The Boy Under the Table (25 page)

Tina could feel her heart racing and she could see Lockie’s pulse in his skinny neck.

‘Hey, Pete,’ he said quietly.

The man looked up again and gave the two of them a closer look. He stared at Lockie for a moment and then his eyes widened. He looked over at the poster on the wall and back at Lockie.

‘Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ,’ he said, backing away. He rubbed at his eyes. ‘Jesus Christ . . . Is it you, Lockie. Is it you?’

Lockie nodded.

‘Jesus, Jesus, Lockie, oh god, Lockie . . . Where have you been?’

The policeman came out from behind the desk and grabbed Lockie gently by the shoulders. He studied his face, searching for the boy he knew. He ran his hands over Lockie’s hair and felt up and down the boy’s skinny arms.

He looked from Tina to Lockie. Tina could see him trying to get his breathing under control. He looked like he was going to have a heart attack. She stood silently next to Lockie. The thing had to play itself out.

‘Margie,’ shouted Pete. ‘Margie, get out here!’

‘What now?’ came a voice from behind a door at the back of the room.

‘Margie, you have to get out here.’

Tina heard a loud frustrated sigh but the door opened and a small woman with hair as grey as Pete’s stepped out. She wasn’t wearing a uniform and Tina guessed she must be Pete’s wife. She peered across the counter and gave Tina and Pete a questioning glance.

Pete pointed wordlessly to Lockie.

The woman looked at him, trying to identify him and then: ‘Lockie!’ she screamed. ‘Oh my god, Lockie.’

Margie reacted the way a woman reacted. She kneeled down and grabbed Lockie in a big bear hug.

Then she leaned back and looked him over.

Lockie stood with his arms by his sides as she ran her hands over his hair and squeezed his arms. Tina could see how uncomfortable Lockie felt at being touched. Margie hugged him again and again. She didn’t notice Lockie’s face or she would have stopped.

When Margie stood up she was crying.

Pete, meanwhile, was watching Tina.

‘Start talking,’ he said to her and Tina could see he had already decided who was to blame for Lockie’s disappearance.

‘Her name’s Tina,’ said Lockie. ‘She saved me. Can you take us home, Pete?’

Pete looked at Lockie. ‘You know I will, Lockie, but first —’

‘Please, Pete,’ said Lockie. ‘Can you just take us home?’

‘Oh god,’ said Margie. ‘Doug and Sarah—we have to call them. We have to let them know.’ She kept touching Lockie, on his head, on his arms and on his back. Tina could see Lockie wince. People wouldn’t know that they needed to be careful when they touched him. Some touches can make you feel sick.

‘I think . . .’ said Tina.

Pete and Margie turned to her.

‘I think Lockie could use something to eat.’ Tina didn’t know if he was hungry but she wanted to give the woman something to do so the touching would stop.

‘Oh god, yes,’ said Margie. ‘You’re so thin, Lockie. Why are you so thin?’ She wasn’t really expecting an answer, Tina knew. She would know that whatever had happened to Lockie, it wasn’t good.

Margie led them into an office and they sat down on a small leather couch. Then she left them alone.

Tina and Lockie sat in silence. Lockie was alert, waiting for what was to come. He rubbed his hands together and stared at the wall.

In the silence Tina thought,
Now
.

This was her chance to leave. She could bolt out of the door and go somewhere, anywhere. She had done what she had promised to do. Her part was over.

She could, but instead she sat and she waited, and then Lockie reached for her hand and it was too late.

A minute later Margie appeared with a jar of biscuits.

‘There’s not much here but we could send out for something . . . I don’t know.’

‘I want to go home, Margie,’ said Lockie with his flat old man’s voice.

Tina saw a spark of fear in Margie’s eyes. He must sound so different to the boy they had lost. Tina had only ever known this Lockie but there was obviously another Lockie, another boy who had never even been able to conceive of a man like the uniform. That was the boy these people had known. That was the boy they had missed. This thin, almost wasted child who spoke in short sentences without a smile to accompany his words was not the Lockie they knew.

Margie ran back out to Pete and some furious whispering began.

Lockie took a biscuit and ate it slowly. He looked over at her before he took another one out of the jar.

‘You can have as many as you like,’ said Tina.

When Lockie hesistated Tina leaned forward and stuck her hand in the jar. She grabbed five biscuits at once and shoved them in Lockie’s pocket.

Lockie gave her one of his small smiles.

A few minutes later Pete came into the office.

‘The landlines are down and your mum and dad aren’t answering their mobiles, Lockie. We’ll have to just go out there and surprise them.’

Lockie grabbed Tina’s hand.

‘I’m sure they’ll be excited to see you,’ said Tina.

Tina saw Pete glance at Lockie’s white-knuckled grip on Tina’s hand.

‘Yes, oh yes. They’ll be really happy, Lockie. They’ll be happier than they’ve ever been in their lives. They’ve missed you so much. Every day they’ve missed you and we . . . we’ve missed you, too. Everyone will be so happy, mate. Don’t worry, Lockie, everything will be right. So why don’t you and I go out to the farm, while Tina stays here and talks to Margie?’

‘No,’ said Lockie quietly. And then, louder, ‘No. Tina saved me, Pete. She saved me from the uniform. She’s coming home with me. She saved me and she’s coming home with me.’ Lockie wasn’t asking, he was telling. There would be no discussion.

Tina met Pete’s eyes. ‘Just let’s get him home, okay? I can tell you everything later. Let’s just go.’

Pete nodded. Tina knew that inside him his confusion and his joy and his fear of the truth would be colliding.

Pete was not Lockie’s father but it was obvious that Lockie belonged to more people than just his parents. Lockie belonged to Pete and Margie as well and Tina had no doubt that he probably belonged to the whole town too.

Out front Margie was dialling the phone, trying again to get hold of Lockie’s parents.

‘You keep trying, Marge; we’ll take a drive out there.’

She nodded, then bent down to give Lockie another hug.

‘We’ve missed you, Lockie. We’ve all missed you so much. You have no idea . . .’ She couldn’t finish the sentence. The tears began again. She grabbed a tissue from a box on the counter and went back to dialling the phone.

You have no idea
, thought Tina sadly.
No idea at all
.

Out the front of the police station Lockie and Tina got into the back of the police car.

Pete started the car. As they pulled away from the kerb Lockie said, ‘They were looking for me.’

‘Of course they were,’ said Tina. ‘I told you: parents love you no matter what.’

‘No matter what,’ said Lockie, uncertainty in his voice.

‘We were all looking for you, Lockie,’ said Pete. ‘We’ve been looking for you for four months and we would have looked for you forever.’

‘Tina found me,’ said Lockie.

‘Where did she find you, Lockie?’

‘Please Pete,’ said Tina. ‘I promise I’ll give you the full story but he’s tired and he needs to go home.’

‘Home,’ Lockie repeated softly.

‘Yeah,’ said Tina. ‘Home.’

The drive to the Williams’ farm took forty minutes. Pete was silent the whole way.

Tina could sense him biting back the questions—questions she would have no choice but to answer. But what would be the right answers?

Lockie would lie for her, she knew he would, but she also knew that there were some things too heavy for a kid to carry. Lockie would have enough to deal with without having to live with the lie of the uniform’s death.

How many years did you get for manslaughter? Isn’t that what they called it when you killed someone but hadn’t really planned to kill them? Had she planned to kill him?

She hoped she wouldn’t have to answer that question.

Tina had no doubt that Margie would talk herself hoarse on the phone. Soon, everyone in town would know that Lockie was home. The wheels were in motion. The train could not be stopped. Clickety clack, clickety clack.

She looked at Lockie. His body was tense and his eyes darted over the landscape.

She put her hand over his and he grabbed it. She let him hold on and after a few minutes she felt him relax and then she relaxed as well.

His head dropped onto her shoulder and then his eyes closed. After a few minutes Tina felt her own eyelids droop.

She thought about the last car ride she had taken. It had only been a few days ago but it felt like she had journeyed for a lifetime since. The universe worked in strange ways. What if everything that had ever happened to Tina had happened so that one day she could rescue Lockie? It seemed too cruel an idea but you never knew. Or maybe she was just in the right place at the right time. Shit just happened . . .

Tina and Lockie woke up when the car stopped.

Pete got out first and stretched his arms over his head.

Lockie rubbed his eyes and sat in the car looking at his home. Then he opened the car door and got out to stand next to Pete.

Tina scrambled out and stood next to him. She put her arm lightly across his shoulders. He was trembling.

Pete had stopped the car at the bottom of a long brick driveway. Tina saw a large low house that stretched across the open space. It looked like an ordinary suburban house, with white painted cladding. She could see curtains in the windows. All of them were open.

Tina could imagine Lockie’s mother walking into his room every morning to open the curtains and then staring at the empty bed where her son should have been.

Her mother had left Tim’s curtains closed when she knew that he would never make it back home. There was no need for light in the room anymore and no need for air.

There was a garden in front of the house, filled with the hardy kind of plants that could survive anything, including winter.

She scanned the open spaces surrounding the house. There were cows nearby and sheep in the distance and huge squares of margarine yellow. There were reds and deep greens and a few splashes of orange. There was colour everywhere you looked. Colour and beauty and she understood how desperately Lockie would have missed his home. Under the table in that cold stark kitchen he would have held on to what he had known all his life and it would have helped him hold on to himself. That was what you did when you couldn’t see a way out; you held on to the past, hoping it would become the future. You grabbed on to the good stuff and tried to believe that everything would be okay again. It was stupid but it was human nature.

Lockie clasped her hand and just looked, drinking in his home and shivering with fear and excitement and joy and relief and whatever else he must be feeling. There was a swing set in the garden, and on one of the swings sat a little girl with long golden curls. She was dragging her feet on the grass to stop the swing.

It was cold to be outside in the garden but the little girl was rugged up with a beanie and a scarf.

The air was filled with a silence broken only by the wind and the cows and the metal scraping sound of the swing being halted.

There was a man in the garden with the little girl. He was turning over the soil in a garden bed. He had obviously heard the car, because he raised his hand in greeting, but then he had gone back to his work. He had actually turned his back on the car.

Tina thought she knew what that meant. The man had not wanted to see Pete the policeman. Maybe he thought Pete was bringing bad news.

Tina smiled. Here was good news. Finally, here was good news for this family.

The man dug the garden fork into the soil with a little bit of effort. He was deliberately not looking at Pete.

The little girl walked down the driveway towards them.

Pete said quietly, ‘No real way to prepare them. You go ahead, Lockie.’

Lockie squeezed Tina’s hand.

‘Go on, Lockie, it’s your dad. He’s been looking for you for a long time. Go on.’

She pulled her hand slowly out of Lockie’s grip. She wanted to save him from his fear, but she had saved him once. Lockie would have to do this by himself.

The little girl who was surely Sammy looked back at her father, but he was still concentrating on his work.

She smiled in Pete’s direction and then she focused on Lockie.

She stared at him, as if trying to work out exactly who he was.

Lockie pushed his hood back, exposing his short blond hair. He stood, and Tina could sense him holding his breath, waiting for his sister to see him. To really see him.

Sammy stared hard at Lockie now, frowning. And then Tina saw recognition light up her face. She looked at her father who had still not looked up.

She looked back at Lockie.

She started jumping up and down.

‘Lockie!’ she screamed. ‘Lockie, Lockie, Lockie!’

Lockie smiled.

The man jerked upright and dropped the garden fork. ‘Stop that, Samantha,’ he whispered angrily. ‘Jesus, stop that! Be quiet. Stop that.’