Golden Boys Read Free

she’d screw the place up and throw it away.
This is the last
time
, she swears. She will never come here again. She is not going to tell herself lies, nor accept the lies of others. From now on, she will do things properly.
    And when it is finally over, the priest bowing before the altar and trudging off with his duckling row of boys into the private room where girls are not welcome, the morning is done as if packed into an elderly person’s wardrobe, but at least she is free to leave. Freya would like to sprint away kicking her heels like a pony, but that’s not what can happen. The aisle clogs with parishioners and she gets hemmed in, has to worm through gaps while her siblings and mother disappear out the doors. Distance stretches like toffee, for a moment she thinks she will never reach fresh air: at the door she’s caught in a blockage that has congealed in the hope of seeing the priest as if everyone hasn’t seen him just minutes earlier and can’t also see him in the milkbar buying cigarettes and see his underwear, too, if they so desire, hanging on the line in the yard of the presbytery, and it amazes her that with these signs they don’t see he’s just a human, a man of baggy elastic and bad habits, and by the time she’s dodged and wriggled her way into the sunlight she feels scorched with contempt for every last living thing.
    Only to find that her mother, too, has been snagged, and is stopped on the path beside the carpark with Marigold and Dorrie sagging beside her and Peter in his stroller arching his chest against the straps, and she’s talking with an awkward smile to a man and a lady and two boys Freya has never seen before. The sun is warmer than when she’d last been under it, the heat drawing fumes from the bitumen; cars are reversing, people are standing about, children are beginning to cry. She tries to slip past unseen but her mother catches her – actually lunges sideways to grab her – and tells the strangers loudly and eagerly, as if only enthusiasm keeps her heart pumping, ‘This is another of my daughters, this is Freya.’
    â€˜Another!’ marvels the man. ‘Quite a tribe!’
    â€˜Oh, yes.’ Freya’s mother shakes her head with a kind of amused hopelessness. ‘There’s always another one coming.’
    Already, after ten seconds, it is unpleasant to be waylaid in the shadeless carpark, people slamming doors around them, starting the engines of cars. It is fumy, gritty, over-warm. Peter, having tested the strength of his bindings, has subsided in calculation: time starts ticking to the moment he’ll start to scream. Freya smiles unendearingly. ‘Hello.’
    â€˜Freya’s the eldest,’ her mother tells the strangers. ‘She’s – how old are you, Freya?’
    â€˜Twelve,’ she says. ‘You know.’
    â€˜Hello, Freya,’ says the woman.
    â€˜Hello.’ She doesn’t care that the word sounds booted out of her.
    â€˜After Freya there’s Declan, then Sydney, but . . .’ Elizabeth Kiley scans the crowd, ‘I can’t see them.’
    â€˜They’re gone,’ says Marigold blandly.
    â€˜And who’s this fine chap in the pusher?’ asks the man.
    â€˜This is Peter. He’s the baby. Well, he’s nearly two.’
    Peter looks up beseechingly. ‘He’s adorable,’ says the lady.
    â€˜He breaks my stuff,’ says Dorrie.
    â€˜That’s what baby brothers do, don’t they, Colt?’ The man gestures at the boy beside him, who stands in pristine silence. ‘Colt is twelve, the same as you, Freya.’
    â€˜Uh.’ She’s already looked at this silent boy – he’s taller than she is, and more beautiful – and looked swiftly away. ‘I’m nearly thirteen,’ she clarifies.
    â€˜I’m five,’ submits Dorrie.
    â€˜I’m seven,’ says Marigold.
    The man,