– the car bucking and protesting, their father’s wild furious curses, and then the inevitable. A horrific sound of metal screeching like a banshee and the car shooting off the road as it rolled.
‘Jesus Mary and fucking Joseph.’
Those were the last words they ever heard their father say.
Chapter 5 - The dancing of the Otherworld
‘Why the urgency?’ Hilary was brave enough to ask the next time. It was only a birthday party after all.
‘It’s not about the party!’ Claudia responded immediately to the unspoken criticism. ‘Loyola is concerned about Xavier’s prolonged absence from family communications. Very concerned.’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘But at this stage he does not wish to bring in the police.’
Oh Christ. Hilary could practically hear the sirens going off. Bloody Lolly. Bloody Xavier.
‘Please Hilary, when Vianney comes over to visit Loyola this evening, please just go and have a search on his desk. I’ll text you when he comes and when he leaves.’
And then she hung up, business done. Claudia always expected her orders to be carried out. Lucky Claudia.
Such a drama. One day the police may find Xavier dead and then we can all stop worrying, Hilary often thought of saying. Did not. The mother had tried to control him, Vianney said, from Day One. Maybe she feared the fate of Aquinas. But it couldn’t have been just Kate who had stunted his growth. Maybe the doting protective elder brothers had also not allowed the youngest son to grow up?
When Hilary had first been introduced to the Ryans, Xavier had struck her as very cute, shorter than Vianney, just as clever – funnier perhaps. He had flirted outrageously with her. She had had to step back from a very powerful call. To what? To danger.
Yet even then Xavier had begun to fray, just a little, at the edges. He had lost his job some time soon after. In those days the family believed his story of a vicious power mad boss. Later they no longer believed any of the stories.
And as for the girlfriends, the series of gorgeous young women Xavier brought out with him over the years, Siena called them The Dolls. ‘Women with issues’. Isshooos, as Siena mocked. Larissa had a terrible mother. Genevieve had been thrown out by her violent stepfather. Gloria had been a sex worker, maybe still was. ‘I think they make their names up,’ Siena huffed. ‘Like bloody drag queens.’
Yet Lolly and Vianney always spoke of Xavier’s girlfriends with great respect. Maybe the brothers admired Xavier’s ability to always be with a beautiful woman. Sometimes it seemed like his full time job. It was certainly the only one that he took seriously. He was always attending to the latest drama, accident, illness, financial crisis, food binge or alcoholic bust.
In their turn the brothers guarded Xavier, protected him with a quiet ferocity. They fed him when he was in between jobs, paid his bills and traffic fines, took his long-winded night time phone calls. Once Lolly paid a girlfriend’s rental bond, might even have paid her rent if Claudia hadn’t finally put a stop to it.
But something more dangerous than his beloved youngest brother was beginning to sap Vianney’s energies. The charming moods and sensitivities – a man with weather – were darkening. There were days lying on the bed. Bouts of drinking. Unreasonable rages. The TV news had become unbearable. The ALP had become a tragic farce. The Daily Telegraph was the epitome of evil. The Murdoch press was banned from The Planet.
It wasn’t just the media either. The roads of Sydney were designed to suck the spiritual energies out of people. The State government was in bed with the concrete and construction industries. As long as MBAs and civil engineers ruled the state, Vianney growled, there would never be any money for the arts. Only money for the fucking roads.
As if to thwart the government, Vianney got rid of their car. Hilary banned the TV from the bedroom.
Vianney acknowledged his rage might be sometimes out of proportion, but he said it was the crazy hours and the worry of the cafe. He was sick of being nice to people who spent their lives eating and talking about real estate, or bitching about their absent friends. He would like to tape all those stupid conversations and play them back into the cafe the next time they came in – preferably with the insulted friends. He would like to keep the bloated citizens of the Eastern Suburbs honest.
The world may be staggering, he said, under the weight of financial crises, unrecyclable waste, mindless corporate greed, climate change, coal mining madness, cruelty to refugees, but the people of Coogee will still insist on their Eggs Benedict being just so!
It had almost been a relief to Hilary when he had finally given up the café business, and eventually – after a scary few months that had savaged their savings for a mortgage - found work up at the university. They were seeking entrepreneurial staff at the time, with business backgrounds. At least Vianney had kept his mouth shut at interview time about the corporatisation of the university sector and the rise of entitled elites, who thought working class people should go back to begging for tertiary education scholarships.
All this was going on about the time Xavier announced his entry into recovery. If she hadn’t been so concerned about Vianney’s mental health, and their bank balance, Hilary might have been happier with Xavier’s news. But perhaps it was just as well that she hadn’t paid it too much attention. For Xavier’s recovery was followed by relapse, followed by recovery. Who knew where he was up to now? Who cared any longer? Only the Ryan brothers.
And then, thinking of the dark haired youth who had regarded her with such an appraising and admiring eye, much more sexual and demanding than his willowy brother, Hilary would allow herself to feel some grief.
Xavier had made her blush with his bold advances, and wrap herself around the unsuspecting Vianney, who had squeezed her arm in response but not stopped talking or doing whatever he was doing at the time.
‘Vianney is away with the fairies half the time’ Xavier had said, nodding, aware of it all, smiling and shameless. ‘You want to watch out. One day he might not come back from underneath the faery fort – the Good People will have kept him there.’
But Xavier was the one who had been drawn into the dancing of the Otherworld, and it was he who had forgotten his home and his people, and it was he who had not returned from that other country that lies inside the hills and under the wave.
Chapter 6 - In the night dark
That terrifying roll of the old car – the stuff of nightmares for years afterwards. The banging and trashing of small limbs, a riot of flesh and joints and bruising close collisions, until finally the car threw itself into what turned out to be a low ditch. There it jammed, askew but, blessedly, right side up.
The boys heard their father pushing and shoving against his door. The inside light came on as hot night air poured into the car. Relief was everywhere. Lolly must have taken the worst of the hit. There was blood coming from his scalp, blood splattered on his side of the car door. Vianney lay on him heavily, helplessly and Xavier too was in the way. The front door closed again and the light went out. The boys waited for their father to open their door and yank them out.
A good few minutes must have passed before they understood that they would have to get themselves out. Although perhaps Sean was lurking outside, ready to punish any signs of resistance.
Vianney decided to risk it. Lolly’s side of the car was a dark bank of earth.
