Time's Long Ruin by Stephen Orr Page A

asked.
    I shrugged. ‘Where’s Dad?’
    â€˜He got called in. Got a friend you want to invite over?’
    I lowered my head. ‘Nah . . . I’ll see what Janice is doing.’
    â€˜They’ve gone to Victor.’
    And what she wanted to say, You can’t rely on them forever. Bill’s moved before and he might have to move again. What would you do without the Rileys, Henry?
    â€˜Anyone from your class?’
    â€˜I’ll just help Con.’
    She shook her head. ‘Bloody hell, Henry.’ Thinking, Why don’t you do things like other boys, normal boys? ‘Your father’s tried . . . I’ve tried.’ She sighed, turned, and walked out of the room, picking up some dirty clothes as she went.
    My mother was a Russian doll, one inside the other, each almost identical except for one slight difference: an expression, a word, a gesture, or something not said. Each locked away, appearing at the strangest moments. Changing from one mum to another. Happily baking biscuits one minute and then dissecting your weaknesses the next.
    So it was just me and Mum, again. I skipped breakfast, stuffed a few books and an insect jar into my satchel, and walked to the playground. I collected a grasshopper and a skink from the leaf-litter under the eucalypts. I watched them moving, looking for a way out. Then I added a few twigs and leaves but they weren’t any happier. So I let them go. No thank you, nothing.
    For the next hour I walked around Croydon. No destination, no purpose. Just a club-footed nine-year-old in baggy shorts and a policeman’s shirt, carrying his school satchel over his shoulder – a satchel full of crumbling chalk (to draw around bodies), soft biscuits, pens, pencils, a notebook, toy binoculars, a broken watch and marbles. I headed along Day Terrace, crossing the tracks onto Euston Terrace, passing a couple of ladies with baskets full of cuttings from other people’s gardens: carnations, chryssies and geraniums, even a few irises they’d pulled from someone’s nature strip. I said hello to them and they asked how Mum was.
    I had no idea who they were.
    â€˜Good,’ I replied, wanting to tell the truth, about how she had the shits because Dad was away all day, it was going to hit a hundred and she was left with a house full of work (that her hopeless son couldn’t or wouldn’t help with).
    A bit further on I saw a rat with its two back legs broken. Run over by a car, I supposed. It was trying to cross the road, dragging itself by its front legs towards someone’s old shed on the other side. If it could get there it might be alright. There was a yard full of window and door frames and salvaged timber, car tyres, axles, kitchen sinks, baths, cupboards, heaters and wardrobes. And somewhere among all that, probably, a nest of baby rats, waiting for a feed.
    If I were nice I’d get a big rock and hit it over the head.
    It struggled and then stopped to get its breath. If it didn’t hurry there’d be another car along. Maybe if it got back to its rat house, there’d be other rats to help it.
    I made my way to the Croydon cold stores. These were a series of refrigerated rooms connected by a central hallway. One room was filled with meat, another with perishables like butter and cream, others with fruit and vegetables, and the biggest of all, a keg store for local hotels. Men in trucks, or in horse and cart, would stop to deliver or pick up. The cold stores were a depot. They were an intermediary between supplier and corner shop.
    And they were cold.
    Seats had been left in the central hallway for men to take a rest and cool down. Cold air would flow out from behind the clear plastic curtains covering the doorways to the cold rooms. If you moved your chair to the right position you could have an almost constant flow of cold air. No one seemed to mind if there were a few stray kids around, as long as they kept out of the way.