I’ll try, he said quietly. I’ll try.
She pushed the chair back with a scrape.
Well, I’m bushed. What a day. There’s another chicken and rice thing in the freezer if you want it. Don’t stay up too late, now. Don’t want that bitch of a teacher on the phone again.
She gave his shoulder a squeeze and loped down the hall to her bedroom. The boy fingered his cheek, testing the bruised flesh, and then put his hand to his side. His ribs still hurt. He opened the freezer door and searched for some ice.
25
Pete was a music journo at The Tele. He spent his evenings going to gigs and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. He was into all sorts of music, as much at home in a Valley basement listening to some head-banging grunge band as he was spending a night at the opera. One of the perks of his job was free tickets to anything and everything, and sometimes he’d pass the tickets to me. The first time, I didn’t realise he actually wanted me to report back on the music until he casually suggested that I might like to jot down a few notes, speak to people, grab a few comments. So that was my first journalistic assignment. The band was some one-hit wonder up from Adelaide. I’d never heard of them, and after the gig I never heard of them again. Pete took my notes and constructed some sort of sense out of them, and the article was printed under his byline. That’s how I became an occasional accidental journo.
Pete was a big guy, well over six foot, with a head of hair on him like a grizzly bear and huge fists like ham hocks. Beats me how he ever managed those typewriter keys. He’d had a few fights in his day, mostly with other drunken patrons at the gigs. He was supposed to be representing the paper, so it didn’t go down real well the next morning when Sandra had to go and bail him out. She stuck by him though. They sure had something, those two.
Sandra was a telephonist; she managed the switchboard and took messages. Never put up with any nonsense. Pete was no match for her temper. We all knew who wore the pants in that relationship.
Still, I think we all envied them a little bit, what they had together. Most of the others in the group drifted in and out of relationships or, like me, stayed pretty much single. Not that there wasn’t a lot of sex going on. I mean, it was the decade of free love. I had my share of one-night stands, just like the next man. Many mornings I woke up in an unfamiliar room with my arm draped over some girl without having the foggiest notion of who she was or what we’d done the night before. Like the man said, though, the times were changing. Mostly the girls didn’t seem to know or even care who I was either.
I worked as an operator on the offset printing machines, huge mechanical monoliths that had to be lifted in by crane through a hole in the roof, and serviced by specialists that came from Sydney. Despite their size, they were delicate and finicky to work on. You had to be sure of what you were doing. I was lucky to get the job at all, considering my lack of experience in recent years, but as I said, the paper was expanding, and what with half the young men going off to Vietnam and the other half dodging that very same circumstance, hard workers with any experience were difficult to find. I was happy to be given the chance, even though I started with a wage so low I may as well have still been loading vegetables.
The years unfolded around me in a blur of colour and music. Harold Holt disappeared amongst a host of conspiracy theories. I was listening to Normie Rowe, the Easy Beats, the Bee Gees, and of course the Beatles, young people’s music, even though I was headed for middle age myself. Girls wore skirts so short they were nothing but scraps of material clinging together with a tantalising promise.
With a steady income again, and a secure job, I decided to take the plunge and buy a house. I was tired of renting, tired of sharing with strangers, sick of having to up sticks when a landlord wanted to sell. I bought this house in 1970 for under nine thousand dollars. Seems incredible. An unrenovated dog box in Bardon wouldn’t go for less than half a million today. Inflation. Makes you think, doesn’t it. I recall when that house next door went on the market a few years back, they wanted offers over seven hundred and fifty thousand. Seven hundred and fifty thousand! And it’s not much chop to look at. Always been a rental. The owners seem to do the bare minimum of maintenance to stop the place falling down. What it needs is someone permanent to give it some TLC, instead of the array of tenants that stay for a couple of months and then disappear to who knows where.
Mind you, this place wasn’t much to look at back then, either. But at thirty-two I was full of energy, and with a good job I had plenty of cash to fix up my own house. I bought it from an old couple who were retiring and going up to Cairns to live with their daughter. I remember they told me they wanted to see more of their grandchildren and dip their toes in the water occasionally. I used to wonder what happened to them, whether they were happy up in the tropical heat, with their ankle biters. They’d be long dead now. They seemed old to me then, and that was over forty years ago. I thought of them often because there were so many little things around the house that reminded me of their presence or, rather, their absence. She had stuck a plastic air freshener on the wall in the toilet. It was well past being useful, all cracked and yellowed with age, but I couldn’t prise it from the wall without fearing that the whole sheet of plaster would come off with it. And every so often I’d find a button or a hairpin or a tin of half-used something or other at the back of a drawer, and it would bring to mind that couple, and the life they made in this house. In my house. They’d raised two sons and three daughters here. The place only has three bedrooms, even now, and one of them is more like an oversized cupboard, so I’ll be blowed if I know where they put them all. But I suppose that’s how things were back then. The chookhouse was theirs too, although I’ve had to do so many repairs over the years that it may as well be new. But it’s in the same position as when they had their own hens scratching around. They were keen gardeners and the place was kept up nicely. Most of the plants I’ve got here today are similar to what they had growing then. Why reinvent the wheel, I thought. Mind you, my interest in gardening hasn’t always been paramount. I neglected it for many years, ’til one day a friend came over, Sandra’s sister actually it was, and berated me for letting it go to seed like I had. She told me I was lucky to have a house and even luckier to have a garden and I should care for it properly, and so I did. She had a bit of Sandra in her, that sister; it was hard not to do what you were told.
I’ve painted the place twice since I bought it. It used to be a pale shade of green, almost peppermint, but I redid it in the late seventies to a toasty brown with rust orange trim. Did it again in the late eighties with heritage colours, muted reds and greens. Haven’t had the strength to do it since then, or the money to pay someone else to do it for me.
So anyway, what with all the previous owners’ bits and pieces calling up memories of happier times in my little house, family times, it took a while for it to feel like my own. But gradually, bit by bit, it wore down my defences. That other family began to fade into the wallpaper, and the house seemed to curl itself around me like a winter cloak. It began to feel like home. For the first time in my life, I had somewhere I could truly call my own.
26
The boy’s dream had begun by the creek bed. Instead of the meandering filament of silver that he knew, the water of his dreaming was murky and fast, rushing downstream with a force that smashed into boulders and tore small bushes from their roots. He was burying a kookaburra. Its body was stiff and cold, its feathers soaked in blood. Suddenly it came alive in his hands and perched on his arm, its sharp claws digging into his skin. It beat its wings and laughed maniacally at the boy before taking flight, shaking drops of blood from its feathers like water, and disappearing into the cloud-filled sky. When the boy focused on his hands, they were covered with writhing white maggots. He tried to shake them off but realised they were emerging from wounds in his fingers and gaping gashes in his wrists. He plunged his arms into the water, which was not ice cold as he exp
ected, but warm and thick. The viscous liquid sucked at his limbs until he overbalanced and toppled in. The stream pulled him along, the water’s rhythm in his ears, steady like a heartbeat. He could see his mother in the distance, her face turned from him, and he called to her as he passed. She merely raised a hand in greeting. He had travelled well past her before he glimpsed her face at last – it was devoid of features, an anonymous mask on his mother’s body. The water became thicker, a dense sludge. The boy struggled. The noise grew louder, expanded in his ears until he felt the pressure against his eardrums. He heard voices calling to him, although he could not make out the words.
When he opened his eyes he was disoriented. His arms flailed against the sheets, against the water that he felt sure was about to pull him under. Gradually his eyes adjusted to the dimness; he saw his shoes, his chair, a strip of pale yellow under the door. His left ear throbbed, a dull ache. He could hear people, lots of people, laughter filling the house, the sound of their conversations sliding under the door along with the light. He peered at his clock radio. The digital numbers read 1.37 am. The boy massaged his sore ear in an attempt to relieve the pain; a stab penetrated deep towards his eardrum, like a cottonbud inserted too far. He hoped his mother had stocked up on the Panadol in the bathroom. He slipped out from under the sheets and cracked open the door.
Cigarette smoke and the pungent aroma of marijuana swirled in the air. Twenty or more people appeared to be crammed into the living room, a few bodies spilling into the hall. A man, his shirt unbuttoned, sat spread-eagled, his back against the wall, his mouth open, snoring. A half-full bottle lay loosely in his hand, a trickle of clear liquid flowing onto the carpet. Two women in short skirts stepped over him as they made their way to the bathroom. They squinted at the boy and giggled. Music played loudly but he couldn’t make out the tune, let alone the words. The thudding bass boomed in his chest. He ventured further into the hallway, skirting past the man, and waited outside the bathroom door.
By the time the two women emerged, his ear was pulsing with pain, and he needed to pee. The girls were still giggling. They hardly gave the boy a glance as they made their way back towards the party. The boy rushed into the bathroom and closed the door tight.
The room smelt of piss and spew. He tried not to look too closely at the puddle on the floor beside the toilet bowl. He rummaged through the drawers until he found some Panadol. He ran the tap, using the end of his mother’s toothbrush to push aside a mushy sludge of toilet paper blocking the drain in the basin. Cupping his hands, he swallowed a deep draught of water and washed down two tablets.
A groan startled him. He froze, afraid to raise his eyes to the cabinet mirror in case he saw someone standing right behind him. But when the groan came again, he realised it was coming from behind the shower curtain, pulled across the bath. His feet planted on the floor, he reached out one arm and gingerly hooked a finger around the edge of the curtain.
There was a naked man sprawled in the bathtub.
He let the curtain drop. He looked from the toilet to the bath and back again. He really did need to pee. He stood at the toilet with his back to the bath, his brow furrowed with concentration, his right leg jiggling up and down. Another groan. The boy spun around, a wet patch spreading on his shorts; he wrenched open the door and slammed it shut behind him.
He stood outside the door to his own room, thinking he would quite like to see his mother, but not wanting to run the gauntlet of her friends and acquaintances. Especially not with the stench of urine rising from his pants. He slipped inside his room, pulled the door to, retrieved a pair of tracksuit pants from a crumpled heap on the floor and changed out of his shorts. He opened his door again and peered out. A large woman in a colourful strapless dress came towards him, crooning his name. He could feel the cigarette in her left hand brushing the back of his neck, while the drink she held in her right sloshed onto his T-shirt.
Look at you! I haven’t seen you since you were this high! Come here and give Aunty Leanne a cuddle.
The woman pulled him close until his face was smothered by her large bosom. He had no idea if he had met this person before. She smelt strongly of alcohol and perfume, with an underlying sweaty odour that nauseated him.
He managed to extricate himself, along with one of her nipples, which she stuffed back under her tight dress. The boy staggered backwards and bumped into a couple slow-dancing. The man was at least shuffling his feet; the woman was draped over his shoulder and appeared to be asleep.
Fuck. Watch it, mate.
Leave him, Anthony, he’s only a kid.
Well what’s a fucking kid doing up this late? Hey, ya slag, I didn’t even know you had a kid.
His mother had appeared from the swell of bodies. She gave the man’s arm a playful punch.
Watch who you’re calling a slag, darling. Had a look what’s hanging over your shoulder lately? Sloppy seconds, that one. Would’ve thought you had better taste.
Piss off. You weren’t complaining last month. Couldn’t get enough, as I recall.
In your dreams, Anthony. I’ve moved on to bigger and better.
The man released his hold on the woman and gripped his crotch suggestively.
Doubt you’ve found better, and I know you haven’t found bigger.
His glassy-eyed smirk faltered as the woman slipped from his grasp and collapsed on the floor. She raised her hand to her forehead and groaned, and then was still. The man crouched down and roughly rolled her over beside the wall, out of the way of people’s feet.
Fuck. She’s out of it.
He wandered off dispiritedly in the direction of the kitchen.
The boy ventured a glance at his mother. She was staring around the room in an unfocused way, as if she’d forgotten he was there. But then her gaze reached him and she opened her arms. The boy dashed across the space between them and burrowed his face into her sweet, familiar warmth.
Come on, baby. Let’s get you back to bed.
With her arm around his shoulders, she led the boy to his bedroom. Once inside, she closed the door behind them and helped him under the covers, pulling the blanket up around his chin. She sat down on his hand, but he didn’t want to tell her in case she moved. She closed his eyes with her fingers, like he had seen them do to dead people in movies, and stroked his cheek. The boy relaxed.
When she spoke, it was like a murmur of wind through winter leaves.
I’m sorry we woke you, baby. I’ll tell them all to be quieter.
I don’t like those people, Mum. They drink too much. And everything smells funny.
Maybe I’ll tell them all to clear off soon. It’s getting late.
I don’t like the way they look at me.
He opened his eyes.
Like I’m nothing. Like you’re nothing.
OK, baby. I said I’d take care of it.
Why do they have to be here all the time?
A spark flared in her eyes and she stood abruptly.
Fuck. What do you want from me? Aren’t I allowed to have friends? You want me to be some shitty, stay-at-home single-mum loser, is that it? Is that what you think of me? You, you, you. It’s always about you. When is it my time, huh? When? When do I get to have a life?
He sat up and reached out his hand. I’m sorry, Mum! I’m sorry! Please don’t be angry. I didn’t mean it. They’re OK. They don’t have to leave. You didn’t even wake me up. My ear’s sore, that’s what woke me. I got up to get some Panadol, that’s all.
She softened and sat back on the bed.
Really, Mum. It’s OK. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.
Her hand traced the outline of his ear. This one? Poor baby. Maybe you should take a day off tomorrow, rest up.
He nodded. She leant close and landed a wet kiss on his nose.
Night, night. Sleep tight. Watch those bed bugs don’t bite.
She stood. Wrinkled her nose.
What’s that smell?
She nudged the discarded shorts with her toe.
Shit, aren’t you too old to be pissing your pants? Disgust flooded her face.
Sorry, he mumbled. It was an accident. I’ll clean it up tomorrow.
Too right you bloody will. Don’t think I’m doing it.
She left the room and pulled the door closed behind her. The boy wiped the back of his hand across his nose. He pictured a day at home tomorrow, fetching his mum cups of tea, cleaning the vomit from the bathroom floor. The sound of the empties clinking as he dumped them in the wheelie bin. Even now, over the stench of his own pee, he could still make out the stinging fumes of alcohol trailing in her wake.
27
It was the summer of ’79 or ’80 and I found myself hunting through the gig guide trying to find someplace different to take a new girl I was seeing.
I saw the ad for an AC/DC concert planned for later that month. ’Course, I knew it was too late to get tickets the conventional way, but I was thinking I might ask Pete whether he could score any on the side when I noticed the support act. In tiny ten-point type, right down the bottom, it said an act called Flower Power would perform before the main show. It seemed so incongruent – a hippy-sounding band supporting cult legends like AC/DC. So I asked Pete about it, and he trawled his mind and said that Flower Power was some one-woman singing sensation from Melbourne.
It’s this chick, he said, writes her own lyrics; she’s on the rise down in the southern states. Great voice. Smooth one minute and then gravelly and throaty the next. Sexy combination. Appears on stage in this schoolgirl get-up, short skirt, suspenders, you get the picture. It’s not a hippy band, you moron. That’s her name. Flower. Sarah Flower.
The Promise Seed Page 12