by Peter Twohig
Finally, Raffi and I got sick of being bitten by Monty and went back into the house.
Mrs B was not happy for the first time since I’d met her. She was picking up bits of broken crockery, the kind that looked like it was better off broken, the kind with flowers all over it.
‘Monty’s in a bad mood.’
‘He’s not the only one. So, Raffi, where do you live?’
‘Down Fawkner Street.’
‘And have you two known each other very long?’
‘Not really. We’d never really talked much until a few weeks ago.’
She turned to me.
‘So have you met Mrs Whoeversheis Radion yet? I bet she’d be happy to meet you.’
‘That’s enough!’ shouted Dad from the living room. ‘Leave them out of this.’
‘It’s a bit late for that,’ Mrs B shouted back.
Raffi and I looked at each other, and headed for the front door.
‘See ya, Mrs Bentley. Best we be off.’
‘Go on then,’ said Dad, ‘piss off.’ We saw him wave a beer bottle at us from the hall.
I hadn’t noticed till that moment that Dad had been on the grog. He always smelt a bit beery, but it only needed one to put him over the edge sometimes.
I didn’t say anything, but opened the door and left with Raffi. Outside, it was hot and blowy, but I didn’t notice. Raffi sighed and put his hand on my shoulder. He understood. It was the way of the town.
At Kipling Street, we hopped off the tram, and Raffi left me at the Sandersons’ gate. The Sandersons’ front gate was brand new, and therefore probably the only front gate in Richmond that didn’t squeak. I closed it hard, so they’d hear me coming and not drop dead from fright, and bowled in without knocking. Inside, I plonked myself down in the living room, which was about twenty degrees cooler than outside.
‘Hello, love,’ shouted Mrs S from the kitchen.
‘Hello, Mrs Sanderson. What’re ya cooking?’ I could hardly believe someone would cook in this weather.
‘Chocolate crackles.’
‘Sounds good. Is it somebody’s birthday?’
‘No, I thought you might like some for your meetings.’
I went into the kitchen. Mrs S looked like a lollopy lady in a floral dress, because she was. She was stirring something like mad when I saw her, and a lot of her was rolling around like it had nowhere to go.
‘Hello, love. Been to the baths?’
‘How’d you know?’
‘Your hair is sticking out more than usual.’
I felt my hair. She was right. I didn’t have to look to know that I looked like a Marx brother who hadn’t been invented yet.
‘Russell’s hair used to stick out, you know, when he had hair, I mean. He still has to plaster it down — Brylcreem seems to work best. What’ve you been up to?’
‘Oh, I dunno. This ’n’ that.’ The Spirit is very cool. He knows how to talk to dames.
‘Visited the fire up at Abbotsford, I see.’
I had already decided, in view of their warnings, not to tell them about that.
‘How’d you know?’
‘You’ve got black stuff all over your runners.’
I looked down. What a drongo I was! I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the world.
‘I’ll have to make you an honorary member of our secret society, Mrs Sanderson.’
‘Isn’t your dog an honorary member?’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Then thank you, but I prefer to wait for a better offer.’ She gave me a spoon and we began putting the mixture in the patties, some for the patty, some for me, and so on. ‘So you decided to ignore our warnings.’
‘It was just a quick squiz. And besides, Raffi wanted to see.’
‘What’s your next task for the day, then?’
This is where all my cunning was called for, as putting one over on Mrs S was about as easy as breathing under water.
‘Takin’ Zac for a walk.’
‘Not in the drains?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Not for a paddle in the river?’
‘Nuh.’
‘Not —’
‘Mrs Sanderson —’
She gave up. The Spirit chortles at interrogation.
Next item on the agenda was going upstairs to the Typewriter Room to bung the Lena on the map, as I didn’t think our visit to it was supposed to be a secret, and Port Melbourne was looking a bit bare. There was a picture of it in the paper, so I just copied that. ‘Never do anything the hard way,’ says Barney, and the Spirit tends to agree. When I came downstairs I got a shock in the soles of my feet. Standing in the living room was a fireman. I stopped dead in my tracks. If I’d been one of those superheroes who had superpowers I would have wheeled them out on the spot, but the Spirit’s main power is that he’s cool in all circumstances. Like a ghost. Also, Mr Sanderson had turned up, probably fresh from one of his famous walks in the little park across the road. I walked the few steps into the room and waited. Barney says the best thing to do in embarrassing moments involving the authorities is to wait until they tip their hand, and to tell them nothing without a brief.
Mr Sanderson jumped in first.
‘This gentleman is from the fire brigade.’ That was in case I hadn’t noticed his black uniform and brass helmet, the part of him that made me freeze. ‘He’d like to ask you a few questions about the boy who was staying with you. There’s nothing to be worried about.’
How many times had I heard that before?
‘Hello, young man. Is your name’ — he consulted a notebook that looked like my Spirax, but wasn’t as good — ‘Blayney?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you know a boy called Keith Kavanagh?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘No.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
‘When our house burnt down, weeks ago.’
‘Oh, so you’re that Blayney.’ He was quick.
I wish I had a quid for every time I’d heard that; I could afford a bike with gears.
‘Well, your friend is in real trouble now.’ He turned to Mrs S. ‘He is suspected of starting the fire in the lumberyard down the street, as well as the one in the factory in Abbotsford.’
‘What about his father?’ I asked. ‘Couldn’t he have done it?’
The fireman’s eyes bugged out as if I’d grabbed him by the nuts.
‘I know what I’m talking about, young man. The question is: do you realise what kind of trouble you’ll be in if you withhold information from the police or the fire brigade? If that boy mentions your name when we find him, you will go to a jail for children. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. But I don’t know where he is.’
‘And I think you’re lying.’
While Mr and Mrs S were seeing Fireman Jim to the door, I plonked myself back down on the couch and gave a bit of thought to life in general. Though he had gone, the Black Marauder had left an invisible fireman-shaped hole in the atmosphere, which spoilt the lovely feel the room usually had. I felt bad that I had brought this on the Sandersons, who deserved better from me, and tears came out of my eyes. One fell on the leather couch and made a little thud; I had never realised that tears had their own noise.
Towards the end of last year, when all the connections were starting to get me down — it had been just after the Great Big Fire at the old Kavanagh Place — I had asked Barney how the connection thing worked.
‘Well, young Blayney, you’ve come to the right man, for I’ve been unjustly accused — connected with, you might say — more crimes than they’ve got names for, and d’ya know why?’
‘No, Barn. Why?’
‘Coincidence! That’s right. Sheer bloody coincidence! A bloke was in the wrong place at the wrong flamin’ time.’
‘I see.’
He paused to look at the ground. ‘Where was I?’
I had caught Barney late on a Saturday arvo
, when he’d had a few ambers.
‘Sheer bloody coincidence, Barn.’
‘Hey, language. Anyway, I’d be in some geezer’s house in the middle of the night, doing a spot of burglary, you know, just to keep me hand in — as I am what in the game is known as semi-retired — and bang! The lights’d go on and there’d be some flamin’ copper starin’ at me. And the next thing, I’d be in the dock and the aforesaid copper would be telling the beak all about it, and putting to him a pretty one-sided view of my life as a whole.’
He’d lost me, as often happens.
‘I see.’
‘The trick is to make sure you’re always in the right place at the right time, my lad. Then you’ll be right.’
‘Thanks, Barn.’
‘’S’pleasure.’
Barn had opened my eyes. I saw clearly that I had spent most of my life being in the wrong place at the wrong time and that had not really worked out too well. But then, along came a variety of events, which made me forget his advice. Now I was remembering again. I decided to see if Mr and Mrs Sanderson had any thoughts on the subject.
‘Well, well,’ said Mr S, returning to the living room. ‘And I was only saying to Mrs Sanderson this morning that we seemed destined for a quiet weekend.’
‘And I said to Mr Sanderson, “I wonder how long that’ll last,” when here you are.’
The Sandersons were always having a lend of me, despite the young feller having a history: I won’t lie to you.
‘Actually I had been planning on having a quiet visit.’
Mrs S saw the tears, and came and sat beside me, causing the whole room to tilt a little in her direction.
‘I’ve made a decision.’
‘Have you taken the pledge not to drink lemonade?’ said Mrs S, who is a bit of a wag.
‘No. Dad would take a dim view of that. He says many a good man has taken the pledge, and then ended up in the DLP. And worse.’
I said this with a twinkle in my eye, as Granddad had once offered me eight to five that the Sandersons were supporters of Bob Menzies, and I just wanted to see them squirm. However, it takes more than a little dig to make that happen, and I hadn’t really expected a result.
‘Glad to hear it,’ said Mrs S, disappearing into the bowels of the house in search of victuals for the young visitor.
‘So what’s the decision?’ said Mr S.
‘No more coincidences. There have been a lot of coincidences in my life lately.’
‘Like you happening to know the boy who threatened to burn down half of Richmond, and actually did burn down both his own and your home?’
‘That could be one, I suppose.’
‘Like you just happening to have illegally entered the Palmers’ home the day before I introduced you to them right in this room?’
‘I s’pose that could be a coincidence.’ I didn’t like the sound of this.
‘And like you just happening to have witnessed a murder in this very house before we’d even come here to live and met you?’
‘P’raps.’
‘And like —’
‘Ah. Thanks, Mrs S. I was dry as a Weet-Bix.’
‘Saved by the belle,’ said Mr S, though I didn’t hear one.
‘Oh?’ said Mrs S, shoving a flabby oar in. ‘What did I miss?’
‘Our young friend has decided to put an end to the coincidences that plague his life.’
‘Well, good luck with that,’ said Mrs S, mysteriously. ‘If it hadn’t been for coincidence we wouldn’t have met you, would we, dear? And they wouldn’t have caught the man who did that horrible thing you saw — the less said about that, the better. And you wouldn’t have met your friend Raffi, now, would you?’
‘Yeah, I s’pose so.’
‘If you don’t me saying, I think you’ll find that trying to stop coincidence getting into your life is a losing battle. Would you agree, Russell?’
‘Impossible, I’m afraid. Stuck with it. Anyway, it’s how nature gets things done. And besides, without it, life would be dull.’
‘I think mine already is.’
They stared at me as if I’d just said South was a bunch of useless drongos.
I didn’t know whether to feel better or worse, so after gargling a Marchants, I went down the lane to Raffi’s place. It was really his mum I wanted to see, which was a funny thing because I had only been friends with Raffi for a couple of weeks, whereas I’d been friends with some of the other kids — Douggie Quirk and Peanut Hobson — since I was born. But Douggie’s parents had been hungover for so long they’d practically lost the power of speech (and anyway, they hated kids); and Peanut’s parents had begun to treat me like a plague carrier.
Fort Radion was smelling nine out of ten when I turned up, and my doggy nose told me that something was cooking on all cylinders. I found Mrs R with her feet up and watching something on television, something about Mr Calwell, which shows you what kind of life she had, and was happy to be distracted when she realised the young visitor was up for some serious conversation with the adult segment of the Radion clan, usually the only kind of conversation you can have with an adult, unless you’ve just caught them lubricating the tonsils. Raffi was all ears.
‘Mrs Radion.’
‘Mm?’
‘I have made a decision.’
‘Dare I ask?’
‘I’ve decided to stop all the coincidences in my life, because I think that might be where the trouble is.’
‘Like the coincidence when your friend the certifiable lunatic burnt down half of Richmond, including your own house?’
I wished people would stop bringing this matter up, as it always tended to lend further conversation a sort of puce and fawn feel.
‘Sort of.’
‘Or that coincidence when Raffi almost got put in jail because you decided to steal a chicken and throw it off the balcony during Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy?’
To be fair, I’d had no idea that incident would have repercussions — I hadn’t thought the matter all the way through — not to mention that it never occurred to me that some kid who looked like me might end up being blamed.
‘I’m not sure about that one.’
‘Then how about the coincidence where you broke into that policeman’s house down near the brewery, and the next day he came over here and accused my son of being a burglar?’
I hadn’t known about that particular coincidence either, but it did make me see a different side of Mrs Radion, one that I did not want to encourage. I looked at Raffi. He was enjoying himself enormously, because everyone knows that you can’t stop a kid being gleeful over seeing his friend suffer any more than you can stop a girl with freckles sticking her tongue out.
‘Was that what you would call a coincidence?’ I said, trying to curb this one-sided turn the conversation had taken.
‘You should be asking your father that question, not me.’
The conversation had gone off the rails, as adult stuff always does in the end, no matter how juicy it is. But I had no comeback to this unexpected mention of Dad, and I certainly had no intention of asking him about anything that did not involve motorbikes or fishing, because he already had enough on his plate.
Mrs R must have seen the look on my face.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that: I’m just tired.’ She took a sip of beer. ‘Look, you can’t control everything that happens, but you can control a lot of it. It’s a question of keeping your head. And often, you can’t even do that. I suppose you’ve had more than your fair share of that already. It’s like that pie we’ve got in the oven: if we don’t keep an eye on it, it’ll get burnt. You’ve just got to keep an eye on things.’
All of this helpful advice took it out of Mrs Radion, who now lapsed into a kind of TV-watcher’s coma, only with her eyes still open, because an ad about soap powder had come on, and a lady can no more take her eyes off one of those than a cheetah can take its eyes off a baby zebra who has toddled off to do a bit of exploring.
Kipling said: If you can keep your head when everyone else is going loony tunes you’ll be a man, my son. And I tried to live by my own version of that rule: If you can change yourself into a kind of superhero who can survive all the crappy stuff God organises for you just around the corner, where you can’t possibly see it coming until you’ve actually stepped in it, you might not go nuts, and you might find a way to live with what happened to Tom into the bargain.
I just went over it again to see if anything needed changing; not really.
The trouble with life is that it’s like a machine gun: the only time it’s guaranteed to jam is when the enemy is actually close enough to lob a grenade at you.
I would just have to keep an eye on things, starting with Flame Boy. The briefcase was not that important anymore. It was more important that I find my nemesis and tell him to get out of Melbourne, perhaps catch a train to some boring out-of-the-way place where they wouldn’t notice the odd fire — I had Albury in mind. First thing in the morning, I planned to go down to the station and make enquiries. When the Spirit went to bed that night, he had everything under control.
28 The Spirit and the traitor
The good feeling the Spirit had about his handling of the situation — I think it was a situation — disappeared as soon as I left for Mass the next morning. I was still an altar boy at St Felix’s, even though I’d changed schools, for the simple reason that St Dominic’s, the big church on the hill where Granddad lived, had about a thousand altar boys of its own, all of whom were students at St Dom’s. In fact, they were a bit of a secret society themselves. But then, so were we, down near the river.
So off I went to the old eight-fifteen Mass, which wasn’t too bad, as it meant that I would be getting a late brekky, but still a brekky, as we had to fast before Mass. (It was the nine-thirty Mass that was the killer.) So all in all I was in a good mood, apart from not having actually figured out where Flame Boy was. I knew that I would, and I was sure that I had found the right place to pack him off to. In fact, just then the Spirit couldn’t think of anything that could possibly go wrong. So imagine my surprise when, just near the end of Kipling Street, I looked up and found my path blocked by Fergus Kavanagh. It was another one of those bloody coincidences.
