Time's Long Ruin (26 page)

‘Hello,' Rosa said, realising she was standing at Doctor Gunn's door, looking at the doctor sitting at his desk, staring out at her.

‘Hello, Rosa,' the doctor replied.

‘Are you working today?' she asked.

‘No,' he said, indicating a pile of papers. ‘Just catching up. How's Con?'

‘Slowing up. The Riley kids are going to Semaphore, by themselves. I don't know . . . by themselves.'

Doctor Gunn peered through his venetian blind. ‘They'll be fine. Kids grow up quick these days.'

Mariel Johns rode her bike up onto the platform just as the train pulled in. ‘I'm not allowed,' she said.

Janice shrugged. ‘Maybe I'll come over tonight.'

‘We're going out. How about tomorrow?'

‘Okay.'

Mariel rode off without even waving. Janice held the little ones' hands as they boarded the carriage. The train was full of people in various stages of undress: bathers and shorts, PMG work-shirts and singlets, exposed armpits and arse cracks, bodies smelling of Zambuck. Janice found a couple of seats on the Euston Terrace side of the carriage. One of them was damp with sweat from someone's legs so she took out her beach towel and wiped it. Then she sat down and pulled Gavin onto her knee. ‘Now, you have to do everything I say,' she said. ‘I'm the mum today.'

‘And I'm the dad.'

Janice looked at her watch. ‘Damn.' She turned to Anna. ‘Have you got your watch?'

‘No, Mum's got mine.'

‘I forgot mine wasn't working. We can't miss the train. Mum would skin me alive.'

Anna leaned forward to be heard above the groaning diesel. ‘Isn't there a clock, on the statue, near the kiosk?'

Janice smiled. ‘Remind me.' She watched as the homes of West Croydon passed by: split villas and bungalows, a roofless ruin overgrown with wild oats and morning glory, a brand-new cream-brick block of flats with washing hung out over the second-floor banisters. Just before the underpass an old man in a suit sat in front of an improvised book store – an ancient, iron-framed bed with its springs sagging under the weight of piles of books. He'd made up a sign:
Classical Novels,
Prices Agreed
. Janice had looked at them once but couldn't find anything she knew: Cicero, Rilke, Strindberg plays and
Das Kapital
.

‘You can take one,' he'd said, in a thick European accent.

‘What would I like?'

He used his finger to check the spines. ‘Here,
Great
Expectations
, Charles Dickens.' Handing it to her.

‘Thanks, Mister. Do you sell many?'

He shrugged. ‘One day.'

She went home and showed her parents the book and Bill said, ‘Why'd he give you this?

‘He was nice.'

Looking at her. ‘Best stay away from him, eh?'

‘Why?'

‘Just do what you're told.'

Looking at Liz. ‘It's that old Jug-o'-saliva. Why's he givin' kids books?'

Janice finished the book in one week. She returned to the old man and said, ‘I'm going to be a writer.'

‘Wonderful,' he smiled. ‘Because of Dickens?'

‘Because of Dickens.'

‘And what will your first story be about?'

She was still writing it, in her head, on scraps of paper she kept in an old ledger in her desk drawer, in pictures drawn in the Semaphore sand, in sky, and song, and stories made up for Gavin and Anna; in the chords and flat notes plucked on her dad's ukulele and scrawls on the back of gas bills; in timetables and science experiments – in everything she'd ever seen or heard or smelt in Croydon. Her book would be called
The Song of Croydon
and it would star all of us – Bill, Liz, me, Mum and Dad – even Eric Hessian and his boot polish fingertips. It would be set over one summer, and by saying very little it would say a lot.

I am called Janice
, it would begin.
I have never liked my name
but it was the name I was given. So it will do . . .

A young man in black pants, a short-sleeved white shirt and tie leaned over the seat in front and handed Janice a card. It said ‘Know the Bible's Word' and gave a time and place to come and hear so-and-so speak. ‘Where are your parents?' the young man asked, but Janice wouldn't talk to him.

‘The Bible's a load of shit,' Anna said, and several people looked at her.

‘Anna,' Janice scowled.

‘The Lord will come again,' the young man said to Anna.

‘Prove it.'

‘Anna,' Janice repeated, handing back the card and saying, ‘We were told not to speak to strangers.'

‘Good advice.'

There was no more said. At the following stations more and more people got on. Soon the aisles were choked with bags and bodies, prams and eskies and Greek grandmas with three-foot loaves. The train slowed for Port Adelaide station, climbing onto a bridge of old salt-encrusted wooden beams that had everyone worried. They stopped at the platform and a groan made up of every possible pitch and tone rose from the carriage as the doors opened and a dozen more bodies attempted to climb aboard. It was obvious that the train was over-full. But this didn't make any difference to the people still cramming in.

‘Where do you go to school?' the young man asked Janice.

‘Leave her alone,' a nearby mother barked.

‘Attention,' the conductor shouted, at the top of his voice. ‘We'll call for a bus, but no more on please.'

‘My dad is a detective,' Janice said, and the young man shrugged.

Meanwhile, Gavin looked out of the window and smiled. He opened and closed his fist a few times, as if to wave. Anna turned to look.

‘It's a fine thing when you can't start a conversation,' the young man said to the mother.

The conductor walked along the length of the carriage, closing the doors. Then he buzzed the driver and the train lurched forward. It picked up speed as it descended the bridge. After a few moments it was gone, its wheels pulsing rhythmically on the tracks as it faded.

Liz picked up Anna's watch. It was ten to two. She remembered Janice's broken watch and wondered how they'd tell the time. Then she thought of the clock on the statue on the foreshore. She could see Janice, barefoot, towels hanging from her beach bag, dragging her brother and sister towards the train terminus on Semaphore Road.

‘Wait,' Gavin would be saying, shaking sand from his shorts.

‘Hurry up, we'll never get a seat.'

Liz closed the door and headed down Thomas Street. She guessed Bill would be in Clare by now. He'd be standing in a haberdashery store with his sample bag, waiting for the manager to serve some old dear trying to find a matching button for her husband's suit. He'd be looking at the manager, smiling and rolling his eyes. Then he'd step forward and say, ‘G'day, Dave. I've got a new book of fabrics.'

‘I don't know, Bill, you should see what I've got left out back.'

‘Old news. People want a change.'

‘Not here they don't. They just want cheap fabric.'

As Bill loosened his tie he'd think, Fuck, give me strength.

Liz passed the playground in front of the station. A teenager in a blue dress swung in the breeze on a tyre on a chain. Nearby an old man in a white shirt and brown vest sat at a table under a vine-covered trellis reading a Greek newspaper. He looked up at Liz and she smiled. ‘Grapes are nearly ready,' she said, pointing, but he didn't understand her.

She stood on the platform with her arms crossed, looking along the tracks heading north and west. Too early, she thought. Rosa emerged from Con's gatehouse and climbed the shallow incline leading up to the platform.

‘The children?' Rosa said.

‘They've been to Semaphore,' Liz explained.

‘I know, I saw them.' Rosa wanted to say it, but didn't. How could you let them go alone? Children are too precious. They have a habit of drowning, of falling, of running onto roads, of getting lost. Instead she just said, ‘How is your sister?'

‘Sonja? She's alright. There's always something with my sister.' Liz's eyes were searching for the train. ‘She has a cyst on her ovary and she won't let them operate. So every few weeks . . .' She could see the train in the distance. ‘Here they are.'

‘My aunty bled from her brain for weeks,' Rosa said. ‘She was in her yard gardening when a dog came along. A friendly dog. It jumped up on her, like this, to lick her face. But Aunty fell back and hit her head on the concrete.'

Con closed the gates. Liz watched as the train slowed for the station. She was looking for a hand, a face, anything to allow her to sigh, to relax, to realise she'd made the right decision.

‘There were headaches for a few days,' Rosa continued. ‘And then she just wanted to sleep. Turn off the light, she'd say, it's too bright.'

‘Sonja enjoys the attention,' Liz said. ‘I tried to make her realise how serious it was, but she won't be told.'

‘Next thing she was in a coma,' Rosa explained.

The train slowed and stopped. Liz scanned the bodies emerging from the carriage. ‘Janice,' she called, softly.

‘That dog should've been on a leash,' Rosa continued. ‘We should've found it and had the owners arrested. I told my uncle, It's just like murder, I said. But no, he wouldn't listen.'

Liz sighed. ‘Janice?' The children were nowhere to be seen. She went to the front carriage and looked inside and then made her way back along the other three carriages. Nothing. She stopped a young couple and asked, ‘Have you seen three children? One this big, another so . . . and a little one?'

‘No, sorry.'

She stopped a few more people before they left the platform but no one had seen three children by themselves. She returned to Rosa. Her heart was racing, and she wiped sweat from her forehead. ‘Christ, I shouldn't have let them go.'

‘They'll be on the next one,' Rosa replied, as the doors closed and the train pulled out of the station.

‘I know.'

‘What time is it due?'

Liz reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out pegs, coins, a hairnet and a few dockets, which she searched as her hands trembled. ‘Here: 2.35.'

‘Come back then,' Rosa consoled. ‘You wouldn't expect children to be on time.'

‘No,' Liz agreed. ‘I know what it is: Janice's bloody watch. I bet they're still on the beach.'

‘Come back.'

‘She should've thought of that. I should've, I suppose.'

‘So they're late? What else is there for them to do?'

‘Still . . .'

‘Go home,' said Rosa, as she thought, Silly woman, what were you thinking? She took her by the shoulder and led her along the platform.

‘What's wrong?' Con shouted, as he finished opening the gates.

‘Go back to work,' Rosa replied, walking Liz home.

Liz took the key attached to a string attached to her apron. She'd done this on Ellen's advice, after locking herself out of the house when she was hanging out washing. Gavin was inside, crawling around on the floor. As she peered through the glass of the back door she could see him playing under a pot of mutton bubbling away on the stove, touching power points and pulling books from a bookcase she'd asked Bill to screw to the wall. She knocked and screamed, Gavin looked up at her and laughed. Christ, she thought, move away from the stove. She ran around to the front but that was locked too, so she sprinted to the woodshed and found a fruit crate, putting it under the high laundry window and climbing up, squeezing through the opening and falling into the laundry trough, bruising her bum and hips and just about breaking a rib. Then she ran to Gavin and picked him up and kissed him, crooning, ‘Stupid, stupid Mummy . . .'

Now, she went to the kitchen and made herself a coffee. Then she sat in front of the television and switched on an episode of
Lassie
. The characters seemed lifeless, barely acting, walking, talking, laughing and crying in a sort of dream that barely registered. Someone had to save a child who was trapped down a mine but she just didn't care. No one was really lost. It was just a story. You could only believe a story if there was nothing else going on around you.

At 2.15 she lost patience. She switched off the television and left her half-finished coffee to go cold on a pouffe. She closed the front door and headed back to the station. This time there was no one in the playground. She stood on the platform with her arms crossed and waited.

Con called up to her. ‘The kids?' he asked.

‘They're on the train,' she replied, pointing.

They're on this train, of course, she thought. They have to be. And if not on the train, then Semaphore Road, the beach, the kiosk, the bakery. Still, they should be here, with me.