The Boy Under the Table (18 page)

She turned her mind back to the problem of getting Lockie home.

Lockie knew she would take care of him as well.

Tina was disturbed by how much he trusted her. Little kids were so stupid. She couldn’t ever remember being so stupid, but she must have been. Before her whole world fell apart she must have thought that there was nothing more terrible than rain on a summer’s day or some such other shit.

She needed seventy dollars to get Lockie home. She needed seventy dollars and she had eleven.

‘
I wanna be a billionaire so frickin’ bad
,’ she sang softly.

Seventy dollars was not a lot of money but it might as well have been a million. She couldn’t work and she was no good at stealing. She was up shit creek.

In Martin place they blended in with the crowds who would pay way more than seventy dollars for dinner. It was still early so they sat together in a doorway waiting for the vans to arrive.

The first one came with sandwiches. Tina looked around the square. Along the sides were all the folks who needed a free meal. They were hidden in doorways and sitting on the cold flagstones with their backs against the buildings. They needed food but if she dragged Lockie over to the van there would be raised eyebrows and questions.

‘You have to stay here, Lockie, while I get some food.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Lockie, I’ll only be over there. Nothing will happen to you. I promise, okay? If I take you to the van they’ll want to know all about you.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Lockie again. His body was stiff, determined.

‘Lockie, they’ll take you to the uniforms,’ said Tina.

Jesus, I’m a bitch
, she thought. And then,
What else can I do?

Lockie stepped back further into the doorway. He pushed himself into a corner.

‘I’ll stay here,’ he said.

‘I’ll be quick,’ she said.

The van was run by a priest. He’d brought along some schoolboys to help. The boys were obviously on some required excursion. They all had earphones in their ears and they tried really hard to look everywhere but at Tina.

‘I need a few,’ she said to the priest. ‘I have to take some for my friend.’

‘Why don’t you get your friend to come over here?’ said the priest.

Tina sighed. He only wanted to help, she knew that, but she felt the anger at having to deal with this heat up her body. If not for the kid she wouldn’t be here, begging for food.

‘Please,’ she said, looking straight at the priest.

He smiled and lifted his hands, sensing her desperation. She kept glancing over at the doorway.

‘Okay, sure, don’t worry. How many do you need? What kind?’

‘Anything’s good. About six? And something to drink?’

The priest moved to the back of the van and gathered some things together. He found an old plastic shopping bag and filled it. Tina kept her eye on the doorway. The schoolboys in the van were pointing and smirking at the slow movements towards the van. Once Tina herself would have laughed at the sad rabble drifting towards the van. Once she would have done a lot of things.

She thanked the priest, took the bag and turned around. Then she saw a big man with a beard move into the doorway where Lockie was standing.

Her feet barely touched the ground.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ was already out of her mouth before she reached them.

The man, startled, moved out of the doorway. Lockie was crouched on the ground, making himself into a ball.

‘Nothing . . . I just . . . nothing . . . Don’t panic, okay? I just wanted to say hello to the kid. I just . . .’

The man was drunk, homeless, harmless.

‘Get the fuck out of here before I beat the shit out of you,’ yelled Tina. She was enraged but she was also crying.

‘Sorry . . . sorry . . . Don’t panic, okay? Sorry.’ The man backed away into the middle of the square then took off at a slow run. He didn’t look back. He was afraid of her.

Tina felt her heart slow. She would have roared if she could have.

She put the bag of food down on the ground and crawled over to Lockie. He was not moving at all. He was a statue, a ghost, a piece of the wall. He wasn’t there.

‘Sorry, Lockie. Did he touch you?’

Lockie kept his head buried in his knees.

‘Please, Lockie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you. Please, Lockie, are you okay?’ She had done exactly what his parents had done. She had left him, and who knew what might have happened? She stopped talking and sat down next to him. There was no point in going on at the kid. She had fucked up. She had fucked up but she was all he had right now. Lockie wasn’t a stupid kid. He would understand that.

Tina took off her backpack and worked her way through it. One lonely, crushed cigarette presented itself. She didn’t have a light and even though she could see the glow of cigarettes all across the square there was no way she was moving away from Lockie. She sighed and pushed the cigarette back into the empty box.

Two more vans entered the square. One was giving out hot food, but still Tina didn’t budge.

Lockie moved a little and there were some muffled words.

‘What, Lockie?’

‘I wet my pants,’ he said, lifting his head and looking her straight in the face. His nose was running again and his eyes were red.

‘Oh fuck, Lockie,’ she said. God, she was tired.

‘Look, don’t worry about it, okay? We’ve got a spare pair of undies and there’s an all-night laundromat near where I sleep. We’ll get it sorted and hopefully we can get the money together for tomorrow so we can catch a train and get you home.’

Lockie nodded and stood up. It was time to walk again. There was not enough money for a bus, there wasn’t enough money for anything, and now she had to use some to clean the kid’s clothes. She couldn’t let him be dirty. She knew that.

They made their way to the laundromat and Tina draped him in her coat again. Four precious dollars went on the washing machine and tumble dryer.

They ate their sandwiches and leafed through old magazines. It was warm and it was quiet. The man at the back barely looked up from his newspaper.

After Lockie had eaten two sandwiches he fell asleep. He had wanted one more but Tina knew they would need it the next day. If they did manage to get on the train they would need some food. She had sneaked onto trains before. She could always make a quick getaway if she was caught, but she had the feeling that a country train was different and there was no way she could go anywhere quickly with Lockie in tow. It was nearly midnight and the train left from Central at seven forty-two.

Tina rubbed her eyes. It was completely impossible. There was absolutely no hope at all. There was nothing worse than feeling there was no hope. She’d felt it when Tim was at the end and she tried to stop feeling it every day since. People went on because they clung to hope. If you didn’t have that you basically had fuck-all.

Tina woke Lockie up when his clothes were dry. She dressed him and they made their way back to the squat. The longer he was with her the more babyish he became. He let her dress him and hold his hand and at every opportunity he would sidle up next to her.

The constant touching was making Tina’s skin crawl. It was too much. She kept telling herself that they were the touches of a child but it had been a long time since she had been so physically close to anyone. It took everything she had not to shake him off. She needed her space but Lockie needed his mother. Right now what Lockie needed was more important.

He needed help to process what had happened to him. He needed to feel safe and cared for. He needed to be with people who understood how to deal with kids who had been through shit like this. She was barely qualified to take care of herself. Tina wondered if, in the end, she would have to walk into the police station and just confess so she could get the kid some help. It was a thought she didn’t allow to develop. Instead she kept the facts moving around in her head, trying to come up with an idea.

Lockie stumbled along with his eyes down. He was half asleep.

Suddenly he stopped and pulled at her hand.

‘Fuck, Lockie, I’m freezing—let’s go.’

‘Look,’ said Lockie.

‘I don’t want to look, Lockie; I want to get some sleep.’

Tim had been like that. The world was full of interesting objects. He was always looking at the ground, searching for treasure. He had kept a collection of bits of glass and stones on his bookshelf. He wanted to be an explorer when he grew up. When he grew up.

‘Look!’ said Lockie again.

‘Fuck.’ Tina turned around and looked at the ground where Lockie was pointing. People moved around them.

On the ground, in the gutter, partly covered by a piece of meat pie, was a ten-dollar note.

Tina just stared at it for a moment. It was probably fake, something that had belonged to a kid. It was probably just a piece of paper. She reached down and picked it up. It was a ten-dollar note. She wiped it on the pavement and then on her coat. It was still a ten-dollar note.

It wasn’t like she had never found money on the street before. The whole city thought that the Cross was a cool place to have a drink. They stumbled in from the city with their pockets full of cash and a big night on their minds.

Drunk people tended to drop things a lot, but tonight the money felt like a gift. Tonight the money
was
a gift. Tonight the money was a little slice of hope. Tina smiled at Lockie. ‘We’ve got seventeen dollars, Lockie. We’re almost there.’

‘Almost there,’ said Lockie and he gave her another one of his small smiles. Almost there, but actually so far away the idea was just a dream. Tina shoved the ten dollars down to the bottom of her backpack. As she brought her hand out of the bag it brushed against the warm metal. She tried not to touch it just as she tried not to think about it. Not ever.

Oh God, not that, please not that
. But the universe would not be swayed. It had given her the answer.

Reluctantly, unwillingly, Tina took the locket out of her bag.

It was all she had taken when she left. She hadn’t even been clever enough to think about the cold months ahead or to empty her mother’s purse. She had just wanted out. She couldn’t take deep breaths, she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. It felt like only she could feel the grief in the house. It coated everything thickly like grease and she couldn’t bear to be in the space. She couldn’t bear to be with her mother and Jack and their endless conversations about God. She had known she had to leave, but she had stayed because Tim was still there. In his room, in his toys and clothes he was still there.

Tim’s door was always closed but his bedroom was exactly as it had been before his last stay in hospital. Mr Lulu slept on his pillow, waiting for . . . for what? She’d wanted to take something that had belonged to him but when she opened the door to the bedroom she couldn’t go inside. Her mother wanted to clear the room out. She wanted to give as much as she could away and keep only a few things to remind her of Tim. But the first time she tried Tina had gone completely crazy.

What the fuck do you think you’re doing?
she had said when she found her mother in Tim’s room with a garbage bag.

Please, Christina, don’t use that language—and you can see what I’m doing. I just thought it was time.

It’s only been a few months. You can’t wait any longer? What do you need the room for? Do you need a home gym or an office? Will it be better if there’s nothing to remind you that he ever existed? Do you need to throw out everything so we can all forget? Didn’t you love him? Don’t you miss him? Who the fuck are you with all your future plans? Tim is dead and there is no future. Not for any of us. Why can’t you get that? Why do you keep trying to pretend he never existed?

Tina was crying and screaming. She was out of control and the anger was in charge.

Okay, Christina,
her mother had said, backing out of the room as though away from a wild animal.
We’ll leave it a bit longer. Don’t get upset, Christina, please. I’ll leave it as long as you want. You tell me when you’re ready.

How come you’re ready?
Tina had shouted.
How come you’re ready? You’re his mother. You are never supposed to be ready. And I’ll never be ready either. Leave it all alone. Just leave it alone.

That night she heard the whispering as her mother told her side of the story. She heard the word ‘doctor’ drift through the walls.

They wanted to fix her. They wanted someone to say the right words or give her the right pills so they could all move on with their lives.

They thought she was crazy. They were right but there were no words that could lighten the weight of her grief and there was no way she was going to gloss over Tim with some fucking pill. And she had seen, very clearly, that one day without warning she would come home and everything that was Tim, everything that had touched Tim, would just be gone and all that would be left was Jack and her mother and their God.

The next day she had left.

She’d just wanted out, but she had taken the locket.

The locket was eighteen-carat gold and opened to reveal a picture of her aged ten and a picture of Tim aged three. Tim and Tina together forever.

The locket had belonged to her mother. It had belonged to her grandmother. Now it was hers.

In those first lonely, hungry days she had taken it to the local pawn shop and the thin man with thick glasses had priced it.

‘This is a beautiful piece, dear, but there’s not much call for lockets, I’m afraid. I can give you one hundred dollars for it.’ Tina knew she could have taken the man a tree that grew its own money and he would say, ‘Not much call for money trees, I’m afraid.’

Business was business. Just about everyone who ever walked through the door of a pawn shop had a sad story to tell, especially in the Cross. Tina knew the man had to keep his head above the misery. He had to build a wall to hold back the gush of other people’s problems. Tina understood. Her own wall was pretty crap after Tim but with each day in the Cross it got stronger and higher. Now that she had it just right Lockie was busy pushing through. The sooner she got him home the sooner she could go back to strengthening her defences.