The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta Read Free Book Online

quick image of his mum when Anabel’s back in possession of the camera and he can’t help but notice those laugh lines around her eyes that seem to be all about age these days and little to do with laughter. In the old days, his mum and Georgie spent most of their time killing themselves laughing at absolutely everything. “You girls are going to wet your pants,” his father would say in his typically dry tone, but most of the time it was Dominic who made them laugh. Tom could do it too. And Joe. They were perfect mimics.
    The film ends with Anabel dancing around the kitchen, playing the trumpet. Tom’s impressed with the speed of her playing and her ability to keep the notes in check. His parents wanted her to play the violin, but the moment Pop Bill showed her Tom Finch’s trumpet, Anabel wasn’t interested in any other instrument. The screen freezes on a kiss that she throws out to the world, but it’s the wedding photo of his parents on Granny’s mantel behind Anabel that he stares at. He magnifies the screen until he sees both their faces.
Shit,
they were young. So young that his mother’s parents flew down from Brisbane to talk Dominic and Jacinta Louise out of “ruining their lives.” But Tom’s mum and dad had already gone and done it at Saint Michael’s with only Georgie and a couple of their best friends in attendance. Six months after the wedding, Tom was born. Nanni Grace and Bill insisted that they move to Albury, but Tom had heard his father say more than once that he would never have been able to look his in-laws in the eyes if Jacinta didn’t finish her degree in politics. So his father dropped out of law to look after Tom, and instead of taking his wife home to his parents, he took her home to his twin sister and they all moved into a cramped two-bedroom fibro in Camperdown and lived off Georgie’s wage as a paralegal while Dominic started fixing people’s furniture.
    His father’s face in the wedding photo freaks Tom out. It’s like looking at himself in the mirror. Worse still, it’s like looking at a photograph of his grandfather, Tom Finch, and he can’t help thinking that when Tom Finch and Dominic were his age, they were fathers. By the time Tom Finch was a year older, he was dead.
    He looks back at the keyboard and begins typing.
    To: [email protected]
    From: [email protected]
    Date: 16 July 2007
    Dear H-anibal,
    How goes it, fugly girl?
    Make sure Agnes of God doesn’t get Mum down, and tell her I’m staying with Georgie and, yes, she has put on weight and will be losing it in about four months.
    Love, the better-looking sibling,
    Tom
    P.S. The Mackee pride goes down the toilet if you let chicks with names like Trixie and Ginger get the better of you.
    He takes the bus home, already bored, which is a worry when it’s only three thirty and the highlight of your day is an e-mail from your little sister. The thought that this will be his timetable for the next couple of months makes him feel as if he’s gagging from lack of air. At least if he was with his flatmates, he could waste the day away and not realize it was even over until it was two in the morning and one of them would point out that the home-shopping show was on.
    The worst part of the day is always walking past the Union hotel. Today Stani, the owner, is out front smoking. Tom could keep walking and forgo the long history his family has with the place, but he can’t. Because Dominic and Joe Mackee drank here. Georgie still does with his parents’ friends. And then there’s the story of his grandparents and this pub. Two best friends traveled from the Burdekin in North Queensland sometime in the 1960s and walked into the Union and fell in love with Grace. Tom Finch was the smarter talker of the two and won first round, marrying her before his name came up in the lottery sending him to Vietnam on a tour of duty. He never returned. The heartbroken, patient one, Bill Mackee, grieved a best friend and