I tuck my arms and legs tightly into my body and pray.
It is morning, and the search for me has started in earnest. I hear the engines of four-wheel drives, and the crackle of radios, before all these sounds melt into the bush that surrounds the camp.
I sit and wait for the unlocking of the door, the shock of discovery, the humiliation. But none of that happens.
In all the excitement of the search no one has thought to open up the laundry. They have more important things to worry about than smelly socks and dirty undies.
I need to piss, and do it in the laundry tub. I run the tap and watch it spiral away down the drain. It is a dark yellow. I think that means I am getting dehydrated. I take a drink from the tap but the water is metallic and disgusting. It makes me thirsty.
The sun rises, and with it the temperature. The air gaps at the top of the walls let out some of the heat, but even so it is sweltering inside this small concrete-block dungeon.
I risk another drink from the tap, this time running the water for a while to flush out the crap in the pipes. It still tastes the same, but I drink it anyway.
Around lunchtime I hear voices returning, and I realise how hungry I am.
There is a new sound. The chop of a helicopter. It passes overhead a number of times throughout the afternoon. I lose count of how many.
By mid-afternoon the heat is unbearable and I know that I cannot hold on any longer. I try to shout but I have no voice, my throat now dry and cracked. I stand up to walk to the door and bang on it, but the next thing I see is the concrete of the floor, and I realise I am lying in the middle of the room.
I somehow roll myself back to the bench and wait for the dizziness to pass, but the roof of the laundry spins around in slow swoops and bile rises in the back of my throat.
I think of dehydration and I think of the actress with the swollen brain, then the roof fades to nothing.
When I wake again it is dark, and with the evening has come a cool breeze, flowing like a gentle river through the air gaps.
The room has stopped spinning.
In the distance I can hear the sound of singing.
What a friend we have in Jesus ...
I will not survive another day in here.
I stand, slowly, and the room remains steady. I walk towards the door, but halfway there I change course. I use some rags to clean my blood off the washing machine and the wall.
I put the box of laundry powder back on the shelf.
Only then do I approach the door. I stand at attention. A soldier facing the firing squad with resignation and dignity. I raise my fist to strike.
Before I do, there is a sound from outside. A click and the sliding of a bolt. Then nothing.
I stand with my fist raised for almost a minute, before I trust myself to push on the wooden slats of the door.
It opens easily.
There’s no one around, but I think I detect a faint trace of cigarette smoke.
I enter the big tent from the rear, behind two huge policemen who are standing with their arms folded, watching the service, but not participating in it.
The campers all have their eyes closed in prayer, so nobody notices me at first. Then the prayer finishes, and the youth group leader, who is conducting the service, looks up.
His eyes fasten on me so quickly and tightly that I can feel it like a hand around my neck.
‘Richard!’ His mouth drops open.
It’s Rich, you dumb mucker.
There is a commotion, a swelling and sighing in the crowd. It is a living thing, pouring over me, surrounding me, smothering me with touches and squeezes. With concerned looks and caring glances.
I mutter some story about falling down a bank up at the old quarry, but it doesn’t seem to matter.
I have appeared, in the middle of their prayers for my safe return, it is a miracle from God. The power of prayer. Nothing will ever convince them otherwise.
Madison Woodes bursts through to the front of the crowd and her arms envelop me. My head is nestled into the happy valley of her boobs. She is crying and shaking and the rest of them move in.
I leave the camp in the back of the police car. Not as a prisoner, which I had expected (and deserved), but as a hero. There is a chorus of goodbyes, and ‘See ya, mate!’ as I am helped towards the car, and as I am about to get in, Madison moves forward and hugs me again. I don’t hate her for this.
As the car moves slowly away along the gravel track up to the main road I see Tom, standing by himself.
He shakes his head with a cynical smile.
I wink at him, then look back at my new friends.
It won’t last.
But I’ll take it while it does.
Matthew is out in the backyard, shooting stars with his Wild Bill cap rifle. I hear the small pops as he takes pot shots at those stars that manage to burn through the haze of the outer suburbs.
I leave him to it. It is after 7 and already too cold outside for me. And there are bugs. Nasty, biting bugs. Even at this time of year. They don’t bother Matty at all: they don’t like his smell, or the taste of his blood, or something. But they make for me like the dessert bar at Sizzlers.
I’ll get him in soon, though, or Mum will be mad with me. Matty’s bedtime is 7.30. Otherwise he’ll be tired and grumpy tomorrow and we don’t want that. Not on his first day at school.
Small footsteps on the lino and a horrified little voice in the kitchen, ‘Janey! Janey! I got one!’
It makes no sense to me. With a thudding heart I leap up from the sofa, scattering my English homework. I meet him halfway across the kitchen.
‘Are you all right?’ I try to sound calm; it is important to sound calm, but my heart is pounding.
‘I got one, Janey!’ His eyes are wide, guilt-stricken.
‘One what?’
‘A star.’
There is a moment of doubt, then a flood of relief and I want to smack him but I hug him instead.
He leads me to the back door and points up at the sky. ‘There, see?’
I can’t see what he is pointing at and tell him so.
‘Of course you can’t see it,’ he says, so logically. ‘It’s not there. I shot it.’
I suppose my brain is still muddled from Shakespearean Themes in Modern Literature, but it takes a while before I can work out what he means.
‘It fell like this,’ his little finger traces a line down the black dome of the night, ‘and landed over there, behind Mrs Goodrich’s house.’
I try not to laugh. His face is so serious.
‘It was a meteor, Matty,’ I tell him. ‘A shooting star. It was nothing to do with you.’
He looks puzzled. ‘But it was there before, and then I shot it, and it crashed behind that house, and now it’s not there anymore.’
I can’t explain that, so I don’t try. I use the I-know-more-than-you way out. ‘Trust me, Matty, you didn’t do it. It was just a meteor.’
It works. As it should. Hell, he’s only five.
Memories are glimpses of a time that once was. A brief flash of light through a window onto things that will never be again. And that is what makes them so valuable. My memories are precious pearls, gleaming from the depths of my life.
I remember.
Matthew is seven. He’s in Year 3 at the state school. My old school. Just across the road from my high school. He loves it. I walk him there every day. When we get to the gate, he gives me a hug and walks up the long concrete path that flows like a stream up through the playground.
I watch him until I see his little brown school shoes flapping along the path out of sight.
After school I wait for him at the gate. Some days he is talking to his friends. Once he was holding hands with a girl. So cute. Innocent. So Matty.
Today we are at his school, Mat
ty, Mum and me. In an office. It has a warmth about it, coatings of excitement and enthusiasm, applied by generation after generation of kids.
Matty’s teacher, Mrs Haversham, sits opposite us. She is not much older than me, but has her hair pulled back in an old-maid’s bun. She is what I imagine crotchety old school-marms look like before they get old. Or crotchety.
We are waiting for the principal, Mr Carter, to arrive. He is late. He is late because he is busy. He is busy because he is important. He is the principal.
He arrives as I am thinking this and Matty is fidgeting in his chair. Mum sits silently. She looks exhausted. She had a ten-hour shift last night, so I don’t blame her.
Mr Carter is tall, gaunt and grey-haired, with wire-rim glasses and an atrocious comb-over.
He shakes Mum’s hand and introduces himself. He glances at me but ignores me. He doesn’t recognise me, even though I used to go to this school.
‘Caroline,’ Mr Carter says, and Matty looks at Mum, surprised to find out that she has a first name. He only ever calls her Mummy.
‘Caroline,’ Mr Carter says again, unsure of how to start, ‘perhaps Matthew would like to go next door and play with some toys while we talk.’
‘Off you go,’ Mum says, but Matty pouts.
‘They’re kids’ toys,’ he says. ‘They’re boring.’
Mum looks at me and sighs.
I say nothing but give Matty the stare until he shrugs and walks out.
‘Caroline,’ Mr Carter says for the third time, still not acknowledging my presence, ‘you probably know by now that Matthew is a special child.’
This sounds ominous. I had thought Matty was pretty normal, all things considered. His reports have always been glowing. Mum and I look at each other, both worried and confused.
‘He’s a lovely boy,’ Mrs Haversham chimes in. ‘I really enjoy having him in my class.’
I hold my breath, waiting for the disaster that I know is about to happen. Is it something I did? Did he hurt himself somehow when I was supposed to be looking after him?
‘So what is the problem?’ Mum asks.
‘We don’t know quite what to do with him,’ Mr Carter says. ‘He is very bright.’
‘Very, very bright,’ Mrs Haversham contributes, earning a slight narrowing of the eyes from her principal.
‘At the start of this year we felt we were holding him back so we gave him the workbooks for the next year’s class. English and maths. When he finished those, we gave him the Year 5 workbooks. Then the Year 6 and 7.’
He waits as if expecting Mum to say something. She seems a bit dazed so I say, ‘And?’
Mr Carter ignores me and looks steadily at Mum. ‘He completed them all. He did all the maths problems, even things he had not been taught. He just figured it all out for himself. He finished all the reading comprehension exercises with a hundred per cent marks. We have never seen anything like it.’
Mrs Haversham says, ‘He found such a large mistake in one of the Year 6 maths workbooks that they’re having to reprint the book.’
I breathe out slowly, but I don’t say anything. Why is this a problem? Mum and I share another worried glance.
Mr Carter says, ‘We don’t really have the facilities to cater for exceptional children like Matthew.’
And now I see the problem.
In the dark of the storm Matty comes to my room and crawls in bed with me.
‘I’m frightened,’ he says, ‘of the lightning.’
‘It’s just lightning,’ I say.
‘I know that,’ he says, as if he were the big brother and I were the little sister. ‘It’s static electricity caused by friction in the clouds.’
He looks at me with wide seven-year-old eyes. ‘But it’s loud and scary, Janey.’
I remember.
Matthew has just turned eight. He’s tall for his age. Or do I just think that because I still think of him as a toddler, flicking his food at me with his Mickey Mouse spoon?
Mum and Matty and I are in the domestic terminal. I sit on a firmly upholstered seat, one of four joined together with grey, plastic armrests. So ugly. Matthew lies on a baggage trolley, pushing himself along. I think he is a surfer, or maybe a kayaker. He could be in a moon buggy somewhere in outer space. His imagination takes him many places, wonderful, thrilling places, where other people can’t follow.
He gets disapproving stares from grey-clothed travellers. I don’t know why. He’s not hurting anyone or getting in anybody’s way. They look at Mum and their eyes say that she should be controlling her child, telling him to stop and sit quietly. But why would anyone want to clip this little bird’s wings?
He whirls into the airport bookshop, around a stand of Stephen Kings and back out past a disconcerted group of Korean tourists. He catches the attention of a security guard, a stern-faced woman with a severe haircut, but she does nothing, with just a glimmer of a smile. She has more important things to worry about.
Strange how the things you worry about most turn out to be the least of your problems.
Mr Carter thought Matty would be better off at a special school for extremely gifted and talented children.
But special schools have special fees. Fees I knew Mum couldn’t afford.
She already worked more than fifty hours per week, much of it nights, and we barely survived. Most of the money went towards paying back Dad’s debts.
Dad was no help either. Not for the next seven years (with good behaviour).
But the fees turned out to be all paid for under some government scholarship scheme.
There was one small detail I hadn’t considered. The school was in Springfield. A boarding school. Six hours away by bus.
Matthew has gone somewhere down towards the airport café. I can’t see him and a knot of fear grows in my belly. What if—
But he reappears, grinning hugely, standing on the trolley and pushing it along with his foot like a scooter.
I want him to come and sit with me. I want to spend these last few minutes giving him bear hugs before the flight takes my brother away. Perhaps it is enough just to be together. I cannot bring myself to slice into his excitement, even though I don’t share it.
I can’t imagine life in our old, cold house without the warmth of my little bro. The shrieks of delight from outside on the old tyre swing. The unstoppable, hiccoughing laugh at something that isn’t even funny. The unexplained crashes and sudden silences from the kitchen. These are the patterns of the fabric of my life, and without them life will be a plain, white sheet.
The flight has been called and Matthew, after pushing off our lingering hugs, is walking away through the departure gate, another woman holding his hand. A substitute big sister, in her crisp, flight-attendant uniform.
I am holding back all the tears and the sobs and the snot. I must be happy and not spoil Matthew’s excitement. I dare not look at Mum. That would burst open the floodgates.
He looks back and gives us a huge smile, and I manage to return it. But after he has turned away I catch a brief glimpse of his face in the reflective glass of the barriers, and I see the tears.
I remember.
Matthew is working on a novel. I’ve read it. It’s good. He’d kill me if he knew I had read it, but he didn’t hide it well enough.
He’s home for the holidays and he brought the manuscript with him and slid it under his bed.
He told me that he was writing it, but he told me also that he didn’t want anyone to read it until it was finished. That he didn’t want to let out the steam while the kettle was still boiling.
I knew what he meant.
But I found the manuscript, dog-eared and ragged with red-pen editing. I read it, and I cried.
Matthew is eleven, and his novel has a depth and an understanding of the human experience that I rarely find in the supposedly great
novels that we study in English.
His characters are real, you feel you know them. More than that, you feel you want to know them.
I always wanted to write. Ever since primary school. I plan to go to university to study literature. Apart from Matty, books are the loves of my life. And now I see what I can never be, in the scrappy manuscript of my eleven-year-old brother.
I don’t know whether to scream with joy, or just to scream.
I remember.
We are in the doctor’s office and it is me who is scared.
Matty has been falling over. A lot.
The last time he just about split his head open. I told him off for being so clumsy. But Matty has never been clumsy. And now there are headaches. The school has sent him home for tests, and worried looks from grey-haired men with expensive suits. We wait and I hold Matty’s hand in a way that will let him know that there is no problem.
He seems calm. Terribly calm. He should be bouncing off the walls, annoying the receptionist, rearranging the magazines, making castles out of the paper cups by the water cooler. For him to be sitting so still, I know he must be bouncing off the walls inside his head.
Mum is calm, too. Hers is a different kind of calm. She is rigid, like a statue. She barely seems to be breathing.
I stare at the walls so that I can stop myself from panicking and hyperventilating. I, too, need to be calm. It’s important to be calm. The walls are painted a calming colour. This helps. There’s an azalea in a pot on a table by the window. It looks like it is made of plastic, but I suspect it is real. There’s a painting on the wall of a Russian woman playing a lute. She is wearing a dainty, leafy dress. She is turned away, but looking back over her shoulder at me with compassion. But I don’t need compassion.
I JUST WANT MY BROTHER TO BE OKAY!
I remember.
It is his twelfth birthday. We have a party at GameZone. His friends are there. The ones he used to go to school with. His first school. They hardly seem to know him, but the food is free and there are lots of video games, so they all turn up.
Matthew is in a wheelchair now. He has been working flat out on his novel; he cares about nothing else. He didn’t even want the party, but I organised it. It is an important birthday. Not because it is his twelfth, but because there won’t be a thirteenth.
Stubborn Seed of Hope Page 6
