La Moustache – by Howard McKenzie-Murray
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
Although the babysitter hadn’t budged on the sunlounge in 30 minutes, a singularly shitty mood radiated visibly off her. She lay supine by the pool way beyond Cancer Council recommendations under a double coat of SPF 50+.
Something had happened – a ridiculous standoff with the seven-year-old brat inside about her heart medicine. Kid had a ticking time-bomb in her body, a heart that could blow any second, and she refused point-blank to take her medicine.
The child, the time-bomb, Darcy, appeared smack-dab in a block of late-morning UV looking for all the world like a gigantic butterbean in her pale yellow, one-piece bathing suit. She wore a healthy, a comely padding of baby-fat that made you want to bite into her calf as she ventured down the steps, chin-up, barefoot, pigeon-toed.
‘Siddown, hun,’ the babysitter patted a deckchair. It was a burial of the hatchets. ‘Take a load off.’
The child gave the babysitter a non-committal squint. On her own terms, she laid her towel on the sunlounge, righted the chair so it was a perfect ninety-degrees to the pool and, only then, climbed up. Her frown went sunward like she was a solar-powered child recharging her battery.
‘What you looking at?’ Darcy cried.
The babysitter was giving the child a lazy look behind cat-eye sunglasses. She now lifted the glasses and dropped one eyebrow critically.
‘I’d like to have a nice, long talk to you about something. Now it’s just us two gals.’
‘About what?’ the child asked.
‘Well, that’s the thing. I’d like to just level with you, but …’
‘But what?’
‘Indoor voice, hun. But … I’m not sure you’re old enough. Didja have your medicine?’
‘I’ll have it when I feel like it!’ Darcy shouted.
‘O, I forgot.’
‘Are you a forgetful Fred?’
This drew from the babysitter the tribute of a reluctant smirk.
‘What’s your name?’ Darcy asked the babysitter.
‘You know my name. Are you a forgetful Fred?’
‘Just answer. It’s a trick.’
‘Chloe.’
‘And what’s this?’ she pressed her nose-tip with her pointer finger.
‘A nose.’
‘And whaddameye holding?’ she cupped her hands.
‘Nothing.’
‘So Chloe knows nothing!’
While Darcy collapsed hysterically into the sunlounge the babysitter queasily regarded her: an unexploded mortar shell in bathers.
‘That’s what I was afraid of.’
‘What?’
‘I just don’t know if you’re old enough, mature enough really, to handle what I wanna tell you. It can be pretty risky.’
‘Handle what!’ she yelled.
‘Let’s be civil, why don’t we?’
The child stuck her chin out away from the babysitter: her pre-selected conversation-ender of the month.
‘D’you know where mum and dad are?’
‘They didn’t tell me, hun. Not a peep on the subject.’
Darcy eyed the babysitter – two, pale blue lie-detectors that scanned the babysitter’s face. The result: inconclusive.
‘Wasson your mind?’
‘D’you know what dah vaws is?’ Darcy asked.
‘Dah vaws…? No, what? This another trick?
‘No!’ she squealed. ‘I’m asking!’
‘Well,’ the babysitter sighed. ‘I don’t know what dahvaws– … Divorce?
‘That’s what I said!’
‘O hell’s bells, hun. Whereja hear that?’
‘Do you?’ she shouted shrilly.
‘Could we have this conversation after your medicine?’
‘I said I don’t want to.’
‘See, here I am about ready to spill the beans and you go and act like this …’
The girl’s singular response, a bull’s-eye for eloquence, was to push out her bottom lip. But then: ‘Spill what beans?’
The babysitter sat up on her greasy elbow and drove a look at Darcy as if she was ready, come what may, to get down to brass tacks. Woman to woman.
‘Do you know about the Exultant Conductor?’
‘The what?’
‘The Exultant Conductor?’ She looked at the child blankly. ‘You don’t know about the Exultant Conductor?’
‘Umm … I know a little.’
‘The Exultant Conductor who stands in the centre of the universe?’
‘Yeah.’
‘In a red peacoat?’
‘Yeah.’
‘With big, fat brass buttons?’
‘Yeah.’
‘O well … There’s no need to go into it then,’ the babysitter swung her head back down onto the sunlounge pillow. ‘That saves time.’
‘Well … I don’t know everything about him.’
‘What do you know?’
‘I know he’s in the centre of the universe. Aaaand … he’s gotta coat and buttons.’
‘The basics. Everybody knows that. But d’you know about his moustache?’
Darcy shook her head.
‘They call him La Moustache because he has this big, fat, ridiculous moustache – a foot long – like a Russian Hussar. And he’s been smiling this big, fat, ridiculous smile ever since the universe began. Even on the worst days—’
‘When it’s raining?’
‘You bet your boots, sister. All soggy, he’s still got a big, fat smile on his face.’
The child’s incredulity rose on a wave and her half-closed eyes skated off across the pool. Then, as if the shimmering heat-haze softened her cynicism, her eyes did a neat U-turn back to the babysitter.
‘Whaddabout when you have a toothache?’
‘Uh-huh. When you have a toothache he has a toothache. Because everything that happens happens to him too. He’s the Exultant Conductor. But even then he’s still smiling.’
‘Why?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘And aiiiiiir-verything happens to him?’
‘Everything. He’s not the Exultant Conductor for nothing.’
‘Has he been shot with a bowen arrow?’
‘Not one, hun. Hundreds. They’re still sticking out of him too. Every which way. Because everything that happens happens forever.’
‘And has his head been chopped off?’ she brightened.
‘Too many times to count.’
Darcy frowned. ‘Then why does he keep smiling?’
‘Nobody knows. But he’s been smiling since the world began. That’s all we know. In his red peacoat.’
‘With buttons.’
‘So you do know about him!’
Darcy nodded. ‘He’s god-a big, fat, ridiculous moustache and he’s smiling a big, fat ridiculous smile,’ she said with her hands. ‘Ever since the world began.’
The two gals lay down, cool as cucumbers, as the robot pool cleaner kicked in. Apropos of nothing at all, the child hinged up and went inside to pour a capful of raspberry-flavoured liquid from a glass bottle in the fridge.
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Image: Annie Spratt - Unsplash
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