Neville the Less

  * * *

  “I promise,” Neville the Less said to the back of his mother whose name was Mum but was also Bettina or sometimes Betts and sometimes Tina. Once, when Neville was sitting very quietly high up in the mango tree, he’d heard Mister Shoomba tell the Duke of Daisley that she was ‘a criminal waste of hormones’. But that hadn’t seemed like a real name at all.

  “I promise not to be a soldier.”

  “Good,” she answered, coming back from her reverie. “That’s good. Thank you. Now what about you and Ava go outside for a while. Get some fresh air. Throw a stick or something. You could both use some exercise, I bet.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Nev’?”

  “Mmhm?”

  “Try not to worry, okay? We just have to stay strong and healthy and brave, you and me. That’s what I believe. Be as brave as he is. And be the best people we can be, every minute of the day. He wants that for us, I know he does. And one day we’ll get him back, just like he used to be. Okay? That’s my promise to you.” She smiled her old soft smile. “In exchange for you not becoming a soldier.”

  Ava

  Ava was a grey terrier with the soft, curly hair of a sneaky poodle ancestor. Most times, her name was Ava but sometimes, like when she caught a rat in the hen yard on Rahimi Island and brought it limp and bloody into the house, she was called ‘Bloody Horrible Mutt’! And other times, like when Mister Shoomba found her in Shoomba Territory or discovered her leavings on the soles of his shoes she was called ‘Stinkin’ Shaggy Little Bitch’.

  Names. Everything, Neville had learned, and everyone, had lots of names. Names were the glue of meaning, even though they were as changeable as the weather.

  This day, Ava was laying on the floor beside the couch that held The Quiet Man who had once been Dad and Neville the More. She’d lain there pretty much every day of all the weeks since he’d come home. And if The Quiet Man seldom seemed to sleep, watching ever so carefully for his nightmares to appear in the ceiling, for Ava, sleep was a calling and nightmares, it seemed, gave her a wide berth; presumably because she was, at heart, a Terrier-of-Death. Not with her own family, of course. She was gentle with all of them. Whenever The Quiet Man moved, especially in those rare moments when his hand fell near her, she would rouse right up, nose the fingers carefully and lick them as though to say, ‘See? I’m here and on the job. Nothing to worry about.’

  “Ava,” Neville whispered as he slid onto his bum beside her. “Wanna come outside?”

  In answer, she rolled on her back and showed him her belly; pale skin through the fine covering of hair. He gave her a rub and rolled onto his back beside her. So now they were three, staring up into the ceiling.

  “Nightmares’re up there, Ava,” he whispered. “Up there in the ceiling. From the war. From the jungle. Nightmares so bad, you ‘n’ me’d just be killed by ‘em.”

  Ava wriggled her back against the floor, stretched luxuriously and yawned. And in the voice of the yawn, Neville distinctly heard her say, “I don’ sink so.”

  Neville was surprised. Not that she was expressing an opinion - she did that more and more frequently these days - but that her opinion differed from that of Mum whose wisdom practically never missed the mark. He rolled to his side to ask Ava why she didn’t think so, but his mother’s finger snaps from the kitchen doorway and the mouthed “Outside!” distracted them both. Ava bounded to her feet and, in the midst of a clear steady look, flicked her eyes doorwards. As if to say, I’ll tell you outside. And then, without waiting for him, she trotted from the room.