2

Return

As he eased his way through the front door of his flat, Jack did his best to ignore the stale, musty, single-man smell that wafted over him. Jack’s flat was one of eight in a crumbling inner-city block that had been built in the 1960s, as part of a process of urban renewal that was called ‘progress’ at the time. Run-down houses had been demolished, and replaced with smart cream-brick flats. Unfortunately, they didn’t stay smart for long.

Brunswick had become very fashionable in recent years, full of musicians, Greens, and caffé latte professionals. But Balmoral Avenue wasn’t in a fashionable part of the suburb. It was close to the northern end of Lygon Street, some distance from the transformation that was gradually working its way along one of Melbourne’s most glamorous inner-city streets. Jack’s end of Lygon Street was a world of dusty ethnic cafés and cheap clothing shops.

His flat was on the first floor at the back. The stairs annoyed him, but they did provide some distance from marauding teenagers and wandering drug addicts. Things were quiet most of the time. No one hassled him.

Jack dumped a small calico bag filled with basic groceries onto his kitchen table and slumped into the threadbare couch that marked the boundary between the kitchen and the lounge room. The afternoon’s exertions had taken a toll: he wasn’t used to physical activity, particularly anything involving violence.

He thought about taking some Teludene. The full horror of hayfever season was still a few weeks away, but he could sense the early signs creeping through his body. The pressure in the sinuses, tickle in the throat, water in the eyes, irritation in the nose — they were all there, stalking him like jackals shadowing wounded prey.

Jack had an unusual drug problem. His hayfever had got much worse over the past few years, so he was grateful that a new, and much better, drug had come onto the market. Teludene didn’t get rid of the hayfever entirely, but it made it bearable. The trouble was, it was expensive because it wasn’t subsidised by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. He’d looked it up on Wikipedia, and discovered that it was a slightly modified version of an earlier drug called Teldane, which had been withdrawn because it caused liver damage. Jack wasn’t sure whether he wanted to know if they’d fixed the problem.

Jack knew a bloke whose brother worked in the warehouse of the company that distributed the drug, so he’d managed to gain access to an illicit supply. It wasn’t easy: security at the warehouse was strict, and Harry’s brother wasn’t very reliable. Luckily, though, he was a keen gambler, so he was always on the lookout for a bit of extra cash. Jack paid well below retail for his Teludene, but it was still expensive, and he had to ration it.

He gritted his teeth, and accepted that it was more important to preserve the meagre stock that had arrived a few days before. He knew his need would be much greater in a few weeks’ time, and there was no guarantee of future supply from Harry’s brother. Last year he’d gone on holiday at a very inconvenient time, leaving Jack high and dry until early October.

Another empty, meaningless evening loomed: dinner, crap TV, a few cans of VB, and fitful sleep. Jack thought about watching some porn, but it didn’t feel right. The encounter with Farhia had really got to him, and he didn’t want to sully the moment with the crude trash he used to fill the void in his life. He could indulge in fantasies of a higher kind for a while.

Jack wasn’t accustomed to being a hero, even a minor one. His life was mundane. He had a few mates, but he regarded them as nobodies like himself. He enjoyed going to the football occasionally, even though his team had been forcibly absorbed by the Brisbane Lions, which meant it wasn’t quite the same. Now and then, he’d have a few beers and a few laughs with interesting characters, but that was about it.

He hadn’t had any kind of relationship with a woman for years. His only protection against drowning in loneliness and boredom was his passengers. A lot of them were windbags and dickheads, but at least every day was different. That afternoon had certainly been an interesting experience. He grimaced as the aches and twinges in his quads and lower back reminded him of his exertions.

A Current Affair was running a segment on Melbourne’s worst taxidrivers. Within thirty seconds, he was yelling at the screen. There were plenty of bad drivers, that was for sure, but if people had any idea what cabbies had to put up with … aggressive drunks, obnoxious teenagers, middle-class twerps, smelly wogs, vomiting dickheads. You name it, we get it. Who cares if a few drivers don’t know where the Royal Melbourne Hospital is? Jack was too tired to continue seething, so he turned the TV off and got up to start cooking his dinner.

The standard Balmoral Avenue dinner consisted of cheap sausages, mashed potatoes, carrots, and beans. Jack liked good food — and even ate out at restaurants from time to time — but when he was home alone he made little effort. He couldn’t afford to spend much on food, once rent, bills, cigarettes, and alcohol were taken care of. He worked long hours for a limited reward, and was so settled in his ways that even if he had more money he knew he wouldn’t know what to do with it.

The kitchen was very basic. A tarnished steel sink fronting the picture window was littered with dirty dishes and scraps. An inch or so of dishwater lingered at the bottom of the sink, held in place by food scraps clogging up the plughole.

To the right of the sink was a set of cupboards, hovering over a food-preparation area. On the bench was a tube of Glad Wrap, a battered old toaster, and a liberal sprinkling of bread crumbs.

Directly opposite was another bench that, along with Jack’s old couch, marked the boundary of the kitchen. An old Yellow Pages, some unwanted junk mail, and a couple of newspapers lay at the far end, while next to the window was an old grey phone that had been disconnected long before.

Against the free-standing wall that separated the kitchen from the entrance area was a yellowish Kelvinator fridge, a tiny round wooden table, and a couple of plastic chairs that Jack had pinched from the local scout hall. The only decoration was a calendar for the previous year, courtesy of Donellan’s Tyres, which Jack kept because he liked the nude model, and a poster for a 1982 Cold Chisel concert.

He made a mental note that he had basketball training the next day. For nearly six years, Jack had coached the Brunswick Bullets under-12 team. A mate had roped him into it, and he’d never had the gumption to bail out, even though his mate had long since moved to Geelong. He didn’t get paid, and he had to cadge a lift with parents to away games, but he enjoyed it enough to stick at it. He’d played a bit of basketball in his youth, and the kids were still young enough to take notice of what he said.

Once he had mechanically munched his way through dinner, Jack sat back with his first can for the night. He scanned the Herald-Sun TV guide, and noticed a documentary on the Horn of Africa. He normally didn’t watch SBS — except the late-night porn movies — because the signal was poor and the content was boring. Tonight, things were different: he now had a serious interest in Africa.

He didn’t have the stamina, though. After twenty minutes of a snowy screen and crackling voice-overs, Jack fell asleep, half-sitting, half-lying on the couch, mouth wide open, snoring fitfully. When he woke up a few hours later, an obscure Mexican historical drama was playing. It was after ten-thirty, so he crawled off to bed, forgetting to brush his teeth. In the world of the single middle-aged bloke living by himself, such things didn’t matter that much.

Jack was in a remarkably sunny mood the following day. He didn’t abuse any other drivers, or complain to any passengers about the nation’s politicians. Tiny grains of hope and expectation mingled with absurd fantasies as he thought about the prospect of meeting with Farhia. With the ingrained pessimism of the chronically single, he put off calling until the afternoon. At least that gave him some time to prepare himself for the inevitable rejection.

He wasn’t able to hold out much beyond his lunch-break. After dropping off a passenger in Collingwood, he stepped out of the cab, took a few deep breaths, and punched Farhia’s number into his phone. She answered after the second ring.

‘Er, ah, hi. Is that Farhia?’

‘Yes, it is me. Who is speaking?’

‘Um, er, it’s Jack. Er … the cab driver who helped with your kids yesterday. You know, when those two big kids …’ Jack’s voice trailed off as he thought better of reminding her of the ugly details of yesterday’s confrontation.

‘Yes, I do remember.’

‘How’s your son?’

‘Yusuf? His arm, it is broken.’

‘I’m sorry about that. Look, I found a little book with a light-blue cover, with writing that might be in Somali or whatever, thought it might be …’

‘It has a blue cover?’ There was excitement and anxiety in her voice.

‘Yeah, kind of pale-blue, I guess.’

‘Allah be praised! I am now two times in your debt. Can I take it back from you?’

Jack did his best to ignore Farhia’s unusual use of language.

‘I can come round in a few minutes, if you like. I’m just over in Collingwood — not much of the shift left.’

‘Can we meet in the playground?’

‘Yeah, no worries. I’ll be there in five minutes.’

Jack got back into the cab and punched the air in triumph. The book had to be important.

This was puzzling. It didn’t look like an address book or diary, or anything like that. It only contained a few pages of handwriting in a language he assumed was Somali.

On a sudden impulse, Jack took a photo of each page with his mobile. He wasn’t a tech head, but he did own one of the latest-model phones, one with a camera built in. He still enjoyed the novelty of taking pictures for no particular reason, as he’d never owned a camera before.

He didn’t think about why he was taking pictures of the book: his fascination with Farhia was sufficient motivation. He knew a few Somali drivers. Perhaps he could get one of the ones he hadn’t had a fight with to translate the writing for him. It might contain interesting information about Farhia. There was no harm in it; she would never know.

He also wondered about the man who had attacked him. Was he the teenagers’ father? Farhia’s husband? Why would someone flash a knife in a harmless scuffle with a few kids?

He arrived at the Elgin Street rank just as Farhia and Yusuf were getting out of the lift on the ground floor of the flats. They walked around the outside of the building past a bank of overflowing rubbish bins and a couple of scrawny druggie types arguing about something, and spotted Jack as he got out of the cab.

He noticed Farhia’s robes straightaway. The multiple shades of blue stood out against the drab, depressing landscape, as though she was in three-dimensional colour standing in front of a black-and-white movie backdrop. With a calm, imperious air, Farhia floated towards him, trailing a downcast Yusuf close behind her.

In Jack’s limited experience, small boys with broken arms were usually rather upbeat about their situation once the initial pain and shock had passed. It was a magnet for sympathy and attention. But Yusuf must have been an exception. He stood silently at his mother’s side, his eyes fixed firmly on the ground in front of him. Jack offered a token expression of concern, but when he got no response, he turned back to Farhia, shivering momentarily as a nasty gust of wind pierced his thin uniform.

‘Perhaps we must sit,’ Farhia said as she pointed to a wooden bench next to the playground. She said something to Yusuf in Somali, and he went and sat on one of the swings. He had the playground to himself this time.

‘Do you know the kids who attacked him?’ Jack asked.

‘A little,’ Farhia replied.

‘Why’d they do it? Big kids pick on little kids all the time, but they don’t usually break their arms and stuff. Not in front of their mum, anyway. And who was the guy who went for me? Had a knife …’ A touch of indignation crept into Jack’s voice as he recalled his apparent brush with death.

Jack was trying to look at Farhia as much as he could without making it too obvious. Sitting side by side made it difficult, so for much of the conversation he was peering at her out of the corner of one eye. He sat forward on the bench, with one buttock half-suspended in mid-air, to allow him to face sideways more. Farhia was sitting about three feet away from him.

‘It is a Somali matter — clans, tribes, that sort of thing.’

‘Oh.’ Jack didn’t know anything at all about Somali tribes and clans, but he thought it best not to reveal his ignorance. She obviously didn’t want to discuss any details. Farhia’s dark, bewitching eyes dominated her face. Her skin was surprisingly pale, up close, like a faded sepia photo. She was dark-skinned, but with a fair tone that reminded Jack of stonewashed jeans.

Her lips were full and rounded, with no sign of lipstick. Jack noticed that there was no evidence of makeup of any kind, in fact.

He lamented the fact that her traditional dress made it impossible to assess any part of her other than her face. He couldn’t even see most of her hair. It didn’t make any difference, though: he was completely entranced. He’d never encountered such an alluring mix of beauty, calmness, and colour before.

‘So you can give me my book?’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Jack extracted the book from the pocket of his finest Big W trousers and put it on his lap. Farhia didn’t move, but her exaggerated stillness betrayed her excitement.

‘So what’s in it? Sounds like it’s important.’

‘Only family matters. We are all separated, and some are not in a good place.’

‘Will you go after those idiots? Like in court, and so on?’

‘I do not think so. I must go to the police tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Yeah, me too. What time you going?’

‘They told me to come at one o’clock. Omar will be at school, and Yusuf must go to my friend’s house.’

Jack was quick to capitalise on this information.

‘Hey, I might see you there. I arranged to drop by there in my lunch break. Guess they’re trying to sort it all out in one go.’ Jack usually ate lunch earlier than one o’clock, and he hadn’t spoken to the police, but Farhia didn’t know either of these things.

‘And my book?’

‘Yeah, sorry, all yours.’ Jack handed over his bargaining chip with some reluctance. Once it had changed hands, he had no other way of keeping Farhia talking.

He fidgeted on the hard, uncomfortable bench and turned his head directly towards her, hoping she wouldn’t notice how unattractive his nose was. He raised his right hand to his face, scratched the side of his nose, and allowed his forefinger to rest on his upper lip for a moment. Nerves were getting to him, now that his excuse for being with her had gone.

‘How old are Yusuf and Omar?’ Jack knew that all women liked to talk about their children.

‘Yusuf is nine, and Omar will be eight very soon. They go to school over there.’

She indicated towards the west, where a small primary school serving the high-rise flats was located. She grasped the upper part of her robe and wrapped it more tightly around herself, increasing her protection from the biting wind.

‘And their father?’ The crucial question.

‘He is dead. In Somalia.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thank you. It is alright.’

‘Must be hard looking after them by yourself?’

‘It is alright.’

‘But no family to help or anything?’

‘No, but there are friends here.’

‘If there’s anything I can do … I’m happy to help out. I’m around a fair bit, you know, with the taxi and all that …’

Jack was now blushing and stuttering, and starting to feel ridiculous. Christ, he thought, what would I be like if I was asking her out?

‘That is very nice of you.’

‘Here, here’s one of my cards. Got my number on it. Don’t mind giving you a ride to the hospital or whatever. No charge or anything. Seeing as how I was part of it all … Must be hard with the kids. You work as well?’

‘I help at the welfare centre at Lygon Street, and I have trained to be childcare worker. But the boys are young. Their mother must be there for them.’

‘Yeah, true. Otherwise they might grow up like those big kids …’

Jack sensed her stiffen, and instantly regretted this casual comment. He was starting to suspect that there was a lot more to the incident than he realised. He kept talking, trying to prolong the encounter as long as possible.

‘Look like good kids, though. You’ve obviously done a good job. Tough in the flats …’ His voice trailed off as he realised how this might be interpreted.

‘You must work very long days in your taxi,’ Farhia said, shifting the small talk to safer territory.

‘Yeah, ten hours-plus, some days.’

‘Many of my countrymen drive taxis. It is sad — so many of them are highly educated, but they cannot find other jobs.’

Jack absorbed the implied put-down, knowing that he could not deny his humble status. He might also have a foreign-sounding surname, but he didn’t have an excuse for being a failure. Somebody had to drive cabs.

‘But you, I think, also are educated. So why do you do this?’

‘Yeah, I went to uni for a bit.’ He didn’t mention that his two years at La Trobe had left him with virtually nothing to show for it. ‘Just wasn’t my thing, I suppose.’

‘You have been driving taxis for a long time?’

‘Yeah, years. I’ve done other stuff, though’ — his voice rose a fraction and he straightened his aching back — ‘like worked in bars, run a shop, worked on building sites, that sort of stuff.’

‘And you have children, too?’

‘No, never happened. Didn’t get around to it.’ He smiled ruefully, amused by the thought that his failure to have kids was a minor oversight, like losing his wallet or forgetting to vote in the local-council elections.

‘That is sad for you. Children are very beautiful.’

‘Yeah, suppose so. I don’t really think about it.’

‘Never mind. I must go now. I must do things before I get Omar from the school. Thank you for bringing back my book. It means a lot to me. You must be a very good man, with a good heart. You have helped Yusuf and Omar, and now you make work for yourself by bringing back my book. That is very kind. Many people in this country do not like African people. It is good that you are not like them.’

Jack reconnected with his multicultural roots for a moment.

‘Yeah, well, I’m not that different really. My parents were refugees, too. Dad came from Holland, and Mum was Czech … We’re pretty much the same, just a few decades apart.’ He laughed self-consciously at the absurdity of this notion.

‘That is why you have a good heart. You understand people who do not have much.’

Jack started blushing again. He stood up slowly and turned to face her.

‘I’ll be seeing you then.’

‘Thank you.’

Farhia walked across to the swings and collected Yusuf. As she turned and walked back towards the flats, Jack stepped carefully over the scrawny shrubs and got into the cab, his mind awash with intoxicating possibilities.

He wasn’t concentrating as he drove back along Nicholson Street towards the city. The encounter had gone much better than he’d expected. His body was tingling, and his mind was in turmoil. That old, long-forgotten feeling, the strange mixture of desire, anticipation, and apprehension, was loose inside him. The fact that the idea of a sexual relationship with Farhia was obviously ridiculous had no bearing at all.

‘Maybe I’m in love,’ he said out loud to himself as he crawled towards Victoria Parade in the afternoon traffic. His rational self understood how delusional this was, but he didn’t care.

Jack’s history with women was modest — a parade of sporadic and disappointing encounters. He’d had a few girlfriends in his twenties, but none of these relationships had evolved into anything serious. As time marched on and his late twenties drifted into his early thirties, romantic encounters were few and far between. Now he’d reached his mid-fifties, and even brief moments were little more than a fading memory. Occasional visits to brothels had proved profoundly unsatisfying, and prohibitively expensive. Luckily, porn was cheap and readily available — because that was all he had now.

Underneath Jack’s crusty exterior lay a dank, stagnant pool of loneliness that was slowly consuming him. With no partner, no children, no assets, and no prospects, he often wondered about the point of staying alive. He knew he’d become a caricature, the proverbial grumpy old man. In his darker moments, he acknowledged that he was one of the ultimate outcasts of modern society: a loser.

Any sexual relationship with a beautiful young Somali woman was such a nonsensical concept that it was safe for him to fantasise about. Its sheer impossibility made it appealing, because that protected him from inevitable disappointment.

Farhia might be beautiful, but she was also very vulnerable. He’d already helped to rescue her sons from those nasty teenagers, and had recovered her precious book for her. He was taken aback by the warmth of feeling that these two selfless acts had induced in him.

He smiled at the thought of how some of his drinking mates would view this situation — a cantankerous old cabbie with a chip on his shoulder and a healthy dislike of Somalis getting off on helping a Somali single mum. He wondered whether he needed to see a shrink. Maybe this was the beginning of a mid-life crisis.

Very little happened during the remainder of his shift. He was polite and helpful to his passengers, and went out of his way to engage with the less attractive ones. He was energetic, stimulated, and optimistic, all of which felt very unfamiliar. He wondered what might come next. Buying a Harley? Joining a religious cult? It was all quite disconcerting.

As he ambled down Albion Street to basketball training, Jack tried hard to focus on the ordinary things that dominated his existence. When he arrived at the local secondary college, there were only a couple of his kids there, which wasn’t unusual. One or two more would probably wander in in due course.

‘Okay, let’s do some shooting! Ben, get a move on! Do you know if Nick’s coming?’

‘Dunno.’

Jack rolled his eyes and said nothing. He didn’t know why he kept at it — habit, probably — but it had become part of him. His team wasn’t that good, and most of the parents weren’t even interested enough to turn up to the games. He liked the kids, though. Maybe that was it.

As he led the two boys through some low-key shooting drills, Jack noticed one of the more annoying parents shepherding his pale, overweight son across the court towards him.

Uh-oh, here comes trouble, he thought. Alistair Taylor was a university lecturer — something in the arts, Jack was sure — who was a rather over-protective and intrusive parent. His son laboured under the name of Gideon, and wasn’t very good at basketball. Or anything much else, apparently.

‘Hi, Jack. Not a bad day, all things considered.’

‘Yeah, hi, Al. How’re you goin?’

‘Uh, need to talk to you about something.’ He turned to his son: ‘Why don’t you go and do some shooting, Gid?’

Jack stayed silent, not sure where this was heading.

‘Need a bit of advice. Gideon’s at Brunswick Secondary College, and he’s having a hard time. Getting bullied — that sort of thing. It’s very worrying. I don’t know what to do about it. Thought you might have some ideas.’

Alistair’s voice shook as he spoke. He was embarrassed, almost radiating pathetic helplessness.

You could try changing his name, for a start, Jack mused. And finding him a dad with balls.

Suppressing this inner contempt, he asked for more details.

‘The usual stuff — constant taunting, belittling, hassling. He’s coming home from school in tears, most days. He’s the youngest in his class, and he’s quite shy. The puppy fat doesn’t help … We’ve had him on a special diet for a year or so, you know, no dairy and sugar, that sort of thing. But it hasn’t made much difference.’

No wonder he’s upset, Jack thought.

‘Thought of moving schools? Maybe a private school or something …’

‘Oh no, Angela and I are very strongly committed to the state system. And we think the exposure to diverse ethnicities he gets at Brunswick is really important.’

‘Er, okay. I’ll talk to him, find out who’s hassling him. Sometimes they won’t tell their mum and dad, but they’ll talk to someone else they trust. See what I can do.’

‘Thanks, Jack. Appreciate it.’ Alistair’s relief was evident — it was obvious he’d been dreading this conversation.

He couldn’t have known that Jack had copped a fair bit of bullying when he was at school. The world had changed a bit since then, of course, but Jack still had a lot more sympathy for Gideon’s plight than he was letting on. He knew how vicious early-teenage boys could be, and it wasn’t Gideon’s fault he was lumbered with parents who’d OD’d on political correctness. He decided to have a quiet chat with the boy at the end of training, maybe under the guise of some special-skills practice.