Tim (6 page)

Seven

Ron was at the Seaside as usual, but early for a Saturday. He had loaded up his portable ice chest with beer and gone off to the cricket match clad in shorts, thong sandals, and a shirt left open all the way down to let in the breeze. But Curly and Dave had not shown up, and somehow the pleasure of lying on the grassy hill in the Sydney cricket ground sleeping in the sun was not the same alone. He stuck it for a couple of hours, but the cricket proceeded at its normal snaily pace and the horses he had backed at "Warwick Farm had both came in last, so at about three he had packed up his beer chest and radio, and headed for the Seaside with the unerring instinct of a bloodhound. It would never have occurred to him to go home; Es played tennis with the girls on Saturday afternoons, their local Hit and Giggle Club as he called it, and the house would be deserted with Tim working; Dawnie was off somewhere with one of her Quiz Kid boyfriends. When Tim turned up a little after four Ron was very pleased to see him, and bought him a schooner of Old.

"How'd it go, mate?" he asked his son as they leaned their backs up against a pillar and stared across the sea.

"The grouse, Pop! Mary's a real nice lady."

"Mary?" Ron peered into Tim's face, startled and concerned.

"Miss Horton. She told me to call her Mary. I was a bit worried, but she said it was all right. It's all right, isn't it, Pop?" he queried anxiously, sensing something unusual in his father's reaction.

"I dunno, mate. What's this Miss Mary Horton like?"

"She's lovely, Pop. She gave me a whole heap of beaut things to eat and showed me all over her house. It's air conditioned, Pop! Her furniture's real nice, so's her carpet, but everything's gray, so I asked her why she didn't have anything red around, and she said she'd see what she could do about it."

"Did she touch you, mate?"

Tim stared at Ron blankly. "Touch me? Gee, I dunno! I suppose she did. She took me by the hand when she was showing me her books." He pulled a face. "I didn't like her books, there were too many of them."

"Is she pretty, mate?"

"Oh, gee, yes! She's got the most lovely white hair, Pop, just like yours and Mum's, only whiter. That's why I didn't know whether it was all right for me to call her Mary, because you and Mum always tell me it isn't polite to call old people by their first name."

Ron relaxed. "Oh!" He slapped his son playfully on the arm. "Struth, you had me worried for a minute there, I tell you. She's an old girl, right?"

"Yes."

"Did she pay you like she promised?"

"Yes, it's here in an envelope. Her name and address is inside. She said I was to give it to you in case you wanted to talk to her. Why would you want to talk to her, Pop? I don't see why you'd want to talk to her."

Ron took the proffered envelope. "I don't want to talk to her, mate. Did youse finish the job?"

"No, she had too much lawn. If it's all right with you, she wants me to do the front garden next Saturday."

There were three crisp, new ten-dollar bills in the envelope; Ron stared at them and at the clear, heavy overtones of authority and education in Mary Horton's handwriting. Silly young girls or lonely housewives didn't have handwriting like that, he decided. Thirty quid for a day's gardening! He put the notes in his own wallet and patted Tim on the back.

"You done good, mate, and you can go back next Saturday and finish her lawn if you want to. In fact, for what she pays you can work for her any time she wants."

"Gee, Pop, thanks!" He wiggled his empty glass from side to side suggestively. "Can I have another beer?"

"Why can't you ever learn to drink it slowly, Tim?"

Tim's face fell into misery. "Oh, gee, I forgot again! I really did mean to drink it slowly, Pop, but it tasted so good I went and forgot."

Ron regretted his momentary exasperation immediately. "No matter, mate, don't let it worry you. Go and ask Florrie for a schooner of Old."

The beer, extremely potent as Australian beer was, seemed to have no effect on Tim. Some dimwits went crazy if they even smelled grog, Ron puzzled, but Tim could drink his old man under the table and then carry him all the way home, he felt it so little.

"Who is this Mary Horton?" Es asked that night, after Tim had been packed off to bed.

"Some old geezer out at Artarmon."

"Tim's very taken with her, isn't he?"

Ron thought of the thirty quid in his wallet and stared at his wife blandly. "I suppose so. She's nice to him, and doing her garden on a Saturday will keep him out of mischief."

"Free you to skip around the pubs and racetracks with the blokes, you mean," Es interpreted with the skill of many years.

"Jesus bloody Christ, Es, what a rotten thing to say to a man!"

"Hah!" she snorted, putting down her knitting. "The truth hurts, don't it? Did she pay him, eh?"

"A few quid."

"Which you pocketed, of course."

"Well, it wasn't that much. What do you expect for mowing a bloody lawn by machine, you suspicious old twit? No fortune, and that's for bloody sure!"

"As long as I get me housekeeping, I don't give a sweet bugger how much she paid him, mate!" She got up, stretching. "Want a cuppa tea, love?"

"Oh, ta, that'd be real nice. Where's Dawnie?"

"How the hell should I know? She's twenty-four and her own flaming mistress."

"As long as she's not someone else's flaming mistress!"

Es shrugged. "Kids don't think the way we did, love, and there's no getting around it. Besides, are you game to ask Dawnie where she's been and if she's shagging with some bloke?"

Ron followed Es into the kitchen, fondly patting her on the bottom. "Cripes, no! She'd look down that long bloody nose of hers and come out with a string of words I didn't understand, and a man would end up feeling pretty flaming silly."

"I wish God had rationed out the brains a bit more fairly between our kids, Ron, love," Es sighed as she put the kettle on to boil. "If He'd split them down the middle they'd both be all right."

"No use crying over spilt milk, old girl. Got any cake?"

"Fruit or seed?"

"Seed, love."

They sat down on either side of the kitchen table and polished off half a seed cake and six cups of tea between them.

Eight

Self-discipline carried Mary Horton through the week at Constable Steel & Mining as if Tim Melville had not even entered her life. She doffed her clothes before using the lavatory as usual, ran Archie Johnson as well as ever and chewed out a total of seventeen typists, office boys, and clerks. But at home each night she found her books unenticing and spent the time in the kitchen instead, reading recipe books and experimenting with cakes, sauces, and puddings. Judicious pumping of Emily Parker had given her a better idea of Tim's taste in goodies; she wanted to have a varied selection for him when Saturday came.

During one lunch hour she went to a north Sydney interior decorator and bought a very expensive ruby glass coffee table, then found an ottoman in matching ruby crushed velvet. The touch of deep, vibrant color disturbed her at first, but after she got used to it she had to admit that it improved her glacial living room. The bare, pearl-gray walls suddenly looked warmer, and she found herself wondering if Tim, like so many naturals, had an instinctive eye for art. Perhaps one day she could take him around the galleries with her, and see what his eye discovered.

She went to bed very late on Friday night, expecting a phone call any minute from Tim's father to say he didn't want his son hiring himself out as a gardener on precious weekends. But the call never came, and promptly at seven the next morning she was roused from a deep sleep by the sound of Tim's knock. This time she brought him inside immediately, and asked him if he wanted a cup of tea while she dressed.

"No thanks, I'm all right," he replied, blue eyes shining.

"Then you can use the little toilet off the laundry to change while I get dressed. I want^o show you how to do the front garden."

She returned to the kitchen a short time later, cat-footed as always. He did not hear her come in, so she stood silently in the doorway watching him, struck anew by the absoluteness of his beauty. How terrible, how unjust it was, she thought, that such a wonderful shell should house such an unworthy occupant; then she was ashamed. Perhaps that was the
raison d'etre
of his beauty, that his progress toward sin and dishonor had been arrested in the innocence of early childhood. Had he matured normally he might have looked quite different, truly a Botticelli then, smugly smiling, with a knowing look lurking behind those clear blue eyes. Tim was not a member of the adult human race at all, except on the sketchiest of premises.

"Come along, Tim, let me show-you what's to be done out front," she said at last, breaking the spell.

The cicadas were shrieking and screaming from every bush and tree; Mary put her hands over her ears, grimaced at Tim and then went to her only weapon, the hose.

'This is the worst year for cicadas I can ever remember," she said when the din had subsided somewhat and the heavy oleanders dripped steadily onto the path.

"Breeeek!" gurgled the basso profundo choirmaster, after all the others had ceased.

"There he goes, the old twirp!" Mary went over to the oleander nearest her front door, parting its soggy branches and peering futilely into the cathedral-like recesses of its interior. "I can never find him," she explained, squatting on her haunches and turning her head to smile at Tim, who
stood
behind her.

"Do you want him?" Tim asked seriously.

"I most certainly do! He starts the whole lot of them off; without him they seem to be dumb."

"I'll get him for you."

He slipped his bare torso in among the leaves and branches easily, disappearing from sight above the waist. He was not wearing boots or socks this morning, since there was no concrete to blister and crack his skin, and wet humus from the grass clung to his legs.

"Breeeeek!" boomed the cicada, drying off enough to begin testing.

"Gotcha!" shouted Tim, scrambling out again with his right hand closed around something.

Mary had never actually seen more of a cicada than its cast-off brown armor in the grass and thus edged up a little fearfully, for like most women she was frightened of spiders and beetles and crawly, cold-blooded things.

"There he is, look at him!" Tim said proudly, opening his fingers gingerly until the cicada was fully exposed, tethered only by Tim's left index finger and thumb on his wing tips.

"Ugh!" Mary shuddered, backing away without really looking.

"Oh, don't be afraid of him, Mary," Tim begged, smiling up at her and stroking the cicada softly. "Look, isn't he lovely, all green and pretty like a butterfly?"

The golden head was bent over the cicada; Mary stared down at them both in sudden, blinding pity. Tim seemed to have some kind of rapport with the creature, for it lay on his palm without panic or fear, and it was indeed beautiful, once one forgot its Martian antennae and lobsterish carapace. It had a fat, bright green body about two inches long, tinted with a powdering of real gold, and its eyes glittered and sparkled like two big topazes. Over its back the delicate, transparent wings were folded still, veined like a leaf with bright yellow gold and shimmering with every color of the rainbow. And above it crouched Tim, just as alien and just as beautiful, as alive and gleaming.

"You don't really want me to kill him, do you?" Tim pleaded, gazing up at her in sudden sadness.

"No," she replied, turning away. "Put him back in his bush, Tim."

By lunchtime he had finished the front lawn. Mary gave him two hamburgers and a heaping pile of chips, then filled his empty corners with a hot steamed jam pudding smothered in hot banana custard.

"I think I'm finished, Mary," Tim said as he drank his third cup of tea. "Gee, but I'm sorry it wasn't a longer job, though." The wide eyes surveyed her mistily. "I like you, Mary," he began. "I like you better than Mick or Harry or Jim or Bill or Curly or Dave, I like you better than anyone except Pop and Mum and my Dawnie."

She patted his hand and smiled at him lovingly. "It's very sweet of you to say that, Tim, but I don't really think it's true, you haven't known me long enough."

"There's no more grass to mow," he sighed, ignoring her refusal to accept the compliment.

"Grass grows again, Tim."

"Eh?" That
little
interrogative sound was his signal to go slow, that something had been done or said beyond his understanding.

"Can you weed garden beds as well as you can mow a lawn?"

"I reckon I can. I do it for Pop all the time."

"Then would you like to come every Saturday and look after my garden altogether, mow the grass when it needs it, plant seedlings and weed the flower beds, spray the bushes and trim the pathways and put down fertilizer?"

He grasped her hand and shook it, smiling broadly. "Oh, Mary, I do like you! I'll come every Saturday and I'll look after your garden, I promise I'll look after your garden!"

There were thirty dollars in his envelope when he left that afternoon.

Nine

Tim had been coming for five weeks before Mary Horton phoned his father late on Thursday night. Ron answered the phone himself. "Yeah?" he asked it.

"Good evening, Mr. Melville. This is Mary Horton, Tim's Saturday friend."

Ron pricked up his ears immediately, beckoning Es to join him for a listen. "Oh, nice to hear from you, Miss Horton. How's Tim doing, all right?"

"He's a pleasure to have around, Mr. Melville. I do enjoy his company."

Ron chuckled self-consciously. "From the tales he brings home, I gather he's eating youse out of house and home, Miss Horton."

"No, not at all. It's a pleasure to see him eat, Mr. Melville."

There was an awkward pause, until Ron broke it to say, "What's the matter, Miss Horton? Tim not wanted this week?"