26

It’s friday. Late afternoon. The weight of the working week is lifting. A manic energy is descending on the city. Henry backs the Hyundai out of the Seafarers’ Mission car park. He turns left onto Wurundjeri Way, and heads towards South Melbourne.

The traffic is frenetic. The weekend is beckoning. Henry works his way in and out of lanes seeking openings. He finds gaps with ease; his instinct has been honed by a lifetime of moving about the city. He is staving off fatigue, willing himself onwards.

West-facing skyscrapers catch the dying light in bursts of gold tinged with rose and silver. He turns left off the main road, and makes his way through the South Melbourne streets. He pulls up by the parklands opposite the warehouse, a low-rise brick building, hard up against a railway embankment.

A van is backed in the loading bay; the roller door is open. On the garage floor there are piles of donated clothing, and by the walls, ladders and trolleys, and canvas canopies for wet weather. The walls are lined with shelves stacked with foodstuffs. The inner rooms house floor-to-ceiling fridges, a well-equipped kitchen and office spaces. The food for tonight’s meals is packed in crates and eskies. Some of it is still cooking, or on the kitchen benches in various stages of preparation.

The warehouse is the engine room of the Father Bob Maguire Foundation. Over the years, they have worked together, Father Bob and Henry, larrikin priest and ex-fighter, united by a common vision. When he has an evening off Henry heads here, like a homing pigeon returning to its point of departure. He moves with the crew to and from the van carrying bollards, fold-up chairs, trestle tables, a portable barbecue and gas cylinders.

A picture of the St Kilda pier is painted on the side of the van: the kiosk at the end of the pier can be made out in the distance, and beyond it the sea, extending to the horizon. The sun is a white ball and its reflection a white circle in the water. People stroll along the pier. The rails and lampposts cast shadows. Two gulls are caught in flight in the upper reaches. Sky and sea are suffused with light. The scene blazes with infinite possibilities.

The van sets off for one of a number of regular destinations. Over the years the crews have travelled to each point of the compass, drawing up in the city’s liminal spaces—parks and squares, vacant lots, side streets and laneways, and around the corner from the clocks lined up above the station’s arched entrance.

Father Bob is in his eighties. He has handed over the physical stuff to younger workers, former street kids. At the wheel sits Mem, head of warehouse operations. He has known Henry since he wandered the streets as an errant teenager, a street fighter prone to outbursts of anger.

‘You always felt safe with Henry,’ he says. ‘He doesn’t judge you. He is an older brother. You can vent on him, and he’d take it and lead you somewhere else.’ Mem returned to school after years of absence, and regained a sense of purpose. He now offers others what Henry had offered him. You always feel safe with Mem, they say.

In each sortie out into the streets, it’s the same trajectory: from nothing to nothing, from empty space to empty space, and in between, the creation of a temporary haven.

This evening it’s a postage stamp of a space off Bay Street, in Port Melbourne. Two palm trees, their fronds dark against reddening skies, can be made out as the van approaches. They stand on the foreshore, two hundred metres away.

When the van arrives, the space is dimly lit by the Coles supermarket opposite and all but deserted. Dusk is giving way to night. It is mid-winter, and dark by five-thirty. The benches are vacant, and the side streets are empty. All is still, in a kind of stasis.

The crew sets to work, Henry among them. They work quickly, with precision. They string up fairy lights on a wooden fence to add a festive touch. They unload the van and arrange the bollards, tighten the ropes, and cordon off the cooking and serving areas. They place lights in the tree branches, unfold the chairs, set up the tables, and hook up the barbecue to the gas cylinders.

They pile on chops and steaks, sausages and chicken rissoles. Unload boxes of fruit and vegies, cartons of sprite and juices. Set out sandwiches and salads and loaves of bread on the serving tables. Mustard, tomato sauce, salt and pepper, take your pick of condiments. And to finish, coffee and tea, milo, slices of cake, and biscuits. All is in place, the carnival erected.

And from the shadows they are emerging, from the nearby streets and beyond, one by one, in pairs and alone, making their way from rooming houses, commission flats, hostels and single-bedroom apartments. A black-clad woman on a motorised chair; a white-bearded man, ear glued to a red transistor; men and women in tracksuits; women dressed up; youths in hoodies; a man wheeling a bicycle trailing a trolley; men and women pushing shopping jeeps. There are long-time regulars, and tentative newcomers. Children. Entire families. They mill about, lean against the wooden fence, and form huddles on the footpath. Or hang back in the shadows. Settling. One by one they join the queue. They file past the tables, fill their plates, then find a seat on the plastic chairs and benches.

Spirits are lifting, fuelled by food and company. Hesitant eyes are making contact. The talk is accompanied by gestures that are growing ever more expansive. The listless are becoming animated, and the stoic casting aside their reticence. Brooding is being transmuted into engagement. Snatches of talk drift in and out of hearing.

‘She’s a Jack Russell–chihuahua cross,’ says the owner. The dog nestles beside her on the park bench. ‘Got his dad’s Jack Russell head and his mum’s chihuahua body.’

The dog stands up, eyes the crowd, and receives pats and accolades.

‘She’s with me all the time. She sleeps on my bed of course.’

A Laotian woman, a single mother, and her son, join the queue. Her eyes are clear, her complexion glows. She wears a black headscarf that accentuates her fine features.

‘You look so young,’ says Henry.

‘It must be the sticky rice,’ she replies.

S has brought garlic bread, his customary offering. The bowl is wrapped in tea towels to retain the warmth. It’s the only thing he knows how to make, he claims, his proud weekly contribution. It is snapped up quickly.

‘Henry, you remind me of Santa Claus,’ he says, then smiles shyly.

‘I get hurt, I come back,’ says Y. ‘I always come back. I speak my mind, I get hurt, and I come back. A few years ago I was on life support. I stopped breathing. I was at death’s door. I was floating away and I saw a white fence, and I knew I had to get back. I fought hard. I was not ready to go yet. I come back. I go away, but I come back. I always come back.’

She speaks fast. Her mind is on fire. The accented words flow with a poetic intensity. ‘There are two horrible things in the world: envy and greed,’ she says.

‘I used to run all the time. I was on the go, chasing life, living it up and drinking myself silly. Now I can’t do without a walking frame. My wings’ve been clipped. But I still see things. I’ve seen rain. I’ve seen sun. I’ve seen bombs. I’ve seen hate. I’ve seen hope. I’ve seen angels and I’ve seen the devil, but I always come back.’

‘Thirty-three years Henry’s been helping me,’ says L.

Her jeep holds her belongings: CDs of Patsy Kline, Johnny O’Keefe, Bill Haley and the Comets, Hank Williams, country and western, sixties rockers. Grantley Dee: ‘Let the Little Girl Dance’ is her favourite.

She wears a black coat, a black beanie and a bright red blouse with a large collar. ‘Mark Twain is my twenty-second cousin,’ she says. ‘Samuel Clemens was his real name. I’ve got the family tree to prove it.’

‘My father lived hard,’ says P. ‘He drove himself, and he drove us. He hung on till ninety-three. He was a tyrant. He loved opera. He loved Verdi. I love Verdi, “The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”, Va pensiero. Pure genius.’ He begins to hum it.

All the while Henry is on the move. Circling. He pauses. Listens, and enters into conversations. He greets old timers, and welcomes newcomers. Does a stint behind the serving tables. He hands out plastic knives and forks, paper plates and paper napkins, engages in banter, rugged up against the cold in his thick woollen jacket and beanie. He is a dogged boxer in the fifteenth round, a master of conserving energy. He puts his arm on the shoulder of a man with delirium tremens and steadies his swaying. Props him up.

‘His Holiness has arrived,’ says Mem.

Father Bob has come to survey the troops, as he does most evenings.

‘He’s the director. Alfred Hitchcock,’ quips Mem. ‘A dead set lookalike.’

‘Better than staying home,’ says the good father.

He walks slowly, supported by a walking stick. He plants it on the pavement, and places both hands on the curved handle. He bends forward as he talks, moves from side to side, and works up a rhythm. The stick is an anchor.

‘Henry walks among them,’ he says.

He lifts the stick and points it towards Henry, at work, circling. ‘See what I mean?’

Father Bob speaks elliptically. He sees the world in symbols; he views life as a sequence of parables. He is beyond religion. He is of life and the earth, and of the streets and the people. And Henry is a kindred spirit.

‘Henry is a people whisperer,’ he says. ‘He knows the dark side. He kisses and hugs the vampires. See what I mean? A prostitute once came to me and complained: “Henry comes up to us and kisses us, and greets us with his love and best wishes, and we become lazy customers.”’

Father Bob retains his vantage point on the footpath. He is at ease in the semi-darkness. He does not need to move forward. He lifts the walking stick and hooks the curved top over his lower arm, freeing his hands. With each remark, his forefinger and thumb touch gently. He is firmly moored, yet in constant motion, mind ticking over. Taking it in. Observing.

‘It’s all about place,’ he says. He lifts the stick from his arm and points it upwards. ‘Heaven is not another place.’ He lowers the stick and waves it at the assembled company. ‘It’s this place, clearly seen.’ In the huddles around the tables and benches, and the lit-up faces, the volunteers lined up behind the serving tables, tending the barbecue, in the quiet undertone of voices. In the talk and laughter, and the stillness that hums beneath it.

In this hour there is trust. Familiarity. The gathering is at its zenith, a tranquil celebration. Communion.

Henry moves as if on autopilot. He has been doing this for decades.

The talk is subsiding. The carnival is winding down. Slowly they are leaving, disentangling themselves, drifting off as they had come, in singles and pairs, in families, wheeling shopping jeeps now stocked with food, back to who knows where. Slipping away into the darkness, disappearing down side streets and around corners.

‘It all helps, it all helps,’ says the Laotian woman as she guides her son into the night.

They arrived. Stayed a while, and now, quietly, they are gone. The lights are being unwound, the tables wiped down, and the chairs folded. The van is packed and the crew is leaving. The square returns to quietude. Several old men remain. They lean back on the benches and succumb to their private dreaming.

From nothing to nothing, from empty space to empty space, and in between, heaven, clearly seen. And, after all these years, Henry is still walking among them.