Golden Boys (14 page)

Rex: she sits across from him and drinks tea that Tabby has made, and as she talks Freya detects no doubt in his eyes, nothing to show he isn't taking what she says with the utmost seriousness. She's here because she had to come, the need to speak to him had been a weight like stones on her ribs. He'd been outside watering the garden as he often does after dinner, but it seemed like he was waiting for her. As she'd approached the house she remembered Declan telling Syd not to go there alone: but Declan should get on his knees and beg to be forgiven. ‘Good evening,' Rex had said, gathering the hose in loops. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?'

So she's sitting on the deck opposite him, her gaze on the spangling surface of the pool, telling him about the beaten station wagon and how, the next morning, their father made no apology: how he'd had, as he always had, nothing to say about the night before, as if he didn't remember or it had never happened or it had nothing to do with him. He'd cooked pikelets for his children's breakfast, and as she'd eaten at the kitchen table Freya had studied him when she had the chance. Joe has never seemed particularly interested in her. He lets her help tinker with the cars, but he doesn't need her; he doesn't talk to her about the jazz records he buys or what he did when he was a boy, he's never told her he is a good dancer. If they had a cat, she muses, an animal that ate and slept and crossed one's path unnecessarily, that cat could be what she is to Joe. Yet for her, because of her, he endures this sour life: going off each morning to the printery, coming home each night to a family he's allowed to drift into dreading him, a life of blotted bruises and forgotten hours and empty pockets, and years of the same ahead. It's a life run into a ditch – and her mother's life is too, the realisation that she didn't need a husband or children having come too late to save her. The things they don't want are all they have.

A leaf has blown onto the surface of the pool, and the breeze spins it like a pixie's raft caught in a whirlpool. Bastian is rambling on hands and knees among the trees, pushing a metal dumptruck as large as a loaf of bread. His mother has gone into the garden with him, strolling along clearing the truck's path with her foot as she goes. And Colt, who is wearing his school trousers and shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the tail of the shirt untucked, is sitting on the steps listening as his father listens, soberly and without comment. His hair has fallen forward, there are notes written in biro on his brown forearm. She can't decide if she'd prefer him to go. It is, despite everything, another beautiful night. ‘I wish they would leave each other,' she says. ‘I wish Mum would make him leave.'

Rex says, ‘Some things are more complicated than you imagine.'

‘She should try harder —'

‘It's not your mother's fault, Freya. Don't blame her.'

She shuts her mouth, reproof tingling her face. Bastian guffaws as the truck topples head-over-wheels down the BMX ramp. From one of the trees a blackbird lets loose its call, having spotted the neighbour's black-and-white cat dodging along the top rail of the fence. Colt says, ‘Puss,' and twitches his fingers, but the cat only stares ponderously at him before moving on.

‘I know whose fault it is,' Freya says. ‘It's mine.'

Rex lifts a brow. ‘Why do you think that?'

‘Well.' She stops, it is so awkward. ‘Remember you said they might have got married for babies? Well, they did. I was the baby. I found out what day they got married, and I worked it out.'

‘I see.' He's as calm as a river. She looks at his hands closed loosely around his mug, and thinks of those hands in flesh-coloured gloves, cradling aching jaws. The drill-sound of unhappiness always in his ears. He sees, yet she feels compelled to explain, ‘If I hadn't been born, they wouldn't have got married, and none of what happens would happen. So it's my fault, isn't it.'

Rex smiles as he must smile at nervous children in the chair: as if they're silly for imagining he'd even know how to hurt them. ‘That's a foolish thing to say,' he tells her. ‘You know it is, so I won't indulge it. None of us are responsible for the circumstances of our birth.'

She stares into her cup, disgraced, but mulishly determined. Breathing deeply, she looks up to meet his eye. ‘Even if it's foolish, it's still a fact. They wouldn't have got married if not for me. And that makes me . . . guilty.'

Colt has rested his forehead on his folded arms. His hair catches the setting sun and shines like hot copper. Tabby and Bastian are walking the perimeter of the pool, Bastian in the lead, Tabby pretending she's secretly plotting to capture him; he squeaks and scurries when she gets too close, then lets her catch up again. The neighbour's cat has settled on a fencepost and with a droll eye is watching their game. Freya hesitates, but finally says what she's come to say. ‘I've been thinking about something strange. It's dumb, but I can't stop thinking it. The other night, when I thought Dad was going to smash the house with his car, I imagined this creature – this
monster
that's black and slinky, like a big black lion, with long shiny claws and yellow eyes. It runs really fast, and it has fangs like a shark. And it wants me. It's been coming for me since I was born, because I wasn't supposed to be – born, I mean. Me being born . . . messed things up. Other things should have happened, but they couldn't, because of me. So the monster's chasing me, not to make things different because it's too late now . . . but because someone has to pay for things being messed around. And since I'm the one who did it, it's me it wants, and when it gets me things will still be wrong but they'll be less wrong, because I'll have been . . .'

‘Sacrificed?' says Rex.

She looks up from the table. ‘Yeah. I think so. I won't die or disappear or anything like that. But I'm meant to be unhappy. It wants me to be unhappy, to even out how unhappy Dad is, and Mum is. And that seems . . . fair.'

Rex contemplates her, his eyes moving over her cheeks, chin and mouth. He doesn't reach for her hand as she'd like him to, or even smile at her. ‘Freya,' he says. ‘Do you think it's what your father and mother want – for you to be unhappy?'

‘No,' she admits. ‘But the monster doesn't care.'

‘There is no monster. There's no such thing. There's no such thing as the way things were
supposed
to be. And you are not responsible for how other people live their lives – you know that, don't you?'

‘Yes,' she says, although she doesn't know, not honestly. She says, ‘I know the monster isn't real. If it was real I couldn't hide from it, not even for a day. It would see me. It would see me when I was asleep. It would see inside my head and hear what I was thinking.'

‘Like God,' says Colt into his arms.

Rex glances at his son and smiles; Freya likes it, how he's a father who smiles. Joe, she realises, never smiles. He looks at her and says, still smiling, ‘For what it's worth, I'm glad you were born. I'm glad your brothers and sisters were born. If you messed things up, Freya Kiley, I think you messed them up the right way.'

She grins at the tabletop shyly. She could wish her own father were more like him – generous with affection and wisdom – but she won't, not if it means having Rex become less special, cool the warm cradle that is his attention. If she has to choose, she chooses Rex. ‘OK,' she says: and goes home feeling strong, as if she's been suited in armour.

Syd and Declan ride their bikes to the stormwater drain. The school holidays are nearing, and the promise of them seems to tense and sparkle the air. Syd is not a child for sleeping-in or mooching around home, and he has plans for the holidays. He will ride to some point further than he's ever been. He will construct a habitat for camping outside overnight. He will explore the drain, having added a torch to his wishlist. And he will master the skateboard which he craves so hungrily now that surely the world must fit itself around him, he can't possibly be denied. ‘What do you want for Christmas?' he shouts to his brother, who is speeding down the road's centre beside him, and Declan shakes his whipping hair and says, ‘I dunno! I don't care!' And that is incredible to Syd, that someone should have the chance to receive something for nothing and yet be utterly lacking in greed and grandiosity. Syd will never be like Declan, his brother will forever be a mystery to him: but if he thinks about life without him, Syd sees himself flying off the way screwed-up paper skitters over a table when a door opens and a gale comes in.

Apart from a woman walking a dog far across the grass, the wasteland is as deserted as always. The creek into which the stormwater flows is stinky with the morning's warmth, a sweaty, mouldering smell. Along the bank, in every nook of rock and earth, are jumbles of leaves and twigs and rubbish that have been catching in these corners for years. The crusty piles are solid with sludge and time, and don't budge when Syd kicks them. He likes to inspect the drifts regularly, for the creek is eternally adding to them. Avery claims to have once found a five-dollar note planted like a pink flag in one of the drifts. Syd would be satisfied with cash, but he fantasises about finding a limb. He would like a foot in a shoe or an arm with a tattoo. He would like an entire body, but would not, he thinks, care for just a head.

The smell of the creek reaches them before they see its glinting water, and as they swing onto the track that weaves through the grassland Syd is riding fast, standing on his pedals, his bike jinking and squeaking under him. The wind on his face is so pleasant that he yelps with the joy of being alive. Summer is here, the season that is the great friend of boys; this year he will amass a collection of cicada shells to rival all previous collections combined. It is a perfect morning for two brothers to be powering their trusty bikes down a stone track with most of the weekend ahead of them and no one around to bother them, and summer is here, and Christmas is coming, and school is as good as done.

Declan hits his brakes and the rear tyre of his bike cuts a fanning groove in the path; Syd pulls up behind him saying, ‘What?'

They are within sight of the cavernous mouth of the drain, and dumped among the weeds on the bank is a bicycle. ‘That's Garrick's bike,' says Declan.

At once Syd's happiness deflates. ‘Let's keep going, Deco.'

But his brother skims his bike closer to where Garrick's bike lies, leans over his handlebars to get a better view down the bank to the pipe. ‘Garrick?' he calls. ‘Are you in there?'

There is no immediate answer; then a stone whizzes out from the mouth of the tunnel and lands with a brown splash in the water. The Kileys look back to the drain. ‘Garrick?' says Declan.

The bulky boy's voice comes from the pipe's shadows like the voice of a dragon from a cave. ‘Wadda you want?'

‘. . .  Nothing. We saw your bike.'

There's a pause in which Syd squints against the sun and sky, wishing he could sprout wings and flap away. On the opposite bank a paper bag, blown up like a balloon, is bopping and gusting its leisurely way across the land. ‘Who's with you?' Garrick demands, and Syd sighs.

‘It's just me and Syd —'

‘Not that Jenson homo?'

‘No, just me and Syd.'

Immediately Garrick materialises at the mouth of the drain – he must have been closer than Syd realised. For all his talk, he is scared to go deep into the tunnel. Having ascertained that the bike is safe and that Garrick Greene is not only alive but also in a foul mood, Syd sees no reason why he and Declan should not resume their carefree cruise; but Declan has kicked down the stand of his bike and is stepping from rock to reliable rock down the embankment to the water, and Syd has no choice but to follow. One day, he vows silently, he will make Garrick pay.

Inside the pipe the air is cool as it always is, with the same decomposing smell, like the air inside a haunted house. Garrick has retreated to slouch against the pipe's wall, the worn toes of his runners taking his weight. He looks squeezed into his striped t-shirt. His face has been chipped from granite. ‘What are you doing?' Declan asks, and Garrick says, ‘What does it look like?'

It looks like a lot of things, so Declan doesn't say anything. The boys linger beneath the cresting concrete, waiting for something to change. Then, ‘Look,' says Garrick, and takes from his pocket the cap of a softdrink bottle. In its shallow basin are microscopic letters:
You
have won a portable radio!
Declan quirks an eyebrow. ‘Where'd you get that?'

‘Sister got it. Said I could have it.'

Syd doesn't ask if the sister in question is the one with the baby or the one who ran away or the one whose underwear Garrick steals: frankly, he's not interested. And he knows that if he had such a bottlecap Garrick would deride it, saying they give away a thousand radios and how they're the kind which nobody wants and that there's always a catch with such prizes so he'll probably find when he goes to collect it that he's actually won a sun visor or a free game at a bowling alley, all this poison hucked out because nothing good's allowed to happen to anyone . . . so Syd's startled when Garrick sends the bottlecap soaring through the air, out the pipe and into the water where it bobs frantically for an instant before being swallowed from sight. ‘Shit,' says Garrick.

Declan looks away from the place where the cap disappeared; Syd can see him struggling to work out what's going on. Garrick is not typically a complex man. ‘Could have given it to me,' Declan says carefully.

Garrick sneers. ‘What would you do with a portable radio? Listen to cricket in the shed like some codger?'

‘Maybe.' Declan doesn't point out that Garrick himself likes cricket. ‘I would have tied it to the handlebars.'

Garrick thinks about this – the notion of having a radio attached to one's bike, of being able to play music or follow sport while also riding around – and Syd sees, with some relish, that he's kicking himself. ‘Too late now,' he says. ‘Should have said before.'

And then he does, in fact, kick something – he spins and boots the concrete wall even as the slope of the pipe sends him sliding into the slime. It's a hard kick, and must hurt, for he's wearing just old canvas runners, but he doesn't wince: if he'll never be anything else, Garrick is undeniably tough. He prides himself on being a boy of steel – yet here he is, kicking the wall. And Syd feels a pinprick of disquiet.

The slime is a staining substance, and it smudges Garrick's white shoes. He lifts a foot out of the gunk and shakes it. ‘Ah, shit,' he says. ‘Shit!'

To Syd's vast relief, Declan finally sees sense. ‘We better go,' he says.

‘Yeah, piss off!'

‘. . .  You can come with us, if you want. Look for taddies or something.'

‘No, piss off, cockwipes! Get lost! Go play your baby games by yourselves.'

Declan regards him. ‘OK,' he says. ‘Come on, Syd.'

The brothers pick their way up the embankment, Syd fighting the urge not to run, but they're not at the top when Garrick reappears at the pipe's mouth. ‘Hey,' he says. ‘We gotta do something about that perv.'

Declan pauses and straightens, looking back. Syd stops behind him, trapped on the narrow climbing route on both sides of which the weeds grow chest-high, studded with barbs and insects. ‘What do you mean?'

‘You know.' Garrick gazes at them leadenly. ‘You know who I mean. Avery said you were all laughing about it. What's so funny about a perv, Deco? Like pervs, do you?'

Syd feels an almost frenzied desire not to become embroiled in what can only be a miserable conversation: but Declan, standing with the weeds shushing round him, asks, ‘What's happened?'

‘Nothing funny, that's for sure.' But instead of telling them anything, Garrick's mouth warps and his hefty hands wag. ‘I'm not yelling it out for the whole world to hear.'

‘Let's go,' Syd whispers, so softly it is scarcely more than a thought, and Declan only glances at him; Syd follows him unhappily back down the slope to the drain. Garrick has edged into the shadows, but the brothers stop at the entrance of the pipe so the sun stays on their shoulders and they could run if they had to, through the water and up the far bank, into the obscurity of the scrub.

But now they are here again, Garrick's suddenly offhand. He kicks the pipe, tosses his fringe, hawks up a gob of spit. He peers down the tunnel as if he's heard his name called. Without looking at them he says, ‘He wasn't naked,' and adds swiftly, ‘Neither was I. He didn't make me touch his toggle —'

Syd, to whom the idea of touching someone else's toggle is completely new and even more completely horrifying, makes a rodent's noise, and Garrick wheels, glaring. ‘Tell him to wait with the bikes, Deco!'

‘No, Syd should know.' Declan darts a frown at his brother. ‘Keep quiet. So what happened?'

Garrick grunts, and settles awkwardly against the pipe, his knee a battering-ram in front of him. He seems to chew on his words before letting them out. ‘Me and Avery were there having a swim last night. You know why he put that pool in, don't you? He was sitting on the deck, the way he does. Making his stupid comments. Anyway, it was getting late, dinnertime, so Avery said we had to go. We had our towels hanging on a tree, not up on the deck. So we get out of the pool and get dressed fast, just pulling on our clothes over our bathers. And he's watching like he does, he comes down as if he's got something to do in the garden, he comes down and he's standing there, pretending he's looking at something in the grass. And then, as we go past, he goes,
What
an untidy pair you are
– you know the homo way he speaks –
take pride in your appearance, boys
. And he doesn't get Avery because that slippery bastard jumped out of the way: but he grabs me and, really quick, he tucks my shirt into my jeans. He sticks his fingers down the back of my jeans, stuffing my shirt in.' Garrick's voice has become wobbly and heated, and when he looks at his friends there is craziness in his eyes. ‘He cops a feel of my arse, Declan!'

Declan, hands on head, says, ‘Yeah. That's shit.'

‘Yeah it's shit!' Garrick's voice slams down the tunnel. ‘Touching my arse!'

‘Where was Colt?'

‘How would I know? He was there, and then he wasn't there. I don't know where he went. He should have been there. It wouldn't have happened if he'd been there —'

‘It's not Colt's fault —'

‘Nah?' Garrick gulps, eyes bulging. ‘It's his dad, isn't it? Not my dad or your dad:
his
dad.'

Declan's hands drop. ‘What happened then?'

‘What? I went home —'

‘Did you say anything to him?'

‘No! What was I gonna say?
Enjoy that, perv 
? But he was lucky that when I went home my brothers weren't there. When I tell them, they're gonna stuff his bloody hands down his throat!'

‘Don't tell them,' says Declan.

Both Garrick and Syd look at him, surprised. ‘What?' says Garrick. ‘Why not?'

‘Because . . .' Declan pauses, wincing. ‘Because it's not that bad, is it? It's not. But if your brothers stuff his hands down his throat, it
will
be bad.'

Garrick stares, incredulous. Then, ‘Not that bad!' he bellows, and his voice, in the pipe, is ear-splitting. ‘He touched my arse, Declan! My
arse 
!'

Declan nods and nods. ‘Yeah, I heard you. But what's the point of making a big deal about it? You can't do anything. You can't prove it.'

Garrick squeals, ‘Bloody hell! You reckon I should forget it? Let him touch my arse and
forget it 
? What's wrong with you? You like that sort of stuff, do you? You reckon it's OK?'

‘No —'

‘You do! You like it! You're a bloody perv too! You're as disgusting as he is!'

Declan's lip curls, and his blue eyes go flinty. The sunshine haloes his edges as he stands cool and still and dignified. ‘All right,' he says calmly, ‘tell your brothers. Tell them how you let a man touch your prick. You know what he's like, you knew he was gonna do it, and you stood there and let him. See what they say about that.'

Garrick stares black murder. ‘You shithead. That's not how it was, and you know it. I should kill you for saying that.'

‘It's not me saying it,' Declan replies. ‘It's what everyone else will say.'

Garrick's nostrils flare as he absorbs this, he swallows what sounds like a brick. ‘He didn't touch my prick,' he says finally. ‘He touched my arse, I told you.'

‘And did it set your arse on fire?' Syd is speaking before he knows words are coming out: Declan and Garrick turn to him in astonishment as he plunges delinquently on. ‘Don't be a crybaby, Garrick. We don't like that man either, but being a crybaby and a dobber is worse. If you make a big fuss we'll never get to swim in the pool or ride the BMX or play with the slot cars or anything ever again, get it?'

Garrick stares, his eyes jumping over Syd's face. Death-coldly he says, ‘The only reason I'm not punching your head in right now, you shit, is because I've got more important things to think about, get it? I don't care about
toys
. I'm not a baby.'