‘Bee Walshe.’ Hilary said. She enjoyed watching Siena’s surprise. She, Hilary, had finally got to the buzzer first. I know something too!
‘Yes, Beatrice Walshe. Ladies Land League stalwart.’ said Siena, laying claim firmly to the story. ‘But he never married her.’
‘Oh.’ Hilary felt a pang of disappointment. Ridiculous.
‘Of course Davitt would have been very attractive to women,’ Siena went on. ‘Wounded men usually are. And Fanny Parnell did write a poem about him. It will be in my anthology of Ladies Land League writings, when I finish it. If I can find it.’
‘Yes, I knew it!’ Hilary raised her arms up like the little Buddha. A poem was proof of a woman’s love. She had written so many poems and songs about Vianney. She wondered where they were now.
‘That’s Fanny Parnell anyway, not Anna!’
‘Oh I can’t keep up, with the Ryans or the bloody Parnells!’
‘There’s three of them, the Parnells. One brother, two sisters – those were the ones politically active anyway - Charles, Fanny, Anna. There were other Parnell siblings but -
‘But stop it!’ Hilary warned.
‘Okay, and speaking of wounded men,’ Siena changed tack immediately, in the direction she really wanted to go, ‘how is Vianney travelling?’
‘Ah good.’ Hilary suppressed her irritation at the 12-Step cliché – that land where everyone was always travelling. ‘He is finally going to see somebody. Trying the talking cure.’
‘Good. That might bring him some relief.’
‘Quite frankly, I am thinking of my own relief.’ Hilary said. ‘He just goes round and round the same old stuff. The Family History.’
‘Yeah like you haven’t got one!’ Siena was of course immediately onto it. ‘Like, hello! Good old white Australia. No brain, no pain.’
‘Well, excuse me if I don’t want a history like yours! Famine, evictions, car crashes, what have you. It used to be such an entertaining story, but now it’s so damned serious.’
‘Entertaining?’ Siena didn’t know whether to get offended.
‘Well, you know. Three little boys on the road to nowhere. Lost and found. Rescued by one another, by deep brotherly love.’
‘Yes’ Siena nodded, suddenly giving up her opposition to Hilary. She put on a newsreader voice, deep. ‘An Australian legend.’
‘Bush heroism and plucky masculinity.’ Hilary took up the same tone. They laughed together. In tune again.
‘Lolly only twelve at the time.’ Siena marvelled, in Claudia’s voice.
‘But Vianney got them out of the car.’ Hilary chanted. ‘And he was just turned seven.’
Siena leaned forward over the table toward Hilary. ‘But what was my role, Hils? The seminal event, the formation of the Ryan boys’ legend. Where was I?’ She leant back. ‘At home in my bloody bed.’
‘Yes well,’ Hilary risked, ‘you were only one or something at the time.’
‘I was two!’ Siena’s strong jaw snapped down hard on the words. ‘That bastard left me behind.’
The anger was as fresh as a daisy. Hilary felt it whoosh past her. This was not a family that was getting over anything.
***
They’d been walking on the old electricity road for a couple of minutes before Lolly realised what it was, intentional gravel and rock. The signs of men. He nearly fell on his knees and kissed the road, but it was a relief he could not share entirely with either Vianney or Xavier, since they already believed he had everything under control. Little Xavier was still clutching tightly onto their hands, but bravely being part of the team.
In fact Lolly had had no idea where they were going, but he figured that as long as they were making a decent distance between themselves and the old man, that would be good enough.
Outside of the upturned car, he seemed to have been the only one of the boys to hear his father’s ragged breathing, hear him trying to control it, as if he was trying to hide from them. Trying to get away from them.
‘Fine with me,’ Lolly had thought as he helped Vianney pull Xavier out of the car. ‘You just stay over there’.
Xavier had been crying too loud to hear anything and Vianney seemed entirely preoccupied with Xavier. Perhaps those dramas were keeping them from hearing their father, or maybe only Lolly had been listening.
He had begun the habit of marking his old man’s whereabouts, checking out what his tone of voice might mean, how strong was the ever-present lament, the ever-present threat. And whether his mother had anything to fear.
And so that long dark night he had led his trusting brothers away from the sounds of his father’s muffled breathing. He just kept moving away, out of reach, and the others had mistaken it for a moving toward, a confident forward movement. A movement into a lifetime of quiet guilt. But Lolly didn’t know that then.
The road created some sky space above them, and a star-lightening of the dark. They were on a rise. It seemed a hopeful thing to be climbing upwards to the sky. But then the road fell away again, down into a gulley and they were plunged back into the interior of the bush.
‘Keep to the road!’ Lolly warned, as Vianney, anxious to get free, dropped Xavier’s hand and started running on ahead to get to the top of the next rise. ‘Don’t get too far ahead!’
Xavier whimpered, and Vianney came back.
And then the road rose again, and this time they got high enough to see through the darkness, to see lights in the distance that could have been houses, or the highway. It didn’t really matter. It was just immensely reassuring to know that the world was still with them.
Eventually one light had seemed close enough and stable enough for them to strike out back into the bush to reach it.
Vianney had some last minute doubts. ‘I wonder if we should just wait here until they come and find us in the morning?’ he asked, as if he now feared leaving the safe road behind.
But Lolly feared another kind of finding. ‘Let’s press on.’
It was the outside light of the Griffins, left on to guide a wayward daughter home. But Tania Griffin had come home too pissed to remember to turn it off. So it was still being bashed at by moths and other winged creatures, making a drumming humming sound, when three bloodied boys made their way to the small fibro house on the outskirts of Napoleon Reef.
Inside Tania Griffin slept the righteous sleep of the drunk while her mother Maude was lying hot and sleepless. Maude almost didn’t get up when she heard the knocking, even though she knew the dogs would not stop barking. What drunk and outraged boyfriend would she be forced to meet and deal with?
It
