Back at school on Monday I told the crew about Bert’s death. Isa and Pericles had only met him once but were both more upset by the news than I’d expected them to be. I think it was the dying-with-nobody-around element that got to them. Phoenix broke through the heaviness of the situation with a cheering platitude: ‘When your time’s up, your time’s up.’ As obvious and unhelpful as the statement was, it got me thinking about Bert taking us into his Church of Time – the clock room. Maybe he’d heard his final call, and that was his way of letting us know?
‘So there won’t be any junkyard sale,’ I said, saddened by the thought that none of Bert’s instructions would be followed – except in the case of Ethel.
‘Such a shame,’ Isa said. ‘Terri was on board and ready to go.’
‘Initially Bert wasn’t keen. But when I visited on Saturday there were heaps of coloured stickers on his stuff. He must’ve spent days pricing everything. The mechanical hen had a note attached that said “Lincoln from up the hill”.’
‘Did he get her working again?’ Pericles said.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t tried yet.’
Bert probably stopped moving before he’d had a chance to make Ethel start. That’s all death is – you stop moving. Forever.
When I got home from school I stared into Ethel’s painted eyes. Permanently gleeful, they got me wondering if there wasn’t still a spark of life left in the old girl. She was well over a hundred years old, though, and would probably need a penny or a shilling to get her started, which I didn’t have. So I dropped a twenty-cent piece in the slot. Nothing happened. I turned her over and shook. The coin rattled around but stayed in there.
On Tuesday I ate lunch alone near The Labyrinth, recalling the day Dr Limberg had sent me in there and I’d met King Henry the prize bull. I remembered how he’d started talking to me when I rubbed his snout. Bert was always talking to little Percy, and often acted as if he could hear Percy speaking to him. While I didn’t believe that lifeless objects could converse, I did believe they had stories to tell. And I had a hunch that Ethel had something important to tell me. It was only a matter of figuring out how to make that happen.
When I got home from school, I stroked Ethel’s metal wings and whispered into the spot her ears might be, ‘How do I make you work again?’
I stilled my thoughts and waited at least ten minutes for an answer. There was no audible voice, no omen or the slightest inkling. I tried again before going to bed, but nothing. Defeated, I brushed my teeth, crawled into my cocoon and pulled the doona over my head.
On the verge of falling asleep, golden phosphenes danced across the dark screen of my closed eyes and a possible solution came to me. Bert had given Pericles a gold token and told him to guard it with his life. He’d said, ‘You never know when it might come in handy.’
On Wednesday morning as soon as I got to school I found Pericles and asked if I could borrow the coin.
‘Sure.’ He shrugged and unzipped his wallet. ‘Oh no . . . it’s not there!’
‘Have you lost it?’
‘No, no, no.’ He squeezed his eyes then looked up. ‘I think it’s still at your place. I wanted to escape before my father arrived and couldn’t decide between crashing at Isa’s or running away, so I flipped the coin. It rolled under the bed and as I was reaching for it, your dad came in and persuaded me to stay. I’m so sorry. With all the shit that was going down I totally forgot to retrieve it. It must be under the bed.’
When the electronic glockenspiel sounded at the end of the day, I tore home on my bike and dived under the bed. The gold token was there against the wall. Eureka! I dropped it into the hen’s slot.
Nothing happened. It got trapped in there with the twenty-cent piece.
Early the next morning, halfway through breakfast, I heard my father’s bedroom door open and someone coming out. Judging by the footfall, it wasn’t Dad. It had to be the light step of a woman.
I leant back on my stool and, peering down the hallway, caught the door closing again. The person must’ve seen me first and ducked back in. Ten minutes later, Dad came out in boxers and ruffled my hair. ‘You’re up early this morning, champ.’
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
‘You’ve got two hours before school. Why don’t you hop back into bed?’
‘Things to do.’
Dad ground some coffee beans and set the machine for two cups. I told him I didn’t want one, but he said he was having a double shot. Then he complained that the milk was sour and asked me to nip down to the shop to get a fresh carton.
‘Anybody would think you were trying to get rid of me. If I took a stab, I’d say you brought somebody home last night and you don’t want her to know you have a teenage son.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘I heard you both coming in.’ I hadn’t heard them but I wanted to force a confession.
‘All right. You got me. Guilty as charged. But she already knows about you. She’s painfully shy and you’re making this very awkward. How about you duck back into your room for ten, fifteen minutes and give her a little space to leave?’
‘If you’re playing Secret Squirrel because you’re worried I’ll tell Mum, you can relax. I’m good at keeping secrets.’
‘Thank you for being so considerate, but your mother already knows.’
Dad went down the hall, knocked on his bedroom door and said, ‘The gig’s up. The kid won’t budge.’ A middle-aged woman emerged and walked down the hallway wearing one of my mother’s black dresses. She even bore an uncanny resemblance to my mother.
‘Who’s cooking the eggs?’ she said. ‘Both of you should’ve had enough practice by now.’ She turned to me. ‘Why the look of horror, darling?’
‘Sorry, but nobody expects their father’s one-night stand to be their mother. There’s something so heinously wrong about it.’
‘Honey, we’re your parents. We’ve been doing it for more than twenty years. There’s nothing more natural.’
‘Not when you can’t stand each other.’
‘Here’s some news for you,’ Mum said. ‘Sex isn’t always about love. People have needs.’
‘Way too much information.’
After their initial awkwardness at being sprung, my parents turned the tables and enjoyed making me squirm, which sucked considering I was the only one in the group with an ounce of discretion. I’d only recently forgiven Dad for all that he’d done, and only just come to accept that I’d never move back home because soon it wouldn’t be ours. Now here they were – the two people who’d caused untold upheaval in my life, having sexual congress right under my nose. It was too much.
‘So are you two back together now or what?’ I said.
‘No, we’re not back together,’ Dad said. ‘But if you require some sort of definition, I suppose you could call us friends with benefits.’ He slipped his arm around Mum’s waist.
‘Steady on, tiger,’ she said, removing his arm. ‘I haven’t said anything about being friends. And the jury’s still out on the benefits. Lincoln, yesterday afternoon I went to the funeral of a distant relative. He’d been estranged from his family for years and nobody was there when he died. Ghastly affair. I only went out of obligation to my cousin Lana. We got a bit drunk afterwards so I stayed here last night instead of going all the way back home. There’s nothing more to it.’
‘Whose funeral was it?’
‘My Uncle Albert. You never met him.’
‘What was the funeral like?’
‘Mercifully one of the shortest I’ve been to. The minister either knew nothing about him or was very diplomatic. Albert was far from squeaky clean. He was a driver for one of Sydney’s biggest underworld figures in the fifties and sixties – Jack Monodora. Never convicted of anything, but I’m sure he made the occasional special delivery.’
‘I can’t believe it,’ I said. The dawning realisation was like being with Mum in the car sliding backwards down the driveway at Signal Bay all over again. Hearing the names Lana and Jack Monodora hit me like an airbag, knocking the wind out of me.
I drew up the family tree in my head.
Bert was my great-uncle.
‘What’s the matter?’ Mum said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Just surprised to learn our family has a few dark secrets.’
‘All families have their colourful characters,’ Dad said, failing to make the connection.
‘That’s euphemistic, Lance. He was a volatile alcoholic and Lana hadn’t seen him in a decade. You can try to sever the ties, but family is family. Albert was still her father and she was a howling mess at the funeral.’
Mum’s words became background noise as I thought through the consequences of being related to Bert. I remembered what Lana had said about him not passing the medical because of a ‘spinal issue’. Was Bert’s spinal issue a tail? He’d blamed himself for Johnny’s death, and the shame had destroyed his life. I needed time to sort a few things out before I could tell anybody anything. Fortunately Mum had reached the end of her story.
‘Skip the coffee,’ she said. ‘I have to dash.’
The day at school dragged on and on. Bert’s death and the subsequent revelation that he was family had raised even more questions and I desperately wanted to finish the book to find some answers, but after school I had to work at Give Me the Juice with Pericles.
In my half-hour break I raced down to Sushi Train® and claimed one of the two vacant stools. Three purple plates of raw tuna later, a lady in a brown coat excused herself and sat on the stool next to me. Devoid of make-up and colourful clothing, Ms Tarasek looked nothing like her usual flamboyant self and I might’ve left without recognising her if she hadn’t said my name.
She asked how Art was progressing with the replacement teacher, and I said that Miss Timms was all about the theory and very little practical work.
‘Is the exhibition going ahead?’
‘Postponed, which I think means cancelled.’
‘I am not surprised. I had resistance from Mr Dashwood.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He said that your piece and two others were too controversial for display. I argued that they must be shown. Otherwise what is the point of art?’
‘Is that why you left?’
‘No. I would never back down so easily. My father is terminally ill. So I will soon return to Poland to be by his side.’ She took a bowl of edamame off the belt, popped a couple and began eating the beans separately with chopsticks. After expressing my condolences, I told her that Isa and I had discussed installing the knitted double helix unofficially.
‘You must choose your fights carefully,’ she said. ‘Be aware of the possible repercussions and be willing to face them. Two generations of my family have suffered terribly for their art.’ She didn’t elaborate further and it didn’t feel the right time to probe. Imagining it probably involved confiscation, burning, imprisonment or execution, I figured Isa’s and my effort was likely to seem trivial in comparison.
‘The worst they can do to us is cut it down before anybody has a chance to see it,’ I said.
‘I am proud of your courage,’ she said. ‘Teachers are not supposed to have favourite students, but we all do. You and Isa were mine. Such passion and dedication. Will you take my email address and let me know what happens?’
‘It would be an honour,’ I said. I put it into my phone then dashed back to work.
After all that had happened today, explaining to every third customer that we were out of bananas took all the patience I could muster. Sam continued to hassle Pericles but now he brushed it off or silenced him with much wittier retorts. As the clock approached nine, he could see that I was exhausted, and didn’t ask me to stay back and help him close. I left a hundred per cent confident that he wouldn’t allow Sam to get under his skin again.
I caught the train back to the Cross and rain began falling the moment I stepped out of the station. One minute later I entered our lobby saturated. ‘Cats and dogs out there,’ Frank said as I passed the desk. Home at last, I showered and climbed into bed, then turned to the final pages of My One Redeeming Affliction.
Bitterly cold winds hastened the termination of the park’s season, but Irving Melinkoff, unwilling to forfeit a single penny, refused to cancel the show. Instead, he forced me to perform increasingly difficult and sometimes life-threatening underwater stunts to entice the park’s dwindling visitors. In Hilda’s absence, the mermaid princess was played by a submerged mannequin whose single moving feature was her hair. Neglect of the tank’s maintenance turned the water cloudy, and a vibrant green film of algae spread over the mannequin’s skin, terrifying and delighting the younger members of the audience in equal measure. The fouled water infected both my good and bad ears, and provoked a severe case of dermatitis that blistered and became fiercely itchy.
Where once I’d enjoyed astonishing the audience with my fellow performers, I now dreaded being the sickly object of their leering gaze. Each night, after seven exhausting performances, returning to my lodgings brought little comfort. Bereft of my friend Paulo and his belongings, the small room seemed cavernous. And in the oppressive silence, my thoughts returned to my family and Deidre Budd. For more than a year I’d maintained my vow not to write to her, and with no photographic portrait to cherish, my mental picture, conjured too many times, had irretrievably faded.
One evening the landlord delivered a letter from my sister, Loula. Following the usual pleasantries came some troubling news: Deidre Budd was being courted by one of the local Pyrmont lads. The blow of discovering the suitor’s identity on the next page struck harder than a prize-fighter’s uppercut to the jaw. How could she have fallen for someone as low as my tormentor, Reg McGuffin? McGuffin, the pug-nosed thug who’d stirred the Pyrmont lads against myself and Thomas. Surely the heartless ruffian who’d hurled a rock through the window of our family home hadn’t reformed sufficiently to merit her affection?
Hoping to expunge all thoughts of Diddy from my mind in the revels of the racing crowd, I washed and shaved, dressed in my finest suit and headed for the New Brighton Hotel. Having hardly partaken of spirituous liquor since leaving Australia, I expected a whisky might loosen me sufficiently to enjoy the company of strangers. But my hearing loss made it difficult to follow conversation, and impossible to contribute – the raucous singing and laughter only mocking my desperate loneliness.
After downing my third drink, I found my way to a dive bar in an area fittingly coined The Gut, where nobody would bother to interrupt a man’s solitary descent into delirium and stupor. There I threw back shots until my vision blurred and veins knotted my temples. Yet still the blaring torment of being condemned to live alone forever continued. I drank one more for the road, lurched outside and witnessed the modern miracle of a million electric light bulbs spinning above me.
Even in my miserable state, the tawdry beauty of the place wasn’t lost on me as I attempted to gather myself on a bench. And where there is any form of beauty, there is life. If only I could manage to find my way home, I thought, everything might somehow be all right. But the address of my lodgings and the ability to walk there had abandoned me. I needed someone who could point me in the right direction. Instead, a raven-haired woman wrapped in fox fur took my arm and pulled me east towards the Elephant Hotel, where a room could be paid for by the hour. On reaching the boardwalk I seized a pole and refused to continue. She drew close and traced a line down my back, her breath hot in my ear, whispering her desire to see the thing I was famous for – to touch it. She began to unbutton my fly, and I burnt with the shame of inexperience and unwanted arousal.
‘Don’t be shy,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t be my first animal act.’
Her forced interest in my abhorrent feature for the sake of money filled me with loathing and self-loathing. I asked her to stop, but she dug her nails into my arm and said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t like girls?’
I shook her off and staggered away but she followed, unrelenting in her taunting solicitation. I pulled the remaining bills from my wallet and pushed them into her hand, then walked towards the sea. The woman remained on the boardwalk and yelled, ‘I don’t need your lousy change!’
I reached the lapping waves. Water seeped into my shoes.
‘I’ve met some crazies in my time, mister. But you sure take the cake!’
Fully clothed, I walked into the inky sea, lights dancing on its surface. I hardly registered the chill until it reached my aching ears, and cut off the woman’s voice.
My toes curled with a chill of recognition that ran its way up my entire body, setting me shivering convulsively. When it reached the top of my head, I remembered properly for the first time how I’d walked inebriated and fully clothed into the sea, wanting to die from the shame of Nicole Parker discovering my ugly secret.
Exceedingly intoxicated, I’d convinced myself that I’d never find love and happiness, and attempted to drown myself. Only by the grace of God did I fail. My father had always told me never to give up the fight, and at that crucial moment his words returned to me. I saw the faces of my dear family longing for my return, a revelation of their great love for me, and I chose life. I allowed the waves to wash me ashore and crawled up the sand. The cold bite of the ocean had restored enough sense in me to find my way back to my lodgings. I built a roaring fire and spent the night beside it, thawing my frozen body and planning my return to Australia.
There I would fulfil my goal of setting my family free from their bondage of debt with the money I’d earnt from putting myself on display. Touring with the Astonishing Assembly of splendid performers had opened my eyes to variances in human anatomy and appearance, and given me an interest in studying medicine. I would eventually establish a practice that provided comfort and assistance to people suffering from any condition that made them feel isolated from society. And by accomplishing this, my own affliction would at last be redeemed.
Edwin Stroud’s story finished happily enough, but the abrupt end of the journey left me feeling flatter than three-day-old roadkill. I lifted Ethel off the shelf and asked her if there was anything more to know, and if there was any way of finding out. I waited for five minutes then, putting her back onto the shelf and feeling utterly defeated, I noticed a tiny hole at the left side of her base – a keyhole.
‘Of course! You need to be wound,’ I said. ‘But where is your key?’
Calling Isa after midnight was impulsive and perhaps selfish, but I desperately needed to slow my speeding thoughts. After she’d expressed her sleepy incredulity at the hour of my call, I asked what Bert had given her. She said it was a tiny brass key.
I gasped, stopped breathing momentarily.
‘Are you still there?’ she said. ‘Speak or I’m hanging up.’
‘I’m still here. Could I please borrow the key?’
‘What for?’
‘I can’t divulge that right now – maybe later. Could you please bring it to school tomorrow?’
‘Sure. Goodnight.’