Could he please hear it now? Not the coughing and the banging and the yelling. Not the shattering of glass and the scream, but the trickling of water from a flannel to a forehead?
Could he?
Please?
51
Pete had lost everything. At birth, his mother, to drink. At five, his father, to England. At twenty-four his country, to cars. And now . . .
Like all those other times, he knew he was powerless to stop it. Like when the yelling got so bad his Dad called a taxi, hugged him at the door, cried, and said: ‘There’s nothing else I can do, son. I’ll visit.’
Like when his Mum had peed herself while he microwaved two packets of real beef lasagne.
Like when the need to say fuck you had gotten so desperate that he’d smashed a window with his bare fist and punched an officer with the same hand.
So he was used to losing things. But as he washed water over Bronwyn, hoping the toxins would leave her body, he prayed for the ambulance to be fast, please God, because he didn’t want to have to lose again, didn’t want to have to recover, get tougher, again.
Vera Oh had been heading south at high speed when the call came in. She said fuck, then shit, then swerved full pelt across the motorway.
‘Fuck, shit and fuck,’ she said, taking out an emergency cigarette from her glove compartment, lighting it, and sucking the guilt into her lungs. It was her fault, wasn’t it? She’d had him in the cell, the weed. Had questioned him at length, and ignored a gut feeling that it might be him – something about the way he had all the right answers ready.
‘It’s just a feeling,’ she’d admitted to her fellow interrogator. ‘Nothing concrete.’ And with continuing suspicions about the husband, and with Peter McGuire and his leather gimp mask in situ, she’d let him go.
‘Shit, fuck, shit, fuck, shit, fuck, shit,’ she continued, lighting the second emergency cigarette.
‘You’re only supposed to have one,’ her police passenger remarked, returning the Silk Cuts to the glove compartment. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ was her answer.
When Vera finally arrived at the entrance to the baths, five other police vehicles were already there, along with two ambulances.
‘Inside,’ someone yelled.
Vera ran towards the corner door.
52
The last few weeks don’t flash before me, they amble. I’m touching the rough face of a beautiful man. I’m losing my shoe on a London roof. I’m being carried on a Singapore conveyor belt. I’m sitting on top of the world watching Australia go on and on beneath me. I’m running away from the hospital.
And now I’m running towards my home. Mr Todd, caked in cracked dirt, is riding one of his horses out of the old railway, smiling. The pigs are scampering onto the street from the bacon factory, wriggling their ears. Ursula and Dad are on the veranda, waving at me as I run towards them. My steps are getting bigger. They’re huge and fast and high, so high that, just when I think I’m going to land on the veranda, I fly right past and land several feet on the other side. I turn and jump back towards Dad and Ursula again, but it’s like I’m slowly crawling up the hill of the Scenic Railway and when I hurtle back down, I land even further on the other side. They’re looking up at me now. I must be thirty feet up in the air, yelling at them as I come down to land at least sixty feet away from them this time.
I breathe. I’ve been dunked in the freezing plunge pool and Pete’s embracing me, crying, and saying, look at me, hold on, hold on. I can see Vera Oh. I can see Greg smiling down at me: ‘Thank you, Celia’s alive, she’s okay, thank you, thank you,’ he says.
‘I love you,’ Pete whispers.
I know exactly how to respond . . .
‘I want you to come home with me. Do you understand?’ He nods, and locks his fingers with mine. A man who loves me is holding my hand as I die.
Greg disappears to go to Celia.
I close my eyes. Pete has joined Ursula and Dad on the veranda. They’re getting smaller and smaller, so teensy as I leap back and forth.
I can’t see them at all now.
Is that a trike?
The bounding is starting to feel exhilarating.
I find myself yelling: ‘Wheeeee!’
Thanks to my editor, Alison Rae at Polygon, and to my early twenties, which I somehow survived.
The Devil's Staircase Page 16
