Sometime after the mid-sixties the entire developed world lost its virginity. This was loosely described as the hippie movement and Heather and I dropped jazz and joined in. It made no difference that we had two little kids. Heather was about thirty then and I was in my late twenties. As if by osmosis, I suddenly had a thin moustache that trailed right under my chin, I wore a fur vest, a 5-inch wide belt and bellbottom trousers. When she wasn’t working, Heather went for Pocahontas headbands, suede, fringes, beads and no bra. Let it all hang out, we said. Yeah, cool, like, crazy man. You’d rather have two heads and one eye than be square.
Of course, with every new movement there’s another one going in the opposite direction. The Mods wore miniskirts, medallions, tall boots and short, sharp hair. Even though Heather didn’t go for it, they were the ones who kept her salon alive, while I doubt she ever made a cent from the hippies. Kitty went more mod than hippie, though I don’t think she belonged in either camp, and on reflection, she probably created her own cross-style.
At that moment Christianity took a dive and people began to look elsewhere for meaning. It was our own Aunty Deb and her Tarot who seemed to preempt it all - she was a pioneer of the paranormal. And from the late sixties on, you weren’t alive if you didn’t believe in something supernatural: Ouija boards, seances, polter-geists, levitation, auras, ESP, telekinesis. The Secret Life of Plants was published announcing that indoor greenery could read your mind and that putting headphones on a pumpkin would make it grow twice the size. Erich von Daniken explained UFOs, Lobsang Rampa had his third eye opened and Carlos Castaneda visited strange realms with the help of a shaman and a lot of peyote.
The United States government began to examine telepathy as a way to communicate with submarines and spacecraft - which caused the USSR to immediately set up departments to train psychic abilities and, in controlled environments, people practised using their minds to move solid objects. Each country wanted the upper hand in the race to harness psychic powers for military use.
People may laugh now, even wonder how it could have happened. But which person today isn’t a little supersti-tious? We still believe that if we do good, good will befall us. Some read their horoscope, some believe in feng shui, others believe in luck, angels, signs, totems - even God. Some believe everything will turn out alright, in the end. I hardly need say it’s not a reliable assumption to make. Back then I would never have imagined that so much excreta would eventually rain down in my own life - disasters are for other people.
Jeff and I were hired to do a psychic’s window: Clairvoyant. Let me see your future. I painted the words myself. Clairvoyant. If the English language was ever confiscated and I was allowed just one word, that would be it; even as it leaves your lips it suggests something requiring special expertise, knowledge not available to ordinary people. From the French clair, clear; voir, to see. Oxford p. 142.
It was that word alone that made me want to meet the practitioner - a thin woman whose small grey eyes could not be found within dark pools of mascara; whose long, hennaed hair really did fly free around her; whose bony clavicles seemed to jut above the low V of her faded caftan. She introduced herself as Charlotta and, despite her scary look, she spoke gently and throatily, like a middle-aged smoker, and she insisted on examining my future.
‘Give me something personal,’ she said, the day I painted her window. ‘Something I can hold that’s important to you.’
I handed her one of my signwriting brushes.
‘That’s personal?’
‘Well, it’s important,’ I said. ‘To me.’
She held my No. 5 angled fitch like an artefact and closed her blackened eyes.
I remember very little of her advice - I was more interested in the scenario than her actual words and I only recall the gentle drone through which my past, present and future took many turns and twists, up one dead end then back the other way until finally a decent freeway loomed.
‘This is very good,’ Charlotta said finally. ‘You have nothing to fear at all. Though I see a woman in your life other than your wife.’ We both glanced at the gold band on my finger.
‘That’d be Kitty,’ I said, smiling. She looked up at me.
‘Maybe. And there’s also another message coming loud and strong. You have healing abilities, skills you haven’t harnessed.’
‘Maybe I’m going to be a surgeon,’ I said and smiled. Charlotta gave me a stern look.
‘My foretellings aren’t for fun, young man. Listen carefully to the signs. Read them into your life - or ignore them if you like, but it won’t change the messages I’m getting.’ She passed my brush back to me.
‘I once told a client that in three months she would visit an island and meet her husband-to-be. She scoffed and chose to ignore it. Two years later she was in Tasmania when she met a man and married him. She told me that she’d been thinking about my prediction.’
I stared at her.
‘She’d at last allowed the signs to enter her consciousness.’
I stared at her some more.
‘I was just wondering if there’s any travel for me.’
‘Very much so!’ she said. ‘And quite unexpected as well. But first we have to work out how you can become a healer.’
She took my hands and turned them face upwards.
‘See that?’ She pointed to a crease across my palm. ‘That’s your lifeline. See how it isn’t crossed? See that deviation? And here; you’ve got several fine intersections.’
‘I’m not dying, am I?’ I smiled again.
She looked at me solemnly without releasing my hand. ‘It’s nothing to do with your lifespan; it’s more to do with your character and your potential. Yours isn’t challenged.’
She talked on for some time and before I left, she loaned me two books, A Primer Guide to Palmistry and W G Benham’s The Laws of Scientific Hand Reading. By the end of that month I felt I had the entire concept mastered. I’m not sure why it interested me. Perhaps, as Benham suggested, it was a predictive means that was to some degree, scientific. Even numerology relied on birth dates and had no real connection to the physical body: if people are born on the same day in the same hospital in the same hour, they’d have to be leading parallel lives. Whereas palmistry was specific to the individual - as unique as a fingerprint - and, like iridology, it seemed to connect meaningfully to the life of the person. At least it did to me.
I had intended to write a theory, a theory of everything, but at that time all I wanted was a way forward. For the first time I began to think about the lifetime in front of me, the great big wobbly mass of mysterious something that had already begun taking shape, even before I’d entered it. The whole thing seemed half-formed and I’d orchestrated none of it. Was this how the future should be? I knew what Kitty would say - shape it yourself - but how could that be done? How could I put meaning in my life - if I discounted religion? Charlotta insisted that it came by ‘healing’ others. And that’s why I settled on palmistry.
Kitty was amused. She thought I’d gone slightly mad - and she was partly right. It was a craze; this was the era of crazes; crazes ruled at the end of the sixties. Meanwhile Kitty went up in the world. She was put in control of a chain of bars. One of the big brewers was buying up pubs and upgrading them - at least upgrading them to their own brand of beer. Kitty was appointed to facilitate the changeover.
And I began to read palms on Saturday mornings.
Just had a truly awful experience, frightened the shit out of me. Jim asked me about my grandsons - Lisa’s kids - and for the life of me I couldn’t remember their names! I can now of course, Joseph and Trent. Joseph and Trent; how could I forget that? They live thirty minutes away. Some sort of tiny neurological block or momentary lapse of memory. Is it the start of the rot? It’s happened a few times now; something I should know very well suddenly escapes me. My memory has been excellent but every now and then some ordinary thing disappears - poof ! Is that how it is for all these dementia patients? Did they get the same scare which gradually took them over? Joseph and Trent - how could I forget my own flesh and blood?
Charlotta’s business was jammed between a bank building and a hardware shop on Ferrars Street. And when she felt I had an adequate grasp of my subject, she offered a little room that I could use on weekends. I wore a caftan like hers except it was blue, a faded indigo; a garment that a monastic prophet might wear. I did not like sandals - rudimentary sand traps - and preferred suede shoes with crepe soles. On Saturdays I’d just sit in the room in my blue caftan and wait for someone to knock. I never professed to be an expert; I never advertised or put my name on a sign. When someone arrived hoping for the clairvoyant I’d explain that she didn’t work weekends; however, if they wanted their palm read - I called it hand analysis - I’d be pleased to help. It was as simple as that. I practised on people’s palms, pink and sweaty, cracked and calloused, some hands firm and strong, others with skin that slipped like a scrotum. Occasionally I’d get a man, or couples, but mostly it was women - nervous loners, brides to be, jilted lovers or just curious tourists. I charged them all moderately.
‘Is Charlotta in?’
I looked up to see a figure standing in the doorway. I copped her perfume first, one of those overpriced brands that lines the nostrils and forever imprints somewhere in the Old Brain region. Perhaps it’s a branding strategy.
‘She’s not in today,’ I said mechanically. ‘I’m the Palmist.’
She looked me over, assessing the likelihood: a skinny twenty-something with a drooping moustache and long, lank hair crimped to the head with a towelling headband.
‘Can you do me? It’s urgent.’
‘Come through,’ I said and led her into the small darkened room. She sat down immediately and I took my chair on the other side of the little card table.
‘It’s ten dollars.’
‘OK, what do I have to do?’
‘Put your hands here,’ I said.
At this point I would begin to take stock: Conservatively dressed, a few years older than myself - perhaps in her early thirties - spends her money on hair, makeup but not fashion or jewellery; just the one ring. Rings are good - they’re a Godsend for a psychic. Unmarried; no obvious children; office job maybe; timid though unpredictable; driven to sudden unconventional acts. Knows Charlotta so she’s been before.
‘Hmmm,’ I said, taking her right hand. ‘You’re right-handed.’
‘Left, actually.’
‘That’s what I mean. Those who are left-handed have their right hand as their Birth Hand. It shows what things you’ve inherited from others, aspects of your original character.’ I studied her harder and spread her fingers as a doctor might do. I then took her left hand.
‘In your case this hand shows your individuality and your potential.’ She caught her breath. I knew that’s what she wanted to know - and the state of her current situation.
‘You have a strong heart, your health is good.’
‘I’ve not been well, Jonathon.’ I called myself Jonathon in that room - it sounded more authentic.
‘When I say good I mean you have the strength to overcome things. Your life line shows you have the energy and … and your heart line says you have an emotional involvement that needs some work.’ I saw her body stiffen.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There’s something troubling you.’
‘You’re right, there is!’
‘It’s … it’s to do with this ring.’ I looked at the cluster of small garnets set in pink gold - quite out of fashion. An heirloom? I touched the ring lightly.
‘I see a previous owner.’ Exactly why I said it I cannot say; it was completely uncharacteristic and an unnecessary risk. The woman sat bolt upright.
‘A previous owner?’
‘Well, it’s not exactly clear. When I look at your life line …’
She snatched her hands away.
‘I knew it! You’ve hit the nail exactly, Jonathon! That’s the very reason I came here and you’ve cleared the matter up perfectly!’
‘I have? Before we come to any conclusions maybe we should …’
‘That fuckin’ bastard. You’re very good, Jonathon, very good.’ She put ten dollars on the table, and before I could stop her she turned around and left.
The bath fiasco continues - 6.00 a.m. on the dot. It appears to be the last task of the nightshift before they are relieved of duty. I got dragged out again and made to do my usual ‘strip tease’ for the large and lumpy Jan Osborne, twenty years my junior. Hope she gets a thrill out of it as I most certainly do not. I have no idea what they put in the bathwater but it has an elegant scent somewhere between nitric acid and sump oil. It cannot have been more than a year ago that a nursing home was taken down for giving their inmates kerosene baths. I think this stuff is something similar. And I do not know why the nurse cannot leave the room. ‘Oh come on, Mr Smythe,’ she says. ‘I’ve seen it all before.’ Which ‘all’ is she referring to; has she inspected the particulars of every man on earth?
At lunch it was announced that some bright spark has invented ‘Art Group’. Naturally I am refusing to go. I could in fact teach them a thing or two - about colour harmony and the use of the brush - but I have no intention of it. Dooley said at dinner he made a picture as good as the abstract over the bar in his pub. Said that picture was done by ‘none other than Picasso himself ‘. Can you believe it? To my knowledge there are very few Picassos in Australia let alone one hanging over the bar in Dooley’s pub.
Also at dinner a discussion broke out about the name of our illustrious camp, ‘Eden’.
‘About as original as peas and mash,’ I say.
‘And pork chops,’ says Clem.
‘There’s a town up the New South coast called Eden,’ volunteers our Dooley.
Jim pipes up: ‘I used to have a little house at Eden Valley. In the Barossa, out of Adelaide. The block was a wedding present from my in-laws. I built a nice little weekender on that block. Eden Road, Eden Valley.’
‘Now there’s a good site for our concentration camp,’ I say. ‘ Eden at Eden Road, Eden Valley.’
I now look in my Melways and I see that around Melbourne there are twenty-one Eden streets, avenues or courts. Twenty-one! Who names these streets? No doubt some artless public servant with the imagination of a Bogong Moth. There’s also seventy-six Elizabeth Streets and eighty-three Georges. And one hundred and fifty-six Oaks, Elms and Wattles, forty-one Souths and fifty-two Norths - in the one city!
Just tell me, what would be wrong with a Trout Street? Or a Poa Court, which is one of our most common native grasses - or even a Grass Street. But not one!
The following Saturday I arrived at Charlotta’s to find a man standing on the footpath. He did not look like someone waiting for a reading. He looked more like someone waiting for his rugby coach, or someone waiting for his T-shirt to tear sideways. Should I approach the shop? Perhaps I should just walk right past? I did not need Charlotta’s clairvoyance to see that something wasn’t right. I put my keys in the lock.
‘You the palm reader?’ The man looked down at me, his arms propped out from his sides, his thick fingers hanging loose.
‘Sorry, not open today. I’m just collecting some …’
‘You the idiot who spoke to Sharon?’ He pushed into the passage and I was forced to walk backwards ahead of him. I found myself in the tiny room, crowded with the two of us; the man’s frame seemed to double in size. ‘You’re the idiot told Sharon about the ring. You’re the idiot broke up my relationship. Know how hard it is to pull a bird like Sharon?’ He looked me up and down. ‘Nah, ‘course you wouldn’t. Wouldn’t have a fuckin’ clue. Palm reader! Tell you what, you come near Sharon or me again and you’ll be readin’ my palm through the back of yer fuckin’ head, got it?’ He slammed his fist into his open hand and for a second it stopped my heart.
I said nothing. I wanted to, but the impact of his smashing fist rendered me mute. He stood there a second longer and then lumbered out. I rushed to the door and locked it. I waited a whole hour before going home.
On the Monday I told Charlotta - she might be compromised.
‘Forget it!’ she said. ‘There’s always the odd crackpot. Some people are afraid of the truth. Just be careful what you reveal to them.’
‘But I didn’t tell the woman anything. I didn’t see anything to tell her. I didn’t …’
‘The truth has a way of appearing mysteriously, Jack. You get mixed up with something as serious as palmistry and you have to wear the consequences.’
I had intended to quit right then but Charlotta wouldn’t hear of it.
‘Take charge, Jack. Take back what’s rightfully yours.’ But deep down I knew the whole business wasn’t rightfully mine and that I wasn’t rightfully sure about any of it, including the state of my own future.
Regardless, two weeks later I found myself once again sitting at the little card table, analysing the palm of a pleasant young woman who took the words I offered with great sobriety, and again I felt as if I was in control, doing something worthwhile. I made sure to say positive things and I stretched her Life, Head, Heart and Fate lines as far out as I could. We were both pleasantly satisfied with the outcome and the young woman was just about to leave when ‘Sharon’ suddenly appeared in the passageway. My heart leapt and my life line crept up under my shirt sleeve.
‘I need another consultation,’ she said, even before the first woman could make an exit.
‘Sorry, I don’t think I can do that, Sharon.’
I saw her rock backwards.
‘You even know my name!’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No I don’t. I mean your boy friend told me. He was here …’
‘Garth? Garth came to see you? But he said he doesn’t believe in all this stuff …’
‘He didn’t exactly come for a reading. He came to warn … he came to ask me not to see you; not to tell you anything else.’
‘Well, I don’t care. He can’t stop me finding things out. I want you to take another look.’
It suddenly occurred to me that perhaps with careful words I could undo the previous reading; I could fix things up. I locked the front door. I sat down with her and tried to explain my error with the ring.
‘Oh, forget that. I want to know about my prospects. Do you see Garth and me together or apart?’ She slapped her palm out in front of me.
I tried to focus. I saw no lines, no branches of the future, no mounts of energy or talent.
‘It looks very positive,’ I said. ‘I think he could be the one.’
‘Damn it!’ she said. ‘I don’t think I even like Garth most of the time, let alone love him. I was hoping I could move on.’
‘Well, you can if that’s what you want. There’s room here for change, if that’s what you’re really looking for. But I also see something very important in your life line. It says you should keep your visit here top secret - you should tell no-one, if you really want your future to work out successfully.’ But it was my future I wanted to work out successfully and my life line that looked a little wobbly.
It is now getting on for 10.00 p.m. and old MP Jim Southall has just left, barrelled out of my door in his chair taking the doorjamb with it. Came over about an hour ago and I did not have the heart to kick the old man out. The door stands open because we are not allowed to close it until we are in bed - the problem being that people think you’re open for business.
Jim sticks his head in. ‘Doing anything?’ he says. No, just marking time until you arrive, uninvited.
‘I thought you might be interested in a game of cards,’ he says.
‘Don’t play cards. Never had the call for it.’
‘Well, you do now. Do you want to try a few hands?’
‘Not my interest, Jim. Now if you’d said petanque I might have taken you up - except you have to go outdoors for that, a concept that doesn’t exist around here.’
‘They have the doors locked with a security code,’ Jim says.
‘Very true,’ I say. ‘Pity if there was ever a fire.’
Jim’s wearing a fawn cardigan, neatly buttoned over a pale blue shirt and olive green trousers. No colour sense at all.
‘We’re imprisoned, Jim,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘What if we wanted to get out? How could anyone escape this place?’
‘Why would we, Jack? Where would we go?’
‘I rest my case, you see: imprisoned.’
I can see we are in danger of beginning another cycle.
‘What’s petanque?’ Jim says at last. ‘I know I’ve heard of it.’
I don’t want to go into it but it’s clear he’s not leaving.
‘A ball game. Big, shiny metal balls, or boules. You have to get them near the white ball. I like it because you can play on your own if you prefer it. And it’s the only sport you can play with a ball in one hand and a glass of chardonnay in the other.’
‘We could do it up the passage.’
I laugh. I hear the sounds coming out of my throat and realise that I haven’t laughed in ages. I do not intend making a habit of it.
‘Imagine the look on Jean Stinson’s dial if you started dropping two-pound steel balls on her carpet!’
Jim grins, or kind of grimaces, and I wonder whether he might be in some pain. I notice the rashes and scabs rising from the neck of his pale blue shirt; they look rather aggressive and I keep my fingers crossed that he won’t touch anything. Then I begin wondering again whether the scabies might have originated with him. He is in need of a haircut, with wispy white fluff points everywhere, licked down here and there with some Straight 8 but it seems likely that the scabies or even nits might be breeding in there.
‘Where’d you get your hair cut?’ he says. He must have read my mind! I try not to look surprised.
‘From the sex-starved, stand-over one who likes to look at strangers in the nude.’
‘Jan did it? She can’t handle the scissors, can she?’
‘Course not! I thought that was pretty bloody obvious!’ I tap my skull. ‘I hope to fix it up myself. As soon as I get my Wahl and combs. Chris is going to deliver them - I hope!’
‘Can you cut hair?’
Uh oh.
‘No, not really. I was given the Wahl by my ex-wife who was a beauty therapist. Before she died.’
‘I was going to say, I need a …’
‘Ex-wife that is. In other words, we were already apart when she died from the cancer.’
‘Terrible thing that, breast cancer.’
‘Ovarian, it was. Right down here.’ I touch my abdomen where they took out my gall bladder.
‘You got any kids, Jim?’
‘A daughter. And she has a daughter as well. A real trouble-maker. Gives her mother hell. I always hoped I might have a son and then a grandson. Maybe someone who would go into politics. But all I have is a rebel granddaughter who thinks she can rearrange the entire world.’
‘The young, Jim. Youth is wasted on the young.’
‘George Bernard Shaw.’
That surprised me; a bloke of his age still having the marbles to remember something like that.
Fortune, good and bad, comes regularly and at strange times. Tell someone they’ve got some good news coming, or tell them to watch out for strange twists ahead and of course it’s just a matter of course. No future is ever straight sailing and every open palm has a few cracks in it.
One afternoon Jeff and I were stopped at the lights, me in the passenger seat, Jeff forking mussels out of a jar in his lap. Jeff always kept a jar of mussels in vinegar propped between his seat and mine and if we were ever held up in traffic, he’d take a fork from behind the visor and prong those mussels right out of the jar. Suddenly a black Ford ute pulled up beside us. I just happened to glance sideways and at the same moment the driver of the ute did as well, a big tradie with a tattooed arm hanging halfway down the door. His eyes widened.
‘You!’ he yelled - I heard it through the glass.
The lights changed and Jeff accelerated, painfully slow. The ute cruised alongside and Jeff seemed not to notice. I slid into the seat, my reddened face casually hidden behind my trembling palm. I looked ahead, praying for no more traffic lights. Jeff crept up to top gear and the ute stayed with us. Then we came to a single lane and the man pulled in behind.
‘Look at that idiot!’ said Jeff. ‘Right up our clacker, what’s wrong with these drivers?’
Eventually the black ute began to pass and came up on the driver’s side. The man screamed something abusive, Jeff wound down his window.
‘And you can go to hell too!’ he yelled. ‘Bloody moron!’ I shrunk further beneath the dash and it seemed ages before the man finally took off up the street, his tyres squealing. I knew he’d left us for now, but what worried me most was that we had Burgess Signs written across the truck door with a phone number and an address.
But weeks passed and no new twist in my fortunes came. Aunty Deb would have said the cards fell nicely, Charlotta’s grey eyes would have twinkled from deep within her mascara. But one day Venus must have moved right out of my constellation.
I was up on the old Coy and Bensen building (where there now stands a Myer store), installing a big canvas banner. That building had been condemned so the owners put a high, form-ply wall around it to keep out the public. And while they were waiting for the site to be sold, they leased the brick facade as advertising space. Jeff and I made the banner, 40-foot-long. Ipana Toothpaste. If you remember that sign, it was me who scaled up the picture of the girl’s smiling face. The owners of the building installed the scaffolding and I climbed up there, hauling the rolled-up banner behind me.
I was working on my own then - Jeff was at last preparing to retire - but it wasn’t a big job. All I had to do was raise the banner and tie it off so the wind couldn’t get under it. About noon I stopped for lunch, sitting high on the platform swinging my legs. I remember watching the cars and trucks down below and I flicked a bottle-top right out over the traffic. You can’t flick bottle-tops these days because they’re now lined with plastic instead of cork.
But as I looked down, the pleasant scene before me turned incrementally dark as I suddenly became aware of a lumbering figure marching along the wide footpath below me, all the while looking up, directly at me, perched high on the edge of the platform. I recognised him immediately. I gulped air and my heart bounced like a bagged cat. Sharon’s Garth! It was bloody Garth again! What right-minded person would name their son Garth? Clearly, no right-minded person - he was, no doubt, the son of another defective.
Down below he marched back and forth on the other side of the form-ply barrier and gave it a decent whack every now and then to placate his boiling intentions. I stood up and backed away just as he worked out which panel was used as an entry. He came onto my side of the barrier and without a word, marched towards the bottom of the scaffold. I stepped back - and then I tripped. I caught hold of a rope tied above and it should have saved me. Instead, I pulled a row of bricks right off the top of the building. Luckily they missed me on the way down but they hit the platform with such force that they sent me flying. And that is all I remember - I heard the crash of the bricks, felt my body shift and that is all.
When I came to, I was in hospital with Kitty standing over me. By the look on her face I knew something bad had happened.
‘Are you OK?’ I said. I must have been still under the drugs; I think I meant to say, ‘Am I OK’, I really don’t know. Anyway it became a standing joke, me in traction and asking Kitty if she was OK. Turned out I had compound fractures in both legs. I was told they found me hanging upside down ten metres below the sign with my legs through the iron scaffold. Oddly, my first thought was that at least it got Garth off my case.
I was in The Prince of Wales for sixteen weeks. And then a lot of rehab, practising to reacquaint myself with my rebuilt pins - more metal in them than the Six Million Dollar Man. It was lucky I was only thirty. But something else changed during that rehabilitation. I stopped worrying about the future. You might think you know something about it and even pretend to have some control over it but you don’t really. All you can do is hope it will arrive in a form you’ll like. But you can never be sure. And so it was that the fall off the scaffold knocked fortune-telling right out of my system and I resolved to never glance at my palm again.
Kitty came every week. And so did Heather, though she never liked hospitals and she’d fidget and scratch as though it was she who had the bed sores. Debbie came once or twice, and even Charlotta. I never asked her why she didn’t warn me of the impending doom. There seemed no point challenging her beliefs - and she’d have probably said you can’t change the future anyway so why turn your life black ahead of time? She had answers for everything.
In hospital I did a lot of hallucinating. Some might have said I was turning into a true prophet, receiving psychic advice, messages from the other side. In truth, I was in pain, on drugs and troubled by visions of Garth the Neanderthal. And also of my father.
The parental nightmare happened so often that it got me thinking about my father in real life. I recalled how he used to polish his new Humber Super Snipe. He’d lean over the bonnet and make that thing shine like it had just come out of the showroom. Then he’d just stand and stare at it. From our window I would see the back view of him, his arms folded, feet apart and I’d watch him just planted there for what seemed like hours. Then he’d disappear, leaving the car shining on the driveway. It was parked there because he had a bed made up in the garage.
At The Prince of Wales I even hallucinated that he might one day walk right into the ward. What would he look like, what would he say? In my imagination I had him turning into a really decent man with tears of regret for not being there for us and saving our mother from the quagmire of her life. It was all fantasy and bore no relation to the truth. Of course, at that time I knew nothing of the depths to which the man had sunk.
About a month after the accident I awoke to see a strange suited figure leaning over my bed. I could tell he was no doctor.
‘Mr Smythe?’
‘Yes.’
‘David Gresham, Jack. May I call you Jack?’
‘Yes.’
‘Very sorry to hear about your accident, Jack. Terrible thing; truly terrible.’
‘Yes.’
‘I think you’re in line for a big payout, young man. Do you think you’d like to be compensated?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s get on with it - I don’t beat around the bush, Jack. And I’ve got all the forms right here. If you want to retain me, I’ll see to it that you get quite a sub-stantial settlement.’
In a flash he had a wad of papers on the bed and a fat shiny pen hovering before me.
‘How much, do you think?’
‘Hard to say, but I’m going for somewhere around thirty grand. Think you could use thirty grand?’
In less time than it takes to blink I had half of it spent. I signed the forms; here, here, here, here and here.
It seems there were two eye witnesses to the accident, a woman and her partner, who heard the crash as they were passing. The man happened to be a solicitor, and he alerted David Gresham, a city lawyer. David arranged for photos to be taken of me in traction. And true to his word, he won me $38,000 in legal damages - $30,000 to me. In the early seventies it was enough to buy a house outright.
But once I was out of hospital it felt like no compensation at all - I was suddenly alone and bed-ridden in a little flat with nothing but a bank account. Lisa and Chris were eight and six and at school. All day I lay in bed wondering what everyone else was doing: Kitty, the kids, Heather, the rest of the world. Despite my resolve to do otherwise, I examined my palm, but of course I found nothing. I heard people on the street, planes going over, car doors slammed and horns. I heard our neighbours through the party wall and got to know their every movement, when they showered, went to the toilet, cleaned their teeth, cried, argued, watched televi-sion. The man’s pet hate was cleaning the barbecue, the woman’s was towels on the floor. The children’s names were Brett and Sarah. Sarah had learning difficulties and wore braces. Brett barracked for the Swans, played baseball and hated his English teacher. I never met any of them.
It took a world event to change things: the Apollo 11 moon landing. In my room I saw it on TV, two men stepping down in The Sea of Tranquility. I made detailed notes: Command module - Columbia. Landing module - Eagle. The Eagle has landed. Armstrong and Aldrin left behind a plaque for posterity. It referred to Men from the planet earth first setting foot and We came in peace. It struck me like a brick (not literally this time) that people generally believe we are not alone in the universe.
When it came time to leave the moon, one of the men - I think it was Aldrin - accidentally broke the switch that would fire the engines. It meant the astronauts could be stranded on the lunar surface and the mission would become an historic catastrophe.
They used an ordinary felt-tipped pen to activate the switch and it saved the day. And over the next week that felt-tipped pen kept reappearing in my thoughts. Surely it was a lesson: even the smallest and most insignificant thing can achieve remarkable results. I could do it, I decided … I could write a Theory of Everything.
I asked Heather to bring home books and magazines that had something to do with science or the universe. I dumped Advanced Palmistry, Chariots of the Gods and The Third Eye. If Heather brought nothing new, I reread what I already had, and over that long six months cooped up in the flat I began to think about how things work - of course based on Milo’s rejection of The Big Bang. I concocted many ideas about the universe, I thought of many possibilities for existence, I made folders of notes. But try as I might, in all that time, no coherent theory squeezed its way onto the page.
When I was well enough to go back to work I learned that Jeff Burgess had hung up his brushes for good. I got a job at Braithwaites, a big company employing twelve signwriters. I did a lot of the preparation and clean-up but it suited me fine while I was building strength in my legs. Meanwhile, Heather used some of the money to open a beauty salon; she had a lease on a shopfront in Davis Road. And Kitty made another upward career move.
‘I’m a PR manager now,’ she said, grinning. She was outside Braithwaites sitting astride her Harley.
‘PR?’
‘Public Relations. For the hospitality industry. They stuff things up and I help them put it back together.’
I smiled and thought of the two of us. Me in my paint-smeared overalls, Kitty in her tight jeans, high boots and red denim jacket - all labels.
‘So what’s your plan, Jack? For the future?’
A lot of things flashed through my mind but for some reason I said, ‘First I’m going to write a new theory of the universe. Then, who knows.’
Kitty looked at me askance.
‘Why, Jack, why are you doing it? What’s the point?’
‘The point?’
‘Yes; the point?’
‘The point is … the point is …’
I knew there was one but it was hiding right then.
‘Remember Milo?’ I said.
‘Milo?’
‘I think Milo was right. We need it - the world needs it. And it’ll make me famous! Don’t you want a famous brother?’ I grinned at her.
Kit’s clear blue eyes were trained on me.
‘Milo was just a drifter, Jack, that’s all.’
The words surprised me. I’d always thought we were agreed: the man meant something; his life meant something. Kitty stared a moment longer and then turned her bike and rode off towards her new career. I watched her go, thinking about her words. Suddenly, I realised I was carrying an empty paint drum under each arm. I took them back inside.
In truth, Heather and I didn’t make the decision to move back to Melbourne - it was made for us. Two things: I needed some more surgery - there were complications - and Heather was offered a partnership with a beauty clinic in Carlton: facials, exfoliations, waxing; top to toe - literally. By the end of the year we had our own house at 141 Harrow Street, West Brunswick - bought the place outright - and we had the kids enrolled at Brunswick North Primary.
Of course the thing to miss was Kitty. But she had no time to miss me, she was on her way to the top and that takes effort. But before the year was out she’d quit PR and moved into the entertainment industry. She set up her own arts management agency and booked the likes of Split Enz, Rasterfield and the Gettysburg Philharmonic. She was always offering me free tickets to this show or that but I can’t remember ever taking her up on it.
I did not find work in signwriting. Instead I landed a job with a house painter. I grew a beard and bought a Labrador, and so we began a simple life in the suburbs - simple in the sense that Heather had her life and I had mine. In plain terms, she shopped and I fished; she headed for the city and I went bush. I wasn’t interested in fighting my way through Myer or David Jones and she wasn’t interested in pushing through the scrub to the banks of the Barwon in the hope of landing a trout. But neither of us complained, and each weekend, as we headed out in opposite directions, I assumed things would continue this way forever.