by Cox, Carrie;
‘Well, this is a bit weird,’ pipes up Cate, her legs swaying from side to side like a bored toddler.
‘What is?’
‘This father–daughter movie moment,’ she says. ‘Is this where you’re meant to tell me something profound about life, or that I’m adopted or something?’
Harvey laughs. ‘Cate,’ he says, ‘you’re adopted. And I’m okay with you finding your real parents.’
‘God, I hope they’re rich,’ she says. ‘With a boat.’
A man in a silver tinny idles past them, gently lifts his index finger and nods his head. The universal wave of regional Australia.
‘Are you enjoying it here?’ Harvey asks.
‘I am, actually,’ Cate says. ‘It’s like, small, but cool small.’
‘There’s not much to do, I know,’ he says.
Harvey had spent most of the day helping Matt transfer his bonsai plants into a new, larger lawn-locker, a task prolonged by the occasional ponderous beer and the always entertaining philosophical musings of his brother-in-law. He had heard vignettes about more of the women who had inspired his potted projects—Runaround Sue (girlfriend #4), Mother Mary (his mum), and Stacked Stella (his year six teacher). Harvey had found himself intermittently recalling the ghosts of girlfriends past and also smiling about the new and unexpected development that was Grace. A whiff of romance out of step with time and place. A buzz in his chest. He had wanted to see Grace today but she was working a double shift.
‘I like helping Penny in the shop,’ Cate says. ‘Today I redesigned her whole front window. It’s now like an Eiffel Tower wedding proposal scene for Valentine’s Day.’
‘The Eiffel Tower?’ Harvey snorts. ‘Well, that’s very Shorton.’
‘Good marketing is about aspiration over reality, Dad. People want to buy when their imagination is stretched.’
‘Wow. Now who’s being profound?’
Cate throws a stone into the water. ‘This is the first time I’ve felt good at something,’ she says. ‘Penny says I’m a natural.’
‘A natural at retail?’ Harvey says, not meaning to sound judgemental, but still. ‘At working in a gift shop?’
‘Forget it,’ she says, and Harvey realises he has ruined the moment. Like trying to hold an ice cube between two fingers, one of Beam’s studio guests had once described the act of talking with teenagers.
But Cate is forgiving and changes the subject. ‘So,’ she says, removing her shoes and settling in. ‘I visited your dad … my grandfather.’
‘Today?’
‘Yep.’
‘And how did that go?’
‘Okay. He’s pretty sick.’
‘He is.’
‘It felt weird because I don’t really know him. Like, am I meant to cry or … I don’t know. It was just weird.’
Beam gives a good impression of a sigh. ‘Well, Cate, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t really know him either and I never know what to do in that room.’ That room. Does he have to go back there?
Cate lies back on the pier, looks up at the mauve sky.
‘Why do you hate him?’
Harvey coughs, runs his hand through his thinning hair, searches for the right answer. ‘I don’t hate him, Cate. I’m just … indifferent to him.’
‘God, that’s so much worse.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Yeah it is. Like, you don’t even care enough to hate him.’
Harvey feels a burning in his chest. ‘That’s not quite right.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Cate says. ‘Why can’t you love him? The others love him.’
The others?
Harvey rubs his breast bone. ‘I don’t know that they … maybe Bryan … I don’t know, Cate,’ he says. ‘Maybe they’re just better than me at pretending. Lionel is not an easy man to love. I doubt he’s ever even used the term.’
‘Do you like him?’
Harvey thinks about this, about the picture he is painting of himself on Cate’s nascent emotional landscape. She is not yet old enough to know that bitterness can set like a stone; a gradual petrification that becomes part of you, immovable.
Finally he says, ‘It’s a moot point, Cate. My father didn’t like me.’
Cate sits up, mildly incredulous. ‘Is that even allowed?’ she says. ‘For a parent?’
Harvey laughs. ‘There are no rules for parenting, love. Most of us just do the best we can. The good thing about having two parents is you can get away with having one who’s pretty shit at it.’
‘Like you?’
Beam looks at his daughter, who has only the smallest hint of a smile in her eyes, and he gently punches her in the arm.
‘I’m not that bad, am I?’ he says.
‘You were pretty shit at it most of the time,’ Cate says, but now she offers him a smile to temper the moment.
‘I was, wasn’t I? Thank goodness you girls had your mum.’
‘Who is not having her best year, either.’
‘Look,’ says Harvey, realising this is probably the longest conversation he has had with Cate in recent years. ‘She just wants what she thinks is best for you. She might be wrong about what is best for you, I don’t know, but she’s being tough because she loves you.’
‘Right. Sure. Tough love. Do you love me?’
‘Oh for shit’s sake, Cate, of course I do.’
‘Poetic,’ she says.
‘More importantly,’ Beam says, ‘I like you.’
‘Well,’ says Cate, standing up and dusting off her legs. ‘What’s not to like?’
Beam realises as they drive back to Penny’s house, Cate trying desperately to establish a bluetooth connection between her phone and Simon’s giant, industrial-looking car stereo, that this fresh connection with his eldest daughter has happened because of Shorton. Something about being here, about disrupting his Sydney existence and letting all the cogs shift and resettle, has brought him closer to his daughter, to one of them at least.
Something good is happening to his life, Beam thinks, and for once he’s present enough to notice.
24
Grace feels like a secret—the best kind. Like winning on the first race and carrying around the unclaimed ticket in your pocket all day. Knowing it’s there.
Even though his family suspects Harvey has been ‘seeing’ Grace, whatever that term means, the specifics of their relationship are unknown to the world. Grace has given nothing away when their paths have crossed at the hospital and there have been few opportunities for subsequent get-togethers now that Cate is here. But at night, every night now, they talk to each other on the phone until sleep can be pushed back no further, and throughout each day text messages zing back and forth—playful, funny, bordering on tender.
Harvey can’t help but think this … thing with Grace has been tossed into his path (he refuses to say ‘cosmically’, but whatever) to take up the space and time he would have almost certainly been devoting to mourning his job; to fearing his best days were behind him and trying to make peace with irrelevance.
The days at Shorton Radio have helped too, kept his professional pride ticking along, although the last two stints (rants about the town’s neglect of the river and the need for an art gallery) drew more ire from listeners than agreeance. ‘You might want to tone down the criticism a tad,’ Hugh Traynor had suggested to Beam afterwards. And Harvey had laughed inwardly because if Traynor knew anything about talkback radio, he wouldn’t still be in Shorton.
Today Beam is feeling fearless, even happy, and it’s this fleeting state that has led him to bring his secret out into the open, sitting with Grace in a coffee shop in Shorton’s main street and using every chance to brush his hand over her smooth knee. He just wants to drink her in today, crowd out everything else.
It’s been twenty minutes since Beam ordered them both a coffee and while he could happily sit here all morning looking at Grace’s delicate features and making her laugh with wry observations about passers-by (‘Look, t
hat guy’s ironed his hivis shirt—must be off to a wedding’), he knows too that Grace is tired and needs sustenance. She’s worked double shifts back to back, much of which has involved caring for his father and dealing with Bryan.
‘I think it’s a matter of days now, Harvey,’ Grace says and rests a hand on his. ‘You should visit him again. Before it’s time.’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I should do that.’
‘I don’t know when Bryan sleeps. He’s always there. Naomi has dropped off a little but Penny is there every morning.’
Harvey looks down. He hasn’t been there for several days and really can’t see the point.
‘Matt has gone back to work,’ he says, ‘so I think things are fairly busy for Naomi when he’s gone. I’ll go tonight.’ God, where is this coffee?
Beam looks up at the shop’s main counter, devoid of human life. He looks about for their waitress, a young girl with an enormous nose-ring (why?) and an odd body odour. Finally he sees her standing to the side of the main glass entrance, a phone to her ear.
Beam notices a sign on the front glass, ‘Staff wanted’, and suggests to Grace they surreptitiously scrawl ‘Dead or alive’ underneath it.
Their coffees finally arrive, tepid at best. Grace’s is a flat white instead of a cappuccino and they decide not to complain because the people at the next table have already launched a loud protest about the content of their sandwiches. Silently, though, Beam files ‘Shorton’s dismal customer service’ into his mental collection of future talkback topics.
‘Let’s go back to mine and I’ll make you something to eat,’ Grace says, and Harvey feels himself stiffen awkwardly underneath the table just at the thought of being alone again together with no-one else around.
But she doesn’t prepare anything and they don’t eat, don’t even enter Grace’s kitchen. Instead she leads Harvey into her bedroom, shuts the door, flicks on the fan and gently pushes him down onto the bed. Then Grace casts aside her white blouse and her sandals and she climbs onto him, astride him, wants him. Good God. She’s still in her jeans and it’s the most exciting sight Harvey thinks he’s ever witnessed. A beautiful woman above him in tight dark denim, hair tumbling down one shoulder, the ceiling fan above them click, click, clicking.
Grace.
She leans down over him and cradles Harvey’s face in her hands, her elbows resting on either side of him. She kisses him gently and soon hungrily and then softly again, and in between these changes of gear Harvey moves with her. There are no words and no awkward moments, not even when Grace removes those no-daylight jeans.
He is inside her now, shadows of muscle memory wildly kicking in. It is that perfect and rare sex, Harvey thinks, when two people are lit from within and want only each other, only this precise moment.
And Harvey surprises himself by lasting significantly longer than he had expected (a good ten or so extra seconds thanks to his trusty mental dampener: Bronwyn Bishop in bathers) and he’s fairly certain Grace comes at about the same time.
The noisy ceiling fan is clapping them now, applauding fantastic afternoon sex.
‘Don’t say it, Harvey,’ Grace says, her head on Beam’s chest, hair splayed across his arm.
‘Say what?’
‘Thank you.’
Beam laughs hard, recalling their first encounter. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘can I perhaps express my gratitude in a different way?’
Grace looks up at him, slaps his shoulder flirtatiously. ‘It’s called foreplay not afterplay,’ she says. ‘Best think of your heart, old boy.’
‘You might be right about that, Grace,’ Beam says. ‘I’m not getting any younger.’
‘You’re doing alright,’ she says and kisses his cheek.
‘Such tenderness I barely deserve but shall wilfully partake of,’ he says gratefully.
‘Is that a quote?’
‘I don’t think so. I think I made it up. It’s good, though. I hope someone’s writing this stuff down.’ Beam pretends to look around desperately for a scribe.
Grace laughs warmly and Harvey smiles. He has never, definitely not since Suze, had such an appreciative audience. His radio listeners generally express criticism before gratitude.
But as Grace’s laughter fades, the air in the small room shifts. The ceiling fan loses its rhythm. Harvey wants to fall asleep but is wide awake. How do women not have TVs in their bedrooms?
‘Do you think, Mr Beam,’ Grace says after a lengthy pause. A snack-worthy pause. ‘Do you think that we only get, you know, one real love in a lifetime?’
She props up her chin with her hand. ‘Do you think there is a “one” and everyone after that is “two” or “three” or “eight”, never again the “one”?’
‘Would it matter?’ Harvey answers, not wishing to diminish her question but not really understanding it either.
‘Maybe we’d make different decisions if we knew,’ she says. ‘If we were somehow informed officially by the universe or whatever that this is your “one”. This is your best chance. Blow it at your peril.’
‘I don’t know,’ Beam says. ‘Surely life isn’t that big of an arsehole to just give us just one chance.’
But then Beam gets it, knows what Grace is thinking. ‘Are you worried your husband—God, what was his name?—was your one and there can’t be another?’
She holds her bare hand in front of her face, fingers splayed, peering through them at the fan above. ‘Sometimes. I felt so sure with him, so certain, and then, you know, when something falls apart, you lose your confidence in knowing what’s good for you anymore. I feel like I’ve been flailing about for years now. Can’t commit to anything. Can’t make a decision bigger than what to wear.’
‘I like what you’ve got on now,’ Harvey says, running his hand over Grace’s naked body. ‘This really works for you.’
Grace looks over and smiles at him but doesn’t laugh this time.
‘And how does this feel then?’ Beam says finally, realising the topic is still hanging in the air, refusing to dissipate. ‘You and me? Now?’
‘It feels nice,’ she says. ‘It feels … lovely.’
‘Too right it does.’ And Harvey shifts his hands behind his head as though life right at this moment is sorted. Look, Mum, no hands!
Just when he thinks he could happily stay in this position, in this bed, with this person, somewhere close to forever, Grace sits up and looks down at him, a large tear hanging on her eyelid. ‘I’m going to miss you, Harvey Beam,’ she says.
He is taken aback. Says, ‘Where am I going?’
‘Back to Sydney. Probably before me.’
‘Well, there’s no tearing hurry,’ he says. ‘Can I at least collect my trousers on the way out?’
‘Your father doesn’t have long,’ Grace says. ‘Days at best.’
‘I know, I know,’ Beam says. ‘But since coming back, I think, I don’t know, sometimes it feels like there are other reasons I’m meant to be here.’
Grace throws her hands up theatrically. ‘But you hate the place! All you ever do is complain about it.’
‘I don’t hate it,’ he says. ‘That’s just me firing up the locals—it’s good radio.’
‘This isn’t Sydney, Harvey,’ she says, lying back down and taking up a spot in the cradle of his wing. ‘Small towns don’t like big shots from the city pointing out their flaws.’
‘They might not like it but it’s what they need,’ Beam says. And instantly he hears in that sentence the mighty arrogance of a man in a hospital bed not far away. He winces at the realisation and changes the subject.
‘Grace, would you like to meet my daughter?’
The air suddenly feels still, ambivalent towards the ambitious fan. Where did that come from? Harvey’s phone pings in the other room, or possibly it’s Grace’s. He thinks about retracting the question, turning it into an odd joke. He knows it’s unfair to talk like this, about meeting his children, about the future, but right now a future with Grace seems less impossi
ble than everything else in his life.
After a very long pause, and a return to a more cautious Grace than the one who has just seduced him with single-minded purpose, she says: ‘Harvey. Let’s just see what happens.’
25
Lionel Beam is home late from work and Harvey has spent most of the past hour and a half wrapping and rewrapping insulation tape around one side of a tennis ball. He’d noticed older boys at school doing it to engineer swing, but he can’t seem to get it right. The tape keeps folding upon itself.
He jumps when he hears the car door shut and waits for his father’s first words, always a sign of where the evening is headed. It sounds as though his father is in a good mood because the first thing he does is summon the whole family into the lounge room.
‘I’ve been at a conference today,’ Lionel Beam tells them, ‘and we played a really interesting game.’
Harvey looks at his sisters, who are equally puzzled. Their father rarely plays ‘games’. He rarely addresses them as a group. The night is already askew.
From behind his back, Lionel reveals a set of rope quoits. He hands one quoit to each of the four children—Harvey hadn’t even noticed Bryan enter the room and slide into a chair behind the girls and himself—and he places the wooden pole stand in the centre of the room. Then Lionel walks backwards to the door and instructs the children to have their throw. To toss the quoit on the pole, simple.
Penny is first to speak, characteristically wanting to be very clear about the rules. ‘From where?’ she says.
‘From wherever you like,’ Lionel Beam answers in a measured tone.
‘But …?’ Penny is clearly rattled and sits down on the carpet. She’s going to give this some thought.
Into the breach leaps Naomi, excitedly wanting to get things started. ‘I’ll go first,’ she says, and stands as far back from the pole as the room will allow. She tosses the quoit, which hits the side of the pole and bounces off. Before anyone can comment, Naomi fetches the quoit and lines up her next throw, and misses again. After another eight or so attempts, during which time their father says precisely nothing, Naomi’s quoit spins successfully around its target and she runs around the room in a playful victory dance.
