Theft: A Love Story

52

Hugh never changed from the morning I picked him up to take him down to Melbourne. He had attempted to drown his daddy, also vice versa, but still he glared at me as though I was the author of his misery. It was in my mother's low-ceilinged kitchen that I found him that day, blocking the light from the Gisborne Road window, like a giant Jehovah's Witness with his black church shoes, Fletcher Jones trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt and a tie. Brylcreem had turned his hair a wet burned umber and his little seashell ears were burning red. And the eyes, they were the same, little baleful eyes which he now cast upon Marlene.

In Mercer Street I asked him, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

No answer.

"Have you been taking your pills?"

He stared at me belligerently, then retreated into the deep unhappy tangle of his bed, where, in company of toast crumbs, beneath the cowl of his quilt, he now watched my beloved read The New York Times, bestowing on her a special quality of attention you might think more suited to a dangerous snake.

Marlene was dressed for running, in baggy daggy shorts and a soiled white T-shirt. Until now she had ignored my brother's close attention, but when she stood Hugh cocked his head and raised an interrogative eyebrow.

"What?" she asked.

The buzzer sounded.

Hugh started, and went back under cover.

He was a silly bugger, but my own relation with that buzzer was not much better. I certainly did not want to have Detective Dickhead enquiring about the painting I had wrapped so carefully with newspaper the night before. It lay now exactly where it had lain in its freshly sanded state, leaning against the wall.

Thinking to move it, I stood, but not before Milt Hesse walked in. It was the first time I was ever pleased to see the old cunthound, for he had come to take our treasure to be cleaned. As he entered my brother glared at him so fiercely I feared that he might charge.

"Whoa," I said. "Whoa, Dobbin."

Before Milt had a chance to properly understand his situation, he advanced on the huge swaddled creature, his arm outstretched. "I haven't met you, sir. Are you another Aussie genius?"

But Hugh would not touch him and Milt, doubtless having a New Yorker's well-calibrated judgment of all forms of madmen, swerved sideways to the table where he kissed Marlene.

"Doll-face."

His left arm, having been injured in a fall, was supported by a sling and he now allowed Marlene to tuck the parcel beneath the right.

Hugh meanwhile was all hunched over, knees to his chest, rocking sideways. If you did not know him you would think he was ignoring the guest but I was not at all surprised when, as Milt was leaving, my brother suddenly lurched to his feet.

"I'll see you out," Marlene said suddenly.

Hugh dropped back to his knees, burrowing in the tangle of bedclothes where he finally found his coat and separated it from quilt and sheet and then, with Marlene and Milt not too far ahead of him, he was heading towards the door.

"No, mate, you don't want to do that."

I blocked his way, but he shouldered me away.

"Please, mate. No trouble."

He paused. "Who is he?"

"He's going to clean the painting."

"Oh."

He drew back, puzzled at first, but finally displaying a stupid knowing smirk, as if he, of all people, was privy to some hidden truth.

"What is it that you're thinking, mate?"

He tapped his head.

"You're thinking?"

"Roof," he said.

The fucking smirk was physically unbearable. "What roof, mate?"

He withdrew further, back towards the mattress, his mouth now impossibly small, his ears slowly suffusing with blood. As he settled back into his nest his dry hair, confused by static, rose slowly on his head. He was still like this, a dreadful grinning fright, when Marlene came back from her run.

She also was on edge, had been on edge in any case, and no matter how she ran or worked her weights, nothing would give her any peace.

Sitting at the table, she went straight back to the Times.

"You burned down the high school," my brother said.

Oh Hugh, I thought, Hugh, Hugh, Hugh.

Marlene's colour was already high, a lovely pink that revealed the tiniest palest freckles.

"What did you say to Marlene?"

Hugh hugged his big round knees and giggled. "She burned down Benalla High School," he said.

Marlene smiled. "Hugh, you are very strange."

"You too," my brother said, somehow seeming contented, as if some puzzle had been solved. "I heard you burned down Benalla High School."

Marlene was staring at him now, and for a moment her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened, but then her face relaxed.

"Why Hugh," she smiled, "you are as full of tricks as a bag full of monkeys."

"You too."

"You too."

"You too," until the pair of them were laughing uproariously and I went to the dunny to get away.

At lunchtime, Milt called to say Jane had the painting which appeared, she said, to have been hung in someone's kitchen.

That night I cooked sausages for Hugh and after Marlene had taken her evening run, she and I went to dinner at Fanelli's where we drank two bottles of fantastic burgundy.

I didn't feel drunk, but I fell into bed and passed out like a light.

I woke to find Marlene crawling back into bed. I had a splitting headache. She was freezing cold. At first I thought her shivering but when I touched her face it was aflood with tears. As I held her, her body shook convulsively.

"Shush, baby. Shush, it's all right."

But she could not stop.

"I'm sorry," said Hugh, standing in the doorway.

"For fuck's sake, go back to fucking sleep. It's three o'clock."

"I shouldn't have said it."

"It's nothing to do with you, you idiot."

I heard him sigh and Marlene was almost choking, a dreadful noise like someone drowning. I could see her by the light from the street, all her smooth lovely planes crushed and broken inside a fist. It was the dumb divorce, I thought, the bloody droit moral. Why she had to have it, I really, really could not see.

"Can you still love me?"

Headache or no, I loved her, as I had never loved in all my life, loved her wit, her courage, her beauty. I loved the woman who stole Dozy's painting, who read The Magic Pudding, who faked the catalogue, but even more the girl escaping the vile little room in Benalla and I could smell the red lead paint her mother brushed on the fireplace every Sunday, taste the shitty ersatz coffee made from chicory, the canned beetroot staining the boiled egg white in the deadly iceberg salad.

"Shush. I love you."

"You don't know."

"Shush."

"You won't love me. You can't."

"I do."

"I did it," she cried suddenly.

"What did you do?"

I looked into her face and saw an alarming terror, a dreadful cringing in the face of my tender enquiry. She gave a little moan and hid her head in my chest and began to sob again. Through all of this, I detected Hugh. He was now standing right over us.

"Go to bed, now."

His bare feet brushed across the floor.

"I did it," she said.

"She burned down Benalla High School," said Hugh mournfully.

"I'm sorry."

I took her chin and tilted her face towards me, all the street light trapped in a tide around her pooling eyes.

"Did you, my baby?"

She nodded.

"Is that what you did?"

"I'm vile."

I took her to me, and held her, the whole cage of mystery that was her life.