TWO

‘Claudia Valentine.’

‘Hello, dear.’ It was my mother on the other end of the line. She asked me if I could come over and see her. ‘It won’t take a minute.’ For something that wouldn’t take a minute her tone sounded ominous.

‘Everything OK?’ I asked. It was the day before the wedding. I hoped she wasn’t getting cold feet. ‘I’m picking the kids up at 2.30, I’ll call over on the way.’

The front door was open, with just the screen door protecting Mina from the outside world. I nevertheless knocked and called out to her. The neighbour watering his garden looked up and gave me a friendly wave. Mina came to the door absentmindedly carrying a teapot.

The house was in chaos. There were clothes, packing boxes, crockery and newspapers all over the place. If you hadn’t known what was going on, you’d swear the place had been burgled. My mother’s orderly, calm life was in upheaval. Not only was she about to remarry, she was also selling the house and moving. ‘So that Brian and I can start out afresh,’ she’d explained. Mina’s life was in eruption and some of the lava was coming down on me. This was the house I’d grown up in, my grandmother had been born here, it was the home we came to after my father had pissed off.

Mina had discussed the matter with me—I thought it was a great idea for her to cut loose from the past. But coming back here, probably for the last time, I felt the twinge of change.

It wasn’t on account of Mina. She was only going to the next suburb. It was on account of the house. I’d assumed she’d live here forever. That the house would always be accessible to me. But next week there’d be new people with new furniture. They’d probably renovate, paint it Federation colours. Put Polyfilla in the hole I’d drilled in the wall to see if I could get through to China.

Despite the pot in her hand she didn’t offer me tea. Nor did we go into the kitchen, as we usually did. We stayed in the dining room, where the biggest mess was. There were three piles—what she was keeping, what she was leaving in the house and what she was giving to St Vincent de Paul’s. She explained it all to me, talking about everything else except whatever it was she’d called me about. The kids’ flight was due in soon, I didn’t want to be late for them.

‘What did you want to tell me?’

She wrapped newspaper round the teapot. Slowly. Deliberately. ‘I just wanted to make sure, you know, with the wedding coming up and everything. So a couple of days ago I went and checked up. I don’t suppose the news will come as a surprise, but I thought I’d better let you know anyway.’ She spent some time wedging the lid into the pot so it wouldn’t rattle.

‘He passed away. Years ago—25th April, 1985. Anzac Day.’

She fussed around looking for a piece of paper the right size to wrap the sugar bowl. The time it took me to realise properly who she was talking about. She rarely referred to him as ‘he’, it was always ‘your father’.

She slid open the glass doors of the sideboard to get the next items for packing. In it was the dinner service that was kept for ‘best’. In fact I can’t ever remember seeing it in use. It was plain white with a blue and yellow pattern round the edge, all the rage in the fifties. She picked up a cup and saucer, holding them fondly. ‘Your father gave this to me for our fifth wedding anniversary. Last present he …’ Her voice trailed away. She wrapped up the cup and saucer and put them in the box destined for St Vincent de Paul’s. ‘I don’t think I could watch Brian eating off your father’s plates,’ she said, as if needing to justify her decision not to take them. ‘I never used that set anyway,’ she said, too brightly. ‘What’s the point of keeping it?’ She busied herself with wrapping another item, folding and refolding the newspaper. Too many times.

We hadn’t heard from Guy in over thirty years. He drank and drank till eventually he couldn’t find his way home anymore. I would have been three when he gave Mina the dinner set. ‘I’ll take it,’ I said. ‘It’ll be nice having a set where all the pieces match.’

It was only a couple of days since I’d flown back from Melbourne and here I was at the airport again. I couldn’t help thinking about John and Anna Larossa. And the woman in Melbourne. I still felt ambivalent about not telling Anna what I had discovered about her husband. I’d never even met her husband yet I knew more details about his intimate life than she did. The knowledge weighed heavily on me. She’d have my report by now. And the invoice. It would almost have been a relief if she’d rung up and questioned the expenses. But so far she hadn’t. I felt bad about carrying this on my own but I was going to have to wear it.

The arrivals screen indicated that the flight from Brisbane had now landed. I hovered at the gate, looking over the heads of the handful of people who’d come to meet the plane. I immediately spotted David. It wasn’t because of the instinct that allows parents to instantly recognise their offspring in a crowd. David was the first person everyone noticed. He was wearing a baseball cap back to front, a pair of lime green sunglasses that almost engulfed his face, grunge shorts and a T-shirt with wording on it I hoped he didn’t understand. When he walked, the only parts of him that moved were his legs. My son’s attempts to look totally cool. I was almost embarrassed to go and claim him. When he saw me, though, his face broke out into a big wide grin.

Amy sauntered along slightly behind, deliberately not looking at him, as if this kid in the stupid clothes had nothing to do with her. She was two years older but ten centimetres taller. She seemed to be growing before my very eyes. Prepubescent spurt. The tallness didn’t seem to bother her the way it had bothered me at that age. At least she didn’t have the tangle of red hair to cope with as well. The blond hair she’d inherited from her father was long, straight and shiny. ‘Hi Mum,’ she said, flicking it back over her shoulder and giving me a hug. I smelt perfume, one of those you sometimes get as give-aways in glossy magazines.

Though he’d almost broken into a gallop when he’d spotted me, David looked like he’d rather die than embrace in public. Nevertheless, he allowed me a quick hug. ‘Let’s get the bags, OK?’ he said authoritatively, heading off in the wrong direction.

‘David! Can’t you read?’ retaliated Amy. ‘Just testing,’ he said, and came back into the fold.

We managed to get the luggage, despite David’s attempts to dive on anything that remotely resembled his bag, and walked outside. Amy turned her nose up at the smell of the pollution I couldn’t smell at all. Still, I suppose she hardly noticed the farm chemicals that left my eyes streaming.

I didn’t think they’d be concerned one way or the other, since they’d never met him, but on the drive back from the airport I told them that their grandfather had died. They both went silent for a moment then David, as if commiserating, announced: ‘Jesse’s grandfather died last week. While we were doing our exams.’ No-one said anything, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that required a response.

We drove through Stanmore then across Parramatta Road. ‘He had a heart attack and fell off the tractor,’ continued David, as if no time had elapsed since his last informative comment. ‘But that wasn’t what killed him,’ he went on, sounding just like one of the blokes in the pub telling a story. ‘The tractor rolled backwards and squashed his skull.’ Amy looked out the window, having no doubt heard this story before. There wasn’t much I felt like saying either.

We were almost home, in the line of traffic waiting to turn into Balmain, when Amy said: ‘How did he die?’ Mina hadn’t gone into the specific cause of death, there was no need. We assumed he’d drunk himself to death. ‘How do you drink yourself to death?’ enquired David when I told him. ‘You drink so much you just swell up and burst?’

‘Da-vid!’ said Amy with exasperation.

‘Well? Do you?’ For once he wasn’t trying to be funny, his question was genuine.

The lights changed. ‘It’s drinking alcohol. You drink it long enough and hard enough it affects your insides. Your brain, liver and kidneys,’ I gave him all the gory bits he loved so well, ‘they all just pack it in, refuse to function.’ I followed the stream of traffic down Roberts Street and into Mullens.

‘Why didn’t he ever come to see us?’ asked Amy when we pulled up outside the pub. I’d asked myself the same question a million times. ‘Did he know about us?’ I heard David say. Guy must have considered the possibility that his daughter had had children of her own. If he ever thought about me at all. How much of his brain, his memories, were there left at the end? Did he ever look into the bottle and see his past? Or was it only the future he saw there.

‘I think he knows,’ said Amy wisely. ‘I think he’s watching over us from Heaven.’

Heaven? That jolted me back to the here and now. David was poking his finger up in the air, indicating where Heaven was. I could see that it was time for us all to have a little talk. I didn’t know where Heaven was but I was pretty sure it wasn’t in the roof of this hire car.

‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ I said to them as we got the luggage out of the boot. I took them into the pub via the side door. Usually it’s all I can do to stop David going into the bar and staring at George, our resident derelict, but the promise of a surprise had him racing up the stairs.

My living quarters were looking spick and span; I’d got in flowers, frozen pizzas, a stack of videos. ‘Nice, Mum,’ said Amy, looking around appreciatively.

‘Yeah. Nice, Mum,’ repeated David, looking around for the surprise.

‘It gets even better,’ I said. ‘This time you get your own room.’ Up till this visit they’d bunked on my floor in sleeping bags. But they were old enough now for their own space. Besides, it was an adventure for them.

I’d been living in the pub for years; my living quarters—a combined bedroom/living room with kitchen and bathroom, were comfortable but small. As I was the only tenant I had almost free range. No-one stayed in pubs anymore when they came to town. Some of our regular drinkers suggested that Jack should open up to backpackers, as had other pubs in Balmain. ‘Gawd,’ said Jack, ‘then I’d be working twenty-four hours a day. I’ve got to get away from the public sometime.’

‘We’d help you look after ‘em, wouldn’t we, Les?’ said one bloke, nudging his friend. ‘Some of them nice young German frauleins, eh?’ As if a nice young fraulein would be interested for one minute in a man whose only personal growth in the last twenty years was a beer gut that practically rested on his knees. Dream on.

Jack and I had cleaned out the room and let the sun in. The wallpaper left something to be desired but otherwise it was very pleasant. There was an ensuite bathroom so they wouldn’t have to make midnight forays across the corridor to mine. No balcony as in my quarters but they’d only be in the room to sleep. They sniffed around the room, like cats coming to a new home, wary but at least staying there. Amy gravitated to the bed near the window, while David did a sideways dive onto the other one.

I showed them the wardrobe, empty except for the ubiquitous wire coathangers. ‘You can hang your things up in here.’ I looked at the way· David was dressed and asked warily, ‘You guys got something nice to wear to the wedding?’ They pulled clothes out of their respective bags and showed me. I was relieved. At least David wouldn’t be going to the wedding dressed like a circus. ‘Come across when you’re ready, OK?’ I left them to their unpacking.

But I’d hardly stepped into my room when I discovered David right behind me. ‘There’s no TV,’ he complained. ‘Well, it’s not going to kill you, there’s one in here.’

‘I know.’

‘What’s that?’ I asked, indicating the computer game in his hand.

‘Nintendo. You’ll love it, Mum.’

Hot on his heels came Amy. ‘Dad’s going to have a fit!’ she exclaimed. ‘I bet he confiscates it when you get home,’ she addressed her brother.

‘I want to show Mum, that’s all. Dad won’t care.’

‘He will.’

There was a series of alternating ‘he wills’ and ‘he won’ts’. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘that’s enough.’ I was tempted to tell them to go to their room now that they had a room to go to.

‘But, Mum, it’s great,’ David insisted. ‘You’ll love it.’

‘I’m sure I will. Later. Did you bring a wedding present?’ I said, changing the subject. They looked at each other as if this had also been the cause of dispute. David blurted out, ‘Rachel wanted to buy her a present but Amy wouldn’t let her.’ He looked at her defiantly, waiting for a response.

‘It’s got nothing to do with Rachel,’ came Amy’s reply. ‘She’s not related to Gran.’ Amy went quiet, trying to put some calm on choppy waters. I looked at her, but she wasn’t inviting any further discussion.

‘Well, the wedding’s tomorrow, let’s go shopping.’

We went into the city by ferry. It was one of those brilliant blue afternoons, the sky so bright it looked like it was about to burst. We sat outside, feet up on the rails. Amy’s and mine on the rails anyway. David’s didn’t reach. I don’t know where he gets that short stocky build from. Amy used to tell him he was adopted, using this as ‘proof’. But I had the ultimate proof—a birth certificate with Gary’s and my name on it. It had come to that. Usually an assurance from the parents is enough but David wanted to see it in print. I don’t know why, he could barely read at that stage.

‘Why is Gran getting married?’ asked David.

My mother was marrying a man who’d been a friend of the family for as long as I can remember. Brian Collier and my father were journos on the same paper. He was the one who stuck around when my father pissed off. I think he’d always had a soft spot for Mina but never once did he behave in a manner that my mother would describe as ‘untoward’. When she’d announced the news to me, Mina had explained, ‘It seems like the right thing to do, that’s all.’

‘Why didn’t you do it years ago?’ I’d asked.

‘I didn’t feel like it then.’

As if that was as much explanation as anyone would need.

It was Amy who supplied the answer. ‘She’s getting married because she’s in love.’

‘But Dad and Rachel are in love and they’re not married.’

Amy quickly glanced at me to see whether that unintentional little arrow had done any damage. A slight graze but nothing serious.

‘Just look at it this way, David—you get to eat a lot of cake.’

It was David who pointed out the two champagne flutes. I guess he thought the quicker they bought the present, the quicker he could get home to Nintendo. Elegant handblown glass that sounded so fine when you tapped your fingernail against it you could have used it to tune an entire orchestra. I wondered how many tuning forks you could buy for $120. That’s what it cost for the glasses.

As soon as we were in the door David hooked the computer game up to the TV. He’d done this before. ‘Look, Mum, it’s really great.’ And then I ceased to exist, he had shifted into another dimension. His expression was one of all-consuming alertness. He operated the controls and moved through that imaginary world with the ease, grace and concentration of a downhill skier. Amy lay on my bed reading tilt she finally flounced out in exasperation at the irritating little tune coming from the game.

I listened to some irritating little sounds of my own—messages on the answering machine. Most of them were from Gary, wondering whether the kids had arrived safe and sound. Whoops! Negligent parent. I should have got them to ring as soon as they arrived.

‘David.’

No response. I went and stood between him and the TV set. ‘That’s enough virtual reality, it’s time for some actual reality.’

He didn’t know what I was talking about but he understood the tone of my voice. ‘I just want to get to the next stage.’

‘Now.’ He closed the thing down. ‘OK, now call Gary.’

He didn’t seem too keen on the idea. ‘Amy can do it.’

‘No. You can. You’ve seen the birth certificate. You’re his child, too.’

‘Do you have Optus or Telecom?’ he asked, trying to delay the inevitable.

‘David, it doesn’t matter. Phone.’

He dialled the number. ‘Dad? It’s me.’ I went into the kitchen and took out one of the frozen pizzas. ‘We went to buy Gran a present.’ I could hear only David’s side of the conversation but that was enough. ‘Champagne glasses.’ Then there was a longer silence. I poked my head around the corner. David was squirming. ‘I wanted to show Mum.’ More silence, more squirming then, ‘Yes, Dad. Sorry, Dad.’ A shorter silence then, ‘OK. Mu-m!’ As if I were three blocks away instead of three metres. He held the phone out to me.

Gary and I had a short friendly chat. Then we had a ‘friendly chat’ of another kind. ‘We went into town, it slipped my mind … If anything happened the police would be in touch with you straightaway, Gary. I’ve got a friend in the force … No, he’s not playing at present … Yes, I’ll monitor it … Give me a break, my father died.’ It slipped through, bypassing all those border controls between the conscious and subconscious parts of my brain. It stopped him in his tracks. He said he was sorry, really sorry. He asked me how I felt, I told him I was OK.

David was looking at me with big eyes when I hung up. ‘Did you get into trouble from Dad too?’ he asked sympathetically.

I tousled his hair and grinned at him. ‘Go and tell your sister that dinner’s ready.’

I whipped up a salad and took the pizza out of the oven. As I was putting it on the plates the phone rang. ‘Help yourselves,’ I said and went to answer it.

‘Claudia Valentine,’ I said into the phone.

‘Hello. I … I want to make an appointment.’ A woman’s voice, slight accent, desperate tone, talking in a whisper as if she didn’t want to be overheard.

I kept my own voice neutral, not too curious or oversympathetic. Rock solid. The kind of voice a person in trouble could rely on. ‘Certainly. When would you like to see me?’ As soon as possible. Daytime. Nights were difficult for her. Tomorrow was the wedding, I had the kids for the weekend. ‘Monday?’ I suggested. Yes, yes, that would be fine. We settled on a time and place. ‘And your name, please?’ I said in a businesslike fashion.

‘Rosa. My name is Rosa.’

‘Do you have a contact telephone number in case …’ It was pointless continuing, she’d already hung up.

I hadn’t been on the phone long but the pizza was almost gone. There was plenty of salad left though. ‘Who was that?’ asked Amy.

‘Someone who wants to talk to me.’

‘About murder or something?’ David asked, picking out a piece of goat cheese and discarding it.

‘I don’t know yet. Want to go up the street for dessert?’

We walked up to one of the many cafes in Darling Street and sat outside eating cake. With cream. I wondered if I’d ever be able to eat cake again without thinking about Delightfully French and John Larossa. Probably.

Back at the pub the kids automatically went into their new room. It had been a long day. ‘Good night, Mum,’ said Amy. ‘Sorry about … your father.’ She reached up and kissed my cheek.

It was odd hearing her call him ‘your father’. I guess she’d always heard Mina refer to him like that, plus he’d never really been a grandfather to her. It made me want to curl up beside her and tell her all about it.

I sat on the balcony till long into the night, my children sleeping soundly across the way. The occasional car swished by on roads wet with night cleaning. Behind that was the hum of the city across White Bay, the tiny squares of light in the office buildings, Centrepoint above it all. How many times had I sat here looking out at the city, imagining my father out there somewhere. Which doorway, which park bench, which gutter he might be lying in. I could have gone looking for him. But I never did.