Neville the Less
Page 28
* * *
So no Ava, no mum and no Quiet Man. And when Neville looked out the kitchen window, through the shaggy butts of the paperbarks, he was greatly shocked to see that there was also no Lightning Bug. The little ship’s anchorage was marked only by a patch of brown, wilted grass, in the centre of which crouched the corpulent figure of Mister Shoomba. He was clad, unusually, in camouflage tee-shirt and shorts, from which his pallid limbs protruded like pale sausages. When Neville spotted him, he was bending, hands on knees, peering unashamedly at the shrubbery that surrounded Home Country’s Under. Neville, with equal measures of reluctance and curiosity, felt it his duty to go forth with questions.
Shoomba started nodding the moment he came into view.
“So!” Rising and holding out his arms to indicate the emptiness in which he stood. “No more night time travels for you, young sailor! No, nor none for your little ‘Ghani mate, neither!”
“Where’s the Lightning Bug, Mister Shoomba?”
“Can’t tell you that! Might be deep-sixed, for all I can say! Scuttled! Crashed! Swamped! Shipwrecked! Might be stole away! High-jacked off onto the big ocean by some sneaky thieves! Eh? We got a few o’ them in the neighbourhood, as you ‘n’ me both well know, eh? Whaddya think o’ that then?”
If there was an intended bait in that for Neville, Neville was not about to bite it.
“Who’d take her, Mister Shoomba?”
“Who’d take her? Who’d take her? Ye mean other’n a person who’d steal a commemorative cyclone bolt from under me very own personal castle? Or a perfeckly useful war medal from his own fam’ly? ‘Zat what you mean?”
“I . . . I . . . I . . . !”
“Yeah, you you you! ‘At’s who I’m talkin’ about! D’joo steal her? Didja?”
“I . . . I . . . I . . . ! No! It wasn’t me!” Neville was deeply regretting his decision to come out of the house.
“What about yer ‘complice then, eh? Yer little ‘Ghani Amazanie witch friend. She steal my boat?”
Neville wanted to say no straight away but then . . . how could he know? He and Mum had taken ‘Soon home in tears after the Quiet Man’s upheaval. But whether she’d stayed there was anyone’s guess. Perhaps she’d decided to visit the Ragged Man on her own, as he himself had done! Perhaps she was still out there on that limitless sea! Maybe caught at last by the pirates and taken away to the Island of Nobodies!
“I . . . I . . .!”
“Awright, awright, don’ go gettin’ yer boiler in a knot. I know it wunt neither o’ youse. Not this time, anyways.”
“Who was it then? Was it the pirates at the boat ramp! You said they would’ve given pots of gold for the Lightning Bug once. Could they have come an’ stole her!”
The suggestion sparked a notable outburst of sarcasm from Shoomba and a revelation that the boat wasn’t the primary thing on his mind.
“Pirates? Whaar hem hem rrr, sure, le’s jus’ say that’s who done it! Bloomin’ pirates took her! Say! You didn’t tell no one I gave up me captainship didja? ‘Cause pirates can’t tolerate ships without captains, ye know. No way! Snap ‘em up quick as twist your ear! On the other foot, though . . . !”
He leaned in close to Neville, for the sharing of a confidence.
“I think you ‘n’ me better hope it wunt them, eh? ‘Cause if they saw the doin’s ‘ round here las’ night, they mighta figured this whole neighbourhood was a ship without a captain! Might be they’d wanna move in here next! Start sortin’ things out! Know what I mean?”
Neville’s heart flip-flopped in his chest. He knew, of course, what ‘last night’s doin’s’ referred to, and wasn’t at all surprised that the ruckus had caught Shoomba’s attention. But he hadn’t considered the possibility of it capturing anyone else’s - pirates, for instance - attention. And for them, ‘sorting things out’ could only mean attending to unfinished business with the Rahimis - the taking of Afsoon. But would they dare try anything with the Quiet Man now on the alert, along with Riff Rahimi? And if they would do that, would anyone at all in the neighbourhood be safe?
“D’you mean . . . ?”
“I mean,” Shoomba sneered, pulling wide a bloodshot eye, “I see what I see, see? An’ what I seen las’ night an’ what I see this mornin’ tells me seein’ off the Lightnin’ Bug was just the start o’ what needs doin’! ‘Cause it ain’ all plum duff ‘n’ nestle-berries ‘round here is it!”
He gestured vaguely at the Home Country house which responded with a short rapid shake of the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow bush at the edge of its Under. And that’s when Neville realised why the Quiet Man was not in his usual place on the lounge.
“It’s the . . . it’s my dad,” he said, doing his best to feign casualness. “He might’ve thought of some work to finish! In Under! I guess.”
In his mind, he ticked off the ‘work’ already ‘completed’ by the Quiet Man: starting with dragging ‘Soon and falling on her and half-crushing her. Followed by putting out her torchlight and pressing her and Neville to one of the dead trees in Under and pulling Mum in to make her sit as well; and sobbing out a story of a smiling boy whose arms were exploded away.
“Kinda work?” Shoomba demanded. “I thought he wunt up to work?”
“Uh . . .!”
* * *
The true answer was exactly the stuff Neville would not be talking about, to Shoomba or anyone else - unless maybe that anyone was Ava, who would listen without comment. Or ‘Soon who had been there and who, as the story of the explosion unfolded, had reached across to Neville and replaced his fistful of sand with her own tiny, damp fingers.