Last Drinks

by Andrew McGahan

  ‘And you really stayed in Brisbane? You never left?’

  ‘Do you think I should have?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just assumed, after everything . . .’

  ‘I came close. I really did. God knows, everyone else was gone.’

  Including me.

  ‘What about Charlie?’ I said. ‘Did you see him at all, before he died?’

  ‘I didn’t even know he was still in town.’

  ‘What happened with you two . . . after the last time?’

  The question didn’t seem to bother her. ‘After he got out of hospital I kept going out to the prison, but he wouldn’t talk to me. Later he refused to even see me, and I stopped going. Then I got divorce papers in the mail.’ She dabbed at an eye, but there were no tears. It was an older May. Harder, maybe. And it was all ten years ago.

  ‘What about Marvin and Jeremy? Did you ever see them at all?’

  ‘Why would I want to see Marvin? And Jeremy. I was thinking of Jeremy . . . I might have got round to it, I don’t know. Have you seen him? Is he still in that house?’

  ‘He’s in hospital. He’s dying of leukaemia.’

  She sighed. ‘I’ve left it all too late . . . but what’s happening, George? When I heard about Charlie I thought that maybe it was just something that he’d been involved with since our time. From prison maybe. What else would it be? I was going to call you but . . .’

  She stared at me, intent, forgetting about the road.

  ‘George, for all I knew he could have died years ago. I’d given up on him. You didn’t see what he was like in that prison, especially after the hospital. I buried him long ago. But now this thing with Marvin. What’s going on?’

  ‘What did the news say?’

  ‘Just that he was found dead on a beach.’

  ‘They think it was suicide.’

  ‘Suicide? I didn’t realise. I thought . . .’

  ‘There’s a note confessing that he killed Charlie.’

  ‘Marvin killed Charlie?’

  ‘That’s what the police think.’

  ‘You don’t?’ She was getting bewildered.

  ‘Pull over for a minute.’

  We stopped on a side street and May switched off the engine. We turned in our seats, facing each other a foot apart, and I told her the whole story. Aware, every minute, of her hands resting on her knee, only inches from mine. Of the smell of her. Of the new lines around her mouth. Of the body I’d known so well once, and how it was subtly different now, and of the desire to explore it further, to see what had really changed, and what hadn’t, and whether it mattered. It was a helpless feeling, like the old days. May and I talking about Charlie, and me thinking only about her.

  I told her everything. I don’t know how I was expecting her to respond. Alarm or fear or anger. Instead a deep stillness came over her. Watching her hand, I saw it tighten and go white on her knee. A flush seemed to rise in her face, but she said nothing, didn’t move. When I was finished she turned her head and stared through the windscreen. At the end of the street were the remains of a wooden wharf, and beyond that the slow flow of the river. But it wasn’t the river she was seeing. I didn’t know what she was seeing, what she was thinking.

  ‘Poor Charlie,’ she said finally, a brightness in her eyes that might have been moisture. ‘He didn’t deserve that.’

  ‘You were Marvin’s personal assistant. If this George Clarke and Marvin were partners, you must have met him. Christ, it was his property you tried to burn down.’

  She nodded, still far away. ‘I met him. Even before I started to work for Marvin. The first time was at Jeremy’s place, not long after I moved in. They weren’t friends but . . . Clarke . . . kept coming around. I was wishing he’d been inside that building we burnt. But of course I was on the other side by then. I was supposed to be grateful. He’d let me out of jail.’

  ‘What was he like? Is he capable of all these things?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . maybe.’

  ‘Do you know anything about him now? Where he lives? Where he works?’

  ‘No. He kept to himself. That was the way he and Marvin wanted it.’

  ‘I guess we should go to the police, then.’

  She came back to the present, clutched my hand. ‘I don’t think that’s enough, George.’

  ‘What else is there?’

  ‘You should get out of Brisbane. If everything you say is right, then he might have other friends in the police. Get away, George. Hide somewhere.’

  And the feel of those fingers, long and slim, but so strong, digging into my palms . . .

  ‘Hiding didn’t help Marvin,’ I said. ‘I’m okay for the moment. They won’t know where to go once they work out I’m not at the motel. My car’s still there, but that’s better. They knew my car anyway. They won’t know yours.’ I looked around the interior. ‘It’s a lot more luxurious, for a start.’

  ‘It’s hired.’

  ‘You must have some money, then . . .’ And it came to me again. I still had no idea where she’d been, how she’d survived. ‘What have you been doing, May?’

  ‘I’ve got money, but I don’t want to go into that, George, not now. There’s too much. What are you going to do? That’s what’s important.’

  ‘Detective Kelly is okay, I think. I can talk to him.’

  Her hands twisted in mine, worried. ‘All right. But get out of Brisbane first. Call Detective Kelly from somewhere safe.’ And her fingers were gone. She swung back behind the wheel, started the car. ‘I can take you somewhere. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘May, I can’t just leave.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘There’s . . . for one thing, I want to see Jeremy. He left me a message to come and see him. He said it was important.’

  ‘All right. I’ll take you to Jeremy. But then you leave. George, I’ve met this man. I . . . I saw what he was like, even back then. Promise you’ll get away before you call anyone?’

  ‘Okay, but . . .’

  ‘Which hospital is Jeremy in?’

  ‘The Royal Brisbane.’

  She faltered a moment, her hands on the wheel, looked at me. ‘The Royal?’

  ‘I know. But it’s only a hospital, May.’

  She hesitated a second longer. ‘Of course,’ she said, and turned the key.

  But of course it wasn’t just a hospital. It was the hospital where one night, ten years before, everything had ended.

  That night. The last night. Election night, December 1989.

  THIRTY-NINE

  It was a foregone conclusion anyway, the election.

  I spent the day wandering though New Farm and the Valley, walking past polling stations and rallies, and I watched the revolution building. The Inquiry had gutted the old government, the premier had already resigned, Marvin and two other senior ministers were under criminal investigation, the police commissioner was in jail. On the streets people jeered at the posters of government incumbents. They tore up government how-to-vote cards and laughed at government volunteers. At one booth a dummy dressed up as the old premier was set on fire. Two years of inquisition and trial, of newspapers bulging with endless details of deceit and corruption, and before that three long decades of shame and anger and repression and lethargy . . . it was all reaching culmination.

  I didn’t bother to vote.

  I stopped at bar after bar, jammed in amongst excited drinkers who talked of nothing but the ballot. No one recognised me, no one knew I was one of the old regime, one of the despised. I supposed I didn’t look much like the George Verney of old. I was drinking all day, every day. I could see it in the mirror, if I could bring myself to look. The permanently bloodshot eyes. The swollen veins on my face, a raw transparency of the skin. When I shaved my hands trembled so badly that I constantly nicked myself, so I’d stopped shaving. My hair hadn’t been cut in a year. And I could feel it in the way I walked. I was never quite steady any more. My legs ached endlessly. Everything ached and even with alc
ohol the nights were sleepless, my thoughts a bleary haze. I was sliding, step by step, into the deathly, empty-eyed shuffle of the chronic alcoholic. And worst of all, I stank. I still showered, and I was only fleetingly aware of the smell myself, but it was there. Embedded in my pores. Stale wine. Stale hopes. Defeat.

  So I stood alone amongst the crowds. Election day wore on, and hour by hour a black depression settled over me. I didn’t care that the government was going to fall, it deserved to fall, but still, it was the end. The official end. Once the voting was over and the government was gone, the whole thing would be only a memory. The purgatory I’d been floating in for two years would be over. I’d have no more connection to anything, no one left to blame, no more excuses. I would have to move on with life . . . and yet I couldn’t see how or where. I could never work in the media again, and what else did I know? Where else could I start? The future had been a deep hole for so long, I’d simply let myself fall without thought, but now the bottom was rushing up and I was afraid.

  I drank and drank, but there were too many people, too much noise. I couldn’t handle it all in public. I loaded myself up with bottles of red wine and carted them home. From my flat I drank and watched the afternoon fade and listened to the growing rumour of vengeance from the footpaths. One bottle of wine, then another and another . . . by that time it was dark and the TV election coverage had started. Even from the first few booths it was obvious which way the landslide would go. No amount of bias in the electoral boundaries would save them now. But I thought that, with luck, I could drink myself unconscious by the time the result was final, by the time the new premier of Queensland raised his fist in the air. And maybe I would have made it. Maybe I wouldn’t have woken up at all.

  But the phone rang, and it was May, calling from the Royal Brisbane Hospital. Charlie had somehow got his hands on a prison guard’s rifle, and used it to shoot himself in the head.

  Later I would wonder if the same mood that had enveloped me throughout the day had also spread its wings around Charlie, sitting there in prison. Why else attempt suicide on election day, the very day that would mark the end of everything we’d ever been or shared? Had he even known what day it was? Had he cared? Or had the months of jail just built and built in him, and then there was a chance, a door left open, a gun case unlocked? Either way, he failed. The doctors would decide later that the length of the rifle made the angle awkward. He’d tried to shoot himself in the right temple, but instead the bullet had only made a furrow along the inside of his skull and exited just above his right eye. Charlie never even lost consciousness.

  May was distraught. ‘We did this to him,’ she cried over the phone, ‘we did this to him.’

  I got in my car and weaved through the Valley streets to the hospital. My mind was fetid with alcohol and I felt sickened, with myself, with May, but mostly with Charlie, for being so weak, so stupid. At least if he’d shot straight it would be finished. It would be appalling, but it would be finished. This was even worse. Die, Charlie, I thought, die and let May and me be. And out on the streets the revellers were cheering as the government lost seat after seat after seat.

  At the hospital I found May outside Charlie’s room, slumped against the wall. A policeman had set up a chair by the door. He watched us vaguely. I knelt down before May and looked into her face, into her tear-reddened eyes, and she only stared back. It was months since we’d seen each other.

  ‘He wouldn’t believe me,’ she said, broken. ‘No matter what I said. But I haven’t seen you, have I? I stayed away.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You stayed away.’

  ‘It’s been so hard. I’ve lost you both.’

  ‘How is he, May?’

  A wild sorrow shook her. ‘His eye, George. They say he might lose his eye. And that’s not the worst. His brain, the swelling, they don’t know how bad, whether he’ll ever . . .’

  And tears took her again.

  I knelt there and did nothing. The policeman watched us.

  ‘I’m going in,’ I said to May.

  ‘He’s sleeping. They’ve sedated him. They’re waiting, before they operate.’

  ‘I have to see him, May.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  We rose and the policeman lifted his gaze to me. ‘You family?’ he said. ‘Only family inside.’

  ‘I’m family,’ I said.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s family!’ May yelled.

  And so we went in. There were two beds in the room, but only one was occupied. I wouldn’t have known it was Charlie. The body under the sheets looked so thin, and the head was swathed in bandages. Only his left eye and lower face were visible, the lips dry and swollen. The eye was closed. There were still smears of what looked like blood on his jaw, and on his neck. A drip was attached to his arm, and a heart monitor blinked silently.

  Oh, Charlie, I thought, you fool, you bloody fool.

  Beside me May stood with her hand to her mouth, staring.

  ‘How could he?’ she asked. ‘How could he?’

  ‘He hates us, May. That’s why.’

  ‘There is no us.’

  ‘He doesn’t think so.’

  We stood there, side by side at the foot of his bed, but a foot apart. Not touching. As if we had never touched. She shook her head, closed her eyes to blot out the sight of him. ‘It’s killing me,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t take it any more. I’d rather he’d just ended it.’

  ‘You don’t. You love him, May . . .’

  ‘No, I love you.’

  But her voice was dead. She had never said it before. And it was too late now.

  Charlie groaned.

  It was a hollow, despairing sound. A man arising to an awareness he’d done everything to destroy. His left eye fluttered and opened. He stared at the ceiling a moment, the eye glazed, but then he seemed to focus. His throat worked. His head shifted slightly, and with whatever vision the chaos of blood and swelling had left for him, he saw us standing there. His wife and his best friend, at his feet.

  ‘. . . you . . .’ he whispered.

  May moved towards him. His hand lifted minimally from the sheets, stopping her.

  ‘. . . get . . . away . . .’

  The words were slow, thickened, as if his tongue wasn’t working. Or maybe it was the damage he’d done to his brain. Maybe he’d speak like this forever. Was he already lobotomised, a crucial part of him lost beyond retrieval? And did he know? Did he know what he’d done to himself, in failing to die?

  ‘Charlie,’ May pleaded. ‘Charlie, I want to help . . .’

  ‘. . . can’t . . . help . . . me . . .’

  And a tear glittered in his eye, bright with a terrible, frightened confusion. He knew. He knew everything. His chest rose and fell in a sob, and his voice cracked as a red trickle emerged from under the bandages.

  ‘. . . damn . . . you . . . damn . . . you . . . both . . .’

  May choked. She turned to me for a second, speechless, then fled the room. I stared at Charlie a moment longer, at his single eye fixed on mine, shining with hatred for me or pity for himself, I didn’t know. Then he was weeping, low and awful, and I stumbled backwards out the door, past the policeman who’d risen to his feet, his hand to his gun, wary. May was already gone, she was nowhere in the hall. I took a few aimless steps, I called her name once, and then the blackness swallowed me. The policeman was talking but I pushed him aside, reeling off down the passageway. I had to get out. Out of the hospital, out of this life, out of Brisbane, away from May, from Charlie, from everything. Enough, it was enough. More than one drunken coward could possibly bear.

  So I ran out into the night where the government was crumbling and the crowds howled their victory and my car waited to take me away into the darkness and the rain of the mountains.

  And Charlie cried, alone in his room.

  FORTY

  The Royal Brisbane. It was just a hospital. May and I w
alked through its front doors, and it was just a hospital, just a building . . . but with May at my side, and Charlie finally dead, as we’d both once prayed he would die, it was as if he was vindicated at last. The two of us together as he’d always known we would be, as he’d cursed us for being, that night. It didn’t matter that he was wrong, that we were strangers now. The guilt felt the same.

  Reception gave us the directions to Jeremy’s floor, and we waited for an elevator, entered it alone. I pressed the button and watched the numbers slowly climb.

  May spoke. ‘I went back, you know.’ She wasn’t looking at me, was talking as if I wasn’t there. ‘That night. After I’d calmed down. I went back and held his hand and talked to him. I explained it all. I told him I loved him. That I forgave him . . . even for what he’d done to himself. I told him I wanted him to live. That I’d wait for him.’ A laugh escaped her and was gone. ‘It didn’t make any difference. And I kept watching the door. I was hoping you might come back too.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not blaming you, George. You did the right thing. If you’d come back it just would have gone on. How would that have helped?’

  ‘It didn’t help you and Charlie that I stayed away.’

  ‘No . . . we were beyond saving. But there was no chance for you and me either. Not after that.’

  I could only nod. After so much time, and in a few words spoken between floors in an elevator, there was no way to rescue the past.

  The doors opened, and at the nurses’ station we were pointed to Jeremy’s room. Outside his door May touched my arm, hesitating.

  ‘I don’t know about this,’ she said. ‘Should I go in?’

  ‘It’s only Jeremy. Things were always okay between you and him, weren’t they? I thought you’d want to see him.’

  ‘I do, but . . . my life has been so strange since then, George.’

  ‘In what way?’

  She stared at me, complex emotions moving in her.

  ‘There are things you mightn’t like . . . about what I’ve done.’

  ‘I’m not gonna judge, May. As if I could.’

  ‘It was so horrible after you left. I only saw Charlie a few more times. He wouldn’t talk to me at first and then he refused to see me. It wasn’t just the injuries . . . he was so bitter, so stubborn. So I thought, well, that’s that. Time to get on with life. Everyone else was gone. You were gone. It was just me, and all I was doing was drinking, drinking far too much . . .’