Rankin House was listed in the Hospitals section of the telephone directory, and there was something else added after its name—Alcoholism and Drug Treatment Centre. Seymour slowly dialled the number and asked if he could speak to Angela.
‘I’m sorry, it’s not possible for you to call patients on this line or to leave messages,’ an impersonal voice told him. ‘Hospital visiting hours are between three-thirty and five each afternoon.’
He hung up and went and tidied himself in the bathroom, although that was just to fritter time, for he was neat enough already. A painfully neat kid, not really equipped to deal with this new burden sitting so heavily on his shoulders, looked back at him. He frowned at that reflected, timorous face.
It’s nothing to do with me, anyhow, he thought with anguish. Lynne said so! Angie got herself into this mess and they’ve all tried to help her and there’s nothing more anyone can do. She’s just a liar! All those rotten lies she told me…I don’t have to go and see her. I should watch that crummy old TV set all afternoon, forget about her…
It was tempting. He winced at the thought of having to go to a strange, alarming place and ask for Angela. Ask to see a drug addict, a junkie—wasn’t that what they called them? Perhaps she would be in bed, in one of those intimidating, high white hospital beds, with other people in the same room, other…junkies. And how would he manage to talk to her, how could he possibly bridge this huge furrow that had ploughed its way through their friendship? Maybe she wouldn’t even want him to see her in a place like that. A memory of a photograph stirred in his mind, something he’d once seen in a magazine, shock tactics to warn kids about drugs. It had shown a girl, eyes black-rimmed, skin white as death, slumped on a squalid concrete floor. Fleetingly, he saw Angie’s face superimposed on the photograph…
He spent an agonised half hour, decided to leave the house at once and visit her and get it over with, then finding dozens of tame excuses to avoid it. For instance, he could just write to her casually instead. Could phone the Easterbrooks and ask for the Lakeview address, giving some reason—Angie had lent him a book and he wanted to send it on, or she’d forgotten to return a pen of his and he wanted it back—but none of those excuses sounded convincing. And besides, there was the rag doll, for which he had taken responsibility. He glared at it morosely, knowing that he couldn’t take something like that on public transport, it would have to be disguised. He wrapped it in a striped tablecloth of Thelma’s, the first thing to hand, and shoved the whole lot into a plastic bag. Then he climbed over the back fence into the alley.
‘Strewth, Angie,’ he thought with despair, gazing down the dangerous length of the alleyway, buffeted by all his fears. ‘The things I do for you…’
No one was about, and he plunged into that dark river, floundering towards the tram-stop end, but before he could reach it, two kids suddenly walked in from the entrance. They halted when they saw him, whispering together, and the sunlight blazing behind made them seem like malevolent science-fiction figures. Seymour’s footsteps grew leaden and trembled to a stop. He glanced behind at the long stretch of flagstones leading back to the other main road, and knew that was a useless route of escape. The distance was too far. His own gate was too far away, so was Angie’s, and besides, she wasn’t there to protect him. After a moment he trudged on hopelessly, his throat tight with fear, until he was close enough to see their faces. Alert faces, full of latent mischief. They didn’t move, but stood casually in the centre of the alley, positioned so that he couldn’t walk between them. Seymour came to a halt, he couldn’t do otherwise.
‘Well, look who’s here. If it isn’t that kid we saw the other day, the one in the park with the grandpa hanky,’ one of them said. ‘Where’s he off to, then?’
‘Sunday School,’ said the other boy, grinning. ‘Boy Scout Jamboree.’
Seymour tried to keep his face neutral, but to his disgust found it slackening into a glib, ingratiating smile. A smirk, you could call it, nothing else. Something he’d read once crossed his mind, about the behaviour of wolves in a pack. How, if one were threatened by a more dominant wolf, it would lie fawning on its back, offering its neck to the threatening teeth, and its action would somehow defuse the situation. That’s what he was doing now, and he felt sickened by his cowardice, but couldn’t help it. Wearing the ghastly stiff grin, he tried to step around the boy by the right-hand fence, but that space suddenly vanished, so quickly it was hard to tell if it had actually been there at all.
‘I’m just…just doing messages,’ he stuttered. ‘Had to go into town for someone…’
His fear was as evident as scent, he could almost smell it in his own nostrils. Panicking, he tried to force a way through the two boys, but again the space moved and ceased to exist. Someone laughed—an unpleasant sound, not like laughter at all.
‘What you got in that bag? Let’s have a look…’
He jerked it back instinctively, his action springing from shame at being caught carrying a doll and the urgent need to get it to Angie before she left. Maybe the last thing he could ever do for her.
‘Pongy washing, bet that’s what it is,’ one of the boys jeered. ‘Off to the laundromat with his spare hankies…’
Under snatching, relentless fingers, one of the plastic bag handles broke, revealing a section of the tablecloth, garishly striped in red and blue bands. Seymour found his voice, battled to hold it steady, chatty even, and kept his fingers tightly hooked in the other handle. ‘This?’ he said. ‘Well, it’s…’ Oh God, what had Angie called them, that day at the races? ‘Jockey’s silks,’ he said with forced swagger. ‘You know, those jackets jockeys wear in horse races.’ Trying to sound like a myriad of other kids in playgrounds displaying prized possessions…‘My dad gave me this, my uncle brought this back from…’ And always himself on the fringe, not included, suffered to be part of the audience.
‘They belong to Clive Trelawney,’ he said in a rush. ‘My uncle. Got to get them to him right away, he’s riding in a big race this afternoon.’
‘Clive Trelawney’s your uncle? Get out!’
‘Yeah, he is. He’s riding a horse called Plumestone, fifth race on the program. This jacket, I mean these silks, they’ve just been dry-cleaned. You know how it is, all those top jockeys are dead fussy about the way they look on the track. I’d take it out and let you have a proper look, only they’re folded a special way…Still, I guess you can watch the race on telly if you’re interested.’
All the time he was walking, step by small ragged step, heart thumping, towards the alley entrance. At least they’d let the other handle go, and he looped it around his wrist with a show of casual importance…
‘My old man’s always placing bets down at the shop,’ one of the kids said conversationally. ‘He won five-hundred dollars once on the quadrella.’
‘Well, you tell him to watch out for a horse called Black Satin. A real roughie, but it can sometimes win you a whole month’s rent. Specially if my uncle’s riding it. See you round some time…’
He was scrambling up on to the tram, glancing back at the kids, and they didn’t look threatening at all, now. One of them even gave him a half wave. Outwitted, he thought, with pleased surprise. You don’t always have to roll over and offer up your throat, there are other ways you can get out of things. Other ways where you come out the winner.
The elation of being a winner stayed with him while he got off the tram at the railway station and bought a ticket to Knudsen. He stopped at a flower stall, thinking that he should buy something for Angie. You always took flowers to people in hospital, even if the Rankin House place wasn’t really a proper one. But the stall flowers were unspectacular bunches in identical wrappings, as though they’d all been processed in some factory. The only thing out of the ordinary was a sheath of pale stems dotted with small silvery moons. Each disc felt like silk stretched delicately over framework.
‘That stuff’s called honesty,’ the assistant said. ‘Present for someone, is it, love? People buy it to put in dried-flower arrangements, but it looks nice on its own, too. It’s expensive, though, we don’t often have it in stock.’
On the way to Knudsen station, he thought dubiously that, expensive or not, he might have made a mistake about the choice of flowers. They didn’t look very exciting, nestled in their tissue wrapping, just a handful of brittle little circles the colour of milk coffee. But there was no time to worry about that now, he had to find a red-brick building on the left-hand side as described by Thelma. It was easily visible from the train, but when he got off, he became lost in a maze of narrow, illogical streets while trying to find the entrance. Angie and her hospitals, he thought irritably. Why can’t she ever pick one in a place that’s easy to get to!
After trudging around a complete block, he found the entrance at last, with a large sign above the gate saying ‘Rankin House’. The sign didn’t carry the extra information that had been in the phone book, and he was glad of that, grateful that Angie’s trouble wasn’t advertised to all the passing traffic in the street. Now, he thought, all I have to do is walk into the reception hall, that should be easy enough for Clive Trelawney’s nephew. It’s visiting hours, they said so on the phone. All I have to do is ask for her…nothing to it…
But when he forced himself to go through the gate, he was unexpectedly amongst a crowd of people in a small barren garden. He hovered, stricken by bashfulness. Many of them were visitors, he could see that by the bunches of flowers being handed over, and there were kids, too, amongst the visitors, so he didn’t really look out of place. But at first it was difficult to tell which ones were patients. He’d been prepared for dressing-gowns and hospital wards and nurses in the background. Disorientated, he stood looking around and suddenly located Angie without having to ask anyone. She was sitting by herself under a tree on the far side of the garden, looking very subdued and small, like a lamp turned down low. Even her clothes were lacklustre—washed-out old jeans and a shirt faded to the colour of water. Her hair hung in slack tendrils around her lowered face, and she was playing listlessly with a long stem of ivy, winding it around her fingers.
Seymour went across, skirting the groups of other people, and knelt down beside her. He was taken aback by the tremendous start she gave, as though she hadn’t heard his footsteps across the lawn, as though his sudden appearance had jerked her back from some other dimension. She nearly jumped out of her skin, he thought, bemused, and saw just how pale and delicate her skin was, close up. Almost too fragile to contain such a complicated and vulnerable thing as a human being.
‘Anyone would think I was a ghost,’ he said. ‘Hi, Angie, just thought I’d come and visit you.’
‘How did you know where I was?’ There was no welcome in her voice. It sounded flat and tired, but underneath the flatness lurked something that could, he sensed, flare into anger directed at him for coming. He’d made a mistake. He should have stayed away.
‘Your sister said Rankin House…’
‘Lynne? She’s been talking to you?’ The something glinted like a blade in the sunlight.
‘Not really what you’d call talking,’ Seymour said quickly. ‘It was only on that day when you…got so sick and they had to pick you up in the car. Rankin House was sort of mentioned casually.’
‘Casually, eh? Sort of casually enough for you to know the address.’
‘Hey, calm down, Angie. Lynne didn’t even say the address. There’s that sign you can see from the train, I just thought it might be the same place. So I dropped in to visit you, that’s all. Only you’re not exactly giving me the red carpet treatment, are you? Talk about grouchy—it’s like…like visiting Morris Carpenter!’
Angie relaxed visibly and a shadow of her old effervescent smile crossed her face. ‘Okay, I’m sorry. It’s just I don’t like people talking about me behind my back. I thought…oh, never mind. Anyhow, you’d feel grouchy, too, in a dump like this. It’s a proper hole, this place, you just wouldn’t believe it. The rooms are like shoeboxes, that’s why everyone sits out here getting sunstroke. You go crazy in those little shoebox rooms—I was starting to feel like an Adidas sneaker. The matron, my God, you should get an eyeful of the matron! She eats live yabbies for breakfast…So, what have you been up to? I’ve missed you heaps, you know. And guess what, pal, my flu’s nearly gone.’
Seymour didn’t say anything. He looked away from her contrived effort to sparkle, glanced at the other patients, seeing faces superimposed upon a photograph.
‘Soon be out of here, though,’ Angie said gaily. ‘This evening, as a matter of fact.’
‘Yes, I know. You’re going to…’
‘Countdown to freedom, I’ve been marking off the seconds. Wow, I can hardly wait to get home, back to my flat.’
‘The flat? But that’s…’
‘What’s the matter? You look as though someone just donged you over the head with a crowbar.’
‘Angie, your mum packed all your stuff away and they cleaned up your flat. They gave the keys back to the lady who owns it. There’s nothing…Hey, Angie, you’re joking, aren’t you? Lynne said you’d be going to a place called…’
The ivy stem snapped like wire. Angie cast it away and began to tear at another, binding it around her fingers. ‘I remember now, they did mention they’d be cleaning up the flat,’ she said. ‘I tend to let things get in a right old mess and Mum’s such a…It’ll be nice to find everything all tidied up for a change. There must be some mistake about the keys, though, some mix up. Doesn’t matter. That old dragon lady will be glad to see me back—no one else would want to rent a tiny place like that. Not for what she’s asking. I should have…I was going to discharge myself this morning, only I have to wait around for the results of some dumb blood test they…Let’s talk about something else, huh? I know, how about tomorrow morning you come over to the flat and we’ll go to…Oh, there’s dozens of places we haven’t been to yet! There’s ice skating…’
‘All your things are at your mum’s house,’ Seymour said hoarsely. ‘All your clothes, everything. Lynne reckoned you knew about it. She said…’
‘Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home. Your house is on fire and your children all gone,’ chanted Angie, aping his troubled voice with a degree of malice he didn’t know she possessed. ‘Listen, Seymour, you stay out of this! Lynne and her casual conversation…she’s been at you, hasn’t she? Telling you lies. You don’t want to believe anything she tells you, she’s just plain jealous of me having a flat of my own and being independent…’
‘Angie, you sort of promised them you’d go to Lakeview…’
‘Lakeview, where the hell’s that? I don’t know any place called that! Mum just popped in to clean my flat and that’s all there is to it! Got it all ready for me to go back to, because I was sick…I asked her…I’m not going to…They all seem to think…Hey, come on, let’s change the subject. You know what I thought of buying for my flat? One of those gorgeous big prints, they cover a whole wall. I saw this fabulous one like a forest scene—tree trunks and light coming down in a shaft…It will look great up on that wall behind my dressing-table.’
‘People ought to keep promises.’
‘Let’s change the subject!’ Angie said with taut desperation. ‘Visitors are supposed to talk about nice things in hospital. I’ve been sick, really sick, you know. I got a kind of pleurisy on top of that flu. Pleurisy’s serious, people can even…If you’ve just come here to hassle and nag me like everyone else, Seymour, talk me into…Oh, forget it! I don’t feel like visitors anyway! Why don’t you just nick off home?’
Seymour remembered the gift he’d brought her and handed it over in defeated silence.
‘Oh, a present—it’s lovely,’ Angie cried. ‘You’re sweet, bringing me a present. I’ve always loved this stuff, too, though I can’t remember what it’s called. It’ll come in really handy. Did I tell you I’m thinking of getting stuck into making things and selling them at craft markets? Little boxes with pine-cone lids, fabric picture frames, you know the sort of thing. I could use this—what’s it called…fennel? No, that’s not right. Oh, God, I hate it when I can’t remember things! You might be able to help me out at those craft markets, be my assistant. We’d have fun…’
‘I go back to school next week. I’m moving tomorrow with my mum to the new place.’
‘Where is it? I never knew you were moving…’
‘Honest, Angie, you and your rotten memory,’ Seymour said, thinking how far away that unknown suburb had looked on the map when his mother had pointed it out to him. ‘I already told you about Carrucan a million times.’
‘Well, I’m no good at names and dates and stuff. Here, write down your new address on this paper the dried flowers were wrapped up in, then I won’t have any excuse for forgetting next time. Carrucan—that’s way out past the airforce base somewhere, isn’t it? Never mind, no worries. I’ll be able to buy another car with what I make from my craft market sales. Something really jazzy, a little four-wheel drive, maybe. I’ll whizz out to Carrucan and pick you up and we’ll go on safaris. Oh, don’t I wish I had that car right now! I’d be out that gate and away, right to the edge of the map and off!’
Seymour glanced around at the other patients. Most of them were young, like Angie. He studied the faces of the visitors. They chattered brightly, ribbons of cheerful sound festooning the air like bunting, but it somehow sounded false and laboured. The eyes in the bright faces of the visitors didn’t somehow link with the chatter. Sad, worried eyes…everywhere he looked.
‘You’re always talking about…about nicking off to places,’ he said jerkily.
‘So what if I am? Any law against it? What’s the matter with you, biting my head off like that?’
‘It’s true. It’s the way you always carry on. I bet even if you did have that car, the nurses wouldn’t let you take off in it. Your hands are all shaky. You couldn’t…’
‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’ Angie said rapidly. ‘Just a little bout of flu, that’s all it was. Why, I could have stayed home in the flat and got better all by myself. It was just everyone fussing—you know what parents are like. I’m feeling fantastic now, really I am. I still look pretty. I look terrific, don’t I? Come on, Seymour, you’re my pal, don’t you reckon I look terrific?’
‘About as terrific as everyone else in here,’ Seymour said, carefully not looking at the other patients and their visitors.
‘Them? What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t look a bit like them! They’re all absolute no-hopers, that lot—that skinny guy over there, he’s in and out of this place like a yoyo! And Samantha, that twit with the frizzed up hair, she’s nothing but a…Some friend you are, saying…Specially when I never even asked you to barge in here and poke your nose into my affairs, you little twerp! Bothering someone in hospital…Go away! Go on, nick off!’
‘Okay,’ Seymour said. ‘No point in hanging around if you just jump down my throat every time I say anything. I’ll go, then.’
‘Good! I’m certainly not stopping you!’
He gathered the small stems of dried flowers together. Angie with her restless, agitated hands had messed them up and they no longer looked like a neat, shop-assembled gift. Seymour wrapped them again in the tissue paper.
‘That’s a lovely present,’ Angie said distractedly. ‘Did I thank you for it? I’ll be able to use it in dried-flower arrangements when I get my florist shop. My goodness, all this fuss about a little attack of flu and pleurisy, you’re just as bad as my parents…I’ve forgotten what this dry stuff’s called—it’s not fennel, is it? I’m well enough to get up and walk right out of…Bracken, that’s not it, either…Oh, I wish I would remember the names of things!’
‘It’s called honesty,’ Seymour said and suddenly felt very tired, too tired to bother about the bouquet. He dumped it next to her, not caring that the fragile moons scattered fragments of themselves into the dusty grass. ‘That’s what it’s called—honesty. Geeze, Angie, you go rattling on about bronchitis and flu, but we both know what…The flat, that’s all over and done with, there’s nothing left there now. You can’t go back there.’
‘There are other places! I’ve got friends…’
‘They all want you to go to that Lakeview place, you know they do. It’s some kind of home where they help you get off…drugs, isn’t it? You promised them you’d go there. Your dad’s coming in to pick you up.’
‘I won’t be here when he does! They can’t make me go if I don’t want to! It’ll just be like all those other times I tried—a waste…it never ever works out…’
‘Maybe you never give it a chance to.’
‘Don’t you dare start preaching at me! I’ve got enough to worry about. Got to find somewhere else to…Samantha reckons it shows now. They don’t like renting flats to people with kids, neighbours complaining…poor little baby…poor little thing. Oh, God, what a mess! I wish now I’d just…just…’
Seymour suddenly thought of the baby he’d seen all those years ago, remembered clear eyes gazing peacefully into his face. He felt sick with distress.
‘Any kid of yours is going to have a great time, isn’t it?’ he said stiffly, getting to his feet. ‘A real lovely time it’s going to have! You falling asleep every time you come down with…with flu, and it can just bawl its head off. You probably won’t even hear, Angie. Falling out of its cot and you won’t hear that, either! You reckon you like little kids—all those times we went out and you saw a pram, you’d stop and have a look and go all clucky. Talk about a big act!’
‘I’m good with kids, you ask anyone! I’d never…’
‘You’ll be falling asleep with a cigarette burning the place down. It’s okay, I’m going. I don’t want to stay here any more and talk to you. You make promises and don’t…They booked you into Lakeview and your dad bought the plane ticket. They’re all trying to help you…All you’ve got to do is bloody go there wherever it is and stay for a while!’
‘Get lost, Seymour!’
People were turning to look. An older woman with a tired, concerned face hesitated and half rose from a bench, but he didn’t care. For the first time in his life he didn’t much care if people turned to gape at him if he were causing ripples. He felt angry enough to wish that the ripples would surge into a whirlpool large and powerful enough to swallow up the whole mess, take Angie away, cover up the frightened eyes in the garden, swirl away the whole sad, terrible business.
‘Babies can smile really early, did you know that?’ he said bitterly. ‘Yours probably won’t have much to grin about, though. Where’s it going to grow up, Angie? You haven’t even got anywhere for it to live. Oh, I forgot, there’s that posh house on Gresham Avenue, isn’t there? Or maybe in the back room of your florist shop…’
‘You rotten little creep! I never asked you to come in here and lecture me! You get the hell out of here—I didn’t want to see you, even! I never even…liked you!’
‘Well, I don’t like you much, either, Angie,’ Seymour said and turned to go, but something was dragging at his wrist. He tore at the knotted handle of the plastic bag and let it fall into Angie’s lap. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘You might as well have it. Little girls like playing with dolls.’
He went away, not looking back, not able to look back, and walked numbly through the intricate streets to the railway station. The air shimmered with heat. Waiting for the train, he found himself blinking and screwing up his eyelids, for the sky seemed to be filled mysteriously with white-hot, silver flecks. They flickered like miniature rain and dampened the backs of his hands when he touched his eyes.
No little winged horse, he thought, looking up into the sky, trapped in the numbess that wasn’t, after all, free from pain. He blinked the illusion of silver rain from his eyes. There would never be any little winged horse plunging splendidly from the sky to land at your feet and carry you away from things not to be borne. That was something you had to learn to do all by yourself.
Lakeview
Hi, Seymour!
Guess you’d never thought you’d get a letter from me after all this time, hey, specially after that big fight we had. You should be so lucky, pal! (N.B. Note the above address. I’m just about the oldest inhabitant—four whole months, strewth, someone oughta give me a medal!)
So, how are things going with you? You learned to swim yet, you lazy nerd? I’m as well as can be expected (as the saying goes). I was going to nick off that many times when I first got here, you wouldn’t have believed it. (Or maybe you would.) Once I hiked all the way to the nearest station (like travelling over the Sahara Desert, no kidding). Just my terrific luck when I got there—next train wasn’t due for another two hours! Nothing to look at except gum trees and I was feeling a bit wobbly and peculiar after that long walk. (Or maybe it was the baby giving me a good kick, who knows. It’s obviously going to be a bit of a nagger, like you.) Anyhow, the thought of looking at gum trees for two hours didn’t seem all that fantastic, so I turned round and came back here.
I’m staying on for a couple of months after the baby’s born (got to make sure I’m really and truly recovered from flu and bronchitis and pleurisy and that!). Then we’ll both be going to live with Mum and Dad for a bit. Back home.
I’m getting along fine, Seymour. (Honestly.) I think maybe I’m going to make it this time around. Just thought I’d tell you. When things get a bit tough I go for walks—only not in the direction of the railway station. The lake’s full of little silver fishes. (THEY can swim, you dill, so why can’t YOU?) They’re so pretty to watch I sit there for hours on end. It’s peaceful.
I didn’t get around to thanking you for bringing Juliet for me that day, did I? Well, thanks. She got a bit battered the first few weeks here. I used to get so depressed I’d scrunch her up in a ball and practically chew bits out of her. But that part’s all over now. I made her a new dress and new plaits of wool and washed and ironed and starched her. She just sits on my dressing table now, looks like a new woman!
The baby’s going to be fine, too, the doctor said. They did this ultrasound—that’s kind of like a moving x-ray picture—and I saw its little feet and it moved a hand and sort of waved to me. God, it’s so tiny, though you won’t think so from the photo I’m putting in with this letter. I look like I’m going to have triplets!
Seymour, it won’t ever be crying in its cot because I’ve fallen asleep, truly it won’t. You don’t ever have to worry about that now.
You should see all the cute things I’ve knitted for it (while I’m down talking to the fish in the lake).
I hope you get this letter and you haven’t moved on to some place else. And that things turned out OK for you at the new school and no one’s giving you a hard time. You know I never meant it when I said I never liked you. That was just me feeling sorry for myself and hitting out at the nearest thing which just happened to be you. I thought you were an ace kid (even though you wore that daggy shirt!). I hope I see you again some day. Hey, how about writing to me? It gets a bit lonely up here. Sounds silly, doesn’t it, when there are so many people here—sometimes we even have to have two shifts for meals in the dining room. But it’s spooky, like climbing a big mountain all by yourself in the fog. Still, I reckon I’m nearly up to the top, now. When I get there, I’ll tell you what the view’s like!*
Love from Angie
* If Morris Carpenter’s got anything to do with it, the fog might be just as thick up at the top! (Joke.)
P.S. Please write to me, love. I really miss you. Be my friend, keep me comforty, OK?