Saturday morning I went down to visit Bert. The gate was unlocked so I walked around the back. Crimson chair empty, no pink rubber ring. I called through the flyscreen and got no reply, so let myself into the kitchen. All of the objects were neatly arranged on the shelves, with different coloured stickers attached. The kitchen was immaculately clean and smelling of lemon Jif™ – not usually the scent of trouble, but today it was.
A woman’s voice came from upstairs. Nothing more said than a casual ‘shit’, as if somebody had asked her what cows do besides eat grass and make milk. Bert had never mentioned friends – not a high priority for a hermit. And I knew that, statistically, burglars were mostly men in a hurry. Maybe it was a mental-health outreach worker, or a volunteer from Meals on Wheels?
I sneaked back out and rang the cowbell. There were footsteps coming down the stairs. A silhouette behind the flyscreen.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m here to help Bert get things ready for the antiques and vintage sale.’
‘Which school do you attend?’
‘Crestfield Academy.’
‘I’m not aware of any arrangement to donate articles for a sale.’
‘It’s not for school. Bert’s having a garage sale before he moves.’
She withered me with her eyes. ‘I’ve heard troubling stories about Crestfield boys. Please go away now.’ She closed the door, but I knocked until she reopened it.
‘Your presence here is unwanted.’
‘I just want to see Bert. He’s a friend of mine.’
The woman clicked her tongue and shook her head. She walked away then returned, dusting something off her shoulder. ‘Very well. You’d better come in.’ She opened the door and directed me to sit. She had short black hair with a jagged fringe that made her eyes look impossibly blue. ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but Bert had a seizure. They say it happened three days ago.’
‘Oh no. Poor Bert. I knew he wasn’t very well. Lucky St Vincent’s is so close. If you’re picking up some stuff you should probably take Percy, his cockatiel.’
The woman’s mask cracked, like a sheet of white ice breaking from an iceberg and sliding into the blue sea. And I floated somewhere safer above, watching a stupid schoolkid being told bad news by a woman in a sharp white suit. Her lips were moving but the kid couldn’t understand what she was saying.
‘What?’ The kid was me but younger, smaller and naïve. ‘What?’ His mind tried to push the words back out of his ears. ‘What?’ Before they could take root. ‘What?’ he said, again and again, because he couldn’t think of anything else.
The woman took a deep breath. Cleared her throat. Recomposed herself and lifted her head with the mask firmly back in place.
This incongruity – this dizzy chasm between the terrible news and the forced poise of the messenger – induced vertigo. The kitchen tilted and revolved like the automatic toilet the time old Bert had come charging up on Miss Daisy to rescue me. I closed my eyes and almost heard him yelling at Nads, Mullows and Starkey, scaring them away again. Bert was outside waiting for me. DOOR OPENING.
I opened my eyes. The woman with precision-jagged black hair was sitting opposite me in Bert’s kitchen but there was no Bert anywhere. She touched my knee. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Where’s Bert? Can I see him?’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’ She poured me a glass of water. It seemed a kind gesture but as I drank she tapped her fingernails on the Formica, and the dark alchemy of impatience turned the water bitterly metallic in my mouth. ‘The funeral service is on Wednesday,’ she said. ‘But I’m afraid it’s family only.’
Bert is dead.
Who appointed her to inform me? What was she doing in Bert’s house? In her white pants and white jacket, in Bert’s house? I asked if she was the white lady from White Lady Funerals.
‘No.’ She almost smiled. ‘My name is Lana. I’m Bert’s daughter.’
‘Bert never . . . You didn’t visit much?’
‘We live in Melbourne. I used to make the effort so that my daughter could get to know her grandfather – but over time we stopped coming.’
‘Why?’
‘My father had become a very bitter man and he made our visits difficult. In fact, over time, unbearable. My mother left him a very long time ago – nineteen seventy-nine.’
‘Ruby?’
‘Yes, Ruby.’ She waved her arm around. ‘All of this was her dream and she left it behind when she walked out on him, took nothing but me and the car. She was a brave woman.’
‘What about your brother?’
‘I was an only child.’
‘Bert talked about someone called Johnny.’
‘Did he? Well, there you go – his memory was very disordered.’ Without missing a beat, she said, ‘Please excuse me now. I have a lot to do.’
‘He talked about Johnny and fighting. Was your father a soldier?’
Lana looked at the ceiling and drew a deep breath. ‘Johnny Drinkwater and my father were best mates from the age of five. At school they made a pact to join the army. Thirteen years later Johnny enlisted but my father didn’t pass the medical. Some spinal issue. Johnny went off to fight in the Korean War and was very badly injured. My father believed it wouldn’t have happened if he’d been by his side.’
‘He felt guilty?’
‘Ten years later, in the sixties, Johnny took his own life. My father turned to the bottle.’
‘Is that why your mother left?’
‘Among other things. My mother was a cabaret singer when they met. She was very beautiful and my father was insecure. He wouldn’t let her perform after they married – wouldn’t even let her drive the car. He was suspicious because of his own philandering. One night she confronted him and he hit her, then went out and drank himself into a stupor. She took his keys and we headed west out of town.’
‘Could she drive?’
‘Hardly. The police pulled her over on the outskirts for running red lights. She charmed them and they let her go with a warning. Driving away she said, “At least I didn’t get my hair set for nothing.” Strange, the things you remember. What most upset me was us leaving town without my bike. It was an orange bike, a dragster that my father had found dumped somewhere. At first I’d refused to ride it because it was a boy’s bike. So Dad attached plastic streamers to the handlebars and a little basket to the front.’
Before I could speak, a girl’s voice came from the top of the stairs: ‘You won’t believe what I’ve just found!’ She appeared at the doorway – nineteen or twenty, with strawberry-blonde hair tied back from her pale freckled face with a green ribbon. The mechanical hen was in her arms.
‘Hello?’ she said to me, frowning.
‘April, this young man knew your grandfather.’
‘Oh, right.’ She laid the hen on the table, and looked to Lana. ‘Isn’t she wonderful? Do you think I could keep her?’
‘I can’t imagine anyone else wanting it.’
I chewed the inside of my cheek. Bert had wanted me to have the hen. ‘Say something!’ Homunculus said. I couldn’t because I knew it would have been obnoxious and insensitive to make a claim, even though I was probably Bert’s only friend in the world. Sure, it sounded like he was a bitter and mean old turd who’d done some truly heinous shit, but right near the end of his life I’d somehow managed to break through his hardened shell. Not from some altruistic motivation, I had to admit – I’d wanted that bike so badly, the bike that had once belonged to his daughter.
Lana pushed on and told me the details of how Bert was found and I wished she hadn’t. A jogger running past the junkyard late Wednesday night had noticed an awful smell and contacted the police. Her clinical report of the grim discovery was too much to bear.
Grief settled on my chest and dug its bony claws into my throat.
I was about to excuse myself when April said, ‘Oh, I found this tied around the hen’s neck. No idea what it means.’ She handed her mother a small tag on a piece of string and Lana read it out.
‘Good egg for a good egg – Lincoln from up the hill.’
Dad was mixing a pre-workout drink for a training session with Sergio when I walked into the kitchen with the mechanical chicken under my arm. ‘Good God!’ he said and turned off the blender. ‘Where did you get that thing?’
‘Bert gave it to me.’
‘Who’s Bert?’
‘The guy who sold us the bike.’
‘I thought I made it clear that you were never to visit him again?’
‘You did.’
‘And here you are with another piece of his junk! He’s not a well man, Lincoln. I would even use the word “deranged”.’
‘I promise you that I’ll never see him again.’
‘You told me that before.’
‘Dad, he’s dead now.’
‘Oh, the poor old bugger,’ Dad said. ‘He really wasn’t well.’
I gave a brief account of what had happened and then Dad tried to comfort me – at least I wasn’t close to Bert, etc., etc. I couldn’t tell him that his death was hitting me almost as hard as Pop’s.
On Sunday I caught the bus to Signal Bay and, seeing a furniture rental truck parked outside our house, I knew that hoping for any form of sympathy from Mum would be like expecting honey from a hornet.
When I walked into the living room I was confronted by a completely different interior. Mum was buzzing about with a stylist and a photographer, creating perfect pictures for property magazines and websites. Our furniture had gone to storage, replaced by a white leather lounge, coffee table, prints, plants and a massive fake flat screen – all rented by the stylist for the shoot and open house. There was no hint of the lives we’d lived there and I felt like a stranger in my own home.
The photographer asked me to step out of frame.
So I did. Then I walked back out the front door.
Mum caught me outside and apologised for being preoccupied. I asked her why she hadn’t warned me before I came.
‘Your room hasn’t been touched,’ she said.
‘Everything else has gone.’
‘Imagine how difficult it’s been for me doing it alone. Getting emotional is a luxury I can’t afford right now.’
‘But why so fast?’
‘I need this one thing dealt with to clear some mental space for other issues. The outfall from Vienna’s accident has been an unmitigated PR disaster. The client expects compensation for her failure to appear, and Vienna’s management are now threatening to sue even though her teeth were restored. It’s a perfect shitstorm.’
I knew that Mum, teetering on the brink, wouldn’t have been receptive to hearing news of the death of a stranger so I hugged her instead. ‘I have complete faith in you.’
‘That means the world to me. Why don’t you go and visit Venn now that she’s settled in? She’d love to see you.’
I caught the bus to the North Curly flat. Venn and Jessie had ripped out the smelly carpet, painted the apricot walls white and hung new blinds. Jessie was out surfing. Venn made me a cup of tea and we went out to the sunny balconette. I told her about Bert’s death and thanked her for trying to help me save his home. ‘In the end, nothing could save him,’ I said. ‘We were too late.’ Venn scrunched up her face, which sent a tear rolling down my cheek. ‘He was the opposite of Pop Locke. Pretty mean to me at first,’ I said, ‘but I’m already missing him.’
‘You obviously shared a strong connection. Whether directly or through a million different lines and junctions, everybody’s connected somehow.’
‘True – Pop wasn’t our biological grandfather and it made no difference to me. But it does mean we can’t explore Dad’s side of the family. Which means I’ll never understand half of where I came from. There was something about Bert . . . He often seemed completely nutty, but he taught me things about myself that I can’t explain without sounding equally mad. One thing I know even more strongly now is that life runs out and all we have is the present.’
‘I’ve been thinking the same. Life’s too short to hold grudges. They turn into monuments that you can’t stop circling, like being trapped in your own museum of bitterness.’
‘That was legit poetic, sis. A perfect metaphor.’
‘I smashed my own museum of bitterness this morning, thanks in no small part to you. I called Dad and invited him over next weekend. He’ll be our first official dinner guest.’
‘That’s comforting to hear in my moment of gloom.’
‘Let’s try something out. Stay still and close your eyes,’ Venn said, as she stood and placed one hand on my chest and one between my shoulderblades.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Shh! I’m performing a solemn restoration.’
Warmth radiated from both of Venn’s hands and built inside me until I felt almost hot and broke into a sweat. ‘I think it’s done.’ I’m not really sure exactly what the ritual achieved, but I know that Venn extending the olive branch to Dad somehow instantly brought the two of us to a much better place.
Back home in the city tonight, I was confronted by a dilemma. Longing to know what happened to Edwin Stroud, I wanted to read the final chapter of his book – but doing so would bring the story to end. Another ending was the last thing I needed, given Bert’s death and the imminent demolition of his home. Fearing being left with nothing more to discover, I compromised by allowing myself to read half the chapter.
Early one morning, when the yellowing leaves were signalling the approach of autumn, Paulo and Hilda eloped, forsaking the significant sum of money still owed them by Melinkoff. The scrawled note Paulo left on our washstand made it clear their decision had been sudden – but still, I wondered, how could they have left without telling me? Paulo and I had become brothers on our journey across America, sharing everything we owned, both intent on saving money for our families back home. I’d been something of an accomplice to him in his budding romance, encouraging him to make his feelings known, and later taking late-night strolls along the boardwalk so he could entertain his sweetheart privately in our room. The fact he hadn’t revealed to me his intention to elope belied the strong bond of trust between us and, feeling horribly abandoned, I screwed up his note and threw it into the fire.
Then, like a bubble in oil, a memory floated into my consciousness. I too had run away from a dear friend without warning, leaving only a letter and trinket. In doing so, I’d stolen Diddy Budd’s chance to say goodbye, to reveal her true feelings. I realised I’d been afraid of what she might say – and even more afraid that she might have tried to stop me leaving. This memory of my furtive departure brought cold comfort. At least Paulo and Hilda had run away for love, whereas I’d run to escape its possible consequences. If the couple had made their plans known to me earlier, I might have dropped to my knees and begged them not to leave me alone with Melinkoff.
The showman was dead silent when I told him of the elopement, his face darkening as he absorbed the news. The object of his longing had been spirited away by someone he considered in all ways inferior to himself – a stealth assault on his once unassailable pride. More pressingly, they’d left him without a show. His hands trembled as he cut and lit a cigar, then paced the Turkish rug in his hotel suite without saying a word – just puffing, puffing. He poured and swallowed a snifter of brandy then lifted the glass balloon to the light. He turned it in his fingers, admiring its craftsmanship, then drew back his arm. I cowered, anticipating the missile whistling past my head and smashing against the mirrored wall. Melinkoff laughed and placed it on a coaster, then in a measured tone accused me of collusion.
I pleaded ignorance, deeply regretting having incinerated Paulo’s note. Melinkoff lashed me with a torrent of obscenities, poking my chest repeatedly in the way that weak, anger-possessed men do to make themselves heard. He savaged Paulo’s appearance, denigrating the physical features he’d exploited to make himself a fortune. I held my tongue even after he’d finished. Irritated and unnerved by my silence, he demanded I speak in my friend’s defence. With unwavering clarity, I told him that Paulo Esposito had been the truest, most loyal and kind-hearted man I’d ever known and deserved every chance of happiness in life.
Without warning Melinkoff whirled around and struck the side of my head with such force it destroyed the hearing in my left ear.
My own left ear popped and rang in sympathy as I read those words. An intense painful needling deep inside my ear canal destroyed my last tiny bit of resolve to maintain a degree of distance, to remain rational, and I cried for this man who seemed so close to me yet so far away in time. I cried because I would never know him.