Cosmo Cosmolino by Helen Garner Read Free Book Online Page B

men looked at each other, swung their heads to take in the moving garden, then fixed their eyes again on Raymond. They’re crims, thought Raymond. They’ve been in the nick. The one with hair was dressed in ironed grey trousers and a maroon blazer with gold on the pocket. He must have a job at a racecourse or out the front of a tourist hotel. He wore boots as well but cheap brown ones, hard-looking, though polished.He glanced at his watch. His hands too were tattooed, with bitten nails.
    â€˜Come on, Phil,’ he said to the bald man. ‘The next mob will be on my back at four.’
    The bald man, catching Raymond’s eye, clicked his tongue and jerked his head sideways. ‘Hop up, pal,’ he said. ‘We want to show you something.’
    Raymond got to his feet warily, brushing the seat of his pants.
    â€˜Tsk,’ said the man in the blazer, to himself. ‘People don’t care what they wear to a funeral these days.’ He took a toothpick out of his blazer pocket, jammed it between his back teeth, and clomped away along a narrow path that skirted the chapel’s outer wall. The bald man pushed Raymond lightly between the shoulder blades, and himself trod close behind. A freckled man in a towelling hat passed them and went tramping away across an enormous lawn, wheeling a barrow and whistling with raised eyebrows and cheerful trills. All three men greeted each other in an old-fashioned way, with grimaces and clicks.
    Raymond’s legs were still hollow and shaky; but as the men marched him Indian-style along the pathway, not speaking, moving forward with apparent purpose, he began to relax. Maybe this wouldn’t be too bad. These men, like uncles, had taken him in hand. He turned to glance at the bald one, who winked at him and nodded. It was a public place, after all. What couldgo wrong? Maybe he could drop his guard and walk like this between them, single file. It was not so dangerous. He could slide from one thing to the next, and the next; nothing much would be expected of him, the rest of the day would roll by as even the longest of days do, and by the end of it he would have got a lift somewhere, would have walked somewhere, would find himself somewhere, under somebody’s roof, maybe with people, maybe on his own; yes, all this he could handle. The worst was over. He turned again to the bald man, and almost smiled at him.
    The man in the blazer veered off the path and plunged into the dense strip of hedge that separated it from the building’s side. Between two bouncing bushes of blue flowers he rustled his way, spitting out his toothpick, and with key outstretched unlocked a little wooden door marked Private .He held the springy green branches apart for them with turning thrusts of his shoulders; they joined him, pinned against the wall by whippy shrubbery; he went ahead, and one by one they stooped and stepped through the little door, on to a narrow staircase that led them into the underworld.
    The shock of it.
    Raymond propped on the stair with one leg in mid-air. Above him the door slammed. The bald man coming close on his heels down the ladder would have cannoned into him, but took the strain with his thighs, and Raymond felt, instead of the weight of a heavybody landing against him, merely a dexterous, light brushing. He lurched down the last step.
    Here they had not heard of blood or colour. It was a land made of dust, of chalk, of flour. The walls and floor and ceiling were grey, the air was grey, and as his gaze cleared and crept deeper, he saw that the receding alley of huge ovens was grey, that the workers who moved silently away between them were grey. The only sound was a low, steady roaring.
    â€˜Like it?’ said the man in the blazer. ‘This is where we work.’
    â€˜He runs the place,’ said the bald man. ‘He’s the one who gives the orders.’
    The man in the blazer, flattered, gave a naughty shrug. His hand closed round