The Piper's Son

“I’m going to breast-feed this kid until he’s in kindergarten.”

He pulls her gently to her feet and they cross the road, looking up at the front veranda. “Have you seen the way he looks at me?” Dominic asks quietly. She knows he’s talking about his son.

They walk up the steps of the terrace, where Tom sits smoking a cigarette in the dark, putting it out quickly before she gets to him.

“Don’t leave butts in my potted plants,” she says firmly.

“You’ve killed them all anyway,” he mutters, but she catches the relief in his eyes and holds out a hand to him, which he grips for a moment before she goes inside, their fingers lingering like she’d let them when he was a kid.

When Tom can hear her safely in the kitchen, he looks up at his father.

“Is she okay?”

Dominic shrugs. “For the time being.”

“Sam rang. He’s really pissed that you took her to . . . a meeting.”

“What did he say?”

“I recall the letter c and the letter u and the letter n and the letter t and lots of fs and ks. It will filthy up my mouth to repeat the words.”

Tom doesn’t know why he says that. It’s what his mum would say when she had to repeat someone’s swearing, and his father would laugh every time. The princess, they would call her. But the princess packed her bags and took Anabel with her and told his father not to come near them until he had been sober long enough not to remember his last drink. “And if you break that rule, I’ll file for divorce and you’ll have to see your daughter through a court order,” she had said. But she still added “my love” to it. So his father stayed away all this time, and now Tom thinks he’s doing it all wrong. In the movies, the guy gets sober and goes straight back to reclaim his family, like something out of a Paul Kelly song. He doesn’t hide in his sister’s house, still avoiding the world.

Sometimes Tom wants to break into his father’s room and search it. Does he hide his booze there? Did he get up there tonight at his meeting and say, “Hi, my name’s Dominic and I’m an alcoholic and I’ll never drink again because I love my family too much to screw up again”?

They walk into the house and his father shuts the door behind them.

“She hasn’t eaten all week,” Tom says quietly. “She’s going to go straight up to her room. Do something.”

He doesn’t know why he says that either. Why he thinks his father will be able to do anything. But he follows Dominic into the kitchen, just because it’s instinctive.

“Can you make us something to eat, Georgie?” he hears his father say.

It’s about eleven thirty and he hears the beep of a horn. At first he thinks it’s random, but Tom knows that horn well and peers outside the tiny window and sees the Valiant first and then Justine and Francesca jogging on the spot to keep warm. They’re dressed up, he can see that. It’s what they used to do years ago with Tara and Siobhan. Beep the horn and he’d have to determine in a split second, by the way they were dressed, where they were all off to. One minute’s notice. Tonight he has no reason to respond, because their lives aren’t like two years ago, but Francesca and Justine aren’t budging, so he grabs a pair of jeans and collared shirt.

Five minutes later, he’s out of the house, and without a word, Justine and Francesca get back into the car and he hops in after them. They end up in some warehouse nightclub in Rosebery for a schoolmate’s twenty-first. He hasn’t seen the school crowd since the last of the eighteenth birthdays. The moment they step inside, Justine and Francesca are kidnapped by A

“When your uncle died, I felt it here, bro,” Shaheen says, thumping his chest.

“Same,” Travis says.

It gets too intense and someone brings up football. Tom’s relieved to be talking about something that has rules and purpose, and next minute they’re arguing and everyone’s calling each other pussy and dickhead and boofhead and turd with such affection that it almost brings tears to his eyes. Later, he goes inside and ends up on the dance floor with the girls and it’s hazy and sweaty and he doesn’t have to think; he just has to feel the bass inside him. It’s what he always had with Francesca and Justine. They were uninhibited when it came to music and sometimes the three of them had a tune inside their head that no one else could hear, and tonight it’s there between them and they’re fucking the space with their bodies.

In the early hours of the morning, a bunch of them drive to Maroubra Beach like they used to when they were at school. The last time they were all here together was after graduation night, with their dates. Tom thought Tara was making a statement because she hadn’t asked anyone to be hers. He had been going out with one of the Year Elevens who seemed keen, but that night he couldn’t keep his eyes off Tara Finke and he knew she felt it. They drove around the city with Tom as their designated driver, pla

“Tom!”

Until his date’s voice rang out through the night and Tara pushed him away. And she was crying. His one claim to fame, he thinks. Being able to make Tara Finke cry. All he could say the next day was, “Sorry about last night. Shit. What was that?” Like he didn’t know, the weak bastard that he was.

He feels someone against his shoulder and it’s Francesca calling his name again.

“You’re getting your jeans wet,” she says, and he walks up the sand with her to where Justine’s sitting on the hood of the car under one of the streetlights. This place isn’t exactly the best spot to be hanging out on a Saturday night if you’re not a local, but it’s like they couldn’t even be bothered being scared.

He lights a cigarette and sits between them.

“Stani’s going to have to find a new dish-pig if you don’t come back,” Justine says.

“He was actually thinking of promoting you to glassy,” Francesca adds.

“Oh, my God. Then what am I going to do about the job offers from Bill Gates and Donald Trump?”

“Tell them the Union’s a better gig,” Francesca says. “It’s where you need to be.”

He can’t speak because it’s like there’s something in his throat, but these two have learned the art of silence and they stay there until some shifty-looking guys come along and it’s time to go.

And as quietly as they arrived to pick him up, they drive back over the Anzac Bridge and drop him off in front of Georgie’s, just as the sun begins to appear.