by Steve Hawke
That’s right, the bear cub found a mate!
His guts churn to water with the thought. That’s not where he wants to go now. Not today of all days. He needs to change the record.
‘Want some lunch?’ he calls to Anne, busy with her secateurs in the back corner of the yard.
‘No thanks, I’m full of baklava,’ she replies without looking around.
‘And where’s my slice?’
‘Sorry about that.’
‘Cuppa tea then?’
‘Ta.’
She joins him in the comfy chairs on the back verandah, dusting the dirt off her gardening pants. But the needle is stuck in the same groove in his head.
‘Ever think about Jason?’ he asks as he hands her a mug.
Her immediate tensing is a warning. The over-forceful clink of mug on the glass of the coffee table makes him flinch.
‘No.’ It could not be more curt.
‘Just asking.’
‘Don’t go there, Joe. Just don’t go there.’
‘Tried to tell myself that. Never had that schoolteacher’s knack of yours though for calling the class to order. My wandering brain won’t do what it’s told.’
‘Yeah. More’s the pity. I’ve got more pruning to do.’ She puckers her lips a smidgeon to indicate that she gets it but she doesn’t want to be a part of it, gathers her mug and secateurs, and heads for the back corner.
PUPPY LOVE
At the time it happened, he was distraught; but remembering Claire’s defiant glare, hand on hip, holding back the tears, Joe almost melts with nostalgia at the memory of his fierce, beautiful, righteously angry daughter.
‘There’s no way I’m going to boring bloody Dongara unless Jason can come too!’
‘Well that’s not happening,’ said Anne in her brook-no-argument voice.
‘Then I’m not coming.’ Claire folded her arms, ready for battle.
‘Can we talk about this tomorrow?’ Joe intervened.
Later that night Anne asked incredulously, ‘You’re not going to suggest he comes are you? They’re fourteen! We hardly know him.’
‘Of course not. I just thought we better sort out our position first.’
Anne was inclined to insist on the holiday proceeding, with Claire. Joe suggested that a week in the close quarters of the shack with an angry, lovelorn daughter would be no holiday at all. She muttered about him being wrapped around a certain girl’s little finger, but saw his point. They stayed home that summer.
Claire was happy to come the following year, with Jason away with his own family. But the magic lustre of the family holiday at the shack seemed to have faded.
Jason had been terrified the first time Claire managed to drag him over to meet the oldies. Year nine the two of them were. He was a Bassendean kid too, but his folks lived the other side of the railway line, a good mile and a half from the river. Dad was a sparkie, and Mum a part-time cleaner. Claire’s house a block back from the river was like another country to him. An architect for a father; and far more scary, a teacher for a mother.
It sure was awkward, but they all survived the tortuous hour before it was time for Anne to drop the young lovebirds at the movies in Midland. They caught the train back. Jason walked Claire home. He tried to refuse Joe’s offer of a lift back to his place, but was too unsure of himself to insist. He would have danced on air if left to walk himself. Neither of them could find a word to say on the five-minute drive, other than Jason’s blurted ‘Thanks for the lift Mr Warton’ as he almost burst out of the car. The house on Rugby Street is a permanent reminder of the Jason era for Joe. He drives past it on the way to his office.
Ah, puppy love. Seeing Claire so happy was enough for Joe. He felt vicariously warmed by the glow that she emanated. If Jason could make his daughter this happy, then he must have something going for him, Joe reckoned. Anne felt guilty about her lack of enthusiasm.
‘He’s so bloody ordinary Joe,’ she said after a third glass of red one Saturday winter’s night. ‘There’s five or more Jasons in every class I teach. The boring ones who don’t cause any trouble, but don’t ask any questions. Surely Claire can do better than that.’
‘Some of us have hidden depths darling,’ was the best he could come up with.
‘Fuck hidden depths, you drongo,’ she slurred. ‘We had the real birds and bees conversation today. You know, the practicalities. She came to me. She might be fucking him as we speak, my dear.’
He experienced a momentary flash of absolute outrage. But it passed as quickly as it appeared, and he found himself smiling as he offered a prayer to the god who isn’t there, that it would be joyous for her, be it tonight, tomorrow or next week. He watched Claire closely in the days that followed, but she betrayed nothing.
AS PARENTS DO
And so it was. Anne did the hard yards and the practicalities of shepherding Claire safely through her teenage years. She was unfailingly polite and reasonably kind to Jason, but because she could not summon any false warmth she also bore her daughter’s wrath and resentment.
Joe decided early on it was down to him to make the dynamics of the situation bearable, and went out of his way to welcome Jason. The funny thing was, it wasn’t at all hard. He really did like the kid.
The way he’d rock up halfway through the first quarter at netball—the only one of the boyfriends who did so—to stand unobtrusively a few yards down from him and Anne and watch Claire bouncing around the court.
His unaffected, unabashed enthusiasm, be it for the West Coast Eagles or AC/DC. They rocked up after a party one night stoned as crows. Out of the blue Jason started doing his Angus Young duckwalk impression. Even Anne, who was never an AC/DC fan, caught the giggles from Claire.
And he loved fishing. Claire came along the first couple of times Joe suggested it, but she’d lost any real interest not long after that mulloway. The first time the two of them went out on their own was pretty weird, he had to admit. But they were both good at companionable silence, a trait that Joe valued highly.
Their solidarity was sealed when Jason hesitantly enlisted Joe’s help to create the birthday present he had imagined for Claire. Multiple subterfuges to excuse themselves from netball nights were involved, as Joe supervised and assisted Jason in the crafting of the exquisite little hinged mallee-wood box to hold the pearl earrings he had scrimped and saved for. He found himself dreaming of the son they’d never had, as he and Jason measured, sawed, shaved, clamped and glued.
Claire wears them still sometimes. Geoffrey thinks they were a present on her seventeenth from her parents.
As parents do, Anne and Joe analysed, dissected and speculated. From early on they were both convinced it would not last. Anne thought she knew the pain that awaited her daughter, but nevertheless cleaved to the notion that the catharsis would be the making of her. Joe’s guts churned at imagining the pain. He accused Anne once of being a snob, the words slipping out before he could bite them off. She thought it the most grievous thing he’d ever said to her.
Year nine … ten … eleven … twelve. That love puppy seemed like it was there to stay. Joe found himself sometimes thinking of his Aunt Betty and Uncle George, childhood sweethearts, who until recently were still holding hands and flirting shamelessly in their seventies.
There was one fight somewhere in the middle there. Joe can’t remember any more what it was about, but he can remember that Claire thought the world was ending, and that when they made up the world had never been better—and that went for him too; he could not handle his daughter’s distress.
That hiccup aside, the pair seemed to anchor each other through the storms of adolescence that rocked many of their friends and peers. And along the way Anne and Joe somehow acquired the status of the cool parents. Or at least adults the kids could turn to.
It came at a cost though. When Jenny from Claire’s netball team fell pregnant, she was unable to tell her fiercely Catholic parents. Anne was dragooned by the girls in loco parentis—unhappily, a
nd not without qualms—to counsel and assist Jenny through the abortion process. Six months later Claire begged her once again to help another friend. She did so, but told Claire there would be no more. She was unwilling to risk, for herself or for Claire, gaining a reputation.
At the end of year eleven there was a party that they lost control of. It was legendary amongst the kids; but there is a mother three streets away they can never quite look in the eye, given the state her daughter went home in.
Early in year twelve there was an attempted suicide; a boy in Claire’s biology class she had occasionally shared study notes with. And there were others damaged in a variety of ways that seemed set to blight their adult lives.
They mourned with the kids for the casualties. Sure they were a minority. But it hadn’t been like that when they were young, had it, they asked of each other. You truly had to count your blessings that your own child had come through unscathed, as far as you could tell.
The night the kids headed down to Margaret River for leavers week, Joe and Anne let their hair down. No toolie was going to get past Jason to make mischief with their girl. Anne put Leonard Cohen on, did her badger dance, and even had a dram of the best whisky as she raised a toast. ‘We’ve made it this far.’
NIGHT DRIVE
The young lovers sailed through their first year as semi-adults as if nothing had changed, despite the fact that their worlds appeared to be diverging. Jason did as expected of him, starting an apprenticeship with his father. Claire began an arts course, for want of any more definite plan. They both stayed on at home with their parents and spent at least two nights a week and most weekends entwined with each other.
Claire took to leaving copies of the Green Left magazine that she picked up on campus lying around at home. Joe rose to the bait. He took a not-so-secret delight in her feisty leftiness, as he played the role of the wise old pragmatist provocateur, with the pair of them relishing the thrust and parry. He seemed to have the knack of testing her without pushing her too far. Sometimes she would even concede. More often they would just find a point at which to disengage, with Claire giving him a friendly ‘stuff you’ look that was just like her mother’s, and not too far removed from that conspiratorial glint in the mulloway photo.
Anne hated these jousts. Argument as a sport did not appeal to her. On the much rarer occasions when she and Claire clashed it seemed to be about things that really did matter, the personal stuff, where there was always the possibility, sometimes the inevitability, of truly offending or even wounding the other. She could admit to herself, if not to Joe, that she was jealous of how he could get away with teasing and provoking Claire in a way that she never could. The trouble was that the bugger knew this, and delighted in it.
But when it came to anything serious affecting their daughter, Joe and Anne were always a team. When Anne had to do the hard stuff, he backed her, even against his better judgement at times. When necessary, in the aftermath he was able to console and support Claire. Anne loved him for that, even as she ached. For it was also true that they competed for their daughter’s affections, and she sometimes felt that she was at an unfair disadvantage.
‘We should have had more kids,’ she said to him one night.
‘What? Bit late now. I don’t seem to remember you being too keen at the time.’
‘Hindsight, Drongo. Spread the emotional load a bit.’
‘What are you worrying about now?’
‘I don’t even know, Joe. Of course I want her to be safe. Happy. All that. But there’s such a thing as too safe—at her age. It feels like she’s still stuck in the same old groove.’
Joe was stoked when later that year Claire announced the plan for the big trip. ‘It’s what we should’ve done,’ he told Anne.
‘What! Don’t you remember me trying to talk you into it? But you wanted to build your Ficus didn’t you. “No time to waste on the hippie trail Anne,” you said. I still haven’t been any further than Bali.’
It had caused ructions on his home front, but Jason insisted. He threatened to abandon the apprenticeship if his father wouldn’t agree. And so it was locked in. They would both save like buggery for the next year and a bit, then Claire would defer her course, and they would set off on the big overseas trip.
Claire was the dreamer, urged on by Joe, as the globe and all its possibilities were considered. Jason kept reminding her of their budget. Somewhere in there the dynamics between the four of them began to shift. Jason seemed to welcome Anne’s voice of reason and practicality. Mongolia held no appeal to him whatsoever.
At the time Joe wondered if it was Anne being thankful for the protective shield that Jason seemed to offer; an extension of the leavers week and toolies sentiment. Thinking back on it now he wonders if Anne had divined something that he’d missed. A seed or a sign of what was to come that made her more generous to Jason, and more protective of Claire.
No birthday call! For the first time in nineteen years Claire had no involvement in the day. For a fellow so dismissive of significant dates and anniversaries he was embarrassed at how disappointed he felt. She had been so apologetic before they left. Jason had organised the trip for the midyear break. The same chalet they’d had for leavers. She couldn’t say no, she told Joe, who laughed her off with bad dad jokes about the dangers of red wine and firelight. But he’d thought she would ring, and he would endure ‘Happy Birthday To You’ over a bad phone line and feel good.
‘She’ll call in the morning Joe, all apologetic,’ Anne reassured him. ‘It just means they’re having a good time.’
But she didn’t. And didn’t again. They began to worry. Her phone rang out. Anne’s texts went unanswered.
Joe’s heart raced when his phone showed Jason calling. But he wouldn’t answer any of Joe’s questions. He just needed to know if Joe could come down and pick her up. ‘She won’t come back with me. Today would be better than tomorrow, Mr Warton.’ There was something ominous in the ‘Mr Warton’. Anne was in class and wouldn’t be home from school for hours yet. He texted her, saying to call him, and was on his way to Margaret River within the hour.
Six years have passed, but Joe has never been able to work out which bit was the worst. The uncertain agony of the drive down, interrupted by Anne’s panicked phone call and anger at him heading off without her. The terrible moment of seeing Claire huddled in a cold bedroom, stricken, almost unrecognisable. Or the awful night-time drive home with his baby lying on the back seat sobbing.
Jason had his car packed, and was gone within a minute of Joe’s arrival, tears streaming as he mumbled abject apologies. Claire would say nothing except, ‘Take me home.’
Joe had to pack her belongings. He almost carried her to the car.
‘No,’ she said, when he put on a CD.
Black road, white lines, oncoming headlights sliding past, silence, misery. For almost five hours.
If there was a day he could erase from his memory, that would be the one.
They never saw Jason again. And they never got a proper explanation of what had happened. Claire’s state of disintegration lasted a week and a half. Then on the first day of the new semester she emerged from her room, showered and ready to go, got the train into uni, and resumed her life.
BEER AND CRIBBAGE
Joe pushes himself to his feet. Shakes like a wet dog, flinging his hands about as if trying to expel the memory of Margaret River, and ward off the Geoffrey/Jason comparisons. Anne is right, there is nothing to be gained by going down that road.
He glances out the back window of the shed and sees that she is still going strong, down on her knees grubbing out litter from around the base of a pair of bottlebrushes. He steps out the front, assesses the light as good for another hour and thinks about a brisk walk down to the jetty by Ashfield Flats to change the flow of the day and his mood.
He is rescued from his good intentions by the welcome sight of Eric pushing the front gate open, sixpack in hand. ‘Perfect timing mate. Saved me from mysel
f as usual.’
‘Sorry I missed your call. Was at the movies.’
‘Any good?’
‘Nah. Forgotten it already. Just killing time.’
‘Looking to kill some more?’
‘Best of three?’
Joe pulls out the cribbage board and cards. Eric tears two beers out of the pack and stows the others in the bar fridge under the drafting table, taking in the sketches still lying there, but saying nothing for the moment.
The two friends settle into the old armchairs that Joe refuses to consign to the tip, whatever Anne says. They are placed either side of a low table, for just this purpose. Shuffle, cut, deal, and they are into the routine of calling the points and progressing the pegs. ‘Given me an eight mate?’ as the crib is turned over. ‘Nah, course not. Fifteen two, fifteen four and the rest don’t score.’
You have to call the points. None of that silent pegging that Anne’s inclined to do when they play three-handed. There’s a poetry to it, they agree. And around the familiar rhythm they weave their man-talk, the shorthand exchanges devoid of detail but rich in unspoken meanings and feelings.
Eric inclines his head towards the drafting board while Joe shuffles. ‘Are those sketches for the civic centre project?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘The councils run those big ones past the Department for comment. Nothing else like that happening in the state of excitement at the moment.’
Joe’s look is an acknowledgement.
‘That what the chat with Johnson was about?’
‘Four makes eight, and two for a pair,’ Joe answers, matching Eric’s lead of a four.
Joe concedes as Eric shuffles for the next hand. ‘You should have joined the spooks mate. Intelligence analyst. You’ve got me dead to rights.’
