Death in Brunswick Page 6

  At eight forty-five, his eldest son tugged at his arm.

  ‘We’re goin’ to bed now, Dad. You better put Leon in his cot, otherwise Mum’ll kill ya.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, kids,’ Dave mumbled. ‘Good boys.’

  He slept on…

  ‘Dave! What are you doing?’ June had returned.

  ‘Give me that baby! Honestly, Dave, you’re always either asleep or making a mess!’

  She snatched the baby. It had wet his T-shirt.

  ‘Oh well. Yeah. Sorry, babe.’

  He went back to sleep.

  ‘You coming to bed, Dave?’

  ‘In a minute, hon.’

  He slept on, the TV flickering blankly. After midnight sometime the phone rang. Dave woke with a start.

  Jesus! Who’s ringing at this hour? Shit. The baby’ll wake up and June…

  He lurched to his feet, stumbled to the phone and lifted the receiver. He could hear a strange panting noise like an animal. Then:

  ‘Dave! Dave! You there, Dave?’

  ‘Yeah. Who the fuck is this?’

  The voice was unrecognizable.

  ‘Dave! Come quick.’

  It was Carl.

  TWO

  As Carl left Dave’s street, he looked at his watch. It was only twelve. He was surprised at how early it was, then he remembered that his mother had woken him at nine. He wasn’t used to getting up before eleven.

  I had better go home—Uncle John mightn’t have left. I might find out something more…Jesus! Thrown out of my own house!

  He tried to feel indignant but he couldn’t. He felt good, sort of lightheaded—a bit distant from everything—it was the music at Dave’s, his friend’s reassuring good humour and something else.

  Maybe those pills from last night—Soneryl! I must sneak into Mother’s room today and cop some more of those. Who needs Mustafa when I’ve got good old Mum!

  Turning into Stewart Street, he saw a line of flapping posters: ‘The Marquee Tonite. Friday. The Divinyls.’ Each poster was plastered on top of inches of others, a palimpsest of forgotten enthusiasms. He thought of work with very little of his usual anxiety.

  Bugger it. If it gets too heavy down there I’ll just quit, and if they give me a hard time, I’ll just call Dave. Dave could be very formidable, as Carl well knew. Good old Dave. As he said: ‘Take it easy’, and I will! And Mother couldn’t give me all that much trouble. After all a hundred thou is serious money—everything’s all right, isn’t it?

  Carl crossed his fingers. He was a great one for crossing his fingers, touching wood and similar rituals. Now he counted the lamp posts to Lygon Street. If there were more than, what?—twelve—he was all right. One, two, three, four—shit! There were at least fifteen.

  He hurriedly turned down a lane. Ah, it’s all bullshit anyway. But he felt the familiar cloud of impending doom.

  The lane was unspeakably dirty. The refuse from take-away shops and greengrocers spilled into the gutters. There was the sweet, foul smell of decay. Nearby, acrid steam drifted from the back of a drycleaner’s.

  Why does Dave like it so much round here? He likes poor people. Fuck that! With some money I could get out of this shithole. He thought of leafy avenues, quiet empty streets, an occasional big car whispering by.

  Suddenly a big Alsatian barked at him from an open back yard. Carl hesitated and carefully walked past, hugging the other side of the lane. He saw with relief that the dog was chained. Looking round, he threw a mouldy orange at it. It lunged in a frenzy and he hurried into Lygon Street.

  Around the corner was a laundromat. A few depressed, fat women in moccasins waited by the battered machines. Up and down the street were lines of take-away shops and coffee bars, each with their group of silent card players—Greek, Turkish, Lebanese.

  Outside a video game parlour was a group of husky boys, wearing sleeveless black T-shirts, on their backs in white letters ‘The Young Turks’. Carl walked past them.

  ‘Hey, mister. Got a smoke?’

  ‘Ah, yeah, sure.’

  He fumbled his cigarettes out. They all took one, grinning.

  ‘Thanks, mate. We got a light!’

  He crossed the road feeling their eyes on his back.

  Shit! It’s getting like New York round here—why aren’t they at school? Oh yeah, holidays. I know where they’ll be tonight. The Marquee. That Laurie’s a prick but he sure knows how to deal with shit like that. I must stop riding home from work on my bike—I’ll get thumped one night. Imagine if they got me in one of those dark streets—Jesus.

  Carl, who had been bullied unmercifully at school, was deeply fearful of any sort of physical confrontation. He became paralysed and incoherent. He remembered being beaten to the ground and kicked by boys just like these. He looked back at them. Red, impotent thoughts of vengeance flickered through his mind. Ah, forget it—the only way you could deal with pricks like that is with a fucking Magnum. I’ll just have to get out—but how? At least that house is cheap.

  He turned into his street. He thought it looked worse than ever. The dusty ti-trees drooped in the hot dirty air and he saw with irritation that the rubbish hadn’t been collected again. Split green plastic bags lay spilling on the kerbs.

  His uncle’s car wasn’t there—too late. As he opened the front door, he could hear Mahler again. This time it was the Sixth. It sounded so bombastic and tasteless after the Charlie Parker tape. He could hear his mother singing along, a high tuneless keening which put his teeth on edge.

  She was sitting in his lounge room wearing a tweed skirt, twin set and pearls.

  Pearls! They looked real too.

  He looked at them with proprietary interest. A thunderous chord came from the stereo.

  ‘Really, Mother, do you have to play that garbage? Turn it down for God’s sake.’

  ‘Oh, there you are dear. Why? Don’t you like my beautiful Mahler? You’ve always loved good music. I hope that club isn’t spoiling your ear.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Mother, maybe that’s a good reason for leaving. I don’t like that place much anyway.’

  ‘Now Carl, I would be very unhappy if you left. Why can’t you see if you can stay in a job for a reasonable time?’

  ‘Now look here, Mother!’

  ‘Now, dear, that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. Your Uncle John has just left and we’ve finished drawing up my will. Do sit down dear, and stop fidgeting. You do want to hear, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

  ‘Well now,’ she said, smiling at him, ‘you are to get all my pennies and half my bits and pieces, but one thing. You are not to sell them. You do promise me, don’t you, Carl? And that’s another thing. I’d really like you to change your name back to Charles as your father and I called you. I can’t think why you changed it in the first place.’

  ‘Because, Mother, I didn’t like everyone calling me Charlie. Christ! That’s twenty years ago!’

  ‘Well, dear, I think it’s little enough to ask. I remember your father was very unhappy about it at the time. But never mind that for now. Aren’t you pleased? You’ll be quite well off.’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Yeah, I am. Listen, did you get some lunch?’

  She wasn’t listening.

  ‘I feel a little tired. I think I’ll lie down this afternoon. Why don’t you go outside? It’s a beautiful day, and your back garden needs such a lot of work.’

  ‘Gee, Mother. I have to work tonight you know—till one o’clock.’

  ‘Now Carl. You’re a young man. You should have plenty of energy. It’s just your bad habits. You had nearly a quarter of a bottle of spirits when you got home last night. I don’t like to see you drinking so much.’

  Christ! She’ll be marking the bottle next. He controlled himself.

  ‘Well, I was a bit upset.’

  Take it easy.

  ‘Now, dear, just try and please your old mother. I haven’t got all that much time left, you know.’

  ‘Oh Mother, Doctor Lee s
aid you were quite well. You just have to give up those cigarettes, that’s all.’

  ‘Doctors don’t know everything. Now off you go, outside—I want to have a rest.’

  She turned up the music and settled back.

  Carl wandered out into his back yard. It was a maze of overgrown native trees, grey-green spiny grevilleas and untidy ti-tree. Over all hung the cat’s-piss smell of wattle. He found it terribly depressing. No wonder the early explorers succumbed to melancholy, surrounded by this sort of thing. He sat down on the bumpy brick paving.

  He felt trapped; a Carl at bay, bailed up by circling mothers.

  Maybe I could go interstate—I could say I had a job in Sydney or something. I could write to her—tell her any bullshit. No, it wouldn’t work. I just haven’t got the money. Anyway—he had a feeble burst of spirit—I won’t be forced out of my own house. God, listen to that awful music.

  He paced around like a prisoner in an exercise yard, whistling the alto solo from ‘April in Paris’.

  That’s what I’d like to do—lie back and have a couple of drinks and listen to some bop. But Mother hates jazz, and as for boozing in the afternoon…! How long till work? Five hours! I’ll go spare! I will—and I’ll fuck things up and then I’ll be sorry. Like she said, in four or five years I could be pretty well off—four or five years!

  He sat down again, looking at his dilapidated outside lavatory.

  What did she mean, she drew up the will? Does that mean she hasn’t signed it? She’ll keep it hanging over my head like a…a sword. Still, half her china and silver and that—why, that could be worth, what? Ten thou at least. You only have to look in antique shops. Christ! As soon as she wheezes her last I’ll have that gear in an auction so quick…! But I’ll have to be a good boy till then—no wonder Dave was laughing.

  Why has she always tried to make me into something I’m not? He remembered his kindly, ineffectual father—she really tried it on you too, you poor old bugger. He remembered his mother’s scorn and rage when his father had gone bankrupt. And when he took us out of those expensive schools—Jesus! We got into him too. How we must have hurt him. Carl was filled with self pity and regret. Well, I can’t do anything about it now—ah shit, and I felt so good coming back from Dave’s. Hang on, that’s something I can do—nick some pills…

  He went inside. The symphony was coming to its loud and messy end. His mother was lying back with her feet up. Carl noticed with disgust the varicose veins over her shins.

  ‘I’ll just tidy up your room, Mother.’

  ‘No need, dear,’ she said, with her eyes closed. ‘I did it this morning.’

  ‘Well, you might need some flowers or something. I’ll get the vase from your side table. You like boronia, don’t you? There’s some out the back.’

  ‘That’s very sweet of you, dear. You could put the kettle on too.’

  Carl hurried into his mother’s room, closing the door. He examined the bedside table. Linoxin, Kinidin—everything except Soneryl.

  That’s funny, where’s the stoppers? Don’t tell me she’s a wake-up. Where…?

  He saw her handbag on a chair. Quickly unfastening it, he rummaged through. Ah ha! He removed the plastic vial. As he did so he saw a green banded document tucked into a side pocket. Must be the will! Trying to unfold it with one hand, he dropped the bag and the vial. Little pink pills spilled across the floor. Shit! He was on his knees feverishly gathering them up when the phone rang outside the bedroom door. He heard his mother shuffle across the lounge room.

  ‘I’ll go, dear.’

  Oh God.

  He scooped as many pills as he could into the bottle and flicked the rest under the bed. Moving with lightning speed he tucked the will back and replaced the bag on the chair. His mother opened the door.

  ‘For you, Carl, a young lady.’

  ‘OK, thanks, Mother.’

  He could feel sweat trickling down his back. Jesus! That was close. As she turned, he slipped the pills into her bag and went to the phone. It was Sophie.

  ‘Hi, Sophie. I didn’t think you’d ring.’

  ‘Hi, Cookie. I rang this morning. Your mum answered. She said she’d tell you.’

  ‘Oh, right, yeah…um, where are you?’

  ‘I’m at my Auntie Martha’s looking after my cousin Con. What’re you doin’?’

  ‘Nothing much. Sitting round thinking about you.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘No, really. Listen, what are you doing later on?’

  ‘I got to take Con to the movies soon. It’s school holidays you know, and Auntie Martha’s at work. She works at Kmart.’

  ‘Well, I might come, OK? What are you going to?’

  ‘Alien BattleStar—you don’t want to see that, do you?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. It’s a kids’ film, is it? I don’t mind. Hey, don’t you want me to come?’

  ‘Yeah, if you want to.’

  ‘What time then?’

  ‘Two fifteen. You know where?’

  ‘I’ll find it. Ah…Can I meet you inside? In the foyer, I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, OK, Cookie. I’ll see you there.’

  ‘And Sophie, please don’t call me Cookie, huh?’

  ‘OK. See you.’

  He put the phone down, doing a little dance step of delight. Hey, what about that!

  His mother came back with a cup of tea.

  ‘Did you want one, dear?’

  ‘No, Mother. Hey, why didn’t you tell me Sophie rang?’

  ‘It must have slipped my mind, but I don’t really think you should be carrying on with other girls when you’re still married to poor Prue. Your divorce isn’t through yet, you know, which reminds me, I want to speak to you about that.’

  ‘Oh Mother! That’s just a girl from work. She was ringing to tell me about last night.’ Thank Christ the old bag is a bit deaf.

  ‘Yes, well, she sounds very common, Carl. Not like dear Prue. She sounds foreign. Is she Italian or something?’

  ‘No, Mother, she’s Australian. Well, Greek-Australian, and listen, I don’t really want to talk about Prue. She won’t let me see Lilly, you know.’ And dear Prue licks cunts—I’d love to tell you about that, you old bag.

  ‘What time is it? Ah, listen, Mother. I just remembered, I have to go into the city. I promised to meet someone.’

  ‘Who, dear?’ She looked at him suspiciously.

  ‘Ah…Dave. Yeah, I fixed it up ages ago.’

  ‘That awful Dave. Oh Carl, I thought you had given him up.’

  ‘Jesus, Mother, come on. He’s a respectable married man now. He’s got three little kids and a wife and everything.’

  ‘Yes, Carl, and I remember he used to get you into so much trouble—is he still a communist?’

  ‘No, no, Mother. He always asks after you—um…I’ll just get your flowers and then I better have a shower and get changed.’

  Carl scurried outside, grabbed a piece of foliage from the nearest tree, and, hurrying into his mother’s bedroom, shoved the spiny mass into a vase. He looked round furtively and reached under the bed, found the pills he had dropped, pocketed them, and went back into the lounge room.

  ‘All right, Mother, I’ll just have a wash and I’ll be off.’

  ‘If you must, Carl. I was looking forward to a quiet chat this afternoon. I’ve hardly seen you since I arrived.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mother, I only have to work two hours tomorrow arvo and I’ll have all Sunday free.’ Christ! What a thought—a quiet chat.

  Carl went out into his bathroom. It was a rather squalid lean-to at the back of the kitchen. Some former tenant had painted it dark green in an attempt at hiding the mould and cracks in the plaster. There was a stained bath at one end with an old-fashioned shower rose perched insecurely over it. He took off his clothes and stood in the bath, turning on the taps and waiting. The water pressure was weak and the hot water system unpredictable. Eventually there came a lukewarm trickle.

  Shit! Mother must have had a bath this
morning—bugger all hot water left. What a place! Still, Mother couldn’t put up with this sort of thing much longer—after South Yarra! She must go back, in what? Twelve days—not that long. How everyone used to be thrilled at living in these bloody dumps—how I hate them now.

  He remembered how he and Dave, in their youth, had shared a house in Carlton—the Latin quarter of Melbourne. Dave had been a student and Carl an apprentice. How romantic they had thought the rows of dark, crumbling terraces and the Italians and Greeks who couldn’t wait to get out of them and escape to the clean air and open spaces of the outer suburbs.

  The two boys had fallen easily into the raffish antinomism of middle-class inner-suburban slum life. Dave had become the socialist he still was, but Carl’s revolt had never taken him beyond drugs and the cliches of the dropout. As Dave said, ‘From angry youth to peevish middle age!’

  Now Carl stood under the cooling water, knowing that living as he did was no longer a matter of choice. Still, he could hope.

  Maybe I could cook full-time and afford somewhere better—till Mother dies anyway. Then…No, I can’t work full time—my nerves…I’d be drinking like a fish. At least these dumps are cheap.

  He stepped out of the bath; the concrete floor felt clammy and unpleasant. On the wall facing him was a big cloudy mirror. He saw his reflection swim forward in the sub-aqueous gloom. He looked with distaste at his skinny arms and the slight pot belly beginning under his bony chest.

  Ugh! I look like a fish. A rabbit fish—Sophie’ll go mad, I don’t think. To work!

  He blew dry his thin blonde hair, teasing it carefully at the crown, applying more than the usual amount of hair gel.

  After all Sophie’ll be seeing me in the daylight. Thank Christ I’m seeing her in the foyer—that was good thinking. It’ll be a bit darker in there—God! I can’t see a thing in here.

  He opened the door; hanging on the back was his mother’s shower bag. He had a look inside. There was a clutter of make-up and scent bottles. He sniffed a few and dabbed one under his arms. A bit overpowering but sexy!