The Piper's Son (36 page)

“Oh, hi, Tara,” he said nice and matter-of-fact, like they had just bumped into each other at Coles in Norton Plaza.

She stares at him with her airplane hair that looks slightly greasy and her eyes bloodshot from the cabin pressure. She’s darker and he wants to say, “Nice tan,” but remembers that she hasn’t been on holidays. He gives her a quick hug, patting her on the back, and for the whole time she looks at him, her face is on the brink of . . . something he can’t put a finger on.
Say something. One of us, say something.
Just because you can talk to a girl all night about everything doesn’t mean she’s going to feel the same. It’s like she’s lost her voice.

“Want me to stick around
here
while the others turn up?” He points to the ground when he says
here.
He does a whole lot of pointing and can’t understand why. He keeps his face neutral and she’s just staring at him with that look of . . . is it disappointment?

He’s miserable. There’s no coming back from this moment and they’re just staring at each other, not starry-eyed or with tears welling up in their eyes. She has that “What is your problem?” look of hurt on her face. He hasn’t a clue how to fix this. How many great love stories in history go down the gurgler because the right thing wasn’t said at the right time?

He stops pointing and holds up his hand as a good-bye. See you later. Have a good life. Not that they’ll never see each other again, because they will. Always. But she’ll belong to someone else and so will he, and the girl he’ll end up with won’t like his friends, for some reason. And one day he’ll think that balancing them both is too much work and they’ll all start seeing each other every couple of weeks, instead of every day, and it makes him feel like shit to think that. Like his insides are in revolt. Tara looks like she’s about to cry, shaking her head as if to say, “Thomas, what am I going to do with you?” But that’s all he needs. The hope that she wants
him
to do something. So he talks.

“This is the deal, Finke,” he says firmly. “I’m getting on a plane with my pop Bill and my father and I can tell you this,
Apocalypse Now
has nothing on what will take place in Vietnam in the next couple of days, so you look after yourself and have fun with the girls, but don’t let anyone introduce you to engineers or peacekeepers, and whatever you do, don’t hang out with Ned on your own. Don’t let anyone take care of you. Can you maybe leave that for me to do? I mean, take care of you? Feel free to take care of me in return . . . because I think I’ll need you to do that.”

Why can’t he just kiss her and stop this talking crap?

“I’ve been an inexplicable fool,” he jokes. And then from behind him, he hears screams and Francesca and Justine are all over her.

“Oh, my God, look at you,” Francesca says.

Tara looks at the girls.

“My hair’s shit,” she says, and then burst into tears.

Tom can’t believe it. He’s just spilled his guts all over the floor in front of them and she’s crying about her hair.

Justine and Francesca are looking at him furiously.

“Did you make her cry, Thomas?” Justine asks.

“What did you say to her?” Francesca demands.

But they don’t wait for his answer and then her mum and dad turn up, wearing Kevin 07 T-shirts, and there’s no getting close to her, so he walks away.

Georgie rings him while he’s on the line going through immigration.

“I’m breast-feeding,” she explains, because he really needed to know that. “We’ve checked them in so they should be somewhere in immigration now. We’re already in the car.”

He looks around and he sees Bill and his dad a couple of people behind him and he waves.

“Did you get in your postal vote?” she asks.

“Uh-huh,” he says.

“It’s a pity I didn’t get to see you today,” she says.

“You saw me yesterday, Georgie.”

“I know, but I wanted to see you today.”

“Why?”

“Because seeing you makes me happy. I was telling that to Billy when I couldn’t get him to sleep this morning.”

“Maybe he couldn’t get to sleep because you were talking to him.”

“That’s what Nanni Grace says. She wants to kidnap him because she reckons I kidnapped you when you were born.”

He hears something said and he figures it’s Nanni Grace in the car with them.

“Hold on, I just have to swap breasts.” When Georgie explains why, he just blocks it all out. He’s seen Georgie’s breasts more times in the last week than he’ll ever care to see in his lifetime. And she talks on and on, but it brings him comfort and somehow he figures that when she gets off the phone, he’ll try to ring Tara and make things right. There’s something about Georgie’s voice that makes him want everything to be right in the world.

“Auntie Georgie?” he says just as he gets to the top of the line in immigration.

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes . . . sometimes I thought I’d . . . deck myself in the last couple of months . . . and if it wasn’t for you . . . if it wasn’t for seeing you every day . . .”

He doesn’t know where that comes from, but he knows he has to say it, even if it’s going to make her cry. But she doesn’t cry. She’s silent for a moment.

“You don’t have to move out, you know.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“The Europeans have been living together in multigenerational households for years. And the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Everyone does it except for us and do they look any more miserable?”

Tom swears he hears something mumbled by Sam beside her.

“I love you, Tom.”

“Same.” And he hangs up before it gets too messy.

His phone rings again. Comes up anonymous.

“Hello?”

“When I got off the plane, I was so churned up because there was this really small part inside of me that hoped you’d somehow be there, even though I knew you were in Brisbane, and when I came out, you were there but you had your back to me and then you were pointing . . . what was with the pointing, Tom? And you were shrugging and matter-of-fact, and I thought it was just like the one-and-a-half-night stand and I just wanted to slap you, Tom, because I can’t believe I have to wait another six weeks to see you and I’m kind of sick of this bad timing, so when I get back,
no excuses,
do you hear me? I’m going to be following you like a bad smell.”

“Who is this?”

And then he can hear her laughing. “Why can’t you make this romantic?”

His father and Bill pass him toward security.

“I spilt my guts out all over the arrival lounge at Sydney’s domestic airport, Tara. It’s as bloody romantic as you’ll ever get from me. Where are you?”

“At a public phone in arrivals. I’ve run out of credit. I used my reprimanding voice and told my parents and Frankie and Justine that they couldn’t come near me for the next five minutes. I can see the four of them from here. They’re talking about me. They have a look of fear on their face. Even my parents, who created me, are afraid. I see that look on a lot of people’s faces when they see me, Tom. Never yours.”

“I keep it hidden, but it’s there. Believe me, you frighten me to death, but for different reasons.”

There’s silence for a moment.

“Can you promise me something?” he asks.

“I’ll promise you anything.”

The air kind of whooshes out of his lungs.

“Okay, when I get back, I need to go to Walgett with my father. Something he promised my auntie Margie Finch a couple of years ago. I’m probably going to move in with Mohsin, who’s enrolled to do molecular science, as one does when they’ve worked as a data-entry zombie for a year. He’s sharing a house in Summer Hill with a bunch of international students and I’m thinking of picking up a few construction subjects and taking Frankie’s dad up on his offer, but before I do all the moving bit, et cetera et cetera, I thought I’d come and, you know, kind of check out what you do over there in Same. Wouldn’t mind hanging out in Dili for a couple of days and watch you get chucked out of salsa classes. And then we can fly home together.”

Silence.

“Are you still there?” he asks.

“A thousand times yes,” she says quietly. “To everything you said.”

Maybe it’s because he hasn’t had a cigarette for a week. Maybe it’s because he’s seen Anabel and his mum and spoken to Georgie. Maybe it’s because Tara Finke is his girl, but all of a sudden, Tom feels as if he can breathe properly for the first time in a long time.

“I’ve got to go. They’re making my pop take off his shoes in case he’s got traces of explosives and my father’s just about to chuck a mental.”

He sits between Dominic and Bill for the sake of sanity, bladders, and maybe because he just wants to. His dad looks shell-shocked. Tom doesn’t know what to say to a guy who’s about to bury a father he has never known, but Dominic’s gripping onto the two scapulars Georgie’s given him as if his life depends on it. Georgie says they should be buried with Tom Finch.

The hosties do their thing and Bill wants them to listen to the security instructions despite the fact that Tom’s listened to them twice in the last twenty-four hours.

“How were your mother and Anabel? How did they look?” his dad asks.

“Beautiful,” Tom says.

“Do you think they’ll be there when we come back?”

“Dunno. I think so.”

“I do too.”

His father still hasn’t budged, so Tom reaches over and grabs Dominic’s seat belt and secures it tightly. For a moment their hands touch. When he was a kid, it always turned into “This Little Piggy
.”
But this time they don’t need words.

And he knows that everything’s going to be fine.

Because he and his family are on their way.

Thank you to those who answered my questions about politics, passion, and work: Julia Clements, Jill Finnane, Phil Glendenning, Mark Halsted, Patrick Devery, Jan Murphy, Robert Thorne, and those who work at the Edmund Rice Centre for Social Justice. Your generosity gave substance to many characters in this novel.

Many thanks to Amy Thomas, Clair Honeywill, Anyez Lindop, Kristin Gill, Marina Messiha, Gabrielle Coyne, and everyone at Penguin for your support. Especially to Laura Harris for your friendship and ability to pick the best part of my brain.

Thank you to those who read the manuscript and provided feedback: my mum, Nikki Anderson, Marisa Brattoni, Anthony Cantazariti, Adolfo Cruzado, Patrick Devery, Jessica Flood, Jill Grinberg, Sophie Hamley, Tegan Morrison, Raffaela Pandolfini, Brenda Souter, Maxim Younger, Deborah Wayshak, and Kate Woods.

A special thanks to Jim Bourke, who answered my very naive questions about the work involved in returning to their families the six Australian servicemen left behind during the Vietnam War.

All of the characters appearing in this novel are fictional creations. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Some aspects of the rugby league matches referred to in this story have been fictionalized for the purposes of my narrative.

MELINA MARCHETTA
is the acclaimed and multi-award-winning author of
Finnikin of the Rock,
an Aurealis Award winner;
Jellicoe Road,
a Michael L. Printz Award winner;
Saving Francesca;
and
Looking for Alibrandi.
About
The Piper’s Son,
which reintroduces characters from
Saving Francesca,
she says, “Tom’s aunt Georgie spoke to me first, and Tom found me through her. At the time, I didn’t actually think Tom was a big enough character to carry a story. If it had to be anyone from
Saving Francesca,
I thought, it would be Will Trombal or Tara. But a line in
Francesca,
‘I want to be the first male in the Mackee family to reach forty and still have his liver,’ stuck with me, and in the end, Tom has been one of my biggest surprises. I’m glad I didn’t kick him out of my head.” Melina Marchetta lives in Australia.