by Peter Twohig
The next item on the agenda was the whereabouts of Keith Kavanagh, alias the Torch. I couldn’t bear the thought of him being alone out there, Granddad or no Granddad. I needed to know if he’d been spotted. But I didn’t really expect a response from this lot, as they had only joined the Olympians to avoid Matthew Foster (I had yet to remind them that it was their idea, not mine, that he be allowed to join the Commandos in the first place; I was waiting for the juiciest moment), but had decided to stay for Mrs Sanderson’s chocolate crackles, coconut ice and toffees, which kept your teeth stuck together for about half an hour (which did tend to slow down meetings, however).
‘Should we be talking about this in front of Lettuce?’ said Charles, who was our keenest member by a mile and would probably end up being the next Special Agent, especially as he always seemed to know rules that none of us had even dreamt up yet. Actually, this was a good point, but none of us felt like giving Lettuce the push, as he couldn’t hear properly.
‘I don’t know if he’d even hear us,’ said Johnno Johnson, seriously, reading my mind like Mandrake the Magician.
‘I heard that,’ said Lettuce, helping Johnno out.
‘I vote that we make him a member and then he can stay and talk about the Torch,’ said Luigi, who came from a family of about thirty-five children, where every little issue was discussed by everybody for about two days before a decision was made; in short, a family where everyone got a guernsey.
So we voted, and Lettuce was made a member, and we all grabbed a piece of coconut ice.
‘That was pretty easy,’ said Lettuce.
‘I thought you were going to make me jump in the river or something. So who’s this kid you’re looking for?’
‘Keith Kavanagh, alias the Torch. He’s a firebug. The police are going to find him and torture him.’
‘What are you going to do with him when you find him?’
‘Get him a train ticket to Albury.’
‘Where’s that?’ said every member except Zac, who already knew.
I waved a wing at the front window.
‘Up north.’
They all nodded. A kid will never admit that he does not know where the compass directions are, unless that kid is a girl. Directions are a boys’ thing, like knowing how to do the Around the World with a yo-yo. With girls it’s knitting. I have never seen a mum do yo-yo tricks.
‘So what’s he look like?’ said Lettuce.
‘He’s got a head like a duck,’ I said, because it had to be said, kid or no kid.
‘He’s at our place,’ said Lettuce, looking for the biggest bit of coconut ice.
‘He’s not talking about a real duck,’ said Johnno Johnson, who was allowed to say that, as he was Lettuce’s friend. ‘He means he just looks like a duck.’
‘Yeah, I know who you mean: piggy eyes, lots of black hair like a bear, head like a duck. Likes fire a lot.’
Lettuce finally found the biggest bit. It was okay: I could see he had a real fondness for the stuff. I was willing to bet that was how my Dad started off: coconut ice.
I had never heard a kid described entirely in animal parts before — none of us had. We waited for more, but the Gettis Zoo had closed for the day.
‘What’s he doing at your place?’ I said.
‘He turned up this arvo and asked Mum if he could light the incinerator in exchange for a sandwich. And she said yes, but he could stay and have tea with us — it’s only sausages — and we could all have tea in the back yard. That’s so she could keep an eye on him and so he couldn’t come in and burn the house down.’ He chewed thoughtfully; it was like watching a paddle steamer. ‘Like at your place.’
‘Meeting closed.’ I said. ‘Lettuce, my boy, I’d like to go over and say hello to young Kavanagh. Talk over old times.’
‘I dunno,’ said Lettuce. ‘Mum told me not to tell you he was there. In case you murder him. She heard what you did to Oby.’
‘Hmm. Have another piece of coconut ice, Lettuce. No, have two.’
Lettuce got the evil eye from his mother when he walked in with me in tow, but she could see I was happy to see the outlaw boy, and was not about to wring his neck for any past misdemeanours. Flame Boy for his part was in some kind of holy state, like the Children of Lourdes, and greeted me the way Tom used to when he was sleepwalking; in other words, he ignored me completely. Granddad told me that fires have that effect on firebugs, a bit like the effect bribes have on the average policeman, or the effect Debbie Reynolds has on the growing boy. I understood, because with me it was the Captain Video serial at the flicks. If you blinked you could be the only kid in the picture theatre who didn’t see the best bit. And if you blinked right at the end you would have just wasted half an hour of your life.
‘Keith! Mate! G’day!’ I had to give him the Big Blayney Hello, as the whole family was staring at me as if I was a TV set. I thought the lack of a reply might have been the result of my not using his superhero name. I stepped closer.
‘Um, Torch?’
Flame Boy continued to ignore me, as he was stoking at the time, despite the presence of bangers and tomato sauce, the Spirit of Progress’s second favourite food, rating about an eight on the smell scale. There were so many things about him I admired: his determination to perfect his superhero skills, his easy way of poking the glowing bits to make them burst into flames, his hair, which hadn’t been cut since before Christmas and made him look like a member of the Coldstream Guards who’d gone AWOL. He had reached the peak of his superherohood. I felt that he would never be more comfortable than at that moment.
‘Sausages, Keith?’ said Mrs Gettis.
‘He’ll be along when he’s ready, Mrs Gettis,’ I said, grabbing the bangers meant for Flame Boy. ‘He’s concentrating. I’ll have ’em.’
So we sat and munched, and I gave my bangers an extra dollop of Tommy’s sores, as Tom and I used to called it. And we watched the genie working his magic.
Finally, Flame Boy was satisfied, and came over and hopped into the goodies. And I could tell by the way he ate, thoughtfully and slowly, two things: first, that he wasn’t starving, but had eaten recently, and second, that he was thinking about his father. I knew that because there was nothing else for him to think about, except, perhaps, his mother. But something told me that was not the case.
I went over and sat beside him while we waited for dessert, which turned out to be something yummy that looked like pus.
‘Torch —’
‘You took it!’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Now he’ll never come back. He needed it.’
‘No. I didn’t even know where it was. A lot of people have been looking for it, you know. One of them saw me coming out of the old tannery and put two and two together. You’re lucky they didn’t catch you as well, or you’d be in jail.’
‘What do you care?’
‘You’re not the only kid who’s missing someone. Look. Your dad told me he was going to get you and take you away with him. I don’t want them to hurt you. I can take you to where I saw him, where I think he’s hiding. Okay? He’s bound to turn up there again. It’s the best I can do.’
‘We could go away.’
‘And there’s your aunty, don’t forget. She’s waiting for you at our place.’
‘No. Me and Dad can go away.’
‘That’s right. To Albury — I can get the tickets.’
‘Show me where he is.’
We took the main drain up the hill under Rooney Park, and came out at the big underground space not far from Eden Park Station. I could tell by the look on Flame Boy’s dial that he’d never been this far up the drain before, and was a bit nervous. It made me feel good to be in control of the situation, to know exactly where I was. If I’d had Brother Timothy with me just then, I’d have switched off the torch and shot through, and it would have been Adios, amigo. They wouldn’t find him for years, and when they did, he’d be gnawing on a dead rat, have a long white beard, and be stark-ravi
ng mad, like Ben Gunn in Treasure Island.
We went to the platforms at Kansas Station, and looked all over the place, and called out — nothing. We went to the underground offices I had once found, and searched for signs of him, but there was nothing. Finally, I got my pencil and a sheet of paper from my notebook and wrote ‘KK’ on it, and left it on Platform A with a rock on it.
‘C’mon, Keith … Torch. Let’s get out of here.’
‘No. I’m waiting.’
‘I don’t think he’s hiding here.’
‘I don’t care. I’m staying. He’ll come back.’
A train pulled in to Eden Park Station, nearby, and made a whole collection of heavy metallic echoes. We waited until it had gone on its way to Burnley.
‘There’s no way out, except through the drains. It’s dangerous.’ He wasn’t listening.
‘Look, let me show you how to get to Eden Park Station. I’ll leave you with the torch. But you can only use it to get back here one more time, then to leave, otherwise the battery might run out. I’ll come back with some food.’
I took him to the main station, which was in constant use, and showed him how to get onto it. Then I gave him the torch and asked him if he could find his way back to the old wartime station. He said he could.
Next morning before breakfast, I went down to Corbetts newsagency and bought some new batteries for Tom’s old torch. Then I got a few victuals, filled an army canteen with water, and was off. When I got there I couldn’t find Flame Boy, so I just left the goodies on the platform at Kansas Station and went back. I hoped he wasn’t out checking the local buildings for flammability, as I now lived in one of them.
38 The Mole Patrol swings into action
I hoped Flame Boy would be okay up at Kansas Station because I had an important adventure to follow up. This was the day the Mole Patrol had decided to explore the tunnels we had found under Darrods. In fact, I had been itching like hell to get down there, as the underneath of cities was the Spirit’s personal territory. No one knew the underground bits of Melbourne like me, not a soul. Except, apparently, Fergus Kavanagh. And Bob Herbert, who was a thoroughly bad bastard and who chased me down there last year and shot at me. And Mr Sanderson, who seemed to know everything about everything, but who was also looking for Bob; and whoever made the map of the tunnels that I nicked from the basement of the US Embassy last year — as I said, I have a bit of a past. And Flame Boy, whom I had shown a lot of my secret drains to. And the bloke who put the Harrigan kid in the drain, and got put in jail for his trouble, thanks to me dobbing on him like mad. But no one else. Except whoever put the drains there in the first place, though he would have died and become the Drain Zombie.
The Spirit needs fresh drains and tunnels like lamingtons need coconut. He needs them so that he can be free, be brave, and to show Tom that it was okay for him to die, and he doesn’t have to worry about me. Also, it gave me a special place where I could have a bit of a cry when I felt like it, and listen to the echo, so that it sounded like having Tom back, though we didn’t cry together very often, except for the time that our birthday-present bikes didn’t turn up on time. Sometimes crying creeps up on you and waits, as if it knows that you’re going to need it — it’s like a land mine. That’s what it did that day. We didn’t have time to go down any drains, or even to our bedroom: we just exploded. The other time Tom cried was when Abbotsford the cat ate our pet blue-tongue, Lizzy. Tom was very fond of that blue-tongue, while I, on the other hand, can take or leave a lizard. I am more your vicious killer Labrador type of kid.
Melbourne in summer is a rotten place. For a start, you have to wear shoes everywhere you go, or your feet melt right onto the footpath and you die a horrible death, like the saints who got burnt at the stake for not renouncing their faith (though I would have been renouncing so fast you wouldn’t have seen me for dust). Also, the tar melts on the roads, which makes it hard to even catch a tram sometimes, and you get home with black stuff all over your runners, and have to repaint them (though they do smell terrific — think seven). It’s for that reason that nine out of ten superheroes agree that the best place to be in Melbourne in summer is either in water, or in a drain.
The nearest water was the river. It was close, and it had a constant supply of fresh water, so you could piss in it as much as you liked, and it was brown, which made it mysterious. However you couldn’t swim in it, because the sides were too steep, and Mum said it was bottomless, which would make it hard for paddling. The next nearest water was the baths, which smelt about a six on the smell scale. But there were usually hundreds of kids there, and that’s a lot of piddle. That’s why they have showers.
Then there was the beach, which lacks the Yarra’s constant supply of fresh water, so that the piddle has just sort of built up over the years. There is so much piddle at the beach that, close in to the shore, it’s all green. Tom and I never did figure out how to swim in it without getting it in our mouths. We often saw dead fish lying on the sand. There you go. Also, the beach is a couple of long tram rides away, so far, in fact, that by the time you get home, you’re dying to get into some cold water all over again, and get under the hose straight away; and if you were Tom you wouldn’t even take your clothes off first. Tom never did anything exactly the same way as other people, not even me, though only a few people ever noticed that, because people just see what they want to see.
So James and I were happy to get into Darrods and get under the ground again. It was Saturday morning, so I reckoned that, if worst came to worst, and we couldn’t find a way out somewhere else, we could just go back to Darrods before lunch time, and we’d be able to get out the way we got in. Naturally, I didn’t tell James this, as I didn’t want to alarm him; it was bad enough that I was worried.
I had appointed James Quartermaster for the trip, as I knew his mum would provide good munga, but I cautioned James against telling her anything about the mission — or the Mole Patrol — or the Olympians — or Flame Boy — or (especially) me. He was simply to say that it was a Commandos adventure at Charles’s place, which was just across the river from his house. If she asked him whether we were going down any drains, he was to say no. I had to explain to him that it would not be lying, but a special technique to throw the enemy off the scent, which he thought was reasonable. The Spirit of Progress is considerate of ladies, and doesn’t want them to worry. As for the other Olympians, I couldn’t see how I could get the whole club down there without us all being thrown out of Darrods. It’s easy for most boys to keep a secret (otherwise they’d all be locked up in a home, and the streets of Richmond would look like the final scene from On the Beach), but as Abraham Lincoln said, a bunch of boys can’t keep a secret from any of the people even some of the time.
When James turned up at the Sandersons’ that morning he had his explorer’s bag containing the victuals and his bathers, all you need for a day out in a hot city. Mrs Sanderson thought James was one of the nicest kids she had ever met, and insisted that he add a few chocolate crackles to the goodies supply, which he agreed to do, so as not to hurt her feelings (though we both knew, telepathically, that, once outside, they would melt in nothing flat, and would therefore need to be scoffed on the spot). Then we had a drink of lemonade, because it was going to be a scorcher, filled our army canteens — I had insisted that James buy one at the army disposals shop — and were off.
The Darrods entry routine went off without a hitch for the simple reason that it was Saturday morning and the place was packed with more ladies than a knitting grand final. Even the ladies who saw us, and that was a hundred or so, just thought we were two cute little boys who were with their mummy, and smiled at us fondly as though they understood. It makes you wonder.
Underground, there was work to be done. We found our way to the tunnel marked VB VIA HQ and, after taking a careful look into it in case one of the little trams was rushing through the tunnel, we entered. I chose that tunnel because of the name, and because it had enough room alongs
ide the track on both sides to walk, so that if a tram did turn up we wouldn’t be creamed, the way Johnno Johnson’s dog, Digger, was creamed by the Dandenong train, and spread out all the way from the Richmond Brewery to South Yarra Station.
After we had walked a few hundred yards, and seen a few steel doors (which wouldn’t open), we came to a sign that said HQ, and then to a railway yard that had a set of steps with double steel doors at the top. The interesting thing about this railway yard was that it was huge, and had six little trains in it, each consisting of a loco pulling a string of open carriages big enough to sit in. The whole place was lit up with dull lights, but the trains were dead. Attached to each train by a cord was a large card which said: DIRECTIONS FOR USE OF TRAIN IN EMERGENCY.
I gave it an eight on the deliciousness scale. We were impressed, for completely different reasons. For James it was the discovery of a lifetime: little trains that ran on little tracks deep beneath the city, which had been there for probably a hundred years. They didn’t have to be running and have real, live train drivers sitting at the controls, and crowds of people waving to each other in summer hats. They didn’t have to be blue with yellow stripes, like some other train I could mention (they were all a lovely green that reminded me of Melbourne’s trams). It was enough for James, who had a big electric train set of his own, that they were there.
I was impressed just as much as James, but not because I’d never seen an underground railway before, because I’d seen more underground railways than I’d had hot feeds — just not here. The others I saw only a few months before, down under City Boys High, tunnels that Mr S made me swear I’d never tell a living soul about, unless I wanted molten lead poured down my undies — except I made up that last bit. No, I was impressed for another reason.
I’ve already mentioned that I couldn’t get down into those other tunnels anymore, as they had stuck new locks all over the place, because, I think, of the daring exploits of Railwayman and his excellent pinch bar, the tool for every occasion, as Barney is fond of telling me. You can use it for busting off padlocks, levering the lids off crates, and opening all kinds of doors. I didn’t have it with me then, because I was just exploring, and Barney had told me that when you’re in an unfamiliar neighbourhood you don’t want to be sprung by the superhero’s natural enemy, that is, anyone wearing a uniform (or, if you’re a kid, anyone having a deep voice), while you have your pinch bar with you, as people like that are apt to get the wrong impression altogether.