Neville the Less
Page 44
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Around the block, Hayley had been sitting for some time at the edge of the semi-derelict golf course. The stars had inched upwards. Behind her, curlews raced down the fairways, wailing like lost children. And before her, across the road, stood the smug fortress which housed the Duke and Duchess of Daisley.
The blinds on the windows were drawn, as always, allowing only the faintest outlines of light to escape. The fence across the front, though not as formidable as the Folly, was still six feet high, made of closely spaced pine palings and bore a sign that promised: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PRESECUTED. (By Order of LOAD). The fence, she knew, was like that all the way around except on the Rahimi side. There the palings were no longer pine and the spaces no longer existed. There the Folly rose; lapped iron-bark, grey and solid; impenetrable as a basalt cliff. If the Less’s mutt was in there, Hayley surmised, nothing short of a bomb would shake it loose.
She turned her attention to the front of the Rahimi house and wondered at the paranoia of the Duke and Duchess. The Rahimi house had no fence at all across the front; only two generous stands of Golden Cane palms straddling a footpath that looked moderately welcoming. And there was a driveway that led to a carport on the building’s northern side. Hayley knew that by walking up that driveway, she could find herself, unannounced and uninvited, in Riff’s and Raff’s backyard - or even in the open space underneath the house. It was as though, despite all the horror that’d happened to them in their lives and despite the Folly’s despicable message, they were determined to show that their ability to trust, at least, had not been murdered.
It was not the first time Hayley had been along this street. Not by a long shot. And maybe it was something to do with the frantic cries of the curlews back there in the dark, sounding so bereft. But this evening, looking at the contrast between these two houses, she quite suddenly found herself feeling very, very . . . ordinary. And disappointed.
She rose to go home. Around the block was not far but with the neighbourhood seeming quiet and deserted, she decided on the shortcut through Rahimi’s yard. Up the driveway she went, her thoughts drifting back to the Ava issue; until suddenly the low hum of voices pulled her up. There in the gloom, Raff and ‘Soon sat, nestled in chairs next to the shallow pond, while two men finished rolling the little two metre replica ship back onto its keel and into the water. Bobbing peacefully at the pond’s centre, three white ducks softly quacked their supervisory interest.
Hayley made to retreat, but Raff had already spotted her.
“Who is there?” she demanded, rising to see and, “A neighbour! Come! Come!”
Greetings ensued and the guest was introduced: “From the Immigration Department, Hayley! So helpful, this Australian government, yes? He has helped us mend the boat. Come. We have tea.” Only ‘Soon seemed ruffled, whispering mysteriously to Hayley, “He is not from the government. He is in disguise. Do not go near.”
‘Soon’s fantasies, thought Hayley. The kid’s in a sad way. She nodded her mock gratitude and accepted tea. And so they were five, talking into the night.
The Launching of Bill
There were things on this walk that were out of place - things that Terrible Bill had not seen before. One was the skein of wires stretched between the acrid-smelling black boxes. He studied it from a distance, then arched his neck until his nose almost grazed the wire. Nothing. Nothing was there. Nothing to be frightened of. He snorted derisively, turned sideways and lifted his leg. Marking things as one’s own is always somewhere between being this simple and being very, very difficult.
The arc of current from the batteries crackled up the stream of water, zapped through Bill’s organs, ignited the ends of every hair on his body, from twitching nose to tip of tail and flipped him in a high and mighty circle. It also drew a brief, terrifying jungle scream from his throat; a scream that ended as his once nimble body returned to earth, flat on its back. Bill’s great eyes blinked a question at the stars and the shadows that lurked amongst them. Then they were still.
Shoomba, already frozen with apprehension above an unquantifiable improvised explosive, saw the flash and heard the scream. He recognised the voice as that of Terrible Bill and he recognised the message it contained: Death was afoot in the neighbourhood. If he’d begun to entertain any thought that the trap he’d stumbled into was possibly a bluff, that flash and that scream told him otherwise; told him for certain that Neville the More had become the cunning, merciless and lethal local equivalent of the Mongolovian Wolf Hunter. And also that, no matter what else happened, he mustn’t move.
Neville the Less, at the Home Country kitchen table, also heard the scream though he failed to recognise its source. He’d been watching as the Quiet Man’s head fall lower and lower in response to the sleeping pills Mum had ground into his portion of potato. By the time the scream came and Neville said, “What was that?” the Quiet Man’s head had drooped all the way onto his folded arms. It was only when the question got a snore for an answer that Neville realised two things. Firstly, he was on his own for whatever was to come. And secondly, something was loose in Home Country. A ‘Thing’, perhaps, or a pirate - creeping through the yard toward Rahimi Island and Afsoon - caught in one of the Quiet Man’s traps. So Shoomba’s prediction, that he must become the man of the house, had come true. Neville the Less took the box of home-made bombs and the magic cyclone bolt out onto the veranda and, very very quietly, he began piling up the chairs as a barricade.