by Tim Winton
I don’t believe it, said Vic.
Will you come with me? Carol asked.
Vic and I glanced at one another and already he wore that round-shouldered look of apology. I shrugged. In the decades since Carol’s husband had disappeared, his family had shunned her as though she were to blame. For her sake we couldn’t refuse.
Just for an hour, said Vic.
Oh, said Carol with a laugh. An hour’ll be time enough.
As we drove through the suburbs where new kites already hung from powerlines and shiny bikes lay askew on front lawns, nobody spoke much except Vic.
Things were never hostile between my mother-in-law and me, but they were often strangely cool. There was no battle of wills over her son, just a distance that couldn’t be bridged, a civility that bewildered all of us and Vic in particular.
Everyone got enough air? he said, with a familiar panicky note of jauntiness in his voice. Hey, the streets are deserted.
It’s the heat, said Carol from the back seat.
It’s eerie, I murmured.
We’re all just nervous, said Carol.
She was a substantial person, Carol Lang. I knew she’d endured a lot. Even in our earliest encounters, during the first tricky months of letting go, she’d been gracious and thoughtful. Yet there was something impenetrable about her. She resisted intimacy. Beneath the mildness there was a hard-won pride, a kind of dignity that was intimidating. If she’d ever had a life beyond motherhood she wasn’t letting on to me, and the less of it she offered the less I came to enquire. In the company of this plain, quiet, grey-haired woman I became cautious, even defensive, conscious that I was not a mother, that I had no purchase. After five years, no headway.
You think they want us to eat? asked Vic.
No, said his mother. They made it clear we should come after lunch.
Just in time to do the dishes, he muttered.
Carol laughed and Vic laughed too. I’d never met Ernie and Cleo but I’d heard the stories. I had a headache just thinking about them.
Through a suburb of roundabouts and artful dead-ends, Vic brought us to the driveway of a house that seemed stranded somewhere between ‘Gone with the Wind’ and ‘Miami Vice’. It had porticoes and pediments, but also pastels and palms. Rising from the cul-de-sac and the hectic styles of its neighbours, Ernie and Cleo’s place stood high at the peak of a berm of rollout lawn. It was two storeys high and festooned with lights and decorations. In the drive were several cars.
Are you sure this is it, Mum?
This is the address they gave me.
I just don’t recognize anything. The cars . . . nothing.
Well, you haven’t seen them since you were at the uni.
He’s obviously moved on from driving pig trucks, I murmured.
Or getting someone else to drive them for him, said Carol getting out.
Vic and I shuffled up to the door behind his mother and we stood fidgeting like children while chimes echoed through the house. We waited. Carol knocked. Her beige shoulderbag jiggled at her hip. Vic whistled a tune whose melody was beyond him. The only other sound was the general noise of people carousing in backyard pools.
We’ll try round the back, said Carol. They might be in the pool.
We don’t even know they’ve got a pool, Mum.
Vic, I said, what’s the chances of a place like this not having a pool?
Imagine cleaning it, said Carol.
The pool? I said.
The house, Gail.
Yes.
Feeling conspicuous out there in full view of the neighbourhood, a whole street without evidence of people but for the slopping, screeching, laughing noise of poolside celebration, we hullo-ed the house a few minutes longer and then followed Carol through the open-doored garage into the yard beyond. Back there it was all coconut palms and aluminium wrought-iron and brick pavers. Not only was there a pool but also a cabana the size of a hangar.
The sliding doors at the rear of the house were ajar and Christmas music tinkled from within, but nobody came to Carol’s calls. I noticed a tremor in her voice. She chewed her lip uncertainly and pivoted in her flat-soled shoes.
Try up at the pool? said Vic without enthusiasm.
Yes, said Carol.
What time did they say? I asked.
After lunch, said Carol firmly.
It’s nearly four, I said.
I didn’t want to seem too eager, she said.
It’s quiet, said Vic.
Too damn quiet, I said, and with that Vic and I broke into nervous giggles. Carol stared us back into order.
We’ll try that hut thing, she said.
It’s a cabana, Mum.
Yes.
We stalked up the path with its bougainvillea and assorted water features and I felt a creeping hysteria. I was actually walking on tiptoe, throwing glances over my shoulder, shaking with silent, mortified laughter.
Yoo-hoo! said Carol at the pool gate.
Oh my God, muttered Vic. Get me out of here.
Once we were inside the pool fence it took quite a few moments to realize that the deep shade of the cabana was empty. The pool was strewn with bobbing toys. On the cold barbecue were a few wizened chops and prawns.
It’s the Marie Celeste, I said.
It’s rude, said Carol. That’s what it is.
She turned, tottered a moment with eyes big as baubles, and a ball shot from beneath her as she went sidelong into the pool. I caught the bag but not her arm. When she surfaced her frock billowed beneath her arms and I couldn’t help laughing.
Hell, said Vic, sensing trouble.
Oh my sainted aunt! cried Carol.
Not in this family, he said.
And then we were all useless with laughter. It was like something had possessed us. Vic lurched around the pool holding his knees and I laughed till my throat hurt.
Well, it’s lovely in, said Carol.
Which is when I jumped. I still had her bag in my hand. The water was cool and stupidly chemical and I floated a moment with a spritz of trespass bubbling through my limbs.
At the edge of the pool Vic was only moments from joining us – he already had his arms behind him like wings – when a dark look travelled across his face.
Hey, he murmured. You reckon this is even the right house?
It better be, I said.
Oh, God, he said. Stay there, I’m gonna check.
Stay here? said Carol, still laughing. I don’t think so.
We clambered out and followed Vic. There were towels at the cabana but we didn’t stop to use them, just slopped back down the winding path with a new, feverish urgency.
Vic hesitated at the back door. He almost hailed the house as his mother had earlier, but then he looked at Carol and me and the puddle we were making on the pavers beneath the pergola, and eased the slider aside and let himself in. Carol and I looked at one another. I handed her the beige bag. She’d lost a shoe and her hair was flat. Her big sensible undies were showing through the cotton dress plastered to her.
We’ll be a sight, she said.
But will we look too eager?
Bloody hell, said Vic emerging from the house. Let’s get out of here!
What’s wrong, love?
It’s not them.
Oh gawd, I don’t believe it.
My shoe. I’ve left my—
Bugger it, Mum, I’ll lose my job.
We bolted back through the garage and piled into the Camry. As Vic hurtled us backwards down the drive I saw our footprints and drips on the concrete.
Oh, dear, said Carol.
Wrong house, Mum.
But I wrote it down. Seventy-eight Quay Largo.
Vic had hardly got the vehicle into forward gear when we saw the spill of Christmas partiers on the driveway of number seventy-five.
Oh my good God, said Carol.
It’s Ernie, said Vic.
We can’t stay now, said Carol. We can’t possibly! Drive!
I felt mysel
f sliding low in the seat.
Go, said Carol. Drive!
We shot forward. Vic mashed the gears. A spray of faces flashed by the window. Vic grappled the Camry round the corner and out of sight.
Carol and I were half dry when we got home. Vic went straight to the fridge and opened a bottle of champagne.
Here’s to not being struck off, he said holding up his glass.
Oh, don’t be melodramatic, I said. It was a simple mistake.
Maybe I wrote down seventy-five and read the five as an eight, said Carol. My writing’s not good and my eyes are worse.
It doesn’t matter, Carol. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed it.
Give me a glass of that, said Carol. Vic, where’s your manners?
But you don’t drink, Mum.
You don’t think I have an excuse, this once?
Pour your mother a drink, I said.
Yes, I’ve lost a shoe over all this.
Carol gulped the wine and refilled the glass herself.
They were at Ernie’s, she said. The people, the neighbours, they were over the road at Ernie’s.
Another coupla minutes they’d have sprung us in their pool.
They’ll find the shoe, I said, breaking into a giggle.
You think they saw us?
We were all over their driveway, said Vic. Oh man, what if they got the rego of the car?
Oh dear, said Carol with a titter.
I’m serious, Mum.
Well, excuse me, constable!
I was laughing again; I couldn’t help it.
Some reunion, said Carol. Actually, it went well, considering.
Kerbside drive-by, I said. The best sort.
No time for arguments. Ideal.
You two, said Vic. Jesus!
Victor, she chided. Not at Christmas.
Let’s open another bottle, I said.
Gail? said Vic.
No, I want to. This is the most fun I’ve ever had at Christmas. I’m serious.
Carol laid an indulgent hand on my arm and I just kept talking.
When we jumped in the pool I felt ten years old.
When you jumped in the pool. Mum fell.
I had this forbidden feeling, this naughty feeling.
Vic groaned.
Be quiet Vic, let her speak.
When I was little we went to church three times of a Sunday, I said. But at Christmas only once. It’s a bit arse-about, don’t you think? We weren’t allowed to say Merry Christmas because it condoned drunkenness. It was Happy Christmas or the doghouse. Oh, I’m sorry Carol, I wasn’t thinking.
Because Bob was an alcoholic? she asked. Look at me, I am tipsy. You’re too careful.
Oh.
My mother was a drunk, too, she murmured.
Really?
I used to fish her out of the pub at twelve years of age.
Mum, said Vic. What about a cup of tea?
She used to smash windows with her high heels. I never wear heels, but now I drink. I used to want to be a teacher, you know.
You would have been good, I said.
Kindergarten. Do I seem the type?
I never went to kindergarten, I said. My parents wouldn’t send me.
What was wrong with them?
I don’t know, I said. I never had birthday parties either.
Never? asked Vic.
Not once? asked Carol.
I asked my mum about it a couple of years ago. I thought I just might not be remembering. But she said she wasn’t really into that sort of thing.
Bloody hell, said Vic. You never told me this.
We never did home reading. Other kids had their mum or dad check their spelling lists. Nothing. Sports days, they never came.
Was it work? asked Carol. Some religious thing?
No. Well, the church did soak up all their time and attention. But with us . . . I don’t think they ever got interested.
Vic started stacking plates and running water. Carol and I kept talking while he worked around us. The more I said, the more agitated he got. He didn’t care for my parents, but now I knew he’d never speak to them again, and I thought that was probably fair. They were vain, careless people and I’d forgiven them, but there was no reason for him to; he had no need. I knew that Carol had only just buried her mother the year before. Just the way she held my arm, I knew she understood.
Don’t mind him, she murmured. He gets upset on my behalf, too.
I know.
Has to defend everybody.
That’s him.
I’m in the same bloody room, girls!
He was a dear boy.
Yeah, right.
By the way, son, what did you see in that house that made you skedaddle?
A wall of photos, he said. No red hair, no freckles, no ugly cousins. I knew I had the wrong joint.
They’re all married now, said Carol. All of them with kids, apparently.
Lovely, he muttered. More wobbegongs. My cousins all looked like carpet sharks.
Careful, I said. You share the same gene pool.
Don’t even say the word pool, said Vic.
Strange, but they’re nothing alike, Ernie and Bob.
Vic was silent at the mention of his father. He plunged his hands into the suds and washed.
Bob was everything Ernie wasn’t, said Carol. But you could never tell their mother this. Bob cleaned up every mess his brother made. And when he needed help he got nothing. Just this howl of disappointment, disapproval.
I’ve heard some stories, I said, hoping to head Carol off somewhat. Vic was clenching his jaw now.
Ernie and Cleo were off again – on again. They were like a bad movie. She ran away to Kalgoorlie once. Took the kids and all. Bob gets dragooned into driving Ernie up there to save their marriage. It’s his mother’s idea; in fact, she comes along. They drive all day, seven hours to Kal and get there on sunset. Mrs Lang words Ernie up and sends him in, and Bob and her sit in the car for two hours.
While Ernie and Cleo were hashing it out? I asked.
Well, that wasn’t what they were doing.
Mum—
Bob and his mother sat out in the car while Cleo and Ernie had an amorous two hours, punctuated by the usual barney – which meant they were off again – and then the three musketeers drove home all night so Bob could make the morning shift.
I was laughing again. I couldn’t resist it.
Vic, she said, is his father’s son.
Thanks, Mum.
And neither of us, Gail, is his grandmother.
Family, said Vic. It’s not a word, it’s a sentence.
Rubbish, said Carol. It’s an adventure.
Don’t give her any more to drink, said Vic.
But I did. I took her by the arm and we sat out under the grapevines where our clothes and hair dried awry and the sunset made the sky all Christmassy and we talked and laughed until we forgot the man between us and made some headway.
Commission
THE DAY AFTER HER DIAGNOSIS Mum sent me in search of the old man. She’d lain awake all night thinking and she told me she just wanted to see him again before she died. Although it was five in the morning she knew I’d be awake. I couldn’t believe what she was asking me to do – it was such a longshot, so unlikely that it felt cruel – but in the circumstances I had neither the heart nor the presence of mind to turn her down. I got out a map of Western Australia and studied it over a breakfast I had to force down with several coffees. I left messages at the office, kissed my sleepy wife goodbye and drove out of the city with the rising sun in my eyes.
Almost twenty-seven years had passed since I’d seen my father. I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. The only piece of information Mum had armed me with was the name of a bush pub in the eastern goldfields. It was there on the map, Sam’s Patch. The pub seemed to be the town. It was the last known address. As I drove I held the folded map to my face a moment and smelled the classrooms of my childhood.
I was t
oo tired to be driving such distances that day but I fought to stay alert. At the outskirts of the city, the foothills and the forests still bore signs of the week’s drought-breaking storms. Road crews were out and men took chainsaws to fallen trees. A couple of hours east, machines were seeding wheat paddocks. Water lay in culverts at the roadside and birds gathered to wash themselves, hardly stirring as I passed. I drove until farms gave way to red earth and salmon gums, until the sun was behind me and the towns were mostly ruins amidst the slag heaps of mines long abandoned. Even out here, in staticky waves, the radio spewed scandal from the police royal commission.
Up past Kalgoorlie I turned off the highway onto a thin bitumen road which wound between old mineheads and diggings until it petered out amongst the remains of a ghost town. All that was left was the Sam’s Patch pub and before I reached it I pulled over and switched off the engine to think a minute. The hours on the road hadn’t given me any ideas about what to say or how to act. I’d concentrated so hard on staying awake that I was nearly numb and I sat there with the motor ticking and the window wound down long enough to feel queasy again at the thought of what I’d agreed to do. If this was it, if the old man was really in there, what sort of state would he be in after all this time? I tried to think in purely practical terms; I couldn’t afford to feel much now. I had to consider the logistical details of managing him, of cajoling and threatening and maintaining him for the time it took to deliver him as promised. The feelings I’d deal with later. But I dreaded it. God, how I dreaded it. He’d never been violent; I wasn’t afraid in that sense. It was the fear of going back to how things were. Drunks and junkies take everything out of you, all your patience, all your time and will. You soften and obscure and compensate and endure until they’ve eaten you alive and afterwards, when you think you’re finally free of it for good, it’s hard not to be angry at the prospect of dealing with the squalor again. There was no point in being furious at my mother for needing this, but I couldn’t help myself.
I drove up and pulled in to the blue-metal apron in front of the pub. It was a fine old building with stone walls and brick quoins and wide verandahs, stained with red dust and hung with barrows and wagon wheels and paraphernalia of the goldrushes. When I got out and stood stiff in the sunshine a blue heeler stirred on the steps and behind it, in the shadows of the verandah, an old man put his hat on but did not rise from where he sat. I licked my lips, summoned what I could of my professional self, and strode over.
