Читать книгу The Dragon's Skin - Ross Gray - Страница 7

When Ben Bovell got out of bed early that morning he was surprised how refreshed he felt. He must have slept soundly last night. If he had, it was the first time in years.

The irony didn’t escape him.

Then he noticed how calm he felt. He was eating his breakfast – Coco Pops and cold milk – when he noticed. He noticed that he hadn’t had at least two fags before breakfast, one before and one after he got out of bed. And he noticed that he didn’t really want one. He was glad about this because Brie didn’t like the stench on his breath. Today of all days he wanted to do nothing that drove a smile from his daughter’s face.

He smiled at the tattered movie poster on the back of the door: a horse and his buckskin-clad rider, both of them pissed, leaning against a wall. He noticed he felt good. He took his feelings and laid them on the scratched and stained Formica table top beside the cereal bowl. And he reflected upon them. Perhaps reflection is too sophisticated an act to attribute to Ben. He looked at them. And he was pleased with what he saw. The mere fact of their existence seemed to validate his plans for the rest of the day. Ben didn’t recognise euphoria. Such a state was alien to him when he was stone cold sober.

Once, when he was in prison, he’d seen that Mel Gibson movie about Hamlet. It was shown in one of the classes that he took which earned brownie points for parole. He hadn’t understood a word of it. But the bloke who taught the class explained that Mel was nuts because he couldn’t make up his bloody mind to do something. That whole ‘to be or not to be’ bit. But Ben wasn’t nuts.

And Ben Bovell wasn’t ‘Benny’ today. Ben was most definitely ‘Ben’. And Ben was going to take arms against Benny’s sea of sorrows. Ben was going to end them. To be, to be, to be. To be Ben.

And then not to be.

He looked at his watch. It was a good one. He needed a good one for today. He’d nicked it. Plenty of time. Today had more than enough hours. He felt pride in his cool calm. He felt he was behaving just like his hero. He’d see him today too. There was plenty of time.

He decided to have another helping of cereal. There was some left in the box and he may as well finish it. He emptied the contents of the inner bag into his chipped bowl then folded it neatly. He flattened the box and pushed them both to the far side of the table. He poured the milk and then reached across and switched on the electric jug. It was bought for a couple of dollars at a Brotherhood shop and the automatic cutoff didn’t work. He noticed the Heinz Baked Beans tin in the corner near the fridge was full, so he swapped it for the SPC Two Fruits tin. As he settled back into his chair and scooped up his cereal he listened to the slow, metallic tock of the roof leak in the tin and the warm throaty groan of the jug. For some reason the sounds were like music.

Ben was living in a two-room fibro bungalow in Sunshine. It was raining in Sunshine. Well it was dripping. It was a small bungalow: he could reach almost anything in the kitchen without getting up from the table. There was only one leak. It wasn’t over his bed. It was comfortable enough. It was cheap. It was in the backyard of an elderly aunt of a girlfriend of a mate of a bloke he’d shared a cell with. The aunt was alone and lonely and didn’t want much rent, just the imagined security of a male presence on the property. A few dollars to cover power, water, heating and sundries, a few evenings on the sofa watching telly with the landlady and effusive praise of her very ordinary cooking, was all it cost.

When he finished his cereal he made a cup of instant coffee and drank it as he washed his bowl and spoon and cleaned up some dishes from the night before. He made his bed then took his towel and meagre toiletries, grabbed the Coco Pops packaging and, holding it above his head, he ran across the backyard to the old weatherboard laundry attached to the back of the house. The plumbing had been moved indoors decades ago, but he had use of the old toilet and shower that still functioned in the laundry. He stuffed the packaging in the recycling bin near the laundry door, had a bog, a shower, brushed his teeth and was scampering back across the muddy lawn in his tattered terry-towelling within fifteen minutes.

He dressed carefully. He put on his best clothes. They weren’t much: jocks, jeans, polyester shirt, jumper. But they were all clean, freshly washed, and the jumper was a genuine wool blend and it had no darns. He’d had to pinch a pair of sneakers because his others had a hole near the little toe. They were a bit tight, but he wouldn’t be wearing them long. His socks didn’t have any holes.

The bed-sitting room had a bunk bed against one wall, a small veneered particleboard chest of drawers, an armchair upholstered in brown vinyl and a veneered plywood wardrobe, circa 1950. He opened the wardrobe, took out a large cardboard box and placed it on the chest of drawers. He checked the grey world visible through the grubby window and decided there was little chance of being observed. He opened the box and removed the – he liked to call it – device. He held it up and admired it. It was all his own work. It was the only thing he had ever made. The only thing he had ever completed. He had tried to make stuff in prison, but it didn’t get finished – or fell apart. This was finished and it would work. All the parts were stitched and glued and taped into an old canvas vest, one of those that fishermen and hunters wore with lots of pockets and pouches. He’d found it at a Salvo’s op shop.

Double-checking through the window he carefully donned the device, shrugging it on with small movements of his shoulders and zipping it gingerly so as not to dislodge the wires. He looked at his reflection in the age-freckled wardrobe mirror. He smiled, satisfied. From the wardrobe he took a bulky green parka – St Vinnies; the colour may have been that of grass once, time had tinted it horse-shit. But it was clean. He put it on with similar care and inspected his reflection again. He nodded, very satisfied. He wrapped a long scarf with Collingwood colours around his neck and carefully zipped the jacket. Another mirror inspection. Then he pulled a black and white beanie over his dark mop of hair.

Ben Bovell was a little below average height. He had a slight build and the kind of stooping posture that Woody Allen’s movie persona affected. On any other day he had the anxious hand gestures and compulsive speech mannerisms as well. Sharon had been the first to point this out. She liked Woody Allen movies. Or she did until that business with Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter. But that’s where the similarities ended. Ben had a face the shape of a plump strawberry, and black hair so thick and curly his head looked too big for his body. He wasn’t handsome, but he wasn’t ugly. His face was saved from plainness by large, dark, eyes: liquid, nocturnal, of an endangered species. And lashes most women would kill for. He was a sort of sable Noddy. The combined bulk of his ‘device’ and parka did not appear odd below the head above the collar.

After rotating before the mirror until he was satisfied, he took some money from the top drawer of the chest. He put a few notes in his pocket and folded the rest and placed it on the kitchen table under the boy-trying-to-kiss-a-girl salt and pepper shakers. It was this week’s rent. He gently patted his pockets, gazing absently around, then he returned to the bedroom and found a doll in the second drawer, a black plastic Barbie clone. It was naked. He pocketed it as he left the bungalow and locked the door. He walked down the crumbling concrete driveway beside the house and turned left onto the footpath. He slipped the bungalow key in the letterbox as he passed the front gate. He walked to the Sunshine station and caught a train to Flinders Street. From there it was a twenty-five minute tram ride, and he legged the last two blocks to the day-care centre.

The centre had a high fence of vertical steel rods. It was saved from penal severity by a top trimmed in long scallops between the main posts. There was a lot of glass. The renovated brick veneer house had been refitted with big double-glazed windows. The children would never be out of sight anywhere in the grounds. There was colourful play equipment in both the front and back yards and lots of trees. You had to give it to Sharon: she could pick ’em.

He was very polite. One of the women saw him open the childproof gate and approach the sliding glass doors. She slid the door open and smiled. She blocked his entry with her body and asked if he was a father of one of the children. Ben told her he was Briette Kitchen’s father. Brie saw him at that moment and yelled out happily. He waved to Brie, the woman turned and he slipped past her over the threshold. He faced the woman with his back to the room. The woman was about to launch her spiel on the security protocol of unheralded visits by parents, but Ben hushed her with a finger to his lips. He opened his coat and revealed the device and said, ‘It’s cold outside. An’ rainin’ a bit. Get all the kids – not Brie. Get ’em in their coats an’ ats. It’s orright. I won’t ’urt ya. Jist be calm. Smile an tell ’em it’s a ’scursion or sumpin’. It’s orright, missus, I don’t wanna hurt yas. Okay?’

‘Is that …?’ said the stunned woman whose eyes had not wavered from the device.

‘Yeah. It is,’ said Ben. Brie had run to him and grabbed his hand. She was trying to pull him over to her table to show him something. He looked at the woman. The initial shock was wearing off. She seemed to be taking his measure. He wasn’t a big man, but she was a big woman. ‘Don’t be silly, luv,’ he said. He was so cool. He was proud of himself.

He let Brie drag him to her table but kept an eye on the woman. She watched him like a bird watching a lazy cat, looked out the door, looked at the children and made up her mind. She strode across to the other woman and spoke quietly and urgently to her. The face of the other woman popped up over her shoulder, saucer-eyed. Then after a furious discussion they both nodded approval of some course of action they had hammered out and they turned to the room. They both cut smiles in the fragile crusts of their faces, clapped their hands loudly and the first woman announced: ‘Alright children. Quiet now! We have a very special visitor here today. Mr Kitchen is here to see how well we do our fire drill. Let’s show him we’re the best in Melbourne.’

It all went smoothly from then. The only problem he had was that Brie wanted to do the drill. She was a bit dark on him for a while. That’s when he produced the doll.

In all his planning he had forgotten about food. He hadn’t thought it would take so long. Fortunately the kids didn’t think to rescue their lunches from the fire, and there was some good stuff: muesli bars, Cheezels, peanut butter and Vegemite sandwiches, and the negotiator bloke, Gareth, he brought over some coffee while they were waiting.

The hardest bit was keeping Brie entertained without her playmates. She was watching TV at the moment, Bananas in Pyjamas. Other channels were interrupting their usual programs for updates on the ‘day-care centre hostage situation’; fortunately the ABC was exhibiting more sensitivity. He was pacing the perimeter, his ear tuned to a radio he had found, turned low, and he felt his first small shock of panic when a journalist reporting from the scene speculated about a ‘third negotiator’ approaching the centre. He spun around and peered through the curtains. A tall figure, face hidden by an umbrella, was opening the gate. He wasn’t wearing the blue police jacket but Ben knew it was him, not a third party. He breathed a sigh of relief. Then he tensed again. He was just wearing a bloody cardigan. No protection of any kind. Ben had seen him in action; he was most dangerous when he looked most harmless.

Ben scurried back across the room and sat next to Brie in front of the television. This was the Grand Final. He wished that he felt like one of his beloved Magpies, but he didn’t, he felt like a bloody sparrow. And he was taking the field against a hawk.