Love, Charlie Mike

by Kate de Goldi

  ‘Right,’ I said, standing up, stomping on the panic. ‘This is what we’re going to do.’

  ‘You’re beautiful when you’re angry,’ said Finn in a seductive bass.

  ‘Shut your face. We’re going to find out.’

  ‘Find out what?’

  ‘What happened, who Dad’s father is. Everything.’

  ‘Oh yeah? How?’

  ‘Gran.’

  ‘Right. Hey Gran, remember Jim, the husband you can’t remember and Bob, you know, your son you’ve forgotten? Can you possibly remember why Jim isn’t Bob’s father? I don’t think so.’

  ‘But she does remember things sometimes,’ I said, the plan unfolding as I spoke. ‘She’s just erratic. You know how sometimes she’ll just say something totally clearly. About the past.’

  ‘Yeah, about her mother and that sister with the gross name—’

  ‘—Trudy—’

  ‘—Trudy. And the big fat one—’

  ‘—Lenora—’

  ‘—Lenora, yeah, Lenora the Snorer. And Mr Martini the Eyetie and Alice Tarbottom and her drunken father and Sister Clitoris—’

  ‘—Colista—’

  ‘—Sister Colista and Grandad Motions who had eccentric notions and … shall I go on?’

  ‘She knows,’ I said, thinking of Gran, her infuriating stories, repeated so often we knew them by heart, the crazy cul-de-sac conversations we all had with her, the moments of startling clarity when she made us pay attention, suddenly, briefly hopeful, until her thoughts got lost again. ‘It’s all there somewhere. And I’m going to find it out. We are going to find it out. A little summer project.’

  Silence.

  ‘So you are going to Granny-sit?’ said Finn, yawning, lying along the couch.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, looking down at him, my brother who’d sat on a family secret for nearly a year, who’d casually readjusted my entire identity by divulging this secret, who’d cleverly reorganised my summer for me with one sentence. Incredible. Not for the first time I thought what an odd person he was. ‘Yes, I am going to Granny-sit,’ I said slowly, aware of a disorderly mix of feelings: disorientation, affection, loss, anxiety, anticipation … zeal? ‘A Mission!’ I pulled at Finn’s Nikes, grinning at him. ‘We’re on a Mission from God.’ This was Jake and Elwood’s standard explanation to anyone they met on their circuitous route to the Palace Hotel Ballroom.

  Finn laughed tiredly. ‘We haven’t got the uniform.’

  ‘Borrow Dad’s shades.’

  ‘Jake sleeps in his hat,’ said Finn, rolling off the couch, rolling across the floor until the TV stopped him.

  ‘Go to bed,’ I said, kicking him gently.

  ‘Sorry if I fatally shafted your sense of self.’ His face was buried in the carpet, voice muffled.

  ‘I suppose I’ll recover,’ I said, wondering if there was any other thirteen-year-old in New Zealand who talked like him. I opened the door to the hall. It was dark. Mum and Dad were upstairs in bed.

  ‘S’pose you’ll tell Sonny,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said instantly.

  No way. I disliked the thought intensely.

  ‘True love hath no secrets,’ said Finn, getting up off the floor, dragging himself floppily, comically, to the door. ‘Love conquers all. Love means never having to say you’re sorry. Love is as brief as an April—’

  ‘Shut up, fuckknuckle.’

  ‘Up your fanny.’

  ‘Up yours.’

  ‘Haven’t got one, actually,’ he said, wandering off down the hall to his bedroom, getting the last word as usual.

  Chapter Three

  As soon as Duncan pours our teas Gran wakes. She comes to tidily, like someone flicked a switch: her eyelids open, she sniffs, her fingers go instantly to the hankie tucked up her sleeve as if in completion of an act intended before she slept, briefly postponed. She blinks at me, cat-like, then turns to the window, contemplates the west Canterbury landscape — fertile pasture, soft green undulations, sheep and shelter belts, pines and poplars. She turns back and looks at her tea.

  ‘Oh good,’ she says, ‘a nice cup of tea. Nothing like a nice cup of tea.’

  ‘A horrible cup of tea?’ I murmur.

  ‘Pardon, dear?’

  ‘A Devonshire scone?’ I’ve ordered a Devonshire Tea from Duncan.

  ‘And a nice Devonshire scone.’

  She hoes into the nice tea and scone, and soon she has a peak of whipped cream on the end of her nose and a clownish cream-and-raspberry mouth. Talk about regression. This is not Mrs Patricia Callaghan, former president of the Fendalton Bridge Club, chief floral supplier and co-ordinator of the St Peter Chanel Parish Ladies Altar Society. No way.

  ‘What’s that you’re having, dear?’ says Gran, talking with her mouth full.

  ‘A nice piece of shortbread,’ I say, dipping it in my tea.

  ‘My sister made excellent shortbread,’ says Gran. ‘Trudy. She wouldn’t tell me the secret, but I found out anyway. Cornflour. The governor-general’s wife’s recipe was in the Woman’s Weekly and I tried it. It used cornflour and it was identical to Trudy’s. She was mean-spirited, Trudy,’ she says, emphatic as always about the facts of the past. ‘A spoilsport. Died a week before my wedding — day before war was declared, 1939. She was supposed to be my matron-of-honour so I had to have Lenora instead and the dressmaker had to unpick the pleats in the dress because Lenora was so fat. She was a very large woman. No self-control. No pri—’

  ‘Did you have a war wedding, Gran?’ I already know the answer to this, but if I don’t steer her away from great-aunt Leonora, the white whale, we’ll be here all day.

  She looks blank. ‘Yes,’ she says, recovering, biting into the scone, buying time. ‘I was a spring bride. October 2 1939. But the arrangements had all been made before the war so we didn’t have to have a rationed wedding breakfast. Later on, bridal parties had to wear street clothes.’

  I wore dupion silk. I hear the words though she doesn’t say them. I’ve heard them a thousand times. Oyster. And a full veil. Court shoes. I carried arum lilies with a fern spray.

  ‘It was Monseigneur Kelly,’ she says. And he had his back to the congregation — they did in those days. Lenora smudged the register …

  ‘—smudged the register and tried to catch the bouquet.’ She stops, possibly thinking about fat old great-aunt Lenora who pinched her lollies when they were kids and married a fast-talking car salesman with a gold tooth and who’s bedridden now in an Auckland old people’s home.

  ‘Cast!’ said Dad. ‘She heaved herself into bed one day and couldn’t get upright again. Too much adipose.’

  ‘He had to go to Trentham two days later,’ says Gran.

  ‘Who?’ I haven’t heard this bit before.

  ‘He did. Whatshisname.’ She looks round, out the window, at the old man over the aisle from us; she smiles brightly at him, hoping for inspiration, a cue perhaps. ‘The groom.’

  ‘Jim? Pops?’ A bubble of excitement. This is exactly what I want — a new bit, a bit from another story, an unheard fact that will help force a new pathway into her scrambled memory bank.

  ‘Yes, him,’ says Gran. ‘Jim. Corporal James Callaghan, 19th Battalion, NZ Expeditionary Force, Trentham, Egypt, Crete, Western Desert Home.’

  She recites it like an address. Perhaps it is an address — or a series of them. Perhaps she wrote to those addresses during the war. Perhaps there are letters somewhere. We’ve never thought of that. My mind’s racing, but at the same time I can hardly bear to breathe in case it disturbs her, distracts her from this new line of thought.

  ‘I sent him fruitcakes,’ she says, looking out the window, into the distance. I want to wipe the cream off her nose, but I don’t dare move. ‘When I could get the fruit. It was hard to get fruit in the war. Lenora had a supply, but of course she wouldn’t tell me, and she didn’t even have anyone serving.

  ‘That husband had flat feet, I don’t think. What a frightful man. Wore gemstone rings, vulg
ar on a man, I always think. He had a very smooth tongue—’

  He could have sold ice-blocks to Eskimos.

  ‘—he could have sold ice-blocks to Eskimos.’

  I suppress the itch to smack her.

  ‘Jim,’ I say. ‘During the war when Jim was—’

  ‘Jim who?’ she says, squinting into her teacup. ‘I must have drunk the tea leaves—’

  ‘Jim Callaghan,’ I say, knowing it’s hopeless. ‘Corporal Jim Callaghan.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ She’s vague, and now she’s reaching over for my cup and as she does the train pulls into Springfield. I haven’t even noticed it slowing. ‘You drank yours, too,’ says Gran, looking into my cup. ‘I could have read them for you. We had a girl who could read the leaves, my mother and father, that is—’

  Mary Anne McConachie.

  ‘—Mary Anne McConachie—’

  She was fey.

  ‘—she was fey—’

  Very Irish.

  ‘—very Irish—’

  The Springfield station’s empty now, closed up. No magazines for sale, no barley sugars or ham sandwiches. There’s a woman standing on the platform in front of a table of handicrafts, baby knits, ovencloths, hefty pottery.

  ‘D’you want to go for a stroll, Gran?’ I say, thinking it might distract her from Mary Anne McConachie.

  ‘Springfield.’ She reads the sign on the side of the stone station. ‘Time for a nice cup of tea. My treat.’ She stands up and straightens her wool skirt, buttons her coat. ‘Off we go then. Time waits for no man.’

  ‘Or woman,’ I sigh, tired at the thought of explaining how we’ve just had morning tea.

  ‘Just a brief stop,’ says Duncan over the speaker. ‘A party of Japanese tourists joining us now. If passengers could please ensure they’re in the seats allocated them …’

  Out on the platform the Japanese party is forming a crocodile, getting ready to board. They are mostly older couples; the men carry cameras and finish cigarettes; the women are exquisitely dressed in well-cut suits, knitted ensembles, appliquéd blouses with girlish collars. Their hair is blue-black and stylishly cut, their make-up immaculate. They are talking loudly, excitedly to each other; they see us alight, nod and smile at us. I’m just wondering how to get Gran back to the war when I see her standing still, scowling at the tourists, and it hits me. No! The war!

  Avert, avert!

  ‘Well, for goodness’ sake!’ she starts.

  ‘Ohlookatthesearen’ttheysocute?’ I’m instantly in over-drive, taking Gran’s arm, pulling her towards the handicraft table.

  ‘… be allowed,’ she’s hissing, ‘nasty little—’

  ‘I love these, don’t you, Gran?’ I shove a couple of beaded netting jam covers under her nose, talking, talking, trying to divert her, drown her out. ‘You used to have some, remember, at the old house, I used to love putting them on top of everything, milk jugs and sugar bowls and things. And look, what about these bath-cleaner things, people used to make them for our school fairs at primary school, it’s ballet costume stuff, you know?’

  ‘Tulle,’ says Gran absently, looking at the pink and blue tulle bath-cleaner, fingering the ribbon holder. She’s diverted. The woman behind the trestle thinks I’m crazy, but who cares? At least she’s missed the full-blown version of the Yellow Peril tirade.

  Why didn’t I think of this? Of course there’ll be tourists on the TranzAlpine and of course most of them will be Japanese or German — the Enemy, the Axis, the Wrong Side. For the trillionth time in the last three years I wish my grandmother dead and buried.

  By the time we reboard, the Japanese party is seated, twenty-odd in our carriage; but, preoccupied with her own berth, Gran doesn’t seem to notice them. I contemplate the rest of the trip, the effort of keeping her distracted, on task. We’ve only done 65 ks and I’m exhausted.

  ‘Oh,’ says Gran, ‘Springfield! Good. Just what we need, a nice hot cup of tea.’ I pray for patience.

  ‘This train ride is a trip to nowhere,’ said Brenna.

  ‘I’ve gotta trip her usual rhythms,’ I said. ‘Blast through her loony tunes. Tap her code. Find the logic.’

  ‘What logic? She has no logic.’

  ‘Everyone has a logic,’ I said, believing it. ‘Underneath it all.’

  Gran’s rooting in her handbag, getting out her powder compact, preparing to do her face for morning tea.

  ‘Jim,’ I say firmly, giving it another try. ‘Jim Callaghan. You know who I mean?’

  ‘Of course I know who you mean.’

  Yes!

  She’s dabs her face with the powder puff, lips pursed.

  ‘British prime minister. Awful Labour man. Don’t imagine the Queen thought much of him.’

  Brenna was blown away by the family news. Briefly speechless.

  ‘What a magnificent scandal,’ she said finally. We were walking into town on the evening of the last school day to meet the others at the Rattlesnake. We’d spent hours dressing, making up.

  ‘Snow White and Rose Red,’ called Finn, from the verandah, when we left. It was true, we were a study in contrasts: Brenna in a red velvet jacket, her black hair piled high, her brown eyes heavily lined; I wore my tight, shiny black skirt and left my hair out, thinking of Sonny, how he liked its length, its blondeness, its curls.

  ‘You’re not the Bear Prince, by the way.’

  It was a week since Finn’s thunderbolt and I’d waited until now to tell Brenna. Funny how you can hear something life-changing and still carry on more or less normally. I’d done my exams, eaten, watched TV, the usual stuff, and all the while the information had been turning in my head, the ramifications sinking in and, apart from Finn, no one was any the wiser.

  ‘It makes sense of some things,’ I said. ‘It makes sense of Dad being so weird when Pops died, and the more I think about it the more I realise he’s been weird with Sonny’s family — like he knew they weren’t his or something. I think he’s known for ages.’

  ‘But how?’ She lit cigarettes, passed me one. ‘Do you think Pops made a deathbed confession? Wrote something in his will?’

  ‘Didn’t have a will. Didn’t have anything to leave. He drank it all.’

  ‘Your Gran was a naughty girl, then; spread her favours round, didn’t she? Do you think she was a GI girl?’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting. Anyway,’ I said, ‘that doesn’t work. Dad was born in ’47 and the war ended in 1945, so Pops would’ve been back by then. But she must have had an affair,’ I’d spent some time trying to picture this: my upright grandmother, unfaithful, furtive maybe, having sex, clasping and writhing, with someone not her husband. Or perhaps it had been a sedate coupling, neat dry kisses, a dark room, silence. Either way, the scenario seemed preposterous.

  ‘She spread her legs, as they say.’.

  ‘You are gross.’

  She looked pleased. ‘Must say I find it hard to imagine Pat spreading the old legs — unless it was to straddle a suitcase.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have had the suitcase then, you idiot. And she was nice-looking.’

  ‘Better dress sense,’ said Brenna, and we started laughing. Gran’s clothing combinations were getting more bizarre by the day; now and then she would appear with the suitcases, her coat on and white ankle socks with her high heels. Most days now she sat on the verandah wearing a revolting knitted pom-pom hat that had belonged to Pops.

  ‘Nearest she’s been to him for thirty years,’ said Dad, considering Gran’s new bag-lady look. ‘If she goes near a rubbish tin I’m calling the men in white coats. Christ, when I think of how fussy she used to be about her appearance.’

  ‘How would you feel about your mother if you knew she’d gone off?’ said Brenna. ‘And that your father wasn’t your father?’

  We stood under the elms on the Fitzgerald Avenue traffic island, waiting for a break in the cars before we crossed. It was nearly nine o’clock but still warm; the sun wouldn’t set for another half hour.

  ‘Pissed off,’
I said, grabbing Brenna’s arm, running for it. ‘And, he is always pissed off with her, but I thought it was because she couldn’t remember who he was.’

  ‘It’ll be the guilt,’ said Brenna. ‘She’s blanked him out because he’s a by-blow.’

  ‘By-blow?’.

  ‘Wrong side of the blanket. Illegitimate. Not to put too fine a point on it, Christy, you’re descended from a bastard line, as they say.’

  ‘There’s so much we don’t know,’ I said. ‘How Dad found out. When he found out. Or how Pops found out, if he found out — I mean, why would Gran tell him? Not to mention the sixty-four-thousand dollar question: who’s Dad’s real father?’

  ‘Cut to the chase. Ask your mother.’.

  ‘Finn says absolutely no.’

  We were walking west now and the sun was sinking behind the city buildings. The sky was smeared with bands of orange and red, and against this dramatic canvas we could see the tiny clear black outline of a plane coming in to land. I felt oddly peaceful and pleased with life, despite a mad grandmother and a half-orphaned, irritating father.

  ‘Since when does your little brother give the instructions?’

  ‘He reckons Mum’ll tell Dad and Dad’ll have an existential breakdown before our very eyes.’

  ‘But he’s having one anyway.’.

  ‘True. But I like the idea of us finding out, getting it out of Gran ourselves.’

  ‘Fat chance.’.

  ‘Sometimes she remembers things, when you least expect it. Sometimes she’s almost normal. She is. Anyway, you never know.’

  ‘You probably will never know. But you’ll be paid handsomely for the fun of it.’

  ‘Don’t be cross, little Bren gun,’ I said, putting my arm about her neck. ‘You can hang out with us on your days off, sunbathe, watch the soaps, listen to music.’

  ‘What days off? I’ll be at it dawn to dusk, believe me, while you’re swanning round, enjoying the summer of a lifetime.’

  We were at Cashel Mall. I could see the others in the queue outside the Rattlesnake, squashed in the long crocodile, dressed to kill.

  ‘And when you’re not swanning, you’ll be mooning, longing for the lance-corporal.’