Louis Beside Himself (9 page)

‘But you told your mum?' asked Singo. ‘And she threw him out?'

Cordelia looked away. She picked at her jeans again. ‘No.' Her voice was so soft, you could barely hear her. ‘I tried to tell her, but she wouldn't listen. She said there were things I didn't understand, that Jimmy was all right, he just needed a woman to understand him, help him get back on his feet, that he'd never had anyone who'd been there for him, I didn't know him like she did, blah blah . . . I guess I just couldn't find the right words to . . .'

There was silence. Hassan and Singo and I exchanged a quick glance.

‘That's awful,' murmured Singo. ‘Did she see your bruise?'

Cordelia shrugged. ‘No. I just sort of, I don't know, there didn't seem to be a point to anything after that.'

We all looked at our laps.

‘And so you couldn't stay there, at home, in that situation,' Hassan finished for her.

‘But that was last week!' I blurted. ‘What have you been doing since then?'

‘Oh, well, you know, hanging out in the library, sleeping at a friend's, a bus shelter, the bush once but . . . but then tonight, I saw Jimmy again. See, I went to that café on Nimbin Street, you know the one? Near the theatre, next to the pub where Jimmy drinks. I knew it might be dangerous but every Friday night there's a soup kitchen out front – you know, free meals for the homeless. They cook up food not used during the week, and . . . it's really good.'

‘Oh, I've seen it,' Hassan said. ‘They've got those long benches set up on the lawn, and people serving from big pots. My uncle wanted to begin something like this at his restaurant— '

‘Yeah, once I was walking past and it smelled so good I was gunna line up too!' Singo gave a crack of laughter then went quiet when Hassan frowned at him.

‘So anyway, I rocked up there,' Cordelia went on, ‘and was waiting my turn – there was quite a crowd – when I spied Jimmy dashing out of the pub, clutching a big square sort of briefcase. He must have stolen it – it sure didn't belong to him – and he made straight for the soup kitchen, trying to lose himself among all the people I guess. He pushed past a little old woman carrying a tureen and made her drop it! Steaming soup went all down her apron, dripping all over the bench – what a mess!' Cordelia suddenly grinned.

‘What's funny about that?' I said.

‘It's just that – this woman, she was so plucky, and you could tell she had bad knees, but she hobbled after Jimmy, screaming at him, ‘You think you can treat your elders like that? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I'll have the Guard onto you, why, I'll tell the Emperor! Look at my toga, it's all splattered with sauce!'

Hassan and Singo fell about laughing at Cordelia's transformation. The reedy voice – tremulous, outraged,
familiar
.

I blinked. ‘Did you say toga?'

‘Yeah, from the ancient Romans, you know? She must be away with the fairies, but she's got guts! Anyway, with all that yelling Jimmy turned and spotted me, so I ran. He called after me, chased me. I guess he didn't want any witnesses with those stolen goods of his. So I just ran . . . and hid here.'

I fiddled with a jagged end of my nail. I tried to tear it off, but it hurt. My mind was so scrambled – thoughts bashing about like bats in a cave. I wondered if Dad had driven past the soup kitchen . . . Wouldn't he be home soon, and what would he say about a burglar sitting in our kitchen?

‘You must be very tired after all your . . . dangers,' Hassan said quietly. ‘You need somewhere to stay tonight. You could stay here.' He looked at me enquiringly, his forehead wiggling up and down.

I glanced at Singo. Very, very slightly he was shaking his head. He looked concerned, anxious, frightened, and guilty. Cordelia was eyeing the last piece of chicken.

My heart rate
C
ATAPULTED
to new heights. Like Singo, I felt concerned, anxious, frightened, and guilty. On the one hand, I was thinking: Dad just wouldn't understand the situation the way Hassan did. Even Singo, who'd heard the whole story and knew Cordelia's name, which was so old-fashioned and un-burglar-like, was wary as hell. And all Dad's over-protective, Jericho-dropkick-five-star-frog-splash-look-after-your-children-first feelings would overcome him.

We had to help Cordelia, but how? As soon as the question formed, the awful blankness descended . . .

‘Er . . .' I said. ‘But . . .' My voice cracked.

Everyone looked up, waiting for me. Nothing came.

Then Hassan marched into the silence like a rescuing army. ‘I know!' He spread his hands on the table and went still with seriousness. ‘I know you want Cordelia to stay here,' he said to me, ‘but you're worried about Monty— '

I nodded madly, full of gratitude to wise old Hassan, who had become my interpreter now that I was struck down with muteness.

‘Who's Monty?' asked Cordelia, taking another bite.

‘Lou's dad,' said Singo.

‘Oh no, I don't want any more dads interfering in this, telling me what to do,' Cordelia said in a rush. ‘No offence, Lou. It's just that, you know, a parent would take me straight back there and I can't, I just can't— ' ‘No, that's right,' said Hassan, tapping out a tune on the table with his fingers, as he often does when he's excited. ‘So this is my idea. Cordelia could stay here – but in secret.'

‘What?' cried Singo. ‘How do you figure that? She's not a pet mouse!'

‘No, she could be a guest – and stay in our tent!' Hassan sprang up to look through the window at it. ‘See? It's all set up, it's big enough, there is plenty of room and we could bring out cushions and sleeping bags, make it very comfortable . . .'

There was silence for a moment while we all looked at him as if he was Solomon himself, ancient king of the Jews, brilliant at solving everyone's problems.

Finally, Singo said, ‘Cool.' In a different, grown-up tone he added, ‘And really, it's better if you're not staying inside, Cordelia, because of all those
parental
problems you mentioned.' He shifted around in his chair. ‘So, like, I could run home and get my air mattress.' He leapt up.

‘And we'll bring food and drink, of course,' said Hassan, gesturing at the table still laden with leftovers.

‘And you can wash your hands and shower and stuff when Monty's at work.' Singo swung round to me. ‘Your dad doesn't have to know – no one else has to know, just us three, right, Lou?'

I looked out at the garden, trying to imagine it all, trying to find the right words.

‘You could have my books so you don't get bored,' I ventured, finding a shadow of my voice. ‘I mean, I've got plenty of books I'm not using right now,' I added stupidly.

Cordelia looked around the table at us. Her face reddened with the effort of stopping the quiver of her bottom lip.

‘Maybe just for tonight then,' she murmured. ‘Thank you.'

Hassan squeezed her shoulder. But she was looking at me. I don't know why, when everything inside me had gone so small, as small as her hurt-voice, as dark and disappointing as my cowardice in the kitchen when the bad man was outside.

8
THE LIE

When I came back into the kitchen with pillows for the tent, Singo was practically falling off his chair with laughter, and Hassan was slapping his knee like an old-timer in a hillbilly movie. Cordelia was performing a stand-up comedy act.

‘You,
boy
.' She pointed imperiously. ‘Find another toga for me! Look at this one, all splattered with gladiator blood. How can I cook for the Emperor in this state?'

In a nanosecond she could change her identity, her body language, the shape of her mouth, everything. She made you believe an Ancient Roman cook had somehow managed to get stranded between centuries, a natural accident of the universe that had occurred, amazingly, in your very own kitchen . . .

‘Agnes!' I remembered, leaping up. ‘I've got to ring Dad!'

As I ran to the phone, I was
B
ESIEGED
by an image of Doreen speeding along in her old Ford, her hair frizzing out in fright. Dad would be driving beside her singing ‘The Long and Winding Road', which he did whenever he wanted you to think everything would turn out all right but was secretly convinced it wouldn't.

‘Hullo, Dad?' I yelled into the phone, trying to make myself heard above a sea of music and voices.

‘Lou, is that you?' He laughed. ‘Ha, that rhymes, I should write a song! What's up?'

‘What do you mean, what's up? Listen, I'm ringing to tell you where Agnes is. She'll be at the soup kitchen, you know, the one set up outside that restaurant—'

‘Yes, that's right. We found her there, didn't want to come away until she'd washed and dried the last pot, which was hot! Hey, that rhymes. Now she's tucked up in bed all safe and sound.'

‘Why aren't you home then? Dad, are you okay? It's pretty late. What's that music in the background, why are you rhyming, where are you?' I shook myself – I sounded like a worried dad, and he was the teenager.

But Dad didn't notice. ‘Hear that song? The Beatles – Doreen has a brilliant record collection, you know, the real deal,
vinyl
! All my favourites.'

‘Has she got ‘The Long and Winding Road?' '

‘And we're having a glass of champagne to celebrate finding Agnes. Doreen says that would make a good title for a song, ‘Finding Agnes'. Pity it's not a more modern name, like . . . Doreen makes up songs, plays the guitar, so tal— '

‘So when are you coming home?' Without warning, in the middle of my sentence, my voice squealed and dropped, a harsh ugly sound like a French horn playing a wrong note.

‘Hey, look at the time, hadn't realised it was so late. You're all right, are you? Your friends staying the night in the tent?'

‘Yes, yes, well maybe not in the . . . anyway, yes.' I cleared my throat, hoping there was only a frog in it rather than something more
S
INISTER
.

‘Okay, I'll be home soon. Stay well, or give me a bell, ha!' And he put down the phone.

I turned around, probably still looking a little stunned. Hassan called out, ‘Okay?'

‘Yeah,' I croaked. ‘They've found Agnes. Dad will be back soon.' Or whoever it was that Dad had transformed into . . .

Cordelia went silent in the middle of a sentence. She looked at the pillows I'd left on the kitchen chair. ‘They look comfy,' she said quietly. ‘Thanks, Lou. I guess I'd better make my retreat.'

We got busy then, fetching Singo's mattress and my sleeping bag and a bottle of water for the night and Aeroguard – tropical strength – and sheets just in case the sleeping bag was too hot, which it probably would be, and Mark Twain's
Huckleberry Finn
, which astoundingly Cordelia had never read. After we'd all trooped out with her, carrying my extra-heavy-duty torch, and we'd watched her laying out the mattress and given her tips on where to wee so as to avoid stepping into the gossamer clutches of the St Andrew's Cross spider that always spun its web between the lemon tree and the hibiscus no matter how many times we destroyed it, we said goodnight and scarpered back into the house.

It was stuffy in my room. There was my bed and another double mattress which two of us often had to share on a summer's night. We left the window wide open and put the fan on, but even so, it felt unusually hot. And not peaceful. In fact, the darkness was peppered with sharp hissing and muffled thumping. ‘Why are you so
bony
? It's like sleeping with a bunch of Dad's golf sticks!' and ‘Pffaw, you stink, why can't you hold it in?' and ‘Better out than in!' and ‘For who, you? Garbage guts!'

But I think we'd all dropped off and floated into the world of dreams when I felt a hot tickle in my ear and a whispered shout smelling of something tangy – olives? I swung round, my heart pounding, to see my father grinning at me in the pearly dark.

‘ 'Sup?' said Dad.

Thank god there was no one else to witness this transformation from responsible, middle-aged father of two into teenage clone. How embarrassing! I blushed red in the dark for him, even though the other two were snoring like trains.

‘All good?' he asked, sitting down on my bed.

‘Yeah,' I muttered.

He looked around the room, at the two shapes sprawled on the mattress, and the fan doing not much next to them. It must have been thirty degrees centigrade in the room. He loosened the buttons on his shirt, which were already pretty loose, I have to say.

‘Why aren't you dudes sleeping in the tent?' he asked.
Dudes!
‘At least outside there's a breeze. You could leave the tent flaps open.'

I closed my eyes and pretended to be falling asleep again. I was still trying to get over
dudes
. Perhaps if I ignored his transformation, it would disappear? If you give little children no attention when they behave badly, they usually stop it and go away. Did that work for fathers, too?

‘Louis? Aren't you all too hot in here?'

‘Yes,' I sighed. He wasn't going away. ‘But there was a . . . a snake in the tent and Singo didn't want to stay in there after we'd chased it out.'

Dad gasped. ‘Oh good heavens, certainly not, well, and Singo of all people, how dreadful!'

Dad had transformed back so completely into his usual anxious self that I was stung by guilt. Now he'd worry to death about snakes from all over Australia swarming into our garden, and think what if someone had actually stepped on the snake, so easy to do in the dark, and what was he thinking letting his children sleep out there in a nest of reptiles when he'd been far away at Doreen's place, grooving to The Beatles on vinyl?

‘Well, actually, Dad, I don't think there actually
was
a snake – in fact after I had a look around— '