Came Back to Show You I Could Fly Read online

  The shopping complex wasn’t a slick modern one with escalators and malls, but two terraced rows facing each other graciously across a garden courtyard. It was too posh, Seymour thought, too aware of its own importance. He felt ill at ease, but Angie, full of aplomb, stopped to inspect a dress in a window.

  ‘Well, I can’t say I fancy that much,’ she said critically. ‘It’s a nothing sort of colour, like smoke. I usually go for pretty colours, you know, bright and happy, or glittery things. I just love things that sparkle. That one probably costs hundreds of dollars, though you notice it hasn’t even got a price tag. Price tags would be too vulgar for round here, I guess. That dress is too long, too. If you’ve got good legs, you shouldn’t be ashamed to show them off. I reckon I’ve got good legs, don’t you?’

  Seymour felt embarrassed, but because she plainly expected an opinion from him, he nodded. He thought she must have good legs, the way people turned around to look at her. Again, he couldn’t help noticing how they all did that, even though they pretended not to be staring, but Angie seemed sunnily unaware of it. Glamorous people, he supposed, must become used to people turning their heads to look, even bored by it.

  ‘Let’s go and check out that gift shop,’ Angie said. ‘I’ve got to get my mum a birthday present and you can help me choose it. It was her birthday last month, but I was…Well, it’s a long story, but the fact is I never got around to buying her a present. So I want to get something really special now to make up.’

  The gift shop was lined with glass shelves holding splendid things—china platters, carved wooden fruit, crystals, embossed-leather writing folders and boxes of wonderful stationery. There was a small long-stemmed rose, intricately fashioned from gold metal, complete with gold thorns and leaves and a dewdrop resting on one petal. It lay all by itself on a coral velvet board.

  ‘There you are, Angie!’ Seymour said. ‘Why don’t you get that for your mum? It’s just right, you being a florist.’

  ‘That rose? Yes, it’s gorgeous…but hang on, look what it says on the price label, for heaven’s sake!’

  A shop assistant came over to them, wanting to know if they required help. ‘May I show you anything in particular?’ she said austerely, and Seymour could sense her eyes flicking at him briefly, but nonetheless taking in every detail of his shabby jeans, his cheap sandals and shirt, then dismissing him altogether and switching attention to Angela, eyes narrowed. Jealous, Seymour thought defensively. She’s just dead jealous of Angie being so pretty and wearing clothes no one else has.

  ‘We’re just looking,’ Angie said, apparently not at all bothered by such scrutiny. She knelt to rummage about in a basket of soap, picking one up and sniffing it appreciatively, then handing it to Seymour.

  ‘Please don’t touch the displays,’ the assistant said.

  ‘But how am I supposed to know if I like the smell or not?’ Angie said. ‘We’re not hurting anything. How could you possibly damage a cake of soap just touching it?’

  ‘That’s not the point. The sign up there says not to handle the items on display. They’ve all been carefully arranged.’

  ‘Oh, pardon me, I’m most terribly sorry,’ Angie said contritely, but with sarcasm spiking her voice. She moved on with exaggerated care to look at a shelf of pot-pourri containers. The assistant hovered, almost as though daring her to touch another thing, but Angie just minced sedately along the shelf, with her hands linked behind her back. Her eyes were wide and innocent and her lower lip tucked behind her teeth. It was as though she were miming the role of a good obedient child, but the overall impression was one of impudence.

  ‘Angie, how about we go and grab something to eat, a sandwich or something?’ Seymour whispered uneasily. ‘And you could buy your mum a pot plant instead. They have them at that market near Victoria Road, don’t they? It’s all too dear, this stuff.’

  ‘I haven’t finished looking yet, even though they think we’re not good enough for their old shop,’ Angie said, not troubling to lower her voice.

  ‘If we haven’t anything to suit you, I suggest you try elsewhere,’ the assistant said coldly, and turned to attend to other customers who’d just come in.

  Seymour, crimson, tugged Angie towards the door. She took her time getting there, dropping her bag halfway and shaking him off when he bent to help her pick up her scattered possessions. Almost through the door, she stopped and called, ‘Hey, Miss!’ The assistant frowned at her in exasperation. ‘Your bra strap’s showing, did you know? Wow, some bra, looks like a parachute harness!’ Angie said, stuck her tongue out, then grabbed Seymour’s hand and hurried him back through the courtyard. ‘Did you see her face?’she gloated. ‘Serves the sour old thing right, the way she was looking down her nose at us! You just wait, one day I’m going to set up my florist shop right next door to her crappy old place, and I’ll have a whole section stocked with gifts much better than hers, and put her right out of business!’

  ‘Angie, honest, you shouldn’t have given her cheek like that!’ Seymour said, being bundled on to a tram with no explanation. ‘And where are we off to now? This goes back into town, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sure does, and I’m going to shout you lunch at McDonald’s.’

  Angie settled back on the tram seat, smiling secretively to herself and apparently unrepentant about being rude to the shop assistant. She took out a nail file and began to smooth her nails.

  Seymour looked back for one last glimpse of the splendid mansions in Gresham Avenue. There was no harm in dreaming. Maybe one day he’d live in the one with diamond windows and Angela would live at number seventeen and they’d wave to each other each morning. Perhaps she’d let him work in her florist shop when he was old enough, too. You’d have to buy flowers fresh from the market early each morning, and he could do that job. He’d have a smart little van with the shop’s name written on the side. It would be peaceful and undemanding, a job like that, the type of thing he could easily handle. He knew he wasn’t particularly bright at school and couldn’t expect much in the way of a career, but a job like that, just to start off with…

  He even thought of asking Angie now to keep him in mind for it in a few years time, but when he turned to her, she was dozing. The nail file was slipping from her fingers. She was like a cat, he thought indulgently, suddenly yawning her head off like that and taking a little nap in public. Asleep in that manner, she didn’t look grown up at all, but vulnerable, almost like a small child slumbering in a pram in a department store. Her dress changed colour as the tram rocked from stop to stop, like shells altering colour under water, and her head nodded and finally slid down to rest on his shoulder. Her bag was in danger of tumbling to the floor. He grabbed it just in time and put the nail file back inside. And saw, nestled amongst the contents, the gold rose from the gift shop.

  He sat very still, peering gravely at the metal rose, and thought, ‘Of course she paid for it, must have been while I was putting the soap back…Only—why was that assistant so snooty to her after she bought something as expensive as that? Of course she paid for it! Only—why didn’t they wrap it up for her? In posh shops like that, they always wrap things up, in any shop…’

  The tram reached the city. Angela woke with a great start, rubbing at her eyes. She got out and stood uncertainly on the traffic safety zone, looking dazedly up at the town hall clock. Seymour handed back her bag in silence, not mentioning the rose.

  ‘Three o’clock!’ she said. ‘God, I never realised it was that late! Listen, Seymour, I just remembered I’ve got to see…I have an appointment and it’s not one I can break. I’m really sorry we’re going to miss out on lunch, you must be starving by now, but I’ll take you to McDonald’s some other time. You’ll be all right getting back to Victoria Road by yourself, won’t you? Just catch the number fourteen tram and hop off at the stop past that big pub on the corner. And you can’t miss the alley. That’s practically opposite the tram stop where you get out.’

  The alleyway, he thought, harrowed. T
he dogs growling behind the fences, that gang of kids—I can’t…can’t walk down that place all by myself!

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Angela asked. ‘You’ve gone peculiar looking. You feeling crook or something?’

  Seymour nodded, snatching at the excuse with relief, because there was no way he could explain about the alleyway and his fear of walking along it alone.

  ‘Oh hell! Look, I’ve got this appointment,’ Angie said impatiently. ‘I’ve got to be there at three-fifteen on the dot, and I’ve already broken the last one and they weren’t too rapt. I’ll get shot if I don’t show up today. Oh, come on, Seymour, there’s nothing to hopping on the number fourteen tram and getting off at Victoria Road. It’s not such a long trip, either, only about twenty minutes. You’re not going to throw up right now, are you? Can’t you last till you get home?’

  ‘Couldn’t I take a taxi instead of a tram?’ Seymour said desperately. ‘If you lend me the money, I’ll pay you back. My mum’s coming over on Friday and she’ll give me some pocket money.’

  Taxis would deliver you right to your front door, or at least not to Thelma’s front door, for he couldn’t even get in that formidable entrance with no key and the latticed barricade. But a taxi could take him up the alley, right up to the back gate, and the driver would be like a stalwart shield between him and all those terrors.

  ‘Taxis? What do you reckon I am, a millionaire? God in heaven, as if I’ve got enough money for taxis! I already told you I was short of cash. It’s only twenty minutes by tram, if that, you little pest!’

  People milled about them on the traffic zone. Angie was tugged away from him in the tide, and he clung forlornly by one hand to the railing, thinking that she’d crossed with the stream of people and just left him adrift there like the useless piece of jetsam he was. But she surfaced again on his other side and took his free hand.

  ‘Okay, then,’ she said tersely. ‘I’ll come with you, only if you’re going to throw up, don’t do it all over Neptunia, right? You should have told me earlier you were feeling crook. Geeze, kids are pains! I think right now I’ve finally made up my mind never ever to be a mother!’

  But she was nice to him on the fourteen tram, and when they reached Victoria Road, she didn’t just dump him at the alley entrance and whisk off to her appointment. She walked all the way with him and he was ashamed of his deception which she so readily believed. An unseen dog barked and launched itself furiously against iron panels at the sound of their passing footsteps. He skittered around to the far side of Angela, hoping she didn’t notice how his direction veered, or guessed the reason. Thelma had told him, sniping at modern manners, that men always used to walk on the gutter side of a street when out with women, so if a passing car splashed mud, the lady’s dress wouldn’t get dirty. Maybe Angie would think he was just being excessively polite, even if there was no traffic up the alley.

  ‘You want to go in and take it easy,’ she said when they reached Thelma’s gate. ‘Put a damp cloth on your forehead. Or eat some salt, isn’t salt supposed to be good for heat exhaustion, or is that for something else? Anyhow, you run in and lie down.’

  ‘Can I come over tomorrow?’

  ‘Strewth, what do you think I’m running, a playgroup centre? Oh, all right, then…don’t look like that, I didn’t mean it. Tell you what, tomorrow I’ve got to go out and see my mother for her birthday, even if it is over. Want to come, too, if you’re feeling up to it?’

  ‘But…she won’t want me there. She doesn’t even know me.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’d kind of like you along. She’ll think you’re a nice change from Jas and Rick and some of my other pals, that’s for sure. It’s sometimes…well, a bit difficult at my mum’s. She gets a bit narked about things, can’t say I blame her, but if I’ve got a mate along, a girlfriend or someone, she doesn’t carry on quite so much. Nagging and that. I’ll give her a ring and tell her there’ll be one extra for lunch. You call in for me the same time as today, all right?’

  She gave him a leg up over the gate and smiled, and he was charmed again by the grace of that smile. He sat for a moment on the top bar and watched her walk away up the alley, and knew she must have paid for that gold rose and there was no doubt about it. Someone as nice as Angela couldn’t possibly be a thief.

  Mum,

  I love you, you know that. I’m so sorry, what I’ve done to the family, all the trouble I caused.

  Listen, don’t let Dad pay the fine, OK? I don’t want to take any more money off him. I’ll manage, a friend offered to help me out, it’s OK, really.

  It won’t ever happen again, promise. Because I’m seeing this counsellor now, Judy put me on to him. I have a rave to him once a week in the city where he works and it’s really helping. There’s this self-help awareness group I heard about, too, might join it when I feel a bit better. (Not to worry, it’s only some kind of gastro thing. Couldn’t keep anything down, but it’s clearing up now.)

  Sorry about Rick and them phoning. I didn’t give them our number, really and truly, they must have got it out of the phone book. Just hang up if they hassle you again, or tell them I’ve gone interstate.

  I’ll be OK, Mum, honest, don’t worry so much, I feel fine, terrific!

  Love ya, Angie

  P.S. I’ve got a great little flat now! Soon as I get it redecorated—it’s pretty grotty looking at the moment—you and David and Lynne and Dad can come round for dinner. Only don’t get your hopes up about the menu, you know what a flop I was in Home Eco at school!

  Chapter 6

  ‘I just wish I still had my little car!’ Angie said as they walked up the long hill towards the hospital. ‘You should have seen it, Seymour, it was a little VW painted mauve and I stuck daisy tranfers all over the bodywork. Only paid a couple of hundred, but it ran like a dream…oh, I miss that little bomb!’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘Wrapped it around a power pole, total write-off. I went into a skid and next thing I knew there I was over this slope nearly into someone’s front garden. Talk about freaky! There were all these live wires draped over the bonnet and no one could get me out. And faces…you know how a whole crowd always gathers when there’s been an accident, can’t miss out on a good old gawk, can they? Specially with an ambulance waiting just in case. Exhibit Number One, that was me! All these faces peering in at me and talking in low voices like I was going to panic or something. I wasn’t panicky. It was sort of…well, like being in a dream. The only thing that worried me was maybe they wouldn’t get me out safely. I’d had a bit of a domestic with Jas that morning and I thought that if I died, how sad it would be, the last thing he’d remember was me yelling and screeching and calling him every name under the sun. And then the cops turned up, naturally…I mean, they always do for an accident, but some of those guys remember number plates and…other stuff. They really have it in for you. Out for promotion, they never let up…’

  Her face suddenly twisted with what seemed to Seymour to be irrational rage, but when she caught his eye she added quickly, ‘Oh, these shoes are killing me! I shouldn’t have worn them. I shouldn’t have worn this top, either. Seymour, do you really think I look okay, you weren’t just being smarmy?’

  ‘You look all right, Angie, honest,’ Seymour said. He thought she looked sensational in her gelati-striped shirt of lime green, bright yellow and pink. Her hair was caught up on top of her head with a twist of pink cord and spiked like a pineapple. He’d had an easy time choosing earrings to go with all that, for amongst the collection he’d actually found a pair of huge, yellow plastic pineapples.

  ‘I’m not really sure about this top!’ Angie said anxiously, still seeking reassurance. ‘The neck’s a bit…well, you know. I guess I should have worn Susan-Jane instead. My mum’s always hassling me about the way I dress. She’d still like me to be wearing long white socks and tartan skirts.’

  They reached the hospital and she told him again to wait outside by the goldfish pond. He watched the sad, intro
spective people seated on the veranda, then jumped, for Angie had returned and crept up behind him and was whispering evilly in his ear, ‘Psst! Liddle boy, vant some nice candy?’

  ‘Get lost, you old dero,’ Seymour said. ‘Who’d take candy from strange blokes wearing pineapple earrings?’ Angie giggled, and he realised suddenly that he’d made a joke and caused someone to laugh, and he couldn’t remember one other time in his life when that had happened.

  She caught his hand and swung it as they went back down the main road. Seymour, unused to physical contact, felt woodenly self-conscious, but her hand held his lightly in uncomplicated friendship, and after a while he relaxed and swung in time to her singing. He wondered why kids at the various schools he’d attended so often spoke disparagingly about their sisters. If older sisters were as nice as Angie, making you feel special, as though they could think of nothing better than to spend their free time with you, he wished he’d been lucky enough to have one.

  She sang all the way down the long road past the factories, and coaxed him into joining in. His voice, unaccustomed to being raised in melody, was no more than a feeble croak. He didn’t know many songs at all, but she didn’t laugh at him.

  ‘Hey, heard this old one?’ she said and began to sing, partly to him, mostly to herself, forgetting some of the words and having to improvise:

  ‘I was weak, too weak to fly,

  But you were there, right there beside me,

  Urging me on…

  Geeze, how does it go? And da da da…

  Making me strong, could hear you saying…

  yeah, now I remember:

  Spread my wings and left the nest,