The Piper's Son

They’re outside her house and they stand there awkwardly and he’s touching her face, her hair, his eyes taking in every feature, every dark circle, every crow’s-foot, every frown line. “You’re beautiful,” he says.

And she does something she hasn’t done for seven years. Georgie kisses him. Fu

“Come home with me . . . please. Please.”

There’s a new sound. The sound of Sam pleading. The sound of Sam broken.

She holds his face between her hands. She knows that Callum’s mother is dropping him off soon and although she’s willing to change all the rules, she’s not ready for that one yet. Not with the boy sleeping in the other room.

To: [email protected] /* */

From: [email protected] /* */

Date: 6 September 2007

Dear Tom,

The official crazy season of the Oz elections has well and truly reached us over here. I’m a bit torn really, because everyone’s organizing get-togethers to either celebrate or commiserate, which will be heaps of fun, but rumor has it that my dad is flying me home for the Finke Family Election Party, which is usually a night when people who don’t drink get blotto drunk and there’s a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth and screaming at the television set. My view is that the polls have been consistent for too long, but if I express such optimism over the phone to my father, he shuts me down. We have all been forbidden to celebrate until Kevin Rudd is delivering a victory speech. My father reckons Howard’s been the perfect leader for generation Y, apolitical and shallow, and it’s no wonder we worship Britney and Paris Hilton. I have to remind him that he’s talking about my generation and I take great offense to such a comparison (although I wish people would lay off Britney).

Strangely enough, politics don’t dominate here with us foreigners. I suppose it’s because everyone’s just trying to get on with their job without doing a song and dance about it. That’s not to say that there aren’t the cliquey NGO crowd and some of the foreign media who think they are so bolshie and down to earth. A bit nauseating really. But the majority are a truly fantastic lot and I know I will never, ever meet such a mix of people again. I even go to church because it seems to mean something here. And I go to salsa classes with a bunch of teachers and nurses when I’m in Dili, although the instructor did tell me to sit down and have a rest at one stage. Someone later described me as resembling a weapon of mass destruction on the dance floor. You know what I’m like when it comes to rhythm.

I kind of lied in that first text message. We do a lot of laughing out loud. I think of those little sullen-faced Year Sevens back in high school and here are these people who have such a great spirit and so little. This guy, we call him Gomez, looks like he swallowed a piano. Big white teeth and a smile that just goes on and on.

Anyway, I better go. Did I hear a rumor that you were thinking of going back to construction? I remember those times we’d hang out in woodwork after school and you’d wear that apron and your goggles. You looked so serious and grown-up, so meticulous with your drawing and the way you’d explain the process and I’d look at your hands and think, Shit, they can do anything. Like Frankie’s Will. Don’t you love the fact that he builds bridges? I mean, who can say that? Really?

Speak soon.

Love,

T

He remembers those words a week later when Stani has two workmen looking at the floorboards, ushering them out of the kitchen, muttering “bloody bastard” over and over again.

“Frankie’s almost convinced Stani to have a live-music gig one night,” Justine explains to Ned and Tom just as she’s leaving for a recital.

“What band?” Tom asks absently, trying to listen to what the workmen are saying.

“Whoever registers for the night. Each band plays four songs. Two covers. Two originals.”

“What about the regular band?” he asks.

“Leave them to us.”

Ned looks at Tom suspiciously. “The heavenly creatures are going to kill the old-timers. You know that, don’t you?”

Stani walks back in, muttering more behind the two guys, one who’s scribbling in his invoice book. Francesca is trailing him.

“Stani, have you given any more —”

“No,” he snaps, following the workmen into the toilet area.

“We’ve almost got him,” she says with conviction.

He comes back into the kitchen with the quote in his hand. Tom reaches over and takes it, reading the amount.

“They’ve got to be joking.”

Francesca looks over his shoulder at the amount and whistles. “It’s a builder’s market, my father says.”

He thinks of Tara’s e-mail. Every word she mutters or writes to him is a reminder of what he lost and what he needs to get back, somehow. But there’s too much to fix up and he doesn’t know how to go about doing it. He pictures himself spending the rest of his days entering data beside Mohsin the Ignorer and being a dishpig, living with Georgie, who can’t make a decision about her own future. Or his father, who could end up in Georgie’s study for the rest of his life.

“Give me money for the materials and I’ll lay them,” he finds himself saying. “They’ve got great timber down on Old Lilyfield Road.”

Stani reacts to Tom’s suggestion in the same way he reacts to Francesca’s. With total disregard.

“He came third in the state for woodwork,” Francesca explains. “We actually had to be proud of him for a whole week. Tough times.”

Stani is doing that thing where he thinks while staring straight at you and Tom’s left almost sweating from the intensity of it.

“Tomorrow. Take the checkbook.”

Ned comes along as well and they drive down in Francesca’s father’s ute minus Francesca, who’s gone to pick up Will Trombal from the airport. At the lumberyard, they trail one of the owners who is pointing to different variations surrounding them.

“What do you reckon?” he asks Ned. “The Kauri or the Baltic?”

Ned nods like he understands what the old guy and Tom are talking about.

“Ned?”

“Were you speaking English?”

But it makes Tom feel normal and the old guy senses his interest and takes him to some brushbox he’s got lying around. For building furniture.

“How much is that worth?” Tom asks, his eyes almost caressing it.

“I’ll have to check,” the guys say. When the sale of the floorboards is finished and they load the timber onto the ute, the old guy points back into the shed where the brushbox is, already walking away so Tom and Ned have no choice but to follow.

“You were salivating,” Ned tells him.

Tom laughs. “My father’s a carpenter. It’s a Jesus thing. You understand?”

Ned points to himself. “Buddhist.”

Inside, they stop in front of the timber again and he wants to lean down and take in its smell.

“I hear your father’s back,” the guy says in a neutral voice.