Forget that idea, thought Keith miserably.
There couldn’t be anything wrong with Dad’s eyesight if he could see the tiny bits Keith hadn’t been able to reach without falling off the ladder and being killed.
‘That’s a very imaginative way of signing your painting, love,’ said Mum, pointing up at the tummies. ‘Putting your phone numbers instead of your name.’
Keith sent a frantic message to his tear ducts.
Stay closed.
‘I think it’s great,’ said Mum, ruffling his hair.
Keith noticed sadly that her shoulders weren’t that straight after all.
‘So do I,’ said Dad, his bottom wobbling inside his trousers while he shook Keith by the hand.
Keith took a deep breath and started clearing away the paint tins while Mr Dodd took Mum and Dad inside to show them a new paint for toilets that had a built-in air freshener.
Tragic, thought Keith.
They’re so used to being saggy and wobbly they can’t even recognise their real selves.
He took another deep breath.
It’ll be fine, he told himself.
As soon as passers-by start seeing the mural, Mum and Dad’s phones will be ringing hot with invitations to the pub and the pictures and they’ll have to start thinking about suntan lamps and hairdos then.
Keith looked up at the mural.
Mum and Dad’s Suntan Gold faces grinned down at him from the wall.
Good one, Keith said to them.
Think positive.
5
Keith sent an urgent message to Mum’s phone.
Ring.
The phone sat on the sideboard and ignored him.
Keith gave it a pleading look.
Please.
The phone stayed silent.
Keith stood up and paced around the room. It was a small room so after only six paces he was back on the settee.
This is ridiculous, he thought.
Nearly half a day that mural’s been up and not a single call.
The phone must be broken.
He went over and picked up the hand piece. The dial tone buzzed in his ear. He put it down quickly in case someone was trying to call.
They weren’t.
After another pace around the room, it hit him.
Of course.
Must be a fault at the exchange.
Someone down at the exchange must have plugged an electric kettle and a three-bar heater into the same double adaptor and blown all the circuits.
At this very moment in every phone box within a two mile radius of the mural there was probably a mature-age single person frantically trying to ring Mum or Dad, not realising the phones in the whole area were out.
Keith grabbed his jacket.
He’d go round all the phone boxes and be back here with a pile of invitations for Mum before she got home from work.
At the front door his stomach gave a rumble and he realised he was starving.
It’s all this nervous tension, he thought, it’s burning up my breakfast at a faster than usual rate. Must be careful to keep my energy levels up.
He went into the kitchen and pulled open the chocolate finger drawer.
It was empty.
Strange, he thought.
He rummaged through the cupboard where Mum kept all the new groceries.
No chocolate fingers there either.
Or in the cereal cupboard.
Or in any of the jars.
Or in the oven.
Keith’s guts suddenly felt even emptier than before.
Time was running out.
When a person lost her taste for chocolate fingers, the end couldn’t be far away.
‘Thursday,’ Dad shouted as Keith walked into the cafe.
Keith stared.
A jab of excitement ran through him.
Dad was at the stove in a haze of blue smoke, with a pan of sausages in one hand and the phone in the other.
‘Thursday at the latest,’ shouted Dad.
At last, thought Keith. A woman enquiring how long Dad’ll need to get his body into shape.
‘Not too much fat,’ Dad yelled above the sizzling of the sausages.
That’s right, thought Keith, be positive.
Dad hung up.
‘If that Len Tufnell doesn’t start delivering my pork chops on time,’ he said, ‘I’m getting a new butcher.’
Keith suddenly felt very weary.
‘You look pooped,’ said Dad. ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Nothing much,’ said Keith.
He didn’t feel like going into detail about how he’d just been to every phone box this side of Woolwich and how they’d all been empty except one and how the person inside it had told him to get lost or she’d set her dog on him.
‘Dad,’ said Keith hopefully, ‘have you had any other phone calls this morning?’
Dad thought while he made a sausage sandwich.
‘Just the wholesaler,’ he said, handing the sandwich to Keith, ‘and an order for six takeaway egg and bacon rolls. Why, were you trying to ring?’
Keith shook his head and sat down at a table and stared at the sandwich. He wasn’t hungry any more.
Why wasn’t the mural working?
He’d made sure all the paint was waterproof so it wouldn’t run in the rain.
The phone numbers were right, he’d double-checked.
Keith sighed.
I should have given Mum a bigger chest and Dad bigger leg muscles, he thought gloomily.
Then Mr Kristos, the owner of the cafe, came in for his liver and onions.
Keith noticed that as Dad served them up he didn’t pop a bit of onion into his mouth like he usually did.
That’s it, thought Keith.
Dad’s a goner too.
When a person loses interest in fried onions, he’s pretty much lost interest in life.
‘Keith,’ said Mr Kristos, coming and sitting at Keith’s table, ‘that painting you done on that wall. Exquisite.’
‘Thanks,’ said Keith sadly.
‘A masterpiece,’ continued Mr Kristos through a mouthful of liver. ‘Just one thing puzzles me. Why did you put your mum and dad’s phone numbers on the stomachs of two bodybuilders?’
Keith opened his mouth to explain, but he felt too weary.
‘Don’t take offence,’ said Mr Kristos. ‘If it’s art, just say so.’
‘It’s art,’ said Keith, wondering if a person’s eyesight could be damaged by eating too much liver.
What other explanation could there be for Mr Kristos not recognising Dad in the mural, a man he saw every day at least once and sometimes up to eight times if the stove was playing up?
Unless . . .
Keith stared at Mr Kristos.
Suddenly it all made sense.
Of course.
That’s why the mural wasn’t working.
Mr Kristos and everyone else in the district were so used to Mum and Dad being wobbly and saggy they couldn’t recognise Mum and Dad’s real selves either. To them Dad was just the quiet bloke with the unfortunate bottom who cooked their bacon rolls and Mum was just the poor soul with the tragic legs who gave their cars parking tickets.
But not for much longer, thought Keith happily.
It’ll all change once Tracy arrives.
Once she starts perking Mum and Dad up and they get a grip on themselves and suck their tummies in and pull their shoulders back and start smiling, people will start recognising them in the mural and the invitations will come flooding in.
‘No offence?’ said Mr Kristos anxiously.
‘None taken,’ said Keith with a grin.
He bit hungrily into his sandwich.
‘Oops,’ said Dad from behind the counter, ‘just remembered. There was another call this morning. Mrs Smith from the newsagents. She’s got a fax for you from Tracy.’
Keith stood in the newsagents and read the fax for the third time.
Perh
aps he’d got it wrong the first two times.
Perhaps he’d missed out some words.
Perhaps it wasn’t terrible news after all and the brick he could feel in his guts would vanish.
Dear Keith, he read.
Something real crook’s happened. A squall hit Dad’s boat and turned it over and Dad tore half his ligaments. They sewed him up but now he’s in bed and Mum doesn’t want to leave him cause he’s already hurt himself once reaching for the comfort bucket.
So we can’t come next week.
Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop. Poop.
Life can be a real mongrel, eh? First German measles, now this. Mum reckons we can come at Chrissie. That’s another four months! I’ll go mental. At this rate we’ll be fifty before I get there. You’ll be fat and bald and I won’t recognise you.
Write soon, love Tracy.
PS. The prognosis for Dad is a complete recovery except for the boat.
There should be a law, thought Keith bitterly, to stop people taking small fishing boats out into North Queensland waters when the weather was changeable and their daughters were about to make important overseas trips to see best friends who were counting on them.
Keith realised Mrs Smith and Rami were staring at him from behind the counter.
‘Are you alright, Keith?’ asked Mrs Smith, concerned, twisting her sari anxiously in her fingers.
Keith nodded and tried to smile.
No point in upsetting her.
Rami held out Keith’s change.
Keith took it.
‘What does prognosis mean?’ asked Rami.
Mrs Smith gave him a clip round the ear.
‘It’s when doctors tell you you’re going to be OK,’ said Keith. ‘Or dead in a couple of months.’
He hurried out of the shop before Mrs Smith could ask him how Mum and Dad were.
Keith peered into the darkness.
The street lamp he was standing under was broken and the moon was behind a cloud and he couldn’t see for sure if it was the right place or not.
He sent an urgent message to his eyes.
Please.
Try harder.
I don’t want to break into the wrong house.
Keith took a couple of steps closer to the dark windows looming in front of him and suddenly a pain shot through his right hand.
Something had stabbed him in the knuckle.
He couldn’t see if his hand was bleeding so he gave it a suck just in case. His tongue felt the sharp end of a splinter. He crouched down and pulled it out.
In front of his face was a gate post.
Keith could just make out a jagged slash of new wood where the paint had been scraped off.
He remembered how two days ago he and Mitch Wilson had seen the ambulance men accidentally give the gatepost a thump with the stretcher as they carried the body out to the ambulance.
This was it.
The dead man’s house.
Keith hurried along the street, counting the houses all the way to the corner. Then he ran round the corner and along the back alley, counting the houses again till he got to the dead man’s back gate.
He leant against the gate and closed his eyes and sent an urgent message.
Sorry about this Mr . . . urn . . .
He realised he couldn’t remember the dead mans name.
Mr Milton?
Mr Stannish?
Mr Mellish, that was it.
Sorry about this Mr Mellish, said Keith silently, but I’m desperate. Tracy can’t come now and this is the only other thing I can think of Sorry.
He took a deep breath and clambered over the gate.
He hit the ground on the other side, slipped on the cold damp grass, picked himself up and ran towards the house.
He crouched at the back door, panting.
The windows at the back of the house were dark too.
Keith strained to hear if any sounds were coming from inside.
Nothing.
OK, he thought, the key.
He felt under the mat.
Nothing.
In the darkness he could make out some flowerpots next to the back step.
He felt inside them.
Behind them.
Under them.
Nothing.
Come on, he thought, everyone hides a back door key somewhere.
He groped around the other side of the step, feeling for an old gardening shoe like Uncle Derek and Aunty Joyce used.
There wasn’t one.
Just an empty milk bottle which toppled off the step and smashed loudly.
Keith froze.
He waited for all the neighbours who’d gawked at the body on the stretcher to come rushing out of their houses and grab him and drag him off to the police station where he’d be charged with breaking and entering.
‘I wasn’t really breaking and entering, officer,’ Keith rehearsed in his head, ‘I was just trying to find out how Mr Mellish died. Whether it really was from loneliness or whether it was from something else like drink or bad diet or radiation from a leaky microwave. There are two lives at stake. Three if you count me worrying myself to death.’
After several rehearsals Keith realised he was still alone in the dark with his eardrums pounding.
When they’d stopped, he began carefully feeling around for a key again.
Then he heard it.
Coming from inside the house.
A high-pitched wail.
It was very faint but Keith knew as soon as it started that it wasn’t a door creaking or a microwave leaking or the wind in a plug hole.
It was somebody crying.
Somebody or something.
A thin, eerie, mournful sound.
Keith’s eardrums started pounding again.
He had a stern word with himself, reminding himself that he’d been around and he knew that ghosts were just a figment of the imagination.
He tried to swallow but the inside of his mouth felt dry and woolly like the blanket that had covered Mr Mellish’s body.
The wailing was the saddest thing Keith had ever heard.
A thought slipped into his mind.
What if . . .
It was crazy so he waited for it to go away.
It didn’t.
What if, he thought, the wailing is Mr Mellish trying to tell me he did die of loneliness and I mustn’t give up trying to save Mum and Dad from a similar fate?
Keith realised he was shaking all over.
He had an even sterner word with himself, reminding himself that he hadn’t believed in ghosts for over two years.
He listened to the wailing again.
Then he turned and ran for the back gate as fast as he could.
Keith lay on his bed at Dad’s place.
He could feel his heart trying to jump out of his chest, partly from the running, partly from Mr Mellish’s wailing, but mostly from the brilliant idea he’d had on the way home.
When his hands had stopped shaking, he found a pen and wrote a fax.
Dear Tracy,
Sorry about your dad. And the boat. But don’t give up. Think positive. Somebody else could come with you.
My suggestion is Aunty Bev. She’s single, selfemployed and has a very positive attitude to life. I bet when she finds out your mum’s ticket is up for grabs, she’ll jump at the chance.
Tell her that once she’s here she won’t have to pay for any meals and Mum will make sure she doesn’t get any parking tickets.
Don’t give up. It’s a matter of life or death. (I’ll explain when you get here.)
Love, Keith.
Then he flopped back onto the bed and crossed his fingers very hard and hoped that Aunty Bev was open to new challenges in her work as a beautician.
The reply came two days later.
Dear Keith.
Ripper! Aunty Bev has said yes! Mum says I can come! See you Thursday (same flight). Ripper!
Love Tracy.
PS. Aunty Bev can be a real pa
in sometimes, but I’m hoping travel will broaden her mind.
Keith stood in the newsagents and felt the brick in his guts melt away. He realised Mrs Smith and Rami were smiling at him from behind the counter.
‘What does ripper mean?’ asked Rami.
Mrs Smith gave him a clip round the ear.
‘It’s an Australian word,’ grinned Keith. ‘It means everything’s going to be OK.’
6
‘Come on, Keith,’ yelled Dad. ‘Shake a leg. The plane lands in an hour.’
‘Nearly ready,’ shouted Keith.
He stopped and listened and heard Dad down in the cafe stirring sugar into a cuppa.
Good, thought Keith, that gives me at least another five minutes.
Now, where are those baked beans?
I know.
The wardrobe.
Keith pulled open the doors of his wardrobe and ran his eyes over the cartons stacked inside.
Peas.
Spaghetti.
Marmalade.
No baked beans.
Keith dropped to the floor and lifted the edge of his bedspread and peered under his bed.
As his eyes got used to the gloom, the printing on the sides of the boxes became clearer.
Corned beef.
Apricot halves.
Baked beans.
Good one, thought Keith. He ticked baked beans off his list.
‘Keith,’ said Dad, ‘we’re going to be late.’
Keith looked up.
Dad was standing in the doorway with a steaming mug in one hand and a bacon sandwich in the other.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘Just stocktaking,’ said Keith, standing up.
Dad looked wearily at the cartons piled up around the room, sighed, and sat down on some boxes of fruit salad in heavy syrup.
Keith watched his mouth droop.
There were some lines at the corners Keith hadn’t seen before.
‘Not a great set-up, is it, sleeping in a storeroom?’ said Dad. ‘Wish I could afford a place with a room of your own, but I can’t.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Keith.
‘You’re a good kid,’ said Dad, ‘but be honest, this isn’t as good as your room at Mum’s, is it?’
Keith sent an urgent message to his brain.
Make Dad feel better.
‘It’s very similar,’ said Keith. ‘Mum keeps her spare chocolate fingers under my bed. Well, she used to.’