Truly Madly Guilty(133)

He was at the top. What a palaver to climb a flight of stairs. Now, why was he up here? What did he need?

His mind wasn’t going. Sometimes he couldn’t find the right word for a thing, but he remembered that sometimes Elizabeth couldn’t find a word, ‘Where’s the thingamajig?’ she’d say, and she’d been so young, so beautifully, gorgeously young, she had no idea how young she was, and he had no idea why he’d come upstairs.

He could still hear the music from next door. Even louder now. Who did they think they were? Pretending to be artsy-fartsy types. Elizabeth used to love classical music. She played the violin at school. She had more class in her little finger than that little two-bit whore had in her whole body. She’d have shown her a thing or two. How dare they play it so loud? Inconsiderate.

He imagined calling the police and telling them the neighbours were deafening him with bloody Mozart. Wasn’t Mozart the deaf one? No wonder he wrote such crappy songs. Elizabeth used to laugh at his grumpiness. Elizabeth had a good sense of humour. So did Jamie. They both used to laugh at him. Once they were gone nobody laughed at him ever again. All his funniness flew away with them.

It was the neighbours’ fault he couldn’t remember why he was up here. He’d got distracted. He went into Jamie’s room to calm himself and turned on the light.

He looked out Jamie’s window. The neighbours had all their outdoor lighting going. It was like bloody Disneyland down there.

There were two little girls running about. One of them had wings on her back like a tiny fairy. The other one was wearing an old-fashioned-looking little pink coat. Elizabeth would have liked that pink coat.

He could see the bloody dog zipping back and forth. Yip-yap-yapping. It had been digging up Harry’s garden today, as happy as you please. Harry had given it a kick up the backside, to show it what’s what. It wasn’t a hard kick but it was true that both Elizabeth and Jamie wouldn’t have laughed at that. They would have stopped speaking to him, probably. He and Elizabeth had been going to give Jamie a dog for his ninth birthday. They should have done it for his eighth.

He looked out the window. The electricity bill for all those tiny lights must be exorbitant.

He could see the people from two doors down. Oliver. Namby-pamby name but he was a nice enough bloke. You could have a sensible conversation with him. (Although he rode a bike, and wore those shiny tight black shorts. Looked like a bloody galah when he did that.) He couldn’t remember his wife’s name. One of those worried, skinny women.

No kids. Maybe they didn’t want them. Maybe they couldn’t have them. The wife didn’t have good child-bearing hips, that’s for sure. Although now they could mix them up in test tubes.

Elizabeth would have liked a little sister for Jamie. She always looked at little girls. She liked their dresses. ‘Look at that little girl’s pretty dress,’ she’d say to him, as if Harry ever gave two hoots about a little girl’s pretty dress.

She was looking at a little girl that day, a little girl clutching a stick with a giant ball of fluffy pink fairy floss. Elizabeth said, ‘Look at that, it’s nearly as big as her,’ but Harry had just grunted in response, because he was in a bad mood, he wanted to leave, it was a Sunday afternoon and they had a long drive back and he was thinking about work and the week ahead. The union was giving them grief. Harry didn’t like Sunday nights to feel rushed. He liked to feel sorted for the week.

He hadn’t wanted to drive all the way out to bum-f*ck nowhere to come to this crummy little country fair. He shouldn’t have said ‘bum-f*ck nowhere’ to Elizabeth because she hated that, it really offended her, he was just thinking about the union rep, a tough bugger, that one, and the battle ahead. (The union rep came to the funeral. He hugged Harry and Harry didn’t want to be hugged but he didn’t want to be at his wife’s funeral either.)

He should have been nicer to Elizabeth and Jamie that day. He would have been nicer if he’d known it was the last day they’d ever have together. He wouldn’t have said ‘bum-f*ck nowhere’. He wouldn’t have told Jamie that the games were all rigged and he was never going to win. He wouldn’t have grunted when Elizabeth pointed out the little girl with the fairy floss.

But then again, he should have been grumpier. He should have been firmer. He should have said no when they wanted to go on that ride for the third time.

He did say no, but Elizabeth didn’t take any notice. She grabbed Jamie’s hand and said, ‘Just one more turn.’ And off they ran.

If he saw them again he would shout at them. He would shout, ‘I said no! I was the man of the house!’ Then he would hold them both in his arms and never ever let them go.

If he saw them again. Elizabeth believed in the hereafter, and Harry hoped she was right. She was right about most things, except that day she hadn’t been right.

It was called ‘The Spider’. It had eight long legs with a car at the end of each leg for up to eight people. The legs went up and down, up and down, and then the whole thing spun around in a circle.

Each time they’d flown by he’d seen a brief glimpse of their pink, laughing faces, their heads flung back against the seats. It had made him feel sick.

The Spider had been built ten years earlier by an Australian manufacturer with a German name: Flugzeug Amusement Rides. Flugzeug Amusement Rides had provided only rudimentary maintenance and inspection procedures for The Spider. The company that ran the funfair was called Sullivan and Sons. Sullivan and Sons was in deep financial shit. They made staff cuts. A dedicated maintenance manager called Primo Paspaz was let go. Primo had set out his own maintenance schedule for all the rides in a red notebook. The red notebook disappeared when he lost his job. Primo thumped his fist against his knee when he testified in court. He had bright tears in his eyes.