by Peter Twohig
The living room — I call it that only because it was in the front — was a jungle of furniture and toys and clothes. In front of me was a passage, and what looked like a kitchen at the other end. To the sides of the passage were doors, all closed. I had come to the point that is finally reached by all great explorers, the point at which one chooses either obscurity and shame, or fame and fortune. I had to admit that standing there with that smell in my nostrils and Kay in my ears, shame was looking damn good. But I was a sucker for a mystery, and I took a step as close to the wall as I could, to avoid making the floorboards creak, just as Larry Kent had done in Destination TNT — or was it Sweet Danger? I was halfway down the passage when I smelt smoke.
There was no doubt about it, it was smoke, and a lot of it, and it was coming out of the room I thought might be the kitchen. At the same time there was the scraping sound of a chair or table being moved suddenly. I was about to retrace my steps, not worrying about how Larry might have done it, when out of a room to my left and just a foot in front of me rushed a large lollopy woman with crazy red hair and a transparent nightie that did not hide anything at all. She rushed into the kitchen with a long scream of rage and started going crazy at a kid I couldn’t see, but whom I guessed had decided to find out what would happen if he disobeyed that well-known rule: Never play with matches. The woman seemed to be in control as the tap was on and I could hear water going everywhere, and there was a great deal of screaming and slapping and a lot of you little bastard-ing.
I froze in my tracks. It was too fascinating to miss, and too frightening to face. But when the woman told the kid she was going to teach him a lesson he would never forget I started to back up. I mean, this was his lesson, not mine. But I had only taken one step when the kid’s screams ceased and he suddenly swung around the corner, ran right into me and bounced off again, landing on his bum. In a flash, the woman’s beefy hand reached around the corner and grabbed him by the hair, which was a good call because there was nothing else to grab. He looked at me in terror and screamed as she pulled him towards her and suddenly appeared in the doorway with her face only a foot from mine. She was roaring like a wild animal and breathing a mixture of foul breath and sherry into my face, but without seeing me at all. I could tell right away she was blind. Blind and blind drunk. And she was carrying a fork the way the Phantom’s enemies, the Singh Brotherhood, carry their daggers. The kid yelled ‘Mum!’, as if he was trying to wake her from a nightmare, but it had no effect.
The boy did not ask for help. Although he screamed, his screams were not shrill, but throaty and broken, and he seemed to smile at me as the woman stuck the fork into his legs and ripped down again and again, until she slid on his blood, fell over and lay still. The boy slid down with a long series of grunting sounds. As he lay on the floor writhing in a mixture of gore and filth he clutched his leg and smiled up at me as if he really didn’t mind — It’s all right, really it is, his eyes seemed to be saying. It’s just a bit embarrassing, not to mention humiliating. But his mouth was twisted, and there were tears in his eyes, or were they in my eyes? It doesn’t matter: they’re on the map, and that’s the main thing.
6 Spotted
You’d think that after the incident at the crazy blind lady’s house I’d be glad to get home, and feel the warmth of Mum’s big hello, and her hugs and kisses, and maybe hop into one of her mouth-watering vanilla slices. You’d think. But home no longer meant those sorts of things to me, and wouldn’t have even if they had been real.
I was going home without Tom, and no one knew what that meant to me. Home might, I think, have been his favourite word, just as mine was probably Josephine. He said it a lot more than anyone I had ever met, and always when we were out together. Sometimes I think he saved the word up for that special time of day when we both knew he was going to wheel it out. It could be at the end of the day when the sun was going down behind the steel threads that joined the tops of the trams and the poles, when the orange burnt the doorways and even the raindrops. Or it could be at some time when it got too hot or too cold to go any further, or when there’d be the shared sensation of having done enough, had enough or said enough.
One minute, we’d be swinging our sticks at anything that move d and poking them through fences at monster dogs, and having sword fights with each other, taking turns at dying, because dying was the best part, and the next, stopping and sighing. Because it was time for the little ritual of Tom’s. I think he just loved to say the word.
‘Hey, I’m hungry. Let’s go home.’
‘Yeah. I could eat the arse out of a wicker chair.’
‘I could eat the arse out of a lounge chair.’
‘I could eat the arse out of the electric chair.’
‘How d’yer do that?’
‘Well, you have to start by puttin’ your gumboots on.’
That was one of our favourites, and we made it up ourselves.
But it was always Tom who would suddenly run out of energy and want to go home, and always me who would let him say so, because I knew how much it meant to him. And his job was to let me let him.
My joy was in seeing Tom go home. Funny thing was, as soon as we’d arrive home he would perk up again, and no one would guess that he’d been homesick for a little while, because that’s what it was. I never took the mickey out of him, because I used to get homesick too, for Josephine Thompson.
And now going home meant going home without him. So while I still went out and explored, picked up things that people had left lying around — collecting, Granddad called it — I never forgot that at some point I was going to have to turn away from the sun and go home. I still took my stick, of course, and I still had the pretend fights, but I was stuck with doing both voices. And I always knew that I had dipped out in taking Tom home.
When I arrived home this time, Granddad was there. He was planning to meet a bloke who owed him a few quid. If I came along I might enjoy myself, he said. The rest was a secret. Mum was happy for me to be gone. She was upset — I knew the feeling.
Normally, I’d be keen on a day at the races, but on this particular Saturday all I wanted to do was find a nice quiet place and lie low, just in case the way Mr Garnet was when I found him was no accident, because I could see, at a pinch, how it might have been a very clever attempted murder. And besides, what I had seen at the old house in the dead-end street had made me sick, not in my stomach, but in a part of me that wasn’t anywhere I could put my finger on. I told Granddad I wasn’t feeling well, but his reply was to suggest we’d best get some fresh air into me. A part of me wanted to tell him what I’d seen, but I knew he’d just tell me that it wasn’t any of our business, and to put it behind me; that is, if he believed me in the first place, and I wasn’t so sure about that. So I kept my mouth shut and trotted off to enjoy myself about as much as you can after seeing a kid get torn to shreds by his own mum. Besides, it wasn’t as if I’d never seen someone get cut before, just not a kid.
So it was off to ‘the Valley’ to watch the ponies and make a few dollars, as Granddad calls pounds. Granddad did not drive. We always travelled by train, bus or tram — my favourite was the bus, because the engine aways smelt so good. On this day, we went most of the way on trams. Granddad sat inside, where the seats were padded. He said he didn’t want to lose his hat, but I think he liked the comfy seats. When we got close to the racecourse, we got off the tram early and grabbed a taxi to take us the last half-mile down to the entrance. That was so the punters could see us arrive in style. Granddad always gave the taxi driver a tip, and the tip was usually about a horse.
The Valley was a busy place for us. While most people were milling around the bookies and the bars and talking about ‘some drongo’ they’d met, we’d be making money. At the races we travelled as a duo, a bit like the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Blarney Barney never came with us to the track, because he’d been banned for life, which Dad said was the worst thing that could happen to a man bar taking the pledge, though I could ea
sily think of worse things.
But the way we made money had nothing to do with people forking over, except bookmakers of course, and it was generally considered, at least by Granddad, that bookies were not really ‘people’. But first there was a lot of work to do. For one thing, there were people to catch up with — stewards, to be exact. Granddad seemed to know them all and had a smile for all of them, and they for him. Their conversations were always ‘short and sweet’, as we said, and were always about the same thing: the steward’s family. Granddad would ask about the steward’s wife, and his kids, and his brothers and sisters, his aunts and uncles and even his parents. And the steward would ask Granddad about the same things, except that the answers Granddad gave were all wrong, and later, when we were alone, I once told him so.
He laughed and said: ‘Boy, you can’t talk to these people any way you like. You have to ask them about their family, then they ask you about your family and so on. Pretty soon, you know everything you need to know about each other’s families, and then off you go and place a bet or two. D’yer see?’
‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I mean, the things you told him about our family were all wrong, even the names. He thinks you have a sister called Miss Calypso, and you haven’t … have you?’
‘I have now.’
Then we’d be off to visit the horses in the stables. The horses are always having a rest when we visit them. When Granddad wants to see them ‘working’ he visits them in the middle of the week at the training track, which is something I only get to do during school holidays, although we have been to see the horses paddling down at the beach. The stables at the racecourse were not the best place to see the horses, Granddad said, because they were always a bit nervous when they were there, being away from home, and they’d often had a little something to make them feel good. But they did have their special things with them, and their blankets, and their strappers, who were always called Carol, had lots of freckles and smelt like horses themselves. They all called Granddad ‘Arch’ and said things like ‘youse’ and ‘my oath’ a fair bit.
While Granddad talked to the strappers I talked to the horses. My job was to feed a sugar cube to each one and have a friendly conversation with it, to get an idea of its chances. Granddad always listened to whatever I had to tell him, and never laughed if I said this horse was feeling off-colour or that horse was in a good mood and so on.
Once when we were on our way to the next Carol I said: ‘That last one had a lot to say — must’ve been a bob’s worth. Did you give her a bob?’
He shook his head and looked at me sternly. ‘I never give anyone money at the track, boy. Never.’
‘But you give it to the bookies,’ I said.
‘Actually, I don’t give it to ’em,’ he said with a sly grin. ‘I just lend it to ’em.’
Then we’d be off to see the jockeys, and Granddad’d ask them about their families, and they’d ask him about his, only this time he’d tell the truth. So I said to him: ‘Granddad, why do we tell the jockeys the truth about our family? What happened to Miss Calypso?’
‘That was Miss Calypso,’ he said.
Anyway, Granddad was having the time of his life this Saturday, while I half expected to see people lying dead everywhere, and when I went to the toilet, I was absolutely sure there was a dead person in one of the cubicles, so I left as quickly as I could. When, eventually, I saw the murderer, he was standing motionless in Bookies Alley, staring at me as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. I almost fainted with fright. There was no doubt about it. He didn’t need a gun, he didn’t need to have his pants down or raise his voice. It was him.
I grabbed Granddad by the sleeve and pulled hard.
‘What the hell is it?’
‘I can see him, Granddad — the murderer. He’s over there.’
I pointed at the bookies, but he was gone. Of course.
‘What murderer?’
‘The one from Kipling Street.’
‘How sure are you?’
‘It was him. He was standing just over there watching me. But now he’s gone.’
‘Well, if he was the bloke you saw, he’ll be halfway to the nearest exit by now.’
‘Granddad, what if he follows me home? Let’s tell the police.’
‘No! Bugger ’em. That’s not how we do things. I’ll have a word to Barn. It’s time we went, anyway.’
I was relieved that he was taking the whole thing seriously, but I had been hoping that the murderer had forgotten all about me, or perhaps decided to go and live in Mexico, as sometimes happened in 77 Sunset Strip, or had accidentally shot himself — it happens.
It had been a long day, and not a good one. Too many surprises. As for the man at the racecourse, I could see that he was just as surprised as me. He had good reason to worry, I suppose, but I felt that I had even more, because I was only a kid. And all the way home, I felt him looking at me, even though Granddad said he wouldn’t dare get close to us in case we yelled for the coppers. But Granddad didn’t know about the money stamps, and I didn’t want to tell him. They were for the Commandos — it was finders keepers. That was a saying that Granddad swore by, so it was good enough for me.
But one thing bothered me. Despite exploring in an entirely new direction, I had still run into trouble. I needed to get my directions right, and for that I figured I needed a compass. I decided to go down to Sax’s on Monday after school and buy one I’d had my eye on since my birthday, when it had failed to show up, though God knows I’d mentioned it often enough. This compass came with a special cord you could hang around your neck, which was what every explorer needed when he was trying to prise a diamond out of the eye of an idol in the Burmese jungle with one hand while holding off a bunch of bloodthirsty natives with a Colt .45 held in the other. With a compass, and the north arrow on my map, I could always work out which direction I was heading in. And the compass glowed in the dark — a bonus.
But first I had Monday, which was back-to-school day. St Felix’s was not a large school — the state school had bigger playgrounds — but it was a more crowded one, even with its three storeys. At St Felix’s, you knew everyone, and everyone knew what you’d had for breakfast and what you were going to have for lunch — with me it was always an egg sandwich made from a boiled egg that had turned black, until Mr Garnet told Mum how she could add a drop of vinegar to stop that. If there was one thing the kids at St F’s were good at, it was talking, so it only took about two minutes for everyone in the school to tell each other what they knew about the murder, which was in fact nothing, or niente, as Luigi Esposito says. But the story had set like blood on laminex, and by the time I heard it, it had a smooth, black sound to it.
To make matters worse, though you wouldn’t have thought that possible, Matthew Foster claimed to have seen the Kipling Street murderer from his bedroom window, which was at least not impossible given the view from his house over the railway lines and Church Street, straight down Kipling Street, though I reckon he would’ve needed a telescope powerful enough to see halfway to China. But we Commandos knew that the main reason he was telling everyone this was so we would make him a member, something that I reckoned would only happen if it turned out that he also witnessed the St Valentine’s Day Massacre and the whole Korean War. Naturally, Foster described the murderer in detail, but everyone knew he was just describing his dad. Matthew Foster has a tendency to exaggerate.
He had one piece of news, though, that was disturbing, and this was not something that he made up: someone else had been murdered down at the river overnight. I tried to tell myself that it was a pretty dull day in Melbourne if no one got murdered, but I wouldn’t listen.
As soon as school was over I went down to Sax’s. The compass cost me an arm and a leg, but it turned out to be even better than I thought, and allowed me to take bearings, as the directions explained. The only drawback was that I couldn’t share it with Tom, or see him with a compass of his own. When I took it out of the box and held it in my ha
nd, I felt so many different feelings that for a minute I didn’t know if I was coming or going. But I knew one thing: I wanted the compass for myself, and I didn’t care if that was right or wrong.
By the end of the week, my map was redrawn with the directions reasonably accurate. I even made sure Old Man Garnet was lying with his head pointing north-northwest, my favourite compass point. When the map was finished I sat back and checked it. It was coming along nicely, but it was a frightening piece of work, and I decided not to show anyone for the time being, especially Mum, who had a habit of throwing things out when they upset her.
But I was worried about what Matthew Foster had said about the murder down the river, so I decided to ask her about it.
‘Hey, Mum. Matthew Foster says they fished a body out of the Yarra, and he’d been murdered.’
‘A drunk fell off the Herring last night and drowned,’ she said, as if she was bored stiff. ‘And I want you to stay away from the river.’
Bloody Matthew Foster. Still, that night I prayed that I would not dream about murderers, or old codgers who were half dead, or crazy ladies with forks, and went to sleep hoping to God that the drunk who fell off the ferry was none other than the murderer himself.
7 The Manual
I went over to the Commandos Club after school on Tuesday. There was a special meeting to discuss Miss Schaeffer, a new teacher at St Felix’s who looked like Debbie Reynolds, and to show off my compass; but the meeting did not go well.
