Half Wild

by Pip Smith

  When Crawford returned, Harry was tugged out of the Parnells’ house into a day fully alive and crawling with men on their way to the tram or the shipyards or the factories to work.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Harry asked, but he was not told. He was told instead to hurry up.

  When they saw a tram pulling out of a stop on Bridge Street both Crawford and Harry ran for it, grabbed a side rail and swung themselves onto the carriage.

  We’re going to find mother and Robert, Harry thought, but he did not dare ask Crawford if this was right.

  They got off at the railway and Crawford did not stop to get his bearings, look at street signs or the signs on the trams. He opened the palm of his hand and counted the coins there and then they walked, Harry noticed, in the direction of seagulls and salt.

  The streets were full, but oddly quiet. Horses trotted past and men propped up doorways, smoking cigarettes, but none of them seemed to be making any noise. They walked through dark gullies of streets sunk between sandstone buildings until they reached the water sucking at the pylons of Circular Quay.

  ‘Two tickets for Watson’s Bay,’ Crawford said to the man behind the ferry ticket counter. ‘One way,’ he added, and even though Harry had not spoken in some time, Crawford turned to him and said, ‘We’re going to take the tram back, in case you were wondering.’

  As they waited for the ferry, Crawford sat on the edge of the bench, leg jiggling, eyes up. He seemed wary of the seagulls looking down at them from the tops of pylons and the roofs of buildings along the quay.

  It was hard to make out the buildings on the other side of the harbour—where they ended and began—because the sky above the harbour was misted over with spume and fog and Harry couldn’t think clearly. He could just see windows in the clouds—it looked like people lived in the clouds. Why had his mother left? Was it something he had said?

  He asked Crawford: ‘Was it something I said to her?’

  Crawford said nothing. Perhaps he thought it was.

  The ferry was small and though the harbour was flat and dark under the heavy clouds, the boat moved in a sickening way. Crawford leaned against the railing, looking out, as if worried the ferry might not know the way, and Harry slumped back, not only in the ferry seat, but inside himself, so that he watched Crawford from eyes inside his own.

  The ferry curved around Garden Island, past boats pulling against their moorings like horses tied to fences, itching to run. They passed leisure yachts named after violent, hungry pursuits: Buffalo Hunter; Moby-Dick; Pirate Queen. They passed the green roughage of shrubbery and pipes cut out of the sandstone walls like sawn-off arteries, dribbling black water into the harbour. They passed houses tiered like syrup cakes. They passed fragments of regular lives lived in those grand houses: a maid collecting undergarments from a clothesline; a woman on an upstairs balcony, pacing backwards and forwards.

  ‘What are we doing?’ Harry asked, but the wind was loud and Crawford didn’t register the sound of Harry’s voice.

  Up on a hill, a convent school and church with a dark spire spiked two clouds in the guts, but still the rain would not spill out.

  They arrived at Watson’s Bay at a time when only housewives and old men were out in their gardens or walking through the streets. It was a slow, weather-beaten outpost of Sydney and the wind stung through the weave of their jackets and the pores of their skin, making their bones thrill with cold. Crawford gripped Harry by the wrist and tugged him up the hill, through a park, until they were standing at the raw edge of the coast.

  Down below, the Tasman was a deep wild blue, the blue of fish eyes, not the dirty green of the harbour, and the cliff face reaching up out of it was jagged, as if the country beyond this point had been dissolved, in one instant, by a freak acid wave. Along the top of the cliff, a fence kept people netted in, though the fence was rusted through with salt and was easily peeled back in places. Leading up to the fence, knife-sharp grasses strained against the wind. Trees bent back, flipping the silver undersides of their leaves at the sky. The only tall tree to be seen was a scraggy pine. Crawford climbed the path towards it and Harry followed.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Harry asked.

  Crawford still said nothing. The wind carried a child’s voice up from Watson’s Bay below, then changed direction and brought with it only the slap of waves against rock.

  Harry stopped in the middle of the path. ‘Crawford! Stop walking. Please!’

  But Crawford did not stop; he kept climbing the path and Harry had to run to catch up.

  At the summit, part of the cliff hooked out and around into nothing, but in its crook a stubborn green succulent grew, its leaves swollen with the strain of clinging. ‘Why are these fences here, wrecking the view?’ Crawford said. ‘Come over to the other side and throw rocks with me.’

  Harry didn’t move. From here he could see the hard rock platform below and how the waves shattered against it. The sandstone of the cliff they stood on looked as soft and collapsible as a skull, the grass on top as rough as salty, blood-matted hair.

  ‘No, Crawford. I want to go back.’

  Harry’s eyes stung. The rain seemed to be falling upwards, right into them.

  ‘I want to go back!’ he yelled. ‘Can you hear me? There are signs, can’t you read the signs?’

  But of course Crawford couldn’t read the signs, because Crawford couldn’t read, and now Harry was sobbing with frustration. Despite his height and his new strength he could not make Crawford leave or read the signs or tell him where his mother was. He could only retreat back into being a boy and he wouldn’t let anyone touch him when he was like this, especially not Crawford, who was climbing between the rocks and the wind-whipped grass, trying to turn the cliff and the bitter wind into a game.

  ‘Come up here, ya bugger! Come on!’ Crawford called as if to a dog, but the thin veneer of fun crumbled easily in the wind and underneath his desperation was an ugly pulsing thing.

  Harry stayed right where he was. Sobbing. Not even bothering to cover his face. He felt raw and pathetic and his snot and tears mixed with the spume, making his face sting where the wind struck it.

  Crawford was not looking him in the face anyway, he was still walking here and there, finding stones to throw, then crawling through a gap in the fence and throwing them. The two went on like this: Harry sobbing, Crawford crawling in and out of the hole in the fence, collecting stones, throwing stones, trying to entice Harry into playing his game, until Harry went and sat on a rock—a numb, crumpled shell of a boy, embarrassed by his own tears. He watched an ant crawl up and fall off a twig again and again until eventually he noticed Crawford sitting beside him.

  ‘You hungry, kid?’

  Harry felt himself nod.

  ‘You want to go get a pie?’

  Harry nodded again.

  ‘Alright, let’s go and get a pie.’

  On their way down the hill, Harry noticed the sapling of a pawpaw tree growing amidst a thicket of grass and prickles: a glimmer of the tropics in this bitter, wind-pummelled place.

  ‘I thought we were going back by tram?’ Harry said as they boarded the ferry back to Circular Quay.

  ‘Changed my mind,’ Crawford said.

  But Harry suspected he hadn’t changed his mind. His mind had been worn down.

  It would be a full three-quarters of an hour before they could eat. The ferry would stop at Rose Bay and Double Bay and pass all the boats straining against their moorings and the grand houses with their elegant women trapped inside and Harry would have to sit there, so hungry his bones themselves felt hollow, his eyes heavy from crying, clutching his knees to his chest on the ferry bench. Crawford sat next to him and Harry thought he heard him say, ‘I’m sorry, son. We’ll find her.’

  When they finally arrived at Sargents pie shop, Harry could have stuffed his face with every pie in the store and Crawford would have bought them all for him, too. Would you like a mince pie? Yes. With mushy peas? Yes. And a shepherd’s pie? Yes. H
ow about a pink cake? Or a lamington? Yes. Yes to both? Yes.

  They walked up the hill towards the botanic gardens, their arms overflowing with pies and cakes as if they were heading straight for a bunker to live out the rest of the war.

  They ate by the large fountain, where businessmen languished on the grass, reading the Herald and nibbling at their cut lunches between paragraphs. And they ate furiously—almost in silence but for the sucking of stray meat back into their mouths and the growling of their stomachs. Ibises and pigeons stalked the grass between Harry and Crawford, pecking at the pastry crumbs that escaped their hands and mouths. Even as he ate, Crawford appeared deep in thought.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Eat your pie.’

  ‘You must know what you’re thinking about.’

  ‘Come on,’ Crawford said, but what he meant was, She has left me as well. Leave me be.

  When the pies were finished, Crawford was silent. He stared, fixated, at the fountain.

  Harry asked again, ‘What are you thinking, Crawford? Tell me.’

  ‘No, never mind—come on,’ Crawford said, and made them move before their stomachs were ready, so that their steps were slow and their insides heavy as stone.

  Harry suspected Crawford did not know where they were going. They walked in no direction in particular—or every direction at once—and it seemed like each corner turned was a new and different decision Crawford had made about what the day would bring. It was early afternoon now, but the sun was obscured by cloud so the whole sky glowed white. It could have been any time at all. And they seemed to be walking forever—the further they walked the more the minutes stretched out like pastry beneath their feet.

  They eventually arrived at Sargents again but a different Sargents, on Castlereagh Street near the Southern Cross Hotel.

  ‘But we already ate, Crawford,’ Harry said.

  ‘Did we?’ Crawford seemed genuinely confused.

  ‘Yes. Just then. And I’m so full now I can barely walk.’

  Crawford reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver shilling. It glinted the same cold light as the distant, buried sun.

  ‘Here,’ Crawford said, flicking it to Harry, ‘buy yourself a cup of tea. I’ll be back for you in an hour,’ and he crossed the street towards Hyde Park without once looking back over his shoulder.

  He waited for Crawford under the awning of the shop and watched as the clouds finally filled the sky with a fine rain. The rain was so delicate it spun in the air like snow, dusting the wings of the pigeons lined along the lampposts. They shook themselves and as they did turned the rain into spray, and by the time Crawford was back the spray had become rain again, pooling in puddles on the street.

  The man and the teenager stood close together—almost touching—under a ledge at the side of the building. Crawford leaned his head back against the stone, shut his eyes and breathed out. It seemed to Harry like the first time Crawford had breathed all day.

  ‘Let’s wait for this to pass,’ Crawford said, and Harry couldn’t tell if he meant the rain or the breathing or what.

  When the roar of the rain had given in to the sound of birds shrieking in the fig trees in the park, both Crawford and Harry moved out from under the ledge and followed the tramlines out of the city. They walked with more purpose now—the tram lines giving them direction—and eventually they arrived at a house with four windows flashing purple and white.

  Crawford put a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m going to leave you at this boarding house for the night,’ he said, and walked back towards the tramline, the way they had come.

  A screech of bats tore the sky open above their heads and Harry glanced up. He looked over Crawford’s way to see if he had noticed the sound, but he had gone. All that was left of the scene were two tram tracks, white with water and afternoon light, never touching, chasing each other to the quay.

  JACK, THE BOARDER

  WOOLLOOMOOLOO, OCTOBER–NOVEMBER 1917

  HENRIETTA

  She is ready to leave the house with her hat pulled low over her eyes and her laundry bag balanced on her hip when a sharp rap at the door has her spill tea towels and soiled undergarments all over the floor. ‘Ach du scheiße!’ she swears at a sweat-stained singlet. She is already overdue at the police station by an hour. What if that’s them now, come to check up on her?

  Peeking out at the man on her front step she can’t see much. He has his back to her and the silhouette of his face, turned towards the Domain, is blurred by a cloud of cigarette smoke. But she can see that this gaunt man in grey trousers, a mismatched coat and worn hat is clearly not—to her great relief—an officer of the police.

  ‘Yes?’ she asks the man.

  His face is drawn, the bags under his eyes are purple with sleeplessness. ‘I need a place to stay for a few nights.’

  ‘I see.’ She needs more tenants, but these days one has to be so careful. ‘And who might you be?’ she asks, but in the same instant he asks, ‘You do run a boarding house, don’t you?’ and in the confusion they both look at each other, waiting to see who’ll answer first.

  ‘I am Mrs Shipley,’ she says, doing her best to soften her consonants. ‘Und you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Jack.’

  She unlatches the door and steps back into the hallway, apologising for the mess as she does. He’d given her a fright, she says. That was all. The police is usually very clean. The place, rather.

  The man, who can’t move for the tumble of boxes and bags he’s standing amongst, looks like he hasn’t eaten in days. No, he’s nothing to be frightened of. An opium eater, maybe, but he doesn’t appear to be the patriotic type. And was that a slight accent she could hear? Maybe he’s a Boer?

  Now he is rattling off requirements, instructions. He needs a single room, with two beds. One for his stepson. He needs help with these boxes. And full board, too, once he gets himself a job. The transaction is swift and straightforward, because he’s left the boy at another boarding house up in Paddington and has to get back to him, quick—and she has the laundry to wash, she says, gesturing to the mess on the floor to make sure he has no doubt laundry’s the reason she is leaving the house. She shows Jack his room—the front room, bright, with nothing in it but two bare cot beds thrust against opposite walls—bundles up the laundry, and leaves.

  At the corner of Crown Street, she hides the heavy laundry bag behind a bin, and looks back at the house to check no one has seen. Jack’s on the front step with a fresh cigarette hanging off his lip. He’s looking up towards the cathedral as a violin trill lifts from her husband’s music room at the top of their terrace and tangles in the smoke from his cigarette. Thank God her husband has not yet been taken away. She cannot deal with people like this on her own, she simply does not have the nerve for it.

  JACK

  At first the woman is just an eye, wide open and scared.

  She calls herself Mrs Shipley, but gets her words mixed up in that way foreigners do. And there’s something fishy about how she opens the door. She opens it just a crack, and asks what I want before opening the door an inch further.

  The hallway’s covered in dirty laundry. She’s nervous about it, tries to block my view. I look at her and the look says, Smile at me. Go on, we’re the same, you and me. But she doesn’t smile back.

  The house smells of vinegar, and of something sweet also—I can’t put my finger on it. Lamps are burning at their lowest gas mark; some corners of the hall throb with light, others fade into blackness. It’s a tomb, this place, and it’s restless with ghosts.

  The foreign woman drops my suitcases and opens the door onto a bright room with nothing in it but two bare beds. There’s a window. No curtain. It looks out over Cathedral Street below. The foreign lady has given us a front room, then. Good. I think that’s good.

  I haven’t been sleeping. At night, I’
m wide awake. During the day, I drift around in a fog. I’m not sure how things get done, but they do get done. Somehow I made it here. Decisions are being made through me, as if I’m being dreamed by someone else, and in this dream I’m a man who knows to pack up the house in Drummoyne, leave the keys for the landlord at the grocer, take the boy Harry, deflect all questions of his mother, and leave for a place where everyone lives as if they’ve been packed at a cannery.

  But the boxes. Where are they? Out on the front steps where anyone might find them. When I open the front door there’s my green box, full of her lace, her things, curtains she left half mended. My green box, bending the light towards it. A violin scale floats down from the open upstairs window above, and it strikes me what the sweet, vinegary smell is that lingers in the house. It’s the smell of cabbage farts and pig’s blood. It’s a German house, full of German smells. I almost laugh. No one will trust the word of a German woman, especially not the police.

  HENRIETTA

  Standing in her kitchen with a letter held high between herself and the sun, Henrietta hears footsteps, then a cough, and turns to see a boy in the doorway.

  ‘Hello there,’ she says, hiding the letter in her apron pocket.

  ‘Hello,’ says the boy. He’s looking up at her with the frightened eyes of a dog about to be hit. The poor thing can’t be more than fourteen.

  She stretches her hand out towards him. ‘It’s alright,’ she says, ‘I don’t bite.’

  The boy has his eyes trained on the biscuit tin on the kitchen bench. He must be starving. How strange that she should be reading a letter from her son and then turn to find a boy—about as tall as her son had been ten years ago, and as fair—standing before her. She must have dreamed him up. She fetches a biscuit for the boy, but he has already slipped down the hall and out of sight.