Read Online The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elliot Perlman
Tags: Suspense, Historical
Ads: Link
mischief, warmth, intelligence, sweetness, yes, but also a kind of understanding, as though she understood things you were going to need to understand. That’s who Adam saw when he saw the little girl victim of 1863 from the Colored Orphan Asylum.
‘Dad!’
On a black-and-white television screen a newsreader read the news for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A little boy sat cross-leggedin front of the television waiting to hear something to remember that might interest his father at the end of the week when he spoke to him over the telephone all the way across all those oceans. His father had once told him he ‘liked the sound of this Hawke guy’. What was his name? Bob Hawke. Ever since then Adam had collected as many facts as he could about Bob Hawke to tell his father.
Bob Hawke, an Oxford University Rhodes Scholar, was the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ first paid advocate before the Arbitration Commission, the body that determined the minimum wage for the whole country. Subsequently a president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and a member of the governing board of the International Labour Organisation, he campaigned against apartheid in South Africa, among other ills. Jake Zignelik liked the sound of the guy.
Searching for something to tell his father that might interest him, Adam would phone him from his mother’s house and talk about Bob Hawke. And Jake, when stretched for something to say to his son that mattered even a little, would often ask, ‘How’s your mate, Bob Hawke?’
The little boy sat alone cross-legged on the carpet in front of the black-and-white news broadcast and then ran around the house from room to room looking for somebody to tell. But each room was empty. Diana was still asleep. She wanted to have a child. She wanted to marry Adam and have a child with him.
‘Dad!’
Charles had been leaving messages gently suggesting that they needed to talk. Adam had hit a brick wall. He wanted to spare Charles the embarrassment of having to tell him that it was all over for him. Diana wanted them to have a child. If you have a child you have to be able to feed it.
‘Watch your suitcase! Always watch your suitcase.’
When the eight-year-old boy craned his neck to look up at the corner of 43rd and 5th he saw the face, the eyes, of Denise McNair. If you have a child you have to know its name. Don’t you have to know the names of all the children? Can you have a child and not give it a name? Can it be done? Maybe someone would tell him because he really didn’t know.
‘Dad!’
By the time Hawke had been elected Prime Minister of Australia, Adam’s mother had died of breast cancer and his father, Jake Zignelik, had died of a heart attack. Shortly before 4.30 am that Monday morning Diana woke up beside the writhing Adam, her Adam, and put her arms around him to try to calm him.
‘Shhh! It’s okay. It’s okay.’ She whispered it soothingly in the greyish-blue light of their Morningside Heights apartment in the north-west corner of an island in the city of orphans.
‘Shhh!’
She warmed his back with her body and hugged him. Adam, exhausted, was gasping for air. His cheeks were wet. She held him tighter. She loved him. She wanted to have a child with him. Adam was awake now. In a couple of weeks they would be separated.
part three
T HE BUS JERKED TO A STOP at a set of traffic lights on its way uptown. The sudden change of momentum woke Lamont Williams. He had made it through the day, his fourth day as a probationary employee in Building Services at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He had even managed to find a seat on the bus, a window seat, on the first of the two buses he needed to catch to get home to the Bronx. For a moment he had fallen asleep, his head against the window, and in that moment he relived random snatches of the years he had spent in Mid-Orange Correctional Facility. He sometimes dreamed he was back there or in Woodbourne where he had
‘Dad!’
On a black-and-white television screen a newsreader read the news for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A little boy sat cross-leggedin front of the television waiting to hear something to remember that might interest his father at the end of the week when he spoke to him over the telephone all the way across all those oceans. His father had once told him he ‘liked the sound of this Hawke guy’. What was his name? Bob Hawke. Ever since then Adam had collected as many facts as he could about Bob Hawke to tell his father.
Bob Hawke, an Oxford University Rhodes Scholar, was the Australian Council of Trade Unions’ first paid advocate before the Arbitration Commission, the body that determined the minimum wage for the whole country. Subsequently a president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and a member of the governing board of the International Labour Organisation, he campaigned against apartheid in South Africa, among other ills. Jake Zignelik liked the sound of the guy.
Searching for something to tell his father that might interest him, Adam would phone him from his mother’s house and talk about Bob Hawke. And Jake, when stretched for something to say to his son that mattered even a little, would often ask, ‘How’s your mate, Bob Hawke?’
The little boy sat alone cross-legged on the carpet in front of the black-and-white news broadcast and then ran around the house from room to room looking for somebody to tell. But each room was empty. Diana was still asleep. She wanted to have a child. She wanted to marry Adam and have a child with him.
‘Dad!’
Charles had been leaving messages gently suggesting that they needed to talk. Adam had hit a brick wall. He wanted to spare Charles the embarrassment of having to tell him that it was all over for him. Diana wanted them to have a child. If you have a child you have to be able to feed it.
‘Watch your suitcase! Always watch your suitcase.’
When the eight-year-old boy craned his neck to look up at the corner of 43rd and 5th he saw the face, the eyes, of Denise McNair. If you have a child you have to know its name. Don’t you have to know the names of all the children? Can you have a child and not give it a name? Can it be done? Maybe someone would tell him because he really didn’t know.
‘Dad!’
By the time Hawke had been elected Prime Minister of Australia, Adam’s mother had died of breast cancer and his father, Jake Zignelik, had died of a heart attack. Shortly before 4.30 am that Monday morning Diana woke up beside the writhing Adam, her Adam, and put her arms around him to try to calm him.
‘Shhh! It’s okay. It’s okay.’ She whispered it soothingly in the greyish-blue light of their Morningside Heights apartment in the north-west corner of an island in the city of orphans.
‘Shhh!’
She warmed his back with her body and hugged him. Adam, exhausted, was gasping for air. His cheeks were wet. She held him tighter. She loved him. She wanted to have a child with him. Adam was awake now. In a couple of weeks they would be separated.
part three
T HE BUS JERKED TO A STOP at a set of traffic lights on its way uptown. The sudden change of momentum woke Lamont Williams. He had made it through the day, his fourth day as a probationary employee in Building Services at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He had even managed to find a seat on the bus, a window seat, on the first of the two buses he needed to catch to get home to the Bronx. For a moment he had fallen asleep, his head against the window, and in that moment he relived random snatches of the years he had spent in Mid-Orange Correctional Facility. He sometimes dreamed he was back there or in Woodbourne where he had
Similar Books
