by Ian Wedde
She took the woman’s unnerving nod with her to the juice bar and ordered a large freshly squeezed orange juice. Although she had only glimpsed Frank’s granddaughter along with a dog in the background of the Skype call some weeks back, the young woman who served her the juice reminded her of Lizzie and so she found herself a table and sent Lizzie a text asking her how Frank was doing now? The answer came back quickly – Grandad Frank was doing okay though still couldn’t speak very well, but she could tell he was really glad Beth was coming over. The message had a thumbs-up emoji at the end, which reminded her of the smiley-face one on the Freddy archive box.
Joe went to Townsville with his girlfriend Sakura years ago on their zigzag route to Japan so she’d phoned to ask if he had any tips about the place. It was a way of letting him know she was going while at the same time involving him in her decision. But the silence before his reply said that he didn’t much want to be reminded about that trip, and then he said he and Sakura had flown to Brisbane and hitched north to Townsville.
‘Might not work for you, Ma.’
That was a little joke but also it wasn’t, and then after a bit of awkward nothing-much chat he’d said he had to go, he had stuff to do, and he hoped she’d enjoy herself.
It was also hard to gauge the tone of Joe’s hope that she’d enjoy herself and she couldn’t really tell if he was pulling her leg or not. The hope soon ran pretty steeply against the dread she’d begun to feel not long after getting Lizzie’s phone call about Frank. But the dread was as much about seeing Frank after his stroke as it was about how the poor bugger felt, and so spurred on by shame she set about organising her trip. The mental image of Frank with the winking galah head superimposed over his own lurked in her thoughts as she went about her work.
The best online deal was a seven-and-a-bit-hour flight to Townsville with a brief stop in Brisbane on the way and then another forty minutes or so by Uber from Townsville down to Cungulla. There was a crack-of-dawn flight and a late-afternoon one. If she got the later one she could cadge a lift to the airport with Joe and have a chance to chat. Maybe let him know she was sorry for reminding him about his trip with Sakura. But also she liked the idea of drawing breath before getting to Frank’s place. Even allowing for the three-hour time difference, she couldn’t expect to get there before nine at night if she took the later flight, so she’d booked into the Waters Edge near the Strand in Townsville. The place promised views to something called Magnetic Island which had some appeal as a vista to wake up with. Then she could go on down to Cungulla and get there late morning, having had time to rest.
Of course the Waters Edge recalled the countless times on their road trips that Noel had been seduced by motel names like Seaview where you were likely to be looking at a row of suburban bungalows or a laundromat across the road, but it was worth a try. And asking Lizzie for advice about where to stay before Cungulla would have sent a message that she was procrastinating, which she was.
But when she got there she went for a walk along the promised water’s edge, had a dinner of crispy-skinned barramundi with chips and salad and a couple of glasses of fresh cold sauvignon blanc at the rowdy C-Bar, took a photo of her barramundi dinner and texted it to Joe, slept well and woke to a nice enough view of the sea across a strip of grass and past a palm tree. There was a narrow balcony outside the room with a metal table and a couple of chairs, so she rang for some breakfast and then sat out there for a while.
After leaning in to kiss her goodbye at Auckland airport, Joe had told her she looked freaked out and needed to chill. She should have a feed of barramundi with a nice cold beer in Townsville, go for a real good walk in the eucalypts, get into the sea, it wasn’t all about bloody old Frank. So those had been some of his tips after all. The elderly Indian matriarch’s knowing nod in the departure lounge had communicated something similar but without the tips.
It was going to be about a forty-minute drive down to Cungulla. She went for a stroll along the Strand, then came back for a shower and checked out. She was going to visit an old mate, she told the Uber driver, and would he mind if she opened the window for some of that fresh air rather than have the aircon on? No worries lady, he said, and she leaned back in her seat thinking that’s right, no worries.
Frank’s place was on an unfenced residential street that ran along the beachfront at Cungulla. There was a dry expanse of grass with some skinny gums, then a strip of sand, then the sea with a patch of mangroves off to one side. The sea was very blue and still, with the pale shadows of clouds motionless on it. The dog spotted her first as she wheeled her bag around the side of the house past a fragrant frangipani tree and a bougainvillea that had sprawled across the corner of a wide open veranda. It ran at her yelping oddly as if it had a damaged throat. She gave it a scratch along its back and it trotted back the way it had come. The veranda faced the sea and Frank was sitting to one side of it in an old wicker chair. The dog had run to him as if to report her arrival, but then a young woman came out of the house towelling her hair.
Yes, she was Lizzie, sorry she couldn’t get to the front door in time.
There was another old cane chair next to Frank, so she pulled it close to him and sat down. He reached over and took her hand, and yes the old Frank grin was there, though a bit lopsided. His left eyelid was halfway down. His legs sticking out of faded khaki shorts were skinny and sun-dark, and his big knobbly feet were crossed at the ankles. They stayed that way and he made no effort to get out of his chair or do more than grip her hand and grin.
But then she saw an effort pull at the muscles in his neck and cheek and he said, intelligibly, ‘About bloody time.’
Lizzie brought some fresh lime juice and Frank sipped his through a straw. He could walk okay, she said, steadying the straw in his hand, but he had to take it slow and think about it a bit, and someone had to hold his arm.
John was at work and wee Frankie was having his nap. Later on they could have a barbie on the veranda, Grandad liked to do that. John could bring them back some prawns and stuff from town.
She’d made up the bed for Beth in Frankie’s room, he could sleep in bed with John and her for a day or two.
She was glad Beth got the parcels of old papers okay. But the house was pretty much a museum even with them gone.
She had some study to do, she’d leave them to it.
Frank blew her a kiss off his fingertips as she went back inside.
‘Clever,’ he said. It came out clewer.
On impulse while packing her bag the day before she’d put in the larger of the two envelopes included with the Freddy papers that Lizzie had so neatly and professionally organised. She’d read its contents some days after her first foray.
Had he read any of the stuff that his clever granddaughter Lizzie had organised so beautifully, the family stuff that he’d told her his sister Ruth had been hoping to do something with, and their mother Greta before that?
He was looking out across the patchy yellowed grass at the glittering sea and just shook his head and made a little show of lifting her hand and dropping it. But she’d spotted the telescope on its stand in the front room and the shelves of books in the shadows further in and what she guessed were some of Helen’s watercolour sketches of plants and trees on the walls – they were all prompts in their way, so she got up and went inside. Lizzie was sitting at the big table with a laptop and some folders.
Beth’s room was just off this one and the toilet was down the passage.
Then she went back to her work.
There was a faded watercolour of a red bottlebrush flower next to the door to little Frank’s room, its crazy punkish pistils with their white tips painted with neat precision. She guessed that Helen’s granddaughter Lizzie might have got some of her scrupulous ways from that artist. Lizzie had parked her bag next to the bed, which had a neatly folded towel and a facecloth on it, also a bar of eucalyptus soap in a plain green paper wrapper. She took the towel and the soap along to the bathroom and had a pe
e and a quick wash, and then went back and got the Freddy envelope from her bag.
On the way back to the veranda she asked Lizzie where Dingo Beach was, where they had those extra-special prawns.
About two hundred and fifty-odd k down the coast, why, was Beth thinking of going down there?
‘Thought this might interest you,’ she said to Frank back on the veranda. ‘You old bugger. You promised me prawns at Dingo Beach but it’s halfway back to bloody Brisbane.’
She saw him preparing his face and mouth to say something.
‘Next time.’ Neck sime.
Then he nodded his head at the chair beside him.
Freddy, whose stuff Lizzie had packed up and sent to her, had telescopes where he lived on a tea plantation way the hell up a river near Assam, and he’d looked at the stars and written something. She thought Frank might be interested?
‘He reminded me of you,’ she said. ‘Bit of a crazy.’
That wonky smile.
The sheets of paper were yellow, with faded blue typewriter text. The first sheet was headed up ‘A New Theory of the Universe’, and when she read that aloud Frank cackled with laughter. It was a sudden, surprising noise and concluded with a deep barking cough, at which the dog thumped its tail on the veranda. Frank was reaching for the box of tissues on the floor beside him, so she got one out and wiped his mouth and chin. Then she began to read aloud Freddy’s ‘New Theory of the Universe’, which began with the statement that for many years he had liked to look at the stars through his telescope when the sky was clear and he now knew quite a lot about them, having had time at his disposal, but what had begun to interest him more than the celestial bodies themselves was the means by which their light was transmitted across such vast expanses of space.
Frank’s lopsided smile had been replaced by a frown that almost shut his left, lidded eye. He waved ‘Go on’ with his good hand, the one from which he’d blown a kiss at Lizzie, the one that had held hers when she first arrived. The other one lay in his lap and it seemed he couldn’t move it.
Many years ago the English scientist, Dalton, gave the world of science the Atomic Theory, all chemical elements consisted of atoms the smallest particle of an element that could enter into chemical combination with atoms of other elements. With most elements the atoms combine together forming a molecule of two atoms.
Lizzie came out – she could make some lunch if they’d like? There were some just-ripe avocados, she could make a guacamole to put on that nice fresh bread?
Frank’s hand that had waved her the kiss waved the guacamole away. She came back with the jug of lime juice and put it down on the veranda next to them. Then she went back inside. The quick, faint clicking of her keyboard, a bit of a wheeze in Frank’s breathing, the sporadic squawk of a bird down towards the sea.
‘Want me to go on?’
‘Freddy.’ Furdy.
‘Yes, Frank. Your Great-uncle Frederick Wenczel. The mystery man. Well, guess what, he’s come to light after all these years. So to speak.’
She poured them each a refill of the lime juice and helped Frank with his straw. Then she read on.
Our universe is an electric universe and where protons are found in this universe galaxies are in the process of formation, or have been formed in former eons of time. What exists between the galaxies, between the stars which form them and nebulae, masses of gasses which are seen in our own Milky Way.
She hesitated over Freddy’s awkward sentence about the masses of gasses and looked up at Frank, but he was staring with that frown down towards the glitter of light that came between the eucalypt trunks from the sea. It seemed to her that what he was listening to and what he was seeing were connected – he was sitting very still as if concentrating on that connection.
‘My hypothesis is this,’ she read, and heard Frank’s little laugh-cough and saw his face turn back towards her with his crooked smile back on it.
‘Furdy’s,’ he began, but stopped.
‘Yes, Freddy Wenczel’s hypothesis.’
My hypothesis is this; these enormous spaces are filled with electrons, negative particles of electricity which repel each other and by so doing in the vicinity of the solid or gaseous bodies like the sun and the planets are the cause of gravitation which these bodies seem to possess.
She took a quick peek at Frank – he was once again staring ahead and the forefinger of his functioning hand was tapping slowly on the arm of his wicker chair.
Light from the farthest stars reaches us with the same speed as an electric current travels through a copper wire. The electron alone without the mass of a proton about which it revolves cannot reach a body consisting of elements, protons and electrons bound together by atomic force.
Another peek. Now Frank was looking at her with his grin that might have been or meant something not grin-like. Go on, went his hand.
Thus the hypothetical ‘Ether’ of former scientists is nothing but a universal mass of electrons which pervades all space. Such is the medium which carries light throughout the universe.
Freddy Wenczel’s ‘New Hypothesis’ text ended with the polite request to ‘Please keep this paper it may be of interest sometime in the future.’
The cough of Frank’s laugh.
‘Not bad,’ he said. Nos pad. His good hand clapping against the arm of his chair. Nos pad, Furdy.
*
Frank walked slowly and carefully with his good hand gripping her arm and got knee-deep in the sea. He reached his good hand down and scooped water over his face and head, soaking his shirt and shorts. Then she helped to lower him on to the sand with his feet in the sea while she paddled about with little Frankie. There were blushes on the wisps of cloud at the horizon and the trees in Frank’s yard were shaking a little as the breeze got up. A raucous flock of cockatoos flew the length of the beach and Frank let go of her arm to give them a wave. She could smell the frangipani as they came back from the beach, and he made a show of snuffing up the fragrance.
Frankie’s dadda John had already fired up the barbie and was lifting the prawns off it. He’d gone over the top and got a couple of whopping spanner crabs, did Beth like crab?
The crabs looked pretty serious, she reckoned, and she had something that might go well with them.
She fetched the bottle of Te Mata Coleraine from her bag and poured them all a glass. Frank wanted a proper glass as well and waved the straw away.
It was great to see her dear old cuzzie-mate again and she wished him a speedy recovery. Next time she came over the bugger had to take her down to Dingo Beach like he’d promised.
The rowdy cockatoos flew back again from wherever they’d gone. Frank seemed to be saluting them as he raised his glass and swivelled in his chair to watch them go.
Catharina
Of course even though she herself still thought of her mother as ‘Mutti’, she had long ago stopped calling her that in public, and even within the family ‘Ma’ as Wolf used it had become the usual way she referred to the neat little woman she had addressed in German at her graveside. There was no one there, or later on in Wolf’s house for the afternoon tea, who bore him any ill will, let alone thought unkindly of his mother who was widely loved and respected in the community on account of her demeanour but also because of her skills as a seamstress, which were ‘legendary’, Greta said admiringly after listening to conversations at the tea – but even so word of German being spoken openly had got to the authorities, who came to see Wolf only a couple of days after the funeral.
She and Greta were still at the house helping with the tidy-up, although Greta was fretting to get back to her bellicose fiancé Albert who was dogmatic that there was going to be war and he damned well hoped so! The two policemen from Taumarunui were well known to Wolf and drank their cups of tea with him out on the porch. Afterwards they shook his hand, took polite farewell of Ettie and rather more formal leave of Greta and herself, and drove back the way they’d come up the road Wolf had surveyed and bridged long enough
ago for almost everyone to have forgotten he’d done it, though at the time it had been a legendary feat or so Mutti had told her.
He was closing in on sixty, he said to Ettie, and his sister who had uttered the seditious words at their mother’s graveside was somewhat older than him. His family had lived peacefully in the valley for a bit over thirty years, plenty of time to raise a secret army of toothless old enemy Huns hanging about somewhere in the bush down there towards the Wanganui who all whistled in a secret code.
Was that what he’d told them, Ettie wanted to know.
Yes, and also that his big boy Adam could easily pot a rabbit sticking its head up fifty yards away over the river. But don’t worry, he hadn’t reminded them that his sister’s husband the professor of spying had been locked away on that island in Wellington harbour last time. Meanwhile the valley was short of patriots because the land wasn’t that way inclined – half the sheep men had walked off when things got rough a few years ago, and poor old Smithy would be walking off his place any day now, no way he could skittle his loan and anyone could see that the dirt his grass was meant to grow on was so useless most of it had washed away down the river, same as it had with half the others. It was the elements that were traitors, not the local Krauts.
Then he’d gone out to get on with his day’s work.
But what would become of Elke when Smithy went?
Elke might have to look after herself, said Ettie a little sharply, meaning perhaps that their granddaughter shouldn’t take her and Wolf’s house for granted, any more than she should dwell on the likelihood of her mother Aggie coming back to the valley any time in the near future.
And then after a couple more days she and Greta had been back on the train to Wellington, and she saw her clever daughter squeeze her eyes shut and make a phew shape with her lips when she thought her mother wasn’t looking.
And perhaps Greta’s phew was because back then in the days after Mutti’s funeral a tension had grown up between her mother and Ettie, because Ettie knew that she, Catharina, had taken some things from the tallboy and put them in her mother’s coffin before Wolf nailed the lid on. He’d run his finger around the edge of it and yes, it was a fine tight fit, said his nod and the set of his lips, but he’d been looking at her across it in the moment before he then tapped the first nail in. His look had said thank you, but also that he did not want to know what was in the two packets.
