The Point (38 page)

Can I make you a cup of tea, asked the policewoman.

Oscar hadn’t bought computer gear with his birthday money, he’d bought heroin. He and Hamish and Raoul had gone back to Hamish’s house. Raoul had said he didn’t want any and gone home. Chad had come back and found Oscar in the bathroom, not breathing, and Hamish in the lounge room, unconscious. Hamish was still in a coma, it wasn’t known if he’d wake or what damage was done.

I think I should make some tea, said the policewoman. Laurel was sitting stiff and still, not crying, asking slow questions in a soft flat voice.

Was it an overdose? she said. Oh, she said, you told me. I mean … she shook her head.

Deliberate, do you mean.

She shook her head again.

It has all the marks of a suicide pact.

Suicide? You think suicide?

That’s a question we should ask you, said the policeman.

Today … yesterday … was his birthday. He was twenty-one.

I’m sorry.

I do not think he would have killed himself, said Laurel. He had everything to live for.

I wanted to give him a watch, said Laurel. Or even a silver paperknife. And he bought himself heroin. But not for death. I do not believe it was for death.

She remembers Dr Glancy.
A dazzling boy.

Is there somewhere you can go, asked the policeman. A friend who can come and stay?

I’m quite all right, said Laurel. I am used to being on my own.

I should ask, said the policeman, was he in the habit of taking drugs?

I don’t think so, said Laurel. She knew Oscar had a marijuana plant, just one, in a pot in the garden. And he had taken things in the past, but she felt sure he didn’t now. I’m sure he didn’t do heroin, she said.

The parents are always the last to know, said the policewoman as they walked down the drive.

They believe what they want to believe, said the policeman.

The kid that found them, Chad Shenstone, that ghastly cute blond kid, isn’t he doing community service? Those fuckwits stealing canisters of nitrous oxide?

Yeah? Is that the mob of them that hang out round the lake, with the baseball bat, bashing people?

Allegedly. There’s a daddy who always gets them off.

Not this time. Nobody will talk young Oscar out of this.

I think it’s the kid brothers who are into bashing. Not Oscar and his friends. Nitrousing out, yeah, but not bashing. I don’t think.

Raoul had gone home, but then come back to Hamish’s place and found Chad and the police trying to find Chad’s parents, and Oscar and Hamish already taken away in ambulances. The police questioned Raoul, who at first was incoherent with grief. What about Hamish, he kept asking, is he going to be all right? Who knows, they said. Maybe you should say some prayers. Yes, I will, said Raoul, and they looked at one another.

Was it a suicide pact, asked the policewoman.

No, of course not. They wouldn’t have done that.

Why not?

They loved life. They lived it. Oscar always said he would suck life like an orange, and when it was dry there would always be another one.

Pity there wasn’t.

Raoul wept. The tears ran down his cheeks, and dropped on to the front of his shirt which was made of some stiffish glossy material. The tears didn’t soak in but slid down it like raindrops on glass. If you’d known them, you’d know … the heroin was an adventure, it was an experience, it was a portal that was going to open up into some new amazing place. It was special. Oscar said it was his birthday and this was a key to a door, he was going to unlock it and go in.

Why didn’t you go too?

I should’ve done. Why didn’t I. I just … wimped out, I suppose. He bent his head and his floppy black hair fell over his face. Well, I promised my mother I wouldn’t.

Was Oscar in the habit of using heroin, unlocking this door?

No, said Raoul. I’m telling you, it was this particular occasion. It was a rite of passage, he said. They were explorers. Can’t you understand? Raoul was frantic. A voyage of discovery! He wasn’t afraid of getting addicted.

Well, he was right there.

Raoul wept still, the tears pearling on the front of his shirt.

And right about the door opening, too, you’d have to say. And him going right through it to the next life. Just a pity it slammed shut behind him. Wonder what he thinks of it. If of course there is a next life. He’ll know about that now. Or not.

You shouldn’t talk about him like that. Oscar was a genius. He and Hamish, they were philosophers.

Do you think we like finding you stupid kids dead, said the policeman.

It became clear that Raoul and Laurel were right. Oscar would have had no intention of killing himself. The heroin had been particularly pure. The most dangerous kind; had it been even crudely or badly cut he’d have had more chance of surviving. There are no quality controls with heroin, the policewoman said. The whole thing is so approximate, said the doctor who did the postmortem. If only they knew. What kills one simply makes another high, or sends him into a coma and his brain is never the same again.

Which is what happened to Hamish. He woke up, but his memory was ruined, and he was not the sharp bright boy he had been.

Gwyneth said to Clovis, Is it difficult to go to a funeral?

Well, I suppose it depends on how sorrowful you feel about the deceased.

No, I mean, can anybody go. Do you have to do anything special?

I thought you’d been to your stepfather’s.

I was supposed to. I ran away, remember.

It’s just like church. The Way the Truth and the Light lantern.

That was Sunday School. I didn’t go much. Wayne, he wasn’t the stepfather before Daryl, the one before that, he thought we should go. He said he was an atheist but we should go to Sunday School so we would know about God and could have a choice. Be atheists or God-botherers or just sit on the fence.

I see.

Mind you, I reckon it was just so he could have it off with my mum on Sunday mornings with us kids out of the way.

And did you make a choice?

Nah. Never went long enough, probably. I remember Jesus with the lantern though, and the words under it, and I thought he had a lovely face, kind, but then I thought if you had him for a stepfather he’d probably just bash you up like all the others. His nice face would fall to pieces and he’d hit you.

Did they all bash you up?

Oh, yeah. You’re always getting up their nostrils for some reason or other. You could try not being there but that got on their wick too. No-win situation all round. Anyway, this funeral …

Whose?

This guy Oscar, his mum works at the restaurant. He died.

Heroin. Too pure, they reckon. Not a good look.

You knew him?

I saw him round.

Not …

Not one of that gang, no way.

Not one of the baseball bat guys?

Well, no, not really. He hangs round with the big brother of one. No, they aren’t into violence. They just nitrous out and get on those computer chat rooms, pretty boring, you’re always typing. They call themselves philosophers.

Good grief. Clovis hasn’t imagined Gwyneth having friends, getting round with people her own age. He’s been aware of her not being about quite often, but thought that was owing to moods and those probably to do with chemicals and their imbalances and presences or absences. He looks at her, thinks of her having this secret life he doesn’t know about. But then everybody has a secret life, he decides, that’s what’s wrong with being in gaol, or certain marriages, no secret life. But even in gaol you can have a secret life in your mind.

He says, Do you want me to come to the funeral with you?

If you like, says Gwyneth, and he knows she would like him to.

Lucky I’ve got my suit, he says.

It’s a bit crumpled, though he folded it neatly inside a plastic bag and stashed it in the place he keeps his few belongings, behind a padlocked door that leads under one of the library’s terraces. The door appears to be padlocked but he has worked away at the eye of the bolt so that it detaches. Nobody else ever seems to use it.

And my silver dress, says Gwyneth.

Where will it be?

Oh. I dunno.

And when, says Clovis.

Laurel had intended to keep on going to work. What else was there to do? She was not ill, or incapacitated, there was nothing in particular to do, Oscar had very little life to bring to a close, the funeral would be taken care of by the firm she chose out of the yellow pages for no reason at all, work was somewhere she might as well go. But Flora took one look at her and sent her home, and her sister arrived from Wagga and kept her there. Flora gave Joe the job, just for the days Laurel was away. The waiters were prepared to be miffed by this, but Flora took them aside and said they had skills she couldn’t afford to lose, she needed them doing their own jobs, especially Martin, who might have expected to replace Laurel; she told him his waiting was irreplaceable. This was probably true, and it saved their faces. She was interested to observe Joe in the front-of-house role. He was grave and charming, rather formal and perhaps too careful, but then you couldn’t expect him suddenly to have Laurel’s ease of manner. He surprised people because he looked such a child, but that was amusing. Being greeted by him made a good start to the meal. He remembered the right things, like where people’s bookings were. For the week that Laurel was away Flora paid him not quite the same salary, but nearly.

You are giving him ideas above his station, said Jerome.

Oh you are so cruel. He can’t stay a dishwasher forever.

Joe said, shyly, to Flora: You see, I think I am my grandfather’s grandson.

The newspapers made good stories out of Oscar’s death. There were pictures of him, he was photogenic as well as beautiful, and accounts of his past exploits, the old tales of closing down the taxation office for several days were run through again, though they did say he had never been charged and was a reformed character. But they did play with the titillation of so handsome, so bad, so clever, so naughty. They used headlines like
Dangerous Glamour
of IT Underworld
. They made much of his genius, and gave sentimental accounts of the brilliant young man keen to have a career in computing but betrayed by his hacker past. He may be totally reformed, said a consultant from FingertipIT, but would you take the risk? Once a computer vandal always a computer vandal, that’s what I’d be afraid of. A man from an anti-virus company said, I’d have liked to give him a job but I couldn’t afford to, you have to be squeaky clean in this business, how would I know he had the antivirus mentality? A teacher from his old school said the creation of viruses was like a virus itself, like HIV, once you got the bug you were infected, you never really got cured. His friend Raoul said yes of course he kept on making viruses, just because he could, it was a great exercise, but no he didn’t release any of them, they were private.

Everybody agreed it was a tragedy, the hacking and the death.

A professor of computing wrote to the newspapers complaining of the lionising of crackers and hackers. He said that computer viruses were digital bombs and just as dangerous as plastic ones. That they were to legitimate computer programming what pipe bombs were to real science. At best, he said, such people are destructive hooligans, at worst dangerous terrorists, and the fact that they are very clever only increases their culpability.

Laurel’s sister Jane from Wagga censored the newspapers before she let Laurel see them. The angry professor’s letter she destroyed and also the interviews with men who wouldn’t consider giving him a job ever. But she showed her the ones praising his genius and regretting the tragedy of his early death. She stuck them in a scrapbook so Laurel would always have them.

35

Jerome

When Oscar died of the heroin overdose I think Laurel was in an odd way relieved, because the worst had happened, she didn’t have to worry any more, fearing it, avoiding it, escaping it, trying to send its evil chance somewhere else. She just had to bear it.

Bear it, I say, as though that were easy, yet it is in a way compared with preventing. I remembered him that last night, coming into the restaurant, his birthday, the way I saw him as radiant.

Oscar the observed. I realised I didn’t ever speak to him, I just observed him. Considered him. Admired him. Spoke to his mother about him. Oscar, the dazzling boy to be contemplated. With rage sometimes. Oscar, the image of Icarus, the overweening son, the boy who will fly too close to the sun, and no warning will prevent him. And once that is accomplished, the exhausted relief: I can warn him no more. I remembered the way his mother smiled at him, with delight, indeed, but with apprehension too. With fear.

Now, this day of his funeral, she was full of grief, no doubt of that. Her eyes were huge with it, and her mouth trembled. But the apprehension had gone, she was calm. She knew he had made that fiery plunge into the quenching sea. He was beyond her saving, now she had only herself to worry about, and I saw in her elegant responses to the rather jostling comfort of friends that she would manage that. I found this calm more heartbreaking than rage.