Neville the Less

by Robert Nicholls

  * * *

  Neville crept into Under to retrieve the magic iron bar, but he couldn’t stay there, or in the lilly-pilly fortress - not with the Quiet Man’s muttering, puffing defensive preparations taking place so near at hand. Nor could he stay in the mango tree - not with Riff’s relentless attack on the Folly taking place below on one side and Shoomba’s mysterious hubbub on the other. He could not slip into Hayley’s bus, or even into a possie in the chokos, because an argument had broken out earlier at Boogerville and the last thing he wanted was to be caught up any further in their troubles. Especially if, as seemed to be the case, their troubles related to his troubles and had resulted in Beau being unexpectedly foot-shot.

  Where he came finally to a resigned and weary halt was flat on his back on the corrugated iron roof of the garage, looking up through the red flowers of the Poinciana. He thought he would be content to stay there all day but, in time, his mind got bored and wandered off. It wandered first to the base of the Poinciana where lay the husk of the rhinoceros beetle he’d so heedlessly stomped the day before. It wandered secondly into the tree-top to see if, somewhere amongst those tiny-petalled flowers, a glossy beetle mum and her little beetlings were still vainly awaiting the return of their hapless adventurer. It leapt, then, from the image of those patient black, hook-legged insects, to a more restless image, of black, hook-legged Flying Foxes with red burning eyes; and then to yet another, of the black, hook-tailed scorpion that’d catapulted into the Lightning Bug. And by that route, it finally reached the destination it had been seeking all along - the Ragged Man of Apollo Dungeon.

  ‘Why are there ugly horrible Things in the world?’

  ‘Figuring that out is your job. Look around, ask around, think it over. There’s a lot riding on you finding a strategy.”

  A strategy. Figure one out! Ragged Man had been able to describe a strategy for getting rid of the War Things from Under. It didn’t seem to have worked for Neville, but now the Quiet Man was down there amongst ‘em, in Under, just like Ragged Man had said must happen. So this then was a sort of new strategy - to let the Quiet Man take control. Perhaps they had something to do with the terrible tale of the killed boy in Afghanistan. ‘Soon had said all along that there was something shaming from the war and she had a habit of being right.

  It had taken great courage to tell that secret. Mum said so. The courage of a Hero, she said. So he surely was one, even though the medal didn’t say so. Heroic enough to chase anything away. Unless . . . unless . . . the other thing the Ragged Man had said . . . somehow they got inside him and made him one of them! In fact, what if they’d done that at the War! And that was why he’d let the boy be killed! The thought was terrifying. Not the least because it was clear from the Quiet Man’s frantically unquiet behaviour that some struggle was continuing on inside him.

  All this complicated reasoning actually began to make things seem a little clearer for Neville. Not totally clear and certainly not more comfortable, but at least a little bit sensible. The answer to the big question he’d asked Ragged Man, though - how he could help - that was still unclear. And now things were possibly on the urgent side because, after all, if all the Quiet Man’s current preparations were a sign of a battle going on inside him . . . how long before it was either won or lost?

  Neville strained very hard to get his own mind all the way back to Apollo Dungeon, to hear again those fading-away words from Ragged Man! Find the strategy. Something about the Folly! And something about ‘Soon! And maybe . . . some other stuff that was . . . that was . . . !

  They were crucial clues, Neville knew. Crucial insights almost on the point of revealing themselves; but suddenly sent scuttling back into hiding as Neville’s mind, sensing a sprinkling of leaves and a shuddering of branches, gave up its wandering and sprinted for home. And Neville, opening his brown eyes, was confronted by ‘Soon’s green ones, peering down at him from a very near perch.

  “I’m glad you’re not higher up,” she groaned. “In the mango tree. I couldn’t have climbed up there.”

  She dropped down onto the roof, drawing a hollow thunk from the metal and a strained gasp from herself.

  “Did he hurt you?” Neville asked, reaching to steady the branch.

  “Yes. I’m all broken. My insides are porridge.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think he meant to.”

  “ No,” she said. “I know.”

  Gingerly, she placed her bum back on the branch and Neville rose to sit beside her. From inside their shield of leaves, they looked out across the yards until, with sad surprise, she noticed the bare spot in Shoomba’s yard.

  “The Lightning Bug! It’s gone!”

  “Yup. Blown away, Shoomba says. Or stolen by the pirates.”

  He tried to be light and off-hand but knew, as ‘Soon did, that something important had gone from the neighbourhood with the loss of the little boat.

  “I wish it wasn’t gone,” he said. “If it was here, we could go to Apollo Dungeon again. We could take sandwiches and grapes this time, and give them to the Ragged Man, so he’d tell us where the pirates are. Then we could kill them with the magic cyclone bolt and get Anosh back.”

  Privately, of course, it wasn’t really the pirates that he wanted to know more about. But they were the nightmares in ‘Soon’s family and ‘Soon was his friend and she’d been hurt trying to help him. It was the least he could do in return.

  She didn’t respond. Over in Home Country, the Quiet Man appeared, furtive and nervous, walking the Boogerville boundary. At the big philodendron he paused, bent and retrieved something - a cloth the same shade of red as the hanky that Shoomba sometimes wore on his head. He studied it for a long moment before putting it in his pocket and moving on.

  “We’d need Ava, of course,” Nev’ said, thinking that, if anyone could sniff out a Thing hiding in the Quiet Man, it’d be Ava. “But at least your family’d be right then.”

  At the corner of Cookie Camp, the eyes of Mister Hughes appeared, peeping surreptitiously over the fence before slowly subsiding from view, only to rise again when the Quiet Man had passed.

  “Anosh is dead,” ‘Soon said flatly. “He won’t come back.”

  Somehow, Neville was only a little surprised.

  “You’ve let go of his hand?” he asked, remembering the strength of her grip on his, when the Quiet Man was telling his story.

  Down below, the Quiet Man reached the banana palms. He stopped, glanced around and stooped, peering through to Rahimi Island where Riff’s hammering tempo was finally flagging. Over in Shoomba Territory, a ghastly figure chose that moment to clank out from under the house. It was clad in cricket pads, coated in tin, draped across the chest with ropes and topped with a welder’s helmet propped up like a great grey beak. It lifted each leg experimentally, waved each arm independently and turned to stumble back under the house. On Rahimi Island, the hammering stuttered to a stop.

  In the echoing silence, Neville and ‘Soon sat on their bough above the roof, shoulder to shoulder, still as a pair of doves. Below, the Quiet Man finished his stealthy circuit of the yard, stopping at the base of the Poinciana to speak Neville’s name, once, softly, before moving on. Neville wanted desperately to answer but found that he couldn’t, possibly due to the witcherly forbidding in ‘Soon’s gaze. Instead, he closed his eyes and pretended to be deaf and blind. Pretended that it was his own mind rather than his father’s that was now lost in the jungle - a jungle so dense that no words could penetrate it. Especially not words as empty as ‘Neville the Less’.

  Happily though, pretend is not reality and some voices are more insistent than others. The one that eventually wended its way through to him was, of course, ‘Soon’s.

  “It’s safe,” she whispered. “He’s gone inside.” And he felt her tiny weight leave the branch.

  She was wearing his hat; the one he’d offered to appease her potential Amazonian head-hat hunting instincts. And though she was bent a little to one side from
damage caused by the Quiet Man, and though she had a fresh sadness in her eyes from the new knowledge that her beloved Anosh would never come back to her, and though her father (somewhat like his own) was in an agony of impotent rage that left him beating helplessly on a needless barrier of a fence - despite all that, Neville saw only strength in her. She was, he thought, like the magic cyclone bolt - apparently light and slight but imbued, as the iron was with unknowable power; the power of blood. Unlike himself who was imbued with no power at all.

  “I decided,” he said, and he did so exactly as he was saying the words, “‘Neville’ might be a wrong name. Like ‘Anosh’. I bet it means something that says you’re Nobody. When you can’t think how to help anybody at all, you definitely start to be Nobody.”

  She put her little hand on his shoulder and repeated words she had said to him once before: “It is worse than death to be Nobody, Neville. You must not allow it.”

  There was an echo there, and he recognised it straightaway, of something the Ragged Man had said: Imagine there’s hope. Just waiting to be found.

  “But if our name says it’s true . . . !”

  “If it was true then no one would see or hear you. But I see you, Neville the Less. And I hear you.”

  Neville looked around the neighbourhood, which suddenly seemed to be empty of people.

  “I think if I find the medal and give it back, it might help him remember that the War Things shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be anywhere.”

  “Yes.”

  It was empty everywhere except in the Duchy where, out of everyone’s sight but theirs, the Duke himself stood, arms folded, rocking on his heels, gazing and smiling at his rock-solid fence.

  “And get Ava back too.”

  “Most absolutely,” she said. “Now you’re talking.”

  Fists

  For the briefest moment, Neville thought the choko vine itself had taken hold of him: thumping his ribs, flinging him to the ground, smacking a great stone into his stomach and oofing the air out of him. Two things quickly disabused him of that idea. First was the unmistakably musty odour of Beau the Bum. And second was the nasty, saliva-laden toad-croak of Beau’s voice.

  “Where is it, Nubbin, you little creep? One minute! That’s all you got, boy! Then I’m gonna pulp you! Hamburger-ize you! Squish you like a bug! One minute, Nubbin! Tell me where me stuff is or you die!”

  He was a boy possessed of terrible intent, as amply evidenced by the knee he was grinding viciously into Neville’s belly and the immediate start, without waiting the promised minute, of the hamburger-izing process. It began with the wrapping of a grubby fist around each of Neville’s ears and moved quickly on to the winding of them, as though they were keys and the interposed head was a sluggish jumping jack. Neville couldn’t move or breathe, for the pressure of the knee. He couldn’t think for the pain in his ears. And he didn’t doubt for a minute that Beau’s thready voice would be the last thing his poor ears would ever hear.

  He was surprised then, to have one of his ears suddenly released and allowed to spin back into equilibrium. And for it then to still be able to hear ‘Soon’s voice, crying out.

  “Stop it!” it was shrieking. “Get off! Get off!”

  It was a cry that preceded, in quick succession, a flurry of slaps by a small hand against a very hard noggin, the horrible, dust-raising thump of a body landing beside him and, from a second throat, the same painful gagging sound that was emerging from his own - the one a person makes when breath has abandoned their lungs and fled the neighbourhood.

  Neville had been at the point of crying for mercy, but those sounds brought something strange and frightful to life in him. It began with a choked denial that, despite the puny breath behind it, belted out of him; as though, if he expelled the last of his air with sufficient speed, some of it might to dive into ‘Soon’s paralysed chest and save her. And it continued with an unquenchable flailing that paid no homage to Beau’s strength. Feet, knees, hips, arms and elbows - all suddenly, terrifically, almost hysterically complicit in making something a great deal More out of the Less. Making him into a creature that flipped, kicked, rolled and punched with such ferocity that the one ear on which a grip had remained either came off or came free - Neville didn’t care which - and the crushing weight of the Bum’s knee slipped away.

  In Beau’s mind, that should’ve been concession enough. But it wasn’t. For several following seconds, the new creature that was Neville scratched, clawed, kicked, battered and growled with wild abandon, planting almost as many bruises on himself as on his attacker. And his breath came back, and with it, words - awful, terrible words. He didn’t know many but the volume and passion with which he delivered them struck Beau as being a very ominous sign indeed.

  Not that Neville could ever really have gotten the best of Beau; Beau would seriously have died before allowing that. But the fending off was distracting enough to allow Hayley a powerful two-handed grip on her brother’s wounded foot and that, finally, was enough to achieve Beau’s grudging retreat from the field of battle.

 

  Hayley

  Okay, so here’s the goods. Totally awesome, getting a free shot at old B’ the Bum, even if it was just at his foot! And I was purest genius at getting the Less’s mum distracted while he went on his monster hunt. Like, if it’d been Hallowe’en, I’d’ve been given a medal or something!

  But it’s got very uncool since then. It’s the Doofus Combo’ that’s got me worried. Hughesy and Shoomba. I mean, if it was just Hughesy - the Holy Ghost that Walks - I reckon I could come to grips with him getting about in the night. Pulling the pistol still throws me a bit because, like, for a dude who’s into peace and prayer, it’s most especially heavy duty! I got a clearer idea on where it came from now, which I’ll tell you in a minute, but still . . . the dude got it out on show!

  Or, vice versa, if it was just old sleazo Shoomba on his own, I could prob’ly get a grip on that! Even him popping outta the bushes where he’d been hiding for like ages, which I know because I hid where I was for ages, trying to figure out why that bush was making noises.

  But the two of them together? I mean you have to say to yourself, that’s mega-weird! Obviously there’s a connection because like, what’re the odds they’d both be scoping out the neighbourhood separately, on the same dark night? No way! Oh, we’re all curious about the war hero o’ course - ‘specially considering he’s all unstable ‘n’ like that. According to the rumours, that is, which like, what’s the point of rumours if there’s no truth in them? But still! Being spooked enough to hide in the bushes and wave guns around is not being curious! It’s being brain-bent!

  And now I’m thinking on it, it’ll be a foggy Friday when I believe those dudes aren’t slippin’ through everyone else’s yards as well! As for example, I actually saw Hughesy climbing out of ours! And also I just wonder if it’s just the two of them! I mean, that wrinkly old possum the Duke is one o’ their mates! Was he out there with them? Was he maybe lurking back in the chokos and just too cunning to show himself?

  Makes your skin crawl, dunnit? Prob’ly right outside my bus while I’m gettin’ dressed or whatever! Hooh! How creepy is that? Which you might think, now I’m getting paranoid but like I said, listen to this!

  Turns out my brain-dead brother had - past tense - ‘had’ one of his psycho-stashes hidden in the chokos! An’ there was a gun in it! Yeah! For real! Maybe even loaded! I mean it’s old as rocks, is that gun! Been in the attic like, at least since Poppy died which, Poppy was our grandad and a lovely old guy, wog to the core, who brought all kinds of cool stuff from Italy when he came to Australia after they had their war over there, back at the beginning of like, time. And the Bum sniffed it out and being as I said, mostly brain-dead, decided to flog it. Whatever it is goes on in the Bum’s head, it’s got nothing to do with normal thinking so good luck with asking him why!

  But the point is, he had it in some waterproof stuff out in the chokos and now
it’s gone! And if you reckon it’s gotta be the one Hughesy was waving about, I reckon you gotta be dead right!

  All this came out because today the Bum discovered it was missing and, like the clueless junior psycho he is, got it into his head that the Less had taken it. So he set to thumping crap out’ve him. Then Afsoon tried to get between them and she started copping it as well. Though I think they shook the Bum a bit. Gave almost as good as they got, judging by what I saw.

  Anyhow, after I pull them apart and make the Bum tell me what he thinks he’s doing, I break the news to him.

  “It wasn’t them, ye noik! It was Hughesy!” And I tell all three of ‘em what I saw. After which Beau, ever the deep thinker, reckons, “Well I’m goin’ over there an’ get it back!”

  An’ the Less says, “They were in Home Country?”

  And Afsoon goes deadpan and says, “They have come!”

  They’re all three all googly-eyed and I have to take ‘em one at a time, so it’s Beau first.

  “First off,” I says, “you can’t just go and ask for it, ye dill!”

  “Why not? It’s mine! He stole it!”

  And the Less says, “Why would they be sneaking in Home Country?”

  And ‘Soon says, “They’re looking, Neville. Finding out!”

  She sounds like she’s got a pillow stuffed into her left lung, poor kid, and maybe some kinda scary outlook stuck in her head but, for the minute I gotta concentrate on keeping the Bum from whatever hari-kari he’s intent on committing.

  “He stole it after you stole it, Beau! I don’t even know if it’s possible to steal stolen stuff. And anyway, there’re gun laws in this country, you know? Duh?”

  “Who gives a rat’s? It’s mine!”

  “Fine fine! Okay, let’s say you do go over and claim it. You got a receipt to show you bought it, right? An’ you got I.D. that says you’re eighteen and allowed to own it, right? An’ a licence that says you got it for reasons other than because you’re a criminal head case in training, right?”

  “Well what’m I s’posed to do then? Just let him keep it?”

  I’m already over this because I know the only way to put Beau off an argument is to start a different one. And anyway, the other two’re getting all aeri-ated about something else and I figure, while I’m fending off cockeyed delusions, I best do theirs as well!

  So to finish Beau, I says, “Listen mate! You don’t want it back! First up, it’s a friggin’ thousand years old and just waiting to blow somebody’s hand off. And second, Hughesy reports it to the police that he found a gun in our yard and you front up saying it’s yours, you’re dead meat! The neighbours! The law! Dad! Think about it, Beau! Just exactly how bad do you need to be murdered?”

  And I turn in time to hear ‘Soon saying, “. . . finding out if the Quiet Man is still a soldier! If he can still protect you! Or anyone! Or maybe if he can be on their side!”

  “Their side! Their side of what?” squawks Neville.

  “Their side of the war!” she says and her whole tone and voice are like, Sorry, mate, but that was your gerbil we just killed!

  “The war? No no no! It’s not a war, ‘Soon! It’s just the Things! Just them!”

  She shakes her head. “The Things are from the war. You know that. And the war is everywhere. That’s what Riff’s dream says.”

  “Waah!” the Less says. “But why? Why does it have to be here?”

  “I told you, Neville!” says ‘Soon, “They have come for me! And maybe for you! They have Anosh and now it’s for me and you and maybe Beau and Cookie and Robert and Hayley too. We have to fight now!”

  “But Mum says . . . ! I mean . . . she promised a war could never come here! And I wouldn’t have to be a soldier!”

  “Ha! Good luck with that one!” snorts the Bum, rubbing at these new scratches on his face and ‘Soon says, “Neville. This morning, before I found you on the roof, I went to the Quiet Man.”

  She’s all apologetic sounding and he’s like, no way!

  “You went to the Quiet Man? In Under?”

  She nods. And I gotta tell you, after seeing her limp outta there last night and seeing how beat up she is today, and how confused about who’s doing what for why, I’m thinking like, whoa! This kid’s either majorly damaged brain-wise or she’s got more balls than a tennis court!

  “I don’t know what’s happening there,” the Less says, and you can see the poor little guy is just on the brink o’ being emotionally shattered. “I don’t know if the Things got him. Or if they’re gone.”

  “He prob’ly doesn’t know himself, mate,” I say, without any real clue what Things he’s on about but just trying to take a little of the pressure off. But he ignores me and says to ‘Soon, “Did he tell you?”

  “No,” she says and she’s got this little cough and she’s holding her ribs like maybe she’s eaten like a bowl o’ pins for breakie. “But something is there. Like with Riff when he hammers on the Folly. Something terrible is inside.”

  “Did he . . . did he try to hurt you?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Did he talk to you?” he squeaks and she nods.

  “I asked him about the exploded boy.”

  “Exploded boy?” says I. “What the . . . ?” And she tells us the story; which blows my mind like, totally, because he’s like, supposed to be a hero or something!

  Then, “He says he would take it back,” she says to Neville. “That’s what he says. Because the war will follow him always, he says, until it is made equal - until he is punished. You see? He knows this. He says Ava might be only the beginning. And that maybe you . . . maybe even your mum . . . !”

  She stops and Nev’s just staring at her like he’s been smacked with a fish but Beau reckons, “What? Him ‘n’ his mum what?”

  So I cuff him on the back o’ the head and say, “Think about the story, dumb-ass! If you wanna get back at someone for letting your kid get blown up, whaddya do?” Which, like, I’m immediately sorry for because it’s like I’m like saying someone wants to plant a bomb in the Less’s shorts or something, and the little dude’s already gotta be Panic Central! And o’ course, I most definitely don’t believe any of it. But then, I can’t shake these images of Hughesy and Shoomba and I gotta ask to see if we’re all, like, on the same page.

  “Did he say who, ‘Soon? Who around here’d be wanting to punish him for something he did over there?”

  She doesn’t answer because the Less has suddenly reached out to touch her arm and it’s like one o’ those really deep, ‘But I loved that gerbil!’ minutes and he says, “Anosh! Was it Anosh that he let get killed?”

  And she says no, it was another boy and Beau squeals out, “Who the frick is Anosh? What’s goin’ on? Why aren’t we talking about my gun any more?”

  But I remember this story about Anosh being another Rahimi kid who died, somewhere between here an’ there, and suddenly a light goes on for me. “It’s your mob!” I blurt out. “Your mob from Afghanistan! That’s who he thinks is coming to punish him?”

  And Beau reckons, “What mob? Ye mean Riff? Riff’s gonna murder Nubbin’s ol’ man? An’ Nubbin? Holy far out crap! When?”

  But Afsoon’s shaking her head. She doesn’t know. “I asked him,” she says, “if he was okay today. In Dari: ‘Haleton khoob ast?’”

  “Oooh what?” says Beau. “In your gibbery language? How’s he s’posed to know that? Why didn’t ye talk to him in Australian?”

  “He knows!” she says and, talking to all of us now, “And I wanted him to know - I want everyone to know. Who I am. Riff and Raff, they try to hide who they have been. So they will fit. Not me. I say, if people hate me for being only this, then . . . best we both know.”

  “What I know,” shouts Beau, “is that you’re a pack o’ fruit baskets!” And he starts walking in circles, scratching his head, which is what he does when he’s got like, no clue. Not the Less, though. He asks, real quiet, like he’s not sure he wants
to hear the answer, “What did he say? When you asked! Is he okay?”

  And she shakes her head.

  “‘Aya mitivanid be nan komak koni?’ That’s what he said. It means . . . can you help me?”

  “Can you help me? He wants you to help him?”

  “He wants us to help him, Neville the Less. You and me, together. And I said yes to him. Because you have lost a boy in the war, I said, and I too have lost a boy in the war.”

  “Oh!” says Neville. And there’s a bit of light bulb moment. “Is that why he asked in your language? Not in Australian?”

  This brings the first hint of a smile I’ve seen from her all day but I’m too weirded out by the whole like, twenty-four hours up to now to care.

  “Okay!” I say. “On the off-chance you two got any idea what you’re talking about, it’s time to share! Just something simple; in simple Australian for me, please. Like for starters . . . help him do what exactly?”

  They both look at me like they’re each a hundred and I’m three.

  “What we said!” the Less tells me. “There’s a Thing inside him. A bad Thing. We have to help him get rid of it. So he can come properly back and chase the pirates and the war can end. And everyone will be safe again.”

  “Not just chase,” she says. “The pirates must be killed.”

  “Right!” says I. “Everybody into the bus.”