This Is the Life

by Alex Shearer

  They took the keys and left.

  “One less thing to worry about then, Louis,” I said. “You don’t have to pay the mooring fees now.”

  “I loved that boat,” he said. “Going down to the marina, chewing the fat.”

  “When did you last go anywhere in it?”

  “Up the coast with Kirstin.”

  “That was ten years ago, Louis.”

  “A couple of times around the bay since, maybe. I’d be down there every weekend, though, doing the bits and pieces.”

  “Which bits and pieces, Louis?”

  “The boating ones. Go down, see Hugh—”

  “Who’s Hugh?”

  “Moored next to me. You met him. Irish Hugh.”

  “I thought he sounded Welsh.”

  “He is.”

  “So why’s he called Irish?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Louis said. “They’re just like that down there. You’d need to have a boat.”

  * * *

  After the funeral the ashes were delivered to the door. I had to sign for them and show ID. The man who delivered them was still in his dark undertaker’s suit and wore a white starched shirt and sober tie.

  He left me and Louis together, so I rang Irish Hugh up and said, “Hugh?”

  “Louis? Is that you, you cunt?”

  “No, Hugh. It’s his brother. I’m just using his phone. You were at the service, Hugh. You came to the crematorium. You stood up and said a few words. How could Louis be ringing you up?”

  “I forgot. It was his name coming up on my phone.”

  “I’ve got his ashes here, Hugh.”

  “Your brother, he was a right cunt. I told him I’d take that boat off his hands and do it up and look after it for him until he got better and then he could have had it back.”

  “He didn’t get better, Hugh.”

  “Didn’t know that at the time. And what does he do—he gives it away to bloody strangers. They were down here yesterday, sailing around in Louis’s boat like they owned it.”

  “They do, Hugh.”

  “They looked like cunts to me.”

  “Hugh—”

  “How are you keeping anyway? You clearing out the house?”

  “Trying to. You know his will’s gone missing?”

  “Surprised he made one.”

  “He did and he carried it around in a blue cooler bag with all his bits and pieces.”

  “His bits and whats?”

  “Pieces. The drugs he had to take and his appointment cards. But it’s all gone missing.”

  “No will? None at all?”

  “There’s a copy.”

  “You’re fine then.”

  “Not really. A copy’s not legal enough. It might be challenged. The court might say that Louis had destroyed the original—so the copy’s no longer valid.”

  “I think you might need a lawyer, boyo.”

  “I’ve got one. That’s not why I’m calling.”

  “It’s bloody windy down here. Even the seagulls look seasick. Can you hear all that rigging rattling? It’s like the steelworks at Port Talbot back in Wales. Or have they closed them down?”

  “Hugh, can you take us all out in your cruiser to scatter the ashes, say next weekend?”

  “Who’s invited?”

  “You and Mrs. Hugh and your son, Hugh, obviously, and maybe his kids, and, say, Louis’s friend Halley, and the neighbors, Don and Marion, and Kirstin and me.”

  “I can probably fit them on, but that’s your limit.”

  “The weather going to be good?”

  “Sunday? All right in the morning. Get here before it blows up.”

  “When?”

  “Ten’ll do.”

  “Thanks, Hugh.”

  “I’d have looked after that boat for him and given it back to him, though. I liked your brother Louis, I had a lot of time for him, but he was a cunt.”

  “He was fearsomely independent, Hugh, and didn’t like being beholden to people.”

  “That’s just what I’m saying if you’d listen to me—he was a cunt.”

  “But you’re okay about the ashes?”

  “I’d have been offended if you hadn’t asked me.”

  “Thanks, Hugh.”

  “Here—my wife was saying that you’re quite a bit like your brother.”

  “You mean I’m a cunt as well, do you, Hugh?”

  “I’ll see you Sunday then, shall I?”

  “Thanks, Hugh.”

  “You’ll bring the ashes with you, will you?”

  “No, I’ll leave them here.”

  “Well, there won’t be much point in—”

  “Joking, Hugh.”

  “Your brother had a peculiar sense of humor as well. But I’d have looked after that boat for him and given it back to him when he got better.”

  “He died, Hugh.”

  “I know. And I told him he should have gone to the doctor a year ago. He’d sit on that boat of his and stare out to sea for hours on end. Just sit there, staring, until I’d go over and tell him to put the kettle on and we’d have a cup of tea.”

  “I’ll see you Sunday, then, Hugh.”

  “I’ll see you Sunday, Louis. And don’t forget your ashes.”

  “It’s not Louis, Hugh, it’s his—”

  But the phone had gone dead.

  I guess there’s good and bad in everyone; the trouble is it’s usually so stirred in with the blender that you can’t separate the one from the other.

  Hugh told me once that he was seventy-six years old, though he looked no more than sixty, but he did dye his hair. He told me he never drank and then poured us both a whiskey and he lit a cigarette to go with it. He had done every job there is to do under the sun, apart, maybe, from being a midwife, and even then he might have seen some action at an amateur level.

  On the following Sunday, Halley and Kirstin and Marion and Don and I drove down to the marina in two cars and found Irish Hugh, Mrs. Hugh, their son, Hugh, and Hugh’s son—surprisingly not called Hugh—waiting on the boat.

  We set sail and headed out to the bay. After an hour, younger Hugh, who was steering, cut the engine and threw the anchor out.

  “How’s this?”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  The sky was blue, the sun high, the breeze cooling, the clouds few.

  I had trouble getting the lid off the canister and had to ask Hugh for a screwdriver so I could pry it up. Then Marion uncorked the bottle of Jägermeister she had brought, and Mrs. Hugh passed around the teacups, and we drank a toast to absent friends.

  Then I tipped the ashes over to leeward so that they wouldn’t blow back into our faces, and Louis sped away, returning to the elements, becoming part of the vast ocean. It would carry him all around the world. In a year or two there would be a trace of Louis in all the seas and oceans of the planet.

  The Jägermeister bottle was empty, so Hugh broke out the Greek brandy from the first-aid cabinet, so we drank that too, and then Marion passed out on one of the bunks for half an hour. When the brandy was gone, younger Hugh produced an Esky—a cooler—with beer in it.

  “Louis would have liked it here,” I said to Hugh the elder.

  “Sailed out here many a time,” he said.

  “What’s the island there?” I asked. “The one nearest ­to us?”

  “Old prison island,” Hugh said. “They used to keep convicts there.”

  “Convicts?”

  “That’s right. They sent the convicts to Australia, and when they got here, the ones that were so crooked even the convicts couldn’t stand them, they sent them to that island there. Could never swim it to the mainland. The sharks’d get you first.”

  “I see. So we have just scattered Louis’s as
hes offshore from a prison island, once occupied by Australia’s worst convicts?”

  “He loved it out here, Louis did.”

  “Can I have another beer, Hugh?”

  “Help yourself, boyo. Let’s have a toast—to Louis.”

  “To Louis.”

  “I loved him. But he was a cunt.”

  “Hugh!” his wife rebuked him.

  “Sorry, love. No offense.”

  Mrs. Hugh had brought flowers, which I had overlooked to bring, and she handed us a few each, and we dropped them into the sea, to follow the ashes on their way.

  Soon there was a pageant of drifting blossoms, mixing with the deep blue of the water and the flick of the whitecaps’ foam.

  “Better get back, Dad,” Hugh the younger said. “Blowing up now a bit, and look at the horizon.”

  He hauled in the anchor and we turned back for the marina. Shoals of jellyfish floated alongside, white as the flowers we had thrown.

  We tied up at the marina and headed for lunch at Fried Fish.

  “Nice to see you again,” the waiter said when we arrived.

  “I’ll have the usual,” I told him, when he returned to take the order.

  “Your brother not here today?” he asked.

  * * *

  The next day Hugh rang me early.

  “Louis? That you?”

  “No, Hugh, it’s his—”

  “Ah, you’re the one I want. Not too early for you, is it?”

  “Well, it is only half past seven.”

  “I’m down here by five every morning.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Sorting things out.”

  “Hugh, what things need sorting out at five in the—?”

  “Thing is, I’ve been sweeping bits of your brother off the deck.”

  “Sorry. I tried to make sure that didn’t happen.”

  “I think there’s some of him in the compass.”

  “I don’t think—I mean, how would he get in there?”

  “But it don’t matter, boyo. No, the reason I’m calling is you left the canister behind.”

  “Yes, I realized. Sorry. I was going to call later when you were up.”

  “I am up. Up every morning at four thirty, down here at the marina and on my boat by five. Don’t really know why. There’s sod-all to do. So I thought I’d give you a ring. You want the canister back?”

  “Not particularly. It’s only plastic.”

  “No sentimental value then?”

  “Not really.”

  “No, it’s not like it was a coat or his trousers or something, is it? Tell you what, I’ll put it in the recycling then.”

  “Thanks.”

  “That was a nice coffin you got him, by the way.”

  “It was wicker.”

  “He’d have liked that. He always liked alternatives. I’m thinking of having one of those myself. I said to Mary, ‘I’ll have a woven one.’ ”

  “Well, good to talk to you, Hugh, and thanks again.”

  “When are you going back?”

  “Still got a bit to sort out. Another two weeks or so.”

  “Come down and have a cup of tea then.”

  “Thanks, Hugh.”

  “See you then, Louis.”

  “I’m not—”

  And he hung up.

  I felt as if I’d spent a lifetime in the shadows of tall trees, walking down a track of old footsteps—as if dinosaurs had once passed that way, and you could still hear the echoes of their rumbling. And every time you tried to get a bit of attention for yourself, someone would remember them.

  18

  See Red

  I wasn’t supposed to know about the Kirstin episode, at least not as far as other people were concerned, for I was sworn to confidence, but know about it I did.

  I never met her until the funeral. Louis had left her a bequest in his will—or at least in the copy of it I possessed—and so plainly still carried some small burning candle for her that the slipstream of the years flying by had failed to extinguish.

  I had no number for her, but found one for her daughter on one of the pieces of paper with coffee-cup rings on them that acted as Louis’s address book. I rang and introduced myself and said, could you please tell your mother that Louis from ten years back has died of a tumor and this is his brother and he has left her something and she would be very welcome to attend the funeral service, but if not, no problem, and everyone would understand. But, in either event, would she have an address for her mother as the lawyer would want to be in touch.

  Ten minutes later Kirstin rang back and sounded genuinely sorry that Louis had gone. She seemed perplexed that he had left her anything and said she felt she could not accept it. This was in strong contrast to some beneficiaries of wills, who often feel they should have been left a whole lot more.

  “Kirstin,” I said, “the wording in the will says: ‘To my friend Kirstin, three thousand dollars.’ ‘To my friend’ is the phrase he used. ‘My friend.’ I think he wanted you to have it. Don’t you?”

  * * *

  She turned up at the funeral, both she and her daughter. Two nicer people you would not meet.

  Louis, I thought, what went wrong?

  But I knew what had gone wrong.

  Louis had tried to strangle her.

  Inexcusable, but excuse it I must, even though I feel like the body-in-the-bath murderer saying, “It was just the one lousy corpse.”

  It was after the halcyon sailing trip up the coast, and they had been back awhile, and the old black dog was nipping at Louis’s heels.

  He always had the yearning in him to strike out on his own and to be his own boss, but every time he tried it, things seemed not to work out, and it was back to the drudgery of some ill-paid assembly line.

  The two of them set up in a franchise business, but it went wrong. They spent a lot of money up front, but little was coming in. Kirstin wanted to stick at it, but Louis wanted to cut their losses and quit.

  Then, one morning, Louis rang me.

  “Louis, you don’t sound good. You ill?”

  “No, but I’ve done something terrible.”

  “Well?”

  “It was Kirstin. We were in the kitchen and having an argument, and suddenly I saw red, and the next thing I knew—when I came to—I had my hands around her neck.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Well—that’s bad, Louis, but it’s not as if you do it all the time.”

  “No.”

  “I mean, that’s a first, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “We all have bad days, Louis.”

  “Yeah, but I tried to strangle her. And didn’t even know I was doing it.”

  “Yeah. I can see where you’re coming from, and it isn’t good. But, I mean, you stopped—you did stop, didn’t you? Louis, she isn’t dead, is she?”

  “No, no. No, no, no. But she’s gone.”

  “Right.”

  “And she’s not coming back, she says.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “I feel so bad. . . .”

  “Oh, Louis—why do you live so far away?”

  “I feel—I mean—I’ve never done anything, ever. I just saw red. I just saw red.”

  “I know, Louis. I understand.”

  “I could have killed her.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “But I could have done.”

  “Louis, why don’t you grab a plane and come on over and see us, and we can go around and visit the old places?”

  “It would be nice, but I can’t right now. I’ve got to find a job and . . .”

  “Louis, are you all right?”

  “Not really.”

  “Come over, Louis.”


  “Have you ever strangled anyone?”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Who have you thought of strangling?”

  “You.”

  “Yeah, funny.”

  “Oh, you think I’m joking?”

  “She’s gone and I don’t think she’s ever coming back.”

  “Come over, Louis, why don’t you just come on over?”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to get a job.”

  “Louis, what’s life for?”

  “Maybe next year.”

  “You always—”

  “I feel so bad about it.”

  “Try calling her.”

  “She won’t answer.”

  “Louis, are you all right?”

  “No, not really, I’m not.”

  “Louis, you’re my brother. I don’t care what you’ve done. I mean, I’m not endorsing it, but—”

  “I just saw red. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just saw red.”

  “You’re a good person, Louis. Really. Remember that stuffed koala bear you sent? Dan loves it.”

  “He does?”

  “He winds it up and it plays ‘Waltzing Matilda.’ And Kelly, she loves the kangaroo.”

  “How’s the boomerang?”

  “Still coming back.”

  “You got it to work then?”

  “Sort of. Are you all right, Louis?”

  “I’ll maybe call you tomorrow.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll call you. Come over and see us, Louis.”

  “I can’t. I can’t right now.”

  “Louis—”

  “I’ve got to go now.”

  “I’m going to call you tomorrow.”

  “Did they really like the toys?”

  “Do you want me to go and get them and put them on the phone?”

  “No, it’s all right. Say Louis says hi. Don’t tell them about the strangling.”

  “Louis, they’re kids. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

  “Thanks. Okay. I couldn’t help it, didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “We’re all still alive, Louis. Nobody died. Nobody got killed.”

  “Maybe talk to you tomorrow.”

  “If you don’t ring me I’ll ring you.”

  “Okay then.”

  “Bye.”

  * * *

  Of such mistakes is life compounded. Louis, for years the gentlest and most considerate of men, snapped and saw red, and he lost her and frightened her. And she would never risk going back, although she loved him and he loved her. And that was it. No going back. And the next time they were in the same room, he lay in a wickerwork casket, and she sat in a pew. So of such errors and mistakes and sadnesses is life constructed, and who, if they had some kind of repair kit upon them, would not rush to the latest emergency or scene of crime, and apply the healing powers and the make-and-do and the make-and-mend and the stitch-in-time and make things better and put things right?