The House That Was Eureka (22 page)

On Tuesday night, sitting at tea, Evie’s mum had said: ‘It’s the 26th this Friday, darl. Your birthday. Why don’t we go up the club at Campbelltown and make a night of it, see all our old friends, have a real celebration for once. God knows, it’s been long enough.’

‘You know I’m trying to save money,’ Ted said, looking gloomily at a glass of lemon cordial.

‘But it’s my shout,’ said Evie’s mum.

‘I’ll look after the kids,’ Evie offered fast, seeing the opportunity. She was serving up the steak and kidney pie and cut Ted the middle bit, with the pastry rose, and scooped him out his mashed potato and pumpkin with the icecream scoop, to make it look nice.

‘I’d still rather we saved the money,’ Ted said.

‘But I
want
to shout you, darl.’ Evie’s mum touched his hand and she smiled at him.

‘It’s not fair,’ said Maria. ‘Why can’t we come?’

‘Yeah, let’s just take the girls out for a barbecue on Saturday instead,’ said Ted.

‘Yeah!’

‘No!’ said Evie. ‘It’s your night, Ted.’ She looked hard at Maria and bumped Jodie as she handed them their dinners. ‘I’ll take the girls somewhere on Saturday, to make up.’

Maria gave her a weird look. Sniffing a secret. But knew enough to shut up.

‘Where?’ Jodie demanded. ‘Can we have pizzas?’

‘Will there be swings?’ Sammy said.

‘There’ll be everything,’ said Evie.

‘See, darl?’ Mum said. ‘It’s all settled.’ She looked really young and happy, Evie thought, when she smiled like that. Ted still looked as if he didn’t want to go, but he made himself smile back at Mum, and then Evie’s mum looked even happier.

Over the washing up, Mum thanked Evie for being so thoughtful to Ted, and Evie felt a rat inside, Might as well go the whole way, though.

‘Mum,’ Evie said, ‘why don’t you take Noel’s poor little mum next door with you? She’s real nice, Noel’s mum, and she never gets to go out, she’s probably never been to a club in her life, and Noel and I can fix tea for Noel’s grandmother.’

‘I thought you didn’t like her, love.’

‘Noel’s mum? She’s really nice,’ said Evie, deliberately misunderstanding.

‘No, I meant the old lady, love.’

‘Oh? I guess you get used to her.’ That was one way of putting it.

Evie’s mum looked pleased. ‘You’re growing up at last, love,’ she observed.

Evie felt dreadful. Mum was so nice, she never suspected anything, so it made you feel bad to cheat her.

But it was settled. Ted seemed to think it was a good idea to ask Mrs Cavendish – ‘Might as well shout her too,’ he said. ‘I don’t ’spect she’ll drink much, and who knows, seeing as how it’s m’ birthday I might win the cost of the night back on the pokies’ – and Noel’s mum was hard pushed by Noel till she finally agreed.

‘Yes, Mum. No, Mum. Of course Evie and I can fix nanna. You should go, Mum. Nanna’s used to Evie. She
likes
Evie. No, don’t ask Nanna, don’t even tell her, just go. Of course I know the doctor’s number.’

So at half-past six on the Friday night Evie and Noel waved the three of them into the Kingswood, Ted in his suit still worried because of the money, Evie’s mum looking great with a henna rinse in her hair, and Noel’s mum in grey silk, as excited as a child off to its first party. At the last minute, Ted turned to Evie. ‘Thanks, Evie,’ he said, a bit awkward.

‘No, you sit in the front,’ Evie’s mum told Noel’s mum, and at last they drove off, Ted hooting the horn and grinning and the two mums waving like mad.

‘
Now
tell us,’ Maria demanded. Something secret was happening. She could smell it.

‘Nothing,’ Evie said, feeling bad about Ted. ‘Noel and I are just having some friends around, that’s all, and I don’t want you lot in the way.’

‘Oh, let them,’ Noel said. He felt jittery. I must’ve caught it from old Mum.

‘Yeah, okay.’ (How could you stop them, anyway?) ‘But just don’t go blabbing off to Ted and Mum, okay? You either, Little Miss.’ She grabbed Sammy up and hugged her.

‘What makes you think we’ll be around anyway; Smartey-pants?’ Ree said.

‘Will there be swings?’ Sammy asked Evie.

A feeling of dread suddenly hit Evie. ‘I told you, there’ll be everything.’

Evie wasn’t far wrong.

At half-past six, Newtown CYSS was fuller than it had ever been, for the word had got around that Roger was making a video. So now there were fifty cops dressed in blue jeans and blue jumpers, and eighteen pickets dressed in long white underpants or old trousers, and a hundred or more others dressed in raggedy gear, to be the crowd. There were two video portapaks loaded with fresh batteries, and there were two buses borrowed from other CYSS places ready to take everyone to Liberty Street.

The plan was: Roger and Di and Sharnda would go with the equipment and the pickets in the Newtown CYSS truck and set everything up, and after a while the ‘police bus’ would roar up and the cops would jump out and it would start. A couple of minutes later, the second bus would let the rest out at the Liberty Street corner, and they’d all run up and start booing and cheering and acting like an unruly mob.

At six-thirty, then, everyone was organized. Or as organized as an unruly mob will ever be. Roger and Di hadn’t got there yet, they were due any minute.

The phone rang.

‘This is Noel.’

‘Hi, this is Sharnda.’

‘I know.’

His voice sounded a bit odd. Distant and high and wavery. ‘Is something wrong?’ Sharnda asked.

‘No...’

‘What’s up, then?’

‘Nothing...’

‘Then why are you ringing?’

‘Oh, just to say, it’s all okay.’

‘We’ll be over in ten minutes,’ Sharnda said, but Noel had already clicked off. There was something odd in his voice, as if he was miles away.

In a room down Liberty Street a man who was miles away sat gazing down at his shoes. They looked strange, he thought; like someone else’s feet were stuck to the ends of his legs. For years there’d been boots down there, boots to tread the miles in, boots that were always old to start with for they’d be given to him in exchange for a bit of weeding, a couple of days fencing, boots that had been someone else’s until the someone else had no use for them, and gave them to that chap without a name. These black shoes, though, were new. Came from the social-worker girl, up the hospital, shiny black city shoes with cardboard soles. They looked more like they belonged to someone else than all those boots over the years that really had been someone else’s.

In a room in Liberty Street the man stared down at them. Sitting inside four walls like his mate there in his cage. This was the first time he’d had the shoes on since the day he left hospital. Since the day he’d left the hospital, he hadn’t left his camp.

‘I’ve been a bit crook,’ he’d said to Mrs Maria, when he arrived.

‘Crook?’ She mouthed the strange word on her Greek tongue.

‘Sick,’ said the man. ‘Real no good.’

‘Ah,’ she’d said and crossed herself, then smiled. ‘Is no good to be no good, eh?’ They both grinned at her joke. After which, she’d done his shopping for him, buying him the sausages and spuds and eggs that he cooked up neat like a bushman in the cooking corner of his room.

So since that day he hadn’t been out. Except (he remembered now) for that day early on when he’d brought his mate here in his cage.

‘Scab, scab,’ his mate said now.

‘Not
me
, mate,’ said the man.

‘Traitor, traitor,’ his mate accused him now.

‘Not
me
, mate,’ said the man.

‘Though maybe you’re right, at that,’ the man said at last.

Staring down at the floor at night, a man who was stuck in the past.

Staring out at the ceiling at night, the despot lay in her room. With the blind half up, the blackness hit her, so she tried to pull the blind down but, like that first night, yanked too hard, and it flew right up to the top.

‘
Noh!
’ she called.

But no one came.

So she reached over to her magic pad and started to write to no one.

Writing her interminable letters to no one, no one could read them, so as soon as they were written, she made them disappear.

In her own room, Evie was nervous. She wished she’d never said Yes, she wished she’d never met Sharnda. Why did I have to go big-noting myself and say everyone could come round here? They’d make a real mess, turn the house upside-down, and even if she and Noel managed to get it all cleaned up before Ted and Mum got home, Sammy or Jodie would go and tell them. You could trust Ree to keep her mouth shut, Ree liked secrets for their own sake, but Sammy and Jodie couldn’t help themselves, they were like the dobber’s encyclopedia.

It wasn’t that, though.

It wasn’t really the fear of Ted that made her nervous. Ted can say what he likes. I hate him anyway. Though these last few days, since Tuesday, he’d been being nice to her.

Evie’s hand felt its way to her pocket and found the serviette ring. It had been a comfort to her, this week. Something to hold to, a smooth bright silver shape to hold to in the dark. She’d been meaning to give it back every time she saw Noel, but had always forgotten, somehow. Her finger traced the scroll of the
N
.

In her room, Evie sat shivering. She’d just put on another jumper, but she still felt cold. It wasn’t Ted, and Mum, and the mess that she feared, but some greater mess, she didn’t know, she had a feeling. There are some things you shouldn’t play with.

That feeling all this week, of being somewhere else, alone, waking in the night with a faint smell still in her mind of crusting salt, of salty breeze, of something damp that smelled like bag or rope. One morning, just before dawn, it was the hardness of the bed that woke her, a feeling of grit on her skin. Getting up, turning the light on, she saw that all the blankets had come off, no wonder she was cold; but it was more than that, for all over the bottom sheet was a fine layer of sand, not clean sand but dull gritty stuff, more a fine soil than sand. Sammy must’ve been in the sandpit up the play centre and brought it home in her pockets, and then mucked about on Evie’s bed.

Evie felt the curl of the
N
. Tell him, the feeling told her.

But how tell, whom to tell? All week, the weight of that demand had been pressing on her. But how can I tell him when I don’t know where he is? He’d disappeared, the mystery gunman, that was why he was a mystery, and if the police couldn’t find him, way back then when the trail was fresh, how was she to do it after fifty years? He’s probably dead by now anyway, Evie told herself to avoid even starting to search for him. For searching would start by asking his mother, and even the thought of exposing herself again to the despot’s hatred filled Evie with dread. All this week, it’d grown worse and worse, the feeling of the despot thinking of her. The bell that rang to summon her, that she ignored.

But tell him, the feeling told her. And so sometimes Evie did imagine the finding, and telling him, and his joy, and then…and then…

The phone rang. Sharnda answered. It was Di. She was at the meeting of the CYSS funding committee that was going to decide whether or not to close down the Newtown centre.

‘Hi, it’s me. Look, you’re going to kill me, but I can’t make it. The meeting’s still going, looks like going on all night. No, it seems dreadful. They’re set on closing us down. I’ve got to stay, to keep arguing our case. Yeah, good luck to you too.’

Lying under the bed, Noel had the gun. They’d be here soon. Playing games. There were some things you shouldn’t play with.

He thought of ringing Sharnda again, really saying this time that it was off. Tossed the thought around, and dropped it. He couldn’t, they’d think him weak.

Yesterday he’d gone round there, to CYSS with Evie, and met some of them. Sharnda was okay, and a girl called Di, but Roger was a werewolf. This warm voice, like a werewolf, that made Evie go quiet and listen. There were blokes in the kitchen, eating spinach pie; Noel knew some of them.

‘Well look who it isn’t,’ laughed Matt Dunkley. He was bigger than ever these days; played C grade for Newtown; was reckoned to be real good with girls.

‘Hey, Sookabubba!’ Tasso yelled, just as he used to when Noel was a kid and the despot sent him to Tasso’s father’s deli. ‘Have some spinach pie. Make you big and strong, like Mister Popeye!’ He laughed, as if that was funny.

‘Help you see the girls in the dark,’ leered Billy Greenhouse, Matt’s other off-sider.

‘That’s no use to Noel,’ Matt said heavily. Then he put on a high voice. ‘Is it, Noley-Poley?’

Bang. I could shoot them.

‘I dunno,’ said Billy. ‘He came in with a girl.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Not bad. Pretty good. She’d do me.’

‘Probly his auntie.’ Matt laughed, and bits of wafery pastry flew out of his wide open mouth. ‘Little poof.’

‘Little worm,’ said Tasso.

‘You better watch yourselves. One day the worm’ll turn.’

What an idle threat. Noel walked out.

‘You can be one of the eighteen pickets, Noel,’ Sharnda offered.

‘No thanks,’ said Noel. Evie was off in a corner, with Roger. She was going to hold the sound-thing for him.

‘I thought you’d want to,’ said Sharnda. ‘Well, what are you going to be?’

‘Something,’ Noel said. ‘Nothing.’ Then the words blurted out of their own accord. ‘The Mystery Gunman.’

‘But he wasn’t there,’ Sharnda objected.

‘Well then, I won’t
be
there, will I?’

Evie looked up sharply from the camera. ‘Don’t be stupid, Noel.’ Noel’s just trying to get attention, she thought. Of course he’ll be there, he’s got to be. The thought of doing it without Noel made her feel desperate somehow.

‘
Me
stupid!’ Noel said, looking at Roger, his stupid suntan.

Then Noel left, left Evie to it.

No Mystery Gunman. They’ll see.

Lying under the bed, the Mystery Gunman had the gun now. He’d grown fond of it this last week. At first, it’d made him sick, reminding him of those green eyes gazing desperate into his as
quick
, he ran. With time, though, it’d grown a comfort. He’d lie there, thinking of the safety catch, imagining pulling it back, pulling the trigger, a bullet whistling out, knowing this all for make-believe, for it wouldn’t be loaded, but still all the same never doing it. Sometimes even truly putting the barrel against his head, lining up, A to B, against his head. People think I’m a creep. If I did this, they’d believe me. Playing games, knowing himself as gutless (freezing that night when I had the opportunity) he still got a comfort from the warm feel of brown wood, the long barrel of cold silver. It was something real, to ward off the night.