The Piper's Son

  Strangely enough, politics don’t dominate here with us foreigners. I suppose it’s because everyone’s just trying to get on with their job without doing a song and dance about it. That’s not to say that there aren’t the cliquey NGO crowd and some of the foreign media who think they are so bolshie and down to earth. A bit nauseating really. But the majority are a truly fantastic lot and I know I will never, ever meet such a mix of people again. I even go to church because it seems to mean something here. And I go to salsa classes with a bunch of teachers and nurses when I’m in Dili, although the instructor did tell me to sit down and have a rest at one stage. Someone later described me as resembling a weapon of mass destruction on the dance floor. You know what I’m like when it comes to rhythm.

  I kind of lied in that first text message. We do a lot of laughing out loud. I think of those little sullen-faced Year Sevens back in high school and here are these people who have such a great spirit and so little. This guy, we call him Gomez, looks like he swallowed a piano. Big white teeth and a smile that just goes on and on.

  Anyway, I better go. Did I hear a rumor that you were thinking of going back to construction? I remember those times we’d hang out in woodwork after school and you’d wear that apron and your goggles. You looked so serious and grown-up, so meticulous with your drawing and the way you’d explain the process and I’d look at your hands and think, Shit, they can do anything. Like Frankie’s Will. Don’t you love the fact that he builds bridges? I mean, who can say that? Really?

  Speak soon.

  Love,

  T

  He remembers those words a week later when Stani has two workmen looking at the floorboards, ushering them out of the kitchen, muttering “bloody bastard” over and over again.

  “Frankie’s almost convinced Stani to have a live-music gig one night,” Justine explains to Ned and Tom just as she’s leaving for a recital.

  “What band?” Tom asks absently, trying to listen to what the workmen are saying.

  “Whoever registers for the night. Each band plays four songs. Two covers. Two originals.”

  “What about the regular band?” he asks.

  “Leave them to us.”

  Ned looks at Tom suspiciously. “The heavenly creatures are going to kill the old-timers. You know that, don’t you?”

  Stani walks back in, muttering more behind the two guys, one who’s scribbling in his invoice book. Francesca is trailing him.

  “Stani, have you given any more —”

  “No,” he snaps, following the workmen into the toilet area.

  “We’ve almost got him,” she says with conviction.

  He comes back into the kitchen with the quote in his hand. Tom reaches over and takes it, reading the amount.

  “They’ve got to be joking.”

  Francesca looks over his shoulder at the amount and whistles. “It’s a builder’s market, my father says.”

  He thinks of Tara’s e-mail. Every word she mutters or writes to him is a reminder of what he lost and what he needs to get back, somehow. But there’s too much to fix up and he doesn’t know how to go about doing it. He pictures himself spending the rest of his days entering data beside Mohsin the Ignorer and being a dishpig, living with Georgie, who can’t make a decision about her own future. Or his father, who could end up in Georgie’s study for the rest of his life.

  “Give me money for the materials and I’ll lay them,” he finds himself saying. “They’ve got great timber down on Old Lilyfield Road.”

  Stani reacts to Tom’s suggestion in the same way he reacts to Francesca’s. With total disregard.

  “He came third in the state for woodwork,” Francesca explains. “We actually had to be proud of him for a whole week. Tough times.”

  Stani is doing that thing where he thinks while staring straight at you and Tom’s left almost sweating from the intensity of it.

  “Tomorrow. Take the checkbook.”

  Ned comes along as well and they drive down in Francesca’s father’s ute minus Francesca, who’s gone to pick up Will Trombal from the airport. At the lumberyard, they trail one of the owners who is pointing to different variations surrounding them.

  “What do you reckon?” he asks Ned. “The Kauri or the Baltic?”

  Ned nods like he understands what the old guy and Tom are talking about.

  “Ned?”

  “Were you speaking English?”

  But it makes Tom feel normal and the old guy senses his interest and takes him to some brushbox he’s got lying around. For building furniture.

  “How much is that worth?” Tom asks, his eyes almost caressing it.

  “I’ll have to check,” the guys say. When the sale of the floorboards is finished and they load the timber onto the ute, the old guy points back into the shed where the brushbox is, already walking away so Tom and Ned have no choice but to follow.

  “You were salivating,” Ned tells him.

  Tom laughs. “My father’s a carpenter. It’s a Jesus thing. You understand?”

  Ned points to himself. “Buddhist.”

  Inside, they stop in front of the timber again and he wants to lean down and take in its smell.

  “I hear your father’s back,” the guy says in a neutral voice.

  Tom stares at him. The resemblance must be too obvious. At the AA meetings or at the IR rallies, or anywhere he goes where his father’s world exists, there’s always a double take.

  “Tell him Bert said hi.”

  “Will do,” he says casually. “Let’s go,” he says to Ned.

  “I owe your father some money for something he did for me once. Take it. Sort of quid pro quo.”

  “Maybe you should work that out with him,” Tom says coldly.

  The guy shakes his head.

  “He wouldn’t take it and I don’t like owing.”

  Some other customer comes along and the guy’s attention is elsewhere.

  “Take it,” Ned says.

  Tom looks at him, shaking his head. “It’s bloody expensive, you know. He’s making it seem as if it’s not, but it is.”

  “Then whatever your father did for him must have meant a lot,” Ned says.

  Despite the voice in his head that says he doesn’t want anything that’s owed to his father, Tom can’t wait to get his hands on it.

  “Just take it. Hit your old man over the head with it. You’re dying to.”

  They go back to Georgie’s place, lugging the timber in with them through the house and into the back. On his way in, Tom sees the mail poking out of the box and grabs it as they shuffle in.

  “What’s going on out here?” Georgie asks, stepping out onto the back veranda. She’s just started her maternity leave and he wonders if that’s going to drive them all crazy.

  “Ned. Georgie,” he says, pointing to one then the other as a form of introduction.

  “What are you making?” she asks. Georgie never acknowledged new people until they’d been in her house a dozen times, and then they were family. With his father, the world was accepted at a hello.

  “Something special. For the baby Jesus.”

  She looks confused for a moment and then he sees it register on her face and she covers her mouth and walks inside.

  “You’ve made her cry,” Ned says quietly.

  “She cried during the elimination rounds of Idol the other night,” Tom informs him. “Anything can set her off.”

  He goes to call out to her because he remembers the mail, but stops when he sees his mother’s handwriting. A letter addressed to Dominic Mackee. He’s never been home in time to get the mail. He wonders if Anabel was right and his parents are writing to each other or whether this letter is a one-off. Instead of putting it in his father’s room or in the kitchen, he keeps it with him. He wants to read his father’s reaction.

  He sits in the backyard with Ned for the rest of the afternoon, for the most part talking films and music. And then somehow it gets back to Joe.

  “You can know someo
ne all your life, like your parents or family, but I’ll tell you this, Ned. There’s an expression on their face, or a tone in their voice, or a way they walk, that you’ve never ever seen before. Like they’ve kept it hidden. Until their brother dies. Or their son. I remember those days and they were like these strangers and I wanted to say, Who are you people?”

  Ned’s not an interrupter. He doesn’t offer anything. He just sits and waits.

  “And I hated everyone. Every single person in the world. Bush. The Muslims. The Pakis. Blair. Howard. The Israelis. The press. Frankie. Justine. Tara. Siobhan. Jimmy. My parents. Joe. Bloody Joe.” He swallows hard. “There were jobs here,” he says, trying to keep the anguish out of his voice. “Why go there to teach?”

  He doesn’t want to break down in front of Ned for the second time in a fortnight, so he stops for a moment.

  “And the press were all over us. Every racist in the world came to the surface wanting to use us for their own shit reasons. And others would say, ‘Well, you know, those people would have been oppressed by the West, and they would have had a reason.’ What reason? What fucking reason is there to fill your backpack with explosives and blow yourself up with a bunch of people who just wanted to go to work that morning?

  “And then you just get tired from it all. You go dead, you know, and you don’t hate anyone because you don’t feel anything. Ah, the joys of mind-numbing drugs.”

  He looks at Ned and laughs. “Sorry. A bit heavy.”

  “They used to talk about you a lot,” Ned says. “Frankie said you had all waited forever to meet each other and that it was the real thing as friendships went. ‘He’ll come back to us,’ she’d say. I heard every story in the world about every moment you all had and I remember once you came in and they pointed you out. ‘That’s him. That’s our Thomas.’ I was like, What the? No offense, but you didn’t really rate as a person when you were hanging out with Sarah or What’s-His-Face. And Tara was there, at Easter, and she looked really cut to see you and that’s how I heard about the one-and-a-half-night stand.”

  Tom stares at him, stunned, even going as far as ignoring the whisper of the phrase. “Tara was there once at the Union while I was?”

  Ned nods. “You were pretty wasted.”

  The back door opens behind them and they turn to see his father standing there. His eyes go straight to the timber and he walks over, sliding his fingers over it.

  “Ned,” Tom mutters. “Dominic.”

  His father sighs and holds out a hand. “His father,” he explains.

  “His boss,” Ned replies, shaking Dominic’s hand.

  Tom gives a snort.

  “Do you need all of this?” his father asks.

  Tom doesn’t respond.

  “Ernie from the lumberyard said you had to share it,” Ned says, feigning innocence, the cheeky bastard.

  His father looks confused.

  “Bert,” Tom corrects, sending Ned a dirty look.

  He sees his father’s eyes flicker to the bunch of envelopes lying on the lawn.

  “Forgot to give Georgie her mail,” Tom says, shuffling them together and handing them up. His father takes the bundle and without flicking through them, he picks out Tom’s mother’s letter and stuffs it in his back pocket. It’s as if he would have known her stationery in his dreams.

  Francesca insists on meeting them for lunch with Will the next day and they end up in a Vietnamese café in Marrickville. Trombal doesn’t make much eye contact and gives Ned a run for his money in the introverted stakes. Francesca has that intense, manic “I want everyone to love each other” look on her face, so Tom’s relieved when the menus come and they can all study them without speaking.

  “I’m going to go the beef salad,” Francesca says.

  “It’s got coriander,” Will says.

  “Then I’ll go the shitake stir-fry.” She looks up at Tom. “Will’s coming down to the pub tonight. You can keep each other company, seeing you’re not rostered on.”

  Tom and Will make eye contact finally and the lack of ecstasy in both their stares conveys their feelings about the prospect.

  “I . . . have something on,” Tom says.

  “You?” Francesca asks, screwing up her face in disbelief.

  He’s going to spend the next five days hating her.

  After they order, he decides to put some effort into the conversation.

  “Tara tells me you’ve caught up once or twice,” he says politely to Trombal.

  “Yeah, we did.”

  Tom would like to explain the rules of dialogue etiquette. One asks a question, the other keeps the conversation going.

  “She was homesick, I hear.”

  Trombal stares him straight in the face.

  “No. Her boyfriend was on the other side of the island for a couple of weeks. She was missing him. Thank God the engineers cheered her up.”

  A declaration of war.

  “So do you have anything romantic planned while you’re out here?” Ned asks Will when Francesca goes to the ladies’. “She’ll like that.”

  Will Trombal gives Ned a look that says he doesn’t appreciate being told what his girlfriend will like.

  “Just stuff,” he mutters.

  Tom decides to step in with some good advice, especially after Francesca’s discussion with him about Will not being a romantic.

  “Listen, Will. I’d recommend dinner, flowers, and room service for breakfast.”

  Ned makes a scoffing sound. “Oh, the expert. The way I hear it you don’t wait around for breakfast, Tom. So what would you know?”

  Ned says, “Listen to me, Will. Frankie’s the type of girl who looks good in stuff. Like undies or something. Buy her undies.”

  Now Tom makes the scoffing sound. “Yeah, the expert on what women look good in,” he says. “It’s lingerie, dickhead. Not undies.”

  Will is looking uncomfortable. He’s searching over people’s heads for Francesca.

  “I’ve got things planned,” he tells them in a flat tone.

  “Will, you’re not exactly Mr. Valentine’s Day,” Tom says.

  “You’re going to screw this up,” Ned agrees.

  Will sighs. He seems a bit doubtful now and looks at both of them.

  “Okay,” he says, as if he’s going to try the idea out on them. “When I came back from overseas five years ago, her father wouldn’t let me drive her anywhere. We had to take public transport. Buses, mostly. Bus from Annandale to the city. Bus from Annandale to Central and then the train to Kingsgrove. Bus from Annandale to Concord.”

  Tom’s already shaking his head. Ned has no idea where it’s going.

  “So I was thinking that I’d try to be romantic . . . you know . . . take her to all the bus benches . . . where we pashed . . . and stuff.”

  Tom stares at him. Ned even looks impressed just as Francesca returns to them.

  “What have you guys been talking about?” she asks.

  “Oh, you know,” Tom says. “We just gave Will a great idea on how to be romantic.”

  That night Francesca is back and forth between the bar and their table. She’s too hyper. She’s a meltdown waiting to happen, already counting down the moments from now to when Trombal leaves.

  “He’s seen you onstage a thousand times,” Tom says, remembering that Trombal was at every single gig they played during their first year at uni.

  “But he hasn’t heard me play guitar,” she says, leaning across the table to show Trombal the list. “Choose any one of them.”

  “Whatever you want to play, Frankie,” Trombal says.

  They’re looking at each other in a way that suggests that stuff is happening on dimensions Tom has no entry into. Trombal leans over and kisses her. “You choose.”

  “When you do that so close to people’s faces, can you refrain from using tongue contact?” Tom mutters.

  Stani taps Francesca on the shoulder and points to the crowd at the counter and she leaves reluctantly.

  “So . .
. it must get a bit wild over there,” Tom says, for no other reason than there is nothing else to say.

  Will’s attention is focused on the bar, where Francesca’s serving and chatting with some locals.

  “So, have you been to any of the strip joints? I hear that’s what you guys get up to,” Tom asks.

  This time Will looks at him. There’s a whole lot of muscle twitching and holding back. He could not have picked someone more different in Francesca.

  “I hang out with engineers,” Will says quietly. “What do you think?”

  Delivered without a trace of sarcasm. Neutral. Tonight Tom’s going to break Will Trombal.

  “Does Frankie know about it?”

  Tom’s tone shows insidious intent.

  “We’re open with each other.”

  “Why? Because you get off on telling her about it?”

  Will wants out, Tom can tell. Some guy at the bar is chatting up Francesca and he can tell that Trombal’s not liking it.

  “Tom,” he says patiently, “remember that time when you were in Year Seven and I was in Year Eight and your mates decided they would flush my head down the toilet because I was a midget? It ended in tears. Mine, because there’s nothing more degrading than having your head down a toilet bowl, and yours, because I don’t think you were equipped to embrace the dark side. Tonight will end in tears.”

  “Mine or yours?” Tom says.

  Francesca plonks herself down again. She’s giddy beyond sanity. Tom wants her back in normal mode, organizing the troops and listening to the bad news. He wants to remind her that Trombal will be gone in five days. With her younger brother. One more person to worry about. But Trombal is still looking at him. With the answer to his question in his eyes.