Jim’s sixteen-year-old granddaughter arrived again as expected. I did not see her come in but I got a glimpse of her pushing one of the old dears around the common room. At about 11 a.m. I rolled out to the courtyard for a smoke. Unfortunately I ran into Matron Collier who keeps going out to check her plant, as if it might somehow have changed since the last time.
‘Mr Smythe. Had your shower?’
‘Yes, thanks. On my own too.’
‘Good. Let’s hope you’ll be walking soon, eh?’
My comment was to suggest that, for once, I didn’t share the experience with a nurse. Of course she interpreted it as me being proud to have achieved such a remarkable feat without assistance. I was going to clarify but she’d already marched off.
As to my walking, my legs are really no better; I think it’s the cold weather. When I wake they’re as stiff as broom handles. I work on the circulation, bend them up and down but it’s still a good while before I can make it to the wheelchair. A person walks about 65,000 miles in a lifetime, though that average has been severely reduced by the likes of me. Meanwhile Osborne says I should get more exercise. I look at her fat arse and wonder what she’d know about it.
I round the corner of the concrete yard, look up, and there’s Pheona or ‘Phe’, leaning against the brick wall again with a smoke.
‘Thought you’d be gone by now,’ I say.
‘Thought you’d be gone years ago,’ she replies.
I suddenly realise I have left my lighter in the room. I cannot go back. I’m forced to ask for a light. She passes me a pink plastic lighter with a cupid on it.
‘You enjoy being a sook, don’t you?’ I say.
Pheona blows a puff of smoke. I blow one too. Silence.
She’s what you might call a ‘new generation’ teen. Tattoos, pins and rings in her ears, nose and eyebrow. She’s wearing black tights and zebra striped shoes, a black fur-lined jacket with a zip and a hood, short on her waist but the sleeves going right over her hands. Bluish lipstick, black nail polish. What’s with all the black? She’s actually quite pretty, underneath it all. She knocks the ash off her smoke and gazes straight ahead. I had the idea she was supposed to be here to do some penance and look after her grandfather.
‘Where’s Jim?’ I ask her.
‘Fucked if I know.’ She blows some smoke.
‘Don’t you think you should find out?’
She glares at me. ‘What’s your problem, grandpa? What’s it got to do with you? Would you keep your mind on your own business?’
I study her and for the first time I think I see her. She’s angry. A very angry sixteen-year-old. But there’s something else in her eyes as well, something like disappointment. She’s pissed off, pissed off with her lot, her friends, her life, who knows what. I study her profile. Her short black hair is messed up and spiked just like a million others that look exactly like her, right out of some teeny magazine.
‘You put gel in your hair.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Breaking news: old man comments on girl’s hair.’
The reason I said it is because of a recent observation. I have determined that five out of ten young women on the fashionable streets wear their hair in a pony tail. The other five wear their hair severely chopped and messy, as though they’ve fallen into the blades of a ride-on mower. When I was the same age, women’s hair was long and wild - it was a symbol of freedom and anti-establishment. Tell me what these new styles are a symbol of ? Also, these days a lot of young women are large, if you catch my drift. What’s going on there? Don’t they care anymore? At least one thing in Pheona’s favour; she’s slim like Kitty was, though she’s nothing like Kitty as a person.
And I have also noticed that a high proportion of young men now shave their heads - or crop it tight to their skulls. Perhaps it marks a new age of sobriety -
in the sense of being resigned to the meaningless and ordinary. What happened to creativity and the use of the imagination? What happened to free thinking?
‘You probably think it’s original,’ I say, ‘but look around you. All the other smart young girls have spiky, gellie hair too.’
She stares at me. ‘Mind’ (pause) ‘your own’ (pause) ‘business!’ We puff away on our smokes.
‘Ever see The Life of Brian?’
‘The what?’
‘The movie, Life of Brian?’
‘It’s probably a classic, is it?’ She does a quote sign in the air.
‘Not really. But there’s this scene where Brian appeals to the masses who’re all shouting for his head. Brian yells to them, Why go along with this, you have to be different! The mob yell back, Yes, we are all different. Then one little bloke way back in the crowd puts up his hand and says, I’m not.’ Pheona drops her butt and screws it flat with her jungle-pattern shoe.
‘Are you different, old man?’
‘Well, I’m not like any of these in here.’
‘Yeah, but are you different?’
She’s asking me; can you believe it? What the hell would she know about it?
Suddenly Jim comes round the corner in his chair and crashes into the brick. He has more skin off his knuckles from hitting things than a prize fighter. You’d think he’d learn.
‘Slow down, Pop,’ Pheona says. ‘What’s the rush?’
Just this minute Dell came in collecting money for one of the nurses in the west wing who’s leaving.
‘Well done!’ I say. ‘Nice to see that someone is escaping this joint!’
‘Think you could toss in?’ says Dell.
As I have never met the woman in my life I wonder why I am to give money. Insult to injury.
‘I don’t know her,’ I say.
‘Well, she knows you.’
‘Then why doesn’t she chuck me a few bob.’
‘Come on, Jack. A bit of loose change?’
‘Sorry, Dell. None of my change is loose. It’s all ear-marked for something.’ Hopefully she’ll have more luck with others who won’t remember that the donation was given, let alone recall a nurse from the other wing.
I have just been out to the payphone near the front office - getting rid of a bit of ‘loose change’. I rang Lisa. Saturday morning is always the best time to catch her. Could you please bring my fishing rods? There is a man here who wants to see them. Maybe he wants to buy them, I say, though of course I have no intention of selling anything. But this is my strategy: as nothing has worked so far I need new reasons to recover what has always been mine. I ask her also for my clock radio. ‘My traveller’s clock runs out of battery and I miss breakfast.’ And my petanque balls. ‘Someone wants them for a championship.’
She asked me whether I enjoyed my day at the museum. ‘Yes’, I said, ‘thank you very much. Now can I have my possessions? It’s urgent’. She was quiet on the line a long while and then she said, ‘OK, Dad. I’ll dig out what I can and bring them over.’
‘The fishing tackle box too? There’s a carton that’s got all the bits inside it. I might have a buyer.’
‘OK I’ll dig it out.’ I think I might have had a break-through this time. I was careful not to mention the photos.
Then I rang Chris. I could hear very strange music playing in the background, I think Indian, with a lot of wailing and high-pitched instruments.
‘Hang on a sec,’ he says. He turns down the music.
‘How are you, Dad?’
‘Good, Chris. Are you in the middle of something?’
‘No, no, not at all. Just finished my meditation and then I turn the volume up. I find the vibrations fill my body - like a top-up. Gives me positive energy through the day.’
‘Yes, I could feel it at my end too.’
Chris laughs. He thinks I’m joking. I want to ask when I might see him again but I decide against it.
‘What’s on for the weekend?’ I say.
‘There’s a group of Buddhist monks here on a visit from Tibet,’ he says. ‘They’re making a sand mandala in St Kilda and I’m going over to watch them do it.’
‘Sounds interesting. Do you think I’d be interested?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I might go back again tomorrow. If I do I could pick you up. I’ll leave a message with the receptionist.’
‘I thought you were interested in Hinduism?’ I said.
‘I am. But it doesn’t mean it’s the only path. I have a lot of respect for the Buddhists, especially the Tibetan ones.’
‘Have you spoken to your sister lately?’
‘Not in the last week or two. Why?’
‘I just think you should, that’s all. Never let the gap widen like it did with your Aunt Kitty and me. It’s a bad thing to do in a family, Christopher. Why don’t you give her a ring?’
‘OK, I might this afternoon. If I get back in time.’
‘And ask her to return my things, will you? It will have more weight if you say it.’
‘OK, Dad, I’ll ask her.’
‘The fishing rods, box of tackle, clock radio and the petanque balls. You got that?’
‘Yeah, OK, Dad.’
‘Four things, Chris: Rods, tackle, clock, balls. Got it?’
‘I got it Dad, OK?’
‘Otherwise, I could get her to drop them at your place?’
‘No, I’ll talk to her.’
‘OK. Thanks son. I’d really appreciate it.’
I hang up. If that doesn’t work, nothing will.
It was nearly six months before Kitty finally made it to Melbourne. She would have been thirty-nine then. It was 1981, the year the first desktop computers came on sale. I remember going once to a science display with Lisa and Chris. Chris was eighteen then and mad about science. I’m surprised that he eventually went into photography. Now he is watching out for a computer for me, a PC. I am hoping he can find a good second-hand one that I can set up in here. With a computer I’d really be ‘the talk’ among the oldies (although most wouldn’t know an Apple Mac from a piece of fruit).
That day in ‘81 we walked around the science display and there it was, one of the first computers for home use. Black-and-white screen in a grey box, a DOS system and operated by key commands. And I remember that object as though it was yesterday; I knew there and then that the world had changed.
Technology, it was the big thing of the eighties and suddenly it seemed to make the youth of the day go all ordinary again. The counterculture was over, supplanted by education which got everyone thinking exactly the same. Without anyone noticing, life lost any sense of urgency and people stopped trying to change things. People seemed to get their sense of meaning from the latest innovation: toys and gadgets, tools and appliances, hardware and software - professional levers to climb the ladder and wedge into the system.
In terms of popular culture, many of the big groups of the eighties were actually conceived in the seventies - AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Genesis, Police, Split Enz. In the eighties, it was less about the music - or the message as they used to say - and more about the money. And what about the rest of life? Same thing. I’m not saying it wasn’t a good time, just that the world started to think of everything as ‘product’ - buy and sell, promote and project, new and novel - and a lot of it excessive and superfluous, like the endless types of milk we now get in the supermarket. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Kitty did not arrive on a motorbike; she came by train. I was working at Wilson & Turnbull then, some of it signing but mostly doing the screenprinting. I had a knack for it and could do the set-up, run the proofs and make ready for the final print-run faster and cleaner than the more experienced printers. It was noisy, smelly and repetitive but at the end of the day you knew you’d done a good day’s work. The proof was in the product. When Kitty arrived I took the day off which the boss was not happy about, but I’d rather get the sack than not be there for Kitty.
I met her at Spencer Street and we walked up to the tram stop. I kept standing apart from her just so I could see how she moved, how she reacted to things, following in the wake of her self-certainty. Even hefting a suitcase she exuded a kind of class that is common in inner Sydney. I watched her looking all around, taking in the scene and learning from the simple experience of just walking the street.
Back in my room at the Ceswick pub, Kitty plonked down on the bed and looked around. She was sitting on her hands and she swung her legs. She still had on her creaky leather coat and now I could really smell her perfume, a gentle fragrance that brightened the place all on its own. She looked healthy. I tried to see if there were any outward signs of her past occupation. There were none. I tried not to think about it - when you’re over something it’s best to erase it. Kitty just sat there on the mattress and swung her legs. Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed with the room. But that day nothing could dampen her happiness and she was pleased to be closing one door and opening another.
‘First thing tomorrow, we look for a flat,’ she said smiling.
‘Can’t. I’ve got to go to work. But we could do it Saturday.’
‘Can’t wait ‘til Saturday, Jacky boy. I’ll start looking and you come along when you can.’
By the end of the week we had a nice little place in Richmond and within a month she had all her things down from Sydney. She got a job managing a bar in Fitzroy through someone she knew in Darlinghurst. And that is how Kitty reorganised our lives.
She left her past behind. She told me about her Sydney love affairs; the guy who promised everything but neglected to mention he already had a wife; the long relationship she had with her first boss from the hotel industry. Kitty said the affair was rocky, like a seesaw: up in the air one minute, feet on the ground the next. Finally, she said, she just walked out of the playground.
It was nearly three months before I found the moment to ask her about Dad. I came home to find her in the yard trying to put new screws in the leg of an outdoor table. She had it upside down on the concrete.
‘Found it in the hard rubbish, on McKean Street,’ she said. ‘Carried the fucking thing all the way back.’
Her skin was naturally pale but this summer she’d tanned and in her white singlet top, her arms and shoulders looked coppery. She often wore the white singlet -
she was what men might call ‘curvy’ and it suited her. I noticed that she’d also changed her hair; cropped above her shoulders jet black and straight, it hung across her face as her head tilted. I looked at the table.
‘Remember the one we had at home?’ I said. ‘It was just like it.’
‘It wasn’t like this,’ she said. ‘It might have been white but it was made of metal.’
‘No it wasn’t. Dad made it in the garage.’
I think it was the first time he’d been mentioned since we were teenagers.
‘Do you think you’ll go and see Mum?’ I said.
She drew her hair back behind her ear. I noticed she wasn’t shaving her underarms.
‘I might. Sometime.’
‘She’s changed, you know. I think she’s got her act together.’
Kitty looked at me. ‘So do you want to see her again?’
I looked away. ‘Not much point. I’ve seen her once already. What will I learn from another visit?’
Kitty turned the table up the right way and crawled under it.
‘Mum said a few things about you and Dad,’ I ventured. I could not see her but I’m sure she stiffened. She continued working on the table.
‘And what might that have been?’
‘She said Dad molested you?’ There was a short silence and then Kitty emerged, put her brown arms along the table top. She fixed her clear blue eyes on me.
‘It’s not your business, Jack. And if anything happened it was so long ago I can hardly remember.’
She got under the table again. Over the fence I heard beer barrels bouncing on the footpath outside the pub.
‘I … I wondered why you never said anything?’
A steel barrel struck another and Kitty emerged.
‘Jack, it had nothing to do with you, OK? I’d completely forgotten about it and I can’t see why you need to remind me now.’
She gathered her tools and took them inside.
About nine months into our new life together Kitty came home with a man. Naturally, she always had dates - she attracted friends like flies - but this was something else. I knew the moment he walked in that I wouldn’t like it. The look of him - as though he already had the future mapped out: his career, his finances, his social life, and Kitty. And I could tell immediately he certainly didn’t include me in the picture. And what irritated me most was that he was a really nice guy - which left no room whatever for negotiation.
The bastard could cook, sew, type, speak Italian, and hold a conversation about politics, fashion, art, you name it. Matthew Banes was his name - Kitty called him Matty - and he was about ten years older than she was. That made him going on fifty at the time - who knows, he might this day be in a nursing home like me. He was tall and good-looking for an older man - though I thought the scarves he wore were a horrible affectation. Kitty seemed to really go for him and there was a long period where she didn’t get in until very late.
Not that I was sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I had my own dates, off and on. Sometimes I’d go along to the Rainbow - the pub where Kitty worked - and it was not uncommon for her to introduce me to one woman or another, usually in her forties, who was happy to date someone like me. We’d go out to dinner or to the movies, and more than once we’d end up back at her place.
The good thing about middle-age is that people know what they want, why they want it and they don’t waste time getting it. It may sound like a boast but it was rare for one of my dates to be still clothed half an hour after arriving at her place. If they did, it was only because they were sick or tired or emotionally stressed. But all things being equal, we’d be on the bed before the kettle boiled.
If I am to be baldly honest, I found it boring. After a while a pattern emerged and in the dim light of one bedroom or another, with one person or another, it was hard to tell the events apart, hard to find any sense of purpose or sense of surprise - in the way that a natu-ralist might suddenly spot a new species in territory he’s walked over before. No doubt my partners felt the same. What we really wanted was companionship but you don’t get that anywhere, at least not the kind that’s worth keeping. At best there’d be conversations about work or weather or which is the best restaurant, at worst, just dumb silence. Nobody’s fault; just a failure to connect.
It got so I never expected a relationship to last, and it didn’t. But to tell the truth, it never bothered me. I use again the old tennis analogy. You can’t ever be much good at it if you don’t really like the game, if you aren’t terribly inspired. And just like tennis, some people are very good at relationships, some are average and some are just wasting their time. I’m average, or maybe a bit below.
In my experience, the only relationship that really works is when two people who are very good at it happen to cross paths. If one is good and the other average it doesn’t work; two average only lasts a while; two bad players is a disaster. But two top sports in the relationship game can really pull an audience - on the same court at the same time and starting at love all round.
Also, it’s not a competition.
If I did have a date, I made sure I never brought her back to our flat to stay over. How could I expect Kitty to avoid the practice if I didn’t honour it myself ? Of course Kitty hardly complied.
Only a week after Kitty introduced me to Matthew, the crunch came. The three of us were watching a video and when it finished, Matthew and Kitty just sat there until I was obliged to get up and leave. For a short while I heard hushed voices and finally Kitty’s bedroom door clicked shut. Then began what I can only describe as the most uncomfortable experience of my life. First there was a lot of thumping and bumping and I feared some violence was involved. But then all went quiet until I began to hear that older man’s throaty sighs. Soon there were repeated moans, each one rising higher like a woodwind ascending a staircase. And then suddenly a long pause followed by one heaving groan and I dared not imagine what Kitty was doing to him right then, at that particular moment. I found myself gripping the sheets.
Half an hour later Matthew left the house and Kitty saw him right out onto the footpath. From the kitchen I could see her in her dressing gown in the lamplight, giving him a final hug and a kiss goodnight. As soon as he was gone I returned to my room and I heard Kitty come in and quietly make a cup of tea in the kitchen.
It became a regular routine and a few nights a week that’s what I came to expect. In the end I’d leave the house if that fifty-year-old bloke arrived, and then I’d come home at an hour when I knew he’d be gone. Of course I didn’t complain; it was Kitty’s life and that’s all there was to it.
Only once did I do my block. It was summer and on certain days Kitty would sunbake in the backyard. She wore a little black bikini and often spent the afternoon just lying out there, reading. She sometimes asked me to join her but I wasn’t much for sunbaking - I burn easily and get no pleasure lying in the sun’s glaring rays with perspiration running.
One Sunday, Matthew turned up. Invited? I don’t know. But before long the two of them were out on the back lawn with towels and bottles of drink. Matthew stood there stripped down to his togs and I saw clearly that, for a man of fifty, he was quite well built in a Hawaii Five-O kind of way. Kitty stepped up and kissed him - and then suddenly she dropped all her clothes. She stood there in the sun stark naked and I swear she looked like a goddess. Matthew saw it too and took hold of her breasts.
I could stand it no longer. I marched straight out onto the porch.
‘Have you two gone completely mad?’ I said. ‘Can’t you see that half the windows of Richmond are pointing at you?’
Kitty laughed.
‘Oh, Jack, don’t be so traditional!’
She pulled a towel around her.
‘This is my flat too, Kitty. I have to live here as well, you know.’
‘Sorry, Jack,’ said old Matty. ‘You’re dead right mate, won’t happen again.’
I began to hate him. And I might have done him an injury if the affair hadn’t slowly run its course. It lasted about six months, then it was on and off over the next half year or so. But I was very relieved when Kitty finally made the decision not to bring the man home at all.
For a while she went quiet - introspective, some might say. And that was when I tried to raise the subject of her childhood again. For a long time I’d felt as though I’d been written out of a story that should have affected the both of us; I felt I should have been allowed to share the unpleasantness.
‘Kitty,’ I said one morning as she sat with her coffee, ‘if ever you want to talk about the past, you know, things that might have troubled you once, you’d let me know, wouldn’t you?’
‘What are you talking about, Jack?’
‘The past, Kitty. The trouble you had with our father. I don’t mean to pry but …’
Kitty wobbled her head.
‘Jack, can I … When will you understand there’s nothing to discuss? Everyone has some good and bad in their lives but they don’t go around reliving it. It’s not worth the effort, Jack. I’m fine, you’re fine; what more do you want?’
I thought about pressing the point. Then I just left it. I hated the tension; I did not want bad blood between us.
That aside and the business with old Matty, those three or four years together in the Richmond flat were good times and for a while we were as close as we were as children. It was a period when I really got to know that sister of mine. The way she hummed softly as she put on eye makeup and bit her lip when putting in earrings. And the way she made a noise like a hairdryer when she was towel-drying her hair. Typically, she’d march right into the bathroom and plonk down on the toilet in front of me, no different than when we were kids. And the way she’d slide down the couch and fall asleep watching some late night movie. I’d flick off the set and she’d just stir and smile. And in the morning she’d have oranges squeezed before I was out of the shower. I think it was a Sydney thing.
Just put a small fly in my Venus Flytrap as it doesn’t seem to be having much luck on its own. It closed around its prey immediately. The fly wasn’t a mosquito or a gnat but something in between. If I had a magnifying glass I could describe it more accurately. It would be ironic if I had just discovered a new species of insect and fed it to my plant. I will measure how long the digestive process takes. Quicker than mine, no doubt. Had to make a runner to the bathroom again this morning. I vomited up a lot of sour bile, with black flakes in it. Since I no longer have a gall bladder it might have been some sort of black coating on my stomach where the bile now collects - if you know what I mean. I limped back to my room where I have just spent the last half hour trying to ease the ache out of my calves and the front of my shin muscles. Though I am pleasantly surprised by the newfound strength in my legs in an emergency.
Also ran into Craaayyyg again this afternoon, the handicapped lad. I ran into him literally. I was going around the corner just as his bed, pushed by Stinson, came charging the other way. By the time she pulled him up his bed had piled into my chair. The man made a lot of noises; no doubt it was the most exciting thing that’s happened to him this year. Later, on my way back I saw him parked by a window as usual. He caught sight of me and his arm went up at a strange angle and a lot of new noises came out of him. I got the distinct feeling he recognised me.
For the hell of it I said, ‘Fancy bumping into you!’ There were more strange gestures. I wonder what’s going on inside his brain?
In 1984 Heather got really sick for the third time. Just when she thought it was beaten and she was getting her life back, the worst news was delivered. At that time Chris was twenty-one and still living at home. Lisa had gone to live in Charters Towers so she rarely saw her mother. As for me, Heather wouldn’t let me near her.
It wasn’t until they put her in hospital that I managed to get within shot of her. I walked into the ward and she tried to turn away. But I saw her well enough, only forty-six yet a woman I could barely recognise … I knew the old Heather was gone. She wouldn’t speak to me. I sat by the bed and tried to remember the vital young woman I once shared a bed with. I remembered an afternoon in Sydney when Lisa was a baby. We tucked her into the cot and then Heather and I shared a joint. I don’t know where she got the stuff but she always had some around. For the next few hours in the direct rays of the sun we lay on the carpet and did things that would shock these nurses right out of their uniforms, an encounter that would require a new chapter in The Joy of Sex.
But when Heather was on the hospital bed I looked at her and felt nothing but despair. How unforgiving is the passage of time. How appalling that it should turn a vital human being into something shrivelled and weak, a wasted organism as pointless as a diseased pear still clinging to the branch when it should have gone back to the soil. Suddenly she turned her face towards me and I saw the sad and hostile eyes, her thin lips set hard and all of it surrounded by skin unnaturally tightened.
‘Why are you here, Jack. Come to see me die?’
‘You won’t die.’
‘Course I will. For once, why don’t you face the facts?’
I didn’t want a fight.
‘I’m sorry, Heather. Sorry if I mucked things up. Perhaps it was the accident … If my legs hadn’t been …’
‘Legs my arse. Always the legs. Wake up to yourself, Jack Smythe.’
She turned away.
Heather has never understood the full effect of my smashed legs. No-one has. All that time convalescing and not being able to hold my life and family together. Things can turn on you when you can’t keep up the pace; the world leaves you behind.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ I said.
‘Go away. That’s what you can do. Get the fuck out of here.’
I sat there quietly for a good while. Heather was facing away and I heard her sigh. A nurse came in to check something but she looked right through me. I looked again at the body under the tight bedcover. I remembered the first day when a young, freckle-faced girl bailed me up on Graham Street and asked me for cash. And the day we sat in Charlie’s Bar and she flicked her hair back and told me she was ‘up the duff ‘. How could this be the same person? How could time have been so ruthless?
Then I just stood up and walked out. In the lift I tried to think of something that another person might have done to improve things. But what was there; what could anyone do? Nothing at all; I was sure of it. I began to feel nauseous and nearly threw up in the elevator.
The elevator has one particular oddity - the fact that it is called an elevator or a lift - when in fact it takes people down 50 per cent of the time. Why couldn’t it just be called a shaft?
Collier’s gardenia has a lot of buds on it. I did not notice them at first but there they are. The old bag must be frightening the shrub into life. She pointed her fat rump at me this morning as I observed her from my window. She was bending down to scrutinise the bush, probably ordering it to hurry up and bloom. She didn’t see me and doesn’t know she’s being observed. Frankly, I think her dull shrub is not half as interesting as my little Venus Flytrap. There is no trace of the fly I fed it so now I should catch another one. We are getting quite close, me and Jaws.
I think Clem may have noticed Collier’s plant as well. He has the next room to me. At lunch, Osborne told him to eat his greens. He said, ‘What about those flowerpot greens. Can’t eat those!’
Today is a very good day. My darling daughter Lisa brought over my things! Not the photos or the claw hammers and other tools, but I got my big clock radio. Brown, ‘General Electric’ brand, made in Malaysia. About 25 cm long, 16 deep and 6 cm high. The speaker hole is on the top. I had this clock radio at The Grace. There was a house cat living there and some mornings I’d let that cat into my room where it would take up a position sitting on top of the clock radio, I think because of the warmth. But it would park its bum directly over the speaker hole and I hoped that one day it might open its mouth so I could hear the music. Red digital numerals have two settings, bright or dim. It has a ‘snooze’ button, two wakeup times and I can listen to the morning news by setting the alarm to ‘radio’. Why do they call it an alarm? It isn’t one; it’s a waker.
Alarm n. Call to arms; warning sound e.g. of a bell to announce danger. Oxford p. 18. Of course, when you find Jan Osborne in your room at dawn that is alarming.
Lisa also brought my rods, a carton box full of tackle and the petanque balls! The blue canvas case for the balls is very rough and dirty but I think I can clean it up with a bit of Napisan from the laundry.
Lisa didn’t stay. ‘I’ve started another job,’ she said and with no further information, turned around and left. Frankly, I don’t care.
I have since spent a couple of hours cleaning and reorganising my fishing gear. Two rods, both Jarvis Walker, one a two-piece spinning rod, the other more of a boat rod but very good the way I rig it up. My large tackle box is still intact. Three reels, one a sidecaster and the other two are spinning reels, a Penn and a Daiwa, both good brands. I put 12 lb line on the Daiwa and left the old line on the Penn. I have a range of lures including spinners, poppers and Wonder Wobblers. Sinkers include balls size 0 up to 4, snapper sinkers, spoons and stars. Hooks need replenishing. A few good gar hooks and smaller suicide hooks but many have rust on them and should not be used. Also two squid jigs, a packet of swivels and other sundry items. Not bad, considering.
I have hidden it all in my wardrobe in case having it in my room creates a bad reception from the overlords. Especially the knife. It’s a very good cleaning and scaling knife with measurements in centimetres running the length of it. Before stashing it away I used it to measure my room: 2.5 metres x 3.2 metres or in old terms, eight feet by ten feet.
Later I suddenly decided to cut Pistol Pete’s hair. He’s harmless for all his ‘prowess’ rantings and he said he’d give me five dollars for the job. And of course Dell wanted it. She got the clearance and set me up in the bathroom. Pete and I both sat on the plastic shower chairs, a bit awkward but the only way.
‘All off,’ he says, ‘Down to the bone. None of this namby-pamby poofter rubbish!’ Then he adds, ‘How’s your love life?’
‘Terrific,’ I say. ‘Got my eye on a hole in the fence.’ I know he likes to be crude so why not bait him?
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘When I was in Korea, that option was presented. Only we had a little lady on the other side!’
‘You fought in Korea?’
‘Course! Shot more commies than you’ve had hot breakfasts! Then I had my heart set on a little princess from Pohang but I had to come home.’
I push the No. 2 clippers right over the top of his hard old skull. My Wahl buzzes through, no effort at all. Pete puts his head down while I zip up the back.
‘Hard to believe,’ he says into the towel. ‘Put myself in all sorts of danger over there. Put myself in all sorts of danger here as well. Then I’m to go out with a bloody stroke.’
‘You’re still alive,’ I tell him.
‘Bet you don’t know how I got the stroke?’ he says.
‘No idea.’
‘Poking three TV models at the same time!’
Just then Clem comes to the door in his wheelchair. He sees us on the white shower chairs and our wheelchairs standing empty. He just sits and stares, first at the wheelchairs then at the plastic chairs. He’s nearly had it.
I finish with Pete and give him a good dust off with the hearth brush. With a lot of trouble I manage to get him back in his wheelchair. I’m forced to stand so I grab hold of Pete’s chair and Clem gets out of the way so I can shove him into the corridor. ‘I’m right now,’ Pete says and wheels off with one arm. He has a special chair with two hand rims on the one side, one for the right wheel and one for the left - or he can turn the two together so he can go straight. Quite ingenious really; wish I’d thought of it myself. Suddenly he stops and calls, ‘I must be truthful, Jack. I didn’t really do my heart in with the three maidens.’ Then he turns around. ‘It was four!’ I can still hear his stupid cackle as he zigzags up the hall.
Clem won’t go.
‘What is it, Clem?’ I say as I sweep up.
‘My hair’s hanging down,’ he says.
Oh no - what the hell have I started.
‘Not today,’ I tell him.
‘Not today, not tomorrow, not the end of the week.’ He doesn’t move. His old grey eyes shift about, all watery like a seal pup. Just because I brought in my bloody clippers!
‘Five dollars,’ I tell him. I was certain that would settle it.
‘Five dollars. Now that’s handy,’ he says.
‘Clem, why don’t you forget about it and go back to your room? You’ll be dead by the end of the week anyway.’
‘Dead one day, gone the next.’
He is not leaving. I assess how long it will take - what a nuisance the man can be.
‘Just get your ugly head in here,’ I say.
‘Ugly is hardly a kind word.’
‘A good one though.’
‘Good is hardly a kind word either.’
It’s like talking to a drugged parrot.