Cairo (31 page)

‘Tom? Tom?' Detective Bird was saying, and I realised he had asked me a question.

‘What?' I said.

‘You were at a party all night, did you say?'

‘A party. Last night? Yes.'

He rested his elbows on his knees, clicked his pen in and out. ‘And how do you think our suspect got hold of your enrolment papers?'

Click-click. Click-click
.

‘I gave them to her.'

‘You did?'

‘Yes. In that laundromat in Brunswick Street. Months ago.'

He and Detective Powell looked at each other. ‘But why would you do that?'

What could I tell them? That I had decided to forgo a bland formal tertiary education in favour of lessons in art and history and friendship and love? That I had sacrificed my ordinary life for one so filled with excitement and danger that it was almost unbearable? I looked at them. I wanted to laugh in their faces. They would never understand, not if they lived to be a thousand years old. All I could do was shrug in response.

Predictably, my father was outraged. ‘Why in hell did you do that?'

As Jane glided from the kitchen with a tray of steaming mugs, Detective Bird tucked his papers under his arm, and stood. ‘Well,' he said, ‘it doesn't look like there's any need for us here.'

The detectives declined tea, bade farewell and made their way to the front door, accompanied by my father (not before he had promised to deal with me later).

Jane smiled and handed me a cup of tea. ‘We're just glad you're OK.'

I had never liked her a great deal, but Jane's gesture of making tea felt like the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me and I was filled with gratitude. My eyes clogged with tears.

After a whispered conference in the hallway, the detectives departed. I sipped my scalding tea, comforted by the menial task at hand.

‘What the hell?'

It was my father, who was looking quizzically at the floor underneath his shoes, eyes narrowed. He pressed down with one foot. With renewed despair, I realised he was standing on the squeaky floorboard — beneath which rested the shoebox containing Aunt Helen's pistol. Again he rested his weight on the floorboard and grunted with satisfaction at the resultant squeak.

Like many Australian men, my father fancied himself a home handyman (saw it, in fact, as intrinsic to his masculinity),
and it was with no small degree of horror that I recognised the expression on his face: it was that of a man discovering a construction fault he might be able to repair himself.

With the intention of manoeuvring him away from such a dangerous spot, I jumped up and strode towards him. Before I could distract him, however, he had crouched on one knee and peeled back a corner of the Persian carpet to expose the offending floorboard.

‘This needs fixing,' he muttered. ‘Probably needs something to wedge it. Do you have a bit of wood, by any chance?'

‘What?' I said.

‘Wood. Are you deaf as well as stupid? A bit of
wood
. As a matter of fact, it looks like you might be able to …'

I became aware of a high-pitched voice nearby. A few seconds later, Eve was standing in my front doorway. She was gasping for breath, as if she had run some distance to get there.

Still on one knee, my father swivelled around and said good morning to her.

‘Eve,' I blurted out, grateful for once to see her, for the distraction she would provide. Grateful, that is, until she opened her mouth.

‘There's that child protester!' she announced, and I detected her piquant revenge for all the times I had avoided her. She was nodding so energetically that her pigtails flopped about behind her.

Then I heard the voice of Detective Bird, who was still on the walkway outside. ‘What did you say, little lady?'

My father looked back at me, eyebrows raised. I felt I was sinking into a dreadful zugzwang in which I might be compelled to implicate myself in one awful crime to absolve myself of a worse one.

‘He's a child protester.'

Caroline, the horrible girl's mother, loomed up behind her, also short of breath. ‘It's
molester
, honey. Mo-les-ter.'

Detective Bird peeked around the doorjamb at me. Then, addressing Eve: ‘What makes you say that? Did he hurt you?'

Eve, usually so eager to be the centre of attention, was struck mute. Confused, she glanced back and forth between me, her mother and the detective, who had lowered himself onto his knee to meet her eye.

‘No, no,' she said at last.

Caroline, ever astounded by her child, chuckled.

My father was by then standing again, hands on hips, mouth agape.

‘Then what makes you say that, honey?' Detective Bird persisted.

The child hopped from foot to foot. ‘Um, um.' She gazed around, unable to contain herself, then pointed to the middle of the apartment block. ‘Max told me!'

I recalled Max joking that he would use this to keep the girl from bothering me, but I never considered he would do it.

Submitting to the childish belief that I might render myself invisible if unable to see my persecutors, I closed my eyes.

FORTUNATELY, THIS MOST HEINOUS OF ALLEGATIONS WAS SOON
cleared up. With Detective Powell left to watch over me, Detective Bird trooped over to Max and Sally's apartment with Caroline and Eve. Although nobody answered the door, on the way the detective managed to ascertain from Eve and her mother that I had not touched her at all and that her allegation was based on the throwaway comment of an eccentric (and often drunk) neighbour. Finally, most of my unwelcome visitors left.

My trials were not, however, finished for the day. Hungover and exhausted, I endured a gruelling lunch with my father at bustling Tiamo in Lygon Street. We made small talk: Barbara had damaged her Achilles tendon playing tennis; their real estate business was going well; the Dunley football club was raising money to build a new locker room. To my ears it was news from a distant land for which I cared not a jot. I hadn't been alone with my father in many months, and I knew I was being sullen and uncooperative.

My father stared at me, a steaming forkful of spaghetti marinara suspended between his mouth and plate.

After a while, he put it down. ‘You were such a sweet boy when you were small,' he said, taking up a paper napkin and wiping his mouth. ‘I remember once, when you were about eight years old,
you tried to run away. You had a bag of stuff, some sandwiches and an apple, things like that. Meredith and Rosemary caught you sneaking along the side of the house. You had some idea you were adopted. I don't know where you thought you were going. To find your real family, I suppose. I'm not sure if you remember that.'

I did remember the day — the whine of cicadas, the rough drag of pampas grass trailing through my fingers as I crept past the house.

My father laughed to himself and began shovelling spaghetti into his mouth.

I thought of what Sally had told me once about being brave in the face of one's family.

‘Well,' I asked, ‘am I?'

My father chewed his pasta. ‘Are you what?'

‘Adopted.'

‘You serious?'

My heart was beating hard. I nodded.

My father licked his glistening lips and arranged his cutlery on his plate. ‘Why would you even think that?'

‘Rosemary and Meredith always said I was.'

‘Oh, I see. Since when did you listen to them?'

I was surprised to feel hot tears forming behind my eyes. A young waitress dropped a wine glass near our table, prompting a round of cheers from a group of tipsy students.

By the time the shattered glass had been cleared away, I was able to speak. ‘I thought Aunt Helen was … that she might have been my mother.'

My father looked as if he were about to laugh, but managed to control himself. ‘Helen? Why Helen, of all people?'

I shrugged.

My father sighed and held his face in his hands. ‘God,' he said when he resurfaced. ‘OK, OK. Let me tell you a few things about Helen.'

He observed another waitress, the prettiest one, bearing aloft plates of spaghetti as she navigated between tables. He cleared his throat. ‘Your aunt wasn't your mother, Tom. Your mother is your mother and I'm your father.'

‘Then what was that big fight about, the one you had with Helen?'

‘Oh, that. Is that what this is all about?' He lowered his voice. ‘Listen. It would be a miracle if Helen was your real mum. Your aunt, well, your aunt liked, uh,
women
. The fight was when her …
girlfriend
, I guess you'd call it, moved in with her. An Englishwoman she'd met on a bloody cruise down the Rhine. And she wanted to bring her to Christmas dinner. And we wouldn't allow it. Not in front of you kids.'

‘Why not?'

My father looked at me aghast but declined to respond, no doubt considering the answer to be self-evident. ‘She didn't last long, at any rate. Pat moved back to England a few years ago.'

‘An Englishwoman?'

‘Yeah, that was the, you know, girlfriend's name.'

I remembered the mysterious phone call, the postcards. ‘I think she rang me. Last week.'

‘Yes, she rang me, too. She and Helen were still friendly — even still wrote to each other — but Pat didn't know your aunt had died. She said she'd rung Helen's old place. That someone had told her. You, I presume.'

I felt betrayed and sad that my relationship with my aunt had been severed over this.

‘Look,' my father continued, ‘it was right before your mum and I divorced. It was a bad few years for everyone. And once it happened it was hard to go back. Some pretty nasty things were said.'

This revelation should, by rights, have provided me with some
relief, but its effect was indeterminate; I had for so long assumed I was not of my family that it was confronting to be told otherwise.

My father looked genuinely dismayed. ‘I'm sorry your mother and I split up. I think perhaps you didn't handle it very well, but you mustn't blame yourself. We both adored you children. It was just that, I don't know, sometimes things run their course, that's all. And you can't always predict how it will go. You always think it will be forever. That's the best thing about relationships when they're new and the worst when they're over, because it always feels like such a failure.'

This was about the only reference to an emotional life my father had ever expressed, and I was confused by its unexpected articulation. I doubt I'm alone in finding it difficult to see my relatives as complete human beings with their own interior lives; I usually deflected any such exploratory overtures, preferring them to remain frozen in the role I had designated for them.

In any case, my father appeared to regret his uncharacteristic outburst almost immediately. He pushed his plate of pasta away and ordered coffee (‘A cup of chino, please').

Fiddling with his shirt cuffs, he told me that — in light of the fact I wasn't even studying at university but was just ‘bumming around' — he had decided to sell his late sister's apartment at Cairo. Rosemary was having yet another child, and he wanted to help her out with some money.

‘Besides,' he went on, ‘you were meant to paint the place, remember? That was part of the deal. As far as I can see, you haven't done a single thing.'

I attempted to disguise my distress at hearing this news by inspecting my salami focaccia. ‘Fine. I'm moving to France in a few weeks, anyway. As soon as I get a passport.'

‘With what money? You've lost your job, remember?'

‘I've got some saved up.'

He snorted. ‘Right. From washing dishes in a French restaurant.'

‘Well, I do.'

‘We should never have let you move here all alone. Your bloody uncle's an idiot, no good to anyone. Too busy prancing around in lycra. I blame myself. We should have kept a closer eye on you. I don't even recognise you anymore.' He broke off until a waitress had set down his coffee. ‘You're not on drugs, are you?'

Even if I were inclined to reveal all that had happened in the past eight months, my confession would never be for his ears. I shook my head and took a bite of my now-cold lunch.

We said our clumsy farewells, and I returned home late in the afternoon to find a folded piece of paper slipped under my door. I recognised Sally's distinctive looping handwriting, even though the note consisted only of a single word.

Rooftop

STILL HUNGOVER AND SHATTERED BY EVERYTHING THAT HAD
occurred in the past twenty-four hours, I drank a glass of water before mounting the curling, cantilevered stairway.

Max and Sally were sitting in deckchairs on the roof. For some reason they both looked surprised to see me but, as ever, Max rallied; he stood to shake my hand with gusto. ‘Well, hello there. We're taking in the air. Lovely up here, isn't it?'

I nodded hello. Sally was gazing across to where the sun was dipping behind the elm trees in the Carlton Gardens. Unwilling, it seemed, to meet my eye.

All at once Max's demeanour altered. He clapped a hand to my shoulder and pulled me close, although there was no one else within earshot. ‘Mr Orlovsky told us the cops were around at your apartment today? What did they want? Was it about the painting? What did you tell them?'

I tried to placate him. ‘Relax. I didn't tell them anything.'

‘
What did they want?
'

I was taken aback by the ferocity of his interrogation. ‘It's alright, Max. It was unrelated.'

‘What, then? Tell me.'

He listened wide-eyed as I explained about the university forms
the police had found in the possession of a suspect in the Moonee Ponds killings, how my boss had rung my mother and so on; the whole unlikely chain of events that had led the police to my door that morning.