Time's Long Ruin Read Free Page A

time,’ Liz Riley half-laughed.
    â€˜Shut up,’ Bill replied. ‘You think I’m makin’ it up?’
    â€˜Not all of it.’
    Bill was a performer, and always had been. He’d played the Tivoli Circuit for twenty-five years, or so he told us. Once I did the sums and said to him, ‘You must have been five when you started,’ and he just replied, ‘Maybe I was.’ It all went back to when he was one of J.C. Williamson’s greatest assets: Bill ‘Irish’ Riley, singer, juggler, straight man and joker, acrobat, dancer and everything else that ever walked a stage. Until radio. He told us he struggled valiantly for a few years but by the time Mo was doing McCakie Mansion he was selling linen.
    Not that it didn’t take a good performer to do that. So, like Bill always said, nothing is ever wasted. Liz had come somewhere between unemployment and six-piece flannelette sheet sets, so she couldn’t confirm or deny his stories. And apparently, all of his old programs were lost in a fire in a Semaphore boarding house he was staying in. Luckily he got out with his life and a second-degree burn that had long since healed.
    But Bill Riley still looked the part: tall and athletic (apart from a pot belly that was Liz’s fault, cooking him all the wrong foods). He had a round face with big blue eyes and a bulbous nose that was nourished by a web of fine capillaries. His wild, curly hair was grey before its time, hiding ironing-board ears that stuck out like handle bars, allowing Liz to come up from behind and take a hold of him, leading him towards washers that needed to be changed and lawns that needed to be mowed.
    I looked through a small hole in the wall of my hutch and saw the adults talking. Bill was standing up, clutching a barbecue fork in one hand and his ukulele in the other. ‘Well?’ he asked.
    â€˜A body?’ Mum guessed.
    â€˜No, a glasshouse, full of whoopee weed.’
    They all laughed. Dad stood up, took the fork from Bill’s hand and walked across to the incinerator cum barbecue. It was a four-foot high square of besser blocks, equipped with a grill, a flue on top and an ash-box at the bottom. Dad started to turn the chops and roll the sausages. ‘And how do you know it was weed?’ he asked.
    â€˜I can tell,’ Bill replied. ‘I’ve been around.’ He winked at Liz and my mother. Liz shook her head. ‘Where have you been? Myer’s haberdashery?’
    The two women laughed again.
    â€˜I’ve been around. Backstage at the – ’
    Before he had a chance to finish, Liz screamed and doubled over with laugher. Back in my hutch I rolled up my book and smiled.
    â€˜I’ve seen photos,’ Bill continued. ‘The Greeks brought it with them from Calabria.’
    â€˜That’s in Italy,’ Mum said.
    â€˜Athens . . . Lesbos.’
    â€˜Lesbos?’ Liz cried. ‘How did you get from Lesbos to Grant Rehn’s backyard?’
    Bill just shook his head and smiled. ‘It was marryjewana.’
    Just then Janice appeared at the front of the hutch. ‘Henry, what you doing in there?’
    I dropped my book on the pile of old tyres. Janice turned to my mum. ‘Here he is, Missus Page.’
    Mum stood up. ‘Henry?’
    Janice opened the door of the hutch, came in, took me around the shoulders and led me out. ‘We’ve been looking for you at the playground.’
    â€˜I was just . . .’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Nothin’ . . .’
    Janice and I sat down at the table with the adults just as the little ones came around the corner. ‘I’m hungry,’ Anna cried, and she went over to help Dad watch the pink chops.
    â€˜Me too,’ Gavin added, following her.
    â€˜What were you doing in there?’ Mum asked, putting her arm around me, spitting on her handkerchief and rubbing dirt off my face.
    â€˜Nothing,’ I replied, pushing her