London via Paris and Rome
Andreas Å Andersson
We moved to a new share house on Union Street and from there on it was all home brew, new faces and an evening sun setting fire to a backyard brick wall. Mitch was supposedly Mum’s second cousin and emptied the storage room facing the laneway when he got her call. At the time, we didn’t need much space and except for the torn carpeting and a damp smell there was nothing wrong with the place. Ron called it a dunghole, but if anything, it had a late ’60s working class charm. It was my first summer in Melbourne since coming down from Horsham so I didn’t know what to expect. It was also my only summer. Sometime in April we were leaving for London, indefinitely, making stops in Paris and Rome.
I was waiting for a call from the council that didn’t come and Ron had finally gotten into construction which meant good money but early mornings—not once did I hear him leave for work. Downstairs was Myra. She had a military crew cut and didn’t say much, but was always there, sipping peppermint tea or taking notes in her My Little Pony journal. Tony had the room next to ours and was the proud owner of the household’s 3-in-1 rice cooker.
‘Look at this coating,’ he said, one hand digging in on the grains, the other spinning a strainer between us. ‘All starch. It all comes down to rinsing. One go is not enough. How could it be?’
I smiled, thinking it was especially funny since his hair didn’t look like it’d been shampooed all year. He wanted to show me a lot of things, Tony. I found it cute. Every day at noon he made us fried rice for breakfast. Usually just with green peas but every once in a while with chicken or egg, whatever he could find. He had a lazy eye that he tried to cover with his long fringe. I pretended not to notice it. That first day, while fiddling with the stereo, Tony asked if I liked Spoon, and thinking it was a drug I said yes. Even Myra laughed.
We’d ditched Ron’s bed base and just kept the twin-sized mattress. It was his idea to start scaling down on possessions before the big move. With the addition of a couple of picnic quilts it was as comfortable as ever. Alone in our room, Ron rattled on about the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, Big Ben. I sat behind him, stabbing my knuckles in his upper back. His long shifts made him sore all the way down the sides. With my eyes I followed the twigs in the saffron-coloured wallpaper. Like the pattern coiled, so did his thoughts.
‘Do you know how many steps there are to the top? Five hundred? More than that. It’s seven. Think of that.’
I thought of that and I leaned in to get more pressure.
‘Do you think I should cut my hair?’ I said. He didn’t reply. Then he said: ‘Imagine us at the top. You have to take the elevator the last bit but then you step out on this tiny platform and it’s all right there. The sky, the city. The wind violent, I’m sure. Hair covering our faces. Such a great shot. We’ll frame it and hang it over our headboard.’
It wasn’t a bad picture. Something out of a film. I reckoned I’d do okay in it.
When it was time for Ron to crash I closed the door and went down to the others. Ron said my sighs kept him awake and I didn’t want to be that person.
Mitch worked irregular hours and sometimes hung out with us in the somewhat shady backyard, slumped in one of the couches. Tony was sucking on an unlit cigarette, his naked feet in a ray of sunlight that sneaked in through the neighbours’ plum trees. No-one in the house cared enough to water the plants, except the one cannabis plant appropriately flowering in a reused bucket of fertilisers. Still, English ivy was flourishing and covering most of the northern fence.
‘When are you off?’ Mitch said. ‘Not that I mind having you here.’
‘You should ask Ron. He would know.’
‘Booked your flight?’
‘Don’t think so.’
‘Maybe it’s too early.’
Tony straightened his legs to keep the sunbeam in reach. ‘Where were you going again?’ he said, the cigarette now hidden in his closed fist. His elbow was resting on an empty flower pot, an arm frozen in a throwing motion. It was an odd image. It looked like he was holding a hand grenade, directing it towards me. I stared at it and his one straight eye and forgot what he had asked.
‘I haven’t seen much of Ron,’ Mitch said. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Oh he’s great.’
‘The good ol’ great guy,’ he said. ‘What makes him great?’
‘A lot. Trevor Larkins’s his uncle.’
Mitch didn’t get it.
‘He was a half-back,’ I continued. ‘For the Tigers, or the Roos. One of those.’
‘Not my teams.’
‘The Tigers are all right,’ Tony said. The cigarette was back in the corner of his mouth. One of his hands was stretched down the cobweb filled space between the couch and the exterior wall, the other one tugging the hair on the back of his head. His shrubby armpit looked wet and sticky. ‘I knew a girl who was into that shit. Matched her bra and knickers on game day.’
‘As in black and yellow?’ Mitch said.
‘I don’t know. She never showed me.’
‘Well if there are any faded red or discoloured white teams, consider me a fan,’ I said.
‘Any bare-chested, sign me up,’ Tony said.
Mitch made a half-arsed attempt to kick at Tony’s foot. ‘I thought you went for the ones with skid marks down their backs,’ he said.
‘Yeah, they’re all right too.’ Tony grinned so wide it didn’t make sense why the cigarette didn’t fall from his mouth.
Those months I spent most of my time in that backyard couch. I really had nowhere else to go. Ron was all smiles when he came home. He’d started picking up tourist guides and road atlases and whatever he could find at the library that he dumped on the kitchen counter.
‘One step closer,’ he’d say before heading for the shower. Without getting up I made my hand look like an airplane taking off. When he turned away it swooshed back for a safe landing in my knee.
Ron went to bed early so usually we kept it quiet. Friends of Tony’s came and went; there must have been at least twenty of them. They all had hair like him, as if they’d just come back from two months of isolation on an offshore oil rig. Their eyes looked tired, yet they never fully shut them, no matter how late we stayed up. When the sky went dark there were talks of starting a fire but we never got to it. A stray cat, we called her Jolly, kept climbing in from the street. We wiped an ashtray and filled it with water. She tramped all over us to get to it and if she was to stop and lay down it was always in the lap of Myra, the one who didn’t enjoy company. Mitch had a 23-litre glass carboy in the hidden closet under the stairs and provided us all with drinks. The second or third week, Tony started handing me gifts. At first I didn’t know what to say, but after a while I began saving them for later, usually until eight pm or so when the backyard was at its most beautiful. I’d pop it under my tongue and when Tony scoffed his I’d do the same and wait for the sun to hit the angle when the brick wall started to glow and shift from a sweet pumpkin to an underwater coral red. A smell of dust fell over us, grazing our pale palms—I made sure to hold them face up—slipping through the fingers to pick up whatever was left of the day. When it rose there was dew and there was vanilla and trust me when I say it was not only around us but inside us as well.
One morning we were still outside when I heard Ron coming down the stairs, ready for work. He didn’t switch on the lights and remained a shadow, picking up his clunking tool belt and grabbing his lunch box from the fridge before leaving. If he saw us, he didn’t let us know. He joined us on the weekends, but never for too long and always too bubbling with talks of scaffoldings and steel frames and this guy John who once didn’t just drop but rather threw a bull pin over the Southbank promenade.
‘Why on earth would he do that?’ I said.
‘The West Indies hat-trick. Imagine being strapped sixty feet in the air when that news hit you.’
When he left and Mitch went to get another armful of beer Tony leaned over and pretended to fall off the couch.
‘That guy threw a ball and that other guy caught it—tell me, what’s now left to live for?’
I really started taking to Tony’s gifts. He would dig into his pocket and exclaim: ‘Here comes Jolly!’, which had me doubled up with laughter.
‘Get me some soft paws and a stingy attitude!’ I replied.
‘Here’s something stingy and soft for you,’ he said, pulling down his zipper to take out his dick. It was all lumpy and hairy. Myra asked if she could draw it, which she did. There he was, more pleased than ever, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and dangling from his fly, a soft dick all mushy like an overripe kiwifruit. He started playing with it but couldn’t get it any harder and let it be.
‘You’re in the picture too,’ Myra said to get me to stop howling, but even if I tried I couldn’t straighten up.
Ron brought home a thick work on gothic architecture with a hideous gargoyle on the cover. I hid it under some magazines but the next day found it on my seat in the couch. I held it over my head just to drop it to the ground. The thud echoed over the laneway. It was still early afternoon.
‘Hey Tony,’ I said. ‘Wanna fuck?’
Myra was right there, looking up from her journal. Tony nodded, all serious. We strolled up to his room which was the same size as ours but had a window facing the street. It was cooler on his side of the house so we slid under the doona. I kicked my shorts to the floor but kept the bra on. For once I pulled back his hair to see both his eyes. He took forever. There was a shelf with all the classics: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Melville. Not just for show; they all looked well read. Afterwards he had a cigarette. I had one too. Ron would be home any minute, yet I stayed for another smoke and this time really took my time with it. I’d just put it away when I heard Ron coming through the front door and have a chat with Myra. Tony shook his head to get the fringe to cover his eye. I felt like I had a fever. I picked up my clothes, walked over to ours and laid down on the mattress, my belly still all sticky from Tony. Just when Ron entered the room I tossed a blanket over my groin.
‘You all right?’
‘Just tired.’
There was a dense and tangy ooze of sweat and genitals. It was all so obvious. Tony came out of his room with his belt still unbuckled and said hello.
‘Go put a beer in the fridge and I’ll be right down,’ I said to Ron. He was halfway there when he turned around and came back, popping his big head through the door.
‘You know what?’ he said.
‘What?’
‘One step closer.’
Since Ron worked up until the day before our flight, he asked me to do most of the packing. I started folding my knickers but got distracted when Tony’s friends arrived. With still a couple of days to go, Ron came home with flowers and a sponge cake. We had it by the kitchen table like a proper family.
‘You cut your hair,’ Ron said.
It had been sweltering for weeks. Ron thought his bronzed cheeks gave him a well-earned tradie look, but I couldn’t help seeing a ten-year-old boy late for dinner, having chased sheep in the paddock the whole day. Mitch’s forehead was all prickly with sweat; Tony and Myra looked cool. The cake tasted of butter and was soon gone from our plates.
‘Where’s your first stop?’ Mitch asked looking at me. I looked at Ron.
‘Trastevere, Rome. An apartment by the Tiber,’ he said. ‘Tiny. But two floors.’
‘Beautiful. And from there to the City of Love?’
He looked at me and again I looked at Ron, who now was tapping his teaspoon on the tablecloth, seemingly reluctant to answer.
‘Love, I like that,’ Tony piped in.
‘Yeah,’ Mitch said, ‘you can’t say no to that.’
Ron kept hammering the same spot.
‘Thanks again for this,’ I said, not being entirely sure what I was referring to. Our time at Union Street was coming to an end, I knew that much. When I got up to clear the table, I noticed Jolly hiding behind Tony’s legs. She didn’t look like she wanted any affection. Still, I leaned down to offer her one of the plates.
On the shuttle bus I tried to talk to Ron. There was a wind outside that made the flags from the car dealers look all stiff and fake.
* *
Our flat in London is nice. We have a squeaky oak door and a window overlooking a railway depot. In the early mornings you can sometimes see foxes balancing on the wooden fence.
When I think of my time on Union Street, it’s all about the sunlight—its constant presence—and Tony, failing to keep his pale feet in its warmth. If he’d just stood up or moved the couch no more than an arm’s length, he would’ve been right in it. So would’ve we all.
Recently, I’ve tried to tell myself that everything changes, that there might be a time to go back. Not that there’s anything wrong with London. I must admit, I’ve grown to like it. And when it really comes down to it, isn’t that what it’s all about?