Came Back to Show You I Could Fly Page 2

  He had none of his own things with him, apart from a few changes of clothing. Some of his stuff was with his father in the caravan park and the rest was packed away in storage boxes while his mother was making arrangements to move from the flat. Starting from next month she had a new job as a live-in housekeeper, with accommodation provided for the two of them—herself and Seymour. It was a temporary job, and after that they’d have to wait and see what turned up. Everything was always temporary, always in a state of flux. He supposed dully that one day the tiresome see-saw of his life would stabilise, and he’d know for certain just where he was supposed to live, and with whom. Meanwhile he’d been parked with crabby old Thelma, and had to make the best of it. As she’d said, she wasn’t even a proper relation, just someone who’d once formed a casual and tenuous acquaintance with his mother through some church group. His mother, he realised with shame, was adept at imposing upon people and making them feel sorry for her. In reality, she didn’t need that sort of help from anyone. It was all a pose, the act she put on. Behind her disguise of pastel-framed glasses, floral dresses and thin martyred face, she was a born survivor, as tough as any street fighter.

  The little back room became even more stifling as the sun sizzled across the concrete path. It was pointless trying to open the window for a breath of fresh air. There was no movement of air, nothing stirring at all out in the garden. He was supposed to draw the curtains when the sun reached the back of the house, but that made his pokey room feel even worse, like being locked up in a packing crate. Not ‘his’ room, exactly, Thelma had never called it that. She called it the ‘guest room’, though Seymour certainly didn’t feel like a guest. People were supposed to be deferential to guests and make them feel welcome. Thelma had bestowed no such courtesy on him. She’d made it clear that his presence was inconvenient, even though he hadn’t wanted to come and was bewildered by the whole arrangement. All he knew was that although he was supposed to spend three more weeks of the Christmas holidays with his dad, his mother had charged dramatically up to the caravan park and brought him home. Maybe she had a point—his father had made a boozy telephone call threatening to take Seymour away interstate for good. Seymour himself hadn’t been particularly worried. His dad had made the same threat once or twice in the past, but as he rarely had the funds to travel even to the next town to find work, an interstate trip held as much likelihood as a visit to the moon. His mother, however, thrived on drama, no matter how shallow.

  He glanced at his new watch, which his dad, coming home tipsily one night to the caravan park, had given him in a fit of maudlin remorse. Seymour hadn’t wanted such a gift, but hadn’t known a compassionate way to refuse it, either. And it wasn’t really a gift, but more of a bribe for his permanent company.

  It was only ten-thirty. Groaning with boredom and despair, he went up the hall and had another look through the coloured panels in the front door. All the houses in Victoria Road were exactly the same as Thelma’s—single-fronted red brick, each with a miserly sliver of front garden and one window set beside the door. Those windows looked like a gallery of eyes watching him, saying, ‘We see you, Seymour Kerley! Don’t you dare step outside while Thelma’s at work. She told you to stay inside, and we’re here to make certain you do!’ The whole street of one-eyed, spying houses was intimidating. Even their polished brass doorknobs looked like medals awarded for vigilance.

  Seymour went back down the hall and out into the garden. His shirt clung damply to his armpits and his clay-coloured hair lay in plastered wisps across his forehead. He almost wished himself back in the caravan park, but that had been just as oppressive. His father, caught in a cycle of occasionally finding work, then being sacked for inefficiency, was not cheerful company. No place Seymour had ever lived in had been particularly pleasant as far as he could remember. He inspected the garden, hoping to relieve the tedium with some job that needed doing, but nothing was out of place, no hose to be coiled, not one weed growing amongst the sad hydrangeas.

  He examined the gate, through which no one could possibly pass. It was as though Thelma believed that burglars prowled continually along the alleyway, just waiting for the chance to creep in and steal her tacky old TV set. The stiff, unused bolts couldn’t even be moved in their brackets. He put his eye to the gap above the padlock, but could see only a stretch of bluestone flags with a central guttering, and the shabby corrugated iron fences of the back yards opposite. He placed one foot on the crossbar and scrambled up—a small, skinny, uncoordinated boy made timid by a lifetime of constant nagging. Eleven years of lectures clattered away in his mind now, as though someone had pressed a control button: ‘Don’t climb on things, Seymour, you’ll rip your good shirt. Be careful, don’t go near strange dogs, you never know if they’ll bite. Did you remember to take your anti-histamine tablets? Don’t do this, don’t do that…’

  The times in between, of staying with his dad, were in their own way just as restrictive. Uncertain, fluctuating moods had to be gauged and conversation trimmed accordingly, or you were likely to end up getting yelled at or sometimes hit. The blows, he knew, were never intended, but just rose from his father’s chaotic despair. It wasn’t just the job situation, either, Seymour reflected. Underneath all the blustering, his dad was scared stiff. He’d been labelled a no-hoper for so long, and that was his mother’s doing, with her sharp accusing tongue. You didn’t want someone bearing constant witness to your failure. Seymour could understand why a person would choose to drift and live apart. He could also understand why his dad so perversely clung to some remnant of family life—he was scared stiff of the uncertain future and loneliness. And that remnant happened to be Seymour himself. It was sad and depressing and he didn’t know how he could handle things. Living with either of them, it was best to keep very quiet and not obtrude at all and, under the circumstances, he hadn’t developed much expertise in climbing barriers or scaling any heights.

  The forbidden alley looked sinister enough, thick with shadow, bordered by tall graffiti-scribbled fences. His knuckles ached from supporting himself at precarious chin height, so he drew his other foot up to the crossbar and stood at waist level, shutting his eyes quickly. His mother suffered from vertigo and kept her eyes shut even on escalators. She’d passed that phobia on to Seymour, or at least he’d always thought she had, but now to his surprise he discovered that this wasn’t the case. He didn’t feel giddiness when he opened his eyes and looked down from such a height, just relief as coolness from the flagstones wafted damply up into his face. The ground didn’t swirl about below him; he didn’t lose his balance and splatter his brains gorily all over the paving below.

  He felt rather pleased with himself, and even defiant—a rare sensation for him. He glanced back over his shoulder at Thelma’s unbearably smug little house, then craned forward to see what was at either end of the alleyway. There were two major roads, busy with passing traffic. He manoeuvred one leg right over the top of the gate, sat on the frame for a moment to gather his courage, then dropped down on to the flagstones. It was like escaping from a cage.

  Chapter 2

  Seymour headed towards the main road at his left, keeping in the exact centre of the alleyway, fearful of many things. Any of the gates in the tall ribbed fencing on either side, for instance, could be flung open to disgorge sudden terrors—large dogs who wouldn’t be calmed by the words of a peaceful stranger just passing through, or neighbours of Thelma (even though it was unlikely because she kept so much to herself) who might know that he wasn’t supposed to leave the house in her absence. Worst of all, there could be kids his own age—brash, tough kids who would give him a hard time, as they always did, because he was fair game. He knew very well that he was fair game, but hadn’t yet managed to figure out any defence mechanisms—only chameleon ones, which didn’t always work. Breathing anxiously through his mouth, he kept his eyes fastened on the whirl of colour and movement at the left end of the alley and hurried towards it as fast as he could.

  T
he main road down there was called Upton Street and its shops faced each other across a tram route. Seymour had no money, but he walked along the nearest side carefully inspecting each shop in turn, as though he could buy anything he chose and had all day to think about it. There was a fruit shop, its counters piled high with golden oranges and soft dark grapes. Seymour looked at them with longing, swallowed hard and passed on. Next to it was a second-hand shop where he hesitated and then went in, because there were plenty of people in there and you could hide yourself easily enough in crowds. In a corner he found an old barber-shop chair, and added it to the private list of desirable things he’d one day have in his own room, if the situation of never quite knowing just where he’d be living ever resolved itself. He was always discovering things for that idealised room of his—cheerful bedspreads, desks with maps painted on them, carved teak chests. There was a chest in this particular shop, an old battered metal one with a rusty clasp. He knelt and tried to open the lid, visualising the whole thing enamelled in bright gloss with new brass hinges…

  ‘Don’t fiddle around with the lock, dear, unless you’re planning to buy that trunk,’ someone said, and although he hadn’t really been doing anything, he shot up, red-faced, and retreated to the door, stumbling over his feet. Anyone who spoke to him with authority tended to have that effect. He scooted over the Victoria Road intersection, then calmed down enough to stop and look into a sports-shop window at chrome and gleaming new leather. He pressed his palms sadly against the glass with pointless longing. How he’d love a new bike, not like that old battered second-hand thing which had been lost on one of their moves.

  One time, before his mother had become so vindictive and bitter about such visits, he’d been staying with his father and came by a job cleaning out a butcher shop after school. He’d saved twenty-five dollars in a little tin box under his mattress. The flat box with embossed bells on the lid was a treasure trove, found on a rubbish dump. The butcher’s wife had told him that tins like that were used to send gift slices of wedding cake to guests who couldn’t attend. So the tin with its pattern of bells had seemed fortunate, a symbol of perhaps managing to save enough money to buy a new bicycle. It hadn’t fulfilled its promise, though. His dad had found the hidden money and spent it down at the pub.

  After the sports shop there was a small wooden building with ‘Upton Street Gospel Hall—I Am The Word’ etched in flowery writing across a frosted glass window, and next to that a narrow park with palm trees and a sprinkler system maintaining a lawn. Seymour avoided the park—alarming, loud-voiced kids always hung around parks—and came to five adjoining shops under one long awning that made them look like a sliced log cake. They sold small multiple items—health food, baby clothes, wool, embroidery cottons. His mother was besotted with embroidery: ‘fancywork’ she called it—fussy little mats scattered with rosebuds and garlands. He had a fleeting, melancholy vision of his mum stitching away at her fancywork in the evenings. Heard her voice, carping monotonously about the troublesome life she’d had to lead ever since she’d become entangled with his father, the sacrifices she’d made. How she could barely afford that last dental bill, how his father never put himself out to get a proper job or hang on to one when he did, the promised maintenance payments that never arrived. Why, she could have married anyone! Given her time all over again, by now she could have a nice house and not have to work. Yes, she knew it was an old-fashioned viewpoint these days, but in her opinion women were happiest at full-time home-making. Only here she was in this miserable situation not of her own making, married to a no-good wastrel…

  Seymour went very quickly past that particular shop window and came to a long stretch of ugly jerry-built flats riddled with little metal balconies. No one in their right mind would sit on balconies like that, he thought, even if there’d been room for a chair. Not unless they wanted to be asphyxiated by car fumes and deafened by traffic.

  He crossed the street at the lights and began working his way back along the shops on the other side. There was a place where leadlight doors and windows were made, and a jovial man looked up and waved a soldering iron but Seymour moved on, too shy to wave back. An antique shop where a lady seated at a carved desk just inside the door gave him a hard, appraising stare when he peered in. A supermarket with howling toddlers and frazzled young mothers. An extension of the park which ran on this side also, cut in two by the busy main road.

  The grass, dappled by leaf shadows, gave an irresistible illusion of coolness. He plucked at his long-sleeved shirt, which was made of cheap synthetic material. Thelma had bought it for him as he’d come to her house with so little clothing. Even with the sleeves rolled up, it was like being imprisoned inside a metal bin. He went into the dark a little way and had a long drink from a bubbler, then wet his hanky. Thelma supplied him with a fussily ironed handkerchief each morning, not believing in tissues, which she said were a wicked waste of money. Seymour folded the wet hanky across his forehead, and as the park was empty, sat on a bench under a trellis. It was a mistake.

  A bunch of rowdy kids, smug with assumed toughness, suddenly came racketing in from the shopping-centre entrance. They were shoving each other about and making a lot of noise with skateboards, but spotted Seymour at once. He got up nervously and tried to edge past to the safety of the main road, for he was a target, and they knew it as well as he did.

  ‘Hey you, new kid round here, where’d ya score that shirt, off your grandpop?’ someone sniggered.

  Seymour didn’t say anything. He pressed back against the bole of the tree, feeling the bark pattern imprint itself through his clothing, trying to make himself as secret as a lizard. But they didn’t give up, they formed a closer semi-circle.

  ‘Hey you, no spikka da English or something?’

  Seymour kept his eyes on the ground, on the restless feet and little skateboard wheels. The wheels jiggled backwards and forwards, holding cached, impatient power, biding time. A hand darted out and grabbed at his handkerchief and someone yelled, ‘Geeze, a snot rag! Maybe he’s a little midget grandpa. Only grandpops carry hankies…’

  He peeled himself away from the tree, plunged through an opening in the circle of feet, and scuttled back to the comparative safety of the shops. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the kids didn’t intend to leave it at that. They’d followed, laughing and calling out after him, their day made. Heart thumping, he shot across the road with the green light, collecting a furious, ‘Watch where you’re going!’ from a woman with a shopping jeep. His racing feet whisked him past blurred images of embroidery wool, health food, I Am The Word, chrome and leather, golden oranges, purple grapes—and blessedly to the alleyway opening. He dived into its dark tunnel, but didn’t stop.

  Corrugated fences flashed by, each looking exactly like the next, and in his bother he became hopelessly disorientated, couldn’t remember which was Thelma’s gate, even which side of the alley it was on. Those kids had spotted where he’d gone to ground. He didn’t look back, but could hear them storm into the Upton Street end of the alleyway, baying insults and threats which could mean everything or nothing. He could hear the clatter of little nylon wheels across flagstones, and pounding feet. An empty aluminium drink can sailed past his ear and clanged against a gate post—maybe it was Thelma’s gate post, but he couldn’t even remember what colour that was.

  There was a sudden unexpected break in the wall of iron on his left, a splash of light from a gate left ajar, and he darted in there and slammed the gate shut and stood against it, quaking. The feet stopped, the wheels stopped and someone rattled the gate half-heartedly and said, ‘Aw, let’s forget about that little wimp, for the time being, know what I mean? Probably nicked inside to tell his old lady on us. Come on, let’s go down the oval.’

  The feet stampeded past and there was just the muted, innocuous rumble of main-street traffic. Nothing was new, nothing under the sun…confrontation and flight, huddling in some secret place trembling with cowardice. It happened inevitably at e
ach new school, every new place he lived. All his strong resolutions made in lonely hours seemed doomed to come tumbling down like a flimsily built tower of plastic blocks. Seymour stood pressed against the gate for a long time.

  17 Acacia Avenue

  Merken

  Dear Judith,

  I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wondered if you have any idea where Angela is living now? She really is very inconsiderate about not letting us know when she moves, and some urgent mail (bills etc.) has turned up here for her.

  Judith, I’m afraid my husband must have sounded very abrupt and rude when he arrived to collect her belongings from your flat last month. We were all very upset and things looked so hopeless and impossible. I do apologise for Stuart, he’s been under a great deal of pressure and strain recently.

  It was kind of you to put Angie up for those four days, especially when you’re so cramped for space with the new baby. I’m sorry she abused your hospitality like that, it was unforgivable. She had no right to inconvenience you when she could easily have come out here to stay.

  I’ve enclosed a stamped envelope in case you do know her new address and can let me know. We worry about her so much, this whole dreadful business seems like a nightmare. You’ve been such a good friend to her all this time, and I certainly don’t blame you now for wanting to have nothing more to do with her after that scene at your flat.

  If she does get in touch with you, would you please ask her to phone me immediately? I’ve tried all her other places and they don’t know where she is. We’re so terribly worried about her.