I have taken to wearing a peaked hat or ‘baseball cap’ as it was once known. It has Reward Your Curiosity stitched onto it, though I haven’t the faintest what it means. Found it in one of my boxes; I think it belonged to Chris or one of his colleagues. It helps to hide my bad haircut and differentiates me from the remainder of our enfeebled populace.
Sitting at this little table I am constantly reminded that I have three or four warts on the back of my hands.
Senile warts, I have been told. They look relatively young to me. At what age does a man suddenly sprout senile warts rather than ordinary ones? Two others have also appeared near my temple and one near my left cheekbone. I might have to see about some sort of treatment before they outweigh the rest of me.
Senile: Incident to or showing the characteristics of, old age. Oxford p. 762.
Around 1978 Heather and I ran out of conversations - or perhaps more truthfully we stopped talking. We just lived in the same house like two bats in the one cave, coming and going, almost completely oblivious to each other. I knew it couldn’t go on like that and one night on my way home from work I bought two tennis rackets and a box of second-hand balls.
Heather’s mouth dropped.
‘What the fucking hell are you going to do with those?’
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We can practise on the court at the back of the church in Grey Street.’
‘Tell you what, Jack. You practise and get your skills up and maybe it’ll inspire me.’
And so I did - but not on the asphalt court. I walked around to the big brick wall of a factory on St Phillips Street and whacked the balls against it until it was too dark to see. It was the best my legs have ever felt and I dropped the medication completely. For a few weeks I practised nightly and only stopped when every ball I owned was lodged in the factory’s gutter 50 feet up.
I bought Heather a chess set for her birthday. She, in turn, gave it to our neighbour for minding the dog. I bought The Joy of Sex which had just come out, a fully illustrated manual for loving couples - the guy on the cover even looked like me. Heather loved the book and promptly took it to work. Slowly I began to see that no matter what anyone did, it would not repair our marriage; it would not stop Heather’s resolve regarding our future together. Yet it still took years for her to call it quits. I think she was waiting for a better reason - and finally one day, it came.
She got sick, very sick: ovarian cancer. After her initial treatment and recovery, she suddenly announced that she ‘wanted her life back’ and having it back meant shedding the one she already had. For a while she was out most nights, and at all hours strange men and women would suddenly appear in our lounge and I’d find them still staggering around the kitchen in the morning.
‘There isn’t room for all of us,’ Heather said one day, and it seemed I was to be the first casualty.
‘It’s not necessary, Heather. Chris and I can share a room. Then I can look after you.’
‘I don’t want you to look after me - that’s the whole point; I don’t need looking after; I want to be seen as a vital woman; I want to be loved.’
‘I love you, Heather.’
‘Well that’s too bad, Jack. It’s not enough.’
And so I packed my bags. I left Heather to address her mortality and moved into a tidy room at the Ceswick Hotel.
Chris rang again last night. Very pleased to learn that he’s feeling ‘centred’, as he calls it. He has been through so much and not the least was his mother’s long illness. He was sixteen when it happened and Lisa was eighteen. She seemed to handle it - she wasn’t home much anyway - but Chris decided that all of us had suddenly abandoned him. He was probably right.
Before my bed went cold a new bloke moved in with Heather, a man I’d never met, and no doubt The Joy of Sex finally had its practical application. Unfortunately the two must have had no more than a year of it, working through the chapters, before Heather got sick for the second time. Her new bloke took off immediately, shot out of there faster than a change in the price of petrol.
And that’s when Heather realised that Chris was the most important thing to her which, amazingly, he cheer-fully accepted. Lisa by then was already pregnant, yet she had no intention of marrying her man. ‘That’s not important these days,’ she told me. ‘Why would I want to end up with a nightmare like the one you and Mum created?’ She had a point.
It was soon after that I suddenly had the urge to visit my own mother. I’d turned forty, a horrible age for a man, maybe for a woman as well. It’s the halfway stop, on the way to eighty and a place like this. For a short while, until you turn forty-one, it feels like you’ve reached some peak and now you’re coming down the other side - not a crisis as such, just a sudden realisation that you’re not young anymore, never will be. I spent my fortieth in my room at the Ceswick. I cannot remember where Chris and Lisa were. I tried to ring Kitty on the payphone but it just rang out. When the coins fell out I took them to the bar and bought a stubby of Fosters, went upstairs and drank it sitting on the bed. I realised then that I was perfectly happy with my own company.
But I started thinking about my mother. In all the time Kitty and I were gone, I hadn’t once wanted to visit her. Kitty even asked me once if I thought I’d ever go back. ‘No,’ I said, almost immediately, ‘no chance’. I had no need of it. But after the split with Heather a space seemed to open which became occupied with thoughts of the woman who gave birth to me. She wasn’t dead, I knew that much. But what did she look like? I tried to imagine her in the flat. Was she still on the mattress? Did she still have her faculties, her health? Not that I really cared. It sounds terrible, I know, but for the life of me I had no more feeling for her than the bloke who sweeps up the butts outside this window - I just wanted to see what she was like, through adult eyes.
I caught a cab to the end of our old street in West Preston and got out there. I wanted to walk the length of it, I wanted to think about what I might say, but also to see the street itself, to see what I might remember of it - it was twenty-three years since I had last walked along there. There was a block of flats I’d never seen, just a concrete box with a lid on it, green glass in the windows, towels hanging off the balconies, letterboxes piled up. It was built on what used to be a weed infested block, our shortcut to the track beside the stormwater which led to our school in Coburg.
I did not recognise Aris the Greek’s old house. It looked new again. When we were there, a six-foot-high chicken-wire fence enclosed the front yard and behind it tomatoes on stakes grew higher than our heads. It was well known that Aris the Greek refused to pay water rates. He had a big water tank at the back of the house - illegal in those days - and he claimed it supplied all his needs and kept his vegetables growing all around the yard. His letterbox was forever stuffed with junkmail so the postie used to put his letters in the fork of his lemon tree. There was no lemon tree now.
I walked on and two boys about the age I used to be came walking past, swearing like troopers - f this and f that. They didn’t notice me. Their parents would have been babies when we were there, when Kitty and I, fifteen and sixteen, turned our backs on that tired old street and marched towards a different life.
Our flat hadn’t changed at all. Same colour, same green-and-white checked tilt-a-door on the garage, same narrow strip of lawn crowded with pink and blue hydrangeas. How could they still be there twenty-three years on? I tapped on the flywire door. For a moment I hoped she wouldn’t be there - it meant I could leave again, assured that at least I’d tried to make contact. Then the glass door opened and through the flywire I could see the outline of a stooped figure.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘It’s me, Mum, Jack. I’ve come to visit you.’
For a moment she stood quite still and then she un-clipped the flywire door. She turned and walked down the passage. There was a distinctive smell. Nothing unusual, just a general sense of oldness: something from a bygone era but nothing like we have in this place - a cocktail of deodorisers. It was a smell that was somehow unsettling, infused with sadness and melancholia.
I was surprised to see that the lounge actually looked like one, no double-bed jammed in, no pine chest spilling clothes, no coat-stand invisible under a mountain of garments. We went into the kitchen and it looked like a kitchen, clean and tidy. From the outside the flat looked the same but inside it was a completely different place.
‘Want a cup of tea?’ She went to the stove and put the kettle on. I had forgotten how tiny she was - and thin, like I am now. And her hair used to be permed-out and bottle blonde. Now it was short and grey. How come I still have mostly dark brown hair? A mystery. I wondered if she was still drinking. There were three wine casks lined up on the fridge.
I watched her get the cups, untangle the string on the teabags, pop the milk carton open. Her knuckles were large and her hands seemed to clasp and claw at things but her body seemed fluid, for an older woman. It scares me now to think that at that time she was only sixty-two, the same age I am now, yet that day I saw her as ‘elderly’. Is that how others see me? Not in here, at least.
She turned the gas off and the whistle faded.
‘I’ve been wondering how you are,’ I said. ‘Whether you’re getting along alright.’
She looked at me sceptically. We were both still standing.
‘What you see is what you get.’ She turned her back and opened the pantry. ‘Was there anything in the mailbox?’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Milk?’
‘Milk and one.’
She poured it in and the teabag swirled. I hate the milk going in before the bag is taken out. Why soak the teabag in milk? I took my cup and removed the bag. There was a clean kitchen tidy under the sink.
‘So what do you want with me?’ she said.
‘Like I said, I just wanted to see how you are, after all these years.’
‘Thought I’d be closer to death, no doubt. I bet you’re wondering about my will.’
‘No. I never thought of it.’
‘You wouldn’t expect me to leave you anything, would you?’
‘No. I really didn’t come …’
‘There’s only the flat and I’m giving it to Russell Stuart.’
‘Russell …’
‘Stuart. You don’t know him. Where’re you living?’
‘Ceswick Hotel at the moment. Very comfortable. I like it.’
‘Cheap?’
‘Not too bad. Not bad for long-term residents.’
I remembered Heather.
‘I used to be married,’ I said. ‘Separated a while ago. But that’s OK, it’s life I suppose. I’m OK.’ It wasn’t what I meant to say; I didn’t expect sympathy.
‘Any sugar?’
‘One. Just the one thanks.’ Her knuckles bent around the lid of the sugar jar. It’s a horrible thing, arthritis.
‘I’ve got two kids as well,’ I said. ‘Lisa and Chris.’
‘I know. Teenagers.’
‘You know?’
‘Chris rings up sometimes.’
‘He does? When? I didn’t …’
‘Only when he feels like it.’ My mother put a single chocolate biscuit on a plate. I wanted to sit down but it seemed impossible to just drag out a chair and plonk down the way I might have twenty-three years ago.
‘How are your legs?’ she said.
‘Fine. Good as gold.’ I suddenly realised she knew all about me. I couldn’t get over the idea that Chris had phoned.
‘Has Chris been out here?’ I said.
‘A few times.’
I took a step back.
‘When?’
‘Whenever.’
How could my son have been to visit without telling me? I knew he was troubled - he had always been a troubled boy. And I knew he felt a real loss when Heather took up with a new man. But why didn’t he tell me he’d visited my mother? She sat down at the laminex table but I kept standing. Perhaps I wanted her to think my legs were as good as ever. A lawn mower started up and a dog barked.
‘What happened to Sammy?’ I said.
Serious creases formed on her brow.
‘Good God, boy! He must have died twenty years ago.’
Our eyes met again.
‘You’ve been gone a long time, haven’t you - will you please sit down?’ she said. ‘Sit down.’
I took a chair and the vinyl squawked.
‘Did you bury him?’
She looked at me across the table.
‘Bury him? Christ, I don’t know. I suppose so - you never liked that dog anyway.’
‘Yes I did. I used to take him out …’
‘No you didn’t. Kitty did. It was your sister who watched out for him. She’s the one Sammy used to follow around.’
I could have pressed the issue but the last thing I wanted was an argument.
‘Heard anything from Dad?’ I said.
‘He’s dead too.’
‘Dead?’
‘Dead.’
‘But he’s not that old.’
‘Old enough, obviously.’
‘Where … in Melbourne?’
‘Sydney.’
‘Which … do you know the cemetery?’
‘What, you planning on visiting him too?’ She pushed the plate with the chocolate biscuit towards me.
‘No. I … I was just interested in the history, that’s all.’
‘You won’t get any history out of your father.’ She looked at me. ‘You’re history repeating itself, Jack. You know that, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘History. Man has two kids, a boy and a girl. Then he gets kicked out.’
‘I didn’t get kicked out, I left of my own accord, just like Dad.’
My mother snapped a look at me.
‘Don’t be a fool, Jack. I booted that good-for-nothing out. It was all a woman could do in those days.’
I let the words sink in.
‘Because he wouldn’t be your idea of a husband or father? I’m a good father, you know.’
My mother seemed to stare at me a long time. It was the first time I really looked carefully at her. Such a small face, the grog over the years seemed to have embalmed her and loosened the skin on her delicate cheekbones. My mother at sixty-two; I could hardly recognise her, but then I wonder if I ever really did.
‘You knew about Kitty, didn’t you?’ she said at last.
‘Knew what? I know everything about her.’
She hesitated.
‘You knew about the trouble? When she was little?’
‘What trouble?’
She paused again, took her cup in both hands and sipped.
‘Your father was molesting her.’
A bomb went off in my head. Had I heard her right?
‘What? He was not!’
‘Yes he was.’
My father? Molesting? Molesting Kitty? It was a lie! Was my mother losing her mind? Was she being vindic-tive? After all these years was she now trying to justify her own appalling effort at motherhood?
‘That is not true,’ I said. ‘I know Kitty better than I know myself. I know everything about her. And she knows everything about me - we keep nothing from each other. It’s all we had to survive … We were never out of sight of each other!’
‘Of course you were, Jack, don’t be ridiculous. You were in different forms for a start. You used to ride your bike home. But when Kitty started high school your father picked her up every night, for her own good.’ My heart went into overdrive. I put my elbows on the table. My mother stood up.
‘No,’ I said, ‘it can’t be true.’
‘Back in a sec.’ My mother went into the bathroom. I heard the door slide and the latch click. With that tiny sound a wave of unpleasantness descended. How odd that such a small action could trigger such emotions, a slide of a door and a latch-fall. My father; my own father! I wanted to kill him. I’d go and find the bastard and beat him senseless - if he was still alive! I got up and walked around. Suddenly I found myself in the lounge. I saw a big glass ashtray on a table near the door. I remembered it! Embedded in the thick glass was a picture of an Ansett airliner. My father. A fibre optic lamp with a clock in it sat on the mantle. I recalled the heirloom clock that Kitty and I pawned when we first left, when we ran away for good. She’d have told me: if my father was doing anything to her she’d have told me. Wouldn’t she? We spent half our lives protecting each other.
The toilet flushed and the sliding door banged open.
‘I think I need to get going,’ I said.
‘Righty-o. How is Kitty?’
‘She’s fine, I think. Haven’t heard for … it’s been a while.’ I realised she hadn’t phoned in ages. We were losing contact.
‘Tell me, Jack. Why’d you run away?’
We stood in the passage between the kitchen and the lounge and I tried to think of an answer.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘Because Kitty wanted it.’
‘No, that’s not true. We both wanted it.’ I thought again of Kitty and our father. He was long forgotten by then but perhaps not so for Kitty.
‘Would you have gone if Kitty didn’t want to?’
I couldn’t think of anything to say. My mother stood in front of me.
‘She takes after my sister, that girl,’ she said. ‘Can’t be tied down, likes the risk, always restless. You’re different, Jack.’
‘Different? How different?’
‘You live in your own world, a world you created yourself. But it’s not real, Jack. It’s all in your head.’
I walked past her to the front door, my runners squeaking on the floorboards - she’d had the old carpet lifted and the boards polished. Something must have happened in those twenty-three years, something to make her clean up her life. Perhaps somewhere along the line she’d met someone, perhaps the Russell Stuart she mentioned. I unsnibbed the flywire.
‘You know your Aunty Deb is sick?’
I turned. ‘Sick? Is she dying?’
‘Dying? What’s all this stuff about dying? I said she was sick.’
‘I meant …’
‘Ever since she fell off the ferry platform.’
‘Fell? When?’
‘You know; ages ago. About ‘75.’ I began to feel very annoyed. Was all this the truth?
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ I said.
‘She was coming back from Double Bay, missed her footing and went straight into the drink. Got her picture in the paper and all.’
I began to feel nauseous. Where had I been? Why didn’t I know these things about people I cared for? Perhaps I didn’t care at all. Obviously I didn’t. Was I just a selfish middle-aged man who was watching life pass me by? No, not watching; I hadn’t even seen it happen.
‘Anyway, your Aunty’s sick. Why don’t you go and visit her as well. While you’re on a roll.’
I walked out onto the little porch.
‘Jack,’ my mother called through the flywire, ‘Just want to say, I’m sorry, boy.’ I could just see her in the shadows.
‘That’s OK,’ I said.
‘It’s just that some people aren’t cut out to be mothers. It wasn’t like today, Jack. We didn’t have contraception in the forties.’
Somehow I think she imagined that the comment would make me feel better.
I walked out onto the street and just then the tilt-a-door opened on the garage. I turned and an old bloke in overalls was standing there in the shade under the door. He had hold of a wheelie bin. He just stood there and watched me until I was half way down the street.
Kitty likes the risks; you’re different Jack, she said. I never said I wasn’t different. Differences attract. Maybe that’s why Kitty and I got on so well - we complemented each other like the Yin and Yang that Chris talks about. Why didn’t I know Debbie fell off the ferry platform? Why hadn’t Kitty phoned me about Aunty Deb being sick? Is it possible she didn’t know either? My father molesting her? I felt a desperate urge to go to Sydney.
I want to get on with my story, yet I am constantly distracted by the absurdities in this place. We’ve just been ordered via the intercom to make sure our toiletries are taken back to our rooms. Apparently, someone is drinking the shampoo - it smells fruity and apparently a resident thinks it’s a margarita. Meanwhile a woman by the name of Glenys came to the dining room without her teeth. Of course she announced they had been stolen. But the good nurse Stinson knew exactly where they were - in Mrs Zanoni’s mouth.
So we now have shampoo cocktails and false teeth as the two abiding subjects at the dinner table. Mrs Zanoni wears other people’s, Clem takes his out and licks them and Skeleton Joe dunks his in his tea. I don’t know why I can’t take my dinner elsewhere. Why is it only the bed-ridden that get to eat alone? At least I don’t have Craig’s problem, left to lie alone all day in the sitting room or parked in some alcove off the passage.
Most of the elderly in here remain nameless because of the dementia. I recognise two main conditions, Alzheimer’s and stroke. Naturally there is no point calling most of them by name as they don’t recognise it. There are several others that I’ve been introduced to. One is Valda, who has her arm in a sling. Another klep-tomaniac, she is in the habit of stealing dolls and teddy bears. Jim says she was coming out of someone’s room with an armful of soft toys when she tripped. As she fell she refused to relinquish her cache and as such, broke her arm. Even in pain she would not loosen her grip on those fluffy toys.
Another in here is called Harmony. I assume that is her actual name. Whenever I come within shot of her she says, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’
‘Father Christmas,’ I tell her.
‘Liar!’ She says. ‘All liars, you men are. Liar, liar, liar.’
Then there’s Patricia in the wheelchair, the woman who asked me to assist one of the demented. She doesn’t seem to be a lot older than me. But she has no special feature that I can see and just sits and reads or sometimes sews. Voodoo dolls? Part witch, I think, she often looks my way, perhaps giving me the ‘evil eye’.
The ‘bath’ procession continues. This morning at 6.30 I was woken by poor Clem being dragged down the passageway. I went to the toilet and endured the sounds of the vigorous ablutions, interjected by commands from the unrelenting Osborne. Then all went quiet. Poor Clem succumbed to despair, like curling up in the seat of a falling aeroplane.
Tonight I told Jim about it when he came over for yet another nightly visit. Tapped on my door at 8 p.m. I nearly didn’t answer - always these interruptions when all I want to do is write my story. The old man seems to think that stripping off in front of Osborne and being forced into a hot bath is the conventional wisdom, no doubt because he’s the cause of it all.
‘You are still learning the ropes!’ he says. ‘Consider it a compliment, young fellow.’
Young fellow, further evidence that I do not belong here.
‘The nightshift do the easy ones like you and me first,’ he says. ‘Takes the burden off the day staff who have to deal with the hard cases.’
Easy ones like us? I see he wants to be regarded as able-bodied and normal.
‘I don’t see why they can’t let me take my own fucking bath,’ I say.
‘They call it Duty of Care, Jack. They’re worried you might slip and fall.’
‘Kee-rist!’ I say. ‘Just because I choose to ride a wheelchair doesn’t make me one of the cripples!’ Then I look at Jim in his wheelchair. ‘Not implying anything. No offence.’
He just smiles.
‘Jesus, Jim. It’s just not … I mean, what about a man’s … dignity?’
‘Ah, dignity. Let me tell you about dignity.’ He wheels in a bit closer - too close for my liking.
‘When I was at home I owned some very beautiful things. Like paintings for instance: one watercolour was from the School of Gainsborough. And I had a big library with a collection of rare books. And in that library I also had an eighteenth-century German mahogany wall clock, one of the most beautiful things in the world. Bought it in Austria and had it packed and transported all the way back to East Melbourne. Made sure I was home in time to receive it. But when I came here - to Eden - I lost the lot; everything went.’
He looks at the floor.
‘Break your heart, Jack. Break your heart. There’s no room, you see. Have to leave all those precious things in the past.’
He looks up at me with his watery eyes.
‘Dignity’s one of them, Jack.’
‘Well, I don’t subscribe to that, old man; I’m not ready to just drop everything.’
‘Yes, I can see that,’ he says. ‘I know.’
Despite his very ugly skin condition and advanced years, I think Jim is alright. In fact I’m beginning to like him in a father/son sort of way. I might even give him a haircut if Chris should ever bring my scissors and clippers. But on that score I am still waiting. He promised me tomorrow, which is Father’s Day. But he also said he’d be over on Wednesday, yet that day came and went without a word.
A visit from Lisa! She arrived after lunch and much appreciated. She brought my Wahl electric clippers, attach-ments, combs and scissors! Though she did not bring my other things as asked. Instead I got a ‘Father’s Day’ present - a carton of B&H, some new socks and underpants. All very welcome. She gets the smokes wholesale as Carlos is a tobacconist on Sydney Road. The shop’s most interesting feature is a collection of pipes from around the world. Smoking has always been universally practised and I have found references to the ancient Greeks putting burning leaves into a pipe, though it is believed the habit may go back much further. Carlos has a North American peace pipe, opium pipes from China and some very early English pipes. Though the last time I was there the whole lot had been pushed out of the window for a double row of different-sized bongs.
When Lisa arrived all started out well until she informed me that this week is also the anniversary of her mother’s death. With that big downer the visit de-teriorated badly. Lisa said something about the year we moved to Melbourne. And suddenly I remembered a little strip of photos that Heather and I took one day in a parlour booth at Luna Park.
‘I did love her, you know,’ I said.
‘I know you did.’
‘I really want my box of photos, Lisa.’
‘I’ve started arranging them into an album, Dad. They’re looking great, I think you’ll like it.’
‘Lisa, I can put them in an album. Why won’t you bring my photos and let me do it?’
‘Come on, Dad. You’ve had them for years and never done a thing about it. If you want to put up some photos in here I can get copies for you.’
‘Copies? Why don’t you keep the copies and let me have the originals?’
‘And who is going to see them in here, Dad? Don’t you ever think about your family, your grandchildren and what will be important to them when they grow up?’
‘Why don’t you bring the kids to visit?’
‘They wouldn’t cope five minutes, you know that as well as I do. Tell you what, as soon as you feel up to it why don’t we arrange for you to visit us?’
I have to say that idea doesn’t appeal. I don’t get an ounce of pleasure going to Lisa’s. Carlos shakes your hand and disappears, the kids cannot be extracted from ‘Nintendo’ or the TV and Lisa just sits with one eye on the street and the other on the clock. Not her fault; we have nothing to talk about. I like fishing and petanque and she likes … well who knows what Lisa likes. I can have a smoke with her and that’s about it. The only common thread is her mother who is well and truly gone from this good earth.
Lisa left exactly at 2.25 p.m.. Folded up the Father’s Day wrapping paper and took it with her; I think she intends using it again next year. I did not mention my rods and tackle. Nor the balls. They are a very good set of ‘professional quality’, not like you buy in an average shop. I began playing when I was at The Grace, perhaps the first time I’d engaged in group sport since I tried football as a teenager. Some of the other tenants got me going. From my window I used to see them playing in the gravel behind the boarding house. One day I went down and asked them what they were doing. Petanque, they said, a French game requiring steel balls and a cochonnet or ‘jack’.
Within a month I had my own set. I did not buy the street quality but spent nearly two week’s pension on Obut ‘professionals’. They weigh in at 700 grams and measure 74 mm diameter which is about the middle of the range. In no time I was playing with as much skill as any of the others. And then in January my legs went. And then the gall bladder. I did not appreciate Lisa’s parting remarks about her getting stuck with the St Vincent’s Hospital bill. As a pensioner I should never have been billed at all.
I want my balls back. And I intend keeping on about the photos. Like pulling teeth out of a piranha. I have given up on seeing Chris as Lisa seems to think he has gone to an ashram near Ballarat.
Not so! Christopher paid me a visit tonight. Timely, as I was feeling very low. It’s very cold and wet and the heater has broken in my room. It’s so cold in here I can’t open the window to have a smoke and it’s too wet to go into the courtyard. When Chris walked in I thought the sun had finally broken through.
‘Happy Father’s Day,’ he says and gives me a navy blue V-necked pullover and a giant bottle-opener that he also bought in India. It has a wooden handle with an intricate carving of a monkey and a cobra, or a monkey whose tail is turning into a cobra. The jumper is brand new. It did not fit him so he thought of me.
‘You put up my Shiva,’ he says, noticing the statue on the wardrobe.
‘Lisa thought you went to Ballarat.’
‘I was going to, but I couldn’t get the time off work.’ Then he asks me how I am and what I’ve been doing and I decide to tell him again about the chemical baths.
‘I am very upset about it,’ I say. ‘The nurse makes me strip off in front of her!’
‘Why don’t you say no, Dad.’
‘They wouldn’t have a bar of it,’ I tell him.
‘Just refuse until they leave the room.’
I can imagine what that would do. Anyway I’ve given up refusing things. All my life I’ve tried to be a decent person but it has no measurable effect on anything. Good people get hurt the same as the bad. You either don’t believe in God or you believe in a God who allows good people to get hurt. And if you do that then something is seriously wrong with you. I told that to Christopher.
‘That’s Christianity, Dad,’ he says. ‘A God that punishes you for your sins or the sins of the world. In Hinduism we don’t believe any of that, we believe in karma and the eternal law.’
‘And what might that eternal law be?’
‘We seek it through meditation, the self must be realised.’
‘ Realised? Chris, my “self ” is having trouble getting out of bed. My “self ” is having trouble dealing with this mausoleum on an hourly basis.’
‘Then why don’t you leave?’ he says. ‘Why don’t you put your name down for a Commission Flat and get out.’
I could have said: Great idea! You could give me the money that you inherited from Heather as it was mine in the first place. But I didn’t of course.
‘You know I couldn’t manage it, Chris. Not at the moment. Right now it looks like I’m stuck here, unless by some fluke a good Samaritan should take me in.’
I see his mind racing ahead like a startled hare.
‘I’d have you come and live with me Dad, if I didn’t travel so much. You know that, don’t you? One day I’ll get a place of my own and then we should talk about it.’
‘It’d be good karma if you did, Chris.’
‘Of course it would.’ He sees my carton of smokes.
‘I hope Lisa didn’t give you those.’
‘No, bought them myself.’
‘You really shouldn’t, Dad. Why don’t you give them up?’
‘Then what do I do with my time?’
‘Why not meditate? I can give you a very good mantra …’
‘Rather suck on a fag, mate. Get to heaven a bit quicker.’
Chris stares at me. He’s feeling very sorry for his old dad.
‘I’ve just about had it in here, Chris. They keep wanting me to get out of this wheelchair - but what for? So I can get to the dinner table a bit quicker? I mean, what’s the bloody point? The whole thrust of this place is just sit still and stay calm and try not to shit your pants until you drop dead. That’s what this whole place is about. There’s no point fighting it.’
Chris gazes at me. ‘Well, that makes sense, Dad.’
‘It does? How?’
Chris’ brow furrows lightly. Even with the reduced weight his face is still round. He could safely drop a few more pounds.
‘You have to bend like the reed before the wind, Dad. Otherwise …’
‘You snap off.’
‘Well, you do, Dad. You have to decide. It’s your decision. You either go with it or …’
‘Go with it?’
‘Yes: go with it.’
‘Go with what?’
‘With the situation. With the way things are. Sometimes things just are, Dad.’
He gazes at me with such sincerity that I decide to leave it. We watch some old soul shuffle past my doorway.
‘Did you ask Lisa about my fishing rods and petanque balls? You were going to pick them up for me.’
‘Didn’t she bring them over? I really haven’t seen her. Are they any good to you in here?’
My heart sinks like a sea anchor.
‘Chris I just want them. I just want to look at them. They belong to me.’
He looks at me with sad eyes.
‘You know, you really should try meditation, Dad. It really settles you, I’m not kidding.’
He looks at his watch.
‘You know Mum got into Hinduism before she died, don’t you?’
‘Did she now - did you know she got into Hinduism before you were born?’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
Chris lets that sink in.
‘She understood the principle of the afterlife,’ he says.
I suddenly recognise something new about my son.
‘You’re hoping to see her again,’ I say. ‘You think you’ll see her on the other side.’
He looks away. ‘That is only for Krishna to know.’
A new day and I decide to cut Jim’s hair. My logic is that he may have been the original source of the scabies or nits. But as he’s been given a clean bill of health I might trim back the nest to avoid another infestation. The good news is that Jim’s condition turned out not to be scabies after all but another skin disorder which is not as contagious. Also I feel a bit sorry for the old man.
I am only allowed to do it in my own room and was ordered to ‘clean up thoroughly’ afterwards. As a hairdresser I have to say I still have my old touch, one of the few valuable things I learned from Heather, though Jim’s scabied head is not a pleasant job. And he has a rather off-putting odour.
‘Thanks for doing this, Jack,’ he says as the hair begins to fall.
‘That’s OK,’ I say, ‘but I don’t want to make a habit of it.’
‘Course not. Wouldn’t put you through this again.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ I say.
‘You watching the new Rex Hunt Fishing Adventures?’
‘No. When’s it on?’ I ask.
‘Thursday night, Channel 7, after dinner.’
‘You were a piscator.’
‘A what?’ He lifts his head.
‘A piscator; a fisherman. I was a piscator, used to do a lot of fishing when I lived in Brunswick.’
‘I don’t fish, Jack, but I still find the show very interesting, a bit of a Boy’s Own Adventure if you like. Better than most of the rubbish on TV these days.’
‘Hard to find a decent thing to watch,’ I say. I am using the Wahl very gently around his neck, No 2 attach-ment. I find his flaky red skin a bit hard to look at and I don’t want to touch it.
‘Sorry about my skin,’ he says. ‘Damn syphilis.’
‘Syphilis?’ I jump back about four paces.
Jim starts his cackle. ‘Eczema, actually, though the clap might be better. Bloody thing won’t settle down - anything seems to set it off, soaps, detergent, perfumes, even the bloody chlorine in our water.’ He glances up at me. ‘It’s not contagious, young fellow.’
‘Never thought it was,’ I say. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t let you in here.’ I make a couple of extra adjustments on top and place a part where none previously existed. Then I brush away the loose hair and remove the towel. I have a hearth brush and shovel that Dell Williams has lent me. I give Jim a good brush down including his wheelchair.
‘Think the girls will go for me now?’ he says.
I’m glad he has a sense of humour. At his age you’d stuff a sock down your throat if you didn’t. I hope to hell I don’t end up like Jim in twenty years.
‘Why don’t you come over and watch the fishing show on Thursday?’ he says.
‘Thanks, Jim,’ I tell him, ‘but I’m trying to write a story.’
‘What kind of a story?’
I tell him a little bit about Kitty. I say she deserves to have her story written.
‘I had two sisters,’ he says. ‘Managed to outlive them both. Doesn’t make sense really.’
He rolled out the door and I swept up the floor and put the rug back down. I cleaned my equipment and created a special drawer for it - my socks and undies will have to share a space. I think I’ll see if I can hang onto the brush and shovel. Of course I do intend to watch the fishing show but I couldn’t do it in Jim’s room. He smells so bad I can only imagine what his room is like.
At dinner I receive many accolades. Pistol Pete whistles. ‘I used to pay top brass for a cut like that!’ Dooley the publican runs his fingers through his hair. ‘How much?’ he says. ‘Give you a hundred dollars to do mine!’
Ivan up the end is bald on top. ‘I like mine shaved off. You cannot have ze hair and ze brines too!’ He gives a very stupid laugh that reveals his senility, a state he occupies handsomely.
Sad sack Clem says, ‘Clip, clip, clip, the last man’s head, head, head, off !’
Dooley glares at him. ‘ Chip, chop, chip, chop, you idiot!’ Poor old Skeleton Joe seems uninterested; he just goes on shakily spooning his soup, his chin almost resting on the plate.
I notice as well that Patricia on the other table is looking across, though that gesture is not uncommon - she’s always observing. What’s she up to?
And even the nurses seem to think Jim’s haircut is pretty good. Dell comes over and says, ‘What about having a go at Joe’s? He needs it pretty bad.’
‘I would Dell, but I got a lot on my plate at the moment.’
‘Soup!’ pipes up Clem. ‘Pumpkin soup!’ Dell doesn’t look at me but Jim raises his eyebrows.
‘I’m trying to write a story, as a matter of fact,’ I say.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘By the window, burning the midnight oil.’
I didn’t think anyone had noticed. She’s probably seen me puffing away as well - and she hasn’t reported it!
Piscator. From the Latin: angler. Oxford p. 614.
The Oxford gives no derivation for the word syphilis.