The Piper's Son

And so wonderful to hear about your job. I remember your talent in memorizing the timetable of every guy in Year Twelve, so there is no way the trains won’t run on time. Personally, I understand the pride one takes in one’s job. I’ve just been promoted to glassy at the Union and these days I’m walking with a spring in my step as a result.

And finally, thank you for the rundown on Tara. Strangely, the peacekeeper never comes up in the copious amount of e-mails we write each other, or the heart-to-heart telephone conversations we have, or the witty text messages we exchange. And I’d prefer you stick to the singular when it comes to the guys she’s gone out with. I pride myself on being the only bastard she’s been in love with.

Tom

Siobhan’s mention of the one-and-a-half-night stand pisses him off, but it triggers major regrets and memories. Of the night when he took Tara back to Georgie’s attic to clear out his stuff for Joe’s arrival. Don’t go back there. He’s learned to give himself instructions from a self-help program. The Learn to Listen to Yourself program of healing. Georgie suggested it. Worked for her when she was getting over the Sam betrayal seven years ago. Although when he thinks about it, she’s now pregnant to Sam, so the results aren’t exactly for life.

Don’t go back there. Don’t go back there.

He goes back there because he can’t forget what those foils had done to her hair.

“Foils, fool,” she had said, wiggling her fingers to a little kid who was sitting opposite them on the bus. Somewhere back in Year Twelve the insults became signs of affection.

She had been tired and leaned her head on his shoulder, which was the resting place for all their heads, but when Justine and Siobhan and Francesca used his body so shamelessly, he had never felt the need to turn his head and press his mouth against their hair.

“I’ve finally decided about what I’m going to study,” she said. “Permaculture.”

“Hmm, Permaculture.”

She looked at him. “You don’t even know what it means.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s a hair thing. Like the foils.”

“You’re a dick.” But she laughed all the same. “It works perfectly with cultural studies. There’s a component of overseas study, so I’m going to look at how we can create a sustainable urban environment.”

“Huh?”

He had felt her watching him and when he shifted his eyes to look down into hers, she had been staring intently.

“Do you know what I’m talking about, Thomas?”

He sighed. He had known exactly what she was talking about. He didn’t mind the sustainable, or the urban, or the environment. It was the word overseas he hadn’t cared to dwell on.

A bunch of gigglers vacated the back seat at Central Station, and Tom grabbed both their stuff and led.

“And I owe it all to your great-aunt Margie,” she said, settling into the corner.

Oh, yeah, thank you, Great-Auntie Margie. Love your work.

“She introduced me to one of the nuns. You remember her? Sister Susan. She’s one of the Josephite nuns. When she spoke about East Timor at the Town Hall a couple of years back? Well, we’ve been e-mailing and she reckons I should go over to Timor as part of my studies.”

He hadn’t responded. Just looked past her, outside the window, as if construction on Broadway was mesmerising.

“You’re not interested in what I’m doing,” she said, her voice flat.

He moved away from her, so he could look at her properly.

“No, I’m not interested,” he had said, pissed off.

Her face went pink instantly. She was in retreat and it was going to take him forever to force her back into advance. That was Tara Finke for you. The moment she stopped making speeches and proving a point, the rhetoric went flying out the window and she was all awkwardness, stuck to a wall of vulnerability built over the years. Tom could get her off that wall.

“You’re going overseas for how long?” he asked.

“Forget it. You’re not interested, remember?”

Then it was her turn to be peering outside. Glebe Point Road had never looked so exciting. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her and he knew she felt it, no matter how hard she was looking out that window. Because her face had deepened in color until he actually thought she was going to cry.

“What part of you going overseas, for probably more than a year, would you like me to be excited about?” he snapped. There was no turning back now. She looked up and he had seen it in her eyes. She was getting what he was trying to say. Her face was flushed again. An awkward flush.

“Go out to Campbelltown, Tara. They’ve got a bigger need for ecological design out there.”

She smiled. “You do know what it means, you moron.”

He leaned closer, his mouth an inch away from hers. “Not working against nature,” he said, “working with nature.”

She was looking at his mouth and then up at his eyes.

“That’s what permaculture means,” he said with a grin.

She laughed and leaned her head back against him.

“I’ve never even been on a plane, you know. The only place I’ve been to is my grandparents’ house at the Entrance.”

“A very underestimated part of the world, the Entrance is.”

Each time the bus door opened, he had felt a blast of cold air. When she shivered, he put his arm around her. He should have kissed her a moment before when the time was right.

“So you e-mail my great-aunt?”

“She reckons you and your dad are going out to Walgett to build something out there,” she said.

“Did she, now? I can think of a thousand better ways of spending my holidays, but you know my father. Gets anal about things, so it’s going to be Tom and Dom’s excellent adventures in Walgett.”

“Fun times?”

“Reckons he’s going to convince my uncle Joe to come along while he’s out here from London, which’ll mean that my step-pop’s going to want to come too and it’ll be the Mackee men building the world, while trying not to get into punch-ups after a couple of schooners.”

He gri

By the time they got off at Stanmore, they’d tackled everything from the United Nations to Brangelina, and it was while doing Little Britain impersonations with Tara wheezing from laughter that he stopped and leaned down to kiss her. Her satchel was a barrier between them and when he tried to put an arm around her, his guitar case battered her side and she almost went flying out onto the road. He had only one free hand to hold her, and it just seemed to be his mouth pressing down on hers and Tara on tiptoes trying to reach him. And by the time they had reached Georgie’s house, they’d stopped four times and he just wanted to get her into the house and up in the attic, where his junk could stay another day. It was late and he figured that Georgie was sleeping, but as they tiptoed up the stairs, she came out of her room.

“Yes, we are cleaning out the Messiah’s room,” he had said casually. Georgie pointed to her cheek and he kissed her and although she said nothing, there was that close scrutiny of hers, which kind of said everything.

He mumbled something about going upstairs and continued as if every part of him wasn’t trembling, and as if his head wasn’t yelling, Georgie knows you want to have sex with Tara Finke tonight under her roof! Tara stayed behind and he could hear them talk about her mum, who had just left the Red Cross to work for the Cancer Council and about a job vacancy that Georgie should look into. But then Tara was there in the attic and he shut the door behind her.

“What’s that?” she had asked, looking down at the LP in his hands, and he knew she was nervous and stalling.

“Slade. I’m going to paste it up on the wall so my dickhead uncle sees it the moment he walks in and stops going on about me losing it.”