by Ross Watkins
He put the backpack on the ground and fished out his cigarettes, lighter and the newspaper. He halved the newspaper and rolled it lengthways, then rolled the other half the same way. These would flare nicely once they caught, and they were dense enough to generate the heat needed to catch the grass. He lit a cigarette and smoked, hunched over the newspaper rolls. He worked out where he’d place them, about two hand-spans apart, deep in the grass yet open enough that they wouldn’t be smothered.
But something didn’t feel right. None of this resembled his usual process. It felt rushed, unplanned. Too open to risk. He was also leaving evidence all over the place. He stood, shook his head and thought about heading back. But the burn inside was there, beyond doubt. He looked up at the trees as if for an answer, then across the creek bed. Finally he told himself to grow some balls and just get on with the job.
He dragged on the ciggie and knelt down, then glanced up at the track. There he saw a boy, a kid about twelve years old, who’d stopped on the path and was eyeing Noel with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. Noel had a roll of newspaper in his hand and was holding a lighter to it. He didn’t move. The kid stared for a moment, like a wild animal assessing the situation, then turned and ran back up the track.
Noel knew he had to get this over and done with. Now.
He lit the first roll and placed it, then did the same with the second. As it caught, he chucked the lighter and his cigarettes in his bag and slung it over his shoulder, standing back to see how the fire was lifting, the heat being created, and how the paper took. Within two minutes it was away, and Noel breathed. He felt more relaxed than he’d been at any time over the past few days, since the first Sydney burn.
He watched the fire take hold as he smoked his ciggie down to the butt, which he flicked into the grass. Then he heard a man’s voice from behind. Noel turned. The kid had returned with his dad.
‘Oi!’
Noel took off. He cut a way down the embankment, across the dry creek bed and up the other side, turning only to see the guy giving chase, his kid not far behind. Noel kept a decent pace as he pushed through the scrubby growth, and soon could see light on the other side and then some colour. Within moments he stumbled out onto a grass verge running alongside the road, devoid of cars except for his, parked less than a hundred metres away. Back in the bush he could hear the dad pushing – the snap of sticks and the swish of branches – and the boy shouting for his dad somewhere further in. By the time Noel made it to the car the dad was out on the grass, hands on knees, sucking air, his son just breaking out from the tree line.
The buzz was breathtaking. He’d run down plenty of grubs over the years in the service, but escape was an exhilaration altogether different. As he drove off, laughing and hollering at the windscreen, he understood the appeal of doing a runner, outstripping the chase with the fill of adrenaline. Evasion. Elusion. The cut and run. What a hoot.
After two right turns he was heading south along a street parallel to the bush – he knew this because a thin plume of dirty grey smoke was rising above the houses. He made another turn further south, which put him back on the same road he’d parked on, but the dad and boy were out of sight now. He idled on the road shoulder, waiting for the smoke to take on more shape and substance, but within minutes it eased, turning white. Noel slapped the steering wheel. He watched for a couple more minutes, then did a U-turn and made his way back into the estate, searching for a way out.
*
Any satisfaction was short-lived. So it goes for anything and everything, he thought. Because guilt always percolated through, never more intensely than when he was twelve himself and the urges took control of him and he took control of Adrian. It was only ever Adrian, no one else, because Adrian was there and easy to control. And that satisfaction was unlike anything he’d experienced in his short life, but the guilt came hard and heavy in equal measure, with equal force.
He often wondered whether he felt more shame now than he did back then, after each event, but settled on the idea that the issue wasn’t the amount of shame, but its reach. As a teenager he was able to tuck the shame beneath bravado or jokes, beneath his aspiration to be someone better. And a police officer was that better person – the morally upright figure, community-minded, selfless. A local hero. But the older he became, the more difficult it was to conceal the shame. His bravado was called out as arrogance. His jokes were tasteless, politically incorrect. And his aspirations led him only into further moral corruption.
That urge. A compulsion that was beyond his ability to command. It now scorched the landscape because he knew no other way to get it out. Blotches on the landscape, blistering the past.
*
Noel knew precisely where to go and what to do there. He knew Adrian would eventually put one and one together and end up at the house as well – there were missed calls on his phone from Glenda and Adrian and even Wendy. The search was on. It was what he wanted. Adrian was a smart guy, and Noel himself smart enough to get a plan to work. He congratulated himself with a swig from the bottle, then got out of the car and looked up at the weatherboard beast, still hanging in there after all these years, though the brown trim was gone, now painted Federation green.
He knocked on the door first, as a precaution. The old door. He’d know it anywhere, with the marbled glass window at its centre. He tried the handle, checking its solidity, the size of the deadbolt, which was a piece of piss. He’d busted in plenty of doors like it, and this one gave little resistance, his shoulder colliding with the timber a few times until the bolt shattered through the jamb and the door swung in.
Inside, the house was cold. He didn’t remember it this way. It was clear that an Asian family lived here now – the sweet and sour of Asian cooking smells lingered, and there were photos and knick-knacks of a young couple and their boy and girl. They’d renovated – out with the old, in with the new. The hallway carpet had been replaced by tiles, and the walls given a lick of paint. Probably more than one. The scuff marks of his youth were long concealed, but still there beneath – he could feel it, like a tremor between plaster and paintwork. An energy.
He walked into the lounge room. Different curtains, but the windows were just the same. The front room, where they’d played vinyl records as kids, was now a makeshift office. There was no 1970s rug, no veneer sideboard. He went down the hallway to the bathroom and saw that they’d kept the old tub, but everything else had been renovated – surfaces stripped and rejuvenated, replaced. Noel remembered the photos of him and Adrian and Mal in the bath together when Adrian was only a toddler; he must have been about eight, Mal’s dark body hair clinging, which he hated and had decided back then he didn’t want to inherit. They were the days before. The days of bubble-bath beards and childish entertainments. Hero figures, board games and wrestling on their parents’ bed. His old bedroom was now another child’s, a girl, with pretty things all neat and pastel that reminded him of Grace’s room when she was young. Adrian’s room now belonged to a boy, probably just school age, with posters on the walls and toys pretty much just the same.
But none of these superficial changes mattered to Noel. The space was the most important thing, and that had remained the same, even though he was taller and his sense of it had altered. His idea of his place in the world had altered too – at first expanding with possibility, but more recently tapering into something narrow, constrained. Constrained by his relationships, his understanding of himself and what he was not capable of. Somewhere along the line he’d settled for mediocrity. Somewhere between here and Perth he’d allowed himself to think small and act large.
He looked around at the space, the dimensions of doorways and glass panes, the light, and he realised how alien he was here, now. He couldn’t work out if the past was a ghost or if he was the ghost haunting the past. Because he was positive the past was still here, built into the structure of the house, into the idea of his youth.
Standing at the doorway of his parents’ old room, he could still see his hand pushing the door ajar to see Mal on top of Glenda one humid Sunday afternoon; he swore Mal knew he was there and let him watch anyway. And the time Noel was in his own bedroom and his dad opened the door and laughed at his son standing there naked, bent over, the confused grin as Mal asked what the hell he was doing. Noel had come up with some lame excuse. He remembered looking at Adrian squeezed in behind the door, where he’d pushed him moments before, realising he’d taken things too far and was too close to getting caught.
Noel went out the back door through the kitchen to see the granny flat, but it was no longer there, a large steel and aluminium shed looming in the space where he’d once hung out with his mates before he went off to the academy, where they’d watched movies and tried booze for the first time, where he’d stashed porn in the holes in the plasterboard, which he’d then covered over with posters of rock idols. Thank Christ that place is no longer here, he thought. That had been the original place, the site of the first, when he was twelve.
Noel walked back through the house and out onto the front steps. He sat, opened his bag and got out the scotch and his mobile phone. There were three voice messages from Adrian, each one more desperate than the last. It wouldn’t be long now. He unscrewed the lid of the bottle and had some, then some more, then he lit a smoke and looked out at the street and waited.
ADRIAN
Pulling up outside the house, he could already see Noel.
The old house, their childhood house. As he walked up the driveway, past Noel’s rental car, he looked up at the old place and could sense, even then, the past taking form, as though their stories were etched into the fibrocement walls, the events of their youth strung up from the eaves. It didn’t matter that there was fresh paint and a new carport and landscaping – these were superficial amendments, alterations that had no bearing on the house’s history. The face was still there, windows for eyes, staring down at him like it was surprised to see him after all these years.
Noel sat on the front step, a bottle of whisky in one hand, more empty than not. Adrian could tell that Noel had been emptying it into himself.
‘Little brother,’ Noel started, ‘welcome home.’
Adrian stopped well short of the steps. ‘Noel, what are you doing here? This is someone’s house.’
‘Exactly, bro, this is our house,’ he said, pointing at Adrian and then at his own chest. The drink was well and truly through him. ‘This’ll always be our place.’
Adrian looked up at the front door. It was open. There was debris on the floor – chipped paint and timber shards. ‘Noel—’
‘I don’t give a flying fuck about who lives here now, because we’ve got some shit to settle once and for all.’
‘Noel, this is piss talk. Come back to my place and we can sort out everything there.’
Noel smiled, nodding. ‘So you got my mail, eh?’
Adrian took The Apology from his pocket. ‘Yeah, but listen—’
‘No, you listen to me, okay, because I wrote that letter and I brought us back and I couldn’t care less about the people who live here now, because they aren’t here and we are. And anything we’ve got to say about that’ – he shook the bottle at the letter – ‘has to be said at this house.’
Noel then swigged from the bottle.
Adrian looked up at the house, at its angles framed by blue sky. They’d kept the big tree out the front – he was glad about that. He wondered what else about the place had remained. Standing there, he felt the house freshly in his blood, its roots set deep inside his marrow. But it wasn’t their place to colonise with a discussion about the past.
‘Noel, you’re not thinking about anyone but yourself.’
‘That’s bullshit. I was actually thinking about you when I came here, when I wrote that thing.’
‘I didn’t ask for it, Noel. I didn’t ask to start this or end this or whatever it’s supposed to be. Why now, anyway? Why are you doing this?’
Noel shook his head, laughing. ‘Little bro, I started this a long time ago. Who do you think put a hole in Connor’s pool all those years back when we were teenagers? I snuck out one night and put a knife through the wall and ripped the side open. I had to laugh when all the water came pissing out. Would’ve loved to see their faces when they woke up to a flooded yard.’
Adrian remembered hearing about that. He had never made the connection.
‘And remember how the bush cubby got trashed? I did that. Do you get it now? This started a long, long time ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Shit like that doesn’t just go away.’
‘I know,’ Adrian said quietly. Hearing all this made him light-headed, as though he were entering some form of shock. Noel was undermining his conception of their past, as well as any sense he had of his brother as a good person.
‘And the stupid thing is that, now we’re here, I can’t make up my mind about what to do.’
Adrian understood. Today had always been on the cards – inevitable, even – but now, in the middle of it, they were losing touch with what this was all about, let alone what they should do. Perhaps, as he’d long thought, there was nothing to be done. Simple as that. There was no use arguing over detail, no use in apologies. Sure, Noel was to blame because the actions were his, but should either of them really feel guilty? Adrian didn’t want to erase the past. This was not about erasure – it was about ownership. Owning truths. Coming to terms with the emotions attached to certain acts. Learning to move forward, to move on. God, it sounded like a cliché, but it was true.
And despite it all – despite how appalling his brother had been, and still could be – Adrian loved him enough to want something better for him. Adrian understood just how low his brother’s mental state had plummeted – and with what Wendy had said, perhaps the acts against Adrian were the least concerning. He wondered if Noel could fall even further.
Looking at him on the steps of the old house, steeped in the past, the past steeped in him, Adrian feared that yes, Noel was capable of sinking to deeper levels. Adrian knew when his brother meant what he said, and settling this once and for all would only be possible through further actions. Noel Pomeroy was a self-made man, and one capable of graver acts than he’d shown so far. What this might entail, though, Adrian had no idea. He only knew he had to do something, say something.
Adrian crouched so that he was level with his brother.
‘Noel.’ Noel wouldn’t look directly at him. ‘I forgive you.’
Noel said nothing.
‘If that’s what it takes for this to be over with, then I forgive you.’
‘Shit happens, eh?’ Noel said.
‘Shit happens.’
‘Simple as that?’
‘Simple as that. It was thirty years ago, for Christ’s sake.’
Noel swigged again, then placed the bottle beside him on the step and stood. ‘Nah,’ he said.
Adrian stood too. ‘No what?’
‘It’s not that simple. Not for me.’
‘Fucking hell, come on, Noel.’
Noel looked him straight in the eye now. ‘Hit me,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
‘I’m not going to hit you.’
‘Come on, pussy. Just fucken hit me – you hit that prick from next door when we were kids. I know what you’re capable of.’
‘I’m not hitting you.’
Noel stepped forward and shoved Adrian in the chest with both hands. Adrian staggered backwards into a garden bed.
Noel raised his voice. ‘Come on, hit me! I know you want to, so just fucking do it!’ Noel stood over him, pumping himself up.
Adrian got back up and came eye to eye with his brother. He wouldn’t back down from his pacifism. ‘I forgive you,’ he said again, calmly. ‘I’m not out for re
venge – that’s not what I’m about.’
Noel was monstrous. Noel was rage.
Adrian didn’t care. He continued. ‘I’ve had enough and I’m going home. You should do the same – go back to the hotel.’ He looked squarely at the house. ‘There’s nothing left for us here,’ he said finally.
As he turned back towards Noel, he glimpsed a flash of movement, then felt Noel’s fist smashing into his nose, splitting the skin again, cracking the bone again, and for a moment Adrian caught sight of his own face from outside himself, witness to the blood and disbelief as he reeled into the garden bed, his head finding ground, losing consciousness.
NOEL
Noel looked at Adrian sprawled in the garden, his bloody nose smeared across his face, out like a light. Next to him was the letter, which he’d dropped as he fell. Noel could still feel Adrian’s face on his knuckles. He shook his head and called himself a fuckwit for bashing his little brother; it was a knee-jerk reaction, a moment of panic. He definitely hadn’t meant to knock Adrian unconscious. He only wanted to rile him up enough that he would lash out and punch him like he’d done to that neighbour kid, and maybe even unleash what Noel knew must have been boiling inside him for all these years.
Noel bent and picked up the letter. He unfolded it and skimmed over what he’d written the day before. He had to do something about this – he couldn’t have it out there, floating around. There was no telling what Adrian would do with it, who he might give it to, who might read those words. Get rid of the letter. Rip it to shreds.
Fuck.
He turned and picked up his whisky, drank some more. He looked at the bottle and then up at the house, and came to the conclusion that he himself was the only fucked-up one here. Adrian had found peace in his own way. Noel always thought it was a secret pact between the two of them – a brutal and sick one, but a pact nevertheless. Now, the thought that Adrian had bowed out was difficult to handle, if only for what it said about his own failings, his own troubled mind. He set about making it otherwise.
