I’m only a brother and I’m a continent and a family rift distant. So he’s in the ground and blessed and prayed over and eulogised and covered up before I even know he’s dead. Before Thaw offers his random commiserations and I go down and search out Senior Constable Malcolm Lunn at what’s left of Cosimo’s wake to zero them in on someone. Him with one hand full of crumbed calamari and the other holding a flat beer. And ask, ‘What commiserations are these, Mister Lunn? What commiserations am I offered … by you?’ And he tells me, ‘Oh, Jack, oh, Jack,’ and with his lips he nibbles a calamari ring up out of his palm into his mouth and stands there chewing and swaying in front of me. And then zeros the commiserations in for me by telling me, ‘Sends a shiver through me to hear when a member goes down in the line of duty. There but for the Grace of God … and my natural aptitude with lone gunmen … go I. Commiserations, Jack.’
I’m commiserated at because Adrian is dead. Has been shot through a door. Like he said he never would be. Like he said human-nature wouldn’t allow. Has gone and rattled the door handle to the house of a near-death friend named Walter Thorns who hasn’t fronted at the pub that morning. Has listened to Walter’s thin voice warn him, ‘Don’t you bloody well come in here, Adrian.’ Has drawn a long breath. Has coughed politely and said, ‘Now, Walter …’ and been amazed, I suppose, not at the pop of rim-fire rifle, but at the slug coming through the door and on into his hip. Has been outraged. Has scrambled his police-issue .38 up out of its holster and put his shoulder through the ply of that door and shot Walter three times in high disappointment at the man, reclining there in his Jason recliner with his oxygen mask dangling at his side.
Has then inflicted about twenty seconds of silence on himself, the townspeople say, before he’s pulled the trigger again. This time with his thumb the coroner says. This time all muffled and hushed with lip the townspeople say.
Adrian’s greatest act of solidarity with the people of Tinburra was to specify in his will that he wanted to be buried among them. Or maybe he just couldn’t see his corpse laid anywhere else.
Detective John Riordan flies up from Perth with three senior sergeants and the Deputy Commissioner and the police chaplain to pick up my mother for the funeral and for the posthumous awarding of the Police Medallion of Honour in Tinburra. Senior Sergeant John Riordan was a friend of Adrian’s from his police academy days in Perth. He makes my mother brave enough to leave her house for the day by assuring her the ignorant prick hasn’t been invented who’d bulldoze the house of a woman who’s attending the funeral of her son who’s been tragically killed in the line of duty.
And when they land out front of her house he looks around with raised eyebrows at how there’s nothing there and tells her, Nice neighbourhood, and he strolls over to the site-vans facing her house and rouses up the man in charge, who is a foreman called Barry this week, and he asks Barry what he has planned for today and before Barry can answer tells him to take the day off, tells him, We’ll be back here tonight with this old woman here and if the architectural landscape round here is noticeably improved in even the smallest way we the cops will kick some arse, yours, and maybe frame some arse up in a drug deal, also yours.
So her house sits out there by itself with the bulldozer poised. Sits there empty of her for this one day but full of police threat instead. The BBK men shut down their didgeridoo and turn off their tapes of the old gang living out their new lives amid beautiful coastal scenery and sit in their site-vans throwing down their spades and their clubs and their diamonds and their hearts and daring each other occasionally to start up a bulldozer and do the deed so they can all get the fuck out of here back to civilisation and the abos can get on with being abos here.
She flies to Tinburra in the police chopper. And the ceremony, she says, is simply beautiful. About twenty-three of Adrian’s friends and colleagues stand around in the open air of the Tinburra cemetery under a red cliff amid the shriek of galah and the beep of medical machinery. Everyone who stands out front of the assembled friends and speaks of Adrian confirms her opinion he was a saint.
The police chaplain tells how there’s no greater love than to give up your life for your fellows, and Adrian gave his twice. First, in the daily sacrifice he made for the community. The devotion of all his waking hours to its safety and to its well-being. And second in the moment of his death … where he placed himself between a crazed individual and the community he loved. The chaplain says it’s Jesus’ teachings. That Adrian was a fine student of the word of Our Lord … and that made him a fine man.
The Deputy Commissioner lays a medal and a ribbon right on Adrian’s chest in his open casket while the sergeants stand at attention. Says his bravery is the stuff we all only hope we will find in ourselves when confronted with a lone gunman. They go ahead and call old Walter a lone gunman, as if he was out prowling, threatening society with something semi-automatic, and Adrian had challenged him across a street and he had shot Adrian across a street and not through a door and not because Adrian was looming like mortality itself and was about to take hold of that door handle and rattle it.
The Deputy Commissioner says it’s police training that polished the diamond that was Adrian himself. Says he hopes they didn’t bust the mould when they made Adrian Furphy.
Then John Riordan tells what my mother calls some rather inappropriate anecdotes which have the crowd wheezing and coughing and one man taking off his oxygen mask long enough to yell Bloody Oath. But apart from that, she says, the funeral is entirely beautiful.
Until the undertaker nudges a silver lever on the silver frame that surrounds Adrian’s grave and the silver frame starts to feed out the green canvas strapping that supports Adrian’s coffin and he sinks smoothly into the red rock and the whole event becomes entirely sad, she says, with bagpipes starting up out of a portable tape machine and the galahs starting up at the bagpipes and her suddenly having to be supported by the man who’d told inappropriate anecdotes.
The police chopper is needed then to search for a Cub pack who’ve walked down a wrong compass-bearing in the bush east of Perth. John Riordan and the Deputy Commissioner and the three senior sergeants drop my mother back at her house on their way south. She hustles inside with a garbage bag of Adrian’s personal effects to explore.
That night, after a can of tomato soup and a half-thawed Tim Tam, she enters his garbage bag. Discovers, by way of a small herb-filled pouch and a large bamboo bong, Adrian was a smoker of marijuana. And discovers, by way of a Favoured Client Discount Card with a naked, back-arched woman on the front of it with raised nipples you can actually feel, that Adrian was a regular user of the whore caravans that travel the Pilbara.
My mother fears then that Adrian’s bag of effects may not be the trappings of unadulterated sainthood and she decides she might as well hand them over to me without further exploration. She puts them on my childhood bed in case I ever show my face again.
It’s a full fortnight after Adrian shoots his Lone Gunman and inflicts his twenty seconds of silence on himself and shoots himself before they come to me. Before they realise what Adrian’s death does is make me sole next of kin to their problem.
They buy me cappuccinos. They offer me spaghetti marinara. They buy El Cid’s best chardonnay. Between them in about half an hour of small-talk and marinara they think of about fifteen different ways of telling me my stance, as they call it, has been admirable. Open-minded and admirable. Open-minded, admirable and honourable.
My stance has really been in the realm of not giving a fuck either way. They like to call that open-minded, admirable and honourable.
But now, they tell me, new factors are come to light. New factors that, they are sure, will see me share their deep concern. They let me wonder about the new factors. Margot Dwyer takes a drink of chardonnay and looks up at the huge crab on the wall trying to bust out of a wicker craypot it couldn’t have got into in the first place without the help of a top-flight taxidermist. Richard Finnes smiles at the couple at the next table, smiles at people coming in the door, smiles at the waiters as they pass and smiles at me and tells me this is a ripper little restaurant, ripper little town for that matter. Lorne, eh. He smiles across the street at the sea.
They’re waiting for me to ask about the new factors that will jolt me out of my admirable-couldn’t-give-a-fuck-either-way stance. I let them wait. I eat my apple crumble. Until Margot cracks. Swings her head round from contemplating the crab and says, ‘No one’s flushed the toilet in your mother’s house for two days, Jack.’ She stares at me, and then she looks down into her crumble like she’s sorry to bring me such news.
‘Are you telling me you think my mother’s dead?’ I ask.
‘No. Not dead,’ Richard Finnes says sadly.
‘She’s incapacitated?’
‘Not physically, No,’ he says. He draws a significant breath. ‘Your mother’s taken to urinating out of doors. I’m sorry, but she has. She’s taken to relieving herself on her rose bushes. In full view of our men.’ Richard Finnes has pursed his smile into a look of concern.
‘She’s pissing outdoors,’ I say. ‘So?’ I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know why they’ve come to me with this.
‘Jack, we think your mother might be clinically insane,’ says Margot.
‘I told you she was a nut the first time you came to me about her,’ I say. ‘You people are such doubters. She’s been a fruitcake for years.’
‘We think there’s been profound mental degeneration recently, Jack. We have medical people observing her. It’s not just the pattern of urination emerging. It’s other things as well. She sings hymns at all hours. She doesn’t seem to be washing. And as for her diet … well, our people on the spot tell us maybe she’s showing signs of malnutrition.’ Margot nods softly at me to let that sink in. Our waiter asks if we’re interested in more wine at all and Richard Finnes waves him away. Margot sucks herself upright with breath. Looks me straight in the eye.
‘Jack, our advice is she’s certifiable. She’s a danger to herself and as such her right to self-determination can be waived on the say-so of qualified medical people with the agreement of her next of kin. You. For her own well-being.’
‘You want me to sign a form to put her away?’ I ask.
‘For her own good, Jack. She can be helped in an institution.’
‘Well … you told me you were going to fuck with her,’ I say to Margot, ‘and this is certainly fucking with her. This is seriously fucking with her.’
Richard Finnes frowns at Margot.
‘I never said that,’ she tells me. ‘I never said anything of the sort,’ she tells him.
Richard Finnes leans forward at me with his smile. ‘The issue is, Jack, your mother’s a mess, mentally … and getting worse. Now we surely do have a problem with the aboriginals that her continued presence exacerbates. I’m not into denying that. I’m not even pretending your mother’s not a major problem for us in that light. But let’s also not deny your mother’s a mess. And that’s what you’ve got to concern yourself with. Whether you’re going to make a stand and help her out of what she can’t get out of by herself. Or whether you’re going to let her play the free spirit … who ends up dying covered in her own shit … like so many of those free spirits do.’ He’s still smiling at me.
I tilt my head back and pucker my lips and make a show of actually concerning myself with my mother’s options. I rock my head side-to-side slowly weighing them. Then I nod as if the options are considered and weighed and my mind’s made up and I tell Richard Finnes and Margot Dwyer I prefer the free-spirit-dying-in-own-shit option for my mother. Tell them the free-spirit-in-self-inflicted-turd scenario doesn’t seem too bad a way to go to me. When you think of all the ways a person can go.
Margot doesn’t know what to say. Looks like she mightn’t for a long time. Richard Finnes doesn’t know what to say for only a couple of seconds. He looks out across the water and furrows his brow. Announces he was a keen diver in his day. Skindiver, that is. And asks is there a reef off-shore there where the swell goes sharp and gets a white lip and nearly breaks? Because it looks like there is. He supposes there is. And he supposes there’d be a fairly stupendous array of cold-water reef fish out there in the crevices for a bloke to get a shot at – strictly photographic of course, nothing in the way of spearguns. Do they hire scuba gear in town, he wants to know.
I tell him round at Anglesea they do. The sea’s too rough here as a rule.
Pity, he says. Then he calls for the bill and tells me the best way to assess the woman is to fly up there and do it first-hand and a company jet is at my disposal for that assessment. Because when I’ve seen her state of delusion first-hand, then, he’s pretty certain, I’ll be ready to bite-the-bullet and take what’s really the only compassionate course available to me. Move her somewhere she can be assisted … by professionals.
His card is taken away and brought back and the waiter thanks him for the tip and tells us to have a nice day and thanks him for the tip again. Richard Finnes reaches a post-lunch stretch at the ceiling and says, ‘Now then, let’s have a look in your lady friend’s gallery. Your mother’s an artist they tell me. And I’m a collector.’
We wander up the street to Jean’s gallery. She’s sitting at the front desk arguing on the phone. She tells someone to go ahead and add the freight charge then, but it’s not going to be paid at this end because the people at this end aren’t wankers. She hangs up. ‘Hi,’ she tells us and comes around the desk and kisses me. I introduce them and tell her Richard here is a collector. Likes to buy things sight unseen. Jean says maybe sight-unseen is the way to sell these babies cos they ain’t moving any other way. He reads out loud the sign on the wall that says, ‘I REALLY AM STILL GRIEVING INCONSOLABLE PROBABLY INSANELY, FOR MY DEAD DAUGHTER AND HUSBAND EVEN SIXFUCKINGTEEN AND EIGHT YEARS AFTER THEIR DEATHS.’
He goes up and taps INSANELY with the back of a crooked index finger and says, ‘Hmmm …’
We go down the hall into the converted squash courts in amongst the Sad Purple Dads and Sad Purple Mollys. Richard Finnes puts some half-moon glasses on the bottom end of his nose and walks from painting to painting stopping only long enough to lean his head back to where his line of sight goes through his glasses and say,’ This is sad. Hmmm … this is really sad. I can’t tell you how sad I find this.’ Margot walks with him and agrees, ‘It is … I do too.’ And they shake their heads pretty much in wonder at the whole gamut of sadness creeping up on them here.
Jean stands in the middle of the room and watches them go around. After a run of This Is Sads and It Is It Is echoes Jean puts her hands on her hips and I can see her getting angry, she looks at me and frowns, looks at them and asks them, Are you at work, or what?
Richard Finnes takes off his half-moon glasses and asks her, ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Well, it’s Wednesday today and I was just wondering … Are you two on holiday?’ she asks. ‘Or working?
‘We’re down here to see your … friend Jack,’ he points at me. ‘On some … personal matters,’ he explains.
‘Are you?’ she says. ‘Personal matters for him but business matters for you.’
He stares at her. ‘Yes.’
‘Mother matters?’
‘I’m not at liberty …’ He looks at me. Tells her, ‘Yes.’
‘Well fuckingwell weep,’ she says. ‘You’re on company time. Getting top dollar. Put some passion into it. Break down. This is heartbreaking stuff.’ She sweeps her hand around at the paintings. ‘Saying it’s sad’s hardly good enough. What about open weeping? Earn your dough.’
Richard Finnes doesn’t weep. He breaks into a graveness. Something still and disappointed that is maybe genuine. ‘Ms Turner,’ he says, ‘I’m currently one of the few people taking this woman’s predicament seriously.’