Henry Hoey Hobson

by Christine Bongers

  ‘Can I come with you, tomorrow? To find the contract?’ I could picture Mum’s face, when I showed it to her, the relief, the sheer–

  ‘No.’

  I swung round in my seat. ‘Why not?’

  The flashing lights of an ambulance lit up his face as it swept past us, heading back the way we had just come. Something was eating him, but he couldn’t put it into words.

  He pulled up at the lights on Kelvin Grove Road, yanked on the handbrake and slipped the car into neutral. ‘You should go to school.’

  If that was the best he could do, he could stick it. I folded my arms and stared mutinously back at him.

  ‘I hate school.’

  As soon as the words were out of my mouth, they took on a size and importance they hadn’t had the whole time I’d been bottling them up.

  ‘Everybody hates me. They think I’m a vampire and that I hang round with a bunch of freaks. I have to spend all the breaks by myself in the library because nobody even talks to me. Except for the principal, and that’s like walking around with a big ‘L’ stuck to your forehead. Nobody cares if I don’t go to school. Nobody cares if my mum’s in hospital. Nobody cares if her contract gets lost and we don’t have any money. Nobody cares about us, OK? NOBODY CARES.’

  The blip of a horn behind us told us the light had turned green. He didn’t break eye contact until the second, more insistent blurt. His lips worked, but no sound came out. He released the handbrake, slipped the car into gear and we travelled the rest of the way home in silence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Manny had made an effort with the studio.

  He’d dragged in a mattress, covered it with lime-coloured sheets, a purple cotton blanket and a furry black throw rug. The desk lamp, relocated to the floor near the bed, perched on a hardcover copy of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights.It shone a spotlight on a fresh glass of water on the floor, and a toothbrush, still in its packaging, lay propped on the pillow.

  ‘Let me know if there’s anything else you need,’ he said, bending down and awkwardly folding back the covers. ‘Bathroom’s just next door.’ He straightened up, one hand massaging his hip. ‘Do you want me to grab some of your stuff from home?’

  The question jarred me. Without Mum there, next door didn’t feel like home, just another empty house. I shook my head. All I wanted was to crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and shut out the remains of this day.

  Manny blew a breath out between his lips and cupped a giant hand on my shoulder. ‘Look, Henry, we’re not what you’d call experienced when it comes to kids. But we’ll do our best to look after you till your mum comes home, OK?’

  I nodded, toeing the soft folds of the bed cover. The insides of my eyelids were hot and swollen. I couldn’t risk looking at him in case I started blubbering.

  He hesitated, then squeezed my shoulder. ‘We’ll go get your stuff in the morning. Sleep tight, OK?’ A final pat and he was gone, the door swinging shut behind him.

  I pulled the curtains open and stared out into the night. A flickering glow came from the house on their other side. It must be the old lady that I’d seen on the verandah in the mornings, watering her hydrangeas with a hose. Now sitting alone in the dark, watching TV, waiting for another day to end.

  A couple of doors further up, etched into the blackness by security lights, was the school.

  I turned away from the window.

  I didn’t care what Anders said; I wasn’t going back to that school.

  First thing tomorrow I was going to get Caleb or Manny to help me find Mum’s contract. Then I was going to take it in to her at the hospital, so she wouldn’t have to worry about no money coming in while she was laid up. And then I was going to pull up a chair and sit with her until she got better.

  Anders’ sketchbook lay on the sloping desktop. Closed, just like he’d left it. I drifted towards it, drawn by the memory of his hand moving across the page; the sure, deft strokes of the charcoal, the fluency of his movements, such a contrast to his stilted and brooding presence.

  My hand hovered over the cover, tempted to open it and have a quick flick through. The memory of his hand clamping down on the pages flooded back. He’d made it pretty clear that he didn’t want anyone, and certainly not me, looking at his drawings.

  I crawled onto the mattress, and hugged my knees to my chest. I couldn’t get the thought of Mum being operated on out of my head. I ground my kneecaps into my eye sockets and rocked back and forth, but I could still see Mum’s face, stripped naked by pain and worry, telling me to find that contract.

  A sharp tone from somewhere in the house brought my head up; a much-needed distraction. I pushed myself to my feet, flicked off the light and cracked open my door.

  Caleb and Anders stood at the far end of the dining room. They were making an effort to keep their voices low, but Caleb was fuming about something, and Anders, head bowed, was on the receiving end.

  The idea of Caleb going off was novel enough to make me strain to hear more. His next words snapped out, loud enough for me to hear.

  ‘The real-estate agency might have been a coincidence, but signing us up for this house wasn’t, was it, Anders? For God’s sake, did you think that no-one was going to notice?’

  Anders looked away and I couldn’t catch his reply. But Caleb sure did.

  ‘Staying away is no longer an option.’ He clawed his fingers in frustration at Anders’ bowed head. ‘You have to deal with this, you owe it to–’

  He broke off, and swung round as though sensing my presence. I snicked the door closed as he started towards me and threw myself on the mattress on the floor.

  Moments later, the door eased open. I felt eyes searching the darkness of the room as I lay unmoving under the garish sheet.

  The click of high heels across the polished wood floor grew louder and stopped in the open doorway.

  ‘Is he asleep?’ It was Vee, her sweet, musky candle scent wafting in the open doorway.

  ‘I think so,’ said Caleb.

  My heart thudded at the uncertainty in his voice.

  ‘Then go,’ said Vee. ‘I will make certain that he is all right.’

  A moment later his footsteps retreated down the hall. The scent of candles grew stronger.

  ‘I think not,’ she said softly. ‘Not asleep yet, are you, Henry?’

  I rolled onto my back and stared up at her pale face gleaming in the moonlight.

  ‘How did you know?’

  Her skirts rustled and billowed as she settled on the floor beside me. She leaned towards me, resting a cheek on one knee, hands clasped around the tops of her high-laced boots.

  ‘I have spent a lifetime awake while the rest of the world sleeps, Henry. I know the moment that conscious thought vanishes. The instant when the breath slows and sighs, and settles into a rhythm never found in the wakeful.’ She smiled, teeth white against her inky lips.

  ‘Geez, Vee–’ I struggled into a sitting position. ‘I can’t believe you don’t know how creepy that sounds. No wonder Angelica thinks you’re a vampire–’

  She laughed. ‘Is that the girl who photographed our coffin? How wonderful. We should do our best to perpetuate the illusion–’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’ I pushed the hair out of my eyes, irritated that she could make a joke of it.

  ‘Because it would be amusing?’ She shrugged. ‘Illusions are more entertaining than the truth, Henry. And more comforting.’

  I wasn’t in the mood for this. ‘Why do you have to go out of your way to be different, Vee? To freak people out with the black lipstick, the weird clothes–’

  ‘But I am different, Henry.’ Her black-rimmed eyes were serious, her voice, calm and matter-of-fact. ‘That’s what I came here to tell you.

  ‘There is something you must know about me, if you are to stay here.’

  I drew my legs up and rested my chin on my knees, unsure what to make of her statement.

  She lifted her chin. ‘Have you ever
heard of a condition called Xeroderma pigmentosum?

  ‘Zero what?’

  ‘ Xeroderma pigmentosum.’

  ‘It sounds like a curse out of Harry Potter.’

  Her black lips thinned in a humourless smile. ‘Some might call it a curse. It is a genetic condition where the skin cannot repair itself.’ She paused. ‘I was born with it. The smallest amount of sunlight causes dreadful burns that turn cancerous, killing most sufferers before they reach my age. You need to know this so that you don’t rip open the blinds and inadvertently expose me to sunlight while you are here.’

  ‘Vee, that’s terrible–’ I couldn’t have been more shocked if she had told me that she was in fact a vampire.

  She shrugged. ‘I have a mild form of the disease, but my older brother was not so fortunate. He died before I was born. My mother knew to protect her next child. When she fell pregnant with me, she took no chances. We lived in Europe for the milder summers and shorter winter days. She ensured I was never exposed to sunlight while I was growing up.’

  ‘What, not at all?’ I couldn’t get my head around a life without the sun. ‘What did you do all day? How did you go to school?’

  ‘I slept during the day or played indoors. I was home-schooled by my mother. In music and literature, art and science. We became creatures of the night, playing and working during the hours of darkness.’

  ‘How did you make friends?’ I thought I had it bad at Perpetual Suckers, but it was nothing compared to this.

  ‘In winter, the sun set by four o’clock; I could play with the local children until their bedtime. It was more difficult during the short summers; few wished to play indoors and the other children went to bed when the sun was still high in the sky. But it became easier as I grew older.’

  She dimpled a smile at me. ‘You will one day discover that there is no shortage of young people who like to party till dawn and sleep all day.’

  ‘But to never go outside, to never go to the beach–’

  ‘Oh, but I do all that, Henry. Between sunset and sunrise. Caleb and I have swum at midnight, when the phosphorescence in the water glitters like diamonds. We have ridden horses in moonlight. Danced under the stars.’

  She smiled again. ‘I refuse to let a skin condition ruin my life, Henry. I write and sleep during the day; shop, go to the movies, have fun with my friends at night. When they go to bed, I curl up with my characters at the computer and make more terrible things happen in their lives than have ever happened in mine. Then, to show I am a good witch after all, I help them sort it all out by the end.’

  ‘You’re not a witch, Vee, don’t say that–’

  She shrugged. ‘People see the black clothing and make-up and say Goth. Witch. Emo. They are masks that I am happy to wear; tribes I am happy to belong to...’

  She rose gracefully, smoothing her skirts. ‘We all must play the hand that we are dealt in this life, Henry. Choosing to play with imagination and flair makes the game more enjoyable, no?’

  I nodded, not sure what else I could do.

  She kissed two fingertips and pressed them to my forehead. ‘Sleep well, Henry. And when that is not possible, come knock on my door. I can be there for you while the rest of the world sleeps.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Half an hour later I was still awake, my mind over heating with the events of the day.

  I flicked on the bedside lamp. Picked up Northern Lightsand put it straight back down again. I sat up on the mattress, scrubbed my hair into a bird’s nest and thought seriously about knocking on Vee’s door. I swung my head round and spotted the sketchbook, at eye level, on the desktop next to my bed.

  Anders had left it sitting there, right out in the open.

  I reached up and grabbed it.

  If he didn’t want anyone looking at his drawings, then he should have put them away.

  ***

  I lay on my stomach and shone the beam of the reading lamp onto the cover. It bore nothing but a generic description: Sketchbook – 100 pages.

  No name. No hint of the contents.

  I opened the book to the last used page, the charcoal sketch that I had already seen, and tried to tell myself that it was less of an intrusion to sneak a second look at a picture I had already seen. I was kidding myself; once those pages lay open, I knew that no force on earth could stop me looking at every single drawing in the book.

  Just like the first time, my eyes were sucked towards the tiny figure in the corner of the page.

  Anders knew what he was doing. Every sweep and smudge of dark charcoal on that white page funnelled the gaze in one direction only.

  The bleak desert landscape took up most of the page, but the meaning of the picture clearly lay in the figure of the departing child. It was as if all the life in the picture had withered and died in his wake.

  I turned back to the previous page, careful not to smudge the dusty charcoal. It was completely different in every way. A pen and ink sketch of a baby looking over a mother’s shoulder, eyes wide and expressionless. As though looking into the face of a stranger.

  The page before was different again: a water-colour of a rugged landscape, with a boy running away on the far side of a rocky chasm.

  Page after page showed drawings, paintings, pastels, all different, yet oddly similar. All featuring a child of varying ages. Distant, alone, caught in the act of leaving, of turning, of running away.

  A soft knock made me start.

  I fumbled to close Anders’ sketchbook, but it was too late. Through a crack in the door I could see Manny’s scarred eye staring at me and at the book on the floor in front of me.

  ‘I didn’t want to wake you–’ He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. ‘I just wanted to make sure that you were OK before I went off to bed.’

  He held out a big scarred paw and I handed him the sketchbook, blood pounding in my face.

  ‘He’s really good,’ I said defensively. ‘He should show these to people.’

  Manny nodded. ‘He does, when they’re finished.’

  I caught the note in his voice and hung my head, embarrassed about being caught snooping. ‘They look pretty finished to me,’ I muttered under my breath.

  He perched on the edge of the desk, tapping the sketchbook against his leg. ‘They weren’t meant for anyone else’s eyes. Anders uses them as a way of thinking out loud, trying to work out what he wants to say through his art.’

  I raised my head. ‘Did you know that his sketchbook is full of pictures of lonely kids?’

  His tufted eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘No, I didn’t. But I do know that he draws what’s important to him.’ He took a breath, as though about to say something more, then changed his mind.

  Instead he reached down and patted my arm. ‘If you’re interested, Henry, just ask him.’

  ‘He doesn’t talk to me, like you do. Like Caleb does.’

  He studied the sketchbook propped against the broad expanse of his thigh. ‘Anders is a hard guy to get to know,’ he admitted. ‘But he’s worth the effort. Trust me on that.’

  I hesitated. ‘I asked him how come he knew his way around the hospital. He said that he visited you when you were in there.’

  ‘ Visited–’ He coughed out a half laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Is that what he called it?’

  I shrugged and shifted uncomfortably. The truth was Anders hadn’t even said that much.

  Manny sighed. ‘My story is what used to be called a “cautionary tale”. The type of story you tell kids to put them off doing something stupid. Something that might ruin their lives.’ He pointed. ‘And their faces.’

  I held my breath. He was going to tell me where he got the scars. The ugly twisting gouges that clawed across his head and face and disappeared down the front of his ridiculous T-shirts.

  He smiled a tight, sad little grimace.

  ‘I got hit by a car. My own stupid fault for being too lazy to cross at the lights. Got thrown more than ten metres into the fro
nt window of a shop. Smashed it along with practically every bone in my body. I even broke my neck. Luckily I didn’t sever my spinal column or I would have ended up in a wheelchair.’

  I didn’t know what to say. Manny’s eyes were on the sketchbook in his hands.

  ‘When I woke up in the hospital, Anders was there by my bedside. He was there everytime I woke up. He read to me when I couldn’t hold a book or a newspaper. Brought in meals from Sirianni Fine Foods in The Valley so I wouldn’t have to eat the boiled mince the hospital dished up. Took my dirty PJs home with him every day, washed them and brought them back fresh next morning.’

  I couldn’t help thinking of Mum and how she wouldn’t be able to get her PJs on over a broken leg. Maybe I could take her some big T-shirts to sleep in. ‘How long were you in hospital, Manny?’

  ‘Six months.’

  The words were a kick in the guts. The air rushed out of me and I thought I was going to be sick. Manny dropped the sketchbook on the desk and reached out a steadying hand. ‘Henry, I broke practically every bone in my body, including my neck. It’s not the same for your mum, OK? She’ll be up and about on crutches before you know it. OK, matey?’

  I forced myself to breathe and he patted my arm, not sure what to do next.

  His story had hit a nerve. Now I couldn’t look at his broken face without thinking about what might have broken in Mum.

  ‘Manny, I’m really tired. I might just go to bed now, if that’s OK with you.’

  He ran a hand through his shaggy hair. ‘Sure ... and don’t worry about your mum. She’ll be fine.’

  I crawled under the cover, trying not to notice him going down awkwardly on one knee, trying to tuck me in.

  ‘Things will look brighter in the morning, matey. You’ll see.’

  A final pat and he was gone.

  I wanted to believe him, but the day had sucked a lot of the optimism out of me.

  I turned my face towards the pillow. Muffling the hot damp fear that rose up inside me. Trying to ignore it squeezing its way out from between my closed lids.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN