Ten Pound Pom by Griffiths Niall

Author:Griffiths, Niall [Niall Griffiths]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908069542
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2011-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

THEN

The death-masks intrigue and appal the boy. The cold plaster behind glass and the set expressions on the faces, all serene, all peaceful, never, now, to change. He searches them for any sign, any hint, the merest suggestion of what it might be like to die but he sees nothing, just gently closed eyes and calm mouths, belying completely the violence of their going. But this is plaster; maybe if he saw the death-in-flesh… Why worry anyway? Death is something that happens to other, older, people. It’ll never come for him. He’s immortal. But one mask in particular fascinates him and holds him rapt; the facial features are much the same as the others’ but this one, running from nose to nape across the bald skull, has a crimp like that on a Cornish pasty where some awful rupturing has been sealed. The accompanying placard tells the boy that this man, in a last desperate defiance of the authorities, broke free from the guards who were escorting him to the gallows, bent his head and ran full pelt at some cell-bars, splitting his skull open, killing him instantly. The boy thinks about that, cannot help but think about it; is there something noble about that death, in that way? An act of rebellion, the only possible one left. The terminal action of this life, to regain self-expression, to wrest identity back from the vast and faceless machinery that had swallowed it. And to split the skull like that – he must’ve charged the bars as fast as he possibly could. He must’ve been truly determined, with every cell of his body.

Nothing else in Melbourne Gaol impresses the boy as much as this death-mask does. It doesn’t feel like a place of incarceration to him, with the laughing and running children and the tourists taking photographs and the light slanting in from the windows in the high ceiling and alive with motes. The gallows is on the third floor, and the boy wonders why it has to be so high. Beneath it, a long way beneath it, is a large drain.

The family stays in Melbourne for one night. They enter the state of South Australia on May 9th, Mother’s Day, and they stop at a garage to fill up on petrol and the boy’s dad buys a bunch of flowers for the mum. On a road entirely free of any signs of civilisation the back tyre bursts; from the back window, the children can see black rags wriggling in the road away from the car to turn and twist like snakes in the dust. The dad fits a new tyre, and buys a replacement at the next garage. ‘Another $36 gone’, the mum writes in her diary.

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