Category: Short stories

Marjory brushed away the morning flies that were circling around the crate of apples, her chequered apron swishing against the cold concrete floor, keeping a cotton beat to her low hum, soft and petered, like the light which came in from the car park entrance. She was the first of a few stall owners who had arrived before sunrise. Brian, the book seller was there and Owen, from the hardware stall, both unfolding their tables, thumping and chinking their wares, talking among themselves and tuning in their radios.

Marjory sold fruit under a small shopping centre near the sea. Her and her husband Jim owned twelve acres of land an hour west of the coast in the highlands and her gardens were plentiful in the summers, with gnarled lemons, passionfruit like tennis balls and glowing sweetcorn, all of which she neatly laid out on the table with an elegant slant. There was never enough passionfruit to last the entire day, the customers who came in before seven always selected the biggest and ripest. Every Saturday, Melvin, a restaurateur from across the road, wandered in and chose some eggplants for his vegetarian bake. “The best in the east”, Melvin would say each time, making Marjory blush. A fisherman, who spoke little, and whose name Marjory never remembered bought bananas before setting out to catch the fruits of the sea. All these people kept Marjory in her garden bent over crooked, her fingernails black with soil and at her stall – erect and proud at the Saturday markets until two-thirty in the afternoon.

Her space was just inside the car park where the roof was low and the alleys were narrow. She had always been at the entrance because she had always been one of the first to arrive. People always remembered that they needed fruit and vegetables at the end of their visit to the markets she reasoned, or not having found a home-made gift or a discount decoration for their homes, they justified their outing with a bunch of carrots or a fluffy lettuce. The space to the right of her was forever changing tenancy. For a few months it had been Roy, who sold woollen carpets, blankets and boots, then for a good while after it was Eileen, peddling her home-made cakes, biscuits, jams. Eileen often swapped a chocolate dessert for two kilos of potatoes or a large pumpkin.

Marjory ripped off a piece of bread and chewed, surveying her table with its clumps of colours, smelling its sweet, earthy aromas. She looked in her tin money box to make sure she had enough change to last the morning. Inside were mostly coins, a few small notes, some orange seeds and a fine, brown silt. She shook the box, looking for the gold coins, but there were none.

Outside, the sun was beginning to creep up the road, now animated with morning walkers, dogs on leads and the odd car. A pale, blue Volvo station wagon, pulled into the car park entrance, as it idled, the engine rattled and choked, spitting out black clouds of exhaust smoke which wafted into car park. Marjory spread a tea cloth over her produce but it hardly covered everything and her grapes caught a blast of the dark clouds.

The Volvo went forward and then reversed into the car park so that the car boot was just in front of Marjory’s table. The engine hummed at a higher pitch for a few seconds and then shut down with a rattle. A thin woman with a patchwork jacket and a shaggy mass of yellow hair popped out of the car. “Hello, I’m Sue,” she said.

Marjory raised her eyebrows.

“I’m in number three for a few weeks,” Sue said as she opened the rear door and began pulling boxes out of the car. “Got all these boxes to unpack. Yes, there’s a table. Did I bring my chair? Hey, those apples look good there! Save me a couple for lunch.”

“Whatcha sellin’?”

“Fruit-eze.”

“Frooties?”

“No, Fruit-eze. It’s powdered vitamin supplements. They’re imported from the States where they’re all the rage, has the diet circuit doing cartwheels. There’s one for everyone, mums, athletes, teens, elderly people and it comes in all sorts of flavours: banana, cherry, apple, rockmelon you name it; there’s even kiwi fruit. Would you believe it? Kiwi fruit! And it’s made from real fruit. I’ve already sold a heap down in Melbourne but I think it’s going to be a hit here too. Now that one was banana, oh yes, kiwi fruit, here it is – see the little picture of the running kiwi fruit? I think it’s so cute.”

Marjory screwed her face and put her hands against her wide hips. She stared as Sue struggled with a long table. Marjory had never had any problem erecting her table – Jim had made it especially for her from pine wood and metal hinges, which, thanks to Jim’s constant vigilance, assembled and collapsed silently with fresh grease every week. Sue’s tables on the other hand looked as if someone had attached four pool cues to a door.

Sue dropped the table and it hit the concrete floor with a sharp clap. “You’d think I’d be used to it by now,” she said and continued to work, singing successive choruses of ‘tsk tsks’ and exasperated sighs. She draped a white cloth over the table and arranged small glossy signs at each corner. The signs had the words ‘FRUIT-EZE’ printed across the top, above a cartoon image of an running man carrying a fruit basket. Sue stacked tins of Fruit-eze and arranged pastel coloured leaflets in front of them. “That looks just wonderful then,” she said and began singing ‘What a wonderful world’ in a growling Louis Armstrong voice.

As Sue trumpeted beside her, Marjory restacked the bananas and made sure that all the pieces of ripped cardboard had the correct prices and were sitting nicely on top of their respective piles of produce. Then she recalibrated her set of scales and weighed a couple of avocados she guessed to be about a kilo. The arrow bobbed up and down and then rested at nine hundred and seventy eight grams. Satisfied that everything was ready, Marjory sat on the edge of her picnic chair, rubbing her hands on her apron, waiting.

By six-thirty the market was yawning as stalls began to multiply and interested buyers drifted in from the street. Melvin, the restaurateur, came in looking tired and blurry-eyed. He bought four eggplants and a sweet potato and then left, mumbling something about Irish people and wine. He didn’t compliment Marjory’s eggplants. Marjory checked the others to see if they had blemishes or were too small. The fisherman didn’t come for his bananas but three tourists ambled in and bought two each. Marjory had not taken many bananas with her to the markets because, for the third time in two years, the trees on her farm were infested with fruit flies. Marjory didn’t like to use spray on the trees, but there had been no alternative. It was a pity, she thought, because bananas were always the best sellers.

A women of about forty walked through and paused at Sue’s table. She picked up a leaflet.

“Good morning!” Sue tanned face and yellow hair burst forward like an exploding sun flower. “If you’ve ever tried to diet and failed miserably, I know I have, or just looking to complete a balanced diet without the calories then I really recommend that you have a look at Fruit-eze.”

The woman smiled and nodded for Sue to continue. Marjory tried to appear disinterested and looked out onto the street. She coughed and edged closer Sue’s table, one hand over her mouth, the other on her hips.

“It’s got all the goodness of real fruit and all the flavour, I might add. Do you like fruit? Good. Well you’ll love Fruit-eze. It’s got twice the vitamins of real fruit and lasts up to three years in the pantry. You can take it anywhere too! No more rotten apples! If you just want a moderate intake of nutrients, try the rockmelon variety – it’s one of my favourites, not too sweet…”

Sue rummaged around in one of the boxes from which she produced an orange and white tin. She held it up high like a trophy. “For just thirty dollars, I’ll throw in a banana starter kit too.”

“No, thanks,” the woman said and left.

Marjory wiped down her apron and smiled. It was getting warm and the whirring engines of ice cream trucks on the footpath outside indicated that the day’s markets had awoken. The plant sellers had erected a temporary jungle at the mouth of the car park and the fresh smell of herbs began to swim around the market floor, joining the scented pool of donuts and saw dust.

Sue was wiping down a gigantic stainless steel milkshake maker with twin blenders. She smiled at Marjory.

“You make it like a milkshake,” she said. “You just have to add water and maybe some ice and then you stir it up! Some people even put ice cream in it! I mean, you go on a diet for a reason don’t you? It’s the athletes who can afford to do that I think, but I’ve heard that some mothers keep drinking Fruit-eze after pregnancy – they’re addicted to it! Are there any power points near here?”

“You got power up there – cuts off at two o’clock. And the taps are round back near the newsagent’s,” Marjory said and moved around some eggplants that had fallen on their sides.

“Thanks! Do you want any? Can you keep an eye on my stuff while I’m gone?”

Marjory waited until Sue had walked some way and then shuffled over to look at the multi-coloured tins. She picked up one called ‘Bouncing Berry’. “Flavour agent D89, non-crystallising solution, beta-Gluconates, Gum-Arabic…” Marjory turned her up nose. She didn’t know a lot about the new trends in health; she’d seen infomercials about intestinal cleansing diets and machines that helped you lose weight while watching television, but could never understand why people chose to eat things, the origins of which they knew little. She lifted the plastic lid and sniffed.

“Excuse me.”

Marjory fumbled and dropped the tin. It hit the concrete with a clang and exploded in a cloud of blue powder.

“Oh, sorry about that. I didn’t mean to startle you,” said the man. He looked about sixty and wore a blue track suit. An Alsatian puppy was running in circles around his ankles tied to the end of a red leash.

“Oh no, you-“

“I was hoping to try out some of this stuff; a friend of mine said it was quite good.”

“Well, I,- ”

“The banana I think, yes, that was it. The banana. I think I’d like to try that one.”

The dog yapped at the man’s feet. “Settle down, Ginger,” he said.

“I’ll just clean up.” Marjory bent over and picked up the empty tin. With her tea cloth, she began sweeping up the dry powder. Clouds of grey dust rose from the ground with every pass.

“You don’t mind if I take a look at some of these do you?”

“Uh, no,” Marjory said from under the table. The man went to each variety and read the contents, um-ming and ah-ing. From under the table, Marjory could see the Alsatian pup, nosing at the man’s black leather shoes: they had polished gold insignias. Marjory was the first to admit that, with her knitted striped jumper and rotten joggers, her sense of fashion was questionable, but she had rarely seen anyone wearing a blue cotton track suit with designer shoes. She got to her feet and put the re-filled tin of Bouncing Berry back on the shelf.

“Um, never mind about the banana,” the man said, putting back a tin of Cherry Chaser. “I might come back later. Will you be here?”

“Yes, but-“

“Goodbye!” And with that he darted out of the car park dragging Ginger behind him.

Marjory looked up and saw Sue’s yellow hair bouncing up the alley; she quickly went back to her stall and began rearranging potatoes.

“Thanks for that,” she said. “Anyone come by?”

“No, no.”

“Oh well, early days yet! I met the nicest man – Brian his name was – he was selling books. He gave me this vegetarian cookbook to read for the day. What great people you’ve got around here. Nothing like back home in the city. A girl could fall in love with a relaxed place like this but it’s a pity I’ve got to go north tomorrow.”

The day wore on and the sun crept its way into the car park. Groups of children walked passed the entrance carrying surfboards and smoking cigarettes. Marjory had not sold much that morning and was irritated when she looked down at her tired-looking tomatoes and browning bananas and then at Sue, who was chattering at the passing crowds with her permanent smile and high-pitched voice. And they came and they bought. From the corner of her eye, Marjory could see Sue’s money belt getting thicker while her tin box laid barely untouched beneath her chair.

“What about you sell me some of those great looking apples?” Sue asked Marjory around noon. “They are just crying out to be eaten. How much? A dollar? Great!”

Sue took the apples away and washed them in a bucket of water. As she crunched on her first apple, a siren wailed. Outside, people’s heads turned towards the road but Sue and Marjory couldn’t see what was going on. “Can you see? What is it?” Sue said just as a police car swerved in from the road and screeched to a halt at the entrance. Two burly constables trooped out from the rear doors. The front passenger door flew open knocking over one of the plant seller’s ferns and out stepped another. This one pointed at Marjory – it was the man she had seen in the blue track suit. Marjory’s heart raced and she stepped back, knocking her chair to the ground.

“That’s her,” he said. “She’s the one whose been selling stolen goods. The vehicle matches the description.”

“So we’ve finally got you, eh?” said the Senior Constable. “To be honest you look a little different to the description. Just goes to show that anyone’s capable of hijacking a truck and ripping off the driver. And I see you’ve made quite a little business out of it.”

“I… I… I just sell fruit,” Marjory blinked. “It was her. It was her! Look there she goes!” Sue had run off down the alley, bumping into market-goers, squealing “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!”. She crashed over a plastic bin filled with empty cans and napkins hitting the floor hands-first. Someone tried to help her but she thrust them back. As she did, a burst of yellow flashed into the air like a fire. Sue’s shaggy wig had flipped over her head and landed in a crumpled heap on the concrete, was now covered with a mixture of cordial, juice and soup from the fallen bin. The police gave chase, but Sue, now brown and scruffy, leapt through a hole in the throng of shoppers and disappeared into the hum of the day’s market. Marjory watched the police run off and then looked down at Sue’s wig. Its sandy curls were straightening out in the dregs of the morning’s market as it edged slowly towards the iron bars and into the drain hole.

A shining four-wheel drive hurtled down the coastline of northern New South Wales. Past the summer chorus of cicadas it moved, past the high shoulders and lines of deep blue and down into the still heat of shallow valleys. The driver tapped his fingers on the leather steering wheel as the car soared over potholes.

“As soon as you can, don’t rush” his mother had said, offering the cautionary tale of how Aunty Beth had fallen off the end of the Earth in her mini-van. As soon as he could it would be then, all the way on a Tuesday morning with a yawn and two aspirins and the smell of salt reaching into the back of his mind.

He was committed this time. The last few years in his city apartment had passed without so much as a ripple; Martin had come to stay a few times, even his parents had learned to use email so there was contact, but it was never as close as it once was. He had left and that was it. And now he was riding the wave back to where questions and confrontations awaited him.

Hunter had grown up the son of a drunk and was thankful for the escape that adulthood had given him. His money had paid for the erasure of childhood confusions and impossible interpretations of wild language and projectiles in his parents’ living room – stories that steamed through the rafters of a small town and out into the Pacific Ocean. But he had always been a good boy they had said; him and that good looking brother of his, they’ll be right, they’d said.

“Yeah, I’ll be right,” Hunter thought as he rode the perforated ribbon into the brick universe, flanked by a reception of dishevelled wheelie bins.

He mounted the concrete gutter and edged his machine into the shade. A curtain parted and the pale face of his mother appeared for a second and then faded into the darkness.

Hunter’s mother smelled exactly like he remembered – a mixture of dough and musk. She cried and laid her small forehead on his breast. He stroked her hair and toyed with the wooden hairpin she had bought in Polynesia.

“Where’s Martin?”

“He went out, down to the beach. Down to the beach, I think. Oh, Hunter! It’s been so hard on him, my poor darling. He and your father-”

“I know, Mum,” Hunter said and pulled a mobile phone from his back pocket before sinking into the weathered, floral couch of the living room. He began sweeping the cushions with his hands, lightly, like he was touching the cover of an ancient book. Grains of sand sprinkled off the edge onto the floor and onto a pile of photo albums.

“So, Martin’s arranging the funeral?”

“Yes,” Mrs Morrisey sniffed, pulling a handkerchief from inside the cuff of her shirt. “You know, Hunter, it all happened so suddenly, the impact of that stroke took five seconds to kill your father, but it’s taking longer to get at me. I don’t know how to feel, Hunter, do you? Twenty-nine years, Hunter, nearly as old as you, your father and I. He was damned I think, a man damned. Look, I found these old photo albums….”

“And the rest of the family? Uncle Robert and Thelly? How are they all getting here?”

His mother gazed at the photos.

“Perhaps I can call Trent, a friend from work, we studied together. Studied law,” Hunter pursued. “I don’t trust that solicitor of his. You know he’s dodgy.”

Photos old and blurry.

“And what about his shares?”

“Ah? Let’s not worry about that now, Hunter, ok?” Mrs Morrisey breathed out the words.

Hunter swallowed hard. He had cried when his mother called with the news of his father’s death. She had described over the phone how his father had twisted and wheezed as the stroke laid him down on the main street of his home town. Hunter had cried at work and wiped his wet eyes with a red, coarse tie in front of the entire staff. Now he felt that if he were to betray his feelings in front of his mother, this lady who was shaking, who used to shake at the sight of a dirty kitchen and publicly bemoan her weekly menthol cigarette, he would feel more ashamed than ever.

The kettle clicked. Mrs Morrisey mother scurried off into the kitchen.

  *          *          *

Andrew Morrisey’s absence moved around the house like a ghost – whenever Hunter went to fetch a beer from the rumpus room bar or when his brother smiled and the family dimples lit up his cheeks. The walls sighed and Hunter half expected his father to burst in, golf clubs over his arm, growling in alcoholic appreciation. But the house kept its secret; which suited them all. While in the town of local men and women and dogs, beers had been raised with bowed heads and the whispers metered off behind private doors.

The phone rang.

“Hello, ah, yes, Martin, is it?”

“No, Hunter.”

“Oh, Hunter. Back from Brisbane? That’s nice. Nice town Brisbane.”

“Who’s this?”

“Oh, sorry. Jack. Jack Oldfield. An old friend of Trish’s. Is your Mum in?”

“No.”

“Out is she? Down at the shops perhaps, busy downtown today. Yes, well just let her know I called – I hope she’s doing all right. I, ah, yes, well, nice talking with you.”

Hunter left the phone on the table and sat down to finish his coffee.

Martin fell through the door wearing only his wet suit and swished over the kitchen tiles. Hunched shoulders slurped down a litre of water, heaving and cracking in osmotic excitement.

“Ahhhhhh,” he licked. “Surf’s shit hot today.”

“Someone called.”

“Let me guess, Jack?”

“Yeah, who’s he?”

“Mum’s boyfriend or something.”

“Bullshit.”

“The guy’s been hanging around for ages, think he was Mum’s bridge partner or some shit.”

“Dad’s just died for fuck’s sake. How long’s this been going on?”

“I dunno. Mum doesn’t know I know. Just found out really.”

“Well, didn’t you say anything? Martin-”

“Hey, don’t blame me! What was I going to say? Can’t say anything now, she’s too upset.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Well, that’s the thing. I haven’t got any proof. He’s been over here a few times and he’s been calling, saying he’s got to talk to Mum about the bridge club, spinning some crap like that. And Mum gets all shy and takes the phone into her room, like she doesn’t want me to hear or something. I know it’s something. But he knows about you, always asking, ‘how’s your brother going?’ and ‘how’s the big businessman doing in the city?’. Sounds like an arsehole. Even though Dad was shit-faced half the time, doesn’t mean anything – Mum’s still upset and she doesn’t need guys like Oldfield hanging around for scraps.”

“I don’t want him anyway near this place while I’m here. Not before the funeral, not even at the funeral. I don’t care who he is, ok?”

“Ok, ok. Don’t lose it. But you’d better tell Mum, yeah?”

“Where is she anyway?”

“Dunno, playing cards I suppose.”

Hunter kicked away from the table. “I’m going for a drive.”

  *          *          *

It was wider back then, but creeping lawns and suburban competition had smoothed over the strip of tar that led into town. The shortcut through the backstreet had remained, as had the old A-frame house where Hunter had had his first taste of passion with Greta Simpson. A rusted Kombi out the front told him that the Simpsons had abandoned the house long ago, but he sped up past the house anyway in case the sharp eyes of old Mr Simpson were still lurking behind the balcony window. Mr Simpson had known about the party, that much was sure, and had grounded Greta for one whole month. But Hunter only suspected that he had discovered the blood on the bed, the used condom and the shame of his daughter. The flush of memory made him shift in his seat, and he pushed it away with the speed of his vehicle. And as he pressed the pedal, the road remembered and, just as it had done more than fifteen years ago, it shot him like a catapult into the main street of town.

There had been a fight in the pub the night before. The carpet was wet and covered with broken glass. A small man with a plastic cap and hardend potbelly sat on the end of the bar and crunched on a cigarette butt. With each roll of his jaw he seemed to masticate the history of the town: the drinking partners, the games and gossip.

“You know, m’boy, yer old man loved a few, that’s true, but he was a good man and a good mate,” Max said, almost gagging on the word. “Sorry to see him pass on.”

Hunter took his beer slow and waited for Max to recover.

“Yip, I’ll tell ya, he had something in yer mother too. Nice woman yer Mum. Heart of gold, what, with her charities. A woman in charity feeds the souls of a thousand men. How is she by the way? Must be hard on yers all. Bad way to go. Right on the middle of the bloody street, in front of everyone, like a sack o’ shit.”

Max raised a blood-shot eye to the ceiling, muttering to the heavens and the dry wood and cobwebs.

“She put up with a lot of shit, you know, Max. Dad coming home pissed all the time. That is if he ever came home. You should bloody well know.”

“What, yer saying it’s all my fault, are ya? I’ll tell ya this, Andy might have got on it pretty damn hard, harder than most yer might say, but he never said a bad word about none of yers. Loved yers, more than anything he did.” Max paused and wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and nodded his head as if it were causing him great pain. “Yip, especially you, m’boy, despite all that shit floatin’ around. Those were his own words I tell ya, plain as that. Faithful. Never looked twice at a bird. And well, yer mother, God bless her, running about town like that, with those fuckin’ ponces-“

“What shit floating round?”

“Load of cod’s wallop. Of course yer a Morrisey! Yer Dad knew it and so do I.”

Hunter turned away.

“Sorry about that, son. I said sorry, hey? Look, yer old man’s passed away, that stuff doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Mum never cheated on Dad. What the hell would you know anyway?”

“I’ve known yer Mum and Dad for a long time, got a lot of respect for the Morrisey’s I have, the whole friggin’ lot of yers. If it wasn’t fer yer Dad, well, son, I probably wouldn’t be here.” Max replaced the chewed cigarette butt with a fresh one. “Put me up some nights, lent me a few bob here and there. Youse were pretty well off, yer know, with that council job of Andy’s. Good man considering. Yip. And, well, your Mum and I never got on much, but you know I respect her and all. I just seemed to rub her the wrong way. But God damnit, yer had a family, more than I ever had.”

Max rubbed his unshaven chin. His face, scrawny and sickly under the artificial lights, screwed up as if he were calculating a sum in his head. Hunter remembered Max’s face from when he was young, before his mother had banned him from the family home, when he and his father would curse the sky, vomit in the back garden and fill the house with the stench of uncertainty. At their apogee, the world seemed to Hunter like a rabid place and he small and defenceless. He thought of the time when Max was holding Martin above his shoulders in a drunken game of ferris wheel. They had both fallen backwards onto one of his mother’s earthenware pots, leaving Martin with a gaping hole in his calf.

“By God, you never found out, did ya? Christ, it was all over the bloody wall, yer mother and that prick. Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Jack Oldfield? Drives that red cortina?”

“No.”

“I can’t bloody believe it. I’m sorry to be the one to break to yer, mate. He’s an accountant or some bloody thing. He’s a dickhead if yer ask me. Maybe it was the money. He’s got plenty of it you know, and tight – like a fish’s arse. But not with yer Mum, I should hope.”

“She didn’t say anything.”

“That’s normal, son. Why would she? An’ yer father was too ashamed to do anything, poor bloke – what, with all the talk goin’ about. It were you kids that he cared about. Yip. Might have taken it out on her, but he never left her side, never stopped providing for you, God damnit.”

“This is such utter crap, Max.”

“Yip, you knows best, mate. I’m only telling you what I hear, okay? There’s some nasty rumours goin’ around, and fer ya father’s sake, don’t you believe none of the shit those people come up with. You are who you are – son of Andy Morrisey, a local legend.”

 *          *          *

Trish Morrisey sat on the couch with her legs together, biting her lip. She blew on an empty cup of tea, half smiling.

“Who’s Jack Oldfield?” Hunter asked.

Trisha pursed her lips and leant back into the lounge.

“Mum, it’s not a secret anymore. Don’t treat me like an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot, darling. He’s a close friend. That’s all. From bridge. That’s all.”

“How close?”

“He’s just a friend, Hunter. Someone who’s helped me through the times when your father couldn’t. You remember those times?”

“That’s not what ol’ Max had to say. “

“And you’d believe that old drunk, would you? Couldn’t string a coherent thought together if one was given to him on a rosary. I can’t believe you talked to him. I told you stay away from him, what, after your brother. He played his part that Max. That’s what years on the grog does to you.”

“Mum, it’s okay, I just want to know.”

“No!” Trisha put her hand to her mouth. “Just let your father have this time,” she whispered. “This one time at his death. The cousins, your Aunty Robert, Thelly, they’re all here and want to pay their respects, can’t you just do that too?”

“And then what, it’s over?”

“What’s over?”

“You know what I mean!”

“Please… Hunter.”

“What’s wrong, are you ashamed?”

“Yes, I’m ashamed! Is that what you want me to say? I’m ashamed because I really wanted to leave. Because of your father mainly, but I was so close. So close to leaving you all. Oh!”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t,” Trish sighed and her shoulders fell and she put her head in her hands. “Jack convinced me to stay, for your sake. For Martin’s sake.”

“So you admit having an affair with this guy?”

“I shouldn’t have to justify it to you!”

“Why did we never find out, Mum? What’s the big secret? For fuck’s sake, what is the deal with all the shit that went on? You didn’t think we could handle it, did you?”

“Your father loved you, Hunter, both of you, just as much-”

“What do you mean? Just as much as if I were his own son? “

“No, I didn’t mean-”

“Tell me!”

“Please don’t shout Hunter, sit down now, come on, just sit down please!”

Hunter reeled. His hands scraped across his scalp as he regurgitated the words he was trying to swallow. In his mind a tiny beep sounded. It grew louder and louder and filled the room. Hunter took his mobile phone from his back pocket and looked at it. He moved through the house and into the kitchen before answering. When he returned to the living room, Mrs Morissey was lying on the couch with the empty teacup resting on her stomach.

“That was Martin. The head stone’s ready to be picked up.”

“Good.”

“I’ll take my car.” Hunter stopped short of giving his mother a goodbye kiss and backed away. Mrs Morissey turned her face into the pillow.

Hunter was at the door when he heard a whimper.

“Hunter?”

“Yes?”

“What did they write on it?”

“Andrew Morrisey – loving husband and dedicated father of two sons.”

Mrs Morrisey turned to face her son and they both curled their thin lips. Hunter looked up at the clock on the wall.

“You’d better go then.”

“Yeah,” Hunter said and flexed like a spring before bouncing out the door.