Peter Carey - The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith

‘You’re it?’ the woman said. She lowered her white, red-nailed hands to her lap. She looked at me as if I were a source of light so bright that I might cause damage to her sight. ‘You’re his son ?’

She scared me. Everything about her scared me. She had her handbag open. I could see a gun inside. It was quite clear, undisguised, lying amongst crumpled tissues and a rent-a-car agreement.

‘Are you Vincent Theroux’s son?’ she quavered.

I was too afraid to answer.

She put her hand into the bag. I thought she was reaching for the gun. I screamed. I threw my mask at Wally and it smashed into the bridge of his nose and brought him leaping out of his sheets, white-legged, outraged, his hand clutching his injured tarboof. The woman dropped her handbag.

Wally was in no state to understand anything quickly. He stared at the woman as she picked up her handbag and ran out the door. I could hear her on the stairs, laughing.

The front door banged shut — Wally flung up the window but she was already driving away.

‘A crazy woman,’ he said, patting my hair. ‘That’s all, just some old crazy woman.’

He helped me back on with my mask, making the buckles as tight as I liked them, biting hard against my skin. He wrapped some blankets around my shoulders, tucked his exercise book into his back pocket.

‘Some old crazy woman, that’s all.’

‘She … was … going … to … murder … me.’

‘No.’ Wally’s hair was standing skew-whiff on his head. His face was pale, drawn. His nose was turning purple around the small cut the mask had made. ‘She wasn’t going to shoot you, son.’ He hugged me into his cigarette-smoke shoulder. ‘You scared her, that was all. You frightened her.’

‘She … came … to … kill … me.’

‘You both scared each other, that’s all.’

But he began to busy himself around the room, gathering blankets, a kettle, the vid, and when he was completely loaded up with all these things he stooped, grunted, and brought me into the tangle of hard and soft things in his arms. ‘We’ll have a little kip up in the tower.’

The tower was now empty. Everything that had marked it as my home was now gone and it had, instead, a rather depressing dusty appearance, but it still had the same heavy bolt my mother had always slid across when making love, and when Wally had set me on the dusty floor, the first thing he did was drive that old bolt home.

I stood on my ugly stick-thin trembling legs, shivering. I tugged my mask straps one notch tighter.

Wally plugged in the kettle and the vid and arranged them beside each other on the floor. He inserted a pirate recording of Irma. While the show began he wrapped me in two blankets and made a hood for my head.

‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s cheerier.’

He squatted beside me for a moment but when I looked across at him I saw he was writing in his exercise book again.

‘Aren’t … you … calling … the … Gardiacivil?’

But Wally did not feel free to call the Gardiacivil about Vincent’s wife. He held his handkerchief to his injured nose and turned his bleak grey eyes on me.

‘You’re … writing … her … description?’

‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘The door is locked, OK? We don’t have to tell the Gardiacivil about her.’

‘What … are … you … writing?’

‘I’m staying awake with you, OK? I’m writing because I’m staying awake.’

‘But … what … is … it?’

‘NOTHING,’ he said. ‘Just watch the vid.’

‘You’re … writing … a … play.’

Wally looked up at me, his eyes accusing, his mouth uncertain.

‘Watch the vid,’ he said, but I knew I had got it right. He was writing a play for me. I was at once excited, but incredulous. My legs became itchy and kicky. Could he write a good play? I watched Irma on the vid. She splayed her small white fingers, bent her wrists backwards.

‘Never, ever tell anyone, right? Not till I say it’s OK.’

‘OK,’ I said, but I could not stop my legs drumming on the floor.

‘What I can do,’ Wally said, ‘is write parts for them.’

Actors?’

‘Animals,’ he said.

I looked at him sharply.

‘I know about animals,’ he said. His eyes were bright, aggressive. ‘You can’t have a circus without animals.’

‘Wally …’

‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘You don’t know shit. We can open this theatre without your mother. You don’t know shit about all this stuff, so just listen to me. We’ve got to make a living. You can be in it, and Rox. We can have a good life here,’ Wally said. ‘That’s what you’ve both got to reallze. We can make it out of what we have. She doesn’t have to go outside. She doesn’t need peacocks.’

‘What … peacocks?’

‘Parks, peacocks, all that crap,’ he said. ‘She’s going to see it’s totally unnecessary.’

But someone opened the big door down on the street. It let in a draught which came all the way up the stairs, under the door, and shifted the dust around.

‘What’s that?’ I was afraid.

‘Mollo mollo.’ Wally went to the door and unsnibbed the lock. He stood there for a moment with his head out.

‘Your maman,’ he said.

I began fiddling with my straps, unbuckling my Mouse mask. Wally ejected the vid of Irma and slipped it into his back pocket. I could hear the footsteps on the stair — not one person, a crowd — fast and purposeful, hard leather soles.

I rocketed towards the door, through a crowd of trousers and stockings and high-heeled shoes, my mask held in my hands.

‘There … was … a … crazy … woman … here,’ I said, but my maman was anxious, did not hear me.

‘Why are you up here?’ she said, disentangling me. ‘What happened?’

I tried to answer but Mother’s team were pushing in around us, men in suits, women smelling of perfume and instant coffee. They had tiny computers, miniature telephones, French battery chargers with complicated adapters. Vincent was there too, pasty-skinned, pouchy-eyed, talking to someone on his telephone.

When he had finished he came and kissed me.

‘A … crazy …’ I began.

‘Shush,’ my mother said. ‘Be quiet. Be calm.’ She squatted on the floor beside me. ‘My darling,’ she said, ‘your maman has to tell you something quite upsetting.’

I looked into her face and saw how the make-up sat on the surface of her skin and how the skin beneath was tired, how there were lines beside her eyes, beside her mouth, and how the eyes themselves seemed clouded.

‘Roxanna?’

My mother shook her head. She opened her purse and took out a folded front page of Zinebleu. On the front page there was a photograph of Vincent and my mother kissing. I had seen this photograph before, beside my mother’s bed, pinned on to the moulding beside the very window where I now sat. It did not seem ‘upsetting’.

‘Darling, there are things I must tell you. I can’t tell you here.’

She held out her arms to me and I clung to her again. I buried my face in her neck, ashamed that everyone could see my ugly legs sticking out of my pyjamas. Then she carried me downstairs to the bathroom and sat me on the toilet. Then she carefully wiped my nose and turned on the taps, in the basin, in the bath.

Then she squatted beside me and put her mouth against my ear. I thought she was going to kiss me, but instead she spoke.

‘You saw that picture in the paper?’

‘Yes.’

She looked at me and blinked. She put her mouth back against my ear and started whispering fast. ‘We are about to win this election, and now there are all these stories which are going to hurt your maman.’

She took the crumpled paper out from her purse again and held it up to me.