The Jaguar and the bicycle

Silas was calm and considered each of the Coroner’s questions carefully. The dead man, Martin, had slipped on the stairs and hit his head. The two of them were drunk. When Silas had told his friend to get up, Martin had not responded.
‘Why did it take so long to call an ambulance?’ the coroner asked.
‘I thought he’d passed out,’ Silas explained. ‘He was pissed.’
When asked how long he and Martin had known one another, Silas couldn’t say.
‘I done a bit a weed Your Honour,’ he said. ‘Me memory’s shot.’
When asked was the relationship between them sexual Silas baulked.
‘Isn’t that my business?’
‘You were the beneficiary of his estate weren’t you?’ the coroner asked.
‘Yeah,’ Silas agreed.
‘Well it’s the business of this court now,’ the coroner said.

Earlier witnesses had said that Martin planned to change his will.
‘Did you know anything of that?’ the coroner asked Silas.
‘Yeah,’ Silas said. ‘He got angry sometimes. Doesn’t everyone?’
The coroner gave him a look.
‘I ask the questions,’ he said. ‘Not you. Now was it because he didn’t approve of things you were doing?’
Silas mumbled something, then said, ‘It was the other way around, Your Honour.’
The Coroner made a note, and reminded Silas that he was on oath.
‘So the under-age boys you brought home were for him?’
‘Yeah,’ Silas said, to a gasp from Martin’s family. ‘He was old. He shoulda stopped.’
‘Did the possibility of disinheritance trouble you?’ the Coroner asked, ‘when you had no assets of your own?’
‘Yeah,’ Silas answered. ‘Wouldn’t it trouble you?’
He leaned on the word ‘trouble’ with sardonic emphasis.
‘But I couldn’t do nothing about it. Could I?’
His answer hung there in the court room, all but answering itself.

After that, the coroner explored Silas’ past, his mother’s boyfriends, the beatings, the sexual approaches he received as a child.
‘You took to the streets when you were thirteen. Is that right?’
‘Yeah,’ Silas said. ‘Til Martin took me in and give me a home.’
‘Albeit at a price?’ the coroner asked.
Silas didn’t answer straight away but after some prompting agreed that he supposed so.
‘And where are you living now?’ the coroner asked.
‘The park, sometimes,’ Silas said.
‘You have no address?’
‘I got a room up on the Terrace,’ he said.
‘Gregory Terrace?’
‘Yeah,’ Silas said.
‘You don’t live in the house you shared with Martin?’
This was a house that was in dispute with Martin’s family.
‘Nah,’ Silas said. ‘Don’t like to be there do I?’

Harry Brand was there as Martin’s lawyer, but he was also there as a friend. He watched Silas as closely as Silas observed him. Harry was a man of certain years, a slender dandy with a gift for making money. He drove expensive cars, ate at the best restaurants and enjoyed a wide circle of friends, Martin once being among them. While the coroner went over the same things again and again, Silas remembered he had seen Harry many times before. He had a mental picture of Harry in the park, offering soup and bread to the homeless. In fact Harry and he had once had a chat. At the time Silas had proposed something more, but Harry had side-stepped him, moving on to the next blanketed form. Silas had excellent recall of events when he chose; it was a hallmark of his illiteracy.

On the final day of the inquest, Silas left his bicycle chained to the rails at the top of Wickham Terrace and walked downhill into the park. He was planning to sleep there that night, in an old rug he’d found in the back of Martin’s laundry cupboard. It smelt of dog and was eaten with moth holes and it made the perfect disguise. Wrapped inside it, Silas was able to see the lighted pathway where Harry usually walked at night. He lay with his eyes almost closed and waited until Harry came close. By then it was about 10 pm. He stretched his arms from inside the blanket and began levering himself into position against the tree, wrapped like a chrysalis in the tube of Martin’s old blanket. Harry squatted on his haunches.
‘Something to drink?’
When Silas turned towards the light, Harry recognised him at once, as Silas had planned.
‘Martin’s friend,’ he said. ‘Silas.’
‘Yeah,’ Silas said. ‘And you was in the court today.’
‘I’m an old friend of Martin’s,’ Harry said. ‘And his lawyer.’
He wiped his hand and then extended it to introduce himself. ‘Harry Brand.’
Silas took the flat dry palm and shook it.
‘Silas,’ he said.
Then Harry did something unexpected. He opened the smaller hamper and inside were china plates and cups, silver spoons and ivory knives, and a cake.
‘Tea?’ he asked, offering a thermos.
‘Uh. Yes,’ Silas said, eyeing the passionfruit sponge.
‘And cak e?’
Silas nodded.
‘My housekeeper baked it this afternoon. Anya.’ Harry said. ‘But I need your help. I can’t eat it all myself.’
‘D’you always bring this stuff?’ Silas asked.
‘I was hoping to come across you,’ Harry said.

They propped themselves against a tree-trunk surrounded by bushes and shrubs. A few men engaged in a bit of blow nearby. Possums and snakes moved in the tree-tops. Some people slept.
‘More?’ Harry asked, lifting the thermos.
‘Yes please,’ Silas said, holding out his cup, remembering the manners Martin had started to teach him. ‘Thank you very much sir.’
‘Please,’ Harry said. ‘Just call me Harry.’
And Harry went home that night none the wiser about Silas.

The inquest had ended but as there was no immediate family, the coroner found that Martin had been free to dispose of his property as he wished. So Silas kept the house that was left him. But he continued his life in the park as though he had nowhere else to sleep. He was interested in Harry. And Harry began to rely on his meetings with the strange young man. The two of them ate and chatted together in the shadows, sometimes for hours.
‘I hope you look forward to our meetings,’ he said to Silas one night, ‘because I do.’
But he never asked Silas anything about his daily life. Harry wasn’t a man who trusted anyone much. He never spoke of Martin.

After these visits Harry often returned to his office to work; occasionally he went home to his apartment further along Wickham Terrace. Some nights Silas amused himself by spying on Harry and this was how he rescued his friend from a beating. They were only kids, rolling a ‘fag’ for a bit of fun and money. But Harry was frail. Even his cries for help were feeble. When Silas saw the attack begin he ran at them with all the energy of his wiry body.
‘Fuck off ya little cunts.’
And ripping a plank from a bench he clubbed heads and elbows, jabbing the kids and their knives away with the skill of a fencing master. His glowering stare was a scary sight. As the smallest of the kids stumbled off, Silas gave him a kick to help him on his way.
‘This man has my personal protection.’
The two ‘p’ sounds pursed his lips outwards like a kiss. Then he began to laugh, exultant after the fight.
‘Mate,’ he said to Harry. ‘That was fun. Stupid little pricks.’
Harry was upright again, dusting himself prissily with his long fingers and picking off the twigs and stones now caught in his clothing. Silas stood behind him and moved close, touching Harry for the first time.
‘Let me help,’ he said, putting his arms around the man’s thin torso.
He began to brush his hands across Harry’s chest from behind, moving them slower downwards to Harry’s hips and further. Under these probing fingertips Harry trembled but he didn’t move.
‘I’ve been attacked before,’ he said. ‘But by men. Not kids.’
Silas turned him around and holding Harry’s face kissed him hard.

Harry didn’t tell Silas his story that night; instead they went back to his apartment and for the first time, Silas saw Harry’s interior world. Everything in the apartment was cared for and old. Lamps glowed peacefully beside fat armchairs. Side tables were polished to a mirror surface and rugs deepened the room with Turkish reds and blues.
‘My housekeeper,’ Harry said. ‘She cooks, cleans and runs everything for me. Her name is Anya.’
‘Yeah,’ Silas said.
‘A Russian émigré,’ Harry explained. He’d gone to the drinks tray and was setting up two glasses with ice cubes. ‘Smokes non-stop. Voice like a smoked cod.’
He imitated her baritone.
‘Mr Brand. I mus goo out for Zobrrrani.’
Silas gazed around. He didn’t understand Harry’s story. But he understood what was in front of him.
‘You really know how to live,’ he said.
Harry laughed.
‘I suppose that’s true,’ he said. ‘Except Anya is a tyrant. Ivana the Terrible.’
‘I’ve never met a Russian,’ Silas said.
‘Well when you meet her you’ll be meeting a true Soviet style Russki. Trusts no-one and hates everyone.’
‘Yeah?’ Silas said without much interest. He leaned back into the depth of his chair and caught a whiff of his own armpits.
‘Phew,’ he said ‘Stinkin the place up. Sorry about the..’ And he indicated his faded t-shirt and worn tracksuit pants.
‘Nonsense,’ Harry said. He smiled. ‘Go to a good barber. Put on a suit and tie. I could take you to Tattersalls.’
It was an entertaining thought. Tattersalls didn’t allow women in Silas wouldn’t be a problem.
‘Now there’s a challenge,’ Harry said. ‘Could I get a rent boy into Tatts?’
‘Is that what you think of me?” Silas asked. He wasn’t offended.
‘No, no,’ Harry said. ‘It was just a scenario that seemed, well, interesting because of your … um …,’ he looked for a polite way to say it, ‘… upbringing.’
‘I was dragged up,’ Silas said humbly. He pronounced it drayged.
Harry poured whiskeys, using the heavy-bottomed crystal glasses that stood alongside the whiskey decanter.
‘Maybe it isn’t too late,’ he said. ‘Take a bath. I’ll find you something better to wear.’
Silas’s shirt had been ripped in the fray. He stripped off, displaying a perfect vee of male torso, the square line of his shoulders tapering into a scoop of waist and long narrow hips. Harry swallowed his drink in one gulp as Silas stepped towards him.

That night Harry dreamed of an attack which had changed his life. In his dream, he followed the path again into the underpass of Breakfast Creek bridge, a rat’s alley reeking of urine and misery. And again as it had during the real event, his heart began to pound with the approach of voices. A group of thugs blocked his way.
‘Come on faggot,’ one of them called, beckoning with both hands, like a coax. In his dream, Harry was transfixed by fear, just as he had in reality. He was near the water and could escape by diving into the blackness. But it was murky. He was terrified. He would surely drown.
A rock caught him in the eye and Harry went down at once. Boots stomped his face, grinding it into the mud and gravel. His ribs were kicked. His groin was booted. Each blow fell on him an instant at a time and throughout it all Harry’s tongue had become an indigestible gristle in his mouth. And then, just as had happened in reality, a sense of intense love and peace came over him and he surrendered himself to that, lying perfectly still in the mud and blood. This numinous moment was something he understood as a rent veil, a glimpse of some other place thing so wonderful that Harry no longer cared what was happening to him.
‘That’s enough,’ a voice said. There was the stinging warmth of urine spraying over his face.
‘Turd packer.’
‘Stinkin faggot.’
‘Let’s get outa here.’
And they were gone.
Harry woke to Silas shaking him.
‘Mate. Mate.’
‘Wha?’
‘You’re having a bad dream.’
‘No. No.’ Harry said, clinging to the intensity of the moment but it was too late; he had left both the fear and the pleasure. His body trembled and Silas took the older man in his arms holding the thin bones with his own strong ones. He became Harry’s comforter and protector, even though Harry knew that Silas was also the kind who could dish out a belting himself, in fact had probably killed his old friend Martin.

Harry’s apartment was the converted top floor of a small hotel. Standing at the peak of Wickham Terrace it was like living in the sky. Birds wheeled past. Thunder storms rolled in from the West. The high winds of the city knocked at the windows like spirits. Silas’ presence there every day was not something Anya enjoyed
‘Lucifer,’ she muttered in Russian when he came near her. ‘Chert!’
Harry had taken charge of Martin’s estate and set up an income stream for Silas. He knew that Silas would fritter away his money until it was all gone. And in the process of thinking about Silas he’d begun to consider his own wishes. He wanted to create a legacy of his work in the parks. To that end he placed the sale of his apartment inside a charitable trust; so that other claims could not be made on his estate. In fact the trust would absorb most of Harry’s assets, although he’d set aside nominated sums for Anya and Silas.

Harry did other things for Silas too. He made him his next of kin. And he began to teach Silas the manners of social eating: how to set a table, what glasses to use for what, how to converse. Harry invited friends around for Silas to practice his skills. Silas’ language was clumsy and he discussed things that were gauche but that just amused Harry’s friends. There was no attempt to alter Silas’ look. He wore leather jackets, skinny jeans, and hand-made boots just like the ones Harry ordered from his Hong Kong boot maker. He combed his hair straight back without a part and kept his sideburns. Harry liked him to maintain his louche appearance. In fact Harry liked driving the two of them around in his expensive car, Silas slouching in the passenger seat, his intense gaze observing the world without expression.

At night Harry continued his ministrations among the city’s homeless, taking Silas with him. Silas knew a lot about the sleeping places of those who live rough. He showed Harry all the little culverts and safe places where homeless women and children might be found. And he steered him clear of areas which were too dangerous. Harry’s experience of violence had added something to his life, but it wasn’t something he sought out.
I been beat up too,’ Silas said. ‘Once it was real bad.’
He showed Harry a broken elbow that hadn’t been reset properly and a mended eye socket. There were scars on his jaw line where his five o’clock shadow wouldn’t grow. Harry suspected his protégée of having been in prison at least once.
‘Now if I fight,’ Silas said, ‘I go in real hard. Cruel the other guy first.’
His eyes gleamed. Knowing Silas was like knowing your much loved Labrador could chase down and dismember a cat.

Anya detested Silas, but that was something that came easily to her. Growing up in a Moscow tenement had made her unforgiving and untrusting. Her father described people as hogs, an expression she had taken to herself. Having the house to herself all day was one of Anya’s pleasures. She loved Harry’s apartment, his music collection and beautiful china, his rugs and rosewood furniture. But Silas loafed around in Harry’s sitting-room listening to the Sex Pistols turned up loud, drowning out Rachmaninov or Prokofiev.

Silas did worse things. He messed up the bathroom and brought home men when he thought Anya had gone for the day. She’d see him coming up the escalators at Central Station with some dissolute character and report it to Harry. Superficially Harry was not bothered by Anya’s disclosures.
‘Silas is free to do what he wants,’ he would say in response.
‘He’s a bit of a rough diamond I know, but we don’t live in a police state. He needs someone to watch over him.’
‘Watch over that one?’ Anya muttered into the sink. ‘Someone needs to watch over Mr Brand.’
It didn’t matter that Silas made coffee for her and carried her shopping. The coffee grains clogged the sink and he dumped the shopping on the floor for her to put away.
One day he really upset her. It wasn’t enough that Silas himself had come off the streets, one lunch time he brought home a street boy who was obviously under-age, smuggling him into the apartment then going to the kitchen to greet Anya with his usual insouciance. She was slicing aubergine for the evening meal. Mr Brand loved them baked, parmigiana style. He was a delicate eater.
‘You take the rest of the day off love,’ Silas said. ‘I’ll get dinner for Mr Brand.’
Silas was dumb but Anya was not. His artless offers to help made her suspicious.
‘Humph,’ Anya said, changing her shoes and picking up her scarf. Her street shoes strapped onto her feet like a ballroom dancer’s. Clearly Silas was up to something.
‘Go on love,’ he insisted. ‘Take the rest of the day off.’
‘Is Mr Brand tell me what to do. Not you.’
Silas put his arm around her waist. ‘He’d want you to.’
So Anya left, but a few minutes later she returned for a shopping trolley she had ‘forgotten’. That was when she heard the voices. What was going on was plain enough. And it was definitely against the law. Mr Brand needed to know what his ‘rough diamond’ was up to. She hurried away to ring from a payphone.
‘Mr Brand. That devil with a young boy,’ she said. ‘Maybe only twelve, thirteen.’
There was a long silence from Harry’s end of the phone. He was furious.
‘Thank you Anya,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to him about it.’
In the car that night, they drove in silence until Harry reached his usual spot on the Terrace. It was raining heavily.
‘Apparently you had a kid with you this afternoon,’ he said.
There was a hard anger in his voice.
‘Yeah.’ Silas was gazing into the rain, not much interested in the conversation.
‘How old was he?’
‘Dunno,’ Silas said. ’15, 16.’
Harry turned from peering out through the windscreen wipers and looked at Silas.
‘That’s not good enough Silas, and you know it,’ he said. ‘If he was fifteen you’ve broken the law.’
It was wrong. And it was disloyal.
‘How old do you reckon I was when Martin took me in?’ Silas asked.
‘What difference does that make?’
‘Didn’t think you’d care anyway.’
Harry considered. Anya was right. She called people hogs for good reason. Harry was a fastidious man who used the highest thread cotton sheets. His bed was a Rosenstengel inherited from his mother. It might be wrong of him to think the way he did, but he found it disgusting to picture Silas and some grubby kid romping around in his inner sanctum.
‘You could ruin my good name around town,’ Harry said. ‘People talk.’
This didn’t make sense to Silas who already went everywhere with Harry and provoked ‘talk’. In fact, they had even been to Tattersalls together.

They got out of the car and Harry opened the boot to collect the food they would carry between them into the park. The rain was heavy. Harry wore a short fishing coat which was for all weathers. Silas was in his hoody. He never complained about the food deliveries no matter how bad the weather.
‘Poor buggers,’ he said, not really to anyone.
Harry turned towards him. He looked grave.
‘You‘ll be joining them soon enough if things don’t change,’ he said. ‘You don’t hide what you do from Anya. And she lets me know.’
Silas stared.
‘Anya dobs on me?’
‘I didn’t get into this game to service paedophiles,’ Harry said. ‘I’m trying to help people who would otherwise have no chance. Just like I helped you.’
He wondered fleetingly if he might be jealous.
‘But it’s OK to get sucked by me?’ Silas said.

They went about their work in silence. It was cold and slippery in the wet conditions and Silas was shivering by the time they trudged back up the hill now with their hampers emptied.
‘What a life,’ he muttered.
‘Yes.’ Harry was terse.
‘Would you really throw me out?’
‘Yes.’ Harry turned to look at Silas. ‘Buggering kids is beyond the pale.’
Silas thought about the sorry men they’d just seen sheltering under bits of plastic or inside pipes or under rocks or cardboard. Of course there was the money he had in trust. But he knew Harry had set up this up so it came to him once a year. And it was not a lot. Silas would get through it in the first month and then be rejoining the fringe dwellers they’d just seen.
‘Aren’t I your next of kin?’
‘At the moment, yes.’
To Silas, this had made Harry his substitute father. Fathers took care of their children apparently, although his own had not. What did it mean if Harry changed this status?
Harry strode up the pathway ahead of Silas, heading for his car.
‘Can I trust you Silas? That’s what I want to know.’
The rain had worn away much of the understratum of pebbles and roots and the slope of the park was slippery. As he walked, head hunched into the high collar of his rain slick, Harry felt Silas lurch into him. It was unexpected. He half fell then began to slide, and with nothing around him for purchase began to tumble down the slope they had just trudged up. Silas stood on the pathway and watched. He watched as Harry’s body gathered mud and leaves and his slick jacket tobogganed him downwards. After finding a safer route Silas walked carefully down the sloep too, to find that Harry was still breathing.

Silas visited Harry’s hospital bed each day, taking Anya’s food. Harry’s prognosis was poor, the doctors said, because of his underlying myelofibrosis. Didn’t Silas know about that? No. All he had known was that Harry was getting on and was sometimes unwell. Well the outlook wasn’t good. There were grave looks around the bedside. One of Harry’s friends went through his papers and explained Silas’s role as next of kin in the event of Harry’s death. This was when Silas learned of Harry’s charitable trust and the sale of assets which would be triggered once his life came to an end. The trust had been settled some time ago it seemed. There was little provision for any person apart from a couple of disbursements to specific people. Silas didn’t know if he was one of them.

Everyone commented on Silas’s devotion to Harry, how he sat at his bedside day after day feeding him. People marvelled that such a ruffian should show such tenderness. And Harry now in a twilit consciousness, was closing in on the moment he had sensed once before, of something wonderful he might soon reach. He was back at the Breakfast Creek Bridge.