Hill of Grace (40 page)

He stood up and turned towards William's house. Various thoughts passed through his head and he nearly called them out. Instead, he walked over to Bruno's house, knocking on his front door and reminding himself not to become emotional. ‘Bruno.'

‘Arthur, you're back. How was Clare?'

Arthur put his hands on his hips. ‘Fine, until I had my cross stolen.'

‘No, where?'

‘Bruno, my flowers.'

‘I couldn't get any water. I looked everywhere for the stopcock.

I was going to call the water people but the flowers looked okay.

And Edna said you'd be along directly.'

Arthur sighed. ‘Someone turned it off.'

They both looked over at William's place. ‘You don't reckon?' Bruno asked.

Without a reply, Arthur walked out of Bruno's yard and followed the path up to William's front door. Knocking, he called out, ‘William, do you know anything about my water supply?' There was no reply and he knocked harder. ‘William!' He looked over at Bruno, watching from his front porch. ‘Thanks anyway, Bruno,' he called, ‘at least some of us still try to live as neighbours.'

Bruno waved and went back inside, unwilling to become more involved, lest William become more irrational. He'd read about such things in the city: neighbours building high brick fences or filling their yards with barking dogs, playing Beethoven until four in the morning or burying broken glass in vegetable patches.

Arthur went home to check his carnations, which had fared better. He pumped the soil with water until it would take no more, emerging from his house every hour or so to check his lisianthus, looking over to William's vegetables and well-watered vines and trying to remind himself that he was still a Christian.

There were other possibilities: kids again, or locals playing a joke, maybe someone responding to the publicity he'd brought to the town. But Arthur had never had a single enemy, let alone such an organised one. If he accepted that it was malice then he'd have to start installing locks on his doors, fencing his flowers with wire and buying a guard dog.

The next morning, when William came out into his back-yard, he found Arthur's cross lying on the ground, cut neatly with a saw at ground level. He walked over to his fence on Arthur's side and called out, ‘I didn't touch your water.'

Arthur lay in bed smiling, wondering what would come next. In time William went in for breakfast, calming himself with a devotion from Hebrews, hearing his father's voice whisper, ‘Seven times,' and wondering what he'd done to deserve all of this hate.

That afternoon Arthur rang Lawry's and had two lengths of Tasmanian oak delivered. Setting up trestles in his back-yard he started sawing and planing in full view of William's back porch and side window.

Bluma emerged with a basket of washing and called, ‘Hello, Arthur, what you doing?'

‘It's my new cross. To replace the one that got stolen.'

‘That's terrible. What's the world coming to?' she said, before passing into the wash-house as Arthur started cutting tenon joins and fitting the pieces together. When his cross was glued and screwed and a new wheel fitted, he warmed his iron poker and branded the words again:
What shall I render to the Lord, For all his
bounty to me?
Just before sunset he put on the first coat of varnish and settled into a chair beside his creation, drinking unlabelled wine and listening to the last chorus of birds.

Just after dark he turned off the tap to his flowers and walked among the garden beds, looking at a hundred-plus lissies drooping face first into the mud.

William was watching him from a crack in his back window. Bluma came up behind him and said, ‘For goodness sake, get out there and talk to him.'

William didn't reply, making a beeline to his study and his pamphlets.

Next morning William was up early. He didn't want to miss seeing Arthur's reaction when he found the table and cross he'd made for the Millerites sitting in his backyard. William had opened the cocky's gate between their two homes and pushed them through.

Later he watched from his window as Arthur made up the table with a table cloth and rested the cross up against his rainwater tank. That afternoon he picked out the dead flowers and replanted the ground with calendulas, returning to his cross and the varnish William could smell from his study.

Chapter Eighteen

Four times daily: 10.00, 2.00, 4.00 and 8.00, regardless of the weather. Lately there'd been problems with Yolanda, the Sexsational Dancer, who bluntly refused to work if the mercury hit a hundred. Joe Hobson, MC, would go behind the Easter Wondershow tent and say to her, ‘I'm not asking you to cure the cancer, just wiggle your arse.' One day, when she was being particularly obstinate, he said, ‘We need to get your banner repainted, you're not looking much like
that
Yolanda anymore.' The Yolanda of suspenders and waif-like waistline, glowing white teeth and nibble-me shoulders dripping baby oil and hiding a cleavage (it was said) which moved with the slightest breath off the Semaphore sea.

Nathan and Lilli stood at the back of the crowd outside the tent, still dripping from their swim in the Semaphore baths, balancing on a gutter to see over a sea of towelling hats. Phil, in one of Bob's old work shirts, sat down on a bench and started peeling a banana. ‘Yolanda's seen better days,' he said, as Joe Hobson paraded her around stage in sequined leotards. Lilli looked at him. ‘You've seen her sexsational dance?'

‘That I'm not ready for. Apparently people pay, though.'

A line of them, at a small booth beside the stage, buying tickets and entering the tent in anticipation of Moulin Rouge with cellulite. On cue Yolanda waved goodbye to the crowd and followed them in. Nathan was holding Lilli's hand but his mind was elsewhere: front row centre in the Wondershow tent, as underwear was tossed from the stage, landing across his face in a wheeze of stale farts. Yolanda with Bible, ripping pages from Hebrews, dipping them in glue and pasting them across her naked body.

Yolanda suddenly become his mother, hanging her privates across a washing line on the main stage.

Phil stretched back and munched on his banana. ‘They never found their giant python.'

Lilli looked at him again. ‘Who?'

‘This lot.'

She sat down beside him as he continued talking. ‘Vanessa Lee from Tennessee, she was Yolanda's predecessor. Draped a giant python across her shoulders. One year it disappeared. Since it was worth a lot of money, Joe Hobson contacted the paper.'

Nathan looked back at him, grinning. ‘Bullshit.'

‘Without a word of a lie.'

Nathan noticed how Lilli had angled her body towards Phil, who bit off more banana than his mouth could hold, apparently disinterested and disconnected from both of them. ‘The story appears and of course everyone's too scared to come. Semaphore's deserted. Then they run a story that it's found. But no one ever saw Mrs Lee from Tennessee, or her snake, again.'

Nathan watched Lilli lean towards Phil and remembered her words,
Not me at my best
. His one consolation was that his ability to read people's characters was still improving. With every smile and grin he saw his notion of eternal togetherness – he and Lilli, a child or two – dissipate a little more, like a sax solo from the Joe Aronson Synco Symphonists fading as it broke over the Torrens. Or were these doubts more of his father, he wondered, the purist, the tester and rejecter of people, the all-or-nothin', one-winner-takes-all puritan. He knew Lilli's behaviour wasn't Phil's fault, although Phil wasn't helping. Lilli lacked what William called constancy. But then again, what did William know?

Joe Hobson was the Aronson of the foreshore, replacing T-bones with Dixies and jazz with tinny, prerecorded Glenn Miller. He straightened his bowtie and introduced Vanessa the Undresser, a grain-fed Betty Grable who made Yolanda look like Stan Laurel. ‘What she doesn't show isn't worth seeing,' Hobson promised, asking the audience to look out for plain-clothed detectives. Vanessa descended into the dim, smoky tent, followed by a string of gents removing their hats in the manner of St Michaels, Sunday morning, nine a.m.

Nathan looked back at Lilli and Phil and this time Lilli seemed to notice him. ‘Nathan, I was telling Phil about our shot at Sunday School. Remember, pin the tail on the martyr?' She started laughing, turning back to Phil and elaborating. Phil looked at Nathan and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, What am I meant to do? Nathan smiled, realising that Lilli was completely misreading Phil.

There were other choices. Zoltan the Fire Eater, there to give the Eastern Wondershow some dimension, bringing skill and artistry to the tent of otherwise smut. Lighting a pair of gruesome-looking sticks and plunging them in his mouth. Throwing a petrol flare over the audience of hatless men with flagging erections. This was Lilli's choice: to light up the darkness with something remarkable or, as Nathan guessed she would, continue with more of the same.

As the show continued, against a backdrop of human sacrifices and flying carpets, those who were willing to suspend belief had the best time. Darkness allowed them to believe that the severed heads were real, that Vanessa really got it all off. This was Semaphore's version of Langmeil, the miracles of Sinbad the Sword Swallower every bit as real as Christ's, an audience praying in the form of mouths hung open in disbelief. And somewhere amongst them there was a William Miller, convinced that all the trickery was real.

Lilli, Phil and Nathan walked up to the Esplanade and caught a trolleybus, its two arms reaching up to a latticework of overhead wires suspended from poles. The arms would spark and sometimes slip off the wires, jumping frenetically about until the driver got out to reattach them. Largs Bay grandmothers would moan, ‘Not again,' as the sun beat in through tempered glass. When an old Scot, sitting three seats in front of them, muttered, ‘Jesus fuckin' Christ,' Lilli looked at Phil and laughed under her breath. Phil looked at Nathan and raised his eyebrows the same way as earlier, deferring to Lilli's hand on his arm and giving her an explanation of his Biblical narrative.

That night, as the two boys lay awake in their beds, waiting for sleep and something that resembled a breeze through their window, Phil said, ‘I didn't know what to do.'

Nathan smiled. ‘I felt sorry for you.'

‘How?'

‘I dunno. The thing is . . .'

Phil turned over. ‘I felt sorry for you.'

There was quiet for a while, crickets at various pitches and tempos filling the emptiness with an electricity every bit as musical as the Sunbeam trolleybus. Out of this silence Phil said, ‘Vanessa the Undresser,' and they both cracked up.

‘Night fellas,' Bob said, walking past their door.

Two replies and then Phil in analytical mode. ‘Maybe it's the novelty of a new face, in which case she'll get over it. On the other hand . . .'

Nathan jettisoned a pillow and farted. ‘Let's put it this way, do you think she'd ever try to crack onto you?'

‘That's the question. And more importantly, how would I react?'

‘Well?'

‘How would you like me to react?'

‘That's not the point.'

Phil sighed. ‘Sex, yes. Especially in a rugged outdoor location. Relationship, no. Nothing personal, but I'd end up smothering her with a pillow within a month. Therefore, the question is, would it be worth ruining our friendship for approximately thirty seconds of intense nervous stimulation . . . especially when you consider there are simpler, no fuss alternatives. Therefore, to answer your question, no.'

Nathan detected a breeze across his forehead. ‘I don't know if that makes me feel any better.'

‘To paraphrase Darwin, eat, root, and root some more . . . we may only have six weeks left.'

They laughed. Rose stuck her head in the door. ‘What you two laughing about?'

‘March twenty-one,' Phil replied, ‘put it in your diary.'

‘Why?'

‘The Second Coming.'

As outlined in the verses Rose had found on the dining-room table, sitting down with a coffee and a dose of Perry Como, reading and laughing as Kavel was upstaged by the gags of Martin and Lewis.

Rose closed the door, went into her bedroom, dropped her dressing-gown on the floor and climbed into bed. Single sheet, cotton blend tropicana. Fluffing up her pillow she searched for
A Man Called Peter
and settled in for an agreeable dose of the Messiah via the Reverend Peter Marshall. Every night she got to know him a little better, imagining his thirty-something good looks and brandy-warmed breath, preaching from pulpits the length and breadth of the Americas, animating Jesus in the same way Chips Rafferty had reinvented the Aussie battler. Belief suspended, the reality of Miller and his Revelations lost in a bed-spread of woven marsupials.

Her husband, meanwhile, sat in the darkness on a stone wall in the backyard. Wiping Ballarat Bitter from his mouth he wondered if the fellas at work had started to notice his changing condition, if they were becoming tired of his weary body dragged from one end of the day to the next.

‘It's not like Bob,' he could hear them saying.

Although no one had said anything to him: the ever reliable Bob Drummond, pulling on his jacket and clocking off, crossing tracks without so much as hearing the eight-wheeled cafeteria being towed past. On his way back home, dogs barking at him through rickety picket fences, the lady in the cottage next to the deli saying hello. Replying, but sighing at the same time.

It was just how he felt. They must have started noticing. Maybe they were just waiting for him to get over it, as he usually did. Arriving at work one morning with a bag of sly grog and his Menzies impression.

He stubbed out his Garrick filter-tip and blew the smoke into the empty night sky. Rose's God could sniff it out and apportion blame. No. No God. Just emptiness, and the smell of deep-fried flake from the Kilburn fish and chippery.