Tom Houghton by Todd Alexander Page A

with the company – even though she’d decided not to have an open casket. Once Pa was taken away, an eerie otherness settled over the house and Mum set to another kind of work. She went to her father’s room and folded all of his clothes meticulously, emptying his wardrobe and chest of drawers of every last thing. These she drove down to the local Salvation Army. She stripped his bed clean of linen and threw it all away. While I was feeding the chooks, she single-handedly dragged Pa’s heavy mattress out into the sunshine and scrubbed away at it with soap and a thick wiry brush until a white lather formed. Then she hosed it down with water warmed by the day and left it standing upright against the side of the garage, hoping the sun would be strong enough to dry it out.
    In the laundry she poured out his flagons of port and threw the empty bottles so hard into the bin they exploded like the copper bungers I’d heard older kids setting off on cracker night. One half-used cake and other unopened packets of Solvol were thrown into the bin. When we sat together to eat lunch, my mother was not mad or morose, she was simply efficient.
    â€˜I never realised how much there was to do,’ she said over her corned beef sandwich. ‘It’s never-ending. I can’t see an end in sight.’
    â€˜Can I help?’ I felt both useless and excluded, as though I had done something to upset her and she was punishing me by keeping me from all of the important actions and decisions.
    â€˜You’re being a darling out in the yard, Tommy; let me take care of inside. I’ve been thinking, though. Over the summer, I reckon if you could attack the garage for me that would be a big help. Give it a good scrub and throw away the things we won’t need for us, just you and me?’
    To be allowed to enter my grandfather’s domain, to sift through an entire history and decide for myself what of it should live on, gave me a genuine thrill.
    While she was focused and business-like during the day, each night my mum repeated the routine of stroking my back until she was tricked into thinking I was asleep, and she’d sob some more into my pillow and the back of my hair. On the third night she’d developed a chill and her shivers had shaken me awake from the deepest of sleeps. Though Mum called me her little man, I wasn’t equipped to deal with her pain, and I chose instead to concentrate on the treasures that might be found in the garage and, specifically, whether that signed Katharine Hepburn theatre program existed.
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    Now that he’d been farewelled, and his body was more than likely on its way to being tickled, then melted, by flames, a routine without Pa needed to be established. Friday evening marked Mum’s return to work and she’d come up with a brainwave. I was not old enough to be left on my own all night and, despite my protests to the contrary, on this matter she refused to budge. Behind the bar there was a tiny manager’s office where they counted and stored the evening’s takings. I was to remain locked in the room and not move, under any circumstances. The pub could get quite rough, especially on a Friday night, and she was concerned for my safety, not to mention what would happen to Roger’s licence if a child was found on the premises. She’d spoken to her colleagues and they’d cautiously agreed to her idea, acknowledging that it was temporary and feeling sorry for her in light of her loss. The alternatives were impossible to consider. Her father had died while she was at work and if anything were to happen to me, she said, she’d never be able to forgive herself. At least this way, she could control what happened.
    So I found myself curled under the desk in the money room, my pillow from home propped behind my back. It was not uncomfortable, but difficult to stretch out my legs and I worried they might cramp. Mum