Jack went back up north that week. He swore he would come again soon, but it had been five years since we’d seen him before that, not counting Dad’s funeral, so I figured it would be five years till we saw him again. As he carried his bag out to the waiting taxi we followed in a solemn file.
‘Look after your Mum,’ he said over his shoulder to Edward, trailing just behind him. ‘Don’t you give her any trouble, you two.’ He turned to James and me.
‘And you, little fella.’ He picked up Gerard and patted his tiny broken wing folded into his chest. ‘No more tree climbing.’ Gerard slid down Uncle Jack’s side and dropped back to the grass on the footpath.
Jack wrapped his giant paw around Mum’s back.
‘See ya, Dawn,’ he said.
Mum replied caustically, trying to hide how abandoned she felt by his departure.
‘Yeah.’ She said it to the grass at her feet.
‘Remember we have a deal,’ Jack reminded her.
Jack had found a phone number of a tree surgeon the previous evening, he had made the initial call and organized for the man to ring my mother and agree a date.
‘I’ve told him to come within the week,’ said Jack.
‘This week?’ Mum protested. Then she nodded. ‘Yeah, all right,’ she added, trying to convince us all that she was ready now.
‘What will it take?’ Jack yelled at her. ‘He’s lucky to be alive.’ I knew he meant Gerard.
Mum inspected the footpath as Jack told her off. He reduced her to age twelve.
‘All right,’ she agreed, ‘I’ll do it.’
‘Dawn!’ He looked into her eyes.
‘I hear you.’ She said it quietly, but there was meaning in the words.
‘I’ll call the cops if I hear you haven’t cut it down.’ They were Uncle Jack’s final words.
He said it in front of us, so we heard it too. I knew it was his crude way of letting us know that he didn’t want us to feel like we were being deserted, which is exactly how we felt.
‘I can’t do all of it, Dawn. If I cut it down, you’ll punish me for ever,’ he said.
That was true enough. My mother could be bitter and irrational and Jack wasn’t interested in the role of scapegoat. He was big enough to occupy the role, but he wasn’t going to, even when our lives depended on it.
‘You have to take the last step, at least, Dawn,’ he said.
It was a long way down for Jack to stoop from the footpath to the cab. He threw his bag into the back and plunged down into the front seat next to the driver. Then he hauled the door closed. I thought he was looking at me as the taxi took off up the street, but I knew he had eyes like the Sacred Heart, they looked at everyone at the same time and followed you wherever you moved. We raced the taxi up the hill, but by the time we got to the hibiscus trees it was pulling away from us. I stopped because I knew there was no point chasing it. I would never get Uncle Jack back now.
We drifted back to the house all feeling lost. Mum was sinking her fury into the saucepan cupboard. She was crashing around like a Sherpa warding off the mountain spirits. An air of destitution sunk over the dinner table that night, apart from Mum dropping plates on the table and Gerard asking for Uncle Jack, we sat in silence.
All the responsibility was with my mother again and she exploded in the end.
‘He’s got a family, all right. He’s someone else’s father.’
We knew he had a family that needed him, but we felt we needed him more.