Six Bedrooms

by Tegan Bennett Daylight

  The bell rang. There was the clatter and scrape of chairs all over the senior block, the rush for the door from every classroom. He could hear his father shouting again as his class burst into the sunlight. Darcy had had him just once, for Year 9 Science, and that was enough for a lifetime. That was the class where Rebecca Somers had broken her leg, doing a Michael Jackson impersonation. She’d jumped off one of the lab tables and broken her femur. Darcy’s father had been there, shouting at her to get down.

  Darcy waited for Noor at the school gates, keeping an eye out for his father. His heart was beating pretty fast; he’d run all the way from Art to get there in case Noor beat him to it and caught a lift with Taylor and Jordan, instead of getting the bus. It would be summer soon; he could feel sweat under his arms. There she was, walking slowly up the hill with her head down, apart from the other kids. He looked forward to when they would feel relaxed together. Like Evan and Karina, who watched TV with Evan’s legs draped over Karina’s lap, their hands feeling for each other. He tried to swallow the sensation of his beating heart.

  They sat near the front of the bus, holding hands. Noor wasn’t talking. Darcy thought about asking what was wrong, but he couldn’t, for some reason. Noor was looking straight ahead; he couldn’t catch her eye. He got off at her stop, and walked her the half-block to her house. He wouldn’t pass in front of her house, in case her parents saw him; he stopped, and pulled her close, and bent down to kiss her. She moved her face so that the kiss missed her lips and landed near her ear. She tried to slip her hand out of his but he kept hold, and she stopped, looking up at him seriously.

  ‘Do you love me?’ he said.

  She paused one tiny second, then nodded. He could feel her trying to keep her hand quiet in his. He’d had words with her about being impatient, about not listening when he had something important to say. She stood there, like a horse with her beautiful thick black mane of hair, still, and tamed.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ said Darcy, unable to think of anything else to say.

  She nodded again, waited until he had let go of her hand, and then turned away.

  Because it was Thursday there was a staff meeting and his father would not be home. Usually they arrived about the same time and Darcy would go round the back, letting himself in with the key under the cat’s bowl, straight past the kitchen and up into his room so he wouldn’t have to talk. But today would be quiet; he might sit with his mother and have a cup of tea, do his study at the kitchen table.

  For a second he thought the tall figure at the table was his father, and braked to step back out of the kitchen. But it wasn’t; it was Evan. He turned round to see Darcy. He’d shaved weirdly. It looked like he was growing a goatee. Their mother was pouring him a cup of tea.

  He raised his eyebrows at Darcy. ‘G’day,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said Darcy, dumping his bag on the lino.

  ‘Came to see Mum,’ said Evan.

  ‘Ask for money more like,’ said Darcy.

  Their mother frowned at him. Her purse was on the table – there was no use pretending.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ said Darcy, sitting down, and accepting a cup of tea.

  ‘In the city. Got a flat in Woolloomooloo. With some of Karina’s friends.’

  ‘Who’s paying your rent?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  Darcy smiled to himself, and sipped his tea. Evan was not like him. He was stuck to their parents; not free, like Darcy, who would be gone the second he’d finished the HSC. He had $550 of his own money already, not to mention Noor’s.

  Their mother wouldn’t sit down. That was normal. Mostly at dinner she hovered behind the kitchen counter, eating scraps out of the pans. She was thin, with papery skin and eyes that came out slightly, that you could see when she stood side-on. Like a fish or a frog, their father said.

  ‘For your information,’ said Evan, ‘we’ve both got jobs. We’re going fruit-picking in a few months. I’ll quit the flat. They pay for your board. We’ll make enough money to last us all year.’

  ‘Fruit-picking?’ said Darcy. ‘Where are you going to do that?’

  ‘Young. We’re already registered.’

  Darcy was impressed, he had to admit it. ‘When do you start?’

  ‘Just before Christmas.’

  Evan grinned at him triumphantly, and Darcy stared at him. He chewed on the Iced VoVo his mother had passed him.

  ‘Do they do it every year?’

  Evan rolled his eyes. ‘No, dickhead. Only one year – this year. Then there’s never gunna be stone fruit ever again.’

  Darcy ignored him. He was planning. He couldn’t wait to tell Noor.

  He caught up with her on the way to English the next morning. She was walking with Jordan. He tried to shove Jordan to one side, and get between them. He hated her. She had a witchy, pointed face and freckles. Since Year 7 she’d been famous for her horrible, high-pitched giggle. Her older sister Taylor had teased him so badly when he first started school that he’d had to stop taking the bus for a while and get lifts home with his father. She was a friend of Karina’s.

  ‘Dar-cy, you dick!’ Jordan screamed at him, shoving him back.

  ‘I just want to talk to my girlfriend,’ said Darcy. He stepped round and stood in front of Jordan, so she couldn’t get past. ‘Is that okay?’

  Noor took his hand and tried to draw him away. ‘I’ll talk to you later,’ she said to Jordan.

  ‘Tell me how it goes,’ said Jordan. She was sneering at Darcy, and getting her phone out. She started texting as they walked away.

  ‘How what goes?’ said Darcy.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Noor.

  ‘Why weren’t you answering your phone last night? I had something I really wanted to tell you.’

  He could hardly hear Noor, who was walking beside him with her head down, that mass of black hair shining in the sunlight.

  ‘What?’

  ‘My father said I had to study,’ she said again. Her voice was like a little tune; up, down.

  ‘You could have emailed me.’ He’d set up a Hotmail account just so Noor could get round the Facebook ban, even when her phone was switched off.

  ‘Dad switched off the wireless.’

  ‘That bastard,’ said Darcy, but then stopped himself. Noor hated it when he swore. They were running late now. ‘I’ll have to tell you at lunch. Don’t sit with the girls. We’ll go over to the rocks.’

  Noor pulled her hand out of his and Darcy stood watching her as she walked away. When it came to lunchtime she had gone – someone said to the library, someone else said home, and she wasn’t answering her phone.

  That night he took everything out of the suitcase under his bed to check it. He had toilet paper: ten rolls. He’d been taking it out of the weekly shopping, just one at a time, so his mother wouldn’t notice, for about two months. There was a cheap china shop in Kingswood where he’d bought some plates and mugs. It had been difficult to know how or whether to store food. Baked beans he knew would last quite a while, but then he did not know if Noor liked them. Tinned tomatoes, bread-crumbs: these were the things his mother bought all the time and didn’t miss. His father had once seen him looking for the use-by date on a tin of tuna. He hadn’t said anything to Darcy, just stared, with that limitless contempt he had always available to him.

  He got up to check his email again. Still nothing. He looked again at the fruit-picking website. It looked like a five-year-old had set it up – crappy formatting, for one thing, and half the links were broken. Still, they’d answered his enquiries and it looked like it was going to be pretty easy to book in.

  He sent another email to Noor, marked it high priority, texted her again call me NOW!!!!! and looked at himself in the mirror. He was so tall now that he had to step back to see all of himself. He leant in to check his pimples. He pushed his dark hair back off his face to see how high his hairline was, the way Evan did, then swept it forward again. He let his head d
rop forward, tilted it, stared out from under his fringe. His phone sang and he turned and tripped over his chair trying to get to it, hitting his cheek on the edge of the desk.

  ‘Fuuuuuck!’ He sat up, cupping both hands over his cheekbone. ‘Fuck, fuck, fucking hell!’ It hurt so much his eye wouldn’t stop watering. He put one hand over the eye, leant against the desk, and fumbled for the phone with the other. He read the message out of his good eye. Recharge now to win a prize. Savagely, he texted Noor again.

  After his face stopped hurting he got his suitcase out and went through it again. He got his list out of his desk and checked it. He wrapped the tins of tomatoes in t-shirts so they wouldn’t make a noise when he finally snuck out. He hefted the weight of one. If you tied a knot in the t-shirt you could kill someone with it. Or knock them out. He got up to look at himself. His cheekbone was bright red, like someone had rubbed lipstick into it. Great.

  Finally at three am he went to bed, though he couldn’t stop himself sitting up one last time to glance at the screen of his laptop, just in case Noor was pulling an all-nighter and had just then decided to take a break. When he lay down his cheek hurt if he let it touch the pillow, so he had to turn away from the laptop. Its blue light was like moonlight.

  It was past eleven when he woke up. He was still holding the phone, hot in his hand. Nothing there. He dropped it on the desk, ran his finger over the mousepad of his laptop. Nothing there either. Her father must have put her in total lockdown. Maybe he’d heard about the plan. What if Noor had told him? He looked at himself in the mirror. His red cheekbone had turned darker overnight, as had all the skin around his eye. And it looked very, very cool. Noor would probably cry, as she had done when he’d been knocked out, just for a second, on the football field. He went into the bathroom where the light was brighter to really get a look at it. His hair was a mess. He looked tired and beaten.

  He didn’t shower – didn’t want to spoil the hair – put on a t-shirt and shorts and his sneakers, and went downstairs. He could hear the twittering of noisy miners, and his father swearing at his mother in the garden.

  All the breakfast things had been put away. From now on, said a note on the table, if you’re too late, you miss out.

  He took the cornflakes packet out of the cupboard, got the milk and a bowl and spoon. He shoved the note into his pocket and sat down at the table. There was a scrape at the back door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said his father. He was wearing his gardening hat and gloves.

  ‘Having breakfast,’ said Darcy, and in his head added, you motherfucking arsehole.

  ‘Didn’t you see my note?’

  ‘Nup,’ said Darcy, you cocksucking note-leaving loser.

  Darcy’s father stepped forward and seized Darcy’s hand as it brought his spoon up to his mouth, so that the milk spilt on to Darcy’s t-shirt.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Darcy, and dropped the spoon, wrenching himself away from his father. ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  ‘You can wait till lunchtime.’

  Darcy stood there, breathing heavily, wiping the milk off his t-shirt.

  ‘If you don’t have the common courtesy to join us for breakfast then you don’t deserve it.’ His father was sweating, cold waxy beads of it on his white, clean-shaven face. He had a cleft chin, which Darcy had not inherited but Evan had. Hence, thought Darcy suddenly, like he’d been taken over by an English teacher, hence the goatee.

  ‘Where’s Mum,’ said Darcy.

  ‘Cleaning the gutters,’ said his father. ‘Waiting for you to help her.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Darcy and, before his father could do anything, ducked past him and out into the yard. He ran down their street, turning once to see his mother standing on top of the garage, holding a broom and wearing a big hat, watching him. She was terrified of heights. He stopped himself giving her the finger. It was hardly her fault.

  It was hot, the kind of day that told you it was going to be a long summer. Darcy started out across the dry grass of the park. In a few weeks the whole expanse would be yellow and ant-ridden. No one had thought to plant trees, so there were no birds. By the time he reached the other side, his t-shirt was damp with sweat.

  He’d never been inside Noor’s house. There was no way her father would have allowed it. There was a white car parked in the driveway. He stopped, looking at it, and swallowed. Noor’s mother and sister didn’t drive. He’d sent her a text on the way. If he was lucky she would be able to sneak out round the back and they could head out together, so he could finally tell her about the fruit-picking.

  She wasn’t waiting outside. Darcy peered over the fence into the back garden, but there was no one there. The front door was open, but the screen door was locked. Darcy gathered his courage, pressed the doorbell and tried to see down the dark hallway. A radio was playing. At first, silence, then the sound of a chair being pushed back, and heavy feet on the wooden floor. He clenched his fists by his sides. A man opened the screen door, which creaked. He looked very like Noor – darker-skinned, and heavier, but with the same shaped mouth, the same low, deep hairline.

  ‘I came to see Noor,’ said Darcy, feeling his voice jump.

  ‘I’m her father,’ said the man. He was staring at Darcy, staring at his black eye.

  ‘I’m Darcy. A friend of hers.’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Can I –’

  ‘She doesn’t want to see you.’

  Darcy didn’t think, just said, ‘You bastard.’

  Noor’s father moved slightly and Darcy stepped back, watching to see if he lifted his hand. But he just looked at Darcy and didn’t say anything.

  ‘It’s wrong. You’re repressing her. It’s sexist,’ Darcy said.

  ‘You mean oppressing.’

  ‘You know what I mean. She’s scared to talk to me.’ Darcy wiped sweat off his forehead, blinking it out of his sore eye.

  Noor’s father raised his eyebrows.

  ‘This is Australia. You can’t tell her who to go out with. You can’t arrange her marriage.’

  Noor’s father snorted, and Darcy went on, ‘She’s free to do whatever she wants.’

  ‘You’re right. This is Australia. And if she doesn’t want to see a boy, she doesn’t have to.’

  Darcy took a breath. It was so hot. The backs of his legs were burning. If Noor’s father would move back a bit, he could come forward and be under the shade of the awning, but he stayed where he was, one hand resting on the door frame.

  ‘She’d see me, but she’s scared of you,’ said Darcy. ‘You’ve terrified her.’

  Noor’s father looked down at his feet, and then back up. ‘No,’ he said, almost regretfully. ‘You’ve terrified her.’

  Darcy gulped. He felt sweat running down the middle of his back. ‘What do you mean?’ he said at last.

  ‘You’ve scared her. She doesn’t want to see you anymore. It’s too much. She’s not ready.’

  ‘She said –’

  ‘What she said and what she thinks is different. She’s too young, and she doesn’t know how to tell you to leave her alone.’ Noor’s father didn’t seem to be feeling the heat at all. He was wearing a white collarless shirt that looked bright against his brown skin.

  ‘But. I love her.’

  ‘You don’t know what love is. You had an idea. Like a – like a –’ it was the first time Noor’s father’s English had failed him. ‘Like a shape, a mould. A mould. And then you chose someone and tried them to force them into it.’

  Darcy tried to say something, but Noor’s father went on. ‘Next time, you might know better. Next time you choose someone, you let them be.’

  Darcy looked down. He couldn’t believe it. His eye was killing him; tears were coming out of it.

  ‘And now go home.’

  Darcy tried to wipe his eye without hurting it. He took a step back.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Noor’s father, and closed the door.

  Darcy turned and walked away, and the
n went back. He could hear Noor’s father’s voice in the house, and a woman answering him. He stood still a moment, his heart right up high, banging in his throat, and then slipped round the side of the house. He put his hand through the hole in the gate, feeling for the lock. He slid it sideways. It gave a little scream, and he went still again, but no one heard.

  Noor’s bedroom was at the back of the house. He knew this; she’d told him, in case they had to get away earlier than they’d planned. She’d even taken a photo of it with her phone. She would be in there studying, for sure. Her father had probably locked the door on her.

  The window was open. Noor was at her desk, her laptop open. Quietly as he could, he tapped on the glass.

  Noor looked up, and started so violently that her knees hit the desk. Darcy froze, and put his finger to his lips. He closed his eyes for a second, staying calm, then opened them and beckoned Noor over.

  She shook her head, and stood up, making for the door.

  ‘Noor,’ Darcy hissed. ‘Noor! Come back! I have to tell you something!’

  Noor stopped, irresolute, and Darcy beckoned again. ‘Come here.’

  She visibly took a deep breath, and came over to him. She slid the window a little higher, but not high enough for him to get in, and stepped back a bit. Then Darcy saw that her laptop was open at a clothing website. Her father had connected the wireless again. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you answer my emails?’