‘Alfred told me I was stunning,’ said Judy, shading her eyes from the sun.
‘How embarrassing,’ I said coldly.
In fact Anne behaved very well, inviting us to choose a hymn and asking if James or I would like to read a verse from the Bible. She did not ask my mother to speak, for which I was very grateful.
‘How about “The Rose”,’ said my mother. We were sitting at the kitchen table, not eating breakfast. She’d had her black hair cut into a bob, sharp around her face. Her cheeks had that bright spot that told me she’d already had a drink.
‘That isn’t a hymn.’
‘“Angel of the Morning”?’
I frowned at her.
‘How about “Bette Davis Eyes”?’
One of my mother’s favourite things was to watch Countdown with me and berate or imitate the singers. She could shame me out of my love for a band. I had thrown away my Culture Club album after she had appeared from the bedroom, her hair teased up and tied in rags, and wearing every one of her bracelets and necklaces. She’d been in there for nearly an hour. I was learning to keep my passions a secret but it was not always easy. I had almost no one to talk to.
She began to sing “Angel of the Morning” and I interrupted her, saying, ‘“Amazing Grace”.’
‘Bit obvious.’ She reached for her cigarettes.
I hadn’t decided yet whether or not I would go to the funeral. No, not true. Of course I would go. It was inevitable. I had no choice; not like James, who seemed to have dematerialised since Saturday. He had not turned up that night, and he was not answering the phone at his flat.
‘What will we wear?’ I said to my mother.
‘Clothes.’
I quivered with hatred.
‘Where’s my lighter?’ When she turned around I snatched two cigarettes out of her pack and had them in my pocket before she turned back.
‘I can’t think of any other hymns anyway,’ she said. ‘“Jerusalem”.’ She lit her cigarette. I got down from the table before she could start to sing it.
I could remember nothing of my parents’ marriage; nothing of the nights of drinking, the sudden attempts at leaving – both of them fighting for the car keys, determined to be the one who went. Girls at school, fools who had tried to become my friend, sometimes commiserated with me about having no father, but I never felt it. I could not remember living with him. My first memory of him is being left outside his chambers with James, sitting in the plush chairs he kept for his clients. The door to his office opens and he puts his lantern face round, and he says, ‘Not long.’ James passes me my book of the Wombles. We are calm and happy enough, for a visit to my father’s house means quiet, and the superior toys of our half-siblings, which James was never too old to enjoy.
Now the kids at school, usually wary of me, afraid to be infected by my virulent unpopularity, were commiserating again. When it came time to hand in my Maths homework I had nothing and Mrs Lennon looked surprised.
‘This isn’t like you,’ she said, pausing by my desk.
‘My father died,’ I said loudly.
Raffaello turned around and gave me a startled, then sad look. A few minutes later Katie Goldsworthy passed me a note that said, We hope your OK.
Judy made a great show of protecting me at lunchtime, when other girls came round to share in the drama. ‘She’s too upset to talk,’ she said, when they bent over to look into my face. I had mastered the tears this time. I let them roll down my cheeks and then wiped them away with a corner of my school blouse. ‘Thank you,’ said Judy, to a girl who proffered her packet of cheese CC’s. ‘I don’t think she’s hungry though.’ I heard her telling them that I wasn’t even invited to the funeral because my father’s wife was such a bitch.
I was calculating how much time I might get out of this, how long the hostilities might be suspended for. The girls walked away in a group, their heads together, and Judy and I shared the CC’s.
James and I are sitting outside on the street. I suppose I am three or four years old, so James is about thirteen. We are sitting on the side of the road and I am on James’s lap, and he has started a little fire in the gutter, using twigs from the jacaranda tree over our heads. It is burning quite well. My mother’s lighter lies discarded on the grass. James gives me things to feed into the fire; a twig, a gum leaf. We try a jacaranda flower; it sizzles and fluffs out sweet smoke. James hitches me up on his lap and passes me another twig. The little fire snaps and pops.
This was what I remembered as my mother and I walked up the long driveway to the church. I smelt smoke – someone burning leaves – and I remembered this. I realised I had not asked my mother whether my father was being buried or cremated. It was quite possible that she did not know.
Anne and her two children, Georgie and Oliver, were sitting in the pew at the front. There was organ music, exhausted and sad. The other pews were filling up. There were a lot of families; men in suits, who had probably had morning meetings and were already checking their watches, high-heeled wives in blacks and greys, sullen, bored children in churchy best. My mother seized my hand and pulled me towards the front. My half-sister and brother turned their heads just as we reached them.
There had been a viewing but not even my mother had been able to force me to go to that. My father could be seen between certain hours at the funeral parlour in Darlinghurst, which was where James lived. There was no way James could know this because no one could reach him to tell, but he might ride past it on his bike, or even walk past it. He might be metres from our father’s body without knowing it.
Georgie, smelling of perfume, edged away from me along the pew. She had put on a great deal of make-up. It came to just in front of her ears. I leant behind her to see Oliver just as he leant back to see me; our eyes met. The music changed, and we faced the front, sitting up straighter as the minister and the boys’ choir filed in. The choir took its place behind the minister, one row at a time. My mother squeezed my hand so the bones crackled. The choir began to sing; ‘Amazing Grace’, my song. The boys with the deepest voices stood together on the right. The tallest of them, at the back, with his hands together, his eyes closed, his face sorrowful and his white frock moving with the music, was Alfred.
Anne had organised the wake at the local yacht club, a place of gleaming surfaces and a broad and shimmering view of the harbour. My mother took the first drink that was offered to her and headed for a group of people who watched her coming, wincing slightly, bracing themselves for impact.
A dream came or a vision in which I opened my mouth and fire came out in a blast that levelled this place, scorched it clean. Afternoon sun was streaming in. I walked towards it and out on to the wide verandah. In the corner, sitting on a ledge, was my half-brother.
I went over and sat down next to him. He had his head down and he was staring at his shoes, which were polished a shiny black. With one hand he picked at the knot of his shoelace.
‘Where’s James?’ He didn’t raise his head. His dark hair was just like our father’s, just like James’s.
‘He didn’t come,’ I said.
Oliver made a sound in his throat. It was clear that he was waiting, as I was, for James to appear on his motorbike, his leather jacket on, his helmet under one arm.
‘Do you miss Dad?’ I said stupidly.
‘Duh,’ he said.
‘I’ll get us some alcohol.’
He lifted his head and stared at me. ‘You won’t be able to. Mum’ll see you.’
‘Bet you I can.’
Another memory, another fire. I am in the driveway of my father’s house, which is made of sandstone and looks like a small castle. The driveway is big enough to have its own turning circle, a kind of roundabout constructed of small palm trees and shrubs. James has built a fire by raking up the leaves and branches that were littering the driveway. It was a job my father gave him. We are squatting beside our fire, with Georgie and Oliver hovering, scared, behind us. We have taken some of the rocks from
the roundabout to make a circle around it, and James has brought pine cones from the tree at the back, which crack and pop when we drop them in. We catch a beetle and drop that in too. It writhes frantically and then goes still in the heart of the flames.
Anne looks out of the kitchen window and James picks up one of the dead palm fronds, alight, and walks towards her. She pulls the window shut just as he lunges with it. Bits of burning palm hit the glass, splintering off and spattering fire into the garden.
James catches my hand and we run around the side of the house, away from our sister and brother, down past the swimming pool and into the bush that runs down to the harbour. We sit in a cave, panting, the cave that the neighbourhood boys use to stash their naked woman magazines. This is the place that we brought my father’s Playboys when we found them under the mattress of the bed he shared with Anne. That was the day we were alone in the house, uninvited from our grandmother’s birthday because of our behaviour, which Anne said was rude and devious. On that day, too, we lit a fire, and we burnt one thing from every room in the house. A pair of Anne’s peach-coloured underpants, which I knew to be silk and very expensive. Our younger brother’s Etch-a-Sketch, which I had coveted for years. Our sister’s ABBA poster. A goldfish. A roll of toilet paper. A chequebook.
Alfred stood between me and a waiter with a tray of drinks. ‘I thought you weren’t invited. That’s what Judy said.’ He was in a suit now, the same arrangement my younger brother was dressed in, the same almost every male was wearing – light-coloured chinos, a dark-blue blazer, a striped shirt. He had the portly, high-trousered look of an older man.
‘She didn’t tell me you would be here,’ I said, counterattacking.
‘We do all the funerals. And the weddings.’
‘What kind of singer are you?’ I said.
‘A basso profundo. It’s very unusual for someone my age.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Eighteen.’
Out came my mother from behind the tall curtain that hid the bathrooms, clutching a glass of white wine, which she must have taken in with her. Sometimes in our house there was a half-drunk glass, balanced on the cistern.
‘Who’s this?’ she said, seeing Alfred.
‘He’s in the choir.’
‘I’m Judy’s boyfriend,’ said Alfred with dignity.
‘That makes sense,’ said my mother, looking him up and down.
Alfred looked discomfited.
‘We’re getting a drink,’ I said, and grabbed Alfred’s hand. It was not sweaty, as I had expected; it was warm, and quite soft. When I pushed him in front of me I could smell him. Apple shampoo.
We got to the bar. ‘Three Scotches and Coke. Three double Scotches,’ I hissed at Alfred, and turned my back as the barman approached.
‘I don’t drink,’ said Alfred frantically.
‘Scotch is good,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘For the voice.’ I remembered Judy’s mother saying this. She drank a tot before every performance.
Alfred made his order. I used my body to shield him from my mother as we went back out to the verandah. I carried two of the drinks. There was Oliver, waiting for us.
‘Coke?’ he said, disappointed, as we approached. I handed him a glass. He sipped from it and grinned at me.
We sent Alfred back for more drinks. The afternoon took on a rounded quality, embracing us. I could not perceive things in the distance. After a while Oliver cried and Alfred and I sat on either side of him and comforted him. ‘It’s not so bad. I don’t even have a father,’ I said to him, forgetting for a second where we were, who he was.
‘I have a father,’ said Alfred.
‘What’s he like?’ I said, lifting my head to focus on Alfred’s face. I kept one hand on Oliver’s knee. He leant closer into me and I let him. I pulled him so close his head was on my chest, and he sobbed into it. This was what James would do for me, if he were here. I stroked Oliver’s hair and said again to Alfred, ‘What’s your father like?’
‘He’s a bastard,’ said Alfred. ‘He thinks I’m – he says I’m a poof.’
‘But you’re not.’
‘No.’
‘You love Judy.’
‘Well,’ said Alfred. There was a high polish to the sky, boats on fire, a spill of light on the water. Oliver slid down into my lap.
‘She’s all right,’ said Alfred.
‘She’s my best friend,’ I said.
‘She’s fat,’ said Alfred.
I was pleased, and outraged, mostly because I had been tricked into taking this seriously, tricked into being cruel to Judy because she was leaving me. She wasn’t leaving me. As soon as Alfred could find someone better he would be gone. Some other idiot girl with long hair would be impressed by his manly ways, his deep, commanding voice. Some skinnier girl. I put my face into Oliver’s neck, and took a deep breath of him.
‘I’m going to spew,’ he whispered, and I sprang up, and he managed to get himself to the railing, from where he vomited copiously.
It was twilight when James came to find me at the bottom of our street, where it gave into an empty reserve of long grass. I heard his motorbike but didn’t look up. I had managed to get my mother’s lighter open by stamping on it till it broke, and I was scattering a little trail of lighter fluid from a pile of gum leaves I had made. There was a slight breeze, which might be enough to get things moving.
‘Firebug,’ said James. That was what our father had shouted at us the day we made the fire in the driveway. Bloody firebugs. That was why he banned James from his house, and that was why my own visits had become so sporadic, designed to inconvenience and irritate. He would never know how he had offended us that day, shouting that word at us. It had made us think he did not love us, even though we loved him because he was so handsome and strong, and because he had chosen others instead of us.
James got down from his bike and came over to me. We stood over my little pile of leaves. He felt in his pocket for matches, and handed them to me, then gave me a cigarette. I lit it, dragged on it, and then knelt down, and applied the burning end to a browned gum leaf. The leaves around it caught, and then the fire found the lighter fluid. It raced in a bright crackling stream across the grass and then it stopped. It smouldered briefly, reaching for twigs and leaves nearby, and then went out. I dropped my cigarette on the ground and stamped it out too.
James put his arm around me and I turned my face into his chest. He smelt of leather and smoke. I could hear our mother reversing out of our driveway. She must have run out of wine.
TROUBLE
EMMA and I were walking home from school together. It was September, spring, with a cheerful breeze running along with us, new leaves lit and flickering, the houses hung with wisteria and jasmine. We were walking with Peter, who had been troublesomely in love with Emma for several years. If she’d been alone he might not have dared to follow her but her younger, noisier sister made it easy. I was, without knowing it, combative; sparring with me had relieved the nerves of more than one of Emma’s boyfriends.
Emma walked silently beside us, a spray of jasmine dangling from one hand. A truck, uncommon in our quiet, moneyed suburb, screamed past us. When it had gone, Peter said, ‘A truck drove into my house once.’
‘No, really?’ I was balancing on the low stone wall that ran beside the road. ‘Tell us about it,’ I said, hopping off the wall to land next to him.
He glanced at Emma, who continued to watch the pavement in front of her, which was lumpy with tree roots. ‘We lived on a corner,’ said Peter. ‘It came too fast on the way round, and its brakes failed. It went straight through the fence and into the side of the house.’
‘Amazing,’ I said, kicking a rock.
‘It was a big deal!’ said Peter. ‘If I’d been playing in the yard it would have killed me!’
Suddenly inspired, I said sweetly, ‘Do you often play in the yard, little boy?’
Emma snorted with laughter and Peter blushed angrily. He was quite a handsome
boy, with thick blond hair and long eyelashes. ‘It was years ago. I was much younger.’
A magpie whose nest we were passing swooped suddenly, clicking its beak in Peter’s hair. He swung at it in fright. It flew up into the branches ahead of us and perched there, glaring.
‘Come on,’ I said, prodding Peter in the small of his back.
‘You’re much bigger than it is,’ said Emma.
We went forward, turning to face the bird as we passed, then continuing to walk backwards. The magpie snapped its beak again and hopped along the branch speculatively, but did not swoop.
When I was eighteen Emma and I moved to London, using the money that our grandmother had left us. We had a place to stay: a flat, belonging to wealthy friends of our parents, who lived for the most part in their farmhouse in Surrey. They were in their sixties, and had no children. The flat was furnished with cream carpet and cream brocade sofas. The windows had double glazing, so that the traffic outside could hardly be heard, although it made the ground bounce under your feet when you went outside. The kitchen shone. We took our boots off at the door when we came in, and the carpet would always be warm underfoot.
In our second week Emma started applying for work. I went with her to her first interview and sat outside on the street, in a quickly shifting rectangle of sunlight. First the sunlight was on the steps of the office, which was in a silent lane of low sandstone buildings with pretty window boxes. No cars. Then it moved to the pavement, so I sat there, my back against the cold stone. When the light moved on to the road itself I stayed where I was, growing colder, watching it cross the narrow space.
The door next to me opened and Emma was handed out by a man in a white shirt and linen pants. My legs had gone to sleep. I tried to get up to say hello but the door closed before I was upright.
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