dimly in. I could still smell the presence of that old man and it wasn’t unpleasant at all. I saw his old enamel mug - it still had water in it. And then a great wave of despond-ency came over me. Maybe it was because of Kitty but for some unknown reason my face was suddenly awash. I remember this well because I found myself kneeling on the floor going through his few possessions and as I picked up one book after another I could not see the titles through my watery vision.
Then I came across a little notebook with a title written in Milo’s hand. I used my palms to clear my eyes and read, The New Theory of Everything. My heart jumped. I snatched it to my chest and took it out into the Office. Kitty was not yet up and I found some comfort holding Milo’s precious diary and thinking about what we’d lost. What could we rely on? Nothing. Nothing except each other.
In the morning light I looked at that spiral bound book, took a breath and carefully opened it. The first page had nothing more than a simple list of supermarket items. I turned the page and found a list of names and birthdates. The third page mentioned a halfway house in Fitzroy and details on how to get there. The next had directions for some other place, and beyond that, pages of simple sums in pounds and pence, daily reminders.
There was no New Theory of Everything.
Did Milo have one? If so, he kept it locked within his old skull and it died with him, along with all the other things the man stood for. What could that theory have been like? That night, when the whole city was quiet and Kitty snuffled beside me, I decided to write it. Why not? Would a certificate of some kind help me understand something that no-one has ever seen? Could I not have an idea as clear and valid as any other person about a subject which is only understood in principle?
Someday. Someday I would write that Theory, when I had time to read up on what other people had said - especially about the origins of things. I would write a detailed and comprehensive new scheme like Milo might have done and I would write it for him - for the three of us - so far, anonymous. A new theory would change all that: people would see us; they’d know we stood for something.
In the meantime, at least we’d given the old man a proper burial. Frankly, I think he had a more fitting end to his days at the old Daco building in 1958 than what we got here at so-called ‘Eden’.
The only consolation here is my little room which I am getting used to. Adequate is the word that comes to mind. A single bed, a white laminated wardrobe with an oval mirror about 60 cm x 30 cm and a heavily bevelled edge, greenish curtains made out of a shiny polyester-type fabric. Wooden floor of hardwood and a little rug about one and a half times as long as it is wide. Walls a kind of beige with a few hooks sticking out, though I have nothing to hang on them. At least I have my 14-inch TV, set up on a shelf over my little hand basin and plugged in where my razor goes.
Christopher has delivered some of my other belong-ings though they are still in the boxes. Don’t want to unpack in case I see a way out of here, but I have noticed there’s Epsom salts leaking out of a carton which I will have to attend to.
So far I’ve only found my traveller’s alarm clock, dictionary, ashtray and calculator - the ‘essentials’. I keep my window open to the courtyard so I can have the occasional smoke. And I’ve put a little side-table under the window. I got one of the other inmates to pinch it from the lounge. He’s one of the few still walking - the walking dead. Any questions, I can always say I had nothing to do with it. Now I’ve got all this time on my hands. Which is why I’m writing about my life with Kitty and the day we put old Milo down the culvert so he could be near the long-dead Aborigines.
You might wonder why we didn’t get caught. Well, of course we did. It so happened that somebody said they’d seen something and then it was only 24 hours before the police cut the lock on the factory door and found us. Believe it or not, they knew we were living there all along.
‘You knew about us?’ I said at the station.
The police officer didn’t even look up; he just kept tapping away with two fingers on the typewriter, slapping those inked letters hard against the official form.
‘You think we don’t have enough to do without worrying about every runaway? It’s only when you muck up that we come down on you.’
I glanced at Kitty. She wasn’t scared. She was just sitting there, quietly defiant. I knew that expression. But in that office environment I suddenly noticed how rough she looked. She had holes in her pants and also in her shoes and shirt, and her once neat haircut was now a jet-black snarl and I felt a little uneasy about letting her go like that. The cop raised his head and stared at her.
‘How old are you?’ he said.
My heart jumped. For the first time I realised that being a certain age could be a problem. It was the first time it came home that society had preconceived ideas about what people should be like according to their age. Kitty saw it to.
‘Eighteen,’ she said. I sat up instantly. In one way she’d read the situation right, but in another I knew we were in real strife if we started that. I just looked at her and said, ‘Tell the truth, Kitty.’
Kit had really sharp features and when she looked hard at you, you felt pierced. Now she turned her ice-blue eyes on me and it triggered something I’d never experienced; my face reddened and my eyes welled. A whole minute passed and then I saw her shoulders slump. ‘Fifteen,’ she said without averting her stare.
‘I’m nearly seventeen,’ I said as though it might help things; raise our collective age.
The cop rolled his eyes.
‘Christ almighty,’ he said. ‘You’re juvenile delinquents. I could have you institutionalised.’
I stared at the floor. We were in his hands now. But at least we told the truth; it was the only way. We’d been through the whole story just like I’ve done now. We’d told him how much we’d come to love old Milo and how we carried him to his grave. And in the end we simply signed off the paperwork and our mother was contacted. They took our photos and as we posed it suddenly occurred to me that our young age had actually worked in our favour.
Late in the day a man from Social Services drove us home. And there was our mother, still with the bed crammed into the little lounge thick with smoke. She said she was worried sick, that she thought we were dead, that she missed us, that things would be much better from now on.
Back in our room we slammed the door and laughed so hard the tears ran down our faces. I think it was just the relief of being away from the police, away from the whole idea of people trying to box us up in some way and throw away the key. Kitty tapped my planets poster on the wall but Haley didn’t come out. The next morning we were gone again.
A person breathes 370,000 cubic metres of air in a lifetime. At sixty-two I have a lot of cubic metres left, though some in here are way over their quota.
A good program on the ABC: Where to next? About the exploration and travel into space. In my view we’ve been getting ready for this for fifty years - we want to construct our own future world. Each day more and more synthetic stuff in our lives, not just the artificial products and plastics but the whole attitude to what we like and what’s best. A lot of people prefer to take a vitamin than eat an orange. A lot of people type an email rather than talk. A lot of people would sooner watch a documentary on TV than go to Africa. Me, I’d rather go to Africa. I still might.
So far 270 planets have been found in our galaxy.
