Lane Boy - Chapter 2 - The Family

“Mum?”

“Esh?” Joy’s mouth was full of pegs. The clothes line prop was leaning against the fence, while she loaded up the wire strung between the house and one of the kids goal posts, with a full batch of freshly washed and bleached cricket whites.  “Mowww”, Toota the grey cat howled and circled her legs. It was feeding time.

“Shew, shew,” Joy looked down, craning her neck out a little to see over her seven month baby bulge, and gently pushed the cat away with her foot.

“Mum, if we keep digging here, what will happen. I mean if we just keep digging down and down and down, whats down there? Is it hot lava or a big marble?” asked Peter. 

Three-year-old Colin, squatted next to Peter, watched intently as his big brother stabbed into the now foot wide hole with an old tent peg. Each time Peter dragged up another handful of scraped off dirt, Colin scooped it up with his beach spade, then piled it into the back of a rusty little tin truck and drove it off to another site a few feet away where it was tipped out. 

The yellow truck was a rare bonus, a very special gift. Each Christmas, Joy wrapped a big brown bottle of beer in newspaper and a tinsel bow and gave it to the garbo men to thank them for their tireless effort throughout the year. She also made one up for the milky and the postie. The garbo men usually had something good for the kids, stashed behind the seat, salvaged from the garbage. Last Christmas, they had surprised them with the tipper truck. Despite being short one wheel, Joy had carved a wooden replacement and glued it onto the axle which worked just fine and dandy. 

“If you keep digging, you will get to the other side of the world,” Joy said smiling, as she whipped and cracked a white shirt into shape before pegging it on the line. 

“Whats there?” asked Colin

“China,”said Joy. 

Colin looked at Peter with puzzlement. 

“The place they make the tea cups?”asked Peter

“Yep,” said Joy, as she disappeared back into the shadows of the laundry veranda, humping the big straw basket on her hip. 

***

Introduction to The Tin Man

A strange object made of pieces of welded scrap steel lay on the ground a few feet away from Peter.  It was about ten inches long. A piece of sheet metal was bent into a barrel to form a torso, looking rather like a trenchcoat. Poking out from underneath the body were two thick spot-welded steel rods. At the bottom, they had been smashed flat and bent ninety degrees to create tiny feet. The arms and hands were made in similar fashion. A half inch thick screw jutted up out of the torso, and on the end of that was a great bolt cleverly welded in place to form a head. 

The kids called him the Tin Man. The Tin Man belonged to the family for as long as anyone could remember. What was clear was that he had always lived in the backyard and that he was never brought into the house. His sole purpose was to be buried over and over again in various spots in the yard and then randomly dug up - deliberately or by accident - but always surprising and puzzling everyone as to where he had been in between. Even Joy would be amused and surprised when digging over her tiny garden beds if she found him. 

When he was dug up, there was always a kind of celebration; a sentimental get together. The kids shared tales about when he was last seen and no one could ever remember who by or when he was buried, but it was always a relief to find him again. Surprisingly not one of the kids ever tried to force the Tin Man into another role. No one said, “Let’s not lose him again, lets keep him up here on the mantlepiece or shelf so we can play with him when we want.” 

The Tin Man’s life seemed to belong only to the destiny that he found himself in, and was continually thrust back into under the ground.

Peter continued to scrape at the sides of hole. Colin, now a bit bored with the earthmoving, spotted the cat dashing in behind Joy, so leapt up and followed Toota inside. 

Peter picked up the tin man, and looked at him. He looked directly at his bolt head. There was no face. He turned him around and around. 

Why did the tin man look like a man, and yet he had no eyes or anything?

 He stroked his smooth steel body affectionately, and put the tin mans head right up close to his face, wondering if he could read the tin man’s thoughts like this. Peter thought about China. How close was he to getting through? Peter placed the tin man on his back in the bottom of the hole. He sat there for some time, squatting, his hands resting on his knees, looking down at the metal astronaut who travelled around underground without any help from anyone. 

We have no idea what it must be like for him, he thought.

 The tin man looked frighted and vulnerable on his back. The thought of the tin man being frightened, frightened him. He leaned in and stood the tin man up on his feet, and pushed him in a bit so he didn’t fall over. He grabbed Colin’s spade and filled up the truck at the dirt pile. He drove it back and tipped the dirt over the Tin Man. The first load came up to his chest. Then another and he was gone. 

This time, the Tin Man would wait there for eight years until Peter returned.

***

Masters of the Worlds

The threadbare carpet in the lounge room was perfect for drawing the boundaries of a city in chalk. Six year old Helen, crawled around to the very edges of the old settee dragging the powdery chalk stick along, to make sure it was as big as it could possibly be. Peter drew in the sporting facilities and had created an oval so they could all play footy and cricket at their whim in the new city. The city builders could change their minds by simply rubbing it out and doing it again and they could create any world they wished. Such was the magic they all understood was at their finger tips. The benefit of living in a house with old carpet, worn so low it was a smooth tapestry, was that it made it a breeze to sweep and drawing on it was easy. An old crumbling house had advantages. The kids were encouraged to glue up their posters and drawings on their bedroom walls to hold the plaster together. 

The dreams and designs of their cities came from a few tatty Golden books, house pictures in Stan’s Sun newspaper, and the occasional arial photo in a Pix magazine. They did not have a television but the topic on getting one kept on coming up at the cricket club. The British Broadcast Commission was now broadcasting the cricket into the new tube television, and this was tipping Stan in it’s favour, but he didn’t want to pay the Television police arseholes the five pounds for a license. If they got one, everyone would have to shut up, and they would have to hide the dam thing because the TV licence inspectors made regular rounds to check if the licences were paid up. Joy told him that they should just pay the darn licence and get on with it but Stan wouldn’t trust anyone from the government, no matter how sweet the temptation. 

He would moan about it to Joy - often - as they chatted over endless pots of tea. He could not forget the business all those years ago with Peter and Alan in the van. That bullshit in Moore street, was enough to warn him what the guv-mutts were capable of. After three years of being subjected to three monthly check ups from the old spinster mole, Harriet Harrison from the Social Welfare Department, with her clipboard, fat arse and clicking ball point pen, to see if they were abusing their own kids, yes! their own kids. He had had enough! What would that frigid old bitch know about kids?

The four kids moved around the floor, each busy in his own special department, working in perfect synchronisation, inside a silent world of concentration and focus. As Helen continued defining the perimeters, Alan, the builder, put together some pieces of old Lego blocks to create an archway and a bridge. Colin was moving farm animals on the back of matchbox cars around the football oval, while Peter worked on setting up goal posts using toothpicks and plasticine. 

The afternoon sun threw its last beams across the floor, creating long shadows behind the cows, horses and archways; turning the children’s skin golden yellow. The little scene … surreal. The stage had been set for an incredible game. They had created the world they wanted to live in and now it could begin.

***

The Footy Getter and Snowy

Stan stood in the doorway in his floppy Y front underpants, moccasins and sun hat. Like a sweaty brown Cyclops, his shadow cast a dark tone over the town the kids had created. The smell of Coppertone suntan oil and perspiration flopped over the oval like a tidal wave. “Come on. Outside. All of you!”

Peter looked up, checking the mood of his father. “Dad we just set it all up, can’t we just play here for a little while?”

“No. Come on, look out there,” he wagged his finger accusingly at the window, “its a good day, and you’re all in here wasting it. Come on … out, out now!”

Nobody dared groan, they knew there was no arguing when he was in sun worship mood. They staggered up, one by one, as if on the way to an execution, and filed outside as ordered, dragging their feet. 

Alan pepped up as the fresh air hit his face. “Grab the footy Pete, lets have a kick.”

Peter knew they had only one ball left. Old Snowy next door had destroyed all of the plastic footies other than this one. “I don’t want to lose it Al, why don’t we just do some cricket practice and wait till we go to the park tomorrow to use it?”

Stan had gone back to his work in the middle of the backyard. He had created a workbench so he could do his upholstery out in the sun, in his undies, which he would roll up to the top of his thighs, except at the back, where he went a bit further, exposing his bum cheeks to the browning rays. No one could work out why he needed to get a suntan there. 

He hated being inside the claustrophobic house. When it rained, he became grumpy and cruel like a tortured animal, biting and sniping at everyone for no particular reason.  In the grey Melbourne winters, home life held a constant promise of a side swipe over any tiny error anyone made on anything. 

Everyone tried to keep out of his way and everyone breathed a sigh of relief when a whiff of old spice filled the air after his afternoon shower, and the front door closed as he headed off to the pub in between cricket club training of course.  Miraculously, everyone's life was transformed at this moment - including Stans! Finally he could just be himself without the responsibility of five kids and a wife and a job he did not like doing that only just made ends meet.

The minute everyone heard the rising gears of the van driving up the street toward the Grovener Pub on Brighton Road, all the children and Joy, would come out of their camouflage positions around the house, and congregate in the kitchen around the table. The room glowed and hummed with happy chatter, as if a bad storm had cleared and the mood was as cheerful as the bright yellow kitchen cabinet doors. Joy boiled the kettle, and offered everyone a cup of tea, and everyone felt like a grown up.  Joy as relieved as them all as she opened up her ears and heart to all the things the children wanted to tell her, and ask her about everything in the world. They wanted to tell her their ideas, their dreams and their worries, and she took each one seriously, and gave deeply philosophical answers full of possibilities and never a no. She of course was not allowed to do this when he was there as he claimed it was wasting time and made the children too soft. Besides, she didn’t really feel the mood was ever right for it when he was around. 

It would be easy to see Stan as some sort of ogre, but Stan was the president, captain and treasurer of the local cricket club, he was a man with many friends and other responsibilities and concerns outside this home. He was known affectionately by everyone out in the world as “Stan the Man”. An extraordinary coach and leader for decades at the North Caulfield Cricket Club. He was the club. But at home - he was a caged peacock, unable to spread his tail, sullen and cramped and all the kids and Joy knew it. 

He never drank at home. He never sat there at the table, skulling beers, or sucking on plonk bottles. He had is principles and boundaries.  

Stan fiddled with the transistor radio trying to get a station. Dean Martin’s voice came through perfectly clear, ‘Send me the pillow, that you dream on, so darlin’ I can dream on it too.’  Music always put Stan in a good mood. It was a game changer, like the sun. Going by the colour of his skin, it was clear he was trying to change the game, allot. In his view, kids shouldn’t be inside when they could be out here in this. 

Even though he was listening to the old smoozer Dean, he was also listening to the boys. 

“She’ll stab it to death and then we’re done,” moaned Peter to Alan.

This caught Stan’s attention, “Whats that old bitch been doing?”

Peter didn’t want to make a fuss. He whispered to Alan, “Come on, let’s just do something else.” But Alan was happy to make a fuss. He could see this was going to be good. He knew when his dad was in the mood for a bit of a tussle and it always proved productive if not at the very least lots of fun. 

Snowy the neighbour on the right, was a bitter old woman and not only disliked the children; she demonstrated her maliciousness by stabbing their plastic footballs with a ten inch long butchers knife when they went over the fence into her yard. Her murderous behaviour was mostly a puzzle to Peter, as she herself was a grandma.  And once in a blue moon she was visited by a carload of well behaved grandchildren on a Sunday, who did not seem to make much noise. Perhaps what she really hated was that she could not control the visits of the footballs or the kids launching them. Therefore by stabbing them to a deflated death, she not only slowed down the missives into her pristine backyard, she sent a gaping wound as a message back. The lightweight plastic footies, once punctured, became useless. While the balls were replaceable and not too expensive, they only got a few under the Christmas tree each year, so there was an exhaustible supply. I guess, he thought, she did feel obligated to return them. Peter could not understand, though, for if she just didn’t return them, that would have been enough of a warning, but that she mutilated and stabbed them to death in a dozen thrusts, made her actions quite unique and just a little bit worrying.

“Dad, she stabbed all three footies last week,” Alan blurted out.

“What? Show me.” Stan, kept prying at the tatty gimp as he stripped the old cover off a Queen Anne chair.

Alan went around the side of the house and came back with an armful of flat brown squashed cheap plastic footballs. The sides of them had several four inch long gashes, and many stab marks, rending them useless. Alan handed his dad one of them. Stan held it, between his thumb and palm like a giant ginger nut biscuit. 

“We tried to tape it up with masking tape Dad, but it won’t puff up again,” said Alan.

“Didn’t your mum go and have a chat to her a few weeks ago about this?”

“Yes, but she keeps doin’ it Dad. We try not to let them go over her side but sometimes they get kicked too hard. We got this one here back with the footy-getter Mum helped us make, but the others were too far in for us to reach.”

Stan looked over at the long pole leaning against the back fence, to which Joy had attached an old fishing net. When the balls accidentally went over next doors fence, if the kids were quick, they could get them back before old Snowy saw them, and by leaning over the fence they could scoop them up. But if they went too far into her yard, they couldn’t reach them. So they had to wait for her to return them - to hopefully throw them back over. It is not known why the old lady with the perfect blue rinse and set, who lived with her equally old sister in the massive double fronted house, which was twice as large as the house the seven of them were living in, could not just throw the whole and complete plastic footballs back over the fence. For some reason she felt the need to stab them to death with a butcher knife before doing so. 

Stan felt it was a form of terrorism. Why even bother to throw them back if not to inflict a nasty violent message to the kids. Bloody old bitch, he mused. Well, two can play at that game. She had treasures too, he snickered. 

“Leave it with me, I’ll have a think,” he said, shoving the ball biscuit under his bench. You go out and have a kick, you still have a few hours. The posts look good.” He looked up at the new goal posts the kids had attached to the back fence with Joy’s help a week prior. Two longer pieces of inch by inch wood, painted white, served as the goal posts, and another two slightly lower outside of those as points posts. 

 Now that they were in Stan’s favour, which always felt really good, Peter chirped up and grabbed the last footy off Alan and all four of the kids headed out the back gate into the lane so they could get some practice in. Peter, grabbed Alan by the arm when they got out, his final caution kicking in. 

“Why don’t we just practice hand passes?” He really didn’t want to lose the last ball. 

“Crap, naa… stuff it, lets play,” Alan mocked. “Fuck that old bitch.” 

Helen, was not interested, and sat down by the fence, well out of the way of the ball, and picked at the weed flowers, trying to make daisy chains like she saw Heidi make in the hills of Switzerland in her Golden book. She wanted to  go inside and read, or just go in and get her book so she could read out here, but no one was allowed back in. Toddler Colin ran around the legs of the big boys, hoping to get a touch of the ball when it slipped out of their hands. Occasionally they let it slip through so he did. They enjoyed coaching him in special secret methods and it made them feel older. The big boys kicked the ball up and down the lane to each other for about an hour, practicing neat little drop kicks, keeping the ball low and out of the danger of Snowy’s fence. 

Then Alan snapped as he did sometimes. He just got bored or something. After taking a perfect mark from Peters kick, he started to walk backwards so he could line up the goals. Peter saw it and panicked. 

“Noooo don’t!” he yelled. But it was too late, Alan had done exactly what he should not have done. He attempted to boot the thing through the goal posts and into the back yard, but of course it went straight over the top and deep into Snowy’s yard.  Peter slumped, totally destroyed but not surprised. Alan always did this. He always just did the things that made it bad. He was a dickhead.

Next minute, before anyone could say anything, Alan stormed across the lane, and ramed the back gate open with his foot. He stormed across the backyard, flung the kitchen door open and went inside, his head bent over, frowning and puffing with anger completely ignoring the ban on going back inside. 

“Whats goin’ on,” Stan asked when the other three came through the gate. 

“Ball gone.” Colin stated, pointing over the fence towards Snowy’s. 

“Alan kicked it over,” Helen pouted, and followed Alan inside, taking advantage of the crisis to get back in. Colin wandered over to where he had left his tipper truck in the dirt and started doing some work. Peter climbed up on the fence and tried to see where it was. Stan shook his head, and decided not to push it. Besides it was nearly time to have a shower and get down to the pub. He felt a little chirpy as he always did at beer o’clock.

***

Recovering the Ball

Everyone was in bed. Colin was rolling around on the bottom bunk making animal and car noises. The cow was standing on top of the matchbox car, as they flew around the bed. Above him, Helen lay sleeping, with a Golden book, about Heidi, across her chest opened at page eleven and twelve which showed Heidi in the huge open field of flowers and goats and distant mountains. Alan, on the other top bunk, was reading the Australia vs England cricket scores for the fourth time, from a folded piece of newspaper out of the sports section of the Sun. Peter below him, lay there, looking up at the slats, thinking. 

Joy popped her head in, and cheerfully called out, “Lights out in five minutes, so finish up kids.” The big boys had to go to school, and Joy needed to get some work done before she went to bed. With Stan at the pub for half the night, she had a good four hours to concentrate and get stuff done. 

Peter watched the chicken coo coo clock tick over on the wall. He rolled out of bed and turned out the light smack on five minutes. Colin groaned and shoved the cow and the car under his pillow. Peter could hear his mums scissors snipping away in the room next door as she measured up and cut out a loose cover. Shortly after, he heard the sewing machine engine start, and then the methodical and comforting whirrs of her pushing and joining materials, piping and zippers, one piece at a time, as she created miracles like the shoe maker fairies through the night for Stan to use on his workbench the next day. 

Soon all of the kids were asleep, except Peter. He knew his mum had the door shut to try to reduce her noise. Getting past her would be a cinch. 

The house was a classic single fronted gold rush workers cottage. One passage ran from the front door past the three bedrooms, and all the way to the lounge room like an oesophagus leading to the stomach. The front bedroom, facing the street was Stan and Joy’s, the next one down, the kids, and the third, Joys work room. Apart from her sewing machine, she kept stashes of left over material rolls, flocks, hessian, calico, endless zips and every other type of upholstery thing in there. 

The loungeroom led to a medium size kitchen. A narrow bathroom was squashed in beside it and across from that leading to the tiny backyard, a covered verandah with a cement trough for washing the clothes. The toilet was located right down in the furtherest corner of the back yard. A left over convenience from the days when the night collection man came for the droppings of the residents via the laneway. There was still a little wooden panel on the outside of the fence where the door used to be, leading to underneath the toilet platform. They had since hooked up to septic, complete with a flushing mechanism and a ceramic bowl. Even though the sewerage now disappeared magically into pipes under the lane, Stan had opted to keep the sitting platform, as it was rather handy to put things on when you were doing your business. It was quite a treck down to the toilet in the middle of the night, especially for the scared little ones. 

Peter leaned under his bed and grabbed his shoes. He tiptoed out and down the passage, stopping briefly to listen to his mothers busy noises behind the door. He turned the big key in the back door, and quietly shut it behind. It was fresh outside. His blue striped flannelette pyjamas were thin, but he needed to stay in them in case he had to get back in fast. If he got caught out of his room, saying he was going to the dunny would work just fine.

Earlier on, when everyone was throwing tantrums and sulking, he had spotted where the footy had gone in Snowy’s yard.  It must have hit her clothes line and bounced back into the crevice between her garden shed and the house. 

He climbed up the slats on his side of the fence, staying as close as possible to the big creeper in the corner to stay hidden. He could see across her whole yard and into the back of her house. There were no big lights on, just a dull glow coming from the the bowels of the house behind the kitchen. 

Good, I can get it and no one will be the wiser how it came back! The old bat hasn’t seen it yet. She can get stuffed. It’s ours and I’m gettin’ it back. 

Peter knew he could get in easily enough, but the wild card was getting back out again. They had never actually gone over into her yard, they had just left their balls to her mercy and that never worked out well. He felt like it was time to make a change. 

He wanted more than to just sit and wait for what they knew was coming. He felt a bit strong after seeing his dad’s reaction earlier. He knew his dad would agree and he did have a plan for getting out. He just had to do all the steps right. He began, step 1. He went over to the gate to the lane, and unlocked the bolt. 

He opened it up and stuck his head out into the dark lane, and looked up and down. Everything was quiet. He pulled it shut leaving it unbolted and proceeded to climb up over the creeper, from where he had surveyed the scene. Once on the top, he swung his leg over. As the ruts were on his side of the fence, her side of the dividing fence was just all smooth straight down planks. He had the footy getter on hand, and pulled it up alongside. He then swung it through the air and brought it down on Snowy’s side. Tipping the pointy handle end toward the ground like a pole vault. He jabbed it deeply into the nice soft garden bed against the fence line. He took a deep breath, and leapt onto the pole and slid down at the same time as the pole collapsed into the centre of her grass. He landed alright, but not without ripping the back out of his pyjama’s on the descent down the pole. 

No matter, he was in. He pulled his vaulting pole out of the rich black soil and leaned it against the back fence facing to the lane. A light came on in the house. He crouched down, pulling back into the fence, as the light from the kitchen beamed out over the lawn. His pyjamas glowed. 

Here I am, here I am! Oh shit!

An old woman in a mauve dressing gown walked through the kitchen. She fussed about in the sink, and then put the kettle on the stove. She walked out again, leaving the light on. 

“Now!” he whispered. He ran across the lawn, right under the kitchen window to where he had last seen the football snuggled in by the garden shed. He reached in, and felt the cool plastic, round, fat and lovely. Yes! He pulled it close to his chest as if it were the redemption of a crucifix for a sinner. This was indeed how it was. This was the object of adoration and aspiration for the boys. 

That she could stab this, with no feelings, no heart, and then push the knife in and spend real thinking moments in her mind, dragging that cut out, making it long and hurtful. That was what he did not understand, or want to understand. Why was she mean? Right now he felt right. He knew this mission was true. 

He snapped out of the glorious victory trance and like a good covert guerilla fighter, snapped back to the task at hand. He crept across the lawn to the fence between the two houses, and with one great haul, threw the ball over into his home yard. He heard it hit Stan’s bench and then roll safely away. 

There, its safe. Mission complete. Now I have to get out. 

 He knew the kettle would boil soon, and she would be back. He ran over to the dark area by his home fence. The footy getter was parked against the lane side fence, which was covered in the honeysuckle creeper and the horizontal fence railings. This was not going to be hard. He wondered why he had not done this before now. He watched her come back into the kitchen. She took the kettle over to the sink, and topped up her teapot. She picked up the pot and headed back into the inner rooms of the house, leaving the kitchen light on. The light was beaming all over the grass and up to the back fence. He dashed over to the back fence, and picked up the getter, lifting it up on the edge of the top of the fence. 

He was about to spear it over with one big push, when he heard a muffled scream on the other side. He froze and levered it back down inside and crouched down. 

What was that? A woman tried to scream again, and then suddenly stopped. Sounds of a struggle, scratching, and shuffling were just the other side of the fence. If the fence was removed he could have touched the noise. A man was grunting and snorting. Peter’s stomach sunk. He didn’t know what was happening in the lane but he was not going to leap over and land on it whatever it was. What should he do? Someone was being hurt. Should he go and tell Snowy so she could call the police? But then he would be found out. No he couldn’t. What if Snowy heard it and came out and then he would be found out anyway? He crouched down and listened to the thumps and whacks as a body hit the fence. Something scraped along the palings. A woman was panting and gasping but was muffled. A man was cursing and swearing. 

He just wanted to go back to bed. He looked at the fence between his home and Snowy’s. It was impossible to get over, as it was as clean as a whistle on her side, no footholds. 

 He looked at the footy getter again. Could he vault over like the Olympians did? No, he might then make a racket and the lane man would hear it and come running in his back gate which he left unlocked! The kitchen was even unlocked and everyone was inside. Oh hell. He would have to wait it out. 

He waited and waited, until it was waited out, he listened to every muffled scream, every vicious slap, every grunt, until there was just the sound of a man panting. Then he heard scuffles, and the slapping shoes of a man running away. He waited another half an hour in the silence. He had to go now. They were gone. 

He lifted the pole up again, and lay it against the back fence, facing the laneway. He hoisted himself up onto the railings and hooked his foot into the aged creeper. He perched on the top of the fence, looking back at Snowy’s lit kitchen. He pulled the pole up, from her side and lifted it into the air like a great joisting spear. He looked down into the lane. It was so dark. The light from Snowy’s kitchen had bleached out his eyes and stuffed up his night vision. He carefully put the pole down on the lane side, and wedged it in between two cobbles, and leapt down into the lane, half sliding down the pole as it tumbled over with him.

He landed and stood there, looking toward where the noise had been up against Snowy’s fence. A huddled lump was all crumpled up. He saw a long pale tapering limb stuck out to the side like a log - a foot at the end. He stepped back in fright, and tripped. Looking down, he saw a shiny womans shoe. His mother never wore those sorts of shoes but he had seen them in the newspaper adds. The bundle of woman was not moving. He could not understand her shape. Was she laying on her back, or hunched over? Why was her leg like that? It was confusing. There was no noise, and no movement coming from the mass. For a few seconds he tried to reconstruct things in his mind - to put the woman’s violated shape back in order by the dull glow of the moonlight. It did not work, and he felt sick. He grabbed the pole and bolted through the back gate, his hand shaking as he smashed the bolt home behind him. He threw the pole vaulting footy getter aside, and ran for the verandah. 

***

The next morning, Peter sat quietly at the table, trying to finish his breakfast, full of dread, after not sleeping at all. When he came to the kitchen,  Stan was already there reading the morning paper which he had opened out double, with his head buried inside. Peter leaned over, and scanned the headlines for some mention of a dead woman but all it said was Sydney to have Trains, and Yes to Aboriginals and No to something else in big black words. 

He got up took his plate to the sink. As he reached for the tea towel, he saw that his dad was still dressed in his pub clothes, not his usual worn out old trousers and shirt he wore at home, if not half naked outside.  He hadn't been to bed, he thought. 

Just then Joy walked in, carrying a large rose bush that had been clearly torn out of the ground. “What is this, Stan?”

“That”, he said,  is Snowy’s best rose bush.