From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle (21 page)

‘Mine,’ said Obi, taking the badge. ‘This is yours.’

White skulls in a boat.
Nuclear Free Pacific
.

‘
I am not a side of bacon
,’ read Ren. A teenyweenysweetie pink pig.

‘We’ve actually got some of these,’ said Barney. ‘In the Emporium.’

‘Yeah,’ said Girl.

Blimey. He was getting stupider by the second. The badges in the Emporium were in a wooden bowl on a dresser. So easy to pinch.

‘Oldest starts,’ said Girl. She placed her badge in the Go space. It was red and black.
Stop the Tour
.

‘Different rules for different games,’ said Obi, in response to their unasked question. He handed Girl the dice. ‘Mix it up, we say.’

The aim of the game was to avoid Foster Care. There was a Good Luck card that got you out of Foster Care, but several Bad Luck cards that put you in there. Instead of a bank and money there was an agency that dispensed vouchers every time you passed Go. The vouchers were for bedding, food, warm clothes, footwear, books, backpacks, Band-Aids, water bottles, cigarette lighters, beer, torches, phones. A certain number of vouchers secured you a place on one of the ‘streets’. You could swap vouchers, or they were surrendered as rent if people landed on your patch.

How absorbed they became in the game, how
competitive
they all were. Funny, agreed Barney and Ren later. They forgot everything else – the prickles and tensions of the room, how nervous they were of Girl’s blank stares and Obi’s unpredictable rules, his barked orders, how earnestly they hoped Mum or Dad had not, for some reason, decided to check their bedrooms during the night. They forgot their dry-eyed, stretched-skin, total-body tiredness.

They thought only about accumulating vouchers and trying to secure the transport spots for a steady voucher income, or the abandoned houses for which you could demand the biggest
payments in vouchers. They forgot the Post Office front room, the Street outside and their empty beds, and they watched the progress of each badge, softly reciting with the others the number of steps, crowing when they landed on Good Luck, pummelling the floor when they were sent to Foster Care.

It was really just like a game with Lovie and Benjamin or Henrietta and Edward. Except there was nothing to eat. Being up all night made you ravenous, they discovered, but Obi and Girl said nothing of their appetites; they offered no food.

Ren ended up with the most vouchers and property. Barney and Obi were institutionalised, which was Crazopoly’s version of bankrupt. Girl hung onto the Band Rotunda and the Cricket Clubrooms Verandah and a few vouchers, but she saw which way the wind would blow.

‘You win,’ she said to Ren, almost graciously.

‘I usually win actual Monopoly, too,’ said Ren. ‘It’s mostly luck. But Dad says it’s smart to snap up the low-priced property.’ She had snapped up the Spreading Plane Tree and the Boatsheds as soon as she landed on them.

Was it insensitive of Ren to mention Dad, wondered Barney, when Obi and Girl were parentless? It was so hard to know. He observed Obi furtively but his face betrayed nothing. Maybe everything they said was insensitive. But, how unusual for him to think about sensitivity. It hardly ever occurred to him. His feelings tonight were altogether strange.

3.45 a.m. Barney felt the familiar worm of disappointment. It was the same worm that nibbled at his happiness on the last day of a holiday at South Island Gran and Granpa’s, or the end of a sleepover at Jack’s, or the final hour of editing on a film project.

The most remarkable night of his life was nearly over.

He caught Obi’s eye across the table and knew instantly that he felt the same way.

‘Okay, okay,’ said Obi, becoming suddenly very busy. He began
packing up the game, shoving the vouchers and counters and Luck cards into the box. ‘One more game. One more, I know what we can do –’

‘Obi,’ said Girl. ‘They have to go to school.’

Barney sniggered. She sounded just like a mother.

‘Charades!’ said Obi. ‘Just a couple of rounds, c’mon, or that one we saw the other night, the memory one –’

‘Look at Specs,’ said Girl. ‘She’s asleep.’

‘No I’m not!’ said Ren, though her eyes were closed.

‘Get Enopee!’ Obi ordered. ‘Check it out!’

‘
Obi
.’

‘I’ll get it then.’ He sprang to his feet and went to the bedside book stack. He removed the top book and brought it back to the table. His dressing gown was slipping open again.

‘From Fat Gene’s.’ It was an old encyclopedia volume.

‘Enopee,’ said Obi, thrusting the spine in Barney’s face.

Vol IX, Barney read. NOP.

‘Check out P,’ said Obi. ‘For Party Games.’

Barney took the volume and opened it. Then he sniffed it, something you couldn’t help doing with books from Gene’s. The smell of age. Even the newish Tintin books at Montgomery’s smelled this way. But this book was ancient.

‘Look at this one!’ said Obi. ‘Spillikins! Crazy name.’ He leaned over the table and began pushing the pages. Ren opened her eyes and read over Barney’s shoulder.

‘Okay, o
kay
,’ said Girl, as if to concede that she was outnumbered. She, too, leaned over the table, but in a flash, wrenched the volume from Barney’s hands.

‘Hey you f–!’ Obi launched himself at her and tried to retrieve the book but Girl held it over her head, out of reach. He gave her a thunderous look. She stared him out.

‘Charades!’ she snarled. ‘It’ll take too long to do that other game. We have to
practise
it first.’

In the tense silence that followed Barney became aware of the low fizz from the candles’ wicks and Brown Betty’s skudding purr, his own held breath. He stared at a knot in the wooden tabletop, at a carton below, buckling slightly under the weight of the plank. Ren’s finger poked his side with familiar insistence.

‘If they stay. Too. Late,’ said Girl, enunciating as if to a child, ‘We’ll get. Found. Out.’

In a beat, the disagreement ended.

Obi shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said, carelessly. ‘Charades.’ He stood up and the sash finally slipped to the floor. The dressing gown fell open completely, revealing a pair of green striped boxers and the skinniest white legs in the world.

‘Cover up, Obi,’ drawled Girl. ‘The kids are frightened.’

Barney and Ren looked studiously elsewhere.

‘You’re first, Maestro,’ said Obi, oblivious. ‘Then Girl, then Specs. I’m last.’

He retrieved his sash from the floor and retied the dressing gown. He adjusted his bandana, which had become skewed during his and Girl’s brief tussle. He scratched the side of his head and folded his arms.

Then he smiled at Barney.

Barney thought about Obi’s smile often in the days following.

It was the smile of someone unaccustomed to the act of smiling. It was clumsy and incomplete. Almost a grimace. And brief. A quick creasing up – like Baby Soo, when it was probably just wind. And then it was gone, and the unaccustomed face was blank again, unreadable.

But, oh! For the fleeting moment of his awkward smile Obi became, suddenly, Orange Boy, the lost and lonely hero of the zine pages, the black and white, pen and pencil boy that they had become so fond of, that Barney had been missing all night. It was the merest glimpse, but it was as piercing as a bellbird call. Barney’s heart gave a small lurch.

He smiled straight back. A Barney K dazzler.

He
llo
at last.

How terrible, how impossible, it was to wake up the next morning. Even Ren had to be shaken vigorously by Mum. It was unheard of for her to sleep through her alarm.

‘Did someone drug you two?’ They sat at the breakfast table, slack bodied, nodding off.

You could say that, said Barney, silently.

‘If it wasn’t against my better judgement I’d dose you both with coffee.’

Mum had great faith in the power of coffee. Barney was prepared to believe in it himself since Mum certainly became a better person quite soon after she had downed her two breakfast cups.

‘Perhaps you need protein. I’ll do eggs. Scrambled? Poached? Coddled? Addled? I should have one myself. Staff meeting. Pays to be fortified. Are you filming after school?’

Unfortunately, coffee also made Mum rather garrulous.

Barney looked to Ren for assistance, but her eyes were closed. He made a great effort and told Mum about Ms Bloodworth’s proposal.

‘Now, that is a seasoned teacher,’ said Mum approvingly. ‘A finely tuned radar, I’d say.

‘
Identify
–’ She squinted and scoped the kitchen with an egg-telescope – ‘and
neutralise
.’ She took out an imaginary student on the other side of the kitchen with an egg-gun, then broke the egg into a bowl.

‘Harsh,’ said Barney.

‘As you might imagine,’ said Mum, giving Barney a meaningful look, ‘I have nothing but comradely sympathy for your teachers.’

‘Harsh times two,’ mumbled Barney. His eyes just wanted to close.

Ren put her head down on the table.

‘What is the
matter
with you both?’ said Mum. ‘Have you been keeping cat’s hours?’

If only you knew, thought Barney.

At school Barney managed a quick nap during creative writing and felt surprisingly restored. For maths, as agreed with Ms Bloodworth, he retired with Nick Etherington to the media room and Nick began gamely on his new task: helping Barney manage his relationship with integers. These had been Ms B’s very words.

‘Integers are a fact of life this year, Barney,’ she said. ‘Much like family. You need to get on with them or life becomes impossible.’

‘I like my family,’ said Barney. ‘I get on with them really well.’

‘But what about distant relations? Visiting cousins? Think of integers as a great-aunt you need to humour,’ said Ms Bloodworth. ‘Someone your parents ask you to be kind to, someone you have to try to understand – just for the duration of their visit.’

Immediately Barney had thought of North Island Gran’s older sister, Aunty Linda, who brought them worthy books and smelled of tinned salmon and whose face Dad had once described as unfortunate. It was just possible to be polite to Aunty Linda if you didn’t actually look at her or sit too close.

But Barney was obliged to get up close and personal with integers. And with Nick Etherington, who was all right as maths geniuses went, but who could not be distracted from integer-relationship management no matter what diverting questions Barney came up with.

‘So, you get that they’re whole numbers and they have opposites?’ said Nick.

‘Yes,’ said Barney. ‘No fractions allowed. Nick, are you planning to do maths as a
job
when you leave school?’

‘Yes. And you get that they’re positive and negative.’

‘Yes. And you don’t always have to put the plus beside the positive.’

Barney thought he was making excellent progress already.

‘Have you seen that film about the maths guy, Nick? The one who was crazy?’

‘Yes. Now, can you show how this problem can be solved with integers?’

The problem involved working out the distance between the top of an American mountain and the bottom of an American valley, but a much greater problem was that Barney simply did not
care
about the mountain, the valley or the distance between them. He cared about nothing else at the moment except the incredibly strange night he had just passed, not 500 metres from Nick Etherington and his integers.

‘Nick, what
use
are integers?’

‘For one thing, to measure rising and falling temperatures. Or in rugby, seeing how much ground a team is making or losing.’

‘Nick, would you consider calling me Maestro while we’re doing this?’

‘No. Show me your workings on the number line.’

It was wrong to tease Nick E. and Barney knew it. But he really couldn’t help it.

He toiled away managinghisrelationships with both integers and American mountains and valleys, but in his head he conducted an imaginary one-sided conversation with Nick Etherington.

Nick, what if I told you that last night I stayed up till 4.30 a.m?

What if I told you that I spent four hours inside the old Post Office building, more or less in the dark except for some candles?

Nick, would you believe me if I told you that there are two people living secretly in the Post Office? Would you believe they’ve been living there for more than three months?

Would you believe me, Nick, if I told you that these two people are amazing artists and infinitely clever thieves and that they
played funny and slightly disturbing games with us inside the old Post Office?

Would you believe me, Nick?

Would you?

After school, after they had parted company with the Ambulatorix, Barney and Ren sat in the leather sofa outside Busby’s eating apple cake. It had been made by South Island Gran and sent up the island on a bus. She often sent them cake.

Across the Street the Post Office now seemed to have doubled in size; it seemed to loom. To look at them. The boarded windows were myriad sightless eyes seeking them out.

‘I can’t believe no one has noticed they’re there,’ said Ren. ‘But now I’m scared they will.’

The leather sofa was a good place to talk though it was public. No one could hear what they were discussing. No one thought it strange that they sat there talking and staring out into the Street. They had been doing this for years.

They gazed and gazed at the Post Office, at its solid squareness. They thought and thought about the clandestine inhabitants and their eccentric kingdom. PostOfficeLand. Obi the Unpredictable and Girl the Guarded.

‘We’ve gotta stop,’ said Barney, unable to pull his eyes away. ‘People
will
notice.’

They were interviewing at Montgomery’s today. They had twenty minutes. But it had been a mistake to sit down. He might fall into a deep sleep, Barney thought. In an instant. He was crazily tired.

The two Post Office monarchs would probably be napping. They could make up lost sleep. No such luck for Barney and Ren. And they really must be careful. Mum’s antennae had been up and alert this morning.