Diamonds in the Mud and Other Stories (20 page)

We finished up around midnight, by lantern light, and I tell you straight, I never seen so much muddling activity by so many achieve so little. As me and a few semi sober blokes scraped up drunks and carried the better pieces of furniture inside, the Davis twins stood looking at their day's work in awe. Me – I just wanted to get out of town.

Come the next day and I'm fragile, dying of a hangover or sunstroke. Me head is made out of cracked eggshell, held together by membrane; it didn't want to rise from me pillow – and by the living bejesus, the rest of me did not want to face that widow. Of course, I had to, so I swallowed four aspros and a pint of coffee, felt my way out to the lock-up where six or eight of me prisoners were snoring and the other six or eight stood hammering on the door, threatening to break out and turn cop killer. I tossed them the key and ran for my van, heading for the widow's now familiar track.

She was in the chook yard, sorting through the pile of junk transferred from me veranda and lock-up. Holding my scalp down, hoping I'd drop dead of a stroke before I got there, me bruised eyeballs fixed on the abortion I'd helped construct. I suppose I wasn't seeing too straight where I was driving and I ran over one of her chooks.

‘You're on its wing,' she called. ‘Run your wheel back a bit, officer.'

I did as she said, cowering there while she walked to me van, stooped, picked the squawking fowl up by its legs then, with a minimum of movement, placed it on the chopping block and cut its head off with the wood axe.

‘Another beautiful day, constable,' she said, tossing the fowl down, watching the headless bird attempting to fly.

‘About the house,' I say, striving not to look at the gout of red raining down on white feathers, but looking anyway, aware that my own head was next for the chop, and at that moment I might have been happy to place my neck on that block – at least it might'a fixed me headache.

‘I've got a plumber coming to put up a bit of spouting on Monday and we'll slap a coat of paint on for you next Saturday – maybe do something about lining that kitchen . . . ' I start, but sort of run out of steam halfway through. What more could a man say?

‘I don't know how you got it all done in one day, or how I can ever thank you.' She looked again at the chicken that now lay on its side, flapping one wing spasmodically. ‘Would you like it? I'll dress it for you, constable.'

‘No! No!'

‘It won't keep in this weather.' She eyed me, head to one side. ‘You look worn out. A good home-cooked meal is what you need after your hard day's work. Would you like to join us for dinner tonight in our lovely new kitchen?'

She was wearing a faded floral dress, her long hair tied at the nape of her neck with a bit of ribbon. No backwoods widow weeping in her mourning rags, the widow Wilson was still a fine looking woman. Her waist may have been donated early to child bearing but it flared into well rounded hips. I'd always been a hip man.

‘I thought I might invite the Davis twins down for a meal too. Would you rather all come down together, officer?'

‘No! No! Tonight will be good,' I say fast. ‘Tonight will be real good, Mrs Wilson.'

‘Six o'clock then,' she said. ‘Jim always liked to eat at six.'

‘Six it is. I suppose it doesn't look too bad from this angle,' I say. ‘With a bit of paint and spouting, a few doors . . . '

‘We left a grain shed yesterday and returned to a mansion,' she said. ‘God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform, officer.'

‘He certainly does that . . . and Bob's the name. Call me Bob,' I say.

She never did get to call me Bob. I never found her husband's carcass neither. Just as I was getting real friendly with his missus the bludging bastard come home, didn't he?

Number eighty-two Hill Street was a nondescript weatherboard, exactly halfway between High Street and Lower Road. The generation before Arthur Thomson had walked up the hill in the morning and gone off to work. The generation after him walked down the hill each night to party. Not Arthur. At thirty-seven, he was one of the lost generation who knew neither work nor party. A shy, plump youth, he'd evolved into an obese and withdrawn adult, television his tutor, food his one comforting constant, but it was the bus stops at the top and bottom of Hill Street that saved his life.

Lunch was prepared early by Mother at number eighty-two, and by one thirty Arthur was off down the hill to catch the orange bus to the local fish'n'chip shop.

‘It would do you more good if you walked up that hill, lad,' Mr Morris called from number fifty-six.

‘Afternoon, Mr Morris.' Arthur waved and continued on downhill.

‘Oh, Arthur, do you think you could pick me up a couple of tins of cat food, love?' Mrs Wilson called from number thirty-eight.

‘Pilchards in aspic again, Mrs Wilson?'

‘Yes, he's still eating that one. He's gone right off his beef and liver though.'

Arthur liked cats, but he couldn't have his own. His mother had many allergies.

At the fish'n'chip shop he ordered a piece of flake, two dollars' worth of chips and six potato cakes, which he ate in the bus shelter while waiting for the green bus that would transport him to the supermarket. A great time filler, that supermarket, he enjoyed browsing there. His selections were made slowly, placed carefully in his trolley. Cat food, biscuits, a litre bottle of Coke, bread, bananas, a packet of Violet Crumbles and one of Tim-Tams. By three fifteen Arthur was out and wandering the centre, eating chocolate Tim-Tams, sipping Coke and looking in windows. His day always ended out front of Jayson's Menswear where he stared hopelessly at stone-washed jeans and suede jackets, locked away from him behind plate glass as surely as he was locked away from life.

At four forty Arthur waited at the bus stop to board the blue bus, which dropped him off at the intersection of High and Hill Street, leaving gravity to assist him down the hill and home to –

‘Arthur! Arthur!' Mother's voice came from the telephone box. No phone bills for her; she had her own private box, two metres from her front gate. Here she spent her days giving free advice to government departments, radio stations, neighbours with barking dogs and the parents of teenagers. ‘So you're finally back then, Arthur, and where have you been to this ungodly hour, and have you been into those . . . ?' Like a cork from a bottle, she popped her bulk out onto the footpath, inhaled deeply and continued:

‘ . . . chocolate biscuits again, Arthur, and how many times have I warned you, and will you keep your trousers pulled up. You're showing half your bum crack to the neighbours . . . '

‘Sorry, Mother,' Arthur replied. With chubby inept hands he hitched up his tracksuit pants and prodded ineffectually at his top. He never argued. Mother left no space for argument. Like his father, Arthur had learned to keep his replies brief, contrite, and to fit them only into Mother's inhalations.

Her mouth regurgitating old insults, she led the way down the drive and around to the back door, Arthur stepping where she trod, her control absolute.

A thin wall separated Arthur's bed from his parents'. Mother, unable to tolerate the silence of sleep, snored all night with open-mouthed, rafter-rattling abandon. Father, a slim and silent shadow, had a snore small enough to match his stature. It was an apologetic snort of air, a furtive triple snatch of low grade oxygen, stolen from between his wife's massive intakes. Once grasped, Father pursed his lips around his stolen sip, attempting to hold it prisoner. But his wife's snore was a gluttonous thing, greedy for air. It created a vacuum within the room, sucking at her husband's pursed lips until they popped, allowing his snore to leak away in a long and high pitched whistle.

For Arthur, bed had long been an abomination. As a bloated seven year old, he'd first crept with his blankets to the lounge room. The television volume turned low, he'd watched midnight movies while his parents snored. As the years passed, Arthur sat longer before the silent television, watching the late show, then the late, late show, putting off the inevitable bed, eating supper and a late night supper until, exhausted by lip-reading third-rate movies, satiated by unrelenting mastication, he waddled down the passage and fell into his bed where he slept like one of the dead, until –

‘Arthur! Arthur!'

‘Yes, Mother. I'm awake.' He loathed the mornings, loathed a new day of aimless existence.

‘You get out of that bed now, there's washing to put on the line and those European wasps are out there again this morning, and me with my allergies, and if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times to find their nest and get rid of it . . . I don't know what's wrong with the younger generation, lying in bed all day, not caring if I'm stung to death or not. Don't you go back to sleep now, Arthur. Get out of that bed.'

‘Coming, Mother.'

Each Saturday, while eating his giant bowl of cereal, Arthur studied the racing guide, making phantom bets at the TAB. His phantom bank account had now hit the forty thousand mark and he'd only opened it with twenty dollars. He studied the television guide while tucking into half a dozen slices of toast, then hung the washing, made his bed and turned on the television. He was on track to eating himself into a heart attack and the peace of an early grave.

Then, Mr Graham from number eighty died and his house, only a paling fence away from Arthur's bedroom, was sold to an irate Social Services Department underling who, on one of his bad Mondays, keyed into the computer, A-r-t-h-u-r-b-l-o-o-d-y-f-a-t-T-h-o-m-s-o-n. The end result of his meddling was an official letter delivered to number eighty-two.

Mother opened it. It demanded that Arthur Brendan Frederick Thomson present himself at the above address for a medical.

This was bureaucratic intrusion at its worst. It took three days of nine to five phone calls before Mother conceded, though she accompanied her boy to the medical centre. Her presence could override most resistance, but the doctor, younger than Arthur, closed the door on her.

He prodded rolls of milk-white fat while prying into Arthur's past. He measured his 184 centimetres and weighed his 198 kilograms, then said: ‘You're fitter than you ought to be, Mr Thomson.'

‘Well, what did he say then, Arthur? What did he say?' Mother asked when the blushing Arthur escaped back to the waiting room.

‘He said to get a job, Mother.'

‘I'll give him “get a job” . . . and who does he think is going to give
you
a job? And didn't you tell him about your excitable heart, and your glandular trouble? I'll let him know soon enough what's what.'

That was the day Arthur learned that Mother's power was not absolute. In due course, the computer transferred A-r-t-h-u-r-b-l-o-o-d-y-f-a-t-T-h-o-m-s-o-n from the disability pension file to the Job Search file, where he came to the attention of a case manager who talked subsidy until he found an employer prepared to give Arthur a go, on the night-shift, at a biscuit factory.

Arthur's hands trembled as he studied his bus timetable. The orange bus at the bottom of the hill would get him to the station. Then the blue bus –

‘No.' He shook his close-cropped head. The green bus that stopped at the – ‘No.' Then the blue bus that stopped at the top of the hill, which would connect with a green bus that would take him to the corner of – Up! He'd have to walk up! The only logical way was up.

On that first night of work, Arthur urged his bulk up while his lungs, wrapped in their cage of fat, worked overtime to feed him oxygen, but he caught the blue bus, transferred to the green and rode off into the unknown.

A cold night, a strange dark corner. As he walked those last three blocks, terror leached the marrow from his bones, sucked rationality from his mind. And there it was, hell in the shape of a biscuit factory. Big. Bright. Busy. He wandered in through the car park, cowering, his head low, and he had a near miss with a forklift.

‘Looking for something, mate?'

‘Job. In loading.' The driver pointed a thumb to the underworld and Arthur entered into a nightmare of fear, noise, white light, people and boxes of Tim-Tams. Biscuits everywhere. They had to be lifted and he was supposed to lift them. Ten minutes into lifting and his muscles wanted to go home. Each time he stooped to take up a box, his tracksuit pants slid down and he hitched. He lifted and he hitched, he panted and lifted, he sweated and hitched. The nightmare ended at dawn.

Mother had told him to take a taxi home. She'd written the number on a piece of paper he'd placed in his wallet, but in his night of hitching and lifting, his wallet had disappeared. He stood before the phone, wanting mother, helpless without her. Teetering on the rim of blind panic, he was near to collapse when Martha, who looked twenty-five from a distance but forty-five up close, came close enough and placed a hand on his arm.

‘Having a bit of trouble are you, Artie love?' she asked.

Artie? No one had ever called him Artie. ‘Lost my wallet,' he panted. ‘Can't get home.'

A red minibus had been the major part of Martha's divorce settlement, that and two thousand dollars she'd spent on a commercial diet plan, determined to show her philandering ex what he'd tossed onto the scrap heap. Her figure was uplifted and streamlined now, but she recognised a shadow of her former self in Arthur. Compassion saw her offering to drop him off on Lower Road at the bottom of Hill Street; thus, as the early birds began to hunt the worms, and Mrs Wilson's cat perched on a gatepost, licking feathers from a Cheshire grin, Arthur dragged his weary bulk up the hill and home, where he fell into bed just as his father stumbled from his, a wall away.

Arthur heard no more, until at ten am –

‘Arthur. Arthur.' That voice entered into his dream of swimming through an ocean of Tim-Tams, a shark approaching, calling his name. He cowered in his blankets, his arms lifting boxes, or swimming.

At twelve, Mother's voice haunted desolate dream-world streets. At one pm, she was still calling, but Arthur was down, down below dreaming, down for the count.

At ten past three, he caught the orange bus at the bottom of his hill, and barely had time to buy a ready made hamburger and chips before the green bus pulled in.

‘No-food'n'drinks-onna-bus,' a strange driver snarled.

Arthur jammed the hamburger in his pocket, stuffed a fistful of chips into his mouth, tossed the rest into a bin and heaved his starving belly on board. No time to browse in the supermarket. He snatched a packet of Tim-Tams and had to run for the blue bus. When it dropped him off at the top of his hill and he removed the flattened hamburger from his pocket to take a belated bite, he made the mistake of looking at his watch.

‘Six ten,' he wailed, throwing the hamburger at Murphy's man-eating dog at number 164 then waddling fast down the hill and home to –

‘Arthur. Arthur. So you've finally decided to come home then, have you? And me thinking you were lying dead somewhere of a heart attack . . . get in here . . . '

‘Sorry, Mother.'

‘ . . . and set the table, and don't you go . . . '

‘No time, Mother. Work.'

Work. A word alien to his tongue. A word belonging to other tongues. Work! A place to go. Escape from the nightly duet?

And so it began again. Up the hill to the blue bus, the green to the corner, on foot to the factory, where he hitched his pants and stacked boxes of biscuits until Martha dropped him off down the bottom of his hill. He was riding a roller coaster that slammed into the brick wall of Saturday, flinging him backwards into nights of the snoring duet, and days of the ongoing ‘Arthur? Arthur!'

Monday dawned like a small beacon of hope for Arthur BF Thomson.

During his second week on the night-shift, he gave up his afternoons of riding on the buses and gorging. Sleep, long, deep sleep, knitted unravelling muscles and mind. Halfway through the third week, Arthur gave up his daily shave to study the racing guide. No time for the television guide. By the end of the fourth week, he was eating his evening meal on the run and using two safety pins in the waistband of his tracksuit trousers. Six weeks of work saw him delving into the rear of his wardrobe, jammed full of tracksuits he'd outgrown but squirrelled away for one fine day. That day had arrived, and though he rarely got to see it, the sun was surely shining over his head.

Twelve weeks after commencing work, Arthur couldn't look a Tim-Tam in the face. He'd shed thirty-six kilograms, according to the scales out front of the chemist's shop, and he'd worked his way down to his hoarded 1987 oversized jeans.

Jeans? Work? Wonderful words, they rolled from his tongue now. ‘Mother, did you put my jeans through the wash? I need them for work.' He loved those words, loved fitting them into sentences.

Then Martha added a new and much finer word to his collection. ‘Uniform.' Three shirts, two pair of trousers and a sweater with the factory's name on it were given into his possession. Arthur Thomson had at last become a part of the greater something. He stood taller in his navy uniform, he held his head higher, his shoulders straighter.

Sixteen weeks of walking uphill, in possession of a ginger beard, and corn silk hair in need of a trim, Arthur was beginning to draw the eyes of female workers, and also attract the interest of the males.

His memory for detail was superhuman. He could remember the name of every old movie ever made and the actors who starred in them. He could memorise every number of every biscuit variety in the storeroom. He could lip-read what the truck driver said to Martha at twenty paces, but it was his knowledge of racehorses that made his workmates sit up and beg. Not only did Arthur know when a horse last ran, and how many wins he'd had over a given period, he could pick to the day when that horse was due to win again.