‘Frank!’ called Bob, pitching the parcel at him like a football. He caught it, letting it swing a little behind his body, taking it deep. ‘An invitation for you. From the wife. She sends you this chook to sweeten the deal — hasn’t been plucked. If you’d rather spend Christmas with a plucked and gutted bird you’d better give that back an’ come an’ stay with us the holiday.’
The package was still warm and he had the feeling the chook had been killed just before Bob left home as an afterthought for a good joke. He looked down at the bundle, black and white and red all over.
‘Well?’ demanded Bob.
‘Love to.’ Christmas had not occurred to him. ‘Thanks.’
‘Right,’ said Bob, turning towards the car. ‘You’d better chuck ol’ Jozé back to me then.’ He put his arms out ready to catch. Frank threw bleeding Jozé back high and tall, and the chook landed in Bob’s arms. He clambered back inside the cab, putting the newspaper bird on the passenger seat, ignoring the blood that already stained the seat cover.
‘I’m telling you this for your own good — I got a kid who’s seven and won’t put up with visitors without presents.’ He started the engine.
As he began to back away Frank called, ‘What time should I come round?’
‘Come round early — we open presents after breakfast.’
When the van kicked up dust and noise, and Bob’s arm lazed out of the window, his usual long still wave, Frank shouted after him, ‘Hey! Hey! What day is it?’ but Bob didn’t hear.
Down at Crazy Jack’s Toy Basement he was faced with a wall of stuffed animals, a wall of dolls and a wall of things in khaki, an army made of plastic. Inspecting the firing mechanism on a civil-war cannon, he put his hand up to his face and said loudly, ‘Buggeration.’ When he took his hand away a small girl was watching, and he smiled and looked around hoping her mother hadn’t heard. The kid picked up a stuffed dragon and backed away from him like she was dealing with a hostage situation. He smiled wider to show that he was friendly, and the girl turned on her heel and ran away down the next aisle.
He’d forgotten to ask if the Haydons’ kid was a boy or girl. What kind of an arsehole was he anyway? Choosing was hard enough — and there didn’t seem to be much in the way of a neutral toy. He stepped back from the dolls with bendable legs and breathed through his fingers.
A shop assistant with pink lip gloss to match her pink pinafore came over. ‘Can I help?’
‘I have to buy something for a seven-year-old.’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘Not sure yet.’
She looked at him strangely, but smiled. ‘Well, why don’t you pick a boy’s toy and a girl’s toy, so when you make up your mind which one the kid is you can give it the appropriate gift.’
He liked her use of the word appropriate and saw that her hair was thick and a strand curled at her throat. ‘That’s a good idea — you think you could help me pick out something for the girl — I like this cannon if it’s a boy.’
She eyed the cannon in his hand. ‘That’s kind of crappy, don’t you think?’
He looked down at the toy. ‘I suppose it is.’
‘How about this?’ She took down some sort of disc that shot out of a bow-type attachment. ‘It whistles as it flies.’
‘Does it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well, I’d better have it then.’
The badge on the girl’s rounded front read ‘My Name Is Leonie’, with a happy face at the end of it. My Name Is Leonie saw him looking at her badge and puffed out her chest. Softening her voice and picking up a pornographic-looking Barbie doll she said, ‘And this is the kind of thing that little girls like.’ She handed it to Frank with a glossy smile and walked saucily back down the aisle to the till.
He parked by the bay with the idea that he might read the paper in some cool spot, perhaps with the rocks as shade. There was no breath off the water as he ankled about in the shallows, absently scanning the paper. No chance of rain for Christmas Day.
LOCAL SWIMMER STILL MISSING
Come home for Christmas, pleads missing girl’s father. Local
girl and Home Counties swimmer Joyce Mackelly has been
missing since Tuesday, 19 November. Joyce, fifteen, left her
weekend job at the Blue Wren coffee shop in Mclean at 5.30
and was last seen hitch-hiking between Camel Bay and
Rayners Island.
Poor bastard.
He turned the page and as he did a leaf slipped out and fell into the water. A grained photograph turned black in a wave and he scooped it up and put the pulp back between the pages of the newspaper, which he balled up. He hadn’t really wanted to know anyway.
There had been nothing that he could even think of buying Bob and Vicky in town. Drink was the get-out clause; he could take them champagne or a crate of beer. It was stale, going to spend Christmas with this family who had taken him on like an old friend even with him acting mad as a coot. He should probably take some as well as a present. As he tumbled these thoughts over, he waded further out, so that the water seeped into his shorts and even though it was not particularly cool, it was better than nothing, and he sat down in the sea, the newspaper a wet rock in his fist. The waves were small and water swilled round his neck. Something surfaced a little way away, a lazy flop in the water. Mullet probably, this close to the river mouth. He kept his eyes on the spot and saw it surface again over to the right this time. A flash of belly. A biggish fish. It splashed again and at the same time something bumped his calf, and he nearly shot out of the water. Making the sound of a kicked dog, he saw that it was not a shark — he was sitting in a shoal and a blunt-headed mullet was nosing at the back of his knee. The tameness of the fish, the water thick with them and their oil-slicked backs and tin-can bellies chopped the waves. A flock of gulls appeared from behind the rocks and dived again and again, noisy white streamers into the torn-up water.
Must be a school of prawns going around kicking up mud, he thought, hands on hips, watching the spectacle. Next time he was in town he would pick up a net. The shoal moved to his left in front of the bream hole, where he saw the shells of untouched oysters, hundreds of them. He felt the sun cutting off the water and hitting his cheeks, and he waded over, feeling for his knife in his back pocket. Nothing said Christmas like a hatful of wet shells.
‘Ta, Mum,’ he said out loud as he gouged at the rocks.
It was too hot to sleep the night before Christmas and Frank lay on top of his sheet listening to a frogmouth bark and hiss in the banana tree. My Name Is Leonie and a smiley face. My Name Is Leonie’s tongue wetted her bottom lip, which was glitter-pink and thick with plastic colour. She was something between a doll and a person; and less and less a person, the buttons on her pinafore stretched over her breasts. She had a long neck and the sound of her rucking up her pinafore rustled in the cane and came right into the room. She went on for miles, the gingham sliding over her acres of white thigh. She put a finger in her mouth. She put a finger in her knickers. She didn’t wear knickers — no, she did, and she took them off slowly, again and again, her dress unbuttoned from the top and showed her pineapple-sized breasts. She held her vulva open and licked her pink lips. She sucked on a toy cannon as if it were a lolly stick.
The frogmouth barked.
She slipped the cannon inside and moaned in time with the banana tree. Her tits her snatch her lips.
He lay still in the still night and thought for a second he could smell gasoline. The frogmouth barked. A wind blew and he put the heels of his hands over his eyes and pressed until they ached.