Still Riding on the Storm

by Robert G. Barrett

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said, ‘that should put a head on everything I drank last night.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Shit, I’d better go down and shift my car.’

  When he got down to the parking area one of his tyres had been let down. You didn’t have to be Einstein to figure out who did it.

  ‘You rotten bludger,’ said Wayne. But instead of getting angry and throwing things around, he calmly got the jack and tyre lever out of the car and smiled up towards the Daffasanas’ unit. ‘Don’t worry, Otto,’ he said slowly. ‘Yours is coming too.’

  The night before they left, Wayne and Jill were lying next to each other on two blow-up mattresses; they had plenty of blankets but were cuddling up to keep warm. The flat was completely bare, except for enough things to make a cup of tea in the morning, and the car was packed and in the garage, ready to go.

  ‘Well,’ said Wayne, ‘it won’t be long and we’ll be in that warm Coffs Harbour sunshine. I’ll be in the shop and then after that I can make a respectable woman out of you.’

  ‘About time, too,’ said Jill. ‘I do love you, Wayne. You know that, don’t you. For a half-bald baker with a fat stomach, you’re not half bad.’ She cuddled up a bit closer. ‘Not half bad at all.’

  ‘And I love you, too,’ said Wayne. ‘For a cranky old nurse with smelly feet and a big backside, you’ll do me.’ He kissed her gently on the head. ‘You’ll do me. See you in the morning.’

  ‘Nigh’ night.’

  It was cold, dark and drizzling rain when they got up at three-thirty the next morning. They had a quick cup of tea and a biscuit, then Wayne got the car out of the garage and parked it out the front of the flats. Jill came down with the rest of the stuff that Wayne hadn’t already put in the car.

  ‘Is there anything left up there?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not a thing,’ replied Jill.

  ‘Did you leave the door open?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right, well wait here. I’ll be back in about ten minutes.’

  Wayne ran quickly but quietly back up to the flat. Jill had left the light on in the kitchen like he told her to. He went to the balcony, took the plastic honey jar with the fish heads and water in it, out of the plastic bag and carried it carefully into the kitchen. From out of one of the cupboards he got two tubes of epoxy resin, one white one, one red one. He poured two small, equal amounts on a piece of cardboard and mixed them together.

  He checked his watch. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ve got seven minutes before they go off.’

  Turning the kitchen light off, he went out into the hall and, by the light of a slim pencil torch held in his mouth, he poked a few drops into the deadlock on Mr Daffasana’s door, using one of Jill’s bobby pins. He only poked it into the deadlock, leaving the ordinary doorlock; he wanted them to be able to get out all right but not back in.

  He hurried back into the kitchen, put the two tubes of resin in the pocket of his jacket, picked up the jar of fish heads and, with the resin mix in one hand and the plastic jar in the other, he ran quietly down the darkened stairs, softly closing the door of the flat behind him.

  There were two doors on Mr Daffasana’s garage, a ‘tilt-a-door’ at the front and, because his was at the end of the row, a side one as well. With the pencil torch in his mouth Wayne glued up the locks on each.

  ‘There you go, Otto,’ said Wayne silently to himself, ‘that ought to keep you occupied for a while. And now the final touch.’

  Tying a large handkerchief across his nose and mouth, Wayne unscrewed the top of the honey jar containing the month-old fish heads in water and, careful not to splash any on himself, took a deep breath and poured the vile-smelling brew all around Daffasana’s garage, making sure plenty ran under the side door.

  Even holding his breath and with the hanky over his face, the stench nearly knocked him out. It was the most putrid, nauseating smell Wayne had ever experienced; even worse than when the plumbers found two dead rats that had been blocking up the drain in the bakery.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he gasped as he felt the tea and biscuits rising up in his throat. He tore the hanky off his face and threw up into the garden. As he crouched heaving over the flowers, he noticed the fish heads scattered around Daffasana’s garage. They were nothing more than solidified, shapeless lumps of green slime. He turned away and shuddered.

  But the job was done. He threw the honey jar into the incinerator under the units, then ran out to the car, jumped in, started the motor and drove off.

  They hadn’t gone fifty yards when Jill started sniffing. She gave Wayne a look of disgust. ‘Pooh,’ she said, ‘did you just fart?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’ She wound the window half down and put her face to it. They headed off up Bondi Road, stopping once to drop the keys into the estate agency letter box. Next stop Bulahdelah.

  They pulled up at the Shell all-night restaurant just outside Bulahdelah at around 7.30 a.m. Wayne had been giggling and laughing like a school kid nearly all the way up, but Jill switched herself off at Hornsby and ignored him.

  ‘Righto,’ said Wayne as he switched the motor off, ‘time for breakfast and time I told you what’s goin’ on.’

  While they waited for their bacon and eggs to arrive, Wayne explained to Jill exactly what he’d done. At first she just looked at him, her mouth slightly open, then she started to laugh till finally she cracked up completely.

  ‘Ohh, you sneaky low bastard,’ she gasped, trying to control the spasms of laughter that were racking her body. ‘So that was your baker’s dozen.’

  ‘That was it.’

  ‘Well, you couldn’t have done it to a nicer bloke.’

  ‘And if my timing’s right,’ said Wayne, looking at his watch, ‘fat Otto and Frieda should be just on their way to work while we’re sitting here having breakfast.’

  They glanced into each other’s eyes for a moment, then started to roar laughing till finally they collapsed into each other’s arms across the table. The waitress serving them looked at them like they were either mad or on drugs.

  Back at the units, Otto was bustling Frieda out the door. ‘Come along, Frieda,’ he said, ‘we must not be late, I have a lot of work on today.’

  ‘Yes, Otto, I am hurrying as fast as I can.’

  Otto Daffasana was a partner in a television repair shop with an Austrian who was just as mean and miserable as he was. Frieda was their secretary.

  He closed the door behind them and gave it a shake to make sure it was secure. Satisfied it was, he proceeded down the stairs to the garage, herding Frieda along in front of him.

  The sun had come up hours earlier and, though it wasn’t really hot, it was enough to dry the slime into the concrete around Otto’s garage and attract every fly in Bondi. The Daffasanas were about ten feet from the garage when the stink hit them.

  ‘Ach du libber,’ roared Otto, ‘vas ist das?’

  ‘Gott in himmel,’ said Frieda. ‘Someone has been sick here, something has died.’

  They stood there in the patches of slime and fish heads, trying not to be sick. Frieda’s face was chalk white, Otto’s was more of a delicate green.

  ‘I will get the hose,’ he said. He held his breath and jabbed the key into the side door of the garage. It would go in, but it wouldn’t turn. He pushed it, turned it and banged it but to no avail. ‘What is wrong with this door?’ he shrieked. He ran round to the tilt-a-door, almost slipping in a patch of slime. After several attempts, he found he couldn’t get that door to open either. Otto’s face was starting to redden and his chest was starting to heave. He thrust the keys at Frieda. ‘Here, go and get the spare keys out of the kitchen, I will get a hose from the caretaker.’

  Frieda waddled off up the stairs like a baby hippo, while Otto stormed around to Sir Percy’s little room under the units. Sir Percy was sitting there sipping a cup of tea and reading a newspaper.

  ‘Get your hose and come and wash away this mess outside my garage,’ demanded Otto.

  ‘
I’m not the cleaner,’ said Sir Percy, almost ignoring him, ‘clean it your-bloody-self.’

  ‘Then give me your hose.’

  ‘I’ll give you nothing,’ replied Sir Percy. ‘Go to the shithouse.’ He reached over and slammed the door in Otto’s face with his foot. Seething with frustration and anger, Otto charged back out to the garage just as Frieda came down the stairs.

  ‘Otto,’ she cried, ‘the key will not work. I cannot get the door to open.’

  ‘What?’ roared Otto. He tore the keys out of Frieda’s hand and took off up the stairs. By the time he reached their unit, Otto’s heart was banging away like a Keith Moon drum solo and his ulcer had gone into overdrive. His fat body wasn’t used to this sudden burst of exercise.

  After several attempts at banging on the door and trying to force the lock, Otto turned to face Frieda, who had wheezed her way slowly up the stairs.

  ‘Someone has done this to us, Frieda,’ he screamed. ‘It is a conspiracy. Those Russians pigs or that schweinehund cleaner, or could it be …’

  He ran over and banged on the door of Wayne’s old unit, but it didn’t take him long to realise he was wasting his time. By now the veins around Otto’s neck were starting to stick out like battery cables.

  ‘They will not stop me,’ he roared defiantly. ‘I will smash the lock on the garage.’

  He lurched drunkenly off down the stairs with Frieda in hot pursuit.

  By the time he got to the garage, Otto had lost his self-control. He grabbed a large stone from the garden and charged at the garage door, laughing insanely, but his foot slipped on one of the fish heads and he landed with a thump on his backside in the slime and the fish heads. The rock flew up in the air and crashed down on Frieda’s foot. She howled with pain.

  Otto made it clumsily to his feet only to slip and fall head-first into the fish heads and slime again. By now, Otto’s face looked like a big red soccer ball. He lay there, face-down in the slime, sobbing and clutching at his chest.

  ‘Frieda,’ he gasped, ‘I cannot breathe. Get the doctor.’

  Frieda limped to the middle of the parking area. ‘Help me,’ she cried, ‘my husband has collapsed. Call an ambulance someone.’

  Sergei and Rossana Efremoff had been watching all this from their balcony. They hadn’t enjoyed anything so much since they lifted the siege of Leningrad.

  ‘Shut up, you stupid German cow,’ Rossana called out.

  Two of the Vietnamese students came out of the units on their way to university. They looked at Frieda and saw poor Otto lying there, so one of them ran back upstairs and called an ambulance.

  The paramedics screamed up about ten minutes later. They walked over to Otto, still lying face-down on the concrete, and the stench hit their nostrils.

  ‘Christ, Davo, it looks like his bowels have collapsed.’

  ‘Well, I’m not givin’ him the kiss of life, Ron. No way.’

  ‘Neither am I.’

  ‘What if he dies?’

  ‘Smells like he’s been dead for a month anyway.’

  They finally manhandled Otto into the ambulance with fat Frieda alongside and screamed off to the hospital.

  A week after they arrived in Coffs Harbour, Wayne and Jill were married in a simple ceremony at a little church in Sawtell. A week later Jill informed Wayne over tea one night that she was pregnant. She was as happy as Larry but she had to tell Wayne in her own way.

  ‘Wayne darling,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some news for you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m hiding in the tea-pot.’

  ‘What do you mean, you’re hiding in the tea-pot?’

  ‘I’m up the spout.’

  Not long after that they were both working in the bakery. Jill was in the shop cleaning out the pie warmer, Wayne was out the back. He’d just finished sprinkling shredded coconut over a tray of lamingtons and was washing the dough-break.

  Jill swept the pieces of pie crust and pastry out of the pie warmer and put them on some sheets of a month-old Sydney newspaper. As she wrapped them up she was absentmindedly glancing at the newsprint, not taking a great deal of notice, when something caught her eye. She read it, quickly read it again, then gave a little scream.

  She ran out the back of the shop and got Wayne. ‘Wayne, come out here and read this, quick, quick, quick.’ She dragged Wayne over to the sheet of newspaper. ‘There, read that.’

  Wayne swept the crumbs off the newspaper with his hand and read it out aloud.

  ‘Let’s see now — it says here, “A Mr Otto Daffasana died today after three weeks in a mental institution. Mr Daffasana collapsed after suffering a mild heart attack early one morning in a block of home units at Bondi last month. Mr Daffasana spent one week in hospital, but was finally transferred to Ryde Psychiatric Centre where he died in his sleep. Mr Daffasana leaves a widow but no children.”

  ‘Well, I’ll be buggered,’ said Wayne, sitting down on the counter.

  ‘Be buggered indeed,’ said Jill. ‘You know what this makes you, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Technically, you’re a murderer.’

  ‘Well, if I am, I know one old bloke that won’t give me up.’

  Back at the units in Denham Street, Bondi, Sir Percy was pottering around amongst the flowers and trees he loved and cared for so much. A cheeky little sparrow fluttered down and landed on his cap, another two started bobbing up and down near his feet.

  ‘I suppose you want something to eat,’ he said. ‘All right, I’ll see what I can find.’

  He went into his room and came back with a piece of bread which he broke up and started feeding to the birds. One jumped up on his hand and started pecking at the bread in his fingers. Sir Percy laughed.

  ‘You’re a cheeky little bugger, aren’t you?’ he said slowly. ‘You remind me a bit of my young friend, the baker.’ He glanced up at Wayne’s old flat. ‘I wonder what he’s doing now. I bet he’d get a shock if he knew I was chairman of the body corporate.’ He broke the rest of the bread up and threw it to the rest of the sparrows. ‘Anyway, birds,’ he said, ‘I can’t be standing here all day, I’ve got work to do. Besides, I’m getting thirty dollars a week now, you know.’

  He adjusted his tie and cap, grabbed a broom and started sweeping the path, whistling softly as he went.

  AMY OUTHOUSE

  On a cool Friday night, with the lights dimmed and ‘Down to the Bone’ playing on the stereo, Norton had been wrestling around on his lounge for what seemed like forever trying to get into Amy Herschel’s pants. However, Amy tap-danced a little too fast for Les and the best the big Queenslander could manage between kisses was to sneak a hand under Amy’s bra, but not for long. Actually, whenever the chance arose, Les had been trying to get into Amy’s knickers since he met her in a Bondi nightspot a year ago. Amy was no oil painting and normally by now, Les would have seen the writing on the wall, done a Charlie Harper and gone politely on his way. But sitting back on Norton’s lounge wearing a tartan mini-dress, torn black stockings and an old army shirt, the untidy brunette, with several tattoos and lanky legs that wobbled round in her shoes, had certain attributes that appealed to Les. Like a tight backside, sweet, firm lips and enticing brown eyes buried under several layers of mascara. Kisses that were lipstick-coated dynamite, convincing Norton she had to weaken sooner or later. And as a perfect accompaniment to her excruciatingly sarcastic sense of humour, Amy was the lead singer in a band called the Hairy Crumbs.

  Having a taste for music, Norton liked people in bands; they dressed differently, spoke differently and always brought plenty to the table. Their only fault was, the vast majority of singers and musicians Les had met imbibed copious amounts of booze and consumed vast quantities of drugs. But from Norton’s point of view, if alcoholism and substance abuse was the fuel that drove good rock’n’roll — so be it. Not that the Hairy Crumbs forte was good rock’n’roll. Les had been to a few of their gigs and although they did a fairly tight cover of Bonnie Raitt’s ‘Mi
ghty Tight Woman’ and Lucy de Soto’s ‘Loose Cannon’, Les felt if they were singing for their supper you wouldn’t give them a paper plate and a plastic fork. And Warren, Norton’s flatmate, reckoned Amy couldn’t carry a note if it was in a backpack and churlishly nicknamed her Amy Outhouse.

  But Les liked Amy and the evening came about after he bumped into her in Campbell Parade earlier in the day. He took her to dinner, then a small bar with a girl singer, before inviting Amy back to his place. Amy didn’t seem interested in any drugs on the night. But she certainly didn’t mind a drink. They hadn’t been back at Chez Norton an hour and already they’d polished off one bottle of Gentleman Jack. Now, with great gusto, ice and a little Pepsi Max, Amy was attacking the second bottle Les opened as if her life depended on it. His head starting to spin, Norton stood up, half tucked his shirt into his jeans and blinked down at Amy.

  ‘Amy. I got to go to the brascoe,’ he said.

  Amy raised her glass. ‘Mention my name in there,’ she quipped, ‘and they’ll give you a good seat.’

  ‘It’s quite all right, Amy,’ Les replied quietly. ‘I don’t sit down to pee.’

  ‘Yeah? That’s not what I heard, Homeboy.’

  Les ignored Amy and tottered off down the hallway. After soaking his face in cold water when he’d finished, Les returned to the loungeroom to find Amy had guzzled her last drink and was helping herself to another. Les sat back down alongside her, stared at his half-empty glass sitting on the coffee table then turned slowly to Amy and shook his head.

  ‘Honestly, Amy,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I could look another delicious in the eye.’

  ‘You’re not fair dinkum, are you?’ sniffed Amy. ‘Christ! What have you got for a spine, Les? A string of cocktail frankfurts?’