The Piper's Son (10 page)

Georgie’s not home when he gets there, so he sits in the backyard with his guitar and alternates between playing it and taking out his phone and scrolling down to the dialed number beginning with the 44 prefix. He itches to ring it. Wants to hear the voice.

Georgie pokes her head outside later.

“It’s freezing out here, Tom.”

He nods and keeps on strumming, and she sits down on the banana chair beside him. He has a strange need to be held. A hug would be great. He’d even go back to the flat and grovel to Sarah. Not just for the sex, but to lie beside someone. Francesca had always been annoyingly tactile when talking and Justine was a hand holder and Siobhan Sullivan was draped over him at all times. And Tara. Especially that night in her parents’ house when she stood in front of him and let him wrap her up in his arms.

“On the night I got my stitches,” he tells Georgie, “I rang . . . Joe’s number.”

He knows what’s going to happen. She’ll ring his mother or arrange for a counselor or something drastic like that.

She keeps her eyes on him. He doesn’t know what can of worms he’s opened up with this one, but she’s silent for a while.

“I write him letters,” she says calmly.

“What?”

She nods. “I write him letters.”

“Where do you send them?”

“To his e-mail address.”

“What do you write about?”

She shrugs. “I went for an ultrasound today and I’ve got photos, so I’ll probably write to him about how it felt.”

“So you don’t think I’m crazy?”

“You were concussed, Tom. By the sounds of things, you hadn’t slept for three nights, and don’t pretend that you were just smoking dope, because I know you took speed and God knows what else. Believe me, my nephew doesn’t turn up on my doorstep with ten stitches in his head without me going to that hospital to find out what happened.”

He nods, almost to himself.

“So I don’t think there was anything strange about you ringing him or thinking that you could talk to him.”

“Who’s still paying for the account? His voice is still there.
‘Joe here. You know the drill. Leave a message.’
Remember, he used that East End accent just to make us laugh.”

He sees it on her face, even in this half-light. Of course Georgie knows the message is still there. How many times has she rung Joe’s number to listen to it over the past two years?

“Does it help?” he asks. “The e-mailing.”

She nods. “A tiny bit. It’s strange. You’re writing a letter to someone who’s never going to read it, so it kind of frees you up a bit.”

“Why not just write in a journal?”

She shakes her head. “I need an audience. Someone who knows me well. Someone I’m used to talking to, who I don’t have to set up foundations with.”

“Have you told . . . written to him about the baby?”

She nods.

“Do you want to see a photo of it?” she asks.

“The baby? It’s not one of those blobs that you pretend has features and form, is it?” he asks.

She laughs again, but he can see on her face that she has a fragile hold on her emotions.

“Play it something.”

“What do you want me to play?” he says with a sigh, not really in the mood but not wanting to say no to her at the moment.

“Something that makes me feel.”

He plays a Lyle Lovett song because he knows she’s seen him in concert with his parents. It’s a song about a boat and pony on the ocean, the only Lyle Lovett he ever bothered to learn. Ever since he was fifteen, he had been determined not to be too influenced by his parents’ taste in anything, although he had a secret obsession with the bands Devo and Big Audio Dynamite because of them, and he still listens to the Cure.

Sam arrives, dressed from work. He’s holding fish and chips, and a beer.

“Come and have something to eat,” he says quietly to Georgie. Tom notices that he does that a lot. Speaks quietly. It’s almost as if Sam believes that if he raises his voice, she’ll notice that he’s around and then she’ll remember the past and tell him to get lost. So these days, Sam speaks quietly. Tom feels awkward observing them. Although they handle silence between them well, it becomes awkward when another person is put into the equation.

“She went for an ultrasound,” Tom explains, “and is trying to show me a photo of the alien.”

Wrong thing to say. Sam looks cut. Georgie looks sad.

“You didn’t mention you had an appointment,” Sam says. “I would have come.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Is it okay?” he asks.

“Perfect.”

Somehow Sam doesn’t dare ask for the photo.

“Pass the snapshot over,” Tom says.

Georgie takes it out of her book and hands it to Sam, who stares at it and then hands it to Tom.

“Can you see its little nose and eyes and legs?” she asks.

“Wow. Yeah. That’s . . . that’s amazing, Georgie,” Tom lies.

She looks relieved and swings her legs over the chair. “I’ll get the plates,” she says. He gets a sense that she’s going inside to cry.

When she’s gone, Tom dares to look at Sam and then the ultrasound photo again. “You’ve fathered the elephant man. Someone has to tell her.”

Sam is laughing as he reaches out for the photo to get another look, this time reveling in the freedom of Georgie not being around.

“Could be the elephant woman,” he murmurs, staring at it.

“Poppy, at the pharmacy, reckons it’s a boy, but Georgie says she feels in her heart that it’s a girl.”

“Why? What did she say?”

“I switched off after she mentioned breast pads and nipple creams.”

Georgie comes out with the plates and hands them to Sam, who begins to divvy up the food. “You can have the photo,” she says, seeing it in Sam’s hand. “I’ve got a few. You too, Tom.”

He asks Sam about his work. Not because he’s interested, but because he won’t be able to sit alongside them without talk. He’s scared that if no one speaks, the sadness in the air will suffocate them. Sam works with the Industrial Relations Commission and has that same manic look in his eyes as Tom’s father did when he used to get hot and bothered about a campaign. The fish and chips are good, and in a way, so is the conversation. Sam and Georgie even have a mini argument about bully union leaders and lazy workers at one of the major car manufacturers, and for a moment there’s nothing more normal than Sam telling Georgie she doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. Not so quiet.

“If productivity is down, Sam, someone’s obviously not doing their job,” she says. “All I’m saying is that there are two sides to the story. Dom would agree.”

“Not in this case, Georgie!” Sam says.

“Would your father agree?” she asks Tom. Tom doesn’t want to have an opinion, although he’s certain that there’s no way that his father would be critical of a trade union.

“Dominic would agree with Sam,” he says, not so much reluctant to side with Sam, but more so not to talk about his father.

Georgie leans forward in her chair to stare at Tom in a you-have-betrayed-blood-kin-beyond-comprehension stare.

“Don’t involve me in your arguments and then look at me like that when I don’t side with you,” he says, taking a drag of his cigarette.

“And stop smoking around me because that passive smoke is traveling this way and gagging my unborn child,” she says back.

“For fuck’s sake,” Tom mutters, getting up and taking his beer and guitar with him.

Later, lying in bed, he thinks of the words that have come to haunt him this past week.
Talk to me, Thomas.
They were spoken in a sleepy voice. He had awoken her, wherever she was in Timor. Same, Francesca said. Was she lying beside the peacekeeper?
Just talk.
He had heard the same tone in her voice on one of those nights they had slept in each other’s arms. The best week he could remember. It was after the never-ending eye contact and hand holding and three-hour nightly phone conversations where they couldn’t stop talking. Everything about Tara Finke triggered a reaction inside him. Like that time she walked in with the foil colors in her hair and he was rehearsing with the girls and he started strumming the guitar, crooning, “Danke Schoen,” because he knew she liked it from watching
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
so many times with him, and then she was smiling and laughing, and yes, Uncle Joe, it was time to STD.

“Plans?” she had asked, but she was talking to Francesca and Justine because whenever things flared up between them, Tara did a whole lot of avoiding.

“Will and I are going to Sallo’s party down at Cockle Bay, so come with us,” Francesca said.

“She’s not dressed for it,” Tom had pointed out. Tara was wearing a skirt over jeans and some high-neck black skivvy that flattened her even more than she was, but it wasn’t nightclub stuff and he was cheering in silence.

“Come to my gig,” Justine said, locking the case of her accordion. “It’s just a bit of a jam session with some of the guys at the Con.”

“Will I be the only one who’s not a musical genius?” Tara asked.

“Probably,” Tom answered for Justine. “And it’ll make you feel inferior and then depressed, and then you’ll want to slit your wrists and you don’t want to be caught dead wearing a skirt over jeans. I mean, what is that look, Finke? Really? On the other hand, I’m cleaning my stuff out of Georgie’s attic ’cause Joe’s coming home, so you may as well come with me.”

He said it with a shrug, as though he was pretty blasé.

“Oh, the choices,” she sighed, unraveling herself from her satchel and putting it down on the floor. “I’ve got to go to the loo.”

He had watched her walk away, and the skirt rode up her jeans and sat where he wanted it to sit. Although there was no flesh showing, his body had already kick-started into something completely out of his control. He felt Justine and Francesca come up beside him and he put an arm around both of them, humming “Danke Schoen” until he realized they weren’t just standing around waiting. They were staring up at him.

He looked from one to the other. “What?” he asked, on the defensive.
“What?”

“What are you doing?” Francesca asked.

“Thomas?” This came from Justine, who usually protected him from the wrath of the other girls.

His hands fell to his side.

“What did I do now?”

“Do you want us to fill you in on something, Tom?” Francesca, Queen of Rhetorical Questions, asked, because she was going to fill him in whether he wanted to be filled in or not. “You know how Siobhan gave Tara a mobile phone for her birthday? Well, we set it up for her so that every time one of us rings, a particular tune comes on. Have you heard of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Tom? Because when you ring her, the tune to ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around’ comes on.”

Now he was really pissed off.
“Back,”
he had said, looking at Justine.
“Off,”
he said to Francesca.

“I’m texting Siobhan.”

He looked at them both with disbelief. “As if I’m scared of Siobhan.”

Francesca got out her phone, and in desperation he had grabbed it from her.

“Please, Frankie. I’m begging. Don’t text Siobhan.”

Tara walked back into the hall and Francesca managed to pry her phone out of his fingers by giving him one of those pinches where she got a grip on the hair on his arm and twisted.

He grabbed his guitar and jumped off the stage, then picked up Tara’s satchel and steered her toward the door.

“I haven’t said good-bye to them,” she said, trying to get her satchel from him. He slung it over his neck.

“Tara says bye,” he had called over his shoulder.

And that began the week when advice came flying from Joe across the seas on how not to stuff things up.

Tom needs the guru to provide him with the words to make things right now. But he knows he’ll never hear them again and he stumbles to the toilet, spewing out the ache of loneliness churning itself inside of him.

They go to Lucia and Abe’s for a barbecue celebrating Abe’s forty-second birthday. A small gathering in the Charbel household means at least forty people were about to converge on them. Georgie is designated the task of straightening her goddaughter’s hair and allows Bella to straighten hers haphazardly in return.

When the guys walk into the kitchen to get the meat for the barbecue and Bernadette arrives with the cake, Georgie knows this is her last chance before she loses her nerve.

“I’d like to make an announcement before everyone else arrives,” she says. For a moment there’s silence.

“What’s with the hair?” Jonesy asks.

“Jonesy,” Lucia says, shushing him.

For a second, Georgie’s eyes meet Sam’s and there’s a flicker around his mouth and a softness in his eyes.

“I’m having a baby,” she says firmly.

There’s a moment’s silence.

“Oh. My. God!” Lucia says, feigning surprise. “Who would have guessed.”

Abe laughs and he reaches over to hug Georgie.

“I’m twenty-two weeks and it’s due in November,” she says, holding on to Abe because she wants desperately to hold on to someone and Abe’s the closest thing she has to her brother.

She looks at Sam. “Close your ears if you don’t want to know what I suspect to be the sex of your child,” she says, and he blocks his ears.