A Prayer for Blue Delaney (7 page)
‘Is this a prison?’ asked Colm, warily.
‘I suppose it was a bit of a prison once. Used to be a nut-house, Fremantle Asylum for the Insane. But there’s only me rattling around in it these days.’
For a moment, Colm felt a flurry of panic. He didn’t know this man and now they were locked inside an insane asylum together. Bill laughed at the alarm on Colm’s face.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not crazy. I’m the caretaker here. There’s no more crazy people here any more. You sit yourself down. We need to put something on those feet of yours.’
Colm sat on an upturned box in the middle of the room while Bill gently washed his feet. The medicine stung the cuts and grazes but it was a good sort of pain, a pain that meant things were going to get better. When he’d finished, the old man took out a length of clean white gauze and wrapped it around Colm’s feet. He warmed up a tin of rice cream, tipped it into an enamel bowl and pushed it towards Colm.
‘Eat up,’ he said. ‘Reckon you need something like this to stick to your ribs.’
Colm thought he’d never tasted anything so delicious in all his life. It was warm and sweet and it made him want to cry.
Then he lay down beside Rusty on one of the narrow bunks. Afternoon sunlight splashed through the high windows, but Colm was asleep in a moment, his body curled around the old kelpie, his thoughts slipping into gentle dreams.
When Colm woke, a soft pink glow was seeping in through the windows.
‘Morning, sonny,’ said the old man.
‘Morning?’ echoed Colm.
‘You’ve been asleep fifteen hours, near enough. Must have needed it.’
Bill sat on the edge of the other bunk, lacing his shoes, and then he slipped on a blue jacket. Rusty watched him, wagging her tail with excitement.
‘We’re going down to catch the morning tide, see if we can bring us something tasty home.’
Colm struggled to sit up but as his feet met the floor he felt a wave of nausea wash over him.
‘No, you’re not coming with us, mate. You were real sick during the night, calling out in your sleep and feverish. Reckon, you’re still running a bit of a temperature there. You take it easy. When I come back, we’ll have a yarn about what’s to become of you.’
Colm felt his chest grow tight. Was Bill planning to hand him over to the authorities? He was uncomfortably aware that he was at the mercy of this old man. He listened to Bill’s footsteps fading down the passage. There was a sadness in the silence of the old asylum that seeped into Colm’s bones and made his ears ring.
He climbed out of bed and winced as his feet met the bare wooden floorboards. A wave of dizziness took hold of him and he had to steady himself against the wall. If he could see the sky, he thought, then perhaps it wouldn’t feel so scary inside the old asylum.
The stairs were battered, crumbling with dry rot, and he had to tread carefully. From a small window at the top, he could see Bill and Rusty ambling down the road towards Fremantle. Suddenly he had a sense that he was falling - that if he just leant a little further forward he would fall straight through the glass and into the street below. He shut his eyes and the vertigo gripped him even more tightly. Inside his head, he could hear a voice, as if someone was calling him, looking for him. His legs gave way and as he fell, he heard a woman crying, then the sound of breaking glass.
Colm was vaguely aware of firm hands at his elbows, guiding him back down the stairs and into the caretaker’s rooms.
‘What were you doing, mate?’ said Bill. ‘How long were you lying there? You can’t go wandering around the place like that.’
‘I heard someone, she was looking for me. A woman calling me,’ he said in a small voice.
‘That must have been Ethel. She was an inmate in here - mad with grief after someone abducted her girl. She jumped out one of the first-floor windows. Reckon it was that window I found you lying under. Some folk reckon she’s wandering the passageways, floating in the stairwells, searching for her daughter. Poor old thing.’
Colm shuddered. He’d never thought about that before, that a mother might go mad with grief at the loss of her child. Thoughts of his own mother whirled in his mind and he curled up on his side, wishing he could stop feeling sick.
‘Ethel’s the least of your worries around here, though. Lucky you didn’t bump into Moondyne Joe. Mad old bushranger that died here in 1900. Now, let’s get you out of that outfit of yours. I should have sorted some jim-jams for you last night. Been a long time since I’ve had a kid around.’
When Bill lifted Colm’s shirt, his face grew pale.
‘Here, what’s all this?’ He held Colm by the shoulders and inspected his back.
Colm didn’t answer. He could still hear the cries of the grieving woman echoing in his mind. He felt light-headed and far away from his body. For a moment it was almost as if he was floating near the ceiling, looking down at himself lying curled up on the grey blanket. He saw Bill staring at his back where Brother Dennis’s strap had cut deep. It felt as though the wounds were oozing pus, as if his skin was melting from his bones. Then he passed out.
When Colm woke again, there was a gold patch of late-afternoon sunlight lying on the floor. Bill sat next to the bed and a man in black stood over Colm. Colm felt his throat constrict with fear.
The stranger was taking things out of a leather bag.
‘You may think it’s harsh, Bill. I agree with you somewhat, but you don’t know this boy. He could be a bad one. You don’t know what he did to warrant the beating. Those Brothers are working hard to make men of these boys. Why, at Clontarf there are over 200 boys and only six brothers. It’s no surprise they have to resort to the strap.’
‘I don’t care what his crime was. I’ve never held with beating littlies, and even if I did, no child deserves to be thrashed within an inch of his life. God knows how he made it to Fremantle. He’s got guts, this one. A real battler. Didn’t breathe a word to me about the beating. It was only when I found him at the top of the stairs, passed out cold, that I realised there was something amiss.’
The doctor bent over Colm and examined his cuts. ‘Some of these are infected. There’s not much meat on his bones, is there?’
Colm turned and stared up at the doctor.
‘You’re awake are you, young man? Can you sit up for me?’
The doctor listened to his chest, looked down his throat and in his ears. Til give him a shot of penicillin and send a car around to collect him later this afternoon. I can’t take him now,’ he said to Bill.
Bill nodded and Colm felt panic rise up.
As soon as the doctor was gone, Colm swung his feet over the side of the bed and tried to stand.
‘Can’t go back,’ he said, struggling to speak. ‘Brother Dennis will kill me.’
Bill stared at him.
‘Don’t be a wacker. The Brothers might beat you, mate, but they wouldn’t murder you.’
Colm fell to the floor, kneeling in front of Bill, his hands folded in prayer. ‘Please,’ he said, hoarsely. ‘Please. Don’t let them take me back.’
Rusty jumped down from her place on the end of Bill’s bed and nuzzled Colm’s cheek. Colm pressed his face into her dusty fur. At least Rusty understood.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What am I meant to tell the doctor?’ said Bill.
Later that day, Colm lay with Rusty beside him, and listened to Bill tell the doctor’s driver that the boy had run away again and he didn’t know where he was.
It took days for Colm to feel strong enough to leave his bed. On the evening of his first day up, Bill lit a fire in a 44-gallon drum in the courtyard. He opened a can of baked beans to heat in a battered black billy can and cooked sausages over the flames on a long fork. Colm relished the sharp, salty taste of the blackened meat.
Bill looked at him across the flames. ‘Good to see you up and about, cobber. But you’re going to have to keep a low profile. I ran into Doctor Do-gooder down at the pub. Don’t know if he believed you’d done a bunk. If he sees you wandering around Fremantle, he’ll be on to you like a shot.’
Colm stopped eating and stared miserably into the flames.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Bill. ‘You can hide out here until you get your strength back. That is, if you don’t mind an old man, a dog and a few ghosts for company.’
It wasn’t hard for Colm to keep hidden. No one came to visit Bill’s corner of the Asylum. It was strange having whole days to himself with nothing much to do. One day he found a battered old piano in the abandoned refectory. From then on, he would sit at the keyboard every day and practise the tunes that Sister Mercia had taught him over and over again. After a week or two, the songs leapt out from beneath his fingers like magic. Sometimes Rusty sat beside him, her head tipped to one side, as if she appreciated the concert.
As the weeks unfolded, a rhythm started to shape Colm’s life. During the morning he’d play the piano or read newspapers or a battered old Bible that he’d found on a windowsill on the second floor. Sometimes he’d help Bill with tasks around the Asylum, sweeping the courtyard or holding a piece of timber steady while Bill hammered it into place. In the evening, Bill would ask him to read the funnies out loud while he cooked their dinner. Bill wasn’t much of a cook, but there was never a shortage of beans and sausages and sometimes he’d bring a parcel of fish and chips with him when he came back from an afternoon down in Fremantle. Slowly Colm’s wounds began to heal until there was only a cross-hatching of scars on his back.
One morning while Bill and Rusty were out, Colm sat in the courtyard reading the newspapers and saw that the Queen of England was travelling around Australia, visiting towns and cities all over the country. Every day there was more coverage of the royal visit, and special picture spreads celebrating her Australian tour. But now she was coming to Fremantle.
Colm carefully tore out the picture of her coronation and put it under his pillow.
That night he dreamt about a queen. He wasn’t sure whether it was the Queen of Heaven or the Queen of England. But the queen in his dream was holding the hand of a boy, a smiling boy with white-blond hair. Colm woke with a start, Tommy’s name on his lips. He felt shaky. Was Tommy trying to send him a message? Why was Tommy with the Queen? Was she his mother now? Colm knew the dream was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t understand what it was.
The next day, Colm read out some of the news about the arrival of the Queen while Bill made toast. There was an outbreak of polio in Western Australia and all the plans for the royal visit had to be changed. She wasn’t going to stay at Government House. Instead, the royal yacht, the
Gothic,
had been moored off Fremantle. There were lots of warnings advising people not to congregate in large groups for fear of the polio epidemic spreading, but thousands of people were expected to flock to the dock to see her disembark and head to the airport for her flight back to Britain.
‘Do you think maybe we could go down to the docks?’ asked Colm. ‘It could be our last chance.’
‘Daft idea,’ said Bill grumpily. ‘You don’t want to get mixed up in that crowd. There’ll be policemen crawling all over the place.’
Colm said, ‘I’d risk it for her. She’s our Queen.’
‘She’s not
my
bloody Queen. This bloody country should have been a republic years ago. You won’t get me going down to gawp at her and her bloke.’
Colm didn’t bother to argue any further. He folded up the newspaper and began thumping out a tune on the old piano. As he played, he thought about the
Gothic
sailing home. A boat sailing to England as swiftly as possible with no passengers on board. Suddenly, Colm started to understand what his dream might have been trying to tell him.
The morning that the Queen was due to leave Fremantle, Colm waited until Bill and Rusty had gone out as usual. When he thought they’d be well out of sight, he pulled back the bolt on the courtyard doors and slipped out into the street.
It was strange to be outside after the weeks shut up in the Asylum. Whenever a car drove past, he found it hard not to shy away and dive behind a fence to hide. As he walked down the hill towards the docks, he took a deep breath and smelt the sharp tang of a sea breeze. It smelt like freedom. But when he turned out of a narrow laneway into one of the main streets of Fremantle, Colm realised he’d made a mistake. The roads were crammed with cars and people heading for the docks, and just as Bill had said, there were policemen everywhere.
Colm felt suddenly self-conscious in his ragged shorts and bare feet. He burrowed his way between the tightly packed bodies. No one seemed to be worried about the risk of catching polio. Pushing between a tall man in a dark suit and his well-dressed wife, Colm wriggled forward to the barricade, wondering how much further it was to the docks. In front of him, behind the opposite barricade, was a sea of fluttering British and Australian flags, and among them, standing in a small group of boys, was Dibs.
Colm backed into the crowd, trying to disappear in the press of bodies, but people were surging forward, pushing him to the front. Colm saw Dibs turn towards the man standing behind him and say something. Then he turned and pointed towards Colm. His heart skipped a beat. Instinctively, he dived under the barricade and ran up the street, ahead of the cavalcade. A policeman shouted at him, and someone in the crowd reached out for his arm, trying to drag him back behind the barricade, but Colm pulled free and kept running until he cannoned into a burly chest in a blue uniform.
‘Just what do you think you’re doing, sonny?’ asked the officer, gripping Colm’s wrists.
Colm looked around wildly. He didn’t know where he was, he didn’t know where to run to. He was ready to give up when he heard a low growl and looked down to see Rusty tugging at the leg of the officer’s trousers.
‘Oi, get off, you bloody mongrel,’ said the policeman, loosening his grip. Colm wriggled free and dived into the depths of the crowd. Rusty was close behind and then suddenly ahead of him. Colm followed the splash of red fur through a tangle of legs. Finally, Rusty turned into a side street and bolted up the hill. Now, at last, Colm knew where he was and could find his way back to the sanctuary of the Asylum.