Time's Long Ruin

by Stephen Orr

  When Mum and Dad arrived home we were still there, sitting on dining room chairs under the healing tree, drinking Greek coffee. Dad parked the car in our drive and Mum wandered over with her arms crossed.

  ‘How was it?’ Liz asked.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ Mum replied. ‘Two hours of Tommy guns.’

  She sat on the fence and Dad strolled over, standing behind her and putting his hands on her shoulders. ‘It was a classic,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Machine Gun Kelly. That man was an animal. You been behavin’ yourself?’

  ‘He’s been fine,’ Rosa replied. ‘Helped me pray for Mister Grinby’s pancreas.’

  A police car moved slowly along the street, shining its spotlight on letterboxes. We all watched as it slowed and stopped outside number seven. A sergeant and a young constable got out and slammed their doors.

  Liz dropped her head. ‘Not now,’ she whispered.

  Mum moved over and sat beside her.

  Dad turned to the sergeant and said, ‘DS Page, can I help you?’

  ‘Just the man,’ the sergeant replied. ‘A word, if I may.’

  Dad wandered over to him as we all watched anxiously. ‘Is it about my kids?’ Bill called from his front door.

  The sergeant looked at Bill and then Dad. Dad talked to the thin, balding policeman for a few minutes and then patted him on the back. The sergeant got in his car, motioned to the young constable, and they drove off. Dad waited in the middle of the road as Bill wandered over from his front porch. ‘What have they found?’ Bill asked, his eyes red, his dressing gown hanging loosely from his shoulders and his hair messed where he’d ran his hands through it a thousand times. Dad clutched his shoulder and said, ‘It’s not them.’

  They came over to the healing tree. Dad paused and then looked at me, then at Mum, Con and Rosa. ‘Doctor Gunn’s dead,’ he said.

  ‘Christ,’ Bill replied. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Don found his door open, about an hour ago. Thought it was a break-in. Went in and found him . . . used an extension cord to hang himself.’

  I looked at the ground. No. That was nothing to do with me. Then I saw the doctor’s face and heard his voice, I thought we were alike . . .

  No one said a word.

  The doctor came around in front of me and whispered, I go about things the wrong way. I always have.

  Rosa dropped to her knees and started praying, and then Con joined her. Mum and Liz just stared at Dad. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I better go down and take a look.’

  ‘Should I come?’ Bill offered.

  ‘No. They’ll wanna take photos and . . .’ He stopped, caught up in his own thoughts. ‘You should get some sleep, Bill, it’s been a big day.’

  Dad turned and walked off.

  Give up the books, I heard, softly, in my ear. They don’t get you anywhere.

  Con looked up at me and smiled. ‘You okay, Henry?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  I could see the doctor’s hands trembling as he gave me the handcuffs. One day you’ll understand.

  And I could see, maybe for the first time, the impossibility of living without love.

  Chapter Six

  A week passed. It seemed like summer had been going on for months, but it was just starting to warm up. Every day I watched from my window as school kids went past: shirts untucked, socks around their ankles – hair, soaked with sweat, sticking out like blonde and brown pavlovas, shorts held up by nothing but hips, ice clunking in water bottles wrapped in tea towels, brown faces, shoelaces undone and legs streaked with paint and blood from scabs picked during long, hot grammar lessons.

  My uniform had been ironed paper flat and hung up in my bedroom on a large brass hook. Every morning Mum would come in and say, Okay, school . . . and I’d reply, Just another day.

  Just another day.

  Until finally she lost patience. ‘No, today, Henry. It’s been a week. You’ll fall behind. Don’t you want to get there and make some new friends?’

  No.

  So there I was, on the Wednesday of the second week of school, dragging my feet along Thomas Street, stopping and picking up a cast-iron Panzer but discarding it when I saw it didn’t have wheels or tracks. There I was, loosening my tie and hitching a bag full of new books over my shoulder, turning to Janice and saying, I’ve never had a bloke teacher before.

  Can’t be any worse than Headley. She’s a bitch.

  Just cos she made you sit at the front.

  I didn’t do anything.

  I smiled. You did.

  After, but when she moved me I hadn’t done a thing.

  They talk in the staff room. They draw up lists. ‘Ah, you’ve got that Riley girl, you better watch her.’

  Bitch. She looked back. Come on, Anna, we don’t want to be late on our first day back.

  Back at numbers 7 and 7A Thomas Street, things had settled down. Bikes and toys had been picked up from around the yard and stored in the shed. The kids’ clothes had been washed and put away, for now. Mr Hessian had reclaimed his concrete Virgin (seeing how his gesture hadn’t been appreciated), and people had stopped standing on the street, chatting, staring at the Rileys’ place.

  Things had settled: life had become a mixture of the old and new, the remembered and had-to-be-forgotten. But it still seemed like we were all waiting. Not so much for them to walk through the front gate as for some news, any news – a sock, a beach towel, a body. Liz spent hours a day at the piano and sometimes Bill would come in and sing along, improvising mostly forgotten lyrics. Then he would open a beer and go and sit by himself in the backyard, sometimes playing his ukulele, sometimes standing (in the midst of his thoughts), going over to the roses and pulling off spent flowers.

  It was quiet. Like the set of a play between performances – a light bulb changed, a chair moved, an oven cleaned. But nothing actually happening. Night and then day. Time in small slices: traces of light an hour before sunrise, as Bill sat watching the little bit of horizon he could see past rooftops and gum trees.

  Dad dropped by the Rileys’ three or four times a day for coffee or a beer or no reason at all. He told Liz and Bill which leads they were following: a sighting at Moana, a pair of bathers found on the rocks at Port Lincoln. And often, he explained, it’s just that people want to help. They imagine their own kids lost and then an old thong on the esplanade is a missed clue. But that’s how it’s affecting people, Dad said. It’s not just you two, it’s all of us. Because once it happens, it happens again. And then where are we? Locking our doors at night, keeping our kids inside when they should be down the playground.

  I stood on the corner of Elizabeth Street and looked down towards Doctor Gunn’s clinic. The door was open and there were mops and buckets and boxes of stationery and books outside on the footpath, stacked high against the bike rack. I crossed the road and slowly walked along the sunny side of the street. And then I stopped and tried to see inside the shop. A woman in her sixties, or maybe older, appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, attempting to smile, taking the mop, wringing it out and going back inside.

  I looked at a few of the books in the boxes, some that I’d read, some that I’d meant to. What a waste, I thought. This lot could’ve kept me going for years. I took a few steps forward and tried to look inside the shop. It was empty. The furniture had been removed: the doctor’s desk and waiting lounges, his bookcases and even his treatment tables from the back room. And instead of emu oil and menthol, his clinic smelt of Ajax and Dettol.

  The woman looked at me again. ‘You’ll be late for school.’

  I shrugged. ‘What’s gonna happen now?’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s up for lease.’ And she continued mopping the floor. It was dark inside, maybe the power had already been disconnected. There was dust in the air – dust that never seemed to settle, that floated around and around in thermals of Bon Ami, stirring up th
e smell of leather and the memory of the doctor’s low-pitched voice. The fifth vertebra. Now I’m going to use the drop table. Are you comfortable?

  Bells, as I entered.

  That you, Henry?

  Yes.

  I bought some more index cards.

  The woman had two large rings on her right index fingers. They clunked against the mop handle as she worked. She had dishwater-coloured hair, permed into a sort of meringue that looked like it might collapse under the weight of gravity. She wore stockings and underneath her legs were covered in scabs, bruises and varicose veins. Her shoes were finished with gold buckles that contained glass disks, or maybe diamonds, the same colour as her rings, and her high heels slipped on the floor every time she bent over to mop.

  ‘You’ll be late for school,’ she repeated.

  ‘I used to sort books for Doctor Gunn,’ I said.

  Her face lit up. ‘You must be Henry. George often talked about you.’ She put down the mop, wiped her hands on a rag, walked over and extended her hand to me. ‘I’m Moira, George’s mother.’

  I shook her hand. It was cold and there was no strength in it. There was just loose, grey skin on long bones, like the hands of the skeleton she’d thrown in the bin.

  ‘You must be terribly upset,’ she said. ‘We all are. But George’s father died of a stroke too, years ago.’

  ‘A stroke?’

  ‘Yes, a blocked vessel, around the brain. I just thank God it was quick. They said they found him at his desk, with a pen in his hand.’

  I looked into her eyes – they were heavy, surrounded by folds of fatty skin that pulled down the lower lids to reveal red, angry eyeballs. ‘He was a wonderful son,’ she said, a certain ecstasy disguising any grief in her voice.

  ‘Is there a funeral?’ I asked, half-convincing myself that the doctor was some sort of misunderstood saint.

  ‘Don’t you worry about that,’ she replied. ‘You remember him how you knew him.’

  As a dirty old man. Or just weak? Failing himself more than anyone else.

  ‘He loved children. That’s the only tragedy – that he didn’t meet someone, that he didn’t have kids. Then things might have been very different . . . very different.’

  ‘I think he just liked the company,’ I said, picking up a book and flicking through it.

  ‘I think you’re right. It was a long day for him in here by himself. I told him to get a secretary but he wouldn’t. Not when I can do it myself, he said. And I suppose he was right. Still, sometimes during the day, when there was no one around, before everyone came in with their crook backs after work . . .’ She looked up, out the window and across the street. ‘He had Con. I’ve been speaking to him. Said they’d just stand out there and talk for hours.’ She looked back at me. She ran her ring finger across my cheek and said, ‘There are worse ways to spend your day, eh, Henry?’

  ‘I suppose. Like school.’

  She smiled. ‘We all went through it.’ Then she looked around the room at the boxes of books stacked against the walls. ‘He said you were helping him make a library.’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘So people could come for their backs . . . and find something to read.’ I pointed next door. ‘We’d nearly filled that room.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The Hindmarsh Library’s crap.’

  ‘Well,’ she continued, ‘I have no use for all these. Would you like them?’

  My face lit up. ‘All of them?’

  ‘I live in a flat. I only read the Woman’s Day. Honestly, I don’t know where George got it from. I was going to ring the Salvation Army.’

  ‘Well, if you reckon . . .’

  She smiled. ‘I reckon.’

  ‘But how would I get them home?’

  ‘Leave it to me.’ She found a pencil and a scrap of paper and handed them to me. ‘Write your address,’ she said.

  I scribbled my address, looking around at the dozens of boxes, wondering what Mum would say but quickly dismissing the thought.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Henry,’ she continued, offering her hand again. ‘Just promise me one thing – you’ll come visit me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She took the scrap of paper, scribbled her own name and address on the corner, tore it off and handed it to me.

  ‘Moira,’ I said, reading the copperplate, looking up, smiling.

  ‘Now, off you go, or you’ll be late for school.’

  I set off down Elizabeth Street, beaming, carrying each of the hundreds of books in my hands. I was Atlas. Superman. I was Mr Stretch, dropping a book and picking it up without bending. And so what if Mum moaned and carried on? Books are an investment, I’d explain. An investment in the future – in the brain, the imagination, in logic and reasoning.

  So what? Moira was happy and I was happy. Doctor Gunn would be happy (sitting in some stratocumulus with a fabric cord around his neck, laughing, smiling, realising he’d found the perfect way of saying sorry to someone he cared about). I would always know the capital of Georgia and how to cook baklava. Oliver Twist would grind okum for the rest of eternity (or until Mr Brownlow came to rescue him), and if I ever wanted to know about integrated circuits . . .

  Walking through the gates of Croydon Primary was never easy. The cast-iron arches were similar to the ones I’d seen in pictures of Auschwitz. The only thing missing were the train tracks leading up to a platform. The rest was there: crowds of people with bags, children carrying rag dolls, disorder, loud voices and commands barked over loud speakers – ‘Nicholas Wynd to the office please’ – guards with whistles and detentions slips, high fences and an Alsatian barking in someone’s front yard. Janice had it right. Himmler was only a few houses away.

  Not much had changed in the previous six weeks. A branch that had broken off one of the giant river red gums still sat wedged between the parallel bars (as some grade ones tried to spin on them, they clunked their heads and revealed their knickers). The bitumen was still cracked and crumbling on the parade ground where they stood us in straight lines in full sun until someone fainted, or made us practise ‘bush dancing’ to music broadcast on the PA (as Mr Mellanby, clutching a fag, counted the beat, stepping down from a podium to scream at someone who’d changed partners too early). The lunch shed was still standing (just), promising bottles of sun-warmed milk to every child at recess time (as we sat on long benches, waiting until everyone was finished, or someone vomited, before we were dismissed for play). The windows of the main block were still dirty from carpet dust and decades of sticky tape.

  And the rest? You hardly need much imagination – polished floors, desks with loose legs, and fans that clunked like they were about to fall on someone’s head; half-pies from the canteen (the meat dry as chalk dust), and water from the fountains that tasted of rust and chlorine.

  If I could survive seven years of this, I could survive anything.

  As I walked towards the front office I passed groups of kids comparing comics, lunches and the engine capacity of their brothers’ cars. A few girls, each with their hair done up in black and white ribbons, looked up at me and whispered between themselves. It’s Henry, they were saying. And he hasn’t got Janice anymore. One of them came over to me and said, ‘We heard what happened, and we think it’s terrible. Are you upset?’

  ‘I suppose,’ I offered.

  ‘You can play with us, if you’d like.’

  I tried to smile, closing my lips and filling my mouth with air. ‘Thanks, I’ll see how I go.’

  I looked back at the rest of the group. They all beamed at me. ‘Is this your first day back?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe some of the boys will play with you now.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Because of Janice. Maybe they’ll feel sorry for you.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ve got plenty of friends.’

  ‘Really?’ She looked at my foot. ‘I thought you couldn’t run around with them?’

  ‘I can run.’r />
  I looked at a group, roughly my age, climbing the pepper tree in the corner of the yard, until a teacher came and blew her whistle and made them get down. ‘Thanks anyway,’ I said, passing on.

  ‘Janice was nice.’

  ‘I know.’

  I went to the main office and explained who I was and why I’d been missing for so long.

  ‘We know,’ the lady explained, coming out of her office into the foyer, kneeling beside me and holding my arm as if I was spastic. ‘How are you, Henry? Are you okay now?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘It’s a terrible thing, but morning comes, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Morning follows night. And then we get on with life.’

  ‘That’s why I’m back.’

  ‘Of course you’re back . . . and so brave.’ She tilted her head and smiled. ‘We can only hope they’ll be found.’

  ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘No, you’ve gotta trust in God.’

  ‘God? Dad reckons it was over on the Wednesday.’

  She smiled again. ‘Now, we have a note from your mother and she says . . .’ She found her glasses on a cord around her neck, placed them on the tip of her nose and read from a scrap of paper – ‘“If Henry suffers any stress, or agitation, please let him rest in the sick room. He shouldn’t need to come home, barring anything very unfortunate.”’

  ‘What does that mean?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she smiled, allowing her glasses to fall from her nose. ‘You just try your best.’

  ‘Where do I go?’

  ‘Mister Meus, room seventeen.’

  The bell rang.

  ‘Chin up,’ she said, squeezing my shoulder one last time. ‘It’s not over yet.’

  What? I thought.

  ‘You wait and see.’

  Silly old bitch.

  ‘Thank you.’

  I walked across the yard, towards a transportable building backing onto Cedar Street. Two boys, one of them, Ashley, a friend from grade two (before he found someone else), sat on a fallen log that had become a seat because the groundsman couldn’t be bothered moving it.

  ‘Hi, Henry,’ Ashley said.