by Kim Kelly
My heart is thumping not with morbidity but with the fear of doing something I don’t know Daniel would approve of: because Captain Duncan is someone sacred to him. This is a man’s world, though, and I will have a better stab at succeeding if I have a man’s support, a man’s introduction to someone who can introduce me to someone who must know someone who can assist me with a proper introduction to the curator. Just now I was preparing to embarrass myself in front of a complete stranger; why do that when I could do it in front of a man who already knows my name? And what if he’s not there? Not interested? It won’t matter; just give me more time to get my bottle up.
‘You’re in charge, Harry,’ I tell him, handing over some money for a treat from the shop across the road, as well as the law to be upheld: ‘Don’t stray too far from the car. I won’t be long, I just have to deliver a message.’
The three of them look at me with complete bewilderment; can’t blame them, can’t explain either. They are not having a very interesting day so far, but I’ll make up for that later. I can’t take them with me; I have no idea what will happen when I step up to that entrance gate, and, besides, I realised on the way here that Daniel, as such a confirmed abstainer of vices, would most definitely disapprove of me taking the children to the races. Poor Kathryn looks especially flummoxed; she used to be a little chatterbox; not any more: she’s taken her father’s death very hard, and she’s also very fond of her Uncle Daniel, who was so beside himself this morning he didn’t even manage a ‘see you later’. I’m supposed to be distracting her from her worries with the wonders of Sydney, or at least the summer circus at Coogee, not my own erratic behaviour. I’ll pay her particular attention when I’ve finished making a fool of myself, or at worst prodding a terrible wound in a man I don’t know.
There’s the members’ gate: seen it hundreds of times before from the road, never been inside it. There’s a man there: just walk right up to him and ask him to find out if, among the throng inside, there’s a Mr Duncan, a gentleman, old acquaintance of the late Frank Connolly in attendance and, if so, could he give him this message, please. The man on the gate looks like a wiry grey rat. He’s looking at me now, a question on his face already. ‘Can I help you, miss?’ He’s got one of those nasal voices, so twangy and high I’m sure that’s exactly how a rat would sound if it could speak.
My request bumbles out of me, my little note trembling in my hand, and I wait to be told there are a thousand Duncans here. This is the most preposterous thing you’ve ever done, Francy. Congratulations.
But Ratty says: ‘The Mr Duncan? Sure he’s here. Been here all day. Saw him come in. I’ll give him your note, miss. You don’t want to come in yourself?’
I shake my head. Ratty scuttles off, my two bob for the favour jangling in his pocket. I’ve gone far enough as it is; possibly too far. Close enough to the heart of Babel right here, where I’m sure I can hear the punters being skinned beneath the hubbub beyond. Anyway, if this The Mr Duncan is not interested, or has never heard of me, he will not come out to meet Mrs Francine Ackerman nee Connolly, daughter of Frank. I’ll give him twenty minutes, no, fifteen, and then I’ll take the children for a drive along the beach roads, so they can pick which one we’ll go to tomorrow.
He’s here in less than five. He is enormous; pinstripe swallow tail, stiff collar, massive shirt front a wall that fills the space in front of me as I turn to the sound of my name, look up from under the brim of my hat. And I can’t speak: I simply lose it on the spot: cap blown off a bottle of Brainless Girl Schweppes fizzy. For everything. For the awful presumption I am making, for every stinging nerve. Because I suddenly miss my father so sharply I can’t breathe, and because, to be plain with myself, I’ve been a flea in a jar of absolute fret since I left Daniel at St Christopher’s Never Heard Of It Before with cold-eyed Foreigner for Ortho- Whatsit molestation.
But this Mr Duncan is so kind. He says, ‘Oh, my dear, dear girl,’ with a soft, disappearing burr and guides me to a bench nearby, sits down with me and waits while I compose myself; try to, quickly.
Force out: ‘Please excuse me.’
‘No need,’ he says: ‘But you can tell me what’s the matter.’
Couldn’t possibly, but must ascertain: ‘You do know who I am?’ Other than strange and overwrought.
‘Of course.’ He smiles as I look up. ‘And I was very sorry to hear of your father’s passing, sorry when he vanished from Sydney, to be more precise. So please, tell me what I can do for you.’
Face-slapping embarrassment will not let me tell him any such thing; searching for return condolences, I blather instead: ‘My husband knew your son …’ Can’t get further.
‘I know,’ he says.
Stare: You know that?
‘Richard mentioned him rather a lot in his letters to me. How is he?’
How is he? The intimacy of the question, mentions in letters throws me, then jolts me back to my senses. ‘Not the best today,’ I tell him. ‘He’s having an operation on a bad elbow. But other than that he’s … well … mostly. He grieved terribly for your son, and he still does, I think. I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr Duncan.’
He smiles again, but with the wound. ‘Thank you, Mrs Ackerman. So am I. Richard was my only child, a very loved one. But I must say that he was most relieved when your husband was sent out of it. Your chap gave him all sorts of trouble, and as many reasons for admiration.’
Dare: ‘What do you mean by that?’
Mr Duncan chuckles gently at my ignorance. ‘He hasn’t told you about it at all?’
‘No.’ Not much.
‘No, don’t suppose he would have. It’s hard for one to know what to say, to anyone, these days, isn’t it?’ And I’m sure he’s drifting three sheets to the wind, just as Father no doubt would be if he were here.
‘Yes.’ Indeed it is, but can you please be sober enough, or perhaps soused enough to tell me something more of what Daniel hasn’t, or can’t?
He considers me and his words for a moment, before divulging: ‘Well, I think I can say that your chap appears to have made a hard habit of following his own orders when things got rough. And whatever the record says is not entirely accurate: less to do with holding his post than with abandoning it. Took some dreadful risks on account of the safety of others; so many, Richard thought he must be bulletproof.’
I have no idea of Daniel’s record, beyond the cryptic, gazetted citation, which sits folded up under my old missal in the back of the wardrobe drawer with the Dear Madam, Sgt gravely injured letter, and pronounces his conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty on all occasions … blah, blah, blah, in particular something to do with a machine gun one day in July, blah, blah, blah; and the present illumination suggests that it’s probably a good thing I don’t know more: not sure whether I’m monumentally impressed or somehow furious at multiple dreadful risks on account of the safety of others. He was supposed to be lamenting his stupid decision while getting on with it, and ensuring he came home in one piece. Seems Most Distinguished Conduct involves deliberate actions contrary to that; several loose screws and a predilection for dinner, perhaps. I say against the clattering reel: ‘Well, he wasn’t shell-proof. Did you know that your son saved his life?’
‘No.’ Almost a laugh, fond and bruised. ‘Only told me about the mess he was in.’
So, while we’re swapping clandestine unmentionables, I tell him what I know: that his Richard gathered the mess of my Daniel and waved down a motor-lorry to take him direct to the nearest hospital that wouldn’t decide he was already dead or legless before looking. I don’t tell him that my Daniel remembers his Dunc as saying to the driver: ‘Take him or I’ll rip your empty English head off your shoulders and post it to your mother.’ Nothing unseemly as that.
Mr Duncan says: ‘There needs to be a new term invented to define how it is that we should be sitting here talking like this, that this is the way things are.’ Indeed again. He adds: ‘Though presumably this is not the reason you’ve sough
t me out.’
Time for confession to intimate stranger. ‘No. I …’ still can’t say.
‘Please,’ he says. ‘I don’t mean to be impolite, but I haven’t put a bet on for the three o’clock yet …’
He breaks through my hesitance and makes me giggle: it’s only half past eleven now. ‘All right, then. I want to know if you have any connections in the … art world … perhaps the Gallery of New South Wales?’
Thick greying eyebrows jump; then: ‘I have connections everywhere,’ he says, roguish. ‘But as for paint slappers and ink scratchers, you could say I’m rather well connected there.’
Stare: you’re not serious.
Now he does laugh. ‘I’m a principal contributor to the gallery.’
Gasp: ‘You’re an artist too?’
Guffaw: ‘No, my dear girl: I throw money at the place, along with the odd item of interest. Why do you ask? Are you an artist?’
Only if you’d like to purchase my last watercolour of a wombat, which isn’t too bad, but you’d hardly call it art. I tell him: ‘No, but Daniel, my husband is, I think.’
‘You think?’
‘He is. But his paintings are … not the usual fare.’
‘Good. I want to see this unusual fare.’ He does, too.
No baulking now, Francy: ‘Anytime that’s convenient for you, over the next few weeks or so. I have them at the hotel, the Metropole. There’s just three of them.’ Sent along by exorbitant express freight mail, crated up and marked all over FRAGILE, day before yesterday in my fit of super-optimistic maternal derangement; they’re sitting in the guests’ storeroom now.
He says: ‘Well, shall we go?’
‘What about your three o’clock, Mr Duncan?’
‘What about it? I don’t really need to lose another ton on the dog meat — already spilled four this morning. I’ll call for my car.’
Car: children: abandoned by roadside. ‘If you don’t mind, I think we’d better take mine.’ Good heavens. And did he mean that he’d lost four hundred pounds this morning? Good heavens again.
‘My word, I see what you mean,’ he says; they are lined up against a clutter of trunks and parcels in this narrow room that barely fits us as well; Mr Duncan is leaning so as not to keep bumping the ‘Forgotten Coats’ rack behind him and his feet crunch on the bumpy sea of brown packing paper all over the floor. He turns to me, blank-faced, and his first adjective is: ‘Repulsive.’
I gape, knees about to give way: how dare you.
But he nods into my stunned glare, turns back to the paintings, and adds: ‘Adamant about it, isn’t he, but the subtleties … Extraordinarily confident, in every way. And the boy is. well, simply exquisite.’ He edges closer to young Fritz who’s asking his eternal impossible, then turns back to me again, eyes alive again, glittering. ‘You say he’s never painted anything before?’
Knees about to give way with stunned relief now; recover yourself, Francy: ‘Not that I’m aware of, apart from the weatherboards of our house.’
Then he clears his throat, returns his attention to the paintings and says: ‘Name your price.’
Pinch me or excuse me? I wouldn’t have the faintest notion of price. ‘There isn’t one,’ I blurt: ‘He doesn’t want to sell them, just to get rid of them. But I want them somewhere where they’ll stay, perhaps mean something one day …’A couple of fat tears blob down my face, along my neck, into my blouse, but that’s all right; it’s as it should be, because I’m not gaga, and my bias is good: Daniel’s paintings are important, and not only for what they express: he is clever. ‘I want them at the gallery, archived or whatever they do with items of interest.’
‘Where at best they’ll only collect dust? They’d be better off staying here as lost property. I know of a collector, however, a European chap, who would be most interested, most interested indeed. At the very least he’d want to meet your chap; I’d be more than pleased to arrange that.’
‘No. Thank you.’ Too fast, too far from the plan and my grasp of what’s happening here. A collector? ‘I’d have to ask him first. I mean, you know, well, it’ll be a while before he’s up and about.’ And at a guess I’m afraid he’ll deliver an outright no: as far as Daniel’s concerned, this is my mischief, and he’s not a proper artist; which is the crux of my caper for him. He is not going to want to meet a European chap for a chat about it.
‘Of course. Until then, may I look after them for you? They can’t stay here.’ Mr Duncan smiles, one that deepens as he explains: ‘No more than I would have them at the gallery. I could walk them into the dusty depths for you myself, but I’m loath to do that: it’s not unheard of for items lacking sufficient appeal to be misplaced these days, if you understand?’
Oh. ‘I understand.’ The depth of my naivety, at the very least, and from Mr Duncan’s tone I think I’m being told that I would not only have been laughed away by the curator, but reported to the Commonwealth Police on my way out: it didn’t occur to me that censorship could reach that far. Quick prayer of thanks to Mr Lawson and the Leprechaun for timely encouragement; but to this The Mr Duncan, champion of monsters: ‘I’m much more than grateful for the advice and the offer, so yes, please, I’d very much like you to look after them.’
‘Good. I’ll arrange for their collection.’ He looks at his fob. ‘But now, if you don’t mind, could you get me back to the track? I need a drink and a flutter after viewing this lot.’
‘Of course.’ I could probably do with a drink too; don’t need a flutter though, feel like I’ve just won four hundred pounds worth of something right, whatever it is. So instead I indulge in a natural impulse: stand on the tips of my toes and kiss him on the cheek, saying above the scrunch of paper: ‘But there’s a proper thankyou first, and a request that you have a malt and a bet for my father.’
‘No need to request, Mrs Ackerman.’ Chuckling away his surprise, at both the kiss and his collision with coat rack: ‘I’ll have one of each for you as well, and another for your chap’s elbow, eh?’
I am so, so teeth-gnashingly sorry, children: abandoned at the hotel now, in their room next to mine, for around about two hours, and they must be starving for lunch. But I must make one last detour: Daniel.
‘Just one minute, please,’ I beg Matron, who is Mrs Moran to the power of ten. ‘I only want to see him.’
‘Not on your life, Mrs Ackerman,’ she says. ‘Not today. Doctor would not approve.’
I say: ‘Yes, on my life. One minute, that’s all. ‘Woeful beseech.
St Christopher intercedes and she relents: ‘One minute.’
And there he is. Oh —
Propped up on pillows, unconscious, fortunately, so he can’t see me gag at the first sight. There’s a sort of scaffold on his upper arm, attached to two pairs of bolts that appear to be driven into his flesh either side of a stitched-up wound, and he’s encased in plaster from shoulder to waist, and from elbow to wrist, with more scaffold from elbow and wrist to waist holding his arm out at an angle in front of him. There’s also a thick dressing around elbow and I can see blood seeping up to the surface of it.
Lunch very doubtful for me now; perhaps Matron had a point. No; had to see him, and it’s not going to be any less what it is tomorrow.
He opens his eyes and smiles, mumbles something, then closes his eyes again. Compulsion to wash his face, but Matron ahems and my minute is up. Kiss him and see you tomorrow; don’t think he even knew I was there anyway. Leave with a heart full of tight screws and loose miracles.
Must be a miracle that drives me back to the hotel, I’m so distracted. Charlie bounces about in front of me: ‘Can we see Uncle Daniel yet?’
‘Not yet, kiddo.’ Certainly not while Uncle looks like he’s being attacked by a Thing that’s grown fangs. ‘What about fish and chips at Bondi Beach instead?’
Famished children rip open newspapered treat and while they lick greasy, salty fingers and the seagulls screech and swoop about us, I take my first long, steady breaths of the day. Th
ank all my angels. Ave anyone who’s watching. Send some rapid-fire salvos for quick healing up the steep hill behind us for St Christopher to catch, and imagine that this shorter distance means they’ll be even more powerful this time around.
Kathryn comes and sits next to me while her brothers build a sandcastle. ‘He is going to be all right, isn’t he?’
Her huge brown worried eyes swallow me up, and I cuddle her, half to hide the weep: ‘Course he is.’
Motor start of love and anger: how dare this world have made her so afraid.
DANIEL
First thing I ask the Russian when I come to properly is: ‘How long will I have to stay in bed?’
But he says with that face I’m still not sure is a smile: ‘No need to stay in bed, better to be as mobile as possible, though you will not be travelling far for a while. I’ll be back later to show you how to get up without falling over, yes?’
Yes. Good. No stay in bed, very little pain, and no traction: apart from the inconvenience, very impressed. But I haven’t got a clue how I’m even going to sit up with this lot.
He says: ‘The wounds look very good, and as soon as there is sufficient correction and union of the bone here in the shaft, I can take away all this metal. The pin at the base of your elbow, however, is permanent, so you must tell me if there is any pain there at all, beyond what you have now, of course.’
‘There’s a what in my elbow?’ Serves me right for not listening in the first place; or maybe it’s better I wasn’t.
‘A small pin,’ he says patiently, ‘the most important piece of metal here. You see, the interior prominence at the end of the humerus, otherwise known as your funny bone, was fractured completely, and malunion occurred, which means, for you, when it healed it had moved out of position. I have moved it back again, and it is, if you like, nailed there with this pin. As a result of that and the alignment of the shaft above, you will have an elbow that works. Better than ever, yes?’
