona Hospital and two weeks afterwards they called me in to say would you like to go to Melbourne to see the Duke of York declare Australia a nation if we pay the fare. They did and so I went, I was the youngest person there, I believe, as an official guest representing the nurses of New South Wales and all because I was the youngest nurse in the State, they found out. So I saw it all, the whole ceremony. I’ve still got it up here in my head. I can still see it, every detail as if it was today.

  – Fascinating. You must tell this to Senator Halloran it sounds like his kind of stuff, he’ll have you on tape.

  (On toast, eat, chomp, spit, chew, disgusting juices, I’m so ashamed I’ve been the biggest fool you could ever imagine.)

  – This is interesting. What’s this? Is it unfinished? Is it just begun, something new? This round end like a wheel with spokes and rings, like the beginnings of a log lying down. What is it Miss McAloon?

  (The grief of my heart, that is, the last weeks of my forty years in the desert, my secret, the thing I’m going to drag around after me, poison, I hate you for that.)

  – But my dear, there are moths in it already. Look, when I poke it, they’re tunnelling in. But everywhere else you’ve put naphthalene …

  – I’m leaving it.

  – But the grubs: it must be saved. They’ll eat it out.

  – That tallow-tree is the only new thing I’ve begun to knit. See who can work the fastest, me or the moth. They cut down my old tree, you see.

  – And so you began knitting another one? We must save it. The concept. A fallen tree. A knitted tree. A triumph of the imagination. Priceless.

  (That lump of sobbing in place of a life, in place of the years of happiness I hoped to have, let the moth eat it, the rot inside here, my heart.)

  Who has done this. To me? Who?

  – Please, please, Miss McAloon you mustn’t cry. You’ll be famous I promise you that. What more can you want?

  – They always said they’d have revenge, they said I was too proud and so I was. Look what you’ve done to me. Now out you go on your ear Mr Pansy. If you think I’m crying you’ve got the wrong idea entirely, that you have. And if you come back here I shall pull the pants off you, because if you’re not any good for that you’re not any good for anything else, I’m thinking.

  Five

  Fido applied his watering eye to the torture of that draughty peephole. He was awake, though it must be past midnight. Lately he’d developed the habit of sleeping for part of the afternoon. Then at night when his parents were asleep he could wander through the dilapidated passageways of the house and shop, his own master. Better than that one horrible muck-up when he had taken the risk in daylight and found the town deserted. No, at night he was able to go out into the garden, wondering why he’d never dared do this before, so safe, so simple, drunk on sweet cool air, lying awhile in the long grass, breathing. This was full moonlight so brilliant you could even see colours, the sky blue, the grass green, the leaves black with silvered edges. Listened as crickets chirruped from one end of the yard to the other. He could see nothing unusual out there tonight either, the place alive and still, even the wind seeming to have dropped a little. He eased his door ajar. He was away, flitting along the corridor to the kitchen, through the back door which had stood open long enough for the hinges to disintegrate. His soft bare feet in the grass, shivers of erotic pleasure so his scalp crawled, his skin tingled. Was this freedom then? Uncle Sebastian turned angry today for the first time ever. Fido was proud of this, informed his diary of how the old man looked in a rage, the loudness of his voice, the flurry of air that followed him, the ponderous thud thud of his boots because his hips were so seized up, how peeping from the shop window he’d seen his mother cry and Uncle Sebastian barging across the road into the repair shed, how his hair had been like white fire. Yes, Fido actually told his diary a proper secret this time: I love him. And the diary now bore this knowledge forever until it might be burned. He lay down in the long grass as before, allowing damp tufts to stroke his cheeks. I love you, he said to the grass, the garden, the crumbling brick chimney solemn as a human face. He forgot the pain in his eye, that bloodshot eye, but he could not forget the ache he felt for company, so even while luxuriating in the feel of night-time and the sounds, he was saddened by loneliness. In his head right then and there he wrote an ode to it which began:

  lonely only me and the grass is grieving

  lonely for the friends I might have had

  except that everyone is gone or leaving.

  It wasn’t what he’d meant to do, nor how he meant to feel, but you couldn’t help it. Unexpectedly he realized the time had come for murdering his parents. Yes, he’d dreamed of this for so long. And now his twelfth birthday had passed without anybody celebrating it, he was almost a man and could handle what must be done. The only thing he couldn’t handle was this imprisonment. Run away? They’d be on the phone to the police, his life wouldn’t be worthwhile. Anyhow, hadn’t he planned for two and a half years to murder them? After the mountain, which must be blown up first, he’d attend to his parents. Unless they could arrange to be blown up with the mountain. He’d planned and planned it, almost enough dynamite lay stacked away, accumulated over the years. But now today, when least expected, all the weapons and explosives hidden in crates under his shelves had gone, vanished. Had he been tricked? Or on the toilet? He supposed they must have been stolen while he was asleep. It set back his plan for the mountain. If he’d known how to use them he’d have done the job long before this. If only somebody had taught him how to make an explosion big enough to blow the mountain to smithereens he’d have done so. It might not take all that much, especially if gelignite was more powerful than dynamite. But was it? And would it need to be buried? How did you use a detonator? These were essential questions.

  And now Fido dreamed he was being given a demonstration. Miraculously, when it was too late, someone was showing him, he did seem to be watching, learning. And he was of course. Half asleep and shivering, shaking with cold, he was gazing into a pool of yellow torchlight and seeing the detonator bound to the gelignite, being crimped to a fuse.

  He crept closer, crouching near the man behind the old shed, the man showing him what he wanted to know, working clearly item by item, steadily completing each stage, his fingers defining their exemplary logic. In that circle of dull golden light familiar objects began to fall into place, you could see how they related. Fido crept closer, breathing beside the man, sharing his skill, the very master he needed most. Yes, you had recognized Bill Swan the Burgher of Calais (let me introduce myself as a prodigy) bowed in anguish, so that you could creep close without fear.

  As indeed Bill was farewelling la dolce vita, confirming his vows finally against the values of Hollywood and its successors.

  – And who the hell are you? he whispered controlling his shock, blinding the child with his torchbeam, a child he had never seen before.

  – I’m Fido thank you, said Fido eager to be friends. And I’ve been watching you because you’re going to blow that up and kill everybody in the shop.

  – Shut up you little bugger, I’m not.

  – Then what else is there to blow up? demanded the child. I know, I’ve been living in that back room and watching for somebody to come to the shed.

  This made everything impossible of course, you couldn’t silence the kid whoever he was, you couldn’t go ahead and demolish the place because they’d know who did it, you should have taken Uncle’s advice and done the job boldly in daylight with Uncle as decoy.

  – I c
ould punch your fucking teeth down your throat, Bill snarled, which wasn’t the sort of thing Fido expected anyone to say.

  – What’s in the shed? asked Fido, learning about the problems of communication and feeling small as a figure in a landscape painting. But the man had already gathered his gear and was sneaking out of the garden, moving unhurriedly, unstoppably, making a getaway. The lifelong needs Fido felt, the desperation to be rid of that mountain watching him all day, took possession of him in one delirious flood of energy. Without thought he sprang into action, darted in front of the criminal and snatched the prepared charge from his hands, enough to start his own explosion at least, the movement so swift and unexpected the gelignite was gone before Billy could hang on to it. With that unknown boy running up through the long grass towards the house, seeming to know where he was going. Next moment his body came hurtling back at Billy, tossed doll-like through the air by a flash of light into a high-pitched silence; his sight blotted out and his shocked ears singing, half-blind and half-deaf, and knocked backwards by the blast, Bill saw that body hurtling through the air and landing as a sad little heap in the weeds. He crawled and wallowed through wet growth, his brain propelling his numb body, act act act, hands grappling with the mulch, must get there, over there, the boy in the dream, the thing he thought had happened. When the lights came on and he could see the house still standing, he expected the calling voices to be Uncle and Vivien, struggled to get up, lurched forward, pitched face-down in something soft, warm, comforting, repellant. This was when the screaming began. He was looking up and wiping his eyes, the poor hurt child, was it himself screaming, no, that screaming was coming from a wild figure struggling against nothing but the night sky, interrupted with hideous retching and vomiting, wavering bright lights. Some awful limp heavy thing flung its weight across him so he couldn’t breathe. There were blades of grass near his eyes, he could see perfectly their moonlit cutting-edges, as if magnified. But all else blotted from his consciousness by a particular stench; a stench he had known once before and enough to frighten him got in at his entrails and screwed them tight. Sobs and whispers, creeping and sucking noises. More lights. Something serious happening. The night itself trickling down into the soil. But he breathed poisoned air, breathing, the lung-cutting chemical smoke now mercifully ate away all other sensation.