Time's Long Ruin by Stephen Orr

Author:Stephen Orr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FA, book
ISBN: 9781862549746
Publisher: Wakefield Press
Published: 2011-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Two

It was early and it was hot. It had taken me hours to fall asleep and now I was tired. Somehow I could sense that Janice and the little ones hadn’t come home. Soon there’d be crying and screaming and police hovering like black angels with stubble. I guessed there would be despair, piles and piles of it, like the boxes of wood stacked high in our back shed, the cardboard wet from the ground, splitting open, releasing logs of all shapes and sizes.

Rosa, still in her dress, wearing her shoes, was asleep beside me. She’d spread out during the night and I’d ended up squeezed between her and the wall. I turned my head to look at her and followed the fine red veins across her nose, noticing a moustache of grey down, and studied her coffee-stained teeth. Her skin was olive and her cheeks were flecked with sunspots the colour of our TV cabinet. Her mouth started tasting the air. She sniffed and the tip of her nose quivered. I watched and almost smiled as she nearly sneezed.

The light reflected bright, white midsummer off my venetian blinds. Shafts of dust tore the room into shards. I lifted my head to see someone riding along Thomas Street, slowing and ringing his bell. Then I heard the Rileys’ door open and close.

I crawled to the end of my bed and looked out of the window. Bill, still in his singlet and suit pants, stood in the middle of his front lawn and looked across at Rosa’s house. He ran his hands through his hair and shook his head. Then he stepped towards his front fence and looked up and down the street. I was almost expecting him to call for them: Kids, teatime! He looked again, and again, and stared down towards the railway station.

A tank engine slowed into Croydon and a car braked. Con was already at work. I later found out that he’d slept on the Rileys’ lounge. He’d risen early and pulled on his canvas pants and gone and stood in the hallway. He’d looked into the master bedroom and seen Liz asleep. Bill was beside her, lying awake. ‘Con?’ he’d said.

‘I’ve gotta go. I’ll come back,’ Con whispered.

Bill had just turned over. His eyes were red; he was yawning and had the start of a headache. Liz had been up during the night, crying, walking around, and they’d argued. Why did you let them go? What were you thinking? This is entirely your fault. Raised voices. A depth of despair in Liz’s eyes. Until Dad took Bill and Mum went to lie on the bed with Liz, returning to the kitchen to call the doctor, waiting, holding Liz’s arm for the injection, drifting off into a half-sleep next to Liz.

Back in his front yard I saw Bill open his letterbox and look inside. Nothing. He used his fingers to feel inside. Then he stared at the white, flaking paint and the birdshit.

‘I woulda noticed,’ Bert said, emerging from his car, parked with two wheels up on the gutter.

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