Currawalli Street (17 page)

And now, the air inside the house is clean.

Jim feels as if something else other than the pile of rubbish has gone. Some shadowy part of his childhood that has been clinging to the furniture; and other, darker things that have been sitting like stale smoke in the back of the drawers.

Standing in the kitchen he hears a knock at the front door. He walks down the hallway, his footsteps ringing on the timber, and opens the door wide, his intuition sensing an odd difference in the air straightaway. On the veranda stands a long-haired young man with his cardigan buttoned crookedly and a t-shirt half tucked in. He looks like a fugitive from the previous decade. Jim has never seen him before. Thomas, the cat from next door, is circling his feet.

‘Welcome home,' the man says, looking at Jim's hand on the door. ‘I am a neighbour. I have brought you a magazine as a housewarming gift.'

Jim feels a cold wind. He accepts the gift—it looks like an electronics magazine—but doesn't stand aside to let the man enter.

‘Thanks very much,' Jim says. ‘I'm still getting settled. There's junk
everywhere.' There isn't any junk. Jim hears the danger in the silence. The long-haired man is tapping his foot to some music that must be playing in his head.

Jim is wary. He rolls back onto the balls of his feet. Ready to react. ‘Which house do you live in?' he asks.

‘Number thirteen. Just across the street there. Next door to the priest.'

‘Oh. Been here long?'

‘Two years to the day. Two years goes pretty quick when you're busy. My parents normally live there with me but they have gone to Poland. That's where they come from.'

Jim looks closely at the face of the man but he can read nothing in his eyes. He says, ‘My parents lived here. I grew up in this house. I've come back to clear things up after what happened.'

‘What happened?'

‘You don't know?' Jim drops his hands to his side, alert and ready.

‘No. I keep strange hours. Often I am asleep or else I am somewhere else . . . if you know what I mean.' He smiles a disturbed smile. Jim doesn't know what he could mean.

‘You didn't hear the gunshots or the police sirens?'

‘No, nothing. I generally work with headphones on so I don't hear anything.'

‘I thought the police might have knocked on your door.'

‘If they did, I didn't hear. Why would they knock on my door?'

‘Routine, I imagine. To see if you saw anything.'

‘What a shame I didn't hear them knock. I see lots of things.'

‘Oh well. They might come back. What's your name?'

‘Peter Alexis. I am from number thirteen—'

‘Yes, you told me . . .'

‘You are more than welcome to come over anytime you like. I will be up. I only sleep four hours at a time. If I don't hear you knocking, it means I am either asleep, working with the headphones on or elsewhere.'

‘Okay. I'll remember that.'

‘And what's your name?'

‘Jim.'

‘Pleased to meet you, Jim. My name is Peter and I will walk home now,' he says in a monotone.

‘Thanks again for the magazine.'

‘That's okay. I am trying to be a more outgoing person. Left to me, I would stay inside for years and never talk to anybody. But the priest says I should be forcing myself to be a member of the community. I go to the pub.'

‘Do you?' Jim says in a steady voice, still alert.

‘Sometimes. Bye.' Peter turns and leaves. He fumbles with the front gate and is unable to close it. Jim tells him not to worry and shuts the front door. Suddenly, he runs at full speed down the hallway, through the back door and up to the back fence. He turns, and without stopping he runs back inside again. Then he sinks to the floor in the hallway and begins the breathing exercises that Brent, his sergeant, taught him.

After three-quarters of an hour, Jim is back in the kitchen thinking
about dinner. There's nothing in the fridge, nothing in the cupboard except Boston bun. Still, he always liked a walk to the shop. He will think about what to buy on the way there. He turns right out of the front gate and begins to count his steps as he walks.

The Hendersons live at number eight. They are the perpetual newcomers to the street, even though they have been here for ten years. They have become known for a few things; noticed just as any new ripple in a pond is. At three o'clock one morning Mrs Henderson ran up the street in her nightie after a domestic screaming match. No one ever mentions it but everybody knows about it, even if they didn't see it happen. The Hendersons know that everybody knows about it and they think that they have to work to keep it unmentioned.

But the fact is, the Hendersons don't have to worry. No one will ever say anything. There are secrets that you keep inside your head, secrets that you keep inside your house and secrets that you keep inside your street. Mrs Henderson's nightie-fluttering run falls into the last category; that's why nothing will ever be said. Amid the Hendersons' insincere attempts to be cordial and everybody else's suspicion of the efforts they make, strange bonds and friendships are forged. Mr Henderson has become a person who can be relied upon to donate paper money to any child who knocks on his door with a charity can. Mrs Henderson has so little knowledge of how the women of the surrounding houses interact together and deal with the domestic business of the street that she is never included in anything important but always in something mundane or slight like a cake baking, or a group fitness walk, or cups of tea at the church.

Number six is the home of Norm Norman. He is the owner of Bruiser
the dog, the unofficial guardian of the street. Norm appears to have always been old; he looks the same as he did when Jim was a toddler learning to walk. Jim can think of no other way to describe him; Norm is a nice man. As a word, nice has lost the effect it used to have; now it's another way of saying ineffectual, or neutral, or even dull. But Norm is nice in the traditional way, generous with what he has, trustworthy, and he doesn't ever take sides. Jim has always liked Norm. Everybody has always liked Norm. People are viewed with suspicion if they say they don't like him much.

But now the house looks faded, as if no one lives there anymore.

Number four belongs to the Alberto family. Old Joe Alberto died when Jim was thirteen. His daughter, Rosa, now lives in the house with her own husband and two children and Old Joe's widow Gina. Old Joe was such a strong presence. It still feels as if he is standing at the front gate.

Lower Lance lives alone at number two. He doesn't talk to many people. He is a quiet man. Not rude like his father was. When Edward ruled this house, people crossed the street rather than walk past it. When he eventually had a heart attack on his front lawn and died, people in the street were secretly relieved.

Jim, without conscious thought, speeds up as he walks past. Most people do.

As he rounds the corner, Jim can see the bustle of the shops up ahead. He walks into the grocery store still undecided and begins a circuit, looking for inspiration. It comes quickly: steak, egg and mashed potato. While he waits at the cash register, the young woman from number nine comes in, her head down, searching in her bag. She walks straight into an exiting woman who lives in Borneo Street. They both
apologise and laugh. The sound fills up the front of the shop like little bells tinkling. For a moment it makes everybody smile.

The afternoon traffic is building up as Jim walks home. He has to wait to cross at Little Road. Halfway across the road, the shopping bag hits the back of his knee. It is only a tiny knock on an unprotected part of his body that he wasn't previously aware of. He shakes his head in resignation and turns into Currawalli Street; while he is walking towards the honeysuckle, he watches a funeral procession leave the church and drive towards him. The pain in the back of his knee from the grocery bag begins to resonate up his thigh. At the front gate of number ten, he looks at the house with new eyes. He imagines that he is seeing it the same way that his father had each day when he came home from work. I think I will paint it a different colour, he says to himself. Halfway up the front path, he suddenly remembers his father coming in the front door and calling to his wife: ‘What about green?' or ‘What about yellow?'

The house had never been painted. But now Jim can understand the reason for the sudden inspiration and why it didn't last for very long. Once his father closed the front door behind him, there was a house full of more important things to deal with. Besides, he had never liked the smell of paint. His childhood bedroom, the one that had become Jim's, always smelled of oil paint and turpentine no matter what his mother did to make it go away.

He walks down the hallway to the kitchen. He has seen a movement out of the corner of his right eye but there is nothing there. He touches the telephone while he is looking around. It rings. He jumps.

‘You all settled?'

‘Getting there.' He doesn't recognise the voice. A girl. He needs to
hear more, so he asks, ‘How are you?'

‘Alright, I suppose. It's nice of you to ask.'

There is only one person this could be. Jim stiffens. ‘You've got a cold, Jenny?'

‘Yes I have. For two weeks. It won't go away.'

‘What are you ringing me for?' Jim asks brusquely.

‘I don't know. I know you've come home from the war and you're staying at your old house in Currawalli Street. I guess I want to let you know that I still think of you. Not in a girlfriend way. Just in a . . . connected way.'

‘I thought you severed that connection before I left?'

‘Sometimes it seems severed. Sometimes it seems pretty solid. I suppose this is one of those solid times.' Her voice begins to falter.

Jim notices that he is pulling his stomach muscles tight. He has a memory of this somewhere in his mind. He asks, ‘How did you know I was back?'

‘My mum was told by Lukewarm's mum. I thought I should ring.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know. I suppose I wanted to hear your voice. I wanted to know if it still did anything to me.'

His stomach muscles remain tight. He remembers now what this reminds him of. Forcing himself back to the conversation, he asks, ‘Oh. Does it?'

‘I can't tell. I knew the phone number off by heart though.' She tries to say it lightly.

‘That's something.'

‘Did you think about me over there?'

‘Not much.'

‘But some?'

‘A little. Jenny, is this all you rang me for?' Jim asks coldly.

‘Yep. That's it. Doesn't seem like a good idea now. I wish I had rung someone else instead.'

Jim knows that she is about to burst into tears. That knowledge, and many other things, makes him say, ‘I wish you had too.'

She hangs up. Jim scratches his chin as he thinks about the phone conversation and the memory that had come to him. In a tent one night by the light of a hurricane lamp, he listened to a classified operations soldier tell him and a few of his comrades that men expecting they are about to be tortured tighten their stomach muscles in such a pronounced way that before beginning any interrogation, torturers will amuse themselves by having the men take off their shirts. Jim was struck at the time by how the shadows climbing on the soldier's face made him look suddenly sinister, as did the delight he took in recounting the information.

Jenny once had a special place in his life. When he was someone else. She was his girlfriend. She left him because he had been conscripted into the army: being the girlfriend of a soldier was as uncool as you could possibly get. Jenny didn't want to be uncool. She dropped him. He put on his uniform with a broken heart. He eventually found out that he was not alone; many of the young men in his outfit had been dumped before they left Australia for Vietnam and some even after they arrived in that strange, dangerous, beautiful place. It was a cruel thing, being a soldier.

The truth is he forgot her pretty quickly over there and only thought seriously about her once, in Mai's room, when the afternoon sun ran
across a torn newspaper on the floor, highlighting a photograph of a girl whose hair ran down onto her shoulders like Jenny's did.

By the time the steak is in the vertical grill that he found at the back of a cupboard, overlooked by the cleaners, Jim's equilibrium has returned. He is surprised to learn that Jenny's voice is still in his head; surprised that, after the things he has seen, she can still have any effect on him at all.

He turns and sits down on a chair. His Saigon radio is sitting on the table. He turns it on, listens for a moment and then turns it off.

Advertisements are starting to hurt his head.

Just as he is finishing his meal there is a loud knock at the door. He walks down the hallway to open it.

Patrick is standing on the porch. ‘Welcome home, Jim. Here's a present. It's a book.'

Jim looks down at the wrapped gift in Patrick's hand. He invites Patrick in. The book is thrust into his hands as Patrick crosses the threshold.

‘The kitchen in the same place?'

‘Yes. Of course.' Jim looks across the road and sees Mary standing inside her screen door, watching. The veranda light is on. Jim can see the moths circling it. She waves. Jim waves back and looks up at the sky as he closes the front door. It is dark but he has known darker. It looks like rain. He is about to say this to Patrick but by the time they reach the kitchen it has begun to fall. For a few moments, the drops are small and gentle but then, as the noise on the corrugated-tin roof grows louder, the rain becomes a summer torrent. Enough to stop conversation. Patrick
and Jim sit contentedly together and watch the rain through the window. After about two minutes, Jim holds up the teapot and Patrick nods his head. They conduct their first over-the-kitchen-table conversation in silence. The rain thunders down for twenty-five minutes. It is so loud that neither of them would have heard the phone if it rang. When the rain stops it does so just as suddenly as it began. Jim's ears are distantly ringing in the sudden silence. Patrick puts both hands onto the table and hoists himself up. He is leaving.