Happy as Larry (19 page)

‘I guess I won't be a space tourist any time soon. And if I do get the chance, I think I might fly with the Russians. I reckon God is angry with America at the moment.'

In the weeks that followed it seemed that it wasn't only God who was angry at the USA. Colin Powell told the United Nations that Iraq had hidden weapons – a nuclear arsenal, biological weapons – and they needed to be disarmed before something devastating occurred. That's why America wanted the war. Around the globe, millions of people took to the streets to protest against the proposed invasion of Iraq. In Villea, more than one thousand people – ordinary people like the Rainbows and the Hollands, Guillermo and his family – assembled on the foreshore with cardboard signs and anti-war slogans painted on old bedsheets. People of all races and from every church; the war was bigger than their differences. It was big enough to displace Mal from his armchair. It was bigger than Denise's indifference.

They walked along the breakwater wall and assembled on the grass beside the Cradle River bridge. They cheered and chanted with guest speakers who talked of the madness infecting the elected government of their country, unlike the governments of France and Germany and Russia, which had said they wouldn't support the war and the military option should be the last resort.

Much of what was said was beyond Larry, but a big lady in a floral dress took the microphone and put it into words a kindergarten kid could have understood.

Her son was being shipped off to war. Shipped off to another country half a world away to maybe kill someone else's son. To maybe even lose his own life. Yes, it was his choice to join the army, but this war was somebody else's insanity.

The Rainbows watched the news as a family that night. Larry perched on the arm of his father's chair as the reports of peaceful protests came in from across the country, across the world.

Somebody painted ‘NO WAR' in huge red letters on the side of the Sydney Opera House.

Mal chuckled. ‘You'd think they'd notice that . . . even in Canberra.'

If they did, they didn't respond.

On 19 March, the Coalition of the Willing, led by the USA, Britain and Australia, launched the war in Iraq.

It seemed strange to Larry that a war on the other side of the world could have such a huge impact on his daily life. The children at Villea Secondary College formed two camps – the mob who saw the war as an outrage, and those who saw it as a kind of international sporting event and viewed the body count as a scoresheet. While the majority of Larry's friends who thought about these things saw the war as an affront to all things humane, the likes of Tim Holland and Clinton Miller searched the news for blood.

The war was like a slap to Denise. Her coma of self-pity turned to anger. If she had joined the protest march out of a sense of Christian duty, now a fire had ignited in her belly. Every news report, every injury and death fanned the flames, and Larry and his father began to feel the reflected heat.

‘It's
your
room, Larry. If you want to live in a pigsty, that's up to you. I only wash clothes that make it into the laundry basket. Do you understand?'

‘Yes, Mum.'

‘That includes your school uniform.'

‘Yes, Mum.'

She was mad about everything. It was a slow burn. Larry wondered if having a mother who steamed from the ears was better than living with the walking dead.

‘And you and your father can take it in turns cleaning the toilet.'

Mal groaned. ‘You use the toilet too, Denise.'

‘Yes, but I never miss.'

Within a month, US troops had taken Baghdad, and on the first of May they declared an official end to the combat operations in Iraq. But there was no huge sigh of relief, and the fighting continued. Suicide bombers and car bombs, abductions and videotaped murders. The war had no single front, and spot-fires of brutality flared with mindless regularity.

One Wednesday night after film club, Denise and Anita were sharing coffee and airing their grievances about the fate of the world at the hands of men, and their men in particular, when Anita suggested that Denise should come and work for her at the supermarket.

‘It'll get you out of the house. Mal and Larry will have to fend for themselves.'

‘That won't do them any harm,' Denise said. She left Anita's place saying that she'd think about it, but the idea was so ripe she could think of nothing else. She was sick of being a mother, wife and domestic slave. She wanted money of her own and the sort of independence she'd had in her late teens.

She phoned Anita at work the following morning and did her first shift later that day. She made it home before Larry got back from school, and while some part of her felt unsettled – guilty even – making the evening meal seemed much less bother. She snuck out to work twice more before she found the courage to tell Mal and Larry.

‘There are going to be some changes around home,' she announced.

‘Oh?' Mal said. It wasn't the first time she'd made such a pronouncement, and while he didn't tremble with fear at her words, he cringed inside.

‘I've got a job. I don't want to be working all day and then coming home to more work than necessary at night. You're both going to have to do more. Pull your weight.'

Mal stood up. ‘You what? That's fantastic news. When do you start?'

‘Congratulations, Mum,' Larry added.

Their lack of resistance caught her off guard. She'd thought she'd get a groan of protest, minimum. ‘I . . . I start tomorrow.'

They took it in turns to hug her, and while a smile didn't magically appear on her face, she did hug them back.

She was alive.

Denise was a success. She was reliable, thorough, self-motivated and a quick learner. She dusted and stacked shelves, helped customers and slipped behind the counter at the delicatessen in emergencies. She shared morning tea and lunch breaks with Anita, and confessed to loving the job and the things it brought into her life.

‘I was going stir-crazy at home.'

‘I had noticed.'

‘It's the little things, like walking here and home again, the constant activity during the day. I go to bed at night exhausted and I'm out like a light. I don't ever remember sleeping so well. I think I'm losing weight.'

‘And there's the money . . .'

‘Yes, the money. I've been thinking about giving Larry extra pocket money. I've never felt so rich.'

Denise took Anita's hand, kissed it and hugged it to her cheek. A little smile escaped from her sore heart and came to rest on her lips. ‘Thank you.'

‘That's my pleasure, sweetheart.'

Mal sensed the change in his wife like a shift in the wind direction. One day it was an ice-laden, hat-stealing surge straight off the South Pole and the next day it was blowing hot and dry, smelling like sand, just as inhospitable as the cold but at least there was change. He hadn't seen her smile, but her every action seemed animated and bristling with heat. Her drug was a moderate-strength dose of work. Those things that used to make her cry now seemed to make her angry. She took her anger to bed and slept beside Mal with clenched fists. She was always snoring before he was, a quiet
snuffle-pah
that he found soothing. It made him smile. He realised he was the closest he'd been to his wife – smiling at her snoring – since the baby died. Two years had passed. It was a thought stained with sadness, but the stain was quickly covered by the realisation that the woman he'd fallen in love with was still in there, somewhere, and fighting. He lightly kissed her sleeping cheek.

While the war in Iraq had officially been over for months, the fi ghting never stopped. While most of the world had hung up their anti-war placards, Guillermo was still on fire. He was the sort of person who was drawn to action. He wrote letters and collected signatures on petitions, held discussion groups at lunchtime, and his schoolbag was covered with badges that spoke of his dissent. You had to have an opinion to be Guillermo's friend. Not that you had to agree with him, but you had to hear both sides of the argument and you had to make up your mind. The thing Larry most admired about his friend was his ability to let things go. He could be furious about something – like how he thought investigators would find no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or that sending John Geoghan, the priest defrocked for sex offences, to jail would be a death sentence and he didn't deserve to die – but the moment the topic shifted, the anger vanished. Larry told him he admired that trait one Saturday. With Jemma, they'd ridden their bikes to the end of the long jetty.

‘If
you
can't control your thoughts, my friend, who will?' Guillermo said. ‘Nobody can do it for you. It's your brain, your heart, they are your emotions. All you need to hold it together is a little self-discipline. It's like when a song gets stuck in your head and the same three lines go over and over again. Do you go crazy or think of something else?'

‘That's all fine in theory,' Jemma said. ‘But what about chocolate?'

Larry and Guillermo laughed.

‘What about love?' she said, and they stopped laughing.

‘Ah, yes, I'm sure some things are harder to manage than others.'

‘But you can't say to yourself, “I'm not going to fall in love with this or that person.” ' ‘Can't you?' Guillermo pondered.

‘No. Not any more than you can say, “I
am
going to fall in love with this or that person.” ' ‘I love you both,' Larry said.

They both laughed.

‘I can't help it,' he said.

‘You can't make yourself fall in love,' Jemma continued, ‘and you can't stop it if it's happening.'

‘Hmm,' Guillermo said. ‘That's one theory where I'll have to wait for some firsthand experience before I can speak with any authority.'

Jemma's shoulders dropped, almost imperceptibly, but Larry noticed.

She turned her bike towards town and said she had to go.

‘Love you,' Larry called to her back.

She took her hand off the bars and wobbled as she waved.

Guillermo was right.

An inmate strangled John Geoghan in his Massachusetts jail cell. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It had been one of the main reasons the USA went to war, and they'd got it wrong. Hundreds of soldiers and innocent people had died and the main reason for going to war turned out to be a bad rumour.

It was only a rumour, too, that Clinton Miller had brought the little bomb to school that blew the side out of one of the toilet bowls. It was only a rumour, but they went through his locker, and the police arrived at his house. They found no evidence to support the claim, and the toilet was duly replaced. Clinton professed his innocence, but when he thought nobody was looking, Larry saw him smile.

Five days after the bomb went off in the toilet, bombs went off in Spain and one hundred and ninety-one people were killed. Al Qaeda said the bombs were theirs. The Spaniards elected a new government three days later, saying that the terrorist actions on their own soil were a result of the old government's involvement in the US-led war in Iraq. If they were right, as Guillermo suspected they were, other countries involved in the war would also be at risk of terrorist attacks. Other countries like the UK. Other countries like their own.

‘It just doesn't seem fair,' Jemma said. She and Larry and Guillermo were swerving to miss Gilligan and pedalling towards the weir wall on a Saturday morning. ‘How can the government get us involved in a war I didn't want, in Iraq . . . a war
against
terror . . . and then after the war is supposed to be over we're more at risk of terror than we were before?'

‘I don't think we personally are more at risk. We aren't the best target. They'll attack the city. They'll attack the power station,' Guillermo said. ‘We're still safe here. We're more in danger of being run over by a bus or eaten by a shark.'

‘That's a comforting thought,' Larry said.

‘It was supposed to be. There are more pressing concerns for us, anyway,' Guillermo said, and nodded along the track.

Ahead, two boys stood beside discarded bikes. They were examining something the shorter boy was holding. Gilligan growled and Larry recognised them: Jemma's older brother, Tim, and Clinton Miller.

At the sound of the dog, Clinton hurriedly pocketed whatever it was he was holding. Tim grabbed his bike in a panic.

‘Morning, gentlemen,' Guillermo said.

Clinton nodded a greeting. Tim sat astride his bike but didn't leave.

‘What are you doing up here?' Jemma asked.

‘Nothing. What are you doing? Finding a quiet spot for a little threesome with your boyfriends?'

Clinton laughed. ‘Not much hope of action there, I'm afraid. You boys aren't really interested in girls, are you?'

Guillermo chuckled and shook his head dismissively.

‘What are you looking at, Rainbow?' Tim growled. He was almost the same age as Guillermo but a full head taller. ‘I'm taken.'

Clinton roared with laughter. ‘Yes, he's mine.'

Larry swallowed, but didn't smile. Clinton's boyfriend? His henchman? His accomplice?

‘On that note,' Guillermo said. ‘I think we'll bid you good day.'

He scooted his bike then slung his leg over, pedalling slowly off along the track.

Jemma sneered at her brother before doing the same. Larry called his dog and heard the boys whispering as he was leaving. He quickly caught up with the others.

A silver object, the size and rough shape of a tennis ball, flew over their heads. They heard it hissing before they saw it skitter along the track. Gilligan bolted at it and scooped it victoriously into his mouth. He bit it playfully then turned to bring it back to Larry.

The silver ball exploded.

It detonated with such force and heat that Larry felt it on his skin and in his stomach before his brain registered the noise. His face and arms were peppered with material from the blast, and something bit at his shin. He stepped off his bike and let it crunch to the track. Jemma was screaming and holding her ears. Guillermo had swerved off the path and fallen heavily onto his side in the bushes.