OUR HOUSE WAS near the river, deep in the city, one of a row of narrow brick houses half-hidden under shaggy creepers. Green and red leaves and yellowish ones like singed wax paper hung and fell, shone through its barred windows, flickered in spider webs. A long glass room tacked on at the back opened into a courtyard. We slept upstairs and woke to pigeons, clusters of them on the bricks and branches, wheezy bubbles bursting in their throats. When I fed them they came fanning up to my shoulder and pecked in my palm, one eye watching, ready to edge their plump warmth away. Some would let me stroke a crown, a mother-of-pearl neck. I remember their eyes: luminously red.
It was in the autumn of my seventh year that my father left this house to live by himself in a house in the Dandenongs, and the first I knew of it was when my mother took me to the park on the way home from school. Over my shoulder while she was pushing me on the swing she said that my father had gone away to another house to live and that I was to be a good boy for her from now on. In the watery green air the words hung shuttling, loud, soft, loud. Then we walked home over the sodden grass hand in hand. His things were all gone when we got home. They were at his new house, she said, but he was coming to see us this and every Saturday afternoon.
Auntie Jan (who was our friend, not a real aunt) was in by the fire with my sisters, and in the courtyard a man not my father sat slumped over a beer and some pizza. This was Uncle David, my mother said, and he had brought Auntie Jan’s things over for her, now that she was going to live in our spare room and mind us when my mother went out.
‘Who’s Uncle David?’
‘He’s a friend of Jan’s. He’s an actor.’
‘On TV!’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Hey, the pigeons know you’re here, Luke.’
They were crowding round. As I went out with the bag of bread I saw one suddenly whir up and snatch out of the man’s hand the red crust he was holding to his mouth. At the same moment a splodge squirted from its fantail onto the pizza tray. The man jumped, clenching his ginger brows until they joined with a ridge like his moustache, and this astonishment wrung a wild laugh out of me. But he had grabbed the bird, pushed it down flat to the table: staring at me, he lifted one arm and clawed his hand above the trapped grey head. At my shriek my mother ran out. ‘Luke!’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Rub its nose in it,’ he growled. ‘Its beak. Teach it a lesson.’
‘No! Mum!’
‘Fair go.’ She touched his shoulder. ‘No teasing my boy. Come in by the fire?’ Grinning, he lifted his hand; the pigeon fluttered off. I scattered the bread by the sandpit, my back to the warm glass room, my shoulders and shoes heavy with pigeons.
‘Who was that man?’ She was putting me to bed. The girls were asleep already.
‘I told you, love. Auntie Jan’s friend. He’ll probably help her mind you sometimes.’
I hung round her neck. ‘But I don’t like him.’
‘You will once you get to know him. He’s just not used to relating to kids, that’s all. He’s had a hard life.’
‘It thought he was feeding it. The pigeon.’
‘I know.’
‘But he hurt it!’
‘Let go, now you’re hurting me. He was teasing you.’
‘Dad doesn’t tease.’
‘Everyone’s different. Just give him a go, love. Please?’
‘I want Dad to mind us,’ I whined. No answer. ‘Why can’t Dad?’
My father came down on Saturdays to take us to the pictures or the park and on to McDonalds, though he would always refuse to come inside or round the back. I waited on the front porch every Saturday afternoon for his car to stop and the door to creak open. The sun was on the front of the house by then; leaves of ivy like flames crawled up knotted branches all over the walls and across windows as dark and clear as ponds. My mother kept an eye out from inside, ready to send my sisters running out when he arrived. They were only three. Auntie Jan remarked to my mother that they didn’t really miss him. I was six, though, nearly seven. I missed him.
He had a long drive from the hills to Melbourne and back. A Saturday came when he had to ring up to say he was stranded and couldn’t make it. My mother shouted into the phone, slamming it down before I could speak to him. I sobbed on my bed, unable to believe it, while she and Auntie Jan had one of their fights about who had to stay home and mind us. (Auntie Jan moved out soon after that and I was relieved, I think.) I fought fiercely against being left with the babysitter who sometimes came and minded the twins: my mother only tried it that once. Another frosty Saturday afternoon she dressed us all and I stood on the porch for an hour watching the pigeons among leaves as red and shiny as apples, until she came running out and hugged me, lifted me up in her arms (and I was heavy): ‘He mustn’t be coming, love,’ she said. ‘Come in now and we’ll watch TV.’
‘Did he ring up?’ She shook her head. ‘No! I want Dad!’ I struggled. I howled. The sky turned yellow before I would give in. My head was exploding. My bad headaches had started about that time and a hot bath helped to take the pain away; that night when she walked in to soap my back she found me doubled over with my face in the water and in her fear she made me sleep in her bed that night, the first of many. I was put on sedatives. The headaches lasted whole days. I cried and vomited. I fell asleep a lot in class and at playtimes I hid in the grounds of the tall church of which my school was part, a grey stone monument with ruffles of cold leaves alive with pigeons.
The Saturday outings lapsed after that and instead my father started picking me up once a fortnight and taking me for the night (my sisters were too small, he said) through silvery gum trees to his windy house on the hill. Bellbirds and crows woke us there. We walked through bracken to a creek spilling over a staircase of brown stones and paddled with numb feet, drank out of numb hands. He wanted to live there now, not with us. Why did he? Well, they fought too much, he and my mother: I’d understand one day. Yes, I said, but there was still us children. None of it made sense.
Now that it was harder for my mother to go out, she filled the house with visitors all weekend. Not many old friends came. These were new ones, strangers in coloured leather clothes, who if they had children came without them. They ignored us, crowding into the courtyard or on cushions around the fireplace, their flagons of black wine flickering, jazz on the stereo; we children played games and watched television upstairs. The babysitter was all right, I had conceded, as long as my mother was still in the house.
‘I want Dad.’ That was my refrain, and I did, but back home where we both belonged. Every weekend in the hills was lonelier and sadder than the last. Nevertheless, the first time he cancelled one I plunged into a panic. I was packed and waiting when the phone rang. ‘At this short notice?’ my mother shouted. ‘I’m going out, that’s why. He won’t stay with the babysitter, he goes berserk. Jan can’t. I told you she’s left.’ She stood and sobbed. So I knew: I was ready for her with sobs of my own. She held my fists and tried reasoning with me. She made phone calls. In the end, sighing, she cancelled the babysitter and read aloud on my bed until the girls fell asleep and my eyes were glazing. She kissed us all goodnight. I jammed my face in the pillow.
Some time later I woke up hot, wet, my head aching, and having struggled out of my pyjamas, lay there covered with nothing but the dusty still light of the lamp that stayed on all night by the bed. The girls inside their white plaits shone like china dolls. If my mother was asleep it would be naughty to wake her. But I heard her laugh and a splash, so I wandered along the passage. The bathroom door half-hid the steamy light. She was standing with her back to me with a glass of red wine in one hand and the soap in the other, and thunderstruck, I saw beyond her my father’s head and knees above a dazzling swirl of water.
‘On your knees and I’ll do your back,’ she said, the way she always used to, and he rose up and sent a surge of water out over the tiles, but instead of scolding she laughed. Only he wasn’t Dad. This was some other man whose large soft thighs and genitals were striped with shadows, spotted with long plaques of light inside a loincloth of bubbles. He sipped her wine while her hands spread froth in spirals around his shoulders. Froth clung to her dress, her best, most beautiful dress, a grey silk that moved with the opal shimmer of a pigeon’s neck. Suddenly she shoved his head under, so suddenly that the wave he made surfacing, snorting, splashed over her.
‘Oh!’ She tugged the darkening silk open.
‘See. I told you to take it off,’ he said, twisting her round so that she squealed, off balance, and taking a wet nipple in under his moustache – but the eyes under his wet ginger hair had caught my shadow’s movement in the doorway.
‘Jesus.’ His lips spoke round her nipple as if round a cigarette and the hand holding the glass threw wine over her.
‘Luke!’
‘Thought you said they were in bed asleep,’ he muttered.
‘Mu-um?’
‘What’s wrong now?’
‘Mum, my head’s hurting.’ But the wet hand that she laid on my brow I angrily shook off.
‘Will I get you some medicine?’
‘Yes.’
‘Come on, then. Sorry.’ Her hand dipped into the bath in passing. Downstairs in the bright kitchen she crushed a tablet and mixed it in a spoon with apricot jam. I leaned my head against the slimy wine-scarred belly of her dress, mumbling bitter chalk, thick sugary fruit. ‘Who’s that, Mum?’ And gulped some water.
‘Don’t you know? He’s been here before.’
‘Mmm?’ So had lots of people. ‘Has he got a headache?’
‘A headache?’
‘When’s he going home?’
‘When he’s out and dry. Where are your pyjamas?’
‘I was too hot.’
After the stairs she gave me a piggyback to bed, bounced me on the lamplit sheets, covered me and kissed my head. ‘Sleep tight,’ she whispered.
I put my arms round her neck. All that autumn her eyes were red and puffy, but that night they were more than usual. ‘Stay here, Mum.’
‘No, it’s time you went to sleep.’
‘Can I come into your bed?’
‘Not tonight.’
‘Why?’
‘The pain’ll be gone in a minute.’
‘Why can’t I, Mum?’
‘Just do as you’re told.’
‘Ssh. You’ll wake the girls.’
‘I want Dad.’
I should have been there with him in his windy house.
‘I’m going to get angry with you in a minute.’
I wailed for a long time and she rocked me, whispering ‘Ssh,’ her hand on my forehead, until with a quick kiss she left. The twins, who had slept through it, sighed, slowly breathing. When I heard that the house was still I crept out again to the door of the spare room. Closed. My mother’s. Closed. In there I thought I heard her rustling, but I was too dazed with tiredness and bafflement to be sure. I thought of opening the door, stumbling in and putting my head on the pillow beside my mother’s, sobbing, waiting for her arm to go round me. ‘Mum, my head’s still sore,’ I mouthed. But she might get angry with me. Why should she? She never had before. In the end tiredness and the cold sent me back to bed.
I woke to find the courtyard already full to the brim with sunlight like warm water in a pool edged with red weed, though above the walls a high wild wind was spinning the leaves off trees. The girls were dressed and in the sandpit. My mother had set the table outside. A few of the Sunday crowd were there already. A woman with orange hair popped open some champagne, half of which frothed over the bricks. There was a cheer. Scowling across the table waving his arms was the man who had been in the bath. ‘Well, hullo.’ He raised his ginger brows at me: ‘Luke Sleepwalker, eh? Bugger you pigeons,’ he muttered, and now I knew who he was.
Someone snickered. My mother was there with a basket of toast and hot jam croissants wrapped in cloths. ‘Watch out,’ she said, ‘the pigeons’ll fight you for these.’
I tugged at her sleeve. ‘Where’s Auntie Jan?’ It was a while since Auntie Jan had been to our place.
‘Later, Luke, I’m busy now, love.’
I only wanted one croissant but I had to have toast first and not be greedy. Everyone had toast except the man, whose every move I was watching: he only had croissants. They were all talking at once. My mother washed the twins’ hands under the tap, sat them up and fed them and let them down to play again. I shook out the cloths. The pigeons gathered round with soft sounds like sobs. When she poured the tea she put some in my milk, so that black leaves spun down to the bottom of my glass and settled. Someone played a jazz tape and a couple danced. The man, Uncle David, sang along. A flagon of claret passed round. A soft ache had taken root in my head. I dug and filled buckets with the twins, drifted in and watched television and out again.
A pair of hard hands suddenly grabbed me round the ribs. With a yell I fought free. He roared laughing in my face: Uncle David. I said, ‘Don’t.’
‘Hop on my knee,’ he said, and my mother nodded to me, giggling, red in the face. People were looking on. I hung my head and did as I was told.
‘What a lump of lard. Hey. Give us a tickle, Luke,’ he said, and I scrabbled my hands in his armpits while he sat there stiffly frowning. ‘My turn,’ he said and tickled hard. I yelled and gasped and rolled, clamped relentlessly. His beer glass fell with a splash on the cloth. ‘Hell. Stronger than he looks. Now hit me. Go on, I know you want to. I want you to. I’m telling you to. Biff, come on. Biff! Ready set? Go!’
I writhed, throwing myself back against him as if he were still fiercely tickling me, laughing in deep, rhythmic, helpless barks. ‘No,’ I gargled. ‘No! Mum!’ I flung her a glance: she was standing his glass upright, her face set in its smile, her head on one side.
‘Go easy, Dave.’
‘Luke can take it.’ His moustache rasped hot on my ear: ‘I mean it. Hit me hard! Are you a sook or what? No? Go on, then!’
I reared up and twisted to face him, my eyes watering, my fists clenched at my throat until I dared to shoot the left one out hard against his cheek. ‘Biff!’ I yelled, and my eyebrows rose into my sweaty hair with the effort of holding my breath. With a roar his head whipped back. My mother spluttered, widening her smile. At that I burst into a high quaver of a laugh, so my mouth was wide open when his open palm, swung wide from the shoulder, smashed into it and sent me thumping onto the bricks at his feet like a sack of flour.
‘Luke!’ All I could see was dew-slopped ivy leaves on moss and bricks. The breath from her mouth was a chilly flow along my cheek and down my collar. Parts of my face stung hot and numb. She touched them and her fingers came away dipped in red. ‘Why did you do that?’ she shrieked up into the silence.
‘Got a blood nose, has he? Give us a look.’
A boot stepped forward. I flung an arm over my head and screamed as the sleeve grazed my split lip.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘That’s what life’s like. You know it. I know it. I reckon the sooner he knows it, the better off he’ll be.’
‘Get out.’ She turned. ‘Get him out, for God’s sake, someone. Don’t you ever come near us again.’ Tears were dripping down her chin. She sat and hoisted me into her arms. ‘Open your mouth, love, come on,’ she kept saying into my hair until with a whimper I did as I was told. Her finger running over my teeth wobbled some of them. My mouth tasted inky. A burning lump was sprouting in the wetness of the temple where I had landed. She wiped the tail of blood dangling out of my nose. ‘Is it broken? Thank God.’
‘That’s what life’s like,’ I heard him protesting as they took him away. ‘You all know that, don’t you? I know that –’
‘You’re going to have a black eye by the look of it,’ she said. ‘Come on, love. A nice hot bath’s what you want.’
‘No!’
‘Yes, it’ll help to take the pain away. You know that.’
‘No! I want Dad!’
‘Come on, I’ll carry you.’
‘No,’ I howled. ‘No!’ I pushed and kicked at her but she was holding me too tight and in her rough hair, ropy and wet against my throat, I could feel sobs bubbling and bursting, hers, my own.