Mavis Levack took a deep breath, gave her neatly permed hair a little pat, then pushed open the gate of number twenty-eight.
‘Yoo hoo,’ she called when she got up to the front door. ‘Anybody home?’
She rattled the screen door vigorously in case the gentleman was hard of hearing. You could never tell with these old ones, thought Mrs Levack, who was no spring chicken herself. She knew already that somebody was at home because she could hear the TV. It sounded like cartoons. She peered straight into the lounge room. It looked very messy.
A clatter of beer cans, a plate being put on a table, then a voice: ‘Hold your horses!’
From out of the big old lounge chair in front of the television rose a man. He hitched up his pyjamas, took a step, tripped on a crease in the mat and promptly sat down again. He got to his feet, muttering under his breath. Mrs Levack watched him approach. He moved rather slowly and was none too steady on his feet. She hadn’t come a minute too soon.
‘Yes?’ he said, opening the door. He was thin and wiry, his hair stuck out at odd angles, he needed a shave.
Mrs Levack bounded in, holding her copious bag in front of her like a business card. ‘Have you had your shower yet?’
‘Who wants to know?’
Mrs Levack realised that in her zealousness she was probably going too fast for him. ‘I’m sorry. I’m Mrs Levack,’ she introduced herself.
‘Slim,’ he said without offering his hand.
‘Yes, of course you are. I’m here to help you with your personal hygiene.’
‘My what?’
‘Personal hygiene,’ she repeated, trying to ignore the smell of beer. The man was inebriated. And at this hour of the morning! Well, they’d prepared her for the worst and she wasn’t going to let it put her off. Besides, she wasn’t exactly a stranger to inebriation herself.
‘I’m from the agency,’ she said, pronouncing each word loudly and distinctly, as if speaking to a child. ‘The Good Samaritan.’
‘Ah.’
She’d finally struck a chord. She raised a finger in the air, signalling him to wait on a minute, then dived into her bag and pulled out three items. ‘Fresh razor, brush and lather,’ she said, holding each one up in turn.
‘What’s all that for?’
‘To shave you, silly.’
Mrs Levack glanced around the room, located the entrance to the bathroom, then offered him her arm: ‘Shall we go?’
He stared at her, taking stock of the situation. ‘Just don’t touch the moustache, OK?’
The gentleman’s face was covered in a snowfield of white lather, the only features of the landscape being the moustache, the nose and his beady eyes watching her every move in the mirror as she chattered away.
‘I suppose it’s a learning curve for both of us, isn’t it? Quite a challenge, all these wrinkles and crevices. Bit like doing the ironing.’ Mrs Levack manoeuvred her way around the moustache. It was quite a handsome specimen, she thought. She drew back a bit. Quite an odd experience, really. Here she was in an intimate situation with a gentleman she barely knew. Still, she had volunteered to help those less fortunate than herself and she had to get over the irksome detail that not only was she in the bathroom of a man she’d met only five minutes before, but he was wearing his pyjamas.
‘Eddy used to have one of these,’ she said, chattering away. ‘When we were first married. Never really took to it myself, all bristly and everything. Do you know what it’s like kissing a man with a moustache? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. Oops!’ She’d snipped off a fraction of moustache.
The man pushed her away violently and grabbed a towel. ‘What the flaming hell do you think you’re doing? Fifteen years I’ve had that, ever since the wife died.’
When he had wiped off the lather the full extent of Mrs Levack’s snip was revealed. It was quite a bit more than the fraction Mrs Levack thought she’d taken off. In fact the fraction was more like a half.
Mrs Levack was all of a flurry. Her first day as a care worker, she had to make a good impression. ‘I’m sorry, dear, really I am. Just let me trim the other side. We can’t have you going around looking like that.’
She came towards him, holding the razor in a lethal fashion. The man got up out of the chair, flung the towel to the ground and warded off Mrs Levack’s attempts to placate him.
‘Good grief, you’re a maniac!’
‘Well . . . I suppose we could skip the shave and get straight on to the shower.’
He looked at her in disbelief. ‘Just get out of my bathroom, will you?’
Mrs Levack felt awful. She’d been told it might be difficult, that if the mood took him he could be a cantankerous old bugger. He’d slammed the door rudely behind her but he seemed quite oblivious to her now. That was one good thing about getting old and forgetful. It was hard to hold a grudge when you couldn’t remember why. Through the closed door she could hear the shower going and an off-key voice singing ‘Moonlight becomes you/It goes with your hair . . .’ He was probably serenading his dead wife. It was a pretty little tune, one of Willie Nelson’s. Mavis remembered Eddy serenading her with it way back when Willie still had all his teeth.
She cast around for something to do. She couldn’t go home and tell Eddy her first day as a care worker had been a disaster, to say nothing of the agency. Light housework was another part of her brief, and at least it didn’t involve close contact with moustaches. The room was terribly cluttered. It was like a junk shop. There were piles of newspapers in the corners, a dresser with a motley assortment of crockery, machine parts and tools. There was an old-fashioned hand drill, just like Eddy’s. The TV had a stuffed parrot sitting on it and in front was a wide low table covered in bits and pieces of wood and scraps of cloth. To one side was a knife and fork, a chipped blue cup with a milky puddle of tea in it, and a plate with a crust of toast and a clot of egg yolk that was going to be very hard to shift if Mrs Levack didn’t get to work on it soon. On the floor beside the lounge chair were a number of empty beer cans and an assortment of bottles.
Mrs Levack could have that table cleared in a jiffy. And wouldn’t that make a nice impression when he came out of the shower? She didn’t want to do too much, she didn’t want to interfere, but she was there to help.
She put the breakfast things on the bench and started rummaging in the cupboard under the sink till she found a cloth and a packet of garbage bags. It was nice to see he had a good supply of them. Care workers kept their eye on that sort of thing as well. If the person couldn’t get out and shop, the carers would shop for them. She pulled a bag out of the packet, grabbed the cloth and went back to the table.
She scooped the beer cans and bottles into the garbage bag. Then the sound of the shower ceased. He’d be out in a minute. She quickly wiped the table down, sweeping the bits of wood and cloth into the bag as well.
‘Oh, agh, oh!’
Mrs Levack turned abruptly. There he was with his asymmetrical moustache, towel around his belly, holding his hand to his chest. Oh my God, he was having a heart attack. Mrs Levack dropped the bag and rushed over to him.
‘You should have let me help you. Come and sit down. Do you have pills to take or something?’
‘Where’s me ship? What have you flamin’ done with me ship?’
‘Your ship?’
‘It was laid out on the table. What have you done with it?’
Mrs Levack stood there staring. What was he talking about? Had he been a sailor? Had the shower reminded him of the sea? Then it slowly dawned. The bottles, the little bits of wood and cloth. Model ship. All the puff went out of Mrs Levack’s sails.
‘It’s . . . it’s in here,’ she gulped, offering him the garbage bag.
The man swung his bony arm up and pointed at the door. ‘Get out,’ he ordered.
Mrs Levack was on the verge of tears. She wouldn’t have minded a carer herself.
‘But . . .’
‘Out!’ The arm remained rigid as a pole.
Mrs Levack picked up her bag and slunk away. The screen door creaked and banged behind her. Before she’d even got to the gate of number 28, she heard him slam shut the main one, as heavy and irrevocable as a prison door.
She sat in the Corolla breathing in and counting, breathing out and counting, just like the young girl at the relaxation classes had shown her. It didn’t make a blind bit of difference. As if it wasn’t bad enough that the visit had been a disaster, she now had to report back to the agency. In fact they’d even given her the use of a mobile phone to make the job easier. She picked up the black oblong shape, turned it over a couple of times, trying to figure it out. She knew how to operate the remote control for the TV, this couldn’t be all that difficult.
‘The Good Samaritan support carer agency. Marina speaking.’
‘Marina?’ Mrs Levack couldn’t believe she’d got it first go. It filled her with a heady kind of confidence. ‘I’ve just finished at 28 Smith Street. I’m ringing to, ah, touch base.’
‘How did it go?’ asked Marina.
‘Ah, fine. Just fine.’
‘He wasn’t any trouble then?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Levack in a small voice.
‘You must have a way with him. Some of them can be awfully feisty. Pride. You have to handle them with kid gloves. You OK for . . . ?’ But it was obliterated by a lot of noise. Some sort of interference. It happened with mobile phones.
‘Pardon?’ asked Mrs Levack.
‘Are you all right for Friday’s visit?’
‘Certainly,’ lied Mrs Levack. At the moment the last thing she wanted to do was go back into that house. Perhaps if she gave it a little time, waited for the moustache to grow back. She put down the phone but the noise persisted. Sounded like car horns. Before she had time to think about it any further an angry red face appeared at the window. On top of the face was a policeman’s hat. He asked to see her licence, then he started writing a ticket. Oh dear.
‘But, officer, the car was stationary,’ she protested. She knew the rules about mobile phones.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Stationary through three changes of traffic lights.’
Mrs Levack suddenly remembered where she was. She looked up. In her rear vision mirror she saw a long line of cars, the drivers all beeping their horns. This was without a doubt the worst day of her life.
‘It doesn’t matter if Eddy finds out you’ve been fined,’ said Mavis’s friend Freda that night down at the bowling club. Tuesday night was darts night at the club. Bill and Eddy were at the board, well out of earshot.
Mrs Levack took another big gulp of her whisky. ‘But you don’t understand, Freda. I never drive the car. It’s Eddy that always drives. Forty-two years he’s had his licence, and not one ticket.’ She had told Freda all about her day, right down to the last detail.
‘Well, he was a tram driver, Mavis, what do you expect? Besides, it’s not going to show on Eddy’s licence, it’ll be yours. Same again, thanks, Gavin,’ said Freda, indicating another round of drinks.
‘Now then,’ said Freda, smacking her lips, ‘we’d better decide what to do about your gentleman. When’s the next visit?’
‘Friday.’
Slim sat on the edge of his comfy lounge chair. In front of him Playschool beamed away merrily. The sound was down low but still he couldn’t help lifting his slippered foot occasionally in time to the music. Catchy little tune that ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’. He’d spent the last three days sorting through the pieces of his model ship. It would take a while longer yet, but he had all the time in the world. The white tornado that had whirled through his house doing its damage was gone, replaced by the calm after the storm. He’d shut the door, battened the hatches and was now absorbed in his task.
The doorbell croaked. A rough, rusty ring like an old man coughing. He’d have to get round to fixing that one of these days.
‘Stone the flamin’ crows!’ It was that woman again. He wanted to slam the door right in her face but her foot was in the way.
‘Can I come in?’
She stood there in the doorway humming a song like a siren trying to beguile a sailor.
‘I’ve brought you something,’ she said. She reached into her bag and drew out a large package, humming all the while. He recognised the tune now, it was one of his favourites, ‘Moonlight Becomes You’. How did she know? He took another look at her. She was no bigger than a grasshopper. Was this the same one who had come the other day? Perhaps he’d imagined the whole thing. He made a resolution to cut down on the morning beers.
‘Here,’ she said, offering him the large package.
‘What’s all this?’
‘Just wanted to . . . you know, make amends.’
He stood there stroking his moustache, or at least what was left of it, looking at the proffered package, wondering whether to take it or not. Curiosity got the better of him.
‘S’pose you’d better come in.’ As long as he kept her away from the ship it’d be all right.
He slowly unwrapped the parcel, keeping one eye on her.
‘Very nice,’ he said when all the wrapping was off and he saw that he was holding a model ship kit. ‘I was putting mine back together but I don’t suppose it would do any harm to have a back-up.’
Taking begrudging acceptance as encouragement, Mrs Levack dived into her bag again and retrieved a second, much smaller present.
‘You can wear it while the other one is growing back. It’s an acrylic fibre, doesn’t matter if it gets wet.’
It was a moustache, similar to Slim’s former pride and glory, packaged and presented like a bow tie.
‘Thanks. Thanks very much.’
There was a moment of embarrassment at this apparent easing of hostilities.
‘You, ah, ready for your shave?’
‘I’m growing a beard.’
‘What about your shower, then?’ suggested Mrs Levack.
‘I think I can manage by myself. If you don’t mind.’
‘Well.’
‘Perhaps some light cleaning, a little dusting?’ Mrs Levack begged in a last-ditch attempt.
‘Ah, no.’
She’d run out of suggestions. She hadn’t actually caused any damage this time, he hadn’t got angry or cantankerous, but she’d failed. Eddy had warned her that she wasn’t cut out for this sort of work, she was almost as old as the people she was trying to help. She had her part-time job as a cleaner at the Opera House, there was bowls, that got her out and about, why wasn’t she happy with that?
Because she wanted to help those less fortunate than herself. And she wanted to succeed at it. But she seemed to have come to the end of the road. Perhaps she’d have better luck with the next client. If the agency gave her any more clients after this.
A dejected Mrs Levack picked up her bag, gave Slim a little wave and shuffled towards the door as if her shoes were made of lead.
‘Bye then.’ She stood there giving him a hangdog look.
‘There’s a pile of washing up. If you’re interested,’ said Slim, softened by Mrs Levack’s doleful eyes.
‘Well, only if it needs doing.’
Slim started heading for the bathroom, leaving her to it. ‘Just don’t touch the ship, OK?’
Mrs Levack stood at the sink, rubber gloves up to her elbows, working her way through the washing up. Useful at last. Everything was right with the world. She stopped her zealous scrubbing for a moment to listen to the song coming from the shower. Yes, it was the Willie Nelson song again.
‘Moonlight becomes you/I’m thrilled at the sight/And we could get so romantic—ah, Christ!’
They weren’t the words Mrs Levack remembered. She raced to investigate.
What Slim saw from his side of the shower curtain was a white nurse’s shoe and a silhouette carrying a very large cleaver.
‘Agh, Gawd strike me!’
Mrs Levack moved the curtain a fraction. ‘Are you all right?’
‘What do you flamin’ think you’re doing coming in here with a meat cleaver?’
‘I heard you groan. Is everything OK?’
‘I can groan if I want to.’ He paused a moment. ‘It slipped out of my hand, that’s all.’
‘What slipped out of your hand?’ asked Mrs Levack, not sure if she really wanted to know.
‘The soap. What else?’ The silhouette did not go away. ‘Well,’ said Slim after a minute, ‘seeing as you’re here, what about giving my back a bit of a scrub?’
He didn’t see Mrs Levack’s jaw clench on the other side of the curtain. It was all right, she reassured herself. This was exactly what she was here for. Gingerly she opened the curtain wide enough to put her arm in. Slim handed her the soap.
‘You can take those gloves off. I’m too old to have anything you can catch.’
She started feeling around, the only part of her in the shower being her arm. It wasn’t the most efficient way of washing someone. And what if he had a fall? ‘Hold on. I’ll be back in a minute.’
She was back in a minute. Dressed in the raincoat and rain bonnet she always carried in her bag. She pulled the curtain aside, got in and looked at his back. It wasn’t too bad. A bit bony compared to Eddy’s, but the skin didn’t sag too much. She started soaping it up.
Slim remained there facing the wall, letting her work away. Had there been a fly on the wall, an unlikely occurrence in that steamy atmosphere, it would have seen a smile on Slim’s face and a look that was impossible for a fly to interpret.
‘There. All finished,’ announced Mrs Levack.
‘Good,’ said Slim. ‘Now what about the front?’
Mrs Levack was in the Good Samaritan office, filling in a form for petty cash and feeling very pleased with herself.
‘How was today’s visit?’ asked Marina, a dark-haired forty-something woman sitting on the other side of the desk.
‘Fine. Just fine,’ said Mrs Levack, this time truthfully.
‘Poor old things. Even though they’re crabby, they really look forward to the visits. Gives them an interest.’
‘Oh, mine’s got an interest,’ Mrs Levack assured her. ‘Building a model ship. You know, one of those in a bottle.’
‘He’d just be telling you that.’
‘Oh no, I’ve seen it.’
Marina looked perplexed. ‘But he couldn’t possibly do something as intricate as that, the way his hands are deformed with arthritis. That’s why he needs assistance. He’d cut his own throat if he tried to shave himself. He’s practically crippled with it.’
What was she talking about? He’d been a bit unsteady the first day, but you’d hardly call him a cripple. ‘He gets around all right,’ said Mrs Levack.
‘Costas Stannopoulis?’
‘He likes to call himself Slim.’ She was starting to get a bad feeling about all this.
‘Twenty-eight Smith Street?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Levack, eagerly clutching at this straw.
‘Parramatta?’
Mrs Levack let the straw go and mentally fell into a slump. ‘Pendle Hill,’ she squeaked.
Marina consulted a teledex, then reached for the phone. ‘Mr Stannopoulis? Marina from the Good Samaritan. Have you had a visit from one of our volunteers today? . . . No? What about last Tuesday? . . . I see. Thank you, Mr Stannopoulis . . . Yes, right away.’
During the course of the telephone conversation Mrs Levack’s face got redder and redder. She wished the floor would swallow her up and seriously thought she would be the first person in the world who actually, literally, died from mortification. But that didn’t last long. Though her face remained the same shade of red, mortification was starting to lag and righteous indignation was overtaking it in leaps and bounds. How could he? How could he?
Slim drained the last of the beer, stuck the empty can under the lounge chair and let out a satisfied ‘ah’. All the pieces were in place now, he could start the rewarding work of assembling the ship. In fact he was so engrossed in thinking about it that he let the doorbell ring twice before he hoisted up his pyjamas and went to answer it.
‘G’day,’ he said.
‘Thought this might come in handy. You won’t have to bend down if you lose your grip.’ She held up a cord with a cake of soap attached. ‘I’d better show you how it works. Now, where were we the last time? Ah yes, I was just about to do your front.’ The soap dangled suggestively between them.
She was wearing the raincoat and hat. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. From out of nowhere came strains of the song: ‘Moonlight becomes you/It goes with your hair/You certainly know the right thing to wear.’
Slim smiled. He had a good set of teeth for a man of his age. ‘There’s a tub in there as well, you know. And I’ve got a couple of cold ones in the fridge. We could launch the ship. What do you reckon?’
Mrs Levack had not told her husband that the agency had sacked her. She couldn’t bear to hear Eddy say ‘I told you so’. Besides, you didn’t have to work through an agency to be a real Good Samaritan. It was the job of a carer to help those in need, wherever and however you found them. And Mrs Levack had found Slim. It was good for women to have an interest outside the home.
‘What an excellent idea,’ she said, barging right in.