The Best Australian Stories 2011

by Cate Kennedy

  My mother gives no sign that she hears anything.

  *

  ‘We’re going to put a catheter up,’ says the nurse on our third day of watching. ‘Why don’t you both go down to the canteen for half an hour?’

  ‘You go,’ my father says. ‘I’ll stay with Mum and hold the fort.’ He’s sitting on the window side of the bed, between her and the sky.

  I take my hand slowly from hers. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour,’ I say to her from the door. Her hand lies where I left it and her expression does not change. There’s no mothering in it at all. Nothing that might go with, Go on dear, you go and have a break, I’m fine, take some money from my purse for your coffee and a magazine.

  ‘Don’t worry Gwen, I’m not going anywhere,’ says my father.

  But she is still looking at me. Don’t leave me, her eyes say.

  The canteen is a windowless place crammed with formica tables with chrome legs, families out of their element, toddlers in pushers and a lot of bad food. The coffee is as bad as coffee can possibly be. I check my watch; upstairs on the eleventh floor it is the eleventh hour and my mother is dying and I’ve left her, although I know she didn’t want me to.

  Do as you’re told now, she used to say to me. Don’t make a fuss.

  Would she want me now to argue with the nurses? Would she want me to make my father go away?

  She never told me she was unhappy. I never questioned the solid, dependable habits of her life.

  *

  When I go back, she’s asleep, her head fallen forwards on the pillow. Asleep, she looks as she always has; it’s possible to pretend that nothing has happened to her.

  ‘I don’t know what it is,’ says my father, ‘but she doesn’t seem to want me here. She doesn’t want to look at me.’

  ‘Dad, you mustn’t take it personally,’ I tell him, taking his arm. ‘She just can’t express her feelings properly, because of the stroke. We’ve just got to keep trying to communicate with her, and hope it gets better.’

  He takes me at my word, and when she opens her eyes he redoubles his efforts at communication. He reads out the messages on all the get-well cards, holding the pictures in front of her face.

  ‘This one’s from Frank and Julia,’ he says. ‘They say, “Thinking of you, hope you make a speedy recovery. We will be down for a visit soon, but Frank’s mother has had to go into the Mercy Hospital for a kidney operation. She is eighty-six.” Fancy that, having an operation at eighty-six! What do you think of that?’

  She stares, somewhere beyond his arm; her eyes flicker. He reaches and pulls her bed jacket closer across her, smooths it down her chest. She turns her head to look at me and her expression is imploring. I pass him another card to read, so that he has to lift his hand away from her to take it. He begins again, ‘Oh this is a pretty one! Look at that! This one’s from Mrs Dobson at the post office.’

  He takes up the newspaper and asks her which bits she’d like him to read. ‘“Bus driver had heart attack, inquest told,” – do you want that one? What about “Triplets reunited after seventeen years” – that sounds a bit more cheerful, doesn’t it?’ But she looks at me still. I glance at my father; his head is in the paper and he’s reading out about the triplets. I love you, I mouth to her.

  Every time my father takes her hand, she pulls it away. That’s if it’s the good one, of course. If it’s the paralysed one, it just lies limp and he strokes it. She seems to shrink away, as if her whole arm has betrayed her and doesn’t belong to her anymore.

  Every time he speaks to her, she turns her eyes away. Sometimes she manages to turn the right corner of her mouth down, as if she says to me, Can you believe the rubbish that comes out of his mouth?

  He holds a glass to her mouth, pushing a bit, encouraging her. Her lips are useless flaps of skin, and water and saliva dribble down her chin. He dabs her with his handkerchief and she turns her face away again; her eyes seem dead already.

  He makes his little jokes. He offers me the change out of his pocket when I go to get the paper and I take a coin from the palm of his hand because I can’t bear to do anything that is like what my mother is doing. He wants to help, but there is nothing he can do. He wants to be forgiven, but he doesn’t have a clue what he’s done – there’s fifty years of it, tangled up like the umpteen balls of wool in the pillow case at the back of the linen cupboard, you’d never get the knots out, ever. She’s not going to forgive him – the stroke has stripped away all the shades of grey, and left just this one plain black truth.

  We ignore it. We pretend. We say she’s tired. We say we saw the shadow of a smile on her face when he came in. He sits on her paralysed side and says to me, ‘Go on, you sit where she can see you,’ as though he is sacrificing precious time with her for me.

  She gives it up in the end, all that truthfulness after so many years, and even her own daughter won’t acknowledge it – it’s more than her little body can sustain. I watch her fade and there’s nothing I can do to keep her.

  *

  After she dies, my father is cut loose, rudderless. He shakes, trembles, has to put down his cup. He can’t remember where anything is.

  ‘Gwen would know, Gwen took care of all that,’ he says.

  He wanders about the house, picking things up and putting them down again. He lets me organise the funeral.

  ‘What music do you think she’d like, Dad?’ I ask him.

  ‘One of her piano pieces, maybe,’ he says, but he can’t name any of them. ‘“Abide with Me”! That’s it, that’s the one, she liked that one!’

  Among her CDs I find Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and I add ‘Dido’s Lament’ to the mix.

  He follows me like a child from room to room.

  ‘What am I going to do about the shopping? Do you think I should water the pots on the patio? Where did she keep her pension book, do you think?’

  I look for the pension book and find a diary, tucked at the back of the drawer in her bedside table. I sit on the bed and open it.

  Went for walk in the park. Lovely sunshine. J wouldn’t come.

  Made jam. J shouting about electricity bill.

  Went to bowls. J took car so had to walk.

  Birthday – seventy-six! Don’t feel any different. Lovely call from P. J surprised when I reminded him, shot up to milk bar and bought box of Cadbury’s Roses, again.

  Worried about plumbing, noises very loud, taps dripping, leak in bathroom. J won’t get plumber – says he will ‘look at it.’

  J upset about fish, went out and bought hamburger! Don’t know anything about losing weight, apparently.

  Played piano all afternoon – lovely! (J out.)

  ‘She’s kept a diary every day,’ I tell my father.

  ‘Any revelations?’ he says.

  ‘No, not really, just ordinary, everyday stuff.’

  He doesn’t ask me for it.

  I go through all her things; everything is open to me now, it’s a treasure trove, so many ways to hold her, keep her, I want them all – jewellery, clothes, letters, bowling-club medals, nail scissors, photos. I keep taking things to him, showing him. ‘What do you want me to do with this, Dad?’

  ‘Oh, you have it,’ he says.

  I want to know the stories; there are things I haven’t seen before. A beautiful green cut-glass brooch. ‘When did she get this? Was it a present?’ I ask him.

  He turns it over in his hand briefly and gives it back to me. ‘I think her mother might have given it to her,’ he says. ‘I don’t remember her wearing it. I can’t find the pegs.’

  There are letters from a friend, Dorothy, who moved to Melbourne when her husband died.

  ‘She missed Dorothy terribly,’ I say to him. He’s watering the hanging violet, which died of neglect days ago.

  ‘Missed who
?’

  ‘Dorothy. Her friend from the library who moved to Melbourne. They were planning a holiday in the US together.’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t have done that,’ he says. ‘We were coming over to Perth to see you at Christmas, that’s the only holiday we had planned.’

  ‘But Dorothy says in this letter,’ I say, trying to show him, but he doesn’t have his glasses, won’t take it. ‘She says she’s written to her sister in Portland to see about them staying with her.’

  ‘Just talk,’ he says. ‘She wouldn’t have gone all that way.’

  *

  Across the plates of sausage rolls, surrounded by cards and piles of hothouse flowers, he sits with the unfamiliar whiskey that someone has pressed on him, accepting everyone’s attentions. The expression of bewilderment has settled on his face now; it is as if he is always about to ask a question.

  ‘We had our golden wedding anniversary only two months ago,’ he says to Bill and Audrey.

  ‘We were there, Jim,’ says Audrey. ‘We were all very proud. It’s a wonderful achievement, fifty years of marriage.’

  ‘The only woman I ever loved,’ my father says. His eyes are filling; he puts the whiskey glass down. ‘I never wanted anything else. I think she knew I loved her.’ He looks to Bill, who realises belatedly that it is a question.

  ‘Of course she did, you were best mates, you and Gwen.’

  ‘You were her rock,’ says Audrey.

  ‘I’d have done anything for her, you know,’ my father says, as if he must state his case. I put my hand in his rough old one and nod my understanding. He’s looking at the piano and the music on the stand, still open at the last piece she was playing.

  Silence 1945

  Rodney Hall

  A man jumped up on the horizon. Quite suddenly he jumped up where nobody had been before. A soldier, with nothing on his head to protect it. In the afternoon. Behind him mushrooming clouds gathered. And above the clouds three parachutes seemed fixed in the sky. The big guns had already fallen silent and every last aircraft had long since flown away. It was on a ridge above some straight shadows that were the enemy trenches. And up he jumped.

  And there was one who asked: Do we shoot him, Sergeant Potts?

  But Sergeant Potts just spat. On the ground. Because this was something no one could account for; a soldier making a target of himself in full view of the platoon of hidden men in helmets, each one of us with his finger on the trigger and a question in his eyes. Each homesick from too much bitterness and loss. And too much fear felt too soon. Boy soldiers, rookies, with no idea what to do next.

  Someone whispered: It must be a trick.

  Or else a lunatic, another whispered back and opened the wound of a grin in his face.

  Another asked: What will they chuck at us next?

  But Sergeant Potts poked around under the rim of his helmet and scratched his skull.

  All because a man jumped up where nobody had been before. Quite suddenly, dark and small in the afternoon, with nothing to protect his head and only clouds beyond. And three parachutists fixed in the sky while we hid, watching him, a platoon of boys in baggy uniforms, with no idea what to do. And this man, who was our enemy, lifted wooden arms. Slow as a broken windmill he started signalling. One letter at a time he spelt a message in semaphore: ICH HABE HUNGER.

  Good Weekend

  Jumping for Chicken

  Sharon Kent

  I nudge in close, waiting for the right moment to cut the engine, to let the boat drift in. If I’ve got it right, the current and the wind will hold the bow back, and she’ll just lie there, like a well-trained pup. It’s the one I’ve been looking for all week. The five-metre male. Big daddy. Boss of the river. There – on the sandbar, motionless, jaws agape. I coast in. Four metres, three, two. I hold my breath and my heart skips, and for a second I wonder if I’ve pushed my luck too hard this time. And then, miraculously, the boat stops. Perfect. No one says a word.

  It’s always like this, coming up close. Everyone, everything, is silent. There is just the water swirling against the hull, tinking and tapping against the aluminium, little bird taps. No one moves, their Nikons and Canons and long lenses forgotten. The woman in the front leans back so far, she is almost horizontal, her eyes wide with fear.

  Afterwards, at the bar, they will all be garrulous and you won’t be able to get a word in – it’ll be that tight with talk.

  Mate, you’re another Crocodile Dundee!

  I can’t believe how close we were!

  Remind me to bring a spare pair of undies next time I get in your boat!

  And they’ll laugh and buy me drinks and slap me on the back and drape their arms over me, like I’ve saved them from something, taken them into the jaws of terror and then delivered them safely home. And I have. It’s my job, my life, this river.

  I always think it’s best to start a tour off with a big saltie. Some of the other guides go for the build-up, begin the day with a juvenile. They reckon you get better tips if you leave the big ones for last. No, I say, you only get one shot, come in hard first up – it’s the memory they pay for. And these kinds of memories just get bigger and better by the minute. By the time I drop them off later today, when it has all had time to cook a bit, the croc will be seven metres and we will have been close enough to touch it. Anyway, I usually get a good tip. Most of these tourists are cashed up. At a grand a night, they ought to be. Being a tour guide isn’t big money, but then I don’t need big money. The shack’s paid for, I catch fish, shoot a wild pig now and then and grow my own everything – vegies, dope, fruit, flowers. Everything. The job – it’s just money for jam.

  You love that job more than anything, she used to say. I know what she meant – that I loved it more than her. And then, later, more than both of them. Well, I did and I didn’t. You can’t love a job. And this one has its downsides – the rubbish runs, maintenance, cleaning dunnies and all that. And talking to tourists all day can get a bit much sometimes. No, I wouldn’t say I loved it. But then I wouldn’t say I loved her either, not really. Not by the end of it, anyway. By then I felt like that croc the fisheries caught years ago, the one who was causing trouble, clambering up into backyards, eating the odd dog. They brought it in, all trussed up on the deck, its jaws wired shut. The whole town came out to have a look at it, standing around sipping beers, arguing over whether fisheries had done the right thing.

  Shoulda left it.

  Nah, you can’t have a rogue croc in the river.

  Yeah, well now we’ll have all the males in here – bloody free for all.

  Fisheries, what the fuck do they know – at least we knew the cunt.

  On and on. Opinions and anecdotes and big croc tales. It was like a wake. Someone even brought a fruitcake. People took photos, pushing and poking at its flesh with their boots, kids squeezing in to jab at it with a stick, shrieking with the thrill of it. I looked at that old river croc, five and a half metres long, fifty, maybe sixty years old, destined to spend the rest of its life living in a cage – and I felt sick inside. That was gonna be me. Jumping for chicken.

  I didn’t think she’d have the balls to go through with it. I stepped right back when she told me. If I could have, I would have held my hands up in the air, to show her how fully I surrendered, all the while walking backwards into my own life. It’s your choice, your decision, all yours, I said. When she told me she was keeping it, planning to have the baby, well I kept on retreating, until I hit the wall of my own existence. And for a while, she had me there, pinned up against it, me squirming, with nowhere to go. Having to face up to everything. Even thinking at times that I could manage it, that at fifty-three I could be a father, a real one this time. I tried it on, like a coat, shrugged my shoulders into it. Eight months to get used to it. Trying to stretch myself into it, gingerly, month by month, as if I was the one who was
pregnant, as if I was the one who had to do all the growing and accommodating. I think I’m really ready for this, I told her. And she prattled on, all earnest and passionate like she was selling me something I couldn’t possibly do without. And I let her go on, all the while nodding thoughtfully, pretending to listen, but when it came down to it, I never bought a thing. Just kept on living my life, while she moved further and further beyond it, until she was insignificant. A speck on the horizon.

  *

  I allow the boat to drift well downstream before I start the engine. Everyone is still silent, just looking around, adrenalin, I’m sure, still pumping. We pass a smaller croc baking in the mangroves. This time I don’t slow, just carve in close and the croc startles and lunges out into the water. I call out above the engine.

  Speeds of around ten ks an hour – can almost outrun a man and can leap half their body length from a water start.

  The passengers nod and I spend the next hour showing them the inhabitants of the river – herons and kingfishers, green tree snakes, mudskippers, archer fish. The only thing we don’t see is the sea eagle. I know where the eyrie is, but you’ve got to hold something back, keep something for yourself.

  The boat flies over the water and it feels like the hull is sitting a few inches above it. I manoeuvre it past mangroves and shallows, following the contours of the river back downstream until we are at the mouth. There I slow the engine and look for the bar, idling back, waiting for the right moment to gun it. And then we’re through and easing out through ocean chop, around the headland, the jetty up ahead, angling out into the blue.

  God, I love this. The boat ride. The freedom of it, being at the helm, shooting skyward and skimming the surface. I don’t think about the owners out here, about the job or the money or anything. It’s just life. Living. Heat and sun and salt. Sometimes I just want to keep on driving, out to the horizon, the wind in my face, the water slipping past, until there is no land in sight and there is just me, out on the ocean, under the sky. That simple. I want my life to be that simple.