Things I Did for Money (2 page)

‘Two pound,' said Monday in an impatient tone.

‘Eight,' I replied without thinking, and he swore.

‘What are you saying, woman?' he snapped. ‘This pup's worth no more than three at best. Look at those girlish wrists. They'd snap in the wind like twigs.'

We argued back and forth, and I felt it begin: the hard pull of money entering my blood, chasing out the sentimental notion that I could walk away. I remembered the lighted windows of the brothel where I'd collected the young man. The coins in the owner's palm, the stench of rubbish in the laneway, and over the months and years, all the men flocking to these places like moths in the dark. The rustle of dresses and the bitter smell of opium burning; the sound of a girl sobbing quietly in an empty room. The boy was not blameless in all this.

‘He's soft,' Monday argued, grabbing the boy's hand and twisting the palm toward me, showing its pale surface in the dark. ‘Soft as a woman,' he scoffed, throwing the arm down like a dirty rag. ‘Only a drunkard or a fool would argue a price like that for soft meat.'

‘He's young and he's strong,' I replied, ‘and you're the only drunken fool on this dock tonight. You can come to your senses and finish this deal before we're caught here. Or I'll gladly row him back ashore.'

It was then that the boy made a sound — a wet gasp, like a creature coming up for air. The two of us froze, watching him, and I fancied I saw a shudder run through that limp body. We listened hard in the darkness, reading the rhythm of his breath.

Mix fifteen drops of the tincture with seven scruples of laudanum. Slip this draught into a glass of port wine and stir well
.

Since that night, without fail, sleep has delivered me the same picture: a bright morning, the city beginning to stir. My young man is walking through the streets, a bunch of yellow flowers in his hands. That private smile is on his lips, the name of a girl in his head. In the dream I do not know her name, but I understand he is turning the word over and over in his mind, like a beautiful stone. His face seems lit from within by a calm light. He does not see me standing in a doorway.

Then I find myself on an empty dock, where the
Belladonna
is moored. The sharp stink of kerosene fills the air; the water is sleek as a mirror. My boat hangs suspended on the surface, a sliver of cracked wood and flaking paint. I strike a match, light a rag and throw the burning thing down into her belly. Doused in fuel, she catches alight in moments. Flames dance in the sunlight, slight as ghosts. Turning my back on the sea, I leave my vessel to her fate — to burn clean and slow, blackening right to the waterline, until only her bones remain afloat.

One average-sized man in good health should sleep six to ten hours. Take care that young children do not discover the liquid and drink it
.

The boy made no further sound, but this we knew: once a sleeper begins to stir, the night's business must conclude with haste. Monday swore again, and there was hatred in it. But then he sucked at his teeth and made a final offer: ‘Six pounds, no more. And don't expect to swindle me this way again. Consider it a bribe to get you out of my sight.'

And I held out my hand. The coins, I recall, were warm from the heat of his skin. I don't remember descending the ladder, but rowing back alone I felt nothing but a cold, mute anger and a nauseous swirl in my gut. All pity had vanished. Just as the line between medicine and poison is often no more than a matter of degree, tenderness and its opposite are closer than we like to think.

Belladonna
cut through the water almost soundless, as if she knew her way. The tide did its best to drag us seaward, but I set my shoulders and rowed hard toward the land. Through the very worst of times my body has served me well. Its finest days may be behind it, but there's decades of work in it yet.

THE TOWER

She found us a week ago, in the arts section of the newspaper. Or to be honest — and really, at this stage, what's the point in lying? — we found her.

‘Listen to this, Helena!' Marianne's voice pricked a sharp hole through my sleepy Sunday afternoon. She read aloud from the paper: ‘
However you phrase it — disabled sculptor, artist with a disability — they're pointless labels. I am a sculptor. My physicality is irrelevant. Why automatically insert it, before the art itself is appraised?'

The journalist had used the word
defiant
, Marianne reported, but I thought the artist, whoever they were, had a point. Eyes half shut, I stroked the cat and waited for Marianne to finish her dramatic pause. I am interested in art, but the feeling is not mutual. Marianne is impasto, thick reds and dark greens and tobacco golds; I am the water in which the brush is rinsed.

She read on:
‘But Alice Rowe's upbeat, assured personality may well have a darker side, if her art in any way reflects her life.'

I opened my eyes. Marianne stared at me over the newspaper and a sneaking unease crept between us. I tried to keep my voice neutral.

‘I'd heard she had become successful. How much space did she get?' I asked.

‘Half a page. That should piss her off. Extra space because she's a sculptor with a disability
and
an attitude.' Marianne doesn't really mean it when she talks like this; she does it when she's frightened.

‘Maybe she's good.' Distracted, I stroked the cat too vigorously and didn't snatch my hand back in time — there's still a red scratch on my wrist. She's a pretty thing, but unpredictable.

As I sucked at the scratch Marianne got up to make coffee, but after announcing this plan and banging cupboard doors busily she just stood at the sink in a kind of dream. She left the tap running for a long time. I had to remind her that we're in the middle of a drought.

It happened down by the river. Summer would turn us into mosquitoes, quick and irritating, whining in our parents' ears until they shooed us out the back door and we all flew down to the water.

Each passing year blurs the memory, another hazy layer of plastic wrap laid over the senses, but at the age of eleven things were still as clear as water, solid as the river stones. The world around us existed in a bright bubble and nothing beyond the immediate horizon counted.

The water tower loomed over a bend in the river, near the train tracks, a squat cement cylinder stained with lichen and faded graffiti. It cast its shadow over our swimming hole, darkening a rectangle of water that shifted slowly with the path of the sun.

Daniel was the first to conquer it. One still afternoon, after weeks of brutal heat, he climbed the worn metal ladder and stood on the tower's crumbling edge, peering down at our upturned faces. Before anyone could yell out ‘Chicken!' he'd done the unthinkable. Those skinny bird legs pedalling the air like Road Runner suspended over a cliff, eyes and mouth three black circles in his pale face; the drop of his scrawny body seemed endless.

Water exploded everywhere like glass. The swimming hole rocked and surged against its banks. We waited.

Finally Daniel surfaced, eyes huge above the choppy water, the shock in his face already turning to pride. He strutted ashore, chest pushed out like a pigeon's, face split by a grin, and he shook his wet hair all over us.

But the hero shrank in status as, one by one, we followed. Marianne was first; my turn came later. By the weekend, all but two of us had jumped off the tower. John, who was only seven and deemed too small, looked relieved when we forbade him.

Alice didn't get off so lightly.

Children are not, by nature, kind. They know that a group is made stronger by the presence of an outsider, that someone has to be the runt of the litter. Perhaps they know this instinctively, or perhaps they learn it from their elders.

That summer Alice had already been made to pay for many crimes: chickening out of our stick-fight tournaments; running home crying when a rubber tarantula landed in her hair; telling her mum about Marianne's strip show, with us selling tickets at twenty cents a head. Alice, who went to church every Sunday, who once wet her pants in assembly, who stared at the ground when teased. Alice the bag carrier, the moneylender, the punchline, the one whose clothes got hidden after swimming. Alice the lonely, and I later realised (hindsight being an inferior source of knowledge), the harmless and helpless.

The water tower waited for her like a judge.

Cajoled, enticed, bullied — I'm still not sure how she got up there. From below I could see her crouching near the edge, the panicky flutter of breath in her ribs; it brought to mind a tiny mouse I once found cornered by our cat. It was easy enough to save the mouse.

The rest is blurred in my memory — a deliberate haze, I suspect. But Marianne and I have always agreed that it was Sarah and Dean's fault.

Nasty little Sarah with her beautiful hair shimmering, her sharp stick prodding. Mean Dean with his goblin teeth, laughing too high and too loud. They scampered up the ladder after her. I don't remember what the rest of us were doing; just watching silently, I hope. It was a long time ago.

Hot mixed-up air, the sounds ugly and jumbled: Alice's jagged sobs, Dean's wild laughter, the swish of Sarah's stick cutting through the air. Five children staring up at three.

And then there were two.

I am certain she was meant to land in the water. If she had fallen into the river, rather than landing on the bank, one of us could have pulled her out before panic swallowed her — Alice couldn't really swim.

But after the sickening sound of flesh on solid earth there was only silence. The sun smiled down on seven tanned children standing very still. Only the river moved.

I refused to go with my mum to visit Alice in the hospital. This didn't arouse suspicions. I'd always been petrified of anything even vaguely medical.

Anyway, it was an accident. We were all fooling around on top of the water tower and Alice slipped and fell — didn't she, Helena? Right, Daniel? That's what happened remember, John?
That's what happened.
We all knew the drill.

And, incredibly, Alice's story was no different. To my knowledge it never has been.

I cried that first day she came to school in a wheelchair. I contracted a mysterious illness, thoughtfully passing it on to the others, and we all spent the week in bed.

Eventually we had to go back to school. At first, Sarah and Marianne would bring Alice Redskins, sherbet bombs, Wizz Fizz. But Alice never said thank you. Alice didn't say much at all. And after a few weeks we came to an unspoken agreement: it had never happened. Alice got no more lollies. We used the stairs instead of the corridors. When the bell rang we'd head for the back of the field, far from the smooth asphalt, on the rough grass where wheels could not travel.

At first, parental concern forced token visits. But after a few months the dreaded questions (‘Helena, why don't you go and visit Alice and lend her your new book?') became less frequent, and then ceased altogether. I guess Alice made new friends. We went to the movies, hung out at the mall or played quietly in our bedrooms. We stayed away from the river. Our parents said the current was too strong.

Marianne flicked a chocolate in the air, caught it in her mouth. I've never seen her miss yet. Like she says, maybe if her hand–eye coordination wasn't so good, her jeans would still fit.

‘So, Hells. Want to go and have a look?'

‘No,' I answered.

Friday lunch hour. The gallery doors flick shut behind me. The woman behind the counter offers a catalogue without glancing up.

The room is all-white, long and narrow, the sculptures set along its length. The first one I come to is a black cauldron filled with cement feet; further along I find an ornate life-sized window frame, carved entirely from a block of soap, hung with a black lace curtain; then a three-course meal for one, hewn from white marble and set on bone china. The titles, written in the language of art, make no sense to me.

And then I see it.

It is more of a scale model than a sculpture: a cement temple, an icon of the rural landscape. A monument cut down to size. Below it, on the rocks, lies a tiny broken doll. The title card reads
Birth.

The next weekend is my mother's birthday and I must make the rare trip out to the country. The train ride is hushed, each stranger wrapped in their own silence, and the landscape is parched and singed. Cheek laid against the synthetic fabric of the seat, I retreat into my quiet bubble.

With me I take Alice's black-and-white smile from the gallery catalogue. It's not a posed smile, and there is nothing modest about it. She is smiling just like Daniel was when he walked out of the water.

An hour into the journey, by the time the train clatters out of the burnt trees and past the gorge, I have fallen into a gentle half-sleep. I don't see that grey concrete mass standing sentry over the river. I tell myself that on the train ride back, if I keep my eyes shut tight, I can pretend that it was never there at all.

SOFT LANDING

When the heroes go off stage, the clowns come on — Heinrich Heine

The carpark smells of rinsed concrete and car exhaust. People lurch back and forth, bodies disfigured by luggage, one shoulder weighed down by bare necessities. Inside the terminal, trolleys glide past one another in silence. Children surf across the smooth floors, laughing; modern women chop past in noisy heels. Half-heard departure times echo from high white surfaces and coffee sours in polystyrene cups abandoned at last call.