by Peter Barry
The last news he’d heard had been about a year ago. He’d been at the Bondi shopping centre, which was unusual for him, when he spotted Jodie. In fact they almost walked into each other. She pretended she hadn’t seen him and made to walk past, but he blocked her path. He didn’t want to speak to her either, but he wanted to know about Kate and Tim. ‘Hi, Jodie.’ She was forced to acknowledge him.
‘Hugh, how lovely to see you! I barely recognised you. Long time.’ The last two words were the only honest ones she uttered. She took a sharp breath in, seemed to hold it as if in an attempt to overcome her distaste, then stepped forward to peck him on the cheek. It might have been from pity. No, she told him, she didn’t have time for coffee. ‘Sorry, in a dreadful rush, you know what it’s like,’ and she gave half a laugh, half a short convulsion of embarrassment. If she was referring to the fast pace of modern life, the pressure of keeping up in the working, consuming rat race, no, he didn’t know what it was like. But he wanted to ask one question of her, the only thing that interested him, and then they could say goodbye and return to ignoring the fact either of them existed.
‘Yes, Kate’s well. And Tim’s growing fast. Very handsome, and full of fun.’
Every word lifted his spirits, yet crushed him at the same time. He couldn’t afford to become emotional, not right at this moment.
‘Yes, she’s with a lovely fellow now, in finance. Very successful.’
He suspected she was getting at him. ‘Not a banker, surely?’
He hadn’t meant it as a joke, but she took it as one nevertheless. She laughed. ‘He is! A merchant banker no less, and a friend of John King – remember him?’ She held up her left hand to show the engagement and wedding rings.
‘Congratulations.’ He did his best to appear pleased by news that left him indifferent.
‘Kate’s fellow’s much more successful than John, though. Always seems to be overseas. Oodles of money.’
‘Are they married?’
‘Not yet, but I think it could be on the cards. Don’t know if I should tell you this, but there’s a baby on the way.’
There was a finality in that last sentence, a severing, yet almost immediately his thoughts went in another direction. How could she? How could she live with a banker? He despised himself for having such thoughts, for being so small-minded. Jodie was telling him that Kate had moved interstate, down to Melbourne, a couple of years earlier. ‘That’s where he’s from.’ So the fact Hugh hopefully and at times desperately scanned the streets and beaches of Sydney whenever he was out, praying he might catch a brief glimpse of his son, had been a waste of time. Tim was living nine hundred kilometres away. It might as well have been on a different planet.
She stared at him. Neither knew what to say. Passers-by probably thought someone down on his luck had approached a shopper to beg the price of a cup of tea, and that the woman had been kind enough to stop and ask after his welfare.
‘How about you, Hugh. Have you found anyone?’ She was looking at his old clothes. She knew perfectly well he hadn’t. They talked for a minute longer, before she reminded him that she was in a rush. He almost asked her to give his love to Kate and Tim, but there seemed little point.
He sat down on a bench for a few minutes when she left. Some tears fell, and an old lady, looking as down on her luck as he was, asked if he was all right. He nodded, but couldn’t speak. ‘You battle all your life, luv, and where does it get you?’ He nodded again. That was where his comfort came from nowadays: strangers.
He went home then. He hadn’t been able to do anything else. He’d sat and looked across his little room to the small table by the single bed, to the only picture he had of Tim. He was sitting astride a bright red, wooden toy train, grinning at the camera. Hugh had taken the picture in the garden a long time ago. The high yew hedge could be seen in the background. Sometimes, when he was feeling low, he dreamt that maybe Tim would come and look for his father when he was eighteen or so, when he left home or went to university. He continued to hold onto that dream, that slim hope. And he would picture their reunion, in different ways, in different locations, and smile at their mutual joy, the end of all their misunderstandings, and the future they swore they would now both share. Sometimes these dreams took a wrong turn. Tim would ask him out for a meal in a restaurant, and he’d have to confess, to his own child, that he didn’t have enough money to eat out. Or Tim would ask him to drive over and visit him and his wife or girlfriend, and he’d have to admit that he didn’t have a car. But those dreams were less common than the happy ones, and he always pushed them out of his head as fast as he was able.
He was woken from these reveries by a nearby door slamming. Startled, he opened his eyes. The train had arrived at Helensburgh, and the newspaper had slipped from his lap onto the floor. He bent down to pick it up. The old couple sitting opposite smiled in an understanding way. He wondered if he’d been talking in his sleep. To hide his confusion he opened The Australian. It was the day they ran an Advertising section; he’d forgotten about that. And there, near the top of the page, he was startled to see a familiar face staring out at him. Geoffrey Wicks of all people! It seems Geoffrey – as the newspaper called him – had recently been promoted to the position of managing director of The Alpha Agency. Hugh laughed out loud and the old couple looked uneasy, as if concerned they might be in the presence of a mentally disturbed person. He was shocked. It obviously didn’t matter how lazy a person was, or incompetent, so long as you played the game, pretended to be busy and smooched the right people, you could still make it to the top. He could scarcely believe what he was reading. He was also so amused, so outraged, so disbelieving that he had to stifle the urge to share this story with the old couple. Geoff will now have to go out drinking with every client at Alpha. Lucky him!
The train started, and it wasn’t long before his mind was again wandering. That was why he enjoyed train journeys so much; having the time to dream, to think, without any distractions. He yawned and stretched. He felt tired, he always felt tired nowadays. It was a kind of inertia, a feeling of lethargy so heavy he sometimes didn’t have the energy to stand up. Poverty did this. A lack of money could kill all feelings in a person. It could grow to take over most of the space within the head and the heart, pushing out higher, nobler thoughts and smothering any inclination towards love or joy. He hated himself for not being happy, but especially for allowing his state of mind to depend on his having money. If only he could be happy with nothing, happy with just being. But then didn’t that contradict the way he’d spent all of his working life? Money was another word for being able to afford things, for buying possessions that would make you happy. Instant gratification, that’s what it was all about, and he’d been sucked into that particular vortex, into the frantic accumulation of material possessions, oh yes. But just as he now knew he didn’t want to own an expensive car, a fabulous home, or a gold-plated this or that, he also appreciated that he wouldn’t be happy living in a mud hat with only the clothes he stood up in. Of course, there was one advantage in having nothing: it meant you no longer had to scrabble. It was no longer necessary to struggle with one’s fellows to get higher up the ladder, not even necessary to fight to keep what you had acquired – because you now had nothing, not even ambition. You were free to just let go.
The train was crowded. These weren’t the people he’d been used to travelling with. There wasn’t a business suit in sight. Instead, there were families, some surfers who were still too young to own a car, and some old couples. They all appeared to be going down the coast for the day, probably to Kiama, possibly to visit the beach. It was the school holidays.
He knew he couldn’t afford such an escapade, a day return, but he’d chosen to do it anyway. Which made him wonder if Kate would be happy to be with him now, now that he had no money. Nor did he have a job or any prospects. So he would be able to spend every hour of every day with her and Tim. She’d like that, he thought bitterly, although she’d probably complain soo
n enough about the lack of money. There wouldn’t be enough to put food on the table for all of them. He sighed. No doubt she had plenty of money now, being with a merchant banker. And it struck him that her new partner would surely work even longer hours than he had at Alpha.
He walked down the hill from the station, the road twisting and turning past several houses. He crossed the footbridge over the main coast road, went past the café on the corner, then hurried to the other side of the road in the hope that he wouldn’t be seen by the owner of the bottle shop. The road continued downhill, past the school on his right, to the recreation area. There were several cars parked outside the beach café – probably visitors – and one or two people strolling on the grass. He crossed diagonally to the little bridge over the inlet, and over the road to the foot of Hill View Drive. He avoided eye contact with anyone he met, but fortunately there were very few. Not that he expected to run into anyone he knew, or even recognised, because they hadn’t lived in the house that long. Although Kate had started to meet a few mothers with children the same age as Tim, there was no one in particular that Hugh had become friendly with.
He felt apprehensive. He sat down on a low wall at the front of a house that appeared to be shut up. It was probably a weekender. He needed a moment to gather his thoughts. He remembered sitting on a similar wall when he was little, waiting for his father to drive round the corner from the main road. But there were no garden gnomes in this garden, and there was no one coming to meet him.
He wondered if this was such a good idea. His actions seemed pointless, even stupid. Perhaps he should head back to the station and return to Sydney? But that would surely be even more stupid than coming down here in the first place.
He walked on, dragging his feet, almost reluctant to reach his destination. Half way up the hill, he took a deep breath and stopped. Everything was exactly as he remembered: carefully tended lawns, cars in the driveways, a few outside on the street, the feeling of space, of being up high, just beneath the sky. It was a position of privilege, above the rest of the world, living safe and secure amongst the other Haves. If you live above everyone else, like this, he wondered, does that mean you hold the moral high ground, too?
He walked slowly, even though it made him feel conspicuous. No one walked around here, unless it was to go next door to a neighbour. Apart from an elderly woman tending her garden, he saw no one. Most people were at work, of course. Others were probably either indoors, about to have lunch, or had driven to Thirroul to shop.
He stopped in front of the house, their house. It rose above him on thick wooden pylons, finely balanced on the side of the hill. There was a BMW station wagon in the short driveway, parked half under the house, next to the hull of a yacht. There were balloons tied to the front gate. The front of the house looked no different really, possibly more chaotic, the few shrubs a little less well tended, but basically the same. He could hear children’s music, and shouting from the rear of the house, then he heard a splash. They’ve put a swimming pool in our back garden! He was upset. How could they do such a thing? They must have ruined the beautiful, gently sloping lawn that one gazed across to the open sea. He took a step or two back, trying to see down the side of the house, but the incline was too steep and he was unable to see anything. He groaned. He and Kate would never have built a pool.
At that moment a car, in low gear, laboured up the hill and slowed to enter the gravelled driveway. It parked nose through the gate, the rear across the pavement. He watched, fascinated. It was almost like being at the cinema. There was the same distance between him and the scene, the same feeling of being an observer, separate from what was happening. A young woman climbed out from the driver’s seat, followed by a child from the rear of the car. The boy was about three or four, and he was carrying a gift in bright wrapping paper. He was excited, talking nonsense in a fast, breathless way, and although Hugh couldn’t hear what he was saying, it was as if he was talking more to himself than his mother. The woman glanced at Hugh as she closed the driver’s door, then walked up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. A woman of about the same age appeared from the interior of the house, greetings were exchanged and the young boy rushed inside. The women chatted on the doorstep. At one stage they both turned and looked at him standing below them on the road, and the scene became disjointed, as if the actors on the screen had suddenly chosen to address the audience. In the distance, a dog barked. The visitor returned to her car. She reversed out onto the street and, as she drove past him, stared pointedly. Remaining perfectly still, Hugh listened to the silence follow the vehicle down the hill. He gazed at the woman still standing in the front doorway. He moved forward, but hesitated, unsure what he should say. He wanted to call up to her, across the front garden, to ask the woman if he could come in. Only for a short while. He wanted to tell her that he used to live in the house that she and her family now lived in, that he had once had a nice wife and a lovely boy, and that his family had been very similar to her own. They just hadn’t had a swimming pool. Would she mind, therefore, as he just happened to be passing by and didn’t wish this opportunity to go to waste, if he had a look around the house, because it wouldn’t take long and he’d so welcome the chance to relive his memories, to see the home where he and his wife and son had all been so happy once upon a time, the home which still very much had a place in his heart? But he knew, almost without any doubt whatsoever, that she would take one look at his frayed clothes, his battered sandals and his careworn face – that would be the real giveaway, the fact his face was prematurely lined, his hair flecked with grey, and his skin pasty and unhealthy – and not believe a word of what he was saying. She certainly wouldn’t trust him.
He could hear a woman singing with children inside the house. The boys and girls voices were high and breathless; they were almost shouting with excitement.
Ring a-ring o’ roses,
A pocketful of posies …
His face was the face of someone in a nightmare, the haunted face of someone being chased. And at that moment he did in fact look over his shoulder, back down the steep road, startled, as if the other woman had returned unexpectedly or a neighbour was advancing on him from across the road. There was no one there, however, no one to be seen. But that didn’t mean they weren’t on their way. He hesitated, unsure …
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down!
The woman hurriedly closed her front door. She closed it against him, and probably went off to fetch her husband, or possibly to call the police. ‘There’s a person standing outside my house, officer … No, he’s not from round here. I’ve never seen him before ….’
Hugh did, finally, turn away from the house. And as he went down the hill, back towards the recreation area where hang-gliders landed after their miraculous flight from the clifftop, as he walked slowly through the emptiness of the suburb, he could hear the faint sound of the children still singing behind him.
Ring a-ring o’ roses,
A pocketful of posies …
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Paul, Charlotte and Richard, who have never wavered and always shown faith. I also gratefully acknowledge the advice and encouragement of Nicola and Alastair Murray, especially Nicola who has unfailingly supported my dreams of writing for more decades than I care to count. Thank you also to Jennifer Compton for her helpful criticisms and suggestions regarding this book, and to Michael Parker who is the fount of all knowledge when it comes to the King’s English – even though he comes from South Africa! I am, as always, eternally indebted to Barry Scott of Transit Lounge for his kindness, wisdom and steadfast belief in my abilities. Thanks also to my editor, Charlotte Brown, for her painstaking and patient help. Finally, and especially, a huge (but still inadequate) thank you to my favourite and most loyal reader, my wife Elizabeth, for her love and support, and for her endlessly perceptive, if frequently painful, criticisms.
All Fall Down
