Golden Boys (3 page)

Her sister is too young to have much concept of the wider world – Freya knows for sure that she thinks the starving Africans live near enough to have her leftovers delivered to them on a plate – and asks, ‘Where should they be?'

‘Somewhere fancy! Where rich people live. Not here.'

Marigold ponders. ‘Maybe they don't want to be fancy?'

‘Everyone wants to be fancy.'

‘Maybe they're hiding.'

Freya smiles, pleased by the idea of aliens hiding in a nondescript suburb, laying out their plans on a speckle-topped kitchen bench. In truth she admires strangeness, and likes the new neighbours for it. She strides along, ignoring her sister's scrabble to keep up, the air balmy as it weaves between her fingers, the sun a molten crown on her head. In a minute they'll be home – once they cross this road she will be able to see the white post-and-rail fence of their house. If her brother Declan were a friend of Colt Jenson's, he would bring him to the house sometimes. That's a fact, but Freya knows little about the friendships of boys, how they meld or repel. A stringy green weed pokes over the path and she plucks it as she passes, swishes it violently. ‘Well, who cares,' she says, and doesn't answer when Marigold asks, ‘Who cares about what?' Instead she will think of what she does know, the sturdy posts in her life. The year is coming to its close: soon the long school holidays will begin, stretching past Christmas and into the new year when, returning to classrooms, she will be starting secondary school, the baby of the schoolyard but a baby no more. She'll be thirteen, a teenager, a creature of change. Already atheism sits inside her as comfortably as an egg in a nest. Next Sunday, when she refuses to go to church, her mother might rage, and to defend her position Freya will call upon the example of her father, which is something she would only do in an emergency and actually has never done before. And it will feel like a betrayal, using him against her mother. It
will be
a betrayal. The heart is wicked. Freya sighs.

They are within reach of their house – the spindly pine in the front yard, the clangy metal letterbox, the rut in the naturestrip where the station wagon cuts the corner; no sight makes her happier than the sight of home – when thoughts of her mother make Freya think of something else. She remembers Elizabeth saying, ‘There's always another one coming.'

The words are written on one of the imaginary castle's innumerable doors, a warped and ponderous door which requires a mighty shove before it will open; but when it does, and when Freya sees what's behind it, the dismay dazes her.

Avery Price looks like a pixie found shifting through dandelions at the end of an overgrown garden; he should have wings jutting out his shoulderbaldes. He is small for his age and as translucently white as a pearl. Grey-eyed and fair-haired, with the pretty bowed lips of an infant, he is delicate, origami, he looks as if the only sustenance he requires is the occasional lettuce leaf sprinkled with sugar, and indeed he hardly eats anything more sustaining. Beneath the dainty façade, however, Avery is a wild child, the kind of boy-without-boundaries that other children enjoy having as a friend because there is nothing he will not do. He isn't a complainer or in any way a sissy – he's a smiler, a forgiver, there's no meanness in him. Despite this, it's evident that Avery is destined to follow a hard path through life – it's as obvious as the bruises, the unbrushed hair, the dirt-lined fingernails and the cheap, inadequate clothes. There's a sense that one shouldn't grow too fond of him. He's only eleven, and already the world is striving to be rid of him: when a dog rushes a fence and startles him into slipping off the gutter he's been stepping along, this most minor accident skins a great gouge from his knee, such an over-abundance of damage that Syd and Declan Kiley are stunned.

He's as tough as a boot, however. After hopping about on the road gasping, ‘Ow, ow,' Avery sits on the kerb and inspects the wound with stoic curiosity. It's a gruesome thing, rag-edged, pipped with stones, as broad as a boy's palm. Crimson blood runs down his shin, crests his meatless calf and drips onto the road. Declan and Syd perch beside him, peering like scientists. ‘Bloody hell,' says Declan.

‘I think I see bone,' says Syd.

Declan winces. ‘That is really disgusting.'

‘Shut up!' Syd screams at the dog, who's still barking.

Someone from the house calls the animal in, and silence returns as it always does to these streets. Occasionally music will float beyond a window, and on weekends there will be the odd lawnmower, a random car horn beeping farewell; but typically there is this silence, and the surreal sense of living on after the rest of existence has ceased. It's easy to believe the houses are empty, the occupants obliterated in some worldwide catastrophe, and that a boy like Syd Kiley can now rummage through strangers' cupboards at leisure. He can hardly imagine anything he'd enjoy more, being the last person alive, with access to all that stuff. Now he cocks his head to gaze into the depths of Avery's injury; this close he can smell a fleshiness, the taste of Avery raw. ‘Look at that. That's a piece of road.'

They are a couple of blocks from Avery's home; Declan asks, ‘Can you walk? Do you want me to go and get your bike?'

‘Or a wheelchair?' suggests Syd. ‘A walking-stick? We could bring Peter's pram.'

‘I'm OK,' says Avery wanly. ‘I'll just stay here a minute.'

‘I really can see bone,' says Syd.

The three boys sit back on the naturestrip, their feet in the gutter. Avery's sandals have thin soles and are slightly too small for him; by January, when summer has parched the grass into a crisp matting, the boys will be constantly stopping while Avery plucks prickles from his heels. Syd sits with his head bowed, the sunshine pressing firmly on the nape of his neck, thinking about this and about nothing. Between his own sandalled feet is a patch of bitumen, very grey and stony. With some work he assembles a wad of spit, and feeds it out as a sparkly thread. The thread breaks before it reaches the ground, marking the road with a dark spot shaped like a thorn. An interesting stone, clear like a diamond, catches his eye. He plucks it up and holds it above the gory swatch of Avery's wound. His brother and his victim watch in silence, Declan's blue eyes almost closed. Syd glances at Avery. ‘Dare me?'

‘Go on,' says Avery.

‘I will,' Syd threatens.

‘I said do it,' Avery replies.

So Syd lets the stone drop, and it lodges in the cushion of blood and must sting, because Avery gives a shuddery flinch. The boys watch as the stone topples painstakingly from its perch, lolling along a bloody rivulet before dropping to the road wearing a ruby cap. Syd sniffs, satisfied. Declan buries his face in his folded arms. There's a hoop of sunburn between his shoulders already.

There is no hurry to leave; they are headed nowhere. After a while Avery asks, ‘Are you going away for the holidays?'

‘Mum hasn't said.' Declan speaks into his knees. ‘Probably.'

Their mother always takes them somewhere, even if only for a week or two to a caravan park a few blocks back from the beach; on the weekend their father will drive down for the day and give the kids dolphin rides through the green water. Neither of the Kileys asks if Avery will likewise be going away. He is the child who haunts these streets, lurking in the places where pest species are found, the side door of the kiosk at the cricket ground, the bottle depot behind the Scouts' hall, the grassy veins of unowned land that divide houses here and there. It's possible he has never gone anywhere beyond the reach of his battered bicycle, and that he is obliged by the natural order to stay. If he were to leave, something would have gone wrong.

Syd feels a surge of impatience, shuffles his feet so his sandals chuff the road. He has no authority but he says, ‘Let's go.'

Declan lifts his head and looks at Avery, who says, ‘Yep.' But in the past minutes his knee has stiffened, and when he moves, he limps. He limps across the naturestrip to the footpath, hoisting and shuffling the damaged leg. It's an injury, Syd is wearied to see, which is going to take a long time to heal, which will glaze over and break open and glaze and break for days before it finally scabs, and the scab will crack and pull, and weep. It will be their damp companion all summer, they'll be witness to its entire lifespan. From the footpath Declan looks back at his brother. ‘You coming or not?'

Avery, too, has looked around, his bad leg posed on its toes. He freezes like that and says, ‘Oh, shit.'

And then, with a rodent's instincts, he bolts: forgetting his pain he flees across the naturestrip and onto the open ground of the bitumen. The road sweeps downhill and around a broad corner, and Avery, following it, is gone like a dart shot from a blowpipe. Declan and Syd stand stupefied, staring after him. Then they look to see what their friend must have seen, and there's Garrick Greene lumbering toward them like a cannonball. And Declan says, ‘Ah, cods.'

The boy arrives claret-faced and heaving – he's heavy-set and nuggety, not built for speed. His burning sights are on the spot where Avery was last seen, but he cannot take another step and thunders to a halt beside the brothers. ‘I'm gonna kill that prick,' he gasps.

‘What's he done?'

Garrick bends double, his hands on his knees, blowing like a bellows: Syd stares in revulsion at the flesh bunching at his neck. At school he's read a book about medieval farmers, and Garrick could have posed for the picture of the farmer's leather-aproned son. His limbs are weighty, over-stuffed, equal parts lard and muscle. His black hair is thin and floppy, groomed into greasy strings. His deep-set eyes are skidmarks left by the tyres of a crashing car. His hands are remindful of the vice bolted to a bench in the Kiley garage. Certain factors make Garrick Greene worth knowing – he sometimes has money, he has no respect for the law, he's as strong as he looks, and he looks like a bull – but to Syd's mind these virtues are rarely reason enough. Garrick, however, is a neighbourhood boy, he comes with the territory and he's impossible to avoid: being his friend is smarter than not being his friend. He hasn't yet caught enough breath to speak, is huffing and puffing into his thighs, and Syd throws a jeering smile at Declan, who ignores it. Garrick heaves more, then straightens, swiping a wrist across wet lips. His gaze jumps around the brothers as if he's never seen them before. ‘He called my sister a bitch!'

Declan says, ‘What?'

‘He called my sister a bitch!'

A yelp of laughter would escape Syd, but he wisely keeps it imprisoned. Garrick is the youngest of a large family, each member of which has a toe-curling reputation. The brothers can guess which of his many sisters is in question, a terrifying girl of sixteen who, wishing Declan to step aside at the milkbar counter one day, flicked her finger against his temple so hard it made him cry. She is either lying about the name-calling, or Avery has gone insane. The Kileys know that Garrick has no particular fondness for his sister, upon whom they have heard him bestow descriptions far worse than
bitch
– indeed, Garrick never shies from exposing much about his sister that the girl would presumably prefer to remain unpublicised. He tells them when a tampon has been fished out of the box and when she has a particularly gross pimple, he's shown them a love letter she had written, at the bottom of which the admired boy had printed,
Get lost mole
. He once stole a bra from her drawer and jiggled it in his friends' faces. ‘So what?' Avery had said urbanely. ‘I see bras on the clothesline every day.' And it is true that Avery has a sister too, a willowy, rarely-seen girl just as slatternly as Garrick's sister, but beautiful as a swan. Her bras would make laundry buckets of Garrick's sister's underwear. Garrick had jammed the garment into his pocket in silence and it was never seen again. Something creepy happened to it, Syd is sure.

Declan asks, ‘Why would he do that?'

‘Who knows?' snarls Garrick. ‘What difference does it make?'

‘He must have had a reason —'

‘Who cares about a reason? He's not allowed to do it. But he did, and now he's gonna pay!'

Syd looks to his brother – his thoughtful, wily brother – and sees Declan considering the situation. It's important never to show fear with Garrick, he's told Syd that before. ‘You call her a bitch all the time,' he says.

Garrick's eyes bulge, his hands fly. ‘That doesn't mean
he
can say it!'

It's an argument which makes sense to Declan and Syd, who come from a large and quarrelsome family themselves. The rules, they know, are different for insiders. Declan's blue eyes scan the treetops, the clouds, the silent houses on both sides of the road. ‘What are you going to do?'

‘Teach him a lesson!' Garrick shouts. ‘Punch him in his smart mouth!'

The noise makes a bird whisk out of a tree, a dog bark from behind a closed door. Declan nods at the news. Somewhere in the world, Avery is still running; Syd pictures him lurching, exhausted, stumbling on, a trail of blood behind him, eyes spinning in his head. Either he will need to keep running forever, or this matter must be sorted. The boys live within streets of each other, their paths will cross for years. ‘Punch me,' says Declan.

Syd swings to his brother. ‘Deco!'

‘Huh?' says Garrick.

‘Punch
me
,' says Declan again. ‘You've got to hit someone, so it might as well be me. Me – instead of Avery.'

Garrick takes a leery step back from madness. ‘Nah, it doesn't work like that.'

‘Yeah it does – why doesn't it? A punch is a punch.'

Garrick stares, his tongue probing his lips, and then he shakes his head. ‘I'm not gonna hit you, Declan.'

‘Why not?' Declan lifts his chin. ‘She
is
a bitch, your sister. I call her a bitch every day. Every time I see her, I say,
There goes that bitch
.'

‘Shut up, Deco!'

‘She should get it tattooed on her forehead:
I'm a big fat bitch
.'

Garrick is smiling, but his mouth is crooked. ‘I know what you're doing, Declan —'

‘I'm telling you she's a bitch —'

‘You're an idiot —'

‘So punch me instead.'

‘Deco!'

‘If you want me to, I will.'

‘Go ahead. Stop talking and do it.'

‘If you don't shut up, I'm going to.'

‘I'm telling you to do it!'

Garrick throws his arms out. ‘You want me to? You really really want me to?'

‘Declan!' wails Syd, but the two older boys ignore him. Garrick assesses Declan, who stands casually, a cowboy, hands open at his sides. He is finely-made and lean, not tall, no competition for Garrick, except that he's a million times cleverer and more admirable. ‘I could punch you in the stomach,' Garrick offers.

Syd bleats, but Declan says, ‘Then we'll be even, right?'

‘Yeah,' says Garrick, ‘I guess': then abruptly he's reneging, as if another personality has stepped in just as an unfair deal was about to be sealed. ‘Nah – I'll hit you, but I'll still want to hit
him
. I'll have to do it, Deco.'

A look of disgust crosses Declan's face, and he turns away as if from a waste of his precious time, and Syd's heart bounds joyously – and Garrick says, ‘OK, OK, I promise! I won't hit the little shit as well. Jeez, Deco.'

Declan turns to face him. ‘All right, do it.'

‘It's a pretty shitty deal, though. I was looking forward to bashing that turd.'

‘Do it or don't do it,' says Declan coolly. ‘I'm not waiting around here all day.'

‘Deco!' Syd protests, but as usual he is ignored: Garrick rolls his shoulders, Declan plants his feet, and Syd watches in disbelief as the bigger boy steps forward and drives a fist into his brother's guts. Contact makes a thick, dire, deadened sound: Declan clutches his stomach and bends like a bow. Syd stares a moment, his mouth dropped open: then he leaps like a mongoose at Garrick, spangling with fury. ‘You shithead!' he screams. ‘You prick! You arsehole! You ape!'

Garrick swats him aside with hardly a glance, studying his victim, who is bent double with his arms clenched round his body. ‘Shut up, Syd,' Declan croaks through gritted teeth. Garrick and Syd watch as he recovers, wincing and coughing and swearing and unfolding cautiously until he is standing straight, then wiping his eyes and pushing back his brown fringe and smiling gingerly, with relief. ‘Phew,' he says, and chuckles.