THE LAST WEEK OF SUMMER
[Extract from “The House In Gondwanaland”]
© T.R.E. 2016
The last week of any summer's school holidays is about doing things that are at the edge, things that pull at the limits of parental ties, that test the world a little to see how far it stretches, and to build stories for the taste of the re-telling in the year, and the years, to come.
The river, above all things, was most at the edge. A calling place. A distant and mythical watering place. Deep in forbidden territory. As it should be.
They gathered on a Sunday, among the clutter of the building sites, out where the erector skeletons of the boxy new suburb were being thrown up daily, out where the ancient backdrop of the ranges was now being wiped away with mushroomings of stumps and forests of frames, killing all kindness to the eye. Out where a wonky wicker pram could be stashed among the tall timbers for hours at a time and no-one would be any the wiser.
There was Mick Pryor and his crud-ugly crate of a bike, with the parcel carrier on the back but under sufferance because he reckoned it made his bike look like a girl's, and there was Hester waiting to get on also under sufferance because Mick drew the line at a cushion over its bare bones, and there was Vernon Pratley and his sparkling new twenty-six-inch Malvern Star his parents bought him as a bribe to stop him escaping but had only seemed to make Vernon more determined to see the world. From the free side of the fence.
Mick hated Vernon’s new bike. Mainly because Vernon flaunted it like it was God's own creation which it possibly was and because he wheeled it everywhere like he didn't know how to ride it which he didn't and not only that but Vernon had also been given a custom-built trailer that hitched on behind it, designed especially for his boofheaded dog which steadfastly refused to go near it. The whole arrangement seemed such an unbelievably criminal waste to Mick that he just had to collide with Vernon and his bike and his custom-built trailer by accident at least once a week, which wasn’t hard because everyone knew that with Mick’s bike any sort of stopping needed special training and lots of thinking about in advance.
Hester put Bobby and his pillows into the dog-trailer and Mick attached it to the back of his parcel carrier with a twist of fencing wire because Vernon had so far only learnt to do a scooter, went everywhere in short bursts standing on one pedal. But he still wouldn’t let Mick ride it. Said he might damage it.
And there was the Rakehandle who didn’t need a bike at all because he could run like the world's last dodgy hare and in fact could travel at twice the speed of Vernon and his run-wheel-scoot approach to cycling and certainly a damn sight faster than Mick and his burdens.
They were a scrubby lot. Three and a half boys, one girl, two dogs, two bikes, one trailer, ten pinched apples, and the last sweetly dying days of summer freedom and utopian innocence garlanded around their necks like winner’s laurels.
The whole scrubby lot headed for the river.
< >
Hester and Mick, lying on the yellowstraw grass, shoulder to shoulder, feeling closeness, somewhere else the noise of kids and dogs, rocks gu-lonk-ing into the river, a small voice egging them on.
Mick told her about We Showed Her. All of it. Even said tits and crutch, and Hester laughed real laughing, rubbed his shoulder with hers, like applause. Made Mick feel like a hero.
Now they were quiet.
Mick and Hester shared the silence. Their eyes were in the sky, watching clouds turn into the next thing. Mick thought he could see a windjammer. Hester saw only endless confusion.
“D'ya think they're really up there?” she suddenly asked.
Mick mulled it over.
“Who?”
“God'n angels'n stuff.”
“My mum said they're everywhere.”
“They might be everywhere but they DO damn all.”
Mick thought she was sounding a bit angry again, but not at him, not today. More like she just wanted him to agree with her, be on her side.
“Yeah...”, but Mick wasn't sure what he was yeah-ing to.
More silence between them. Hester put one leg over Mick's.
“Can you make any sense outa life?”
Mick thought about it, flushed with warmth, felt like it was creeping up from his toes, through his thighs. “No, not much. Sometimes I can. Most times I can't.”
It was then that Hester told Mick about people and trams and clothes flapping on washlines all going still when she looked away. Told him her people play, about God and the angels watching. Mick told Hester about the Big Engine, and natural gravity, and about The Voice of the Stars, the things it said into his ears, and they soaked a while in each other’s tellings, and the space between them went to nothing.
The clouds kept on changing. Mick stayed where he was but Hester went on getting older, came up with another one.
“Where dya reckon life goes?”
Mick wasn't sure. “What – when y'die?”, thinking about headless chooks and dead grandmothers.
“No – while you're alive – where does it – go?”
“Hell – I dunno...”, looking for what Hester wanted, because it was Hester, because she was close. But his brain struggled, fell seriously short, as though he was practising for their years yet to come, when Hester would go on asking him for more than he could find.
“...juss – down the road?”, knew it was really lame.
“No – I mean – what's it travellin – to?”, sounding disappointed he didn't know. “Dya reckon it's on a – y'know – a track?”
“What? – like a train?”
Hester didn't answer. She turned her face inwards. So did Mick. Looking into each other, really for the first time. Looked and looked. Neither of them understood what they saw. And maybe they never will. But that's how the dance begins.
<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>