The Torch

by Peter Twohig

  ‘The Donovan boy.’

  Part of me was glad I’d never heard of him, and part of me wished I had known him. Another part of me didn’t feel anything at all, which made me ashamed.

  That crying kid had the Donovan look, all right. His crying was going to guarantee him a spot in Heaven.

  The next time I saw Barney he was in his new second-hand Ford Consul, which was sitting in the middle of Church Street outside St Dominic’s, and was on fire. Barney, probably under the influence of the Devil, who he’d been fighting all his life with liberal doses of alcohol, had driven into a tram; his car had then bounced off and promptly blown up.

  I was on my way home when I saw it. I had just got off the tram, and walked over to St Dominic’s and looked around in time to see Barney collect the Caulfield tram head on. At first I thought I was seeing things — it was one of those things you never see happening to someone you know. But it was happening, all right. I ran out to Barney and yanked at the door, but I couldn’t shift it, and Barn was off with the fairies. Someone pulled me out of the way, and I stepped back. Then suddenly the whole thing was engulfed in a ball of flame and we all retreated with our hands up.

  It was like Tom all over again: there, right in front of me, someone I’d known all my life was going to die. It was as if the death in the river had not been enough. Then, I had not understood what was happening. Then, I had not known the person who had died. This was real, this I could understand, even if I couldn’t understand God’s motives. I mean, what the hell had I done? This question filled my mind as I hopelessly watched the fire.

  But then there was a kind of black blur, and a man dived into the flames and yanked the car door open and dragged Barney out. Barney appeared to be okay, but was out cold. However, the priest, Father Jackman, was on fire and had to be put out. A garden hose appeared and was turned on the priest. The rest was confusion which, it turned out, was made worse by me fainting from the heat and smoke, and the shock of it all. But the long and short of it was that I ended up in the front of the ambulance that had Father Jackman and Barney in the back. I don’t know why I’m even bothering to tell you that Mum was ropable when she turned up at the Epworth Hospital to murder me.

  The result of my hospitalisation was that the doctor told Mum that I could go home as long as I had a few days off school and stayed in bed and rested. I was to go home with her in an ambulance. I was not allowed to visit Barney, who we were told was in no state to receive visitors, as he was suffering from concussion.

  ‘Doctor,’ said Mum, ‘I wouldn’t let my boy visit that hopeless excuse for a human if he were the last man alive. And here’s some free medical advice for you: when he wakes up you’ll find that he is not concussed but just dead drunk. And good luck to you getting any sense out of him.’

  ‘He owes his life to the priest’s quick thinking,’ said the doctor.

  ‘If that priest had realised who he was saving he might have slowed down a bit and thought things through,’ said Mum, harshly.

  ‘That’s as may be, but the priest is a hero, though he’ll probably die,’ said the doctor in his tender way.

  God save me from doctors.

  ‘Nurse, I have to pee,’ I announced, when Mum had taken the doctor aside to tell him that I had epilepsy, was a well-known lunatic, and needed as much horrible-tasting medicine and needles as could be arranged.

  The nurse drew the curtains around my bed and got a bedpan, which I pushed away. I wasn’t falling for that one.

  ‘Nurse, I don’t really want a pee. I just wanted to ask you to give a message to my Uncle Barney, who came in with me in the ambulance.’

  ‘Barney?’

  ‘He’s out cold — probably drunk. Tall bloke.’

  ‘Oh, yes. What is it?’

  ‘Tell him I tried to visit him but Mum wouldn’t let me. Tell him I’m all right. But don’t tell him he was saved by a priest until he gets his strength up.’

  Whatever Mum said, it was enough to make the doctor change his mind about letting me go straight home. I was given a nice clean bed for the night, one that was across from the one I had recently occupied for an entirely different reason. A few nurses recognised me and gave me a wave, and I realised that I was famous. I was even half hoping that Mona and her beautiful aunty would drop in and hold my hand. But no such luck. Even Mum didn’t drop in to say goodbye, but shot through without a word, home to her snifter and Bex powder, home to her television.

  After they turned down the lights I went for a wander, to find Barney, but couldn’t get past the German guards and the barbed wire. I wondered if there were tunnels, perhaps leading to Dusseldorf. I nodded off thinking of the tunnels we had found, and the little trams with no drivers.

  Next day I missed a Latin test. And they say hospitals are useless. After brekky, I went for a walk and found Barney still off with the fairies. On the head of his bed was a card that said: FLANAGAN, Barnabas. No matter how hard I looked at it, it still made no sense. In a glass by the bed was a denture with teeth sticking out of it here and there. Barney’s mouth was wide open, and he needed a shave. You don’t see people at their best in hospital. I reckon even the Queen would look a bit how’s your father if she was lying there like that, with her choppers in a mug. So I sat there for a while beside his bed and watched the nurses coming and going and the crook blokes coughing and cursing. Finally, I bent down to close the door on Barney’s bedside cupboard, which was ajar. Something was sticking out of it.

  It was the briefcase. I took it out and opened it — it was unlocked; I guessed Barney had picked it. Inside was a stack of papers in a cardboard cover, and a pack of letters tied with a ribbon. I couldn’t imagine what Barney would be doing with it, and my head was full of the usual confusion that filled it whenever I tried to put it all together. I was short to the tune of one connection. I put the briefcase back as a nurse appeared.

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘He will be when he’s properly sober.’

  ‘What happened to his head?’

  ‘Banged it in the accident, but he’ll live. Do you know him?’

  ‘He’s my uncle.’

  It’s easy to get around in hospitals with that line; without it, you’re a shot-down British airman without papers.

  ‘Were you in the accident too?’

  I was tempted to spin her a yarn: a kid gets an opportunity like that only once in a blue moon. But I settled for the truth, though it hurt my brain.

  ‘No, I just happened to be there. But I couldn’t do anything. His car was on fire.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’

  ‘Is that his briefcase?’

  ‘It came in with him. Now back to your ward.’

  ‘What happened to the priest who saved him? Did he die?’

  ‘No. But he’s very sick. He was badly burnt. You might want to add him to your good-night prayers.’

  ‘I will.’

  The prayer list was getting hard to memorise; I thought I might drop the Pope, as Dad said he was about as useful as a Pekingese guide dog.

  As soon as I got back to my bed in Stalag 17 I retrieved some money from my explorer’s bag, which I found in my cabinet, and went down to the old kiosk. I bought myself a couple of superhero comics, and went back to my bed. After reading a top-quality story about The Flash, I went for another walk — the Spirit likes to read his comics a bit at a time, so that it doesn’t feel as though he’s allowed to read them.

  Not far away I came across a ward that was chockers with kids in various stages of hospitalisation. Some were covered in plaster or bandages, a very clever way of getting a pretty nurse to feed you junket with hundreds and thousands; some were just lying there looking as sick as a sparrow (one of my own favourites); while some were having a terrific time and chucking things at each other, which told me that they had probably been prisoners for years.

  I saw evidence of the comic, the Dinky car, and the game, and I decided on the spot to meet these poor kids, and d
o a bit of serious swapping before I went home to Blayneyland. At the end of the ward was a wall of windows, so that the guards could keep an eye on the prisoners, and looking through one of them was the same nurse who had told me to get back to my ward. She was now repeating the act, using a lot of violent pointing and nodding, as if I was in for brain surgery.

  I turned to go, and saw in the last bed before the door a very curious sight: a little kid who was crying. He had no toys, no comics, and nobody. I stopped and sat on his bed. He reminded me of someone, possibly from a different caper — I like to spread myself around. I decided to investigate.

  ‘G’day.’

  ‘H’llo.’

  He stopped crying instantly, this turning it on and turning it off thing being a survival skill that Richmond kids possess in cartloads.

  ‘What’re you in for?’

  ‘I have to have my tonsils out.’

  I saw the problem straight away. Tom and I’d had more tonsils removed than you could shake a stick at. But everyone in our area knew that for every ten kids that went in for this so-called operation, only nine returned. And Peanut’s mate, Shane Purvis, told us that if the doctor was a bit under the weather, he was apt to remove the wrong thing altogether, like an arm or a leg. Tom and I were so sure we were going to die we even picked out our angel clothes (red and white, so all the angels would know who we barracked for) and invented a horrible death for the doctor as a revenge — I can’t tell you what it was because I’m now saving it for Brother Ignatius.

  ‘Did you know they give you tons of free ice-cream afterwards?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘And …’

  It suddenly dawned on me how I knew this kid. He was the Harrigan kid, whom I had rescued from a drain a few months before, when he was being kept prisoner by a loony kidnapper who tortured him. I saw the scars on his ear and his head where he had been burnt. He didn’t recognise me, but it was him all right.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Um, they let you watch TV ’n’ stuff. It’s okay, don’t worry. Would you like some comics to read?’

  He nodded. I could see he was one of those kids for whom a nod is as good as a wink, and speech was practically a waste of breath. He wouldn’t last five minutes as a race caller.

  I hurried back to my ward and grabbed the comics. When I returned he was gone: they had taken him away. I left the comics on his side cabinet and headed back to the Australians’ Hut before the guards missed me. With a bit of luck I’d be in time for mess parade.

  34 Raspberry pash

  Next morning, before I even had a chance to have brekky, Mum turned up and whisked me away in a taxi. I was wearing only my summer pyjamas, as it was far too hot for a dressing gown. Then she was off to the match factory to push people around, and I was left alone to watch television and generally put my feet up. There were no goodies at home, but I still had a fair supply in my explorer’s bag, so I was laughing. Halfway through my Violet Crumble bar I heard the back door being opened with a key. I knew that Mum and Granddad always used the front door, but I also knew that Granddad was lying low so that he could surprise Flame Boy’s dad and kill him. So I reckoned it was Granddad, probably coming home to visit Mrs Morgan next door and get a change of clothes — I’d been keeping an eye on Mrs Morgan’s clothesline and I knew she’d been doing his washing. Not even Mum knew.

  ‘G’day, Granddad.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, give a man a heart attack, why don’t ya?’

  ‘Sorry, Granddad. Are you home for good, or just for a change of clothes?’

  He gave me one of those looks that he only gave to Tom and me — and Aunty Queenie.

  ‘Not much gets past you. Actually, I’m just in and out again. Another few days oughta do it. Shouldn’t you be in school?’

  ‘Not for a couple of days. The doctor at the hospital said I needed a rest. Lovely bloke, that doctor. They should give him a knighthood.’

  ‘What flamin’ hospital? Did you have another one of your turns? Ah hell, and I wasn’t here.’

  ‘Take it easy, Granddad. For a start, I didn’t have one of my turns, and if I do feel like havin’ one you’ll be the first to know. And for another thing, I fainted ’cos I thought Barney was killed in that fire.’ I had a horrible thought. ‘You do know about that, don’t you, Granddad — the fire?’

  ‘Half of bloody Richmond knows about it. What were you doing there?’

  ‘I was just getting off the tram. You should have seen it. Father … um … Jackson … Jackman … saved Barney’s life. You know him? He’s the same bloke who stopped that knife fight in the church.’

  ‘Game little bugger — I heard all about it. I’ll drop in to the hospital later tonight, see how he’s goin’. How was Barney?’

  ‘He was snorin’ like a draught horse when I left.’

  ‘Drunk. Ah well, Barn never did know when to stop. Ruined many a good man, and many a bad one, for that matter. The car was destroyed — I’ve seen it.’

  ‘But they managed to save his briefcase. I saw it at the hospital.’

  I was fishing, but I badly needed to get the connection between Barney and Flame Boy before my brain blew a foofer valve.

  ‘Where did you see it?’

  ‘In his cupboard. The nurse said it came in with him.’

  It was no use trying to keep intelligence from Granddad; he invented it.

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘Someone else wants it too: Mr Sanderson. I overheard him talking to some Russian bloke who went to his house and put the acid on him. Something about them all getting back together like old times. Granddad, I didn’t know you wanted it, or I would have told you Keith had it with him ages ago. Keith was saving it for his dad.’

  He looked at me for a minute and rubbed his chin. I could hear the wheels turning; it sounded worse than a street sweeper going up a hill. But I could see that he was pleased.

  ‘No harm done. Not a word of this to Sanderson, mind. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Eh?’

  ‘Gotcha.’

  Finally he decided, and swung into action, like Batman, despite his size.

  A few minutes later he was ready to go out again.

  ‘Where’s Daphne?’

  ‘Went mad and we shot her.’ That went over well. I put on my serious face. ‘Gone to visit Mrs Kavanagh, I think. Granddad, is someone after you?’

  ‘No, boy, but there are one or two people who’d like to know what I’m up to. So if anyone asks where I am, you don’t know, understand?’

  I nodded hard.

  ‘Yep. Granddad?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you going to kill Mr Kavanagh?’

  He looked at the floor, and sighed.

  ‘No, boy, course not. I’m not going to kill anyone.’

  I sighed too.

  ‘Good.’

  Granddad gave me that look you give a piece of fish when you’re not sure whether to throw it out or give it the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘The fact is, I’m the bloke Kavanagh’s waiting for; he just doesn’t know it. I need to give him a hand. But no one must know. It’s important that I get to that briefcase before he does, that’s all.’

  I nodded. Granddad seemed to know more than I did, maybe more than any of us — I was used to that.

  ‘Things aren’t what they seem, boy.’

  ‘I knew it! We had a bit of a chat, and he didn’t try to murder me or anything.’

  ‘That’s because he’s not a murderer. He’s just a bloke who uses people. He’s been using you, too.’

  ‘He just wants to help Keith.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. He just wants that bloody briefcase. Then the rest of us can go to hell. This time we’re using each other: tit for tat. But I’m in no position to judge — no one is. I just want you to know that the sooner he’s away, the better. And no one is to know. That’s why I want you to forget about his son. No good’ll come of it. I know.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I was say
ing okay, but only because my brain was full, and I needed time to think. I thought an okay would do the trick. Maybe two.

  ‘Okay.’

  My favourite song was ‘The Happy Wanderer’, except I kept forgetting the words. I was just up to the bit that goes

  Val-deri, Val-dera,

  Val-deri,

  Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha

  and laughing pretty loudly, when there was a knock at the door. It was Mrs Morgan from next door.

  ‘Hello,’ says she. ‘Is your granddad home?’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Morgan. Haven’t seen him for … mmm … let’s see —’

  ‘I just heard his voice.’

  Granddad’s and her houses were joined in the middle. Basically, if Granddad had thought too loud, she would have heard it.

  ‘He had to leave. It’s hush-hush. I swore I wouldn’t tell a soul.’

  ‘I’ve only known him for thirty-five years.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Well, even I don’t know where he went. He just grabbed his fresh socks and left.’

  She had a worried look on her face. They had become like the flamin’ Bobbsey Twins since Nanna Taggerty died.

  ‘Just between the two of us, I think he’s gone to the hospital to see Barney and the priest who saved Barney’s life.’

  ‘I don’t know why that priest bothered.’ A popular opinion: Barney had his faults. ‘But thanks. And shouldn’t you be at school?’

  ‘I fainted, and the doctor said I needed a rest. Not a bad sort of a doctor, really.’

  ‘Well, I agree with him. And as there’s no one around, why don’t you come over to my place for lunch, and I’ll see if I can find something special?’

  I knew that Granddad would say yes, even if he was afraid of his own daughter. The trick, of course, was not to tell her.

  ‘You talked me into it, Aunty Vera.’

  So I bunged on a pair of thongs and shot through for a while.

  I managed to pull off the whole caper in total secrecy, which is why they call me the Spirit. And I was so pleased with myself that when I got home I not only sang ‘The Happy Wanderer’ a few times, but also a medley of tunes from Oklahoma!, including my favourite, ‘Everything’s up to Date in Kansas City’.