Gabriel stood on the pavement under a streetlight, suitcases by his side. He inspected the family home from across the road. Despite the icy night air his cheeks burned with shame. Why the hell had he thought for even a nanosecond that it would somehow be different? It was still a dump — that’s why he’d left in the first place. But now, after three years in the army, he’d swung homeward to live. His feelings were in a right mess; a weird alchemy of love and hate brewing in his gut.
He scrunched up his eyes to study the five-foot high front wall Arnold had built from old telephone directories. It didn’t appear too bad at night, blanketed in nasturtium foliage, but in summer, in broad daylight, the wall was grotesque. Turning to look at the other houses that lined the broad street, he saw clear-edged dark structures, quiet and uncomplaining, with subdued light shining from a small number. He found it baffling. How could the occupants of these houses not object to the Great Wall of Telephone Directories?
It was time to fix things up, or rather, fix his old man up.
*
Arnold heard sounds. The front door opening, footsteps going towards the dining room. Helen had returned! He quickly made his way to join her, or so he thought, but on reaching the dining room he saw that it was Gabriel. For a spilt second he was disappointed, but then he felt elated. Too surprised to speak, he shook his head in amazement; his son had come home. He gave him a great hug before standing back to admire him.
Gabriel was wearing jeans, T-shirt and a faded windcheater, but his close-cropped head and erect posture were from another lifestyle. The army had gotten its claws into his son.
Gabriel did a quick reconnaissance of the dining room, finishing on Arnold’s collection of crumbling garden gnomes and early twentieth century gardening implements. There were even a number of lawnmowers, which Arnold had once used, now put out to pasture within the house.
Gabriel stiffened his already unyielding shoulders. He looked ready for combat, as if at any moment he’d throw a grenade. And he did. ‘Why the hell did you name me Gabriel, Dad?’
These were the first words Gabriel had said to his father in six months. He had no idea why he was carping on about his name, when in all honesty he liked it, loved it in fact. But it was a starting point, a vent for his frustration.
Arnold decided to play along with the stranger; let him spend his rage. ‘Because.’
‘Because bullshit. I’ve left the army because of my name.’
Arnold struggled to think. Words came skidding out of his mouth, colliding against one another. ‘Hey, you left the army? That’s good.’
‘Listen up old man. I’m telling you I left the army because of my name!’
‘You left because of your name? You’re kidding me.’
‘You’re an ignorant old bastard, who was once an ignorant young bastard,’ Gabriel spluttered.
Arnold felt wounded by these words. On top of Helen leaving him, this was too much. The Gabriel he knew was an easygoing fellow; the army had sent back an angry young man. Arnold looked to the gnomes for help. They offered none.
‘It was your mum’s idea to call you Gabriel.’
But it had been Helen’s idea, and when she had explained its meaning, Arnold had marvelled at her inspiration. Gabriel was Hebrew for ‘messenger of God’, in honour of the archangel who had told Mary of the conception of Jesus.
Arnold thought his son’s name was beautiful and said so.
‘Caltex would have been a fuckin’ better name.’ Gabriel’s words echoed in the chasm between father and son. ‘No one called Gabriel survives the army. It’s a queer’s name.’
Gabriel knew he was being a right bastard in giving his father grief. No one in the army had given a bugger about his name.
Arnold began to pace the floor. ‘What were the other guys in the army called then?’
‘Keith, Brian, Len, Ken, Phil, Rod, Mark.’
‘Geez, I wouldn’t call a dog any of those names.’ Arnold paused, and then asked out of genuine interest, ‘So what were the queers called?’
‘Keith, Brian, Len, Ken, Phil, Rod and Mark.’
‘Uh-huh,’ grunted Arnold. ‘So stop talking shit. What are you really angry about?’
‘Everything,’ snapped Gabriel.
‘Well, that narrows it down a bit.’
Gabriel snorted. ‘This dump stinks! You know, I could smell it before I could see it.’ This was what Gabriel had been longing to say.
Homesickness, disguised as an honourable discharge after three years in the service of his country, had driven him home. To a house he hated. And a father who disgusted him.
In truth, Gabriel had been homesick for what he’d never had — an orderly house and normal parents.
‘I’m not hanging around here, Dad. This is just a quick visit. I’ll see if I can stay at Astrid’s.’
‘We can fix it up.’ The words tumbled out of Arnold’s mouth.
‘Your idea of a fix-up is to just move stuff around.’
Arnold felt as though he was on a high diving board. Should he jump? He had to do something to keep his son here.
‘We can move it out,’ he said, immediately regretting it for he knew he couldn’t. But how else to placate Gabriel?
‘As in out of the door, out of the house and for good?’ Gabriel asked mockingly. He waited for his father to take back the words he’d just uttered.
Arnold had lost his bearings; there was a whine now to his voice. ‘Out means out …’
Gabriel was not naive when it came to his father’s ‘out means out’. He’d heard it a million times before. He looked around the room, feeling as though he was in the trenches and surrounded by the enemy. He swung his head around to stare at his father, ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I guess. I would need a little more time to think about it.’
‘Ugh!’ cried Gabriel, as he threw up his arms in exasperation. ‘I knew it. I’m off.’
Arnold panicked. Two family members leaving him in one day was too much. But what to do, or say?
‘It’s interesting what you learn in the army, Dad. You should sign up.’
Arnold laughed uncomfortably. ‘They wouldn’t want an old fart like me … so what did you learn?’
‘How to make a bed. How to march in a straight line. How to shoot.’
Arnold froze as Gabriel in three giant steps closed in on him. Nose to nose. Eye to eye. Son to baffled father. ‘And, most importantly,’ Gabriel took a deep breath and in a loud voice enunciated carefully, ‘how to keep a room free of fuckin’ crap.’
‘Didn’t teach you much then,’ replied Arnold. ‘All this is worth a fortune. Gnome collection, big bucks there. The garden collection …’ his voice dropped, he knew he was whistling in the wind. Saddened at the hardening in his son he sulked, and put his hands in his pockets, wriggling his fingers through the holes he found there.
‘Why did you really leave the army son?’
‘Hated the food,’ Gabriel replied. It was another subterfuge. ‘Where’s Mum?’ He looked around for his mother, as if she might be playing peek-a-boo, and could just jump out from behind any one of the piles of junk, holding a plate of steaming home-cooked food.
Gabriel had managed to locate the sofa beneath a huge pile of old clothing. He dumped the clothing on the floor, and plonked himself on it. ‘Hey old man. I asked you a question. Where’s Mum?’
Arnold looked at the garden gnomes again, hoping for some moral support. ‘She’s gone. She’ll be back,’ he said with little conviction.
Gabriel sat up. ‘What do you mean, she’s gone?’
Arnold gathered the few morsels of strength he had left. ‘Gone.’
‘Gone? Gone where? What’s happened to Mum?’
‘She left … me.’
‘She’s left you!’ Gabriel was taken aback. ‘She’s actually done it?’
‘Yeah. She left me a note. She’s living with those wretched Germans next door.’
‘Well I’ll be … and Astrid and Hendel are not wretched Germans. You just don’t like them, that’s all. When did Mum leave?’ Or make her escape, thought Gabriel.
‘This morning.’
‘You mean, this very morning, as in today’s morning? Geez.’
Arnold nodded. ‘All because I brought home one little old photograph album. She went berserk. Gave me an ultimatum. Said if I didn’t get rid of my ventures and collections she was leaving!’
Gabriel sat there, amazed that his father could be so incredibly stupid. How could he have chosen the junk over his wife of twenty-nine years? He gazed forlornly around the crammed room. It was a long time since anyone had eaten a meal in here. The one thing he’d missed while he was in the army. Swapped for crap. He wanted his mum back home. But he would have to bring her back to something better. Much better.
Arnold, agitated, sidled into the hall. Gabriel followed him, watching as his father began fiddling in a box of old spectacles.
‘How many pairs of specs you got there?’
‘Lots,’ answered Arnold. He turned slightly, hiding his face from his son as he recalled Helen’s angry hiss. ‘Are we to be the beneficiary of every pair of spectacles from every person who ever dies?’
Gabriel flicked up a pair, swinging it by one arm, which caused Arnold to flinch. He put them on. The opaque lenses framed by thick black plastic made Gabriel look like a cross between Buddy Holly and Henry Kissinger.
‘Why don’t you sell them?’ said Gabriel as he took off the glasses and handed them to his father.
‘Because they don’t bother me.’
‘Bit of a waste though, don’t you reckon Dad?’
‘No.’
‘Give them away.’
‘Leave it alone son.’
‘Would it be that painful?’
Yes it would be painful, thought Arnold, but he had not the courage to confess such a silly, selfish thing to his son.
‘No one would want these,’ he argued, waving another pair of ancient spectacles, which Gabriel snatched from him and waved back at his father.
‘Yes they would. Asian countries, Africa, all sorts of third-world countries.’
The line of conversation was making Arnold anxious. ‘How about I cook you something? You love a fry up.’
‘How about we talk about your ventures and collections instead?’
Arnold viewed Gabriel with suspicion. None of the family called his stuff ventures and collections. He cleared his throat. ‘One day, all this will be yours. And Vivian’s. It’s your inheritance. I’ve been thinking about your future.’
Gabriel gazed around at his future and let out a long howl. Heir to this crap? ‘You’re making this shit up as you go along,’ he groaned.
Shaking his head, he bent down and picked up a paperweight from a line of them on the floor. Wiping the dust off the glassy weight on his shirtfront, he passed it hand-to-hand. He surveyed the camping equipment and mountain climbing gear which looked like it’d last been used back in Sir Edmund Hillary’s time. More than likely, he thought, Hillary had climbed Mount Everest with some of it. Maybe there was even a collection of stuffed Sherpas somewhere in the house.
He sank his body into a mound of old clothes, burrowing his head into the rough, odd-smelling clothing. Standing up, he dragged an old chequered shirt away from the pile and held it up to his father. ‘Reason?’ he asked, not expecting a sensible reply.
Arnold felt like an innocent bystander being court martialled. ‘It’s a good shirt.’
Gabriel threw the shirt back onto the mound of musty garments.
Feeling let off, Arnold quickly made a renewed offer on his earlier suggestion. ‘Let’s see what I can cook you up.’
He made his way to the kitchen, Gabriel following as though Arnold was some irresistible itch he had to scratch. In fact, he realised, he had left the army to come home and scratch — and scratch — until his father bled.
History told him that getting his dad to part with his junk was impossible. But being in the army had taught him new tricks.
‘Only Mum can make a proper fry up.’
‘I can do a fry up,’ his father protested as he began fossicking through the fridge. Finding some leftover spuds he quickly hacked them up, lit the gas and threw the cold chunks into a fry pan, half full of congealed oil. The oil melted quickly and began spitting searing missiles in all directions. Arnold ducked.
Gabriel was looking with revulsion at the towering cliff of tambourines. Of all things, tambourines! He’d never heard his father play one. Then again, his father never played tennis or golf either. And he never went hang-gliding or abseiling. Which, he supposed meant that the tambourines had as much right to be here as everything else. But how to deport it once and for all? The motivation had to be far greater than mere money.
He looked at his father. Arnold had the physique of a giant wine barrel, with massive arms sprouting thick coarse hair and a wiry beard swelling from his face like a bush. Arnold appeared prehistoric. Who’d suspect such a creature of being so difficult?
‘Dad, you know what you got here?’
‘No. But you’re gonna tell me,’ Arnold complained while examining the spatter burns on his forearms.
‘The world’s biggest illegal tip.’
Arnold tried to divert him. ‘Meet any girls in the army?’
‘Oh yeah, tons,’ scoffed Gabriel. ‘The army’s full of girls. Another reason I left. Arr … there’s some, but they might as well be blokes.’
Arnold set a plate piled with fried potatoes in front of his son and loaded another for himself. They began to eat greedily, burning their mouths.
Arnold looked with admiration at the young man before him. Chatty and open, fast and witty, the larrikin — this was his son. Qualities he could never possess but which he admired in others and especially in Gabriel. Arnold realised he had missed him. Missed the verbal jabs, the telling-offs. And he had missed the bear hugs, the rough play, the mimicking which stung and made Arnold smile at the same time.
‘Why don’t you hang about here until you find your feet?’
Gabriel looked up from his plate and saw a sad, disorientated man whose wife had just left him. ‘Yeah, sure. Never did like Astrid’s cooking that much.’
*
Long after Gabriel had gone off to bed, Arnold was still unable to even contemplate sleep. He scuffled around the house in a fog of misery.
He fossicked in his soap collection. Holding a musty bar up to his nose he sneezed violently, having inhaled more dust than perfume. But it also triggered a memory of long ago, when Helen and he used to hug one another. He had loved her soft yet reassuring embrace. He tried to conjure up the smell of her. Was it the soap she used, wondered Arnold, or her hair shampoo. She didn’t wear perfume. He realised her smell was a mix drawn from everyday life.
He hadn’t been able to give her much of a life, yet her smell had always been sweet.
He began to fossick again, shifting the bars of soap around until he became aware of something moving behind him. He froze. Gabriel, who had learned the art of guerrilla warfare more from old war movies than from training or actual combat, ambushed him. ‘Halt or I shoot.’
Arnold slowly turned around to see his son stripped down to his underwear, the scent of sleep about him, his short hair mussed up. Arnold looked at him in bewilderment. Did he really think his father was the enemy?
‘Shoot me? Why? And with what?’
‘Possession of illegal quantities of soap. Relax, I’m unarmed.’
‘Thank God. Thought I was a goner. Why aren’t you sleeping?’
‘Someone woke me up. Geez, it’s four in the morning.’ Gabriel pointed at the soap. ‘Why don’t you get rid of it?’
‘You never know.’
‘You never know?’ Gabriel yawned. ‘What is it that you’ll never know about this ton of soap that’s been sitting here for shit knows how long?’
Everything, Arnold wanted to tell his son. Instead, he shrank back into his shell. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘I’m being serious here,’ said Gabriel.
‘Me too. Let it alone son.’
‘Dump it.’
‘This is part of your inheritance.’
‘Inheritance! Stuff that!’ Gabriel lunged forward grabbing a bar of soap and holding it in front of his father. ‘This soap is well and truly cured. Sell it. There are lots of dirty people out there.’
‘That’s why I started making it,’ explained Arnold. And stopped making it when he realised he had no great affinity for the stuff.
‘You could use a little of this yourself.’
Arnold flinched at the insult. He wondered if the army had taught his son how to torture people, especially fathers. ‘Had a shower this afternoon. Like I do every afternoon, after work,’ he answered earnestly.
‘Okay. Sorry. But what is it with you and this soap?’
‘I want to keep it.’
‘A rainy day.’
‘Well, I’ve got news for you. The rainy day has well and truly arrived. Sell the goddamn soap.’
‘It’s not good enough to sell.’
‘Sell it cheap then.’
‘I’m … not selling inferior goods.’
Gabriel studied his father’s face for clues to his obstinacy. He could find none; all he saw was that his father had aged considerably. Arnold’s face was a craggy plot with uneven furrows ploughed into his forehead.
Gabriel suddenly wanted the younger version of his father back. He felt distressed; he’d been away too long, missed his father and his mother. He fought back tears, trying hard to think of anything but the family he’d missed in ways he couldn’t fathom. Yet oddly, he knew, he had been trying to punish them at the same time. It hadn’t worked, because if anyone felt punished, he did.
‘Let’s have a beer together, son. Tell me about the army,’ Arnold coaxed.
Gabriel almost caved in, and only just managed to keep his sympathies at bay. ‘Sorry Dad, I’m pretty knackered. I’m going back to bed. Reckon you could keep the noise down?’
He knew verbal negotiations weren’t going to work. In a war there are many ways of outwitting the enemy; he would have to think it out, plan, attack, and then regroup.
Gabriel the soldier made his way back to his bedroom, tugging at the thin leather strip worn around his neck, on which hung his bedroom key. Like Vivian, he had a key to his bedroom. Each of them had managed, through great diligence and effort, to lock out their father’s junk.
His room was an oasis of emptiness.
*
From his bed he rang Vivian on his mobile. It rang through to voice mail. Gabriel checked his watch, it was four twenty-five a.m.
‘Vivian, it’s me, Gabriel … Um … Mum’s left Dad. She’s gone to live with Astrid. She left him yesterday morning. Guess I don’t need to tell you why. I just got home to find her gone. It’s weird not having her here. Dad can be such a jerk. I need you to help me sort out this fucking mess. Tell the boss you’ve got a family crisis. By the way, I’ve quit the army. See you soon. Take it easy mate.’