* * *
After Mum and he had taken ‘Soon home - or at least as far as the banana palm forest, where Riff had intercepted them - they’d gone back to Under, where the Quiet Man remained, still weeping softly. Mum had ordered Neville to wait upstairs but - and it was a memory of Mister Shoomba, telling him he must ‘look out for your ma’, that’d provoked him - Neville had refused. For the first time ever, he’d directly defied her, determined to be part of whatever was to happen; to defend her to the death if indeed more death was what the Quiet Man had in mind. And so, together, they’d threaded a path through the agonised despair of Neville the More.
He’d become quiescent at the end, subdued; letting them coax him back upstairs and into bed. And afterward, in the kitchen, mother and son had stared bleakly at each other’s hands, folded and forlorn on the table.
“Well, that was a thing, wasn’t it?” she’d finally whispered, trying gainfully to smile.
“Mm-hm.”
“I think Afsoon wasn’t hurt too badly.”
“Mm-mm.”
“We’ll check on her tomorrow, what do you think?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Remember when I said to you, war makes people do awful things?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Well what he told us about that boy, if it’s true - and I suppose it probably is - that’s an example, Nev’. Even good people, who only want to do good things - when they’re shown too much awfulness . . . they can start to forget.”
“Forget?”
“Forget who they are. What they stand for. What’s important. What’s right.”
“Like getting your mind lost in a jungle?”
“In a jumble, yes. Good and bad, right and wrong, it all gets in a jumble.”
“Truth and lies?”
“Well yes, I suppose truth and lies too, sometimes. Why? What’re you thinking?”
He was thinking about the medal.
“He’s not a hero,” he said. “The medal didn’t say Hero on it.”
“Oh honey! Is that why you took it? Because it seemed like a lie?”
Neville shrugged. It didn’t seem like a lie, it was a lie.
“Did you know he wasn’t a hero?” he asked, which was another way of asking if she, as the Ragged Man had implied, was also a liar.
She looked at him and saw, for the first time ever, a flicker of distrust in his eyes.
“Nev’, I knew that medal wasn’t for being a hero. But I also know that not all heroes get medals. What’s much more important is that your father didn’t go to the war hoping for medals - or to be a hero. He just went to help.”
There were deep shadows under her eyes. She had always been beautiful to Neville but just now she looked like someone with a very, very bad ache somewhere inside.
“He didn’t help that boy!”
“No. He didn’t. And I . . . I can’t explain that, Nev’. I can’t understand it. Because I know, deep down inside, that’s not him. He’s a good and caring man, Nev’. So you know what? I’m not going to focus on what he did there, under those awful conditions. Conditions I can’t bring myself even to imagine. No, instead, I’m going to focus on the fact that helping is what he started out to do; what he wanted to do; what we all need to be doing. Not turning our backs. If he turned his back that once, something else made him do it. I don’t know - fear maybe. But he needs our help now, Nev’. Our help. Yours and mine. Are we going to turn our backs?”
My help? he thought. If Neville the More was a ‘good and caring man’ and still couldn’t even save a war-boy, what use could a dumb little Neville the Less be? Which was, of course, (more or less) the same question he’d asked the Ragged Man! And the Ragged Man had said . . . ! What? Something about . . . !
“Mate?” Mum said. “You okay?”
She reached for his hand, but he quickly retracted it and wedged it under his bum. It was a refusal that hurt her, he could see. But in the big scheme of things - in the Big Picture - she’d lied to him. Maybe she was even lying now, saying the Quiet Man was good, even though he let a boy’s arms be exploded. So if her feelings were hurt just a little bit, maybe it was time she knew how that felt.
“Okay,” she said, folding her arms on the table, retreating into Mum-mode. “Would you tell me, please. Last week, you wouldn’t go under the house after dark because of ‘Things’, remember? Even though I promised you they were only imaginary! But you were there first tonight, weren’t you? Your father says he went down there to fetch you! So what were you doing, Nev’? Did ‘Soon coax you out? Were you not able to say no to her? What?”
He shrugged again.
“Ragged Man and Mrs Hughes both said the Things are real. They come from nightmares.”
“Oh did they? Well . . . that’s . . . that’s very silly of them. And who is ‘Ragged Man’ anyhow? Ragged Man who? Is that a name you’ve given one of the neighbours?”
He couldn’t understand why she was being so obtuse. Why keep denying the obvious?
“They are real. And I know it and he knows it! I even heard him shout about them at night . . . about Things that are hiding in Under. To watch out, ‘cause they’re there.”
“Oh Nev’! Baby! The ‘things’ that he was shouting about . . . they aren’t monsters! Not like you’re thinking of!” Her volume began to rise, the hollowness under her eyes to deepen. “They’re bombs, Nev’! Like the one that killed that boy! Bombs that frightened people’ve hidden under things - under the road and under cars and under . . . barrels! To try to frighten and hurt other people who are different from them; because that’s the only way they know to deal with their own fear! Your father’s job in the army was to find those bombs and . . . turn them off! You understand? Before they could do their damage. And it was in Afghanistan, Nev’! A country far far away from here! Far away from Australia! Far away from our home!”
At the last, she’d reached across the table and grabbed his arm, shaking his hand out from under his bum.
“You can’t judge him, Neville. That boy . . . being killed like that. It’s awful and unforgivable. But it was put there by someone else. Not your father. And you tell me what you’d rather! Would you rather your father was blown to pieces along with him - trying to save him from his own people? Is that what you’d rather?”
He saw, as she glared at him, pinching and shaking his arm, that some of the shadowing on her face was actually smudged blood. Perhaps foot blood from Beau the Bum. Or maybe ‘Soon’s blood, from the broken pots. Or even the Quiet Man’s blood. Maybe all three. Wherever it was from, the sight of it on her face was so wrong that it made Neville’s own head wound ache. But it also put an end to his impulse to cry. He glared straight back at her, or rather at the smudges until, with a little flick and a push, she let him go
“Go to bed!” she ordered. “Go, and leave me alone!”
This time, he slid off his chair and stood up. He wanted to explain that it wasn’t what he’d rather. Not at all. But that image of the boy - looking, smiling, and then, no arms - then dead - that also wasn’t what he’d rather.
“Ragged Man,” he said, “says that the Things can be sent away. Even the worst, most horrible Things. If someone’s brave enough to go where they are. And give them a proper good look.”
She looked at him coldly.
“That’s exactly what your father was doing in Afghanistan, Neville. Trying to chase bad things away. Being just that brave. But sometimes the things . . . are stronger. They get inside you. They take over. And they send parts of you . . . somewhere else. Next time you’re talking to your ‘Ragged Man’, why don’t you ask him about that.”
She got up and went to the sink, turning her back on him.
“Go to bed, Neville. Please. Let’s get this day behind us.”
So he went. He washed and he watched his hands turning in the water and imagined them exploding away. Mum said it wasn’t the Quiet Man’s fault. But the Quiet Man himself said that he knew the bomb was t
here. He didn’t put it there, but he saw the signs. And he didn’t call out. So how was it not his fault? That was very confusing.
It wasn’t until he was lying in his bed, listening to the Flying Foxes in the bottlebrush and thinking about those blood smudges on Mum’s face that the other thing she’d said came back to him. Sometimes the Things can get inside you; send parts of you away and take over the rest. Ragged Man had said pretty much the same words. What could that mean? Could it mean that, while the Quiet Man’s mind had been sent away to the jungle, the part of him that’d come home . . . not only wasn’t a Hero - it had become one of the Things?
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