Time's Long Ruin

by Stephen Orr

  Janice came running from her front door, stopping at the street fence, hanging over and waving to her dad as she shouted, ‘See yer.’

  But he was gone. She jumped the hedge to our front yard and wandered over to my window. ‘You awake, Henry?’ she asked, cupping her hands to peer in.

  ‘I’m awake. What y’ in bathers for?’

  She used a single finger to loosen the elastic around her bum. ‘Mum’s takin’ us to Semaphore. Wanna come?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s too hot.’

  ‘That’s why you go to the beach.’ Her eyes adjusted to the light and she could see me, still in bed, holding a sheet over my head.

  ‘Why y’ doin’ that?’ she asked.

  ‘Your dad’s car stinks.’

  ‘You don’t have to go swimming.’

  ‘I gotta get my stuff ready for school.’

  ‘But that’s next week.’

  I sat up in bed. ‘You go. I don’t feel like it.’

  She paused. ‘I got money.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’ll tell Gavin and Anna then. They were looking forward to it.’

  ‘Gotta cover my books.’

  And then she was gone, skipping across our yard and in her front door, I imagined, fetching three beach towels from the linen-press and stuffing them in a bag, helping Anna pull on her bathers and a loose green, red and yellow poncho. Then she found her mother on the phone in the kitchen. ‘When we going?’ she asked.

  Liz turned away and swatted her like a fly. ‘Ssh.’

  Janice found her brother in his room, sitting on the floor attempting a 500-piece jigsaw that was mostly blue sky and green pasture. It had been a good six months and he’d got all the edges, mostly with Janice’s help. ‘Hurry up,’ she said. ‘We’re going.’ She started pulling off his pyjamas. ‘Sit still, don’t wriggle.’

  ‘Is Henry coming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  A few minutes later she had his bathers on. She helped him with his shorts and a T-shirt and found his thongs under a pile of Lego and broken toys. ‘Where’s your hat?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Find it.’ She returned to her mother in the kitchen and stood with her arms crossed, staring at her. Liz covered the phone with her hand and said, ‘Don’t look at me like that, it’s important.’

  Janice put their bag of stuff on the table, found the zinc cream in the pantry between the sauce and pickled onions, and put it in the bag. She made up cordial in an old Coke bottle and packed a dozen Arrowroot biscuits in a Tupperware container. Then she went to her bedroom and slipped on a frock and sandals. She returned to the kitchen but her mum was still on the phone. She sat at the table, resting her head on her arm, sighing and occasionally looking up at her.

  Liz hung up. ‘We can’t go,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Aunty Sonja’s bleeding again.’

  Janice didn’t say a word. She knew what that would invite. Instead, she just rolled her head in a full 360-degree orbit.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Liz said, searching for her purse and keys.

  ‘Can we go later?’

  ‘She’s gone to the hospital.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘But it’s hot.’

  ‘Think of others for once, Janice.’

  ‘I am, but . . .’

  ‘You’ve had a good run these holidays.’

  Janice didn’t reply. She sat up, thinking. ‘We could go.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Me and the little ones.’

  Liz was unsure. She started pulling on her shoes. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I watch them every day, don’t I?’

  ‘This is different.’

  ‘How?’

  Liz’s shoes were too tight. ‘Damn it.’

  ‘I’ve taken them on the train before. Remember, to Woodville.’

  ‘Yes, but Dad was waiting at the other end.’

  ‘I’ll tell you which train we’ll be on.’

  ‘I don’t know what he’d say.’

  Janice stood up. She put her hands on her hips and said, ‘It’s all very simple. I’ll ring you from Semaphore if you like.’

  ‘I won’t be here. I’ll have to wear my sandshoes . . .’ She disappeared into her bedroom, calling, ‘Janice, make sure the gas is off and the back door’s locked.’

  ‘Can we?’

  Janice could hear the sound of her mum throwing shoes around the room. A moment later she stormed back into the kitchen. ‘No time for make-up. We can leave those dishes.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can we?’

  ‘You can come to the hospital.’

  ‘But it’s hot.’

  ‘Janice!’

  ‘She’s okay, she’s always bleeding.’

  Liz stopped and shook her head, looking at her daughter. ‘I can’t believe you’re so . . .’

  Janice just shrugged, and then smiled. ‘Can we?’

  The house was hot. Liz was sweating. She could feel her armpits damp and sticky. ‘I wish Dad was here,’ she said.

  ‘He’d encourage it. He’s always on about independence.’

  Janice took a train timetable from her bag of stuff and opened it. She laid it on the table and used her finger to search. ‘See here, to Semaphore . . . leaves Croydon at 9.05 . . . and here, from Semaphore, arrives Croydon at 2.05. Write that down.’

  ‘Janice.’

  Janice found a pen under a pile of bills and wrote the time on the corner of a docket. ‘If we miss that, which we won’t, 2.35, okay?’

  Liz sighed. ‘Okay, straight there and straight back. Hats, zinc cream, don’t talk to strangers.’

  ‘Mum . . .’

  ‘Is Henry going?’

  ‘He’s covering his books.’

  ‘That’s what you should be doing.’

  ‘There’s plenty of time.’

  I watched from my room as Liz emerged from their house and walked towards Government Road.

  ‘Bus pass,’ I heard her say, and she quickly returned to 7A. A few minutes later she was gone again, dropping her purse on the footpath and bending over to pick up cards and change. Not long after, at about ten to nine, I heard Janice slam her front door and say to the kids, ‘Have you got everything?’

  ‘I need the toilet,’ Gavin replied.

  ‘We’ll miss the train,’ Janice said. ‘Can’t you wait till Semaphore?’

  I didn’t hear a reply.

  I saw them walking down Thomas Street, towards the station. Janice, in the middle, was holding their hands and leading them. I wanted to call out and say, Have fun, but something stopped me. Janice was probably angry with me anyway, leaving her with all the work: two kids to watch, sunburn, broken glass on the beach, trains that never ran on time, and an over-full beach bag that she struggled to carry, hitched across one shoulder, pulling her down at a thirty-degree angle.

  Wait for me, I thought of calling out, but I didn’t want to go. I’d just end up sitting under the jetty, using a shell to carve someone’s face into a piece of cuttlefish, collecting shells for Con, watching other kids, tall and lean and brown, as they threw themselves onto white-tipped waves.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Janice said to her brother and sister. ‘If we miss this one we can’t go.’

  Mariel Johns came up behind them on her bike. ‘Where you goin’?’ she asked, as she moved just fast enough to stay upright.

  ‘Semaphore.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘Train leaves in five minutes.’

  Mariel was off, to the end of Thomas Street, turning into Day Terrace and nearly collecting a man standing reading a newspaper on the corner.

  Janice’s shoulder was tired. She dragged the bag along the footpath and stopped. ‘Shoulda just brought one towel,’ she said. Then she had an idea. She wrestled two towels
out of the bag and threw them over the Housemans’ hedge. ‘We can get ’em later,’ she said, putting the bag across her other shoulder and continuing.

  Soon they were standing on the platform.

  ‘Where you going?’ Con called to them, through cupped hands.

  ‘Semaphore,’ Janice replied.

  Just then Rosa crossed the road and appeared beside Con. He said something to her and pointed at the kids. ‘Have you got lunch?’ she called to them.

  ‘Mum gave us money for a pasty,’ Janice replied.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Aunty Sonja’s bleeding again.’

  Rosa turned to Con and muttered something else. Then she looked at them again. ‘Are you alright by yourselves?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I could come.’

  ‘No, it’s all organised. We’re learning to be independent.’ She waved at them and looked down the tracks. The train had just pulled out of Brompton Station. Con kissed Rosa on the cheek and started to close the gates. Rosa noticed the kids were preoccupied, chatting among themselves, as Janice made sure they stood behind the yellow line. Rosa crossed the road and looked back again. Janice had picked up her bag and was counting out some change.

  ‘Hello,’ Rosa said, realising she was standing at Doctor Gunn’s door, looking at the doctor sitting at his desk, staring out at her.

  ‘Hello, Rosa,’ the doctor replied.

  ‘Are you working today?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said, indicating a pile of papers. ‘Just catching up. How’s Con?’

  ‘Slowing up. The Riley kids are going to Semaphore, by themselves. I don’t know . . . by themselves.’

  Doctor Gunn peered through his venetian blind. ‘They’ll be fine. Kids grow up quick these days.’

  Mariel Johns rode her bike up onto the platform just as the train pulled in. ‘I’m not allowed,’ she said.

  Janice shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll come over tonight.’

  ‘We’re going out. How about tomorrow?’

  ‘Okay.’

  Mariel rode off without even waving. Janice held the little ones’ hands as they boarded the carriage. The train was full of people in various stages of undress: bathers and shorts, PMG work-shirts and singlets, exposed armpits and arse cracks, bodies smelling of Zambuck. Janice found a couple of seats on the Euston Terrace side of the carriage. One of them was damp with sweat from someone’s legs so she took out her beach towel and wiped it. Then she sat down and pulled Gavin onto her knee. ‘Now, you have to do everything I say,’ she said. ‘I’m the mum today.’

  ‘And I’m the dad.’

  Janice looked at her watch. ‘Damn.’ She turned to Anna. ‘Have you got your watch?’

  ‘No, Mum’s got mine.’

  ‘I forgot mine wasn’t working. We can’t miss the train. Mum would skin me alive.’

  Anna leaned forward to be heard above the groaning diesel. ‘Isn’t there a clock, on the statue, near the kiosk?’

  Janice smiled. ‘Remind me.’ She watched as the homes of West Croydon passed by: split villas and bungalows, a roofless ruin overgrown with wild oats and morning glory, a brand-new cream-brick block of flats with washing hung out over the second-floor banisters. Just before the underpass an old man in a suit sat in front of an improvised book store – an ancient, iron-framed bed with its springs sagging under the weight of piles of books. He’d made up a sign: Classical Novels, Prices Agreed. Janice had looked at them once but couldn’t find anything she knew: Cicero, Rilke, Strindberg plays and Das Kapital.

  ‘You can take one,’ he’d said, in a thick European accent.

  ‘What would I like?’

  He used his finger to check the spines. ‘Here, Great Expectations, Charles Dickens.’ Handing it to her.

  ‘Thanks, Mister. Do you sell many?’

  He shrugged. ‘One day.’

  She went home and showed her parents the book and Bill said, ‘Why’d he give you this?

  ‘He was nice.’

  Looking at her. ‘Best stay away from him, eh?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do what you’re told.’

  Looking at Liz. ‘It’s that old Jug-o’-saliva. Why’s he givin’ kids books?’

  Janice finished the book in one week. She returned to the old man and said, ‘I’m going to be a writer.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ he smiled. ‘Because of Dickens?’

  ‘Because of Dickens.’

  ‘And what will your first story be about?’

  She was still writing it, in her head, on scraps of paper she kept in an old ledger in her desk drawer, in pictures drawn in the Semaphore sand, in sky, and song, and stories made up for Gavin and Anna; in the chords and flat notes plucked on her dad’s ukulele and scrawls on the back of gas bills; in timetables and science experiments – in everything she’d ever seen or heard or smelt in Croydon. Her book would be called The Song of Croydon and it would star all of us – Bill, Liz, me, Mum and Dad – even Eric Hessian and his boot polish fingertips. It would be set over one summer, and by saying very little it would say a lot.

  I am called Janice, it would begin. I have never liked my name but it was the name I was given. So it will do . . .

  A young man in black pants, a short-sleeved white shirt and tie leaned over the seat in front and handed Janice a card. It said ‘Know the Bible’s Word’ and gave a time and place to come and hear so-and-so speak. ‘Where are your parents?’ the young man asked, but Janice wouldn’t talk to him.

  ‘The Bible’s a load of shit,’ Anna said, and several people looked at her.

  ‘Anna,’ Janice scowled.

  ‘The Lord will come again,’ the young man said to Anna.

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘Anna,’ Janice repeated, handing back the card and saying, ‘We were told not to speak to strangers.’

  ‘Good advice.’

  There was no more said. At the following stations more and more people got on. Soon the aisles were choked with bags and bodies, prams and eskies and Greek grandmas with three-foot loaves. The train slowed for Port Adelaide station, climbing onto a bridge of old salt-encrusted wooden beams that had everyone worried. They stopped at the platform and a groan made up of every possible pitch and tone rose from the carriage as the doors opened and a dozen more bodies attempted to climb aboard. It was obvious that the train was over-full. But this didn’t make any difference to the people still cramming in.

  ‘Where do you go to school?’ the young man asked Janice.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ a nearby mother barked.

  ‘Attention,’ the conductor shouted, at the top of his voice. ‘We’ll call for a bus, but no more on please.’

  ‘My dad is a detective,’ Janice said, and the young man shrugged.

  Meanwhile, Gavin looked out of the window and smiled. He opened and closed his fist a few times, as if to wave. Anna turned to look.

  ‘It’s a fine thing when you can’t start a conversation,’ the young man said to the mother.

  The conductor walked along the length of the carriage, closing the doors. Then he buzzed the driver and the train lurched forward. It picked up speed as it descended the bridge. After a few moments it was gone, its wheels pulsing rhythmically on the tracks as it faded.

  Liz picked up Anna’s watch. It was ten to two. She remembered Janice’s broken watch and wondered how they’d tell the time. Then she thought of the clock on the statue on the foreshore. She could see Janice, barefoot, towels hanging from her beach bag, dragging her brother and sister towards the train terminus on Semaphore Road.

  ‘Wait,’ Gavin would be saying, shaking sand from his shorts.

  ‘Hurry up, we’ll never get a seat.’

  Liz closed the door and headed down Thomas Street. She guessed Bill would be in Clare by now. He’d be standing in a haberdashery store with his sample bag, waiting for the manager to serve some old dear trying to find a matching button for her husband’s suit. He’d be looking at the manager, smiling a
nd rolling his eyes. Then he’d step forward and say, ‘G’day, Dave. I’ve got a new book of fabrics.’

  ‘I don’t know, Bill, you should see what I’ve got left out back.’

  ‘Old news. People want a change.’

  ‘Not here they don’t. They just want cheap fabric.’

  As Bill loosened his tie he’d think, Fuck, give me strength.

  Liz passed the playground in front of the station. A teenager in a blue dress swung in the breeze on a tyre on a chain. Nearby an old man in a white shirt and brown vest sat at a table under a vine-covered trellis reading a Greek newspaper. He looked up at Liz and she smiled. ‘Grapes are nearly ready,’ she said, pointing, but he didn’t understand her.

  She stood on the platform with her arms crossed, looking along the tracks heading north and west. Too early, she thought. Rosa emerged from Con’s gatehouse and climbed the shallow incline leading up to the platform.

  ‘The children?’ Rosa said.

  ‘They’ve been to Semaphore,’ Liz explained.

  ‘I know, I saw them.’ Rosa wanted to say it, but didn’t. How could you let them go alone? Children are too precious. They have a habit of drowning, of falling, of running onto roads, of getting lost. Instead she just said, ‘How is your sister?’

  ‘Sonja? She’s alright. There’s always something with my sister.’ Liz’s eyes were searching for the train. ‘She has a cyst on her ovary and she won’t let them operate. So every few weeks . . .’ She could see the train in the distance. ‘Here they are.’

  ‘My aunty bled from her brain for weeks,’ Rosa said. ‘She was in her yard gardening when a dog came along. A friendly dog. It jumped up on her, like this, to lick her face. But Aunty fell back and hit her head on the concrete.’

  Con closed the gates. Liz watched as the train slowed for the station. She was looking for a hand, a face, anything to allow her to sigh, to relax, to realise she’d made the right decision.

  ‘There were headaches for a few days,’ Rosa continued. ‘And then she just wanted to sleep. Turn off the light, she’d say, it’s too bright.’

  ‘Sonja enjoys the attention,’ Liz said. ‘I tried to make her realise how serious it was, but she won’t be told.’

  ‘Next thing she was in a coma,’ Rosa explained.

  The train slowed and stopped. Liz scanned the bodies emerging from the carriage. ‘Janice,’ she called, softly.