Last Day in the Dynamite Factory (9 page)

Uncle Ben went back to work, but every night returned to his shed. Aunty Jo took up the housework again but often got muddled; putting out cereal for lunch or toast for dinner. She'd go to the sink or the clothes line and stare at her hands as if she'd forgotten what they were for. One time she gave Chris her purse with the same look she'd given her hands and told him to buy himself a treat. He went to the corner store and bought a selection of lollies – humbugs, milk bottles, Fantails and Jaffas – which he tipped into bowls and took to Aunty Jo in her bedroom and Uncle Ben in his shed. They were still there a week later when he started the new school year. Alone. No small, chattering cousin bouncing along beside him.

School was different. Lonely. No-one knew what to say to a kid who couldn't talk. Sometimes words felt so close he'd open his mouth and expect them to pop out, but they never did. He was becoming invisible, the walls of his cell closing in. Some nights he woke wide-mouthed with the weight of Liam's body on his chest and terror drove him into the corridor to beat his hands against the walls. His thumps brought Ben.

‘It'll be all right, lad. You'll talk again. I promise.' Only that promise stopped him from going crazy.

‘Chris.'

‘Huh?'

‘You've eaten nothing.' Diane leans over and removes his plate. ‘Go and have a lie-down; you look exhausted.'

‘He called me son, but he never let me call him Dad. How could he do that?'

She rinses the plates. ‘You'll have to ask him. He can't feign ignorance after this.'

‘I spent my
life
asking him, and look where that got me!'

‘Shh … calm down.'

‘Calm
down
? Thirty years I looked for a father who didn't exist! My history's an invention. A farce.'

‘Yes, well … give yourself a few days to absorb it. You're still in shock. When you're thinking more clearly you'll see it's a good thing. Everything will sort itself out.'

Will it? Will the world slide obediently back onto its axis after a lie-down? Does she have the slightest inkling of what a mess his head is? What kind of words would he need to explain?

He goes downstairs and follows the meandering pathway to the tree house he built for the kids fifteen years ago. He hoists himself up and prises open the hinged roof Phoebe insisted on so she could look up at the trees and the night sky. The floor is littered with leaves and dirt and the broken remains of a child's tea set. Seems like yesterday Diane brought a yellow ribbon for the opening ceremony. Phoebe, claiming the superiority of age, demanded to cut it. Archie resorted to brute force and yanked it down. Phoebe made straight for the rope ladder to be first up but Archie shook it so hard she couldn't get a foothold. Chris lifted him away, allowing Phoebe to climb in, then deposited Archie on the floor at precisely the same moment. Phoebe brought mirrors and cups and saucers to the tree house which Archie promptly chucked out. Phoebe shoved Archie after them; he landed on his arse and screeched like a band-saw.

‘Great success,' Chris shouted over their howling son.

Diane rolled her eyes and asked why they'd bothered.

‘To build the tree house or have kids?'

‘Both,' she said, and they'd laughed.

He reaches for two pieces of doll-sized teacup and brings them together. They don't belong. In the blotchy mirror dangling from chicken wire Chris catches sight of his reflection; the hair – Jo was right – springing from his forehead like Ben's. How could he not have seen it? Looking for Jack Ward all those years and every question put to Jo and Ben met with evasion and discouragement because – he believed – they were afraid of losing him back to his birth father. So then he took care to protect them from knowing about his endless enquiries; the letters, the searches and scouring of records, all in vain. Year, after year, after year.

He drops down, landing on weak legs, and takes the path back to the house. Jo's diary is still on the floor of his den, red and threatening as a branding iron. Chris clamps it cautiously between a finger and thumb and goes back downstairs. Diane watches with a puzzled expression as he gets into his car.

He heads for the office. The staff are still on holidays; maybe there he can think. Familiar territory passes by: the Oswald's decaying house, their huge weeping fig tree, Woolworth's grubby brick facade, cars baking in the hard sunlight. Same, yet different. Everything's the same, yet everything is different.

Doris, Tabitha's garden gnome, is decorated in tinsel and Christmas lights. No matter what assaults that thing endures, it continues to smile with the same everlasting, obnoxious cheer.

The office is not empty. Judge is leaning on Hamish's drawing board, scowling. He looks silly in shorts, with his bony little legs and leprechaun knees.

‘Hey ho,' he says. ‘Come and have a look at this. Perfect, of course. That bloody Hamish – always,
always
accurate. Wouldn't it be great to find a mistake in his work? We could plant one. Imagine his mortification – wouldn't that be something? What are you doing here?'

Chris opens the diary with fumbling hands and pokes at the offending entry.

Judge raises his eyebrows.

‘Read it. My aunt's diary.'

Judge takes the journal and begins to read. After a moment he glances at Chris with a stunned expression before continuing to the end of the page. He shuts his eyes and rubs them. ‘Shit.' He wanders into the small kitchen and comes back with a couple of beers. ‘You poor bastard.' He hands Chris a beer. ‘Diane know?'

‘Yeah. She's already written a happy ending.'

‘Jesus.' Judge shakes his head.

‘She hasn't a clue, Judge; not a bloody clue.'

Diane looks up from her computer. ‘Oh, good. You're back. I was beginning to worry. Been with Ben?'

Chris takes off his glasses and mashes the heel of his hand into his eyes.

Diane stands up. ‘I know it's been a shock, Chris, but can't you see it's a good thing? You've found your father.'

‘He didn't want finding. He didn't
want
to be my father.'

‘Nonsense. He's been a wonderful father. Imagine if you'd had mine.'

‘At least yours didn't pretend he wasn't.'

Diane goes into the kitchen and takes the makings of dinner from the fridge. ‘I agree, he should have told you, but until you know why he didn't, try not to blow things out of proportion.'

‘There
is
no bloody proportion!'

‘All right, we'll leave it for now. I'll make chilli burgers for dinner, your favourite. That'll make you feel better.'

He pushes his favourite food around the plate; poking the meat and torturing the noodles with his fork until Diane puts a stilling hand over his. She clears away the plates and fills the dishwasher, hands him a glass of wine and pats the sofa beside her in front of the TV.

‘We'll watch Rumpole,' she says. But it's the wrong night for
Rumpole of the Bailey
. They watch instead the long green legs of a frog thrash futilely in the jaws of a snake. Its head has disappeared down the snake's gaping mouth. Chris looks away in distress, feeling complicit in the frog's death, while the narrator calmly proclaims nature is taking its course.

Diane, similarly repelled, aims the remote at the TV and switches it off. ‘Early night?'

Chris wonders if it's an invitation to cuddle. But no. ‘You've had a big day. A good night's sleep and tomorrow things will be clearer.'

He dozes restlessly; wakes damp with sweat. Gets up and turns on the ceiling fan, climbs back into bed and nuzzles Diane's neck, inhaling her smell of linen and shampoo. His balls begin to ache. He twirls a hank of her hair between his fingers, feels it slip from his grasp and moves his hand over the Swiss cotton nightie onto her flesh. His fingers begin a joy-ride over her skin – smooth as wet soap, cool and deliciously fine – down her arm, over her breasts, stomach and thighs. He rests his cheek against her back. She stirs, turns to him and gropes sleepily for his penis – reliably ready – and begins to stroke it with competent pressure. When he is primed, she pulls him on top of her, but as he glides into her accommodating warmth he feels another part of her withdraw – her spirit or soul – the part of her that never waits for him. He holds her, kisses her, pumps her, harder and faster in his lonely quest, but all that lies between them is the sweat of his endeavours. After a while she shifts and he rolls onto his back.

For a while they lie side by side, not touching. Then Diane turns to him. ‘Are you all right?'

A pulse bangs in his neck.

‘You didn't come,' she says.

‘Neither did you.'

‘I never do. You know that.'

‘I wish … I wish you trusted me enough to … to let go.'

‘I don't trust anybody enough.'

‘Not even yourself?'

‘Especially not myself.'

‘Why, Di?'

‘Oh, please. Not this again.'

‘Why is it a crime to want to be closer to you?'

‘How much closer can we be? I'm right here, right now. We've just had sex.'

‘What about love?'

‘Ah, come on, Chris. You're tired, I'm tired. It's been a big day. Let's just get some sleep.' She pats his leg. ‘Don't worry that you didn't come. You will next time.'

He turns away and shuts his aching eyes, drifts into a patchy sleep, dreams strange dreams and thrashes about. Diane wakes and suggests milk.

Milk?

Chris goes into the kitchen where pale moonlight spills over the furniture and the television's blank face. Everything seems to be waiting. He drinks some water and lies on the sofa, feeling a pulse throbbing in his neck. Shadows of trees shift in distorted patterns on the ceiling. After a while it begins to rain, softly, water tapping the leaves. He is dissolving. Everything in his life that was certain is melting away; memories cannot be trusted. The rain peters out, leaving only the steely echo of drips in the downpipe. A hush settles; an unbearable, impersonal silence broken only by the disapproving
tch-tch-tch
of a gecko. Chris drags a cushion over his head.

The thin lip of the sun slides above the horizon before he falls asleep.

The brutality of another sweltering day envelop him as Chris drags himself, crusty-eyed, from the couch at six am, leaving behind a cushion ringed with sweat. He goes to the bathroom and splashes water on his face. The mirror reveals vertical furrows down the sides of his mouth. Easy to see whose they are now; and his hair, though wheat-pale, is thick like Ben's.

Maybe he could shave it off.

It'll still be Ben's hair
.

He dries his face and hangs the towel on the rail, then snatches the ends of it and pulls. When nothing happens he braces his foot against the wall and wrenches back with every ounce of strength. The sound of screws tearing from the timber is music. He kicks the wall and the house shudders.