Mercy Street

by Tess Evans

  They put him on oxygen to control the asthma and decided to keep him in for a few hours’ observation.

  Relieved to be taken in hand, he complies with good grace, but when Shirl comes to pick him up, he baulks at the suggestion that she take him back to her house.

  ‘So you think he’s fit to go home?’ Shirl’s tone suggests that she has a well-founded belief to the contrary. Snug in his cubicle, George hears her through the curtain and imagines the poor young registrar struggling to maintain his professional authority. He grins despite himself, imagining Shirl wielding her daunting bosom like some Amazon shield. He’s not sure when it happened, but over the years his sister had become a warrior, her hair an iron-grey helmet, her blue eyes stern behind uncompromising glasses.

  ‘I hope you’re decent.’ Without waiting for a reply, Shirl sweeps aside the curtain. ‘Apparently’ – she emphasises the word for the benefit of the young doctor – ‘you’re well enough to leave. You’ll come back to my place, of course.’

  ‘I’m good, Shirl. Just take me home.’

  His sister looks at him with that unique-to-Shirl exasperation. ‘You told me yourself on the phone not twenty minutes ago. They said they know where you live.’

  George glares right back. Women always make such a big deal out of everything. He might be getting on, but he isn’t going to let a couple of snotty-nosed kids drive him from his own home. In a brief review of the incident, he has decided that it was the element of surprise that gave them the advantage. Next time . . . he sees himself landing a punch on the big one and hauling the younger one by the collar; gloating as the lad stares in dismay at his crony spread-eagled on the footpath.

  ‘Stop fussing, woman. If you’re not going to take me home, I’ll get a taxi.’

  She isn’t a bad old stick, his sister. On the way home (George is surprised to see that it’s nearly dark), she calls by her place and grabs some soup and a casserole from the freezer. She settles him in bed, and making sure his painkillers and puffer are within reach, leaves him with a bowl of soup, a cheese sandwich and a pot of tea.

  ‘Nothing much in the fridge, as usual.’ Just as he’s beginning to feel grateful for her ministrations, she has to add, ‘Except for the grog.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Shirl. For once in your life, give it a break.’

  She goes off in a huff then, and after finishing his soup, he begins to regret his irritability. Not that she doesn’t deserve it. Always going on about the drink is Shirl, preaching about that God-bothering, wowser of a husband. When Bill took the pledge, I knew for sure he was the man for me. George bites into his sandwich. He has to admit that he can’t blame the woman for wanting a teetotaller husband after all their mum went through.

  The morning’s incident has reawakened his childhood fears. Memories long-buried begin to surface. He was six, maybe seven years old, sitting at the dinner table with his mum and Shirl. His mum was talking to Shirl about . . . what was it? A school play. That’s right. Shirl was excited because she was going to be the drover’s wife in the school play.

  He was aware that his mother was only half listening. She was also listening for the scraping of the key. Was he really so aware then, or is it only with hindsight that he knows this? Does it matter? He remembers well enough how they all froze as his dad lurched into the kitchen and his mum leapt to her feet. In the silence before the storm, young George heard himself swallow, milk gurgling down his throat like water down the plughole.

  ‘Started without me, have you? Never you worry about a man who’s been working his guts out. That’s right. Working my guts out so you can sit around on your fat bum all day reading your poxy magazines.’

  ‘I’ve kept it warm for you. The children were tired . . .’

  ‘Like I’m not tired? A man who’s been working all day? Fuck your poxy stew.’ He flung the plate at the wall where the stew oozed, a greasy brown, down the faded wallpaper.

  ‘The children . . .’

  ‘You kids. Get lost or I’ll kick your bums till your noses bleed.’

  Shirl took her brother’s hand and they melted away, in desperate fear of drawing further attention to themselves. Young George put his hands over his ears but he can hear it to this day – the dull thuds, the muffled pleas.

  Just that once, he found the courage to run back to the kitchen. His mother was cowering in the corner and his father, unsteady with the grog, was attempting to kick her.

  ‘Stop!’

  The man turned. ‘Get out, you little prick, or I’ll kill your mother. I swear I will.’

  George fled, and later, when his mum dragged herself to bed, he was given a thrashing with his father’s leather belt.

  ‘That – will – teach – you.’ His father thrashed and swore and thrashed some more until, exhausted, he fell in a drunken stupor onto the couch.

  For a while after that his father called him Mummy’s brave ickle soldier. It was the way he said it. With Frank Johnson, mockery was a finely honed art.

  George, his reverie intensified by codeine, takes a moment to remember where he is, and is relieved to see the familiar green curtains and patchwork quilt. He pushes the quilt back. He’s sweating, and his mouth is dry. He remembers his sister’s crack about the grog. Shirl might go on, but he, George, isn’t a drunk. True, he always liked a beer or two after work, and since he’s retired, he keeps up the custom – two beers before dinner and one with his meal – and some nights (most nights) another one or two while he reads or watches a bit of telly. Although, come to think of it, he can’t remember drinking after dinner when Pen was alive.

  He looks over at the pillow beside his own. Goodnight, Pen. Every night for nearly fifty years, Pen’s head lay on that pillow. He loved the way, in the early days, her hair spread across the white slip like marmalade, glowing with the colour of oranges and sunshine. Over time, she had it cut in what she called a smart, modern style. Over more time, the colour had faded and dulled, but the image he sees every night now is of burnished copper and marmalade.

  2

  Redgum has a key. They both live alone and it seems only sensible that a mate should have a key, just in case. Just in case, they joke, avoiding eye contact. One of us will cark it one day and the other one can come in and pinch his stuff before the cops arrive. They joke, but it’s frightening, the thought of dying alone. In one way, George knows, we all die alone – even when we’re surrounded by family and friends. Pen was alone in that moment when death called her name. Though he clung to her hand with both of his, his warm, desperate flesh was not enough to bridge the measureless gulf that opens between the living and the dying.

  No. It isn’t so much dying alone as not being found for days, weeks, months. You read about old blokes – old women, too, for that matter. They live by themselves and die by themselves and no one notices until a neighbour or a meter reader reports the smell. So he and Redgum keep a lookout for each other – if the newspaper is still in the letterbox by lunchtime, that would be a sign that there’s something wrong.

  When Pen was alive, George didn’t need Redgum’s help and he’d felt a superior kind of compassion when his mate was diagnosed with a dicky heart. He’s a couple of years younger, too. You never can tell.

  ‘A man could, you know – go all of a sudden.’ Though Redgum spoke with his usual calm, his soft brown eyes were troubled. ‘If you could sort of check on me if you don’t see me around.’

  ‘You have to feel sorry for Redgum.’ George had squeezed his wife’s shoulders as they watched him lumber back down the path. ‘We’re luckier than we think.’

  Pen, wrapped deep in the folds of her cardigan, shivered and leaned into his warmth. She had a way of looking right into his thoughts, even before he thought them. ‘Promise if I go first, you’ll ask Redgum or Shirl to keep an eye out for you. It’s different for people who have children.’

  George found himself rattled by the intensity of her tone. ‘Rubbish. You’ll outlive me by years.’ He didn’t respond
to the remark about children. He never did. They had tried and failed. It happens.

  Redgum hasn’t waited for lunchtime. ‘Shirl rang,’ he yells from the passageway. ‘Said to check up on you. One of her grandkids is off school.’

  ‘Up here.’ George can see that there are some benefits in not having children. Even after they grow up, you’re never shot of them. Those girls of hers run poor Shirl ragged. But they were nice when they were kids and he’s still fond of them. Not that he sees them much, nowadays. Hard to believe, but they have families of their own, both of them. When they were small, Pen was always offering to babysit. She loved to read them stories and he had to admit it made a nice picture – Pen with the kids in their pyjamas, all rosy and fresh, snuggled up to her as she read their bedtime story. He had tried once, but it didn’t work for him. He felt awkward and they wriggled and poked at each other as he read. It was their favourite story, too – The Three Billy Goats Gruff – but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to stomp and roar like Pen did when she read it. He sounded flat and boring even to himself. As soon as he’d finished, they jumped off his knee. ‘Thank you, Uncle George. Can Aunty Pen read to us now?’ He was a bit hurt, but the sight of Pen reading to them in the lamplight – that almost made up for it.

  Redgum is his best mate – probably his only mate, but George is not about to tell him the whole truth. ‘Jumped by a couple of blokes in Seddon’s Lane. Big bastards. Could’ve been bikies.’ Not really a lie. They most likely will be one day.

  Redgum shakes his head. ‘Drugs,’ he declares. ‘It’ll be drugs for sure. I mean there used to be rules about not kicking a man when he’s down, but nowadays . . . You see it all the time. They’ll do anything for drugs.’ He flexes his fist. ‘You and me would’ve made a mess of them not so long ago.’

  Good old Redgum. They’d been in one or two pub fights in their time, nothing vicious, just a bit of pushing and shoving. Only ever started a blue once, but when things got going, they were unbeatable. Redgum is still a big bloke, but in his day . . . Working as a ganger for the railways, he used to heft around those red-gum sleepers as though they were kindling.

  It was a fight that brought them together. George was enjoying a quiet drink when a couple of new blokes came into the bar, talking big about what they’d like to do to the redhead bird from the bank. George wasn’t tall, but he was strong and nuggety and completely fearless.

  ‘That’s my wife you’re talking about.’ He punched one of them in the gut and this big bloke joined in. The strangers were no match for George’s fury and the big bloke’s powerful punches. They made a right mess of their opponents, who took off together when the cops came to sort things out. In those days that meant looking the other way unless there was a weapon involved. And these bastards had insulted his wife.

  The cops understood. ‘Fair enough,’ they said. ‘Just get out of here.’ They did, and George shook Redgum’s hand, discovered that they were neighbours and the rest, as they say, is history.

  ‘Bugger of a thing to happen.’ Redgum is uneasy around sick people. All that clucking and tutting and questions and sympathy – that’s what women are for. He opens and shuts his big hands hanging useless by his side. ‘As long as you’re okay . . .’

  ‘Good as gold.’

  ‘I’ll push off, then.’

  ‘No worries.’

  Redgum had brought in the newspaper and George reads the crime articles with more than passing interest. His assailants have grown in his mind. They might have been young but they were big and mean-looking. Then there was the knife. He thought it was probably a switchblade – it seemed to open and close with a flick. A man would have to be crazy to mess with a knife-wielding junkie. You have to wonder what the parents are thinking – letting their kids roam about the streets with knives and God knows what. If he’d had sons they’d have been tough, that goes without saying, but when push came to shove, they’d have been good kids. A bit of rough and tumble – boys will be boys – up to all sorts of mischief, no doubt, but nothing mean or vicious. And respectful of their elders – he and Pen would have made sure of that.

  He sometimes sees his boys – they even have names – Eddie and Jeff. (Jeff with a ‘J’. They weren’t Geoff with a ‘G’ kind of people.) When he was younger, he used to imagine them climbing trees, playing with their dog, Digger. (What else would you call a dog?) A few more years and they’d be playing footy and cricket for their school teams. Later, they might have batted for Australia, played full-forward for the Blues. Who knows? It’s George’s dream and he can make them exactly as he pleases. So they remain forever ten and twelve. He’s always been a bit vaguer about their younger sister, Annie. He gave her copper curls like Pen and eyes like his mother’s, but after that, his imagination ran out.

  He wonders, as his vision of Eddie, Jeff and Annie blurs and fades, why he never spoke to Pen about these children who lived in his head. Did she, too, have a raft of phantom babies that grew into sticky, sturdy toddlers? And later to schoolchildren with scabby knees and eager faces that shone with each new and wonderful thing they learned?

  Despite his own experience of beatings and derision, George has faith in schooling. One teacher. That’s all it takes to fire you up. Miss Walsh was strict, but she was the one who took the trouble to find out that he had no books at home. Every second Friday, she’d take her class of nine-year-olds to the local library, where they were allowed to borrow two books. They could keep them for a fortnight, but George always finished his within a few days. Then Miss Walsh would take him back to the library alone. In her own lunchtime. That was the sort of teacher who made up for all the rest.

  Teacher’s pet! Suck! After a few visits, George told Miss Walsh that he was sick of books and didn’t want to go to the library anymore. He can relive that moment, years later. As a boy, he thought it was him she was cross with, but over time he came to realise that her anger wasn’t directed at him at all. ‘Oh, George,’ she’d said. ‘Such a waste.’

  After he married Pen, he felt safe enough to join the library again. In those days a library had weight to it. All those books, all that knowledge lined up in orderly ranks so high that they had sliding wooden ladders to help you reach the top shelves. There were tall, dusty windows and heavy timber fittings. When he first walked back into a library as a man, the silence, the fusty smell, the general solemnity transported him to another world where people like him, outsiders really, had access to thousands of books. He now goes to a light, modern building, where children sit listening to stories and the librarians all seem to be pretty young girls. He reads detective fiction, war stories, adventure stuff like Len Deighton and Wilbur Smith and, of course, the memoirs of his sporting heroes. These are manly enough to pass muster. In a shifty sort of way, he reads books on astronomy, geology and even history (as long as it involves a war – but then what history doesn’t?). He wishes he had the nerve to borrow the rest of the Biggles series he missed out on when he told Miss Walsh that he was sick of books.

  No point in dwelling on the past. All the same, he regrets not talking to Pen about Eddie and Jeff. And Annie, too, of course. It might have eased the pain of their childlessness just a little. Or it might not. He’ll never know now.

  After folding the newspaper, he drifts off to sleep, then wakes to hear Shirl clattering around in the kitchen. His stomach begins to rumble. He wouldn’t mind some more of that vegie soup.

  Never one to lie about in bed, George is back on his feet three days after the bikie incident, as he’s come to call it. His ribs remain very painful, and when Shirl and Redgum are there, he shuffles about with a faint air of martyrdom. He doesn’t want to become dependent. You never know what might happen if you give in to that sort of thing. The trouble is, he quite likes the attention. He hasn’t felt so cared for since Pen died and remembers well enough the initial fuss and bother that surrounded him then.

  She had lots of friends, did Pen. He was happy just with her. And Redgum. (Every bloke needs a
mate.) But Pen had numerous friends and relatives, who, in that first couple of weeks, visited his hollowed-out house, bringing comfort in the form of soup, casseroles and cake. What is it with fruitcakes? He could die, fully content, without ever seeing another fruitcake. There’s still one in the freezer. Been there nearly three years. It doesn’t seem right to throw it out.

  In the weeks that followed the funeral, visitors sort of drained away, leaving random scraps of food and pity in their wake. Soon there was only Shirl and Redgum and he told himself that was the way he liked it.

  Shirl’s Bill made an effort, but they’d never had much to say to each other and he suspects Bill was as relieved as he was when the visits stopped. (Mind you – not without some carry-on from Shirl.)

  So it’s natural for a man to be wary of becoming dependent. Support can go down the gurgler at any given moment – even, perhaps, when it’s your sister and your best friend. Certainly when it’s your wife’s friends.

  When Pen was alive, people seemed to drop in all the time. He knew they were there for her, and he’d just say ‘G’day’ or ‘How’s Peter (or Harry or Serg or whoever)’ before going on with what he was doing, but he has to admit that it was good to live in a house that was . . . that had . . . He searched a long time for the right words. Then he found them. When Pen was there, 7 Mercy Street pulsed with life. It had a heart.

  After she retired, Pen started a patchwork group. Six women (seven counting Pen) spent Tuesday afternoons in the lounge room cutting, sewing and talking. And laughing. George was amazed at the number of things they found to laugh about. Patches littered the carpet as kneeling women measured and cut and stitched the bright scraps of fabric. They were like bees, he thought. ‘Busy buzzing bees.’ He took to calling them the Bee Bee Bees and the women laughed good-naturedly and threatened to make him patchwork trousers.