The Rules of Backyard Cricket (24 page)

It should be Wally throwing 'em down. Brewer's is all about him, the places he stood and worked. I'd take his feigned outrage and obsessiveness over a machine any time.

These were once the rhythms of my days, the pincer formed by my right arm as upper jaw and my left as the lower, the bat held light but firm in its apex. Exhaling steadily,
blowing not puffing
, as the movement is executed. Long years of coaches watching those physics, me watching footage, swinging through that arc again and again. When it hurts, when it doesn't, when it's boring, when it brings me comfort and when it's solely for the entertainment of roaring summer crowds. Through that arc, again.

I'm sweating now, breathing harder. Every ten minutes I scoop the balls and put them back in the hopper.

I know it's all done now.

It's nothing in the end but muscle memory. Synapses and fibres subjected to enough repetition will reproduce the same effect on cue and without conscious intervention. That source code is buried in my body and will persist until the very end. Until they take me out of this boot and shoot me in the head.

But that day in the nets I knew. From that point forward, none of it had any practical function.

Craigo says I've got it all wrong. In the sun-drenched resort pool bar of his mind, retirement is the best thing that could have happened.

We're at a dance party in Byron when he lays it all out for me: the two oldest men in the place, plonked on our arses on the lawn under a giant inflatable Chairman Mao. We exist outside of the communal thrall around us, though Craigo has done his best to medicate us both. He's wearing scallop-leg tennis shorts from the seventies, a polyester shirt with nauseating geometrics all over it, huge mirror sunnies and a terry-towelling headband. He is beyond ridiculous, has entered another realm that might even be cool.

I struggle to hear him over the thudding bass, which only makes me feel older.

‘You can't
afford
to keep playing,' he's insisting. ‘There's all sorts of stuff waiting for you—TV, radio, a book. Shit, I'm surprised it's taken you this long to get to this point.'

He's thinking celebrity appearances for his booze tours, which, if I'm to live to old age, sounds like a terrifying way to spend the next fifty years. He can see me thinking this.

‘You need to be realistic about who you are, mate. You're not Wally. You're not going to be part of the club. Ever. Not a coach, not a selector, not an administrator. And fuck 'em mate, who wants that? You're the people's sportsman, the guy who can hit a ball out of sight and still front up for beers afterwards. You're a naughty boy, and the public love a naughty boy, cos he's the guy living out all the shit they can't get away with. They've got wives and Saturday morning sport and home loans and they look at you and you set 'em free…can you see it mate? You set 'em
free
.'

He pats the dome of his gut.

‘You need to trade on that, my friend. Don't be something you're not.'

The Fall

The top right corner of the gaffer tape is not quite stuck on. A tiny triangle, about four millimetres on each side, pokes free from my cheek where it never quite adhered.

It's teasing me.

My hands want so desperately to take hold of it and pull. The thought of ripping it free, hauling in great heaves of air, even this boot air—it's almost like sex. The relief would be incalculable. Thoughts curled into a tight fist around the problem, the solution comes to me spontaneously.

I press my cheek against the carpet as hard as I can, so hard that the fibres make stinging little impressions in my skin. Once, twice, three times there's no effect. But after a couple more attempts, the corner of tape grips the carpet and tears away from the skin just a little.

I repeat the process and it tears a little further. The triangle of freed tape is now about an inch along each side. I press down again as hard as I can. I want the adhesive to grab the carpet as firmly as possible. Then I pull my face away like a lion ripping flesh from a carcass.

The tape tears this time, tears in a straight line, leaving the little triangle of tape stuck on the carpet.

I want to cry, but I fear if I do the flow of snot will drown me.

On Saturday November 13, 1999, Wally is on tour in India, two Tests into a three-Test series blighted by disharmony and poor performances. Louise is at home in Kew with Hannah, or at least I assume she is.

And I'm at the strippers in King Street with Craigo.

He calls me quite unexpectedly during the afternoon. As though he knows I'm cut adrift these days, especially these Saturdays. That's always been his talent, the ability to appear from nowhere with a straightforward solution for some absence or hankering in your life. Craigo, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

So he turns up in a gleaming coupe—I've given up trying to identify them—laughing and wanting hugs. His new sunglasses make him look like John Goodman, simultaneously menacing and comical. His things in the centre console, a random sampling of the Big Guy's world—CDs from American west coast stadium rockers, paperclips, a Zippo, more sunglasses, mints, a roll of black roadie's tape, business cards from one-bogan computer businesses, radio stations and nightclubs. Pens. Nail clippers. Panadeine.

He sees me rummaging as we roll towards the city, gives me a slightly paternal frown. I tweak the stereo until it gives us Bryan Adams and he's happy again.

When we reach the club, I watch with amusement as Craigo passes up two perfect parking spots directly in front. He hovers in the left lane next to the vacant spots, looking up, looking down, then revs away muttering, ‘Nah.' He passes up another space, a free one since a construction crew have removed the meter, and his anxiety mounts.
Eventually he parks a block away.

Now I know what you're up to in these moments, old friend. Context is everything.

He checks his watch once he's heaved himself from the driver's seat and feeds coins into the meter. The machine spits out a printed receipt which he carefully places near the air vent on the driver's corner of the dashboard. The robust happiness resurfaces as he waddles beside me down the empty street, scorched dry by the long summer.

He's greeted at the door with more hugs, copious backslapping. He gives his bomber jacket (
Matson Rebuilds
) to the girl behind the reception desk. The car keys in the pocket jangle loudly as he drops the jacket on the counter. The only things he keeps with him are his wallet and phone.

I grab the drinks and a table side-stage, nod to a couple of barflies who've recognised me. Craigo is no sooner seated and two gulps into his scotch than he's up again and wandering around the room, greeting people. The girls are on, the music is thumping and he's still at it. It's over the top, even for him, and more than a little awkward for me, sitting there sipping away at a beer on my own.

After an hour of this—me watching the girls, Craigo entertaining the room—he finally settles and dumps his phone on the table between our drinks.

‘Anything wrong?' I holler over the music.

‘No mate, great!' he mouths.

The young thing, stage name Desiree, is winding herself around a pole, eyes cold.

I'm bored. Despite myself, I'm bored.

Craig's looking at his watch.

The phone rings.

I can still see his face, from the cheery
Ellow?
through the long
silence that follows. I see that face rearranging itself into something darker.

‘When?'

His eyes dart to me. ‘Why don't they know?'

He rises in his seat. ‘Where's Louise?'

A name that doesn't belong in this air. Craig's standing now, reaching out a hand almost unconsciously in my direction. It hovers over the table; a finger curling, beckoning me, though his gaze is still directed to some point halfway between him and the dancer. Time is slowing down.

He's taken me by the arm to pull me up and we're running between the tables. People are staring. Craig brushes a bouncer aside, sweeps a hand past the front desk to collect the jacket, keys jangling again as he hits it running. The phone's still pressed to his ear and he's barking short responses.

‘No.'

‘Coming now.'

‘Yep.'

‘Yep.'

He cuts the call as we're running along the footpath, pockets the phone and looks at me. His breath is short.

‘Hannah's missing.'

‘What?'

‘Missing. Gone.'

His jacket's flapping all over the place.

‘When?'

‘An hour ago. Someone got into the house. Hit Louise. Took off with Hannah.'

He's looking sidelong at me, gasping for air, rumbling and lurching all over the place. I can't compose a question to ask him; the shock has robbed me of speech.

We reach the car, throw ourselves in and he reverses out so violently that a passing vehicle has to take evasive action.

‘W-where we going?' I finally stammer.

‘Wally and Louise's.'

‘Who rang you?'

‘Police. They couldn't find you. They're at the house. Louise is—like—she's not hurt but she's a mess.'

By now I'm seeing Hannah's face, the gravity of the situation scrambling my mind and tearing at my heart. How could someone steal a perfect and perfectly blameless child? To what end? Is this the random selection of some predator? Is it something to do with Wally's fame? A mistake! Yes! She just wandered off…and will return tired and sorry in the morning.

‘Has someone told Wally?'

‘They can't find him. I'm sure they're doing everything.'

It's still hot outside and despite the roar of the aircon on full, I lower the window and look at the passing houses. Someone somewhere has her. For reasons that would already be playing out, too terrible to contemplate. The awful possibilities fill everything.

Craig is driving feverishly, punching at the gearstick, swooping past slower vehicles, forcing roars and rubbery squeaks from the car. We both know there's no point in it. Whatever has been done is done, leaving only the dread that chokes the day.

At the Kew house, there's roadblocks on the street. Media and police cars. It's well after sunset now and there are lights on extendable arms pointed at the house, bathing the whole place in a welter of savage white halogen.

We're ushered through the concentric rings of people who are there to secure nothing at all, concerned with an absence, not a
presence. At the door there's a tight cluster of men in suit pants and shirts. We're stopped, quizzed. Craig's taken aside. Eventually they let me through but Craig's made to wait, despite his protests.

I push down the hall past whispering people.

No signed pictures, no framed memorabilia. There's almost no trace that a professional athlete lives here. No sign of cricket beyond a neat row of yellow Wisden spines in a bookcase—Wally's thing for history and rules. It bespeaks his bitter distaste for sentiment, his nagging aspiration for social advancement.

Louise is sitting at the kitchen table, hair backlit by a table lamp. Traces of Hannah's life are everywhere: her school photos on the fridge, a drink bottle with her name written near the neck. Her handwriting. And outside the back door, near the dog's water bowl, her runners placed neatly side by side, waiting.

Louise is upright, elbows on table and chin on fists. She's been crying but she isn't now. There's a welt over her left eye, extending diagonally back into her hair. In the centre of it a dressing's been affixed, and there's a small spot of blood in the centre of that. Her left eyebrow is swollen and there's blood in the eye, giving her a strangely combative look.

Her eyes—the red one and the white one—follow me. I can't imagine what physical contact is appropriate—a hand on the shoulder? A hug? Her demeanour does not invite touch. So I sit there, half looking at her, half trying not to.