Last Day in the Dynamite Factory by Annah Faulkner Page B

still in his pyjamas, is perched on the end of the kitchen table, holding a bowl of cereal.
    â€˜Oh!’ He scrambles up when Chris appears. ‘I wasn’t expecting …’
    â€˜Sorry,’ Chris mumbles, hovering in the doorway, ‘about last night. Didn’t mean to hang up, but—’
    â€˜No worries, lad.’ Ben puts the bowl on the draining board. ‘I’ll just go and put on some clothes.’
    â€˜No.’ Chris glances at his watch. ‘I’ve got to get to work. I just want … I need to know about Alice.’
    Ben moves his bowl to the sink and turns on the tap.
    Chris turns it off. ‘
Talk
to me.’
    Ben steps back, looking so vulnerable in pyjamas Chris wishes he’d let him get dressed.
    â€˜What do you want to know?’
    â€˜After you left her … What then?’
    â€˜Nothing. Until a couple of months later. Then she phoned me at work and told me she was pregnant—’ Ben lifts his hands, ‘—
and
that she was keeping the baby. I thought … that’s it. I have to leave Jo and look after Alice and the baby.’ He looks at Chris with a baffled expression. ‘But …’
    â€˜But what?’
    â€˜Alice wouldn’t let me. She just plain … refused. I’d lose my job. My reputation. We’d have to move. We’d lose Jo and we’d lose each other. We could never build a life together knowing what we’d done to her.’ He twists a button on his pyjama top.
    â€˜So – you just let her go?’
    â€˜No! I
hated
letting her go. She was keeping you – people didn’t do that back then. It was 1948, for God’s sake. Women adopted their babies out or … had abortions.’ Ben puts a glass under the tap and brings it, shaking, to his mouth. Water slops down his front. He grabs a tea towel and drags it across his chest. ‘Alice was incredible, a maverick. A crazy woman – brave – so
brave
.’
    Chris turns in small circles, making the floorboards creak with mocking familiarity. ‘What did you tell Jo?’
    Ben tosses the tea towel on the table. ‘Nothing. Alice delivered the news and Jo assumed the father was Ian.’
    Chris snorts. ‘Which he denied?’
    â€˜No … actually, he didn’t. When Alice told him she was pregnant to somebody else, he offered to marry her. He loved Alice. But she … couldn’t do it to him.’
    A shape is beginning to form in Chris’s mind of his mother: a gutsy woman, reckless, flesh-and-blood real. ‘So, she was on her own.’
    â€˜Well, no, not completely. Ellie and her husband stuck by her. They accepted the situation without drama – saw the baby as simply another child to love. Ellie said she’d mind you when your mother went back to work.’
    â€˜She kept her job?’
    â€˜She told Myer she was going back to Brisbane to look after her sick mother. Figured if they didn’t know she was pregnant, she might get her job back there again … afterwards.’
    â€˜Did she –
afterwards
?’
    Ben watches a fly crawl across the table and whirr into the air. ‘Yes. But she died before she could take it up.’
    Chris snatches the tea towel and swats the fly, contemplating its marvellous stupidity, hurling itself after a lingering smell, an illusion that sends it crashing into a wall and knocking itself senseless. He misses the fly and flays the table. Ben flinches.
    â€˜Go on.’
    â€˜I told Jo we’d help Alice with money for the baby but she said it was Ian’s responsibility. I said we didn’t know for sure Ian was the father because Alice refused to say.’
    â€˜Will you stop saying
the
father and
the
baby, like I was some brainless zygote? Oh, maybe I was. Am.’
    â€˜Sorry.’ Ben drains his glass. ‘Jo said it was time Alice told the truth. She phoned her and demanded a name. But Alice still