The Country of Our Dreams. Mary O'Connell
and ear stuck painfully under Lolly’s arm, with Xavier behind, stuck somehow between his legs. Xavier was giggling from the tension. There was a cracking sound from their father’s hand, and Xavier went limp. Taking it very seriously now.
They heard their father get in the front seat. The car slumped underneath his weight, the door shut quietly at the same time as the yellow light went out. Silence, deadly, just the hard breathing of their father, and his muttering. ‘That woman.’ It was his name for their mother.
In time to come, pondering his father’s lost voice, Vianney wondered if any of it had ever been said with humour. A humour inaudible to young straining ears. ‘You are too hard on them,’ their mother sometimes protested. But Sean Ryan’s toughness was what they believed in. They had worshipped their father.
In later years Xavier and Vianney had often used the phrase amongst themselves when speaking of Kate. That woman. A guilty pleasure, a secret outburst of the sons, against her formidable powers. But Lolly, now under the thumb of Claudia, felt uncomfortable about it, and Hilary laughed and said the phrase made her think of Monica Lewinsky.
But the way his father had used the phrase that night, it was no joke. It was rage. Implacable.
With the brakes released, the old car started rolling quietly down the stony drive, away from the farmhouse. Then their father turned the ignition key and for once, as if it too was frightened of him, the car started up without protest. It rattled over the cattle grid and soon they were out on the metal road, bumping along. The boys’ curled bodies shook up and down in the back, seemingly half a beat behind the car’s own rhythms, like mis-matched dance partners. The tension in the car, the father’s fierce mood, his low angry muttering in Irish, kept even Xavier silent.
Finally they hit the tarsealed road, and the bone shattering rocking ceased. Now the car sped up, and bands of yellow light streaked through the car. They were on the old highway. To where?
They were travelling a long time, it seemed, before Vianney risked a look. He elbowed Lolly as he lifted himself up to peer out of the car’s left side window. Lolly gave him a fierce protesting look but kept his silence. The car was pouring through the night, the world outside all a blur. Roadside earthen banks flashed unrecognisably past. He didn’t know where they were.
The car lurched suddenly to the right, as Sean made a swift turn across the main road. Vianney crashed back down painfully and Xavier let out a yelp.
‘Shut up you cunt.’ Sean’s voice was vicious.
Vianney saw Lolly’s eyes widen at the evil word. Clearly it was not time yet to joke with their father.
Vianney let Lolly put his arms around him; it was some form of buffering against the wildly rocking car. Their father seemed to have driven onto another bone-shattering dirt road without once slowing down. Xavier was beginning to whimper now; Vianney tried to reach him to bring him into their crooked embrace.
It was all a blur from then on – his trying to reach and comfort Xavier, lying somewhere down between his legs – the car bucking and protesting, their father’s wild furious curses, and then the inevitable. A horrific sound of metal screeching like a banshee and the car shooting off the road as it rolled.
‘Jesus Mary and fucking Joseph.’
Those were the last words they ever heard their father say.
Chapter 5 - The dancing of the Otherworld
‘Why the urgency?’ Hilary was brave enough to ask the next time. It was only a birthday party after all.
‘It’s not about the party!’ Claudia responded immediately to the unspoken criticism. ‘Loyola is concerned about Xavier’s prolonged absence from family communications. Very concerned.’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘But at this stage he does not wish to bring in the police.’
Oh Christ. Hilary could practically hear the sirens going off. Bloody Lolly. Bloody Xavier.
‘Please Hilary, when Vianney comes over to visit Loyola this evening, please just go and have a search on his desk. I’ll text you when he comes and when he leaves.’
And then she hung up, business done. Claudia always expected her orders to be carried out. Lucky Claudia.
Such a drama. One day the police may find Xavier dead and then we can all stop worrying, Hilary often thought of saying. Did not. The mother had tried to control him, Vianney said, from Day One. Maybe she feared the fate of Aquinas. But it couldn’t have been just Kate who had stunted his growth. Maybe the doting protective elder brothers had also not allowed the youngest son to grow up?
When Hilary had first been introduced to the Ryans, Xavier had struck her as very cute, shorter than Vianney, just as clever – funnier perhaps. He had flirted outrageously with her. She had had to step back from a very powerful call. To what? To danger.
Yet even then Xavier had begun to fray, just a little, at the edges. He had lost his job some time soon after. In those days the family believed his story of a vicious power mad boss. Later they no longer believed any of the stories.
And as for the girlfriends, the series of gorgeous young women Xavier brought out with him over the years, Siena called them The Dolls. ‘Women with issues’. Isshooos, as Siena mocked. Larissa had a terrible mother. Genevieve had been thrown out by her violent stepfather. Gloria had been a sex worker, maybe still was. ‘I think they make their names up,’ Siena huffed. ‘Like bloody drag queens.’
Yet Lolly and Vianney always spoke of Xavier’s girlfriends with great respect. Maybe the brothers admired Xavier’s ability to always be with a beautiful woman. Sometimes it seemed like his full time job. It was certainly the only one that he took seriously. He was always attending to the latest drama, accident, illness, financial crisis, food binge or alcoholic bust.
In their turn the brothers guarded Xavier, protected him with a quiet ferocity. They fed him when he was in between jobs, paid his bills and traffic fines, took his long-winded night time phone calls. Once Lolly paid a girlfriend’s rental bond, might even have paid her rent if Claudia hadn’t finally put a stop to it.
But something more dangerous than his beloved youngest brother was beginning to sap Vianney’s energies. The charming moods and sensitivities – a man with weather – were darkening. There were days lying on the bed. Bouts of drinking. Unreasonable rages. The TV news had become unbearable. The ALP had become a tragic farce. The Daily Telegraph was the epitome of evil. The Murdoch press was banned from The Planet.
It wasn’t just the media either. The roads of Sydney were designed to suck the spiritual energies out of people. The State government was in bed with the concrete and construction industries. As long as MBAs and civil engineers ruled the state, Vianney growled, there would never be any money for the arts. Only money for the fucking roads.
As if to thwart the government, Vianney got rid of their car. Hilary banned the TV from the bedroom.
Vianney acknowledged his rage might be sometimes out of proportion, but he said it was the crazy hours and the worry of the cafe. He was sick of being nice to people who spent their lives eating and talking about real estate, or bitching about their absent friends. He would like to tape all those stupid conversations and play them back into the cafe the next time they came in – preferably with the insulted friends. He would like to keep the bloated citizens of the Eastern Suburbs honest.
The world may be staggering, he said, under the weight of financial crises, unrecyclable waste, mindless corporate greed, climate change, coal mining madness, cruelty to refugees, but the people of Coogee will still insist on their Eggs Benedict being just so!
It had almost been a relief to Hilary when he had finally given up the café business, and eventually – after a scary few months that had savaged their savings for a mortgage - found work up at the university. They were seeking entrepreneurial staff at the time, with business backgrounds. At least Vianney had kept his mouth shut at interview time about the corporatisation of the university sector and the rise of entitled elites, who thought working class people should