Leather Wings (14 page)

I’
VE NICKED
M
OTHER’S
sherry from the kitchen recipe shelf. She keeps it there to fool visitors it’s for the cooking. What else should I take? I’ve closed the lounge room door, shutting her away from me, but I had to come back here for the grog. It had struck me, you see, there might be more than neighbours watching, there could be police all around the house, crouching with guns, the armed offenders squad. A cordon. Murderers use cordons to strangle their victims, don’t they? I have to get back to Jania, but I’m in a bit of a state. That’s when I think of the sherry. One bottle’s nearly shot, but there’s a whole unopened one, South African sweet plonk, I don’t need to read the label, it’s always the same. I empty the first bottle down my throat to give me Dutch courage, South African courage, then I try again to get myself out of the front door. I’m feeling braver.

No shots ring out, no loud hailer. Phew. What a joke, the snotty-nosed cops have bungled it again.

Once I’m on the street I don’t run, that looks bad. I stroll, but firmly, I know where I’m going. There’s the odd jabbering couple, the pictures must have come out, I’m in the clear, just a chap on his way home from a show. Some show! That one shot of Mother with her vampire fangs is still stuck in my head. I didn’t touch her but she was dead all right, no doubt about that. Her eyes weren’t open, thank goodness, but they weren’t shut either, not quite, there was a white shiny slit showing at the edge.

Round the corner and I’m on my own again, not many people come to this part of the city at night. I’m home. It feels like hide and seek. I let myself in with my key and — you can’t tag me now — I’m home. Relax, it’s over. I lean myself against the door and, now that I’m locked in and safe, I find I’m starting to shake like a fit. It’s queer. I even nearly cry a bit. I mustn’t make a noise, I don’t want to wake Jania.

The first thing is to change out of these underpants. I prowl around on the mezzanine in the candle light, rummaging
in my plastic bag of laundry, very quietly, I’m so disgusted with myself, I can’t have the sleeping pixie wake up until I’m decent. Pity about no hot water.

I’m clean. I lay the notes out on the sofa, ironing them with my fingers and counting them. Not bad. It’ll buy us time.

Time? That’s what you get in prison. Why did I have to think of that? But I haven’t done anything. What have I done? I haven’t done anything bad.

I’ve left the sherry downstairs. I need the sherry. I sit on the floor in the middle of Doll City and hold on to the neck of the bottle. It feels nice to hold on to, smooth and heavy and solid, you need something to hold on to. I don’t want Jania to see me because I’m crying. I think. I don’t know where the tears are, there are no tears just this jerky noise pushing my chest about. I might be getting drunk. I’m not good at drink, better at chocolate. Bounty Bars.

I’m drunk. I want to touch someone. Not a sherry bottle, not myself. Someone. I want to touch her, I want to touch Jania, I don’t trust myself to go upstairs, I’ll spoil it. The devil in me, the wickedness. I need someone to help me not to. I might — I could, I could ruin the whole beautiful thing. I smash my head into the wall, butting at Claude and the wickedness.

The weatherman winks at me. What? How could he? I pick the little fellow up and bring him near my nose. He’s Father Christmas, that’s who he is, I’ve remembered now. What have you got in your sack for me, Santa? I don’t want salami sausages or dead eels. I don’t have deli tastes, I have delicate tastes. Have you got an elf for me, a little pixie, have you? At the bottom of the bottle, is that where she is? I hope you haven’t drowned her, wicked Santa, you have to take special care of special little pixies with pointy teeth who smell like apples. Oh. It isn’t fair. It isn’t bloody fair.

I’m worn out, I’m wearing out, I’m nearly in holes, I’ll fall apart when the washing machine begins to spin. There she goes, spinning, spinning, I can’t hold on, it’s throwing me away, throwing me down, it’s the tip, the rubbish tip, I know the smell, all dead cabbage and bones and old armchairs —
no, wait a minute, this is somewhere else, it’s jasmine I’m smelling now, a little Jasmine, sweet child. It’s my Christmas present. Christmas present? For me? I’m allowed?

Go on, open it up.

T
HE CRASH WAKES
Jania, the noise of a van smashing into the rear of a tall removal truck. She sits up quickly, blinking it out of her eyes, wiping away the dream; she has had this dream before. She is used to this dream.

It is morning. She is on her own under the low roof of the mezzanine studio on the squeaky rustling mattress, which has gone into interesting humps and hollows. The eiderdown smells funny, she can nearly taste it. When she tests her front tooth it waggles nicely, she must show Wallace.

Was the crash real? Has Wallace stumbled and sent the cathedral flying into the school? Or what? He’s a clumsy man. Worried, she pads barefoot to the stairs, which are really a sort of ladder, and looks over. Wallace is lying there below her. At least he isn’t lying on the city buildings, although she thinks she can see something green poking out from under his leg. It looks like the toy green truck with the red cross on it, the dolls’ ambulance. He doesn’t get up when she calls to him, which is surprising.

“Wallace?” She backs down the stair ladder very carefully, as he has taught her to do. If he was as careful himself …

“I fell.”

He sounds funny. He pulls a bit of a face, that’s all right, he’s smiling.

“I know. I heard you. Can’t you get up?”

“In a minute.”

She reaches in and tugs the little green truck from under him. The red cross is a bit smudged.

He looks up at the offending vehicle. “Is that what it was? I trod on it.”

“It’s all right,” she assures him. “The wheels are still on.”

“Mine aren’t!” says Wallace, and he makes a creaky laughing sound as if his voice hurts.

He groans. “I think I’ve done something to my back — my neck.”

Jania sits on her heels and wonders. He is looking with dull
eyes into her knees, noting without excitement a red graze the size of a twenty-cent piece where she must have fallen recently. Two clumsy people.

She considers. “Perhaps you’ve broken somewhere? Where’s your leg?”

“Under here.”

“That’s all right then, it hasn’t come off.”

Wallace begins to snort with laughter and then to groan.

“We might need a real amberlance.”

“Yes.” Then he corrects this. “No, I’ll just lie here for a bit. Are you — you all right?”

“My tooth’s ready to come out.” She wiggles it. “You can pull it out when we’ve had breakfast.”

He looks ill. “You need a — no, you need a dentist to pull teeth.”

“No you don’t. Esther pulled my bottom ones.”

“I can’t,” Wallace says. He stutters. “And you’ll have to find your own breakfast.”

“Of course. You have a nice rest.”

Wallace tries to move but something happens again in his neck, a sharp belting pain as if someone is beheading him with a blunt axe. He’s always had a funny back, at least that’s what his mother had claimed, but it had never hurt. He held one shoulder higher, she used to complain, usually when they were out in public together, walking or travelling down the aisle of a bus. Suddenly she would hiss at him, as if he’d trodden on her foot or something equally painful, “Walk properly! For God’s sake can’t you walk like a human being? There must be something wrong with your spine. Why do you put your feet like that? Hold your head up! Toes out. Walk like you know you’re somebody!” He was somebody but who exactly? She never went on to tell him who he was.

Perhaps he won’t walk again. Ever.

Jania is poking a Chocolate Sultana Pastie at his mouth.

“What? Oh, no, thank you. Can you bring me a drink of water? That’s a good girl. Just water. You can eat the biscuits.”

When Wallace wakes and opens his eyes cautiously, she has moved some of her doll’s city closer; he is looking into a wobbly house made from blue egg cartons.

“Hello.”

“I thought you’d be lonely,” she said. “Are you going to wake up now?”

“I’m awake. Don’t think I can move yet. Jania. Can you take my watch off so I can look at the time?” It is difficult to use more than one hand without propping himself on an elbow and this seems nearly impossible.

She struggles with the catch and wrestles the watch from his wrist. “I can tell time.” She holds the watch upside-down. It has Roman numerals. “No, you’d better.”

“I’ve been here hours. You’re a very good girl.”

She grins. Then, “That’s blood!” She has seen the sticky red stuff on his forehead when he raised his head. She puts a finger out and runs it in the thick wetness, holding it up to the light. It isn’t very easy to see in here with the window bars criss-crossing the daylight.

“Don’t do that!” cries Wallace, making her jump. “It’s dirty.”

“What? It’s blood.” She is puzzled. What is Wallace thinking of? It is Jania’s blood that might be dirty, dangerous, not his own. He has nice clean dirty-old-man’s blood.

“Go and wash your hands,” he says in a tired voice.

“All right. I’ll bring the cloth and wash you, shall I?”

“Oh —” He shuts his eyes. “Yes, if you want to. It doesn’t hurt.”

“Ouch!” A rough cold cloth is licking at his head like a big tongue. She is back with a grey dripping towel.

“Wring it out a bit,” he commands weakly. “That — you’re wetting me.”

“Sorry.”

The next time he begins to close his eyes she shakes him, pummelling at him as if he were her velvet cushion. He makes an effort.

“What?”

“Don’t go away!”

“I can’t go away. Not going anywhere.”

“I was in an accident once — look.” She bares her thigh and waits proudly while his eyes stroke over the scar puckering her apricot flesh. He dreams he takes a bite out of her. Groans and shuts his eyes until she pushes at him again. “Don’t! Don’t sleep!”

“Ouch!”

“Are you going to die?” She waits for him to smile, but he doesn’t. He rolls his head a little and looks up at her. “Are you?” Louder, frightened.

“No. ’Course not. I’ve just hurt myself a bit. I’ll — no, I’ll mend.”

“My mother died!” She sounds surprised as if she has come across this news for the first time. “Mummy died. People just stop — that’s dying.”

“I know.”

“That’s because it was on the freeway, with all the traffic, that’s why she died. Freeway traffic is murder.”

“Murder is it?” He is making an effort to keep up with her but what preoccupies him now is the possibility he might be sick, he can’t be sick, oh, God, not sick.

“That’s what Daddy says.”

He is concentrating on banishing the nausea. At last he says,
“Go away, darling. I have to put my head down a bit longer.”

“It’s down.”

He has fainted. Jania doesn’t poke at him again, she hovers for a bit then gives up and goes to look for Joey. Joey hasn’t been fed. It doesn’t matter too much, there seems to be an awful lot of seed scattered on the floor of his cage and in his little pie dish. When she unlatches the door he doesn’t fly out, he just sits with hooded eyes, watching her.

She sighs. “You want some water too, don’t you?” She takes the second little tin dish to the tiny sink — the smallest sink she has ever seen — and drips water into it. “I might be a nurse,” she confides to the budgie. “When I grow up.”

T
HE CITY IS
growing about him. A flat line of books from the wizard’s shelves is a colourful street leading away from his shoulder. Father Christmas is standing on this street, the erstwhile weatherman clothed in shiny red paper from a chocolate fudge bar. The little wooden cuckoo is balanced now in a corner of metal framing, which used to be the play area swings except the swings were always missing.

“He’s a partridge now,” Jania is explaining. “For Christmas. A partridge in a pear tree.”

It takes Wallace some time to sort out what she is saying. His ears tend now to scramble messages and it takes a bit of time to decode them and understand. The main thing is that he hasn’t been sick.

“A partridge,” he repeats.

“That’s right.”

“I had a canary once,” he tells her. Well, it was his cousin’s canary but he can leave the cousin out because words are so hard to find in his head, they seem to be rationed. “I killed it.”

“I don’t believe you!” She rocks with horror.

“I didn’t mean to. Died of cold. I didn’t know it had to be warm.”

“Well, then.” The horror is receding. “An accident. Accidents will happen. I expect you were little.”

“Quite little.”

“Well, then.” But she is frowning. “Joey might be sick. He won’t come out. Is he cold?”

“Oh dear.” A shadow wings across his face, a vulture flying low in the room. He shuts his eyes, then opens them again quickly before Jania can abandon him or time pass. Every time he goes to sleep hours leak away from him. He rolls his hip awkwardly trying to reach into the rucked up pocket of his trousers. His leg hasn’t come off but part of it doesn’t seem to belong to him any more; is he paralysed? He rolls again, experimenting, and the pain shoots him in the back: Bang. He pants. The doorkey to the shop will be in his
pocket and he has to give this key to Jania; he was dreaming about it a moment ago before he woke up.